Sitting of 13 November 1996

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

Cattle Head Deboning Industry
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Knapman]
9.34 am
Mr. Peter Viggers: When the BSE tragedy struck this country, I shared with my constituents a sense of distress for the cattle involved and for the agriculture community. I little thought that the BSE problem would have an immediate impact in Gosport, because it is not an agricultural area. We Gosportians—I grew up there, and I have represented the area for 22 years—are proud of our constituency, but the last thing we would claim for it is that it is an agricultural area. One will not see a pig or a sheep in Gosport. We have hardly a horse, scarcely a cow and only a handful of goats.
Because we have so few agricultural animals, we value Felicia park at Forton, which is a mildly eccentric and totally delightful farmlet where children can see live farm animals. Without that opportunity, they may not know what farm animals look or smell like in the flesh. I hope that Felicia park will continue, despite the development in that area.
It was, therefore, a surprise and a shock to receive a plea from a local firm for help following the BSE scandal. Pinnacle Meats has a serious problem: proportionately it is the worst problem of anyone affected by the BSE crisis. It was at that point that I learned about the cattle head deboning industry. I trust that hon. Members had a good breakfast before the debate.
I should say a few words about the trade so as to put the problem in context. Before March this year, cattle were killed in abattoirs and the bulk of the carcase was handled within the mainstream butchery trade. That business is vast: it is so large that it operates from enormous factories, its turnover is huge and its profit margin is correspondingly small in percentage terms. It will be important to bear that in mind when we consider the head meat boning industry later.
By contrast, the cattle head deboning business is tiny. It operates through about 12 firms, typically with 12 to 20 employees. It is a highly specialised part of the trade. It buys cow heads from abattoirs, takes them to purpose-built premises where the edible portions—mainly the cheek—are removed under strictly controlled conditions, and the remainder is dispatched for destruction, also under strictly controlled conditions.
Pinnacle Meats in Gosport is typical. It was set up by Graham Reed and John Gray in 1988, and established itself in the trade with four employees. United Kingdom and EC regulations became more stringent after 1988, and
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it was increasingly necessary for such small firms to buy specially designed equipment. In 1992, Pinnacle Meats moved to new premises in Gosport and took the lease on larger premises in an industrial estate. To carry on its business, it had to invest in expensive, specialised equipment.
The company had to comply with the EC cutting plant licence for 1992, and the cattle head deboning regulations imposed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which applied from August 1995. I am told that that is the only part of the meat distribution trade in which producers require a special licence.
The rules were strict. I visited Pinnacle Meats and I saw the way in which the rules were observed. The cattle heads were kept at regulated temperatures from the moment of slaughter to the moment of dispatch from the cattle head deboning plant. Temperatures and cleanliness were vetted at every stage by MAFF officials, who had right of entry at all times. The quality of the meat was vetted on arrival at the deboner's premises, and there were strict rules to ensure that the paths of the raw material and the product did not cross.
Record keeping was, by regulation, meticulous, and it had to be available to MAFF inspectors at all times. There were daily audits of stocks, with reconciliation of input and output. Maintaining those standards was expensive. At a cost of £300,000, Pinnacle installed epoxy resined floors, special wall cladding, metal detectors, code-printing weighing scales, vacuum-packed conveyor systems and a special scissor lift to enable the product to be loaded directly into a specially designed bay. The equipment was highly specialised, and referable only to the business of cattle head deboning. Those who have visited any such premises in any part of the country will know that there is no way of readily transferring equipment of that kind and using it to operate any other kind of business in the meat industry, or other industries. It is purpose designed.
As I have said, all that cost about £300,000. Most of the businesses involved were small family businesses. As hon. Members will know, it is normal for banks lending money to small family businesses not just to lend on the security of the company, but to require the security of the home of the proprietors. Pinnacle is typical of many small firms—the trade was chiefly concentrated among smaller firms—in that its proprietors borrowed against the security of their homes. They borrowed because they were told that they had to in order to comply with the regulations. In other words, the Government told them that they must spend the money to stay in business, and they had to take up the security of mortgages on their houses in order to do that.
In that way, Pinnacle and other companies built up a useful and profitable business. Pinnacle was deboning about 300,000 cow heads a year, providing a useful service to abattoirs and purchasers of the product and a profitable business for their employees. The process usually involved the removal of cheek meat, some of which was considered a delicacy. Pinnacle, for instance, exported 10 tonnes of cheek meat a month to France, where it is sold as a delicacy—joue de boeuf. Hon. Members who have had the opportunity to eat joue de boeuf in the Crillon may not know that it probably came from the industrial estate in Gosport. That was a matter of pride to my constituents—until 29 March 1996.

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Until that day, the business was providing joue de boeuf, meat spreads, sausages, hamburgers and other meat products throughout the United Kingdom and, indeed, Europe. Graham Reed and his partner had a sound, profitable business; they employed 25 people, who produced food in strictly controlled conditions. Then came the BSE scare, and the Government reacted by taking action against cattle. On 29 March 1996 they passed the Specified Bovine Material Order, which states that the whole of the heads of cattle that died in the United Kingdom, apart from the tongues, constitute specified bovine material that may not be sold for human or animal consumption. People who had profitable businesses on 28 March 1996 woke on 30 March to discover that those businesses had been destroyed. I reiterate that they had borrowed money that they now had no way of repaying, because they had no businesses.
Let me make two points about the Specified Bovine Material Order. First, there is nothing wrong with head meat. Foreign head meat is still being sold. It is head meat from cattle that die in the United Kingdom that cannot be sold for human or agricultural consumption; foreign head meat can be and is being sold in this country. We have become importers, rather than having a profitable export trade—Pinnacle had an export trade worth £ 15,000 a month to France alone. That is because the authorities in the United Kingdom are concerned only about the possibility that the method of slaughter used in UK abattoirs will lead to contamination of head meat. They are not bothered about head meat from other parts of the world. Head meat that is eaten now can come from anywhere other than Britain.
Secondly, no one has ever suggested that the UK cattle head deboners have any done anything wrong. They were controlled, and operated in a sterile environment; their businesses were well run and efficient. It is in no way their fault that they have been put out of business—for that is what has happened. The order of 29 March made the product illegal, and ended the trade.
Hon. Members may ask why the deboners do not go and do something else. The trade was highly specialised: it operated on specialised premises, and with specialised equipment. Pinnacle's blast freezer capacity was 30 tonnes a week, which is minuscule in comparison with that of larger meat producers. As I explained earlier, the larger producers operate with vast quantities, and because of that they work on tiny margins. It is impossible for a head deboner who, because of his specialised trade, was working on a margin of about 10 per cent. to compete with the mainstream meat business, which typically operates on margins of between 0.5 per cent. and 1 per cent.
Mr. Spencer Batiste: Can my hon. Friend confirm that the circumstances that he has described are the same in all similar bovine head deboning companies around the country, such as H. J. Wilson in my constituency? The point is that the owners of such concerns never had time to look for other business. They had all borrowed heavily to meet the requirements of the regulations, and on the day on which the order came into force they had no choice but to close their businesses. They did not have the option of looking elsewhere, because of the Government's determination to take action
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to restore confidence. Why should the owners of such companies bear the brunt of the cost and the anguish of losing their homes because of action that was taken allegedly for the wider good?
Mr. Viggers: My hon. Friend makes a good point. Over the past eight months or so, I have been struck by the similarity of many points put to me by hon. Members.
A trade like cattle head deboning might be expected to range from tiny one-man businesses to larger businesses employing between 50 and 100 people. Not at all: the nature of the trade lends itself very well to businesses employing about 20 people. Typically, these are family businesses, although there are one or two instances of deboning being carried out by larger companies. They were proud of what they were doing, and they had borrowed in order to comply with European regulations. In almost every case, they did not have enough capital to continue unless they borrowed. Virtually all the firms in the trade were small family businesses, which borrowed against the security of houses and subsequently went bankrupt when they had to close. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Mr. Batiste) for citing a company in his constituency.
It is not possible to switch from deboning cattle heads to deboning the heads of pigs or sheep. Some companies have tried, but purpose-built premises such as theirs do not lend themselves efficiently to any other business. It can be done, but it is rather like using a Ferrari to go shopping. This is a highly specialised business, which does not compete well in the normal field of the meat trade.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Is the hon. Gentleman aware—as I have been made aware—that the Government have now instructed abattoirs not to process sheep heads? That alternative has been closed off. Apparently, however, the abattoirs are being compensated for the loss of their business, whereas cattle head deboners are not. Is that fair or consistent?
Mr. Viggers: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Let me take this opportunity of saying that concern about the issue extends across the House and, indeed, across the United Kingdom.
I was not aware of the position that the hon. Gentleman describes, but the inconsistencies in regard to compensation are such that, in my view, the present situation is untenable. I cannot look my constituents in the eye and defend what is currently happening.
If we accept that those companies cannot readily move to any other kind of business, we must also accept that the only answer is compensation. By temperament, I am not one to demand compensation for everything—I am laissez-faire on the more hard-right wing—but in this instance, I feel that points should be made on behalf of our constituents. They should be given the opportunity to set up in some other business, perhaps parallel, but different from the business that they were in before. So what of compensation? Would it set a precedent?
Mr. Robert Hughes: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for not being able to stay for the full debate due to Select Committee business, but is there not an inconsistency in that the Prime Minister talks of

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compensation for farmers while the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food talks about stabilising the market? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, once we land in the area of compensation, we are inevitably driven to the compelling nature of the deboners' case, as the Home Secretary was driven last night into saying that he was initially prepared to compensate only for the loss of handguns, but now accepted that he probably had to give compensation for ancillary materials. It is always difficult to argue by analogy, but there is a parallel here that the Government should consider. There is grave injustice for the people needing compensation.
Mr. Viggers: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Over the months, he and I have maintained contact on the subject of compensation and on the difficulties suffered by the trade. It is good of him to find time in advance of his Select Committee to come to the Chamber to support the plea for compensation.
Would compensation set a precedent? I have conducted a little research. I gather that the Oral Snuff (Safety) Regulations 1989/2345 is one sort of parallel, but when oral snuff was banned by the Government with that regulation the people who distributed oral snuff did not suffer particularly because other parts of the tobacco trade made up for the loss. Similarly, the Asbestos (Prohibitions) Regulations 1992/3067 caused some difficulty in the building trade, but few companies specialised in asbestos.
I tried to find a parallel for the Government, by edict, banning a business. The advice that I was given earlier this year by the House of Commons Library ran as follows:
"I have been unable to find a comparable example of a recent Order with as dramatic an effect as the one to which your enquiry relates".
So it sounds as if this is unprecedented.
Let us look for other parallels. The BSE orders allow farmers to be compensated. In a letter to me on 17 July 1996, the Prime Minister said:
"our policy is to target support at those sectors which are essential for a secure and efficient beef supply chain".
Bully for the beef supply chain, but what about the people who cannot carry on and who have been driven out of business?
Another parallel is salmonella. Since 1989, compensation has been paid to chicken farmers for their entire flock, on a varying basis from 60 per cent. to 100 per cent. of its value. The hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) put his finger on the latest example. It is only 12 hours ago, almost to the minute, that I, for the first time in my 22 years in the House, voted against the Government. I did so on the issue of compensation and gun control.
The Government have decided to ban most handguns and to compensate handgun owners. On legal advice yesterday, the Home Secretary told the House that he would also be compensating for equipment. He was specifically asked—the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North made the point and I reiterate it—by my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) about compensation for people in the gun business. He said:
"is it not clear that it would be grossly unjust if the money resolution did not cover people who have businesses—for example, shooting ranges with long leases—that will no longer receive any revenue?
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They are likely to go bankrupt … Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure us that the money resolution will cover such people so that the House can debate the point?"
The Home Secretary replied:
"My right hon. Friend is unaware of the precise terms of the revised resolution. I cannot give him the total assurance that he requests, but I have said—I hope that he will take comfort from it—that in deciding the precise scope of the revised money resolution we shall take full account of points made in the debate today, including the point that he has just made."
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Tony Baldry): My hon. Friend is in danger of misleading himself. If he reads on, he will find that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary went on to deal specifically with that point again. Referring to my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), he referred to the distinction
"from claims for compensation for loss of trade and business. So far as I am aware, there is no precedent for such claims and I would arouse false hopes and expectations if I were to give my right hon. and hon. Friends any comfort on that point. There is a clear distinction between the two."—[Official Report, 12 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 181–2.]
The Home Secretary said that there is a clear distinction between loss of money in relation to accessories and loss in relation to a business.
Mr. Viggers: That is not the point. I was in the House and I recall the moment well. I prefer the Home Secretary's first reply to his second.
For the sake of argument, let me accept the point of my hon. Friend the Minister of State. I regret the ban on handguns, but if they are to be banned, I suppose that the owners should be compensated. Where is the principle in all this? If it is fair, right and in the public interest to compensate a gun owner for the loss of his gun, which is part of his sport and his hobby, how much more must it be right to compensate someone who has been made bankrupt by Government edict? Surely that is a much more forceful point.
Dr. John Reid: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the case is slightly stronger than even he makes out? People who may, unfortunately, have bought guns that are no longer available, at least bought them of their own volition. The vast majority of the debt of the deboners whom we are discussing has been incurred for machinery and expenses. It was incurred not on the volition of the owner or the deboners, but precisely because of Government and European legislation. Those deboners are being doubly punished, first, by spending the money at the Government's direction and, secondly, in being that by a second Government edict that they have no way of repaying that money.
Mr. Viggers: That is absolutely right. To comply with Government requirements, these people spent and borrowed money to bring their premises up to standard. That is precisely the point.
Mr. Robert Key: May I say to my hon. Friend the Minister of State that there is no parallel here. I listened extremely carefully to what my right hon. and learned Friend Home Secretary said yesterday. He was talking about loss of trade or business in future. What we are talking about, on behalf of our constituents, is an ex

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gratia payment—if the Government do not like the term "compensation"—for the confiscation of private property to meet the Government's requirements, as advised by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee. That surely, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) would agree, is the point. We are talking not about loss of trade and business in future, but about recompense for confiscation.
Mr. Viggers: The interventions in my speech have again made clear how widely the feeling of anger is shared by hon. Members. Clearly, it goes across the United Kingdom and affects every part of the UK. It is shared by all parties in the House. We have been stirred to anger on behalf of our constituents and we expect something to be done about it.
Mr. Batiste: May I ask my hon. Friend to draw a specific distinction between compensating companies for the equipment that they have had to buy to meet their trade, as opposed to a more theoretical argument about future loss of earnings? There is an exact parallel with guns. On the day after the Government's announcement on guns, an ammunition factory in my constituency closed because no business was left for it. Overnight, all the specialist equipment, which is just as specialist as deboners' equipment, became worthless.
Mr. Viggers: I understand that the Government did not start negotiating, but were prepared to receive information from the industry to calibrate the amount of compensation that would be required. I understand that the trade responded by putting together a compilation—I have a copy here—showing that the gross overall value of the trade was about £11 million. The amount of money spent to comply with regulations in the past three or four years was calculated at about £2.25 million. I am told that the trade was optimistic that negotiations would take place, leading to compensation, and that those negotiations, or preliminary discussions, were broken off. The Government are not now prepared to receive information about the value of the trade. Those are the figures should the Government decide to compensate. I support the claims of those who enjoy the sport of shooting, but the claims of the head deboners are absolutely justified, and they have an overwhelming case.
The Minister will have had his speech prepared for him by civil servants who put together what are known as building blocks. The essential building block will be the argument that has been put to me in reply to many letters and parliamentary questions about compensation, so the Minister will read to us:
"The reason is that we are not able"—
Mr. Baldry: Let me help my hon. Friend because, so far, he has failed totally to address the main point of the debate, and I fear that he has been misled by the House of Commons Library on the Skoal case. Lord Justice Taylor said about that case that is would be wrong for the Government to pay compensation where Parliament, with proper and due diligence, has caused a business to suffer. He said that there was no right to compensation if a business was lost as a consequence of that. That was the judgment of the High Court as recently as 1990.
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No compensation was offered as a result of the statutory instruments to which my hon. Friend referred, and I fear that he has been misled by the Library.
The point that my hon. Friend has not so far addressed in his speech, and which mine will deal with because I did draft it, is the concept of settled public policy. No Government at any time have ever paid any compensation for the loss of business—[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. I would prefer to see the Minister's face rather than his back.
Mr. Baldry: No Government at any time have paid compensation for the loss of business, consequent upon a decision of Parliament. My hon. Friend must deal with that fact, but he has yet to do so.
Mr. Viggers: Let me range a little more widely. If my following comments sound irrelevant, I hope to prove their relevance.
I came to the House in 1974 and I was told about a group of widows called the pre-1950s widows. They were the widows of men below the rank of W 1, who retired before 1 August 1950 and who did not receive a service pension. For five years I campaigned on behalf of those widows. I did everything: I introduced 10-minute Bills, tabled early-day motions and initiated late-night debates on the subject. I remember that at one Conservative charity ball I waltzed the then Mrs. Thatcher around the floor and I told her about the case, and she took an interest in it.
I am extremely proud of that five-year campaign on behalf of the pre-1950s widows. Every time I raised the issue in the House, a Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and said that there was no precedent and that it was absolutely impossible to do anything for those women. I was told that the Government could not make ex gratia payments to service widows. Eventually, however. Sir Keith Joseph stood at the Dispatch Box and said that although the rules said we could not do it, the broad view revealed that it was not fair and that we had to compensate them. We did it—we gave service pensions to those widows. It took five years of campaigning and I had five years of Ministers telling me that it was impossible, but then we did it.
I retract my earlier comment to my hon. Friend the Minister about his speech being drafted for him by civil servants. Of course he wrote his own; I always wrote my own speeches when I was a Minister. Other Ministers, however, have explained the refusal to pay compensation to deboners as follows:
"The reason is that we are not able to make exceptions to the policy of targeting aid at the essential links in the beef supply chain. If we did, we would need to extend the exceptions to cover claims from other groups. We have looked very hard at whether head de-boners could be defined as a unique group but we have concluded this is unfortunately not possible."
I do not accept that the problem is insoluble. In 1534 this House agreed that King Henry VIII was head of the Church. If it can do that, it can do anything. If this House said that tomorrow is Wednesday or Saturday, subject to European regulations of course, it would be because this House is virtually omnipotent. Where there is a will, a way can be found. I ask my hon. Friend and his colleagues to look again at the issue and find a way to compensate that small industry.
10.4 am
Mr. Michael J. Martin: I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) on obtaining this Adjournment debate. I also congratulate him on making such an excellent case for such hard-working people. He has covered every problem that they face.
The Glasgow meat market is based in my constituency. I was contacted by Mrs. Fyfe who worked in the meat trade and I was horrified to hear that on a Thursday evening she received a fax from civil servants at the Scottish Office instructing her to stop trading. I challenge the Minister's argument about the decision of Parliament, because Mrs. Fyfe's business was closed down on the instructions of civil servants. From the Friday, Mrs. Fyfe and others had to cease work.
As the hon. Member for Gosport said, it was not so long before that that the same civil servants instructed Mrs. Fyfe and others who work at the Glasgow meat market that, to comply with European Community standards, they had to buy the necessary equipment for their particular trade. Mrs. Fyfe had to go to her bank and say that she had been instructed to buy certain equipment because of EC regulations. She said that she needed a loan to keep herself, her husband, her daughter and her four employees in a job. The bank said that that was fine and agreed to give her a loan, but she had to put up not only her business as security, but her home.
I have been a Member of the House for 17 years. I have heard Ministers say how we must encourage small businesses, which are the answer. We have been told that we cannot bring great big factories into cities like Glasgow but we can encourage people to show initiative. I remember when Mrs. Thatcher said the Government would encourage people to show initiative, get on their bikes and create small businesses. The argument was that a small business may employ four or five people, and other businesses with similar numbers of employees may develop, so before long a group of people are in work and have the dignity of employment.
Mrs. Fyfe's husband was a black cab driver in the city of Glasgow. He was out in all weathers and at all hours to raise the money to start their business off. The Fyfes did not make a fantastic living from it, but they earned enough probably to enjoy a decent holiday every year. It was hard work for them, but now they have been left with no livelihood.
The Fyfes have not said to me that they are looking for big money, but, as the hon. Member for Gosport has already said, they want compensation to claw back the money they had to spend to meet EC regulations They want something to enable them to start up another business. It must be appalling to have to say to four or five people, "I am sorry, but I have to let you go." We are not talking about a big organisation, where the employer may pay off people he does not know. Mrs. Fyfe may have employed just four people, but those men and women have worked for her for 20 years. She knows them and their families. She knows the consequences of telling them that she must lay them off. In a city like Glasgow if a person is over the age of 40 the chances of re-employment are slim, especially when the industry that formerly employed him has been closed down.
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I went to see Lord Lindsay, and he said, "No, I am not compensating farmers." I could only scratch my head, because all that I had been hearing from the Agriculture Minister was that he would look after farmers. Lord Lindsay said, "No, we are not compensating farmers. We are intervening and buying their cattle." It is a rose by another name. I do not mind if we call it "intervention" for the beef industry, but let us provide compensation.
I was a trade union official. Sometimes bosses would say, "I'm not going to pay overtime, but I'll give good expenses." No one complained if expenses were equivalent to the amount of overtime that people deserved. They could call overtime whatever they liked. If Ministers wish to call compensation "intervention", I shall be happy to go to Mrs. Fyfe and other people who work in the industry in Scotland and tell them, "I'm sorry; they're not going to give you compensation, but they will give you intervention." I would be as happy as Larry with that—as I am sure the hon. Member for Gosport and other hon. Members would be.
I think back to the most recent debate we had on the problems in agriculture and to the words of the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross), who said that the BSE problem does not start and stop at the farm gate, but that it goes beyond and into meat markets and into industries such as head deboning. The Government must face up to that fact. In a few months, as culled cattle enter slaughterhouses, there will be serious problems. The effect of any decision made by Parliament is that some people—such as Mrs. Fyfe—will lose their livelihood, but, as in this case, within the year, other people will become millionaires.
The Government are prepared to pay about £40 per head of cattle that goes to a slaughterhouse. People conducting the slaughter will be able to sell the cattle hides for approximately £20. I am not very good at mathematics and failed my mathematics exam, which is probably why I am a Member of Parliament, but even I can understand that, with 5,000 cattle per week in Scotland—I do not know the overall number for the UK—we are talking about a very large number.
The cattle that will be slaughtered are not suffering from the disease. They are healthy beasts—but the situation must make farmers sick. I do not know much about the farming industry, but I know that a farmer will sit up all night with an ill beast, and that he will spend more on vet's bills for his cattle than he probably would spend on doctors' bills for his family. He knows his responsibility. Farmers will have to take healthy cattle to slaughterhouses because of the Government's actions. But that is another matter.
Mark my words: many millionaires will be created because of this. It is a crying shame that people such as Mrs. Fyfe and those mentioned by the hon. Member for Gosport have to suffer. Those men and women have made great sacrifices. They did not clock in at 8 am and clock out at 5 pm. They worked long hours, and, after working those hours, they sent in reports to civil servants at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and then did their bookkeeping. We are talking about small family businesses.
I do not like attacking any hon. Member who is not present in the Chamber, because that is not the done thing. However, I was appalled when I saw on television the way in which the Agriculture Minister conducted himself

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in Europe. It did not help the men and women who are losing out when they saw him strutting about Europe wearing a 1930s-style hat and two watches, like an eccentric Englishman. People's appearance makes a difference, especially if they are in a position of responsibility. The Minister's press conferences and arrogant manner did not help or inspire confidence in people whose livelihoods depend on his decisions.
We are not talking about a great deal of money for compensation. I ask only that people be compensated for improvements that they made in their businesses, which were required by a decision made by Parliament.
10.15 am
Mr. Robert Key: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) on saying everything that I would have wished to say. He has, therefore, considerably shortened my speech on those points. I am grateful for that, because I can now say something extra.
It gives me no pleasure at all to be critical of the Government when, at last, matters seem to be coming right for our farming industry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on the way in which the cull is starting to make a deep impression on the crisis in the countryside. The situation is coming right. However, one problem is not coming right.
On 20 March 1996, my hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food made a statement to the House on BSE. I asked him about the paramount importance of food safety and the need for market support mechanisms. The answer he gave could not have been clearer. He said:
"People sometimes suggest that the interests of agriculture and farmers are MAFF's overriding concern, and obviously they are of great concern to us; but our paramount duty is to public safety—the safety of the food chain and of British food. That is the paramount duty owed by my Department, and myself as Minister to the House and the country."—[Official Report, 20 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 396.]
He cared, most of all, for the food industry.
On 28 March 1996, at Agriculture Question Time, I raised the issue of head deboners, warning of the closure of food processing plants. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mrs. Browning), replied:
"While I sympathise with, and have every concern for, my hon. Friend's dilemma, it would be quite wrong for the Government to challenge the scientific advice that we have accepted at this Dispatch Box."—[Official Report, 28 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 1160.]
She said that she had every concern for my dilemma. I was not asking for the Government to challenge the scientific advice.
Nine months later, it is demonstrably clear that the interests of agriculture and farmers are MAFF's overriding concern, and that "every concern" does not extend to the head deboning industry. Nine months later, I am posed another dilemma. On today's Order Paper, I see that my right hon. Friend the Agriculture Minister invites me to congratulate
"the Government on the action it has taken to deal with the BSE crisis",
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and to welcome
"the package of support the Government has provided to the beef industry".
That is, indeed, a dilemma.
I think of the case of Touchmead Ltd., in Amesbury—an important town in my constituency, which has suffered job losses because of the situation. I shall listen carefully to what Ministers say in this debate, and in the debate later today, before I decide whether I can, in all conscience, support the Government today.
Mr. Batiste: My hon. Friend touched on a very powerful issue. If there is a need, in the public interest, to take action—as, for example, in the case of guns or of beef—we can agree with the principle, but the action must be applied with justice if the Government want to have the support of their Back Benchers. That is the message that the Minister should take away from this debate.
Mr. Key: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I shall now reinforce the point that he has so clearly made.
Touchmead Ltd. of Amesbury constructed a whole new plant. It moved out of the centre of town to a countryside location. It did so to conform to new regulations. In 1995, that new plant was once again upgraded. The head deboning section was renewed. The firm was working for the quality end of the market, supplying some of the best-known food chains in the country. It was a major exporter of some of its products, particularly to France, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport has pointed out. "Waste not, want not" was a pretty worthy phrase to use with regard to head deboners—a little-known part of the British food chain.
We are talking about large quantities of food. Touchmead Ltd. was dealing with 800 bovine heads and 900 porcine heads a day, and a tonne of bovine flank and rib and two tonnes of offal every week. A veterinary report on the company said that public health risks were very well catered for. It continued:
"Particular attention has to be paid to the safe handling and disposal of Specified Bovine Offal. Changes have been made in the handling techniques with the advent of the new guidelines.
The present management has a very positive attitude to meat hygiene. They regard themselves as being at the forefront of their particular field. They often turn to the OVS"—
the official veterinary surgeon—
"for help and guidance in the resolution of meat hygiene related problems.
As the proprietor is always anxious to seek new markets, a considerable effort has to be made to ensure that he is aware of the requirements for these.
Because of the restricted hours of attendance it has been our"—
the vets—
"deliberate policy to vary the time of day at which we attend the plant."
That report was made on 26 February.
On 28 March, I received a letter from the veterinary officer who was responsible to MAFF for looking after that company. He said:
"This purpose built factory conforming to EEC standards has been visited by us on every working day for the past 2 years.
In our opinion they carry out a good job in their function of removing useable meat from bovine and pig heads for further processing.

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To our knowledge they have complied with all requirements from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, where necessary amending their techniques to conform to any new legislation.
We feel it is ridiculous for their factory to be under threat of closure due to proposed changes in legislation which are likely to prohibit the use of any useable meat derived from bovine heads."
On 29 March, Touchmead Ltd. was closed by the Government. A decision was taken somewhere along the line not to pay any compensation. There is no alternative use for the deboning capital equipment, and the irony, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport has said, is that imports are continuing of foreign head meat-meat subject to less stringent controls than our own.
I feel very sorry for my hon. Friend the Minister. It is a peril of collective responsibility that he has drawn the short straw today. I would rather see my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, with whom I have had many discussions on the matter, sitting on the Front Bench. Ultimately, of course, it is his decision whether this tiny amount, this maximum of £11 million, is paid. Farmers have received £2.5 billion to cope with the crisis that affects them.
A line always has to be drawn somewhere concerning any payment and it is the unpleasant duty of Ministers, acting on the advice of their civil servants and MAFF's accounting officer, to decide where to draw it. Clearly, with such decisions, natural justice should not be offended. The decision should not be arbitrary but should properly take into account all relevant factors—in this case, compulsory new investment. The decision taken by the Government not to pay anything to the small number of firms in the head deboning industry is unfair. It offends natural justice and it is arbitrary. That is bad government. I do not mind whether the help is called compensation, ex gratia payments, intervention or market support. If there is no precedent, it is time to set one. Mention has already been made of firearms, salmonella in eggs and other inconsistencies.
During the BSE crisis, the Government have been accused of many things. Let us face it, that is partly because 80 per cent. of hon. Members do not understand rural affairs very well. They do not therefore understand that the entire rural industry—be it animal feed, machinery or Land Rover dealers—has been shaken by BSE and the cash flow in the rural economy has simply stopped. Even lawyers and accountants have had to wait for their bills to be paid. The banks have been very understanding about head deboners. I talked to the bank manager concerned and he was very helpful. I talked to the collectors of taxes on behalf of my friends in the head deboning industry, and they were very understanding. The Inland Revenue has behaved impeccably. Even travel agents have been affected by the BSE crisis in the industry. Things are becoming right at last—but not on cattle head deboning.
What has happened to the head deboners did not happen to farmers, who have been through hell but have at least had £2.5 billion to help them during the crisis. What has happened to the deboners did not happen to the livestock transport firms, which have been very busy indeed. I dare say that some of the people involved will end up millionaires, and good luck to them. The same did not happen to the abattoirs or the renderers, which have worked very hard and are doing very nicely, and good luck to them. The same did not even happen to the livestock markets. They lost massive revenue but could
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limp through the crisis, and their market trade is returning. The head deboning industry will never return. The Government had to act on SEAC's advice, but they did not have to confiscate private property, put hundreds of people out of work and not pay a penny piece to help.
It is the ill-fortune of the deboning industry that it comes within the remit of MAFF. The DTI would not have treated it in the same way, nor would the Department of Health. The industry got tangled up in MAFF and has been treated as the tail-end Charlie of this awful crisis. One Minister has been quoted as saying recently,
"there is no cattle head deboning industry and that's tough".
It is especially tough for Mr. and Mrs. Ron Styles and their 60 former employees, who did everything that was asked of them and have been let down.
What is to be done? It is not too late. The Government do not have to wait to be forced into action by the courts. There is something else, of course, that they can do: contribute the modest amount of money that we are asking for on behalf of our constituents. When the nightmare of BSE is behind us and farmers, consumers and the food industry have regained their old confidence and worldwide markets once again respond to the excellence of British food from British farmers, we shall have to revisit the reform of MAFF itself. The food production industry can hold its own with any industry. It belongs in the DTI, and so does the fishing industry, given the chance.
Land stewardship and land use are increasingly integrated into the responsibilities of the Department of the Environment. Perhaps those functions belong there. Food regulations and standards should long ago have gone to the Department of Health. Consumers would prefer that and as a result would have more confidence than they do in the self-policing of poor old MAFF.
Mr. Robert Ainsworth: I was rather hoping that the hon. Gentleman would tell us about the consequences of the closure of the company in his constituency for the people who ran it. The principals of two companies in my constituency—Lilacmead and A. J. and J. A. Cattermole Ltd.—have lost their businesses and their homes as a result of the crisis. Was that the consequence of Touchmead's closure as well?
Mr. Key: Two generations of the Styles family, the owners of the business who started it from nothing in the town of Amesbury, have been affected. More than 60 families have been directly affected due to lay-offs as a result of the arbitrary action. Many, I am glad to say, have been re-employed, but too many have not.
After the BSE crisis, we need to make a new start. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister, even at this stage, not just to tell us that there is no precedent and that he can do nothing about the problem but to be prepared to look again on behalf of all our constituents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport has so eloquently requested, to see whether a way through can be found. We do not mind what the help is called, but we do mind about the reputation of good government.
10.29 am
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) not just on securing this debate, but on the

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consistent work that he has done from the outset on behalf of head boners. I know that that work is appreciated on both sides of the House and across the country. We welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman is continuing to press the case and we are glad to have the opportunity to back him up.
I have said before that my constituency is probably more affected by the BSE crisis than any other. It is affected across the range of the industry, from hill farms to abattoirs—there are two abattoirs in my constituency, but with the new boundaries there will be three. I represent a range of aspects of the meat processing industry. To take some of the edge off his support for the Government's measures on the cattle cull, I can tell the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) and the House that Scottish farmers will not be satisfied until the Florence agreement is implemented and the selective cull is in process. That is essential before the ban can be lifted or a timetable for that lifting can be drawn up. The industry is 30 per cent. dependent on exports.
Mr. David Trimble: The situation is worse in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Bruce: I understand that the proportion is even greater there. We need progress towards the lifting of the ban.
We are addressing the particular problems of the head boners this morning. Mr. John Troup, who lives in Deystone in my constituency, was the principal of T and T Meats, a small company that used to exist in Aberdeen. He is in the same desperate plight as other hon. Members have had to bring to the attention of the House. His small business employed five people, specialising exclusively in taking the meat off cattle heads. He was trading profitably, making between £50,000 and £60,000 on the business in the previous full financial year. He had reinvested that money in the business and, like others, had extended the mortgage on his house.
Mr. Troup is desperately fighting a rearguard action to save his house, working as a fish packer to get some money to try to meet his basic overheads. His wife has been forced to abandon the further education course that she was pursuing and take a manual job in an attempt to keep enough cash coming in to avoid the house being recovered by the building society.
That is the effect on a previously successful small business that has been closed down by Government edict. The Government have said only that they are not paying compensation because it is not Government policy to do so. There is no legal remit: the Government have simply decided not to.
I have a letter—I am sure that other hon. Members have similar letters—from Lord Lindsay, the Scottish Office Minister responsible for agriculture, to the solicitors representing the Scottish head boners. He says:
"I sympathise with the head deboners"—
I am afraid that sympathy will not be enough—
"whose business activities have been greatly affected by the measures introduced on 29 March and I fully understand the difficulties this has presented for them;"—
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I wonder whether he does—
"but as has been made clear previously, the purpose of the financial assistance which the Government has made available is to provide market support to keep the essential links in the beef supply chain operating while companies adjust to the changed market circumstances. It is not, and has never been, Government policy to utilise public funds to compensate businesses for losses incurred as a consequence of decisions taken to strengthen public health controls."
That says only that it is a policy because it is a policy. The House must recognise that the distress of those businesses requires the Government to revisit the policy and decide what to do about it.
We are not talking about business failure resulting from the cumulative effect of a number of measures over time. We are talking about people who went to work as usual one morning to find a fax on the machine telling them to cease business immediately—the same day—without compensation and that disregarding that fax would be a criminal offence. That is quite different from going out of business because of various measures that make the business non-viable, which usually allows for some time to readjust and retrieve something, rather than having the entire business taken away.
I understand that the Association of Cattle Head De-Boners is taking the Government to the European Court of Human Rights. Lord Lester QC has advised that there is no domestic remedy, but the European route has a high probability of success. The association's solicitors say:
"the Junior Counsel engaged on the drafting of the documentation believes that the chances of the members succeeding has increased greatly since the initial consultation with Lord Lester."
I do not want to intrude on the Government's grief in their experiences in European courts, but it would surely be better for them to face up to their domestic responsibilities than for the issue to be resolved in the European Court of Human Rights, creating another cause of potential humiliation and perhaps anger in some quarters of the Government. They can avoid that by taking action in advance.
The issue may not affect many businesses or jobs—I think that the estimation is that 100 jobs will be affected in Scotland—but the loss of livelihood for the individuals involved is of unprecedented proportions, coming with no warning or opportunity to find any other compensation or alternative business. Whatever the Minister's brief, I hope that he will not close options and will undertake to revisit the issue. Saying simply that the Government have no policy to pay compensation is not a good enough answer. These people deserve compensation. They were doing their business and had their livelihoods removed as a direct result of a faxed instruction from the Government. The Government must accept their responsibility.
10.35 am
Mr. John Whittingdale: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) on his determination and persistence in pursuing the case for the head boning industry and on the eloquent way in which he has put the case this morning, which will allow me to be comparatively brief.
Until the beginning of the year, I was unaware of the existence of the head boning industry. I became aware of it when I received a letter from my hon. Friend the

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Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food informing me that a firm in my constituency, Latchingdon Fresh Meats, had failed to make the necessary changes to its premises to comply with the Fresh Meat (Hygiene and Inspection) Regulations 1995.
The proprietor, Mr. Ken Pearson, had requested a derogation, but my hon. Friend was minded to turn it down. However, she offered to meet Mr. Pearson, and we met on 19 February. I pay tribute to her sympathetic and understanding attitude. As a result of that meeting, it was agreed that Mr. Pearson would make the necessary changes. He has spent some £30,000 to bring his premises up to European requirements. That is a substantial sum for a business of that size, but he was able to borrow the money because he was running a thriving, successful business. The business concentrated on the sale of fresh meats, but 40 per cent. of it was in head boning. He was boning some 400 ox heads a week.
The Government's announcement six weeks later wiped out that part of his business at a stroke. He immediately had to lay off two people and was left with £15,000 worth of virtually unsaleable stock. The loss of the ox head boning business also affected the rest of his business, more than halving his turnover. Six months later, after the Government's measures, he is just about going, but it is still a struggle.
Although there are only about 30 head boning firms in the country, I soon discovered that a second one, Pearce Meats, was also located in my constituency. Bigger than Latchingdon Fresh Meats. it is exclusively a head boning business. Before the Government's measures, it was boning some 2,000 ox heads, and between 4,500 and 5,000 pig heads a week. The Government's measures have wiped out between 25 per cent. and 30 per cent. of its business. The company immediately had to lay off four people.
Like Mr. Pearson, Pearce Meats had also invested to meet European standards—some £80,000 to £100,000 during the previous four years. On each ox head, it previously made a profit of about £3. The Government's ban immediately cost the company around £6,000 a week. As a result of expanding the pig head business, Mr. Pearce has just about got the company back into profit, but it has taken four months, during which he did not think that his business could possibly survive. Those whom he was forced to lay off have not found new jobs.
The general point, which was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport, is that, whether the ban was justified is arguable; foreign head meat is still being sold. However, I accept that the ban is here to stay. The point is that both firms in my constituency did everything that they were required to do. They invested substantial sums at the behest of the Government yet, a few months later, the Government wiped out their business at a stroke.
Unlike other parts of the meat processing industry, which will recover in time, there is no prospect of recovery for the head boning industry, yet it is the other parts of the industry that have been given substantial sums in compensation. I must tell my hon. Friend the Minister that that is unjust. The amounts involved are not great, but my constituents deserve better treatment than they have so far received. I urge my hon. Friend to listen to the arguments and to give us something today that we can take back to our constituents.
10.39 am
Dr. John Reid: The number of hon. Members who wish to speak in this debate is testimony to the breadth of support for the case put by the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers). I will make my remarks as brief as possible so that other hon. Members can participate.
I have no pecuniary or commercial interest in the matter, and I have no specialised knowledge of it—indeed, I find it difficult to pronounce some of the words associated with this great problem, far less get my mind round them. However, I have two interests in the matter. One, of course, is public health; the other is that I know an injustice when I see one and I believe that there is an injustice in this case.
We need not rehearse what happened on 29 March or before, but I want to make two points, the first of which has been made by everyone. I wrote to the Minister as soon as the injustice of the case was brought to my attention by a company in my constituency, as was the case with other hon. Members. I refer to Wilson Young Ltd., part of the National Products Company in Shotts. I have still not had a satisfactory answer or explanation. Why were companies based in the United Kingdom, even in areas such as Scotland with an extremely low incidence of BSE, prohibited from entering the trade, when the same products could be imported from countries that had instances of BSE, some on a small scale but some on a par with the Scottish experience?
The most important issue is compensation. On 29 March, my constituency firm was hit by a whirlwind. We have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) and for Midlothian (Mr. Clarke), and from the hon. Member for Gosport, about faxes saying, "Cease trading immediately." That is what happened in my constituency.
The Minister should think again. I am left, as are other hon. Members, with constituents who have complied with every Government regulation, observed the rules as laid down by the Government and the EC and who have invested in machinery specifically for the purpose. Compensation is available for farmers, for market support to help the essential links and supply chains, for abattoirs and for the beef stock transfer scheme, but none of that offers any consolation to people such as our constituents.
Head meats sourced from outside the UK are a sufficient problem, but when there is no compensation at all, their importation adds a gross injustice to an insult to many of our people. In most cases, the debts were incurred neither as a result of investing to speculate and to accumulate nor as a risk taken on the market, but as a direct result of Government instructions and Government regulations. It seems to me that there is a clear distinction between compensation for future trading profits and recompense for debt incurred as a direct result of Government instruction. I plead with the Minister, as other hon. Members have, to rethink the Government's position and to make some recompense to people whose lives were destroyed on 29 March.
10.43 am
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Tony Baldry): I say, first, to my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) that I have no difficulty dealing with the brief from the point

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of view of collective responsibility. Some of my hon. Friends have given the impression that some of the decisions that have been taken are capricious or arbitrary. I hope that my hon. Friends accept that my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and all the other Agriculture Ministers have taken great care over the issue. Of course we have listened carefully to the representations made to us by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), whom I congratulate on introducing this Adjournment debate. He did so very fairly and in full deference to the interests of his constituents. I fully understand his concerns.
We have, of course, looked at the matter time and again over this summer. Our decisions have, as I hope to explain to the House, been by no means capricious or arbitrary. They have been taken with great care, having regard not just to the Government's policies at the moment, but to long-standing, settled public policy and settled UK law.
The debate concerns established principles of compensation. I fully recognise that several issues such as compensation and market support have been raised, and I hope that I can distinguish them for the satisfaction of the House this morning.
The long-standing public policy on compensation is clear. There is a well-established principle in public law for paying compensation for loss of property as a result of Government action. The European convention on human rights requires the payment of compensation where property is expropriated. That principle means, simply stated, that when an individual is deprived of his property, fair compensation for that deprivation, subject to any overriding circumstances in the public interest, is properly due.
Where, under the over-30 months scheme, it has been necessary for cattle to be slaughtered, that is, in effect, the confiscation of property, and compensation flows from that action. Compulsory purchase is an example of compensation for loss of property. It has, however, also been a long-standing matter of settled public policy that no Government are under any obligation to pay compensation to a business for any loss of opportunity of carrying on that business which may arise from Parliament's properly considered legislative decisions.
Mr. Trimble: The Minister talks about compensation for loss of property. Does he accept that that principle should extend to cases where property is rendered valueless as a result of Government action, which is what has happened to the equipment purchased in this case? The Minister referred to the European convention on human rights. Will he give us an assurance that if the action taken under the first protocol is successful, the Government will implement any decision immediately?
Mr. Baldry: There is a considerable distinction in that no property has been expropriated. The case to which I referred in my intervention during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport is relevant to this point. As the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) made clear, no one involved in the matter has made any attempt to suggest to the High Court or to any of the courts of the United Kingdom that the Government's actions have been outwith UK law. If people feel that they have a remedy
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elsewhere, such as the European Court of Human Rights, they must investigate that remedy. It would be hypothetical to suggest what may or may not happen.
Mr. Batiste: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Baldry: I will not give way because there is an important principle to be made clear. I will give way to my hon. Friend if I have time later.
In this case, there has been no confiscation or expropriation of private property. What has happened is not a loss of property. We should be clear that we are talking about the loss of a business. Here the principle is clear. The Government do not compensate for loss of business. That was demonstrated clearly in the case to which my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport referred. Indeed, in many ways, the Skoal case may have been based on stronger grounds than is the head boners' case. As Lord Justice Taylor made clear in his judgment of the case in 1990:
"The applicants challenged by way of judicial review the decision of the Secretary of State for Health … to make the Oral Snuff (Safety) Regulations 1989. The Regulations provide that no person shall supply, offer to supply, agree to supply, expose for supply or possess for supply any oral snuff …
During 1984, the applicants were looking for a manufacturing and packaging base outside the United States. They discussed with the Department of Trade and Industry and the Industry Department for Scotland the possibility of setting up a factory to market these products in Scotland. They were encouraged by the Government departments to do so and were offered a Government grant by way of incentive. In the result, the applicants built a factory at East Kilbride, near Glasgow, which was opened in 1985. They received £193,357 of Government grant."
The company had been encouraged by Government grant to set up in the United Kingdom.
Mr. Key: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Baldry: I shall give way when I have finished this point.
The business was closed as a consequence of legislation. The applicants complained to the High Court that they should receive compensation because they had been encouraged to set up the business. On that specific point, Lord Justice Taylor said:
"the decision to ban the applicants' products is tantamount to a breach of contract or a breach of representation and, as such, is an abuse of power. However, a Minister cannot fetter a discretion given him under statute. Provided he acts within his statutory powers, rationally and fairly, he is entitled to change his policy."
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Baldry: I shall give way in a moment, but I wish to make my points in some order as it is important to establish the principles relating to these important matters.
In giving judgment, Lord Justice Taylor held
"that it would be absurd to suggest that some moral commitment to a single company should prevail over the national interest"
and that the company's loss of business, though consequential on legislation, did not justify a legal claim for compensation from the Government.
Mr. Key: The Meat and Livestock Commission was offering grants to the companies. My constituent's company, Touchmead, was pursuing the possibility of such a grant, but it did not work out. Surely that was a clear indication that the Government were inducing companies to borrow money and take risks in exactly the way that the Minister has described.
Mr. Baldry: My hon. Friend clearly did not hear me correctly. In the Skoal case, the company was given a grant to set up in business in East Kilbride. To that extent it had a better case or was at least on all fours with the case that my hon. Friend mentions. In that instance, the High Court ruled that provided the Minister acted properly, there was no cause for compensation if the business ceased to trade as a result of a decision by Parliament.
Mr. Elliot Morley: I expect that the Minister is absolutely right in the legal sense, but the arguments that have been put by hon. Members on both sides of the House go beyond that in terms of the Government's moral obligation in respect of the hardship that has been inflicted on the companies.
I appreciate that the Minister is under certain restraints in terms of Treasury budgets, but will he consider two quick suggestions? He knows that there was substantial overpayment in compensation to slaughterhouses, which has never been clawed back. I do not know whether some agreement has been made, but there may be some scope within existing budgets to redirect some money towards this sector of the industry.
Secondly, the Government stopped the marketing and processing grants scheme, which is an EU scheme. Will he reconsider that scheme, as it might provide some assistance to companies that have moved into other sectors such as pig head deboning?
Mr. Baldry: I am endeavouring to explain to the House that our decisions have been taken on long-established principles of public law. The fact that we have been unable to offer head deboners the assistance that hon. Members are urging upon us is not a matter of being moral or immoral, but of following long-established public policy and law.
That was made clear in the House yesterday by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. Perhaps I should have read the whole exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) and my right hon. and learned Friend. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives specifically asked:
"Will he take fully into account compensation for the stock of weapons and accessories that such businesses hold and for loss of trade?"
My right hon. and learned Friend made it clear that there should be a distinction between claims for compensation for loss of trade and business. He said:
"So far as I am aware there is no precedent for such claims and I would arouse false hopes and expectations if I were to give my right hon. and hon. Friends any comfort on that point."—[0fficial Report, 12 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 182]
Mr. Robert Ainsworth: The Minister is not prepared to set a precedent on loss of trade, and we all understand that. Although there might be a moral argument for compensation, it is not necessarily being sought at the moment. In compliance with the regulations, businesses have spent money on equipment that has been rendered totally useless by a further regulation. Can the Minister not compensate those businesses purely for property that they bought to comply with the regulation and is now of absolutely no use to them? If he has to cover himself by confiscating it, he should do just that, but there should be some compensation.
Mr. Baldry: We have not been uninterested in the representations that have been made to us by my hon. Friends the Members for Gosport and for Salisbury, among others.
On at least two occasions we have taken counsel's opinion to see whether we can provide further help to cattle head deboners under established law. Contrary to what some people think, Ministers do not have powers capriciously and freely to dish out public money. They have to have some legal authority to do so. When we took counsel's advice, we thoroughly reassessed the case for a change of public policy on supporting deboners, following the meetings that my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport had with my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary. We then sought further advice from leading counsel in the field. Of course we considered the matter carefully.
Counsel's opinion was that, having regard to established law and public policy, the cattle head deboners were not entitled under domestic law to compensation for the loss of their business resulting from the decision to classify the whole cattle head as specified bovine material.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: As there is all-party support on the matter, surely the solution is perfectly simple. Blow the QCs—we should bring in a perfectly simple Bill that would be backed by both sides of the House.
Mr. Baldry: My hon. Friend, who I suspect may have supported the Government last night—
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: No.
Mr. Baldry: I am sad that we did not have her support, but she will have recognised that, in a number of instances, such as with firearms, companies go out of business as a consequence of certain Acts of Parliament. This is another such instance. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin), whose contribution to the debate was to make gratuitously offensive comments about my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, scorns. Of course there is a precedent. As a consequence of the Firearms (Amendment) Bill, certain companies will go out of business. Last night, I heard no Labour Member urge that those companies should receive compensation for their loss of business. Clearly the Opposition pick and choose what they consider to be easy issues to attract public sympathy.
Mr. Michael J. Martin rose—
Mr. Baldry: I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman, who makes gratuitously offensive comments.
Ministers have to ensure some consistency in public policy, and we shall do that. The value of the cattle deboning industry has been assessed at some £l1 million. We have provided support and assistance to deboners because some cattle head deboners, as cutting plants, have benefited from the beef stock transfer scheme under which the intervention board has purchased unsaleable stock at 65 per cent. of the pre-crisis market price. Cattle head deboners have, therefore, benefited to the tune of some £6.7 million under that scheme.
Out of the total value of the business of £11 million, cattle head deboners have received £6.7 million, and the company that my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport mentioned has received more than £100,000 under that scheme. It was also open to the cattle head deboners to apply for unsaleable stock to be taken off their hands under the separate disposal scheme that we introduced for downstream sectors. I appreciate that those who have companies wish the Government would come up with the money, but hon. Members have not addressed today the long-established principle of United Kingdom law that no Government, at any time or in any circumstances, in any way, have paid compensation for the loss of a business following a legitimate decision of the House.

Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema
11 am
Mr. Michael Clapham: I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, know this subject inside out, because you were at the forefront of a campaign in the past few years to have the disease prescribed. That campaign came to fruition when the disease was prescribed on 13 September 1993. Today's debate is about the callous and uncaring way in which the Government have treated former miners by failing to act on the recommendations that have come from the review carried out by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council of the prescription test for deciding chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
The Secretary of State for Social Security has had a copy of the recommendations on his desk since February this year—some three months before it was officially published in May 1996. In the mean time, many miners who would probably have been able to succeed with a claim under the recommendations of the review have, sadly, passed on.
Last week, I took the opportunity to check with Centris, the company that now manages the mineworkers' pension scheme, to find out how many miners in receipt of an occupational pension had died since April 1996. I used the criterion of the occupational pension because, as the Minister is aware, the qualification period to claim chronic bronchitis and emphysema is 20 years and, therefore, most of the miners who claim will be members of the mineworkers' pension scheme. Centris provided me with figures showing that 3,502 former miners had passed on since April 1996. I accept that it is not possible to say how many of them would have been made an award under the terms of the new recommendations, but it is fair to assume that a good number of them would have won through.
The House will recall that the disease was first prescribed on 13 September 1993. The prescription was made because new evidence, which was examined at the time by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, showed that the disease was an endemic risk of coal mining. The new evidence had come from longitudinal studies that had been carried out in America and Belgium. After that new evidence has been analysed, it showed a greater incidence of the disease among coal miners than in the general population and, consequently, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council made the recommendation that the disease should be prescribed.
The date of introduction was more than a coincidence. In my view, the Government timed it to sweeten the bitter pill of the colliery closure programme. In other words, political expediency led to the introduction of prescription. Now we find that the delay seems to be caused by public expenditure fears, which I believe to be totally unfounded.
In its first report in November 1992, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council recommended three tests for diagnosing the disease. The Government accepted those recommendations and implemented them in full. Under the tests, an applicant must first qualify by having worked underground for 20 years. That means that we are talking about miners who had a career in coal mining, not about people who left the industry after a few years. That is a fair point. Secondly, a miner has to show that he has

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X-ray evidence of dust retention or simple pneumoconiosis. Thirdly, he must demonstrate a 1 litre or more reduction on the forced expiration volume test over one second. If his lung capacity is reduced by 0.98, he is ruled out because the criteria are absolute. I have seen cases in which a man has had a 0.98 reduction in his lung capacity, yet the examining authorities have not been able to make him an award. There is a need for greater flexibility, and the review accepted that.
Many people have been turned down because of the X-ray evidence. One of the arguments in the early days was about whether the X-rays were of the International Labour Organisation type. We got over that problem and the X-rays now conform to the ILO type, but many injustices still occur. I shall give an example to show the Minister what is happening. In my constituency live three brothers who spent their whole working lives in the industry. The Selwood brothers are aged between 79 and 83. The brother who is 79, Harry Selwood, has 100 per cent. pneumoconiosis. The other two brothers have no pneumoconiosis, but they are racked with chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Because they have been unable to show on their X-rays evidence of dust retention, the other two brothers cannot receive a payment for the disease.
Such examples led the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council to carry out the review. It had soon become evident that the prescription test, as originally introduced, was unfair. The number of applicants and those receiving awards did not come anywhere near the figure that the Government predicted. At the time, the Government predicted that there would be 80,000 to 90,000 applicants.
In fact, the bulk of the applications and awards were made in the first year. I can say that because I have made comparisons between parliamentary answers. For example, on 27 October 1994, in answer to a parliamentary question, it was revealed that between September 1993 and September 1994 a total of 43,827 applications had been received. Of those, 40,338 had been processed and just 4,469 awards had been made. Two years on, according to a parliamentary answer given on Monday this week, by 30 September 1996 a total of 48,778 claims had been received and 5,352 awards had been made. The bulk of the applications and awards have been made and, in the past two years, only about 5,000 new applications have been received.
The number of awards is absurdly low and that has led to the prescription test being challenged by such people as Mr. Peake of Pontefract general infirmary and Mr. Howard of the Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield, two consultants who deal daily with miners suffering from the disease. It also resulted in a regionally based media campaign that included, for example, the Barnsley Chronicle, the Yorkshire Post, the South Wales Echo and the Nottingham Evening Post as well as regional television and radio. As a result of that campaign, the IIAC eventually decided to conduct a review. It started that review on 16 January 1995.
The council reported to the Secretary of State in February 1996. In the review, which was published in May 1996, the council recommended to the Government that the X-rays should be dropped from the prescription test altogether because there was clearly no connection between pneumoconiosis and chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Therefore, to call for X-ray evidence of simple pneumoconiosis did not address the problem. The
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council considered that the FEV1 test should be amended, but that the 20 years underground qualification should remain.
In the final paragraph of his letter to the Secretary of State published at the front of the report, the chairman of the IIAC said:
"The Council understands that these recommendations may lead to a large number of previously unsuccessful claims being reconsidered and may therefore be relatively costly to implement. Nevertheless the strength of new scientific evidence published since our 1992 report makes it necessary for us to recommend a revision of the terms of prescription. We believe it should not be necessary to review the terms of prescription for the foreseeable future unless there is evidence that levels of exposure to respirable dust in coal mines are increasing."
In other words, the chairman recognised that the prescription test set out in the original report of 1992 was flawed. It is appalling that the Government have so far failed to act on the IIAC review. One gets the impression that interference by the Treasury is to blame for this unjustifiable delay. Perhaps the Minister could shed some light on that.
I put it to the Minister that even if the total number of awards is doubled, the costs are easily manageable. It will not cost the Treasury one penny, as I shall show in a moment. I say that because currently 5,352 awards have been made. The average assessment is 55 per cent. The pension payable for that degree of disability is £54.72 per week. If my mathematics are correct, that works out at less than £15 million a year for the pension element. Administration costs would, of course, have to be added. So if as a result of the new criteria the number of applicants doubled to 10,700, the cost of the pension element would be about £30 million. As I say, administration costs would have to be added. The Minister may say that one of the reasons for the delay is the administration that is required to deal with large numbers of applicants.
Mr. Paddy Tipping: Has my hon. Friend seen a parliamentary answer from the Minister only last week which suggested a cost of £20 million in the first year, with £5 million administration costs? Does he agree that that is a small sum in the relative scale of things?
Mr. Clapham: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I have seen that parliamentary reply. It suggests that the costs of introducing the new criteria set out in the review are manageable.
I said that changing the criteria would not cost the Treasury a penny because the awards could be paid for out of the £320 million that has already gone into the Treasury's coffers from the sale of British Coal's land. By anyone's reckoning, that is money that should come back to mining communities. If that source of financing cannot be tapped, the awards could be financed from half the annual surpluses that the Government rip off from the mineworkers' pension scheme. As the people whom we are talking about are elderly, clearly the cost will diminish year on year. Therefore, that £320 million could well pay for the scheme into the future.
It is an appalling indictment of the Government that they have sat on the IIAC recommendations for nine months. In the mean time, literally hundreds of former coal miners have died of the dust and have been unable to make a claim. Neither they nor their families, who in

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many instances cared for and nursed them, have a chance of claiming benefit for their suffering. It is estimated that in the Barnsley borough 12 per cent. of the population are carers and that most of the people for whom they care are relatives who previously worked in the mining industry.
I hope that the Minister can tell us that the recommendations will be implemented immediately and that they will be retrospectively applied in view of the delay that has been caused by the Government.
11.16 am
Mr. William O'Brien: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing the opportunity to debate this matter. As soon as the debate appeared on the Order Paper, I wrote to Madam Speaker asking for the opportunity to take part. This is a significant issue which involves a substantial number of my constituents as well as others in west and north Yorkshire. My colleague represents south Yorkshire and I endorse all his remarks because they apply to miners in west and north Yorkshire.
As several hon. Members want to speak, I shall keep my comments brief. I wish to put a number of questions to the Minister. If he cannot respond to them this morning, they will be on record and I hope that he will follow them up after the debate. The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council report was presented to the Secretary of State in February this year and was made public in May. It recommended two main amendments. The first was that the forced expiration volume in one second test—the FEV1 test—should be retained but amended to allow underground workers who have small lung volume to be judged according to their frame. The second was that the need for radiographic evidence of coal dust retention be removed from prescription.
Since the report was published, I have received numerous inquiries from former mineworkers in my constituency. They asked how and when the report would be implemented. I wrote to the Secretary of State giving the names of some of the individuals who had been pressing me. The response has been negative. I should like the Minister to deal with a number of issues. First, when will the recommendations be implemented? That is what everyone wants to know. If he can give some indication today, that will be a step in the right direction. Secondly, will claimants denied benefits because they failed either the FEV or the X-ray test, or both, be granted benefit automatically, or will they have to reapply when the Secretary of State agrees to implement the recommendations?
Thirdly, will the widow or any relatives be able to make a posthumous claim because their husband or father failed the FEV and X-ray tests, but has since died? Will claimants who have satisfied the FEV test but have been denied benefit because they failed the X-ray test be automatically assessed? Will any benefits due to them be paid back to the date of their previous claim, or to September 1993 if the claim was submitted within the original time limit? A substantial number of people applied in September 1993, but it took three or four months before some qualified for the examination. If we are to be fair to them, they should receive compensation from September 1993. Will that apply to posthumous claims made on behalf of a miner's family? Will those claims go back to 1993?
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We must also consider surface workers. Those of us who have worked in the mining industry are aware of miners who worked underground for perhaps 15 or 18 years, but then had to work on the surface in dusty conditions. Those men have been denied the opportunity of applying for benefit, and that is an injustice. The Minister must reconsider, because a substantial number of people who should be claiming benefit are involved.
We are told that 3,502 former mineworkers in receipt of an occupational pension have died since the report was presented to the Secretary of State. How many of those who claimed benefit were turned down because they failed the X-ray test? It would be easy to identify them. Since the Secretary of State received the report. how many appeals have been lodged on the basis that the X-ray showed no dust on the lung? The Secretary of State is sitting on a recommendation from the advisory council while people are being refused benefit because there is nothing on their X-ray. Those applicants are appealing, but that test will not now apply. How much will that cost the Department of Social Security? We have heard that there is a lack of resources to pay the benefit, but the Secretary of State's refusal to act on the recommendation is costing the Government money. However, the people who will pay most are the retired miners.
How many people have failed because of the FEV test? How many appeals have been lodged? If the Secretary of State implemented the recommendations of the report, it would solve many of the problems and many miners would not need to appeal against their assessment. We are also aware of people who—having been turned down because the X-ray did not show them to be suffering from category 1 dust—have died shortly after the X-ray and been found to have been suffering from category 3 dust, which causes pneumoconiosis. But because the regulations say that the X-ray should show category 1 dust, they have not qualified for benefit. The regulations are flawed, as the case now being pursued through the courts will reveal. In such cases, no payment has been made to the family or to the widow.
Mr. Peter Hardy: My hon. Friend will be aware that two years or more ago, some of us—including, I think, my hon. Friend—submitted evidence to the Minister that the quality and nature of the X-ray film being used did not allow a proper diagnosis to be made.
Mr. William O'Brien: That is a substantial point that we made in our evidence to the Government. A significant amount of evidence shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that an injustice is being done to many former miners.
In the 1950s, I worked at a colliery where 2,500 miners worked underground, and some 20,000 miners were working in the area at that time. Those were the numbers in the industry in the early 1950s, and—while other hon. Members will be representing some of them—few of those miners are left because they have been racked by industrial illness and injury. But for the few who remain, the recommendations must be applied immediately. Will the Minister address the points of concern that I have raised? If he cannot answer them this morning, will he ensure that we receive written answers so that people can be made aware of the Minister's response to the concerns of former miners?
11.26 am
Mr. Eric Clarke: I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on obtaining this debate. I think that I am qualified to take part as I am an ex-miner and for 12 years was general secretary of the Scottish area of the National Union of Mineworkers. I also represent a mining constituency, where many people suffer from the diseases in question.
As only 5 to 6 per cent. of Scottish claimants were successful in obtaining a pension under chronic bronchitis and emphysema prescribed disease D12, I was delighted to hear that the Government's advisory committee had agreed to recommend changes in the qualifying method. For example, the recommendation to drop category 1, pneumoconiosis, was a breakthrough. However, the Minister has still not embraced that change, although he received the recommendations in February and we are now in November. Are the Government waiting for most of the claimants to die so as to save the Exchequer money? As the economist John Maynard Keynes once said,
"In the long run, we are all dead."
The Minister wrote to me in response to a letter that I had sent on behalf of the family of the late Joe Knox of Bonnyrigg, who died prematurely of bronchitis and emphysema, but was disqualified under the current scheme. The Minister's reply made the excuse that he did not have time to analyse the findings of his advisers, but he made it clear—as he has done to my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien)—that no retrospective claims would be accepted. We cannot repay families for the loss of a relative's life or health, but a pension or lump sum might show that society actually cared in some small way for the sacrifice that they made. Many miners' families are extremely bitter, and they blame the Government for the way in which the situation has been handled.
I wonder how the Minister can sleep at night, knowing that he is a party to such a grievous injustice. But it is never too late: even Ebenezer Scrooge had a dramatic change of heart. I appeal to the Minister in the run-up to Christmas to change his attitude and shed some ray of hope on those affected in mining communities and particularly in my constituency. I hope that he will reconsider the policy of no retrospection and implement the recommendations immediately.
11.29 am
Ms Joan Walley: I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing this debate.
I ask the Minister to note how many hon. Members signed the early-day motion and also consider all the correspondence. The issue matters a great deal, especially to hon. Members who represent coal mining areas. We have heard a great deal in the past 24 hours about how the House must determine issues of health and safety at work and deal with matters which, according to the Government, affect this country. In mining areas, nothing matters more than ensuring that those who have worked underground and have paid with their health get proper compensation for chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
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Concern is not confined to ex-miners and their families; the British public realise how much suffering and hardship has been endured. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone spoke earlier about the newspaper campaigns, especially in Yorkshire, and in my area of north Staffordshire the Evening Sentinel is backing the cause. We need a proper answer from the Minister today. If we do not get it, we can turn the matter into a public campaign throughout the country, and especially in mining areas.
We must give ex-miners an assurance that they need not live in fear of the cold this winter. In north Staffordshire, about 90 per cent. of applicants for the benefit have been turned down. I spoke to the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers this morning and he told me that a huge number of men had died since the benefit was introduced in 1993. We cannot afford to let down those who are left and their families.
The compensation is not large, ranging between a maximum of £90 and £20, but for the men and their families it represents the ability to keep warm as we approach the winter months. We cannot afford to delay action for another 12 months. I have read the recommendations carefully and I have written regularly to the Minister. I recognise that the Government should have due time to consider the various recommendations, but how long must we wait for them to say whether they intend to implement them?
As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone said, it is right to do away with the X-rays and we should no longer count sickness and absence in the 20-year period that is being assessed. There should also be changes in the criteria for the lung function assessment. As new mining techniques mean that miners could be at risk from a more concentrated exposure to coal dust, the matter should be kept under review.
Will the Minister give us an absolute assurance about how much money is involved, how many people in his Department are working on the issue, and whether he has the staff resources to ensure that the recommendations can be implemented in full? Will he ensure that when he implements the proposals—as I hope that he will, not least because of public pressure—there will be proper arrangements so that an administrative blunder cannot create a three or four-year delay in assessment? The administrative arrangements must be in place, especially in coal mining or ex-coal mining areas, to ensure that the men who need the benefit and apply for it can be paid quickly.
Only last week I received a letter from a constituent in Bradeley village who said that she had followed carefully the campaign in the House of Commons and that, although it was too late for her husband, who had died, we should do what we could to get the Government to introduce the benefit in full and without further delay, on behalf of all the men who have died and all the wives and families caring for men who are ill. That is what we want from the Minister today.
11.36 am
Mr. Dennis Skinner: It is important to recognise that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) has been slogging away on this campaign for ages; others have been involved—I and other hon. Members went to present

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evidence at the Trades Union Congress, for instance—but my hon. Friend has been in the front row for a long time, and he is to be congratulated on his efforts.
The issue could have been settled relatively easily because, generally speaking, the Government are supposed to take on board what the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council—a so-called independent body, staffed by people with medical expertise—says about a case; although the council is a quango, I do not think that it has yet been stuffed with Tories. If the recommendations had come from the City of London, the Government would have implemented them within a couple of weeks and we might have had a statement from the appropriate Minister, but this is different: it is about miners and mining communities in areas of Britain where the Tories by and large have no political influence.
I put it to the Minister and to the Secretary of State, who is not here today, that I know what their game is: they think that miners vote Labour so they need not bother about them. That was their attitude when they shut the last batch of 31 pits. We are talking about communities that have been ravaged by the Government, especially in the years since the miners' strike. There are areas of mass unemployment: male unemployment is as high as 50 per cent. in some of the coalfield villages, despite the fiddled figures that the Tories trot out every day—we had another lot today. We are talking about real poverty.
Groups of miners, wealth creators who worked, in some cases, for 40 or 50 years, who dug the coal during the war and whenever it was necessary, are coughing their lungs up, and what thanks to they get? They are told that they can have an X-ray and an FEV test, that they have to have worked for 20 years and that if they were dragged out of the pit on their hands and knees and had to work on the surface for the last few years they would not qualify. There were about 10 different hurdles for people to jump. What happens? As my hon. Friend said, only 10 or 11 per cent. succeed. Yesterday, at Social Security Question Time, we heard about some tribunals where 50 per cent. of applications are successful, so 10 or 11 per cent. is a paltry amount.
You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have also been involved in this matter, probably from the beginning, in an attempt to put the matter on the statute book, so this could be described as an all-party affair, although it does not extend as far as the Conservative Benches.
What does the Minister have against miners and their communities? We are talking about a relatively small amount of money. The Government gave away the pits to Budge for a song; yet they cannot find this small amount of money to legislate on the recommendations of a body whose recommendations are usually accepted by Governments.
I remember only too well my efforts during the 1974–79 Labour Government to have a chemical factory disease prescribed. Some of my hon. Friends will remember that, because there are not many prescribed industrial diseases. When such a measure goes on the statute book, it is supposed to be implemented. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme), who was in the Department of Social Security at the time, had that recommendation accepted within a short space of time. Yet the present lousy, rotten Government have been
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sitting on this matter for almost the whole of this year because they cannot stand miners who had the guts to stand up against this paltry Government on a number of occasions.
What is bugging the Government? This is not a Common Market directive. When we have a directive such as the one that we had from the Common Market yesterday giving workers three weeks holiday and a 48-hour week, one can understand that the Government have to give way to the Euro-sceptics in their party. But this is not a Common Market directive—it is British through and through—so why can the Government not implement it?
Just think about those miners walking along the streets of the pit villages, struggling from lamp post to lamp post. They walk 25 yards, then they grab at the nearest fence, coughing, their heads bent low. Then along comes Mr. Deputy Speaker and people such as my hon. Friends and they manage to convince the powers that be that there should be chronic bronchitis and emphysema legislation. It took years; then, when it was introduced, the Government emaciated it. Many thought that after 40 or 50 years they would see some rainbow, a little extra money to buy all the things that they had never been able to buy, but they finish up with this tinpot legislation.
Some of us decide to try to make things better and we make promises. We tell people that we will take the matter to an independent body. We do so, and that body goes along with many of our proposals. Yet this stinking Government do not have the guts to implement the recommendations. The Government should get off their knees and give some hope to people who have put more into society than any of those who sit on the Conservative Benches.
11.42 am
Mr. Peter Hardy: I shall be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as a number of my hon. Friends wish to join in. I echo the reference made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) to yourself. You will recall that I was one of the sponsors of the several Bills that you presented in an effort to achieve justice in this matter of coalfield concern.
On Sunday morning last, with a number of other people from my local community, wreaths were laid at the memorial to the men of Manvers Main colliery who were killed in the world wars. In the first world war, more than 200 men from that one pit died. More than 40 of them gained medals for gallantry, including the Victoria cross. Their grandsons and great nephews are suffering from these industrial diseases now. Yet they were labelled by the Government as the enemy within.
My hon. Friend referred to the substantial contributions made by people from the coalfields, yet they have not been treated fairly. In response to your private Member's Bills, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Government eventually gave way and allowed a scheme. Then they drew up qualifications and regulations which meant that only a tiny proportion of the men who applied would succeed. Yet their neighbours, people without political experience or qualification, knew well that those men were coughing and would die far earlier than they otherwise would have done.

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While the Government have hedged, prevaricated and delayed, thousands have died. As my hon. Friends the Members for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) and for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) have said, the numbers are shrinking and the cost will diminish rapidly. The Government have taken a great deal of money out of the coalfields as a result of privatisation; we ask that a little of that money is put back into the areas where it was created.
11.45 am
Mr. Paddy Tipping: I hope that the Minister has heard the voices from coalfield communities all over the country—Scotland, Wales and the midlands—and that he recognises the strength of feeling there. He knows of the campaign to obtain the benefit in the first place. We need to congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on that. Then there was the campaign to have the benefit reviewed because it was not meeting the needs of those involved.
The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council reported in February. It is now nine months on and the clock is ticking for many of those miners. They have given their health and lives to bring comfort and warmth to the nation. It is time for the Minister to make an announcement. Nine months is a long time in anyone's reckoning. For those who are ill and in the twilight of their days, it is important that we have an announcement now.
I am sure that the Minister is aware of the campaign by the Nottingham Evening Post, in which he has been quoted. Back in June, the Secretary of State told that paper that the recommendations would be implemented. If he can tell the Nottingham Evening Post in June that things will be good for former miners, why cannot an announcement be made here today in Parliament during this important debate?
Perhaps it has something to do with the cost. I am grateful for the parliamentary answer that the Minister gave me only last week, telling me that according to his calculations the cost in the first year would be £20 million with £5 million administrative costs. As many of my hon. Friends have pointed out, that cost will decline in future years as the group of beneficiaries gets smaller.
The coalfields have contributed to Britain's wealth, but the communities there have had a tough time. They believe that the Government have turned their back on them and walked away. They have buried the coal industry, but they must not bury those miners who are chronically crippled and ill without giving them the benefit of some extra help.
The Budget is due in a fortnight's time. If the Minister cannot make an announcement today, will he ensure that a decision is made as part of the Budget process? There may well be discussions, debates and perhaps some tension between the Department of Social Security and the Treasury at this moment, but the campaign will go on. People will not walk away from this. Enough is enough. It is important to make an announcement and pay the benefit now because many of the miners, their wives and families are in an intolerable situation.
Let us have an announcement now. The Government have had the opportunity to consider the matter for nine months. We know what the cost has been. The time has come to look after those who have looked after the nation for so many years.
11.49 am
Mrs. Ann Clwyd: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on his campaign, not only on this issue but on many other issues relating to the mining industry. He has acted with his customary modesty, but I pay special tribute to his persistence in those matters, which is applauded by those us who represent mining communities.
Luckily, I still represent a mining community, but that is no thanks to this Government. It is thanks to the effort of the miners themselves—not to the Deputy Prime Minister, who was responsible for the privatisation programme and who made many promises during the passage of that legislation, most of which have been broken. Indeed, on 27 June this year, he told us that he was looking at the recommendations as a matter of urgency. I do not know what urgency means to the Deputy Prime Minister—perhaps it means working with civil servants in an attempt to commandeer them in his vain efforts to win the next general election. I can tell him now that he might as well give up and apply himself to matters of greater importance, such as this campaign.
The Minister, the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Evans), himself represents a south Wales constituency—it might be ungracious, but I should add that he will not do so for much longer. I am sure that, in the next general election, that seat will be reclaimed for the Labour party. The hon. Gentleman knows the situation in south Wales and the conditions in which people live. From his practice in the area, he has known for many years the suffering that those communities have endured. He knows that, all along, miners and their families have had to fight for every penny of compensation that they have ever received from the state. When I was a journalist, I fought alongside the miners in the pneumoconiosis campaign. Everyone knows how hard the miners had to fight to get just compensation for contracting that terrible disease.
I was elected in the middle of a miners' strike. In 1984, I went down a small street in Penrhiwceiber—a small mining village known to the Minister. In every other house there was a man suffering from either bronchitis and emphysema or pneumoconiosis and many of those men were using oxygen machines at that time. I went down the same street a year later and was told, "He's dead," "He's dead," "He's very ill," "He's dying." That is why it is important that the matter be dealt with urgently. Urgency must mean more to the Deputy Prime Minister than five months' delay while people wait for him to come up with a response to those proper recommendations.
The Minister has, of course, been trying to explain why the reduced earnings allowance is a just measure, but I remind him that, ever since the Social Security Act 1986 was passed, disabled people and their relatives have been penalised by this Government. This is an opportunity to put matters right. We are not asking a big favour—the sum of money involved is small—but it would make an enormous difference to those miners and their families who are suffering as a result of an industrial disease that they contracted when they were working in our mining industries.
11.53 am
Mr. Kevin Barron: I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) for not having been present at the

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beginning of the debate. He has done us all a service by obtaining the debate. Like many other Opposition Members, I come from a coal mining area and have many constituents who are worried about the current position.
When, after a long campaign of which you do not need reminding, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the House decided to classify emphysema and bronchitis as an industrial disease, many of us were greatly relieved. That was followed by massive disappointment, with many of my constituents finding that the tests to get compensation were so tightly drawn that the rejection rate was well above 90 per cent. For many years, I have been dealing with the case of Mr. George Lambton who worked for 51 years in Kiveton Park colliery in my constituency. He failed the tests that were originally used to determine whether someone qualified for compensation.
When I read the report published in February this year which revealed the weaknesses in the tests, I was greatly relieved and wrote to Mr. Lambton about it. I also discussed the matter with hospital consultants who were experts on the question of hard versus soft X-rays being used to identify the disease. What intrigued and pleased me about the February report was its findings on the FEV test—that lung capacity varies according to the stature of the individual.
Mr. Lambton is a very small man. He and his general practitioner are absolutely convinced that he suffers from the disease—now classified as an industrial disease—of emphysema and bronchitis, but he has failed the FEV test. As has been made clear by the report, the main reason for his failure is probably his stature—he is only about 5 ft tall. I wrote to him about the report and said that he should reapply for compensation for emphysema and bronchitis, and he has done so. It is nearly sorted out now—he went for an X-ray and was told, "Oh, by the way, you have pneumoconiosis as well, so you should apply for that compensation, too." Mr. Lambton's lungs are clearly in a bad condition.
Mr. Lambton's appeal has not gone through yet, but if he reaches that point before the regulations are changed to correct the problems with the original assessment, he will be back to square one. That is not good enough. When a report is published that clearly shows why there was a failure rate of more than 90 per cent., action is needed. It is wrong to leave thousands of people like Mr. Lambton in this state of limbo resulting from delay in implementing a sensible recommendation that would enable them to get the compensation from the state that they deserve.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) pointed out that the Secretary of State said that the regulations would be altered. I hope that the Minister will come to the Dispatch Box to say that that will be done as soon as possible. If my constituent fails at his next attempt because the regulations have not been altered according to the recommendations, I shall tell him to reapply, and to keep going until he gets justice. The Minister should give some firm assurances about when that injustice will be put right—many thousands of people need it to be done straight away.
11.57 am
Mr. Henry McLeish: This has been an excellent debate and I hope that the Minister is thinking about what he is going to say. Hon. Members have spoken
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with great emotion and the report contained cold logic, so I sincerely hope that the Minister has come here not with fine words, but with a commitment to accept the recommendations and to proceed quickly with implementation of the proposals.
There is a profound sense of injustice, anger and disappointment throughout the coalfields of Britain, and rightly so. Communities, ex-miners, miners' families, councillors, councils, mining unions, Members of Parliament and local newspapers such as the Nottingham Evening Post have campaigned vigorously over the past few years for the issue to be taken seriously and resolved. I join my hon. Friends in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) for his endeavours in this respect—he simply will not give up and that is a message that the Minister should understand. I hope that the Minister has something positive to say, but he should be under no illusion about the fact that, if he is not positive this morning, the campaign will go on and on until we achieve victory for the thousands of ex-miners up and down the country.
Emotion is important in the House and, this morning, we have heard passionate but concise speeches. These men have contributed greatly to the nation's prosperity—that is not in doubt. Many of them knew that their health was being damaged every day they went down the pit. The real tragedy is that the lives of some of those whom we hope will be beneficiaries are now ebbing away. They face the damage caused by chronic bronchitis and emphysema and that is linked to a sense of injustice and concern at the fact that they do not have enough cash in the household. That is not a situation facing the Minister, but it does face those families.
It is always useful to throw in one's own experience. My father was a mineworker for 30 years and his last trip up from the mine was on a stretcher. My grandfather worked for the private coal companies. The conditions in those mines were part of the reason for nationalisation. I have seen colleagues who have been councillors, lying in bed with an oxygen cylinder by their side. I am sure that that is not an experience shared by the Minister or those who advise him, but it provides a telling insight into the suffering that is endured by many of those ex-miners.
Of course, of itself, emotion is not enough on which to base changes to legislation or regulations. However, the emotion of this issue has been built on by the hard and compelling logic of the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council. Public interest should be represented. We have the emotion, the passion and the sentiment, but more important, we have the logic of an inquiry that has delivered recommendations to the Minister.
Given that emotion and logic, Parliament must respond. That is why there is a tremendous responsibility on the Minister this morning. He cannot duck the issue. All my colleagues have put their points to him and he has the report on his desk. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Social Security and a host of Under-Secretaries have uttered fine words, but they have been running. The Minister cannot run any further. He is faced with the contributions made by my colleagues and the logic of the report. I hope that he will rise to the occasion.
So far, the campaign has been successful, and that success encourages everybody to believe that we will go from strength to strength. It was as a result of the

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campaign started by my hon. Friends that, in 1993, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council made emphysema and bronchitis a prescribed disease. It was through their efforts that, in January 1995 the IIAC decided to review the prescription because it was far too constrained and, as a consequence, out of 50,000 miners who had applied only a handful—5,000—got what they deserved.
The IIAC reported to the Minister earlier this year. It is worth restating that, in a technical area, the changes will make a profound difference to those seeking to obtain industrial injuries benefit. The report recommended dropping the requirement for X-ray evidence of pneumonoconiosis. It recommended keeping the 20-year rule but, importantly, making sure that it included sickness periods. It was outrageous that, initially, the 20-year period would not have included the sickness periods. The report recommended keeping the FEV test, amending it to allow for workers with small lung volumes. That seems to be elementary common sense and one wonders why it was not included in the first set of recommendations. One does not have to be a medical expert to realise that implementing those changes 'would allow a larger number of people to get the justice that they deserve.
The case has been made and that is not the basis for this debate. It is important to look at some of the comments that have been made from the Prime Minister through to the Under-Secretaries. To come right up to date, when visiting Nottingham a few days ago, the Prime Minister said that the matter was still being considered. The headline in the Nottingham Evening Post said, "Prime Minister, John Major, visiting Nottingham today, is still refusing to guarantee extra cash help for crippled ex-miners."
On 27 June—this has already been quoted—the Deputy Prime Minister told my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone that he would view the matter with urgency. What does "urgency" mean" The report has been on the Minister's desk since February and it was published in May. The Prime Minister spoke in November, the Deputy Prime Minister spoke in June and we have had many fine words from other Ministers. I am pleased to see in the House the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott), because during his time as a Minister he contributed to some of the more positive aspects of the debate.
Why the inactivity? What is the problem in a budget that spends £90 billion of taxpayers' money and which will rise in 1998–99 to £101 billion? This is the first group of Ministers to look forward to that level of budget, but they will see a Labour Government use it more effectively. I want to ask the Minister some direct questions.
The Minister has seen the report and has had expert advice. He knows of the hardship and misery that the delays are causing to people in the coalfield communities in Britain. Why the delay? I hope that he will give us the reasons. Although we have had some comments on the recommendations in the report, the Government have not overwhelmingly embraced its findings and recommendations. The Minister—I see him raising his eyebrows—may suggest that he has done that, but the comments were not specific enough for us to be reassured that, at the heart of Government, the scientific report has been accepted. I want to find out whether the recommendations have been fully accepted. When will the
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Government implement the changes? My hon. Friends have already asked whether this is a battle between the Department of Social Security and the Treasury—it often is. We have not found out whether the Department of Social Security is whole-heartedly pursuing the Treasury—if it is the Treasury that is blocking this. Those are important questions.
The other issue which underpins the attack that we are making this morning goes back to the initial comments. This is supposed to be a Parliament for all the people of the United Kingdom. It is supposed to be a Parliament that looks at evidence impartially, weighs it up and makes recommendations. If I were an ex-miner in Nottingham, Barnsley or any other part of Britain and I was struggling for breath in the way described by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—I have seen such people walking along the streets—I would wonder what sort of Parliament this is. The partiality of this Parliament is often a disgrace.
If the debate is reported, it means that the public will have an opportunity to know about this excellent debate and the contributions made by my colleagues. Also, the Minister has an opportunity to become a superstar in the mining communities. That is not an opportunity that will fall to him very often. He has the chance to become a hero in the working-class communities of Britain. That must be a challenge for any Tory Minister.
I have been generous and have tried to reflect the excellent case that has been made by my colleagues. I hope that the Minister will say, "Yes, yes, yes," to all the questions we ask so that we can tell our constituents that this Parliament works for them and for Britain and that, on this serious issue, there was a consensus which paid dividends and people got their just reward.
12.9 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing the debate, and I am grateful to him for that. I have been asked in a number of different ways by everyone who spoke, including the shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish), whether I will make an announcement. I shall begin by making my answer to that question clear. I am not able to make an announcement this morning. I did not leave that statement to the end of my speech, because I knew that hon. Members wanted to know my answer now. Let me explain where we have got to, and then I will reply to the debate in some detail.
I raised an eyebrow when the scientific medical aspects of the IIAC report were mentioned. The Government accept those conclusions: that is an important matter. I also make it clear that an announcement will be made shortly, but I cannot go into detail about what stage those matters have reached. I stress that the Government are attending to the matter, and an announcement will be made shortly. I cannot go further than that. I have no doubt that hon. Members will press me to do so, but that is my position.
Ms Walley: In view of what the Minister has just said, will he tell us what is holding up the announcement? Where is the blockage? Is it in the Treasury? Will he share

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that information with us? We want to know why, having had sufficient notice, he is unable to make an announcement today.
Mr. Evans: It is tempting to answer the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley), and it may be simpler for me to do so, but she will appreciate that I cannot. The matter is being attended to, and an announcement will be made shortly.
Mr. Tipping rose—
Mr. Hardy rose—
Mr. Evans: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone first, because he secured the debate and I think that he rose slightly more quickly than the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy). [Interruption.] I am so sorry, it is the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping).
Mr. Tipping: Will the Minister remind the House that on the day after the Budget it is normal practice for the Secretary of State for Social Security to make an announcement? By my reckoning, that day of judgment will be 27 November. My hon. Friends may be relaxed and mild now—the Minister heard my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—but he should reflect on that and make it a red letter day in his diary.
Mr. Evans: I do not think that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) could be so described this morning: he made a powerful speech. I hear what the hon. Member for Sherwood says, and I have made it clear that an announcement will be made shortly. [HON. MEMBERS: "When is shortly?"] That means shortly shortly, within reasonable shortness. Other than that I cannot qualify shortly in a helpful way, and beyond that I cannot and will not go.
Mr. Hardy: A long time ago, when a better Government were in office, I brought to the House's attention the case of a constituent who was suffering from those diseases. He depended on oxygen and could not leave his house because he had to be by the side of a large oxygen cylinder. I asked the then Government to allow portable oxygen cylinders to be provided by the national health service. They agreed, and within an astonishingly short time people such as my constituent were able to go to the local club, go for a walk to see their son's allotment and accompany their wives to the local shop, because they could carry a portable cylinder and were free. They were liberated by a caring Government who acted with expedition, whereas this lot have been sitting on this matter for years.
Mr. Clapham rose—
Mr. Evans: I think that I am obliged to answer the hon. Gentleman's question first. I hear the point that he makes. It concerns a wider issue, but I understand why he makes it.
Mr. Clapham: Will the announcement that is likely to be made in the near future be made orally to the House, and not in the form of a written answer to a question?
Mr. Evans: I cannot answer that, but I can assure the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone that it will be made in whatever is the appropriate conventional fashion.
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I shall deal with the specific points that hon. Members have raised, because it is important that I go through them one by one. The hon. Member for Sherwood referred to my parliamentary answer on the cost, which will be £20 million plus £5 million for administration. I appreciate the points made about property sales and the sums that, it is said, should be paid back to the mining communities. For nearly 200 years, there has been a consolidated fund. Hon. Members must appreciate that, whatever their merits, the proposals involve a public expenditure commitment, which must be accounted for in the usual way.
The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish), who seemed in one breath to be satisfied with the largeness of the social security budget, said that if he were in office he would apply it more appropriately. He must explain what allowance would be made if that were done.
The hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) asked me several specific questions about matters that go beyond the area that we are discussing today. I warn him that some of his observations about retrospection go further than what any Government have done in the past in connection with this scheme. I shall read his speech carefully in Hansard, and I shall do my best to answer his questions. I may be able to answer them more fully at the time of the announcement. I have noted the points that he made, and I shall examine them carefully.
Mr. William O'Brien: I prefaced my remarks by saying that I thought that the Minister would not be able to answer my questions, but that it would be helpful if he could answer them in writing. I am concerned about what the Minister just said about retrospection going beyond what we could expect. Does he accept that the regulations are deeply flawed? They require that dust retention should show up on the X-ray, but post-mortems reveal a vast discrepancy in that area. In my opinion, retrospection is understandable and fair, and I hope that the Minister will give it fair consideration.
Mr. Evans: As I understand it, the scientific evidence presented by IIAC is correct. The difficulty with the X-ray test is that what shows up on the X-ray depends in part on the carbon content of coal. Anthracite and best Welsh steam-coal produce more visible signs in X-rays than do other types of coal. That is the scientific argument presented by IIAC, and, as I said, we accept that.
The difficulty with retrospection—I put this in general terms—is the way in which the scheme has operated since 1946. Scientific knowledge develops. The purpose of IIAC is to monitor the scientific argument as it develops and extends. Governments have traditionally taken the view that when the scientific evidence, as assessed and reported on by IIAC, meets the statutory test of the scheme—which has been in place since 1946—the change is made for future cases. That happened in 1993 in respect of this issue.
I put in a word of caution, because the hon. Member for Normanton, for understandable reasons, is trying to press me to go further than any Government have gone before. I shall consider the point, and I shall try to reply to him as best as I can immediately, and subsequently when the announcement is made.
Mr. McLeish: I wish to reinforce the point. Between 1993 and now, a significant number of cases have come

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before the Department. Will the Minister reassure me that if the changes are accepted and implemented, the case load from 1993 to 1996 will be eligible for reconsideration in an attempt retrospectively to bring justice to those people?
Mr. Evans: That would involve further expense, over and above the figures that we quoted earlier. I shall consider all matters, including that one, before the announcement is made. However, the scheme has not traditionally been operated in that way. The purpose of IIAC is to advise the Government and Parliament on the evolving state of the scientific evidence. The point at which, in IIAC's judgment, the two criteria have been met is the point at which, traditionally, we respond to IIAC.
Mr. McLeish: I am grateful for the candidness of the Minister's responses. Would he be amenable to further representations being made in the next few days about the question of retrospection? It is important to my hon. Friends. I merely ask the Minister to acknowledge its importance, and to tell us whether he would be happy to obtain further evidence before the announcement is made—shortly, or shortly shortly.
Mr. Evans: I hope that "shortly" means fairly shortly. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is, of course, yes. I hope that there was no misunderstanding in the summer. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone on 23 July, inviting him to meet Ministers with members of the miners' group. That meeting has not taken place for some reason, but I shall be delighted to meet any members of the group.
Mr. Clapham: We want to see the Minister.
Mr. Evans: When people say that to me, I know full well that it will happen. Anyway, if any hon. Members wish to make further representations, I shall be delighted to listen.
Mr. Eric Clarke: I raised the question of retrospection because a letter that I received suggested that there was to be no retrospection. Is the Minister now opening the door to discussion about the matter? In the example that I gave, someone died of the disease.
Mr. Evans: The fact that I am always prepared to listen to an argument should not lead to the supposition that I necessarily accede to that argument. As I made clear to the hon. Member for Normanton, what is being demanded goes further than any Government have traditionally gone under this scheme. Nevertheless, if anyone wants to put a particular case to me, I am prepared to listen to it carefully. I will have it assessed carefully, and I will have it costed carefully. I give this warning, however: although I am prepared to listen, we are being asked to go much further than the scheme has previously gone.
I should make it clear to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North that there is an issue of administration. I was asked specifically how long the arrangements would take to implement were we to make such an announcement. The 1993 scheme took five and a half months to implement, and serious questions of administration are involved in any such implementation; but the Government are attending to all matters.
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I shall be kinder to the hon. Member for Bolsover than he was to me. IIAC is, of course, a quango, but I think that even the hon. Gentleman will agree that, if there is such a thing as a quango, it is the best of all possible quangos. It is an expert body: it contains medical experts of the highest repute, as well as representatives of both the TUC and the CBI.
The hon. Member for Sherwood mentioned the Nottingham Evening Post interview with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I regret to say that that newspaper read rather more into off-the-cuff remarks than was justified, although I appreciate that the interview excited considerable interest in Nottinghamshire at the time.
Criticisms have been made of the 1993 scheme, quite apart from those addressed by IIAC. The hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) seemed to be saying that in 1993 we had somehow frustrated everyone's intentions by devising a scheme that was tighter than the one for which they were campaigning. As I understand the position, we simply implemented what IIAC then recommended.
Having—I hope—dealt with most of the points that have been made, I will not reintroduce a discussion with the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) on reduced earnings allowance, or on any of the other matters that she mentioned. The debate focuses, very properly, on a particular matter.
Mrs. Clwyd: It is an important issue.
Mr. Evans: I know that it is important, but it is separate and distinct from what we have been discussing today.
It is important to define the role of IIAC, and the conditions that must be satisfied before a disease may be prescribed. That will explain why the terms of the prescription of chronic bronchitis and emphysema were drawn up in the way that they were in 1993, why the council reviewed the criteria this year and why it reached the conclusions and made the recommendations contained in its report.
No doubt everyone will be encouraged by the fact that the opinions expressed in both the 1992 and the 1996 IIAC reports on the subject were unanimous: there was agreement among all representatives on the body, including the medical experts.
Industrial injuries disablement benefit is payable for disablement resulting from industrial accidents and from certain diseases that are prescribed. As I said earlier, the legal basis for prescription has remained unchanged since the scheme was introduced in its modern form in 1946—although I appreciate that that reformed the 1897 scheme. The statutory provision is contained in section 108 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, which states:
"A disease or injury may be prescribed in relation to any employed earners if the Secretary of State is satisfied that—
(a) it ought to be treated, having regard to its causes and incidence and any other relevant considerations, as a risk of their occupations and not as a risk common to all persons: and
(b) it is such that, in the absence of special circumstances, the attribution of particular cases to the nature of the employment can be established or presumed with reasonable certainty."
Mr. William O'Brien: When my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Sir G. Lofthouse)—now Deputy Speaker—introduced his Bill, he had in mind the regulations to which the Minister referred. Although the Bill was accepted, my hon. Friend's experience in the mining industry—which was included in it—was not taken into consideration by the review body. We are asking for the changes to be implemented without further delay, and for other matters that we have mentioned today to be taken into account. I hope that the Minister will consider all the facts that have been presented, because further changes must be made.
Mr. Evans: I hear that argument, and will give careful consideration to what it involves.
The statutory test is important. It is of fairly long standing, having existed throughout my lifetime. It has worked so far, although I appreciate that whether it is too strict, and whether it is drafted in quite the right way, are matters of argument.
This is a slightly unusual scheme. It is a compensation scheme, not a benefit scheme. It is distinct from, for instance, the arrangements for disability and incapacity benefits. It is a scheme of compensation—in the tradition of workmen's compensation that goes back to 1897—which is not based on proof of fault: it is a tax-free, no-fault compensation scheme. Therefore, it requires criteria that are clear and well established: no doubt that is why they have remained in their present state for a long time.
Mr. Clapham: The payment of compensation is normally connected with the fact that someone has been subjected to an unnecessary risk. Here we are talking about the loss of a faculty, either mental or physical, following an injury sustained at work. The benefit that is payable from the scheme is for that loss of faculty, and
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will therefore continue to be paid because the loss of faculty will remain until the end of the person's life. That is rather different from a compensation payment.
Mr. Evans: Traditionally, that is not so. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's analysis is correct, although I suspect that at the end of the day it does not matter.
As the hon. Gentleman will know, between 1897 and 1946, when a Labour Government reformed the scheme, people had an option, although not a very comfortable one. Either they accepted no-fault payments under the scheme's predecessor, or they sued at common law and had to prove negligence or breach of statutory duty, which was difficult and expensive. At its inception, the scheme was perceived as an alternative to suing at law. When the 1946 reforms came in, instead of either/or it became both.
Mr. Skinner: Under a Labour Government.
Mr. Evans: I know what the hon. Gentleman says. I accept that the scheme has remained in that state since 1946 and of course it was a Labour Government who imposed it, but the point is that, in its modern form, the scheme remains one of statutory compensation and is distinct from benefits. We have been talking loosely in terms of benefits, but the scheme is not like the welfare benefits generally administered by my Department, but a form of compensation for a type of injury.
Mr. Skinner: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Evans: I have about half a second. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Skinner: Yesterday in the handgun debate, as a result of representations about money, the Secretary of State for the Home Department said that he would consider finding extra money to resolve the gun lobby arguments. Will the Minister give the same guarantee on this matter when he has considered all the questions that have been asked by my hon. Friends?
Mr. Evans rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. We must now move to the next debate.

St Peter and St. James's Hospice
12.30 pm
Mr. Tim Rathbone: I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue in the debate, which comes, by good chance, this morning. First, I will remind the House about some characteristics of the hospice movement, although I doubt whether any Members are unaware of them.
Through its in-patient facilities, the hospice movement provides specialist care for people in advanced stages of serious illness. Through day care, it provides opportunities for expert help with symptom control, for counselling and for other therapies, as well as mental and physical refreshment for patients living at home and for their carers. Home care is provided by qualified hospice staff to support community nursing services, to assist patients and carers in daily nursing routines and regular assessment, and to maintain an open door to in-patient respite care.
I mention all those services because they are less well known than the major and best known hospice service, which is in the treatment and care of people whose condition cannot be cured, particularly to reduce, if not eliminate, patient discomfort and to improve patients' quality of life. Specialists are there to allay fear, to prescribe possible treatment and to provide holistic support to improve the quality of life.
Time never stands still and the needs of people suffering terminal illness will always become greater and require increasing support. That is the function of marvellous hospices such as St. Peter and St. James's home and hospice at Wivelsfield Green in my constituency. The Minister's colleague, Baroness Cumberlege, who visited the hospice recently, can vouch for the impressive quality of its work. I must say immediately, however, that the benefit from the hospice's care and service covers adjacent constituencies as well as my own and is almost equally provided to patients from East Sussex and West Sussex, which causes part of the funding problem.
Hospice funding does not depend entirely on health authorities. Like other hospices, St. Peter and St. James's depends to a large extent on charitable donations. It is only through such generous public support that: the hospice survives and can continue to give vital assistance so marvellously. It devotes much energy and innovation to fund-raising activities and local people are continually wonderfully generous, but health authorities also must contribute from the funds provided to them by Government to do so.
The Minister will know—indeed, his colleague has told me—that until last year Government funding was specific and had risen from £8 million in 1991 to £48 million in 1994–95, which is to be welcomed. Since then, funding has been built into health authorities' general allocations, with an aim to meet hospice needs on a 50:50 basis. The Department of Health guidance states specifically that removal of separate identification from funding for specialist palliative care—for hospices—should not be viewed in any way as representing a reduction in priority for that sector. That was confirmed by my hon. Friend the Minister for Health in his letter to me on 14 August.
The East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authority's contract with St. Peter and St. James's is for three years—its last year is next year—at £50,942 per year. I am told
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that that equals only about one third of the cost of in-patient services alone. No extra funding is provided for day care or for home care services, either from the authority or from local social services. It appears that no more funds are available for this wonderful hospice while a new hospice is being developed in Brighton and Hove. It is invidious to choose between the two. Both need better support.
The picture is even bleaker with regard to funding from West Sussex. Patients from West Sussex, just across the nearby county border, represent approximately 50 per cent. of the hospice's work, but the authority provides only £10,550 per annum—an invidiously small remuneration for the wonderful services provided to many people for whom it is responsible. It is not prepared to pay for any day care services, thus forcing patients requiring those services from St. Peter and St. James's to pay for them themselves.
The net income from both East Sussex and West Sussex health authorities of just about £60,000 leaves St. Peter and St. James's with the need to raise between £400,000 and £500,000 each year. That is far removed from the 50:50 funding guideline goal and shows a dramatic reduction in priority for palliative care funding, contrary to the Government's guidelines.
I will give one dramatic illustration. Recently, an East Sussex AIDS patient in a West Sussex hospital was moved to St. Peter and St. James's with the promise of necessary funding to come with him. The money never appeared. The hospice became the pig in the middle between health authorities and social services. Eventually, money was agreed only under threat of having to move the patient elsewhere and receiving negative publicity for that action. Sadly, the money was paid only after the patient had died.
That was a human tragedy. The hospice charges for that AIDS patient are approximately one third of the cost elsewhere and the hospice's services for such a patient are infinitely better—indeed, unmatched. Professional and dedicated people are trying to do their best for a desperately ill and dying patient and for many others like him, but they are not being provided with the basic funds to do so. That is one illustration of an omnipresent problem which has threatened St. Peter and St. James's literally with closure, so desperate is its financial position. But for one generous and substantial donation out of the blue last week, the hospice would probably have been closing as we pursue the debate.
What do I ask my good and honourable friend the Minister to do? First, I ask him to issue new hospice funding guidelines to health authorities to ensure that proper funding is provided in at least the same proportions as previously provided under the specific ring-fenced money provisions of yesteryear. Secondly, he must ensure that health authorities move speedily—I stress speedily—to a 50:50 funding proportion, to establish a deadline for them to do so and to fund them accordingly. Thirdly, he should make certain that health authorities provide fair funding to cover the needs of patients from their region and do not hide behind contracts that have been overtaken by increasing needs, nor rely on the good will of people dedicated to provide those services while denying them the funds to do so, as the West Sussex health authority is doing. Fourthly, some better mechanism must be established for decision-making on funding matters between health authorities and social services to avoid

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in-fighting such as that recently faced by the St. Peter and St. James's AIDS patient. Fifthly, the Minister should make sure that the principles of the patients charter apply, so that patients go where they can get the services that they need and the funds go with them. Sixthly, and finally, my hon. Friend should see what can be done to provide assistance to hospices to help them to deal with health authorities and social services on a more equal basis in their contractual and financial dealings.
The House will realise that people in the advanced stages of illness, and often apparently approaching death, need special help. Hospices such as St. Peter and St. James's uniquely provide with care and dedication the specialist services required. They continue to deserve public support, and I am sure that they will continue to get it. But they also deserve better support from Government-funded bodies such as health authorities and social services departments. I call upon my friend the Minister to give that help.
12.40 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Horam): I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone), and I congratulate him on securing time for a debate on the funding of St. Peter and St. James's hospice. I have no doubt that it is an extremely important issue.
I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend. He feels that the hospice provides a valued service for the people of Lewes and Haywards Heath in East Sussex, and I understand any concern that he has for its future.
Before I respond to my hon. Friend's concerns about funding, I should like to express sadness at the untimely although not entirely unexpected death of Julian Wellesley, chairman of the East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authority. He was a well respected man, with a successful career in finance and commerce. He devoted considerable time and energy to the health service, and was appointed to the position of health authority chairman in 1990. He proved to be an outstanding chairman, leading his authority with great style and skill, and his name will live on in the many improvements to local health services that he pushed through.
Mr. Rathbone: I should like to add my support for my hon. Friend's words. I knew Julian Wellesley for many years before I came to the House. He started his work in the health service on the board of Eastbourne general hospital. He was then appointed chairman of Eastbourne health authority and most recently he was a marvellous chairman of East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authority. He engineered the bringing together of the local health authorities and community care providers under one wing. I believe that my hon. Friend's words are justified.
Mr. Horam: I am grateful to my hon. Friend.
I know something about St. Peter and St. James's home and hospice from my colleague, Lady Cumberlege, who visited the premises on 20 August, as my hon. Friend said. She was very impressed by what she saw. The charity's efforts are obviously much appreciated by patients and the local community.
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St. Peter and St. James's home was built 20 years ago to provide residential care for severely disabled people and elderly people. It branched into hospice care in the early 1990s. The hospice comprises six in-patient beds and a new day centre. It also provides home support services for patients in the community.
St. Peter and St. James's is one of a number of hospices in Sussex. Like other voluntary hospices, it is funded from charitable sources, and also by the health authorities. I will have more to say about health authority funding of hospices, which ultimately comes from the taxpayer, of course, but first I should like to pay tribute to the excellent work done by charities up and down the country in raising many millions of pounds every year for hospice care. None of us is under any illusion about how difficult it can be to raise the sums required, and we are extremely grateful for the considerable unpaid time and effort so generously given by so many people.
I should make it absolutely clear that our commitment to palliative care is undiminished. I also remind the House that the United Kingdom is a recognised world leader in the care of the terminally ill. Significant advances have been made in pain and symptom control and in improving the overall quality of life for patients with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. The aim of our policies is to ensure that the benefits of those improvements in treatment and care are available to all patients, wherever they may live.
The spectrum of palliative care provision and support required to meet patients' and carers' needs continues throughout the patient's illness and into the carer's bereavement. It ranges from the promotion of physical and social well-being to highly specialist palliative care involving physical, psychological, social and spiritual support. It is provided in both community and in-patient settings. It will vary according to the stage of illness, and may be required from the time of diagnosis.
To provide such services, the Government's support for hospice and specialist palliative care services has, as my hon. Friend acknowledged, increased sixfold between 1990 and 1994. In 1994, that funding reached nearly £48 million. As of January this year, there were 171 hospices operating in England, with a total of 2,599 beds, 308 home care teams, 89 hospital support teams and 191 day hospices. Some of those are part of larger national voluntary bodies, but most are locally based individual charities such as the St. Peter and St. James's hospice. As the House will appreciate, the care of the terminally ill nationally is a large undertaking, which has grown enormously in the past 10 years.
As my hon. Friend said, since 1994, funding for specialist palliative care has been built into health authorities' allocations and has not been ring-fenced as it originally was. My hon. Friend is concerned that that practice has diminished support. I can tell him that my Department has a good working relationship with the National Council for Hospice and Specialist Palliative Care Services. We rely on that organisation to identify local problems. The council is co-ordinating a survey of all health authorities and is interviewing those responsible for palliative care. The picture is incomplete because the survey is expected to be published early next year, but the evidence so far is that health authorities are at least maintaining—I emphasise that word—their palliative care funding levels.

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The change in the funding approach was designed to ensure that health authorities planned for palliative care in the same way as they planned for other health services. Health authorities are free to negotiate with individual providers the level and form of support required to meet the palliative care needs of their population. That flexibility in the use of funding has enabled the palliative approach to become more widely adopted in all settings, including hospices, hospitals, nursing homes and the patient's own home.
It is, of course, essential that hospices and health authorities work in partnership when drawing up and developing local strategies for palliative care. Agreement between them must be based on the assessed health needs of the resident population and should take into account local priorities, available resources and existing patterns of services. That should allow resources to be used effectively and avoid undue duplication.
It is also important for health authorities to ensure that new developments do not divert resources from established palliative care units if they are delivering high quality care. That fact needs to be emphasised in the context of today's debate as I know that St. Peter and St. James's is a valued as well as an established palliative care unit. I am sure that that point will not be lost on the health authorities. Indeed, if there was any danger of that, we re-emphasised that point as recently as 15 October 1995 in guidance to all health authorities.
East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authority and West Sussex health authority are responsible for contracting for palliative care services in Sussex and the area served by the St. Peter and St. James's hospice. While I understand the wish of that hospice and those connected with it to secure as much funding as possible from their health authorities, it is for the two Sussex health authorities, as purchasers of health care for their residents, to determine what level of resources to devote to palliative care, and which particular providers to use.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes referred to the level of support being provided and mentioned a total contribution of approximately £60,000 from the two health authorities to the more than £400,000 required to maintain the hospice. Those are large sums of money for the authorities, but I readily agree that they are small in relation to the total sum required. My hon. Friend was correct to say that approximately 30 per cent. of the costs of patients from East Sussex are being matched by funds from their health authority, and that the percentage provided by the West Sussex authority to maintain patients from its area is even smaller—perhaps as low as 10 per cent.
Mr. Rathbone: I remind the Minister that those figures apply only to funding for in-patient services and not for other services.
Mr. Horam: I accept that, but those are the amounts being provided by the two health authorities.
The matter of what resources are available to the health authorities is a separate issue. As a Member of Parliament representing a Sussex constituency, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes will be aware of the difficulties faced by the West Sussex and the East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authorities. This year, the disparity between the target and actual amounts that the East Sussex health
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authority should receive is more than £18 million, while for West Sussex the amount is more than £15 million. Those disparities are among the worst in the country. My hon. Friend will be aware that the authorities are some distance from the target amount of funding that they should receive.
My hon. Friend will also be aware that we are endeavouring to diminish the disparity between the ideal and actual amounts over time. Therefore, this year the two authorities received increases that were very much higher than inflation. They can also expect increases very much above inflation in future years. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be aware of the commitment made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at the Conservative party conference to real-term increases in the health budget, which will be reflected in the amount of money going to health authorities.
At this time of year, health authorities do not know how much money they will receive next year, but they will know fairly soon. I hope that the authorities will appreciate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes in this debate and bear in mind the situation facing St. Peter and St. James's hospice when they consider the disposition of their resources, which have been increased in real terms. I hope that they will consider the situation very carefully when they know where they stand.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes made an important point about the need for co-operation between the two health authorities. It is important that the problem does not slip between the fingers of both authorities as they are both taking their own point of view and not co-operating with one another. I am glad to be able to tell my hon. Friend that there is correspondence between the two authorities on the matter. As he knows, there is also correspondence outstanding between the hospice and the West Sussex health authority. So the problem is being dealt with. My hon. Friend also raised the important issue of ascertaining the exact financial position. I agree that that must happen soon, and I hope that the two authorities will talk with the hospice to deal with the problem.
I hope that my reply has reassured my hon. Friend that I should like the problems to be dealt with urgently by the health authorities, after they are made aware of the resources that will be available to them in the next financial year.
Mr. Rathbone: A couple of questions arise from the Minister's reply—which I much appreciated. He has certainly reassured me about what he would like to see happen, but it does not reassure me about the behaviour of the authorities. There have been long-drawn-out conversations between the East Sussex, Brighton and Hove authority and the West Sussex authority, which have reached a complete impasse. Based on my correspondence with the authorities, they have shown no sign in the past year of overcoming that impasse. Any additional guidelines that the Minister can provide would help. Any assistance that he can give to hospices, so that they can be on a more equal footing in their contractual arrangements, would also be appreciated.
The Minister mentioned the need to close the funding gap for the two authorities to bring them up to the national norm. Therefore—I did not anticipate that the debate

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would reach this conclusion—the problems of the St. Peter and St. James's hospice rest on the shoulders of the Minister.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that interventions should be used to intervene in the debate and not to make a second speech.
Mr. Rathbone: I agree absolutely, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I stand admonished by your ruling. I was seeking clarification from the Minister on two extremely important points. I hope that he has taken them on board. He still has a moment in which to apply his mind to them.
Mr. Horam: First, I realise that the problem has been a matter of debate between the two authorities. As a result of the points made by my hon. Friend in this debate, and particularly because of the immediacy of the financial problems faced by the hospice, I shall ask the authorities to re-examine the matter, in conjunction with the hospice, to discover the exact financial problems.
Secondly, I can reassure my hon. Friend that we realise the funding problems faced by the authorities. We hope that there will be further progress in narrowing the gap between the authorities' current position and the norm in the announcement about health authority funding for the next financial year. That will mean increased real resources for the two health authorities to tackle the problem and will allow them to give the problem the priority that they would wish to accord it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. As the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) and the Minister are in the Chamber, we can begin the next debate early.

Hillingdon Hospital (Cleaners' Dispute)
12.57 pm
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Thank you very much, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am pleased that we have an extra three minutes for the debate, because it is about a matter of great importance. I should say that I have corresponded with the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) on the matter, and I am glad that he is in the Chamber today. In accordance with previous rulings from Madam Speaker, I sent him a note last night to confirm that I would be speaking in the debate.
I should also say that I am a member of Unison, which is the union involved in the dispute. I am a former official of Unison, and was supported by it in the most recent general election. I am very proud to be a member of Unison and to be involved with it.
The dispute has been going on for just over a year. A group of women and one man, who are cleaners at the Hillingdon hospital, have been trying to get back their jobs. They have stood outside the hospital in foul, wet weather and in fine, dry weather, suffering harassment, abuse and abominable behaviour by passers-by. They have also suffered at the hands of the obdurate management of a very large, wealthy and powerful company, known as Pall Mall Services.
The background to the dispute is that, in October 1994, Pall Mall, Healthcare Support Services won a contract to provide cleaning services at the Hillingdon hospital. It sent all staff a letter, on 3 October 1994, which stated:
"Re: Transfer Of Contract—Initial Healthcare Services to Pall Mall Healthcare—Hillingdon Hospital, 17.10.94.
We are delighted to have won the contract to provide support services at Hillingdon Hospital and are pleased to confirm, following our presentation and individual meeting, your transfer from Initial Healthcare Services to Pall Mall Healthcare on 17th October 1994.
We will shortly be completing a contract of employment for you, but as you are transferring under the Transfer of Undertaking Regulations, your terms and conditions will remain the same.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you in advance for your help in making the transfer as smooth as possible and look forward to a successful working partnership as part of the Pall Mall team."
Those were high hopes indeed.
One year later, a number of staff received a letter saying:
"We wrote to you on 30th June 1995 giving you notice that your contract of employment would terminate on 30th September 1995 and confirming that a new contract of employment was on offer from 1st October. We wrote to you again on 29th August once again to offer you the opportunity to accept the new contract of employment.
We are sorry that you have chosen not to accept our offers of a new contract and confirm that accordingly your contract of employment terminated with effect from Saturday 30th September 1995.
If you wish to accept our offer it remains available for acceptance at the moment but will expire without further notice when we have no further vacancies."
There is an entire story between those two letters. Pall Mall took over the cleaning of Hillingdon hospital and, in accordance with the law, maintained the staff under the conditions set out in the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employees) Regulations 1981, and confirmed in writing that they would continue to be paid properly. Yet a very short time into the contract, Pall Mall

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did what it has tried to do in a number of hospitals—indeed, unfortunately, contract cleaners across the national health service too often try to do it—by introducing new pay and conditions, abolishing London weighting and forcing wage cuts of between £25 and £35 a week on people who were already receiving very low wages. The women concerned quite rightly said that they were not prepared to sign the new contracts of employment. They had been taken on in good faith by Pall Mall and had good faith in the company. Pall Mall broke that faith and tried to force the women to accept lower wages and worse working conditions, which is absolutely disgraceful.
Accordingly, Pall Mall took the opportunity to dismiss the cleaners. I have a list of some comparisons between the former terms and conditions and the new ones which shows, for example, that London weighting is no longer applicable, holidays are reduced, sick pay is likely to be reduced and basic wages are lowered. Indeed, the whole gamut of working conditions has been made considerably worse for the women employed at the hospital.
We must ask what is the Pall Mall group and why is it behaving in such a way. It is a very large organisation; it employs more than 10,000 people. Its turnover is more than £70 million a year. Its profits are more than £2 million a year. In 1994, it recorded a profit of £2.2 million, yet the giant organisation is built on sweat, low wages, poor working conditions and aggressive management techniques. The average pay of those in Pall Mall employment is not much more than £5,000 a year. Six Pall Mall directors pay themselves more than £300,000 a year. In other words, they consider themselves more valuable than 63 cleaners. That is the sort of organisation with which we are dealing.
Although the company was forced in 1994 to accept the TUPE regulations, it has not tried to adhere to them. Indeed, it has constantly harassed and lobbied the Government in its efforts to amend or renegotiate its way out of them because, when it wins a contract to take over cleaning in a hospital or any other place, it does not like to have to honour existing terms and conditions or take on the existing staff. It is not a model employer by any means. It has been found against in disputes on a number of occasions—most prominently and recently in a case of persistent sexual harassment against one woman employee, for which it had to pay out £10,000.
The purpose of today's debate is to bring to the attention of the House and—I hope—a much wider public what is going on in Hillingdon and many other hospitals. People who work for the NHS do so because they believe in it; they believe in universal health care. Some of the women at Hillingdon hospital have given 30 years' service to cleaning it. People might ask what is a cleaner. If one wants an efficient hospital that is properly run and managed, one needs managers, doctors, nurses and technicians, but one also needs catering staff, cleaners and maintenance workers. One needs people who are properly employed and treated in order to run a hospital.
The women concerned have given 30 years to ensuring that the hospital is a decent, clean and safe place to work. The huge, very profitable organisation of Pall Mall came along and took over the contract, probably realising fully that the price that it had offered for the takeover was unsustainable and that it would therefore cut the women's wages. In other words, it conned people in order to get the contract in the first place. It is abominable that the
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women were thrown out of their jobs as a result of the way in which Pall Mall behaved and are campaigning for their reinstatement. They are strongly supported by my union in the campaign.
Sir Michael Shersby: As the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, Hillingdon hospital is in my constituency. I am sure that he knows that about 200 of the 230 members of staff accepted the conditions offered by Pall Mall Services. Those who did not have been engaged in the industrial action to which he has referred, although, happily that has not had an impact on the service provided by the hospital to patients. The hospital's trust has, with my full support and in response to my urging, attempted to bring both sides of the dispute together and to reach a settlement. Earlier in the year, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service brokered an agreement, which I believe was recommended by Unison but rejected by the staff concerned. It appears that the next step in the saga will be for the matter to go before an industrial tribunal. Will the hon. Gentleman comment on the agreement that Unison tried to broker and why it was rejected? He has told the House that he is a member of Unison and it may be valuable for him to comment.
Mr. Corbyn: I would have been happier if the hon. Gentleman had said that he supported the women's predicament and recognised the injustice that they feel. People do not reject offers of jobs without having very strong reasons for doing so. I think that they were absolutely entitled to reject the offer. The women have been wrongfully dismissed by Pall Mall and, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, their case is to be taken to a tribunal.
Sir Michael Shersby: I was present at the hospital's annual general meeting and listened to the views expressed by the staff who were not offered new contracts under Unison. I have had further meetings with the hospital management as a result. One of the reasons why I am present is to tell the House that. I think that the hon. Gentleman will be assured of my concern.
Mr. Corbyn: Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman's comments do not reassure me at all. He has said that he has met the hospital management and other staff who, for their own reasons, fears or whatever else, accepted new contracts and conditions, but has not said whether he supports the women who have been thrown out of their jobs by the wealthy Pall Mall company. Does he think that it is right that women cleaners should work for less than £3 an hour?
Sir Michael Shersby: I made it clear that I listened to the staff who had lost their jobs as a result of the events that the hon. Gentleman has described. It was as a result of listening to them that I immediately asked for further meetings with the hospital staff in an effort to bring to an end the regrettable dispute. There is no lack of sympathy or understanding on my part with the staff concerned.
Mr. Corbyn: I am glad that that is so. Given that, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will give his support to the women who have been standing outside the hospital for a year trying to get their jobs back and to ensure that all cleaners in all hospitals are paid a decent living wage. He

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and I would not like to work for, or try to live on, £3 an hour; we probably could not. Why should they or anybody else have to do so? Ancillary staff are treated disgracefully in the health service anyway, but those employed by contractors are considerably worse off. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise the absolute justice of the women's case and the wide support that they enjoy in the local community, from my trade union, Unison, and from a number of other unions.
People have had enough of this cavalier, anti-trade union approach to management which says that it does not matter how low the wages are provided that somebody can be found to do the job. In a time of high unemployment, it is possible to get people to do jobs for disgracefully low wages. That does not make such practices right, happy or just. I want to draw attention to the plight of the workers at Hillingdon hospital.
The Minister has a trade union background, even though he turned his back on it some years ago. Perhaps he can tell us why the national health service internal market deliberately encourages contractors to cut costs, to worsen conditions and to treat contract workers in that way. We would be far better off if we ended the principle of the internal market and instead started treating all national health service staff as crucial parts of a team that ensures that we have good-quality hospitals and working conditions.
The Minister must recognise that all is not well in this dispute any more than all is well in the current dispute in Northern Ireland. He should intervene to ensure that Pall Mall takes the staff back and employs them under conditions no less favourable than those that they were given in writing when the contract was taken over in 1994.
We should go a stage further than that. When contracts come up for renewal, we should end the principle of contracting out cleaning services and take staff directly into national health service employment so that they can be assured of good-quality working conditions and training.
There are problems and dangers for us all in the employment of contract workers. There have been many contract failures in the national health service, with cleaning being inadequately or badly done, staff being badly trained or untrained and incoming staff not being given health checks. Many issues need to be addressed.
The purpose of the debate is to draw attention to what has happened at Hillingdon hospital and the way in which those women have been treated. The wider community, particularly the Government, must intervene to stop the abuse of power by Pall Mall and the Pontius Pilate attitude of the hospital trust, replicated by the Department of Health, which is saying, "It is nothing to do with us. It is all a matter for the market."
Imagine the situation of people whose jobs have been sold to another employer over their heads and who are told a few months later, "Sorry. We did not really mean the promises that we gave you. We did not really mean to give you the undertakings that we gave six months ago. That was all window dressing to get the contract. Would you kindly accept a cut in wages, worse working conditions and less holiday pay? Would you kindly accept less enhanced pay for overtime, night time and weekend
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working? In other words, would you kindly do whatever we want you to do?" What would any of us do if faced with such a situation?
I do not blame those women for what they did. I have the deepest admiration and support for them, as, I believe, do many other people in hospitals, even those who felt that they had no alternative but to accept the unbridled power of the marketplace which forces them into worse working conditions.
My plea is for the Government to intervene to ensure that everybody working in a national health service institution enjoys conditions at least as good as nationally negotiated and agreed NHS conditions. The Minister must recognise that this obscenity can be put right only when proper national conditions are applicable to all workers.
The women are fighting a battle of enormous principle that will go down in history as such, akin to the current dispute at the Liverpool docks and other episodes in the great history of trade union struggles in this country when workers have stood up and said that they are not prepared to allow employers to ride roughshod over them and destroy a lifetime's gains in working conditions. Pall Mall should have some respect for 30 years' service in the NHS rather than casting those women out on the stones outside in the freezing air to campaign for their reinstatement.
I am proud to be associated with the trade union that supports those members. I very much hope that, soon, those women will be back in work in that hospital, able to continue the dedicated service that they have given to the national health service, rather than suffering disgraceful treatment at the hands of Pall Mall. We need to get a grip on the power of cleaning companies and their awful treatment of so many of their staff. Will the Minister explain why he has apparently been unable for so long to do anything and what he will do to ensure justice for these women?
1.14 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Horam): It is most regrettable that the dispute has remained unresolved for more than a year. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) has made extreme efforts, which he has mentioned during the debate, to bring it to a resolution. However, it has not been resolved.
I sympathise with the predicament of those involved, but the parties to the dispute are a private company and a number of cleaning workers who parted with that company last year. I stress that the workers were not national health service employees at the time. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) may have given the contrary impression. Many of them had not been employees in the national health service for more than six years. Neither the national health service managers at Hillingdon nor I have any jurisdiction over the matter. Furthermore, given that industrial tribunal proceedings are now in progress, with the aggrieved workers claiming unfair dismissal by Pall Mall, we should be particularly careful to avoid any comment that might prejudice the case.
I must make one other point clear from the outset. The hospital has at all times during the dispute continued to provide its customary excellent service to patients. At no time has the quality of cleaning at the hospital been compromised and the contractor has continued to fulfil all

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its contractual obligations at the hospital. Patients, their relatives and friends and the residents of Hillingdon can be assured of the quality of health care provided by the hospital. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge will want to endorse that, particularly considering last week's debate on another matter.
Before discussing the circumstances of the dispute at Hillingdon, I should like to comment generally on the Government's policy on market testing—an issue that the hon. Member for Islington, North raised—particularly as it relates to non-core NHS services. By testing services through competition, we seek to ensure that the support services provided to national health service hospitals are the best available and provide the best value for money. Whether a support service is provided by the public or private sector depends solely on who best satisfies the criteria of quality and value.
As a result of the market testing initiative, the national health service has saved more than £1 billion since 1983. That means that £1 billion for investment in patient care has been made available. Apart from the cost savings achieved, market testing has also led to greater innovation, better specification of service needs and improved management, releasing resources from non-core support services and making them available for the core business of improving health and patient care, which is what the national health service is all about.
We estimate that the service contracts currently in place in the national health service are achieving an annual saving of between £100 million and £150 million. Again, that is money for use in direct patient care.
Mr. Corbyn: The Minister is keen to quote savings of between £100 million and £150 million on NHS contracts. Does he recognise that that saving comes straight out of the pockets of the lowest-paid people in the national health service, creating more poverty, worse working conditions and worse living conditions for many people? Is he proud of that?
Mr. Horam: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The service improvement has come from a reconfiguration of services and greater efficiency by the providers. There has been no loss of quality in the service and, often, pay has not been reduced. The hon. Gentleman mentioned pay at Hillingdon. The rate for cleaners there is £3.69 an hour—one of the best in the area according to the Uxbridge and Hayes job centres. General airport cleaners at Heathrow—broadly comparable with Hillingdon staff—earn £3.50 an hour. The pay conditions implemented by Pall Mall at Hillingdon are no worse than is general for the area. Not only that, the hon. Gentleman failed to mention that, when the changes in the TUPE arrangements were negotiated, the workers were offered compensation of between £400 and £1,000. The hon. Gentleman cannot, therefore, say that the provider has behaved badly in this case.
Mr. Corbyn: I am glad that the Minister has given way on that point. He failed to say that the overtime and weekend rates were cut as a result of the change. Does he recognise—it is important that he does—that Pall Mall had a contractual agreement with the cleaners which it unilaterally broke in 1995? That is the nub of the argument. The company gave a solemn undertaking in October 1994 that the staff would be employed, under
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TUPE, on existing conditions of service. It broke that undertaking and subsequently dismissed the women from their jobs.
Mr. Horam: If the hon. Gentleman is reasonable, he will recognise—
Mr. Corbyn: I am.
Mr. Horam: I am glad to hear it. The hon. Gentleman should recognise that the changes were a result of renegotiation—for which compensation was paid—which was part of a change in the services that the provider wished to make.
Mr. Corbyn: I do not accept that.
Mr. Horam: Well, the fact is that the hon. Gentleman's own union negotiated an agreement which the workers did not accept. The hon. Gentleman made great play of the point that we should stand up for workers' rights and so forth, but when the union of which he is a member said to the workers in the dispute, "We advise you to settle on the terms that Pall Mall is willing to offer", they refused. Where does the hon. Gentleman stand? Is he in favour of trade union members accepting what has been negotiated by their officers or not?
Mr. Corbyn: The Minister and I both have a background of trade union negotiation and activity. The difference is that he pretends to forget it, whereas I do not. He knows perfectly well that, on many occasions, a union recommends something to its members which they subsequently do not accept. The duty of the union is then to continue to represent those members until they are satisfied with what is on offer. Unison has continued to represent those members, and it continues to campaign for their reinstatement and to try to force Pall Mall to keep to the agreement that it made in October 1994. What the public need to know from the Minister is whether he supports the Pall Mall group in its unilateral reneging on the conditions under which it employed the women in October 1994.
Mr. Horam: The hon. Gentlemans acknowledged the point that, unlike some of my colleagues, I have particular experience of trade unions. What that taught me was the realism that trade union negotiators often bring to situations where two sides may be very divided on what they wish to achieve. The practical negotiating skills that trade union negotiators often deploy should not be ignored. The fact is that Unison negotiators achieved an agreement which was then unilaterally turned down by the workers in question. One has to question why that was. I take no side on the issue, but I merely point out the facts. An agreement was brokered by Unison which the workers felt it right to turn down, for whatever reasons.
Before I was slightly sidetracked by the hon. Gentleman—quite reasonably, and I am not complaining about that—I was justifying the Government's approach to market testing. Market testing offers a practical and proven way in which to determine the best way in which to meet support service needs, in terms of both quality and value for money. It also gives local managers opportunities regularly to review support services in the

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light of market developments and in response to local circumstances and needs. Legislation ensures that employees' rights are protected when there is a transfer of an undertaking and guidance on market testing incorporating advice on the legislation has been issued to the national health service generally.
If a contract is awarded under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, which we all know as TUPE, staff transfer to the new contractor. Under TUPE, the new service provider, who is usually an incoming contractor, takes over the contracts of employment of all employees who were employed in the undertaking at the time of the relevant transfer. It is then up to him after a suitable period, if he wishes to do so, to renegotiate the contracts in the light of the situation as he sees it. It is not unusual to find that, in such a situation, the new provider offers compensation for any changes that he may wish to make in the contracts.
It is interesting that, of the people working for Pall Mall, as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge said, 200 accepted all the changes. The only people who did not do so were a particular group of workers who decided to go against the views of their own union and not to accept the position.
I shall now return to the position at Hillingdon. Hillingdon hospital market tested its hotel services in 1994 and awarded a five-year contract to Pall Mall in October of that year. The hotel services concerned were catering, sterile services, laundry and portering, as well as cleaning, which had originally been contracted out to a different firm in the late 1980s.
The estimated savings achieved against previous costs were £500,000 on a contract for hotel services worth about £4 million. The contract won by Pall Mall at Hillingdon hospital was one to which TUPE applied. As a result, both the national health service workers affected and the domestic staff, who were already privately employed, became employees of Pall Mall, keeping their existing terms and conditions of employment.
Pall Mall spent six months in negotiation and consultation over new contracts for the transferred staff. The package included new shift patterns and rates of pay comparable with other employees in similar jobs in the area. I have spelled out the exact figures for the hon. Gentleman. More than 90 per cent. of the transferred work force signed the new contracts in autumn 1995. Regrettably, 30 domestic staff refused to accept the new contract and their existing contracts were terminated by Pall Mall on 31 October last year. A further 22 staff signed the new contract but never went back to work and were deemed by Pall Mall to have dismissed themselves.
Earlier this year, ACAS brokered an arrangement between the parties in the dispute which was recommended by Unison, as I mentioned, but which its members unfortunately rejected. The reasonableness or otherwise of that arrangement is not something on which I wish to comment, given the current industrial tribunal hearing.
The fact is that Pall Mall employs approximately 210 staff at Hillingdon hospital. None is on strike and Pall Mall is meeting its contractual obligations at the hospital under the contract for the hotel and cleaning services.
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What concerns me is the action taken by some of the more vociferous individuals involved in the dispute. I understand that at one point, pickets using loudhailers were causing such a commotion that the hospital was concerned for the treatment of patients in intensive care. Hospital management pleaded with the pickets to moderate their behaviour. There are, therefore, questions about the behaviour of the pickets and not only about the behaviour of the management.
Mr. Corbyn: I have been waiting for the Minister to get on to smearing people who have lost their jobs as a result of a contract granted to a wealthy multinational corporation. Can the Minister now tell us—I have asked him this three times already—whether he approves of Pall Mall's action in imposing new conditions of service on staff in breach of its undertaking in October 1994? An important principle is involved. The Minister should recognise the justice of the workers' case and the strong passions aroused by the company's behaviour instead of attacking people who are trying to defend their existing conditions of service.
Mr. Horam: I was pointing out that I am responsible for the health service. I was also pointing out that some patients at Hillingdon were being seriously inconvenienced and that their health may have been detrimentally affected by the behaviour of the pickets outside. I deplore that, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman does too. Whatever he may feel about the rights of the pickets in question, he should realise that they should not interfere with the provision of health care at Hillingdon hospital. Does he accept that? The hon. Gentleman says nothing, but I feel as strongly about that point as he does about his case.
Mr. Corbyn: Those women gave 30 years to the national health service. They have shown a greater commitment to the national health service than the Minister and his Government have ever shown. He should intervene in the dispute to ensure justice for the women rather than raising what are, in effect, red herrings surrounding the serious issue of the disgraceful treatment of the employees concerned.
Mr. Horam: Interfering with the proper treatment of health service patients is not to be taken lightly. I am disappointed by the hon. Gentleman's attitude.
The fact is that Pall Mall took over and ACAS brokered an agreement which was agreed to by Unison, of which the hon. Gentleman is a member, but the workers in question did not choose to accept it, for whatever reasons. I am not commenting on those reasons; the workers obviously feel that they have justice on their side. Others may take a different view. Those are the facts of the matter. I hope that, when the industrial tribunal looks at the case, it will take all aspects into account and will come to a reasonable conclusion. That is the right and proper thing to do and I am sure that that will be done.
In the mean time, Pall Mall continues to fulfil all its contract requirements to Hillingdon hospital. It is regrettable that a few of Pall Mall's workers came to be in dispute with the company and, as I have said, it is now for the industrial tribunal to consider the rights and wrongs of the case.

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The dispute is not a matter for the health service or for me. There is no suggestion that Hillingdon hospital has not acted properly at all times. On the issue of market testing, which the hon. Gentleman raised more generally, the Government do not intend to change a policy that has saved the national health service more than £1 billion. Market testing of national health service support services is not about contracting out services; it is aimed at producing more cost-effective services and better value for money from whatever source. That is precisely what has been achieved at Hillingdon and countless other hospitals. We certainly intend to continue what is an extremely sensible policy for the health of the nation.

Unitary Development Plan (Hillingdon)
1.29 pm
Mr. John Wilkinson: I have two reasons to be grateful for the opportunity to discuss the proposed changes by Hillingdon borough council to the draft unitary development plan. First, the new planning proposals set out by the borough council cause the most acute local concern I have ever experienced in the 17 years that I have represented Ruislip-Northwood. Secondly, they raise aspects of environmental and housing policy that are of national significance, as they demonstrate the need to encourage the private rented sector, rather than relying on housing association developments subsidised by the taxpayer.
My constituency is largely residential, with some light industry at its southernmost extremity. Most people commute to London by tube or train, or travel by car to work at Heathrow airport or Stockley park or along the A4-M4 and A40-M40 corridors. Unemployment is the lowest of any Greater London constituency and, despite constant developmental pressures, limited school places and traffic congestion, Ruislip-Northwood is a pleasant place to live, to raise a family and to retire. It has excellent schools, good recreational facilities and playing fields and a high proportion of owner-occupied homes. In short, it comprises a harmonious blend of residential districts and public open space, underpinned with carefully designated, well preserved, green chain and metropolitan green belt areas.
That crucial harmony and balance have been deliberately put at risk by the Labour borough council's proposed changes to the UDP. When the plans became public in late July, proposing social housing development on up to 50 acres of green chain land, I immediately wrote to the leader of the Labour borough council, Councillor Chris Rogers, to protest that the wholesale social housing developments which were being promoted by the socialist borough council put at risk the quality of life of my constituents, would damage the environment irreparably and would be fiercely resisted by local residents.
It is worth quoting my letter verbatim, as it summarises the arguments clearly—not one of which was addressed by the Labour council leader in his curt reply:
"I am in receipt of your letter of 22nd July 1996. Your comments have been noted."
Hon. Members will agree that maintaining the value of my constituents' homes, retaining playing fields and recreation grounds for their children and designated public open spaces in a green chain of protected areas for people to walk, exercise their dogs and breathe freely when so much of their daily lives is spent strap-hanging on the underground travelling to and from work and enduring endless traffic jams, noise from aircraft and motorways, are worthy planning priorities for any responsible outer London borough.
Under the heading "Urbanisation of Ruislip-Northwood", I wrote as follows:
"Dear Councillor Rogers, I have been informed by Councillors in my constituency that Hillingdon Borough Council has arbitrarily and peremptorily altered the Hillingdon Draft Development Plan so as to permit the construction of very substantial amounts of social housing within my constituency.
First it would have been courteous if the Council had informed me in advance. Secondly and much more importantly these proposed developments on important predominantly green areas within Ruislip-Northwood will seriously degrade the local environment and prejudice the important amenity areas for local constituents.

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The Field End Road and Sidmouth Drive recreation grounds are much appreciated by local people. Children have all too few areas on which to play and that the Council should deliberately curtail recreation space for children will be much resented and rightly, bitterly contested.
Likewise the St. Vincent's Hospital site is a particularly beautiful semi secluded area on the edge of Haste Hill which an aesthetically sensitive council responsible to the feelings of local people would wish to preserve.
It is clear that the Council has its own agenda to put as much open space as possible under concrete and brick. I believe my constituents will contest these thoroughly undesirable plans implacably and that they will organise to save our green fields from the clutches of inappropriate Council-sponsored developments.
Coming on top of your publicly quoted observations in favour of a Warner Bros Theme Park on green belt land in Uxbridge"—
in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby), who is here supporting me and is president of the Metropolitan London Green Belt Council—
"it is clear that preserving the quality of life for local residents from undesirable urbanisation does not feature as a policy of Hillingdon Borough Council.
A little bit of imagination and sensitivity to local feelings could preserve an attractive environment for generations to come. The Council clearly prefers to promote an impersonal urban sprawl. I give you notice that it will he fiercely resisted."
It is small wonder that local people have been incensed. They see elected Labour councillors, who should be the custodians of the local environment and quality of life, deliberately setting their face against them. The civic centre has been inundated with thousands of objections. Public meetings have been held on Field End recreation ground and Sidmouth drive playing fields, and protest handbills are displayed in countless windows nearby.
Local Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) who sent a message of support and has done much locally, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks), who is in his place, have been strenuous in their opposition, as have local residents' associations such as south Ruislip residents association in my constituency and Roxbourne residents association in Harrow, West. The Conservative councillors' group on Hillingdon borough council and responsible conservation groups, such as the Hillingdon group of the London Wildlife Trust, Friends of the Earth and the Sports Council have all protested in meticulous detail, itemising the environmental damage that would ensue from the plans.
Sir Michael Shersby: I fully support what my hon. Friend has said today. Does he agree that the general thrust of the modifications should concern the House and the Minister—that the plan seeks to
"contribute as far as possible to the Borough's identified housing needs by seeking to ensure the highest acceptable number of new dwellings are provided in the form of affordable housing".
It takes no account of the need for other varieties of housing in the borough and is putting at risk green belt sites, green chain sites and other land locally.
The local authority has argued that the council has revised housing allocation, and is planning a 10 per cent. increase. That information came from the London Planning Advisory Committee. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will say a word or two about that.
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It has also been argued by council officers that the inspector considering the original draft development plan made a comment to the effect that Hillingdon should be more proactive in the provision of such housing. I challenged them to show me where those words appeared. They do not appear anywhere; they are an interpretation by the council's officers, as was admitted to me at a recent meeting.
Mr. Wilkinson rose—
Mr. Terry Dicks: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Wilkinson: I shall proceed for a sentence or two before giving way to my hon. Friend.
To his great credit, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment lodged his objections with Hillingdon borough council, which was an extremely responsible and unusual action and helped to concentrate the mind of the local authority. His action induced the council to bow to popular pressure and to withdraw the Sidmouth drive playing fields in my constituency from its plans for social housing development.
Mr. Dicks: Both my hon. Friends the Members for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) and for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) will recall that back in the '70s we had problems with the infamous Alderman John Bartlett, who wanted to turn Ruislip-Northwood into one massive council estate for political reasons. When the Conservatives took power in 1978—I was the housing chairman—I was presented with a waiting list of 10,000 people. It was completely false, because it contained the names of people who had bought their own homes or been rehoused years before. I am convinced that the figures in Hillingdon today have been falsified to justify what is called social housing—I call it council housing—and to turn even more of Ruislip-Northwood, parts of Uxbridge and parts of my constituency into council estates.
Mr. Wilkinson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who brings incomparable experience of great relevance to the subject. The question of density is crucial and my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge referred to the lack of balance, which perturbs my constituents particularly.
Now that the crucial democratic precedent has been established over Sidmouth drive playing fields, the council should also withdraw its proposals to build social housing on Field End road recreation ground in my constituency. The surface of the recreation ground is currently pockmarked with large boreholes, dug at the behest of the council at the council taxpayers' expense.
I tabled four parliamentary questions to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment about his commendable intervention. It is worth recording the reply yesterday by my hon. Friend the Minister who has responsibility for London:
"Objections were made by my right hon Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to twenty six proposed modifications. The objections were made to modifications that appeared to bring the plan into conflict with national or regional policies without good reason and where that was proposed would result in the plan lacking clarity such that it could cause great difficulties to users later.
Twelve modifications concerned Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land; six modifications would produce policies or proposals that were unclear or imprecise; and three modifications conflicted

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with our preferred approach to planning and affordable housing. A further five modifications to which objections were made related to proposals for residential development on two recreation grounds.
Objections to the published modifications in respect of the deposited Hillingdon Unitary Development Plan are addressed to the Council of the London Borough of Hillingdon. I would be pleased to provide a copy of the objections made by my right hon. Friend, but the approach in the first place should be to the Council."
I have obtained a copy through other sources and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Minister with responsibility for London for their assiduous efforts to ensure that the interests of my constituents were safeguarded.
My hon. Friend the Minister continues:
"We encourage local authorities to meet with objectors to discuss objections."
There have been no such effective meetings as yet, although on occasions there has been a dialogue of the deaf in the Ruislip-Northwood forum and elsewhere, but no proper reasoned dialogue.
"These informal meetings are helpful, not least to consider how the plan might be changed to meet the objections. Officials in the Government Office for London and those from Hillingdon have met recently to pursue the objections made by my right hon Friend. Further discussion is likely once Hillingdon's response to the objections they have received is known."
In those circumstances, it is clear that Hillingdon borough council should act democratically and rescind its proposed changes to the draft unitary development plan. At the least, it should initiate a public inquiry, with an inspector appointed by the Secretary of State. Following the inspector's report to the local authority, the Secretary of State could either direct appropriate modifications to the unitary development plan or call it in for his decision in its entirety.
My view is that the Labour Hillingdon borough council, which has clearly learnt nothing from the bad old days of socialist municipal vandalism at the hands of Alderman Bartlett 20 years ago, should waste no more council tax payers' money on proposals that have no public support, and should withdraw them totally at its unitary development plan sub-committee meeting on Thursday 21 November.
I reiterate my gratitude to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the House for allowing me to bring the matters to your attention. They may appear parochial, but they raise issues of national importance and planning questions of the utmost significance to my constituents.
It must be borne in mind that constituencies such as mine and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge and for Hayes and Harlington are under special developmental pressure. I mentioned the horrendous application by Warner Brothers to build a theme park and film studios in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge. It would have a crucial knock-on effect in my constituency. On top of that pressure we have the expansion of the motorway network and, of course, the potential fifth terminal at Heathrow airport.
The maintenance of pleasant residential areas, where it is possible to live happily and harmoniously in a balanced environment, is a crucial policy for any responsible local authority, which ours clearly is not. Luckily, it is a policy that I know that the Government support and that has received effective backing, throughout his tenure of office, from my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for London.
1.46 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir Paul Beresford): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) on securing this debate. He has received support from my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) and for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks), and they are a formidable team. As has been pointed out, the proposed changes to Hillingdon's draft unitary development plan have caused considerable anxiety to the constituents of all three of my hon. Friends, and they have assiduously pursued those concerns.
The development plan—the unitary development plan in the case of Hillingdon—should under normal circumstances provide for rational and consistent decisions, and should give greater certainty about where new development will be permitted. In permitting plans, the right balance must be struck between the demand for development and the protection of the environment. In that way, plans have a key role to play in contributing to the Government's strategy for sustainable development. Plans help to provide for necessary development, but development should be sought only in locations that do not compromise the needs of future generations.
It is right that anyone with an interest in their area and the way it will develop in the future should participate in the preparation of the plan and help to influence the emerging proposals. Indeed, an objective of the plan-led system is to secure public involvement in shaping local planning policies.
More than two thirds of the London boroughs will have adopted plans by the end of the year. Until Hillingdon published its package of proposed modifications, it looked as if it too would be able to adopt its plan by the end of this year. Hillingdon has already taken its plan to public inquiry. The inspector's report recommended modifications to the plan where the modification would provide a definite improvement.
However, Hillingdon's modifications go further. They are numerous and complex. Several are at variance with the inspector's recommendations, and some modifications bring forward new proposals. While there may be occasions when local reasons support disagreement with an inspector's recommendation, the expectation is that authorities will wish to accept the inspector's recommendations in most cases.
Given what is included in Hillingdon's proposed modifications, the borough cannot be surprised to have received so many objections. I understand that it has received 4,000 or more, the majority relating to the proposals for affordable housing on the Field End and Sidmouth drive recreation grounds.
The modifications are controversial in other ways. For example, there are proposals that affect the metropolitan green belt and metropolitan open land, including proposals for housing. There are also changes in the designation of open areas currently identified as forming part of the green chains that my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood mentioned. It is fair to say that we would prefer to let local authorities get on with their plan-making. However, we will object where the plan is at odds with national or regional policies without good reason, or where it is so technically defective that it could cause great difficulties to users later.

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As my hon. Friend has already mentioned, we have objected to several of the modifications proposed by Hillingdon. We have objected to significant changes to the green belt and metropolitan open land. Our policy is clear: the essential characteristic of green belts is their longevity. Their protection must be maintained as far as can be seen ahead. Our planning policy guidance note on green belts—PPG2—advises that, once green belt boundaries have been defined, they should be altered only in exceptional circumstances.
Sir Michael Shersby: Does my hon. Friend agree that another principal aspect of green belt policy is the openness of land? So many people forget that openness is a key factor and that it needs to be borne in mind. Without openness, we have urban sprawl, we have development, we have towns joining together and we lose the benefit of living in a balanced, decent community.
Sir Paul Beresford: You can see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that my hon. Friend is well versed in green belt matters. As president of the London green belt group, he makes his expertise clear.
As my hon. Friends are aware, the principles of control over development in the green belt also apply to metropolitan open land. Other proposals brought forward by the Hillingdon modifications are clearly of local concern but do not necessarily raise issues that would warrant an objection from us. The changes to the proposed green chains are an example.
Although the modifications affecting the Field End and Sidmouth Drive recreation grounds were part of a proposed green chain, they raise different issues. Here Hillingdon has proposed to build on the recreation grounds. Open space and playing fields will be lost. I am not entirely sure how much open space or how many playing fields will be lost, because Hillingdon council has not made the modifications clear.
Strategic guidance looks to the boroughs to maintain and enhance the quality of all London's open spaces, particularly our parks. We expect to see policies in UDPs
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for the protection of open spaces. Our planning policy guidance for sport and recreation—PPG17—makes it clear that all playing fields are of special significance and that, if they are not required for their original purpose, they may be able to meet the growing need for recreational land in the wider community. Our expectation is that playing fields will normally be protected.
For these reasons, we objected to the modifications affecting the recreation grounds. Frankly, we also needed to object because what was proposed was far from clear. We do not know how much open space will be lost, how much development is proposed or whether it is necessary—in other words, the sort of questions that my hon. Friends and their constituents are asking.
It is apparent that local people feel strongly that a further UDP inquiry is warranted. In the first place, this is for Hillingdon to consider, but we have advised planning authorities that a further inquiry will be necessary where objections to modifications raise issues that were not examined at an earlier stage.
I understand that Hillingdon officers are preparing a report for their members' committee meeting to be held on 21 November, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood mentioned. I anticipate that the report will set out the options on the way forward—including, we hope, a further local inquiry.
I urge my hon. Friends—although I realise that I do not need to urge them—to continue to press their concerns with the local authority. We will keep a close eye on the plan and pursue our objections until we are satisfied that the proposals do not conflict with our policy guidance. It is, of course, too early to consider whether intervention in the plan is warranted. We must first wait to see what else emerges from Hillingdon's consideration of the objections that it has received. I hope that the council is receptive and responsive.
It being seven minutes to Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Sitting suspended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings), till half-past Two o'clock.

Oral Answers to Questions
  EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

    Unemployed People (Work Schemes)
    Mr. Wigley: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will introduce a scheme to enable unemployed people to be given work at a minimum of —160 per week on environment, transport, community care and educational schemes; and if she will make a statement. [2070]
    The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Mr. Eric Forth): Our policies help unemployed people take the real jobs that the economy is creating. The approach is working: employment has risen by 210,000 in the past year and we are constantly developing new approaches to maximise our programmes' effectiveness.
    Mr. Wigley: I am disappointed at, if not surprised by, the Minister's response. I warmly welcome the fall in unemployment which was announced today, but even if every vacant job were filled, there would still be more than 80,000 people unemployed in Wales and more than 1.7 million unemployed in the United Kingdom. Would it not make better sense to pay those people to do the worthwhile work that needs to be done in terms of the environment, community care, transport and all the other sectors in which jobs are not necessarily provided by the free market, rather than leaving them to rot on the dole for years until they find work again?
    Mr. Forth: No, not in the absolute sense that the hon. Gentleman suggests. There is a divide here between those who believe in a general make-work scheme, where the taxpayer pays people to do what is regarded as useful across the nation, and those who believe in a more targeted approach, where we try in different way to find what works in helping the long-term unemployed get back to work, including giving them useful work experience. If at the same time they can do useful work in local communities, that is all well and good, and our project work programme has demonstrated that that is possible. The difference is between those who believe in a blanket, unquestioning approach and those who believe in a targeted approach, and I think ours is the better.

    Home-school Contracts
    Mr. Hardy: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what representations she has received on the introduction of home-school contracts for all schools. [2071]
    The Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mrs. Gillian Shephard): I have received a variety of representations about home-school agreements.
    Mr. Hardy: Although it appears that the Government are beginning to move along the road down which the Labour party has pointed for some time, will the Minister assure the House that she will not adopt the approach in
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    order to pursue selection any further? Does she recognise that the value of the approach could be considerable? Will she assist local authorities to secure the resources to allow it to be effective?
    Mrs. Shephard: Many schools will find such agreements to be a useful part of their policies for strengthening parental support and involvement. As many authorities and schools already have such arrangements, I see no need for extra resources.
    Mr. Pawsey: Does my right hon. Friend welcome the Opposition's conversion to the policies of this Government, policies that will do much to help improve the quality and standards of state education? Will she confirm that it will be up to individual schools to decide what actually goes into the home-school contracts and that, if people want a particular contract to refer to the disciplinary measures that a school wishes to introduce, that will be quite in order?
    Mrs. Shephard: My hon. Friend is ingenious, as ever; indeed, his ingenuity matches his common sense. The content of home-school agreements would certainly be up to individual admission authorities, be they local education authorities or schools. However, the Bill will include a power for the Secretary of State to rule out particular conditions.

    Unemployment Statistics
    Mr. Clapham: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment she has made of the reliability of the unemployment statistics in informing her Department's policy decisions. [2072]
    Mr. Forth: I have total confidence in the statistics produced here by the Office for National Statistics, in Luxembourg by the European Commission and in Paris by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, all of which show that our unemployment rate is among the lowest in Europe and falling.
    Mr. Clapham: Is the Minister aware that the Government have changed the method of measuring unemployment 32 times since 1979 and that that has been done to fiddle the figures? If he has such confidence in the statistics, can he confirm that, since 1992, the utilities—gas, water, electricity and telecommunications—have lost 89,743 jobs and have made £33 billion? Does that not support the case for a windfall tax and should not the utilities be encouraged to create jobs rather than lose them?
    Mr. Forth: I am in the fortunate position of not needing to fiddle the figures, because unemployment is in any case falling, by any measure. I regret to say that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to what I said: I said that not only our figures but those—no doubt beloved of Opposition Members—produced by the European Commission in Luxembourg, no less, show that unemployment is low and falling. The Eurostat figures released yesterday demonstrate that fact yet again. The International Labour Organisation—also much admired by Opposition Members—has verified the fact that our unemployment rate is now significantly lower than those

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    of our major European competitors and that unemployment is falling here and rising in the other countries.
    Sir Michael Neubert: Are not today's unemployment figures, the best for five and a half years, directly attributable to the policy of the Department for Education and Employment, and a credit to it? What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the effect on the unemployment statistics of a national minimum wage, compulsory paternity leave, compulsory consultation, a maximum working week and a minimum annual leave requirement? All those burdens on business are espoused and supported by the Labour party.
    Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he has gone to the heart of the argument about what creates jobs. I believe that we can clearly demonstrate that the creation of jobs by the private sector is due entirely to the provision of an environment in which business can succeed, inward investment can be attracted and employers and employees can work out the best arrangements for conducting their business. The mindless regulatory approach that is all too common among many of our competitors and partners in the European Union would threaten all that. That is why the Government will continue to resist any attempt to impose unnecessary restrictions and regulations on our business sector, which is demonstrating a unique capacity to create real jobs.
    Mr. Don Foster: I welcome today's unemployment figures, but does the Minister agree that he should not make too large a claim for Government policies because, based on the statistics that he has said are so reliable, it is clear that the vast majority of new jobs being created are part time and temporary? Analysis of his figures shows that there has been a reduction of 400,000 full-time equivalent jobs over the past 12 months.
    Mr. Forth: Try telling that to the people of France, Germany, Spain and Italy, who would be pathetically grateful for job creation such as we have had here and whose Governments are doing them a gross disservice by the policies that they are pursuing. The hon. Gentleman does not have to take my word for it: the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and all the respected international authorities will confirm that the United Kingdom has found the answer to the needs of a modern, competitive economy while other countries, regrettably, are going in completely the wrong direction.
    Mr. Thomason: Has my hon. Friend formed any view on the reliability of the unemployment statistics for Germany, France, Italy and some other European countries to which he referred, which demonstrate that Britain has a far lower rate of unemployment? In addition, has my hon. Friend any views on why Britain might be producing such good results?
    Mr. Forth: If one looks simply at the statistics produced by, for example, the ILO or Eurostat, which produced its latest figures just yesterday, quite apart from our internal figures, one can see that on a comparative basis even they demonstrate that unemployment in France, Germany and Italy is high and rising, whereas in Britain it is low and falling. Those are incontrovertible
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    facts measured by the ILO and Eurostat. The reason for that can now be seen clearly in the difference in approach and policy between the British Government and other Governments on the continental mainland. That is the nub of the argument about, for example, the 48-hour directive. It is also the reason for the allegations of cover-ups in the Commission of information that would seem to justify the policies that we have been pursuing, which I guess is why they have not made the public domain.
    Mr. Byers: Will the Minister confirm that, on his own figures, one in five households of working age have no one in a job and that 2,750,000 men of working age without a job simply do not appear in today's unemployment figures? How much of today's apparent cut in unemployment is due not to people going into work but simply to people moving from one benefit to another?
    Mr. Forth: Probably about 15,000.
    Mr. Marland: Will my hon. Friend confirm that, in the United Kingdom, more people are in work and fewer people are out of work than in any other European country, and that that is due in no small measure to the fact that we have no social chapter and no minimum wage?
    Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, because it gives the lie to the remarkable contortions that Opposition Members go through to produce something resembling bad news about what is happening on our labour and employment front. I am glad to say that Britain has produced the capacity to provide more work for people who want it than most of our European competitors and partners. That is something in which we can take satisfaction. We shall continue to provide the environment in which business can prosper, inward investment can take place and employers and employees can work out their own arrangements, to maximise employment in Britain.

    Youth Training Scheme
    Mr. Rooney: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what recent representations she has received on the effectiveness of the youth training scheme. [2073]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. James Paice): The Department has recently received many representations as part of a public consultation on the future of youth training as recommended by Sir Ron Dearing in his review of 16-to-19 qualifications.
    Mr. Rooney: The Minister will be aware that some 50 per cent. of trainees fail to complete their youth training course. It is now 10 years since the rate for 17-year-olds and eight years since the rate for 16-year-olds was increased. Would not a review of training allowances encourage people to stay longer in the training scheme?
    Mr. Paice: The figure for the number of leavers is open to confusion because it includes those who leave one scheme to re-enrol on another. They are classified as

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    leavers even if they go on to complete a second scheme that proves more to their liking. Therefore, that is not an accurate figure to quote.
    We have always made it clear that the allowances are minimums. Roughly a third of people on the youth training programme are regarded as employees on a wage agreed with their employer, another third receive significant top-up payments from the training provider or the business with which they are associated, and the other third are on the basic rate. But, as we have always said, that figure is kept under review.
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: Is it not encouraging that the number of young people aged 16 and 17 who have completed their compulsory education and are in training or full-time education has risen from 71 per cent. only 10 years ago to 84 per cent. today? Is that not significant in respect of what the Government are doing and very encouraging for our young people who have to compete in the modern world?
    Mr. Paice: My hon. Friend is entirely right. Those figures represent a dramatic increase in participation in all sorts of learning, both in full-time education and in training.
    Mr. Blunkett: And in training!
    Mr. Paice: The barracking from hon. Members on the Opposition Front Bench is interesting—
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire): They are not listening.
    Mr. Paice: I think that they are listening because, interestingly, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) is denigrating the fact that some of those people are in training and not in full-time education. He obviously believes that it is somehow better to be in full-time education than in training. I have to tell him that, if he talks to business men, he will hear that they often find it much better to have a young person in their business—perhaps on a modern apprenticeship programme—who is learning on the job. They are just as capable of developing qualifications in that way and that is why my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) was entirely right to draw our attention to those figures.

    Training and Business Organisation Mergers
    Ms Lynne: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what is her Department's policy towards the merging of TECs, business links and local chambers of commerce. [2074]
    Mr. Paice: The Government support such mergers where this is the wish of all the local partners concerned.
    Ms Lynne: The Minister is aware of the proposed merger between Rochdale chamber of commerce and Rochdale training and enterprise council, incorporating business link and the enterprise trust. Does he agree that, although Rochdale already has an excellent record on
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    exports, that merger can only improve the situation and build on our very good record on manufacturing industry in the borough?
    Mr. Paice: There have already been nine such mergers and, in most cases, they are delivering the benefits to which the hon. Lady referred. I am, indeed, aware that Rochdale TEC, the local chamber of commerce and other organisations are considering a merger and I congratulate them on the fact that they are consulting widely at this stage, before formulating any proposals to the Government. If that leads to a proposition to the Government for approval for a merger, I shall, of course, bear the hon. Lady's points in mind.
    Mr. Brooke: In the context of the merger of the central London TECs, to what extent has my hon. Friend received intimations of the relative underfunding of the London TECs compared with those in the rest of the country? Would it be sensible to make representations to him, rather than to anyone else?
    Mr. Paice: I obviously find it difficult to accept my right hon. Friend's use of the term "underfunding" in relation to London TECs—the London TECs are funded on the same principle as TECs throughout the country and that is not a level of underfunding that I understand. If my right hon. Friend has particular concerns, the first place to which he should take them, together with the merged Centec organisation, is the Government office for London, which apportions funding between all the London TECs. I am sure he understands that, if he would like to see me about it, I should be delighted to talk to him.
    Mr. Sheerman: Is not the Minister's pathetically timid response—[Interruption.] We will probably have to use the word "pathetically" all the time this afternoon. Is it not a fact that the Deputy Prime Minister has consistently said—using much stronger language than the Minister—that he wants vigorously to encourage those mergers up and down the country as a positive part of the Government's policy? That pathetically timid response does not square with that attitude.
    Mr. Paice: The hon. Gentleman will find that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, under whose auspices the competitiveness White Papers are published, has said exactly this: that where there is clear local demand for a merger and partners come forward, the Government support the merger.
    Mr. Sheerman: It is on record.
    Mr. Paice: It is also on record that we have an on-going evaluation process of the nine mergers that have already taken place. We believe that, at this stage, it would be premature for the Government actively to promote mergers, but we are quite pleased and delighted to see them when they come forward based on local initiatives.
    Mr. Waterson: Is my hon. Friend aware of how successful has been the merger between the Sussex TEC and chamber? Is he aware of the tremendous boost given to local business people in my constituency yesterday,

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    when we had the privilege of a visit by the Deputy Prime Minister, who gave his support to the local business partnership?
    Mr. Paice: I am aware of the success of the Sussex merger which my hon. Friend described. I was not aware that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister was there, but I am delighted to hear that he was. As has already been said, I am sure that he will have been pleased to see the success there, as we have seen it elsewhere. I have no doubt that such mergers will continue to take place elsewhere.

    Assisted Places Scheme
    Mr. Canavan: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how much money has been spent on the assisted places scheme since its inception. [2075]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mrs. Cheryl Gillan): Over the 15 years since it started in 1981, we have spent just over £800 million on the assisted places scheme in England. This has helped over 80,000 able children, four fifths currently from families below the national average income.
    Mr. Canavan: Will the Minister now tell us the whole truth, which is that, if we include the Scottish and Welsh expenditure, the assisted places scheme has cost the taxpayer more than £1.1 billion? That money has been used to subsidise private fee-paying schools when it could and should be spent on deprived local education authority schools which educate the overwhelming majority of children.
    Mrs. Gillan: First, after his years of experience in the House, the hon. Gentleman should know that matters concerning Wales and Scotland should be addressed to my right hon. and hon. Friends in those Departments. If he thinks about it, he will see that, even in England, if we have spent about £300 billion on education over the past 15 years, the amount that we have spent on the assisted places scheme is considerably less than 0.5 per cent. The assisted places are good value for money—far better value for money than schools such as Hackney Downs.
    Mr. Quentin Davies: Is my hon. Friend aware—I know that several of her right hon. and hon. Friends are—of the cruel and cynical decision by the Lib-Lab coalition that now runs Lincolnshire county council to abolish the county assisted places schemes for the Stamford endowed schools? That leaves a population of 20,000 in the town of Stamford without any sixth form for children whose parents cannot afford to pay fees. Does my hon. Friend agree that a vicious and ideologically inspired decision such as that is a frightening foretaste of what would happen to the country if a Labour or Lib-Lab Government came to power after the next election?
    Mrs. Gillan: My hon. Friend is right to draw this matter to the attention of the House. Yet again, we have evidence of another reduction of choice perpetrated by the Opposition on the parents of children.
    Mr. Kilfoyle: Given the extraordinary figure of —1.1 billion spent on the assisted places scheme, will the
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    hon. Lady confirm that 32 per cent. of primary school pupils in the maintained sector—1.3 million children—are in classes of more than 30? Is it not a national disgrace that, while they are languishing in those over-size classes, the money is being spent as a subsidy in the private sector? Does the hon. Lady agree with her hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden), who said that there are two things wrong with the assisted places scheme—its principle and its practice?
    Mrs. Gillan: Once again, we are privileged to hear the hon. Gentleman, who seems to have lost not only his moustache but his sense of humour. One needs a sense of humour to listen to the same old rubbish that is peddled by the hon. Gentleman time after time. People know that the assisted places scheme is good value for money. It offers opportunity to the most able pupils from the least well-off families. Indeed, 40 per cent. of the pupils in the scheme come from families with an income below £9,873.
    That attitude is a bit rich, because more than 20 Labour Members went to independent schools such as Eton, Winchester and Fettes. They now have a policy that would deny children from less well-off families the ability to attend good independent schools. It is the politics of envy at its worst.
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Further to her last answer, does my hon. Friend agree that the assisted places scheme gives a chance to bright youngsters who have the misfortune to live in Labour-controlled local education authorities? They have a chance to escape from those areas, as did the children of the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) and of the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman). They can have a decent education and a good start in life, which they would never get under Labour.
    Mrs. Gillan: As usual, my hon. Friend is in fine form, and makes a good point full of common sense. The scheme widens the educational opportunities of able children from less well-off families, and gives them a choice of an education that they would not otherwise have had. That is why in the Education Bill we propose an expansion of the scheme to include preparatory schools. That paves the way for more choice for parents.

    Personal and Social Education
    Mr. Alan Howarth: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on her plans for the development of personal and social education. [2076]
    Mrs. Gillian Shephard: Personal and social education is firmly established in schools and backed by statute. The School Curriculum and Assessment Authority is consulting on ways of supporting schools and teachers in that work.
    Mr. Howarth: While in no way depreciating the importance of academic excellence, may I put it to the Secretary of State that the national curriculum, as it has developed, is now designed almost soley to equip young people for the competitive rat race? Does she accept that other values also matter in education, and does she regret, as I do, that the Government did not previously make

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    personal and social education a statutory requirement? Does she agree that all schools should have at the heart of their mission the education of young people in personal and social responsibility?
    Mrs. Shephard: To reassure the hon. Gentleman, I can tell him that schools do a great deal of good work in personal, social and health education. To reassure him further, I point out that that work is subject to regular inspection by the Office for Standards in Education. The standard of work done by schools can be made known to parents, and to people in the wider community. Ofsted inspectors must report on pupils' behaviour in and around schools, and consider whether they form constructive relationships with one another and with teachers and other adults.
    The School Curriculum and Assessment Authority is undertaking consultation—of which we all know—to see whether those aspects of education could be strengthened in the national curriculum, which is currently being revised.
    Mr. Bellingham: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, had the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) had a more fulfilling personal and social education, he might not have had the mid-life crisis that has led to the eccentricity that he has displayed in the past year?
    Madam Speaker: Order. That is not the right form of parliamentary question. Questions should deal with Government policy.
    Mr. Gunnell: What will it do for children's personal and social development if the Secretary of State's colleagues, with her apparent support, introduce into schools legalised physical violence, which I regard as physical child abuse?
    Mrs. Shephard: The provisions on discipline that the Government have included in the Education Bill are what teachers have asked for. I have made it clear to the House on a number of occasions that teachers have not asked for the return of corporal punishment, and the Government do not propose to include that in the Bill.

    General National Vocational Qualifications
    Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment she has made of the impact of GNVQs on educational standards. [2077]
    Mr. Paice: GNVQs are having a remarkable impact on the motivation of young people of all abilities, and we are now building on their early success.
    Mr. Lidington: I invite my hon. Friend to visit Buckinghamshire to see for himself that the introduction of GNVQs in schools in my constituency has increased student motivation and students' levels of achievement. Does he agree that the increasing success of GNVQs should be a source of pride for the students and teachers directly concerned, for Buckinghamshire local education
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    authority, which has strongly supported the introduction of GNVQs, and for the Government, who introduced the qualification in the first place?
    Mr. Paice: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the invitation, and I shall accept it if I possibly can.
    I agree with my hon. Friend on GNVQs. Anyone who has been to schools and spoken to students of different ages who are undertaking a GNVQ can only be excited about the motivation of those students. Many of them admit to having been turned off by the more formal approach to education, and are finding that the approach adopted in the GNVQ process gives them an exciting chance to continue learning. That is what it is all about, and why the Government are proud of the development of GNVQs, which have enabled many young people to continue learning who might otherwise have been discouraged from gaining further qualifications. That is the objective of all of us.
    Mr. Bryan Davies: The reforms of GNVQs are welcome and long overdue, but is it not clear that the Government's promotion of grammar schools and small sixth forms in grant-maintained schools run counter to the development of vocational education? It widens the gap between academic and vocational education at just the time when we should be seeking to bridge that gap.
    Mr. Paice: That is a non sequitur. The whole purpose of establishing a range of different schools, each specialising in a different approach, is to enable young people and their parents to choose what is best for their personal needs. I know of many schools with very high academic achievements, which have always produced good A-level results and which have gone out and grasped GNVQs, seeing them as a sensible and, indeed, essential system to run alongside A-levels. Nothing in the Bill or the Government's proposals would in any way reduce young people's opportunity to choose the qualifications that are most appropriate to their needs.

    Teaching Methods
    Lady Olga Maitland: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on the teaching skills and methods employed in schools. [2078]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire): The Government are determined to ensure that all teachers use effective teaching methods to raise standards, particularly in basic literacy and numeracy.
    Lady Olga Maitland: Given that trendy teaching methods, together with political correctness, are the principal cause of appalling results in some schools—mainly those in the bottom 10 local education authorities, which are controlled by Labour—what steps will the Minister take to root out such methods?
    Mr. Squire: My hon. Friend is aware of several of the steps that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already announced. It is, of course, regrettable that any teaching method should depend on passing fashion, and she rightly criticises some now obsolete fashions. The

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    reforms that we have introduced give greater accountability to heads and governors to enable them to tackle any teachers who are currently under-performing, and the emphasis on standards should enable most of those teachers to improve. I expect—and, indeed, parents expect—the minority of teachers who are not performing adequately, and cannot improve, to be shown the door and given the chance to work in a less challenging environment.
    Mrs. Anne Campbell: Is the Minister aware that the proportion of teachers who use information technology as part of their classroom teaching has remained constant for the past two years? What is he going to do to improve teachers' confidence in such technology, and to ensure that the outdated computers in classrooms are replaced as soon as possible?
    Mr. Squire: This country has one of the finest records in supplying information technology to schools. We were in there first, and our investment bears comparison with that of any other country. As for the specific question of teacher confidence, the hon. Lady knows that information technology is now one of the cross-curriculum requirements. More and more teachers are required to be adept in its use. It features heavily in on-course in-set training, and it is also being given more attention in initial training.
    Mr. Bernard Jenkin: May I suggest to my hon. Friend that, following reform of the structure of education and the introduction of a national curriculum and testing, teaching methods and skills are now the crux of the modern education debate? Will he give every support to the Office for Standards in Education, enabling it to take a rational view about which methods work and which fail? Is there not ample evidence to show that some of the trendier "group learning situations" constructed by education thinkers of the 1960s and 1970s have been an utter failure? There is now cross-party support behind the party-political battle; those methods must be rooted out, and teachers must undertake proper instruction rather than simply waiting for children to pick up the skills that they need.
    Mr. Squire: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In particular, he is right to stress that teaching is about giving instruction, not just about allowing pupils to discover themselves. The emphasis today in teaching, particularly in initial teacher training, is to ensure that all teachers coming into our schools should acquire a range of skills and the ability to determine when it is appropriate to use them. We are determined that all teachers will reach that target.

    Job Insecurity
    Mr. Winnick: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to introduce measures to reduce job insecurity. [2079]
    Mr. Forth: The best protection against job insecurity is sustained economic growth and increased competitiveness. We will continue the policies that have resulted in the economy growing for more than three
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    years, unemployment falling by more than 908,000 since the recovery began and the number of jobs rising by more than 210,000 in the past year.
    Mr. Winnick: Is it not a commentary on this wretched Government that, since the Prime Minister was appointed just six years ago, nearly 11 million people have experienced some form of unemployment and, moreover, that there are 1 million fewer jobs in the economy than in 1990? Therefore, is it not justified that the next round of job losses will be those of quite a few Tory Members of Parliament?
    Mr. Forth: Labour Members are so desperate about the regular and persistent fall in unemployment that they have to scratch around for such odd figures. If 300,000 people enter and leave the job register every month, as they do now and as they have for many years, of course we can identify many people who, from time to time, will both have lost jobs and, happily, gained jobs. Statistics show that, for men and women, average job tenure is little different from that 10 years ago, so the myth that Labour Members feel obliged to peddle about job insecurity is simply their desperate response to the heartening and continuing fall in unemployment.
    Mr. John Marshall: Will my hon. Friend confirm that, since 1992, there has been a drop of some 750,000 in the number of people unemployed? Will he compare that drop with the increases in unemployment in Germany, France and other countries that follow the policies peddled by the Labour party? Does he agree that the greatest threat to job security is the introduction of a national minimum wage and the social chapter, which Labour would introduce?
    Mr. Forth: Indeed. It must be one of the great puzzles of today's political scene that the Labour party espouses and seems to find attractive all the policies that emanate from continental Europe—and have failed almost every country in continental Europe. If Labour Members cared as much as they claim to about jobs and employment, would they not doubt that, if they introduced the social chapter and the minimum wage, the risk would be, that unemployment here would rise to the level in countries that are pursuing those policies? It is not a risk that I would want to take.
    Mr. Hain: The millions of people who are trapped in job insecurity are certainly not pathetically grateful to the Government. Indeed, they will give them a real caning at the next general election. The Minister says that job insecurity is a myth. Is he aware that Government figures show that more than half the people who leave a job for the dole are out of work again in under a year? The new Tory world of work is insecure, short term, temporary and casual. Is he also aware that, instead of indulging in playground politics in Europe, people want him to tackle insecurity at home?
    Mr. Forth: On behalf of many of my hon. Friends, may I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the caning tendency? I am sure that he will be a most welcome addition.
    It simply will not do for Labour Members to think that, if they keep talking about job insecurity frequently enough, they will somehow increase the feeling of

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    insecurity outside the House. It is dishonest for politicians to try to scare the electorate with repeated talk about such things as job insecurity. The figures that I have given do not support such talk. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will look more seriously at their own policies, because if anything will increase job insecurity in the future, it is Labour party policy.

    Legislation
    Mr. Skinner: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many Bills on education matters have been introduced by her Department or its predecessor since 1979. [2080]
    Mrs. Gillian Shephard: My Department has introduced 20 Bills relating to education since 1979.
    Mr. Skinner: Would it be fair to say that, after 17 Tory years, the Government are now introducing education Bills that partly repeal the Bills they introduced in the 1979 to 1984 period? The Tories have turned full circle. When they first started, they were in favour of abolishing grammar schools, but now they want to create them; they were in favour of getting rid of the cane, but now Miss Whiplash wants to bring it back. All the time, teachers are falling down the pay ladder and more than 1 million primary kids are in classes of more than 30. We need about £4 billion to be spent on schools to bring them up to a decent standard of repair, but the Tories took away £50-odd billion from local authorities—mainly Labour ones—in the form of grant, most of which should have been spent on education.
    Mrs. Shephard: The hon. Gentleman's rant does very little credit to his grammar school education. Perhaps I can point out to him that our reforms have resulted in higher standards, more choice, more transparency and more accountability in the education system. I should have thought that it was a matter of shame that the Labour party has voted against measures that resulted in those improvements.
    Mr. Harry Greenway: Would my right hon. Friend like to remind the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) that education is a dynamic science that constantly changes? It is therefore essential to keep on introducing new Bills to keep abreast of new developments. Bearing in mind what my right hon. Friend said about no teacher organisations making representations for the return of moderate and reasonable corporal punishment in schools, would she accept such representations from present or former individual members of the profession?
    Mrs. Shephard: I agree with my hon. Friend that if the Opposition were so concerned about education they could start by looking at the records of their political colleagues in local education authorities throughout the land. It is a matter of great regret that they have voted against parental choice, more information about schools and admission arrangements, and even against the inspection of schools. Their attitude really defies description.

    Primary School Class Sizes
    Mr. Corbyn: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many children of primary schools are currently in classes of more than 30 pupils. [2083]
    Mr. Robin Squire: In January 1996, 32 per cent. of primary pupils were in single-teacher classes of more than 30. About a third of those pupils were in classes supported by at least one member of non-teaching staff.
    Mr. Corbyn: Does the Minister agree that those figures are outrageous and disgraceful, and that standards in our primary schools have got worse and worse in the past 17 years with more and more pupils in large classes in which it is obviously difficult to give them the proper support and tuition that they need? Will he tell us about his plans for the future, because all the estimates I have seen suggest that more and more children will be in classes of more than 30 pupils, and will therefore get a worse and worse education? Will he tell us what plans he has to ensure a proper supply of properly qualified and trained teachers? What are his plans for proper expenditure to ensure that school buildings are of a sufficient standard to accommodate more, smaller classes, which will ensure that all our children get the standard of education that they deserve and need?
    Mr. Squire: How interesting. First of all, a small fact: the percentage of pupils who are in classes of more than 30 is now smaller than it was when we came to power in 1979. I invite the hon. Gentleman to find, at some other stage, the adjective to describe our predecessors, the Labour Government. It is rather more important than that, because the hon. Gentleman comes from the borough of Islington and, indeed, represents it. In Islington, class sizes are below the national average, yet after 11 years of compulsory education, Islington's pupils have the worst record of attainment at GCSE level of any authority in the country. The Labour party has run that authority for the past 25 years. It is down to local education authorities to decide how the money is spent and what standards are maintained. Islington may be the borough of the chattering classes; unfortunately, it is also the borough of failing classes.
    Sir Alan Haselhurst: Although I acknowledge that smaller class sizes must be better than larger class sizes, is not what really matters the amount of attention that each child gets from the teacher and support staff in the classroom, and the quality of the teaching?
    Mr. Squire: My hon. Friend—who is very experienced in these matters—is absolutely right. If there were any doubt about that fact even among Opposition Members, the events of the past year should have disabused them of their belief, to which they adhere fanatically, that class size is all. The pupil-teacher ratio at Hackney Downs was eight to one, and the ratio at the Ridings school was 15 to one. Reports from the three inner-London education authorities earlier this year showed that four out of 10 of their 11-year-olds were two or more years behind the reading age for an 11-year-old. That is disgraceful, but it is not due to class sizes.
    Mr. Bayley: If the Minister genuinely agrees with the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir A. Haselhurst) that

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    smaller classes provide a better education than bigger classes, will the Government match the Labour party's commitment to cut class sizes for five, six and seven-year-olds to a maximum of 30?
    Mr. Squire: For a start, the Labour party has not even begun to find the money—which may be as much as £250 million—to meet that pledge. No one is saying that class size is not important. [HON. MEMBERS: "You are."] No. The Labour party, however, says that it is the single most important issue, which is manifestly untrue. This year and next year, there will undoubtedly be parents in the hon. Gentleman's constituency who will have a choice about which school to send their children to. They will sometimes choose the school that has larger classes and is more popular, and reject the school—which may even be closer—with smaller classes. All the evidence suggests that the belief that the issue is all about class size is simply wrong.

    Schools (Examination Results)
    Mrs. Peacock: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many (a) grant-maintained and (b) local education authority schools are represented in the top 50 state schools measured by A-level results. [2084]
    Mrs. Gillan: The 1995 school performance tables show that 32 of the top 50 schools in England measured by A-level results were grant maintained and 18 were local education authority maintained.
    Mrs. Peacock: Does my hon. Friend agree that A-level results show that GM schools enhance our children's education? Will she also confirm that the Labour party's policy would do great damage to our children's education?
    Mrs. Gillan: Yes; I have great pleasure in confirming what my hon. Friend says. Overall, pupils in grant-maintained schools taking two or more A-levels achieve a higher average point score, at 17.1, than LEA pupils, at 15.5. The Labour party presents the real threat to grant-maintained schools, and its continued hostility to them is paraded openly. The hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) and the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) should speak up, and, when next they visit the schools that their children attend, tell the head teachers of their plans to disrupt the schools and to put them under LEA control.
    Mr. Spearing: Does the Minister agree that the concept of a top and a bottom in tables of attainment is meaningless compared with the absolute standards achieved by all the schools? Will she note the damage done by publication of tables, and back both the head and the parents of students at Cheltenham college, who have taken a sensible view of education—against the views of their rather narrow-minded, business-minded and statistically minded governors?
    Mrs. Gillan: I thought that the hon. Gentleman's party was becoming rather keen on our performance tables, which have bedded down extremely successfully.
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    Higher standards and better results, which is what we are now getting from our schools, are what we expect and what we have delivered in the education system.
    Mr. Stephen: My hon. Friend will be aware that many of the top 50 schools—judging by A-level results—are in the private sector, where head teachers have the power to use the cane if in their professional judgment it is the right way in which to deal with a particular pupil. She may recall that, two years ago, I tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill to give back that power to head teachers in the state sector, from which she may deduce that it is my personal view that head teachers in the state sector should have that power. What response has there been from parents and the general public to the current debate on the issue?
    Mrs. Gillan: I am always interested, as I am sure is the whole House, to hear my hon. Friend's personal views on a wide range of subjects, which he often brings to the Floor of the House. As he knows, there have been no demands to increase the disciplinary measures that we are introducing, over and above those in the Education Bill.

    Nursery Vouchers
    Mr. Touhig: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how much she plans to spend on publicity relating to the national implementation of the nursery voucher scheme.[2085]
    Mr. Robin Squire: The estimated budget for publicity about the nursery education voucher scheme in England, up to its initial implementation, is —1,900,000—or 0.25 per cent. of total estimated expenditure on the scheme. The publicity will include essential information for more than 650,000 parents and some 40,000 providers of nursery education.
    Mr. Touhig: That is in addition to the —1.1 million spent on promoting the pilot scheme. Does the Minister agree that Britain's four-year-olds are more deserving of taxpayers' revenue than the advertising industry? If he does, how does he justify spending —3 million on advertising the nursery voucher scheme when that amount could provide an extra 2,500 nursery places?
    Mr. Squire: The hon. Gentleman has obviously been asleep. Next year, a total of —750 million will be spent on nursery places, of which —165million will be new money and go only into pre-school provision. To ensure that parents and, indeed, providers are able to take full advantage of the scheme, it is essential—indeed, it would be a dereliction of duty by the Government if we did not ensure it—that, as in phase 1, parents are able to see the expansion of places and the enhancement of opportunity.
    Mr. Hawkins: Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way in which to publicise the great success of the nursery voucher scheme would be to ask the parents of children who have benefited from the vouchers in the pilot areas, such as Norfolk and various London boroughs, to publicise it? Will he join me in inviting the Labour party to condemn the schools in Labour and Liberal Democrat-controlled LEAs that have tried to blackmail parents by telling them that they can send their children

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    to the popular state schools only if they attend the authorities' nurseries, thus destroying the choice that many parents want to exercise through nursery vouchers as between state and private sector nurseries? Are not we about choice and diversity and the Opposition, as always, about trying to force parents down the state road only?
    Mr. Squire: My hon. Friend is right in both his main points. One of many interesting statistics that were published today is the independent survey of parental opinion which shows that vouchers are popular with parents in phase 1. I have no doubt that they will be popular in phase 2. On his second point, the concern that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have about the possibility of LEAs or individual schools acting in the way he described has led to our writing a letter to every LEA reminding them that simply cramming more four-year-olds into overcrowded reception classes will not necessarily be the best way forward, and encouraging them to draw on the examples of authorities such as Shropshire, Norfolk and York, which have already recognised the advantages of partnership.
    Mr. Blunkett: Was it not this Government who removed the minimum space requirements—a policy that has allegedly led to the cramming of children into reception classes? Is it not a fact that no one has ever had to advertise nursery places, only nursery vouchers? The use of £900,000 of public money on television and radio advertising out of the £3 million total budget is nothing short of a scandalous and blatant political exercise to try to win votes.
    Mr. Squire: I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong on every material particular. He is certainly wrong to suggest that the advertisements are in some way party political. [Interruption.] If those hon. Members who disagree had seen the advertisements, they would know that they are as party political as the weather forecast, but slightly more interesting.
    I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) for his campaign attacking nursery vouchers. I am enormously relieved that he is giving us so much extra free publicity, reminding parents across the country what they will lose if Labour gets in at the next election.

    Assisted Places Scheme
    Mr. Alan W. Williams: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many places at private schools are being financed by the assisted places scheme in the 1996–97 academic year. [2086]
    Mrs. Gillan: There are 37,816 assisted places available at 355 schools in England.
    Mr. Williams: There are 7 million children in schools in England and Wales. The assisted places scheme benefits only a tiny minority—less than 1 per cent. How can it be right to take resources away from the many to benefit just a few? How does that square with the Prime Minister's avowed intention of creating a classless society and opportunity for all?
    Mrs. Gillan: I cannot believe that the Labour Members are still peddling their opposition to the assisted places scheme. It is extremely good value for money, as I have said many times from the Dispatch Box. The average cost of an assisted place is somewhat higher than, but of the same order as, an average maintained pupil place. The difference is not excessive. An assisted place, the average cost of which is —3,700, is better value than the cost of maintained places in authorities such as Hackney and Lambeth.
    Mr. Fabricant: Is not it true that 70 per cent. of those going into secondary education with the assisted places scheme come from maintained primary schools? It is simple arithmetic that, if they were not going to private schools with the assisted places scheme, their education would have to be funded by local education authorities. Is it not about time that the hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Williams) put his short trousers back on, went back to school and learnt some basic arithmetic?
    Mrs. Gillan: We want to spare you the sight of the hon. Member for Carmarthen in short trousers, Madam Speaker. My hon. Friend is right. Nearly 70 per cent. of pupils on the assisted places scheme come from maintained primary schools.
    The most important fact about the scheme is that 40 per cent. of the assisted pupils come from families with a total annual income lower than —9,874. Some 80 per cent. come from families with an income lower than the national average. Labour Members want to take away that opportunity for children from poor families. They should be ashamed of continuing to peddle their disgraceful policy.
    Mr. Pearson: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many children from Dudley metropolitan borough are currently being educated at schools through the assisted places scheme. [2087]
    Mrs. Gillan: Information about the local education authority area from which assisted pupils originate is not collected centrally.
    Mr. Pearson: Is it not unjust and unfair that the Government are prepared to shell out millions of pounds to provide elitist private education to a handful of children in Dudley when 4,500 five, six and seven-year-olds in the borough's cash-strapped schools are suffering in class sizes of 30 or more? Does not new Labour's pledge to cut class sizes for youngsters show which party really cares about educational opportunities for all?
    Mrs. Gillan: The hon. Gentleman had better check up. This is not new Labour, but old Labour. This is the politics of envy. This is the Labour party that says to poor families, "Your children are not going to be allowed to have the chance that our children have had or we have had." The hon. Gentleman should look closely at the assisted places scheme, at the value for money it offers and at the results achieved by the pupils. He should recognise that it is about time the education policies of the Opposition parties started to level up rather than down.

    Nursery Vouchers
    Mr. William O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will visit Normanton to discuss nursery vouchers with (a) parents, (b) governors and (c) teachers. [2088]
    Mr. Robin Squire: No, but my right hon. Friend and her Ministers have discussed the benefits of the nursery education voucher scheme at a number of events up and down the country.
    Mr. O'Brien: That reply is obviously disappointing because parents, governors and teachers at St. John's school, and at other schools in my constituency such as Wrenthorpe and Outwood, would like the opportunity to tell the Secretary of State that they want the Government to provide more nursery places rather than spend £3 million on publicity. Parents want nursery places rather than vouchers and publicity on the issue.
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    Parents would also like the opportunity to tell the Secretary of State that they support Wakefield local education authority's nursery provision for three-and-a-half-year-olds and that they want nursery facilities in the area to be extended. It is disappointing that we do not have the opportunity to tell the Secretary of State exactly what people require in the areas that I represent.
    Mr. Squire: The hon. Gentleman must have misheard or not heard when I said a moment ago that another £165 million will be spent—next year alone—on pre-school education. He quotes a tiny fraction of that money, which is essential expenditure on publicity, as the totality of new spend. I say to the hon. Gentleman and to other hon. Members from areas where there is currently high provision that, if the present quality of provision by local authority schools is as good as they say it is, parents will undoubtedly continue to use those facilities. If the provision is not as good as that, parents should have the choice to look elsewhere.

Opposition Day
[1ST ALLOTTED DAY]

BSE Crisis
Madam Speaker: I have selected the amendment standing in the name of the Prime Minister.
3.31 pm
Mr. Robin Cook: I beg to move,
That this House notes that after the Florence European Council the Prime Minister assured the House that by October the United Kingdom should meet the conditions for the ban to be lifted on the export of beef from certified herds and certain other categories and that by November the United Kingdom should meet the conditions for the ban to be lifted on all beef that can be sold in the United Kingdom; deplores the fact that the ban on the export of United Kingdom beef remains fully in place and that Her Majesty's Government has failed to meet the conditions for it to be lifted within the timetable they themselves announced; recalls that in advance of Florence Her Majesty's Government pursued a policy of non-co-operation which led to a deterioration in relations with the other member states of the European Union, and failed to resolve the crisis for the United Kingdom's beef industry; believes that the measures adopted by Her Majesty's Government following the identification of BSE a decade ago were inadequate and enforcement was unsatisfactory; notes the confusion and delay since the House was advised on 20th March that BSE was considered the most likely cause of a new variant of CJD and the failure of Her Majesty's Government to meet its own targets for the slaughter programme; deplores the hardship and suffering caused to beef farmers and the beef industry; and regrets that Her Majesty's Government has not protected the interests of United Kingdom consumers or producers of beef.
On Monday, the House was entertained to the vision offered by the Government of a world free of trade barriers by 2020. The Foreign Secretary, in a failed attempt to capture the headlines, described this as the Government's "2020 vision". There is, of course, an unreality about a Government who have five months to run setting out their vision for 2020, but there is a wider lack of reality about a Government who have visions of free trade around the globe in the next century when they comprehensively fail to get the ban on exports of UK beef across the channel lifted.
The crisis in the beef industry since the statement of 20 March dominated the proceedings from March to June. Since the House returned, there has been no statement and no debate initiated by the Government. The only statement that the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food gave the House was in response to the private notice question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang).
This is the first full day's debate on the subject, but—many hon. Members on both sides will be aware of this—the crisis caused by the statement on 20 March is still there around Britain. It is experienced by thousands of farmers, by the people who work in the industries that support farming, and by the people who work in the industries that process beef, all of whom are still living with the consequences of the statement of 20 March.
Those people might by now have expected to be out of that difficulty. They might have heard what the Prime Minister said at the victory celebrations on 24 June in this House when he returned from his triumph at Florence. In
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that statement, the Prime Minister assured the House that, by October, the Government would have met the conditions for lifting the ban in two stages—beef from certified herds and beef from young animals—and that, by November, the Government would have met the conditions for lifting the ban on all beef that at present is allowed to be sold only in the United Kingdom in order that it could be sold on the continent as well.
The House must agree that October has been and gone, and all those stages of the ban are still in place. Indeed, November is half over. I will cheerfully give way to any hon. Member who believes that the ban will be completely lifted in the next two weeks. Not only have the Government missed the target they set for the lifting of the ban, but I am prepared to have a small bet with any hon. Member that the Minister of Agriculture will not be able to give us the revised target for the lifting of the ban.
Before the recess, the Minister said that he hoped that the ban would be lifted completely by the back end of the year. Perhaps we should ask him what he meant by that.
Mr. Brian David Jenkins: Which year?
Mr. Cook: Indeed. Is December the back end of the year? Will the Minister stake what is left of his reputation that the ban will be lifted in December? If we miss December, will we not be looking down the front end of another year?
I hope that the Minister will tell his hon. Friends the truth—that he has no idea when the ban will be lifted. Far from being able to tell us when he will get agreement to lift further stages in the ban, he now cannot even tell us when he will implement the agreement that he has already secured to lift the ban on the trade in gelatine.
Conservative Members have to face the truth: that they will be fighting the general election with most of the beef ban still in place. That will lead to some interesting questions at their election meetings. The most difficult one to answer will be whatever happened to the Prime Minister's great triumph at Florence. Lifting the ban in stages was the victory of the beef war. If we take that away, what will happen to the victory?
I do not hold the Minister responsible for the beef war. He is held to account for enough without being held responsible for the beef war that he did not invent. The architect of the beef war was the Foreign Secretary, who, no doubt wisely, decided not to be here today to explain why the policy that he constructed has collapsed.
The Minister of Agriculture will recall that, last May, the Government brought in the Foreign Secretary to support him in his negotiations, because of the feeling that his diplomatic skills could be improved by assistance. The Foreign Secretary devised the policy of non-co-operation in Europe, or, as it graphically became known to diplomats, PONCE—a fitting acronym, given the posturing that it involved.
In pursuit of PONCE, the Government halted the work of the European Union by prolonged serial vetoing. They even vetoed measures that were more important to Britain than to the other member states. We blocked a measure that Britain had proposed to cut red tape. We blocked tougher powers of inspection against fraud, although Britain had lobbied for them. We blocked the sending of

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a letter to Iran about Salman Rushdie, although the only person who could have benefited directly from it was a British citizen.
We even blocked measures of value to countries outside the European Union that had no part in our quarrel with the continent over the trade in beef. In view of the human tragedy that is currently taking place on an epic scale in Zaire, the House should recall with some sense of shame that, in June, Britain blocked a joint declaration of concern at the rising ethnic tension in that region of Africa.
There has been a cost to Britain of that sustained disruption. I shall give only one example, which illustrates the damage to our relations with Europe. Last January, the Government of Portugal brought forward a resolution in the European Union to condemn Indonesian repression in East Timor. It is a big domestic issue in Portugal, because Indonesia is a former colony and because the people of Portugal have considerable sympathy with the Catholic majority of East Timor.
The British Minister in January requested the Portuguese to withdraw the motion because, at that time, British hostages were being held in Irian Jaya and Indonesia was assisting us in the release of those hostages. It would have been a source of embarrassment for Britain were that resolution to have been pressed. Happy to help, our oldest ally withdrew the resolution.
In the spring, the hostages were released. In June, Portugal brought back its resolution on East Timor, and Britain blocked it under the policy of non-co-operation. The fury that that double-cross caused in Lisbon may partly explain the warmth with which the Prime Minister of Portugal sent a message to our party conference hoping for a change of Government at the general election.
That loss of good will might have been a price that the Government were prepared to pay, if they had won the war. All wars have casualties, and it is victory that justifies the risk of casualties. Conservative Members claimed victory. The Foreign Secretary described Florence as a turning point. The Minister of Agriculture said that it was
"a great success, and provides a solid way forward."—[Official Report, 24 July 1996; Vol. 282, c. 369.]
As late as 4 July, the Prime Minister was asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair):
"Does the Prime Minister still hold to November of this year as the date by which the ban will be completely lifted?"
The answer was:
"Yes".—[Official Report, 4 July 1996; Vol. 280, c. 1049.]
Of course, to meet that target the United Kingdom would have had to keep its side of the bargain. The most curious part of the Government's mystifying conduct over the BSE crisis is that, having hailed agreement in Florence as a victory, they then proceeded to break that agreement by not keeping their part of the bargain.
Mr. Robert Jackson: The right hon. Gentleman talks about Britain keeping a bargain. If the Government were to introduce a selective cull to implement the Florence agreement, would the Labour party vote in favour?
Mr. Cook: The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the reason why the Government are terrified to
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introduce such a cull is that they do not know whether their Back Benchers would vote for it. If an order is tabled, we will consider the details and decide whether it will obtain our support. The hon. Gentleman can hardly ask us whether we will support the order when his Government will not even table an order for us to consider in the first place.
The Minister of Agriculture did agree to bring in a selective cull in June, presumably in the confidence that the hon. Gentleman would support him. Having introduced it in June, the Minister then dumped it in September. Shrewdly, on that occasion, his colleagues recognised that, to sell that breach of contract, he would need more help and guidance than just the Foreign Secretary. When the Minister of Agriculture went to last month's Agriculture Council, he was accompanied not just by one extra colleague but by a phalanx of five Ministers. Some were there to support him and others were there to contradict him. Yet all the Queen's Ministers could not put the Florence framework back together again.
The Minister of Agriculture has talked much, and no doubt will talk again today, about the new scientific evidence that justifies scrapping the cull—mainly the computer-modelling exercise in nature magazine. But the weight that he places on that exercise is not shared by Nature magazine. After his decision to halt the cull, Nature ran a blistering editorial saying:
"The role of science is to illuminate political choices not to enforce them. By acting as if it is oblivious to this truth, and to European political reality, the UK Government can only erode its credibility still further."
Before the Minister invites the House to attach the greatest importance to scientific evidence, perhaps he also should attach the same weight to the conclusion of the same scientist, that the Minister's course of action lacks credibility and is out of touch with reality.
The truth is that it is not the scientific evidence that prompted the Government to abandon the cull but the bogus, empty nature of the agreement they reached at Florence. The Minister of Agriculture was candidly honest about that on 14 October. He told the House on 14 October that the case for the cull had diminished because
"It has become increasingly clear during the summer that the prospect of other member states agreeing to an early …lifting of the export ban …has lessened."—[Official Report, 14 October 1996; Vol. 282, c. 465.]
So there we have it: other member states were not going to agree to lift the ban anyway. I have to ask, how can this be? It is not what we were told was in the Florence agreement. We were told after Florence that decisions would be taken not by the Council of Ministers but by the Commission. We were told that the decision that would be taken by the Commission would be taken on scientific, not political, grounds.
The Foreign Secretary explicitly told me in response to an intervention on 20 June:
"It does not need to go before any Ministers or any Government."—[Official Report, 20 June 1996; Vol. 279, c. 1028.]
If that was true, how can the Minister of Agriculture now claim that the ban cannot be lifted because some Ministers and some Governments object?
Or is the truth that the Foreign Secretary has absented himself from today's debate because he knows that he has sold the House a false prospectus; that Florence did not

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give us a binding framework for progress on lifting the ban; that there was no real linkage between steps that we might take and steps in lifting the ban; and that there never was any serious prospect that the ban would be lifted in October or November, as promised by the Prime Minister?
The public have a much more acute sense of the worth of the Florence agreement. After the agreement, a survey discovered that 83 per cent. of the public believed that the United Kingdom had lost the beef war, and 4 per cent. believed that the European Union had lost the beef war. Even at today's ratings in the polls, there must have been some Conservatives among the 83 per cent. who believed that Britain had lost the beef war.
Yet, breathtakingly, the Government propose to do it all over again, this time to stop the working time directive. The Prime Minister assured us yesterday that the Government would veto the intergovernmental conference unless the law was changed. We shall be treated to some more acts of PONCEing, and pretty empty PONCEing it will be, because the end of the IGC will not be until June next year, and the Prime Minister knows perfectly well that there is a pretty good chance that he will not be there in June next year.
Before I move on, I should just say that, if Conservative Members want to announce in their election addresses at the next election that the Conservative party is the party that will deny people the right to say no to excessive working hours and that will refuse parents the right to insist on holidays to spend with their children, I warn them that there is not a Labour candidate in any constituency who will not dance with delight.
In taking on Europe, the Government are condemning themselves to expose their own weakness. Conservative Members are doomed to disappointment if they think that the electors are keen to be conscripted to another war against Europe. The beef war was the first war in British history in which we picked a fight with the whole of the continent. Previous British Governments, including Conservative ones, have been sensible enough to ensure that either France or Prussia was on our side before going to war. For two centuries, Britain's advantage was held to be in finding the balance in Europe and holding the balance in Europe. Only this Government imagine that the balancing point can be found somewhere in the middle of the channel, between Britain and all the rest of Europe.
In taking on the whole of Europe, the Government have not demonstrated their strength but exposed their weakness and revealed their incompetence—the incompetence with which the Minister of Agriculture gave no prior warning to the Commission or his opposite numbers of the bombshell he dropped on 20 March on the connection between BSE and CJD. I know that the Minister rang the Agriculture Commissioner just before he came into the House on that day. I know that he advised the Agriculture Commissioner that he was sorry that he could not give him prior warning because it was a convention of the House that the House had to hear first before anyone else.
I have to tell the Minister that the Commissioner in Brussels would have found this a lot more convincing if he had not read in that morning's editions of The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail what the Minister was going to say in the House that afternoon. Plainly, those newspapers had been told before the House of Commons.
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The Government also revealed their incompetence by promising an action plan to eradicate BSE and then turning up at the meeting with a four-page sketch that the Spanish Agriculture Minister described as "mierda"; a term which, if literally translated, I am sure you would rule unparliamentary, Madam Speaker, but which was paraphrased by The Daily Mail as "clearly insufficient" They showed incompetence in taking three months following the statement of 20 March—some 10 years after the identification of BSE—to produce a serious, thorough-going programme to eradicate BSE from the herds.
So inept has the Government's response been to the beef ban, a bit of me wonders if it is not just suiting them that the ban is there. The amendment accuses the Opposition of "cynical…opportunism". Words like "mote" and "beam" flit through my mind. I must tell the Minister that there is no worse cynical opportunism than the way in which the Government have seized on the beef ban to blame Europe for a crisis that was of their own making. Indeed, the moment of truth will come if the beef ban is lifted.
Beef sales will only recover not when Conservative Members bludgeon political leaders into lifting the ban, but when they persuade housewives in Europe to buy British beef, which they will never do by threatening a policy of non-co-operation with consumers. The amendment has the sheer gall to accuse the Opposition of ignoring
"the restoration of consumer confidence".
That amendment will be moved by the Minister of Agriculutre, the same Minister who told the House on 20 March:
"I do not believe that this information—
the information on the link between BSE and CJD—
should damage consumer confidence".—[Official Report, 20 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 387.]
I must tell the Minister that he is still out of touch with reality. The Meat and Livestock Commission reported in October that beef sales were down by 17 per cent. on last year. In Germany, sales are down by 15 per cent. and in Italy by 25 per cent.—even before those countries agree to import any British beef.
Nor is it just Europe that does not have confidence in British beef. More than 50 countries outside Europe have also banned the import of British beef, some of them countries that Conservative Members regard more warmly than Europe, where they speak foreign languages—they include the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
Mr. Rod Richards: Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that the beef ban by the European countries was justified?
Mr. Cook: As I have explained to the House, it was entirely understandable why—given the ineptness of the Government—that ban was introduced. Ever since the ban was introduced, the Opposition have offered support to the Government in their steps to remove it, even to the extent of giving them the benefit of the doubt during the beef war when they carried out the policy of non-co-operation. What we object to is the failure of the Government to achieve the measures that would lift the ban, and the way in which they deceived the House on the effect of the Florence agreement.

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I was about to add—perhaps the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards) will wish to ask whether this ban is justified—that even Hong Kong has banned British beef, although I keep reading that the next leader of the Conservative party may be the man who is currently the Governor of Hong Kong. If he stands, presumably, he will not get the vote of the Minister of Agriculture, who cannot even persuade Chris Patten to have confidence in British beef.
The reason why there is such difficulty in restoring international confidence in the safety of British beef is the manner in which, at every stage of the history of BSE, the Government have done as little as possible, as late as possible.
Mr. Michael Lord: The right hon. Gentleman has been asked two direct questions, neither of which he has answered. He is making a clever speech that the House is enjoying in some ways, but he is not dealing with the problems facing a major industry in this country. Does he support the slaughter of thousands of healthy animals, with no guarantee that the ban will be lifted at its end?
Mr. Cook: Hang on. We were told that the Government secured the undertaking in Florence that, if they slaughtered the animals, the ban would be lifted. The hon. Gentleman is disagreeing with those on his Front Bench, not with me. We are asking the Government why, having sold that agreement to the House, they have ratted on it.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Surely the right hon. Gentleman realises that British agriculture is facing its gravest crisis this century. Will he tell the House and the country simply and clearly whether he believes that the ban is justified?
Mr. Cook: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting that question again. We have repeatedly said that we regard British beef as safe and that we do not accept the ban, and we have repeatedly supported the Government in all the measures that they said would lead to a lifting of the ban.
After all that support, we are told that the ban cannot be lifted in the timetable that the Government promised, partly because they have done too little, too late, to combat BSE, starting at the very beginning, with their disastrous decision on taking office not to regulate the feedstuffs industry to a higher standard, on the grounds set out in their consultation paper:
"It is the wish of the Minister that in the present economic climate the industry itself should determine how to produce a high-quality product."
The industry promptly responded by phasing out the chemical solvents that might have prevented BSE from getting into the food chain.
The Government long refused to accept the risk to public health from BSE, as exemplified by the famous observation of the present Secretary of State for the Environment that
"nobody need be worried about BSE, in this country or anywhere else."
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Fortunately, he was moved to another job just before we discovered how worried we ought to be.
Finally, even when Ministers introduced regulations to control BSE, they failed to enforce them, and as late as last year, 48 per cent. of slaughterhouses and 17 per cent. of rendering houses were in breach of BSE controls; and, in March this year, eight feed mills were still found to be breaching regulations to keep animal protein out of feedstuffs. The crisis in our beef industry was made in Britain. The genius of Her Majesty's Government is that, instead of solving the first crisis, they have paralleled it with a second crisis, in our relations with Europe.
I began by referring to the human hardship caused by the collapse of the beef market. Farmers, especially hill farmers, watched their way of life being put at risk, and workers in the processing industry watched their jobs disappearing. They are watching this debate and will note how we vote; we owe it to them to vote against a Government who have failed them, and we owe it to ourselves to vote against the Government, because we know that they deceived the House in June over the deal they brought back from Florence, and that they have broken the commitment they gave about when the ban would be lifted. All hon. Members with any self-respect must resent that deception, and I urge them to join us in the Lobby tonight.
3.57 pm
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Douglas Hogg): I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
"congratulates the Government on the action it has taken to deal with the BSE crisis which has led to the restoration of consumer confidence; welcomes the package of support the Government has provided to the beef industry; notes the significant improvement in the measures to deal with the disposal of animals over 30 months of age and the progress made towards meeting the criteria set out in the agreement for lifting the European ban on British beef; and urges the Labour Party to drop its cynical political opportunism at the expense of many who depend on this important industry."
I begin my response to the debate with at least one assertion with which we can all agree: BSE has been a disaster for British agriculture and a tragedy for all those whose lives and livelihoods depend on a prosperous beef sector. Against that background, we have a right to expect that all those who participate in a debate on BSE, whether in this place or in the newspapers or elsewhere, should do so in a rational, considered and sober way, because scares, alarmist headlines and ill-judged political point scoring damage consumer confidence. That reinforces the prejudices of those who do not wish to see the ban lifted and thereby damages the interests of British farmers.
Prominent among those whom I most condemn is the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman). Her comments on 20 March, when she raised quite unjustified scares about the risks of feeding beef to children, did a great deal to damage consumer confidence in Britain.
In addition, I very much regret that on 22 March the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) gave his support to the imposition of a beef ban, making our task harder, reinforcing the position of member states when they did not deserve to have their position reinforced.
Dr. Gavin Strang: Let me correct that from the Dispatch Box for the second time. We have

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been round this course before. When the French Government took action immediately following the announcement to stop beef and animals moving into France, I said that I liked to think that had the situation developed in France, a British Government would have done the same. That is quite different from the worldwide beef ban. The French Government's action was justified. What was not justified was the subsequent worldwide beef ban. The French Government were talking about a temporary cessation of trade in the crisis, which was obviously justified. We have made it clear throughout that the worldwide beef ban is not justified, and the Minister knows that.
Mr. Hogg: That is a case of wriggle, wriggle, wriggle.
The hon. Gentleman made two statements. He made a statement on 24 March, which he has summarised reasonably accurately, but he omitted to mention the press release that he put out on 22 March, which is the one to which I was referring, when he said in terms:
"A temporary cessation in the movement of British cattle, beef and beef products into the continent may be wise at this time."
He did not thereafter qualify it.
It is interesting to note that the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), in the first of the observations that he made on a ban in the course of this afternoon's speech, found a justification for the imposition by member states of a ban on British beef and beef products, and that is a profoundly unsatisfactory state of affairs.
That brings me to a point that I wanted to make about the right hon. Member for Livingston. I have seldom heard a more self-indulgent speech made in the House from the Front Bench. By adopting the case of member states he makes it much harder for us to secure a lifting of the ban. Furthermore, everybody in the agriculture industry will have noticed that the right hon. Gentleman could not or would not say whether he would support a cull order. In truth, it was the most irrelevant and least illuminating speech that I have heard for some while. It surprises me that it was thought right to allow the shadow Foreign Secretary to move the motion when the Opposition agriculture spokesman is sitting beside him.
Mr. Robin Corbett: Will the Minister support a cull order?
Mr. Hogg: I shall shortly tell the House exactly where we stand on that matter.
Any discussion of BSE must start with the proposition that British beef is safe. I say that for at least four reasons. First, the only British beef on the United Kingdom market is from the younger animal, and that provides a high degree of assurance. Secondly, all BSE suspects are removed from the food chain. Thirdly, we have established in the slaughterhouses the most rigorous and comprehensive set of controls of any in Europe, with the result that all parts of the carcase capable of harbouring the infected agent are stripped out and destroyed. Fourthly, we have removed from the food chain all the meat and bonemeal that is believed to have triggered BSE in the first place.
Mr. Gordon Prentice: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hogg: No, I shall not give way at the moment.
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For all those reasons, I can say with complete confidence that British beef is safe and that the consumer can eat it, confident as to both its quality and its safety. That is not only my view or that expressed by the leading experts in the United Kingdom, but the view of the World Health Organisation and its veterinary equivalent, the Office International des Epizooties, and of Jacques Santer and Franz Fischler.
Mr. John Townend: Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr. Hogg: I shall give way in a moment.
It is therefore all the more unreasonable—indeed, it is unlawful—that member states should have imposed the ban in the first instance and that they should have defended its continuation thereafter. The ban is not based on scientific criteria, nor on a proper consideration of the objective facts. It was imposed and is now adhered to because of internal pressure in member states. I say that the single market is being disrupted for reasons that are wholly improper.
I give way, first, to the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Townend).
Mr. Gordon Prentice: Was it not an absolute disgrace that contaminated feed was still being exported from this country as late as June this year? How can we possibly expect the French and the other continental countries to believe that we have done everything we possibly can to eradicate the disease, when we continued to send them poisoned feed?
Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the facts. The controls that were put in place at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s related to the feeding of meat and bonemeal to ruminants. They did not preclude the feeding of meat and bonemeal to farm animals that were not ruminants. What was being exported was, therefore, also lawful in this country. We reinforced the controls this spring when we prohibited the feeding to all farm animals of rations containing meat and bonemeal. The objective of that was to prevent any risk of cross-contamination.
Mr. John Townend: In view of what my right hon. and learned Friend has said, does he agree that this country has been double-crossed by our European partners in respect of the lifting of the beef ban, just as we have been double-crossed in respect of the social chapter opt-out? Does he agree that they are enjoying taking British export markets and that they have no intention of lifting the ban for several years?
Mr. Hogg: I shall turn shortly to my assessment of the position of member states. If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I shall deal with his question when I reach that point in my speech.
Mr. Nick Ainger rose—
Mr. Barry Sheerman rose—
Mr. Hogg: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Ainger), but then I must make progress with my speech.
Mr. Ainger: The Minister has just spent some time describing how all the specified bovine offal has been

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removed from carcases and so cannot enter the human food chain and I agree with him that it is safe. Can he therefore explain to the House why the Government entered the Florence agreement?
Mr. Hogg: I now come to the Florence agreement in my speech. I believe that that agreement represents a triumph of the negotiating skills of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, because it provides a framework within which the ban can be lifted. The basic structure of the Florence agreement is that the United Kingdom undertook to take certain steps and, in return for that action, the European Union agreed to a progressive lifting of the ban.
We have already implemented all but one of the five Florence preconditions. We have withdrawn meat and bonemeal from farms and feedmills; we have introduced cattle passports; we have tightened yet further our slaughterhouse controls; and we have destroyed more than 850,000 cattle under the over-30-month scheme. Against that background we had every reason to expect an increased willingness on the part of member states to move on the ban.
Thus far, the signs have been disappointing. My clear impression, based on many discussions within and without the Council and from all that I have seen, heard and read, is that member states are facing strong internal pressures. Like us, they are having to assess the latest scientific evidence. That said, they do not appear to be in a position to agree to a rapid and substantial lifting of the ban, which was the basis for our commitments made at Florence.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Hogg: I will give way in a moment.
It seems that the most promising way forward might be to seek a lifting of the ban in respect of specialist herds and—more difficult—in respect of cattle born after 1 August 1996. In that context, it is worth noting that some parts of the United Kingdom are well placed in that the incidence of BSE is low and traceability is good.
Mr. Charles Wardle rose—
Mr. Hogg: I will give way to my hon. Friend, then to the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and then to other hon. Members who have been attempting to intervene.
Mr. Wardle: What my right hon. and learned Friend has to say about Florence and Europe is illuminating, but I hope that he will spend part of his speech talking about the plight of farmers in this country. Does he accept that the 10 per cent. reduction in the 30-month slaughter compensation has hit many farmers caught waiting in the slaughter queue, through no fault of their own, at the very time of year when feed costs are going up and they are
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already having to use winter feed supplies? Given all the chaos over which he has presided, why hit farmers when they are already down?
Mr. Hogg: I will tell my hon. Friend a great deal about the support that we have given to the beef sector. I am sure that he will be encouraged by the speed at which we are processing the backlog.
Mr. David Trimble: As the Minister has said, it has been obvious for some time that the solution to the ban will be through a United Kingdom-wide certified herd scheme under which, at present, many Ulster herds and some Scottish herds would qualify immediately. What is the position with regard to that scheme? Has a scheme been formally submitted to the Commission or is it being held back by a dog-in-the-manger attitude on the part of some others?
Mr. Hogg: It is true that some parts of the United Kingdom—the hon. Gentleman mentioned Ulster—are particularly well suited to benefit from certified herd or beef assurance schemes. That is based in part upon traceability and the low incidence of BSE in the Province. We have discussed with the European Commissioner and his officials various concepts surrounding the beef assurance scheme and the certified herd scheme. They have approved the beef assurance scheme for the United Kingdom market. We have not yet submitted detailed working papers, which would be the step preceding formal proposals by the Commission for a lifting of the ban to be put to the Standing Veterinary Committee.
Mr. Robert Jackson: My right hon. and learned Friend knows of the anxiety within the farming community that the Florence agreement should be implemented by our partners and, therefore, by ourselves. My right hon. and learned Friend has mentioned his clear impressions and the signs that our partners will not honour their commitment to the Florence agreement. Surely the simplest thing would be to ask them whether they would implement their commitment to the agreement if we do what we have to do under the terms of that agreement.
Mr. Hogg: If we were to ask a question in those terms, we would simply be referred back to the Florence agreement. When we move forward with particular proposals, we must judge what sort of response we will get. It is always difficult, but we must judge that by people's words and deeds, both public and private. It is on that basis that I have made my statement.
Madam Speaker, you looked at your watch, so I shall make progress and shall give way to other hon. Members later.
It is important that we should not lose sight of the scientific facts. Those facts were usefully brought together by Professor Anderson in his article in Nature magazine, to which the right hon. Member for Livingston referred in somewhat disparaging terms.
There are two key points. First, BSE will be eradicated from the British herd by 2001 or thereabouts. The number of cases is falling year on year by about 40 per cent. The high point was in 1992, when we had 36,700 cases. That figure fell in 1994 to 24,000 cases; in 1995 there were 14,000, and in 1996 we expect about 8,000. Secondly,

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there are no credible cull policies—that is, policies involving a size of cull that the House would accept—which would bring forward the date when BSE will be eliminated, or decisively accelerate the rate of decline.
I shall spell out that point a little more clearly. We have already had around 160,000 confirmed cases of BSE. Before the disease dies out in 2001 or thereabouts, we are likely to have around 8,000 more cases. A cull policy involving 128,000—that being the number agreed at Florence—or, indeed, any cull that would commend itself to the House, would still leave us with about two thirds of the anticipated number of confirmed cases. There are no public health arguments for a substantial cull, because the measures to which I have referred already address that question.
Mr. Tam Dalyell rose—
Mr. Malcolm Bruce rose—
Mr. John Greenway rose—
Mr. Hogg: I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway), and then I shall give way to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell).
Mr. Greenway: My right hon. and learned Friend said—accurately, I suspect—that other member states seemed unprepared to honour the Florence agreement if the cull went ahead. There is growing support among farmers for the cull to go ahead so that we honour our side of the bargain. Will my right hon. and learned Friend tell the House what the European Commissioner's view is? My understanding is that the European Commissioner, Franz Fischler, has throughout been helpful to my right hon. and learned Friend and the Government in trying to find a way of resolving this problem. It should be possible to get agreement, at least with Franz Fischler, on a way of resolving the conundrum that unless we have the cull, the ban will not be lifted. That is increasingly what more of our farmers think.
Mr. Hogg: I have always found the Commissioner to be straight and direct. I am grateful to him for the candid way in which he has always dealt with me.
The position of farmers has changed. In the summer and early autumn of this year, the National Farmers Union was strongly opposed to an accelerated cull. It has modified its position, but it has an unduly optimistic expectation of how far the ban would be lifted. The important issue that it has to face is whether it wants a full cull for a very limited lifting of the ban. That is a matter of great importance to them and to the House.
Mr. Dalyell: On the latest scientific research, Nature has not addressed the question of what is being done to find the basic causes. That was addressed by Dr. Bob Will of the neuropathogens unit and the CJD research surveillance unit at the Western general hospital in Edinburgh, who came to a meeting of 130 farmers and butchers which I chaired in my constituency. What is the basic science, especially in relation to the suspicions about prions? Will the Government make a statement about how they are setting about the basic science, because they
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cannot be sure about 2001 or any other date unless more is known about the root causes, and that may require more expenditure on scientific research.
Mr. Hogg: There are a number of possible causes of BSE in the United Kingdom herd, but I believe that the most widely accepted view among experts is that the feeding of meat and bonemeal containing the remains of sheep triggered the condition, although other causes have been suggested.
Mr. Robin Cook: The Minister said that Franz Fischler had always been candid with him, but did not convey to the House what view Franz Fischler had expressed when being candid. Has not Franz Fischler gone on record as saying, as recently as two weeks ago, that it will not be possible to continue lifting any part of the ban until the condition of a selective cull is fulfilled? Will he now present proposals to fulfil that condition? If he does, we will not oppose him. Will he now present proposals for a cull?
Mr. Hogg: We now have the humorous situation of the right hon. Gentleman's having said one thing in his speech and another in his intervention. But he is right: Commissioner Franz Fischler has always been very direct with me, and he has always said that a cull must take place. That statement, however, conceals as much as it discloses. The rate of lifting of the ban, the rate of implementation of the cull and the stages that will be delivered in response to a lifting of the ban are matters for discussion in the European Union and the European Commission.
Rev. Ian Paisley: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hogg: No, I want to make some progress. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] I do not think that anyone can accuse me of not having given way. I think that I have given way to eight or nine hon. Members so far.
Let me say something about maternal transmission. The House will recall that, early in the summer, scientists advised that the calves of affected dams were more likely to develop BSE than those of unaffected dams. On further consideration, it has become clear that we may not be seeing maternal transmission of the disease in the true sense. What we may be seeing is transmission of a susceptibility to contaminated feedstuffs, which is a different matter.
The difference is important. If there is true maternal transmission, certain cull policies might be justified on that basis. Quite different conclusions would flow from a decision that what was being transmitted was, in fact, a susceptibility to contaminated feedstuffs. I hope that we shall have a view on that important matter within a few months.
For all those reasons, we have not presented the House with proposals for a full-scale cull. It is important to see the outcome of the European Union's scientific deliberations on the latest evidence. It is also useful to have the opportunity of listening to the views of hon. Members—
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: In that case, will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hogg:—in particular, on the balance to be struck between likely progress on the ban as I have outlined it,

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and the implementation of a selective cull. And, of course, we have not completed the clearing of the backlog under the over-30-months scheme.
Rev. Ian Paisley rose—
Mr. Bruce: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman serves no interest by shouting in that way. I give way to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley).
Rev. Ian Paisley: In his reply to the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble), the Minister said that he had discussed the certified herd scheme with the European authorities, but had not yet submitted papers to them. Will he promise us that he will take that course, and submit the papers?
Mr. Hogg: I think that there may be some misunderstanding. I have discussed certified herds and the beef assurance scheme with the Commission and the Commissioner, and they have had papers; but there is a difference between having papers and having the formal working proposals— the documents referred to in the Florence documents—which triggers the process that causes the Commission, we hope, to go to the Standing Veterinary Committee. The Commission and the commissioners have not had those formal working papers.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce rose—
Mr. Roy Beggs rose—
Mr. Hogg: I am going to give way to the hon. Member for East Antrim (Mr. Beggs).
Mr. Beggs: My hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) have both pressed the Minister. My question is simple: why have the papers not been completed and forwarded for consideration?
Mr. Hogg: There is a distinction between discussing the proposal for certified herds and discussing the beef assurance scheme. We discussed the concept of the scheme and the scheme itself in the context, initially, of the UK because it is an exception to the over-30-month scheme. We had approval from the Commission to go ahead with that. It is also a step in the lifting of the ban, but moving on the formal lifting of the ban must be triggered by a cull, by bringing forward specific proposals following a cull, and by putting them to the Commission, on the basis of which it can lay formal proposals to the Standing Veterinary Committee. We have not yet done that.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce rose—
Mr. Andrew Welsh rose—
Mr. Hogg: I have already and on various occasions explained why we have not yet done that. I turn to the over-30-month scheme, which has been the subject of a certain amount of comment in this place.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hogg: I am making some progress. I have seldom seen a more excited gentleman than the hon. Gentleman.
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I remind hon. Members of the origin of the over-30-month scheme. Its first purpose was to provide an extra safeguard for public health. It also met the joint demands of supermarkets and the National Farmers Union. I agreed with those views and persuaded our European Union partners to adopt the scheme as an EU measure, funded by European funds.
The over-30-month scheme has important and beneficial consequences. First, it has reassured the consumer. We must not overlook the fact that, having dropped significantly, the consumption of beef is now back to around 80 per cent. of its pre-March level. Secondly, the scheme has underpinned the beef market. Had we not slaughtered about 860,000 beasts under the scheme, the beef market would be much weaker.
Mr. Sheerman: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hogg: I will make some progress and then give way.
It is true that there is a backlog of animals to be culled, but in the past four weeks the position has greatly improved. The register that we have compiled shows a present backlog of around 320,000 beasts. We have taken steps to improve throughput: we have altered the rendering mix and brought more capacity on stream. On 8 October, I announced a further £16.6 million for extra cold storage. Taken together, those steps have enabled us to increase the weekly rate of slaughter to 59,000. The register will enable us to give priority to registered animals—to animals now on the backlog—and on that basis we hope and believe that we will he able to clear the backlog on a UK basis by around Christmas.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that much of what he says will be deeply disappointing to beef farmers in Scotland who, only on Monday, met Franz Fischler and came out of the meeting urging him to put pressure on the Minister to secure the implementation of the cull, in accordance with the Florence agreement? Does the Minister not acknowledge that Scottish farmers are ready, willing and able to start implementing the cull now, and that that could be the first phase of the British implementation of the Florence agreement? Why will he not agree to that?
Mr. Hogg: The House and everyone concerned with the debate have to ask themselves this: what is the likely response to the imposition of the accelerated slaughter plan? The best judgment that we can make at the moment is that member states are facing very strong internal pressure from their consumers, farming unions and others not to agree to a rapid and substantial lifting of the ban. Therefore, it seems to us, probably, that the best way forward is to concentrate on the specialist herds and possibly cattle born after 1 August. What this House has got to do is to decide whether the balance is the correct one, it being less favourable than that which we anticipated, and had every reason to anticipate to be the case at the time of Florence.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Hogg: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack).
Sir Patrick Cormack: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way. He will know from his

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visit that farmers in Staffordshire take a similar line to that just mentioned by the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce). I understand my right hon. and learned Friend's dilemma, but can he not seek an early meeting with his colleagues and a firm undertaking from them that if the accelerated cull is implemented, there will indeed be an assurance that the ban will be lifted?
Mr. Hogg: It would be highly desirable of course that, if we had to implement any accelerated cull policy, we did so against the background of an agreed timetable for the lifting of the ban, but the House needs to be honest with itself and with the country: we are not going to get from the European member states a precise timetable for the lifting of the ban. Therefore, the Government and others have to make a judgment as to what the member states will do if we take certain steps, including undertaking an accelerated cull.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Hogg: I give way to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon).
Mr. Seamus Mallon: The Minister will be aware that European Commissioner Fischler has said clearly that he will make special arrangements for Scotland and the north of Ireland because of the protections available there. Will the Minister not put the Commissioner to the test by asking for those special arrangements for Northern Ireland and Scotland? He will then find out the commitment of the Commission. He will help the Scottish beef industry and help to save the Northern Ireland beef industry, while learning what, in effect, he suspects.
Mr. Hogg: I have not in fact heard the Commissioner express himself in precisely the terms that the hon. Gentleman has outlined, but I have already made the point that there are some parts of the United Kingdom that are particularly well placed, having regard to the low incidence of BSE and traceability. That fact is well understood by the Commissioner.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Hogg: I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) and then I must make some progress.
Mr. William Cash: Will my right hon. and learned Friend accept that what he has just said could be interpreted as weasel words? Furthermore, does he accept that, in the light of everything that has gone on in the past few months, the most important thing is that we get an absolute guarantee from the member states? It is not a matter of judgment, but a matter of practicality that we get an absolute guarantee from them that if we honour our side of the Florence agreement, they will lift the ban. If not, there will be serious trouble from those on the Conservative Benches.
Mr. Hogg: I do not think I justify the criticism of having used weasel words—I stated the position absolutely plainly. I say to my hon. Friend that I might wish that it was otherwise, but the position is that we
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are not going to get from the member states an absolute guaranteed timetable leading to dates when the ban will be lifted. We are not going to get that.
Mr. Robin Cook rose—
Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman will just have to contain himself for the moment. I am not going to pretend that we will get such a guaranteed timetable because if I did so, I should be deceiving the House.
Mr. Cook: The right hon. and learned Gentleman has now said twice that it is not possible to get an absolute timetable out of the European member states. Can he therefore explain why the Prime Minister said as late as 4 July that the ban would be lifted by November?
Mr. Hogg: The Prime Minister also made it plain that it was not possible to get a timetable from the European Union—which has always been the case. I am glad to have an opportunity, once again, to reaffirm that fact. Inevitably, we must make a judgment on the likely response to any action that we may think fit to take within the framework of the Florence agreement.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Hogg: No; I shall make some more progress now.
The over-30-month scheme has been an important way in which to reassure the consumer and to underpin the beef market. It is, however, only one strand in an extended policy of support. Since 20 March 1996, the Government have committed huge sums in support of the beef industry and the related sectors. I shall deal with the latter point first.
We concluded that we could not assist everyone who had suffered loss: there were too many of them, and the costs would be too great. Therefore, we concentrated financial assistance on those links in the chain whose survival we judged to be essential, and which would survive only if Government funds were made available. That is why we provided transitional aid of up to £118 million for the rendering industry and up to £100 million for the slaughtering sector.
Mr. Robert Key: My right hon. and learned Friend will know that one part of the industry that has not received any assistance is the cattle head deboners, who effectively have not only had their business stopped but had their property sterilised, if not confiscated. That has been deeply distressing and has caused much unemployment, and it is irrational. Is my right hon. and learned Friend prepared to meet—or to allow one of his Ministers to meet—representatives of cattle head deboners to find a sensible way forward on the issue?
Mr. Hogg: I know that that matter causes considerable concern to my hon. Friend and to other hon. Members. The issue was, today, the subject of an Adjournment debate, in which my hon. Friend spoke. The Government's position was clearly outlined in the debate by my hon. Friend the Minister of State. I do not wish to imply for a moment that we can move from that position. If my hon. Friend would like to bring a delegation of representatives of those who have been affected to my

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hon. Friend the Minister of State, I know that he would be extremely glad to see them. However, I do not wish to arouse expectations.
Mr. Robert McCartney: Does the Minister agree that the beef crisis has borne more heavily on Northern Ireland—because of its high percentage of imports, at more than 77 per cent.—than on any other part of the United Kingdom? Does he also agree that the best method of testing the bona fides of those who imposed the ban would be to put forward our best case—which, undoubtedly, is Northern Ireland? Northern Ireland has the highest degree of animal traceability and the lowest incidence of BSE, and its agricultural producers have suffered to the greatest extent. Therefore, will the Minister press Northern Ireland's case as a pilot scheme for testing the bona fides of those imposing the ban?
Mr. Hogg: The hon. and learned Gentleman constructs a very powerful case for Northern Ireland, which I understand. We have to approach the matter collectively, having regard to the entirety of the United Kingdom. I realise that the facts mentioned by the hon. and learned Gentleman constitute a powerful case, which is already known to the Commission and to some member states. I shall ensure that those arguments are always borne in mind by all those who have to make decisions on those issues.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Hogg: I feel that I must give way to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman); he is getting so excited.
Mr. Sheerman: I thank the Minister for giving way at last. He is aware of the pent-up frustration of the farming community, and has described some of the hardships it is suffering. However, the frustration is not only over Government inaction. According to figures I received yesterday from the Minister's colleague, since March there has been a 15 to 20 per cent. drop in the market price of beef. According to figures that I received from the Library today, however, there has been only a 1 per cent. drop in the retail price of beef. Farmers and consumers are being cheated. Will he explain why? Farmers and consumers would like to know.
Mr. Hogg: Market prices are determined by the market, but the hon. Gentleman is right that there has been a substantial reduction in the price of beef sold for consumption. I am glad to say that that has increased somewhat recently and now stands at about 100p a kilo, which is still about 20 per cent. down on this time last year. He brings me naturally to my next point.
Sir Michael Spicer: As I understand it, my right hon. and learned Friend seems to have been saying in the past 20 minutes or so—I may have got him wrong, but I am sure that he will correct me if I have—that we did not get out of Florence what we expected. We are honouring all our side of the bargain, including being prepared to offer the accelerated cull, in return for nothing. In fact, he has identified public opinion
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around Europe as being such that it has hardened the position of other countries against us. Is it not perhaps time that we started to contemplate a new bout of disruption, a sort of double whammy of disruption for when we get to Dublin?
Mr. Hogg: Policies of disruption are—and should always be—policies of last resort. We never thought that we had a timetable in the Florence agreement. We established a process. At the time of Florence we believed, and had every reason to do so, that if we fulfilled our commitments there would be a rapid and substantial lifting of the ban. It has become plain over the summer, for the reasons that I have given, that, at least at the moment, member states are unable to deliver the rapid and substantial lifting that we all expected. I think that that is due to the internal pressures in their own countries.
Mr. Paul Tyler: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hogg: I should like to proceed and explain the support that we have given to the beef industry.
Mr. Tyler: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hogg: No, I am going to make some progress.
Since June we have committed something like £263 million in support, both direct and indirect, to beef producers. That includes the July package of £109 million. I announced in September an increase of £60 million in the hill livestock compensatory allowance cattle rates. Last October, the Agriculture Council agreed aid worth £50 million in the United Kingdom, which we intend to spend in ways that will be of particular benefit to Buckler producers. I announced in Bournemouth further aid worth £29 million. Today, I am pleased to announce that we shall be spending that £29 million on a second beef marketing payment scheme, covering the period between July and September.
The measures that I have described demonstrate two things: first, the absolute commitment of this Conservative Government to the needs of the rural economy and the future of British agriculture and, secondly, that the Labour motion, one not even moved by the Labour agriculture spokesman, is a fraud and a sham and should be rejected with contempt.
4.42 pm
Mr. John Home Robertson: I must, as ever, declare an interest since I have a personal position in a family farming business. I also have a constituency interest, since I represent many hill farmers in the Lammermuir hills. The Minister talked about fraud and a sham. I am afraid that farmers and people working in ancillary industries to the beef industry regard him as the fraud and the sham. We have just heard an awful speech from him, which was based on the unsustainable premise that our European partners are as untrustworthy as he has demonstrated himself to be over recent months.
After 18 years, I have learned to expect the worst from the Government. The problem that we are facing today meets all three dictionary definitions of the word "shambles": a mess or muddle; a butcher's slaughterhouse; a scene of carnage. That is what the industry is facing.

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Since the crisis erupted in March, we have had a succession of schemes, debates, statements and palliatives, but we are still in a multiple crisis. The word "crisis" is overworked in the House, but it is for real on this occasion. There is a crisis of animal health, which now appears to be connected with a new form of CJD that has killed 14 people, possibly because some infected cattle got into the food chain in the late 1980s. There is also a crisis of consumer confidence around the world—tragically, with a consequent economic crisis that has engulfed an industry employing 600,000 people in the United Kingdom, mainly in fragile rural areas.
Even leaving aside the point that the disease should not have been allowed to develop in the first place, the Government must stand condemned for letting things progress from bad to worse and on towards unmitigated disaster during 10 years of prevarication and ineptitude.
The priorities must surely be to eradicate the disease and to restore consumer confidence in beef. Both require the fullest co-operation with our European Union partners, but the Government's political agenda requires confrontation with them whenever possible, so we started off with the infantile beef war earlier in the year.
There is a consensus almost everywhere, except in the Government, that a selective, targeted cull of the cattle most likely to be infected with BSE is desirable to speed up the decline of the disease and to help to restore consumer confidence. The whole House has accepted that in previous debates and I made the point in a debate as early as 28 March. Since then, the Government have been all over the place. They had a self-destructive confrontation with the European Union. Then they decided to implement a selective cull as the basis of the Florence settlement of 22 June. Then they decided to renege on that settlement.
Meanwhile, the beef industry and associated industries, employing a total of 600,000 people, are on the rack. Butchers, hauliers, farmers and many others are facing ruin. We now have a serious consequential animal welfare problem because large numbers of unmarketable cattle are stuck on farms. It will be difficult to find feed and housing for them during the winter. Problems will certainly arise from that.
The Minister mentioned the over-30-month slaughter scheme which is working, after a fashion, better in Scotland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. However, there are serious delays in some areas. In September, the Government cut the compensation payable to farmers under the scheme by 10 per cent., to add grief to the businesses caught up in the queue. The scheme is, by definition, not targeted. It is a pretty crude measure to take stock off the market. We have the scheme, but there is no sign of progress towards reassuring consumers in export markets, let alone a lifting of the ban.
The Prime Minister announced the Florence agreement proudly to the House at the end of June.
Mr. William McKelvey: The triumph.
Mr. Home Robertson: The triumph, as my hon. Friend calls it. The framework referred to in the agreement stipulated the action that the United Kingdom is committed to taking to accelerate the disappearance of the disease. When in place, that action will bring about a step-by-step relaxation of the export ban.
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The terms could not have been clearer. Without action on a selective cull of cattle likely to be infected with BSE, there will be no end to the export ban. That was accepted by the industry, by the European Union, by the House and, ostensibly, by the Government but, eight months on, nothing has happened.
The Minister mentioned his doubts about the willingness of the European Union to keep to the time scale suggested. Why have the Government made no move to keep their part of the bargain on the time scale? As far as I can make out, the Minister of Agriculture has done damn all in England and Wales.
There has been some posturing by the Scottish Office, but it seems that only Northern Ireland will4 be able to fulfil the Florence criteria. I had the privilege of visiting the Northern Ireland Agriculture Department a couple of weeks ago with colleagues on the committee of the British-Irish parliamentary body and I was impressed by what I saw there. The Department has developed an elaborate computerised record system for all cattle in the Province to help to promote quality assurance and to eradicate other diseases. Happily and coincidentally, that development should make it possible to make rapid progress with a selective cull in Northern Ireland because the Department can identify the relevant cattle.
Mr. Alex Salmond: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, rather more than two years ago, Aberdeen and Northern Marts which, as he knows, is one of the chief marketing and slaughter companies in Scotland, commissioned a feasibility study into a traceability system for Scotland? According to Brian Pack, the chief executive of Aberdeen and Northern Marts, such a system could be implemented in a matter of months. However, the Government expressed no interest in it. Does the hon. Gentleman have any comment to make on the fact that, at no time during the BSE crisis, have the Government shown any interest in introducing a traceability scheme in Scotland?
Mr. Home Robertson: I doubt whether the scheme could be implemented in a matter of months, but I believe that it is deplorable that the Government have not even begun to look for the cattle concerned and have not put together anything like the quality record system that exists in Northern Ireland. I agree with the thrust of the point made by the hon. Gentleman.
It will probably be necessary for the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture to locate about 2,000 cattle which will need to be slaughtered under a selective programme. The Northern Irish could probably do that immediately, which is to the credit of the Northern Ireland Office. I deplore the fact that neither the Scottish Office nor the Ministry of Agriculture is moving in the same direction.
Mr. Mallon: I take the hon. Gentleman's point about the north of Ireland. He said that the north of Ireland fulfilled the Florence criteria. In reality, there are 1,700 cattle, instantly traceable, which, I am told by the authorities, could be dealt with in one day if the Government asked the EU Commission to make such an

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arrangement for the north of Ireland. That is what is standing between the beef industry in the north of Ireland and its potential demise.
Mr. Home Robertson: The point is clearly made. The preparatory work has been done in Northern Ireland and it should be done in Scotland, in Wales and in England.
Characteristically, the Scottish Office has been blowing hot and cold on the issue. The Secretary of State suggested that he would achieve great things when he attended last month's Agriculture Council meeting. Interestingly, he wrote to hon. Members on 23 September to report on progress. He said:
"my officials are working closely with those in the SNFU to ensure that we can progress preparations as far as possible in advance, so that we are in a position to start culling in Scotland if circumstances permit."
We understand that that would have involved about 4,000 cattle.
Presumably, such a cull would have been carried out with a view to getting an early lifting of the export ban for the whole of Scotland or at least for clean specialist beef herds, mostly in the hills and uplands of Scotland. The letter was good news. It seemed that the intention was to start the process of selective culling to fulfil the Florence conditions and thus to make it possible to restart beef exports from Scotland, which are vital for the Scottish economy.
However, I am a naturally suspicious soul, especially where the Scottish Office is concerned, so I tabled a parliamentary question last week to the Secretary of State just to find out how the Scottish Office was getting on with finding the cattle in the cohorts that were likely to be infected with BSE and that would need to be culled to fulfil the Florence criteria.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson), replied:
"Data on all herds with confirmed cases of BSE are held at the Central Veterinary Laboratory. This data can be used to identify the herd of birth of BSE cases—and hence animals subject to the same feeding regimes; that is, the birth cohorts. To identify all these at-risk animals, it is necessary to visit the herds of origin, to identify the cohort animals remaining in such herds and finally to determine the present location of cohort animals which have moved to other herds. This involves detailed inspection of records. In May of this year, the CVL made an estimate that a maximum of 127,000 cohort animals were present on farms in Britain, of which some 4,300 were in Scotland. Given the need for on-farm visits and reference to on-farm records, it is impossible to give a reliable estimate of how long it would take to identify all these animals."—[Official Report, 11 November 1996; Vol. 285,c.55.]
The agreement was made in June and now, five months later, the Department has not even started to set up the record system, never mind identifying the cattle that would need to be culled in order to fulfil the Florence criteria. It has not even started to look for the cohorts and individual cattle that are likely to be infected in preparation for fulfilment of the agreement that was reached in June.
There may be a problem with confidentiality at the Central Veterinary Laboratory. The CVL is either unable or unwilling to disclose or disseminate information about infected animals and the farms where they originated. For goodness sake, surely the Government should be able to address administrative points of that nature.
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In England and Wales, the Department has not even pretended to start preparatory work for the cull. I appreciate the reluctance in the dairy industry to lose milking cows, but the disease is largely rooted in the dairy herd, so that is probably the main sector where it will have to be eradicated. The Florence agreement is all we have. Why are the British Government sabotaging the agreement that they trumpeted in June?
The Department should address another practicality—the discrepancy in the EU rules whereby in other nations in the European Union, including the Republic of Ireland, individual herds are deemed to be infected, whereas in the United Kingdom it is the farms that are deemed to be infected. Therefore, farms in France, the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere where cases of BSE have been identified can take the straightforward step of slaughtering cattle to wipe the slate clean and start afresh, but the current rules make that impossible in any part of the United Kingdom where the land of the farm is flagged up as being infected. That will have to be addressed and I should be grateful if the Minister could do so in his reply to the debate or in writing.
Let me conclude by quoting a mild-mannered neighbour of mine, Mr. Sandy Mole, the president of the National Farmers Union for Scotland. He represents people who would normally tend to support the Conservative party, but he and his members and those representing the other industries that are directly affected by this disaster feel betrayed and furious.
On 2 October Mr. Mole said:
"The recent outbreak of xenophobia led by the usual gang of anti-European fanatics has put the Florence Agreement in real danger… We must not allow people's livelihoods to become embroiled in a festival of political point scoring."
That is precisely what was happening within the Conservative party at the time.
On 8 October, Mr. Mole said:
"We have lost patience with the political wrangles which stand in the way of progress being made to lift the export ban on beef. The time has come for positive progress to be made. The Prime Minister made a deal: he must stand by it … Scotland's people will not stand for this sort of discrimination"—
that was in favour of Northern Ireland—
"which would so blatantly be based on the Parliamentary arithmetic of keeping fringe interests quiet. The Secretary of State for Scotland is in no doubt about the strength of our views on this subject."
Finally, Mr. Mole said on 11 October:
"In all this Government muddle we are trying to get across the simple message that the selective cull must begin or there will be no progress in lifting the ban anywhere in the United Kingdom. It is high time John Major took a grip of this bumbling shambles of a policy before some agreement is forced on Scotland by civil servants sitting behind desks in London."
That was strong stuff from the president of the National Farmers Union of Scotland. He is right to suspect that Scottish interests may be being sacrificed.
It is time that the Secretary of State for Scotland stood up for that country. The National Farmers Union of Scotland is right to be furious at the betrayal of the Florence agreement. That is the only way forward for the British beef industry, which employs 600,000 people directly or indirectly. Therefore, I urge the Government to stop deceiving the House, the country, the industry and the European Union and to begin to make serious progress towards implementing the Florence agreement.
4.59 pm
Mr. Tom King: The briefest reading of the Opposition motion, together with the announcement that it would be moved by the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), gave the clearest sign that today's debate would be more about politics than about the serious issues surrounding BSE, which deeply concern so many of our constituents and constitute a major crisis for the agriculture industry. The right hon. Gentleman had the gall to open his speech by saying that the matter had been too little discussed in the House and claiming the credit for being the first to launch a full-day debate on the subject. Where has he been all these months, when a number of us—I pay tribute to some hon. Members on the Opposition Benches—have been present and debating the issues?
The right hon. Member for Livingston then had the nerve to make a speech that had little to do with BSE but much to do with his political agenda. I thought that he might have done the House, and the agriculture industry, the credit of being better briefed. He did not even know whether his party was in favour of the accelerated cull and he had to be briefed afterwards. It was not his finest parliamentary hour and his whole body language showed that perhaps he also realised that.
The House will know that I have not been an uncritical admirer of the handling of the crisis. I understand that, since the original, unhelpful leak in the newspapers that precipitated the announcement on BSE, my right hon. and learned Friend the Agriculture Minister and his colleagues have been faced with a massive problem. I recall the panic at the start that affected the markets. Auctioneers even rang farmers to tell them not to bring any cattle to the market and nobody had any expectation about when the auctions might be resumed. It is against that background that I review the problems.
The crisis has posed major problems. I do not regard the Minister of Agriculture and the team of staff at the various official levels of the Ministry of Agriculaire as uniquely equipped to handle the crisis. We need to have lean and efficient Ministries, not over-manned Ministries, but when they are faced with a crisis of this kind, there should be a system that can give them the reinforcement that they need to tackle the problems. That is an important general point of public administration. The crisis has challenged the Ministry of Agriculture, the Intervention Board and the industry.
The hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) said that hauliers had had their livelihoods destroyed, but other hauliers have never made so much money in their lives. The crisis challenged the industry, as I have said, but the Government said that we must all pull together to face the crisis. The Prime Minister made a pledge and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture repeated it. Our determination was to save the industry. That is what we sought to do and that is what I believe that we have achieved. The tragedy is that, in certain parts, the industry has not pulled together. I am sure that I am not the only hon. Member who has heard complaints about people who have exploited the system and taken advantage of the crisis. Preferment has been given in the abattoirs and various deals have been done in which certain people have exploited the situation. That has led to the necessary introduction of the registration scheme and my local
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farmers union believes that that will deal with the problem, together with the speed-up of the over-30-month cull.
I hope that we shall hear further details about how we shall deal with the further arisings of over-30-month cattle when the original backlog has been cleared, and perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister of State will be able to say something about that when he winds up. I also hope that we have come through the worst of the mischief and that the new arrangements will ensure greater fairness.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Agriculture Minister referred to a figure of 850,000 for the cull. He referred to a further 320,000 that will come through the registration scheme. I should like to know whether that is the number of cattle still waiting to be culled or whether it represents the number of cattle that has been registered, of which perhaps some 100,000 have been slaughtered in two weeks at 50,000 a week. If the latter is the case, the number will already have been significantly dented; I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister of State will be able to confirm that.
Against that background, the fifth tenet of the Florence agreement—the accelerated cull—takes on a different dimension. If we have slaughtered 850,000 cattle and if we are going for some 250,000 more, we shall move towards 1.2 million. It has been suggested that, because some of the cattle in the cohorts that might have been part of the accelerated cull have already gone under the present culling process, the actual requirement of the accelerated cull might be less than 10 per cent. of what we have already slaughtered.
Sentiment in my part of the world is now changing. We have not implemented the accelerated cull—the fifth ingredient in the Florence agreement—because the full capacity has been taken up by the over-30-month scheme. It is only by the second or third week of December or by January that we shall be in a position, allowing for any further arisings of cattle not in the backlog but now over 30 months, in which we can embark on an accelerated cull.
Mr. William Ross rose—
Mr. King: I doubt that I shall be able to answer any question on the subject, but I shall give way.
Mr. Ross: I am trying to be helpful to the right hon. Gentleman, as usual. Is he aware that in Northern Ireland, where we formerly had some 2,000 cattle that would have been covered by the accelerated cull, that number is now down to 1,700 because 300 have already been disposed of through the on-going slaughter policy? Northern Ireland is not as far advanced as the rest of the country and if we apply the same statistic to Great Britain, his figures are likely to be correct.
Mr. King: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I have, from my personal experience, the highest regard for the records that are kept in Northern Ireland. They are why the hon. Gentleman is able to give us such specific information about the situation in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Paul Marland: As we have fulfilled four of the five conditions that were laid

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down at the Florence summit, is it not irritating that we have received no co-operation from our European partners over some way to lift the ban?
Mr. King: I was not prepared to support an accelerated cull in July. I thought that the question was premature and we did not know what further scientific evidence would arise in the following months. We heard much about maternal transmission, although I am not quite sure what the position on that is now. Other developments took place and now the question arises for serious consideration. We should now address that issue seriously with the Commission. I understand the problem that my right hon. and learned Friend the Agriculture Minister has now, because I appreciate the problem of what I call the gelatine retreat. My understanding is that we are now clear on gelatine, on the authority of the European Union and the Commission, which has the authority to lift the ban, but the other member states—I stand to be corrected on this point—have all found ways to prevent any gelatine from being admitted to their countries. That is obviously a most unsatisfactory situation and one that we need to address.
The more painful aspect of the present situation is not just the position in individual member states but the nature of the worldwide ban. Some alleviation of that ban would help with the opening of markets which are important to our farmers.
Mr. Salmond: Does the right hon. Gentleman understand the frustration of Northern Ireland Members? In Northern Ireland, animals for the selective slaughter can be identified. In Scotland, we have no backlog in the 30-month scheme. We are hanging around while our industries are in crisis waiting for the Minister of Agriculture to decide to support the selective slaughter. Why cannot Scotland and Northern Ireland get on with the job and why will not the Government support that?
Mr. King: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman's intervention reinforces the belief in the west country that the allocation of animals for slaughter was unfairly tilted. We in the west country still have a substantial backlog. That is not entirely a serious response. The hon. Gentleman has just trodden on a painful grievance of the west country, where a significant number of animals are awaiting slaughter. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) will know why I say that. We now need to challenge the European Union and the Commission to move towards the accelerated cull and lift the ban.
I have thrown some brickbats around today, but I also want to pay some tributes. I pay tribute to the British people. The figures on beef consumption are encouraging. In the west country and in other areas, people have shown a determination to support British agriculture. That is one of the things that has helped to ensure that consumption of beef is as high as it is, although we obviously want to see it improve, and to see the price of beef improve.
I pay tribute to the Government. They have faced many difficulties. The right hon. Member for Livingston said that we had done too little too late. He said that to a Government who have committed some £3,000 million to this process over three years. In their tongue-tied way, the Opposition criticise the Government. I challenge the hon.
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Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang), when he replies to the debate, to say that, if the Labour party had been in government, there would have been the slightest chance that they would have invested such sums.
My farmers have many problems and I have fought many battles with them and for them in this crisis. There was panic when farmers looked at the cattle on their farms and wondered whether they could sell them and when auctioneers rang up and told them not to bother to bring cattle to market because there was no market for them. People wondered whether they might have to bury their cattle. The Government's action and the funds that they have put in have saved the industry. It is about time that that was said. There has been too much knocking of my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister and endless criticism. The markets are living. Farmers can take cattle to the markets and sell them. We are moving through the problem. It is easy to jibe and criticise, but it is right that that tribute and recognition should be given.
5.13 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler: I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), not so much because of his peroration but because of his introductory remarks. He rightly said that we have discussed the BSE crisis in the House on a number of occasions. I am reminded of the text on which I was brought up:
"Joy shall he in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance."
I welcome warmly the Labour party's recognition—at long last—of the severity of the crisis, and I remind the House that on four previous occasions it has been conspicuous by its absence.
On 13 May, seven eighths of Pie Labour party failed to support us in the Division Lobby when we made a careful analysis of, and gave specific warnings about, the dire consequences of mishandling the crisis. Again on 21 May—the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) referred to this—the leader of the Labour party not only failed to support us, but shamefully endorsed the ludicrously counter-productive measures that the Government proposed, no doubt simply because he was scared by the jingoism of the tabloid press. It was sad, and I hope that the words of the right hon. Member for Livingston this evening will be taken as an indication that the Opposition will not be sucked into those counter-productive war games again.
On 25 June, after the ignominious collapse of the non-co-operation tactics at Florence, the Labour leadership again failed to support us here in the House and in the Division Lobby; in relation to both the ham-fisted Hogg diplomacy and to the escalating shambles over the cattle cull, nine tenths of the Labour party, including its leader, failed to vote.
On 24 July, when we had our last chance before the recess to inject some justice and urgency into the cull confusion, all but a handful of Labour Members simply went home. That showed how important they thought the issue was and how interested they were in rural areas. I note that the right hon. Member for Livingston failed to vote on every one of those occasions, so I take it that his appearance for a short time in the debate this afternoon is but a momentary lapse of attention to other matters. The

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only mention of BSE in major speeches in the debate on the Queen's Speech was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown).
Avid listeners to "The Archers"—I suspect that you are one, Mr. Deputy Speaker, being a cultivated man—will have noted the comments in this week's omnibus edition. Ruth bemoaned the failures of the Government, but Phil rightly remarked that the official Opposition had "kept pretty quiet". The victims of Government incompetence deserved more sustained, consistent and robust support.
I draw attention to the people who have been directly affected by the on-going crisis. I have here a report from the Western Morning News entitled "BSE tragedy as farmer is crushed to death by unsold bulls". It says:
"A farmer has been killed by his own animals—which he had been unable to sell because of the BSE crisis.
Cohn Burley, 35, a divorced father of three young children, was found dead by his father at the 100-acre farm he worked on his own at Higher Trebarveth, Ponsanooth, near Redruth.
Investigations are being made into the death of the popular and hard-working man, which has shocked the farming community where he lived, but it appears he was crushed by 16 21-month-old bulls which had remained on the farm after the price dropped out of the market because of the BSE crisis.…
But his uncle, John Burley, said last night: 'The BSE scare has caused his death. Those bulls would have been off the farm by now if he had been able to sell them.'"
That is but one hideous consequence of the failure to manage the markets through the summer, but many other beef and dairy producers throughout the country have suffered, albeit not so dramatically or tragically, from the inadequacies of market support and of the over-30 month scheme ban.
Every week since 20 March, here at home, the dire situation with regard to the cull has been more important to farmers than has the Government's diplomatic calamities abroad. Playing war games to attempt to divert attention from the shambles at home has not conned anyone in the industry. The lesson must surely be that we must now concentrate on cleaning up the situation at home. As the right hon. Member for Bridgwater rightly said, the discrepancies in the effect of the cull in different parts of the country is a national disgrace, and mismanagement of the cull has been a disaster for which the Government must take the blame.
In the six months since it was put in place, the direction and management of the OTM scheme has demonstrated the height of incompetence. At an early stage, Ministers admitted to me that neither MAFF nor the intervention board were in charge of the scheme. In the first few weeks, the plan was to put the whole operation out to competitive tender. As hon. Members will know, every local authority is forced to go out to competitive tender even on tiny contracts. That would normally have been the case—as Ministers subsequently admitted—under both EU and UK regulations, but it was quietly dropped. I challenged Ministers, who replied that it was dropped as a result of emergency time scales. The Government's original application list for abattoirs and collection centres was 200 long, but at a stroke it was reduced to 21.
The dead hand of the cartel of big business that dominates this industry guaranteed that it kept the profitable business for itself, and how profitable it was. The £87.50 price that the businesses extracted from Ministers-remember, there was no competitive tendering—proved to be four times the economic cost
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calculated by the Government's auditors. Even when the price was eventually reduced, Ministers only cut it in half and failed to backdate it for two months, as had been agreed.
The extortionists demanded their pound of flesh. On 17 July, I took representatives of small abattoirs to meet the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who assured us that he was in charge. He said that he had taken over responsibility from MAFF, which had proved to be incompetent—the Prime Minister had admitted as much—but no progress was made for months, until the past few weeks.
Many hon. Members who have watched the situation unfolding may suspect that there is a hidden agenda. Just before the crisis broke on 20 March, the Meat and Livestock Commission was hawking around a plan to streamline the abattoir industry. Is it a coincidence that the larger groups are now fattening themselves very nicely at the taxpayer's expense, while smaller firms are being forced out? From Scotland to Devon, Skegness to Greater Manchester, and Wales to Northern Ireland, the meat industry is being cut to ribbons before our very eyes.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who I regret has left her place, told European Standing Committee A this morning that the industry is being reshaped by the crisis. Is this what she means? Is it deliberate? Do the Government approve of the changes that are taking place? Surely the lesson is that the failure of the Minister, MAFF and the Government to take charge has rewarded the cartel of the biggest operators at the expense of everyone else, including the taxpayer.
There is now the prospect of greater incineration and freezing capacity coming on stream, but it looks as if we are to have a repeat performance of the farce that has already occurred. The Government have indicated to a small number of large operators that they will be given preferential treatment. A very small number have been given letters of intent, without any promise that they have the plant or equipment necessary or that they can carry through their promises. In addition, there is no promise that there will be anything in it for small operators. How they have been selected is a mystery; there has certainly been no open and competitive tendering. Indeed, the operators have so fallen down on what is being asked of them that they are asking other, smaller operators to come to their aid.
Incineration South West, a smaller firm that serves much of my county of Cornwall, has not been allowed to participate fully and directly, despite having the most modern plant and full approvals. Mr. Russell Peake, the principal of that company, came with us to meet the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 17 July, and was promised urgent and favourable consideration of his application. He has since obtained all the local approvals, which came through this week. His is a respected and conscientious firm that is much used by farmers throughout the south-west.
However, the big boys of Yorkshire Water—whose waste disposal company apparently put in a bid—received a letter of intent from the intervention board. It has now been allowed to accept a contract without having plant available—so much so that it has come to Incineration South West at the other end of the country to get the adequate and modern plant to do the job, and is prepared

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to subcontract the work. The big operators will flourish at taxpayers' expense, while smaller, better equipped, more local companies will be frozen out. Such is the profitability that Yorkshire Water is prepared to go to the other end of the country to use a small company. It will still make a large profit.
The unlucky farmers who have not yet been able to move their over-30-month cattle from their farms are facing higher feed and housing costs with each week that goes by, and the costs are escalating as winter comes in. In addition, they are facing a 10 per cent. cut in the figure —initiated by the Government in Brussels—to be paid in compensation, and they will be hit by an extra 3 per cent. cut as a result of the revaluation of the green pound. The National Farmers Union and the Country Landowners Association have today demanded that the Ministry restores in full the value of those unjustified and illogical cuts.
The Minister has told us that the cull backlog will soon be cleared. He has said outside the House that the backlog will be cleared by Christmas day, but I do not remember his mentioning that date today. When the Minister of State replies to the debate, I hope that he will say firmly that that Christmas present is guaranteed and that the date still stands. Farmers are now entitled to expect the Minister to stand by his forecast and to keep his promises. I hope that, if he is not able to do so, he will restore immediately and in full the compensation that farmers have lost.
A number of beef producers are in dire straits, particularly those who are wholly dependent on their suckler herds. On 24 October—after thousands of farmers had come here to meet us —The Daily Telegraph published a revealing report, headlined "Be grateful for BSE aid, Hogg tells farmers". The article contained an interesting description by one of the Minister's senior officials of a letter from the Minister to beef and dairy producers. The official said that the letter was intended to be a
"stop whingeing and count your blessings message".
If that was the intention, the Minister should resign; if the senior official did not understand his Minister's intention, he should resign. The president of the NFU said in response that
"the Government's mismanagement of the beef crisis"
was a "catastrophic affair". I have been in public life for 32 years, and I cannot remember an occasion when I or my farming community have been more angered by a ministerial announcement. Anyone would think that the farmers had knowingly, willingly and callously taken risks that had caused this crisis.
Mr. King: How is that comment to be reconciled with the letter from the NFU today which states that, despite the recent difficulties, the NFU is
"grateful for the sympathy, substantial practical assistance and extensive public expenditure"
devoted by the Government to tackling this unprecedented crisis in British agriculture?
Mr. Tyler: Nobody is saying that we are not grateful for anything we can get, but the right hon. Gentleman knows full well that—for the first time in living
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memory—the council of the NFU has passed a motion of no confidence in the Minister. I take that motion seriously, as I do other comments by the president of the NFU that have been quoted in the newspapers.
Miss Emma Nicholson: Will my hon. Friend invite Conservative Members to read the second page of the NFU letter, which states that the Government have done very little and that the NFU is unhappy? In other words, the first page of the letter shows the courtesy that we would expect from the NFU, but the second page gives us the reality.
Mr. Tyler: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and the Country Landowners Association—a traditional ally of the Conservative party—has made equally trenchant criticisms. I find this attempt to blame farmers and put the obligation on them despicable. They have been powerless as the cull mismanagement has deepened. As victims of the catastrophe, they deserve better than the whingeing self-pity so evident in the letter from the Minister.
Mr. Tony Banks: I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. Can he tell us who is responsible for BSE?
Mr. Tyler: It is certainly true that the conspiracy between certain big commercial organisations and those who approved their products caused farmers unwittingly to use dangerous products on their farms. The farmers cannot be held responsible for that, just as the hon. Gentleman cannot be wholly responsible for the pet food that he gives to his beloved pets, to which he refers occasionally in the House.
In the meantime, the Government must stop repackaging the compensation sums that they claim to be making available. For example, once we were able to analyse—and the farmers were able to identify—the precise nature of the supposed £40 million that was announced at the Conservative party conference, it turned out that less than £10 million in new money would reach the producers.
The forthcoming decision on hill livestock compensatory allowances will be crucial, because if there is not a substantial increase, especially in the ceilings that are put on the payments for cattle, there will be no adequate response to the deepening crisis in less-favoured areas. We need a substantial and sustained increase immediately—not next spring—for those in the disadvantaged and severely disadvantaged LFAs, especially to meet the crisis in the suckler herds.
Last week, the Midland bank report forecast a one eighth drop in the profitability of the agriculture industry as a whole—but that disguises a much deeper crisis in the livestock sector, as the industry is bolstered by a relatively happy situation in the cereal sector. There is worse to come. The lesson from the report must be that this is no time to put income tax cuts before the survival of a vital industry.
Much has been made in the debate this afternoon of the outcome of the Florence summit. I was surprised that the Minister made much play of the fact that we could not control the time scale, but did not refer to the Prime Minister's statement that
"It is now up to us to meet the conditions for lifting the ban" .— [Official Report,24 June 1996; Vol. 280, c. 21.]

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That is how he kept hon. Members of the Euro-sceptic tendency in their place. He said that the time scale from then on was in the hands of the British Government and that we were no longer the victims of the whims of the French and German conservative Governments. The Minister did not mention that this afternoon—and we heard nothing about it from the Opposition Front Bench.
The Prime Minister specifically promised that the over-30-month cull backlog would be cleared by the end of October. I know that Roman emperors used to change the calendar for their convenience, but so far that has not happened here. He further promised that that would enable the accelerated slaughter scheme for potentially risky cohorts of cattle to be set in motion from the end of October—but here we are, well into November—and that the timetable was in the Government's hands. He bought off his Euro-sceptic fanatics, who suspected that his belligerent tactics on the continent had been a total failure, and said that the Government would be able to make the running from then on.
We now know that all those promises were worthless. Specialist beef producers throughout the United Kingdom are furious at being misled. I spent two and a half weeks in Scotland in September, meeting hundreds of beef producers and their union representatives, and I was left in no doubt that they are anxious that progress be made on the selective cull as quickly as possible. Before the BSE bombshell in March, 20 per cent. of their output was exported. I know the case that has been made for Northern Ireland; indeed, I referred to it this morning in European Standing Committee A.
Instead of producing the comprehensive working document on how the cull could work which the Minister and the Prime Minister undertook to produce after Florence, the Minister went back to the Council of Agriculture Ministers with nothing. The Commission and other member states want a good wad of paper that they can deal with and discuss at a technical level to ensure that the veterinary and medical significance is fully understood, but the Minister put the matter straight back into the political arena and invited a complete rejection. Perhaps that is what he wanted, because the Government could then blame Europe for what went wrong.
The Minister was sent back from Florence to do his homework, but he reappeared with pathetic excuses for more dither and delay. He was sent away with a flea in his ear, and the following day Commissioner Brittan had to try to pick up the pieces.
I hope that the Minister will tell us that the working document promised at Florence is now in an advanced state. We need a clear strategy covering the whole United Kingdom, to re-establish the British beef herd as BSE clear. The Minister again admitted this evening that he has not as yet any firm proposals for certified herds; that must surely be an integral part of the working document.
We need a phased, step-by-step BSE eradication plan, region by region and/or herd by herd. That is essential to rebuild confidence at home and abroad.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Tony Baldry): We heard the Labour party's current position this evening although, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) said, it was not entirely clear on the
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accelerated or selective cull. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will make it clear exactly where the Liberal party now stands on that.
Mr. Tyler: I am delighted to give the assurance that if the Minister produces a working document that sets out in detail and in practical terms an accelerated cull that will do the job, we will support it. So far, he has failed to do so, and his Ministry and the Prime Minister have failed to deliver. It is no wonder that people at home and abroad are beginning to distrust their promises and forecasts.
Mr. Paul Marland: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Tyler: No. I have already taken longer than I intended.
In answer to our debate on 13 May, the Parliamentary Secretary promised that the mature beef assurance scheme would be
"up and running by June."—[Official Report, 13 May 1996; Vol. 277, c. 735.]
It is now nearly eight months since we first suggested that necessity, and still the Ministry has failed to produce a workable, reliable scheme. Its first attempt was patently inadequate —it failed to impress European Ministers or the Commission, or to meet the facts of agricultural life here. For example, any link with holdings rather than with herds is irrational, unless Ministry scientists are reversing their previous advice and saying that BSE can be transmitted through the soil.
Ministers have managed to sour relationships with all our European partners and with the farming unions, so progress is painfully slow.
The House should consider carefully the admission in October by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster that
"in an emergency—which this is—you have to think the impossible."
I invite the House to compare the Government's response to this crisis with that of the Thatcher Government to the Falklands invasion in 1982, when with all-party support and within seven days the task force was mobilised. The current Government have taken seven months to get to the starting block. Under this Administration, the task force would never have left port.
If this is an emergency, why not seek emergency powers? Why not requisition plant and take control back from the Federation of Fresh Meat Wholesalers and the United Kingdom Renderers Association, by which Ministers have admitted being held over a barrel? The federation's memorandum of 23 May warned its members that if the way in which the over-30-month scheme was being mishandled became public, the Government might decide to
"take control of the cull".
Liberal Democrat Members have been ready and willing from the outset to try to achieve a consensus on the priorities. On several occasions, representing as we do rural Britain at so many levels of government, we have offered to work with Ministers to seek solutions. They have insisted on blundering on alone.
I notice that the Minister is in deep conversation with the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley). Perhaps he is seeking alliances in that respect, but he has

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made no attempt to talk to parties representing major livestock areas in this part of the country and on this side of the Irish sea.
I refer in particular to the family in my constituency of the late Robert Cowburn of St. Columb Road, in the heart of Cornwall. The coroner judged his suicide to have been the direct result of the hopeless situation in which the Government's mishandling of the crisis had left his beef herd.
Surely it is, even now, not too late for Ministers to swallow their pride and adopt a non-partisan national approach to this continuing national emergency.
5.40 pm
Mr. John MacGregor: Like the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson), I begin by declaring an interest in that I am a director of a company which has a subsidiary company which deals with feed mills and feed. It is a small part of our total turnover, but it is nevertheless there. I also have a much more general constituency interest.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister is not currently in the Chamber, but I understand, perhaps more than most, how immensely difficult it is to develop reasoned actions in handling these immensely difficult issues, when so often politics, emotion and alarmist headlines can dominate.
I shall not go over the background of the past few months—others have done that— but I start, as my right hon. and learned Friend did, by re-emphasising, as I think should be done every time we have a debate on this issue in the House or discuss it elsewhere, that British beef is safe.
It is fundamentally important that my right hon. and learned Friend started with that and re-emphasised it. Nothing can do our farmers more good than to keep thumping that message home. In my part of the world there is now robust acceptance of that message, and it has done a great deal to bring confidence back to the market.
Mr. Tony Banks: Did the company with which the right hon. Gentleman has an association ever produce cattle feed that contained animal protein?
Mr. MacGregor: The company was acquired only recently by the company of which I have recently become a director, but I believe that rigorous measures were in force from 1989 to deal with the feed mill issue. I have seen a great deal of the documentation that it produced for its employees to ensure that the original 1988 measures were adhered to.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister emphasised that British beef was safe, but the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) did not do so until he was asked a question. Had he not been asked a question, he would not have mentioned it at all. That leads me to the conclusion that what he was about this afternoon was playing party politics rather than trying to deal with the real situation.
Two issues now concern my farmers. The first is the reduction in the payments under the compensation scheme. What particularly angered them was the fact that
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it was not their fault that a number of cattle on their farms did not get into slaughter in time, and that therefore there was an element of retrospection in the way in which the matter was handled. I understand that the problem was that, because of the registration scheme, there was no way of identifying which cattle came into that category. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister of State could confirm that when he replies, because it is the issue which, until recently, predominated in the discussions that I have had.
The main emphasis now is on the continuing uncertainty in relation to some aspects of the overall policy. The current progress on the 30-month slaughter scheme and on registration is immensely helpful. It has done a great deal to remove much uncertainty. The key area of uncertainty now is the accelerated and selective slaughter scheme, on which I want to concentrate.
I underline the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend, that we must be certain that we will benefit from the accelerated scheme before he embarks on implementing it, especially given the background that the rational case for it is weak. It is not scientifically justified, and it certainly does nothing to assist in dealing further with the food safety issues, which have all now been addressed and fully carried through by my right hon. and learned Friend.
Not only that, but the measures that I introduced as Minister of Agriculture, and other measures taken since then, have all led to the position in which the beef is safe. Therefore, the scheme is not scientifically justified from that point of view, and the recent measures that were taken after the statement of 20 March make that clear.
Mr. Alan W. Williams: The right hon. Gentleman says that the arguments for the second slaughter programme are weak, yet it is part of the Florence agreement, and when the Prime Minister returned from Florence in June he trumpeted that agreement, and the Minister of Agriculture said that the agreement was a great success and provided a solid way forward. Are not we going back on that agreement?
Mr. MacGregor: I shall come to that point later, because it is relevant to what my right hon. and learned Friend was saying this afternoon about how he assesses the mood in the European Council of Ministers. The case is not strong, and the point that I am making now is that we should not embark on it unless we are sure that we will get the benefits from it.
In addition to the cull not being scientifically justified, according to the Oxford Nature research, to which reference has already been made, we are already on course to eradicate BSE, as my right hon. and learned Friend made clear this afternoon. We believe that the measures that have been taken to deal with BSE will work and are the right ones, and that we are on course to eradicate it by 2001, or whatever.
An accelerated slaughter scheme would accelerate that by only a few months. So, again, it is not in itself justified in dealing with the problem. It will also mean that a considerable number of healthy, non-BSE-infected cattle will be slaughtered unnecessarily. It will also involve a substantial cost to the Exchequer and, just as significant—from the industry's point of view, more significant—a devastating and possibly unnecessary impact on many

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farmers who have built up their herds after decades of hard work and now feel that they will have been cruelly dealt by if they see all that go by the board.
If such a scheme were to add to consumer safety, it would be justified, but it will not. We know that the measures that have already been taken over the years, including all the measures in the past few months, are the right ones to deal with consumer safety. Even the right hon. Member for Livingston admitted this afternoon that British beef is safe. Therefore, it is not justified from that point of view.
The accelerated slaughter scheme could be justified—I come now to the point—in terms of the cost to the industry and the taxpayer only if the benefits exceed the costs. That means not just lifting the ban, on which we seem to have focused this afternoon, but also seeing exports re-established. Those are two different things, and both are necessary.
What my right hon. and learned Friend said this afternoon about his assessment of the position in the EU is most important. Only he can judge the attitude in the Council of Ministers and the attitude of other Ministers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) referred to what I think he called the gelatine test. So far, the failure of the gelatine test is not very encouraging. Therefore, my right hon. and learned Friend is right to be concerned to ensure that we will get the benefits if we go ahead with the scheme.
I was going to say that I suspect that there may be a hardening of attitude among some Ministers in other European states towards their part in fulfilling the Florence agreement —my right hon. and learned Friend nearly went as far as saying that, to some extent, there has been that hardening of attitude—and that therefore they may also be considering tightening the conditions further or raising new ones. If so, my right hon. and learned Friend is right to be cautious, and should resist and put the responsibility where it clearly lies.
My right hon. and learned Friend has already made the point that four of the five steps in the Florence agreement have been taken, which is significant progress. We need to be convinced that, in taking the fifth step, we will get the returns that are necessary for our farmers.
I am aware, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater said, that the numbers in the cohorts may be down from the 120,000 as a result of the 30-month scheme. Obviously, that will be the case. The numbers will come down. Therefore, in principle, the costs and the effect on the industry will be less if we go ahead with the scheme. The danger is that new conditions might be raised and those numbers therefore increased. That is why I support my right hon. and learned Friend's approach to the matter—it is right from the farming point of view.
My right hon. and learned Friend said that one way through might be to begin the scheme with the specialist herds, and possibly cattle born after 2 August 1996. That is a sensible way to proceed, because we can thus test whether the European Union will respond as it ought to. My right hon. and learned Friend needs to be sure that the European Union ban will be lifted and that no other types of restriction will be imposed on our exports—all the issues that are starting to emerge in respect of the gelatine test—before he embarks on the full ban scheme.
The House should reflect on this point: suppose we started on the scheme, but failed to get the right response from the European Union? We would have a very
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different debate from this one, and our farmers would feel very let down. The guarantees must be clear-cut and absolute. My right hon. and learned Friend's current way of tackling the issue is right, and, if he does not get those guarantees, he should announce that the scheme will not proceed. The sooner a decision is reached within the European Union, the better.
5.51 pm
Mr. Tony Banks: Unlike previous speakers, I have no financial interests to declare. I do not speak on behalf of the farmers of Newham. For the benefit of those hon. Members who think that I live in a concrete jungle, I should point out that many cattle once wandered on Wanstead flats, which is in my constituency, and it was a delight to see them. I have not seen them around recently, but I suppose that they have gone the way of all flesh.
I want to say a few words about the welfare of the creatures we are discussing tonight, which are being slaughtered in large numbers. The House is clearly overwhelmingly concerned about the welfare of farmers. I can understand that—farmers have votes, cattle and other animals do not. Indeed, if animals could vote, I am quite sure that I would have become Prime Minister by now.
I was appalled by the figures read out by the Minister—860,000 slaughtered so far, a backlog of 320,000 waiting to be slaughtered, we have now reached a weekly slaughter rate of 59,000, and that is all a matter for great congratulation. As far as I am concerned, it represents nothing more than a concentration camp regime for cattle.
Why are all those animals being massacred, and for what purpose? We have heard that there is no timetable from the European Union for an end to the ban—there is no end in sight, and no one can give any clear indication of whether there will be an end at all. How many cattle will have to be slaughtered? It might be that the European Union will not be satisfied until the whole national herd has been wiped out. In achieving that end, vast numbers of completely healthy cattle will be unnecessarily massacred. That is appalling from an economic point of view, but from an animal welfare point of view it is obscene.
The other point in the Minister's speech that appalled me was the fact that, so far, this exercise has cost the British taxpayer £263 million. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) talked about a conspiracy. I find it strange that, despite the fact that there was clearly a man-made cause of the disease which led to the crisis, no one will be prosecuted. No one will be blamed. We will not be able to recover any of that money from those responsible.
I hold farmers partly responsible—it is not necessary to have a great deal of knowledge to know that there will be a price to pay if herbivores are fed animal protein.
Mr. Tyler: What proof does the hon. Gentleman have that the average livestock farmer had any idea that animal protein was an ingredient? They were told only that there was a protein ingredient and they were usually told that it was fishmeal, even if it was not.
Mr. Banks: Even if it was fishmeal, that would not have been appropriate. When does the average cow eat fishmeal if it is grazing in a field? If any animal protein

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is fed to a herbivore, there will be a price to pay. I might add that that is only the thin end of the wedge. If we consider all the ways in which we are interfering in nature for the sake of food production, we shall see that there are all sorts of problems in the pipeline, but it will be years before we find out how horrible our future might be.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I entirely agree with some of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. It is unethical, immoral, wasteful of money and unnecessary that all those animals should be slaughtered; but—bearing in mind the recent intervention from the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler)—surely the hon. Gentleman accepts that it was the European Union that encouraged increased agricultural production? The use of protein led to that end, so the European Union is to blame.
Mr. Banks: The hon. Gentleman could no doubt find a convenient way to blame the European Union for bad weather, or any other ill. No one can claim that they are totally innocent or that their hands are clean—no one, that is, except dedicated vegetarians like me, but that is of little consolation.
Human interference in nature worries me greatly, and it is still happening. We are currently dealing with one crisis, but how many more are waiting to be addressed as we interfere more and more with nature in trying to get higher and higher productivity? Look at the pesticides and herbicides we use, the poisons we pump out, and the way in which we genetically engineer fruits and vegetables. Nature is extremely unforgiving, and either we or our children and grandchildren will have to pay the price for our actions.
Let me return to the subject of animal welfare. We are approaching the winter, which brings colder and wetter weather. Even at the accelerated rate of slaughter, there will clearly not be enough housing on farms for the animals. How many animals will be left out in the fields in the winter months? Many farmers say that they cannot afford the extra £10 to £14 per week needed to feed animals through the winter. If farmers are able to bring their cattle in, welfare considerations come into play if those animals are kept in overcrowded conditions —the problems of mastitis, lameness and pneumonia will emerge.
We have to ask this question: if farmers know that cattle are waiting to be slaughtered, will they feed them properly?
Mr. Winterton: Yes.
Mr. Banks: I do not know how the hon. Gentleman can give the House that assurance, given how many farmers there are.
Will farmers be ready and able to meet the high veterinary bills resulting from problems of overcrowding? Farmers will be looking at an asset of diminishing value, so we have to ask ourselves whether they will be prepared to invest in it. I cannot believe that all of them will.
Apart from welfare problems on farms, there are reports of serious problems involving marketing, transport and pre-slaughter conditions. Around one third of cull cows are sold through markets. Last week, "Newsnight"
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showed a west country market selling cull cows to a dealer who was transporting them to Yorkshire for slaughter, yet there was an abattoir next door to the market. The abattoir in question was receiving cull cows from Yorkshire. What the hell is going on? Why are those cattle being moved around?
Nigel Taylor, a vet who saw those animals at the market, was appalled, and said that the animals could be "distressed and disturbed". The programme suggested that the over-30-months scheme had been hijacked by dealers, who paid backhanders to slaughterhouses to get their animals to the head of the queue. The Government have acknowledged that problem by introducing the new registration scheme, and I hope that we shall have regular reports on whether the scheme is addressing those abuses.
There are eye-witness accounts of cows calving as they wait their turn in the slaughterhouse. In September, one person saw about 60 cattle in a slaughterhouse at Crick in Northamptonshire. The animals had come from a market and were supposed to have been killed on the Wednesday; but the Ministry had called a halt to the killing, so they had to wait until the following Monday before being slaughtered.
Several animals were painfully thin. Others had udders that were grossly distended—they obviously required milking, but, of course, abattoirs do not have the facilities to milk cows, so the cows spent their last five days in severe pain. The matter was reported to the Ministry vet, whose response was, "What on earth can I do about it?" Others report overcrowded abattoir lairages with animals up to their bellies in muck. The staff say that they have no time to clean out the facility because, as soon as one lot is slaughtered, another lot comes in.
Let me talk about the calf slaughter scheme, officially known as the calf processing aid scheme, which was set up by the European Union four years ago. So far, it has been optional for Governments, but it could become compulsory. Farmers are paid to slaughter the young calves under the scheme. We adopted the scheme in late April, when the European Union refused to import our male dairy calves for their veal crate farms. It is a shame. It must be bad enough for the calves to find out that they are going to a veal crate, but when they think that there is a chance of being rescued, they find out the EU will not take them, so they are slaughtered. What appals me is the waste of animal resources as well as the welfare considerations.
To date, about 300,000 calves have been slaughtered under the scheme. It was originally intended for male dairy calves only, but it was extended to beef breed calves early this month, so numbers are likely to be increasing rapidly. The calves have to be slaughtered by the time they are 20 days old—it was originally 10—and the abattoir is paid £103.47 for each calf slaughtered. Further profits can be made from the by-products such as the hide, as well as by selling carcases to pet food manufacturers and maggot farms. The flesh is not allowed to be used for human consumption or for consumption by livestock, fish or horses.
Welfare concerns come to mind immediately. The calves are condemned animals, and, as I have said, I believe that they will receive minimal care on the farm. Certainly, an expensive —[Interruption.] I believe that that will be the case on many farms. I am just saying what

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I believe. Given the pressures on farmers, I do not believe that they will be prepared to pay for expensive veterinary visits, because the cost would be uneconomic.
There is the question of transporting and marketing. Many of the calves are being sent to market and bought by dealers who shop around for the abattoir offering the best price. Some dealers are paying £101 for a calf, yet, as I have said, the subsidy to the abattoir is only 103.47. Are the abattoirs paying more than the subsidy for each calf? If so, how are they making a profit? There will obviously be a little bit extra from by-products, but can we be certain that none of those calves is ending up in the food chain?
There are many reports of calves being brought to market and sent on lengthy journeys to faraway slaughterhouses. We all know that young calves make poor travellers—the literature shows us that. We know of consignments that have gone from a west country market all the way to Scotland. It is appalling. Dealers are collecting calves and transporting them all over the country.
On 17 August, there was an advertisement in a west country newspaper, the Western Morning News, which called for calves of four to 10 days old. It talked about
"regular collections throughout Devon and Cornwall".
It is an offence to transport a calf of four days old, before the navel has healed. What action is being taken? Nothing is being done, because so many cowboys are operating. When a large amount of taxpayers' money is around, corruption always comes in.
The welfare considerations of the cattle have not been addressed in the House in the way they should. The concern is essentially for farmers, particularly those who are making a big noise. There are votes here. I did not just turn up in this place yesterday; I understand that votes are vital and concentrate the mind of every politician, but we should not be oblivious to the welfare of the animals that are being massacred, in many cases unnecessarily, in their hundreds of thousands.
The BSE crisis has been an example of appalling incompetence, particularly within the cattle cake manufacturing sector. They are the people who are responsible for this, and I want to see someone arraigned before the courts. If this had been in any other area of production, the producers would have been in the courts by now, and all sorts of heavy fines, if not imprisonment, would have been handed out. It has been an example of incompetence by the Government and the industry. It is about time the electorate were given the opportunity to carry out a political cull of the Government.
6.3 pm
Sir Wyn Roberts: The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) is right to be concerned about animal welfare, particularly over the next few months. We are all concerned about that, none more so than the farmers who have bred the animals.
There was a curious air of unreality about the opening speech of the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) which contrasted sharply with what my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) described as the realistic assessment of the situation in Europe presented by my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister.
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It will come as no surprise to the House when I say that I wish to concentrate on Wales, although much of what I want to say will be applicable to other parts of the United Kingdom, except perhaps Newham.
Agriculture is very important to us in Wales. It is the backbone of our rural economy and the prosperity of life in the countryside is highly dependent on it. The beef sector is an essential element of that. I met my farmers during the long recess and when they came to Westminster on the opening day of this parliamentary Session. I know at first hand of the problems they face on farms, in the market and even in the abattoirs and elsewhere.
There was a backlog of 30-month-old cattle which grew during the summer months as the farmers failed to get them slaughtered. There is no doubt that Wales is particularly handicapped by its lack of rendering capacity and our animals had to be taken over the border after slaughter. Progress was abysmally slow. Some extra facilities have been brought into play and the pace of the cull has undoubtedly quickened. However, there is still a lot of cattle on farms awaiting slaughter. I am glad that more carcases are now being diverted to cold storage and that precedence is being given to registered animals.
Wales has 14 per cent. of the total England and Wales backlog and I welcome the measures taken to deal with that. During the recess, the process was so slow that my farmers were actively discussing the possibility of incinerating carcases in disused quarries and elsewhere. I hope that we shall not embark upon an accelerated cull, as proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), before we have disposed of the backlog. We can talk about it and think about it along the lines advocated by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk. I thought that what he said about the accelerated cull made good sense.
The effect of the backlog, coupled with the low market price, has meant that farmers have been unable to restock this autumn as they would have wished. Their incomes have been hit badly, not only this year but for the year to come. It is important to bear that in mind.
Most of Wales is hill farming country. It is 80 per cent. less-favoured area and there is considerable dependence on the livestock compensatory allowances, which, as I understand it, have fallen in value over the past four years. Therefore, I plead with the Government to be as generous as possible with those payments this year. If they are not, many farming enterprises will go under and those that survive will be left wondering whether there is any future in farming for them and their families and whether we in this House really care.
Few could understand the Brussels decision to reduce by 10 per cent. the basic payment under the over-30-months scheme. No one will understand it if the hill livestock compensatory allowances are not up to expectations, and are niggardly at this time of deep crisis and acute need in the farming industry.
Mr. Home Robertson: The right hon. Gentleman said that it was a Brussels decision to cut compensation payments. He should understand that that decision was taken by the British Government.
Sir Wyn Roberts: I understand that it was a Brussels decision. It was certainly taken in Brussels. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] It was taken in Brussels.

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We have talked a great deal about consumer confidence in beef. We are now talking about farmers' confidence in themselves and their enterprises. It is vital that that confidence be maintained and sustained through the HLCAs to be announced later this month. I warn the Government that there will be justifiable anguish if the uprating is inadequate.
There is no doubt in my mind that we must eradicate BSE—that has been my position from the outset, but it is easier said than done, especially in the absence of complete and definitive science. The incompleteness of our knowledge and its emergence in dribs and drabs have been responsible for many of our difficulties, along with what I describe as the vagaries of European Union opinion. That BSE must be eradicated is now generally accepted. Scientists are urging a similar policy on scrapie in our sheep flocks, and I do not dissent from that view. Meat for human consumption must be above suspicion. However, I do not underestimate the enormity of the tasks and the length of time that they will take. Mercifully, the end of BSE is in sight as a result of the measures adopted by the Government.
It is also clear that while measures are taken to achieve the objective of clean herds and flocks, the farming community must be financially supported or it may lose heart, which would be a sad day for all of us. I fully appreciate the magnitude of the Government's financial commitment—£2.5 billion. I also appreciate the fact that they have already allocated £60 million to hill farmers, although I am not sure how that will be distributed.
I am aware of the tremendous personal efforts made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) and his colleagues on the Front Bench, who were faced with a daunting situation that might have floored lesser men. They are to be commended for their courage, pertinacity and dogged pursuit of their policy objectives.
The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) referred to the rapid reaction to the Falklands crisis. We were dealing with the Argentines with our own forces. The BSE problem facing the farming industry is very different. It takes time for agricultural measures to take effect.
I am sure that the Government will persevere and rally the farming community behind them. I hope that they will also have the full support of their colleagues in the Treasury and other Departments, including the Ministry of Defence, which is feeding our troops with foreign beef. There have been protests in Wales—I am sure that the hon. Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones) is aware of them, as is the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames), because he listened to representations from the farming industry. A change would help to restore and buttress confidence, as would the return of beef to our school menus. Believe it or not, in parts of the Principality—even rural parts —beef is still not on the school menu.
It is clear that the Opposition are milking the beef crisis for all it is worth. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is right to describe their behaviour as cynical political opportunism at the expense of the farming industry. Naturally, the Opposition are quick to fault the Government at every step in the long process towards the
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eradication of BSE, but it is by no means clear after today's debate what they would have done had they been in office. They are not clear about what they would do, even with the hindsight that they have now. They are naive in the extreme to think that more could have been done to lift the European ban, especially when the European beef industry as a whole was suffering a severe crisis of consumer confidence.
The right hon. Member for Livingston gave the game away when he referred to the decline in beef sales in France, Germany and elsewhere. Surely that proves that there was a lack of confidence in French, German and Italian beef, as well as in British beef, which was not subsequently exported to those countries.
Mr. Marland: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lack of confidence in beef in Europe is due to the fact that there is no system similar to ours for tracing BSE? All too often, when a cow in France looks as if it has a BSE problem, it is diagnosed by the vet as having backache. The farmer is advised to get it to the market and into the food chain as quickly as possible, so that the whole affair can be covered up.
Sir Wyn Roberts: I agree with my hon. Friend. We have supreme confidence in our beef industry, and in the safety of our beef products. That is not paralleled in European countries, where consumers have more doubts than British consumers.
The Government have taken the right measures in difficult circumstances. The proof of that is that the end of the BSE scourge is in sight. Opposition Members have given the impression that somehow or other the crisis could have been solved overnight. Measures to eradicate BSE require time, and the industry requires time to work those measures through.
6.18 pm
Mr. William Ross: The Minister of Agriculture began his speech by saying that the BSE crisis was a disaster for British agriculture. I hope that he will reconsider those words and accept that it is a disaster not only for British agriculture, but for a wider spectrum of our economy. The ancillary industry employs a vast number of people—far more than the numbers employed on beef production in farms—who have also suffered grievously. We must keep in the forefront of our minds the problems that those people have faced, many of whom have lost their livelihoods as a result of the crisis.
In Florence the Prime Minister, the Government and the country signed up, if not to a timetable, to a sequence of events leading to a progressive lifting of the beef ban. I say that in the most charitable way that I can: whenever we start talking about timetables, the perspective, or the meaning, seems to change. In any event, although we may not have signed up to a particular month, I believe that we certainly signed up to a result that was clearly understood by all. Although we are all happy that four of the five measures agreed to at that time have now been implemented—or nearly implemented—we are concerned about the remaining principle of the cull, which has not yet been carried out. We look forward to the day when a certified herd scheme will operate throughout the United Kingdom.
I am glad that in Northern Ireland—and, apparently, throughout the United Kingdom —all cattle destined for slaughter are now registered and given a measure of

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priority. I have always felt that the Government should have taken control of the situation. I know that there were manpower difficulties at the start, but a large number of retired officials could have been brought back on an emergency basis to set up and run the scheme. That would have avoided all the problems encountered by farmers, and all the rumours of fraud, backhanders and so forth that have so plagued the scheme. The mere fact that the Government have now had to take over the whole system of registering cattle for slaughter means that the view of those such as my local farmers union was entirely correct.
I hope that the slaughter of the 90,000 cattle that remain in Northern Ireland will soon be carried out, but it cannot be carried out unless some of those cattle leave Northern Ireland to be slaughtered elsewhere. That means that they must cross the water to Great Britain. I hope that the Minister can tell us whether that will be possible, because we all want the backlog in the entire United Kingdom to be cleared very soon.
Another point that the Minister and the Government seem to be trying to ignore is that, so far as the Common Market countries are concerned, the only show in town is the certified herd scheme. Having listened with interest to all that has been said here today, I simply cannot understand why the detailed papers have not been presented, because that is the key. Is it because the Government are not prepared to continue the accelerated slaughter scheme, which would have to follow on from the clearance of the current backlog involving cattle aged over 30 months?
My hon. Friends and I appreciate that those in the rest of the United Kingdom may not know where the cattle intended for accelerated slaughter actually are. They may not know which beasts are involved, and on which farms they are located. In Northern Ireland, however, we know which cattle are involved and where they are. As I pointed out in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King)—a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—in recent months the number has dropped by some 300 to 1,700.
Rev. Ian Paisley: I understand that the most recent figure is nearer 400.
Mr. Ross: If the number is dropping as fast as that, it is excellent news. The cattle, however, are scattered over Northern Ireland. Although in theory one day's slaughtering would deal with the lot, it would actually take about a fortnight to gather them all up and get them through the slaughterhouses. We hope that an effort will be made to do that very soon; once it is done, Northern Ireland will have fully met the requirements of the Florence agreement.
The Minister said in his speech that there was no credible cull policy that would accelerate a national clear-up of BSE. I assume that that is one of the reasons for his current difficulties with our colleagues in the European states. He also pointed out that, despite all the work done by the United Kingdom, there had been no favourable response from those other countries. If the situation regarding the attitude of the other EC countries is as bad as the Minister believes, it is time to test their good faith. In Northern Ireland, and to a lesser extent in Scotland, the mechanism is to hand, although I understand that Commissioner Fischler has indicated that Scotland
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would not be accepted as speedily as Northern Ireland in that regard. In Northern Ireland, the cattle can be identified, the whole thing could be cleared up in a matter of weeks, and we would then know whether Europe was prepared to accept the measures that we have signed up to.
Mr. Douglas Hogg: May I make two brief points? The first relates to the backlog. We hope to be able to increase throughput to around 8,000 per week in the fairly near future. Beyond that, of course, the backlog needs to be cleared in a UK-wide context: we are as anxious as the hon. Gentleman is for the backlog in the Province to be cleared.
As for the extent to which the European Commissioner and his officials have been involved in discussions on the specialist herds, the beef assurance scheme and the certified herds, we have had detailed discussions on the basis of detailed papers. The Commissioner and the officials understand very well that Northern Ireland will fall readily into both the beef assurance and the certified herd schemes. It seems to me that any proposals that we present are likely to bring early benefit, in so far as benefit is possible, for Northern Ireland. I direct what I have said to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) as well, as I know that he has the same anxieties.
Mr. Ross: We all know these things. There is nothing new in what the Minister has said. What we want to know is whether he is going to test the good faith of those in Europe. If we are not prepared to do that, what is the use of all these words? We have an instrument to hand —or a weapon, if hon. Members wish me to use a stronger term—which we can use to extract from Europe the concessions that we need. The plain truth is that, no matter what system we use, the very first area of the United Kingdom that will be able to meet the requirements is Northern Ireland—followed rapidly, I believe, by many parts of Scotland, under the certified herd scheme. We all understand that, but when will Europe's good will be tested?
To go a little further down the same road, can the Minister tell us whether, when we reach the happy point at which we believe that the Florence criterion has been met, the Standing Veterinary Committee can itself lift the ban? The Minister shakes his head, but I understand that the decision on tallow and gelatine never went back to the Council of Ministers: it was lifted following a request, or a ruling, from the committee.
Let us look at the time scale. If the scheme must be considered by the committee, it will probably want to look at it for two or three months, and it may then have to return to the Council of Ministers. Does the scheme have to go back to the Council of Ministers? Will we be subjected to one delay after another, carrying the thing on until perhaps after a general election, before final decisions are taken? If so, all the problems that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) mentioned, including the feeding of cattle over the winter, will have to be faced. The Minister cannot wriggle out of these problems. We all appreciate his difficulties in dealing with Europe, but these are crunch issues and we need answers to them today.
The flagging of holdings is basically a Northern Ireland problem only. The Minister and Baroness Denton of Wakefield at the Northern Ireland Office are well apprised

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of the difficulties surrounding the issue. He knows that there is a unique problem in relation to flagged suckler herds. Farmers expect to sell their calves by this time every year. If they try to sell them at present, however, they are immediately flagged up in the market as calves from herds that have had some contact with BSE, with the result that no one in the buyers' end of the market wants to know.
Farmers do not have the feed to carry progeny over the winter. Next year's calves have already been born and the rest will be born in the next few months, to be sold, farmers expect, next autumn. There must be some way out, some scheme to help those 300 farmers in Northern Ireland. I am sure that Members representing Wales and Scotland will be aware of the same difficulty, although a slightly different aspect of it may concern them. That problem concerns us in Northern Ireland. We need sensible answers to help that small group of farmers in the hills of Northern Ireland.
6.31 pm
Sir Hector Monro: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross), who has a broad knowledge of agriculture and of rural affairs, as he has demonstrated again today.
My right hon. and hon. Friends and I felt that the opening speech by the Opposition spokesman was a political act of scaremongering. He spoke with much hindsight, was negative and did not say how the Labour party would handle the crisis in future, if in power. We know that we have had a difficult six months. As a farmer, I have been involved at first hand in the problems of, say, the over-30-month scheme and the calves scheme. I have heard the problems that my constituents have, as farmers, in getting their beasts to slaughterhouses. It has been a difficult time for them. They were particularly cross at the reduction in the value of the OTMS in October. Those in the queue felt hard done by that they had missed the deadline by a few days, as I did when the date for the topping-up of heifers occurred in July.
Mr. Tyler: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the Minister was wrong in saying just now that the reduction was made on the initiative of the European Commission in Brussels? In fact, the initiative came from Her Majesty's Government.
Sir Hector Monro: I will not confirm it because I do not know. This was all part of the fact that the European Community ecu had to be reduced, which was tied in with the value of the green pound. It was Europe's decision as much as ours.
Mr. Tyler: May I just separate those two issues? The 3 per cent. reduction was the result of the green pound devaluation—the right hon. Gentleman is correct there—but the 10 per cent. reduction, which took place before that, was on the initiative of Ministers.
Sir Hector Monro: The hon. Gentleman has made his point. Whoever made the reduction, it was unfortunate that it had to be made at all, because the prime beef market had been slowly recovering. The price was
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approaching around 100p per kilogram and farmers felt a little better for that. They took it hard when the OTMS was reduced.
I thank the Ministers who have been involved. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and Lord Lindsay have spent much time trying to resolve problems and to help. Both were at the recent Council meeting with my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and his colleagues. Ministers have left no stone unturned in trying to resolve the problem, which came out of the blue in March. It is not right for Opposition Members to criticise Ministers, because the problem came as a big surprise in March.
Much had to be put in place quickly to try to save the industry, which the Government have done. We have had our knocks, prices are down and there are still problems. Considering what occurred, however, we have got through the summer and autumn better than many people thought we would. The Opposition are carping in not accepting the huge amount of money that the Government have put into the BSE problem—£2.5 billion. A Labour Government would never have considered putting up so much money to help farmers.
The trend is right, but the overall issue is that the priority is to get the ban lifted and exports re-established. It is no use flying kites—as many people do for one thing and another—which might or might not help. We should not take any step unless we are absolutely convinced that it is the right way to get the ban lifted on the continent, and we must receive an assurance from the continent that it will accept what we are doing towards gaining 100 per cent. consumer confidence again.
The Prime Minister and the Government were right at Florence. Five out of the six points have been cleared. The critical issue is still the selective cull. We shall never get the ban lifted until we conduct a form of selective cull. The continentals are not prepared to accept anything less. It may not be prudent or justified, but they believe that it is essential and it will take a miracle to change their position.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that some people, the Germans in particular, are so keen to ruin our beef industry that even if we offered them heaven tomorrow they would not agree?
Sir Hector Monro: I fear that my hon. Friend is right. Whatever we do—even if we had conducted a selective cull in the past few months—it would still not be accepted by the Germans and probably not by the French or the Belgians either. They are not considering the matter scientifically. Sadly, they have a totally irrational attitude, with their own home beef production at the forefront of their minds.
I sometimes wonder where we are in terms of science. In March, we based policy firmly on Edinburgh and the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee; yet we were prepared to accept, on relatively little scientific evidence, the view of Oxford scientists this summer. Do the Government have a policy on whose scientific evidence we should use and what science is under consideration at present? Which universities or establishments are working specifically on BSE and trying to produce an answer that will help farmers and Britain?

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Some things that come out in the night in scientific journals are singularly unhelpful and often leave much to be desired in terms of what most people would feel was fair comment.
During the summer, like many hon. Members, I spent a lot of time with farmers. I toured around Scotland to talk to them and to members of the National Farmers Union, listening to their problems and to what mattered most in terms of their practical problems. They always talked about the 30-month cull, but the Government have now got on top of the problems associated with that, and well done to them. I know that it took a long time to take all the relevant factors into account, especially those relating to the rendering industry.
I have been worried about casualties, but I have received letters of confidence from Lord Lindsay that they must have priority at all slaughterhouses. I hope that that turns out to be true because there must not be any worries about animal welfare.
In Scotland, we are all pleased that the threat of BSE is falling away rapidly. I suspect that there will be under 1,000 new cases this year. That is good news. Given the present rate of cull, I should have thought that a further selective cull need involve only a small number of animals to meet the required criteria.
Bearing in mind what the hon. Member for Londonderry, East has said, we must be careful about opting for regional policy, with Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales going their separate ways. I believe that it is very much better to stick together to try to get the ban lifted universally. I know that Ireland is way ahead of us on computerised traceability. It is a complicated procedure, and all credit to Ireland for having built it up over the years, but I do not believe that universal computerised traceability would impact on the present ban. It would take a long time to put similar schemes into operation in Scotland, England and Wales, so it is not something to which we can give great priority at the moment.
We must look at the good news—the Government have put £2.5 billion into agriculture and an extra £6.6 million towards cold storage facilities. It is true that we have been concerned about the long distances that beasts have been taken to be put into cold store. Once again, it is also important to consider the additional costs involved, because under the OTM scheme farmers have to pay for the transport. A farmer may believe that his beasts have been taken to the slaughterhouse a couple of miles down the road, so it is quite a surprise when he receives the bill and discovers that they went to south Wales. It is important to try to keep the slaughter of beasts as near as possible to their farms.
I was pleased at the announcement of £60 million for the cattle component of the hill livestock compensatory allowance. That is important and will build up the suckler cow subsidy to a significant sum. I take into account what the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) said about less-favoured areas, which are an important consideration. I know that this year has been one of particular difficulties for hill farms. The hill farming review is currently being conducted and it is shortly expected to announce that there has been a significant drop in incomes. In the light of that, it would be a major disappointment if there were a drop in the sheep component of the HLCA. I hope that it will be possible
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to see it increased, because if ever a sector of farming needed confidence and support it is that of the true hill farmer.
I was glad to hear on 8 October about the further significant sum of money to be devoted to help overcome the BSE crisis. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Minister of State where that money will go. I believe that my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister said that it is intended to pay for additional help with beef marketing, but I hope that a further explanation will be offered when my hon. Friend winds up the debate.
In the long term, I am worried about whether we intend to continue the 30-month cull. Are we making progress with the slow maturing breeds? How are we getting on with the certified herds scheme? Farmers are itching to know what is to happen about those issues now and in the coming year. I cannot see the ban being lifted for some months, so we must know how we shall be placed next spring, summer and autumn. Will there be a sufficient supply of prime beef, and what will the price be? What advice is the Meat and Livestock Commission giving to the Government about the future?
I do not think that we can sustain beef production at 100p per kilo. Somehow or other prices must increase if beef production is to be profitable again. We have got over the problems of the summer because of various schemes and assistance provided by the Government, but we appreciate that that cannot go on for ever. We must build a settled, long-term future for a profitable beef industry because it represents a major part of the agriculture industry, particularly in Scotland and Wales. The current drop of one third in the value of prime steer is a serious loss.
I am extremely concerned about the current import ban that Spain has imposed on lambs aged over six months, and I hope that a brief mention will be made about that tonight by my hon. Friend the Minister of State. That means that all lambs born in this country in spring and early summer that would have gone to Spain are banned from there because of their age. That is serious and I hope that we can put a diplomatic boot into Spain and say that we will not accept the ridiculous approach that it has taken up in recent weeks.
Whatever it takes, and whatever the cost, we must put all our efforts into getting the current beef ban lifted. That means reaching an agreement on the continent, which will be our major difficulty in the coming months. We have all agreed that beef is safe. We want to see it eaten at schools, in homes, and restaurants and sold at McDonald's and supermarkets. We must strive to market it in case we do not succeed in getting the ban lifted in the foreseeable future.
The letter from the National Farmers Union rightly pointed out that farmers appreciate the support that they have been given by the Government. They also know that they currently receive significant aid for livestock, and great support through arable aid. They know that the Government are deeply involved in rural affairs. I also think that farmers believe that this is no time for change, and they would regret it if they helped to bring that about.
6.46 pm
Mr. Seamus Mallon: A serious problem in Britain in agriculture almost inevitably becomes a serious crisis in the north of Ireland. I make

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that distinction because of the structure of the industry there and the scale of dependency in the north of Ireland not just on agriculture, but especially on the beef industry.
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, the right hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), answering on behalf of the Government in a recent Adjournment debate, agreed that the current crisis was
"one of the greatest setbacks in the past 150 years."—[Official Report, 16 October 1996; Vol.282, c.752.]
The permanent secretary in the Department of Agriculture in the north of Ireland is reported to have said
"I think there has been nothing like this since the famine."
Those are crisis words, but they are not an exaggeration when one looks at how dependent the north of Ireland is on the beef industry. Consider that 5 per cent. of its gross domestic product derives from agriculture as opposed to 2 per cent. in the rest of Britain. If we add food processing and agricultural input supply to that figure, it rises to 8 per cent. That represents a huge dependency on the beef industry. Consider, too, that 10 per cent. of Northern Ireland's work force are engaged in agriculture and ancillary industries. Of those employed in the north of Ireland, 40,000 are employed in the agricultural industry. The output for finished cattle and calves is worth about £400 million per annum, which is equivalent to slightly more than £1 million per day. Those facts about the small, mixed economy of the north of Ireland clearly demonstrate its absolute dependency on the beef industry and the scale of the crisis.
There is also a difference between the importance of beef exports in the north of Ireland and in England, Scotland and Wales. England, Scotland and Wales import beef to meet their needs. Therefore, they can more easily withstand the effects of BSE.
Mr. Welsh: No, we cannot.
Mr. Mallon: I realise the difficulties of having one's economy tied into a wider economy, but that is a problem for the Scots.
The beef trade is of greater relevance to the north of Ireland, which exports almost all its beef and cannot sustain a beef industry in the face of a worldwide export ban. That is the difference, and that is the problem. About 80 per cent. of the beef production of Northern Ireland is exported: 30 per cent. to Britain, and 50 per cent. to the rest of Europe. Suddenly to close off the market for 50 per cent. of production spells trouble for an already depleted economy.
Sir Jim Spicer: We are all anxious that the ban should be lifted. However, does the hon. Gentleman believe that the same scale of exports—or any exports—would automatically resume the next day if the ban were to be lifted? I am speaking particularly about France, because we do not sell much beef to Germany. Even if the ban were lifted, would not those continental countries—I use that phrase advisedly—continue to ban our beef products, by hook or by crook?
Mr. Mallon: I do not know, but I should like to put them to the test, and there is only one way in which to do
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that: by ensuring that there is no argument left against our position. Then we will find out. We must revert to the seriousness of the problem in the north of Ireland.
Mr. William Ross: Surely the hon. Gentleman is as well aware as I am of the strong signs from some countries in Europe, and also from South Africa, that they would willingly buy Northern Ireland beef once the ban is lifted.
Mr. Mallon: I believe that that would be the case, but I always prefer to have something proved than to take the word of someone about it. The hon. Gentleman—who, politically, comes from the same place as I do—can understand that one becomes conditioned to accepting not a person's words but the deeds that accompany them. I have every confidence that beef from the north of Ireland will sell, that it will sell in Europe and that it will sell as well as before. I want to prove that, to ourselves and to everyone else.
The incidence of BSE is remarkably different in different areas, and I have gone to some lengths to check the figures. Between 1988 and 1996, there have been 163,000 identified cases of BSE in England, Scotland and Wales. In the Republic of Ireland—I make no political point here—there have been 143 identified cases. In the north of Ireland, per head of herd, there have been 0.004 identified cases. Something in those figures should tell us something.
The figures tell us, first, that the control system in Ireland, north and south— although I am speaking only about the north of Ireland—has been very effective. It has been effective and efficient because of the farm quality assurance scheme, to which 75 per cent. of main producers subscribe, as do supermarkets in the north of Ireland. The scheme is unique in its identification and traceability system, which does not yet exist in England, Scotland or Wales. It has also been at the forefront in dealing with, and anticipating, the problems that have accrued—not so much in Scotland, but very much in England and Wales, and, minimally, on the island of Ireland. A high standard of protection is in place.
We have one other great advantage, which I believe is the key advantage in negotiations and in solving the problem. We have a sea around us. We are ring-fenced by sea. Surely that must have some influence on the low incidence figures, which I believe I can support. Surely that must be taken into account when we consider how we will solve the problem. I am not arguing that we are different, better or separate, but that we have been different in the approach we have taken to the problem of controlling disease and to our agricultural industry. Out of necessity —our dependence on the industry and the market—we have been more attentive to the market and to our products.
I do not suggest for one moment that anyone or any area should suffer because of the unique situation in the north of Ireland. But, as I know almost every hon. Member would agree, the north of Ireland should not be made to suffer because it has exceeded other regions in protecting its beef and beef production. That would be the unkindest cut of all. The heart of the hurt among the farming community in the north of Ireland is the belief that—after having done it right and produced the product in manner that is relatively BSE free—we are suffering as if those achievements had never occurred.

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I have great admiration for the efforts made by the Minister with responsibility for the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, during a harrowingly difficult time. She has had to cope with Whitehall; she has had to cope with Europe; she has had to cope with the farming industry in crisis; and she has had to cope with us, the hon. Members from the north of Ireland. I pay tribute to her work, dedication and sense of justice—which was very potently demonstrated during the problems over the continuing backlog.
I make three suggestions. The first is that, whatever the merits or demerits of the Florence agreement, only a small step is now required to ensure that beef from the north of Ireland can re-enter the European market, and that would involve the culling of 1,724 cohorts. In his most recent intervention, however, I was reassured to hear the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) say that a more accurate figure would be about 400 cattle, because of the culling that has already occurred. The figure is only 400 cattle. They could be culled before 1 o'clock tomorrow, and then nothing would then stand in the way of north of Ireland beef going straight into the European market. Is that an unreasonable request? Once the selective cull of those 400 cattle is accomplished, a certified herd scheme can immediately be implemented in the north of Ireland.
Secondly, because of the 30-month cull scheme problems, there is a differential between what people might have received for their cattle on the morning before 31 October and what they would receive today. I sought professional advice on this before the debate and was told that for normal beef cattle at this time of year, anything up to £346 an animal can be lost. There is not only a loss on the animal but the added expenditure on feed and the difficulties that that causes, especially for the smaller producer.
My last point relates to hill livestock compensatory allowances, which are crucial to the north of Ireland economy. A huge part of the north of Ireland qualifies for the scheme. Many people depend on the compensatory amounts to be able to continue in the industry, but they have been reduced by whomsoever over the past two years on the grounds that farmers had done better. What farmers had been doing beforehand, of course, was not evaluated in relation to other incomes. Due to the problems facing those farmers, there is a very strong argument for ensuring an immediate and substantial increase in HLCAs, so that people are able to see themselves and their industry out of the problems.
I fully agreed with the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) when he referred to the flagged herd. Flagging the farm as opposed to the herd is unique to the north of Ireland and other parts of Britain. It means that the suckler herd farmer simply cannot give away his stock once it is flagged. I am told that we are talking about 300 farmers who need to be bailed out. There is no short-term palliative. I am also told that only a very small amount of money would enable those people to start again, build up their herds and get back into the industry without such a millstone, which they will never be able to remove alone, hanging around their necks.
I ask the Government to listen carefully to those points. I think that they are important and I know that they will be elaborated on. Every single public representative in the north of Ireland has been working with other parties, Members of the European Parliament, the Minister,
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farming unions and people on the ground to try to resolve the problem. They can only go so far. We can make progress only by the type of informed Government decisions about which I hope we shall hear very soon.
7.2 pm
Rev. Ian Paisley: This is a very sobering and sombre debate for the representatives of Northern Ireland. We are not engaged in any party-political endeavour. Whatever others in the House are about—it is their business, and rightly so—we are dealing with a crisis, as the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) has underlined. I shall not go into the statistics.
In evidence given by the banks to the forum for political dialogue in Ulster, it has emerged that £70 million has already been lost out of our economy in Northern Ireland. I heard the right hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) ask about next year. Next year— indeed, next summer—we are not going to have a beef industry because, as the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh has just said, we depend on our exports. Scotland will survive, although not well; England will survive and, perhaps, do a little better; but we cannot survive because we can sell only 25 per cent. of what we produce to our people. We have to sell the rest outside the country, and at least 50 per cent. of that goes to an area that is now prohibited to us. The door is shut, the chains are up and the locks are in.
I have some experience in Europe, for I have been a Member of the European Parliament since direct elections were introduced. We are not going to wake up one morning and hear an announcement that the ban has been completely lifted. That is not going to happen. If any hon. Member thinks that, by any way we move in this House, that will happen, they are living in cuckoo land.
Sir Jim Spicer indicated assent.
Rev. Ian Paisley: I notice that the hon. Gentleman, who has had wide experience of Europe too, nods his head in approval.
How are we going to get out of the difficulty? What plan can we adopt that can get us out of the difficulty? The only plan than we can adopt is realistically to face up to the fact that, if the ban is going to be broken, it will be broken only piecemeal. Hon. Members might not like to hear that. Nobody believes in the Union more than I do. The matter is not about setting one part of the United Kingdom against another. Frankly, if Scotland, England or Wales were in the position that we in Northern Ireland are in, I would be advocating that they immediately go ahead, start to move and get some water over the dam. If we get a break, we can bring others with us. Some hon. Members might not like Northern Ireland carrying the flag in this instance, but they will have to face up to it at the end of the day. We had better all realise that—and quickly.
Why do I say this? We have heard that we have difficulties in Europe. I am not pro-European, as everybody knows; I know that there are difficulties with Europe. There are two kingpins to our problem, however, with whom we do not have difficulties: the Agriculture Commissioner and the chairman of the Council of Ministers, who happens at the moment to be the Agriculture Minister of the Republic of Ireland.

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Commissioner Fischler met the three Members of the European Parliament who represent Northern Ireland—me and my two colleagues, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) and the former Member for Newry and Armagh, Mr. Nicholson—and representatives of the unions. I asked: "Will you tell me, Commissioner, what Northern Ireland has to do to come up to the standard that you say you have in Europe?" What was his answer? He said, "You are far beyond that standard." How can we justify a ban on Northern Ireland beef in Europe if we are far more advanced than Europe on the matter? I would like the Government to press that matter with vigour.
I was greatly disappointed and disheartened by the Minister's answer when the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) asked why we are not pressing on with the certification scheme. The Minister replied, "Look, we have talked about this. We have had some papers, but we do not have the working papers yet." I then intervened. I asked the same question and got the same reply. Then the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) asked the same question, and he got the same reply. We did not get anywhere.
Tonight, the Minister has spoken again. As the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) said, we have heard it all before. I want to ask the Government some plain questions. Are they going to block this road? Are they going to press for the certified herd scheme? Are they going to push the issue? How soon will they make a decision? I understand that they have not yet made a firm decision. Until they do, we shall not know what the outcome will be. I urge them to make a firm decision.
The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh talked about what stands between us and the market that we want. He was right. The animals are one obstacle. There are many others. The hon. Member for East Londonderry took me up wrongly before, and I want to put the figures on the record. He said that some 300—of 1,700—cattle had already been slaughtered. I checked, and found that 400 have now been slaughtered. About 1,300 beasts stand in the way of our meeting the Florence requirements for a cull.
A tremendous number of animals have already been slaughtered: 56,000 steers and heifers and 25,000 cows—a total of more than 80,000. Only 1,300 cattle are now standing in the way. Surely the Government should proceed.
Someone said that the debate was about what Europe had done. The Prime Minister accepted the Florence agreement. He may ask whether I accept it or whether the House accepts it, but that is not the question. He accepted it. It was sold as a very good deal. We were told that there was a calendar with this very good deal. That calendar has come and gone and we are nowhere. Would it not be right for the Government to say, "Right, we shall bring Northern Ireland up as far as the cull is concerned"?
The second matter to be dealt with is whether the number of cases of BSE in Northern Ireland is going down or up. If we still have serious levels of BSE in Northern Ireland, should it not be looked at? The good news is that BSE has peaked in Northern Ireland. In 1988 we had three cases. In 1989 we had 30. In 1990 we had 100. In 1991 we had 170. In 1992 we had 333. In 1993 we had 487. In 1994. the number went down to 360, and
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it has gone down again in 1995 and this year. The number is going down; we are not experiencing an increase. I am not making a political point, but the south of Ireland has had an increase while we have not.
The secret of the difference between us and the rest of the United Kingdom is simple—we do not have a land border; we have water around us. We can safeguard ourselves. Everyone knows that we have always had the best possible animal health standards because we are ringed by water. We have a case to be put.
I am sorry about what has happened, because Mr. Fischler and Mr. Yates, the two key men, told my two colleagues in the European Parliament—the hon. Member for Foyle and Mr. Nicholson—and me only a few days ago that they needed an application from the British Government. They need the Government to ask for it.
Hon. Members have talked about testing Europe. Let us test Europe. Mr. Yates will soon be going out of office, but he has assured us that he has already talked to his replacement from the Netherlands, who is of the same opinion. We used to export a lot of beef to the Netherlands. The Netherlands accepts Ulster beef. It was asked in the House today whether, if the ban was lifted, we would get these markets. We would have to go and fight for them. They are not waiting for us, but there are certain places where we have good will, and the Netherlands is one. We want to be able to help them out by giving them the best possible beef.
The House and the Government must take steps to get the papers and make the application. On European matters, it has often been necessary to persuade the chairman of the Council and the Commissioner. They do not need any persuasion. They are already of the opinion that the matter can be dealt with regionally. Swine fever in Germany was dealt with regionally. It was dealt with inside one country. One of the directives gives the ability to do that. We need to adopt that approach.
Sir Donald Thompson: It may seem that some of us have just come in, but we have been watching the hon. Member through the medium of our new televisions. I have listened carefully to what he has said. A lifting of the ban in Northern Ireland would begin to break the logjam. My farmers in Yorkshire, many of whose herds are BSE-free and who argue along the same lines about swine fever, Aujeszky's disease and foot and mouth, would welcome the first thaw coming from Northern Ireland.
Rev. Ian Paisley: That is very heartening for the people of Northern Ireland. At times, we feel isolated—perhaps even discriminated against—because we happen to be better than some of the farmers over here. We want the ban lifted for the whole United Kingdom. Unlike the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), I am not a vegetarian. I eat beef and like it. Beef eaters should eat Ulster beef, but if they cannot get Ulster beef, they should not forget Scottish or Yorkshire beef.
Let us be frank. The ban will not be lifted overnight. We shall have to go the way that I am suggesting. I plead with the Government to sit down and look carefully at the matter and say, "Yes, we shall have to do it this way." That is the only way to make progress. As I have already said, we shall not wake up one morning and discover that the ban has suddenly been lifted.

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I was at the European Parliament yesterday and I saw a report that said:
"Meanwhile confusing messages emerged from Luxembourg on October 28 on the UK's strategy for eradicating BSE and ending the beef ban. UK Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg told the press corps he was not pressing for a regional approach to lifting the ban, but would be trying to make progress towards resumption of beef exports 'from certified herds' which were guaranteed free of the taint of BSE, and of the contaminated bone meal held responsible for spreading the disease. However, the presence of Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth in the UK delegation sent out a different signal."
I am glad that the Secretary of State for Scotland is present. The report continued:
"Both Scotland and the UK province of Northern Ireland have a large number of such herds.
Earlier, the Farm Council President-in-Office Ivan Yates told the press corps that a regional proposal 'could be considered', provided the agreed targeted cull of cattle most at risk from BSE were implemented in that region. 'A special case can be made for Northern Ireland because of their animal identification system and that they were surrounded by water', said the Irish Agriculture Minister. However, Mr. Hogg rejected the idea of destroying cattle from herds already certified free of mad cow disease as 'irrelevant'."
If the Minister is saying, "Yes, I want to make progress towards the resumption of beef exports from certified herds," why does he not put in the working documents? That is the question and that is the position. Let us get the documents in and then see the response from Europe.
7.20 pm
Mr. Martyn Jones: From 1985 to 1996, we have been debating BSE in the House, yet we still have a BSE crisis. I believe that as long as it is handled by the present Administration, the issue will drag on and on. I am, therefore, grateful for the opportunity today to express my disgust at the Government's mishandling of the crisis. Government incompetence created it. They deregulated the rendering industry and allowed the prion organism of BSE to get through into the food chain. Government incompetence has maintained the crisis. How dare anyone say that the Tories do not care about manufacturing. They have manufactured more crises than any of our competitors.
At every stage of the crisis, the Government have failed to build a positive bridge with Europe. They have failed to deliver promises, and they have even failed to be consistent with their own version of events. In June, the Conservatives celebrated Florence; in September, they mourned Florence; since 28 October, they have been in confusion. The Tory BSE crisis has created a new verb—to maff it up. The Government have maffed it up, leaving our farmers in chaos and our consumers in fear.
At the European Union summit in Florence in June, in addition to the over-30-month scheme, the UK Government undertook to implement a selective cull of cattle most likely to develop BSE, to remove both meat and bone meal from farms and feed mills, to improve the methods of removing specified bovine material from carcases and to introduce an effective animal identification and movement system. In return, on being satisfied of an effective application of those methods, the European Commission envisaged a staged lifting of the ban on beef and beef products. The necessary draft orders were published to fulfil the commitment to the accelerated cull and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food described it as a great success. But it now appears that there never was a certain timetable for lifting the ban, so why on earth was the agreement signed?
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In the following months, we heard contradiction after contradiction. Like Britain's European partners, UK farmers are confused. I have met many farmers in my constituency and they, like farmers elsewhere, are rightly angry and in confusion. It is ridiculous to leave a whole industry trying to interpret the smoke signals coming from MAFF. I fear that the smoke signals are no longer hidden messages of indecision, but the burning of an ineffective dinosaur being steered by an ineffective Government. My farmers fear another cut in the hill livestock compensatory allowance, which other hon. Members have mentioned, when an increase is surely justified.
As a Member of Parliament for a rural constituency, and as a microbiologist by profession, I understand that the science surrounding BSE is continually evolving, but everyone can see only too clearly that a policy of sitting on one's hands waiting for Father Time to sort out the problem is not an acceptable option for British agriculture.
The beef export ban is still 100 per cent. in place and beef farmers have been given no indication of what the Government's policy is and when they can expect progress. The Government have lost their credibility in Britain, and Britain and its farmers eagerly await a change of Government. The Government have also lost their credibility in Europe, with their schoolyard antics losing the respect of even our most long-standing European allies. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said recently of this Government:
"They seize on an issue, they talk tough, they alienate everybody and then they cave in."—[Official Report, 12 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 152.]
Perhaps my right hon. Friend should have said that the Government sleaze on an issue rather than seize on it.
Such a stance undermines the efforts of representatives of farming bodies to press the Commission and member state Governments to honour their part of the Florence agreement. As we cannot rely on this incompetent Government to achieve anything in Europe, their undermining of our representative farming bodies is particularly serious and potentially catastrophic for farming.
I bring to the attention of the House—I am sure that it has been done before—the fact that, at the October meeting of the National Farmers Union, there was a
"vote of no confidence in the Minister's representation of the interests of the UK and its agricultural industry in the European Union."
Indeed, the Minister's speech to the Tory party conference in Bournemouth was described by Farmers' Weekly as a "masterpiece of under-achievement". It is now a standing joke among farmers in my constituency that the only safe meat is Hogg-meat as it is spineless, brainless and gutless and, therefore, contains no specified bovine offal. That is possibly a bit unkind, but to be fair to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's miserable ministerial performance, it is merely typical of the Government's overall performance.
It is no surprise that the Farming News editorial stated on 11 October, with regard to the impending general election:
"Few in farming will not be wishing that it brings a change in the management."
I return to the subject of science. It is worth bringing to the attention of the House a quotation from a recent edition of the scientific journal Nature. On 7 November,

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Gerald C. Coles, from the department of clinical veterinary science at the university of Bristol, said:
"MAFF has a history of suppressing scientific information it does not like, either by banning publication by its research staff or suggesting to those outside that the publication of certain MAFF sponsored research might jeopardise further funding."
The article then comments on the cultural problem within MAFF. It explains that it arises from
"the view that the role of scientific civil servants is to support politicians. As a result, science must be made to fit policy (which may be dogma) rather than policy being based on scientific research."
That is one of many such comments. The Government have dismissed science they do not agree with, or science that is outside MAFF control, but they have desperately clutched at any science that backs their stance.
I take no pleasure in saying—for the second time this week—"I told you so." In a speech in the House in May 1990 on BSE, I asked the Government to act on a number of crucial points. I asked them, first, to make Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease notifiable and, secondly, not to use the brains of cattle for any purposes. Thirdly, I asked them to ensure that all cattle brains were destroyed by burning within the head and, fourthly, to stop offals such as brains, spleen and lymph glands being used in any animal feed. Here I specifically warned of my concern for Britain's 7 million cats.
On 24 April 1990, even though we had had recently reported cases of feline spongiform encephalopathy, the Minister said that there was no evidence of naturally occurring encephalopathies in cats. That is almost certainly true, yet every year since 1989 we have had cases of FSE. Already this year, six cases have been confirmed and, at the last count, since 1989, there have been 74 sequels to Mad Max, the first cat who went down with the disease —so we have reached Mad Max 75 and counting.
I asked the Government to ensure that if pet food manufacturers must use meat and bone meal, it should be produced only in plant that has never been used for specified bovine offal or for cattle destroyed under the over-30-month scheme. Further to my sadly necessary "I told you so" lecture, I asked the Government not to hide behind expert advice—that is, selected advice. Advisers advise, but Ministers must decide.
I shall now quote from Nature of 19 September, which said:
"The role of science, with its attendant uncertainties, is to illuminate political choices not to enforce them. By acting as if it is oblivious to this truth, and to European political reality, the UK Government can only erode its credibility even further."
In 1990, I also asked the Government to stop feeding offal to animals, to instigate random testing at abattoirs—something they have not done yet—to prevent the possibility of vertical transmission in cattle by culling calves and affected cattle, with full compensation, and to increase research on transmission. For some of those suggestions, the Government have had to scurry about like political rats on a sinking ship of consumer confidence, desperately trying to cover up the holes instead of bothering to repair the damage. Other measures have not been taken. Do the Government not care? Are they arrogant? Apparently, the answer is yes on both counts.
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Farmers in my constituency and throughout north Wales are suffering because of the Government's arrogance and incompetence and they have had enough. They are suffering great hardship and I am as angry as they are that we have had to put up with the Government's pathetic performance.
Welsh farmers are considered to be the finest in the land and second to none when it comes to caring for their animals. Their suffering is a tragedy that I shall never let the Government forget. No doubt the history books will concur with that analysis.
The Government have continually maffed it up and they should resign. We should have an election as soon as possible so that farmers—Welsh and others—and consumers can vote out this miserable and incompetent Government. Enough is enough.
7.29 pm
Mr. Paul Marland: I am sick and tired of listening to Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen in the House and on the radio knocking the Government and denigrating Britain and British industry. However, we have heard not a word about what the Labour party would do about the present crisis. Today's debate has been distinguished by a lack of speeches from Labour Back-Benchers. Of course, we heard from the House's favourite vegetarian, the hon. Member for Newham, North—West (Mr. Banks), who made a passionate speech, but we have heard very few speeches from the Opposition Back Benches. The fact that very few of them are present demonstrates their lack of interest in the debate and its subject.
We heard earlier that the Labour party backed the cessation of trade in United Kingdom beef. That is another example of the Labour party cosying up to the European Union and being willing to accept whatever it proposes, regardless of the effect or the consequences in Britain.
The right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) made no reference whatever to United Kingdom farmers. My impression was that the debate was being used as a political platform for totally separate purposes. I could not help wondering why the debate was opened by the Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs rather than their spokesman on agriculture. It was only when the answer was dragged out of him that the right hon. Member for Livingston agreed that British beef was safe. He did not volunteer that information. It seems to be the stock-in-trade of the Opposition to spread despondency and speak with the benefit of hindsight, claiming that as a genius that only they possess.
We are talking about the biggest crisis that has ever hit both our farming industry and our food industry. In and around Gloucester and Gloucestershire, the operation of the over-30-month slaughter scheme appears to be going quite well, and the backlog is being reduced. Locally, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
In the past two weeks, nearly all the cattle on the OTMS scheme in Gloucester have been slaughtered. I am assured that the backlog will have been entirely cleared within the next two weeks. Each week, 600 cattle pass through Gloucester market. Some weeks ago, the number was 250. Abattoirs in the district are now looking for cattle to slaughter.
Looking back, one can see that it has not been easy, as many interests have had to be taken into account. We had to do what we could to save the entire industry. Farmers

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had to be considered, markets had to be kept going and the interests of abattoirs, cattle dealers, transport companies, butchers and meat wholesalers all had to be safeguarded. It was the biggest crisis ever to hit the food industry in Britain. It was also important to try to keep our European partners on side as we attempted to tackle the problem.
As others have said, this is an evolving crisis and a new disease. There was uncertainty about the best way to tackle it, and we had to find the way forward with some caution. Quite rightly, we followed the best scientific advice available. The Government deserve some recognition for sticking to that course while others bobbed and weaved and changed their minds. I was shocked by the performance of the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Hannan) when the crisis first came to light, and the way in which she seized upon the opportunity once again to damage British interests.
Although I am speaking locally, clearing the backlog has had an effect on the registration scheme in Gloucestershire. Cattle were due to be registered on the scheme by 1 November so that action could be taken by 4 November. That deadline slipped to 11 November due to the small numbers of cattle that had been registered. That was not due to a lack of information that should have been handed out to farmers, a shortage of forms or other minor difficulties that we have heard about in the past; it was actually due to the lack of cattle that farmers wished to enter on the registration list.
I cannot help wondering whether we need that registration scheme. Could we leave it to the market? I believe that the numbers in the registration scheme have been distorted by the fact that a number of farmers have registered their entire herds. As they were unsure whether any of their cattle would have to be taken out in the not too distant future, in order to safeguard their own position they have registered their entire herds.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister said that some 285,000 cattle were still awaiting slaughter. I wonder how many were as a result of farmers having registered their entire herds under the scheme. May I suggest that, in the changed circumstances, perhaps it would be better to drop the registration scheme and let market forces sort it out? That would change the position, so that the abattoirs were chasing the farmers for cattle rather than the farmers chasing the abattoirs to allow their cattle into the scheme to be slaughtered.
I believe that we should reconsider the selective cull. There has been a considerable change of heart in the House and throughout the country on whether it will remain necessary in future. Originally, we heard that hundreds of thousands of cattle would have to be taken out under the selective scheme, but now, as a result of successfully clearing the backlog of the OTMS scheme, the number has been substantially reduced.
Many farmers have made their own arrangements under the 30-month scheme in order to take older cattle out of their herds. That may have been part of the reason why there was a considerable logjam during the operation of the scheme. Yesterday, we heard again that there is further scientific evidence that older cattle are most at risk. If the 30-month scheme remains in operation, they will all be taken out of the food chain.
Sir David Naish confirmed to the Back-Bench agriculture committee that farmers would like the selective cull to continue, but only if our European
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partners agreed to lift the ban when the selective ban had been completed. I have serious doubts whether our European partners would lift the ban if we went ahead with the selective cull. It is important to get their agreement. As has been said, we have already fulfilled four of the five preconditions set out by the Florence summit. It is a great shame that our European partners have not recognised our efforts.
I agree with what has been said about lifting the ban in Northern Ireland. That would be an excellent first step. We could then flush out exactly what our European partners had in mind and whether they would lift the ban if we proceeded with the selective cull. Lifting the ban on Northern Ireland might give us more confidence that we should proceed without delay.
Mr. Phil Gallie: If that is the case for Northern Ireland, does my hon. Friend agree that there is also a good argument for considering the Scottish situation?
Mr. Marland: I like the idea of going a step at a time; that is a helpful intervention. We should seek to get the ban in Northern Ireland lifted, test our European partners, and then start concentrating on what has been happening in Scotland. The Scottish farmers are making a good case, as my hon. Friend says.
On the subject of compensation for farmers, I realise that I am walking on eggshells. Nevertheless, farmers in Gloucestershire have told me that they are grateful for the amount of taxpayers' money that has been paid to them by the Government.
I am reliably informed that the value of cull dairy cows this year throughout the scheme has been similar to the value of cull dairy cows during last year. That fact is worth recording. Some farmers may have specific views on their circumstances; it is easy to blow up an individual case to demonstrate the awfulness of a situation, but overall, the information I have is that cull dairy cows have retained their value well during the scheme.
I know that the drop in the price of cull cows was unpopular. Whoever was responsible for the drop, it happened. Part of the reason for the drop may have been that farmers were achieving a higher return for 30-month-old cows than if they had put them into market. Taxpayers can be asked to pay so much, but I do not think that anyone wanted the farmers to profit from the scheme in the way that some have, and there is considerable evidence that that happened.
Sir Jim Spicer: I can see the logic in what my hon. Friend has just said, but I cannot see the fairness. Some people stood by from early May with their cattle waiting to go, watched others go through the back door, and then found that the cut had happened and the ones who came in through the back door had collected the cash. Those who waited are naturally irritated about that.
Mr. Marland: That is why I said earlier that I recognised that I was walking on eggshells. I have not heard anyone dissent from my observation that some farmers sought to retain their animals to put them into the 30-month scheme, so that they could achieve a higher price. That is a sad reflection on them, but it is the way things work. There are so many farmers and so many cattle that the Government would not have been able to regulate the scheme in any other way.

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One or two other speakers have mentioned the Intervention Board, and some problems surrounding its activity have been brought to my attention. For example, it has been difficult to trace large payments made by the Intervention Board to markets to be distributed among a number of farmers. The markets have had difficulty in tracing what the payments were for in order to apportion the money as intended. The markets have had to go back to the Intervention Board to find out how the cheques were made up. The Intervention Board has done its best to co-operate, and that is the one minor irritation that I have heard about.
Furthermore, I understand that the Intervention Board has been uncompromising in its attitude to missing ear tags. Even when a cow in the system is clearly freeze-branded and the farm records back up its history, I understand that the board has been difficult about accepting that the cow is eligible for the scheme. I understand everybody's concern about fraud, but perhaps in the circumstances a little more understanding from the board might not go amiss.
All in all, in my district, there is some light at the end of the tunnel of the gruesome situation. I wish to pay tribute, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) did, to farmers for the way in which they have responded throughout this time. It has been difficult for some of them, but they recognise the difficulties we face. I also pay tribute to the president of the National Farmers Union, who has shown tremendous leadership during this difficult time. He has not become flustered but has remained cool-headed. Despite the pressure that he has been under to lambast the Government, he has been fair and reasonable throughout. I publicly pay tribute to him.
It is wrong to blow up isolated cases, but it is easy to do, and it is an old trick still used by some Opposition Members to paint a picture of a difficult situation. It is wrong to focus too much attention on one individual. I also pay tribute to the Meat and Livestock Commission, which has mounted a quiet and steady campaign to promote British beef. It kept saying that British beef was safe, as everybody in the House—certainly all Conservative Members —thinks it is. A butcher in my constituency—Andy Crease, who has a butcher's shop in Newent—has kept all his customers eating beef by reassuring them that everything in his shop was of the highest standard. I salute him for what he has done to keep up beef sales in Newent.
I hope that those who run the mighty McDonald's will take notice of our debate today. They have explained their difficulties with their customers and the use of British beef in McDonald's restaurants. I hope that they will be reassured by what has been said in the House and the way in which beef sales are keeping up. Before too long, I hope that McDonald's will decide to go back to using British beef, because its consumption in its restaurants has a tremendous effect on the price.
Mr. Tyler: You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that, in your city, the royal naval dockyard and the Ministry of Defence have let a franchise to McDonald's, which is the first ever on naval property. That McDonald's emporium is now serving Dutch beef to
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British service people and the dockyard workers. Does the hon. Member agree that it is time the Government used their influence to ensure that our service men have access to clean, good, fresh British beef? Does he also agree that, if the task force were to set sail now to the Falklands, it would have to eat Argentine or Dutch beef, as was mentioned earlier?
Mr. Marland: The last part of the hon. Gentleman's question is imaginative. I do not think that it is the role of the Government to interfere in the private sector and tell McDonald's restaurants that they must use British beef.
Mr. Tyler: Why not?
Mr. Marland: Because we are not in the business of compulsion. We have to seek to persuade McDonald's by other means that British beef is safe and that its customers can be reassured about eating British beef, probably more so than about Dutch beef because, as I said earlier, I believe that BSE exists just as badly in Europe as it does here. It has been tremendously under-reported in Europe, and that is a great shame.
I lament the way in which senior Opposition spokesmen have sought to denigrate British industry and British farmers, and to make trouble where no trouble exists.
7.48 pm
Mr. Alan W. Williams: I found the opening speech by the Minister of Agriculture profoundly depressing. I am sure that farmers across the country will have got little cheer from the Government's grasp of the problem and, in particular, their lack of success in lifting the European ban.
When the Prime Minister returned from Florence, he hailed his framework agreement as the way forward. He said that, by October or November, the ban would he lifted, but our part of that deal was the second slaughter programme, which collapsed during August and September. It was clear from the Minister's speech that there was mistrust—mutual mistrust, so he alleges—between our European partners and Britain. The Government did not have faith that, if we went ahead with our slaughter programme, the EU would lift the ban. That intense mistrust is appalling. It is a reflection of the Government's relations with the European Union. It is sad, and it makes it difficult to work our way out of the crisis.
I am afraid that remarks such as the latter remarks of the hon. Member for West Gloucestershire (Mr. Marland), in which he expressed Euro-scepticism and sought to blame Europe for a crisis that is absolutely British-made, are extremely unhelpful in finding a way out of the problem.
The accelerated slaughter programme is our side of the bargain. One does not sell one's house for £50,000 and then go back and ask for more. Once one has signed the contract or agreed to the communiqu—, one has to keep one's part of the deal, whether it was good, brilliant or poor. I was taught when I was a youngster that an Englishman's word was his bond. I am from Wales, and when I give my word, I stick to it. It is a bad breach of

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faith on the part of the Government that they have been backsliding throughout the summer since the Florence agreement.
Very little pressure has been placed on the Government by Conservative Members this evening to proceed with the accelerated slaughter programme, which has to be the way forward. We agreed to the framework that was set up. Its targeting is difficult to define. We accept the difficulties, but it is the only agreement we have.
We have heard three excellent speeches from Northern Ireland Members this evening. There was nothing concrete or definite in the Minister's speech about making a special case for Northern Ireland, where the incidence of BSE is so much less than in mainland Britain. Traceability and records are much better. There is no backlog, and the problem is relatively much simpler to solve. The way ahead is to make a special case. Ivan Yates and Commissioner Fischler are key people in the Council of Ministers. We have them on side, and they want to see us proceed in the direction of special treatment for Northern Ireland.
I listened intently to the Minister's speech, but he gave no assurance that the Government would submit the necessary papers, because they would then have to proceed with the accelerated slaughter programme, and they are unwilling to do that. There is a lack of political will to proceed with implementing the Florence agreement, and at the same time Northern Ireland is being held back.
I am afraid that my general impression from this evening's debate is that the Government are being slow and ponderous, and have shown bad faith in finding a way out of the problems that afflict us.
I was in the Chamber on 24 June when the Prime Minister made a statement on the Florence summit. What he said was incredible. He said that most of the stages in lifting the ban would be completed by October or November. The steps we took were up to us. We had to implement in full the over-30-month scheme and proceed with the accelerated slaughter programme. If we fulfilled both those conditions, as well as four other conditions—which have been met—two stages in lifting the ban could be reached in October and two in November. The fifth stage would be to lift the ban from all beef. The barren cows programme would remain.
The Prime Minister said:
"this timetable is essentially in our hands."—[Official Report, 24 June 1996; Vol. 280, c. 22.]
If the timetable was in their hands, the Government have proved incompetent in the three or four months since in implementing the programme.
Sir Jim Spicer: On the particular point about implementing the selective cull, the hon. Gentleman has close links with his farmers' unions, as do I and all other hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. Will he recall just where his local NFU stood on the selective cull in May and June? Was it not opposed to it? In the south-west of England, the NFU was saying that, if the Government tried to implement the cull, farmers would block their driveways and not allow it to go ahead.
Mr. Williams: I accept that the Farmers Union of Wales in my constituency has changed its mind backwards and forwards over the summer. I promise the
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hon. Gentleman that the farmers' unions are now united. I shall quote them later to show that they want to see us proceed rapidly towards a selective cull.
I shall continue to follow the argument chronologically. In his speech on 24 July, the Minister of Agriculture said that the Florence
"agreement was a great success, and provides a solid way forward."—[Official Report, 24 July 1996; Vol. 282, c. 369.]
Yet, three months later, we had prevarication and a breach of faith during September. At the beginning of the recess, we expected to receive details of the accelerated slaughter programme. On the last day that the House sat, the Secretary of State explained why there was a delay in drafting the programme.
During the summer, a statement was made on maternal transmission. There has been some confusion on that since, but the crude numbers suggest that it is a factor to be borne in mind in the slaughter programme.
Then we had the Oxford study, which outlined various scenarios and estimated how effective or efficient a slaughter programme would be. Such scenarios need to be taken into account in drafting the programme, but I learned from my discussions with farmers at shows and at local offices of the FUW when the statement on maternal transmission came out that there was an instinctive feeling, which was borne out by the statement, that it was sensible to slaughter the last calf born to a cow which subsequently died of BSE. BSE would clearly be developing within the calf's brain.
It makes sense to slaughter the birth cohort of any herd of which 5 or 10 per cent. have already contracted BSE. The Oxford study considered various such scenarios. It is the Government's role to draw up a suitable, targeted slaughter programme. The figures may be of the order of 100,000. I cannot understand why MAFF and Conservative Members find such a figure difficult to accept. We already have in place a programme that involves the slaughter of more than 1 million cows in a calendar year. We are talking about an additional 100,000. That is not many more—just an additional 10 per cent.—so why do we not proceed with that?
The right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) expressed serious reservations about any second slaughter programme, because he thought that it would be inefficient. I accept that, but it is no more inefficient than the barren cows programme is now. If one out of every 100 cows slaughtered has BSE, that scheme will be 99 per cent. inefficient. The figure for the targeted programme is about 30 cows slaughtered for every one with BSE, making it a more efficient programme.
In research carried out at St. Mary's hospital and Imperial College in London, Professor Collinge identified the fingerprint for a BSE prion and a CJD prion. Initially, farmers and the national press took that to be a depressing find, as it appeared to make it all the more certain that the newly identified strain of CJD was directly related to BSE. The vast majority of scientific opinion is now of that view, and Collinge's work confirmed it.
The research contained the opinion that, within perhaps six months, we will have a test for CJD using samples from the tonsils and lymph nodes of human beings—a significant step forward. It may be disturbing, in that we could then use anonymous testing or volunteers to estimate the seriousness of the incidence of CJD in the

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next five, 10 or 20 years. If the test is available in six months, we may discover within a year or two that there are a few dozen cases of CJD. If so, CJD will be less important than salmonella, and we will wonder what the panic has been about. If the numbers are higher, however, the test will have given us a measure of the problem that lies in store.
If we can test for CJD, it may allow us to produce a test for BSE in live cattle. Throughout last year—and in debates since 1989—the Opposition have pressed vigorously for research to be carried out to produce a test for BSE in cattle, which would lead to the only sensible slaughter programme. If we can develop such a test within six months, we can apply it every three months or six months, and slaughter only those animals showing signs of BSE. That slaughter programme would be 100 per cent. efficient, and that is the direction in which we must move.
We must not be afraid of science, as science can help us solve the problem. Until we have such a test, the Government must proceed with the accelerated slaughter programme and legislate in that area. The farming unions want the programme, and we agreed to it in Florence. We must also press Northern Ireland's case for the restrictions to be lifted, as a first major step towards having the ban lifted for the rest of the UK.
8.3 pm
Mr. Edward Leigh: I shall speak briefly, as I know that others want to get in. I shall make three points: first, I will say a few brief words about the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg); secondly, I will mention some points put to me by my local Lincolnshire NFU branches; and, thirdly, I will give my views on the selective cull and whether we should proceed with it.
First, my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has, sadly, been traduced as usual during this debate. I very much regret that the NFU has taken it upon itself to demand his resignation. It may be true that my right hon. and learned Friend is not the Errol Flynn of our parliamentary generation in terms of charm or good looks, but no one compares with him in terms of intelligence, integrity and moral courage.
I wish my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food well in his continuing efforts, and nothing can be gained on the part of the NFU by demanding his resignation—particularly as the NFU itself has changed its position on the issue. During the summer, the NFU urged the Government not to proceed with the selective cull, and it has now accused the Government of dithering. I do not blame the NFU for changing its position, as this is a highly complex situation and it is quite entitled to change its mind. But the Government are equally entitled to change their mind on the basis of scientific evidence, as they have done.
Secondly, I wish to refer to the views of my local NFU branches. Like all hon. Members who represent agricultural areas, I am only too well aware that this is one of the gravest crises facing rural areas in many years. I had a number of meetings with my local NFU branches over the summer about the backlog in the 30-month scheme. Ministers—particularly the Chancellor of the
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Duchy of Lancaster, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Freeman), who has taken a close interest in this matter, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food—have cleared the backlog. Those are not just my words, because I took it upon myself to check today with the Lincoln NFU and with the regional NFU at Uppingham. I was told that the backlog in our region will be cleared by December, and a great deal of credit should go to Ministers for achieving that.
My local branches say that there are still wide variations in the time it takes for farmers to get their beasts slaughtered, and that the new registration and permit scheme that is to come into effect should even out those problems. They add, however, that it is too early to say how effective the scheme will be. They have made it absolutely clear that, as far as the 30-month scheme is concerned, they believe that we have cured the problem.
My local NFU branches and the national organisation—I now come to my third and final point—now call for a selective cull, but I very much hope that the Government will resist these calls. I believe that they should resist them for two reasons. First, there is very little cogent evidence that such a selective cull would achieve a rapid eradication of the disease; and, secondly, there is little cogent evidence that it would be politically effective in Europe. As an hon. Member who represents a rural area, I want to do all that I can to help farmers resolve this problem. If I felt that a selective cull would be effective physically—in terms of eradicating the disease—or politically, I would be the first to call for it. There is no such evidence.
We have heard during the debate about the various scientific evidence. Professor Anderson wrote during the summer that
"the epidemic is well past its peak, and seems to be in a phase of rapid decline."
He added that new infections from contaminated feed
"are predicted to be close to zero"
by the end of this year. Some interesting statistics have been produced during the debate, but no one has denied that all the various options for the cull would, to a greater or lesser extent, be hugely expensive and barely effective.
The evidence suggests that if all 7 million cattle in this country were culled, 1,300 would have been culled for every case saved. Culling the 2 million cattle born between October 1990 and 1993 would result in 564 being culled for each BSE case saved. Some 455 cattle would have to be culled to save each BSE case if cattle from herds in which a case originated between January 1991 and December 1995 were culled. So it goes on. Virtually every single option—there is no need to detain the House, as they have all been published—would result in a huge number of cattle being culled at great cost with very few BSE cases being saved. Those are the scientific facts, and no one has been able to refute them.
I do not believe that it would be politically effective in Europe to proceed down the route of a unilateral selective cull. One need only consider what happened with gelatine: we were assured that the ban would be lifted but every member nation has found some excuse to maintain it. If we were to go down that route without getting an assurance in writing that there would be a timetable for a phased lifting of the ban, member states would find some excuse for keeping out British cattle. I do not blame them

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for that, because they have their own political situation to deal with and it is not for me to comment on public opinion in Europe.
In Florence we achieved not a timetable but agreement to a process. We should have continued the policy of non co-operation until we had a firm timetable; the subsequent history of the affair bears out that view. I am told that on the continent BSE is known as the JCB disease, because so many cattle are simply shovelled into pits and never heard of again.
We should insist in Europe that all contaminated cattle be kept out of the human food chain. The fact, confirmed by people on both sides of the debate, is that we have taken adequate steps in the existing cull, in ensuring that older beasts do not go on the market at all and in removing all potentially affected parts from all beasts. Every objective scientific observer accepts that British beef is safe, as do the Commissioner and the World Health Organisation. There is nothing more that we can do to make British beef safe.
Much as I want to help my local farmers, I must tell them that the Country Landowners Association better represents their interests than the National Farmers Union. The CLA is not calling for an immediate cull but insisting that any cull must be linked to a timetable. If we did not secure that link we would be embarking on a senseless, expensive and cruel slaughter that would achieve extremely little. lb/>
We need to stop having debates like this. We all know that this debate is merely the Opposition's attempt to cobble together a majority to embarrass the Government. Do they really think that if the debate achieves any publicity it will help British beef? Will it help the food industry if they manage to defeat the Government? Of course not. I hope and believe that they will not defeat the Government, but are playing politics.
The Government must keep their nerve, stand firm and gradually rebuild confidence in British beef. The British public have confidence in our beef. There is no possible rationale for the European ban. We must resist the siren calls, and I congratulate the Government on the stance that they have taken hitherto.
8.12 pm
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones: Like the hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh), I am a member of the Agriculture Select Committee. Probably not for the first or the last time, I disagree profoundly with his analysis, particularly on the accelerated cull.
The right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) made a forceful point when he told us that the position on the accelerated cull had changed significantly since June. We are now well into the backlog and if all the indications are right we shall have cleared it by the end of the year; we shall then have the opportunity to implement the accelerated cull.
Until the speech of the hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle, there was general cross-party realisation that there has to be movement on the accelerated cull. It would not be a unilateral action, because it was part of the agreement that the Prime Minister acknowledged was made at Florence. The accelerated cull was not imposed by the European Union or the Commission; it was
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proposed by the Government as a way of trying to lift the ban. We know that the ban will not be lifted unless that condition is adhered to. We should proceed on the basis that the accelerated cull must be linked to the lifting of the ban in clearer terms than were set out at Florence.
I am pleased that the right hon. Member for Conwy (Sir W. Roberts) is here. Tonight we have heard about the impact of the BSE crisis on all the countries of the United Kingdom—Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales—and for most of the debate representatives from the Offices for those countries have been present: the Secretary of State for Scotland, Scottish Office Ministers, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and a Minister from Northern Ireland have all been here, but there has not been a single Minister from the Welsh Office. That is an utter disgrace. I acknowledge the fact that the right hon. Gentleman told us his view from the Government Benches, but a Minister from Wales should have been present, because BSE has had a profound impact on the rural economy of Wales.
The matter is important to Wales, because 80 per cent. of its land mass is in less-favoured areas. Agriculture maintains not only the fabric of our rural economy but the social fabric of many parts of Wales; it is vital, because many people's jobs depend on it. A recent study published by the institute of rural studies at the University college of Wales at Aberystwyth showed the extent of the damage caused to the industry: between 2,500 and 3,500 jobs are at risk as a result of the crisis and our rural economy could lose between £40 million and £50 million. It is therefore important to bring the perspective of farmers in Wales to the attention of the House.
Let us consider some of the core issues. The Agriculture Select Committee examined the matter thoroughly and it became clear that the BSE epidemic arose from the relaxation of the rules on animal meat processing in 1981. The disease was first diagnosed in 1986 and made notifiable in 1988, but it was not until this year that firm steps were taken to eradicate it.
The Government initially appeared overwhelmed by the loss of confidence in the beef industry following the announcement made by the Secretary of State for Health in March this year. They had a number of options: first, the Minister told the House that all cattle over 30 months would be deboned; then there was the suggestion of a wholesale slaughter policy, from which the Government eventually withdrew; and, finally, there was the over-30-month scheme, which has been implemented.
In Wales, the scheme got off to an extremely slow start. We do not have adequate rendering facilities and we had the problem of the designation of abattoirs and collection centres. The Government have increased the number of animals that they want to include in the slaughter scheme—up to 55,000 a week—and we have great difficulty in meeting our targets in Wales, for the lack of rendering capacity.
One of the main reasons for the Government's failure to have the ban on beef exports lifted was the chaos caused by the original introduction of the over-30-month scheme and their failure to recognise the scale of the problem. Farmers' organisations and unions in my constituency and elsewhere consistently told me that the Government had underestimated the backlog. The Government thought that it was about 100,000 and the farmers, about 400,000. Eventually, a proper survey

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showed the backlog to be substantially more. Newsletters produced by the Ministry constantly told us that the backlog would be cleared by October. That was repeated until last month when we were told what the farmers had known all along—that the backlog was substantially greater than the Government had acknowledged.
That was an issue in Europe. We accept that the ban was completely unjustified and we want to see it lifted. But the European member states were not properly informed of the extent of the backlog and now the Government are equivocating on the accelerated cull.
Ministers from different Departments have said different things to different people in different places at different times. The Minister of Agriculture has said one thing, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland another, the Secretary of State for Scotland another and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster another. What is the Government's position on the accelerated cull? Northern Ireland Members have asked today about the position in Northern Ireland, yet we still do not know. Unless the Government make their position clear, the day for lifting the ban will remain on the back burner. The Government need a clear timetable for its introduction.
I want to clarify one point which seems to have been missed by the Government when it was put to them. Why was there a 10 per cent. reduction in the compensation under the over-30-month scheme from 1 ecu to 0.9 ecu? That was put forward by the Government. It was agreed in Brussels, but it was a Government proposal, made when farmers knew the extent of the backlog and had been waiting patiently for their animals to go through the queue. As we have heard tonight, others were taken in through the back door, getting their compensation at the old rate. Those farmers who waited patiently, playing by the rules, found their compensation cut overnight without any consultation. That is no way in which to treat an industry in crisis. The Government should listen to the voices on both sides of the House and restore the position to what it was previously in order to ensure that those farmers who are still waiting are compensated at the right level.
We acknowledge that additional help has been given to the industry. The Minister today talked about the £29 million which has been given to farmers in respect of animals sold between March and June, the £29 million announced in October, the £50 million additional money from the EU following the Luxembourg Council, and the £60 million which has been allocated through the HLCA. All that money is being put in through existing mechanisms, but the difficulty is that not every farmer qualifies for each of those mechanisms. The Government should ensure that there is equity of treatment for each farmer who has suffered loss as a result of the beef crisis.
It is to be welcomed that the HLCA payments will go to those in the hills who are in desperate need of assistance, but lowland farmers also have great problems. Conditions are attached to the beef special premium and the suckler cow premium so that not every farmer will receive the same amount in compensation. The great advantage of the over-30-month compensation is that each farmer had the same compensation. They knew what they would get. Using those mechanisms can distort that compensation and the Government must address that.
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We accept that the Government have already introduced many of the points agreed at Florence—all the points that the Minister has acknowledged and all the points made by hon. Members. But the accelerated cull remains the key issue, and unless the Government are prepared to bring forward proposals, it is highly unlikely that there will be significant early movement on the lifting of the ban.
We are talking not about hundreds of thousands of animals here but about a limited number. The Government should go back to our European partners and talk sensibly, on the basis of the scientific evidence, about how the ban can be lifted. There must be a firm timetable for lifting the ban for all beef animals aged under 30 months. The overwhelming view expressed on both sides of the House tonight is that that accelerated cull will now form the basis of the lifting of that ban and I ask the Government to act with urgency on that issue.
8.25 pm
Sir Jim Spicer: It would be easy simply to say that I agree wholeheartedly with the views of my right hon. Friends the Members for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) and for Bridgwater (Mr. King), which the House has already heard. I could then sit down, but that is no way for a politician to behave. Given the opportunity to sound off and to reiterate exactly what they have said, that I must surely do. I am delighted that my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister is in his place as I shall be repeating almost word for word what my right hon. Friends said in the debate.
I want to concentrate on two points and I illustrate my first point by telling the House about a farmer in my constituency, John Hoskin, the chairman of my local branch of the National Farmers Union, who is well known to the Parliamentary Secretary. my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mrs. Browning), whom I am delighted to see on the Front Bench this evening. What has happened to John Hoskin has also happened to others in my constituency and particularly in the south-west where BSE has hit harder than anywhere else in the country during the past five years.
As hon. Members know, the 163,000 cases of BSE—a chilling figure—have not occurred in the past six months but in the past five years. Long before that dreadful day in March, farmers in our constituencies were living with the fear of BSE and, to be honest, keeping it to themselves. They reported and disposed of each case, but they did not tell me as a friend and someone who has known them for many years.
I shall always remember the shock that I had when I went to my first meeting with the NFU after the statement on 21 March, when suddenly people around the table told me that they had had 30, 40, 50 or 60 cases of BSE in their herds. I realised then for the first time what they had lived through. But that is as nothing compared with what they have had to endure in the past six months, when they have faced uncertainty about the future and how to go forward.
I come back to John Hoskin. John Hoskin is a tenant of the Duchy of Cornwall on a large farm just outside Dorchester. In January this year he was elected chairman of the Dorset NFU. It is pretty certain that his wife wishes that he had never been elected chairman in this particular year, and he probably feels the same way himself.

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On 1 May, when the first measures were announced, John Hoskin had 102 cattle waiting to be disposed of. We all know what the problems have been since May. It is no use the Opposition trying to make capital out of this, because there have been massive problems. The rendering capacity was not there. How can a slaughter rate suddenly be accelerated overnight from 10,000 or 15,000 per week up to 55,000 or 60,000? It cannot be done. The problems arose and, of course, we fell behind. As a result, on 1 October, not one cow had left John Hoskin's farm. The same was true for many other farmers in the south-west, which was the area with the highest incidence of BSE and where far more cattle were left hanging around. John Hoskin still had 102 cattle and winter slowly but surely began to set in.
On 8 October, an angry John Hoskin carne to Bournemouth to the Conservative party conference. He and I had been in almost daily contact before that. He went with other members of the farming community to see my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who expressed to John not only his concern and sympathy, but his absolute determination and the Government's determination to do everything that was needed—not just for one year, but for the next five years if necessary—to ensure that the agricultural community came through the gravest crisis that we have ever faced. Some hon. Members may say that they would have expected the Prime Minister to say that.
John Hoskin was reassured by that meeting, but with 102 cattle waiting at home at that time he also knew that on 21 October there would be a cut of 10 per cent. in the price that he would receive. That point has already been made by many Conservative and Opposition Members during the debate. Frankly, I do not care where that cut came from or how it was initiated. It may have been the most logical measure in the world and there are perhaps good reasons why it should have come about. It was logical, but I have to say to my right hon. and learned Friend that it was not fair.
John Hoskin had been waiting in the queue since May and not one cow had departed from his farm, but in the week beginning 21 October—believe it or not—35 went, and a further 25 went the following week. I phoned him this morning and was told that he had only 15 cattle left to go. He said to me, "Of course I am a happier man because they have gone, but it still rankles with me that some of the people who were up to their tricks behind the scenes and who were getting cattle away got the higher level of compensation while I did not." That point has been made time and again in the Chamber today.
Why did that happen? Why did John Hoskin not get a fair crack of the whip? We all know that we did not get the register established in time. The NFU wanted a register and I do not know why we did not do it. Now we have the register, and it should be possible to say that the register is the end and that the 10 per cent. cut should be implemented only when it is through. However it is done, I beg my right hon. and learned Friend to reconsider the proposal on the grounds of fairness alone.
By mid-December all cattle on the register will have been cleared. That is a massive achievement. I offer my warmest congratulations to all the Ministers who have been involved, to all the abattoirs and to most of the renderers, although the latter really do not need much thanks as they have done rather well out of the operation. During the past two or three months, the situation has
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been treated as a crisis and everyone has worked to get the figure above 55,000, and we hope that it will stay there. Everyone involved deserves our thanks.
After that, we have to look to the future. Everyone wants the ban lifted. To trace the history of the crisis, we have to go back further than Florence, to the meeting in Turin a week after 21 March, when most of the Community's political leaders said to our Prime Minister, "This whole thing is nonsense—we'll get it sorted out." I remember hearing the Italian Prime Minister saying, "Absolutely ridiculous—it will not stand." Yet they went back, talked the matter over and instructed their representatives on the scientific committee to vote to keep the ban in place. That is the challenge that we face.
If we are now to consider a selective cull, let us be absolutely clear that there are steps towards achieving that. First and foremost, we have to establish how many cattle are left on the list. My guess is—all that we have heard tonight from Members from Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England confirms it—that the number will be far less than we originally thought, because many of those cattle will already have been swept up in the 30-month cull. As the president of the NFU said the other day, what farmer wants to be left with the cow that has the last case of BSE in the United Kingdom? Everyone will have been doing their own selective cull and many of the cattle will have disappeared.
Let us say that we are dealing with, at the upper end, 100,000 cattle. That is two weeks' slaughter. The prize, if we can win it, is worth while, but we have to ask ourselves whether we shall achieve that prize by going that far down the road. I echo what most hon. Members have said—by all means, let us get everything in shape, let us be ready with the lists of where those cattle are, but let us then go to the European Community—whether to the scientific committee, or to that kind and sympathetic Commissioner, or to the Irish representative who is so helpful and thoughtful—and say, "This is what we will do, but we will not do it unless the ban is going to be lifted." Somebody said that we should have that in writing: I want it written in blood—I want to be absolutely certain that the promise will not be reneged on. That is what we have to achieve.
If we can achieve that, and if the Community lives up to its promise, it must then go a step further. Simply lifting the ban will help us in South Africa and it may help us to export our calves to Italy, where they are wanted, or to the Netherlands. Northern Ireland's farmers already have their markets lined up—they tend to be far thinking in matters of this kind. In addition, however, we have to ensure that there is no impediment to our exporting to Europe.
I remember the lamb war. My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister was in Normandy—I came along a little later. When I marched off a lorry containing sheep that had entered a French port, it was almost like landing on D-day. The port was deserted and we were cowering and cringing like the lead man in a fighting patrol, waiting for the French farmers to attack us, and I can promise that there were no police about. If we are to return to that sort of scenario, where every consignment of British beef is attacked in that way, we may as well forget it.
Nevertheless, it is worth going that extra mile to try to get the ban lifted because the alternative is five years as a fortress. Like my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister,

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I would give a pledge that even if we have to endure five years as a fortress we shall give our full support to the farming community, and I hope that the Opposition parties would say the same. We are determined that agriculture should emerge from this total ban in good shape and ready to fight.
Let us face up to reality. Let us take the Community's words at their true value, and let the Community show us that its representatives are honest and basing everything on scientific evidence. Only then should we go down that road, or at least make sure that we can explore it.
8.39 pm
Mr. Andrew Welsh: The hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir J. Spicer) is seeking practical solutions and I certainly urge him down that road, whether they are written in blood or not.
The Scottish National party amendment offers some practical, common-sense solutions towards getting a breakthrough in the European ban for Scotland and Northern Ireland. We could use the strength of our industries to breach the ban and lead the United Kingdom industry out of the present unacceptable situation.
I have found this debate and the Minister's contribution somewhat depressing. According to the Minister, there is no end in sight for this continuing crisis. After eight months, there is still no sign of an end to the industry's problems. The debate has been a little like the film, "Groundhog Day". Each time this Hogg reappears at the Dispatch Box, we get slight variations, but nothing really changes. There has been no progress towards ending the greatest crisis to hit the agriculture industry in modern times. I should like to see a greater sense of urgency. This crisis is attacking the heart of one of our most important industries.
From his performance today, the Minister seems to have no real plans and, apparently, no commitment to solving the BSE problem. He complains that there is no European timetable for lifting the beef ban; yet he admits that he has not even got to first base and submitted detailed working documents to Europe. He has deliberately ignored the strongest European cards—the industries in Scotland and Northern Ireland. They could get zonal exemptions and jointly breach the European ban. They could lead the United Kingdom's industry out of its problems.
Those are the major keys, but I have not heard anything from the Minister to suggest that he is prepared to use those keys to unlock the door to Europe. After eight or more months, we still have no timetable. We have had only a series of Government failures affecting 6,000 jobs in Scotland and an industry that is worth £120 million annually. We are now well into the eighth month of what has been an agonising time for our beef industry. The Government's involvement has been a catalogue of disasters and wilful neglect. Rather than the Government making a serious attempt to eradicate BSE as soon as possible and lift the EU export ban, we have witnessed only a series of absurd U-turns, the only logic of which has been to pander to the Euro-sceptic gallery.
Despite all that, the Prime Minister returned from Florence in June with an agreed package which set a deadline of October for returning prime Scottish beef to
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European markets. That deadline has now passed and the Government have failed to implement the accelerated selective slaughter—an essential part of the agreement. The signals from the Ministry of Agriculture suggest that the selective cull may now be shelved, along with all attempts to lift the export ban, the pretence being that the so-called review is based on the evidence of one scientific report. In fact, all the evidence suggests that it is another unhelpful twist by a Government who have been shown as willing to sacrifice an entire industry for short-term political gain in middle England.
The Government have been far from objective in heeding scientific wisdom. As far back as March, the first month of the crisis, Professor T. H. Pennington, professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen university, gave an independent opinion which confirmed that the level of risk from Scottish beef from accredited herds was
"as close to zero as practically possible."
Professor Pennington said:
"Scottish Quality Beef can be traced back to BSE-free herds. From the scientific point of view it would be irrational to rate the health risk from consuming this beef as higher than that run from any other country that had reported BSE in its own cattle—a risk that is currently considered to be negligible."
BSE is essentially a dairy problem and its incidence in Scotland and Northern Ireland is significantly lower than in the rest of the United Kingdom. We have heard the figures from Northern Ireland, and I must point out to the Minister that Scottish herds have produced less than 5 per cent. of United Kingdom BSE cases since the mid-1980s and that the numbers are falling rapidly. The over-30-months slaughter scheme has been operating well in Scotland. We have not shared the difficulties experienced in England, many of which have been rehearsed today.
A selective cull in Scotland would mean slaughtering only about 3,500 animals and could be completed in a matter of weeks if the Government chose to do so. The beef industry in Scotland has insisted that the selective cull must go ahead. It recognises that living with the beef ban is not an option. Before the crisis, 20 per cent. of Scottish prime beef output—worth some £120 million each year—went to the export market. There is no realistic prospect of re-routing that amount of top quality beef to other parts of the United Kingdom. Like the Irish, in many ways we have no alternative but to break the ban and restore our export markets.
The overall value of the beef industry to the Scottish economy is £1.2 billion. Agriculture accounts for more than 3 per cent. of Scotland's gross domestic product—more than twice the proportion in England. That is why we are asking for a greater sense of urgency from the Minister. He chooses to indulge in conversations during the debate and listens to nobody. He should do some talking to Europe and listen to the House of Commons, but perhaps that is asking too much of a Minister who is busy talking to his colleagues. I have news for him: he will eventually have to talk to the electorate, and that will break any complacency that he shows in the House.
The nature of the industry in Scotland is different, and I regret that the Secretary of State for Scotland is not present to hear this. A total of 70 per cent. of Scottish beef originates from Buckler cow herds which are kept to produce only beef animals. There is more than enough difference to merit a different approach in the marketing

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of Scottish beef. Since the start of the crisis, the Scottish National party has been campaigning strongly for a regional or zonal approach to ensure that the ban is lifted from Scottish and Northern Ireland quality beef as soon as possible. That approach has received the support of a number of EU countries, including Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Ireland. There would be support in Europe if the Scottish and Northern Ireland card is played, and it is time that the Government did that.
The Commission President, Jacques Santer, and the farm commissioner, Commissioner Fischler, were also receptive to the proposal, but insisted that it had to come from the United Kingdom Government. That is where the real problem has been. It is up to the Government to make the proposal. It is no use the Minister standing at the Dispatch Box and whining that there is no timetable in Europe: he should produce the working documents and proposals to get beef from Scotland and Northern Ireland on to the European markets and make that essential breach in the ban. Instead, the Government have repeatedly put their Unionist dogma and their Europhobic prejudices ahead of securing any progress for Scotland. The Scottish beef industry has been forced to bear the burden of that approach.
Where was the Secretary of State for Scotland during all this time? He could be described as Scotland's resident Europhobe. He has not been fulfilling his obligation to represent the industry—he has been rousing the Tory faithful against Europe and rubbishing the case for a distinctive Scottish beef industry to receive the distinctive treatment that it merits. The crisis was in its seventh month before the Secretary of State for Scotland could bring himself to engage in talks with our European partners. Even then, he was playing second fiddle to the Minister of Agriculture. It is uncertain what one could expect to be achieved by a man who banned the European flag on Europe day, but he certainly failed the Scottish agriculture industry.
The Florence agreement must be honoured. The accelerated selective cull is the Scottish beef industry's passport into Europe and the industry wants it immediately. If the Secretary of State for Scotland has not made that plain to the Minister of Agriculture, he has done no job for Scotland. There is nothing in the Florence agreement which prevents Scotland from proceeding alone with the selective slaughter. Franz Fischler has already confirmed that fact in a meeting with the Scottish National Farmers Union in Brussels. The block on progress lies not in Brussels but in London.
With growing indications that consideration is being given to some sort of regional approach, the Secretary of State's inaction has raised the prospect of Northern Ireland securing an early exemption from the ban. We welcome the Government's acceptance of the logic of a regional or zonal approach. Scotland must be in the vanguard of that approach, along with Northern Ireland, for the same reasons.
The livelihoods of 6,000 people are at stake. The future of an important Scottish industry must not be neglected because of the Scottish Office's failure to act. The extent of its inaction was highlighted last week when Lord Lindsay pledged urgently to introduce computerised cattle traceability. That announcement was quickly followed by the revelation that only two years ago the Scottish Office rejected a proposal for just such a computerised database, which would have guaranteed cattle traceability.
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In 1994, Brian Pack, chief executive of the beef conglomerate, Aberdeen and Northern Marts Ltd., commissioned a successful feasibility study into the computerisation of traceability of cattle covered by a quality assurance programme. Mr. Pack was sufficiently encouraged by the results to approach the Scottish Office. At that time, the Scottish Office rejected the proposals. It now argues that the advent of BSE has produced a changed situation. Given that the Government had a solution in their hands from day one, why has it taken eight months of crisis for them merely to take note of that proposal? Had the scheme been introduced at that time, it would have been up and running now. The solution has been available, but the Government have opted instead for inaction.
Mr. Peter Hardy: If the ban were lifted only for Scotland, that might satisfy the hon. Gentleman, but it would not necessarily persuade European producers to buy Scottish beef as it would still be coming from the United Kingdom. One has to overcome consumer resistance as well as Community barriers.
Mr. Welsh: We should put it to the test. We know that there is a demand on the continent of Europe for prime Scottish beef. I represent the Angus part of Aberdeen Angus. I know how popular that meat is and that there is a market for it. It is important to breach the blanket European ban, and the key to achieving that lies in Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is what I am arguing for. A selective slaughter programme would be over in weeks. A computerised traceability scheme could be introduced within three months. If that had been undertaken when the problem first arose, the beef industries in Scotland and Northern Ireland would be up and running. The sooner that is done, the sooner we can make the breakthrough.
The Scottish Office has been dilatory. The marketing initiative to promote Scottish beef was promised in May, but we had to wait five long months before it was launched. It seems fair that the first target for lobbying should be the Ministry of Agriculture. A sign of the times can be seen at the restaurant in Kew gardens run by MAFF, which has a sign clearly stating that it serves only foreign beef. If the Government genuinely want to promote beef, the recovery in confidence could begin if they did something about that—assuming that they have any influence in Kew gardens.
I cannot underestimate the importance for the Scottish economy of lifting the beef export ban. Ninety per cent. of Scottish agriculture is in less-favoured areas. The industry is essential to rural communities, where there are few viable alternative industries, partly as a result of the withdrawal by the Government of a constructive regional economic policy. The Government have failed the Scottish beef industry in the past eight months. I urge them to act while there is still an industry to save.
The Government have a key to breaking through the European ban and it could be implemented right away in Scotland. The lower incidence of BSE in Scotland shows that with a combination of a selective slaughter programme and a computerised traceability scheme Scotland would be ready within a short time to get back into Europe and, with Northern Ireland, to lead the rest of the United Kingdom industry back into its lost markets. Anything less would be a sign of continuing failure by a bungling, blundering Government.
8.53 pm
Mr. Peter Atkinson: As much as I enjoy the company of the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) on the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs, I must take exception not only to his poor sense of humour when referring to my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, but to some of his assertions. He said that we have made no progress towards the restoration of the beef industry. To say that we have made no progress when we are about to slaughter 1 million cattle stretches credibility too far.
The hon. Gentleman's other assertion—that we are prepared to sacrifice an entire industry—is arrant nonsense. How could we sacrifice an entire industry when we have put £2.5 billion of taxpayers' money into it?
Mr. Welsh: The Government are repairing the damage that they caused. We heard from the Minister's own lips that he has not even begun to put the introductory working documents to Europe. No wonder there is no timetable for ending the ban: the Government have not even reached first base.
Mr. Atkinson: I am glad to see my right hon. and learned Friend sitting on the Front Bench. He has done a tremendous amount in what has been a hugely difficult crisis. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) likened it to the Falklands campaign. The logistical problems of dealing with that number of cattle are fantastic. A million cattle carcases mean we shall have to dispose of about half a million tonnes of animal. It is a huge operation. The Intervention Board and Ministry of Agriculture officials, who have never dealt with such a problem before and have put this scheme together from scratch, deserve our congratulations, not brickbats from the hon. Member for Angus, East.
The unresolved mystery is what the shadow Foreign Shadow was doing opening the debate for the Opposition at 3.30 pm. What does he know about agricultural matters? Why should he be the one to introduce the Opposition debate? All credit to the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook): as always, he made an entertaining speech. He is an extremely good orator, but why was he chosen? I can hazard a guess. If one has little to say, it is best to say it well and hope that people listen to the way one has said it and not to the content of one's speech. I suspect that, because the Opposition had so little to say about this matter, and about what they would do, they chose the right hon. Member for Livingston to open the debate, not the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang).
Farmers in my constituency in Northumberland want not sophistry or oratory but practical solutions to a difficult problem, so that they can make plans for the future of their business. That is what they have been getting from my right hon. and learned Friend and his team. I am glad to congratulate them, because they have had to deal with an unknown problem and with changing scientific evidence arriving seemingly by the day. They have done a first-class job in extremely difficult circumstances. Most of those in the farming industry will be grateful to them. I should like to include the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who came to my constituency and addressed farmers. He left them feeling far more certain about their future.
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It is natural for farmers to get angry and upset when they do not know what is happening or what the future holds. If I could make any criticism of my right hon. and learned Friend, it would be over the decision to cut compensatory payments that was taken in Brussels. I entirely understand, and do not argue with, the reasons for that action. It is quite wrong for people who send cattle to be destroyed to receive more money than they would if those cattle were destined for human consumption. I also think it wrong for those with dairy herds to use taxpayers' money to "refresh" their herds by culling cows. Apart from anything else, that increases the backlog and makes the problem worse.
I do not argue with the reasons for cutting the amount; but, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) pointed out not long ago, farmers who had been waiting to get rid of their cattle felt angry about the fact that they had been financially disadvantaged, while those who had taken a chance and sold their cattle to dealers obtained a higher price. In Northumberland, we have a large number of suckler cow herds. Suckler cows cannot be got rid of until the calves are weaned, and by the time they had been weaned, the amount of compensation had been reduced.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed views about the accelerated cull. I shall not add to that, nor tell my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister what I think he should do. He has the very difficult job of balancing two interests. As we have heard tonight, the National Farmers Union takes one view and the Country Landowners Association another. I think that most of us would be happy with an accelerated cull if we felt that there would be a substantial chance of the export ban being lifted, but, if there is no such chance, the cull will surely disrupt some farmers, at great expense to taxpayers. As was pointed out earlier, it is not just a question of extending the cull rate by two weeks; compensation for cattle involved in the accelerated cull would have to be much higher, and it would be a much trickier scheme all told.
I am interested by the debate about whether Northern Ireland should be acting as a pathfinder, testing the bona fides of the European Union. That proposal was mentioned several times this evening, and the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) dealt with it in some detail. It has a good deal of superficial attraction, and I understand why those in Northern Ireland are very much in favour of it. Farmers in Northumberland, however, will be asking this question: if the Government went ahead and used Northern Ireland to persuade the European Union to lift the barrier, what effect would that have on the Scottish and English markets?
As we heard from the hon. Member for North Antrim, Northern Ireland has lost its export markets. The hon. Gentleman said that Northern Ireland could go to the Netherlands and get those markets back, but, if it could not, what would it do with its beef? Northern Irish beef would bear the gold star of EC approval, it would be bought and sold in this country and in Scotland, and it would displace the domestic beef markets from those two countries. That is what we would risk if we proceeded in

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that way with Northern Ireland. I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister to give careful consideration to the impact of departing from the idea of a UK solution to the problem.
I hope that the industry can now begin to look forward to a more certain future. I would be very interested to see proposals suggesting what we could do to safeguard the future of the beef industry in the coming years. At present, the export industry occupies 28 per cent. of our beef market, and the cull represents roughly 25 per cent. The export and the cull are almost balanced. What is missing is 15 per cent. Our beef consumption constitutes only 85 per cent: 15 per cent. is, at it were, going astray. We must decide what to do with that in the future.
There are a number of options. One is intervention, which is becoming increasingly unattractive. I think that intervention beef will be virtually impossible to get rid of in future, particularly because it is not traceable. We can cut production by means of, for instance, the calf slaughter scheme, which provides a valuable way of taking dairy beef out of the beef market. There is much merit in trying to reduce the quantity of dairy beef going into the market. If we want to get the beef market back, that would be better done with purpose-bred beef herds than with beef from the dairy sector.
The third option is to increase promotion. In recent months, very successful promotion campaigns have been run by the Meat and Livestock Commission and other parts of the industry. We have seen the start of a return to the consumption of forequarter meat, which is long overdue. Promotion is very cheap in comparison with the figures that we have talked about tonight. We are talking about £2.5 billion; £2.5 million would go a long way towards increasing the promotion of beef.
I think that the British farmer has been well served by the Government. I have no hesitation in going to my farmers and telling them that, whatever they say, this Government and this party will look after the interests of the beef industry—something that no other party would do. We have had nothing from Opposition Members apart from the use of their marvellous 20:20 hindsight vision, and nothing but empty rhetoric from the right hon. Member for Livingston. The Government and their Ministers will save the beef industry.
9.4 pm
Mr. Nick Ainger: The attitude of my farmers in west Wales is completely different from that which the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) has perhaps experienced in north England because my farmers have been extremely angry for many months. That was certainly made clear to me at last month's National Farmers Union lobby, where, as the Minister of Agriculture will know, members of the farming community were seeking the return of capital punishment, but for one individual alone: the Minister.
I was staggered by the Minister's speech, particularly bearing in mind the comments of hon. Members on both sides of the House on the need for a strategy that is workable, practicable and will implement the Florence agreement, which, we were told on 24 June, would, in five stages, move us towards the lifting of the export ban. Both in today's statement and in his October statement, the Minister took much time to explain that it was no longer possible to implement the agreement. What he failed to do in October, and has failed to do today, is to
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announce what is in its place. That is what everyone in the House and, particularly, in the beef sector wants to know. If the Minister believes that the agreement is out of the window and will not be honoured by our European partners, what are the Government going to put in its place?
Bearing in mind the impact of the crisis, which has been running since March, the anger in the farming community and in the rural economy generally—not just in Wales but throughout Britain—is utterly understandable. It is worth reiterating the figures that were referred to by the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) from the Institute of Rural Studies at the University college of Wales at Aberystwyth. They show that, in rural Wales, this year, a loss of between £30 million and £40 million is predicted, with a knock-on effect on more than 2,000 jobs.
In a constituency such as mine, which has some of the highest unemployment not just in Wales, but in the UK, any detrimental impact on the local economy, from whatever source, is of great concern. I will illustrate for the Minister some of the impact that the crisis is having on my constituents.
This week, a farmer, Mr. William George, of Hasguard near Haverfordwest, gave my office figures on his turnover. For the first seven months of this year, it is down by £100,000. Profits are down by £60,000. He believes that he may just break even this year, and he says that he will not invest in new equipment. I receive letters from my local agricultural equipment suppliers saying, basically, that the market has dried up, but is that any wonder when the turnover of such a large beef producer has been cut by £100,000 in the seven months since the crisis began?
If the Florence agreement is, in the Government's view, no longer operational and will not work, the Minister of State must at least tell the House and the farming community what will be put in its place.
The hon. Member for Hexham referred to the 20:20 hindsight of Opposition Members. I do not think that that is a fair comment; at Agriculture Question Time, and when various statements had been made, Opposition Members and, to be fair, Tory Members, have raised specific issues. For example, we all asked about the registration scheme. Had that been in place, we would at least have known the size of the problem and the shortfalls in slaughtering and rendering capacity would have been identified. Why did it take the Government so long to get to grips with those problems by, for example, examining obvious alternatives such as increasing freezer capacity?
The Government warrant justified criticism and must accept it because they made fundamental errors that were pointed out to them not just in this place but by the farming unions. It took an awfully long time for the Ministry and its Ministers to address those serious problems.
At the lobby organised last month by the NFU, I learnt how desperate farmers have become. They do not believe they can get through this winter because of a lack of fodder—the dry summer means that fodder is in short supply—and they asked whether we could persuade the Government to opt for open-field incineration. That shows how desperate they are, because they know that the incineration of huge mounds of carcases will have a

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negative impact on consumer confidence, but they accept that. They are desperate because they have not got the necessary feed for their animals throughout the winter.
Mr. Corbett: Is my hon. Friend aware of reports that some abattoirs are finding it difficult to find animals to slaughter because of the bureaucratic way in which the Intervention Board is handling the matter?
Mr. Ainger: Yes, I am aware of those reports. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) referred to the situation that was described on "Newsnight", where cattle in the south-west were being transported to the north of England for slaughter when right next door to the collection centre was an abattoir that was slaughtering cattle that had been transported considerable distances to it. Enormous bureaucratic mistakes have been made, which again have been pointed out to the Ministry either directly across the Floor of the House or in letters to it. It has taken an unacceptably long time to address those problems.
The farming industry is genuinely desperate. This afternoon, I had a conversation with one of my constituents who not only discussed the problem of winter fodder, but raised an issue of which I was unaware. Because of the increased number of cattle that some farmers will be forced to keep this winter, there is a real problem to do with slurry. There is potential for serious incidents of pollution because farmers' operations have been geared to a certain number of cattle, but they must now keep more on their farms while they await a decision on the slaughter scheme. They have a genuine fear that pollution could be caused as a result of a slurry overspill. It would really rub farmers' noses in it, and quite literally, if they were then faced with fines, as well as the cash shortfall that they have experienced in the past few months.
I said to the Whips that I would not speak for longer than 10 minutes, so let me say in conclusion that this crisis has had an enormous impact not just on the farming community but on the rural community as a whole. I have already referred to the fact that the suppliers to the farming industry have taken a hammering. As I said, the agricultural equipment suppliers face a significant shortfall in their market and have laid off people.
I do not believe that the Government realised sufficiently early the seriousness of the situation. If they had, even they would have put in place measures to address the real issue, which was lack of capacity in the slaughtering industry and in the rendering sector. Even now, we have not got to grips with the issue. I drew to the attention of the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Evans), a crazy situation in which an abattoir that processed only clean beef for supermarkets wanted to take over a neighbouring slaughterhouse that had not been operated for just over a year. The company had approval, yet it was told—directly by the Under-Secretary—that it could not use that slaughterhouse because the rules of the scheme stated that only slaughterhouses operational at the start of the scheme could be used. That company had already set up rendering capacity.
In his reply to the debate, I hope that the Minister will tell us what will replace the Florence agreement if it has been thrown out by the Government.
9.15 pm
Mr. Phil Gallie: The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Ainger) said that his farmers are angry. Of course they are angry: every farmer in the United Kingdom is angry. Across the UK, most people, irrespective of whether they are involved in agriculture, are angry about BSE, CJD and the cull requirements. But I doubt whether any other Government would have been able to find the £2.45 billion compensation that the Government have put into agriculture.
The Opposition motion is particularly cynical, as was the speech of the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). If we were to score his speech, and analyse the solutions presented in it, it would receive nine for presentation and zero for content.
As sad as it was, the statement in March 1996 had to be made. Perhaps we would not be facing the current serious situation if there had been a bit of unity in the House then—but that is water under the bridge. Since then, however, the situation has occasionally worsened. The media come up with issues related to BSE and CJD that add nothing to our knowledge but which cause great anxieties in the marketplace, after the Government have tried to build up the market's support.
Action taken in the 1980s dealt with the risks presented by BSE and CJD. I remind hon. Members that, last Christmas, the market put pressure on the Government not to impose stringently the requirement to remove parts of the carcase from the food chain. Very wisely, the pressure was resisted.
I deeply resent the cull requirements. I resent the 30-month requirement, although I compliment the Government on how that cull has been executed. It has been a massive task, with massive, built-in unknowns, but it has almost been achieved. I resent the selective cull just as much. Today, I heard the Pope speaking to the world food conference, in Rome. He directed his remarks to people who are starving. Let us think about that. Shamefully, we are wasting good-quality food. Future generations will look back to this time and wonder what Europe was doing wasting food on such a scale.
I believe that the selective cull is nothing but a marketing exercise. We signed up to it in Florence, however, and we have to proceed with it—as the Scottish National Farmers Union recognised when the deal was struck. Since then, the NFU has followed that pattern. It is now time for us to meet that commitment.
The Scottish beef industry is a quality industry. It has been well backed by the Scottish Office in recent times. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has found additional resources to promote it—he met its representatives through the summer—and its quality aspects. Such support is very important, and has been welcomed by the industry as a whole. Indeed, only this week, Sandy Mole, the president of the NFU in Scotland, complimented my right hon. Friend on the support for BSE and a number of other issues. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, he didn't."] If Opposition Members care to read Sandy Mole's report, they will find that he did.
Others have not helped marketing. Reference has been made to McDonald's, but I would like to include Burger King, too. It is totally wrong that it is selling Dutch beef to our children. Industries in such countries cannot reach the same levels of traceability as the United Kingdom beef industry. I say to all citizens in the UK, "Forget about

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McDonald's and Burger King. They are a disgrace to this country. Let's use Wimpy, which has at least supported the industry."
I argue very strongly for Northern Ireland. It is an integral part of the United Kingdom, and I honestly believe that, on this issue, the countries of the United Kingdom must stand together. I recognise that that cuts across the wishes of right hon. and hon. Members who represent Northern Ireland, but I believe that in this Union of ours we stand together. I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to get stuck into the selective cull, so that we can clear up the problem as best we can.
9.21 pm
Dr. Gavin Strang: We have had a very useful debate. All hon. Members have expressed the concerns held by people in the industry across the length and breadth of the country—Scotland, Wales and England. It is fair to say that there has been a particular focus on Northern Ireland, and that hon. Members who represent it have made very powerful speeches. I think that the whole House understands why that has been so. I shall comment on Northern Ireland at greater length later.
It is valuable to remind ourselves that the underlying, fundamental concern in the debate on BSE is, of course, one of public health. There is a new variant of CJD, and 14 cases of it have occurred. We do not know whether that new variant has been caused by BSE, or how many more cases of it there will be. Obviously, we desperately hope that there will be very few. We know that, in the 1980s, when it became clear that BSE was a major issue, the Government acted too slowly and quite inadequately. We should remember that it was always understood from the very beginning that there was a possibility—albeit, as it was argued at times, a remote one—of a link between BSE in cattle and CJD in humans.
There were delays in implementing the regulations to protect human health, and when they were put in place, they were badly enforced. The Government have admitted that under-compensation in the 18 months between August 1988 and February 1990 for the slaughter of suspect cases of BSE will have deterred farmers from keeping out of the human food chain cattle that they suspected of having BSE. The Minister admitted that that under-compensation was contributory.
We also know that it took two years and seven months after BSE was officially identified before it was announced that steps would be taken to keep bovine specified material out of our food. Three years after BSE was identified—November 1989—the regulations were put in place in England and Wales. In January 1990, they came into force in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Concern was expressed at the time about the effectiveness with which the regulations were implemented.
Particular attention has rightly been focused on the fact that the ruminant feed ban put in place in 1988 was clearly not enforced. It is generally accepted that the sole cause—or at least the main cause—of BSE in our cattle was the eating of feed contaminated with ruminant protein. It has been admitted that the animals in this country continued to get contaminated feed. Indeed, the report of the Agra Europe meat conference 1996 states that Richard Cowan of the Ministry of Agriculture said on 8 October that lax controls over contaminated feed meant that it was not until 1 August this year—1 August this year—that the
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Government could be 100 per cent. confident that all stocks of contaminated feed and any risk of cross-contamination of feed had been entirely eliminated from our farms.
Over all these years, contaminated feed was continuing to reach our cattle. That is not unrelated to the Government's treatment of the state veterinary service over the years—the way in which it was run down, reorganised and totally demoralised.
Eight years after the ruminant feed ban was introduced, this has to be the overwhelming reason why more than 28,000 cases of BSE have been confirmed in cattle born after the feed ban and why two thirds of all new BSE cases now coming through are in animals born after the introduction of that ban.
On 20 March, the Secretary of State for Health reported to the House that Government scientists had advised Ministers that BSE was thought to be the most likely cause of the new variant of CJD. The Government were clearly unprepared for the impact of their announcement on consumers and thus on the industry. The Minister of Agriculture told the House:
"I do not believe that this information should damage consumer confidence and thus the beef market."—[Official Report, 20 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 387.]
It was clear, and became clearer as the days, weeks and months passed, that the Government had no strategy to deal with the crisis. Our rural communities are still paying the price for that terrible misjudgment. The same confusion characterised the Government's handling of the issue with our European Union partners.
On 3 April the Government announced that all cattle over the age of 30 months were to be banned from human food. The Ministry of Agriculture press release of 16 April said that the slaughter programme would start on 29 April. By the end of May, the Government's 30-month slaughter programme had hardly started. Information from the Government to farmers was poor, confused and late and the slaughtering capacity was insufficient and poorly distributed. Widespread reports came through of dealers and abattoirs profiteering on the compulsory scheme, buying cattle from desperate farmers at knock-down prices. Abattoirs have been paid too much for too long.
Five months into the scheme, on 12 September, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster announced that the Government did not know how many cattle were in the backlog to be slaughtered under the 30-month scheme. Only then did they embark on a survey to assess the size of the backlog. It was estimated at 400,000 animals. That figure has now been reduced. The Minister has confirmed today that the Government expect the backlog to be completed by mid-December.
Let us not forget—several hon. Members have focused attention on this—that a number of farmers have kept the animals on their farms since the over-30-month scheme came into operation in April. They now find their rate of compensation cut. The cost to those farmers of keeping the animals has been much greater than the cost to farmers who got their animals away early on in the scheme.
Hon. Members will recall that the Agriculture Council decided on 2 April that the United Kingdom should bring forward proposals for a selective slaughter scheme for the cattle most at risk of BSE.
First, the Minister proposed slaughtering around 42,000 cattle; that was in April. In May, the figure was increased to 80,000 cattle. It was then reduced again to 42,000, and

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finally, in June, at the Florence summit, the Prime Minister agreed that there would be a selective slaughter programme involving probably around 147,000 cattle.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) pointed out earlier this afternoon, the Prime Minister was keen to present the Florence agreement as a great victory—a great achievement for the British Government. The agreement is at the heart of the debate, and I will remind the House what the Prime Minister said. On 24 June, he said:
"We aim to be in a position to tell the Commission by October that we have met the necessary conditions for decisions to lift the ban on two of the five stages—that is, certified herds and animals born after a specified date and their meat. That is subject in particular to clearance of the backlog of animals awaiting slaughter in the 30-month-plus scheme, and a start to the accelerated slaughter of cattle particularly at risk of developing BSE."
He went on to explain that removal of the ban would, in the first instance, enable us to allow the export of meat up to the value of £100 million. He then said:
"Also by October, I expect a Commission proposal on a third stage—embryos— subject to the scientists giving them a clean bill of health."
The whole point was that the exports would build up,
"increasing rapidly thereafter as the certified herds scheme gains momentum."—[Official Report, 24 June 1996; Vol. 280, c. 21.]
Indeed, on the very last day before the House broke up for the summer recess, the Minister of Agriculture stated, referring to the Florence agreement:
"The agreement was a great success, and provides a solid way forward. The framework also provides for the introduction by the United Kingdom of a programme for accelerating the decline of bovine spongiform encephalopathy."—[0fficial Report, 24 July 1996; Vol. 282, c. 369.]
So what happened after the House went into recess at the end of July? First, we had the partial results of the experiment on maternal transmission; then we had the publication of the paper by Professor Roy Anderson and his colleagues at Oxford. Those developments made a case for redirecting the selective slaughter programme, and the Commission accepted that. The response to those developments should have been to maintain the momentum behind the Florence agreement by redirecting the selective slaughter programme, which, on the basis of the new information, could be more effective.
Let us be clear that the experiment has shown that there is no, or only slight, maternal transmission—that we can rule out maternal transmission on a major scale. The importance of the Roy Anderson paper was that it enabled the Government to redirect their selective slaughter programme more effectively. The Government were given good advice, on the basis of statistical analysis, on how, with a given kill rate, they could reduce the number of BSE cases by even more than was envisaged at the time of the Florence agreement.
I cannot accept that those developments justify what has happened since. The Government used those scientific developments to walk away from the Florence agreement. Let us be clear that the scientific developments meant that the agreement reached at Florence could be more effective. This afternoon, the Minister of Agriculture made great play of the fact that we would still be left with about two thirds of the BSE cases. If we implemented the selective slaughter programme, between now and 2001—
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when, we hope, very few BSE cases will be left—we could reduce the number of cases by about a third. Surely that is worth achieving.
The Commission always made it clear that it would judge the selective slaughter programme not on the number of cows killed, but on the likely reduction in the number of BSE cases. I put it fairly and squarely to the Minister: if it was right to agree in Florence in June to that selective slaughter programme, it cannot have been right to walk away from it in September, because the only developments that had taken place since were ones that were likely to make the programme more rather than less effective.
Mr. Douglas Hogg: I think that the House would like an answer to this question. If the Government come forward with a selective cull programme involving all the 128,000 beasts referred to in the Florence agreement, will the Opposition support us, and will the hon. Gentleman give a guarantee to that effect?
Dr. Strang: Of course. It would be nonsense for us to advocate that we would implement the Florence agreement and then vote against the means of doing so. Naturally, we would need to look at the details of the order, but we would not stand in the way of implementing the agreement.
The debate has revealed that all hon. Members representing all parts of the United Kingdom, even those who were initially against implementing the Florence agreement and the selective slaughter programme—and I can understand why—now support it. The Minister's intervention has confirmed that the House wants the selective slaughter programme to be implemented, and the only ones standing in its way and thus failing to honour the Florence agreement are the Government.
Mr. Home Robertson: When will they bring in the order?
Dr. Strang: My hon. Friend asks when the Government will bring in the order.
The Cabinet announced in September that they were suspending the selective slaughter programme. On 28 October, I heard the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster say on Radio 4:
"We accept the Florence agreement and we intend to comply with it. We intend to implement a selective cull programme once we are in a position to do so under a Union banner."
I am not sure what he meant by that. Then, no fewer than five Ministers attended the Council of Ministers meeting in Luxembourg.
Since July, when it seemed that the Government were intent on implementing the selective slaughter programme, we have had the suspension of the selective slaughter programme, followed by an assurance from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster that it would go ahead. Now we are no further forward. I defy any hon. Member to tell me whether the Government intend to implement the selective slaughter programme and honour their side of the Florence agreement. I appeal to the Minister to give us a clear statement on that when he replies to the debate, particularly in view of the overwhelming opinion of hon. Members that we should comply with the Florence agreement and implement the selective slaughter programme.

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Hon. Members will recall that the Opposition were less than enchanted with the Florence agreement. However, the Government insisted that the timetable was as solid as the Prime Minister described it and that our farmers and meat industry should accept it in good faith. Now we are nearly two weeks into November, and well past the Prime Minister's deadlines for lifting the ban, yet the beef export ban is still 100 per cent. in place and beef farmers have been given no idea about the Government's policy or when they can expect any progress to be made towards the lifting of the ban.
It is no wonder that our farmers are distraught, or that the National Farmers Union passed a vote of no confidence in the Minister and the National Farmers Union of Scotland called on the Prime Minister to
"take charge of policy on the beef crisis, which has now become a bumbling shambles."
It is vital that the beef ban is lifted. Only the European Union can do that, and the Florence agreement is the only mechanism currently on the table.
[Interruption.] Attention has rightly been focused on Northern Ireland, where the beef industry is disproportionately more important. Farming is more important there, and exports are more important to the beef industry. Traditionally, more than half the beef produced in Northern Ireland is exported, and an additional quarter goes to mainland Britain. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is such despair in Northern Ireland.
The same is true of Scotland, where exports affect a large part of the beef industry, which is of particular importance to the Scottish economy. Given the low incidence of BSE in Northern Ireland and the exceptional cattle database operating there, it would make sense for Northern Ireland to lead the United Kingdom out of the beef ban. Right hon. and hon. Members who represent Northern Ireland constituencies will agree that any agreement that gave terms for lifting the export ban in Northern Ireland, but included conditions that meant that other parts of the United Kingdom, particularly Scotland, had no prospect of having the ban lifted in the short to medium term, would be unacceptable.
Obviously, the farming industry throughout Britain has accepted that, if we go ahead with the certified herds scheme, in the first instance the vast bulk of those certified herds will be in Northern Ireland. The debate has revealed not only the overwhelming support for implementing the Florence agreement, but the incredulity felt by all hon. Members—not just those representing Northern Ireland—when the Minister sought to explain to us that, after all these months, the Government have still not managed to submit the formal working document to the Commission as a basis for progress to be made and the decision to be taken to implement the certified herds scheme.
Let us be under no illusions. There is tremendous hardship and suffering in our farming industry. For example, people have invested a whole lifetime's work in building up a pedigree beef herd. It may be their livelihood and their investment, but it is also their lifetime's work. They have built a herd that has never had BSE and that is never likely to have BSE, yet they find that their lifetime's work and their livelihood have been put in jeopardy. Young farmers, perhaps, who borrowed money to move into a hill farm in the past few years and
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whose farms are heavily dependent on beef suckler herds, are on the verge of bankruptcy. Their businesses are on the verge of collapse through no fault of their own.
Hundreds of jobs have been lost in the industry. This morning, we had an excellent debate on the impact of the crisis on cattle head deboners. Tremendous strength of feeling and concern was demonstrated by hon. Members, who rightly argued the case for that industry which, overnight, was wiped out through no fault of its own. There can be no disagreement about the scale and the depth of the suffering in the industry as a result of what has happened. BSE is the biggest crisis to hit British agriculture this century.
The crisis has rightly been the preoccupation of hon. Members on both sides of the House. BSE was always going to cause the industry problems, but the Government's handling of the issue has compounded the problems, cost jobs and damaged livelihoods. It is right that the House of Commons should pass judgment on how the Government have handled the BSE crisis. We owe that to our constituents, to farmers and the industry. I urge hon. Members to vote for the Opposition motion.
9.41 pm
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Tony Baldry): This has been a long six-hour debate, in which many constructive points have been raised. I intend to try to respond to them. I may, towards the end of my remarks, have some things to say about the Opposition and their approach, but in fairness to the farming community I should deal constructively with the constructive points that have been raised.
Since March, we have had only one duty—to seek to protect consumer health and confidence and to help the farming community and everybody associated with the beef industry. The over-30-month scheme sprang from that duty. Why did it come about? The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and others seem to be under some misunderstanding on that point. The scheme came about because SEAC recommended that all beef from cattle over 30 months should be deboned. Immediately, the supermarkets said that they would take no beef from cattle over 30 months, and that meant that there was no longer a market for that beef. The supermarkets and the farmers came to the Government and asked us to provide a scheme that took that beef out of the system and ensured compensation for the farmers. That we have done.
The scheme is a huge logistical exercise. Much of the beef would previously have gone into the food chain, and now all of it has to be rendered. There is a finite rendering capacity, and it was an enormous logistical exercise to bring together slaughterhouses, rendering capacity and refrigeration capacity. Inevitably, bringing on some of that refrigeration capacity took time, but I am fully confident that at no time could we have slaughtered any more animals than we have slaughtered. We have now slaughtered more than 870,000 animals. At the present rate, we are slaughtering them at the rate of more than 55,000 a week. Last week, nearly 60,000 animals were slaughtered.
People were rightly concerned about the backlog, so we introduced a registration scheme, which means that those who have registered will be given priority for their cattle

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to be slaughtered. I am confident that we will have cleared the backlog by Christmas. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) was correct to say that, of the 320,000 animals that have been registered, almost 100,000 have already been slaughtered. I was asked about the capacity of the scheme. Once the registered cattle have been slaughtered, there is more than adequate weekly capacity to deal with any animals that come forward from the over-30-month scheme. Once the backlog is cleared, those who are bringing cattle to be slaughtered under that scheme should have no difficulties.
It is right that the House should appreciate that, on the basis of past Intervention Board records, we had every reason to expect that we would have to deal with 1 million animals in 12 months. In fact, we will have dealt with 1 million animals in seven months. We owe a debt of thanks to officials, to the Intervention Board and to many throughout the industry who have worked extremely hard to tackle an enormous logistical exercise.
We have given considerable support to farmers: including £81 million in suckler cow and beef special premiums, £29 million for beef marketing payments schemes, £60 million for hill livestock compensatory allowances, a further £29 million for a second beef marketing payment scheme, and aid worth about £50 million which we intend to spend in ways of particular benefit to suckler producers.
We have given aid of up to £118 million to the rendering industry. Similarly, £110 million has been provided to the slaughtering industry to provide a breathing space during which companies can adjust to the new marketing circumstances.
We have appreciated the enormous difficulties that farmers have faced throughout all this. My right hon. and hon. Friends in MAFF, the Scottish Office, the Welsh Office and the Northern Ireland Office have met farmers from throughout the country almost on a daily basis. I am grateful to the NFU for its fair acknowledgement in the briefing that it sent to hon. Members today. It said:
"on behalf of the farming community the NFU is grateful for the sympathy, substantial practical assistance and extensive public expenditure that has been devoted by Government to tackling this unprecedented crisis in British agriculture."
That is a fair summary by the NFU. On behalf of all Ministers present, I should like to say thank you to the NFU for recognising what the Opposition were so curmudgeonly not to recognise—that throughout we have sought to act positively and constructively.
Mr. Welsh: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Baldry: We have had a six-hour debate, in which a large number of points were made. I intend to try to reply to those points.
Several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir J. Spicer) criticised the decision to reduce the cull cow compensation rate. Let me deal with that. Historically, the cull cow price is about two thirds of the clean beef price. By fixing and keeping the cull cow rate at 85p a kilo when the clean beef price was only 10p or so higher, we introduced economic incentives for farmers to hold on to cattle so that they qualified for the over-30-month scheme instead of selling
448
their beasts at an earlier age for consumption. Moreover, we created the opportunity for farmers to reshape their herds using the over-30-month scheme as the means.
In addition, the rate of 85p a kilo was higher than the rate being paid in other member states for beef for the food chain. That was clearly untenable, particularly as 70 per cent. of the cost is funded by the Community. I do not blame farmers for doing what they did, but neither of those consequences was desirable or intended, and it was right that the rate was changed. I of course appreciate the concerns that, for those who had not managed to get their cattle through the OTMS, the change seemed unfair because it looked as if it was retrospective, but without a registration scheme there was nothing that we could do about it. We just could not continue as we were. I have to say to the House that, given the circumstances, I do not believe that we could ever get perfect equity. One cannot achieve perfect equity among all producers.
My hon. Friends have raised concerns about particular groups. We had a debate this morning on head deboners. I told my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) and others who took part in that debate that I was more than willing to meet representatives of the head deboning industry to hear at first hand their concerns.
I am also aware that some of my hon. Friends have been concerned that certain abattoirs have not yet been able to participate in culling cattle as part of the over-30-month scheme. The present agreements with the slaughterers expire on 31 March next year. By early December, the Intervention Board will invite expressions of interest from the industry in participating in the continuing cull after 31 March.
The debate has, understandably, moved on to a debate in large part on the selective cull. I think that all my hon. Friends will agree that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister achieved a good outcome at Florence in that he succeeded in achieving an agreed process with our European colleagues which until that time they had not agreed.
During the summer, we reconsidered our position on the selective cull for reasons that I shall explain to the House in more detail. I and my right hon. and hon. Friends have been interested to hear the comments of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. If orders are brought to the House, I am sure that we can look forward to their full support in introducing the necessary statutory instruments for a cull. That is the first time today that such an offer appears to have been forthcoming.
Before the summer, there was considerable opposition from farming unions to a selective cull. We all remember stories about farmers at their farm gates with shotguns, and there was scant support from Opposition parties for such a cull. In fairness, the position of the farming unions turned around completely during the summer, and they are now broadly in support of some kind of cull. In May, the NFU told us:
"The NFU could not, however, support any culling scheme that was not linked to a clear framework for a progressive and rapid lifting of the export ban".
Just before the House rose in July, the NFU said that it believed that
"an additional slaughter programme is unjustified on scientific grounds".

449
As recently as 11 September, the Country Landowners Association said that it
"continues to be against the Government's present policy on the Accelerated Slaughter Scheme."
There has now been something of a change in the NFU and the CLA, and that has been reflected in the farming unions elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The NFU briefing for this debate said:
"It is essential that there is a UK-wide selective cull".
I emphasise that, and I hope that those hon. Members who have not taken part in this debate, or who have been unable to attend all of it, will read Hansard tomorrow. There have been many expressions of a desire to get on with a selective cull, but there have been almost as many variants of how that cull should best be taken forward. The NFU is now saying that there should be
"a UK-wide selective cull to ensure that farmers in different regions of the UK are not disadvantaged …; the only prospect of obtaining an early lifting of the export ban is for the British Government to carry out what it committed itself to doing in Florence this summer."
Mr. Home Robertson: Will the Minister of State give way?
Mr. Baldry: No. The hon. Gentleman has made his speech, and I am seeking to respond to some important points.
The CLA has now changed its tune:
"The Government must review its original proposals for a selective cull in the light of developments since they were first developed and communicate its findings to the EU Commission."
We have not walked away from a selective cull. Instead, there has been a complete turnround in the attitude of the farming unions, and a number of other matters have changed in important ways.
First, Professor Anderson and his team published their findings in Nature in August which indicated that the epidemic will virtually die out around 2001, irrespective of any further measures, that the targeting in the original selective cull proposals could be improved and that there might be other possible approaches. We also received the preliminary results from the Government's maternal transmission experiment, one interpretation of which could indicate an element of transmission of BSE from dam to calf.
It was clear that further work on culling options was needed, and we made it clear in the late summer that we were not proceeding for the moment with the selective cull as set out in the UK's eradication programme. It was never ruled out, and we have studied the scientific evidence in consultation with our European partners. We have never ruled out the possibility of moving forward on some form of selective cull, and there are strong arguments in favour of it. A sharper reduction in the number of BSE cases in the next few years will help to give consumers extra reassurance and steady markets both here and abroad.
It is important to state that even those who want a selective cull have also made clear that it is worth moving towards such a cull only if we can be sure that it will result in the lifting of the export ban. I believe that that is the position of the NFU; I am sure that it would support such a cull if we could guarantee that the export ban would be lifted. We will be looking for the unequivocal support of our European Union colleagues in this. When we have fulfilled our part of the bargain, they must fulfil theirs.
450
As was made clear by my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Mr. Cash) and for North Norfolk (Sir R. Howell), a former Agriculture Minister, we need to be sure that the Commission will honour its side of the agreement if we go ahead with a selective cull, but as other hon. Members have already made clear, the precedent on gelatine is not reassuring. We met the criteria for the export of gelatine some time ago, and we are still having problems, with practically all our European Union colleagues finding ways of not honouring their undertaking. No hon. Member will want us to proceed with a selective cull unless we can be sure that the export ban will be lifted.
Mr. William Ross rose—
Mr. Baldry: Of course, we understand and appreciate the situation in Northern Ireland. If a selective cull goes ahead, those in Northern Ireland are in a good position for an early start, simply because of traceability and certified herds. I am sure, however, that Northern Ireland Members will appreciate the concern of hon. Members from Scotland, England and Wales, that if a process starts in Northern Ireland it should not be to the exclusion of other parts of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Ross: Nobody from Northern Ireland has ever asked that other areas of the United Kingdom be excluded or disadvantaged in any way, but we want the Government to use the position on Northern Ireland as a test of Europe's good faith to see whether it will go along with what they signed up to.
Mr. Baldry: We understand that position, but the hon. Gentleman must understand that the farming industry in Northern Ireland and throughout the United Kingdom would be extremely frustrated if we were to start and complete a selective cull throughout the United Kingdom with no guarantee or reasonable expectation that the export ban would be lifted.
The Labour party has come somewhat late to this issue, and Labour Members have been noticeable by their absence in most previous debates on BSE. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] A handful of them have attended each debate, and it is significant that today's had to be opened by their foreign affairs spokesman, whose presence in the Chamber was notable only for its short duration.
From the beginning, Labour has treated the beef crisis as a political opportunity. It has deliberately ignored the science, and says that we have reneged on Florence, which is complete nonsense. We have taken account of the important new scientific evidence on maternal transmission and of Professor Anderson's work on the selective cull; Labour knows that, but it seeks to make political capital out of it.
Labour Members attacked our non-co-operation policy, which produced the Florence deal; now they say that we have abandoned Florence. All that gets picked up by European colleagues and confuses our message. Labour's party politicking is frustrating our efforts to lift the ban. Back in June, the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) promised to help; we have had scant help since then. In June, he said that the Florence deal was not a victory for the Prime Minister, and he described it as a massive climbdown, yet today he insists that we implement the whole deal, regardless of new evidence and of whether we will succeed in getting the ban lifted.

451
Today is the first time that any Opposition Member has voiced any support for the selective cull. Opposition spokesmen have demonstrated scant leadership, because throughout the summer they listened to the farming unions and, now that the farming unions have changed their view, they are saying that they would support the Government if we introduced measures for a selective cull. We have taken note of that, and we will take note of everything else that has been said during today's debate. I hope that Conservative Members will recognise the motion for the opportunist rubbish that it is and will support the Government's amendment.
Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
The House divided: Ayes 302, Noes 303.

Division No. 13]

[10 pm

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Clelland, David

Adams, Mrs Irene

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Ainger, Nick

Coffey, Ms Ann

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Cohen, Harry

Allen, Graham

Connarty, Michael

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Armstrong, Ms Hilary

Corbett, Robin

Ashdown, Paddy

Corbyn, Jeremy

Ashton, Joseph

Cousins, Jim

Austin-Walker, John

Cox, Tom

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Cummings, John

Barnes, Harry

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Barron, Kevin

Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try SE)

Battle, John

Cunningham, Dr John

Bayley, Hugh

Cunningham, Ms R (Perth Kinross)

Beckett, Mrs Margaret

Dafis, Cynog

Beggs, Roy

Dalyell, Tam

Beith, A J

Darling, Alistair

Bell, Stuart

Davidson, Ian

Benn, Tony

Davies, Bryan (Oldham C)

Bennett, Andrew F

Davies, Denzil (Llanelli)

Benton, Joe

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Bermingham, Gerald

Denham, John

Berry, Roger

Dewar, Donald

Betts, Clive

Dixon, Don

Blair, Tony

Dobson, Frank

Blunkett, David

Donohoe, Brian H

Boateng, Paul

Dowd, Jim

Boyes, Roland

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Bradley, Keith

Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Eagle, Ms Angela

Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

Eastham, Ken

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Etherington, Bill

Burden, Richard

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Byers, Stephen

Ewing, Mrs Margaret

Caborn, Richard

Fatchett, Derek

Callaghan, Jim

Faulds, Andrew

Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Fisher, Mark

Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

Flynn, Paul

Campbell-Savours, D N

Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

Cann, Jamie

Foster, Derek

Carlile, Alex (Montgomery)

Foster, Don (Bath)

Chidgey, David

Foulkes, George

Chisholm, Malcolm

Fraser, John

Church, Ms Judith

Fyfe, Mrs Maria

Clapham, Michael

Galbraith, Sam

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Galloway, George

Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

Gapes, Mike

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Garrett, John

452

George, Bruce

McKelvey, William

Gerrard, Neil

Mackinlay, Andrew

Gilbert, Dr John

McLeish, Henry

Godman, Dr Norman A

McMaster, Gordon

Godsiff, Roger

McNamara, Kevin

Golding, Mrs Llin

MacShane, Denis

Gordon, Ms Mildred

McWilliam, John

Graham, Thomas

Madden, Max

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Maddock, Mrs Diana

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Maginnis, Ken

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Grocott, Bruce

Mallon, Seamus

Gunnell, John

Mandelson, Peter

Hain, Peter

Marek, Dr John

Hall, Mike

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Hanson, David

Martin, Michael J (Springburn)

Hardy, Peter

Martlew, Eric

Harman, Ms Harriet

Maxton, John

Harvey, Nick

Meacher, Michael

Hattersley, Roy

Meale, Alan

Henderson, Doug

Michael, Alun

Hendron, Dr Joe

Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)

Heppell, John

Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

Hill, Keith (Streatham)

Milburn, Alan

Hinchliffe, David

Miller, Andrew

Hodge, Ms Margaret

Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

Hoey, Miss Kate

Molyneaux, Sir James

Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Home Robertson, John

Morgan, Rhodri

Hood, Jimmy

Morley, Elliot

Hoon, Geoffrey

Morris, Alfred (Wy'nshawe)

Howarth, Alan (Stratgf'd-on-A)

Morris, Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Morris, John (Aberavon)

Howells, Dr Kim

Mowlam, Ms Marjorie

Hoyle, Doug

Mudie, George

Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

Mullin, Chris

Hughes, Robert (Ab'd'n N)

Murphy, Paul

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Nicholson, Miss Emma (W Devon)

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Oakes, Gordon

Hume, John

O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)

Hutton, John

O'Brien, William (Normanton)

Illsley, Eric

Olner, Bill

Ingram, Adam

O'Neill, Martin

Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampst'd)

Orme, Stanley

Janner, Greville

Paisley, Rev Ian

Jenkins, Brian D (SE Staffs)

Parry, Robert

Johnston, Sir Russell

Pearson, Ian

Jones, Barry (Alyn & D'side)

Pendry, Tom

Jones, Ieuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

Pickthall, Colin

Jones, Dr L (B'ham Selly Oak)

Pike, Peter L

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd SW)

Powell, Sir Raymond (Ogmore)

Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

Prentice, Mrs B (Lewisham E)

Jowell, Ms Tessa

Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

Kaufman, Gerald

Prescott, John

Keen, Alan

Primarolo, Ms Dawn

Kennedy, Charles (Ross C & S)

Purchase, Ken

Kennedy, Mrs Jane (Broadgreen)

Quin, Ms Joyce

Khabra, Piara S

Radice, Giles

Kilfoyle, Peter

Randall, Stuart

Kirkwood, Archy

Raynsford, Nick

Lestor, Miss Joan (Eccles)

Reid, Dr John

Lewis, Terry

Rendel, David

Liddell, Mrs Helen

Robertson, George (Hamilton)

Litherland, Robert

Robinson, Geoffrey (Cov'try NW)

Livingstone, Ken

Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

Lloyd, Tony (Stretf'd)

Roche, Mrs Barbara

Llwyd, Elfyn

Rogers, Allan

Loyden, Eddie

Rooker, Jeff

Lynne, Ms Liz

Rooney, Terry

McAllion, John

Ross, William (E Lond'y)

McAvoy, Thomas

Rowlands, Ted

McCartney, Ian (Makerf'ld)

Ruddock, Ms Joan

McCartney, Robert (N Down)

Salmond, Alex

McCrea, Rev William

Sedgemore, Brian

Macdonald, Calum

Sheerman, Barry

McFall, John

Sheldon, Robert

453

Shore, Peter

Trickett, Jon

Short, Ms Clare

Trimble, David

Simpson, Alan

Tyler, Paul

Skinner, Dennis

Vaz, Keith

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Walker, A Cecil (Belfast N)

Smith, Chris (Islington S)

Walker, Sir Harold

Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

Wallace, James

Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

Walley, Ms Joan

Snape, Peter

Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

Soley, Clive

Wareing, Robert N

Spearing, Nigel

Watson, Mike

Spellar, John

Welsh, Andrew

Steel, Sir David

Wicks, Malcolm

Stevenson, George

Williams, Alan (Swansea W)

Stott, Roger

Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

Strang, Dr Gavin

Wilson, Brian

Straw, Jack

Winnick, David

Sutcliffe, Gerry

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Worthington, Tony

Taylor, John D (Strangf'd)

Wray, Jimmy

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Wright, Dr Tony

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Thurnham, Peter

Timms, Stephen

Tellers for the Ayes:

Tipping, Paddy

Mr. Jon Owen Jones and

Touhig, Don

Mr. Dennis Turner.

NOES

Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)

Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Linc'n)

Aitken, Jonathan

Carrington, Matthew

Alexander, Richard

Carttiss, Michael

Alison, Michael (Selby)

Cash, William

Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

Channon, Paul

Amess, David

Chapman, Sir Sydney

Ancram, Michael

Churchill, Mr

Arbuthnot, James

Clappison, James

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochf'd)

Arnold, Sir Thomas(Hazel G)

Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

Ashby, David

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Aspinwall, Jack

Coe, Sebastian

Atkins, Robert

Colvin, Michael

Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

Congdon, David

Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

Conway, Derek

Baker, Kenneth (Mole V)

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F)

Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Baldry, Tony

Cope, Sir John

Banks, Matthew (Southport)

Cormack, Sir Patrick

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Batiste, Spencer

Curry, David

Bellingham, Henry

Davies, Quentin (Stamf'd)

Bendall, Vivian

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Beresford, Sir Paul

Day, Stephen

Biffen, John

Deva, Nirj Joseph

Body, Sir Richard

Devlin, Tim

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Dicks, Terry

Booth, Hartley

Dorrell, Stephen

Boswell, Tim

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

Dover, Den

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Duncan, Alan

Bowden, Sir Andrew

Duncan Smith, Iain

Bowis, John

Dunn, Bob

Boyson, Sir Rhodes

Dykes, Hugh

Brandreth, Gyles

Eggar, Tim

Brazier, Julian

Elletson, Harold

Bright, Sir Graham

Emery, Sir Peter

Brooke, Peter

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'ld)

Brown, Michael (Brigg Cl'thorpes)

Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

Browning, Mrs Angela

Evans, Nigel (Ribble V)

Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

Budgen, Nicholas

Evennett, David

Burns, Simon

Faber, David

Burt, Alistair

Fabricant, Michael

Butcher, John

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Butler, Peter

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Butterfill, John

Forman, Nigel

Carlisle, John (Luton N)

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

454

Forth, Eric

Lidington, David

Fowler, Sir Norman

Lilley, Peter

Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

Lloyd, Sir Peter (Fareham)

Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

Lord, Michael

Freeman, Roger

Luff, Peter

French, Douglas

Lyell, Sir Nicholas

Fry, Sir Peter

MacGregor, John

Gale, Roger

MacKay, Andrew

Gallie, Phil

Maclean, David

Gardiner, Sir George

McLoughlin, Patrick

Garel-Jones, Tristan

McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

Garnier, Edward

Madel, Sir David

Gill, Christopher

Maitland, Lady Olga

Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

Major, John

Goodlad, Alastair

Malone, Gerald

Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

Mans, Keith

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

Marland, Paul

Gorst, Sir John

Marlow, Tony

Grant, Sir Anthony (SW Cambs)

Marshall, John (Hendon S)

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Grylls, Sir Michael

Mates, Michael

Hague, William

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Hamilton, Sir Archibald

Mayhew, Sir Patrick

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Mellor, David

Hampson, Dr Keith

Merchant, Piers

Hanley, Jeremy

Mills, Iain

Harris, David

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Haselhurst, Sir Alan

Mitchell, Sir David (NW Hants)

Hawkins, Nick

Moate, Sir Roger

Hawksley, Warren

Monro, Sir Hector

Hayes, Jerry

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Heald, Oliver

Moss, Malcolm

Heath, Sir Edward

Needham, Richard

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Nelson, Anthony

Hendry, Charles

Neubert, Sir Michael

Heseltine, Michael

Newton, Tony

Hicks, Sir Robert

Nicholls, Patrick

Higgins, Sir Terence

Norris, Steve

Hill, Sir James (Southampton Test)

Onslow, Sir Cranley

Hogg, Douglas (Grantham)

Oppenheim, Phillip

Horam, John

Page, Richard

Hordem, Sir Peter

Paice, James

Howard, Michael

Patnick, Sir Irvine

Howell, David (Guildf'd)

Patten, John

Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W)

Pattie, Sir Geoffrey

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Pawsey, James

Hunt, Sir John (Ravensb'ne)

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Hunter, Andrew

Pickles, Eric

Hurd, Douglas

Portillo, Michael

Jack, Michael

Powell, William (Corby)

Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

Rathbone, Tim

Jenkin, Bernard (Colchester N)

Redwood, John

Jessel, Toby

Richards, Rod

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Rifkind, Malcolm

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Robathan, Andrew

Jones, Robert B (W Herts)

Roberts, Sir Wyn

Jopling, Michael

Robertson, Raymond S (Ab'd'n S)

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

Key, Robert

Roe, Mrs Marion

King, Tom

Rowe, Andrew

Kirkhope, Timothy

Rumbold, Dame Angela

Knapman, Roger

Sackville, Tom

Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

Sainsbury, Sir Timothy

Knight, Greg (Derby N)

Scott, Sir Nicholas

Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

Shaw, David (Dover)

Knox, Sir David

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Kynoch, George

Shephard, Mrs Gillian

Lait, Mrs Jacqui

Shepherd, Sir Colin (Heref'd)

Lamont, Norman

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Lang, Ian

Shersby, Sir Michael

Lawrence, Sir Ivan

Sims, Sir Roger

Legg, Barry

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Leigh, Edward

Smith, Tim (Beaconsf'ld)

Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark

Soames, Nicholas

Lester, Sir Jim (Broxtowe)

Speed, Sir Keith

455

Spencer, Sir Derek

Trotter, Neville

Spicer, Sir Jim (W Dorset)

Twinn, Dr Ian

Spicer, Sir Michael (S Worcs)

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Spink, Dr Robert

Viggers, Peter

Spring, Richard

Waldegrave, William

Sproat, Iain

Walden, George

Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

Stanley, Sir John

Waller, Gary

Steen, Anthony

Ward, John

Stephen, Michael

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Stern, Michael

Waterson, Nigel

Stewart, Allan

Watts, John

Streeter, Gary

Wells, Bowen

Sumberg, David

Wheeler, Sir John

Sweeney, Walter

Whitney, Ray

Sykes, John

Whittingdale, John

Tapsell, Sir Peter

Widdecombe, Miss Ann

Taylor, Ian (Esher)

Wiggin, Sir Jerry

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Wilkinson, John

Taylor, Sir Teddy

Willetts, David

Temple-Morris, Peter

Wilshire, David

Thomason, Roy

Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

Thompson, Sir Donald (Calder V)

Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesf'ld)

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Wolfson, Mark

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Yeo, Tim

Townsend, Cyril D (Bexl'yh'th)

Young, Sir George

Tracey, Richard

Tellers for the Noes:

Tredinnick, David

Mr. Timothy Wood and

Trend, Michael

Mr. Richard Ottaway.

Question accordingly negatived.
Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments):—
The House divided: Ayes 303, Noes 302.

Division No. 14]

[10.15 pm

AYES

Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)

Brandreth, Gyles

Aitken, Jonathan

Brazier, Julian

Alexander, Richard

Bright, Sir Graham

Alison, Michael (Selby)

Brooke, Peter

Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

Brown, Michael (Brigg Cl'thorpes)

Amess, David

Browning, Mrs Angela

Ancram, Michael

Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

Arbuthnot, James

Budgen, Nicholas

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Burns, Simon

Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel G)

Burt, Alistair

Ashby, David

Butcher, John

Aspinwall, Jack

Butler, Peter

Atkins, Robert

Butterfill, John

Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

Carlisle, John (Luton N)

Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Linc'n)

Baker, Kenneth (Mole V)

Carrington, Matthew

Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

Carttiss, Michael

Baldry, Tony

Cash, William

Banks, Matthew (Southport)

Channon, Paul

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Chapman, Sir Sydney

Batiste, Spencer

Churchill, Mr

Bellingham, Henry

Clappison, James

Bendall, Vivian

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochf'd)

Beresford, Sir Paul

Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

Biffen, John

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Body, Sir Richard

Coe, Sebastian

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Colvin, Michael

Booth, Hartley

Congdon, David

Boswell, Tim

Conway, Derek

Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F)

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Bowden, Sir Andrew

Cope, Sir John

Bowis, John

Cormack, Sir Patrick

Boyson, Sir Rhodes

Currie, Mrs Edwina

456

Curry, David

Hunter, Andrew

Davies, Quentin (Stamf'd)

Hurd, Douglas

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Jack, Michael

Day, Stephen

Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

Deva, Nirj Joseph

Jenkin, Bernard (Colchester N)

Devlin, Tim

Jessel, Toby

Dicks, Terry

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Dorrell, Stephen

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Jones, Robert B (W Herts)

Dover, Den

Jopling, Michael

Duncan, Alan

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Duncan Smith, Iain

Key, Robert

Dunn, Bob

King, Tom

Dykes, Hugh

Kirkhope, Timothy

Eggar, Tim

Knapman, Roger

Elletson, Harold

Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

Emery, Sir Peter

Knight, Greg (Derby N)

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'ld)

Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

Knox, Sir David

Evans, Nigel (Ribble V)

Kynoch, George

Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

Lait, Mrs Jacqui

Evennett, David

Lamont, Norman

Faber, David

Lang, Ian

Fabricant, Michael

Lawrence, Sir Ivan

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Legg, Barry

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Leigh, Edward

Forman, Nigel

Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

Lester, Sir Jim (Broxtowe)

Forth, Eric

Lidington, David

Fowler, Sir Norman

Lilley, Peter

Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

Lloyd, Sir Peter (Fareham)

Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

Lord, Michael

Freeman, Roger

Luff, Peter

French, Douglas

Lyell, Sir Nicholas

Fry, Sir Peter

MacGregor, John

Gale, Roger

Mackay, Andrew

Gallie, Phil

Maclean, David

Gardiner, Sir George

McLoughlin, Patrick

Garel-Jones, Tristan

McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

Garnier, Edward

Madel, Sir David

Gill, Christopher

Maitland, Lady Olga

Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

Major, John

Goodlad, Alastair

Malone, Gerald

Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

Mans, Keith

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

Marland, Paul

Gorst, Sir John

Marlow, Tony

Grant, Sir Anthony (SW Cambs)

Marshall, John (Hendon S)

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Grylls, Sir Michael

Mates, Michael

Hague, William

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Hamilton, Sir Archibald

Mayhew, Sir Patrick

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Mellor, David

Hampson, Dr Keih

Merchant, Piers

Hanley, Jeremy

Mills, Iain

Harris, David

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Haselhurst, Sir Alan

Mitchell, Sir David (NW Hants)

Hawkins, Nick

Moate, Sir Roger

Hawksley, Warren

Monro, Sir Hector

Hayes, Jerry

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Heald, Oliver

Moss, Malcolm

Heath, Sir Edward

Needham, Richard

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Nelson, Anthony

Hendry, Charles

Neubert, Sir Michael

Heseltine, Michael

Newton, Tony

Hicks, Sir Robert

Nicholls, Patrick

Higgins, Sir Terence

Norris, Steve

Hill, Sir James (Southampton Test)

Onslow, Sir Cranley

Hogg, Douglas (Grantham)

Oppenheim, Phillip

Horam, John

Page, Richard

Hordern, Sir Peter

Paice, James

Howard, Michael

Patnick, Sir Irvine

Howell, David (Guildf'd)

Patten, John

Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W)

Pattie, Sir Geoffrey

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Pawsey, James

Hunt, Sir John (Ravensb'ne)

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

457

Pickles, Eric

Sykes, John

Portillo, Michael

Tapsell, Sir Peter

Powell, William (Corby)

Taylor, Ian (Esher)

Rathbone, Tim

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Redwood, John

Taylor, Sir Teddy

Richards, Rod

Temple-Morris, Peter

Rifkind, Malcolm

Thomason, Roy

Robathan, Andrew

Thompson, Sir Donald (Calder V)

Roberts, Sir Wyn

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Robertson, Raymond S (Ab'd'n S)

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

Townsend, Cyril D (Bexl'yh'th)

Roe, Mrs Marion

Tracey, Richard

Rowe, Andrew

Tredinnick, David

Rumbold, Dame Angela

Trend, Michael

Sackville, Tom

Trotter, Neville

Sainsbury, Sir Timothy

Twinn, Dr Ian

Scott, Sir Nicholas

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Shaw, David (Dover)

Viggers, Peter

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Waldegrave, William

Shephard, Mrs Gillian

Walden, George

Shepherd, Sir Colin (Heref'd)

Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Waller, Gary

Shersby, Sir Michael

Ward, John

Sims, Sir Roger

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Waterson, Nigel

Smith, Tim (Beaconsf'ld)

Watts, John

Soames, Nicholas

Wells, Bowen

Speed, Sir Keith

Wheeler, Sir John

Spencer, Sir Derek

Whitney, Ray

Spicer, Sir Jim (W Dorset)

Whittingdale, John

Spicer, Sir Michael (S Worcs)

Widdecombe, Miss Ann

Spink, Dr Robert

Wiggin, Sir Jerry

Spring, Richard

Wilkinson, John

Sproat, Iain

Willetts, David

Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

Wilshire, David

Stanley, Sir John

Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

Steen, Anthony

Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesf'ld)

Stephen, Michael

Wolfson, Mark

Stern, Michael

Yeo, Tim

Stewart, Allan

Young, Sir George

Streeter, Gary

Tellers for the Ayes:

Sumberg, David

Mr. Timothy Wood and

Sweeney, Walter

Mr. Richard Ottaway,

NOES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Bradley, Keith

Adams, Mrs Irene

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Ainger, Nick

Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Allen, Graham

Burden, Richard

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Byers, Stephen

Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

Caborn, Richard

Armstrong, Ms Hilary

Callaghan, Jim

Ashdown, Paddy

Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

Ashton, Joseph

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Austin-Walker, John

Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Campbell-Savours, D N

Barnes, Harry

Cann, Jamie

Barron, Kevin

Carlile, Alex (Montgomery)

Battle, John

Chidgey, David

Bayley, Hugh

Chisholm, Malcolm

Beckett, Mrs Margaret

Church, Ms Judith

Beggs, Roy

Clapham, Michael

Beith, A J

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Bell, Stuart

Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

Benn, Tony

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Bennett, Andrew F

Clelland, David

Benton, Joe

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Bermingham, Gerald

Coffey, Ms Ann

Berry, Roger

Cohen, Harry

Betts, Clive

Connarty, Michael

Blair, Tony

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Blunkett, David

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Boateng, Paul

Corbett, Robin

Boyes, Roland

Corbyn, Jeremy

458

Cousins, Jim

Hoyle, Doug

Cox, Tom

Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

Cummings, John

Hughes, Robert (Ab'd'n N)

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try SE)

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Cunningham, Dr John

Hume, John

Cunningham, Ms R (Perth Kinross)

Hutton, John

Dafis, Cynog

Illsley, Eric

Dalyell, Tam

Ingram, Adam

Darling, Alistair

Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampst'd)

Davidson, Ian

Janner, Greville

Davies, Bryan (Oldham C)

Jenkins, Brian D (SE Staffs)

Davies, Denzil (Llanelli)

Johnston, Sir Russell

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Jones, Barry (Alyn & D'side)

Denham, John

Jones, Ieuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

Dewar, Donald

Jones, Dr L (B'ham Selly Oak)

Dixon, Don

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd SW)

Dobson, Frank

Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

Donohoe, Brian H

Jowell, Ms Tessa

Dowd, Jim

Kaufman, Gerald

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Keen, Alan

Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

Kennedy, Charles (Ross C & S)

Eagle, Ms Angela

Kennedy, Mrs Jane (Broadgreen)

Eastham, Ken

Khabra, Piara S

Etherington, Bill

Kilfoyle, Peter

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Kirkwood, Archy

Ewing, Mrs Margaret

Lestor, Miss Joan (Eccles)

Fatchett, Derek

Lewis, Terry

Faulds, Andrew

Liddell, Mrs Helen

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Litherland, Robert

Fisher, Mark

Livingstone, Ken

Flynn, Paul

Lloyd, Tony (Stretf'd)

Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

Llwyd, Elfyn

Foster, Derek

Loyden, Eddie

Foster, Don (Bath)

Lynne, Ms Liz

Foulkes, George

McAllion, John

Fraser, John

McAvoy, Thomas

Fyfe, Mrs Maria

McCartney, Ian (Makerf'ld)

Galbraith, Sam

McCartney, Robert (N Down)

Galloway, George

McCrea, Rev William

Gapes, Mike

Macdonald, Calum

Garrett, John

McFall, John

George, Bruce

McKelvey, William

Gerrard, Neil

Mackinlay, Andrew

Gilbert, Dr John

McLeish, Henry

Godman, Dr Norman A

McMaster, Gordon

Godsiff, Roger

McNamara, Kevin

Golding, Mrs Llin

MacShane, Denis

Gordon, Ms Mildred

McWilliam, John

Graham, Thomas

Madden, Max

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Maddock, Mrs Diana

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Maginnis, Ken

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Grocott, Bruce

Mallon, Seamus

Gunnell, John

Mendelson, Peter

Hain, Peter

Marek, Dr John

Hall, Mike

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Hanson, David

Martin, Michael J (Springburn)

Hardy, Peter

Martlew, Eric

Harman, Ms Harriet

Maxton, John

Harvey, Nick

Meacher, Michael

Hattersley, Roy

Meale, Alan

Henderson, Doug

Michael, Alun

Hendron, Dr Joe

Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)

Heppell, John

Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

Hill, Keith (Streatham)

Milburn, Alan

Hinchliffe, David

Miller, Andrew

Hodge, Ms Margaret

Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

Hoey, Miss Kate

Molyneaux, Sir James

Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Home Robertson, John

Morgan, Rhodri

Hood, Jimmy

Morley, Elliot

Hoon, Geoffrey

Morris, Alfred (Wy'nshawe)

Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)

Morris, Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Morris, John (Aberavon)

Howells, Dr Kim

Mowlam, Ms Marjorie

459

Mudie, George

Smith, Chris (Islington S)

Mullin, Chris

Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

Murphy, Paul

Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

Nicholson, Miss Emma (W Devon)

Snape, Peter

Oakes, Gordon

Soley, Clive

O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)

Spearing, Nigel

O'Brien, William (Normanton)

Spellar, John

Olner, Bill

Steel, Sir David

O'Neill, Martin

Stevenson, George

Orme, Stanley

Stott, Roger

Paisley, Rev Ian

Strang, Dr Gavin

Parry, Robert

Straw, Jack

Pearson, Ian

Sutcliffe, Gerry

Pendry, Tom

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Pickthall, Colin

Taylor, John D (Strangf'd)

Pike, Peter L

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Powell, Sir Raymond (Ogmore)

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Prentice, Mrs B (Lewisham E)

Thurnham, Peter

Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

Timms, Stephen

Prescott, John

Tipping, Paddy

Primarolo, Ms Dawn

Touhig, Don

Purchase, Ken

Trickett, Jon

Quin, Ms Joyce

Trimble, David

Radice, Giles

Tyler, Paul

Randall, Stuart

Vaz, Keith

Raynsford, Nick

Walker, A Cecil (Belfast N)

Reid, Dr John

Walker, Sir Harold

Rendel, David

Wallace, James

Robertson, George (Hamilton)

Walley, Ms Joan

Robinson, Geoffrey (Cov'try NW)

Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

Wareing, Robert N

Roche, Mrs Barbara

Watson, Mike

Rogers, Allan

Welsh, Andrew

Rooker, Jeff

Wicks, Malcolm

Rooney, Terry

Williams, Alan (Swansea W)

Ross, William (E Lond'y)

Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

Rowlands, Ted

Wilson, Brian

Ruddock, Ms Joan

Winnick, David

Salmond, Alen

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Sedgemore, Brian

Worthington, Tony

Sheerman, Barry

Wray, Jimmy

Sheldon, Robert

Wright, Dr Tony

Shore, Peter

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Short, Ms Clare

Simpson, Alan

Tellers for the Noes:

Skinner, Dennis

Mr. Jon Owen Jones and

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Mr. Dennis Turner.

Question accordingly agreed to.
MADAM SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House congratulates the Government on the action it has taken to deal with the BSE crisis which has led to the restoration of consumer confidence; welcomes the package of support the Government has provided to the beef industry; notes the significant improvement in the measures to deal with the disposal of animals over 30 months of age and the progress made towards meeting the criteria set out in the agreement for lifting the European ban on British beef; and urges the Labour Party to drop its cynical political opportunism at the expense of many who depend on this important industry.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

HEALTH AND SAFETY
That the draft Health and Safety (Repeals and Revocations) Regulations 1996, which were laid before this House on 23rd October, be approved.—[Mr. Brandreth.]
Question agreed to.
Madam Speaker: With permission, I shall put together the remaining motions relating to delegated legislation.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

INCOME TAX
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Latvia) Order 1996 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 23rd October.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Denmark) Order 1996 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 23rd October.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Finland) Order 1996 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 23rd October.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (China) Order 1996 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 23rd October.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Republic of Korea) Order 1996 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 28th October.—[Mr. Brandreth]
Question agreed to.

Land Holding (Scotland)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Brandreth.]
10.31 pm
Mr. Jimmy Hood: I have long awaited the opportunity to have this debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I should like to thank Madam Speaker for finally selecting me to have the Adjournment debate.
Last Wednesday, the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) had a debate on land reform in Scotland. I congratulate him on his success in raising the issue, which I intend to cover in more detail than the hon. Gentleman and the other hon. Members managed to do then. The hon. Gentleman admitted that he exercised some restraint when describing the behaviour and antics of Mr. Brian Hamilton, the so-called "raider of the lost titles", but I can tell the House that I intend to free myself from such restraint. I intend to speak based on my experience of meeting him. My opinion of him is not a good one, and I am sure that, having heard of that man's activities, most will share my view.
I first became aware of the problem through a local councillor for Boghead, Councillor Esther Serrels, deputy provost of South Lanarkshire council. I would like to record my thanks to and appreciation of Councillor Serrels for her outstanding and tireless work on behalf of the people of Boghead and Kirkmuirhill, who have been on the receiving end of those outdated and abused Scottish land laws.
Councillor Serrels arranged a meeting at my constituency office on 26 August, which was also attended by a delegation of Boghead residents. They informed me of a litany of harassment, threats and intimidation. For example, bank accounts had been arrested, sheriff officers had served warrants, bailiffs had evaluated household goods for warrant sales, and threats of evictions had been made, as well as repeated calls of a threatening and intimidating nature. Such calls seem to be a common feature of Mr. Hamilton's tactics.
There was the case of Mr. and Mrs. Reid. Hamilton obtained an eviction order to evict them from the home in which they had lived for the previous 20 years, after a dispute over the ownership. The previous owner was an old lady who had sold the house to the Reids for £500. She gave them a receipt for the sale, but died two weeks later, before conveyancing had been properly completed. Mr. Hamilton reputedly bought the right of claim for ownership from the old lady's family for £4,000. He sued Mr. Reid for £29,000, in addition to £11,000 in back casualty payments.
Hamilton's attitude towards the Reids was vicious and venomous, and his behaviour was abusive and derogatory. He revelled in the torment that he inflicted on the couple.
I attended a public meeting in Boghead, on 11 September 1996, and met members of the community—among whom were some ordinary people who had been living a normal life one minute, but whose lives were threatened and virtually ruined the next. Forty families have been affected in Boghead, but they have received little or no help, except for the comfort of concern expressed by each other, their local councillor and their Member of Parliament, and by some other supporters.
462
I decided to try to meet Mr. Hamilton to see at first hand what type of person threatens and intimidates an 88-year-old pensioner and a young widow and evicts people such as the Reids from their homes. I wrote to him, requesting a meeting. He agreed. I announced that Councillor Serrells and I would travel to Stonehaven, on Friday 27 September 1996, to discuss all the issues. Hamilton immediately released a statement to the press, stating that he would not meet with "that woman Serrells". It seems that Councillor Serrells had said something critical of his conduct—which should surprise no one.
I telephoned Hamilton, and I told him that Councillor Serrells was the local councillor, and that he was objecting to the attendance of one of the most decent, respected and admired women in the county of Lanarkshire. He reluctantly withdrew his objection to her attendance, and she and I set off to meet "the raider of the lost titles".
We decided that our approach would be to express our concerns, as expressed to us by our constituents, and then to listen to him and allow him to talk as much as possible. I was keen to discover what sort of chap he was, and he certainly displayed conduct that could be described as evil. Our meeting lasted for two hours, and the experience was worth the three-hour drive up and the three-hour drive back.
I should say something about how Hamilton behaved and operated in Boghead. Last Wednesday, the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan briefly mentioned George Malone, but—understandably, because of time factors—he did not give a full account of Mr. Malone's treatment. Hamilton had initially demanded £9,000 from George Malone, an 82-year-old pensioner. He then reduced his demand to £4,800 and said, "Pay up and shut up, or I will withdraw my offer." The debt owed to Hamilton for a casualty fee was, in pre-decimalisation money, 1s 7d—or 8.5p in modern currency. Hamilton was trying to intimidate that old man to pay him £9,000 to buy the casualty that he owned on the house. When Mr. Malone passes on, there will be no casualty fee due because the house will pass to his son. When Hamilton agreed during our meeting to drop his demand against Mr. Malone, it may have been influenced by the fact that he was going to get nothing this side of 20 years anyway, although he still owns the casualty for the property. I could cite many more examples but I shall give only a few because of the constraints of time.
Mrs. Anne Judge, a young widow recently bereaved, had her bank account frozen by Hamilton. Bailiffs and sheriffs were sent round to value her property for warrant sales. Her lawyer behaved less than honourably too, by running up further legal bills when he knew that he and/or his firm had failed Mr. and Mrs. Judge by not properly advising her and her then husband of their liabilities when they bought the property. When Hamilton froze their bank account, he had the neck to telephone her to say that he had to do it so that she would push her lawyer into a quick settlement. That young woman had been widowed for only five months and Hamilton had no regard for her well-being. He was driven by greed for money.
In another case, a young couple, Fiona and Hunter Fairley, bought their home as an investment with a view to renovating and improving it. Like Mrs. Judge, Mr. and Mrs. Fairley were not served well by their lawyer, Mr. Scanlon, and subsequently had to sue him. Mr. and Mrs. Fairley were devastated by their experience and put

463
it down on paper for me to consider before speaking in this debate. What the House is about to hear is not an isolated case—indeed, far from it. Their experience is nearer the norm when evaluating Mr. Hamilton's activities and behaviour.
The couple wrote:
"October 1994
I was contacted by Mr. Hamilton concerning the feu on our 999 year lease. I immediately contacted our solicitor at the time (Mr. Scanlon). He said he would retrieve our title deeds to review them.
Mr. Hamilton phoned again, explained about the feu and pointed out that it had not been paid for a number of years. As we now owned the property it fell on us to pay for previous owners. At the time Mr. Hamilton seemed friendly. We thought he was working on behalf of the current landlord. We readily accepted any advice he gave us. As he put it he was just doing his job.
Mr. Scanlon didn't seem to be bothered about the feu. He thought it would be thrown out of court as it was an old law.
… Mr. Hamilton seemed to think that Mr. Scanlon would pass it on to his insurers to pay, as he had not seen the clause in the title of deeds before we bought the house. We thought it best to leave it in the hand of our solicitor as he knew about these things.
Mr. Hamilton phoned regularly until the end of February to find what was happening as seemingly he couldn't get in contact with Mr. Scanlon.
February. We received a summons to attend a court hearing on behalf of Mr. Hamilton. We contacted our solicitor again. He said he would get a stay of action until we could prepare a case to defend ourselves.
March 20th. After phoning Mr. Scanlon repeatedly over the last couple of weeks I eventually got to speak to him. He told me that everything was fine and that he would get in contact with me if anything happened.
March 28th. Mr. Hamilton contacted me to say that we were supposed to have been in court on March 14th and that Mr. Scanlon sent another solicitor to court to say that Mr. Scanlon had resigned from our case.
The court ruled in favour of Mr. Hamilton.
…December. Mr. Hamilton threatened us with sheriff officers. It has been difficult to further the case as Mr. Scanlon is keeping some of our case notes from us.
Our new solicitor has written repeatedly asking for the remainder of our file, but Mr. Scanlon is ignoring them.
Our solicitor wrote to the Law Society complaining about Mr. Scanlon. I also phoned them.
Knock at door. Two men hand me a writ. It said if we don't pay Mr. Hamilton the money that we owe him, sheriff officers will come into our house and value our possessions for sale. Our solicitor contacted Mr. Hamilton's solicitor to ask what was going on. Mr. Hamilton had agreed to wait for his money until we could sue Mr. Scanlon.
Two days later I got another phone call from Mr. Hamilton. I asked him what he was playing at sending sheriff officers with a writ after he had said he would wait for his money. He replied that he didn't think our solicitor was keeping on the ball and this was just to scare us so as we would get the ball rolling. I explained that it was Mr. Scanlon who was holding it up.
A week before Christmas, took some of our possessions out of our house in case the sheriff officers came back. Was scared in case they took the kids' presents.
January. Keep getting phone calls from Mr. Hamilton. He keeps hassling us. Informed our solicitor to write to Mr. Hamilton's solicitor to tell him to stop hassling us and to get in contact through my solicitor and not phone me.
464
May. The Sun Alliance (Mr. Scanlon's insurers) got in touch with Mr. Hamilton to sort out the mess. They have agreed on a sum for the feu and are trying to agree a sum for buying the casualty clause.
June. Mr. Hamilton is still hassling us. He called to inform me that the insurance company might get in touch to offer us a sum of money if we don't claim anything else after they pay the feu to Mr. Hamilton. He said it would be in our own interest if we refused it as they would approach him with a better sum. I refused and said I'd think about it. He then told me that if I accepted the money that they offered then I would still have the clause on the house and if we passed the house to the boys in years to come he would still get his money.
Phoned solicitor to write to Mr. Hamilton's solicitor again telling him to stop phoning us.
July. At last! Solicitor asked to see us to sign the papers confirming Sun Alliance had paid Mr. Hamilton.
Now we don't have this hanging over our heads any more. Sun Alliance also wanted us to sign a letter stating that we won't be making any further claims against Mr. Scanlon. We refused. We are awaiting word from our solicitor on whether the Law Society will reprimand Mr. Scanlon."
Those are not the actions of a decent person who was only taking advantage of the law.
Before coming to my conclusions, I want to alert hon. Members to another problem that could potentially devastate private home owners in Scotland—superiorities. Do hon. Members have superiors over their homes?
I recently met a constituent who has given me permission to mention his case here tonight—Mr. Maurice Benyon of 12 South avenue, Carluke. Mr. Benyon lives on what he describes as a Barratt estate in Carluke. He bought a house from Barratt and had extra land where he wanted to build another building. He applied for planning permission but was told by Barratt or its agents that they were the superior of the estate and that he would have to pay them £5,000 for permission to build. The superior can also charge for significant alterations to homes or extensions. The potential for panic and damage to the housing market is overwhelming. That is why this outdated law has to be changed.
I want to draw my remarks to a close. I apologise for the time that I have taken, but I hope that hon. Members agree that the people's stories had to be told. I hope that I have done that tonight.
Mr. Hamilton challenged me to name any individuals who have had to pay him money directly. I can answer his challenge tonight.
The masonic hall in our area paid Mr. Hamilton £6,300; it was not the insurers. The local hairdresser's shop paid him £1,150; it was not the insurers. A plant hire shop paid him £255; it was not the insurers. Mrs. Judge, a recent widow, and Mr. and Mrs. Arlott are still being drawn through the courts, defending themselves from demands for many thousands of pounds.
Mr. Hamilton has sought to portray himself as a man who is only exploiting a bad law, and he says that only lawyers get hurt. The media, while being been critical of him, have assisted in fostering that perception. I met the man and I have seen what he has done to good, decent people, from an 82-year-old pensioner to a recently widowed woman, and many others.
Mr. Hamilton is not just a land speculator. He is an evil, twisted man. He invades people's lives and seeks to destroy them on the altar of making money from a bad law. When I met him, I had the impression that he probably had a very unhappy childhood. He is so

465
embittered. His hatred for Mr. and Mrs. Reid, whom he had never met, but whom he sought to destroy, was sickening to see.
I say to the Hamiltons of this land, "When you seek to deprive people of their dignity, you expose your own lack of it." I say to the Hamiltons of this land, "When you attack and abuse my people, as you did the people of Boghead, you are awakening a determination in me to rid Scotland of your like—the raiders of lost morals." I say to the Minister tonight, "Get off your backside and get the Scottish land laws reformed and modernised to take us into the new millennium without the feudal entrails of the worst moments of our history."
I cannot help but reflect on the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) last Wednesday. He reminded us that the 1979 Labour Government were in the process of changing the Scottish land laws to do we are seeking to do now. The Minister today can do what Labour was prevented from doing in 1979. I invite him to get on with it.
10.51 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson): I first congratulate the hon. Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood) on securing this Adjournment debate. I thank him for raising again the issue of leasehold casualty payments which, as we have heard in his speech, are causing grave difficulties for some of his constituents.
I understand and appreciate the concerns that the hon. Gentleman has expressed about some of the demands that are being made on his constituents. This matter was touched on briefly in the House last week when, hon. Members will recall, the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) secured a debate on land tenure and land ownership in Scotland. On that occasion, I expressed my deep concern for owners of leasehold properties, such as those in Boghead in Lanarkshire, who were being confronted by demands for casualty payments.
However, as I told the House then, although the Government are concerned about the severe distress being caused to some tenants, neither Ministers nor their officials have any powers to intervene in individual cases of dispute. Perhaps it would be helpful if I explained some of the background to the problem.
The problem of casualty payments relates specifically to leasehold property. As hon. Members will be aware, very little land in Scotland is held on leasehold tenure. What there is is concentrated in particular geographical areas, reflecting the practice of a few earlier landlords leasing to private householders instead of feuing. Consequently, a preponderance of titles in a small village may be leasehold whereas few if any residential titles in a large town or city will be. Even in areas where leasehold is common, no new long residential leases can now be created following the passing of the Land Tenure Reform (Scotland) Act 1974.
The incidence of casualty clauses in leasehold titles is a further imponderable, but again they appear to be concentrated in individual estates. A casualty is a payment falling due to a superior or landlord on the happening of events of uncertain date or occurrence. They are usually based on one year's net rental value of the property. Casualties relating to properties held on feudal tenure were progressively abolished by the Feudal Casualties
466
(Scotland) Act 1914. The imposition of leasehold casualties in new leases was prohibited by section 16 of the Land Tenure Reform (Scotland) Act 1974.
The landlord continues, however, to have the right to collect casualties that were imposed on a long lease before that date. Therefore, the problem of casualty payments is restricted to a relatively small number of people with existing leasehold casualty clauses in leasehold titles in specific parts of Scotland.
Clearly, solicitors should advise their clients of the existence of such casualties when acting on their behalf in the purchase of a property that is held under a leasehold, as opposed to a feudal title. As leaseholds, and therefore leasehold casualties, are uncommon except in certain geographical areas such as Lanarkshire and are couched in unfamiliar terms, they can easily be overlooked by solicitors.
Until recently, many if not most landlords did not bother to collect casualty payments. Now, however, some new landlords have acquired leasehold interests with the specific intention of collecting long-neglected payments. Tenants may therefore be confronted by an unexpected demand for a payment. In addition, it is possible that landlords may succeed in an attempt to show that incoming tenants are liable for past unclaimed casualties.
Although we all sympathise with the tenants who have been placed in such a position, and I should like to record my own personal distaste for the methods being employed to extract payment, I must reiterate that leasehold casualty payments remain lawful, legitimate burdens on leasehold property.
The duty falls on solicitors acting for clients intending to purchase leasehold property to identify provisions for leasehold casualties in the title deeds and to warn their clients of the possible consequences. If the solicitor fails in that duty, he lays himself open to a claim for negligence against his professional indemnity insurance.
I understand that the landlord of the properties in Boghead is encouraging tenants to make such negligence claims against solicitors who acted for them in the purchase of their properties as a means of making the casualty payments.
The hon. Gentleman asked for legislation in order to alleviate the problem. It would be ideal if we could wave some legislative wand to solve the problems of the tenants in Boghead and elsewhere. Regrettably, in the real world, there is no easy solution.
Existing leasehold casualties cannot simply be abolished without making provision for compensation for the landlords for loss of future income. To do so would be to contravene the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights. Casualty payments that are already due would be unaffected and would remain payable by the tenant. Therefore, nothing can be done to change the present position of the hon. Gentleman's constituents. Their recourse has to be to their solicitors.
I am aware that others have suggested two possible solutions.
Mr. Hood: Many of my constituents in Boghead will be depressed to hear the Minister's response. It is a tragedy that we are giving in to such people as Hamilton.

467
All I have heard is an apology for what has happened in my constituency and I find the Minister's reply truly offensive.
Mr. Robertson: I did not intend to be offensive. I was merely setting out the position and pointing out to the hon. Gentleman why the action that he has requested is, in part, impossible.
Part 1 of the Long Leases (Scotland) Act 1954 allowed tenants to convert leases into feus for a payment in compensation to the landlord. The Act provided that this could be done only during a period of five years after the passing of the Act.
It has been suggested that that legislation should be resurrected. This would not, however, remove the need to provide for compensation to landlords, nor would it do anything to help tenants where casualty payments are already due.
The other possible solution involves the Feudal Casualties (Scotland) Act 1914, which banned the creation of any new feudal casualties after the commencement of the Act, as has since happened for leasehold casualties in the Land Tenure (Scotland) Act 1974. It also set up a system for redemption of old ones within 15 years, either by agreement or upon payment of compensation by the proprietor to the superior to a scale contained in the Act. Redemption other than by agreement did not apply to any casualties that were already due. That meant that if the feudal superior did not agree, the owner had to compensate him for the loss of income.
Section 23 of the 1914 Act states that the Court of Session may provide by Act of Sederunt for the redemption and extinction of
"any rights of the nature substantially of casualties which are not comprised within the scope of this Act"
on terms seeming to the court to be just and equitable on the analogy of the provisions of the Act.
I understand that the possibility of an Act of Sederunt under section 23 to provide for the compulsory redemption and extinction of leasehold as opposed to feudal casualties has been considered. There were, however, concerns both about the vires of the action
468
proposed, particularly given the likelihood of legal challenge from the more commercially minded landlords, and about the resources that the Court of Session would need in order to determine realistic compensation rates for landlords. In any event, the proposal would do nothing to alleviate the immediate problems in Boghead.
A real solution to the problem of leasehold casualties can come only with reform of the law on long leases in general and as part of a package that involves compensation. The Scottish Law Commission is to look at the law on long residential leases as part of the major review of property law that it is at present undertaking. The commission cannot take matters forward until it has completed its present work on the law of the tenement and feudal system.
No one who was present at the Adjournment debate last week can doubt the strength of feeling of honourable Members from both sides of the House over the need to abolish the remaining aspects of the feudal system. As I made clear at that time, the Government are fully committed to doing so as soon as possible once we have received the commission's report.
Reform of the law of the tenement is also very important and will affect many people in Scotland. It has to be right that the commission tackles work in those vital areas first. I understand that the commission hopes to issue its report on the law of the tenement during 1997 and on abolition of the feudal system thereafter. It will, however, require to devote all its property law resources to achieving that: feudalism has survived for nearly 1,000 years and is deeply embedded in the private law of Scotland. It is an immensely complicated area of law. The abolition of one system of land tenure and its replacement with a new system of absolute ownership requires a great deal of consideration and public consultation. Many conflicting points have already been raised and will have to be taken fully into account.
Once the commission's report on the feudal system is delivered it can turn to leasehold tenure. No legislative solution can help the residents of Boghead whose leasehold casualties are already due. Once again, I wish to express my sympathy for their plight and my hope that their individual difficulties may be speedily resolved.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at one minute past Eleven o'clock.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  EU Research and Development Programme
  Mrs. Anne Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations the Government have made to the European Commission concerning integration of applied research funded under the fifth framework programme and national research initiatives. [3167]

  Mr. Ian Taylor
  I have been asked to reply.

  The UK set out its view on the relationship of EU and nationally funded research programmes in its position paper on the fifth framework programme for research and technological development, submitted to the European Commission in June 1996. This is available on the Internet at http://www.open.gov.uk/ost/osthome.html.

  Mrs. Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations the Government have made to the European Commission as regards the priority accorded to basic research in the fifth framework programme. [3165]

  Mr. Taylor
  I have been asked to reply.

  The UK set out its view on the place of basic research in the EU's fifth framework programme for research and technological development in its position paper submitted to the European Commission in June 1996. This can be found on the Internet at http://www.open.gov.uk/ost/osthome.html.

  Mrs. Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations the Government have made to the EU on the levels of funding available for social sciences and humanities under the fifth framework programme. [3166]

  Mr. Taylor
  I have been asked to reply.

  None. At this early stage in the negotiations for the EU's fifth framework programme for research and technological development, it is premature to make representations on levels of funding for specific parts of the programme.

  Mrs. Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps have been taken to ensure that the quality of research funded by the fifth framework programme is of a similar standard to that funded in the United Kingdom. [3164]

  Mr. Taylor
  I have been asked to reply.

  The UK attaches great importance to research funded by the EU's framework programmes for research and technological development being of the highest quality. In
  214
  the negotiations on the EU's fifth framework programme the UK will press for scientific excellence to remain the primary criterion for selecting projects for support.

  Mrs. Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action the Government are taking in respect of the indirect costs of European research programmes to enable universities to participate actively in the fifth framework programme. [3168]

  Mr. Taylor
  I have been asked to reply.

  None. It is for individual institutions to decide whether to bid for EU framework programme funds on the basis of the EU's conditions of funding.

  Anglo-French Summit
  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he had on the furtherance of nuclear co-operation with France at the Anglo-French summit in Bordeaux. [3618]

  Mr. David Davis
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, together with our French counterparts, reviewed the work of the Franco-British Joint Nuclear Commission.

  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary for State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he had with the United States Government before the Anglo-French summit on the matters to be discussed there. [3565]

  Mr. Davis
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary had no specific discussions with the United States Government prior to the UK-French summit on matters to be discussed there.

  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list(a) the members of his Department who attended the Anglo-French summit in Bordeaux and (b) the positions they hold. [3619]

  Mr. Davis
  The following members of this Department accompanied me to the UK French summit in Bordeaux:

  London delegation

  Mr. W. G. Ehrman: principle private secretary

  Mr. J. Macadie: Private secretary, Minister of State

  Ms E. R. Rea: Personal assistant

  Mr. P. Lever: Director for EU and economic affairs and deputy under-secretary of state

  Mr. J. Greenstock: Political director and deputy under-secretary of state

  Mr. N. Sheinwald: Head of news department

  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs which representatives of the United States Government attended the Anglo-French summit as observers. [3564]

  Mr. Davis
  No representatives of the United States Government attended the UK-French summit as observers.

  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will place copies of all agreements reached between Britain and
  215
  France and all communiqués issued during the Anglo—French summit in Bordeaux in the Library; and if he will make a statement. [3603]

  Mr. Davis
  One joint agreement was signed at the summit, a UK-French naval letter of intent; and one joint statement was issued, on Zaire. A copy of each will be deposited in the Libraries of the House.

  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he had on the memorandum of agreement on co-operation concerning nuclear safety and security which the United States of America signed with France on 4 June at the Anglo-French summit in Bordeaux [3617]

  Mr. Soames
  I have been asked to reply.

  We have had no such discussions.

  China
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the Chinese Government regarding the detention of Mr. Ngawang Choephel; and if he will make a statement. [3659]

  Mr. Hanley
  A great many cases, such as those of Ngawang Choephel, are brought to our attention. We continue to be concerned about such cases, and regularly express our views about the human rights situation in Tibet to the Chinese authorities. I did so most recently when I met the Chinese Vice Premier Li Lanqing in London on 5 November.

  Pakistan
  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the advice given by his Department to the Home Office about political freedom in Pakistan following the recent decision by the President of that country to dismiss the Government. [3559]

  Dr. Liam Fox
  We are continuing to monitor closely the situation in Pakistan in conjunction with the Home Office. It is important that the elections called for 3 February are free and fair.

  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the report of the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Pakistan; and if he will list the steps taken by his Government to ensure that the special rapporteur's recommendations are implemented. [3560]

  Dr. Fox
  The Special Rapporteur on Torture has reported instances of serious human rights abuses in Pakistan. We expect such allegations to be fully investigated. We have regularly raised human rights issues with Pakistan, most recently when I met the Human Rights Minister in Islamabad in October, and will continue to do so.

  Chernobyl
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what response Her Majesty's Government have made to the findings of the Secretary-General's report to the General Assembly of the 216
  United Nations in September 1995, regarding the health, social and economic conditions of areas in Belarus, Ukraine, and the southern Russian Federation which were worst affected by the Chernobyl disaster; and if he will make a statement. [3696]

  Dr. Liam Fox
  The Secretary-General's report on the Chernobyl accident, presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 1995, was studied with great interest by those UK Government Departments and agencies concerned. It was a valuable contribution to international understanding of the problems arising from the accident. The main emphasis of the UK's aid policy in relation to the affected areas of Belarus, Ukraine and in Russia has been to deliver assistance through international agencies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health Organisation and the European Union. We believe such agencies are best placed to co-ordinate and prioritise the work that needs to be done.

  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what initiatives Her Majesty's Government(a) have taken and (b) plan to take in 1996 to provide bilateral aid to the Governments of Ukraine and Belarus for the purposes of alleviating the social, health, economic and environmental effects of the Chernobyl disaster; and if he will make a statement. [3697]

  Dr. Fox
  Since 1986, UK bilateral assistance has included £6.1 million from the UK's know-how fund for energy sector reform measures in Ukraine, and we have funded land remediation feasibility studies in the region via the environmental know-how fund. But most of the UK's assistance is channelled through joint programmes managed with our G7 and EU partners. So far, we have contributed £18.25 million to the international nuclear safety account, of which £10 million has been earmarked for Chernobyl-related projects. The Department of Health is supporting international activities to deal with health effects from Chernobyl and is directly supporting research on the incidence of childhood thyroid cancer. This year we have supported work on radioactive food screening and soil decontamination.

  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what contribution the Government have made to the United Nations trust fund for the relief of Chernobyl victims. [3698]

  Dr. Fox
  Her Majesty's Government have contributed £25,000 to the United Nations trust fund for the relief of Chernobyl victims.

ENVIRONMENT

  Renewable Energy
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans his Department has to revise planning policy guidance note No. 22 on renewable energy to give greater encouragement to autonomous local services and associated industries; and if he will make a statement. [3435]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  The Government have no immediate plans to revise planning policy guidance note No. 22, "Renewable Energy".

  Regeneration Assistance
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what assistance his Department provides to(a) the Prince's Trust and (b) Business in the Community. [3431]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  My Department assists these organisations in a number of ways and greatly values the contribution that they make to strengthen communities and promoting regeneration. We are currently assisting the Prince's Trust through the free secondment of two members of staff, one to the headquarters office of the Prince's Trust volunteers and another to the Prince of Wales business leaders forum. We liaise with Business in the Community on various matters of common interest and provide grants towards some of its regeneration and environmental work, the total for the current financial year being about £120,000. My Department worked in partnership with Business in the Community and others to set up the local investment fund, which has already provided over £½ million in loans for voluntary sector projects in deprived areas.

  Preston Farm, Stockton on Tees
  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many people are employed on Teesside development corporation's Preston Farm site in Stockton on Tees. [3880]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  It is estimated that 3,400 people now work on the Preston Farm site.

  Green Ministers
  Ms Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when was the last meeting of the green Ministers; who attended; and what issues were discussed. [3867]

  Mr. Clappison
  I refer the hon. Member to the Department's news release No. 480, issued earlier today.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

  Pension Scheme
  Mr. Denham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many requests for information the principal civil service pension scheme has received from pension providers undertaking reviews of pension transfers and opt-outs; in how many cases all appropriate information has been supplied; what is the average length of time taken to supply such information; and what moratorium has been introduced on supplying such information. [3340]

  Mr. Freeman
  The administration of the principal civil service pension scheme is carried out by employing Departments and the information requested is not held centrally. Administrators have been provided with information packs on the PCSPS, and use these, together with a standard questionnaire on members' benefits, to help them handle requests from pension providers consistently and efficiently. The recent introduction of powers to recharge administrative costs should assist 218
  further with the processing of such requests although we believe that relatively few civil servants are affected by the personal pensions review.

  Central Intelligence Machinery
  Mr. Marlow
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what plans he has to revise the booklet published in 1993 on the Cabinet Office's central intelligence machinery. [4256]

  Mr. Freeman
  A revised edition of the booklet is to be published today and copies are being placed in the Libraries of both Houses. It is being launched simultaneously on the Internet.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

  Zaire and Rwanda
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action the British Government(a) are taking and (b) plan to take, within the EU and with their UN partners, (i) to support the ceasefire in eastern Zaire, (ii) to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches the refugee population in eastern Zaire and (iii) to promote a regional solution to the problems of the Great Lakes region. [3678]

  Dr. Liam Fox
  UN Security Council resolution 1078 of 9 November calls for an immediate ceasefire and complete cessation of all hostilities in the region. We continue to urge all parties to observe a ceasefire, which will be vital for humanitarian aid to reach those in need. We are in close touch with UN agencies and non-governmental organisations, many of them British, which have undertaken missions into eastern Zaire to assess humanitarian needs and means of delivery. We stand ready to provide further assistance. An EU ministerial troika is also in the region to assess what contribution the EU can make. We strongly support the efforts of the EU and UN special envoys to promote a regional solution to the problems facing the Great Lakes, and welcome the constructive engagement of regional leaders in that process.

  Mr. Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what response the British Government have made to proposals to send a multinational force to Zaire; and what logistical and financial support the Government have offered in respect of such a force. [3679]

  Dr. Fox
  We supported United Nations Security Council resolution 1078 authorising member states to begin preparations for a multinational force and are working closely with our partners in considering the options for a possible UK contribution.

  Mr. Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps the British Government are taking to promote the holding of a regional conference on the political problems of the Great Lakes region. [3677]

  Dr. Fox
  We fully support the convening, under UN and Organisation of African Unity auspices, of an international conference on peace, security arid development in the Great Lakes region. We are working
  219
  to promote the support of countries within the region, as well as of the wider international community, for urgent action to make all the necessary arrangements for such a conference.

  Mr. Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the recent declaration of a ceasefire by the Tutsi rebels in eastern Zaire; and if he will make a statement. [3680]

  Dr. Fox
  We welcome the declaration of a ceasefire on 5 November by Banyamulenge leaders. We continue to urge all parties to the conflict in eastern Zaire to declare a complete cessation of violence.

NATIONAL HERITAGE

  National Lottery
  Dr. John Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what is the current total of unclaimed prizes from the national lottery; how much interest has been earned by this sum; and where each sum is retained and by whom. [3279]

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  This is an operational matter for Camelot Group plc. I have, therefore, asked the Director General of the Office of the National Lottery, who is responsible for regulating the operation of the lottery, to write to the right hon. Member, placing copies of his response in the Libraries of the House.

DEFENCE

  Environmental Assessment
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) what environmental assessment in respect of contaminated land has been conducted at(a) the chemical defence establishment at Nancekuke in Cornwall, (b) the central dockyard laboratory at HM naval base, Portsmouth and (c) the RAF aeroplane and armaments experimental establishment at Boscombe Down; [3526]

  (2) what environmental impact assessment has been conducted in respect of contaminated land at (a) the Admiralty engineering laboratories at (i) Ditton Park and (ii) West Drayton (b) the Admiralty experimental works at Haslar, Gosport, (c) the Admiralty marine engineering establishment at Portland, (d) the Admiralty materials laboratory at Holton Heath, Poole, (e) the Admiralty research laboratories at (i) Perran Porth, Cornwall, (ii) Teddington and (iii) Bushy Park, (1) the Admiralty surface weapons establishments at (i) Ditton Park, (ii) Eastney Portsmouth, (iii) Funtingdon, (iv) London road, Portsmouth, and (v) Portsmouth, Cosham and (g) the Admiralty underwater weapons establishments. [3413]

  Mr. Soames
  My Department has carried out environmental assessments as appropriate at its sites. As I informed the hon. Member on 15 October,Official Report, column 861, we are introducing a prioritised procedure of land quality assessment for the defence estate, which will provide a publicly available land quality statement for individual sites. However, such documents
  220
  do not yet exist in respect of these sites, and historic details are not held centrally on work carried out in the past.

  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will ask his United States counterpart to provide routinely to his Department copies of the environmental compliance assessment and management programme reports for each military facility in the United Kingdom and overseas territories where operating rights have been granted to United States defence forces. [3414]

  Mr. Soames
  MOD personnel are already fully involved in the environmental audit process at US military facilities in the UK and are routinely made aware of the contents of environmental compliance assessment and management programme reports. Similarly FCO personnel are kept fully informed of the environmental impact of all US activities at overseas territories where operating rights have been granted to US forces.

  Nuclear Co-operation (France)
  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what discussions were held on co-ordinating the patrols of Trident and the French Triomphant submarines at the Anglo-French summit in Bordeaux. [3616]

  Mr. Soames
  No such discussions were held.

  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the number of occasions in the last four years that members of the French armed forces have visited the United Kingdom to discuss the furtherance of nuclear co-operation. [3604]

  Mr. Soames
  Members of the French armed forces regularly visit the United Kingdom to discuss matters related to defence nuclear co-operation.

  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) if he will list the number of occasions in the last four years that representatives or contractors of the Delegation Generale pour l'Armement, and the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique have visited the atomic weapons establishments at Aldermaston, Burghfield, Cardiff and Foulness; [3606]

  (2) if he will list the number of occasions in the last four years that representatives or contractors of the Delegation Generale pour l'Armement, and the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique have visited the United Kingdom to discuss the furtherance of nuclear co-operation. [3605]

  Mr. Soames
  There have been 28 visits by representatives or contractors of the DGA and CEA to UK atomic weapon establishments in the period. There have also been four visits by French officials to the UK for discussions on nuclear technical and scientific matters.

  Armed Forces (Beef)
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the answer of 31 October,Official Report, column 195, for what reasons British frozen beef is not readily available for use by the armed forces. [3821]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  For commercial reasons the British market deals predominantly in fresh beef.

SCOTLAND

  Ministerial Visit
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the purpose of the visit by the Under-Secretary of State, the Earl of Lindsay, to Middleshot square, Prestonpans, on 6 November. [3411]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  [holding answer 11 November 1996]: My noble Friend visited Prestonpans on 6 November to see at first hand the damage to the homes in Middleshot square and the efforts of the local authority and emergency services in dealing with the situation. He also took the opportunity to visit Preston Lodge school, where the local authority had provided rest centre facilities for the families who had been evacuated from their homes.

  Earth Tremors (Musselburgh)
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many earth tremors have been recorded in the Musselburgh area in recent weeks; what was the magnitude of the tremors; and if he will make a statement on possible connections with current and historic coal mining operations in the neighbourhood. [3086]

  Mr. Kynoch
  The British Geological Survey reported on 6 November that 79 tremors have been detected in the Musselburgh area; 19 of which have been recorded as being felt by residents. The tremors have been of varying magnitude; the largest, with a magnitude of 2 on the Richter scale, was recorded on 25 October. Precise records of old workings in the area do not exist. It is difficult therefore to determine precisely the relationship between the tremors and previous and current mining operations. However, in the 25 years of the British Geological Survey's seismic monitoring programme, there have been no reports of structural damage or injuries caused by mining-induced earthquakes.

  Research and Development
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list those companies which have established plants in Scotland in each of the past 10 years which have created research and development centres within those plants. [3210]

  Mr. Kynoch
  Information is not readily available in the form requested and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Child Witnesses
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) how many cases at (a) the High Court and (b) the sheriff court have been abandoned because of the inability of child witnesses to give evidence in each of the past four years; and if he will make a statement; [3211]

  (2) in respect of how many cases at (a) the High Court and (b) the sheriff court closed circuit television has been employed in the examination of child witnesses in each of the past four years; [3212]

  (3) if he will list the courts which (a) currently have closed circuit television and (b) are to have such equipment installed within the next two years; and if he will make a statement. [3213]
  222
  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  Statistics regarding the abandonment of such cases are not available, but indications are that the numbers are not substantial. A range of measures contribute to this. To assist those children whom it is anticipated may have difficulty giving evidence in a conventional court setting, applications may be made before the trial for the use of screens, closed circuit television or evidence on commission. Since 1 April 1996, prior statements of witnesses, including children, may be admissible in terms of the new exceptions to the hearsay rule contained in sections 259 to 262 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. There have been a number of instances where prosecutors have had recourse to these provisions, which allow for the introduction of prior statements by a child, providing at the time a statement was made, the child would have been a competent witness.

  CCTV has been employed in the examination of child witnesses on the following occasions:

  Year

  Sheriff Court cases

  High Court cases

  1993

  2

  5

  1994

  6

  5

  1995

  6

  5

  1996 (to 30 September)

  0

  6

  CCTV equipment is available in the High Court in Edinburgh and in each sheriffdom. It can be made available for all High Court sittings at which it is required. For the sheriff courts, equipment is based at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greenock, Aberdeen, Airdrie and Falkirk sheriff courts. Installation of CCTV equipment is included in the plans for the refurbishment of the High Court buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

  Extra-contractual Referrals
  Mr. Chisholm
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what proposals he has to simplify the procedure for extra-contractual referrals; and when he plans to implement them. [3518]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  Measures to simplify the procedures for extra-contractual referrals were introduced on 1 October 1996. From that date, it is no longer necessary for NHS trusts to notify purchasers in advance of emergency and tertiary extra-contractual referrals, unless a patient's stay is expected to exceed 28 days or where the costs are likely to be in excess of £6,000. Similar procedures have been introduced in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We will consult the health service in Scotland about any future proposals further to simplify the procedure for extra-contractual referrals.

TREASURY

  Cross-channel Shopping
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the loss of(a) excise and (b) VAT revenue during the last 12 months due to consumers crossing the English channel to avoid United Kingdom taxation on (i) alcohol, (ii) cigarettes and tobacco and (iii) perfumes; what is the equivalent figure for the previous 12 months; and if he will make a statement. [2787]

  Mr. Oppenheim
  Customs' latest estimate of excise duty and VAT revenues lost from legitimate personal importation of duty-paid alcohol and tobacco products is for the calendar year 1995, and is given in the table. Equivalent figures for calendar year 1994 are given in brackets.

  Revenue losses from cross-border shopping

  £ million

  Product type

  Excise duty

  VAT

  Total revenue

  Alcohol products

  145 (145)

  65 (60)

  210 (205)

  Tobacco products

  65 (55)

  15 (15)

  80 (70)

  Total

  210 (200)

  80 (75)

  290 (275)

  Figures have been independently rounded to £5 million. Figures assume that 50 per cent. of alcohol purchased is additional consumption.

  Customs' estimate of revenue evasion through smuggling of alcohol and tobacco products, excluding any losses from commercial fraud, is set out in the table. The actual loss to the Exchequer will be less than the amount of revenue evaded, as some smuggling is likely to represent additional consumption, rather than substituting for similar goods bought in the UK. There was no previous official estimate of revenue evaded through smuggling.

  Revenue evaded through smuggling

  £ million

  Product type

  Excise duty

  VAT

  Total revenue

  Alcohol products

  145

  65

  210

  Tobacco products

  445

  115

  560

  Total

  590

  180

  770

  Figures have been independently rounded to £5 million.

  There is no official estimate of revenue losses from cross-border shopping in perfumes.

  Opticians (VAT)
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what has been the total cost of repayments of VAT to opticians; what rebates remained unpaid after the cut off date; what representations he has received on this matter; and what action he proposes to take as a result. [3035]

  Mr. Oppenheim
  VAT refunds totalling about £200 million have been made to opticians. Customs and Excise does not have information on how many opticians had not made claims by 18 July, and does not hold figures centrally of those who have not received a full refund. Following the Government's announcement on 18 July, and the subsequent exposure of the related draft Finance Bill 224
  clauses, a number of representations on various aspects of the proposed changes have been received. They are being considered along with all other representations.

  NHS Trusts (VAT)
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what discussions he has had with(a) the Secretary of State for Health and (b) NHS trusts regarding the three year limit for refund claims for VAT payments by NHS trusts; and if he will make a statement. [3240]

  Mr. Oppenheim
  None. Where trusts incur VAT on contracted-out services relating to their non-business activities, they should not normally need to make retrospective claims for VAT. Under the special arrangements for contracted out services, refunds can be claimed on a current, monthly basis and there is some flexibility at the end of each financial year.

  Personal Pensions
  Mr. John Greenway
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what progress has been made in the reviews of personal pensions cases referred to in the guidelines issued by the Securities and Investments Board in 1994. [4278]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  SIB' s guidance to regulators recognised under the Financial Services Act 1986 called for a substantial programme of case reviews to establish whether people who had transferred out of occupational schemes, or opted out of them, or had never joined them, in order to hold a personal pension had done so as a result of mis-selling. Where mis-selling was found to lead to financial loss for investors, SIB has looked to the investment firms responsible to provide redress either by reinstating the investor into the occupational scheme—where this was possible—or by topping up the investor's personal pension.

  This review process has proved extraordinarily difficult for all concerned. It has required regulators and investment firms to devote substantial resources to the casework. There have been a number of reasons why progress has been slower than the regulators had expected, some of them arising from factors beyond the control of the firms responsible for carrying out case reviews. However, regrettably there are some investment firms which have made less effort than others to carry out the required casework.

  Even when the firms concerned are anxious to bring cases to a speedy conclusion, it has often proved difficult to do so because of the volume and complexity of the information required to evaluate each case in full. For whatever reason they arise, delays are a matter of concern.

  In order to speed up progress with reviews, SIB has today issued a statement setting out a streamlined approach to evaluation of scheme benefits for computation of loss or redress. It involves using a simplified model which is designed both to reduce significantly the burden on occupational schemes and to enable firms to reach reliable conclusions by using information which is generally available about the terms of the relevant occupational scheme(s) together with standard or approximate data for missing items. By using this approach, it should be possible for investment firms to conclude case reviews more quickly and thus put matters right for investors more quickly too. Where

  225
  standard or approximate data are used for important items, investors will be informed and have the opportunity to provide detailed data.

  The Government welcome this initiative. SIB's model should provide robust results with less administrative input. It means investors who might otherwise have been members of occupational schemes should get their cases sorted out more quickly while investment firms should need to divert resources into this important task for a shorter period. It will also require less input from occupational schemes, which can experience difficulties in providing non-pension information about former members.

  The pensions industry must make haste to complete their case reviews, in the interests not only of the financial position of the investors concerned but of restoring the industry's reputation. I also trust that occupational schemes will co-operate in providing information to investment firms and in providing reinstatement for current employees.

  For the public service pension schemes, the basic information required is already fully available. Steps have also been taken to ensure that these schemes stand ready to reinstate current employees into the relevant schemes for both future and past service.

  At this state, it is not clear how fast cases can now be progressed. Investment firms have much relevant information already and may be able to complete these cases quickly now. SIB now expects the front-line regulators to assess what can be achieved by their members using the new guidance, and then to set and monitor realistic but appropriately challenging targets for completing the review process.

  Investment firms have a clear responsibility to give priority to this important task. Their good names and the prospects of the industry depend upon it. I therefore welcome SIB's warning that firms failing to carry out their responsibilities must expect disciplinary action from their regulators. I very much hope that further disciplinary action will not be necessary and that the pensions industry will now move swiftly to put this unfortunate episode behind it.

  Earnings
  Mr. Hain
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) if he will show the number and proportion of manual, non-manual, and all part-time employees on adult rates earning less than(a) £4.42, (b) £5.89 and (c) £6.31 per hour excluding overtime payments for (i) women, (ii) men and (iii) both sexes by standard economic region for Great Britain as a whole and for (1) each county and unitary authority in England, (2) each unitary authority in Wales, (3) each London borough and Greater London as a whole,(4) each unitary authority in Scotland, (5) Great Britain as a whole and (6) England as a whole for April 1996; [518]

  (2) if he will show the number of and proportion of manual, non-manual and all full-time employees on adult rates earning less than(a) £167.45, (b) 223.27 and£(c) £239.16 per week excluding overtime payments for (i) women, (ii) men and (iii) both sexes by standard economic region for Great Britain as a whole and for each county and unitary authority in England, each unitary authority in Wales, (3) each London
  226
  borough and Greater London as a whole, (4) each unitary authority in Scotland, (5) Great Britain as a whole and (6) England as a whole for April 1996. [517]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  [holding answers 30 October 19961: The information requested falls within the responsibility of the chief executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from M. P. G. Pepper to Mr Peter Hain dated 13 November 1996:
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked the Director of the Office for National Statistics to reply to your recent questions asking for various figures on the number of and proportion of manual, non-manual part-time and full-time employees on adult rates of pay per hour and per week.
  The director has asked me to respond in his absence.
  The latest information from the New Earnings Survey, April 1996, is contained in the enclosed tables. I will also arrange for a copy of this letter and the tables to be placed in the House of Commons Library.

  Taxpayer Records
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchquer (1) how security clearance is obtained for all personnel handling classified information at Oracle facilities abroad; [1076]

  (2) if he will specify the arrangements made for the prosecution of offences under section 182 of the Finance Act 1989 by persons working at Oracle facilities abroad; [1078]

  (3) if he will publish the undertaking which persons working at Oracle facilities abroad are required to sign in relation to taxpayer information; what are the terms of the oral declaration which persons working at Oracle facilities abroad are required to make and what are the circumstances in which it is required to be given, and the person to whom it is to be given; what are the arrangements made for ensuring compliance with these obligations at Oracle facilities abroad; and if he will specify the actions that would be taken against a person working at an Oracle facility abroad for breach of such obligations, or any other confidentiality obligation imposed by UK law; [1075]

  (4) how Oracle ensures that persons at Oracle facilities abroad are made aware of their obligations under section 182 of the Finance Act 1989. [1077]

  (5) if he will specify such other arrangements as may be made by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue in carrying out their functions of care and management under section 1 of the Taxes and Management Act 1970 in respect of access to copies of batches of taxpayer records at Oracle facilities abroad. [1080]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answers 30 October 1996]: The Inland Revenue's contract with Electronic Data Service Ltd. and EDS's contract with Oracle have both been amended to enable specialist staff at Oracle facilities abroad, in exceptional circumstances, to have access to copies of subsets of taxpayer records in order to carry out either diagnostic and/or remedial work necessary to support the self-assessment computer system. These amendments ensure that such access is permitted only under the very strict security arrangements specified by

  227
  the Inland Revenue and that Oracle is fully accountable, through EDS, to the Inland Revenue if there are any breaches of confidentiality. All Oracle employees are required to sign an agreement which, among other provisions, commits them to protect any information belonging to the Inland Revenue. If these procedures were to be breached, the agreement provides for a range of sanctions, including summary dismissal. The sanctions and remedies afforded by the criminal or civil laws of the United States and Australia may also flow from any such breaches.

  Inheritance Tax Exemption
  Mr. Tipping
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent local authorities are consulted prior to agreements being made to grant conditional exemption from inheritance tax on condition that reasonable public access is allowed over the site; if local authorities are required to consult interested parties over the proposals; and what restrictions are imposed upon local authorities preventing them from disclosing information on the proposals. [1626]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 5 November 1996]: In considering claims for conditional exemption for land, the Inland Revenue seeks advice from the Government's heritage advisory agencies-for example, the Countryside Commission for scenic land in England. As well as considering the eligibility of the land, the advisory agencies discuss and negotiate with owners the steps needed to meet the undertakings required by the law about the maintenance and preservation of the land, and securing public access to it. As part of this process, the agencies consult local authorities and other interested parties as appropriate. In many cases the local authority is offered an agency agreement to monitor the owner's compliance with the undertakings.

  When an advisory agency consults a local authority or other body, the normal rules on taxpayer confidentiality apply, and any information given in connection with a claim or designation for conditional exemption is therefore confidential.

  Home Income Plans (Tax Relief)
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many non-taxpayers are in receipt of tax relief for home income plans; and if he will indicate the distribution of tax relief paid out for home income plans by income group. 13320]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 11 November 1996]: I regret that reliable information is not available.

  Mortgage Interest Tax Relief
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has of the revenue which would be raised by restricting mortgage interest tax relief at source, for new mortgage payers only, to(a) 10 per cent. in 1997–98, (b) 5 per cent. in 1998–99 and (c) 0 per cent. in 1999–2000. [3405]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 11 November 1996]: The revenue yield in 1997–98 and future years would depend on future interest rates and the future distribution of the number and value of new mortgages.

  Uncollected Tax
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of uncollected(a) income tax, (b) corporation tax, (c) value added tax and (d) other taxes in (i) 1991–92, (ii) 1994–95 and (iii) 1995–96; and if he will make a statement. [3385]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 11 November 1996]: The information is given in the following table. In this question, "uncollected" has been taken to mean "uncollected and subsequently written off or remitted".

  Inland Revenue collection accounts are drawn up each year to the end of October, and the table therefore shows the amounts as at the end of October 1991, October 1994 and October 1995 (the latest date for which figures are available). Customs and Excise accounts are drawn up for each calendar year.

  Amount remitted/written off

  £ million

  Type of tax

  October 1991

  October 1994

  October 1995

  Income tax

  524

  853

  593

  Corporation tax

  321

  262

  127

  Other taxes

  39

  44

  36

  Value added tax

  515

  550

  484

  Customs and other duties

  0.7

  1.7

  5.9

  The boards of Inland Revenue and of Customs and Excise allow remissions of tax on a case-by-case basis as an aspect of their responsibilities for the care and management of the various taxes.

  Sound management requires that tax which is not collected and which cannot practicably be collected—for example, because the taxpayer is insolvent or his whereabouts are unknown—should be written off.

  Insolvencies, where the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise have very little control over the amount recoverable, account for the vast majority of tax written off.

  Tax Allowances
  Mr. Alison
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will estimate the cost of allowing married couples to choose joint income tax assessment on the assumption(a) that each would retain their personal allowance, (b) that the 20 per cent. and 24 per cent. rate bands were doubled and (c) that the married couples allowance was not given. [2823]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 12 November 1996]: The estimated full-year cost at 1996–97 income levels of allowing married couples to choose whether they are taxed under the current system of independent taxation or taxed under the proposed joint taxation regime is about £5 billion.

  Building Societies
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will amend the building societies legislation in order to safeguard the interests of disabled people whose accounts are held by trustees in the context of bonus payments given by building societies at the time of flotation. [2744]
  229
  Mr. Tom Clarke
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what action he is taking to ensure that investors, with severe disabilities, whose account is managed by a third party, will benefit from payments consequent upon building societies converting to banks. [2699]

  Mr. Angela Knight
  [holding answers 7 November 1996]: The existing law allows building societies to take account of the interests of underlying beneficiaries, including disabled investors and others in this position, but the final structure of any distribution is a matter for the society concerned, and it is for its members to decide whether they agree that distribution. I understand that the Building Societies Association has issued guidance to its members on future account opening and handling practice in advance of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 coming into force on 2 December.

  Economic and Monetary Union
  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) to what extent the membership and voting rights of the Governor of the Bank of England on the European Monetary Institute will be modified if the United Kingdom declares against proceding to the third stage of economic and monetary union; [51]

  (2) what assessment he has made of the impact on United Kingdom representation at the general council of the European central bank, referred to in article 45 of the statute of the European system of central banks, if the United Kingdom decides not to join the third stage of EMU. [8]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  The Governor of the Bank of England would retain his voting rights in the Council of the European Monetary Institute irrespective of whether the Government were to decide that the United Kingdom should participate in the third stage of economic and monetary union.

  The governing council of the European central bank will be the main decision-making body of the ECB and will take decisions about the single monetary policy. Only governors from the central banks of countries participating in the single currency and members of the executive board of the ECB will be members of the governing council. Only nationals of those member states may be members of the executive board, including the president and vice-president of the ECB. In addition, the treaty provides for a general council of the ECB, which will have very limited responsibilities. The general council shall comprise the president and vice-president of the ECB and the governors of all member states' national central banks.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Dounreay Nuclear Power Station
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what recent safety and environment reviews have been conducted by(a) the Health and Safety Executive, (b) the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and (c) the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency into nuclear-related operations at Dounreay. [2958]
  230
  Mr. Page
  There have been no recent safety and environmental reviews, but Her Majesty's nuclear installations inspectorate, on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive, carries out regular inspections of nuclear safety related operations on the Dounreay site. SEPA also carries out regular inspections to ensure that conditions of the discharge authorisations are in compliance with the Radioactive Substances Act 1993 and these will be continuing.

  Business Links
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade in what form and on what scale his Department will continue to fund business links beyond their third year of operation. [3777]

  Mr. Page
  DTI funding for business links beyond their third year of operation is in the form of a grant to the relevant training and enterprise council for business link services.

  The scale of funding for business links beyond their third year is currently being considered in the 1996 public expenditure survey.

  Packaging
  Mr. William O'Brien
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the current situation in respect of the EC's proposals on packaging and packaging waste. [3655]

  Mr. Page
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environmental published for consultation on 11 July 1996 the draft Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations, which propose to implement the provisions relating to the recovery and recycling targets contained in the EC directive on packaging and packaging waste, 94/62/EC. Responses received during the consultation period, which ended on 30 September, are now being considered. It is intended to implement certain other provisions in the directive by means of section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, along with others relating to the identification and marking of packaging, when Commission decisions and a further Parliament and Council directive are adopted.

  Minimum Wage (Hairdressing)
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will re-introduce a minimum wage in occupations where the service provided is not traded internationally, with particular reference to hairdressing. [2081]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  No. The Government have no intention of introducing minimum wage legislation. Statutory wage fixing would lead to increased costs and job losses in hairdressing as in any other industry.

  Trade Deficit (Germany)
  Mr. Renton
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what estimate he has made of the trade deficit with the Federal Republic of Germany in(a) visibles and (b) invisibles for 1996; and what were the equivalent figures for (i) 1995 and (ii) 1994. [3868]
  231
  Mr. Lang
  The UK current account balances with unified Germany, for 1994, 1995 and the first eight months of 1996, are given in the table.

  £ million

  1994

  1995

  1996 (January-August)

  Goods

  -4,669

  -5,960

  -4,392

  Services

  +462

  +638

  n/a

  Investment income

  +46

  +293

  n/a

  Transfers

  +28

  +35

  n/a

  Sources:

  1. Geographic Analysis of the Current Account of the Balance of Balance of Payments, Economic Trends, October 1996, Office of National Statistics.

  2. Monthly Review of External Trade Statistics, August 1996, Office for National Statistics.

  Note:

  n/a = not available.

  Joint Equipment Initiative
  Mr. Ingram
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what are the eligibility criteria for the provision of funds for capital expenditure under the joint equipment initiative; and if he will make a statement. [3690]

  Mr. Ian Taylor
  The eligibility criteria can be found in the guidelines for the initiative, which were issued on 26 February 1996. Copies have been placed in the Library of the House.

  Mr. Ingram
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what support has been provided to universities under the joint equipment initiative; what were the targets set for the initiative; and if he will make a statement. [3689]

  Mr. Taylor
  The awards to be made under the joint research equipment initiative have yet to be announced, so no figure is currently available for the support provided to universities under the initiative. The objectives of the scheme were as follows:To enable high-quality research relevant to the foresight generic science and technology priorities to be conducted with the equipment;
  To contribute more generally to the physical research infrastructure in higher education institutions;
  To promote partnership between higher education institutions and external sponsors of research, such as industry/commerce, charities, Government Departments, agencies and NHS trusts;
  To assist the funding councils, the Department of Education Northern Ireland and research councils in taking a strategic overview of the equipment needs of the UK higher education sector.

  Research Councils Procurement Officer
  Mr. Ingram
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what annual savings targets have been set for the newly appointed central procurement officer for the research councils. [3691]

  Mr. Ian Taylor
  The procurement adviser has been set a number of key objectives for his first year, including an impact on the procurement bill. During the first three calendar months he will assess the current state of procurement practices and performance within the 232
  councils and that basis will propose targets and define the parameters for savings taking account of both purchase price and where applicable life-cycle cost.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Female Detainees
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many women were detained in prisons, under Immigration Act powers, at the end of(a) July, (b) August and (c) September; what were the nationalities of those detained; how many were deported; and in which prison establishments they were detained. [1043]

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

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Dr. Lynne Jones, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question asking, how many women were detained in prison, under Immigration Act powers, at the end of (a) July, (b)August and (c) September; what were the nationalities of those detained; how many were deported; and in which prison establishment they were detained.
  The information requested on those detained is given in the attached table. Provisional information shows that between July and September 4 persons were recorded as being discharged for removal by the Immigration Service.

  Population of female Immigration Act detainees1 in prison service establishments in England and Wales on last day of month, July to September 1966; by nationality2

  Nationality

  Number

  July 1996

  HMP Holloway

  Jamaica

  6

  Nigeria

  5

  Zimbabwe

  2

  Others

  8

  HMP Risley

  Other

  2

  Total

  23

  August 1996

  HMP Holloway

  Jamaica

  4

  Nigeria

  5

  Zimbabwe

  3

  Others

  12

  HMP Risley

  Other

  1

  HMP Styal

  Other

  1

  Total

  26

  September 1996

  HMP Holloway

  Jamaica

  7

  Nigeria

  3

  Zimbabwe

  3

  Other

  9

  HMP Risley

  Other

  1

  HMP Styal

  Other

  1

  233

  Population of female Immigration Act detainees1 in prison service establishments in England and Wales on last day of month, July to September 1966; by nationality2

  Nationality

  Number

  HMP New Hall

  Other

  1

  Total

  25

  1 Provisional figures.

  2 Nationalities with only one prisoner are included in "Other".

  Prisoners (Drugs Tests)
  Mr. George Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list(a) the number of prisoners tested for drugs each month since March 1996, (b)the number of prisoners who have tested positive for each type of drug in each month since March 1996 and (c)the number of prisons testing for drugs each month since March 1996. [1499]

  Mandatory and voluntary drug testing: numbers of prisoners tested and numbers positive for each drug group, March 1996 to September 1996

  Number positive for each drug

  Number tested

  Can

  Opi

  Ben

  Coc

  Amph

  Meth

  Bar

  LSD

  March

  6,482

  1,869

  472

  116

  13

  16

  17

  2

  0

  April

  6,419

  1,488

  483

  140

  17

  15

  24

  2

  0

  May

  6,960

  1,495

  515

  209

  22

  21

  32

  3

  1

  June

  6,777

  1,384

  517

  189

  25

  12

  23

  4

  0

  July

  7,448

  1,623

  675

  173

  17

  10

  29

  4

  0

  August

  6,596

  1,404

  534

  143

  32

  15

  19

  1

  0

  September1

  6,743

  1,413

  570

  143

  21

  17

  33

  4

  1

  1 Figures for September are provisional.

  Key:

  Can = cannabis

  Opi = opiates

  Ben = benzodiazepines

  Coc = cocaine

  Amph = amphetamines

  Meth = methadone

  Bar = barbiturates

  LSD = lysergic acid diethylamide

  Prisoners (Earnings)
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the rules which govern the earnings of prisoners in United Kingdom prisons and the discretion given to individual prison governors. [1420]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter in so far as it relates to England and Wales has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given. The rules
  234
  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. George Howarth, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the numbers of prisoners tested for drugs, the number of prisons testing and the number of prisoners testing positive for each drug type since March 1996.
  The attached table sets out the numbers tested and the numbers testing positive for each drug under all forms of Drug Strategy testing. These comprise the random, on suspicion, risk assessment, frequent testing and on reception types of mandatory drug test, and voluntary testing. Since forms of targeted testing of drug misusers are included in these figures and because multiple drug positives from a single sample have all been counted, these figures indicate higher levels of drug misuse than those for random mandatory drug testing previously published in Hansard. Since the end of March this year all prison establishments have been testing for drugs.

  governing the earnings of prisoners in Scotland are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. Martyn Jones, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the rules which govern the earnings of prisoners within the United Kingdom. The rules governing prisoners' earnings in Scotland are a matter for the Secretary of State for Scotland, so this reply only relates to England and Wales.

  235
  Under Rule 28(6) of the prison Rules 1964 (as amended) relating to England and Wales, prisoners may be paid for their work at rates approved by the Secretary of State, either generally or in relation to particular cases. The present Prison Service pay scheme for prisoners, introduced in 1992, is designed to encourage prisoners to engage in purposeful activity (work, education or other purposeful activity); to allow governors flexibility to use pay to meet their local priorities; and to ensure a reasonable degree of uniformity in rates of pay for similar work in different establishments.
  Under the scheme prisoners willing to engage in purposeful activity but who cannot be offered a place receive a wage sufficient to meet their basic needs (the basic rate). Prisoners who engage in purposeful activity and perform to an acceptable level of quality and effort receive a higher wage designed to meet their reasonable needs and to provide a real incentive to engage in such activity (the employed rate). These two rates of pay are set nationally, and currently stand at £2.50 and £4 per week respectively.
  In addition, governors may set rates of pay above these amounts for prisoners engaged in purposeful activity to acceptable levels of quality and effort measured against targets made known to each prisoner in advance.
  Within these parameters, governors will establish a standard working week for each activity according to the needs of the establishment; and they may establish differentials between activities in recognition of regime priorities, the regular working of long hours, environmental conditions, and any other factors which in the governor's view merit financial recognition. Governors therefore calculate their budgets for prisoner pay on the basis on an average of £7 per week (£8 per week in dispersal prisons).
  Some prisons are able to operate schemes under which prisoners may earn higher amounts for higher productivity. Such schemes must be self-financing. Average earnings under the schemes currently running is about £15 per week, although a few prisoners have been able to boost their earnings to £30 in some weeks.
  The Prisoners' Earnings Act 1996, which receive Royal Assent in July, provides a framework by which governors can make deductions from the wages of a prisoner earning enhanced wages in a prison operating the enhanced wages scheme. This allows for payments to be made in respect of a prisoner's own maintenance and accommodation, to support their dependants, towards organisations involved with victims and crime prevention and towards savings against release. It is intended that the Act will be implemented in spring next year.

  Doncaster Prison
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what is the current complement by grade of(a) part-time and (b) full-time staff employed by Premier Prison Services at Her Majesty's prison Doncaster; and what changes to staffing levels there have been in the last 12 months; [2712]

  (2) how many serious assaults there have been on staff in her Majesty's prison Doncaster since 1 June; and what has been the total number of assaults on staff at the prison since it was opened; [2716]

  (3) how many and what types of incidents have been reported to the Prison Service in relation to Her Majesty's prison Doncaster since (a) 1 June and (b) its opening; [2714]

  (4) what is the current ratio of non-health staff to prisoners at (a) Her Majesty's prison Doncaster and (b) other similar grade prisons; [2713]

  (5) how many prisoners at Her Majesty's prison Doncaster have been subject to closed visits since it was opened; and what is the current number; [2717]
  236
  (6) what percentage of temporary release decisions have resulted in temporary release failures at Her Majesty's prison Doncaster (a) since 1 June and (b) since Her Majesty's prison Doncaster was opened; and for each period what was the average failure rate among similar grade prisons; [2711]

  (7) how many serious assaults there have been on prisoners in Her Majesty's Prison Doncaster since it was opened. [2715]

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

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Questions about HMP Doncaster.
  The number and type of incidents during the periods covered by your questions recorded centrally for the purpose of analysing trends within prisons are shown on the attached table.
  Charges of assaults proven following a disciplinary adjudication were as follows:

  Date

  Assaults on prisoners

  Assaults on staff/others

  1 June 1996 to 31 October 1996

  53

  20

  Opening (20 June 1994) to 31 October 1996

  280

  219

  The percentage of temporary release failures at Doncaster and all other local prisons and remand centres were as follows:

  Percentage

  20 June 1994 to 31 October 1996

  1 June 1996 to 31 October 1996

  Doncaster

  10.52

  None

  Other local prisons and remand centres

  0.48

  0.09

  Records have not been kept of the number of prisoners subject to closed visits since the prison opened. Currently 51 prisoners are receiving closed visits.
  On 5 November 1996 the ratio of staff (excluding healthcare staff) to prisoners at Doncaster was 1:2:16 and the ratio of similar staff to prisoners in other category B local prisons was 1:2:77.
  Information about the overall number of staff in each grade is commercially confidential, but the Prison Service agreed to fund 5 additional prisoner custody officers to introduce at its request a dedicated search team in line with mandatory requirements at other prisons. 12 additional programme and clerical staff have also been recruited to reflect an increase in the capacity of the prison to 900 prisoners.
  The complement of full-time staff on 1 November 1996 was 458 compared to 449 on I November 1995. The equivalent numbers of part-time staff are, respectively, 17 and 14.

  Incident1 type

  1 June 1996–31 October 1996

  20 June 1994–31 October 1996

  Assault

  52

  332

  Attempted escape

  —

  1

  Barricade

  —

  1

  Concerted indiscipline

  —

  18

  Death of inmate

  —

  2

  Dirty protest

  —

  1

  237

  Incident1 type

  1 June 1996–31 October 1996

  20 June 1994–31 October 1996

  Drugs

  93

  668

  Escape

  —

  1

  Fire

  1

  21

  Food refusal

  1

  8

  Key/lock compromise

  —

  1

  Miscellaneous

  3

  33

  Recapture/Surrender

  —

  11

  Self harm

  7

  110

  Suicide

  —

  5

  Tool loss

  —

  5

  Temporary release failure

  —

  2

  Total

  157

  1,220

  1 The number of prisoners involved in each incident and whether any charges resulting from an incident were proven is not recorded.

  Prison Service Performance Indicators
  Mr. George Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what plans he has to increase the number of key performance indicators for the Prison Service which assess standards of custody and control; [2936]

  (2) what plans he has to introduce key performance indicators for the Prison Service which assess (i) headquarters staffing levels, (ii) productivity, (iii) efficiency, (iv) standards of staff development and commitment and (v) rates of recidivism; [2937]

  (3) what plans he has to increase the number of key performance indicators for the Prison Service' which assess (i) standards of physical security and (ii) levels of prisoner discipline; [2938]

  (4) what plans he has to introduce key performance indicators for the Prison Service which assess (a) levels of drug use, (b) availability of rehabilitation services and (c) rates of self-inflicted deaths. [2939]

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

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. George Howarth, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Questions about the introduction of new key performance indicators (KPIs) for the Prison Service.
  Under the terms of the Framework Document, the KPIs for the Prison Service have to be agreed with Ministers. They are kept regularly under review to ensure that they reflect current key priorities for the Service. Our Corporate Plan 1996–99 explained that Ministers had agreed a number of changes to our KPIs for this year. The Service has achieved in full the KPIs on access to sanitation, and the number of prisoners with the opportunity to exceed minimum visiting entitlement, and these have therefore been discontinued. Three new KPIs were introduced: on the rate of positive testing for drug misuse, the number of prisoners completing programmes accredited as effective in reducing re-offending, and the amount of staff training. Targets for each of these were set for the current year.
  Some of the areas you refer to are already covered by existing KPIs, at least in part: for example prisoner discipline is reflected in the KPI on rates of assault, standards of custody are reflected in the KPI on the escape rate, the levels of drug use are reflected in the KPI on positive testing for drug misuse, efficiency is reflected in the KPI on cost per place and staff development in the KPI on the amount of staff training.
  238
  Clearly, there is a great deal of public interest in information about the Prison Service. I believe it important to keep KPIs to a manageable number, if we are to focus staff effort and other resources to achieve better results, particularly at a time when the Service is under great pressure. The Home Secretary announced, on 20 May 1996, that some management information not currently featured in KPIs would routinely be reported in our Corporate Plan. The current Corporate Plan includes, for example, information about self-inflicted deaths, staff turnover rates and Headquarters overheads.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what were the results achieved by the Prison Service on each of its key performance indicators for the first six months of 1996–97; and what assessment he has made of those results against (a) the published full year targets for 1996–97 and(b) the equivalent phased internal targets for the first six months. [2935]

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

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. George Howarth, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the results achieved by the Prison Service on each of its key performance indicators (KPIs) for the first six months of 1996–97.
  Prison Service KPI performance and targets for 1996–97 and performance from April to September 1996 are shown below (we do not set monthly targets within the annual target because performance on some KPIs is subject to considerable seasonal fluctuation). However, where necessary I indicate below the level of performance required over the rest of the year in order to achieve the target.

  KPI I: Escapes from prisons and from escorts:
  To ensure no Category A prisoners escape and to ensure that the number of escapes from prisons and from escorts, expressed as a proportion of the prison population, is at least 10% lower than in 1995–6.

  Category A prisoners

  Rate (Per cent.)

  1996–1997 target

  0

  0.21 or lower

  April-September 1996 performance

  0

  0.23

  KPI 2: Assaults
  To ensure that the number of assaults on staff, prisoners and others, expressed as a proportion of the average population, is lower than in 1995–6.

  1996–1997 target: lower than 10.6%

  April-September 1996 performance: 9.4%

  KPI 3: Random drug testing
  To ensure that the rate of positive testing for drugs (the number of random drug tests that prove positive expressed as a percentage of the total number of random tests carried out) is lower in the fourth quarter of 1996–7 than in the first quarter of that year.

  April-June 1996 performance: 23.9%

  April-September 1996 performance: 23.8%

  January-March 1997 target: lower than 23.9%

  KPI 4: Overcrowding
  To ensure that no prisoners are held three to a cell designed for one.
  April-September 1996 performance: No prisoners
  239
  KPI 5: Purposeful activity
  To ensure that prisoners spend on average at least 26.5 hours per week engaged in purposeful activity.
  April-September 1996 performance: 25.4 hours per prisoner per week (this figure is subject to further validation).
  We would need to achieve an average of 27.6 hours of purposeful activity per prisoner per week for the rest of the year in order to meet the target.

  KPI 6: Time out of cell
  To ensure that, by 31 March 1997, at least 60% of prisoners are held in establishments which unlock all prisoners on the standard or enhanced regime for at least 10 hours per weekday.
  September 1996 performance: 67%

  KPI 7: Completions of accredited offending behaviour programmes
  To ensure that at least 1,300 prisoners complete programmes accredited as being effective in reducing re-offending, of whom 650 should complete the Sex Offender Treatment Programme.

  Overall completions

  Sex Offender Treatment Programme completions

  April-September 1996 performance

  402

  136

  April-September 1996 target

  650

  325

  April 1996-March 1997 target

  1,300

  650

  We would need to ensure that 140 prisoners a month complete accredited offending behaviour programmes, of which 86 a month should complete the Sex Offender Treatment Programme, in order to meet the target.

  KPI 8: Cost per place
  To ensure that the average cost of a prison place does not exceed £24,388.
  It is not possible to show a meaningful mid-year figure because spending is not evenly distributed across the year and because the number of places is increasing over the year as new accommodation comes on line. We are however forecasting expenditure outturn within the cash limit, as revised to take account of additional funding agreed in year.

  KPI 9: Average training days per staff member
  To ensure that on average, staff spend at least six days in training.
  April-September 1996 performance: 2.31 days per staff member
  We would need to provide an average of 0.65 days training per staff member per month for the rest of the year in order to meet the target.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to revise the way in which statistics are collected for the purpose of measuring the key performance indicators which refer to the Prison Service. [2940]

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

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. George Howarth, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question asking if there were any plans to revise the way in which statistics are collected for the purpose of measuring the key performance indicators which refer to the Prison Service.
  The Prison Service currently collects its KPI data using a variety of information systems. These collection procedures are under constant review to ensure that monitoring of the KPIs is carried out as promptly and accurately as possible.

  Maintenance Work
  Mr. Geoffrey Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the current backlog of maintenance work in(a) prisons and (b) police stations. [2798]

  Miss Widdecombe
  The Prison Service has an on-going programme to identify, priorities and carry out maintenance work. Priorities are to preserve a safe and secure environment for prisoners and staff alike and to ensure that as far as reasonably practicable accommodation is kept in use to help cope with the pressure on places resulting from the rising prison population. Because of the nature of maintenance work it is possible that during the year other maintenance schemes might have to be given a higher priority than schemes already in the programme. The situation is monitored and reviewed on a regular basis and the programme revised as necessary.

  Despite financial constraints, the schemes which have been identified as having the highest priority are proceeding in 1996–97. Around 50 per cent. of schemes—worth £16 million—have been deferred until later.

  Maintenance work in police stations is the responsibility of individual police forces and records are not held centrally.

  Dog Breeding
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what provisions govern a local authority's duties in respect of the prosecution of a person breeding more than two bitches for the purpose of sale without a licence. [3639]

  Mr. Sackville
  Section 4 of the Breeding of Dogs Act 1973 empowers a local authority to prosecute a person who keeps an unlicensed dog breeding establishment.

  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 4 November,Official Report, columns 324–25, what are the names and addresses of the companies or individuals convicted under the Breeding of Dogs Act 1973, as amended by the Breeding of Dogs Act 1991, since 1980. [3502]

  Mr. Sackville
  The information requested is not collected centrally.

  Pension Schemes
  Mr. Denham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many requests for information the(a) police pension scheme and (b) fireman's pension scheme have received from pension providers undertaking reviews of pension transfers and opt-outs; in how many cases all appropriate information has been supplied; what is the average length of time taken to supply such information; and what moratorium has been introduced on supplying such information. [3348]

  Mr. Maclean
  The details requested are not held centrally. It is Government policy that assisting pension providers with their review should not impose a burden on the taxpayer. We hope that the necessary amendments can be made soon to the Police Pensions Act 1976 and the Fire Services Act 1947 to enable police and fire
  241
  authorities to deal with the inquiries of personal pension providers in return for a reasonable charge to recover the administrative costs involved.

  Soliciting
  Ms Coffey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the number of(a) men and (b) women cautioned in each of the last five years for soliciting, broken down by age. [3650]

  Mr. Maclean
  The information is given in the tables.

  Table A: Number of recorded male cautions for the offence of soliciting or importuning in a public place for immoral purposes1, by age, 1991 to 1995

  England and Wales

  Age

  1991

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  10

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  11

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  12

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  13

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  14

  —

  2

  3

  1

  —

  15

  1

  2

  —

  1

  —

  16

  3

  2

  1

  2

  —

  17

  1

  4

  2

  —

  1

  18

  4

  3

  —

  1

  1

  19

  2

  6

  7

  3

  3

  20

  4

  4

  7

  1

  2

  21–24

  17

  21

  20

  13

  10

  25–29

  26

  23

  22

  35

  12

  30–34

  15

  24

  24

  44

  24

  35–39

  26

  21

  30

  28

  9

  40–44

  26

  19

  21

  26

  15

  45–49

  16

  16

  30

  33

  12

  50–54

  13

  17

  18

  20

  12

  55–59

  4

  9

  8

  18

  6

  60 and over

  27

  20

  12

  28

  19

  All ages

  185

  193

  205

  254

  126

  1 An offence under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, section 32.

  Table B: Number of recorded male cautions for the offence of persistent soliciting of women for the purpose of prostitution1, by age, 1991 to 1995

  England and Wales

  Age

  1991

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  10

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  11

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  12

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  13

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  14

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  15

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  16

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  17

  —

  —

  1

  1

  —

  18

  1

  2

  —

  —

  —

  19

  3

  1

  1

  —

  —

  20

  3

  4

  1

  4

  1

  21-24

  9

  16

  9

  3

  1

  25-29

  19

  24

  22

  7

  3

  30-34

  28

  32

  21

  16

  —

  35-39

  18

  31

  19

  12

  3

  40-44

  21

  22

  18

  8

  1

  45-49

  16

  19

  10

  7

  —

  50-54

  6

  9

  5

  4

  1

  55-59

  2

  6

  4

  3

  —

  60 and over

  3

  5

  3

  1

  —

  All ages

  130

  171

  114

  66

  10

  1 An offence under the Sexual Offences Act 1985 Section 2.

  242

  Table C: Number of recorded female cautions for the offence of "Common prostitute loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution"1 by age, 1991 to 1995

  England and Wales

  Age

  1991

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  10

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  11

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  12

  1

  1

  —

  1

  2

  13

  5

  1

  5

  5

  4

  14

  10

  6

  32

  19

  11

  15

  34

  41

  32

  25

  27

  16

  111

  62

  82

  91

  63

  17

  200

  189

  145

  156

  156

  18

  318

  275

  247

  194

  187

  19

  294

  250

  260

  206

  201

  20

  292

  244

  211

  220

  212

  21–4

  946

  813

  860

  621

  769

  25–29

  868

  804

  809

  712

  692

  30–34

  451

  557

  527

  542

  466

  35–39

  184

  216

  248

  199

  238

  40–44

  84

  129

  104

  101

  80

  45–49

  33

  56

  42

  34

  43

  50–54

  8

  3

  7

  5

  6

  55–59

  1

  3

  5

  2

  5

  60 and over

  —

  2

  —

  —

  —

  All ages

  3,840

  3,653

  3,616

  3,133

  3,162

  1 An offence under the Street Offences Act 1859 Section 1.

  Ethnic Minorities
  Mr. Thomason
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to issue guidance to local authorities about funding from April 1997 under section 11 of the Local Government Act 1996. [4452]

  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to announce his decision regarding the continued funding of schemes in Trafford currently funded under section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966. [3823]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  We attach great importance to the valuable work performed by teachers and others funded under section 11 in helping members of ethnic minorities to overcome barriers of language or culture. Despite other pressures on public expenditure generally, I can now announce that the current level of section 11 grant will be maintained until August 1998. Grant recipients are being advised accordingly.

  Bukley Hall Prison
  Ms Lynne
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department for what reason two different figures were given in letters of 29 October from the Director General of the Prison Service to the hon. Member for Rochdale for the number of assaults at HMP Buckley Hall since 14 December 1994. [3360]

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

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Ms Lynne, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your Question about the different figures given in my letters of 29 October about the number of assaults at Buckley Hall prison 14 December 1994.

  243
  I very much regret that my replies did not distinguish between and explain the different kinds of data used in replying to each Question.
  The number of assaults given in response to your Question about all types of incidents was taken from information recorded on a central database. This provides an analysis of trends within the Prison Service on a wide range of types of incident for use in incident management. They do not take account of the number of individuals who have been involved in a single incident, whether an assault or otherwise, nor do they take account, in the case of assaults, of whether there is a resulting finding of guilt either in an internal disciplinary adjudication or criminal proceedings.
  The figures given in response to the Question about the number of assaults that had occurred were based on the number of charges of assaults proven following an internal disciplinary adjudication. This information is used for the purposes of a Key Performance Indicator.
  Steps are being taken to ensure that future Questions are answered in a way that makes this distinction clear.

  Hand Gun Licences
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what information his Department collates on the number of persons currently licensed to carry handguns in the countryside for the purposes of killing animals for sport. [3109]

  Miss Widdecombe
  [holding answer 11 November 1996]: Killing animals for sport would normally not be considered a good reason for possessing a hand gun.

  Electric Shock Dog Collars
  Mr. Rendel
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what guidelines he has issued to (i) police authorities and (ii) the Prison Service on the use of dog collars that administer electric shocks to the animals; [3073]

  (2) which (i) police authorities, (ii) prisons and (iii) sectors of the Prison Service are using dog collars that administer electric shocks to the animals; [3074]

  (3)what is the number of dogs owned by (i) the police and (ii) the Prison Service on which electric shock dog collars (a) have been used and (b) are being used. [3075]

  Miss Widdecombe
  [holding answers 11 November 1996]: The Prison Service has possessed an electric collar since January 1994. It is kept at the national dog training centre and has been used a total of seven times on six dogs.

  The electric collar is not currently being used on any dog and is only ever used in accordance with the policy guidelines issued on 19 July 1996. These guidelines state that the electric collar will be used only when authorised by the head of the NDTC. It will be used on adult dogs as part of a training course or remedial training and only as a last resort when other methods of attempting to correct the dog in control-related exercises have failed. The collar is not to be used as a short-term solution for problems that can be resolved by other more traditional and acceptable methods. All uses of the collar are registered at the NDTC.

  The police have no national guidelines for the use of electric dog collars and information on its use is not collected centrally.

  Ella O'Dwyer
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department for what reasons applications for compassionate parole by Ella O'Dwyer, detained in Maghaberry prison, have been refused; how many such applications she has made in the current year; what her prison status is; and if he will make a statement. [3303]

  Miss Widdecombe
  [holding answer 11 November 1996]: Ms O'Dwyer is a prisoner temporarily transferred to Northern Ireland. Applications for temporary release are therefore considered with reference to her eligibility under the rules which apply to prisoners in England and Wales. As a category A high escape risk prisoner, Ms O'Dwyer is not eligible for any form of temporary release under those rules. However, we have the power to authorise release under section 27 of the Criminal Justice Act 1961 and have therefore considered each of Ms O'Dwyer's three applications for release on compassionate grounds carefully and on their individual merits. I did not consider, however, that there were sufficient compelling grounds to justify granting release exceptionally.

  Prisoner Escapes
  Mr. Porter
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how convicted prisoners escaped from a private coach on 5 November in London while being transferred from Her Majesty's prison, Blundeston; for what reasons a secure vehicle was not used; what changes he expects to make to the system for transporting prisoners; and if he will make a statement. [3392]

  Miss Widdecombe
  [holding answer 12 November 1996]: Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. David Porter, dated 13 November 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about how convicted prisoners escaped from a private coach on 5 November in London while being transferred from Blundeston prison; for what reasons a secure vehicle was not used, and what changes are excepted to be made to the system of transporting prisoners.
  The prisoners who escaped were category B prisoners. Our policy on the transporting of category B prisoners is that they should be transported in as secure a vehicle as possible, based on a thorough risk assessment of the likelihood of escape. In this particular case it was decided that a secure vehicle was not required.
  A senior director in the Prison Service has completed an enquiry into the incident. He has put forward nine recommendations, which I have accepted. He has recommended that we should aim to use secure cellular vehicles for all multiple escorts of category B prisoners, as soon as the necessary equipment can be acquired. The Director of Security has been asked to examine the implementation of this recommendation.

  Prisoner Repatriations
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 5 November,Official Report, column 440, when the requests for repatriation to prison in the Irish Republic from Harry Duggen and Joe O'Connell will be decided; when the appropriate documents will be referred to the Irish Republic; and if he will make a statement. [3784]
  245
  Miss Widdecombe
  [holding answer 12 November 1996]: Agreement to repatriation requests requires the consent of both states as well as of the prisoner concerned. Requests are decided only after consideration of all the relevant information by the two states concerned. An initial decision on whether to refer the requests of Mr. Duggan and Mr. O'Connell to the Republic will be made once all the relevant information is available.

WALES

  General Practitioners
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will report progress on the survey of general practice practitioners and trainees in Wales; when he expects the results of the survey to be compiled; and if he will place a copy in the Library. [2643]

  Mr. Hague
  The information is not yet in a suitable form for publication. A decision on publication will be made when the work has been completed. I cannot yet indicate when this will be.

  Prescribed Drugs
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what percentage of, and how many, people admitted to hospital have been suffering from adverse reactions to a prescribed drug in each of the last five years and in age bands of 10 years; and if he will make a statement. [2904]

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  Information on the number of people admitted to hospital as a result of an adverse reaction to a prescribed drug is not available centrally. However the number of people admitted as a result of an adverse reaction to any drug is given in the following table.

  Finished consultant episodes—adverse effect of drugs

  Age

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94

  1994–95

  11995–96

  0-9 years

  19

  23

  48

  21

  11

  10-19 years

  5

  6

  8

  10

  9

  20-29 years

  11

  17

  9

  7

  2

  30-39 years

  7

  16

  6

  8

  6

  40-49 years

  11

  15

  7

  7

  6

  50-59 years

  11

  12

  15

  10

  9

  60-69 years

  30

  22

  20

  19

  9

  70-79 years

  28

  37

  15

  28

  7

  80 years and over

  2

  2

  3

  2

  1

  Not known

  19

  19

  18

  23

  5

  Total

  143

  169

  149

  135

  65

  Note:

  1 Data for 1995–96 are not comparable to earlier years as records are not available for all hospitals and the diagnosis code used was different from earlier years.

  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for 'Wales how many elderly(a) men and (b) women have been admitted to hospital in Wales as a consequence of an adverse reaction to (i) non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, (ii) phenothiazines, (iii) diuretics, (iv) analgesics, (v) night sedation, (vi) digoxin, (vii) laxatives, (viii) corticosteroids, (ix) beta blockers and (x) aminophylline in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement. [2901]
  246
  Mr. Jones
  The information requested is not available centrally.

  Maintenance Work
  Mr. Geoffrey Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the current backlog of maintenance work in(a) educational institutions, (b) prisons and police stations, (c) Council housing, (d) transport infrastructure, (e) the NHS and (f) defence bases in Wales. [2793]

  Mr. Gwilm Jones
  Prisons and police stations are the responsiblity of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Defence. bases in Wales are the responsiblity of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. Information on the backlog of work in educational institutions and council housing is not held centrally. Information regarding transport and council housing is not held centrally. Information regarding transport infrastructure could be obtained only at disproportionate cost, The latest figure for backlog maintenance in the NHS is £275 million as at March 1995.

  Graduates
  Mr. Rowlands
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what percentage of young people graduated in the last available year; and what comparisons he has made with the figures for(a) England, (b) Scotland and (c) each member of the European Union. [3038]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  In 1994–95 11,045 UK domiciled students graduated with a first degree from Welsh higher education institutions. These represented 31 per cent. of the population of 21-year-olds, corresponding to the most common age at graduation. On a similar basis, 32 per cent. of young people graduated from Scottish higher education institutions and 30 per cent. from English higher education institutions.

  Information is not available on a comparable basis for 1994–95 for other European Union countries, but limited information is available for 1991–92 and is shown on the following table.

  Public and private university education graduates as a percentage of the population at theoretical age of graduation 1991–92

  Per cent.

  Denmark

  22.1

  Greece

  11.8

  Ireland

  17.4

  Italy

  0.7

  Netherlands

  17.8

  Spain

  8.0

  Sweden

  11.4

  UK

  20.4

  Source:

  OECD "Education at a Glance".

  Health Authority Funding
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list the additional non-recurring funding allocated to each health authority in the current financial year; and how much has been allocated to each contracted health care provider. [3438]
  247
  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  Up to the end of October, Welsh health authorities have received the following non-recurrent funding allocation additions:

  Health Authority

  Total additional funding £000s

  North Wales

  4,198

  Dyfed Powys

  3,084

  Morgannwg

  3,738

  Bro Taf

  5,644

  Gwent

  3,924

  Details on health care providers' income are not kept centrally.

TRANSPORT

  Red Routes
  Mr. Keith Hill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what action he has taken to measure pedestrian activity along red routes (i) before and (ii) after their implementation. [3437]

  Mr. Bowis
  The traffic director for London, who is responsible for co-ordinating the introduction of the red route network, monitors the effects of implementation 248
  through comprehensive surveys each year. These surveys monitor pedestrian activity on shopping streets and the number of shoppers arriving on foot. The results of surveys in spring 1994, before implementation began, were included in "Red Routes and Retailing" published in October 1995. The next set of results from surveys conducted in spring 1995 will be published shortly. As more of the red route network is implemented, these annual surveys will provide a representative before and after picture of the effect of red route measures.

  Bridge Strengthening Programme
  Mr. Andrew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what is the expenditure on the bridge strengthening programme planned for(a) 1996–97, (b) 1997–98 and (c) 1998–99. [3695]

  Mr. Watts
  Each year the Government provide the Highways Agency with an overall budget for the maintenance of trunk road structures and, through transport supplementary grant and credit approvals, support to local highway authorities for their bridge programme. For 1996–97 the Highways Agency's budget for structures capital maintenance is £130 million, and approved expenditure by local highway authorities is £103 million. In neither case are funds specifically earmarked for bridge strengthening. Figures for subsequent years have not yet been determined.

HEALTH

  Eye Tests (Children)
  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what provision his Department has made for national eye screening of children. [2316]

  Mr. Malone
  An examination of the eyes is a mandatory part of all neonatal examinations conducted by a paediatrician, general practitioner or health visitor. A test for visual acuity is also conducted, usually by the school nurse, on entry to school. Health authorities are expected to assess the needs of their populations for visual examinations and organise appropriate screening programmes to meet these needs. Information is not collected centrally on the precise arrangements made in each authority area.

  Guidance on the need for visual examinations has been issued in the publication "Health for All Children" first published in 1989. The latest edition was issued in 1996 and commended to health authorities in the guide, "Child Health in the Community: A Guide to Good Practice", published on 5 September 1996.

  It is for health authorities to decide how to implement this guidance but, in most areas, school nurses undertake sight tests shortly after a child starts school. Health authorities are expected to monitor these arrangements and, in addition, the Department is in regular contact with representatives of paediatricians, ophthalmologists and nurses on developments in the assessment and treatment of sight defects in children.

  Prescribed Drugs
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what guidance his Department issues to general practitioners prescribing drugs to the elderly; and if he will make a statement. [2791]

  Mr. Malone
  Advice on prescribing issues, including prescribing for elderly patients, is available to general practitioners from a variety of sources. Publications funded by the Department include the British National Formulary, which is regularly updated and provides advice for all doctors on the choice of suitable drugs, and the "MeReC Bulletin", which provides prescribing advice to all general practitioners. Copies of the British National Formulary are available in the Library. Copies of the "MeReC Bulletin" will be placed in the Library shortly.

  Health Authorities
  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make additional funding available to meet the estimated deficits for the current financial year in health authorities(a) in the west midlands and (b) across England and Wales. [3284]

  Mr. Malone
  No additional funding is planned in the current financial year in England. Questions relating to Wales are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales.

  Health authorities received an average cash increase of 3.9 per cent. in 1996–97. Health authorities are expected to manage within these resources and will benefit also from on-going improvements in efficiency.

  Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation
  Mr. Barron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will place in the Library the minutes of meetings of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation held in the last year; and if he will make such minutes publicly available in the future. [3425]

  Mr. Horam
  The minutes of the meetings of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation are confidential. This is to ensure full and frank discussions can be recorded on issues which may include factors affecting external commercial interest and personal medical information. The recommendations of the committee, as endorsed by Ministers, are made available in the publication, "Immunisation Against Infectious Disease", the most recent edition of which was published in September 1996 and copies of which are available in the Library.

  Mr. Barron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when the next meeting of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation will take place; and what issues will be discussed. [3424]

  Mr. Horam
  The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation meets twice annually; its next meeting is on 13 November. As with all JCVI meetings, discussion will cover all aspects of communicable diseases preventable, or potentially preventable, through immunisation.

  Mr. Barron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what advice he has received from the hepatitis sub-group of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation regarding universal vaccination against hepatitis B; and if the next meeting of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation will consider this subject. [3426]

  Mr. Horam
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State receives advice on immunisation from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. The next meeting of JCVI is on 13 November and will include further discussions on the control of hepatitis B in the United Kingdom, as well as other immunisation matters.

  Teenage Smoking
  Mr. Barron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is his revised target date for meeting the "The Health of the Nation" target on teenage smoking; and what steps he is taking to reach this target. [3427]

  Mr. Horam
  Efforts will continue to achieve the target level of 6 per cent. for teenage smoking as soon as possible.

  The teenage lifestyle programme, "Respect" was launched in July and will cost up to £1 million a year for three years. Adult health education programmes will encourage parents to set a good example. Other measures in the Government strategy, including increasing tax and preventing illegal sales, are continuing.

  Mr. Barron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of whether the series of events for teenagers currently being sponsored by the Gallaher tobacco company conforms to the voluntary agreement on tobacco advertising in respect of(a) the requirement not to encourage smoking in general and

  251
  (b) the requirement not to target young people; and if he will make representations to the company to halt further events pending clarification. [3428]

  Mr. Horam
  The operation of the voluntary agreement is overseen by the Committee for Monitoring Agreements on Tobacco Advertising and Sponsorship. I have no reason to suspect that the events being sponsored by Silk Cut breach the voluntary agreement, but I am confident that the committee will fully investigate any evidence put to it.

  Abortions (Folic Acid)
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the effect on the incidence of abortions of adding folic acid to bread. [3589]

  Mr. Horam
  Folic acid is currently added to some 10 per cent. of bread. Fortifying bread with this vitamin has only been practised, as a voluntary measure by the manufacturers, in very recent years. It is not possible to assess whether this limited and recent change in the diet has had an effect on the incidence of spontaneous abortions or whether this change has influenced the number of pregnancies affected by neural tube defects whose outcome has been termination of pregnancy.

  A sub-group of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy is considering whether extending such fortification is advisable, and is expected to report late in 1997.

  Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health
  Mr. Barron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when the last meeting of the Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health took place; and what was discussed. [3420]

  Mr. Horam
  The Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health last met on 15 October 1996. The committee received information on the progress of work it has commissioned on environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer and on ETS and childhood respiratory diseases. The structure and content of the first report of SCOTH to the Chief Medical Officer were discussed and suggestions for the future work programme were considered.

  Infertility Treatment
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the latest advice his Department has issued to(a) purchasers and (b) providers of infertility treatment in the NHS: if he will place this information in the Library; and if he will make a statement. [2068]

  Mr. Horam
  Decisions about provision, priority and resources for infertility services are made by individual health authorities, who are in the best position to determine priorities in the light of local needs and circumstances. The decisions must be made on the basis of sound evidence.

  Advice is available to health authorities and clinicians in the following publications:
  The Effective Health Care Bulletin on "The Management of Subfertility" (August 1992), published for the NHS management executive by a consortium of Leeds and York universities and the research unit of the Royal College of Physicians.
  252
  The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists "Infertility—Guidelines for Practice".

  Copies of these are available in the Library.

  The RCOG is reviewing its 1992 guidance as part of a project sponsored by the Department of Health. The revised guidelines should be available to clinicians next year.

  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research his Department has commissioned in the last two years into the effectiveness of alternative infertility treatments. [2069]

  Mr. Horam
  None. Information on research commissioned by the Department of Health is contained in the "Centrally Commissioned Research Programme" and the "Centrally Commissioned Research Programme: Commissions in 1994–95", copies of which are available in the Library.

  Children in Care
  Ms Coffey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many children on care orders are placed in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. [3644]

  Mr. Burns
  This information is not separately available as the details collected centrally do not distinguish bed and breakfast from other lodging or independent accommodation.

  Secure Hospitals
  Ms Coffey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he expects disciplinary and grievance procedures for staff to be in place for(a) Ashworth, (b) Rampton and (c) Broadmoor. [3645]

  Mr. Burns
  Disciplinary and grievance procedures are in place at all three high security hospitals.

  Ms Coffey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the number of breaches of security incidents in each of the last five years for(a) Rampton, (b) Ashworth and (c) Broadmoor. [3646]

  Mr. Burns
  The following tables list the number of breaches of security incidents at the three high security hospitals. For the purposes of this survey roof top incidents were classified as a breach of security although incidents of this kind are not uncommon in a high security mental health environment. Staff are fully trained to deal with this challenging group of patients and untoward incidents in the three hospitals are speedily contained and swiftly resolved.

  It is worth pointing out that thousands of rehabilitation programmes outside secure mental health environments take place every year without incident. The secure hospitals are places of treatment and care, and rehabilitation is a key component of the management of people with severe and enduring mental health problems. In view of the level of public concern over recent patient absconds while on rehabilitation programmes, the following measures were deemed necessary.

  The High Security Psychiatric Services Commissioning Board, the three special health authorities, specialist clinicians, the mental health and community care division of the Department of Health and the Home Office have

  253
  established, with immediate effect, a steering group to examine professional practice around rehabilitation programmes outside secure mental health environments.

  Breaches of security at Broadmoor hospital authority

  Type/year

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  1996

  Total

  Escape

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  1

  Abscond

  1

  4

  —

  —

  —

  5

  Roof-top

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  1

  Hostage

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  0

  Total

  1

  5

  0

  0

  1

  7

  Breaches of security at Ashworth hospital authority

  Type/year

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  1996

  Total

  Escape

  —

  2

  —

  —

  —

  2

  Abscond

  1

  3

  2

  2

  3

  11

  Roof-top1

  —

  1

  11

  9

  6

  27

  Hostage

  —

  —

  1

  —

  1

  2

  Total

  1

  6

  14

  11

  10

  42

  1 Please note that it is relatively easy to climb on the roofs of wards in the north and south campus of Ashworth hospital authority. The hospital does not regard this as a breach of security.

  Breaches of security at Rampton hospital authority

  Type/year

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  1996

  Total

  Escape

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  1

  Abscond

  3

  1

  —

  1

  —

  5

  Roof-top

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  0

  Hostage

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  0

  Total

  3

  1

  1

  1

  0

  6

  Ms Coffey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) if he will list the number of recorded assaults on staff in each of the past five years at(a) Rampton, (b) Ashworth and (c) Broadmoor; [3647]

  (2) if he will list the number of prosecutions for assaults on staff in each of the past five years for (a) Rampton, (b) Ashworth and (c) Broadmoor; [3648]

  (3) on what dates the most recent work place risk assessments for (a) Broadmoor, (b) Rampton and (c) Ashworth were completed. [3649]

  Mr. Burns
  Data about recorded assaults on staff in each of the past five years, the number of prosecutions for assaults on staff and the most recent work place assessments at Ashworth, Rampton and Broadmoor are not kept centrally. The hon. Member may wish to contact Mrs. Janice Miles, the chief executive of Ashworth hospital authority, Ms Sheila Foley, the chief executive of Rampton hospital authority, and Mr. Alan Franey, the chief executive of Broadmoor hospital authority for further information.

  National Health Service
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what are his plans for the future of the national health service; and if he will make a statement. [4276]
  254
  Mr. Dorrell
  I have today published a White Paper on the way forward for the national health service entitled, "The National Health Service: A Service with Ambitions". Copies will be available in the Vote Office and the Library. It sets out the Government's commitment to a universal, high quality service, available on the basis of clinical need, and one that is responsive to the needs and wishes of patients and carers. It also launches three initiatives designed to improve the use of information in the NHS; to strengthen its commitment to effective management of quality; and to ensure that our policies for education, training and development produce well qualified staff who will meet the needs of a changing NHS.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Teacher Training
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what was the percentage of college graduates obtaining teaching posts in each year from 1989–90 [2996]

  Mr. Ancram
  The available figures are:

  1989–90: 88 per cent.

  1990–91: 91 per cent.

  1991–92: 96 per cent.

  1992–93: 98 per cent.

  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement about the size of the approved intake of students into colleges of education in the current and future years and the reasons for his decisions on future teacher supply. [2997]

  Mr. Ancram
  This year's intake number was maintained at last year's total of 340 places. No decisions have been taken on future years' intakes as each year's allocation is based on an annually updated forecast of teacher demand.

  Student Costs
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the unit cost per student and constant price cost per student in each year from 1989–90, starting with unit cost per student equalling 100 in 1989–90. [2998]

  Mr. Ancram
  The recurrent cost per full-time equivalent student, excluding student support, at universities in Northern Ireland, indexed so that 1989–90 equals 100, has been as follows:

  Cash prices

  Constant prices

  1989–90

  100

  100

  1990–91

  105

  97

  1991–92

  107

  93

  1992–93

  106

  89

  1993–94

  105

  86

  1994–95

  103

  82

  Source:

  Universities' Statistical Record data, 1989–90 to 1993–94; HESA data 1994–95.
  255
  The spending per full-time equivalent student, excluding support, in further education colleges in Northern Ireland, indexed so that 1991–92 equals 100, has been as follows:

  Cash prices

  Constant prices

  1991–92

  100

  100

  1992–93

  98

  94

  1993–94

  101

  95

  1994–95

  106

  98

  Comparable figures for 1989–90 and 1990–91 are not available.

  Universities (Student-Staff Ratio)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the student-staff ratios in universities in each year since 1989–90. [2999]

  Mr. Ancram
  The staff-student ratios are as follows:

  1989–90: 1:13.6

  1990–91: 1:14.5

  1991–92: 1:15.6

  1992–93: 1:15.7

  1993–94: 1:16.4

  1994–95: 1:14.81.

  1 Revised figure. The ratio for 1994–95 is not comparable with the ratios for earlier years, because of a change in the basis of the count of staff in 1994–95.

  Higher Education
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what proportion of young people in Northern Ireland have entered higher education in the United Kingdom in each of the past 10 years. [3000]

  Mr. Ancram
  The proportion of young people aged under 21 expressed as a percentage of the Northern Ireland 18-year-old population, has been as follows:

  1986–87: 19.4

  1987–88: 20.4

  1988–89: 22.4

  1989–90: 25.6

  1990–91: 27.0

  1991–92: 29.2

  1992–93: 33.3

  1993–94: 37.0

  1994–95: 38.5

  1995–96: 41.71.

  1Provisional.

  Further Education (Staff-Student Ratio)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what was the staff-student ratio in further education in(a) 1989–90 and (b) 1995–96. [3001]

  Mr. Ancram
  The relevant staff-student ratios are as follows:

  1989–90–1:11.61

  1995–96–1:14.01.

  Further Education (Teachers)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what was the number of full-time equivalent teachers in further education in 1989–90; and what it is currently. [3002]

  Mr. Ancram
  The relevant numbers of full-time equivalent teachers are as follows:

  1989–90: 2,850.9

  1995–96: 2.813.02.

  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what facilities exist for the training of further education lecturers in Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement. [3003]

  Mr. Ancram
  New full-time, permanent lecturers who do not already possess an approved teacher training qualification are expected to achieve the postgraduate certificate in further and higher education within three years of appointment. In-service training awards are available from the Department to assist such lecturers attend this part-time course at the University of Ulster.

  Further Education (Students)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the age profile of full-time students in further education(a) in 1989–90 and (b) currently. [3004]

  Mr. Ancram
  The age profile of full-time students in further education in each year is as follows:

  Age

  Full-time enrolments

  1989–90

  Under 18

  14,887

  19-24

  1,645

  25-34

  327

  35-44

  90

  45 and over

  113

  1995–96

  Under 18

  19,425

  19-24

  3,858

  25-34

  432

  35-44

  137

  45 and over

  82

  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the number of full-time equivalent students enrolled in further education but taking higher level courses in each year since 1989–90. [3006]

  Mr. Ancram
  The number of full-time equivalent students enrolled in further education but taking higher level courses in each year since 1989–90 are as follows:

  Year

  Full-time equivalents

  1989–90

  1,441

  1990–91

  1,531

  1991–92

  1,620

  1992–93

  1,961

  1993–94

  2,295

  257

  Year

  Full-time equivalents

  1994–95

  3,146

  1995–96

  3,687

  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the number of young people enrolled on national vocational qualification and general national vocational qualification courses in further education in recent years. [3007]

  Mr. Ancram
  In 1993–94, 995 national vocational qualifications awards were made by the main bodies to persons aged 19 or under; in 1994–95 the figure was 756. Enrolments in general national vocational qualifications programmes in further education colleges were as follows:

  1992–93: 566

  1993–94: 2,645

  1994–95: 5,234.

  Further Education (Costs)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the cost of a full-time equivalent place in further education in constant prices in each year since 1989–90. [3005]

  Mr. Ancram
  The spending per full-time equivalent student in further education colleges has been as follows:

  Constant 1995–95 prices

  £

  1991–92

  2,946

  1992–93

  2,783

  1993–94

  2,789

  1994–95

  2,874

  Comparable figures for 1989–90 and 1990–91 are not available.

  Surplus School Places
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many surplus primary and secondary school places were removed in the last school session; and if he will make a statement. [3008]

  Mr. Ancram
  A total of 1,295 primary school places were removed in the 1995–96 school year. No surplus secondary school places were removed.

  School Pupil Costs
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what has been the recurrent cost per pupil in primary, secondary and special education in each year since 1989–90, starting with the current cost in that year equalling 100. [3009]

  Mr. Ancram
  Expenditure per pupil figures in constant prices is as follows:

  1992–93

  1993–94

  1994–95

  Primary:1992–93(£1,429) = 100

  100

  107

  114

  Secondary: 1992–93 (£2,243) = 100

  100

  105

  111

  258
  Information for primary and secondary is not available for 1989–90,1990–91 or 1991–92 on a comparable basis. Summary information on all forms of special education is not available.

  School Pupil-Teacher Ratios
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what has been the pupil-teacher ratio in primary and secondary schools in each year since 1989–90. [3010]

  Mr. Ancram
  The information requested is contained in the table.

  Pupil-teacher ratios in Northern Ireland schools

  1989–90

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94

  1994–95

  Primary1

  23.2

  22.8

  22.6

  22.2

  21.6

  20.8

  Secondary2

  14.7

  14.7

  15.1

  15.2

  15.1

  14.8

  1 Includes pupils and teachers in nursery and reception classes.

  2 Includes secondary and grammar schools.

  Department of Education (Costs)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will publish a breakdown of the administrative costs of the Department of Education by sub-headings in each year since 1989–90. [3011]

  Mr. Ancram
  I will write to the hon. Member when the information becomes available.

  Domestic Rates
  Ms Mowlam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what was the average rate bill per household in Northern Ireland in each of the last 10 years. [3939]

  Mr. Moss
  Responsibility for the subject in question has been delegated to the Rate Collection Agency under its chief executive, Mr. David Gallagher. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from David Gallagher to Dr. Marjorie Mowlam, dated 13 November 1996:
  I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the average rate bill for households in each of the last ten years.
  The average rate bill for domestic properties in each rating year from 1987/88 was:

  Year

  Average (£)

  1987–88

  233.57

  1988–89

  254.71

  1989–90

  284.55

  1990–91

  309.79

  1991–92

  222.20

  1992–93

  224.79

  1993–94

  230.59

  1994–95

  251.41

  259

  Year

  Average (£)

  1995–96

  294.57

  1996–97

  1305.00

  1 Estimate.

  The above figures have been calculated by taking the total sum of rates assessed for domestic properties (including Northern Ireland Housing Executive properties) and dividing that sum by the total number of domestic properties.
  I hope that you find this information helpful.

  Deregulation
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the rules and regulations he proposes to repeal or amend by means of a reference to the Deregulation Committee before the end of 1996; and if he will make a statement. [3779]

  Mr. Ancram
  [holding answer 12 November 1996]: My right hon. and learned Friend will not be submitting any rules or regulations to the Deregulation Committee.

  In its deliberation of the 1994 Deregulation and Contracting Out Bill, Parliament decided that the general order-making power which enables Ministers to amend primary legislation by subordinate order for deregulatory purposes would not extend to Northern Ireland.

  Any deregulatory measures introduced in Great Britain by means of reference to the Deregulation Committee will, where appropriate, be replicated in Northern Ireland by the Order in Council procedure.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Feline Spongiform Encephalopathy
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he is taking to(a) encourage the reporting and (b) collate statistics on the incidence of feline spongiform encephalopathy, indicating the dates for each action taken; and if he will make a statement. [435]

  Mrs. Browning
  Since November 1994, the diagnosis of any transmissible spongiform encephalopathy in the laboratory, other than those produced by experimental means in the course of research, has been officially notifiable. A free post mortem examination for FSE to encourage the reporting of FSE cases by veterinary practitioners has been available through the veterinary investigation service of MAFF since May 1990.

  Statistics have been collated by the Government since 1990, when the first case of FSE was confirmed. FSE statistics were provided for the hon. Member on 11 November 1996, Official Report, columns 73–74.

  Peanut Warnings
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1) what obligations(a) companies, (b) organisations and (c) individuals providing catering facilities have to warn customers who may be allergic to
  260
  peanuts of their presence in food that they provide; and if he will make a statement; [3234]

  (2) what obligations manufacturers of food products containing peanuts have, in addition to listing the products' ingredients, with regard to warning sufferers from peanut-related allergic reactions of the presence of peanuts; and if he will make a statement. [3233]

  Mrs. Browning
  All food offered for sale must meet the food safety requirements of the Food Safety Act 1990. There is no specific rule requiring caterers to indicate the presence of peanuts in their foodstuffs. However, many establishments are now aware that some consumers suffer reactions to peanuts and indicate their presence, or absence, in the food that they sell. This is either by a motif or by using the word peanut in the name of the food. Manufacturers of prepacked food have taken similar steps on product labels. There is a legal obligation that such information should not mislead the purchaser.

  Smallholdings
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what assistance his Department gives to encourage smallholdings. [3452]

  Mr. Boswell
  The Ministry's policies and support for agricultural businesses apply both to smallholdings and to larger businesses. In carrying out our various programmes to improve the economic performance of the agriculture industry, full account is taken of the needs of small businesses. Small businesses also benefit from the Ministry's implementation of the Government's deregulation policies.

  Fisheries Agreements (West Africa)
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, pursuant to his answer of 28 October,Official Report, column 52, what has been the United Kingdom's contribution to the fisheries agreements with the west African countries. [3822]

  Mr. Baldry
  The annual cost to the Community budget of the EC fisheries agreements with west African countries is estimated to be 212 million ecu or £166 million. The UK's contribution will be around 15 per cent.

  Argentine Beef Imports
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on trends in the levels of imports into the United Kingdom of Argentine beef since 1993; what checks are made at ports of entry for the presence of steroids in such beef; and if he will make a statement. [3787]

  Mr. Baldry
  Overseas trade statistics for imports of beef from Argentina into the United Kingdom are as follows:

  1993: 14,285

  1994:1 14,917

  1995:1 28,289

  1996 to July:1 14,634.

  All data are in tonnes.

  1 Provisional data.
  261
  All third countries intending to export animal products to the EU are required to submit plans for residue surveillance for approval by the EU standing veterinary committee. They are also required to submit their results to the Commission as evidence that the surveillance plans are being carried out. Such imports are checked upon entry to verify compliance with animal and public health conditions of import, including conditions relating to steroids. All imports undergo a documentary check. In addition, a percentage are subject to additional identity and physical checks, including checks for prohibited hormones.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Benefits
  Sir Ralph Howell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what would be the estimated reduction in expenditure on(a) social security benefits, (b) welfare benefits and (c) free school meals for social security benefits recipients if all those aged 18 to 65 years, who were able to work, earned (A) £120, (B) £140 and (C) £160 per week gross of tax and national insurance contributions and 16 and 17-year-olds earned (i) £60, (ii) £70 and (iii) £80 per week gross. [2002]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  The information is set out in the tables.

  Table 1 shows the net benefit savings if all the claimant unemployed earned the levels stated.

  Table 2 shows the additional net benefit savings if those currently in work with earnings below the levels stated were to earn the stated value, and work 30 hours or more a week. All figures must be regarded as broad estimates of the potential benefit savings.

  Table 1: Net benefit savings if the unemployed claimant earned £120, £140 or £160 per week

  Earnings

  £120

  £140

  £160

  Net benefit savings

  £6,900 million

  £7,300 million

  £7,600 million

  1 Estimates are based on 2.1 million unemployed, at 1996–97 prices.

  2.Estimates are rounded to the nearest £100 million.

  3.All claimants unemployed are assumed to work 30 hours or more a week.

  4.All partners of claimants unemployed who are identified as in work and earning below the level stated are assumed to work for 30 hours a week at the new level of earnings.

  5.Net benefit savings include the value of free school meals.

  6.Estimates exclude expenditure implications for welfare benefits.

  7.Sixteen and 17-year-olds are deemed to earn £60, £70 or £80 per week in place of £120, £140 and £160 respectively.

  8.Estimates are based on figures from the 1996 departmental report, the 1995 Quarterly Statistical Enquiry and the 1994 Family Resources Survey uprated to 1996–97 prices.

  262

  Table 2: Net benefit savings if those currently in work earning less than the value earned £120, £140 or £160 per week

  Earnings

  £120

  £140

  £160

  Net benefit savings

  £1,000 million

  £1,300 million

  £1,600 million

  1.Estimates are set at 1996–97 prices.

  2.Estimates are rounded to the nearest £100 million.

  3.All those affected are assumed to work at least 30 hours a week.

  4.Net benefit savings include the value of free school meals.

  5.Estimates exclude expenditure implications for welfare benefits.

  6.Sixteen and 17-year-olds are deemed to earn £60, £70 or £80 per week in place of £120, £140 and £160 respectively.

  7.Estimates are based on the 1995 Quarterly Statistical Enquiry and the 1994–95 Family Resources Survey uprated to 1996–97 prices.

  Child Support Agency
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list the date on which the Child Support Agency received an application from the parent with care in case 1017680981 for a compensatory award and the date on which he expects that case to be referred to the special payments branch; and if he will make a statement. [2972]

  Mr. Andrew 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 Miss Ann Chant to Mr. David Lidington, dated 12 November 1996:
  I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about the Child Support Agency case reference 1017680981.
  An application for compensation was received on 5 January 1996. In this case, the Agency could not consider the application until a full maintenance assessment had been calculated. A full assessment was calculated on 29 May 1996, and since then every effort has been made by the Agency to secure regular maintenance for the parent with care, culminating in the imposition of a deduction from earnings order on 1 October 1996.
  The claim for compensation was passed to the Agency's Special Payments Branch on I November 1996. Based on the information then available, it was decided that a compensation payment was not appropriate. However, further information has since come to light and it has now been accepted that compensation can be paid. A revised decision has been issued and a compensation payment of £1,651.73 paid.
  I hope this is helpful.

  Statutory Sick Pay and Maternity Pay
  Mr. Alan Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is his estimate of the cost of raising statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay to the level of the lower earnings limit and of the number of people gaining from this. [2782]

  Mr. Heald
  It is estimated that the gross cost of raising the current rate of statutory sick pay and lower rate of statutory maternity pay to the lower earnings limit would be around £135 million per annum. It is not possible to estimate the number of people who would gain from this as many people will already be covered by occupational sick or maternity pay schemes and there is no reliable current information on the extent of this cover.

  Note:

  Estimated expenditure is at current prices and is rounded to the nearest £5 million.

  Compensation Recovery Unit
  Mr. Alan Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what were the amounts and types of benefit recouped by the compensation recovery unit which have been reimbursed to the national insurance fund for(a) 1993–94, (b) 1994–95 and (c) 1995–96. [2780]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  This is a matter for Peter Mathison, chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member.

  Accounts and types of benefit recouped by the compensation recovery unit

  Benefit type

  1993–94

  1994–95

  1995–96

  £

  £

  £

  Invalidity benefit1

  31,506,196.35

  51,912,225.48

  45,957,227.95

  Incapacity benefit1

  nil

  nil

  21,806,993.44

  Unemployment benefit1

  236,168.62

  355,419.58

  518,384.73

  Sickness benefit1

  3,027,307.11

  4,391,479.21

  5,039,440.94

  Income support

  5,188,320.46

  7,999,922.25

  10,150,965.02

  Attendance allowance

  495,364.16

  876,537.69

  839,317.51

  Statutory sick pay

  13,874,752.39

  17,268,020.26

  15,281,003.03

  Mobility allowance

  942,886.54

  1,039,547.38

  821,166.41

  Industrial injuries disablement benefit

  7,899,333.58

  12,511,359.68

  16,429,575.75

  Constant attendance allowance

  136,815.64

  244,809.00

  266,496.25

  Reduced earnings allowance

  4,894,461.35

  5,236,865.95

  4,176,652.21

  Retirement allowance

  3,506.55

  5,302.25

  601.76

  Family credit

  914.68

  625.82

  Nil

  Severe disablement allowance

  828,476.30

  1,520,197.28

  1,978,326.60

  Old cases act benefit

  Nil

  Nil

  Nil

  Disability living allowance

  2,486,917.53

  6,601,000.90

  10,823,763.54

  Disability working allowance

  18,940.81

  53,767.19

  89,306.95

  Exceptionally severe disablement allowance

  23,894.90

  61,817.02

  53,128.88

  Figures are provisional and subject to change.

  >1These amounts have been reimbursed to the National Insurance Fund. The amounts for all other benefits have been reimbursed to either Votes 1 or 2 of Class XIII Appropriation Accounts.

  Private Pensions
  Ms Corston
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many pensioners currently receive private personal pensions; what percentage they comprise of all pensioners; and how many are estimated to receive a personal pension smaller than the level of the basic retirement pension. [3049]

  Mr. Heald
  Approximately 250,000 or 2.5 per cent. of people over state pension age derive an income from a personal pension. This represents 2.5 per cent. over state pension age. The income from the personal pension was less than the value of the standard rate of state retirement pension for a single person in around 160,000 cases.

  Source:

  Family Resources Survey 1994–95.

  Pensioner Incomes
  Ms. Corston
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what estimate he has made of the number of basic retirement pensioners who have a total disposable income in excess of(a) twice, (b), three times and (c) four times the basic retirement pension.[3052]

  Mr. Heald
  The information is in the table.
  264
  Letter from peter Mathison to Mr. Alan Howarth, dated 12 November 1996:
  The secretary of state for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parlimentary Question asking, what were the amounts and types of benefit recouped by the Compensation Recovery Unit which have been reimbursed to the National Insurance Fund for (a) 1993–94 and (b)1994–95 (c)1995–96
  The information requested is shown in the attached table.
  I hope you find this reply helpful

  Disposable income of pensioner units

  Level of disposable income

  Pensioner units

  Over two times basic retirement pension

  Over three times basic retirement pension

  Over four times basic retirement pension

  Pensioner couples

  1,200,000

  550,000

  300,000

  Single pensioners

  1,250,000

  500,000

  200,000

  All pensioner units

  2,450,000

  1,000,000

  450,000

  Source:

  Pensioners' Incomes Series 1993, based mainly upon data from the Family Expenditure Survey 1993.

  1. Estimates of numbers have been rounded to the nearest 50,000 pensioner unit. A pensioner unit is defined as being a single person over state pension age, or a couple where the husband is over state pension age. Components may not sum to the totals due to rounding.

  2. Disposable income has been defined as net income before housing costs for the purpose of this analysis.

  3. The level of standard rate basic retirement pension in 1993 was £54.15 for single penisioners and £86.70 for pensioner couples until April, and from then on £56.10 and £89.80 respectively. For pensioner couples, the information in the table is based upon mulltiples of the couple rate.

  4. The estimates given above are calculated from the number of Family Expenditure Survey respondents who at the time of interview had a disposable income in excess of two, three or four time the standard rate basic retirement pension at that time. The calculations do not, therefore, involve deflating prices to July 1993 levels, consequently results are not directly comparable with published pensioners' Incomes Series results.

  Lone Parents
  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how much was spent on benefit for single parent families in (i) 1979, (ii) 1990 and (iii) 1994–95 in equivalent terms. [3093]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  The information is in the table.

  £ million

  1979–80

  1990–91

  1994–95

  Cash

  730

  4,680

  8,884

  At 1995–96 prices

  1,874

  5,574

  9,128

  Compensation Recovery Unit
  Mr. Wray
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has in respect of the compensation recovery unit. [3383]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) on 7 November,Official Report, columns 681–82.

  "Households Below Average Income"
  Mr. Simon Coombs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security when the next edition of "Households Below Average Income" will be published. [4277]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  "Households Below Average Income: A Statistical Analysis 1979–1993–94" will be published on Thursday 14 November at 9.30 am. Copies will be placed in the Library and made available to Members in the Vote Office.

  Benefits Agency—Secretary of State targets

  Target area

  1995–96 target— National and district

  1996–97 target—National

  1996–97 target—District

  Income support claims (p)

  63 per cent. in 5 days

  63 per cent. in 5 days

  63 per cent. in 5 days

  Income support claims (s)

  87 per cent. in 13 days

  87 per cent. in 13 days

  87 per cent in 13 days

  Incapacity benefit claims (p)

  65 per cent. in 10 days

  65 per cent. in 10 days

  65 per cent. in 10 days

  Incapacity benefit claims (s)

  85 per cent. in 30 days

  85 per cent. in 30 days

  85 per cent. in 30 days

  Social fund crisis loans1

  On the day the need arises

  On the day the need arises

  On the day the need arises

  Income support accuracy

  87 per cent.

  87 per cent.

  76 per cent.2

  Short term benefit accuracy

  94 per cent.

  94 per cent.

  94 per cent.

  1 Target considered met if 95 per cent. of claims are cleared within one day.

  2All districts within London South area directorate have been set an income support accuracy improvement target of 76 per cent.

  (p) primary target.

  (s) secondary target.

  1. Hampshire comprises of the Benefits Agency districts of Hampshire North, South, East Hants and WTight and Solent and Forest.

  Benefits agency—Secretary of State targets—1995–96 performance against targets

  Percentage

  Target

  National

  Hampshire North

  South East Hants and Wight

  Solent and Forest

  Income support claims (p)

  67.1 per cent.

  63.1 per cent.

  61.2 per cent.

  66.0 per cent.

  Income support claims (s)

  88.2 per cent.

  86.2 per cent.

  86.4 per cent.

  88.7 per cent.

  Incapacity benefit claims

  78.9 per cent.

  74.3 per cent.

  84.0 per cent.

  77.5 per cent.

  Incapacity benefit claims (s)

  96.0 per cent.

  92.7 per cent.

  96.6 per cent.

  96.0 per cent.

  Social fund crisis loans

  97.4 per cent.

  98.4 per cent.

  98.3 per cent.

  92.9 per cent.

  Income support accuracy

  78.1 per cent.

  71.7 per cent.

  69.5 per cent.

  80.0 per cent.

  Short-term benefit accuracy1

  90.7 per cent.

  86.9 per cent.

  —

  —

  1 Only Hampshire North was visited by the STB accuracy checking team in 1995–96.

  (p) primary target.

  (s) secondary target.

  Benefits Agency Staff
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) how many Benefits Agency customer services staff there are; and what estimate he has made of the likely change in numbers in the next financial year; [3349]

  (2) how many persons worked within his Department's Benefit Agency as customer service staff in the last year for which figures are available. [3345]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  Information regarding the total number of Benefits Agency customer service staff is not available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Information regarding the number of district information officers is available only for 1995–96; approximately 450 were employed.

  Local Offices (Hampshire)
  Mr. Denham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will publish the performance targets for each social security office in Hampshire for(a) 1995–96 and (b) 1996–97; and how many of these targets were achieved in 1995–96 in each case indicating how these targets and achievements relate to those set nationally.[3355]

  Mr. Burt
  The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is set out in the tables.

  The tables provide performance targets and achievement covering the Benefits, Child Support and Contributions Agencies. Only the Benefits Agency has individual targets for offices within Hampshire.
  267

  Benefits agency—Secretary of State financial targets 1995–96 and 1996–97 and performance against targets 1995–96

  Target/achievement

  National £

  Hampshire North £

  South East Hants and Wight £

  Solent and Forest £

  Social fund recovery

  1995–96 target

  273 million

  1.16 million

  2.30 million

  2.22 million

  1995–96 achievement

  263.5 million

  1.11 million

  2.21 million

  2.03 million

  1996–97 target

  278 million

  1.26 million

  2.26 million

  2.14 million

  Social fund expenditure1

  1995–96 target

  406 million

  1.73 million

  3.24 million

  2.98 million

  1995–96 achievement

  401 million

  1.70 million

  3.24 million

  2.86 million

  1996–97 target

  440 million

  1.82 million

  3.59 million

  3.09 million

  Benefit savings (fraud)

  1995–96 target2

  680 million

  —3

  —

  —

  1995–96 achievement

  715.6 million

  —3

  —

  —

  1996–97 target

  —

  —3

  —

  —

  Overpayments

  1995–96 target

  110 million

  —4

  —

  —

  1995–96 achievement

  122 million

  —4

  —

  —

  1996–97 target

  91.5 million

  343,000

  632,000

  627,000

  1 The Social Fund expenditure target is "to keep to the cash limit agreement with Treasury for the discretionary social fund budget approved by Parliament".

  2 From 1996–97 benefit savings (fraud) are included in the new security target.

  3 No. 1995–96 or 1996–97 target or performance data available at district level.

  4 No overpayment recovery target or performance data available at district level in 1995–96.

  Contributions agency—1995–96 Secretary of State target and performance against targets

  1995–96

  Class 1 survey—yield identified

  Number of class 1 and educational surveys

  Target

  Achieved

  Target

  Achieved

  Southhampton

  904,400

  1,229,383

  829

  560

  Portsmouth

  1,123,200

  593,653

  934

  1,109

  Fareham

  567,800

  391,630

  384

  470

  Aldershot

  759,600

  825,026

  655

  586

  National

  133 million

  151.7 million

  116,500

  123,308

  Collectable class 2 identified

  Customer inquiries

  1995–96

  Target

  Achieved

  Target (per cent.)

  Achieved (per cent.)

  Southampton

  314

  160

  95.0

  100.0

  Portsmouth

  379

  429

  95.0

  91.5

  Fareham

  152

  143

  95.0

  100.0

  Aldershot

  217

  188

  95.0

  100.0

  National

  40,000

  39,791

  95.0

  93.8

  Contributions agency—1996–97 Secretary of State targets

  1996–97

  Class 1 survey—yield identified Target £

  Collectable class 2 identified Target

  Customer inquiries Target (per cent.)

  Portsmouth

  1,179,648

  544

  95

  Southampton

  1,277,952

  589

  95

  National

  150 million

  40,000

  95

  1. In April 1995 Hampshire division consisted of four parent offices—Southampton, Portsmouth, Fareham and Aldershot.

  2.In October 1995 regions replaced divisions. Hampshire division was split between South and West and South East regions. Aldershot and Basingstoke became part of South East region, while the other areas formed a part of the South and West.

  3. Within Hampshire in 1996–97, targets have been set individually for Portsmouth and Southampton only.

  Child support agency—Secretary of State targets 1995–96 and 1996–97 and performance against targets 1995–96:

  1995–96 national target

  1995–96 national achievement

  1996–97 national target

  £300 million to be collected, or arranged for direct payment from absent parent to parent with care in 1995–96.

  £301.5

  A band of £380 million to £400 million of maintenance to be collected by the agency or arranged for payment direct form absent parent to parent to parent with care.

  268

  Child support agency—Secretary of State targets 1995–96 and 1996–97 and performance against targets 1995–96:

  1995–96 national target

  1995–96 national achievement

  1996–97 national target

  90 per cent. of payments to be made to the parent with care within 10 working days of receipt from the absent parent.

  97 per cent.

  95 per cent. of payments madeto parents with care to be made within 10 working days of a receipt from an absent parent.

  269

  Child support agency—Secretary of State targets 1995–96 and 1996–97 and performance against targets 1995–96:

  1995–96 national target

  1995–96 national achievement

  1996–97 national target

  To achieve rapid and continuing improvement in accuracy so that in at least 75 per cent. of cases checked in March the cash value will be correct.

  79 per cent.

  To achieve a continuing improvement in accuracy so that at least 85 per cent. of cases checked during March the case value of the assessment will be correct.

  Where the client is dissatisfied with a CSO's decision and requests a review, 50 per cent. to be cleared within 13 weeks; 80 per cent. within 26 weeks and no more than 20 per cent. to be older than 26 weeks at 31 March 1996.

  52 per cent. within 13 weeks 71 per cent. within 26 weeks 27 per cent. over 26 weeks

  Where the client is dissatisfied with a CSO's decision and requests a review, 55 per cent. to be cleared within 13 weeks; 80 per cent. within 26 weeks and no more than 15 per cent. to be older than 26 weeks at 31 March 1997.

  60 per cent. of new maintenance applications to be cleared within 26 weeks and at 31 March 1996 no more than 10 per cent. of all maintenance applications received by the agency to be over 52 weeks old.

  48 per cent. within 26 weeks 15 per cent. over 52 weeks old

  60 per cent. of new maintenance applications to be cleared within 26 weeks and at 31 March 1997 no more than 10 per cent. of all maintenance application received by the agency to be over 52 weeks old.

  To manage the agency's resources to deliver its business plan within the gross vote budget allocation.

  £194 million

  Not a Secretary of State target this year

  A score of 65 percent. on an index of client satisfaction as determined by an independent national survey.

  45 per cent.

  Not a Secretary of State target this year.

  Note:

  Hampshire offices are dealt with by the Plymouth Child Support Agency centre, but separate performance figures for those offices are not collected.

  Mr. Denham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what estimate he has made of the number of people who have suffered a reduction in related earnings allowance with the introduction of the retirement allowance in each Benefits Agency office in Hampshire. [3354]

  Mr. Evans
  The information is not available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Social Fund
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on the policies governing advice for social fund applications undertaken by the Benefits Agency. [3352]
  270
  Mr. Roger Evans
  Section 140 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 requires that"A social fund officer shall determine any question in accordance with any general directions issued by the Secretary of State and in determining any question shall take account of any general guidance issued by him."

  That guidance is contained in the social fund guide and is intended to explain the basis for social fund officers' powers to determine applications to the discretionary social fund and to help them interpret the Secretary of State's directions in a consistent and flexible way.

  Section 140 also requires social fund officers to take account of any guidance issued by the social fund officer nominated for his area under section 64 of the Administration Act 1992. This local guidance concerns the level of priority of applications which can be met from the district budget.

  Regionalised Benefit Rates
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what proposals he has to regionalise benefit rates; and if he will make a statement. [3263]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  None. Regional benefit rates would be complex and expensive to administer.

  Computer System
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on progress with the installation of the NIRS 2 computer system; and for what reasons Andersen Consulting will not have the system fully operational in February 1997. [3264]

  Mr. Heald
  Progress on the development of the NIRS 2 computer system is currently proceeding in accordance with the contractual timetable. Under the contract with Andersen Consulting it was always the intention that the system would be fully operational by April 1999. This is still the planned date for NIRS 2 to be fully operational.

  Claimant Entitlement Decisions
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what plans he has to restrict support for departmental employees in establishing claimants' benefit entitlements;[3341]

  (2)what plans he has to remove independent adjudication of claims from the social security system; [3342]

  (3) what proposals he has to change current regulations governing claimants' rights and service levels. [3344]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  Full details of the Government's proposals for new decision making and appeals processes are set out in the Green Paper, "Improving decision making and appeals in Social Security", Cm 3328, which was published on July 23. The Green Paper was issued to a wide range of organisations with an interest in social security matters. Comments on the proposals were invited by 18 October.

  The responses received—around 440—are currently being independently analysed. We plan to publish the results of the consultation exercise early in the new year

  271
  and we will ensure that a copy is placed in the Library. Final decisions on the best way forward will be taken in the light of all the representations received.

  Privatisation
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on his Department's proposals for privatisation in the social security system. [3343]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  There are no proposals for privatisation of the social security system.

  Involvement of the private sector in the Department of Social Security is part of a wider programme of change to reduce running costs and improve efficiency.

  Correspondence
  Ms Lynne
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security when a reply will be sent to the letter from the hon. Member for Rochdale to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State dated 22 August, relating to Mr. R. Marsh of 43 Haslam street, Rochdale, Lancashire. [3786]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  I replied to the hon. Member on 23 October.

EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

  School Discipline
  Mr. Congdon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what representations she has received regarding measures relating to school discipline in the Education Bill. [2089]

  Mr. Forth
  While preparing the legislation, we have received a large number of representations from head teacher and teacher organisations, local authorities, school governors and other bodies with an interest in promoting good behaviour and effective discipline in schools.

  Mr. David Shaw
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what steps she is taking to improve school discipline. [2091]

  Mr. Forth
  The Education Bill introduced on 30 October includes a package of measures to strengthen schools' ability to take action in the face of poor behaviour and discipline; to help ensure there is proper support for schools in dealing with pupils with behavioural problems; and to promote effective provision for such pupils out of school where necessary.

  Education Funding (Staffordshire)
  Mr. Stevenson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment when she last met the chief education officer of Staffordshire county council to discuss the level of education funding; and if she will make a statement. [2090]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  My right hon. Friend met Dr. Hunter, the chief education officer of Staffordshire, on 4 November. They discussed a number of issues concerning education in Staffordshire.

  Primary School Class Sizes
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make it her policy to reduce primary school class sizes. [2092]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  It is the Government's policy to allow local authorities to determine the distribution of available resources between their primary and secondary schools; and to allow governors and head teachers to manage the distribution among classes of pupils, teachers and support staff.

  Teaching Unions (Meetings)
  Mr. Richards
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will review the practice of teaching union representatives attending meetings during schools hours. [2094]

  Mr. Forth
  This is a matter for local management in the light of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service code of practice on time off for trade union duties and activities.

  Lostwithiel Primary School
  Sir Robert Hicks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment when she will make a decision on Cornwall local education authority's application for funding to assist with the cost of the Lostwithiel county primary school rebuilding programme; and if she will make a statement. [2095]

  Mrs. Gillan
  All local education authorities' bids for capital funding under annual capital guidelines and for grant aid for projects at voluntary aided schools, are currently being assessed. Decisions will be announced shortly before Christmas.

  Standard Spending Assessments
  Mr. Ian Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to change the SSA calculations for local education authorities. [2096]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will make a statement on the SSA methodology for 1997–98 shortly after the Budget.

  Mr. Biffen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment by what means, and by what date, she will ensure the details of the education standard spending assessments for 1997–98 will be available to hon. Members. [3510]

  Mr. Squire
  [holding answer 11 November 1996]: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will be making a statement shortly after the Budget. Written details of the education standard spending assessments for local authorities in 1997–98, together with details of the SSAs for the other major services, will be available at that time.

  Higher and Further Education Institutions
  Mr. Pickthall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many(a) higher education institutions and (b) further education institutions currently do not have cash reserves to cover 30 days of total expenditure. [2097]

  Mr. Forth
  Eighty-eight higher education institutions did not have net cash balances sufficient to cover 30 days' expenditure at 31 July 1995. At the same date, 128 further education institutions had less than 30 days' cash in hand.

  Pupil Exclusions
  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many pupils have been excluded from secondary schools in England in the last 12 months. [2098]

  Mr. Forth
  The latest figures on exclusions, which relate to the school year 1994–95, show that 8,870 pupils were permanently excluded from secondary schools in England.

  School Funding
  Mr. Campbell-Savours
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to review the allocation of resources to schools which under-perform. [2099]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  None.

  Unemployment (East London)
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what was the percentage of unemployment for(a) men and (b) women in Ilford, South in November 1990; what it is currently; and what plans she has to introduce further measures to reduce unemployment in east London. [2100]

  Mr. Forth
  Claimant unemployment rates are not available at constituency level. Claimant unemployment figures for Ilford, South in November 1990 was 1,633 men and 606 women. In September 1996 the figures were 3,251 and 1,126, respectively.

  However, I am pleased to say that unemployment in both south Ilford and east London is falling in line with national trends. Unemployment in south Ilford fell from a peak of 5,403 in August 1993 to 4,377 in September 1996. Similarly, unemployment in east London fell from a peak of 55,709 in April 1993 to 41,029 in September 1996.

  In east London, as elsewhere, the Employment Service and the training and enterprise councils will continue to deliver a wide range of programmes to help people find the best and quickest route back to employment. In particular, on 7 November I announced plans to extend the project work pilots to a number of areas across the country, including a large part of east and north-east London, which includes south Ilford.

  Claimant Register
  Mr. Barnes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment she has made of the reasons for which people have left the claimant register over the last year. [2101]

  Mr. Forth
  Of those leaving claimant unemployment with a known destination, around 70 per cent. do so because they have found work.

  School Commendations
  Mr. Alison
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many grant-maintained and local education authority schools won Office for Standards in Education commendations for excellence in the most recent year for which information is available. [2102]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Of the 203 schools commended by the chief inspector in his 1994–95 annual report, 39 or 19 per cent. are grant-maintained and 162 are maintained by local education authorities; one is a city technology college and one is an independent special school. This contrasts with the underlying proportion of GM schools, compared with the rest of the state sector, of 5 per cent.

  High-tech Businesses
  Dr. Goodson-Wickes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what recent consultations she has had on the training requirements of new high-tech businesses. [2103]

  Mr. Paice
  The Department provides support to industry training organisations and training and enterprise councils, which enables them to monitor and address training requirements including those related to new high-tech businesses.

  Youth Unemployment
  Mr. Loyden
  To ask the Secretary of State for education and Employment what plans she has to introduce measures to reduce unemployment among 16 to 18-year-olds. [2104]

  Mr. Forth
  The Government will continue with policies to improve standards of education and training and create a flexible and deregulated labour market which have already delivered one of the lowest rates of youth unemployment in Europe. In particular, we shall continue to resist the imposition of policies such as the social chapter and the national minimum wage, which would destroy jobs and create youth unemployment at levels seen in France and Spain where those policies are in place and where youth unemployment stands at 29 per cent. and 39 per cent. respectively.

  Unemployment Trends
  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on trends in unemployment levels over the last year. [2105]

  Mr. Forth
  The United Kingdom started 1996 with unemployment lower than any other major European country and with unemployment falling at an underlying rate averaging around 10,000 per month. During the
  275
  course of the year the labour market has continued to improve and the Office for National Statistics estimates that the underlying rate at which unemployment is falling now averages around 15,000 to 20,000 per month.

  Workplace Training
  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask. the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on policies to encourage workplace training schemes. [2106]

  Mr. Paice
  Employers must take the lead on workplace training. The Government's policy encourages them to look upon training as an investment by demonstrating the business benefits enjoyed by employers who invest effectively in training. Training and enterprise councils are working with employers in a variety of ways to help them address and manage their training needs. Our approach is working, recent surveys show that there has been a considerable increase in the number of employees receiving training in recent years.

  The investors in people standard is helping employers to make their training investment effective by linking the training and development needs of their work force directly with the achievement of business goals. Almost 25,000 employers are committed to the standard, of which 4,330 are already recognised as investors in people.

  European Social Fund
  Sir Michael Neubert
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to secure accelerated payments to qualifying organisations under the European social fund.[2107]

  Mr. Paice
  Payments of claims relating to approved European social fund projects cannot begin until the money arrives from the European Commission. Thereafter payment is made as soon as possible.

  Training (Young People)
  Mr. Tipping
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to extend training opportunities for those aged under 25 years. [2108]

  Mr. Paice
  The Government have consulted widely concerning the introduction of national traineeships and access and support strategies for 14 to 19-year-olds as recommended in Sir Ron Dearing's report on 16 to 19 qualifications. Details of the Government's plans for these new initiatives will be published in a White Paper in

  School

  LEA area

  Nature of change

  Date approved

  Abbs Cross school

  Havering

  10 per cent. music

  June 1993

  Beaverwood girls school

  Bromley

  10 per cent. performing arts (music and dance)

  August 1994

  Beverley school

  Kingston upon Thames

  10 per cent. art or music

  October 1994

  Bishop's Stortford school

  Hertfordshire

  10 per cent. music, sport or drama

  October 1993

  Canterbury high school

  Kent

  10 per cent. music

  April 1993

  Cardinal Vaughan Memorial school

  Kensington and Chelsea

  10 per cent. music

  August 1994

  Chancellor's school

  Hertfordshire

  10 per cent music, drama or sport

  December 1993

  Charles Dickens high school

  Kent

  10 per cent. music

  February 1993

  Chatham grammar school for girls

  Kent

  10 per cent. music, sport or drama

  August 1995

  Chaucer Technology school

  Kent

  10 per cent. technology

  December 1993

  276
  December. Modern apprenticeships continue to expand with over 41,500 young people starting training in 60 industry sectors.

  Nursery Vouchers
  Mr. Pope
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how much she plans to spend on publicity for the national implementation of the nursery voucher scheme. [2109]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  I refer the hon. Member to the oral answer that I gave earlier today to the hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig).

  Jobseeker's Allowance
  Mr. Charles Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will assess the impact of the jobseeker's allowance on rural areas. [2082]

  Mr. Paice
  We have commissioned a full evaluation of JSA policy from the centre for research in social policy at Loughborough university. The Employment Service itself will be carrying out local monitoring of delivery.

  Home-school Contracts
  Mrs. Bridget Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what representations she has received on the introduction of home-school contracts for all schools. [2093]

  Mr. Forth
  I refer the hon. Member to oral answer that my right hon. Friend gave earlier today to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy).

  Schools (Selection Applications)
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many grant-maintained schools have(a) applied and (b) been approved to select up to 15 per cent. of their intake; and if she will name each such school and the selection criteria agreed. [2755]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The following table lists the 43 grant-maintained schools which received approval to select up to 10 per cent. of their pupils on the basis of ability or aptitude in certain specified subjects between January 1989 and September 1996. Grant-maintained schools have not since then been required to obtain approval for changes to their admission arrangements which do not require the publication of statutory proposals. Circular 6/69, "Admissions to Maintained Schools", takes the view that admission authorities may select up to 15 per cent. of a school intake in any subject, or by general ability, without the need to publish statutory proposals.
  277

  School

  LEA area

  Nature of change

  Date approved

  Cliff Park high school

  Norfolk

  10 per cent. music

  October 1994

  Cooper's school

  Bromley

  10 per cent. music, drama, Dance or sport

  June 1993

  Crofton school

  Hampshire

  5 places music

  October 1994

  Dame Alice Owen school

  Hertfordshire

  10 per cent. music or sport

  April 1993

  Dane Court Grammar school

  Kent

  10 per cent. music, sport, drama or any unusual talent

  March 1994

  Deacons school

  Cambridgeshire

  10 per cent. technology

  August 1994

  Dunrave school

  Lambeth

  10 per cent. music

  October 1993

  Enfield grammar school

  Enfield

  10 per cent. music or sport

  December 1993

  Goffs school

  Hertfordshire

  10 per cent. music, drama, sport or languages

  October 1995

  Heathside school

  Surrey

  10 per cent. music or sport

  July 1993

  Hendon school

  Barnet

  10 per cent. music

  November 1995

  Hertfordshire and Essex high school

  Hertfordshire

  10 per cent. music, sport or drama

  March 1994

  Hinchley Wood school

  Surrey

  10 per cent. music

  July 1995

  Kemnal Manor school

  Bromley

  10 per cent. technology

  February 1994

  King Edward VI grammar school

  Essex

  Three places for choristers

  June 1993

  Kings' school

  Cambridgeshire

  10 per cent. music and choristers

  October 1993

  La Retraite school

  Lambeth

  10 per cent. music

  September 1993

  La Sainte Union convent school

  Camden

  10 per cent. music

  September 1995

  Langley Park school for boys

  Kent

  10 per cent. music or sport

  September 1993

  Leventhorpe school

  Hertfordshire

  10 per cent. music

  October 1995

  Lincoln Christ's Hospital school

  Lincolnshire

  10 per cent. music

  October 1994

  Mill Hill county school

  Barnet

  10 per cent. music

  October 1993

  Queen's school

  Hertfordshire

  10 per cent. music, art or sport

  March 1993

  Rainham Mark grammar school

  Kent

  10 per cent. music, sport, drama or any unusual talent

  February 1992

  Rainsford high school

  Essex

  10 per cent. music or drama

  March 1994

  Robert Napier school

  Kent

  10 per cent. music, sport, drama or any unusual talent

  February 1992

  St. Anne's convent school

  Hampshire

  10 per cent. music

  January 1996

  St. George's CE school

  Kent

  10 per cent. music

  July 1995

  Thamesmead school

  Surrey

  10 per cent. music

  October 1994

  Ursuline convent school

  Essex

  10 per cent. music

  December 1993

  Westland high school

  Kent

  10 per cent. music

  January 1993

  Winston Churchill school

  Surrey

  6 per cent. music

  October 1995

  Wymondham college

  Norfolk

  10 per cent. music

  March 1995

  Deregulation
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what regulations her Department proposes to repeal by the end of 1996; if she proposes to conduct a compliance cost assessment on each regulation repealed; and what is the estimated cost of undertaking a compliance cost assessment to determine the advantages or disadvantages of each such a repeal. [3202]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  [holding answer 11 November 1996]: It is proposed to revoke the Education (Transfer of Functions Relating to Grant-maintained Schools) Order 1996, SI 1996/2247, and to make a fresh order with technical amendments. No compliance cost is involved. The effect of the order is to transfer the function in relation to the consent to borrowing by grant-maintained schools in England from the Secretary of State to the Funding Agency for Schools.

  Travel-to-work Funding
  Mr. Peter Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assistance is available to a person who lacks funds to travel to work in respect of a job opportunity verified by the local office of her Department. [3628]

  Mr. Forth
  Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
  278
  Letter from Mike Fogden to Mr. Peter Griffiths, dated 12 November 1996:
  The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question about the payment of fares to travel to work. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency.
  While there are no schemes set up specifically to provide assistance with travel costs upon finding employment, Jobseekers who have been unemployed for two years or more may be entitled to claim the Jobfinder's Grant.
  The purpose of the Grant is to encourage people to look for work by overcoming some of the barriers associated with the transition from benefits into employment.
  Ongoing research has indicated that over 70¦ of Grant recipients cited the need to travel to work as one of the problems they had faced.
  In addition, we have been running the Travel to Interview Scheme for a number of years to help unemployed people cope with the expense of getting to job interviews. The scheme does this by helping people who have been unemployed more than 13 weeks with travelling costs, and if necessary, overnight accommodation costs to attend job interviews outside their usual travel to work area. A few basic conditions must be met before assistance can be granted, to ensure the scheme is properly and fairly administered and gives good value for money. In the last year the scheme has helped nearly 47,000 applicants with travelling costs totalling £1.7m.
  We also provide extra help for disabled people. People with disabilities can be given help with travel costs to attend job interviews and, if necessary, the travel costs of someone to accompany them, through our specialist Placing Assessment and Counselling Teams (PACTS). In addition, once a job has been

  279
  secured, the Access to Work programme can provide help with the additional costs, resulting from disability, of getting to and from work.
  I hope this is helpful.

  Religious Education
  Mr. Peter Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many secondary schools(a) have a member of staff specialising in religious education and (b) have no such member of staff. [3626]

  Mr. Forth
  The Department does not collect detailed information about the deployment of teachers in individual schools. However, the 1992 secondary school staffing survey indicated that over 90 per cent. of schools had at least one teacher with an RE qualification.

  Mr. Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many teachers in training for secondary school posts are specialising in religious education. [3625]

  Mr. Forth
  In 1995–96, 494 students entered courses of initial teacher training in which religious eduction was either the main or second subject.

  Secondary Schools (Unacceptable Placements)
  Mr. Peter Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many secondary school age pupils are at present being kept at home because local education authorities have not offered placements acceptable to the parents. [3627]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  This information is not collected centrally.

  Teachers (Warwickshire)
  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many full-time equivalent teachers were employed in Warwickshire; and what was the pupil-teacher ratio in each year since 1991–92. [3511]

  Mr. Forth
  The number of full-time equivalent teachers employed in the maintained nursery, primary and secondary sector, including grant-maintained schools, and the overall pupil-teacher ratio, for the Warwickshire local education authority area are shown in the table.

  Position in January each year

  Warwickshire LEA area

  FTE teacher numbers1

  Overall PTR

  1992

  3,904

  17.8

  1993

  3,961

  17.8

  19942

  4,017

  17.7

  19952

  4,027

  18.0

  19962

  3,875

  18.9

  1 Excluding FTE teachers in special education and education elsewhere.

  2 Excluding sixth form colleges from 1994 onwards.

  Pupils (Unit Costs)
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what proposals she has to 280
  publish the unit costs of pupils in primary and secondary schools in all local education authority areas in England for 1995–96. [3828]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Provisional aggregate outturn expenditure per pupil for all LEA-maintained pre-primary, primary and secondary schools for 1995–96 will be published in the Department's annual report in March 1997. Data for individual LEAs should be available shortly thereafter.

  Higher Education Staff
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to establish a pay review body for staff employed in higher education establishments [3687]

  Mr. Forth
  My right hon. Friend has no such plans at present.

  EDS Ltd.
  Mr. McNamara
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many contracts her Department, agencies and associated bodies have had with EDS for each year since 1985; what was the value of each contract; if she will indicate for each contract(a) if it was completed, (b) what modifications were made at the request of (i) the company and (ii) the Department and (c) if work under contract is being undertaken in-house; and if she will make a statement on the number of job reductions in her Department arising from the contracting out of work to EDS. [3795]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Both the Department for Education and Employment and the Employment Service have recently signed contracts with EDS for access to the Government catalogue framework agreement for the supply of IT goods and services. EDS operates the catalogue on behalf of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency. No modifications have been made to this contract.

  The Student Loans Company entered into a contract with EDS for software to support its lending operations in 1989. In 1990, at the suggestion of EDS, the contract was extended to include the provision of loan repayment software. The total value of the contract was £3 million per annum. Early in 1993, the SLC signed a revised contract with EDS which transferred ownership of the software lending system to the SLC. In 1995 the contract ended.

  There are no other contracts between the Department or its agencies and EDS. I am not aware of any further contracts between the Department's associated bodies and EDS.

  There have been no job reductions in the Department, its agencies and associated bodies as a result of contracting out work to EDS.

  Corporal Punishment
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will undertake a public consultation exercise on the value of corporal punishment in schools; and if she will make a statement. [2428]
  281
  Mr. Forth
  No. Corporal punishment is an issue which gives rise to a wide range of sincerely held views. However, the Government's view is that its reintroduction would not solve problems of indiscipline in schools.

  Teachers' Superannuation Scheme
  Mr. Denham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many requests for information the teachers' superannuation scheme has received from pension transfers and opt-outs; in how many cases all appropriate information has been supplied; what is the average length of time taken to supply such information; and what moratorium has been introduced on supplying such information. [3346]

  Mrs. Gillan
  Approximately 7,000 requests for information have been received in respect of members of the teachers' superannuation scheme for England and Wales. Responses have been issued in more than 1,000 cases. The average time taken to deal with priority cases is between three and four weeks. The Teachers' Pensions agencies which administers the teachers' superannuation scheme, was unable to deal with requests for information until 1 October when regulations came into force which enable it to provide and charge for information and process re-instalments.

  Assisted Places Scheme
  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many independent schools receiving funds from the assisted places scheme publish full accounts which are publicly available; and if she will list them. [3397]

  Mrs. Gillan
  All 355 schools participating In the assisted places scheme in England are conducted for charitable purposes, as required by section 479 of the Education Act 1996. Copies of their accounts are lodged with the Charity Commission and are publicly available.

  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many pupils benefiting from the assisted places scheme have been (i) temporarily and (ii) permanently excluded from their school in each of the past five years. [3398]

  Mrs. Gillan
  The information requested is not collected centrally. Where an assisted pupil is expelled from a participating school, assistance under the scheme ceases from the date of expulsion.

  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what checks are carried out by her Department of the administration by individual schools of applications under the assisted places scheme; and(a) how many random audit checks have been made to ensure parental assessments have been carried out, (b) how many of the random checks uncovered shortcomings in the school's administration and (c) what action was taken against schools where shortcomings were found in each of the past five years. [3399]

  Mrs. Gillan
  All schools' claims for fee remission are audited by independent auditors who have to be satisfied that the claims have been prepared in accordance with the regulations governing the scheme and are in agreement 282
  with the schools' own financial records. The auditors are expected to check a sample of the parental income assessments carried out by the school.

  In addition, the Department carries out an annual audit survey on a random sample of participating schools to monitor their administration of the scheme, particularly with regard to their assessments of parental income. These surveys have identified a small proportion of cases with shortcomings which are drawn to the attention of the individual schools concerned in the sample and corrective action taken. After each survey, guidance is also issued to all schools in the scheme on the survey's findings to strengthen their administration.

  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many schools receiving funds from the assisted places scheme have had a full Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools or Office for Standards in Education inspection in the past five years. [3400]

  Mrs. Gillan
  All participating schools are covered in the cycle of independent school inspections carried out by Ofsted and the great majority have been visited by HMI in the past five years.

  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many pupils have benefited from the assisted places scheme in each of the past five years; and what were total funds(a) allocated and (b) spent in each year. [3401]

  Mrs. Gillan
  The information requested is given in the report of the Department for Education and Employment, Cm 3210, published in March 1996, a copy of which is available in the Library.

  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many parents claiming funds under the assisted places scheme were(a) self employed and (b) unemployed in each of the past five years. [3402]

  Mrs. Gillan
  The information requested is not collected centrally.

  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what checks her Department makes on schools which apply to receive pupils under the assisted places scheme. [3403]

  Mrs. Gillan
  Under section 479 of the Education Act 1996, the Secretary of State must have regard to the desirability of securing an equitable distribution of assisted places geographically and between boys and girls. Schools applying for admission to the scheme must be finally registered with the Department and conducted for charitable purposes only, and must satisfy stringent published criteria relating to the breadth and balance of their curriculum, the academic achievements of their pupils and the quality of their teaching staff. Information about the educational opportunities available, their intake policy and financial viability is also taken into account.

  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list the independent schools which received funds from the assisted places scheme with, for each school(a) the number of pupils benefiting from the scheme and (b) the amount of money received in each of the past five years. [3404]
  283
  Mrs. Gillan
  A copy of the relevant tables for the academic years 1991–92 to 1995–96 has been deposited in the Library of the House.

  Jobcentres
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list the number and location of jobcentres in each Scottish local authority area. [3699]

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

  Letter from Mike Fogden to Mr. James Wallace, dated 12 November 1996:
  The Secretary of State for Education and Employment has asked me to reply to your question about the number and location of jobcentres in each Scottish local authority area. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as chief Executive of the Agency.
  I can confirm that there are currently 132 Jobcentres in Scotland. For ease of reference I have attached as Annex 1 a detailed list of all Jobcentres and the corresponding local authority.
  I hope this is helpful.

  Unitary authority areas

  Jobcentres

  Aberdeen, City of

  Aberdeen Thistle Street and St. Nicholas

  Aberdeenshire

  Banff, Fraserburgh, Peterhead

  Angus

  Arbroath, Blairgowrie, Montrose

  Argyll and Bute

  Campbeltown, Dunoon, Helensburgh, Lochgilphead, Oban, Rothesay

  Ayrshire, East

  Cumnock, Kilmarnock A and B

  Ayrshire North

  Irvine, Kilbirnie, Kilwinning, Largs, Saltcoats

  Ayrshire, South

  Ayr, Troon, Girvan

  Clackmannanshire

  Alloa

  Dumfries and Galloway

  Annan, Dumfries, Lockerbie, Castle Douglas, Newton Stewart, Sanquhar, Stranraer

  Dunbartonshire, East

  Kirkintilloch

  Dunbartonshire, West

  Alexandria, Clydebank, Dumbarton

  Dundee, City

  Dundee Wellgate and Gellatly Street

  Edinburgh, City of

  High Riggs, Torphichen Street, South St. Andrew Street, Leith, Portobello, Wester Hailes

  Falkirk

  Denny, Falkirk, Grangemouth

  Fife

  Glenrothes, Inverkeithing, Kirkcaldly, Leven, Cowdenbeath, Dunfermline, Cupar, St. Andrews

  Glasgow, city of

  Anniesland, Bridgeton, Castlemilk, Drumchapel, Easterhouse, Glasgow City, Glasgow Central, Govan, Hillington, Langside, Laurieston, Maryhill, Parkhead, Partick, Shawlands, Shettleston, South Side, Springburn

  Highland

  Alness, Invergordon, Thurso, Wick, Fort William, Inverness A and B, Nairn, Dingwall, Portree

  Inverclyde

  Greenock A and B, Port Glasgow

  Lanarkshire, North

  Airdrie, Bellshill, Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Kilsyth, Motherwell, Shots, Wishaw

  Lanarkshire, South

  Blantyre, Cambuslang, Carluke, East Kilbride, Hamilton, Lanark, Larkhall, Rutherglen, Uddingston

  Lothian, East

  Musselburgh, Haddington

  Lothian, West

  Bathgate, Bo'ness, Broxburn, Livingston

  284

  Unitary authority areas

  Jobcentres

  Midlothian

  Dalkeith, Loanhead, Peebles, Penicuick

  Moray

  Buckie, Elgin, Forres

  Orkney Islands

  Kirkwall

  Perth and Kinross

  Forfar, Perth

  Renfrewshire

  Johnstone, Linwood, Renfrew, Paisley

  Renfrewshire, East

  Barrhead

  Scottish Borders

  Eyemouth, Galashiels, Hawick, Kelso

  Shetland

  Lerwick

  Stirling

  Stirling

  Western Isles

  Stornoway

  Job Vacancy Display Boards
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what is her policy regarding the location of the job vacancy display boards in libraries, community centres and post offices in Scotland; and what financial contribution has been made by each unitary authority in Scotland towards this service in each of the last three years. [3700]

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

  Letter from Mike Fogden to Mr. James Wallace, dated 12 November 1996:
  The Secretary of State for Education and Employment has asked me to reply to your question about policy on the location of job vacancy display boards in libraries, community centres and post offices in Scotland; and what financial contribution has been made by each unitary local authority in Scotland towards this service in each of the last 3 years. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency.
  Through its network of local Jobcentres, The Employment Service in Scotland regularly reviews the provision of job vacancy display boards to libraries, community centres and post offices according to the needs and availability of appropriate venues. The provision of such display boards depends on the local labour market covered and the need to ensure that a system can be put in place to keep vacancies on display up to date. Local authorities do not make a financial contribution to this service.
  I hope this is helpful.

  Physical Education
  Miss Emma Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what amount of time primary school pupils are expected to devote to physical eduction each week; and what school facilities her Department assesses are necessary to support this. [4057]

  Mrs. Gillan
  It is for schools to decide how much time to allocate for the teaching of physical education. In deciding how much time to allocate, schools may wish to bear in mind the recommendation in the Government's 1995 "Raising the Game" policy statement on sport that they should offer two hours a week of physical education and sport in formal lessons.

  The Department makes no assessment of the facilities necessary to support physical education teaching; this is a decision for schools.

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.
Lord Daresbury—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

Springvale University Campus Proposal
Lord Holme of Cheltenham Lord Holme of Cheltenham asked Her Majesty's Government:
Why they are withholding support from the Springvale Campus Project in Belfast (the so-called "Peaceline Campus").
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Baroness Denton of Wakefield): My Lords, the University of Ulster's Springvale university campus proposal is a major proposal involving significant resources. The Government had reached no decision when the University of Ulster decided on 4th October to put the project in its current form on hold.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that somewhat disappointing Answer. Does she agree that with a visionary and key project such as this what she has said is not just in marked contrast to the enthusiasm expressed originally by the Secretary of State but is almost tantamount to rejection? Further, does she agree that it imperils £30 million of non-governmental support which the University of Ulster has identified; frustrates the potential of going to the Millennium Fund for additional money; and, what is most important, withdraws a point of hope and initiative from people in an area when they sorely need both those things?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I refer the noble Lord to my first Answer which says that there is no proposal on the table. It is difficult to make mythical decisions. Much work is being done to bring hope to north and west Belfast. I was pleased to announce this morning that the biggest drop in unemployment in parliamentary constituencies has been in those two areas, which proves that our targeting of social need is working. I know that the University of Ulster and the Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education are together looking at smaller projects which could be regarded as modular moves which would not take away hope. There may be an unsubstantiated promise of £30 million, but that does not tell us where to find the further £60 million or £70 million which is needed.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, if the Government are absolutely determined, as it seems that
928
they are, to withhold support from the Springvale Campus Project since they have dithered for so many months about what they are going to do, will the Minister kindly explain in what ways they plan to increase funding for higher education in Northern Ireland where it is desperately needed?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, waiting for the university to do a feasibility study and then ourselves doing an economic study of its impact is not my definition of dithering. Northern Ireland has the significant achievement of 41 per cent. of its youngsters going to university. I do not believe that we can be criticised over higher education.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, would not a positive decision on this matter be the greatest possible confidence-building measure that the Government could deliver in Northern Ireland? Is the Minister aware that this proposal has the support of both local constituency MPs, coming, as they do, from opposing political traditions?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, many activities in Northern Ireland have the support of all parties. That message may not get out as often as it should. Not everyone is in conflict with everyone else. The project could not happen without other parts of education being affected. Such considerations have to be taken seriously. We wait to see what is brought forward by the University of Ulster in a different format. But there is great hope in these areas and there is great spend in the economic area, including the bringing of jobs, which seems to me is the best inspiration of hope.
Lord Glentoran: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that this project is not just another campus project but is more of a regeneration project in what is perhaps one of the most divided and difficult communities of our Kingdom? Furthermore, does she agree that, were it successful, the gains in forwarding the peace process could be remarkable?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I assure my noble friend that we encourage the development of innovative proposals, which is important for this area. However, I strike a note of caution as regards his depressing depiction of the scene. A great deal of work is being undertaken and much support is being given to attract new investment to the area. For instance, £15 million-worth of support was given for F.G. Wilson to come into the area, and we are acquiring a new business park. We are beginning to see change and we are encouraging people there to take charge of their lives.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, it would not be proper to pretend that the change should happen at the expense of some of the other admirable projects mentioned by the noble Baroness. However, she referred to the gap in funding between the £13 million identified by the University of Ulster and the £100 million cost of the project. May I urge the Minister to look at the

929
example of the Scottish Office—I hope that she will agree that she should do so—in relation to the Highlands and Islands University, where its positive and active support is part of the case being made for the Millennium Fund?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, we examine everything that is happening in order to learn from it. However, I stress that our first responsibility is to examine the needs of Northern Ireland. Perhaps I may draw attention to the fact that the Scottish Office does not have to find £20 million in compensation for damage done during the summer.

Rabies and Quarantine Regulations
2.45 p.m.
Lord Carter asked Lord Carter asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they expect to complete the risk assessment of rabies and quarantine announced by the Chief Veterinary Officer of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the Royal Society of Medicine on 3rd May 1995.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, no such risk assessment was announced. The Chief Veterinary Officer indicated in May 1995 that if the arrangements for protecting the UK from rabies were to change an assessment of the risks would be carried out at the appropriate time. The Government are now looking again at these matters. If any changes were to be made these would have to take as their starting point the paramount need to protect the health of people and animals in this country.
Lord Carter: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Perhaps I may remind him that at the symposium on Rabies in a Changing World, held at the Royal Society of Medicine on 3rd May 1995, the Chief Veterinary Officer said:
"We will carry out our own risk assessment",
and later,
"The Ministry of Agriculture is taking a positive line. We are listening and will carry out our own risk assessment analysis".
Therefore, why has there been a change of stance since May 1995? Does the Minister agree that any sensible review of the existing policy on rabies and quarantine must be based on a proper and thorough risk assessment?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I believe that there is a slight misunderstanding of what the Chief Veterinary Officer said. Yes, there will be a risk assessment if and when there are proposals for change.
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley: My Lords, I hope that no risk will be taken. I have seen a man die from rabies; I have had to shoot my own dogs; and, with 200 others, I have had to undergo 12 daily injections in
930
the stomach. As the disease is so close now in Belgium, will the Minister assure the House that every precaution will still be taken?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, yes, indeed.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, will the Minister assure us that no attention will be paid to the views of the present Governor of Hong Kong, who wishes to bring his dogs back to this country without quarantine when he leaves there in 1997?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, whatever other change we might make, we would have to take into account the proximity of Hong Kong and China; China being a country where we believe that dog rabies may well be endemic.
Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior: My Lords, is the Minister aware that two risk assessments have been carried out; the first by the Commission of European Communities in 1991 and the second in New Zealand in 1994, which is most revealing? Will he place both those documents in the Library for further consultation?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, if we have documents which are capable of being released and are public documents I shall certainly place them in the Library.
I am aware of those documents and of the fact that risk assessments have been carried out. However, the New Zealand assessment was of a theoretical vaccination procedure, which we agree can produce protection equivalent to quarantine. We are not interested in a theoretical procedure but in a practical procedure which would guarantee the same level of protection.
Lord St.John of Bletso: My Lords, does the Minister agree that a review of quarantine laws would be somewhat difficult for the Government ahead of the general election next year? Does he further agree that if the system of pet passports were to be introduced, and if as the British Veterinary Association has recommended, a system of electronic tagging were to be introduced, there would then be no justification for the quarantine laws not to be reviewed or to be totally scrapped?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, as I said, we are certainly reviewing the current regulations and we are doing so very much in the light of the technical advances to which the noble Lord referred. But the question is how it would or could be implemented in practice. There is also the matter of how we may achieve European Union agreement to any proposals which we may make which concern us and which are likely to take some time, even with the best will in the world.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that six months is a very long time in the life of a dog, equivalent to three-and-a-half years of our lives?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, indeed, I am well aware of the inconvenience and unhappiness caused to many

931
people by the current quarantine regulations. But that must be set against the inconvenience and unhappiness which would be caused if we had rabies in this country.
Lord Hayhoe: My Lords, in view of the rather curious reference to the Governor of Hong Kong, is my noble friend aware that the Governor has made it absolutely clear that he will abide by the regulations in force when he returns to this country? It is monstrous to make any suggestion to the contrary in this House. Will my noble friend tell us how many animals in quarantine have been identified in the past 12 months or two years as actually having rabies?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am quite well aware that my right honourable friend will follow the customs of this country and will obey the law. I can also tell my noble friend that there have been no cases of rabies in quarantine in recent years.
Lord Carter: My Lords, it is rather curious that the Minister's answer to my first supplementary question put a gloss on the statement of the Chief Veterinary Officer which is not supported if one reads the whole discussion. Can I ask the Government to make it clear that they will not decide to review the policy and then have the risk assessment because that would be the wrong way round?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, a risk assessment must compare the current system with a new system. We must reach the point of having a proposed new system before we can have the risk assessment.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, is it not the case that dogs, cats and foxes are not the only carriers of rabies? I read of a goat giving rabies to a child which it had nibbled. Also, there was the recent case of the bats which had rabies. Can the Minister explain why quarantine regulations apply to dogs and cats but not to any other animals?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, my understanding is that the quarantine regulations apply principally to pets and if the noble Countess had a pet goat, the regulations might apply to it.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, is the noble Lord satisfied with the conditions in the quarantine kennels because from what one reads in the press, many of them seem to be below standard?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I believe that the conditions in the quarantine kennels have been considerably exaggerated for the worse. There is a code of practice which we are very much encouraging and helping to supervise but as I am sure the noble Lord is aware, the legislation is deficient in that we are unable, under the law, to impose welfare requirements on quarantine kennels.
The Earl of Liverpool: My Lords, when conducting a review, will my noble friend bear in mind the amount
932
of smuggling which it is generally agreed is taking place? Sweden had approximately 300 or 400 animals coming into that country per year before it adopted the inoculation, tagging and blood-testing provisions. In the first year in which those provisions were in operation the figure rose to 6,000-plus animals coming in. That must indicate that there is a very high level of smuggling taking place.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I believe that smuggling will take place under any system because any system is likely to impose considerable cost and inconvenience on people who are bringing pets in and out of this country. That means that there will always be a temptation for people to smuggle.

UK Visitors: Figures
2.53 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their estimate of the number of overseas visitors to the United Kingdom, for holidays, sport and conferences, in 1995; and what is their forecast of the equivalent number in 1996.
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, the International Passenger Survey suggests that, out of the record 24 million overseas visitors to the United Kingdom in 1995, 10.5 million came primarily for holidays and nearly 600,000 came to attend conferences. The survey does not record the number of people coming to the UK for sport.
The British Tourist Authority estimates that, in 1996, the UK will receive 25.8 million visitors. We do not expect that the proportion of people visiting for holiday purposes or for conferences to be radically different from 1995.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his encouraging reply. Does he agree that there is no reason why the numbers should not continue to increase, as will the value to the national economy? Since our history and heritage are prominent attractions, is it possible to entice visitors at all times of the year, thus reducing the seasonal aspect of employment in our tourism industry, and to spread them to different parts of the country, thus avoiding the mass overcrowding and traffic jams which have detracted from cultural centres in other parts of Europe?
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right. The British Tourist Authority predicts that the number of visitors will increase in 1996 and that it will be another record year. That will continue the encouraging trend of recent years and suggests that we are maintaining our market share. My noble friend referred to historic attractions and all-the-year-round appeal. Great historic buildings and other indoor heritage attractions make an important contribution to attracting tourists all the year round.

933
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has asked the chairmen of the tourist boards to review the use that we make of our heritage attractions with all the relevant bodies.
Lord McNally: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Financial Times estimates that the Treasury receipt from Euro '96 was some £64 million? Does that not make it extremely short-sighted that the policing of that competition was left entirely in cost terms to the local authorities concerned? If we are to attract major sporting and cultural events which bring hundreds of millions of pounds into the country and tens of millions of pounds to the Treasury, we must have a better way to police it than leaving it to the local authority where the event is to take place.
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord. I believe that Euro '96 was a great success because it attracted 250,000 extra visitors to this country and generated revenue of an extra £100 million. One must look to the future, and the world cup is the next logical step, building on the success of Euro '96.
Lord Clark of Kempston: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that the fact that the UK tourist industry last year attracted 24 million people, and the fact that they spent some £12 billion, is a great boost to our invisibles? Does my noble friend not agree that the attraction of the UK is not confined to tourism? Because of its competitive position, the UK is very attractive to inward investment. Would it not therefore be a folly to sign up to the social chapter and a minimum wage?
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, I heard somebody say "planted question" but nothing could be further from the truth, although this is my number one answer. My noble friend is quite correct. That is an area of great concern to us all. As we are aware from the Statement made by my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade, which was repeated by my noble and learned friend Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, action is being taken on that matter.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, does the Minister agree that wear and tear and damage to historic buildings and monuments is a consequence of the number of visitors who go to see them? Is he satisfied that English Heritage takes that into account in its budget for future years in view of the expected increase in the number of tourists? Does the grant paid by the Government to English Heritage allow for that increase in expenditure?
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, I cannot answer that question in relation to the funding of English Heritage. However, it is quite interesting to note that the Environment Select Committee of another place
934
in July 1995 concluded that compared with other activities, tourism does not cause significant damage to the countryside.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that at least 20,000 new jobs were created in tourism in the year to March 1996? Does he further agree that the industry has the potential for creating over 250,000 new jobs in tourism in the next 10 years? Bearing that in mind, does my noble friend agree that any change in that level of investment in future jobs—and I am thinking of the proposed minimum wage and the introduction of the 48 hour-week directive, which are so favoured by the Opposition—would have a really serious impact on the number of jobs and on the level of service for the future in this fiercely competitive global market?
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, my noble friend is quite correct. It is clear that the directive would have serious implications if applied to the tourism, leisure and hospitality industries. The British Hospitality Association has said that it could affect 15 per cent. of the workforce of the hospitality industry and cost up to £100 million per year.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, as noble Lords opposite have so inappropriately introduced politics into the matter, can the Minister confirm that the balance of trade on tourism under this Government, which was always in surplus under the Labour Government, has in fact, for the first time in history, turned into deficit? Does the noble Earl further agree that the key to the future success of our tourist industry is nothing to do with the marginal matters mentioned but lies in two areas: first, we must improve the quality of our product, mainly through investment in training; and, secondly, we must invest in marketing? Can the Minister say why the Government have no visible, coherent strategy to achieve that aim?
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, I was glad to hear that the noble Lord considers matters of yesterday as only "marginal" as regards the business of this country. The noble Lord also commented about the deficit on our balance of trade on tourism. Of course, since we came to power in 1979, people have been able to afford to go on holiday abroad—
Noble Lords: Oh!
The Earl of Courtown: Of course, they are very lucky to be able to go abroad on holiday. Indeed, I try to do so occasionally; but I also holiday in this country. When people think of their holidays, it is just as important for them to consider visiting attractions in this country. I know that I have not answered all of the noble Lord's questions, but, if he would like to repeat them, I might try again.

Falklands: Landmine Clearance
3.2 p.m.
Lord Dubs Lord Dubs asked Her Majesty's Government:
How many landmines have been cleared in the Falklands since the end of hostilities there; what has been the cost of this operation; and what is the estimate of the number of landmines still to be cleared and the area of land affected.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe): My Lords, about 4,300 landmines have been cleared since the end of hostilities in the Falklands. We believe that there are still around 26,000 landmines in nearly 120 separate minefields, covering some 20 square kilometres of ground. It is not possible to determine how much mine clearing activities have cost since the end of hostilities as these records are not held centrally. There is currently an eight-strong team in the Falklands spending half their time on minefield inspections, repairing fences around them and disposing of landmines. The cost of personnel for this team is £176,000 per year.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, is it not a matter of concern that, 14 years after the end of the Falklands War, such large proportions of the Falkland Islands are still too dangerous for people to walk on? Further, is that not something to which the Government could attach rather more urgency, so that the people of the Falklands could have the scourge of landmines removed from their islands as quickly as possible?
Earl Howe: My Lords, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware, there are many quite major difficulties associated with mine clearance. But, principally because of the difficulties involved in detecting the mines, many of which are plastic, and the dangers to the personnel involved, a decision was made to cease the clearance operations in 1984 and to mark the minefields clearly instead.
The Government and the Falkland islanders welcomed the offer first made in December 1993 by the Argentines to pay a third party to demine the Falklands. We are looking forward to discussing the next steps with the Argentines and with the United States, who have agreed to manage the project should a practical way forward be agreed. We hope that it can.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that Edinburgh University is conducting a research project on a mechanical device to clear landmines more rapidly and with less danger to the operators? That experiment is being carried out with some success and has been financed by charitable funds. Would it not be appropriate for the Government to finance that project?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, for drawing that project to my attention; I was
936
not aware of it. Nevertheless, on the broad subject of research, we continue to treat such research into the means of detecting non-metallic mines as a matter of considerable priority. The MoD is exchanging information with the United States and our European Union partners on a number of promising new technologies in the field. We are also working with humanitarian mine clearance agencies to seek to identify military technology which could be applied to humanitarian mine clearance tasks.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware that I personally exploded one of the mines near Port Stanley? Is he further aware that the mines have been scattered about a very large area, quite uncharted by the Argentinians, and that, therefore, to try to clear them up would be an extremely dangerous and hazardous job?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am most concerned to hear that my noble friend was involved in the explosion of a mine on the Falklands. However, she makes a valid point. Even if one could clear a certain area which is demarcated, one could never be absolutely sure that the area was completely clear and safe for people to walk on. That is a consideration which we should bear in mind.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Question tabled by my noble friend highlights the immense humanitarian implications of the use of anti-personnel mines in warfare? Have the Government been able to study the interesting statements by leading US military personnel who question the need for the use of such mines? Will the Government now undertake a fundamental review of whether we ourselves should ever contemplate the use of anti-personnel mines? In the meantime, are the Government prepared to issue an order refusing the military the powers to use them?
Earl Howe: My Lords, as I am sure the noble Lord will agree, the key objective is to reduce the danger to civilians. I do not believe that a unilateral renunciation by the UK would achieve that aim. We have to balance the humanitarian concerns that we all share with a continuing military requirement. If we can convince the major producers, exporters and users of anti-personnel mines to ban these weapons, then the United Kingdom would be willing to join that consensus. We will also ban them if suitable alternatives can be found.
However, the safety of our troops must remain paramount. We have said that we are keeping some stocks of anti-personnel mines, and we reserve the right to authorise their use in exceptional circumstances where Ministers are absolutely satisfied that there is no alternative to ensure the protection of our troops.
Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor: My Lords, can the noble Earl say whether the Argentinian authorities have given full co-operation in tracing the remaining

937
minefields? If they have not done so, are they not in breach of the Geneva Convention under which all minefields require to be recorded in detail and kept note of? Indeed, that was certainly the case during the last war?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the noble Earl makes an important point. I believe that the Argentines have been as helpful as they can be. However, the problem has been a distinct lack of detailed records. We know the approximate area of the minefields and they have been fenced off, but we have very little precise knowledge of where the mines were laid.

Business of the House: Debates this Day
The Lord Privy Seal (Viscount Cranborne): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. In moving the Motion, perhaps I may take this opportunity to draw your Lordships' attention to the guidance on the Speakers' List that speeches in the two debates, other than those of the mover and the noble Lord winding up, should be limited to 14 minutes and 11 minutes.
Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of Lord Hayhoe set down for today shall be limited to two hours and that in the name of the Baroness Perry of Southwark set down for the same day to three hours.—(Viscount Cranborne.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Social Security Fraud
3.9 p.m.
Lord Hayhoe Lord Hayhoe rose to call attention to the campaigns of the Department of Social Security to combat fraud within the social security system; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, there were press headlines yesterday and today about fraud within the European Union. As earlier debates and exchanges in your Lordships' House have shown, there is much general support for the tough and determined action which is required to deal with this wholly unacceptable problem. Today we are debating an equally unacceptable fraud within our own national social security system. I trust that this short debate will show the same widespread and general support for effective campaigns to combat this selfish and monstrous abuse of our benefit system.
I am delighted that two of my noble friends, Lady Anelay of St. Johns and Lord Rotherwick, have chosen this debate in which to make their maiden speeches. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, brings great authority to these issues with her long experience as a member of a social security appeal tribunal and of the United Kingdom Social Security Advisory Committee. I fear that I do not
938
know the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, but I am told that he builds aircraft. I therefore wish him well in his parliamentary take off. We look forward to both their speeches.
As was widely recognised in all parts of your Lordships' House during debates on the Housing Bill in the previous Session, one of the most consistent subjects of complaint by constituents to their Members of Parliament concern people jumping the housing queue to the detriment of sound and solid citizens who have been waiting patiently. During my 22 years as an elected Member of another place I found that another major area of complaint, which aroused equal emotion, concerned fraudulent claims for social security benefits of one kind or another. Let us make no mistake about it, neighbours and nearby local residents, particularly those living on housing estates or in close knit communities, almost always have a good idea of those who are abusing the system.
I must confess that as a Member for a west London constituency I was quite familiar with the anguish and frustration referred to by Frank Field, the Chairman of the Social Security Select Committee in another place, during the debate on benefit fraud on 18th June when he quoted from a letter he had received that very day which stated:
"Do you and others at Westminster know the depth of my anger and anguish when I stand in line in the Post Office to pay £2.95 to send a letter by special delivery and at the same time watch a foreigner in front of me collect seven £10 notes and take his mobile phone out of his bag? I am just one of those contributing towards the £70 but could not afford a mobile phone or the cost of the calls. I want to know when anyone is going to do something about all this because I know the people of this country are being destroyed. I write to you although I know Peter Lilley is actually the man in charge".—[Official Report, Commons, 18/6/96: col. 711.]
The letter was addressed to Frank Field rather than to Peter Lilley. I shall return later to that comment about my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. Having mentioned Frank Field, I at once pay tribute to his quite outstanding work as chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Social Security. The committee's report Housing Benefit Fraud is an important and instructive document which deserves careful study, together with the Government's reply which was published in June as Cm. 3299.
Inevitably, estimates of fraud are tentative. These can provoke somewhat and argument, as was seen in another place last June. However, there can be no doubt that within the total social security budget of some £90 billion a great deal of fraud exists. I hope my noble friend the Minister can give us the latest figures but there seems little doubt that more than £3,000 million of public money, taxpayers' money, is involved. The two main areas of fraud are income support and housing benefit.
Fraud takes many forms from individual claimants massaging details of their claim, or not disclosing essential facts, to collusion between employers and employees and between landlords and tenants. Housing benefit provides a wide range of opportunities, particularly as it is dealt with differently by the various local authorities responsible for it.

939
Payments are often made direct to landlords, some of whom are serious criminals, rather than to claimants. There are evilly-motivated individuals and gangs who deliberately milk the various systems and more and more sophisticated methods of fraud detection are required to deal with this serious crime. At this point I pay tribute to all those who investigate fraud. It can be difficult and dangerous work and all concerned deserve our thanks and respect.
There are some quite extraordinary cases of fraud on record. I refer just to one. I understand that in Oxford in 1982, 254 people were recorded as living in one four-bedroomed house. Presumably all of them were claiming and receiving benefit. People living abroad have been claiming benefit from addresses in the United Kingdom and then having relatives or friends forward the payments to them overseas. False identities, multiple identities, overseas bank accounts, phoney illnesses, forged papers are but some of the devices used to frustrate the system.
I am delighted and encouraged by the steady progress being made to combat fraud. I believe that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State fully deserves the praise that he receives, often from rather unexpected quarters. For example, the Social Security Select Committee in another place stated in the opening paragraph of its Housing Benefit Fraud report,
"the Secretary of State for Social Services, Mr. Peter [Alley, has shown himself to be one of the most intellectually able of Ministers and the most determined to combat fraud".
Apparently even more favourable words were proposed to the committee by the chairman, Frank Field. Such consensual behaviour seems more appropriate to this House than another place and it is therefore a real tribute to the Secretary of State. He took over as Secretary of State in 1992 and has given top priority to the fight against fraud. In that year fraud savings were some £500 million. By 1991–26—the last full financial year—they had nearly tripled. The Government expect to save some £1.8 billion in the current financial year. I have seen estimates that savings will amount to £5 billion a year by the turn of the century. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could give us more information on that admirable objective.
I have looked through a number of press releases from the Department of Social Security which set out some of the initiatives and campaigns directed against fraud which are underpinning the significant improvements that are being made. The "Spotlight" campaign, launched in March in Croydon, Haringey and Enfield, and since then extended to other areas, appears to be working well.
The "Beat-a-Cheat" telephone hotlines are proving a useful innovation. Of course some people were worried that those telephone lines would be used to settle personal scores. I believe others were worried about what could be described as "sneaking" or "grassing" on mates. However, benefit fraud is a selfish evil and an old fashioned, kid glove approach is quite inappropriate to deal with it. Fortunately there are enough solid citizens who are providing accurate
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information to specialist staff in the Benefits Agency, or to local authority staff who deal with housing benefit, to justify this anonymous tip-off approach. I understand that over 100,000 calls have already been received. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to bring us up to date with the success rate in identifying fraud which has arisen from the information which has been received through the "Beat-a-Cheat" telephone hot lines.
I gather that good progress is being made in recovering lost or stolen order books by the use of bar code scanners. The books are now identified in a unique fashion. If they are stolen or misused, they can often be identified. I hope that my noble friend will give us some update and a progress report on the rewards scheme for Post Office staff who identify stolen or fraudulent order books and giro cheques.
I have but skimmed the surface of the enormous range of activities deployed in the fight against benefit fraud, but more can be done. Even greater co-operation from the Post Office is required. Much fraud is linked with mail being redirected by the postal service. I hope that the department has overcome, or will soon overcome, the refusal of the Post Office to implement the "do not redirect" imprint on benefit payment envelopes; and access to the computerised mail redirection database of the Post Office would also be very helpful to those investigating fraud. Further effort is required to bring greater order to the whole system of national insurance numbers. It is generally satisfactory, but, like Topsy, the system has grown and grown over the years and is now in some disarray.
A most important element in the prevention of fraud will be the widespread use of the new benefit payment cards which are now being introduced. However, like credit cards, I imagine that criminals will be searching for ways to manufacture forgeries. I hope that the authorities are keeping in close touch with banks and others who face similar problems so as to share technical expertise and help outwit the crooks.
Last but by no means least, I have not forgotten the benefit fraud Bill. This Bill should help by giving fraud investigators the tools and access to the information they need. It will increase the range and severity of penalties for benefit fraud. It will improve local authorities' performance in dealing with housing benefit and council tax benefit fraud. It will provide incentives and pressures upon them so that those who have lagged behind in these campaigns can be made to catch up with those local authorities which are setting good examples. Perhaps the Minister will let us know when he expects the Bill to be published. The more that can be done to share information between local authorities dealing with housing benefit and the Benefits Agency the better. At present I understand that the computers do not talk to each other. I hope that ways will be found for allowing that to happen.
I want to end on a more fundamental note. Detailed plans and programmes for preventing and combating benefit fraud are of high significance, not just for the

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money that can be recovered and saved, but because success will help stem and reverse what might be called the culture of fraud acceptance which in its way is twinned with the culture of dependence which so many of us seek to reverse.
I began by talking of the anger of ordinary people against the fraudsters in their midst, on the housing estates or in local communities; but I have also noticed, in particular among younger people, a willingness to accept, even sometimes to admire, the fiddling, the petty swindling and fraud of public authorities. This corroding trend must be fought, resisted and defeated, and effective campaigns to combat benefit fraud will help to achieve just that. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.25 p.m.
Baroness Anelay of St. Johns: My Lords, I crave your indulgence. I stand before your Lordships in some trepidation having been introduced to this House a mere eight days ago. On that day one of the supporters of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, told me that when he took his seat, he was given some advice by a senior Member of this House: that he should settle in before making his maiden speech and that about three years should do the trick. I only hope that by the time I sit down today, your Lordships are not all wishing first, that I had also been given that same advice and, secondly, that I had heeded it.
But I could not resist the temptation to add my voice to this debate because my work in social security over the past 20 years has shown me that social security policy touches all our lives. I have sat as a lay member of a social security appeal tribunal and worked for 20 years with my local citizens advice bureau. This work has reinforced my belief that campaigns against fraud, in particular those which seek to prevent fraud, are vital because they protect the interests of genuine claimants—and it is their needs which are of importance to me.
The security and control programme launched in July last year has already complemented existing detection methods with an increased emphasis on the prevention and deterrence of fraud. The programme consists of more than 30 separate projects. I promise noble Lords that I do not intend to list them all. Some of those, like the Housing Benefit Matching Service, rely upon the development of information technology systems. But other projects rely upon the good old-fashioned human system of look, listen and learn. One such project is the extension of home visits and 1 million of these are being made to income support claimants during the current year 1991–27. While I was sitting as a member of an appeal tribunal earlier this summer, the presenting officer gave details of a successful home visit day—successful from his point of view because his local office had given one week's notice of its intention to visit eight long-term claimants. Then, hey presto, six of those claimants had phoned the office the next day to tell him that he did not need to visit them after all because they
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had "just got a job" and would be signing off immediately. He was not a man to believe in coincidences.
But home visits are also of great value to genuine claimants. They are just as capable of uncovering under-claiming as of revealing over-claiming. The home visit is much valued by honest claimants because it gives them the chance to discuss all their circumstances in private, in familiar and reassuring surroundings with all their evidence to hand.
Cheats can give all claimants a bad name and can deter those who are genuinely in need from claiming benefits to which they are entitled. During my years working with my local CAB as a voluntary adviser, I came across far too many cases of people who would not make a claim because they did not want to be tainted by association with those who fiddled the benefit system.
If potential claimants can be confident that cheats can be readily identified and prevented from making a fraudulent claim, they can be more confident about making a claim themselves and retaining their good name.
So I welcomed the announcement earlier this year that a benefit payment card would be introduced for use by those who collect their benefit from post offices. This should virtually eliminate instrument of payment fraud which currently runs at between £150 million and £200 million each year.
The instrument of payment fraud which so often grabs the newspaper headlines is that which is carried out by organised gangs stealing or counterfeiting order books or giros. This type of fraud is already reducing as a result of the introduction recently of measures such as the electronic stop notice system, the redesign of giro cheques and order books, and the introduction of secure delivery. But it is the introduction of the benefit payment card which should at last all but eliminate this type of fraud.
There is another type of false identity fraud which is far less well known publicly but is particularly vile. It involves loan sharks who prey on those who are vulnerable. I well remember one particular case. A mother who had recently been deserted and left with three small children had borrowed just £30 for a new jacket. The debt of £30 was to be repaid at the rate of £2 per week over a period of a year. But after six weeks she stopped paying. She had just received a large heating bill covering the time when her husband was still living at home and bringing in a wage. She was on income support. She paid the heating bill and for a while managed to dodge the loan shark. Finally, however, he tracked her down at home. He grabbed her handbag, took the child benefit book and "persuaded" her, with the help of two other gentlemen in the background, to sign enough counterfoils for him to be able to obtain money at the post office—not the £92 that she still owed, but over £200. The family was therefore forced to go without child benefit for several weeks as a lesson to her and her friends that she should never again fall behind with her payments. That is not an unusual story now. But it

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could be a thing of the past after the introduction of the benefit payment card. I am pleased to note that child benefit customers will be the first to be issued with the payment cards.
I have been impressed with the plans for this system. Those who designed it have taken into account that it is important to combine the need to fight fraud with the need to provide a flexible service to claimants. That is the sign of success in any benefits system: the ability to be fair to all, yet meet the needs of the individual. Fraud endangers access to benefits by the genuine claimant. I welcome measures that are being taken now and will be taken in the near future to detect, and above all prevent, the commission of fraud. In that way we can protect the vast majority of claimants who are honest. That must be the best course of action.
3.31 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, the honour falls to me to congratulate the noble Baroness on her excellent maiden speech. I am very relieved that she did not wait three years before talking on these matters. It shows the advantage that this House enjoys. We have many Members who have a great depth of experience in their subject.
I declare an interest as president of the Heavy Transport Association. I shall say just a few words about the manifestation of benefit fraud.
The authorities regularly carry out what are known as multi-agency checks on goods vehicles. Every time they do such a check they find several drivers who are claiming social security benefit while they are working. The Government's idea might be to ban those drivers by removing their vocational driving licence so that they can no longer perpetuate such fraud. I would counsel against that.
This type of fraud gives rise to unfair competition for operators who would like to work legally. I therefore propose that, instead of attacking the drivers, who are largely being forced to carry out benefit fraud, it would be better to attack unscrupulous operators by taking away what is known as their good repute. An operator needs to be of good repute in order to retain an operator's licence. The Minister, having previously held a post at the Department of Transport, knows all about that particular aspect. I hope that the opportunity will arise during discussion on the benefit fraud Bill to address this particular point.
3.33 p.m.
Lord Rotherwick: My Lords, I should like to thank noble Lords, the officers of the House and the staff for their kindness and succour. Without it, I suspect that a new boy such as I would be lost for ever, roaming the maze of corridors and chambers in this House. My grandfather, a Baronet, was elevated to this House in 1939, with the motto, "Caute sed irnpavide"—cautious but fearless. Any government wishing to succeed with a £90 billion social security budget must be cautious but at the same time fearless
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in reducing the fraud which runs at present at some £3 billion. One must welcome the proposed benefit fraud Bill to tackle these concerns.
Monday was Remembrance Day. At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, most of us stood in silence for two minutes remembering those who gave their lives for their country. Today, social security looks after the needs of the survivors and widows. Against the background of the courage and honesty of those who gave themselves to serve their country, we must view deception and fraud in the social security system by selfish individuals as abhorrent.
There are those who claim that a loss of around 3 per cent. from a £90 billion social security budget is inconsequential in the context of the overall budget. The attitude of some to fraud is to pretend that it is not very big; another attitude is that it is not very important. It has also been said that shoplifting is just a case of lone parents and other poor people helping themselves to a treat. However, I feel confident that most people feel committed to rooting out fraud, however small or unimportant. The benefit fraud Bill will galvanise poor-performing authorities to investigate fraud, enable better detection of fraud and bring forward more meaningful measures for punishing fraud.
To lose around 3 per cent. of the social security budget, amounting to approximately £2.7 billion, through fraud might seem small to some. But it represents some 9.5 per cent. of the pension budget. The mind boggles at what good that large amount of funds could achieve if placed in the right hands.
At present, each working person funds the social security budget by £15 every working day. However, the Benefits Agency must be applauded for detecting 400,000 welfare cheats last year, 10,000 of whom were prosecuted and were mainly persistent offenders and gangs.
At present many offenders, by the very virtue of being on social benefit, live on minimum resources. One of the punishments in this area is simply to return the money. Many of us might be encouraged to buy vast numbers of lottery tickets if our stake were handed back when we lost. The lottery system would fail if that were the case. In this area prevention rather than penalties must be the way forward. The identification of valid claims using the most up-to-date technology will surely be invaluable; whereas draconian penalties must be the way forward for sly, fraudulent landlords.
Our attitude in aggressively tackling such fraud is of paramount importance. I believe that the majority of people agree. The new "Know of a benefit rip-off? Give us a telephone tip-off" advertising campaign has resulted in a highly successful hotline. It opened in the summer and received 70,000 calls in eight weeks. It seems that there are those who pay attention to such values as truth and honesty.
Sadly, nearly half of all estimated fraud occurs in income support. The sombre statistics show that the largest group to commit such fraud is lone parents;

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18.5 per cent. of lone parents commit income support fraud. However, I am glad to tell the House that only 3.5 per cent. of pensioners commit similar fraud.
The second most common type of fraud involves cohabiting couples claiming to be single. It represents 28 per cent. in this category. At a time when we are concerned about the social fabric, it is worrying that in some situations such attitudes prevail.
Perhaps the saddest and most tragic deception is to be found in the area of asylum seeking. Britain will remain a haven for those who are genuinely fleeing from persecution. However, at the end of the period from 1988 to 1994, 10 times as many people claimed asylum as in the year 1988. Yet fewer than one claimant in 10 is found to be a genuine refugee and therefore a genuine social security claimant.
It does not matter how small or trivial welfare cheating is. It is the issue that is important. It must be vigorously arrested. I welcome the benefit fraud Bill. I hope that above all it will drastically reduce such deception and dishonesty and will kindle better attitudes, akin to the attitudes of those who gave so much in armed struggles in order to preserve the freedom and honesty of this country.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Birdwood: My Lords, it is rich pickings in a debate with so few speakers to have two maiden speakers, and I am delighted to be in a position to be following both. In my noble friend Lord Rotherwick we heard the voice of compassionate outrage. He spoke for the silent millions. In the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, we had that joy in the House of hearing an expert with decades of experience. I was particularly pleased that in the trifling six minutes that she allowed herself, she brought out the point that fraud militates against the honest claimant in that the honest claimant is reluctant to be seen in the company of the fraudster. That is an extremely good point and I had hoped that it would be raised in this debate. It was nice that it was raised in a maiden speech.
The usefulness of a debate in advance of the publication of a Bill sometimes escapes me. I do not disapprove of it as a sort of mini vox pop exercise. It provokes some focused thinking from the Front Benches. But one feels that, defending or attacking, one is punching empty air. When preparing what I should say this afternoon, I skimmed some relevant papers, such as the Housing Benefit Fraud Report of last May from another place, the fraud and security section in the appropriation accounts from the same source, the debate in March and Questions in both Houses. It seemed the least I could do as a courtesy to the House this afternoon, but it had the effect of confirming to me how very out of my depth I should be if I pretended to any expertise in this crucial area of political management. In any case, others who will speak this afternoon have spent entire careers looking at these issues. We are fortunate to be able to share in that depth of experience.
My own thoughts have turned to the problems of fraud at the sharp end of the benefit linkage. It seems to me that, even at the level of superficiality which my
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reflections must occupy, there are issues which bear repeating. I shall take as a given that the benefit fraud Bill is an important and welcome outward sign of highly creditable central initiative. The Government have a good record in combating fraud and seem likely to meet or exceed their targets. The benefit fraud investigation service seems logically organised in, I think, nine areas in England and Wales, something like 13 areas for the UK in total.
The manning levels of these areas in the service are largely appropriate, or would be if the service had the right tools for the job. The management information system (MIS) has the unlovely acronym of FIBS, standing for "fraud in benefit" or whatever. FIBS is now five years old, which in MIS terms is very old. It is built on SUPERBASE, which, though rugged enough in its original application, is less than amenable to network use. I am told by the people who have to make it work that, in computer-speak, it is constantly falling over.
One of the problems of trying to patch and mend an older system is that exasperation turns to distrust which turns to fear. I am worried that we could be on the way to turning the men and women who man the fraud service away from an easy acceptance of the next generation of technical tools which they must have—not may have, but must have—if the fraud Bill is to meet its next thresholds of target.
I have homed in on the issue of fraud at the point of claim because it is at that point, the contact moment between the claimant and the cash box, so to speak, that the tools which the Government could implement now would transform the accuracy of matching claim to claimant. The Bill will address the barriers to information comparison, which is the minimum default procedure that its drafters will tackle. My experience in other environments where very large databases are shared leads me to hope that, for instance, risk-assessment architectures in expert systems will feature critically in the implementation procedures. A mortgage company can deliver overnight a solid decision on the validity of a request. I believe the benefit service takes nearly three months to obtain a result with data of a lower level of complexity. I am sure that in the agency as a whole there are teams working with tools such as regression analysis to cope with this.
Perhaps what I take for granted should not be taken for granted; namely, that the staff whose job it is to have the contact with the claimant must always be separate from the fraud service's employees. This, in agency terms, is probably heresy. Claim-level staff are not equipped to behave like pocket detectives. Their job is already stressful enough, but this process, which one might call "post-referral identification and detection matched against point-of-claim", can have an immediacy which the technology can deliver and which will be a real disincentive to the attempt at fraud.
There are now enabling technologies to deliver process improvements against low-level fraud. I say "low-level fraud"; and I think this point needs to be made. We are talking in statistical terms of many individuals doing what people do when they have nowhere else to go in their own lives and are often

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driven to take care of others who are dependent on them. That is a profoundly different issue from organised fraud, from fraud on the scale where it becomes a minor industry. Perhaps—just perhaps—the strategies for these categories need different Bills. However, it will be argued that fraud is fraud, whether one-off as a personal act of despair or inner-city endemic to family survival where the normative ethics are as remote as Athenian Greece or indeed whether it is a business based on the systematisation of crime and greed. It is a point worth debating, though.
I wanted to use my inexpert contribution to this afternoon's debate to widen our reflections on social security fraud in order to say something about the nature of our society. There is broad agreement among people who make it their business to look into the future that full-time work will cease to be the automatic expectation of an adult in a developed society. Work will be project-based, transient, remote and even possibly an elite activity. As this scenario unfolds, we shall see unprecedented strains in the stuff of society, tectonic strains which will cut across demographic boundaries. As an earthquake brings buildings down, so these changes will crack and tumble social structures which seem to have been part of our landscape for ever. At the same time, we are troubled by a seeming loss of moral self-worth, expressed by the endless questing for new moral absolutes. We cannot look into each other's minds to find reassurances about a general morality, so we are forced to look only at each other's behaviour. It is the only evidence we have. It may be blindingly obvious to state this, but all a government can do is to measure what a person has done against the rulebook which applies at the time, which we usually call the law. The media is luckier in this respect; it can prattle on about moral changes, make moral judgments, wring its hands or point the finger.
A moment ago I touched on the changing nature of work. As is usually the case, changes in society are taking place before any act of Government can respond. As I speak, all developed communities continue to make hard distinctions between work and welfare. All politicians, without exception, metaphorically draw that boundary in the sand: "This is work," they say, "and this is welfare." Politicians know their business, and they read correctly the deep resentment which colours the attitudes of those in work to the welfare moonlighter or the bent landlord.
Where my argument is leading, based on irrevocable trends in the patterns of work itself, is toward work and welfare, rather than being areas with a hard-edged boundary between them, having to start to blur together. Of course, that is already happening, with government after government lubricating unemployment statistics by stealth. I believe my own party to be more honest about those figures than any other political ideologies on offer. It is no accident that socialist societies trumpet their full employment status, at least until real life catches up, as it always will.
Any observer of a community where a legal framework has evolved for the management of that society will be confronted by the paradox that in terms of perception, there are individual acts which are wrong
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but not illegal; and there are individual acts which are illegal but not perceived as wrong. Anybody knows what I mean. Destroying hope in another human being is wrong but not illegal; inadvertently going into penalty on a parking meter is illegal but not exactly worth an entry by the recording angel.
Benefit fraud is unusual in terms of social perception, because it is uniquely pervasive, and for the honest claimant—or indeed the honest taxpayer—uniquely offensive. Benefit fraud is theft. Notwithstanding the ebb and flow of our view of wrong, theft can never be any part of this country's sanctions of what is right.
3.52 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, we have been privileged today to hear in this debate two notable maiden speeches. I listened with pleasure to the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, who said, many things with which I agree and said them very well. I should also like to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, not only to the House but to a very much smaller body: the team of social security specialists in the House. Since the death of the late and much loved Lady Faithful!, the Conservative Back Benches have been very short of specialists in social security. I look forward to hearing the noble Baroness on many future occasions, arguing with her on a few, agreeing with her on others and always learning from listening to what she has to say. I shall take up later a few points that she made but, since I agree with them all, I shall not thereby make them controversial.
When I think about the subject of this debate, I remember a highly successful advertising campaign run by the Conservative Party in the long climb back towards the general election of 1964. The opening and paradigm advertisement in that campaign had a large picture of a CND demonstrator waving a placard saying "Ban the Bomb" and the caption was "Meanwhile, the Conservatives sign the Test Ban Treaty". Today, the boot is on the other foot. The Conservatives have started a campaign against social security fraud and meanwhile Liberal Democrat councils have scored more success in combating social security fraud than have councils of any other party.
Having said that, I do not feel that any of us should come into this debate claiming moral superiority. There may be other reasons for that, as well as the excellence of our councillors which is very great, but I shall not attempt to argue in those terms. We are all agreed that fraud is theft and fraud is wrong. Fraud takes money out of the pockets of those who should have had it and puts it into the pockets of those who should not have had it. I hope we can take that as something which we all feel equally in every quarter of the House. There is nothing new about it either. In 1614 a beggar was arrested outside St. Margaret's, Westminster. It was found that in his pocket he had £30, which was then approximately two years' wages for an ordinary labourer. He was offered an acquittal but discharge if he would give £5 to the poor. He plea-bargained it down to £4 and got off. So there is nothing new about any of this.

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Dealing with fraud is hard, long, slow and dull work. There are not many headlines to be got from it. Combating fraud also is a function of the accuracy of the system as a whole. So one should look at the accuracy of the delivery of benefit as something general: the more organised the system, the less easy it is to defraud. I look forward to the fraud Bill and, as the noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, pointed out, there is a lot that we cannot say until we see it. It is clearly right that there must be interchangeability of government data. But that will involve a fairly considerable check on the accuracy of government data. It has been suggested that many government agencies, particularly I am told the DVLC, hold a lot of data which are not entirely accurate.
There are certain tests which work against fraud must pass. One relates to justice and accuracy. In the haste to condemn the guilty, we must be equally sure that we acquit the innocent. By the way, we have had benefit agency figures quoted for amounts of fraud among different categories of people. Those figures are taken together: confirmed fraud and suspected fraud. People cannot be condemned because they are suspected of a crime. It is like the case in the papers when I was a boy of someone prosecuted for loitering with intent to press Button B. The magistrate threw out the charge and I was very glad that he did.
In considering accuracy we also need to be careful of targets. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, once asking the Minister how he knew the amount of undetected fraud. He did not receive a particularly convincing answer and the question needs to go on being asked. So, when I hear about targets I wonder how they have been arrived at and how accurate they are.
Secondly, we need to consider the test of proportionality. In that context, I was very pleased to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, had to say about under-claiming. It is an equally serious problem. I agree with her that combating fraud leads to under-claiming. We should look with equal intensity for people who ought to be receiving benefit and who are not doing so. For that reason it was a little unfortunate that the fraud hotline was instituted at the same time as a cutback on the helpline. It gives a slightly unfortunate impression.
There is another case where proportionality is an issue. I have sent in Questions for Written Answer but the Answers have not yet arrived. I asked how many people are employed and at what cost in combating social security fraud; and how many are employed and at what cost in the Serious Fraud Office. I shall read those Answers with interest and I hope that others will do so too. That needs thought also.
We have to consider the effectiveness of measures. In that context, I am glad of what the noble Lord, Lord Hayhoe, and many other speakers had to say about housing benefit fraud by landlords. Landlords are in a position to do that much more easily and on a much bigger scale than many other people.
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I was interested also in what was said about collusion with an employer in relation to income support. I wonder whether a minimum wage might make the temptation to do that a bit less than it is at present. I will look at that with interest; the situation needs monitoring. I say no more than that. I will also watch with a certain amount of anxiety what the effect of the "change" programme on all of this may be. I know and I am glad that the fraud programme is ring-fenced from the change programme. But I come back to the point with which I began; that a disorganised department is more easily defrauded than a well-run one. So there is perhaps a risk that if the change programme were to go too fast it might become easier to defraud the Department of Social Security than it is at present. That will need watching as we go along.
In relation to the benefit payment card I agree with what has been said. On other occasions I have heard the Minister give very good answers to the questions asked today about the danger of somebody stealing a benefit payment card for purposes of fraud. I hope that he will be able to repeat those answers and reassurances a little further.
The other point that worries me is the use of fraud allegation for demonology. There is nothing new about that. It goes right back to,
"Hark, hark, the dogs do bark.
The beggars are coming to town".
It always seems to arise at periods when the burden on the system is heavy, and indeed it is natural that it should. The last part of the reign of Elizabeth I is a case in point. I shall therefore be glad to hear the Minister say at the end of the day that the vast majority of social security claimants are honest and that nothing any of us have said in this debate is in any way meant to cast doubt on that.
I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said about the danger of giving all claimants a bad name. Widespread fraud does that. But widespread campaigns against fraud risk doing it also. So we must all—I am addressing myself too—be careful about that as we go along.
I am afraid I share some of the anxieties in relation to the benefit of a cheat hotline. Reliance on the informer has always been risky. It has been done many times before in many other contexts, usually in hunting either for heresy or for witchcraft. Of course, whether or not the information is true is not the same question as whether it is given in malice. The story told by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, about the child benefit book and the loan shark is a good illustration of that point. I shall remember it and, if I may, I may quote it again.
We may therefore be encouraging malice even where genuine fraud is being detected. That would not be unmitigated gain. There is also a risk of informing for profit, especially in cases like the Post Office system where there is a bonus for informing. There used to be professional informers who made their living from it. In the city of Gloucester one of them was dealt with by being thrown into the River Severn. There was one who used to work at the Somerset Quarter Sessions who was appropriately named "Mr. Knowman".

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I do not want to see anything like that system coming back. If there are to be reports, they must be on a small enough scale to make sure that they give no rise to temptation of that sort. With those safeguards we are doing something important. But I hope the attempt to combat fraud will continue carefully, laboriously, dully and with those safeguards in mind. With that, I am happy to support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Hayhoe.
4.4 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am sure I speak for the Whole House in first thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hayhoe, for introducing this debate in such a sane and balanced way so that he commands the assent of the Whole House. Again I am sure that I speak on behalf of the Whole House in congratulating our two maiden speakers, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, on their thoughtful, stylish and well-informed speeches. We hope to hear from them again very soon.
The significance of this debate is that it concerns the accuracy of the delivery of benefits. The DSS has too often fallen short on the accurate delivery of benefits in three ways. First, we have had an unacceptably high rate of departmental error in calculating and paying out benefit, not just as regards the Child Support Agency where still one quarter of all assessments are wrong, but also as regards income support, where only 78 per cent.—barely three-quarters—of the payments are accurate according to the National Audit Office and the Benefit Agency's own quality support figures.
Secondly, not only do we have an unacceptably high rate of error, but also—this was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Russell—we have unacceptably low rates of take-up, especially in family credit where only two-thirds of families with children claim the benefit to which they are entitled and with pensioners, some 700,000 of whom are on state pensions and fail to claim the income support top-up to which they are entitled worth £14 a week. That would float many of them off poverty and enable them to afford winter heating.
Thirdly, we have had and continue to have a worrying and unacceptably high level of fraud. The DSS survey in 1994 showed that nearly 10 per cent. of income support and 8 per cent. of unemployment benefit claims were possibly fraudulent. Other research suggests that perhaps one in five housing benefit claims may be equally dubious, and that is the subject of today's debate.
I am sure that there is no division between us in this House on all those concerns—the need to minimise error, the need to increase take-up and the need to reduce fraud. We all agree that fraud is theft; that every pound fraudulently taken is a pound denied to someone in need. It is not just about saving money; it is also about the integrity of the welfare state itself. If the welfare state is perceived to be riddled with petty and not so petty fraud, it will not inspire the confidence of those who are funding and contributing to it. People will not willingly see their taxes going into a system where they believe millions and billions are creamed off in fraud.
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The Government have been in office for 17 years. It is only in the past couple of years, prodded in large part as the noble Lord, Lord Hayhoe, generously acknowledged, by the work of my honourable friend in another place, Frank Field, that the issue of fraud has come so much to the top of the agenda. The Government estimate that perhaps £3 billion has been lost in fraud. It may be more than that if we take some of the more pessimistic figures in relation to housing benefit fraud. But only a small proportion of that is being uncovered by government. Much of that fraud has been a byproduct of government policy. Why has it increased?
First, over the past 17 years we have seen a growth in part-time, low paid, irregular and insecure work in which people at the bottom of the wages pile are churned on and off benefit into low paid work and back again on to benefit. For example, they may be on income support but have part-time work as casual building labourers, minicab drivers, care assistants and cleaners and do not report it. They are often encouraged not to report it by unscrupulous employers who can then pay low wages instead. Some of them simply fail to resist temptation, though they should do so.
The problem has been worsened by the increase in means-tested benefits which are now double the proportion of DSS budgets that they were in 1979. Now, for example, a husband is likely to lose income support benefit if his wife is in work, and there may be the temptation not to declare. Equally, we have the situation of lone parents—lone mothers in particular. A lone mother may share her bed with a boyfriend, but not necessarily the household budget, and given that the boyfriend is too often unreliable, it is not surprising that she may feel that financially she is on her own.
However, others are clearly not possible victims but downright rogues. The DSS reports that one inspector found a roofer 20 feet up at 8 a.m. who claimed he was bird watching. Another fraud inspector arrived at an Oasis concert site at 7 a.m. to find that the stage hands on his presence fled behind trees, where they stayed for several hours until they realised that the inspector was not going to go away and then they trickled out. A similar surprise awaited the van driver who brought the portable toilets and the bus driver who brought a load of fans. There are undoubted rogues, and they should not be tolerated, but nonetheless to some extent we must take responsibility for the growth in the part-time, low paid, insecure work which has churned people on and off benefits very rapidly. The temptation then not to declare earnings has increased.
A second reason for the growth in fraud is that the DSS system itself has become more complex. Since 1988 the National Audit Office has refused to pass income support accounts because the error rates are so high. The line between error, where the department overpays, and fraud, where the customer does not repay that overpayment, is a slender one. Many such territories have been created by government themselves. For example, when government insisted that mortgage payments covered by income support be paid direct to the building societies without appreciating the administrative complexity that would follow, they landed many customers in arrears through no fault of

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their own and many were exposed to risk of repossession. The system broke down because the Government changed policy. The result has been significant problems in the accuracy of income support, a direct consequence of government policy.
A third reason for the growth in fraud is that the Government have reduced home visits. In 1979 there were 6.5 million home visits to a much smaller number of claimants, not just encouraging people to take up benefits but also detecting fraud. Two years ago the figure had fallen to barely half a million visits. Belatedly, the Government are realising the wisdom preached by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, today, that home visits are essential if one is to ensure that accurate information goes into the DSS data base. As Peter Lilley wrote to William Waldegrave when the Treasury Secretary was proposing to cut the administration of the DSS by a further 25 per cent. and therefore also such possibilities as home visits:
"Your proposed settlement on running costs fills me with despair. Quite apart from the political fall-out as the service becomes more chaotic, I am convinced … that we would be cutting off our noses to spite our faces".
Mr. Lilley was absolutely right. As government have cut back on home visits, as government have cut back on the running costs of the department, so we have seen fraud increase.
More worrying also is the growth now not of what I might call victim crime or rogue crime but of organised fraud in which giro books are stolen or forged and in which false national insurance identities circulate. We now have around 2 million insecure national insurance numbers floating around the system and no way to check. It is true that we are going to have a new passport system, but anyone who has acquired a forged national insurance identity will be asked identification questions which they will easily be able to answer as they will have given the DSS that information in the first place. We hope the Minister will be able to assure us that in the new fraud Bill there will be more stringent methods of controlling national insurance numbers than we have so far been told about.
Finally, and most worrying of all, is the organised crime associated with housing benefit, a point to which the noble Lord, Lord Hayhoe, drew attention. In the past five years the Government have deregulated housing rents. Housing benefit has doubled in real terms since 1990. Two-thirds of that housing benefit-65 per cent.—is paid direct to landlords, very often as a condition of tenancy. It has become a charter for cheating. Perhaps one of those payments in five is corrupted. The fraud may well exceed £2 billion out of the £11 billion spent currently on housing benefit. Some greedy landlords are milking £100,000 a year out of the housing benefit system. They claim for tenants who do not exist, they claim for tenants who speak so little English that they cannot contradict and they claim for tenants who have moved on or died.
Local authorities want to tackle this problem. I hope the Minister will resist the temptation of fingering local government for its inability fully to tackle landlord fraud. This year 90 per cent. of local authorities have
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met and exceeded the targets laid down by central government and are detecting around three times as much fraud in cash terms as just a couple of years ago. Yet local authorities—this is another example of government policy contributing to the growth of the fraud culture—continue to have their hands tied behind their backs by government.
The Government have been notoriously soft on landlord fraud. Not many months ago we completed the Housing Act. We on the Opposition Benches moved amendment after amendment to give local authorities more powers to tackle landlord fraud. All of those amendments were resisted by government. We asked that local authorities should be able to withhold payments from landlords where they were in doubt about their honesty. Local authorities wanted, but were not allowed to demand, proof of identity. Local authorities wanted, but government refused them, a list of all the properties that the landlord owned so that they could cross-check with other information. Why did the Government refuse local authorities that power? I fear that it was because they believed that to do so would be hard on landlords.
We wanted, but government refused to let us have, a national licensing system of houses in multiple occupation. That would have had a huge effect on checking fraud. We were not allowed to have lists of redirected mail from post offices, which again would have been a huge help to local authorities tackling landlord fraud. On top of that the Government cut the subsidy for managing housing benefit and tackling fraud and allowed landlords to gain repossession within eight weeks rather than 13 weeks, thus increasing the pressure on local authorities to deliver housing benefit speedily without necessarily going through all the checks.
In the recent Housing Act we tried amendment after amendment after amendment to strengthen local authorities' powers to tackle landlord organised fraud. The Government resisted every one of those amendments. The Minister may not have been responsible for all of the stages of that Bill but some of us on these Benches moved the amendments that were resisted. It may be that the provisions we asked for then but were refused will be in the new fraud Bill, in which case we will welcome it.
Instead, we have had Operation Spotlight, in which inspectors have parachuted in. We hope that the effect of their spotlight will be to continue to deter fraudsters. But we need to see more evidence that it will. At the very same time as the take-up helpline was closed down we have seen the opening of a fraud hot-line, which has received around 100,000 calls. But as far as we can tell from the research so far done, about half the calls are unreliable and grudge inspired.
Coming through the system there is the fraud Bill, which seems to have as its main purpose that central government will use their inspectors to encourage local authorities to pursue fraud more vigorously. If the Government had accepted our amendments on the Housing Bill, a good deal of that would have been quite unnecessary. There is also Project Work, the latest activity of government, in which two pilot areas were

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tested. From 4,000 people on their Project Work training schemes, the Government have shown that only 8 per cent. moved into work but perhaps double that number have been deterred from claiming benefit. These statistics need to be scrutinised with care, but they nonetheless suggest that there is a large amount of low level fraud out there that must be checked. What is worrying is the assumption that, in terms of motivating people to work, compulsion is required at a time when there are eight people pursuing every job vacancy. The problem is not compulsion and a lack of willingness to work, but the poor quality of training which is on offer.
If the Government are serious—as I hope they now are—in tackling fraud as we have been pressing them to do, they will tackle the issue of landlord fraud and give local authorities the powers they need. They will increase home visits not just from 500,000 to 1 million, but nearer the much larger figure that we had a few years back. They will also tighten up and clean up the National Insurance system so that we can be assured that people are not falsely claiming benefit to which they are not entitled. These three things alone will almost certainly save £1 billion of fraud money. We would welcome the Minister confirming that those things will be included in the fraud Bill.
Perhaps I may make one final point. All of us in this House want to eradicate fraud from the benefit system. There is no division about this. We want to see a renewed welfare state built on trust. The other side of that proposition is that people who are entitled to benefit also get it. Can we hope that the new information technology in the new fraud Bill will give benefit to those who at present do not get the benefit to which they are entitled? We hope that it will allow very many elderly people and families with children living in poverty to be floated into a better and higher standard of living. As I say, if the Government use Project Work and the fraud Bill not just to penalize culprits but to rebuild our trust in the welfare state, to that degree it will have our support. We welcome the Government to a belated concern for the issue of fraud after 17 years of stewardship.
4.21 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hayhoe has tabled a vital issue for debate. Indeed, I thought that I was going to be able to say that the debate had been conducted pretty well in a spirit of all-party agreement, but the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, managed to introduce perhaps more controversy into the debate in her speech than the sum of the controversy put in by all the other speakers. I may be unable to resist the temptation to take up one or two of the points that she made.
First, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the maiden speakers to our midst. I congratulate them on their speeches. My noble friend Lady Anelay is no stranger to social security matters. As she told us, she served for some time on the Social Security Advisory Committee of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and for about 14 years, I believe, she has been a member of a social security appeals tribunal. On the other side of
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the fence, so to speak, she has had a long relationship with the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux. Given her background and knowledge, which I knew about when I saw that she was among those who were to come to this House, I would have been greatly disappointed if I had had to wait three years for her to help me in these debates. Her help will balance to a considerable extent, I believe, the efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, opposite me.
My noble friend Lord Rotherwick made some very telling points in his maiden speech. His career includes an interesting cross-section of interests, one of them being horse racing and horses. So perhaps your Lordships will be able to go to him for tips about the horses which are most likely to succeed. My noble friend reminded us of one very important matter, which I often repeat at the Dispatch Box—that is to say, the cost and size of the social security budget. He redefined £90 billion in a way that is perhaps more meaningful to most of us who cannot really think in terms of billions of pounds. He reminded us that it actually costs every working person every working day about £15. That money goes to a number of different groups. Many of the people in those groups thoroughly deserve the benefits. The working man contributing his £15 and indeed the population at large are, I am sure, perfectly happy to make that contribution.
We have an increasing number of elderly people which affects the cost of pensions. We are to have a debate on that issue next Wednesday. We have a rise in the number of single parents, a subject now being addressed by the wider public looking at some of the consequences of that rise other than the straightforward financial ones. We have sickness, incapacity and unemployment.
Once again today we have the extraordinarily good news of another monthly fall in the unemployment figures. This time there has been quite a large fall, taking unemployment in Britain down to 7.2 per cent. That is splendid news. Indeed, Eurostat, which compiles the unemployment figures for the whole of Europe on a common base, points out that across Europe unemployment rates remain constant at nearly 11 per cent. whereas we in the United Kingdom are virtually alone in having falling unemployment.
Looked at conversely, we have 70 per cent. of our people of working age with jobs in Britain compared with 65 per cent. in Germany and 59 per cent. in France. It would have been nice if the noble Baroness—who normally chastises me by reminding me that one of the reasons for the £90 billion budget is unemployment—had recognised that once again today, as is the case every month, it is the success of the Government's economic policies which have brought about the fall in unemployment. I shall resist the temptation to remind your Lordships, as noble Lords were reminded at Question Time, of the dangers that signing up to things like the European social chapter will bring to the successful economy we have had in this country—the rise in jobs, the fall in unemployment and the attraction of inward investment.

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I return to the debate and to my noble friend Lord Hayhoe. He reminded us of the sterling work that my right honourable friend Peter Lilley has done since he became Secretary of State for Social Security. In a careful and painstaking way he has tackled all the benefits one at a time. He has looked at them, how they have grown, and why, and what we can do to make certain that the help we give to people is targeted on those who deserve it. In addition, he has looked at safeguarding the benefit system from fraud.
What we want to do is shift the emphasis as far as we possibly can away from catching people who are making fraudulent claims to making it pretty difficult for people to make such fraudulent claims; in other words, to deter them from making them. In addition to the work done in my department under the guidance of Mr. Lilley, we have a new inter-departmental ministerial committee on countering benefit fraud which was formed last July. It is chaired by the Secretary of State for Social Security with senior Ministers from across Whitehall. That group mobilises the full force of the Government in the fight against benefit fraud.
A number of your Lordships referred to the fact that very soon we shall be seeing a Bill which will further strengthen our hand in the fight against fraud. The Bill's purpose is to make social security fraud a much less attractive proposition. It will do so in two ways. First, it will give fraud investigators the tools they need to catch and penalise fraudsters. For example, access to data held elsewhere in government will make it much harder for fraudsters to lie or conceal information. New options for penalising those who commit fraud will make it plain that fraud is not a soft option. We can and will take sanctions against the fraudsters.
Secondly, the Bill aims to improve local authorities' performance against fraud by a process of inspection and recommendation, backed up by the power to impose financial sanctions on those which do not improve.
Meanwhile, we are pressing ahead with our existing programme of anti-fraud work. In July 1995 two nationwide programmes of visiting new customers and reviewing existing claims for income support were begun. New claims for the job seeker's allowance were included from October. Virtually—of course, virtually—all claimants are honest. I am happy to make that point. I believe that I was invited to do so by the noble Earl, Lord Russell. But we do have to protect the system against the dishonest minority. So the Benefits Agency selects new claims in high risk categories and then carries out home visits to check that people live where they say they do, are who they say they are, and that all the other relevant personal and financial circumstances are correctly reported. That subject was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Anelay.
These initiatives are proving to be very cost effective. Almost 300,000 new claim visits were carried out in the past financial year, resulting in savings of £162 million. Reviews of selected existing claims, which are targeted reviews, are also being carried out by visit, post or by telephone. Almost 550,000 targeted reviews were conducted last year resulting in a saving of £79 million.
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Those are highly targeted reviews. We try to identify those groups where we know from our experience there is likely to be the highest incidence of fraud. Those are the ones we target for visits.
In March this year we launched a "spotlight on benefit cheats" campaign, which has been mentioned once or twice. It involves a series of month-long anti-fraud drives in specific areas across the country with special area-based publicity before each drive starts. The objective is to encourage people who have drifted into benefit fraud to put their claims right before the campaign starts. There are many people in that category who have just drifted into it, perhaps because they have taken up a bit more work. They are given the opportunity to put their claim into the correct position as soon as they can and before we start our investigation. We shall then bear down hard on those who have failed to take the opportunity to come clean.
Each campaign involves the national benefit fraud hotline, with local exercises matching data across benefit to detect inconsistencies—a point made by my noble friend Lord Birdwood who spoke about the use of IT—higher profile visits and other checks on customers, and the use of bar code scanners in selected post offices to detect stolen order books. My noble friend Lord Hayhoe and a number of other noble Lords mentioned that. About £200 million of savings were achieved last year through using bar code scanners. They are an important tool, and bridge the gap between today's technology, using order books and girocheques, and what will happen in two or three years' time when the benefit payment card, to which I shall return, has been rolled out in its entirety. In those specific areas we have also had special drives on employers and self-employed people who are likely to be involved in benefit fraud. We are giving a higher profile to all benefit fraud, including housing benefit fraud, in particular—the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, will be happy to hear—where the landlord is involved.
The total amount of benefit fraud stopped by the first phase of campaigns is about £42 million. In addition, in some of those areas and in other parts of the country, we have taken part in recent road stop exercises, as mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. We have made considerable savings there. In addition to the few lorry drivers we picked up, who are working and claiming, we have found a number of people doing the same thing in the taxi business where checks, not merely in the special areas but across the country, can often reveal people who are claiming and at the same time working.
The noble Baroness referred to the case—amusing, if it were not so serious—of the outdoor pop event, which I have to admit took place in Scotland, where the benefit fraud office found vast numbers of people coming to work who were also customers of the Benefits Agency. They were taking a day off from the Benefits Agency to help set up the pop concert. There are a number of different cases: the unemployed man who receives benefit but works as a night watchman because that is the easiest way to go to and from one's work without the neighbours seeing. His wife, too, claimed benefit by saying that she was a single parent, but she did it

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twice—once from her mother's address and again from her sister's address. Or there is the man who claimed incapacity benefit, and had been doing so for the past 15 years, who planned a trip to Africa to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. His other interests included marathon running, tug-of-war competitions and abseiling. There is a lady who lives abroad and returns to Britain each time she becomes pregnant. She registers the child in this country, claims child benefit, and then returns to her home land and her family.
In a way those cases are amusing, but they are serious because, taken together, they add up to a great deal of money and give the impression, when one reads of them, that everyone who is on benefit may be on the same lines. That, as I have said, is just not the case.
The national benefit fraud hotline we have now wheeled out is one of the successful elements of our spotlight campaign. The public response has been considerable. There have been about 100,000 calls. We have made savings of about £15 million. Some of the calls give us enough information to follow up clearly; others do not. There is no evidence of a huge number of malicious calls. Many calls are far from that. Partners—these days one has to call them partners, I suppose—splitting up seem to be a small seam of reporting with the partner who has been split from, so to speak, deciding to report the other half for whatever chicanery they are up to. In one case, two or three hours later, the person phoned up again and said, "Can I take all that back? He has come back to me."
To tackle fraud effectively we need to be one step ahead of the fraudster. In looking at our programme of benefit reviews, as part of our strategy we are trying to establish how much benefit is incorrectly paid and identify the causes of those incorrect payments. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, mentioned that in the general term of accuracy of the social security system. Via the change programme and policy simplification we are addressing how we can achieve our objective, much more often than not, of paying the right benefit to the right person at the right time. That involves some simplification of the systems and the use of IT.
Also on the use of IT, we come to the issue of national insurance number fraud. We are taking steps to address that kind of fraud and to use datamatching and the searching techniques, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Rotherwick, which give us powerful tools in the modern world to pursue people who are attempting to defraud the system—attempting to be people other than who they are.
One important point I have mentioned to the House previously—a number of noble Lords have referred to it this evening—is the move to the benefit payment card and away from the old fashioned girocheque system and payment book, both of which are open to fraud. They also lay people, especially elderly people, open to theft. A thief knows that an elderly person is likely to have a book in her handbag and that if he can steal the bag he may well obtain a benefit book with a number of payments in it which he can use fraudulently in post offices.
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We believe that the payment card will be easy to use. We are starting with child benefit. The first steps of the process are taking place in Stroud but it will take a while to introduce. It is a big programme. It is not just the card, or the reader: it is the large system behind it called the customer accounting and payment strategy. This is the computer system which will control payments in all post offices around the country and ensure that the person obtaining benefit is the right person.
The new technology we are beginning to introduce is reflected in other areas such as datamatching departmental records and some of the other records held within government.
Within the Benefits Agency itself a generalised matching service has been developed which matches the internal benefit data bases to look at inconsistencies. The two classic ones, I suppose, are the child benefit base and the income support database. Many claims are not fraudulent. It is just someone giving a middle name in one application and not in another, but they can easily be eliminated. The person can be shown to be one and the same person. Where a suspicion of fraud remains, that can be passed on. There are major savings on those databases.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I am listening with enormous interest to my noble friend. Does he agree that many of the measures he is putting forward as a means of limiting social security fraud could be more easily dealt with if there were to be one national identity number rather than the use of names? Once they have the right number one can at least ensure that one does not have a multiplicity of applications from the same people.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, my noble friend invites me to go on a slightly different tack. I know that he is interested in this, but all that I shall say to him is that if you are to base a system on national insurance numbers or national identity numbers you have to be jolly sure that you have created a system which ensures the security of those numbers. If they are not totally secure, fraud could be made easier. One must be cautious about assuming that a national identity card will necessarily mean that fraud, especially organised fraud, can be avoided.
I remind the House that we are talking about serious, multiple-identity fraud involving both income support and housing benefit. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, that we take housing benefit fraud very seriously because such fraud can be large scale and organised. Someone was recently sentenced to five years' imprisonment for fiddling considerable sums of money from us. He had claimed incapacity benefit and, under a number of different guises, had managed to persuade doctors that he was schizophrenic and suffered from stress and nervous disorders. He was also claiming unemployment benefit in other guises. He had set up 15 false identities in order to claim benefit. Another chap was an asylum seeker—whether bogus or not has not yet been finally determined—but the one sure thing is that he had set up four bogus identities under which to claim various benefits. Fraud is a problem with all

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benefits. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, rightly pointed out, housing benefit is a fertile area for such organised crime.
I was pleased to hear the noble Baroness coming to the decision that housing benefit fraud is a real problem. Back in 1993 Mr. Keith Bradley said in the other place that the Government had overestimated the level of benefit fraud and that there was some danger of overstating the amount of fraud in the system. In that debate, on 16th July 1993, Mr. Bradley also said that we were expecting local authorities to achieve targets that were far too high. He said that,
"the recovery targets set for local authorities are unrealistically high. I know that there is a lower level and a higher level, but my investigations across the country convince me that many local authorities find it extremely difficult to hit even the lower targets … the Government have set the targets unrealistically high".—[Official Report, Commons, 16/7/93; col. 1251–2.]
Clearly, that is another U-turn by the Opposition on their road to the manifesto. Just two or three years ago they said that we were hugely overestimating the size of housing benefit fraud. I am now told we are hugely underestimating it. What we are doing is treating such fraud very seriously. We have laid down what we believe are realistic and challenging targets. In 1991–24 the savings amounted to £92 million. They had increased to £224 million in 1991–26 and are projected to rise to £260 million this year. We provide practical encouragement to authorities in anti-fraud work by providing financial incentives and allowing them to share in the savings they achieve.
I have already mentioned the introduction of a national housing benefit datamatching service which we are going to implement along with other data changes relating to the way in which we use information technology. We are starting a pilot project in December run by the local authorities to target organised fraud, including landlord fraud, across the London boroughs. London has a bad reputation simply because there are so many housing authorities cheek by jowl and the same people can set up scams in one borough, do the same thing in the adjacent borough, and if the two computers do not talk to each other they can never be found out. That is an important aspect which we, and the local authorities, must tackle. There is also a new challenge fund. Local authorities can bid for money in order to implement anti-fraud initiatives of their own. There is a project to research, develop and pilot a range of key verification measures to improve and standardise the checks made by local authorities to help to ensure that fraudulent claims do not enter their system on the housing benefit side—and that they do not enter our system on the income support side. There is a lot of work that we can do together. I believe that with IT we have some powerful new tools in the fight against organised landlord fraud and against landlord and tenant fraud.
In conclusion, benefit fraud is a criminal activity. We are determined to stamp it out. I am pleased that I have the support of the whole House in our endeavours. In the past financial year £1.4 billion of fraud was detected and 400,000 fraudsters were caught. As my noble friend
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Lord Rotherwick said, 10,000 fraudsters were prosecuted with a 99 per cent. conviction rate. I have outlined the wide range of measures that we have taken, and are taking, to deal with this difficult issue. We identify fraud against social security as a major problem. We have declared war on fraudsters. We are attacking fraud on all fronts. I believe that we are winning because we are willing to tackle it as hard as we possibly can. Our message is clear: there is no future in fraud. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hayhoe for initiating the debate and to my two noble friends for their maiden speeches. I am grateful also to all other noble Lords who have spoken for their support in this battle which I believe we can win.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Hayhoe: My Lords, we have had a useful and well-informed short debate. I thank the Minister for his detailed reply. I thank also the select band who have spoken, including of course the two maiden speakers from whom we hope to hear again soon.
As was acknowledged by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, I tried to avoid controversy in opening the debate. I am glad that the general mood was consensual. It is good when the House is like that. Perhaps inevitably—certainly not unexpectedly—a note of some controversy entered the speech from the Opposition Front Bench, but why should the habits of a lifetime be changed? One accepted that that was quite liable to happen.
However, one clear message has surely come from the debate: benefit fraud is theft. It is wrong. It is abhorrent. It is inexcusable and it is unacceptable. More than that, prevention is better than detection. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Educational Choice
4.47 p.m.
Baroness Perry of Southwark Baroness Perry of Southwark rose to call attention to the importance of choice and diversity in the education of four to 19 year-olds; and to move for Papers.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to debate some of the most important aspects of the educational landscape. It would be easy in the light of the current press preoccupations to do nothing today but deplore the state of our schools, the crisis in discipline and the poor performance of teachers with more and more gloom until we had talked ourselves into a state of collective despair. I do not believe that that would be helpful to teachers or to pupils—nor would it address issues about which we in this House are most concerned.
I spent 17 years visiting schools and colleges as a member of Her Majesty's Inspectorate. As chief inspector I read my colleagues' reports of the hundreds of school and college visits that they made each year. Since then, although working in higher education I have been privileged to visit schools and to talk regularly

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with teachers and heads in their schools, in private and in conferences. I therefore have good evidence when I say that the overwhelming majority of our schools are well ordered industrious institutions with good relationships between teachers and pupils and with good standards being achieved. In our justifiable anger at those examples where teachers are failing either to maintain discipline or to teach the basic skills to an acceptable standard, we should remember that the bad examples are far outnumbered by the good.
We have long known that there were problems with a minority of schools and a minority of teachers. The difficulty is in knowing how to tackle the many different influences which bear on those problems. Issues such as the training of teachers, the content of the curriculum, the structure of examinations, increased autonomy for schools and the training of head teachers have all been tackled by the Government in the past few years. But even more fundamental than those is the relationship between parents and schools and the concerns that we all share about examples where the basic trust between the two seems to have broken down. It is for that reason that the Government's initiatives in the past decade have been designed to ensure that parents and pupils are at the heart of all educational policies.
If schools are to serve the needs of their pupils adequately and to meet the aspirations of parents they must establish a real partnership with parents from the start so that parents feel in every sense a real commitment to the school and to the job that it is doing. This commitment, however, is immeasurably stronger if there has been a conscious choice on the part of parents to send their children to a particular school and if there is adequate information on which the parents can base what is, after all, one of the most important choices they have to make for their children. This is why so much of the Government's recent policy has been directed towards ensuring that parents have a very full range of information about the schools within their neighbourhood. Every school must now publish a yearly prospectus which describes both its achievements and what it has to offer. The prospectus includes examination and key stage test results, comparing them with local and national results. It also lets parents know about the standards of discipline within the schools because it records the rates of unauthorised absence or truanting. For secondary schools, the prospectus will record the jobs or further education which school leavers have pursued.
Parents will also find a description of the school's aims, the values it hopes to give the pupils in its care, the moral and spiritual guidance which it offers and how it deals with children who have special needs arising from exceptional gifts or exceptional learning difficulties. In addition to the very full information via the school prospectus, parents now receive reports from the Office for Standards in Education, which inspects the schools at regular intervals. These Ofsted reports, as we know from the press, are of intense interest to parents and employers.
The Government have made this information available because they recognise that a full knowledge of the ethos and performance of the school is the first
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step towards enabling parents to make a real and informed choice about the right school for their child. Once they have made that choice, it is vital for the school to engage the parents as true partners in the learning, discipline and moral values of their children. The knowledge and concern which parents naturally have for their child is an enormous resource for the school, and the pilot projects in home-school partnership, involving parents as intelligent supervisors of their children's homework and other activities, are much to be welcomed.
We have come a very long way in recent years towards meeting the goal which the Prime Minister set in 1991 to empower parents within the education system so that they can make better informed choices about what is best for their children. But the parents' right to choose means choosing the school which suits their child and their family. No parent wishes to see a child fitting into some predetermined mould which ignores the very special ability and needs of the individual child. Under the Parents' Charter, parents have a right to expect every school to do its best to make sure that every child does as well as he or she possibly can. This is a very demanding standard, but it is the least that parents have the right to expect. It is demanding also in that it requires a very wide range of schools from which parents can choose and a very wide range of opportunities within those schools. The individual needs of children cannot be met within a uniform comprehensive system.
As pupils get older they increasingly need to make choices for themselves and they need information and guidance in reaching the right choice of a future career or programme study. For this reason, I very much welcome the provisions in the Bill now being considered in another place which are designed to ensure that pupils receive adequate careers education and advice with access to information about career and educational opportunities after they leave school. The importance of such information and advice cannot be over-estimated. All the best efforts in the world in providing a good education and raising achievement are diminished if, at the end of the educational experience, pupils cannot apply the knowledge and skills which they have acquired to their adult working lives.
At the age of 14 and again at 16 young people now have a range of choices which they may make within the school curriculum. They are still guaranteed, of course, access to the breadth and balance of the national curriculum, but in addition they now have options in specialist fields such as languages, the performing arts, humanities and technology. The introduction of the GNVQ (the general national vocational qualification) has further extended the range of choices which are available to this age group. It is now possible for them to combine academic study with a qualification which introduces them to basic understandings in a broad career field.
The move towards parity of esteem between vocational and academic education has been one of the most important developments of the past decade. Young people and their parents are able to make choices about an appropriate and attractive future career, no longer

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hindered as they were before by issues of status and dreaded academic snobbery. Too often in past years young people were forced into academic choices where they under-performed and were unhappy instead of choosing broad vocational courses where they could have excelled. The policies of the past decade have provided us with a range of diverse institutions representing nothing short of a revolutionary change in the former all-too-uniform landscape of education.
Successive legislation has given increasing levels of independence to schools at the individual institutional level, extending their financial freedom to a freedom to specialise in specific areas of the school curriculum in which they have a special contribution to offer. In the new Education Bill, the Government have proposed that schools may select a larger percentage of their pupils, choosing their own selection criteria. These criteria enable a school to select young people with a special talent, perhaps in the performing arts, languages, technology or humanities, or even in sport. Comprehensive schools selected only on the basis of geography and neighbourhood—this element of selection allows a mix of social backgrounds, sharing talents and aptitudes instead of class. Furthermore, the parent of the secondary school child has a choice between schools still within the LEA system, Church schools, grant-maintained schools and city technology colleges as well as schools in the independent sector. Thanks to the provision of assisted places, whose number is to double to 68,000 following on the Prime Minister's announcement last year, access to the independent sector is no longer limited to those whose parents have the ability to pay. The popularity of this scheme among parents is annually demonstrated by the numbers who apply and the scheme has ensured that the independent schools have a wider mix of social backgrounds among their pupils. It also, of course, provides access to education of a very high standard indeed to those who could not otherwise have exercised such a choice.
This diverse range of schools for 11 to 16 year-olds is matched by the very wide range of choices available for 16 to 19 year-olds. A 16 year-old can now choose the type of further education and training best suited to his individual interests as well as to his individual abilities. If he chooses to remain in the sixth form he may choose A-levels or GNVQs, thus ensuring that the option for a vocational as well as an academic route is kept open. Increasingly, many are choosing to move into one of the dynamic further education colleges to which this Government have also given financial autonomy and entrepreneurial freedom. Because of this, these colleges now provide courses which match the needs of students and employers, unchannelled by any form of LEA planning. The popularity and success of these programmes for 16 to 19 year-olds is dramatically demonstrated by the increase in the number of them who now stay on in education after the age of 16. In the five years from 1981–28 to 1991–23, the proportion of 16 year-olds in full-time education rose from 48 per cent. to 71 per cent. and the Government propose an additional 25 per cent. increase in the
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numbers in further education and are well on target. Modern apprenticeships and national vocational qualifications have, since their introduction, provided work-based opportunities for a wide section of that age group and have ensured that young people move into a properly gradated and externally monitored system of training when they enter the work place.
The record of the city technology colleges founded by private sector investment has been a very proud one indeed. Located in some of the most deprived inner city areas of the United Kingdom, the CTCs have succeeded in raising the performance and standards of those young people; have provided them with expert teaching in well-ordered and pleasant buildings; and given them a sense of their own dignity which has been heartening to observe. The commitment and faith of those who have founded such CTCs—and my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham is an outstanding example of a benefactor and proprietor of two such colleges—has brought a new element into public sector education in this country for the first time since the days of the great humanitarians of the 19th century.
The diversity of schools and the diversity of institutions at all levels, which has been made possible by the increasing autonomy which this Government have given them, has produced a healthy competition among the schools and colleges. That competition has provided them with a motivation towards excellence and has developed in schools a will to meet the needs and aspirations of all pupils and parents in a way in which very few other measures have been able to do in the past.
Parents now not only exercise choice but exercise real influence over the nature and content of the school curriculum. Of course there are many matters which are still not right in the education system and much work still needs to be done. Reforms in teacher training were initiated in 1983 and continue today. Reforms of examinations and curricula have gone a long way to raise standards and to increase choice. The introduction of an orderly system of national vocational qualifications led by employers and responsive to their needs has done much to make this country more competitive in the international market.
The autonomy of institutions has enabled them to meet the needs of their clients in a flexible way. The healthy competition in which they now engage has directed their attention towards raising their performance, so ensuring that pupils and students really do have the opportunity to perform as well as they possibly can, just as the Parent's Charter promised.
Better careers guidance and parity of esteem between vocational and academic work has encouraged more young people to choose a vocational rather than an academic route and both they and their future employers have benefited from that choice. Everything in education takes a long time to bear fruit and we cannot expect the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s to bear immediate fruit. But the first signs are there. Massively increased participation in post-compulsory education and a steady increase in pupil achievement are a validation of the Government reforms. The teaching profession and the

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talented people who run our schools and colleges have responded magnificently to the challenges which those changes have laid upon them. I have every confidence that the exercise of parental and student choice among an increasingly wide diversity of institutions matching the needs of young people and of society is working towards an education system of which we in this country will become ever more proud. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.3 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for giving us this opportunity to debate the importance of the concept of choice and diversity in the education of four to 19 year-olds. I hope the House will pardon me if my own small contribution is rather unusual. I would like to offer a few thoughts on only one word. I will be short, superficial and serious.
I must confess that I have never been entirely easy with the overarching importance which the party opposite seems to give in the vocabulary of education to that idea of choice. I remember watching Mrs. Thatcher as she then was after one or other of the Conservative Party's election victories—I cannot remember which—addressing the workers at Conservative Central Office and congratulating them, and then exhorting them to new and further efforts and saying, "We must give them more choices". The implication seemed to be that choice is, in itself, an ultimate good, and the more choices one has the better one's life will be.
If I beg leave to doubt its supreme moral value, it is perhaps because I have never been convinced of the ultimate importance of consumerism. I once walked into a vast supermarket in Washington DC in search of a packet of cornflakes. I was confronted with a great aisle marked "cereals" which stretched away into the middle distance, and I was obliged to inspect something like 50 to 60 different brands, styles, combinations and varieties of cereal products.
I felt I had vastly more choice than I either needed or wanted, and if I had been able only to select between three or four really high quality products, that would have been enough. In the world of cornflakes, then, so far as I am concerned, more does not necessarily mean better. It may similarly be so in the realm of education. More schools do not necessarily mean better schools. More different schools do not necessarily mean better education unless they, in their differences, are equally good. Wide parental choice is not necessarily good if parents are ill-informed, careless or do not want it. More choice among available schools is not necessarily the most important choice a parent must make for the child. Staying at home and teaching the child to read, setting its imagination alight in a one-to-one parental teaching relationship may be even more important.
In any case, the concept of choice is not simple and transpicuous, especially as applied to a realm so complex and dynamic as education. Rational choice theory is, I am informed, an area of study which currently interests some economists, and is worth deeper
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exploration. But it begins with the axiom that rational choice is only possible if two conditions are satisfied: first, if all consumers have perfect knowledge; and, secondly, if all consumers possess the means to achieve their choice. It is manifestly true that both conditions fail for most of our population in the matter of choosing a school for a child.
In the world of contemporary education, however, it is necessary first to ask the question: choice for whom? I take it that we would all agree that just as Sainsbury's, Tesco, Safeway and the like are the providers of cornflakes, so the providers of education are the state, which provides a variety of schools, and the private or independent sector, including the Churches, and philosophical groups like the Steiner schools and the Montessori schools. The "consumers" of schools—to use the hideous jargon—can be only the children and to some extent the parents, and the exercisers of choice can be only the children, the parents and the schools themselves.
If this be granted, it is immediately obvious that the children themselves have very little choice indeed. In nursery and primary education they will normally go where their parents send them and that first choice will have a strong determining influence on where their secondary and tertiary education takes place. If your parents send you to Sunningdale or the Dragon School you are likely to go on to a school in the independent section and thereafter, with comparative ease, to a university, quite possibly one of the older and more prestigious of those institutions.
The fallacy which needs to be exposed, however, resides in the next category—the parents. If I have £5 in my pocket and I go to the supermarket, I have the absolutely free and unfettered choice to select whichever packet of cornflakes I like provided that the cost of that packet is not more than £5. It is not so with education. Be parents never so rich, never so powerful, they do not have an unfettered choice among the available schools because the schools themselves have the right to refuse a place to any child without giving any reason. You can be refused by Winchester: you cannot be refused by Weetabix.
Neither is the unfettered choice the privilege and prerogative of the schools themselves. Parents can only apply—they cannot choose—and schools can reject an application for any reason they like, but boarding schools have to fill their beds and the comprehensive school has to fill its available places or else they are on the slippery slope to failure.
So the concept of choice in education is not singular: it depends on who is choosing, and between what. Children have initially small, but gradually increasing, powers of choice as they grow older; independent schools have wide powers of choice, limited by quantity and quality of applications and the need to break even financially; maintained schools have in the past had virtually no choice (you take what you get), but some are now offered some choice of pupils on grounds of ability. That is good for them but bad for the other schools to which the rejected must go. Parents have always had one choice at least—between a state school

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and an independent school—if their income was sufficient to make that choice meaningful, and it has been the policy of the present Government to increase the choices of school available to parents.
But is this increase in choice of schools what parents want? Is it their highest priority? What evidence can be adduced that they place choice first? They may, but I beg leave to present one fact which calls the possibility at least into question. Parents already have some choices but, according to DfEE statistics, in 1994, the latest date for which such statistics can be provided, 89.3 per cent. of all pupils were in comprehensive schools. Most of those must have been in their local comprehensive school.
What most parents seem to consider most important, then, is a school firmly established in their own community, close to home, which cares for each child, establishes good standards of behaviour and gets good, acceptable academic results. Parents seem to want high-quality schools more than they want choices among schools.
The wisdom of the tribe is frequently displayed in its proverbs. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of one English proverb, first recorded in 1594 in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (Act I, Scene I, line 135). Your Lordships may care to look it up in by far the finest edition of that play in the Arden Shakespeare; I forbear to say who edited it. That proverb says,
"there is small choice in rotten apples".
5.13 p.m.
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for giving me this opportunity to speak and for introducing the debate. I should like to speak in favour of greater diversity in the schools curriculum, with reference to the moral debate and to the growing interest in global awareness, or development education. I believe that our children's understanding of world affairs has become more and not less urgent. I feel that the time has come for greater recognition of this in school inspections and in the next curricular review.
This is already an acknowledged area of formal education, recognised at various levels and in several subject areas such as geography, history, modern languages, English and drama and of course religious education. It crops up in cross-curricular themes such as citizenship and environmental education. Above all, it is popular with teachers and with pupils and apparently even with Ofsted, though it has yet to be fully identified within the formal curriculum. For those less familiar with it, the Development Education Association publishes valuable guidelines for teachers and there is a special supplement in this week's The Times Educational Supplement.
For obvious reasons there is a lot of interest in this subject within the aid lobby. In the last week alone three conferences involving teachers, local authorities and aid agency staff have been held in London on this subject, addressed either by the Minister for Overseas
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Development, the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, or by the new Shadow Overseas Development Minister, Clare Short.
The British Council, through its Central Bureau, the BBC through BBC Education and the DfEE itself are also interested parties, although I wish they had more opportunities to demonstrate it. There is a strictly educational reason for this interest. Development education is an ideal vehicle for the SMSC (the spiritual, moral, social and cultural) development of pupils which is already a clear requirement of the curriculum. The study of international affairs, human rights, social justice, conflict resolution and citizenship all present immediate examples of good and evil in the world today. Of course, I accept, following yesterday's important debate of the noble Earl, Lord Longford, on moral education, that knowledge of the Gospels, and the story of the Good Samaritan in particular, may seem sufficient. But such is today's outpouring of international news that children today need more interpretation of world events which may not be available to them at home. Such is the cultural diversity within this country, and the expertise within the aid agencies, that we already have the resources with which to inform and guide this interpretation.
The recent initiatives of Frances Lawrence, the report of the values forum of the Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority and Nick Tate's proposal to introduce "critical thinking" on moral values, all fit in with the need to bring development education into the mainstream of educational inspection and assessment.
I do not under-estimate the problems. One has been of definition—the ability of Ofsted to measure performance in development education. The difficulty here is not lack of interest, but priorities. The inspectors' workload is enormous, and they are now being asked to refine their reporting and keep to the main issues. They cannot be expected to know how much development education is already going on in schools, unless the schools themselves inform them.
However, there are encouraging signs that inspectors do like to demonstrate the kinds of initiative which go with global perspectives. Perhaps I may give your Lordships one example. A west country school recently impressed the inspectors with a Caribbean theme which included a visit to Brixton. It was the first time that those children had had any direct experience of another culture. Many teachers have their own experience of working abroad in other societies or in overseas partnerships and they can use these in many contexts in the school.
Money, of course, comes into it—for materials, teacher training and manpower. The Overseas Development Administration believes that development education is important, not least to advertise the UK's aid programme and the ODA's own services to schools. But it cannot, as an agency for aid, spend a very high proportion of its reduced budget in the UK. The European Union, to its great credit, has taken up a lot of the slack and has directly assisted a lot of regional initiatives to help teachers. The aid agencies do a lot, though they have had to cut back many of their programmes in the past two years.

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The Labour Party promises to do more through a development education council. I believe that the DIEE, in its various disguises, is well disposed to development education. It would be comforting to hear the Minister confirm that in his reply. A lot of progress has, for example, been made in the area of environmental education.
In summary, I believe that schools, informed by the non-governmental organisations and their local communities, have shown the potential to develop materials and to deliver education on many international issues which could be more widely shared at various levels of education. This Government still have an opportunity to assist that process in the next curricular review if they really believe in it. The evidence is that schools are now taking it on, but acceptance often depends on the ingenuity of teachers rather than the system, which can sometimes appear to work against them and against diversity in education.
I look forward to hearing the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, on this subject as we have worked together. I am sure that she shares many of the opinions I have expressed.
5.20 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I, too, wish to start by thanking my noble friend Lady Perry for introducing this debate today. She has chosen a most important subject. I believe that education is top of the political agenda in this country. I begin my remarks by referring to a matter which she mentioned; namely, the completely untrue belief held by some that much of the education system is in a state of collapse. I pay tribute to the overwhelming majority of teachers who do a good job in our schools, often in difficult circumstances, and who deserve our support.
It will no doubt be much to the surprise of the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, when I say how much I enjoyed his speech. Of course, I always enjoy his speeches. First, I love his Welsh accent which does us all so much good and carries us along. One sometimes wishes he would put his words into verse. I must certainly look at the version of the works of Shakespeare which he edited so that I, too, can mention a few quotes the next time I speak. I particularly enjoyed his speech this afternoon because it is so unusual to hear the ideas of "old" Labour. I began to wonder whether I was hearing him correctly. The noble Lord was in effect using the argument that because everyone cannot have choice, no one should have any choice. He should speak to one or two of his colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench—I would not dream of naming names—who do not seem to take quite the same view of that matter. They put choice in education top of their agenda. In effect the noble Lord was saying—this was believed just two years ago—that there was no more need to choose where to send one's child to be educated than to choose where to post a letter.
I think that choice is important. One may make a joke of it, but it is a serious matter. Its importance for parents and pupils cannot be over-emphasised. Choice has raised standards and it is raising standards. However, as
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my noble friend quite rightly said, that takes a long time. It has been a case of choice backed by information. I do not think any government have ever provided parents with as much information about schools as have the present Government. I recall that when I was an education Minister the first Bill that we put through in 1980 required information to be given to parents about schools and required schools to publish information about themselves. They are now required to publish information about their curriculum, their examinations, their pastoral care and other matters because if one is to exercise choice it must be informed choice. I believe that one of the reasons that we now have this welcome figure—I am sure we are all agreed on that—of 71 per cent. of the school population staying on beyond the compulsory leaving age is that there is such a wide variety of schools for pupils to attend. My noble friend Lady Perry touched on that matter.
As regards grant-maintained schools, there are now over 1,000 educating some 600,000 pupils. The number would be considerably higher if so many schools had not been discouraged from adopting grant-maintained status at the ballot stage by those who should know better. There are 15 city technology colleges and 30 language colleges. There are 151 technology colleges. The results are available for all to see. Ofsted's annual report produced earlier this year showed that just over 900 secondary schools were inspected. Over 20 per cent. of those were grant maintained, but of the 32 that were identified as outstandingly successful schools, 13, or 41 per cent., were grant maintained. In the list of 70 good and improving schools, 31 per cent. were grant maintained. The fact that those results have been achieved is a measure of the success and the help that is being given to pupils. I wish to emphasise how important it is to have GNVQs alongside A levels. It is extremely important that we should achieve the highest possible standards in vocational education.
In the time that remains to me I wish to touch on what I consider to be an important aspect of the diversity that we have given to parents and pupils; namely, the assisted places scheme. That scheme is popular with parents and with pupils. I am pleased that it is to be extended in the new education Bill to come before Parliament. The assisted places scheme provides a much wider choice. In 1991–26, 42 per cent. of all free places were given to families whose gross incomes were less than some £9,500 a year. Some 60 per cent. of the places were allocated to pupils from families whose incomes were less than £13,000 a year.
Pupils in assisted places schemes have done extraordinarily well in public examinations. In 1995 the pass rate of assisted places pupils in public examinations was over 94 per cent. at both GCSE and A level, which is better than that achieved in independent schools generally, or indeed in maintained schools. Some 51 per cent. of assisted places pupils achieved either an A or a B grade at A level, and 77 per cent. achieved either an A or a B grade at GCSE level. Some 90 per cent. went on to higher education. Some research has been produced recently on the advantages of an assisted places scheme. That research shows that assisted places pupils were entered for significantly more A and

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AS levels than their counterparts in the maintained sector. As measured in the annual performance tables published by the DfEE, the overall benefit for assisted places pupils was an average of between 3.2 and 6.2 points. When one translates that into grades, one finds that the overall advantage for assisted places pupils amounted to between one-and-a-half and three A level grades over all subjects taken. It is well known that for many sixth formers two or three grades at A level constitute the difference between acceptance and rejection for a popular course at one of the more sought after universities. That is quite a remarkable achievement.
I am quite certain that someone will say, "Ah, but of course it costs so much more to provide an assisted place than one in a maintained school". However, that is not the case. The average net cost to the state of an assisted places pupil in 1991–26 was £3,700. The standard spending assessment for local education authorities for pupils under the age of 16 in secondary schools is £2,600, and for those over the age of 16—that is, those in the sixth form—it is £3,600. The comparison of costs is not exact as maintained school pupil costs do not include either capital costs or administrative costs, whereas in the case of independent schools those costs are included. When one takes that factor into account, there is barely any difference at all between the cost of an assisted places pupil and the cost of a pupil in a maintained secondary school. That is relevant to the important debate about the amount of money which might be saved if the assisted places scheme were ended. My figures show that at the end of the day no money would be saved by that course of action, and the only people who would suffer would be the children themselves. It is also claimed that the assisted places scheme results in the brightest pupils being "creamed off' and leaving the maintained system. In fact only 1 per cent. of the pupils in any age group are assisted places pupils. Therefore the argument hardly stands up to analysis. But even if it were true, one has to ask whether it is right to sacrifice the child for the sake of the school. I think that it is not. The scheme has given to many pupils a benefit which otherwise they would never have had. It not only benefits the pupils but the country as a whole when those pupils are qualified.
I believe that it is a remarkable scheme. I am glad that it will be extended. I wish that it could be further extended because it is a scheme that many parents want. The scheme is for the benefit of pupils and not of schools.
It is very sad that the one certain pledge of the Labour Party for the next election is that it would phase out the scheme, but such a course would just damage the opportunities for many pupils. I am sorry that the Liberal Democrats are so uncertain about the issue. So far as I can see—I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood, will correct me if I am wrong—the Liberal Democrats have said that they will end the scheme and replace it with something from central or local government. However, as I have seen no
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details I do not know what they would do. It would be helpful if the noble Baroness would explain their position to us.
This is one of the most important aspects of the argument about diversity. However, I do not refer only to assisted places. I wish to speak in some detail; this is a matter of important public policy. The assisted places scheme was introduced because the last Labour Government removed the direct grant from a number of the best schools in the country—schools that were the backbone providers of scientists in this country. In removing that grant, ironically, at a stroke, the Labour Government managed to create more independent schools than any other government. I am sure that that was not intended, but it was what occurred. The assisted places scheme was brought in to make up for that loss.
I wish to commend what the Government have done. I hope that the scheme will be increased for the benefit of all.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, will she accept from me that I have not been so flattered since I cannot remember when. However, to describe me as old Labour is a most serious accusation. I am new to the point of being scarcely conceived. Will the noble Baroness do me the honour of reading carefully tomorrow what I said in the Official Report; and, when we next meet, will she show me where I said that because all cannot have choice no one should have choice? I prepared my speech very carefully. I read every word; I did not improvise at all; and I never said that.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I do not wish in any way to quarrel with the noble Lord. I shall certainly read his speech carefully.
5.32 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, choice and diversity in education is of great importance, as has already been proclaimed by my noble friends Lady Perry of Southwark and Lady Young, but with far greater authority and expertise than is at my disposal. I do not know the difference between new and old Labour so I shall not try to entertain any such suggestion. I regard the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, as a great expert on educational matters and as having a fair-minded approach. To be perfectly fair to the noble Lord, I have to say that I did not really understand what he said. I shall have to read his speech. Although I read philosophy at Heidelberg before the war, I still cannot come to grips with what he said. Is the value of choice when set against the evils of enforced unanimity greater or less? I do not ask for a reply. That is how I shall seek to approach the problem if the noble Lord will try to understand and forgive me.
However, I think that the noble Lord will agree that choice and diversity are also of importance to those in the murky backwaters away from the mainstream, some with a high IQ rating, who have serious learning difficulties either unrecognised or in want of appropriate remedial treatment.

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At the outset perhaps I may thank my noble friend Lady Perry of Southwark for introducing this debate, which affords an opportunity to consider this aspect of their choice. In that context, my noble friend Lady Perry referred to children with SEN in the context of choice of school, choice of subject, vocational and academic, and in particular for the 15 to 19 year-olds. My noble friend also said that many things were not right in the education system. I lead on from there in this context. The concern is for those and their families for whom there can be no realistic choice in any regime of diversity unless innate frustrations engendering indiscipline are alleviated; and until the barriers to learning have been recognised and broken down. Only then will a potential aptitude on which any informed choice may be made become apparent. Surely choice and diversity assume the touchstone, "each child according to his potential aptitude". On that no doubt the Minister might well agree without reservation.
If the bedrock of the educational system is that it is able to contain indiscipline and truancy, and to encourage good behaviour, so be it. But proposals to detain pupils, to exclude pupils or for compulsory home school agreements, would have no relevant or remedial effect on those in want of treatment for serious learning difficulties.
It is well established that disruptive and violent behaviour is often caused by dyslexia unrecognised or untreated. There is a critical shortage of speech therapists. There is no obligation upon the governors to appoint an SEN co-ordinator with any specialist training.
A review by way of clarification is warranted not only to define the respective legal, financial and specialist staffing obligations of schools and of the LEA but also to identify funding arrangements as to requisite provision for children with SEN. Such matters do not fall within the limited intendment of the Education (Special Educational Needs) Bill due to be read for a second time this evening. But there is much hidden, unknown, unused, latent potential aptitude which inhibits rational choice at all events during those crucial formative years, say, from about five or six to 19 years.
Perhaps my noble friend the Minister may care to look into this. I ask him to be good enough to do so, and to leave a letter in the Library. That would be a gesture of good will on behalf of a Government that I support and shall continue to support which would be much appreciated.
5.39 p.m.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Perry for the subject of this debate. I join in her tribute, and the tribute by my noble friend Lady Young, to our many good schools and teachers. There is no doubt in my mind of the need for diversity in the provision of education in schools and colleges in order to provide for the immense variety of children's needs so as to take full account of the range of their talents and therefore also to give their parents the freedom to exercise choice.
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I welcome the adoption by the Government of a national curriculum, so that when families move house their children can still progress steadily through a familiar curriculum, which also ensures that all children will build their future education on a common base, including the basic needs of good English; efficient numeracy; familiarity with science and technology; modern languages; history; geography; art; music; PE; and, last but by no means least, religious education.
As children grow older if they are well taught their talents begin to blossom. I am very much in favour of setting by subject rather than streaming, so that high abilities can be stretched and encouraged and remedial work can be given to those who are struggling with a particular subject. That education needs to be broad-based if young people are to be well prepared for their lives, especially their working lives in the 21st century.
Recently the Parliamentary Scientific Committee, which includes Members from both Houses, industrialists and academics, held a seminar on "Competitiveness and Success in British Industry". It emphasised the need for manufacturing industry to attract enough of our brightest and best youngsters and the need to set industry in its true position, reflecting wealth creation, betterment of quality of life and exciting career opportunities. The committee emphasised the need for more partnership between schools and industry and commerce, so as to give children imaginative work experience on which to base their later choice of career. That is happening, but needs to take place in every school.
Careers guidance is very important. Careers staff need to have successful work experience themselves outside the teaching profession if they are to be able to advise children in an informed and realistic way. The report of the Parliamentary Scientific Committee recommends that,
"it should be a requirement that teachers with careers advice responsibilities have had at least a short spell of structured working in industry".
The Government, in their new education Bill, lay emphasis on the importance of careers advice. I hope that they will include that requirement in the careers advice section of the new Bill for all careers teachers and advisers. As my noble friend Lady Perry said, poor careers advice through lack of knowledge can be counter-productive.
There are many reports of a shortage of skilled engineers, especially in the North-East, where there is much inward investment in manufacturing industry. Noble Lords will not be surprised that an engineer refers to this important engineering field. I hope, too, that the Government will continue the "top flight" bursary scheme, which attracts able young people into the engineering profession. The Neighbourhood Engineers scheme and the Women into Science and Engineering campaign, set up by the Engineering Council, provide important adjuncts to the curriculum in this important field. As engineering is not a school subject and therefore very few teachers, if any, will have first-hand experience, it is a very important matter. Successful and interested parents who are working in the field

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themselves can help children to make informed choices by encouraging their firms to set up co-operative schemes with their children's schools so that the children can experience the excitement and challenge of solving realistic industrial and commercial engineering problems. Young Enterprise and the Young Engineer for Britain competition encourage interesting, unusual and essential talents in children which will stand them in excellent stead when they leave school and lead to jobs where there are clear skills shortages.
Charitable work in schools on behalf of the less advantaged, and participation in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme, with its accent on service, give young people a marvellous outward-looking attitude towards other people, which, again, is so vital to future successful careers. It is also important in its own right, and many young people in my experience carry out excellent service to other people. I wish that it were given more publicity.
Selective schools taking a small proportion of the ability range, as in Essex, do of course demonstrate how their students can achieve outstanding success in their specialist subjects. They can work at a fast pace and approach the boundaries of those subjects so that they are well prepared for demanding university courses and learn to work hard themselves on an individual basis in their future careers.
At the same time, local comprehensives can be very successful in sending young people on to university and other further education. The publication of results has encouraged greater success in those schools. Now, about 30 per cent. of the age group proceed with their education beyond school. I was interested to hear my noble friend Lady Denton say this afternoon that in Northern Ireland the figure is 41 per cent.
The assisted places scheme can give inner-city children from families living on low incomes the opportunity to take up places in independent schools. That is a precious freedom of choice for those parents. Inner-city parents can otherwise feel that they have little choice by which to offer their children the upward chances that they so badly want.
Grant-maintained schools are developing, through the initiative of their very locally oriented governing bodies, very interesting specialisms for their schools: technology; drama; music; perhaps single-sex groups in maths and science; modern European languages and exchanges with schools abroad. I refer to schools near home, in Essex, and there are many more examples elsewhere.
Parents clearly appreciate those kinds of choices, which they can take up to match their children's special abilities. If parents choose a school, they back it; and co-operation between teachers and parents is probably the best guarantee of success for their children, as my noble friend Lady Perry also emphasised. The child senses that co-operation, is aware of the joint aims of school and home and therefore knows where efforts should be applied to achieve those aims. New Clause 30 in the education Bill, proposing home-school
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partnership agreements, is an excellent idea. I wish it well. I am sure that it will be a great help to better school morale.
Another important choice comes at 16. Many middle ability children do not feel sufficiently valued in school. They will be vital to our prosperity as a nation in the future and can be very successful in non-academic ways with which schoolteachers may not sympathise or which they may find difficult to encourage. I am greatly in favour of those young people being given a free choice and actively encouraged to enter local colleges of further education at 16. The courses provided will be very much more practical and vocational, whether in business studies, retailing, design and technology or engineering. The choice is legion, especially since the colleges have become independent. The young people perhaps succeed in initial City and Guilds and NVQ courses, and realise for the first time their latent abilities and capacity for success in new fields of which they have not previously been aware. A fresh start becomes a successful career path for the future.
Young people are succeeding in many new fields which they would never have attempted before. Life-long learning is available locally in both further and higher education if the opportunities are grasped. Freedom of choice and diversity of provision, particularly in close co-operation with local employers and TECs, can open doors for young people that were firmly shut in days gone by. Long may those opportunities be available under the present Government.
5.49 p.m.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, the fact that I shall detain your Lordships for a very short time means that I have plenty of time in which to offer my deepest apologies for the fact that I was not in my place to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, open the debate. I was informed only this morning that the first debate would be the longer one and the second debate the shorter and therefore I was late, for which I repeat my apology.
Those like myself who might
be described as "hexameter friendly"
Notice with pleasure the fact
that the "choice and diversity" title
Fits so well with the rules
which govern this classical metre.
Classical too is the theme
on which I wish to address you.
Most of us will, I am sure,
accept that a broad education
Should be provided for all,
irrespective of family income.
Only will those so endowed
live out their lives to the fullest.
But—and there's always a "but"—
"broad" does have so many meanings.
Mine is the one which includes
some study of Greek and of Latin.
That's why I chance my arm
in adopting the metre of Virgil;
Thus underlining my case
for reversing the prevalent practice.

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Too few schools now give
their pupils a grounding in Classics;
Nor does the curriculum
find space for classical culture.
Hence are so many denied
the true meaning of everyday English.
Everyone here knows well
that today is Mercurii day.
Scores of our words every day
are of Latin or Greek derivation.
So too abroad do we find
most words have Classical sources,
Making the Englishman's taskߞ
if he's also a Classical studentߞ
That much lighter, of course,
as he tackles the foreigner's language.
Now most students findߞ
so lots of research has establishedߞ
Learning time is reduced
for those with a grounding in Classics,
No matter what is required
to be learnt nor what is the problem.
Later in life they find
that their understanding has deepened.
Then are they fully aware
of the roots of their civilisation.
Schools serve needs of today,
forgetting the many tomorrows.
Long-term gain can be lost
through premature specialisation.
Great enlightenment comes
with the study of Rome and of Athens:
Clear as a bell is the mind
which has conquered irregular verbs and
Nouns. But we've seen what perhaps
I could call a decline in declension.
Hence I propose, my Lords,
a return to the teaching of Classics.
5.53 p.m.
Baroness Brigstocke: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to my noble friend Baroness Perry for initiating this valuable debate. As a former Classics scholar (though it is so long ago that I have forgotten my verbs) I should like to say how much I appreciated the words of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond.
I shall concentrate on secondary schools. I speak from a diverse background in education, having taught for seven years in what was at the time a voluntary-aided grammar school in London, and then for two years in an independent school in Washington DC in the United States, before becoming a headmistress, first of Francis Holland School in Clarence Gate and then, as High Mistress, of St. Paul's Girls' School in London, totalling 25 years as a school head. For the past three years I have been Chairman of Governors of Landau Forte College in inner-city Derby, one of the 15 CTCs in the country which have already been mentioned.
As a founder trustee of the Technology Colleges Trust, together with another Member of your Lordships' House, the noble Lord, Lord Quirk (who is sorry that he cannot take part in the debate today), I am enormously proud of the stimulating learning environment being
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provided by the city technology colleges, most of them in deprived areas, which cater for students aged 11 to 19 from the full range of abilities and backgrounds, making the greatest possible use of contemporary technologies, establishing partnerships with local industry and piloting some valuable innovative schemes.
One of the most valuable innovations is that students and staff in CTCs have a longer school day and year than those in most state-maintained schools in the United Kingdom. There are 25 hours per week of formal lessons, plus at least six hours of enrichment activities. In addition, the CTCs are open for 200 days a year.
A second innovation is that several CTCs now operate a five-term year, which consists of five eight-week terms, separated by four breaks of two weeks and a four-week summer holiday. This is a unique break with the normal European tradition of a three-term academic year, and the benefits are immense.
Landau Forte College, by the way, has always provided the opportunity for post-16 year-olds to take A-levels and GNVQs side by side. Another CTC, Kingshurst, prepares its post-16 year-old students for the international baccalaureate.
The 15 CTCs have now spawned a whole new range of 151 technology colleges plus 30 language colleges. I understand that it is the Government's intention to have more than 200 of these specialist colleges in place by the end of the year. They are all successful schools which have each inspired sponsors, notably local businessmen, to donate £100,000 for the enhancement of the curriculum in technology, mathematics and science, thus building on the pioneering experience of the original CTCs.
Perhaps I may, by the way, tell the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, that Landau Forte College has recently started an optional class in Latin.
However, CTCs, technology colleges and specialist language colleges are not the only schools doing well these days. Last week I sat on an educational panel for a distinguished charitable foundation, which gave me and my fellow panellists an opportunity to learn about the truly broad and diverse group of secondary schools which were applying for grants to improve their buildings or to provide extra equipment. Some of them were independent but a large number were grant-maintained schools. It would be invidious to give names, but I should like to describe two particularly impressive schools. I have not visited them myself, but I quote from the very full and comprehensive reports of the panellists who had visited them.
The first school is on a split site, the larger part having been built in the mid-1970s on a very cramped inner-city site with only the most limited outdoor space, the other part having been built in the 1890s, about 10 minutes' walk away across a busy road. The school became grant maintained in 1989 after bitter battles with politicians and some local councillors. Fortunately, the local education authority is now more relaxed. Today, the school has over 1,100 pupils aged 11 to 19ߞboys and girls in approximately even numbers. The entry is almost all from the immediately local area with a radius of no more than about 2 miles and there is no academic

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selection. In terms of ability, the intake is slewed to the lower end and few have a reading age as good as average on admission. The surrounding area can be described bleakly as "inner city" with a patchwork of mean streets and many signs of social and economic deprivation. There are many boarded properties and much local crime. The school appears as an oasis of calm and good order in a threatening area of violence. Many of the parents are unemployed and for many families English is not the first language as there is an overwhelming majority of pupils from ethnic minorities. Yet such is the fine atmosphere that all the pupils seem to get on well with each other and there are few problems of religious origin. It is a truly splendid example of good English secondary education operating in a community where many of the parents themselves have had little formal education.
The other school, which is seeking technology college status, is in an equally deprived inner city area. Although it has over 100 statemented students and another 30 pupils with learning difficulties, the morale is high, the grounds and school plant are well maintained, the pupils wear uniform and there is a very positive attitude among students and teachers, giving an overall impression of good behaviour and confidence.
In my remarks today I have concentrated on the many hopeful signs of improving standards and confidence in individual secondary schools in different parts of the country. We still have far to go but the best way to restore our school education system to its former glory and our teachers to their former position of prestige and respect is to adopt best education practice, praising effort and achievement while encouraging teachers, governors and parents to have the highest aspirations for all the children in their care. And the children, of course, need to learn to concentrate, to work hard, to control their behaviour, to think of others and, above all, to think.
6.3 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, on my way here this morning through Great Smith Street, I passed a familiar office building, on the front of which was blazoned the letters DEE. At first, I thought those were the entry requirements for one of the new universities, but I understand that it is the current acronym for the department about which the noble Lord, Lord Henley, no doubt will tell us in his winding up speech. I may say that he has been saved a good deal of trouble by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, who gave us an admirable account of what has been done in the way of improving and increasing the variety available in our education system. I only regret that neither the noble Baroness nor any other speaker mentioned one important aspect of diversity; namely, single sex schools, since it is my opinion that, while my co-education may be good for some, single sex schools have clearly been shown to be very good for others.
We are no doubt embarking on a period in which education, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, is likely to be a staple of our debates. It is reported, indeed, that the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool,
982
Mr.Peter Mandelson, the acolyte of President Clinton, was asked by Mr. Tony Blair what the theme of the Labour Party should be in the coming election and he replied, "Education, education, education—stoopid!" That seems to me to be curious advice. One would have thought that an Opposition party would select some area in which central government had complete control—finance or social security, for example—and would endeavour to find weaknesses which, if it came into office, it could remedy. But to choose education is to choose the one area of public activity in which the Conservatives have not been in control. It has been almost wholly controlled by local authorities, which in turn have been ruled by Labour Party, or in some cases nowadays Liberal Democrat, majorities. On education, as in other matters, I find the distinction rather difficult to draw.
It is not merely a question of political control which has enabled local authorities to resist in turn most of the changes that the Government have sought to make in order to improve the education system—resistance to the establishment of grant-maintained schools, city technology colleges and so forth. But it is not simply a political question. The other matter that we have to face, if we look back over the past couple of decades, is the complete symbiosis between the Labour Party and part of the educational establishment. For instance, the Institute of Education of the University of London, which has done about the same amount of damage to British education as Columbia Teachers' College did to American education in the 1920s and 1930s, has constantly been associated, and still is, with the Labour Party. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, whose presence this afternoon would have been welcome, was an ornament of that institute at one time.
I say that because, whatever may be done about a variety of schools, methods of selection, choice or organisation, fundamentally what makes a difference and in the long term will make a difference is the quality of the teaching—the dedication need not be questioned; in question is the quality—the expertise and the approach which teachers have to their task. I am very moved by the testimony of the noble Baronesses who preceded me to the work that has been done and the improvements that are being made in schools in various places under very different circumstances. But we must not let ourselves be carried away into a feeling that everything is all right.
We still have to face the fact that many recent surveys show that in important respects, particularly in the early years of education, in regard to both numeracy and literacy, our pupils by and large do not measure up to their counterparts in a number of other industrial advanced countries with which we are in economic as well as cultural competition. Until one sees a way through that, until one can say that a British child of nine, 10 or 11 has reached the same level of competence in mathematics—particularly in mental arithmetic—and in English—particularly in the ability to communicate—we cannot regard ourselves as being more than at the beginning of a process of improvement. While I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, that

983
we should have Latin and Greek everywhere if we could, let us start with reading, writing and arithmetic everywhere when one can.
It seems to me that there must have been something wrong with the general attitude towards that basic task to explain why it has not been performed satisfactorily. In retrospect, some of the mistakes are obvious. For example, the use of pocket calculators make it unnecessary for children to learn the basic elements of mental arithmetic. There has been an opposition to learning by heart—what is called "rote learning" by fashionable educators—which has made the English language less valuable to children and less valued by them. We can see therefore in retrospect what has been wrong, but I do not believe that we have yet grasped what we are still doing wrong.
So far as I know the only contribution which the Leader of the Labour Party made to the education debate was the expression of the desire to have more computers in schools—no doubt ultimately to connect them up to the Internet; in other words, to provide more ways by which children can avoid the genuine tasks of learning the elements.
From my point of view, looking back, I suggest that what a child needs in a school is, first—if the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris had said a little more about this I would have agreed with him—a healthy and safe physical environment. Secondly, the child needs pen and ink and access to books. That, in the early stages is all. What does the teacher need? The teacher needs a blackboard, chalk and—though I know the noble Lord, Lord Morris, will not agree with me—occasionally, the cane.
We must therefore seek to reinsert into the school system quite simple things, quite apart from the importance of variety and choice, which become more important as children are differentiated by their talents and possibilities. The trouble is that this debate will only take place within the Conservative Party. The Labour Party shows itself to be uninterested.
In preparation for this debate I read the Second Reading debate on the Education Bill in another place yesterday afternoon. It was depressing. There were many speakers from the Opposition Benches, nearly all of whom claimed to have been teachers of one kind or another and many of whom wore as a badge of pride the fact that they failed the 11-plus—that suggests the examiners knew what they were doing. None of them had anything substantial to say other than to repeat the mantra "Comprehensive education; the same for every child; nothing else is of the slightest importance".
As long as that is the case, we will not have a great debate. It is a pity, because this has happened before. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, is not in his place. I remember, as do other noble Lords, no doubt, when he called for a great national debate in 1976 or 1977. He was so thoroughly sat upon by the then Shirley Williams that he was never allowed to do what he set out to do. It would be good to have a national debate and it would be good if it were not confined to a single political party. I hope this afternoon that we have done a little—particularly my noble friend Lady Perry—to set us off on the right track.
6.15 p.m.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend on the characteristically lucid and comprehensive way in which she introduced this fundamentally important topic.
I wish to concentrate on the principles underlying choice and diversity; to commend the Government for achievements to date in putting those principles into practice; and to welcome further measures proposed in the Bill now in another place. For too long freedom of choice has often been the prerogative of those who can afford to pay for independent education or to move to areas with good schools. Those unable to exercise those options had to accept the education on their doorstep, even if they were unhappy with its quality. I must emphasise however, that there are many good state schools and excellent, dedicated teachers. But there is now an abundance of research which also shows too many schools providing inadequate education resulting in serious under-achievement.
For example, a census of all LEAs shows that, on average, within every LEA, 11 year-old pupils at the top achieving primary schools are nearly four years ahead in English and five-and-a-half years ahead in maths compared with those in the lowest achieving primary schools, even in similar catchment areas. Reports from Ofsted also show too many schools seriously failing the children in their care. There is therefore a need to achieve accountability and to ensure that all children receive the best possible education. Accountability can best be ensured through maximising diversity and choice, hence the importance of choice. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, is not here to hear that response to his belittling of the importance of choice.
I wish to focus on two aspects of policies now being proposed to promote freedom of choice and diversity of provision; first, measures to strengthen grant-maintained (GM) schools by increasing their freedom to develop in ways which they believe will be in the best interests of their pupils and the communities they serve; and, secondly, measures to help to raise standards in schools, including the introduction of baseline testing for children entering primary schools. I shall also refer briefly to the importance of the requirement for all schools to publish information, including details of examination and test results—a point rightly emphasised by my noble friend Lady Perry.
GM schools feature prominently in the provisions of the Bill now under consideration, and rightly so. They are an enormous success. An independent survey by Research International in July this year found, inter alia, that since being freed from LEA control, in grant-maintained schools one-third have increased staffing levels by more than 10 per cent. and one in 10 by more than 25 per cent.; 82 per cent. have increased spending on books and teaching equipment; 85 per cent. have increased special needs provision (47 per cent. to a great extent); 62 per cent. have offered new subjects; 60 per cent. have improved their position in performance tables.; 83 per cent. have spent more on non-teaching staff; 67 per cent. have spent more on

985
teaching staff; 42 per cent. have lowered their pupil-teacher ratio; and 76 per cent. reported an improvement in staff morale.
Those results justify the conclusions drawn by Sir Robert Balchin, chairman of the Grant Maintained Schools Foundation. He said,
"This survey shows that children are given better educational facilities if they attend a GM school instead of an LEA school, especially if they have special needs. GM schools employ more teachers than LEA schools do. And those teachers receive better support, better development of their careers and are happier at work in GM schools than in LEA schools".
He continued,
"The weight of evidence for these conclusions is now overwhelming and places a question mark over the future of LEAs as presently constituted … On every single measure, the GM sector proves again and again that schools can outperform LEA bureaucracies. It is time for the dead hand of bureaucracy to be removed from state school management once and for all".
These findings also provide strong evidence to underpin those proposals in the current Bill relating to the inspection of LEAs and measures to increase their accountability for the quality of service they provide for their schools.
I now turn to the role of diversity and choice. As I have already emphasised, there is abundant evidence of serious problems with regard to educational standards in much of the state sector. There is an alarming increase in the numbers of children aged seven who cannot read, despite already having spent two or three years in school; there is an even more alarming increase in the numbers of pupils entering secondary education who are functionally illiterate and enumerate; Ofsted reports highlight inadequate teaching in far too many schools; and—a point made by my noble friend Lord Beloff—international comparison shows that British children are under-achieving compared with children from other countries, in ways which we cannot afford as a nation if we are to hold our own in the international arena.
In addition to research evidence, I give one example from personal experience, as sometimes a story can be more telling than statistical data. I refer to an experience from the war zone of Nagorno-Karabakh, that embattled, besieged Armenian enclave where 150,000 Armenians have been fighting a bitter war for the right to live in their own land. Last winter, I took a parcel of gifts from a primary school in Streatham to a class of 12 year-olds in a bombed-out school in the capital city of Stepanakert. The school, like every other school, had no windows, no electricity, no light or heating. In temperatures of minus 10 degrees, the pupils sat wrapped in coats, mufflers, hats and gloves. Within one hour of receiving the gifts from the British school, each 12 year-old Armenian pupil had written, with no help from their teacher, a personal letter to one of the British pupils. Those letters were written in flawless English. Each one of those Karabakhi children speaks and writes Armenian, with its unique script; they each speak and write Russian, a second language and a second script; English is their third language and their third script, but their spelling and grammar were better than many 12 year-old English pupils.
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I shall give but two brief examples:
"Our capital city, Stepanakert, used to be a beautiful"—
spelt correctly—
"city, but it has been spoilt by bombing. But I do not want to write about sad things; I want to write about happy things".
Another 12 year-old pupil wrote:
"I like to read foreign"—
spelt correctly—
"authors, Alexander Dumas, George Sands, Mark Twain".
How many British 12 year-olds would be capable of writing such letters, even in English, let alone a third language and a third script? How much is this a measure of our failure as a nation to enable them to achieve their potential?
It is against a background of under-achievement that I believe we should welcome all efforts to promote better education for all our children. In primary schools, we should be encouraging every measure to ensure that all young children are assessed from the beginning of their education, and regularly thereafter, to ensure that each child is realising his or her full potential. For those who oppose testing for primary school children—there are many of them, especially from the party opposite—I suggest that their opposition is damaging and groundless: damaging, because unless teachers and parents know how children are progressing, they cannot help them effectively; and groundless, because contrary to all the scaremongering about allegations of "stress" created by testing young children, recent research shows that children enjoy tests. They find them interesting and they appreciate the opportunities of quietness and concentration which they provide.
Finally, I touch briefly on the publication of test results, another issue which has created a great hullabaloo. The advantages of choice and diversity can only be effective if relevant information is available to parents and the public to inform choice and to evaluate the quality of education being provided by different schools and different types of school. Information on school and pupil performance, including test results at key stages 1 and 2, set within whatever context is appropriate, is essential for accountability and the responsible provision of education. I therefore ask my noble friend if he will say when the Government will publish performance tables for all schools, giving key stage 1 test results in reading and maths, as they originally intended to do.
I conclude by commending the Government on the proposals in the new Bill, which will do much to enhance diversity and choice in our education system, diversity and choice which have been stifled by ideological commitments and bureaucratic self-interests for far too long. The time is ripe to build on past achievements and to take education forward in ways which will give all parents and young people the maximum freedom to choose the best education available for each and every child and student. Choice cannot continue as a prerogative of the relatively well-off; it must also be available for all those who have so far been denied it: those whom we as a nation have failed; those trapped in inner cities, with no option but to attend local schools, far too many of which have

987
failed to enable the children to realise their potential. We must move forward to try to achieve high quality provision, diversity to respond to different aspirations and needs, and the genuine choice which is the hallmark of a free and caring society.
6.26 p.m.
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, on giving us the opportunity to debate such an important subject. Disraeli said:
"Upon the education of the people of this country, the fate of this country depends".
Those are still appropriate words today.
As the father of six children, aged from 22 down to four, I have experienced an enormous amount of choice and diversity in their education, particularly as they range from a university graduate to a child with special educational needs. I obviously take a close interest in the subject of special educational needs and I was most interested in what my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway said on the subject earlier. I warmly welcome the recent announcement of £10 million funding under the new schools access initiative. This will enable almost 800 mainstream schools to make better provision for disabled pupils. The code of practice on special educational needs has been widely welcomed. Ofsted published in April a report on the code's first year, drawing attention to improvements in many schools.
I have been enormously impressed by the facilities provided by my own county council and local NHS trust. However, there is a need to set up a multi-agency system to speed up decisions, with one source of funding. In so many special needs cases, there is no clear line as to who is responsible financially. Is it education; is it health; or is it social services? At the moment they each tend to "pass the parcel", which is particularly stressful for some parents, already traumatised by facing up to the reality of a special needs child.
Currently, in order for a child to be referred for a statutory assessment, which may or may not lead to a statement of special educational needs being produced, the school has to prove that it cannot meet the child's needs within its own resources. In other words, it is in the interest of the school to highlight the child's difficulties and failures rather than successes in order to be allocated appropriate resources. I should be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could look at this problem with his colleagues in the health and social services departments. I would also welcome government leadership to enable all agencies to define much more clearly their roles and responsibilities to these children and to their families, from the first moment concerns are expressed, whether the child be pre-school or school age.
It seems to me that the whole thrust of this Government's education policy is to introduce choice and diversity. Children do have different talents, interests and needs like my diverse family, although they do have one thing in common. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Moms of Castle Morris, will be
988
interested to know that that is a taste for different and very exotic cereals at breakfast. It is difficult for a single type of school, particularly at secondary level, to serve the full range effectively. The most able need to be stretched and the least able need help to develop their particular talents.
I am particularly interested in the specialist schools programme. Specialist school status is intended to bring about a long-term change in the school, so that its specialist subject becomes solidly grounded as part of the school's identity. Specialist schools have proved popular with sponsors, parents and pupils. The 181 existing technology and language colleges provide for 180,000 pupils and have between them raised some £18 million in sponsorship. Current budgets allow for the programme to expand to 250 schools, and, because it has been so successful, I understand that the Government will be looking at expanding this further.
Parents want a good education that suits the individual talents, interests and needs of their child. They do have a choice of a different range of schools and there is now much more freedom for schools to meet parents' wishes with the ability to switch from one type of school to another, should the child's development require it.
The Government's aim is to promote a much better match between what parents want and what schools provide. The recent education reforms have given power back to parents who have exercised their right to choose by voting to take over 1,100 schools out of local authority control. That means a greater diversity, with schools specialising in particular subjects, or types of pupil, and looking at what parents actually want. They can match their child to the most appropriate school, as happens in Germany, Holland and Switzerland, where selective secondary school systems are highly regarded.
It is most parents' ambition to send their children to selective schools. This was borne out in the Association of Teachers & Lecturers' survey, carried out by the Harris Research Centre, indicating an overwhelming majority of parents in favour of selection. It is also shown by the high ratio of applicants to places. As an example, it is nearly 5:1 for the King Edward VI Grammar School in Birmingham against a typical ratio of 4:1 for other grammar schools. Labour is opposed to any form of selection in schools, and David Blunkett said in 1994,
"I have no truck with middle class, left-wing parents who preach one thing and send their children to another school, outside the area".
Despite this, some Labour Front Bench hypocrites send their own children to selective schools while pledging to deny this choice to the electorate.
One can sympathise with their reasons. A recent Ofsted report on schools in Labour-controlled London boroughs has revealed appalling results. Over 80 per cent. of seven year-olds and four out of ten 11 year-olds had reading ages below their actual age. Nine out of the ten worst performing authorities are Labour controlled.
There are two areas that I should very much like the Minister to consider. First, could some grammar schools offer the international baccalaureate, which is welcomed

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by English universities? This would give parents even greater choice and opportunities for pupils to prepare for a more global style of citizenship. Secondly, can schools be encouraged to forge more links with employers, chambers of commerce and technical colleges, to develop apprenticeship schemes? Some time might be spent in either schools or colleges on courses that meet employers' requirements and other periods used gaining experience with the companies themselves.
I am much involved with the motor and motor sport industries, and, as a country, we must continue to produce enough engineers to enable companies, with their leading edge technology, to keep ahead of our competitors.
6.35 p.m.
Viscount Chelmsford: My Lords, education is not my area of expertise, but I have a considerable interest in it. My background is insurance, information technology and management. I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lord Beloff, when he says that there should be more learning by tables and that the calculator is used too much. But I hope that he will agree with me that both the calculator and the computer have their place in education. It is just that they are not being used correctly in his examples.
In 1984 I was fingered, just by chance, by my company to attend a City fundraising exercise on behalf of a then unknown man named John Abbott. I do not believe that we would have gone if the Prudential had not been leading us and told us that they wanted us. John Abbott was electrifying. He told us that children should learn how to learn and that that was more important than worrying about the curriculum. Children should learn how to do things for themselves. They should learn how to make decisions. Things would change so fast in their life time that they had to be equipped to learn as adults.
He thought that computers were key to achieving change. He saw that he would be able to run schools with only 85 per cent. of the existing number of teachers when the computers were up and running. The remaining 15 per cent. would be put out into the local community to try to find out from the children what it was that was needed in the community. In addition, part of the time would be used for retraining. Meanwhile—and that is why we were there—he wanted funds for three years to obtain 15 per cent. extra teachers, which is 115 per cent. of the number of existing teachers, for his schools and computers. His project was called Education 2000. He had seven schools in the Letchworth area. Interestingly, he was mixing public sector and private sector schools together. A head teacher was drawn from the schools to run the project and there were regular meetings of teachers together with activities involving pupils and the local community.
Three years later my own company and others started funding something reasonably, but not wholly, similar in Ipswich for 12 schools, which was called the Ipswich
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Initiative. It had support from Suffolk County Council and Suffolk Training and Enterprise Council. I quote from the latter's report in 1993:
"This active partnership between schools business and industry works to educate people for change and, besides preparing them for a technological future, promotes the skills required for a life long learning process".
That is a phrase we hear a lot these days.
One year later saw the start of a similar scheme called Coventry 2000. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry is chairman and three schools are involved. They are run by the wife of my noble friend Lord Butterworth. She is both vice-chair and co-ordinator. Coventry 2000 aims to prepare young people for the challenge of later life; a culture change in preparing students for life long learning; how to do it and how to enjoy it. How to enjoy it is a subject I shall come back to.
By pure coincidence today Lady Butterworth kindly sent me a copy of the latest school report. It reveals that an award in the form of a grant—quite a lot of money—was recently made in order to achieve multi-media centres in the three schools. Now a fourth school—it has technology college status—wishes to join the other schools as part of Coventry 2000. So the scheme is doing well.
This year an interesting development took place in Ipswich. It was decided that as the schools were now so well advanced there was no longer the need to pull out a headmaster especially to run the Ipswich Initiative. So the formal side was abandoned. The TECs were so strong in involving the community that that side was running extremely well. The companies were still producing funding for them and weekly teacher meetings were continuing.
So what have we got? Letchworth started in 1985 with seven such schools; Ipswich had 12 in 1988 and Coventry had three but now has four. I dare say that there are others I do not know about because I am not that close to the concept. Are they just a freak in the general scene of choice and diversity in education for four to 19 year-olds? That might have been the belief when they started but is less so today. The whole climate has changed.
Perhaps I may offer your Lordships one or two quotations from the top places in evidence. In its first annual report to the Commission, the EU's Information Society Forum states that the information society must become the lifelong learning society—that phrase again—that education and training must include homes, communities and organisations, and that the teaching professions need help to adapt to the changing situation so that the new opportunities can be fully exploited.
I was recently sent a copy of the speech made at the annual Lloyds-TSB forum—I was not able to attend—by Sir Geoffrey Holland KCB, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter, in which he stated:
"The new technologies transform access to learning: they make it possible for the student to study at a time, place and pace of her or his choosing. They make learning student-centred and call for a redesigned role for the teacher, as the supporter of the learner, rather

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than the fount from whom all wisdom flows. They dramatically reduce the unit costs of learning and they can make learning fun and an adventure".
Here we have "fun" again.
Both those statements focus on the redesigned role of the teacher. Telecoms companies today queue up to give infrastructure to schools. Corporates can easily be persuaded to give terminal equipment, but it is what the schools do with the infrastructure and equipment that counts. I offer your Lordships a 1995 quotation from Dr. Peter Cochrane, head of advanced applications and technologies at BT Martelsham:
"In my childhood, the home was a desert and the school an oasis of learning. Now the home has the computer and is itself an oasis. It is the school that is now the desert".
Not everybody may agree with that.
What does business have to say about education? Not too long ago the RSA's report, Tomorrow's Company, was published. The best UK business talent had been working on it for a year. The report asked the following questions:
"How do we know that our current educational approach and our curriculum material are adequate to prepare people for tomorrow's business world? Do we include students, parents, employers and the wider community in our efforts to bridge the academic and vocational divide? Do we link the concept of employability with that of life-long learning? Do we reflect the need for multi-skilling, rather than for qualifications matched to particular industries?"
The answer so far must be "not in general" although a beginning has been made by schemes like Education 2000 which deliberately involve local communities, schools and teachers. The TECs are doing the same. However, quite soon I think that the answer to those questions will be "yes" as the tide is turning, and will continue to turn, towards student-centred learning, teacher support and continuous adult development for careers which require new skills training more than once in a lifetime.
Perhaps I may quote Sir Geoffrey Holland once again:
"We need to raise expectations in this Country (in the UK). We expect too little of each other".
That relates to something my noble friend Lady Cox said a moment ago. It is a devastating comment.
In reviewing the skills that need to be raised, I conclude on a sobering note. The 1996 White Paper on competitiveness refers to a skills audit that was carried out jointly by the Department for Education and Employment and the Cabinet Office. The audit tells us:
"In the UK about one fifth of adults have problems with literacy and numeracy that seriously affect their participation in the labour market. Those who fail to reach foundation level in these two basic skills are five times more likely to be registered unemployed".
I have been encouraged by much of what I have heard today about education and the movement forward. Like many people, I was depressed about the subject, so hearing of all the exciting things that are happening has been good news. On the basic problem of numeracy and literacy, however, we have a long road ahead.
6.45 p.m.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, I speak today in place of my noble friend Lord Tope who is unable to be present. Noble Lords who were present
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when the noble Baroness, Lady Young, was speaking will no doubt have observed that when challenged by her on a matter of Liberal Democrat party policy I had to run for my text. I shall refer to it again later.
I find it interesting that the Motion does not say in what respects choice and diversity are important. In the course of an interesting and valuable speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, told us pretty much why she thought they were important. The noble Baroness and other speakers have claimed that choice improves quality. Unfortunately, the noble Baroness and others seemed to couple that with the idea that the maintained sector and comprehensive schools were incapable of producing quality. I entirely disagree with that claim.
I am grateful to have heard so many distinguished contributions. I simply cannot compete with the expertise of a considerable number of those who have spoken, including past Ministers, head teachers and university experts. I was particularly interested when the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, reminded us that, when judged internationally, our standards today are none too beautiful. I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, is nodding. She suggested that standards were even worse than the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, had stated. I have to ask why that is the case after 17 years of single party government. Mention has been made of the literacy of seven year-olds. We must remember that we have had 15 generations of five to seven year-olds passing through our schools since the present Government came to power and rather fewer generations of five to 12 year-olds although still a considerable number. There has been a good deal of time at the disposal of the present Government to achieve something in respect of raising standards.
We on these Benches have no wish artificially to limit the variety of schools available to parents and children. Indeed, in the pre-school area we should like to see a partnership between the maintained, voluntary and private sectors to achieve a wide range of provision. We look to LEAs to provide what we call "light-touch" guidance and advice to schools rather than heavy-handed uniformity.
It is in that context that I reply to the challenge laid down by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, on the subject of assisted places. My book states—I can read because I did not go to a modern school, to follow what the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, suggested—that we would phase out the assisted places scheme but allow local education authorities, if they so wished, to set up locally determined partnership schemes such as special needs bursaries or arts and sports initiatives to support pupils at independent schools. That was stated in a far broader context than I can go into now, but it is the key response to the question that I was asked. As a parliamentary candidate I was asked that question on a number of occasions and I always said—this also appears in our document—that the object of public policy should be to ensure that all children in our country receive an education of the same quality as I received when I was at a private school. That does not mean that they all have to go to private schools. That is what the public sector should try to achieve.

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The noble Baroness, Lady Young, spoke about comparative costs. Again, I shall not go into detail, but every child on the assisted places scheme who goes to a private school will be the beneficiary—not necessarily at a cost to the public purse—of far more money being spent per pupil, because the school will be contributing to the cost of that pupil's education, than is spent on pupils in schools in the maintained sector.
Our belief is that high quality education for all pupils from three years to 19 years, and throughout life, should be our aim so that we can enable students to prepare for work and therefore contribute to the nation's competitiveness—a theme raised a couple of days ago in a different context—to enable them to be good citizens, and for the enrichment of their own quality of life. I disagree that that means, as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, said, that all comprehensive schools need to be uniform.
Whereas the Government and most of today's speakers stressed the diversity of institutions, we stress the ability of each pupil in each school to exercise increasing choice as they grow older so that they receive the education that makes the most of their talents and corresponds to their aspirations.
As a sideline, perhaps I may say that at present not everything in the curriculum is wonderful. I agree with the comments made by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, on the need for a greater appreciation, for example, of what goes on in the wider world. I would add to that a greater understanding and knowledge of what goes on in the EU which will be the context of everyone's lives in the future, whether they like it or not, so they may as well learn something about it. I could bore all noble Lords to death, but I will not, by saying what I believe to be wrong in the history curriculum at present.
We are committed to high quality nursery education for all three year-olds and four year-olds whose parents want it; to small classes in primary schools; to an increased professional standing for teachers through the establishment of a general teaching council, among other methods; to a post-16 provision which offers quality academic and vocational courses, or a mixture of both, to off-workplace education for all 16 year-olds to 19 year-olds in work; and, finally, the opportunity to carry forward education throughout life.
The merging of the SCAA and the NCVQ, projected in the most recent Education Bill, is welcome in that context. NVQs and GNVQs have, as far as I am aware, failed to impress most employers so far. Better standards and accreditation are essential. There may be merit in the measures contained in the same Bill to use a baseline assessment of children at five as a tool to measure the achievement of pupils and the value added offered by schools. That builds upon the work of LEAs in that field.
Overall, however, the Government seem obsessed with the structure of the maintained sector and to giving schools unjustified powers to alter the provision of education in a locality, without any democratic input, by allowing increasing amounts of selection and positive discrimination in favour of GM status. They apparently
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have also a naïve belief in the powers of the market place to deliver education as easily as fish fingers. That is my choice. Cereals were the choice of the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris. I share some of his doubts about the virtues of choice per se.
The disadvantages are that selective schools select the pupils. It is not the other way around. Secondly, the creation of an artificial market place is expensive, as witnessed by the £20 million cost of the nursery voucher scheme which has been described by Westminster City Council as a bureaucratic nightmare. I notice by the way that although the Motion speaks of education of four year-olds to 19 year-olds, not one Member of the Benches opposite mentioned nursery vouchers as giving greater choice to parents. I thought that was interesting.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, with respect, I mentioned five or six to 19 year-olds in relation to children with special educational needs. I am on these Benches, I should think.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, I beg the noble Lord's pardon if I misinterpreted his speech.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I did not misinterpret it!
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, I obviously misheard what the noble Lord was saying, and I am sorry. The scheme has been described by Westminster City Council as a bureaucratic nightmare. I do not believe that it would have been accepted by the Government had it emerged from the European Commission.
A market place may guarantee quality for some, but it would be at the expense of others. I repeat, for human, social and economic reasons we need all our children to be well educated, not just some of them. Excellence for the few must not be bought at the cost of mediocrity or worse for the many. Surely we have learnt that lesson by now.
The changes which many noble Lords have commended and which the Government have put forward seem to be aimed at reducing or eliminating the powers of the LEAs. Yet light-touch LEAs can help enormously with analysing success or failure and their causes, by providing curriculum and management advice, and by ensuring that all children have the benefit of the best possible education.
I agree with the interventions of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway—I agreed with the main thrust of his comments—and those of the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, on the importance of supporting children with special needs and the requirement for a multi-agency approach to the needs of some children. Those children, too, deserve the best that we can offer. That is an area in which LEAs can play an important and valuable role.
I came today from the last annual meeting of the ACC at which I had the great benefit of being able to listen to two senior county education officers telling us of the immense strengths LEAs can offer through partnership with schools in supporting, guiding, analysing performance and stimulating improvement while

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maintaining the local democratic input into the education system. Let a thousand flowers bloom, but let us remember that they will do so better and bloom more gloriously in a well designed and well tended garden.
7 p.m.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject. I join previous speakers in asking what is the intention in and benefit of having greater diversity of choice. Few would disagree with the Labour Party's stated objectives, first, to ensure that in economic terms we develop a high-tech, high added value, high wage economy; and, secondly, that all individuals are given the opportunity to develop their potential talents. Will the return to a form of diversity with increasing selection by ability help to achieve that?
Yesterday, at the conference mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood, the deputy Prime Minister expressed great delight, pride and pleasure in this country's success in increasing the number of young people going into higher education. I hope that we in this Chamber can agree that that is a tribute to the work of our schools, parents, pupils, colleges, local education authorities, members and officers and national government when they have managed to work together. Sadly, they do not always work as closely together as they ought. There is no doubt that we must never be complacent and that much is being done. My noble friend Lord Morris of Castle Morris pointed out that in 1994 89.3 per cent. of children in secondary education were at a comprehensive school in their locality. They too are part of that celebration of success.
The pattern of provision has been tried and tested. Perhaps I may cite an example because I am troubled by the constant party political toing and froing over selection. The former Conservative authority of Solihull consulted the local population about whether they wished to abandon comprehensive education and return to a selective system—that is, selection by ability— and the people said no.
The real issue is on whom we should be focusing our real attention. All the international comparisons show that it is not the top band of young people who go straight from school to university whom, by comparison with other countries, we fail most. It is the pupils who leave school having achieved the average of their age cohort. For the moment I shall leave on one side the issue of whether the average level is higher or lower than it ought to be. Most people will agree that, no matter how high the standards, we shall never achieve a uniform level of success at exactly the same point and age for every child.
What do we do for those children who leave school seeing themselves as average? My personal and political experience in local government is that there is a legacy of the damaging effect of people being told that their ability is such that they cannot go to the local school of their parent's choice where selection is on the grounds of ability. That is the experience of
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those of us who have grown up in and watched this system and are concerned that too many people did not go to grammar school. I know that the Minister will challenge me if I use the term "secondary modern", so I shall use the term "the schools left for those who fail to achieve the necessary academic levels required by schools which select on ability; the schools left for those children to attend, if there is room, without regard to their academic attainment". Nowadays Conservatives reject the term "secondary modern".
Are we going to achieve anything by returning to selection, or is there a better way of raising the expectations and aspirations of those who leave school feeling that they are average? As a result of the work that has been done, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat Party and many illustrious Conservatives in the field of education have recognised that early excellence is most important. That is why we in the Labour Party wish to ensure that there will be access to nursery education for all three and four year-olds whose parents wish them to have it. That is an objective; a way of moving forward.
Secondly, the head-start experience in America shows that social and academic benefits have been gained by injecting the right level of resource into early childhood education. It is a tragedy that in some of the most deprived areas more such nursery education schemes are not going ahead as from tomorrow. That could be done were the Government this week not wasting £1 million of a total of £3 million on TV and radio advertising encouraging people to apply for nursery vouchers. Why, why, why? I am sad that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, is not in the Chamber because I well remember his contribution on the subject of well targeted scarce resources. I do not believe that TV and radio advertising is likely to be high on the noble Lord's list of what is necessary.
The Labour Party is committed to a maximum class size of 30 for half a million five, six and seven year-olds and recognises the importance of ensuring that that is funded. I agree with so much of what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, about the importance of working together to ensure co-operation in raising standards in our schools. The unification of academic and vocational qualifications for young people within this age group is critically important.
I go further and say that the Labour Party's new deal for the under-25s, its Life Long Learning Initiative, and its commitment to training opportunities for 7 million adults in work with no qualifications are part of raising standards in our schools. All the evidence shows that the children who achieve most in terms of the added value of the educational experience are those whose parents start from a weak base. The child watches the parent take up adult education and learns alongside the parent. The aspiration to success gives the child a hope for the future. Therefore, we should unite in saying that helping to offer parents opportunities is a way of improving the system.

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Furthermore, it is extremely important that we ensure that parental participation—the projects which have been so successful—is built upon. A blueprint from Whitehall does not work because circumstances, for instance, in rural Norfolk and the heart of Liverpool or London will be different. However, we must encourage parents to participate. That does not take up a great deal of additional financial resources but it takes human resource time from our teachers. Part of the process of switching resources into the early years and improving the class size helps parents and teachers to work more closely with young people.
Twenty per cent. of pupils have special needs. Should we have had a debate today about whether schools should have the right to exclude pupils with special needs? Are the pupils with special needs who are prevented from achieving the high academic standards set by schools wanting to recruit on the basis of academic attainment to be allowed to bypass the special educational needs legislation?
It has been a very interesting debate. The points which have been raised have been made with a great strength of conviction and commitment. I care passionately—and I know that I am not alone in that regard in this Chamber or alone on this side of the Chamber—about the quality of education which we offer to all our children. If I believed that the most able children could not be catered for in a comprehensive school I would not have sent my own children to one and I would not argue that comprehensive education is a good idea for other people's children. I am a passionate believer in that.
In Lancashire County Council, over 95 per cent. of pupils were sent to the school of first choice before the idea of parental choice was a gleam in the Government's eye. We worked together with our voluntary-aided partners. I find it sad that schools and educational establishments must be freed from the fetters of LEA planning control. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said, a well-planned system is better than a warring system with children falling between stools and not having their needs met.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, made an interesting contribution about whether or not we are talking about old or new Labour. I am Labour. I have always been Labour. I suspect that the noble Baroness has always been Conservative. I suspect that we have both modified our views. We may have been soft left, right, wet, dry, old or new in the course of our political careers. However, I respect the noble Baroness's commitment to high quality education and to moral and family values. I urge the Government, rather than spending money unnecessarily on the assisted places scheme, to spend the money instead on the most vulnerable children right at the beginning.
There is so much that could be said on this subject. Of course the Labour Party has made pledges as regards nursery education and maximum class sizes. Of course there is a need to look at the whole issue of streaming and setting. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Platt of Writtle, that streaming is not
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a good idea. I should like to know how it is possible to set if half of the children from a family are in a selective school and the other half are in a different school along the road.
My noble friend Lord Diamond referred to the importance of making sure that long-term gains are not lost.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Thirteen minutes.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I understand that the time that I am taking is an acceptable time within the rules of the House. I should say to the noble Lord as regards selection by ability, the most tragic thing of all is if long-term gain is lost because of a premature sense of failure by young people who feel that they have been rejected by the system.
I cannot comment on the comprehensive range of contributions to the debate. We have an excellent system but we must not be complacent. Let us not turn our education service into warring tribes and factions. Let us work together for every child.
7.14 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Lord Henley): My Lords, I start by echoing other speakers who have thanked my noble friend Lady Perry for introducing this debate. My noble friend, with her 17 years in the inspectorate followed by years in higher education at both the South Bank and now Cambridge, knows very well just what can be the product of our schools. For that reason, it is worth starting by echoing what was said by my noble friends Lady Perry and Lady Young and what the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, has just said that there is much which is excellent in our education system. I should not like to echo what I thought were the words of the noble Lord, Lord Morris, who echoed the words of his noble friend the noble Lord, Lord Williams, on another occasion in implying that the education system is, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams, put it an abyss and as the noble Lord, Lord Morris, described it, as something akin to a barrel of rotten apples.
This has been an extremely interesting debate and we have had many very interesting contributions. Moreover—dare I say it?—it has also been a very interesting debate in terms of the absences from our regular education debates and from the various Bills which I took through this House in the previous Session. Where are all the old friends—if I can call them that—from the Benches opposite who so regularly tormented me in relation to the Bills which went through and on other educational matters? Where are the noble Baronesses, Lady David and Lady Hayman, the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Dormand of Easington, who spoke only yesterday, I think, on educational matters? It is interesting that they are not here and I miss their presence. All we had was the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, with his quite excellent poetical speech, which I must read very carefully, in favour of the Classics. What a discipline it would be for us all if we all had to speak in metre. On that, I congratulate the noble Lord.

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However, I find the absence of other noble Lords from the Benches opposite, which are rather deserted, somewhat interesting.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will give us the list of the absentees from his own Benches who normally take part in education debates; for example, the noble Lords, Lord Elton, Lord Ashbourne and Lord Skidelsky. In commenting on absences, he is taking up time and will not be able to comment on the speeches of those who are here.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I shall comment on all noble Lords who have spoken. My noble friends Lord Elton and Lord Ashbourne spoke in yesterday's debate on morality in education. But the noble Lord will recognise that many noble Lords from this side of the House have spoken in today's debate. It is worth pointing out that there are some fairly strange absences and I should love to know where those people are. Are they at some interesting Labour re-education camp being retrained in whatever is the next shift in policy to come from the party opposite? That really would be life-long learning.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Rubbish.
Lord Henley: The noble Lord, Lord Morris, made a very interesting speech on choice. I did not agree—and he would not expect me to—with very much that was in it. I see choice as a virtue in itself and a virtue in both education and supermarkets. We believe that extending choice and diversity is central to our education reforms and our commitment to those principles is based not on any exotic theory but on plain, simple common sense.
I believe that virtually all noble Lords who have spoken this evening are parents. Every parent knows that children are different one from another and those differences tend to increase with age. Young people have a wide range of talents, interests and needs. Stretching the most able, supporting the least able and developing a wide range of aptitudes, interests and ambitions are all very challenging tasks.
It is difficult for any single type of institution to carry out those tasks equally well and that is particularly true at the secondary level and even more so post-16. We want to have a better match between what the institutions provide and what young people and their parents—and I am glad that my noble friend Lady Perry emphasised parents—want. We believe that the best way to achieve that is to promote diversity and to facilitate choice. That means encouraging schools in the mainstream sector and other publicly-funded institutions to develop particular strengths; for example, in teaching particular subjects or types of student, and I shall return to that in due course. It also means giving parents and young people information about and access to the widest possible range of education and training provision in the maintained, voluntary and private sectors.
We know that parents and young people want real choice. We believe also that choice and diversity play a crucial part in raising education standards. They do that in three ways. First, they encourage competition
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between providers, inspiring effort and enterprise and attacking the complacency associated with captive markets. Secondly, they help institutions to build on their strengths and focus their efforts and resources. Thirdly, they strengthen the motivation and commitment of parents and young people who have been able to choose a type of education or training suitable to their talents, interests and needs.
For all those reasons, the Government have worked very hard to promote choice and diversity. I should like to look at some of our achievements. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said that no one had mentioned this, but we introduced the nursery voucher scheme which will enable all four year-olds to have three terms of nursery education before compulsory schooling, if that is what their parents want. That will be in the private sector, in the maintained sector and in the voluntary sector. I am pleased to say that my right honourable friend was able to announce today plans for that scheme to go nationwide from next April. I should point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, who quoted a figure of £20 million as regards administration, that most of that £20 million will go on inspection. Is the noble Baroness really saying that nursery schools should not be inspected? Indeed, whatever scheme we introduced, we would have to spend money on inspection. I believe that to be quite right. It is a justifiable expenditure by the Government.
I turn now to schools. Our commitment to parental choice in education for children of statutory school age is just as strong. It is very easy to forget that when we came to power parents were, in effect, allocated a school for their child. I appreciate that some LEAs are better than others. I see the noble Baroness shakes her head, but I accept that Lancashire is better than some others that I shall mention later. For example, I should like to refer the noble Baroness to Islington, Southwark and others.
As I was saying, it is easy to forget that parents were allocated a school for their child and that popular schools had their admissions restricted to protect the unpopular. We changed all that by requiring local education authorities to give all parents the right to say which school they wanted their child to attend. We introduced more open enrolment to remove artificial barriers to admission.
We have also encouraged schools to become more responsive to parents and pupils by requiring school budgets to be mainly pupil led. That means that parental choice can directly influence individual schools.
To drive up standards, choice must be properly informed. So we have made sure that parents have access to more hard information about individual schools than every before. Again, that was something that my noble friend Lady Young stressed as being very important. School inspection reports are now published, as are school and college performance tables. As I believe was noted, a liberal former headmaster said that possibly the publication of the performance tables had done more to raise standards than any other single reform by this Government.

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Further, through the assisted places scheme—and I am glad that many of my noble friends mentioned this—we have given children from low income families access to the independent sector. Over time, we intend to double the total of 34,000 places currently available. As, again, my noble friend Lady Young made absolutely clear, abolition of the assisted places scheme would save virtually nothing. It is not the panacea that the party opposite seem to think that it is, in terms of somehow levering money in to impose an artificial and arbitrary standard class size on all schools.
To increase diversity of schools in urban areas we established the 15 city technology colleges. I thank my noble friend Lady Perry for what she said about the CTCs and, indeed, my noble friend Lady Brigstocke who has personal experience of such colleges in Derby. Both of them were able to tell us how well those colleges have been doing, are doing and how well they will be doing in the future.
As my noble friend Lord Astor made clear, we have encouraged state schools to specialise through the Technology and Language Colleges programme. I believe that my noble friend Lady Brigstocke took the opportunity yesterday when a Question was tabled on the teaching of modern foreign languages to mention the importance of the new language colleges. There are now about 180 of those specialist schools and, over time, we hope to expand that number thus catering for some 180,000 pupils. I can only hope that we can expand that figure much more in the future. However, I have to say that the initial programme was three times over-subscribed; in other words, the number of schools which felt that they could make such a commitment and raise the necessary money from the private sector was three times greater than what we could live with.
We have also given all state schools the option of becoming grant maintained. GM status offers the highest degree of autonomy available within the state sector, giving schools greater flexibility to develop distinctive characters and strengths. Over 1,100 schools—and that is true of both ordinary schools and special schools—educating some 700,000 pupils have become grant maintained and the sector continues to grow. Some 20 per cent. of all secondary pupils are now lucky enough to benefit from the grant-maintained schools. I suspect that that figure might be somewhat higher if they were lucky enough to be the children of a Member of the Shadow Cabinet in another place.
My noble friend Lady Young said that not enough schools had gone grant maintained. I should point out to her that in some nine out of 10 schools parents have not even been given the chance to have a ballot. However, in those schools where there has been a ballot, some three out of four have gone grant maintained. I should like all those LEA-appointed governors, and others, of the non-grant-maintained schools just to consider whether they might wish to offer to their parents the option of having a ballot to go grant maintained.
I should point out to the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, that I believe his party still represents a threat to grant maintained schools. His party is hostile
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to GM schools and its policies would undermine them. As I understand it, from its Diversity and Excellence document published last July, the attack is in three parts. First, they would be forced to have two LEA councillors to act as governors. No doubt those councillors would be as hostile to GM schools as is the Labour Party. Secondly, a Labour government would snatch back some 10 per cent. of their budgets and hand it straight to the LEAs themselves. Finally, the Funding Agency for Schools would be abolished and funds would be routed to schools through the LEAs. I do not think that there would be much left of the grant-maintained school after that.
I move on to post-compulsory education and education for 16 to 19 year-olds. The latter now have more choice than ever before. Every young person is entitled to suitable education or training. They can choose from a wide range of general and vocational qualifications, such as GCSEs and A-levels—and I was grateful for the mention by my noble friend Lady Perry and other speakers of GNVQs and even NVQs—and they can mix and match these to suit their needs. They can also choose from a diverse range of high quality providers: school sixth forms, further education and sixth form colleges and work based training.
I believe that much has been achieved but there is more to do. As I mentioned earlier, today we announced our plans to extend the nursery voucher scheme nation wide. That will be well received. The week before last we published our Education Bill which received its Second Reading in another place on Monday. That does yet more inter alia further to extend choice and diversity. Before I move on to choice and diversity, perhaps I should mention—as I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, did—that that will also lead to the merger of SCAA and NCVQs. That was welcomed by the noble Baroness and I am grateful for that. There is also provision for the school partnerships which were mentioned by my noble friend Lady Platt, parts of which relate to careers advice.
One of the most important points about that Education Bill is the fact that it will further extend choice and diversity. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Morris, said that there was not actually that much choice in the system. However, as I understood the gist of his argument, that was, therefore, a reason for further restricting choice. My view is that if there is not enough choice, we should be doing what we can to extend that choice. That is what the Bill will do.
We believe that schools which select some or all of their pupils by ability or aptitude are an essential part of a diverse education system. At present, there are relatively few schools of this kind and their geographical distribution is very uneven. We want parents in many more areas to have access to selective education. That is why we want to encourage more schools to consider introducing or extending selection.
Now is not the time to go into that Bill in detail. We shall have time enough to do so when it comes from another place to this House. I certainly look forward to introducing that Bill. I also look forward to the support that I am sure I will receive from my noble friends when

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we come to the Second Reading and, indeed, the later stages of that legislation. I can predict, as regards large parts of the Bill, a fairly customary hostile reaction of the parties opposite as they make their usual knee-jerk reactions to any sign of progress in this field. I look forward to the reactions of the local education authorities. I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Beloff for pointing out just how poorly some Labour local education authorities perform. I think of the 10 worst authorities for GCSE results, nine happen to be Labour.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, does the Minister accept that if there were to be a league table showing the 10 worst results by county councils, the Conservative councils could only account for one of the 10 because they only control one of the county councils? There is hardly a Conservative council in sight in local government to perform badly, average or poorly.
Lord Henley: My Lords, there are a number of Conservative authorities and I shall say a little about them. The Bill quite rightly will extend the ability of Ofsted to inspect local education authorities. I imagine there will be a number of local education authorities who will not welcome that. But I think that when they look at an authority such as Islington, they might ask why it is that some prominent parents in Islington—I refer to the Leader of the party of the noble Baroness—prefer to send their child to a grant-maintained school in a Conservative authority, using the choice and selection that we have granted. Perhaps the inspectors would also like to ask Southwark why a prominent parent there, Ms. Harman, prefers to send her children to selective schools in Tory Bromley. Those are points worth making. The party opposite accuses us of having done nothing in 17 years—which is not true—but the noble Baroness must accept that the worst schools and the worst LEAs are in areas where Labour has been in power, and has probably been in power since the Ark.
A number of other points have been raised by a number of different speakers and I wish to touch on those briefly in the few minutes remaining to me. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned the importance of placing greater stress on overseas development matters in the curriculum. Obviously that is something that schools can pursue at the moment within the constraints of the curriculum. I must remind him of the moratorium that we have at the moment on changes to the national curriculum. That is something that can be addressed by SCAA or its successor body in any future changes, and in the next curriculum review.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway raised a number of concerns about special educational needs, some of which we shall address in his Bill which we shall deal with after this debate. If I may, I wish to address other points by means of correspondence, as he requested. I wish to respond to two of the points raised by my noble friend Lady Cox. First, I am grateful for her support for baseline testing. I think that is something that noble Lords on all sides of the House would
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welcome. It might in time provide us with yet more useful information for the performance tables. Secondly, as regards the performance tables, as she knows, we already have them for secondary schools. We are extending the performance tables to the primary sector with effect from March of next year. Getting them out will be a mammoth logistical task. In the first place we intend that they should only include the key stage 2 results because that is obviously the important result in terms of the performance of the schools. Bearing in mind the logistical difficulties, in the future we might consider extending these to the key stage 1 results.
My noble friend Lord Astor asked whether schools could use the international baccalaureate. That is open to them and is something they can pursue as and when they wish. My noble friend also asked about the desirability of schools improving links with employers and with local businesses. That is important. I can give him two fairly encouraging statistics on that. Some 98 per cent. of secondary schools now have links with local business and therefore can arrange work experience for their pupils. The figure for the percentage of businesses that have links with schools is, sadly, somewhat lower, but at 58 per cent. I think it is still an impressive figure and it is one that we could improve on in future.
I have mentioned a great deal of what we have done and I have mentioned what we intend to do further to promote choice and diversity in education for four to 19 year-olds. They are the clearest possible illustration of the Government's commitment to these principles. We believe strongly that the needs of individuals, and the needs of an increasingly complex economy and society, can be met only by a diverse education system offering real choice to young people and their parents. Choice and diversity are not optional extras. They should be integral parts of our education system in the 21st century. This Government will see that they are.
7.35 p.m.
Baroness Perry of Southwark: My Lords, it falls to me now to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in what I think has been an extremely informative debate demonstrating the rich diversity available in the education system. I particularly wish to thank my noble friend the Minister for his full reply to all who have spoken in the debate and for the encouraging way in which he has demonstrated that the policies of the Government are directed to increasing diversity and choice not only within the private sector—as some speakers from the opposite Benches seem to believe—but for the almost 90 per cent. of children who are in the state sector.
I, too, was disappointed that we had only three speakers from the Labour Benches, but I thank those who spoke. However, I was disappointed to hear in the speeches from the Front Bench opposite that there still seems to be a stubborn refusal to see the relationship between choice and quality. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, that when I am directed to only one supplier to buy my apples, if my supplier offers me rotten apples I must take the rotten apples. If I am allowed to exercise a rich choice among

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many suppliers, I can make sure that I buy only good apples, and the supplier of rotten apples either has to improve and start to sell good apples or go out of business. That is precisely the point about consumer choice in education. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Education (Special Educational Needs) Bill [H.L.]
7.37 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It is cast in a form which is unintelligible without a series of side glances at the patchwork quilt of primary and secondary legislation which governs the regime for children with special educational needs under the Act of 1996. At this hour and on this occasion of Second Reading it would not be appropriate to indulge in any such exercise. But the purpose of the Bill is entirely straightforward and entirely clear.
Clause 1 confers status on a child with special educational needs if the child is of sufficient understanding which is collateral to that of the parent. Clause 2 provides machinery for resolving the question of sufficient understanding if it were to arise. Clause 3 is designed to maintain the status quo on review or otherwise pending appeal where the LEA has determined to amend a statement, to vary provision made in a statement or to cease to maintain a statement. It draws a distinction between interim provision and substantive decision in this regard which was not judicially recognised by the Court of Appeal in a recent decision in the case of Re M (1996), and in this respect changes substantive case law.
The main purpose of the Bill is to seek to confer upon the child with special educational needs the right to make representations, to receive notifications and to exercise rights of appeal if of sufficient understanding. By definition we are concerned with children with special educational needs under the age of 19 years registered as pupils at a school and with parents who need not be natural parents but who may only have parental responsibility or care of the child. There are many unfortunate circumstances in which a child under the age of 19 has little or no support from his parents, where the parents have lost patience or interest in the child, or where relationships have broken down. There are many cases where the child and his parents may disagree as to the appropriate educational provision to be made, school included, especially where the child is over 16 years and the parents are not his natural parents but have only responsibility and care, or if there is only a single parent. It is a situation not uncommon with children with special educational needs.
To clarify the situation, under this regime there are three stages: first, the assessment stage by the LEA; secondly, the appeal stage from the LEA to the tribunal; and, thirdly, the process of appeal from the tribunal to
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the High Court. According to laymen and lawyers—I put them in that order—who toil in this field, there are defects in this regime which work manifest injustice—hair cracks in the foundations which this Bill seeks to rectify.
As regards the first stage—the defects at the assessment stage—the Bill seeks to remove those defects (I seek to synthesise quite simply the complexity of the draft) by providing that if the local education authority proposes not to assess, not to make a statement, not to review, not to amend, or not to maintain a statement, then notice of such proposals must be given to the child who shall be entitled to make representations to the LEA in his own right and to appeal to the tribunal in his own right. That right of appeal to the tribunal will also be extended to the contents of the statement including any question arising as to change of named school on which, again, the child is to be afforded the right to make representations to the LEA. As a measure of safeguard, as regards amendment or cessation of statement by decision of the LEA, such decision, if notice of appeal is given, shall be stayed pending determination on appeal so that the statement shall remain effective. In substance, that is the simple explanation of the purpose of the remedial provisions affecting stage one.
As to the second stage, the tribunal is a statutory tribunal whose proceedings are governed by the Tribunals and Enquiries Act 1992 and by the tribunal regulations of 1995 (Statutory Instrument 3113). What I shall say will surprise your Lordships. I am telling the House how it is done and how it has been represented by laymen and lawyers to the Education Committee of another place. This is not a fairy story although it may sound like one. Under the regulations as implemented, the child does not normally attend before the tribunal. His views are not normally heard by the tribunal. If he attends, he does so as one of his parents' witnesses. If there are more than two witnesses, then it is only by leave of the chairman. He has no enforceable right to attend the tribunal. He has no enforceable right to speak to the tribunal even if of sufficient understanding. Concern was expressed in a memorandum. Under the Bill he would be given such right.
Appendix 19 to the second report of the Education Committee in another place, to which I have referred—it is available in the Library—was submitted by the Education Law Association and the London SEN Tribunal Group. The report states that there is a general reluctance to accept evidence direct from children, and that Children Act questions and the decisions of social services are not considered. Members of that association and group include barristers, solicitors, LEA and parent representatives, and educational psychologists. They took the view that the allocation of three hours was insufficient in many cases; that there was undue pressure of time; and that vigorous questioning by the chairman during the course of submission hindered the presentation and tended to confuse. Furthermore, regulation 15 was implemented in practice so as to inhibit the attendance of a solicitor before the tribunal if he instructed counsel. As appeal to the High Court is only on a point of law, such attendance is obviously

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essential in order that a proper note may be taken of the whole proceedings. The effect of such an inhibition is compounded by the requirement under regulation 30 that reasons for the tribunal's decision need only be in summary form, a lesser requirement than obtains for any other statutory tribunal.
Regulation 15 would in effect be annulled by Clause 4 of the Bill, and regulation 30 would be amended to remove this derogation from the provisions of the Tribunals and Enquiries Act as to the requirement to give reasons. It may well be that during the passage of the Bill other amendments to those regulations may be proposed by noble Lords in implementation of the Bill.
As to the third stage, and the defects arising there, it was decided judicially by the Court of Appeal in the South Glamorgan case of 1995 that as the tribunal was a statutory tribunal an appeal must be made under what is called Order 55 of the Rules of the Supreme Court and not under Order 53 applicable to judicial review. It was said also that the powers of the court under Order 55 were not more limited than those under Order 53. But the defect in this regime, which may only be rectified by primary legislation, is that the child with SEN unlike other children is in effect disenfranchised as all his rights vest in the parent.
Under Part IV of the 1996 Act, the child with special educational needs, unlike other children, was disenfranchised. As a result, all his rights vest in the parent. It is no longer possible for that child to appeal to the High Court through a next friend or parent with legal aid granted as of right across the board as in all other child-related matters.
Children with special educational needs are wholly dependent upon a parent whose means so often have to be set aside to pay for expenses, special provision or medical treatment for a long, unpredictable period of time; or the parents may be disinterested; or the parent may disagree with the child as to the appropriate educational provision; or it may be the parent with whom relationships have totally broken down. It is in that parent that the whole right of making an appeal to the High Court vests. The child now has none. Before this regime the child could go by judicial review to the High Court in his own right and as a matter of course legal aid was granted.
This is not a mere matter of money. The sums involved are of derisory consequence. It is no freebie bonanza for the speculative no-win, no-fee lawyer. There are no damages to cover any costs if there is a win; by judicial decision damages do not arise in this context. So there is no fear of encouraging speculative litigation. But safeguard for the interests of the children alongside those of other children is a question of principle; it is not just a question of money in any event. This is an anomalous two-tier dispensation as regards the interests of children which is tilted against those who are disadvantaged and have special educational needs as compared with other children who have no such disadvantage.
I apologise for having spoken at such length. It was accepted by my noble friend Lady Blatch and by the House when this regime was before us in 1993 that it
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was experimental and that if problems arose in the course of implementation remedial measures would be introduced in subsequent legislation. That was the clear understanding. The injustices to which I have referred, in particular that of disenfranchisement of the child, vesting its rights in the parent and the consequences to which I referred, were not foreseen by me. They were not foreseen by my noble friend Lady Blatch, not foreseen by any noble Lord in this House and, looking at Hansard, not foreseen in the other House either. I have spoken to my noble friend Lady Blatch.
If your Lordships are satisfied that there are defects in the regime, I ask that we give the Bill a Second Reading in the hope that the Government will come forward, honour their undertaking and not oppose it. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. — (Lord Campbell of Alloway.)
7.55 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield: My Lords, I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Campbell. There is a question of just principle here. I have one concern. The noble Lord's remarks about the first stage may have resolved it; however, because I am not clear and have not had time to make it clear, I wish to raise that concern. It hovers around the words,
"the child if of sufficient understanding".
The Bill provides that any question arising as to whether a child is of sufficient understanding should be determined by the tribunal with a right of appeal to the High Court. However—and here is my difficulty—if it is desirable that the child should be involved in the process but the LEA considers that the child is not of sufficient understanding, then the LEA will not serve the notices on the child. But if the child never receives the notices, how is the tribunal at the next stage to be asked to determine the question of whether the child is of sufficient understanding? Unless I am confused, that is a loophole and it worries me.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, is rightly concerned that the child's interests may not be properly represented by its parents. But that could be the case whether or not the child is of sufficient understanding. Surely the child should receive notices in any event. The child's interest can then be represented by a friend or professional person who is in sympathy with the needs of the child.
In the light of those concerns, would it be possible for the Government to take responsibility for ensuring that the principle of the proposals put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, is upheld? I hope that the Government will make a statement informing the House that they will bring forward amendments which will close this loophole in the law and ensure that the child's rights are protected.
I therefore urge noble Lords to support the principle underlying the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell. Many parents of children with special educational needs are very reluctant to discuss those needs. We should ensure that such children have the right to representation, and that representation will be sensitive to the mobility and/or communication

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difficulties relevant to each child It would be most unfortunate if the involvement of such children in tribunals merely underlines further the particular special needs that they have and cannot manage to surmount.
Surely we need to recognise the integrity of all children and provide the means whereby those who are disadvantaged still have access to the means of support. I trust that, if my fears are unfounded, other speakers or the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, will help me. However, I want to make very clear that I strongly support the whole thrust of the Bill.
7.58 p.m.
Baroness Darcy (de Knayth): My Lords, I welcome this Bill, so comprehensively introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway. The noble Lord, who has long been a tenacious defender of the rights of children with special educational needs, made a compelling case for the need to rectify certain problems that were not foreseen during the passage of the 1993 (now 1996) Act. As he said today and in the debate on 29th October, it was accepted at the time that,
"if problems arose in the course of implementation remedial measures would be introduced in subsequent legislation".—[Official Report, 29/10/96; col. 253.]
The noble Lord speaks from first-hand and close contact with others involved daily in this area. I have no direct experience and I therefore consulted the Independent Panel for Special Education Advice (IPSEA). Here I should declare an interest because I am a director of IPSEA. It is not a paid position and I am not involved in any practical sense. IPSEA is a charity which provides telephone advice to parents, representation at the Special Needs Tribunal and second opinions from professionals, who are also prepared to be witnesses for parents at tribunal hearings. All these services are free. IPSEA therefore has probably more experience than anyone in dealing with these matters. It has a great deal of countrywide, direct, daily experience of the working of the Act and of any problems which may come to light.
I should like to concentrate on two points: first, that legal aid is not available for challenging the decisions of the tribunal; and, secondly, the fact that LEAs can, and do, discontinue special educational provision before the tribunal meets to consider the parents' appeal. I shall not go into the wider question of the rights of the child with special educational needs because I do not feel competent to speak on that. It seems to go very wide indeed. I very much associate myself with the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield.
IPSEA warmly welcomes the two points that I have mentioned which the noble Lord's Bill deals with. Indeed, when it submitted both written and oral evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee in January this year, one of its main concerns was about the legal aid barrier to challenging a tribunal decision. As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, stated so very clearly both today and on the 29th October (at col. 254 of Hansard) all children other than those with special educational needs can proceed to judicial review through their next friend with full benefit
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of legal aid, irrespective of the financial circumstances of their parents or their next friend. The sole exception to this rule in child-related matters is an appeal to this tribunal. Only a child with special educational needs who comes from a very poor family which would qualify for legal aid or from a rich family which could afford the considerable cost of High Court action will be able to challenge the tribunal's judgment on a point of law. This will not only debar most children with special needs from pursuing an appeal to the High Court, however good their cause, but it will also have a wider spin-off effect because it will block the development of case law. This was something which concerned IPSEA. I quote from paragraph 7 of its submission to the Select Committee:
"With Legal Aid unavailable to children, IPSEA is concerned that the full advantage of Part III [now part IV] of the Education Act will be lost. The Act is likely to require interpretation from case law, particularly in the next few years, to clarify the law both for parents and Local Education Authorities. Certainly, our experience of Tribunal judgments, although in the main positive, has revealed ambiguities and inconsistencies which call for guidance from the courts. It makes economic sense to have these matters brought to and resolved by the court, rather than perpetuate tribunal appeals arising from continuing ambiguity".
IPSEA asked the Select Committee to examine the issue carefully and to recommend to the Government that the law be changed.
This situation is surely something that must be put right. It is clearly the child who will benefit from a successful appeal to the High Court and who stands to lose if the appeal cannot be made. In this sense it is clearly the child's appeal, notwithstanding the fact that the parent is the party, and it is quite illogical that the child cannot be entitled to legal aid. I understand that IPSEA suggested various ways of resolving this dilemma. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, has proposed one way to resolve it. I look forward to hearing the comments of the Minister on the noble Lord's solution.
I should like to give a very enthusiastic welcome to Clause 3, which ensures that the statement will remain effective until the appeal is finally disposed of. In its submission to the Select Committee, IPSEA asked the committee to recommend an immediate change in the law. It felt that this situation was not something that Parliament had intended to create and that the disruption it would cause to a child's education had not been foreseen. At the moment a child may be, and quite often is, removed from the named school and indeed may be without a school place altogether until an appeal has been heard, which may not be for five to six months. The interesting thing is that the statistics in the tribunal's annual report show that it is in precisely this type of decision—namely, on needs and provision, on Parts 2 and 3 of the statement—that the tribunal upholds challenges from parents in 78 per cent. of the appeals. Therefore the education of the children in 78 per cent. of cases has been needlessly and pointlessly disrupted for about six months. Clause 3 is therefore most welcome. Furthermore, it would not impose any extra administrative burden on local authorities. An authority would simply have to inform a parent six months in

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advance that it thinks a child will no longer need special educational provision and that the statement will therefore not need to be maintained.
I do not know what the Minister will say. I hope that he will be enthusiastic, at least on the two aspects that I have dealt with. He may disagree with some of the detail, but will he say whether he agrees that, in particular, the removal of the legal-aid barrier and the protection of the statement until the tribunal's decision is made are much needed improvements which address matters that need to be put right? I very much hope he will respond positively. I hope your Lordships will give the Bill a Second Reading so that we may iron out any problems when it comes to Committee.
8.6 p.m.
Lord Addington: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, is something of a champion in the area of helping children with special needs. Indeed, when the Education Act 1993 was going through Parliament, he was one of the major players in trying to obtain the provisions for a code of practice and representation rights. One might say that he was the bit to the drill for which the rest of us provided the power; he was the cutting edge.
If the noble Lord missed something, it makes me feel slightly better about myself because I have certainly missed many bits of legal jargon. If the noble Lord can occasionally miss something, I feel a little better.
I do not think anybody will find ground for disagreement on the main thrust of this Bill, which is that the child himself has rights as an independent unit, not merely as an adjunct to the parents. This is fundamental, and the noble Lord put it very clearly. This is the important point.
With regard to drafting, etc., I shall continue in humble vein. The right reverend Prelate spotted a loophole rather more accurately than I could have done, although I think I was able to follow what he said. I hope that the Minister will agree with me that the words do not matter, it is the aim of the Bill that is important. We must ensure that children have the support given by this Bill at all times and that they have it in their own right.
The main criticism that I have heard about this Bill from other organisations is that they believe it may lead to more legal procedures. The Minister nods his head—he usually shakes it, but he is nodding it now. We must try to address this point. The tribunal decides whether a child has sufficient understanding. I suggest that we should come up with a working definition of "a child". We are talking of a child here as someone who is under 19. I would suggest that a young person under the age of 19 may well have a very good idea about certain educational procedures. I further suggest that, if the educational procedures are inappropriate, or if the young person feels that they are inappropriate, they will not work, anyway. The child's rights are centrally important here.
Surely the Government can come up with a definition which will make clear who is included within the definition, thus excluding a considerable area for
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potential disagreement and legal time. If it is removed, I hope that the whole of this House will agree that the argument is incontrovertible. We have a major line of argument that a person should be consulted and has rights in his own capacity. If that is taken on board, and surely we have much common ground here, there must be a way forward. Even if it is not stated in exact terms in the Bill, there must be grounds for some step forward. We are talking only about bringing in the person who is directly affected by the process into that process. Surely, that is incontrovertible.
8.10 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for bringing forward and explaining the Bill and permitting us to consider the needs of a very important sector of our society—children with special educational needs—whose redoubtable champion he has long been, to the admiration of the whole House.
This is a Private Member's Bill and, as is customary, my party takes no view on it. Therefore, I speak personally and not representatively.
The Bill confers rights on children with special educational needs and changes the provision made for appeals to the Special Educational Needs Tribunal and appeals from that tribunal to the High Court. I should like to deal with those proposals in reverse order, after making one preliminary point which I feel is important.
The Bill deals with rights and with process. It does not and could not deal with resources. Yet, to my mind, the question of resource allocation is of first importance in daily practice. Those whom I have been able to consult in the teaching profession assure me that their most pressing problem is—to use the vulgar jargon—getting a child "statemented". I deplore the verbalisation of a perfectly serviceable noun, but I take the point. Teachers regularly find that a child has special needs and it is obvious what those needs are. That may be (and often is) corroborated by a doctor or psychologist and a request is formally submitted to the local education authority under the 1993 Act, now consolidated in 1996.
However, the law has enacted that so soon as a statement of special needs is issued in respect of any child the local authority is responsible for providing the money to implement and maintain it. I need hardly remind your Lordships that local education authorities are not flush with cash; and they have pressing problems. Schools are crumbling, with a £3 million backlog in repairs; one in 12 children leaves school with no qualifications at all; and a third of all primary school children are in classes of over 30. Is it any wonder that LEAs tend to look carefully at all requests for SEN statements and sometimes take longer than one would like to make decisions when each decision is an ineluctable, unalterable and legally enforceable spending commitment? Surely, the most urgent need is for resources to be made available to speed the decision process and to permit necessary statements to be issued and implemented.
The 1993 Act does, however, permit an appeal. It is that process with which the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, is concerned. Clause 4 allows a solicitor to be

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present at tribunal hearings when the child is represented by a barrister and it requires tribunal decisions to be given in full (Clause 4 (2)). It is a matter of balancing appropriate legal representation against what is considered to be a desirable informality. The president of the tribunal, in the interests of keeping tribunals small and informal, has said that he will exercise his discretion under the regulations, so that the representation on both sides must be limited to two. Thus, if the parent is one person, that leaves only one place for a lawyer, leaving banisters aggrieved that they cannot be accompanied by solicitors. Clause 4(2) is widely felt by the educational community to be a request to get more paperwork out of the tribunal with which to form an appeal.
The SEN Tribunal was established with all-party support to resolve disputes about the special educational provision for children. On the whole, it seems to have succeeded, despite enormous difficulties. The president, Mr. Trevor Aldridge QC, and his staff have worked extremely hard and well. Views of local education authorities about the effectiveness of the tribunal are sometimes related to the fortunes of the LEA before the tribunal. Anecdotal evidence suggests that tribunal decisions have tended to put up costs and the local authority associations are surveying their member authorities on that issue at present.
Concerns have been expressed that the effect of tribunal decisions has favoured children with certain disabilities over others. A difficult issue is that many parents (or voluntary bodies representing the interests of the disability) are paying for legal representation, which on the whole means that the LEA has to reply in kind. The intention of both central and local government on its establishment was that it would be—in the jargon phrase—a "lawyer-free zone". It seems that current practice pushes up the costs. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of what I began by saying. If tribunal costs go up, LEAs have less money to issue statements of special educational need; borderlines are moved as resources go down and children have to wait longer; and consequently they suffer increased deprivation. Justice for one means injustice for another. There are no easy answers.
Clause 3 deals with the special case where a local education authority proposes to amend or stop maintaining a statement. It proposes that the statement should remain in place until after the appeal process has been exhausted. That seems to me in principle a very necessary improvement to the present law and it is meet, right and our bounden duty that we should support it. Not all LEA decisions are made in heaven and Clause 3 would enforce a very proper discipline.
Clause 2 requires the tribunals and the courts to decide whether or not a child is "of sufficient understanding". I am not a lawyer. I am a literary critic, writer, teacher and poet, and the way in which lawyers use language is a mystery to me and always will be. But I am seriously concerned that this proposal might open up a whole new field of possibilities for lawyers to dispute in court how to interpret "of sufficient understanding". That again would increase the costs of any action and divert money from the primary purpose
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of providing appropriate teaching for SEN children. I realise that to define "sufficient understanding" is as difficult for a lawyer as to define "combat knife". But I am sure that, if the noble Lord could attempt a definition, it would greatly improve the Bill's chances of acceptance and greatly reduce its cost.
Clause 1 is, of course, the heart of the matter. It proposes the obviously laudable idea that the views of the child should be taken fully into account in any decision made about that child. But again, I confess that I am worried about some of the implications. Although giving explicit rights to children was not considered with the passage of the Education Act 1993, I understand that it has always been possible for children to attend appeal hearings at the tribunal. Children can give their own views and answer questions or make a written statement. My worry is that most of the children are likely to be under 11, with learning difficulties, and they are unlikely to have views very different from their parents. Giving children a key role in making an appeal, rather than their parents, would push children to the forefront of the appeal system, which, given that these children are often some of the most vulnerable members of our society, may have unfortunate consequences. Is it not possible, indeed likely, that such a change in procedure might do more harm than good?
At a deeper level, I am concerned about the whole question of children's rights. I accept that there can be no such thing as animal rights because there can be no rights without concomitant duties and animals cannot have duties. But children can have duties as they develop. So I argue that they must have developing rights. I think we are all agreed about that on all sides of your Lordships' House. I do not always agree with Bishop Bill Westwood, formerly of Peterborough, and I miss him in his place. I consider him dangerously unsound on the liturgy; but I listened to him on "Thought for the Day" on Radio 4 last week, and I was impressed by what he said:
"It's not a matter of children's rights, it's a matter of us having responsibilities towards children, whether as parents, or friends, or teachers, or simply as fellow citizens of a decent country".
That last phrase struck home to me, even just before the weather forecast.
The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, at its very heart, seeks to protect and empower some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and in that aim I support it entirely. I am not sure, however, that in its present form it wholly succeeds in that aim, and I hope that he will feel able to take away the suggestions that I and others make today and reflect upon them and, perhaps with the help of people in the established SEN organisations (I think of institutions like the Royal National Institute for the Blind, for example) seek answers to the problems we have posed. I would certainly be profoundly unimpressed by any suggestion that we should depart from our usual decision that this Bill be now read a second time.
8.20 p.m.
Lord Henley: My Lords, on the occasion of this debate there is much with which I can agree with the

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noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, with one brief caveat; that is, that he seemed to imply that there was insufficient expenditure by the LEAs on special educational needs. I remind him that most LEAs, quite rightly—they have a good record in this regard—spend 10 per cent. or so of their schools budget on the additional expenditure required for children with special educational needs over and above what is required for the majority of children. The Government's provision for local authority settlements was a good one last year. We will be announcing it again shortly, following the Budget. Our record speaks for itself. We have made sufficient money available to the LEAs and they have been able to make sufficient money available for special educational needs; though I accept that many would like more—that is ever the case.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell for the way in which he explained the objectives of his Bill. The Bill reflects the great interest that my noble friend has shown over the years in special educational needs issues. I discussed these matters with him at a much earlier stage and corresponded with him about them. I therefore know of his commitment in this area.
It will be apparent that the Bill raises some difficult issues. I am grateful for the careful way in which the noble Lord, Lord Morris, dealt with a number of those. In the time available to me I should like to focus on the issues raised by the first clause, though I shall comment briefly on the Bill's other proposals.
This House, far more so than another place—it is always an advertisement for this House—considered very carefully the arrangements relating to SEN and the tribunal in particular during the passage of the Education Act 1993. I should like to remind the House of two points raised during our discussions then because I believe they remain pertinent.
During the Committee stage my noble friend Lady Blatch said that the tribunal should provide a simple and straightforward means of resolving disputes between parents and local authorities. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, talked of the dangers of turning the tribunal into a highly formal lawyer-dominated process. He said he was sure that this House would not like that to happen. I feel no less sure that that remains the view of most Members of this House. However, the Bill could undermine both those objectives.
Perhaps I can start by offering a compressed sketch of the SEN procedures. Following the SEN Code of Practice which this House endorsed, schools respond in a staged way to a child's special educational needs, monitoring progress and providing additional help if what is offered so far has not proved successful. For that small proportion of children for whom a mainstream school cannot by itself provide, the school or parents may ask the LEA to carry out a statutory assessment. As we know, that is a thorough process involving educational psychologists, the school and often medical and social services, and the parents and the children themselves.
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In most cases such an assessment leads to a statement of special educational needs. That will be drawn up in draft by the LEA and sent to the parents for comment. There is therefore every opportunity for input from the parents and the child. Only where parents are dissatisfied with aspects of that process, or of the eventual statement, does the question of appeal to the SEN tribunal arise. The tribunal is intended to be a last resort and a final arbiter. That is why the tribunal that hears each appeal comprises two members with extensive experience in special educational needs, with a legally qualified chairman. Appeal beyond the tribunal is only to the High Court, and then only on a point of law. So far, since the Act and the code of practice, of the 2,000 parents who have appealed to the tribunal, only 54 have subsequently appealed to the High Court against a tribunal decision. The High Court has upheld the parents' appeal in only four cases.
In Clause 1 the Bill, at over 20 separate points in the existing legislation, would allow a child if of sufficient understanding—I shall return to those words—to be a party in their own right as well as their parents. I believe that that one feature of the Bill alone is enough to render it inoperable. For example, what if a parent and a child want different things? The parent may believe that one school is best able to cater for their child and should be named in the statement, while the child wants another. Who takes precedence? At present the tribunal focuses on the child's needs. If a child disagrees with his parents, the LEA will bring that out in its evidence. The tribunal already makes every effort to establish the child's view. I cannot believe that my noble friend wants to see children with special educational needs pursuing cases in the teeth of opposition from their parents.
In any case, even to operate those provisions involves identifying whether a child is of "sufficient understanding"—Clause 2. The questions of the right reverend Prelate reveal the impracticality at the core of the Bill and I do not believe that those are issues that can necessarily be resolved by adept drafting. No doubt my noble friend, with his expertise, will attempt such a process. When looking at "sufficient understanding" we must ask how a tribunal is to determine that. Even if we could define the phrase in practical terms, I do not believe that anyone in this House can say what proportion of children with special educational needs sufficiently severe to require a statutory assessment would be held to have "sufficient understanding".
That core provision of the Bill is impracticable. Even if it were not, it would at once be to the detriment of the children concerned by putting them, as the noble Lord, Lord Morris, said, in the spotlight where they may not want to be and—dare I say it?—if it is not to the detriment of the children, those are arguments that could be to the benefit of the legal profession. I cannot accept that increasing the legal stakes in matters of complex and sensitive educational judgments that arise in virtually every SEN case

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would necessarily benefit the children concerned. Nor—I make this quite clear—can I overlook the fact that the costs would escalate all round.
One other damaging effect of the Bill arises from the fact that, in order for a child to qualify for legal aid in an appeal to the High Court, he would have to be the original appellant to the tribunal. Even if we assume that the 90 per cent. or so of parents not legally represented when they appeal to the SEN tribunal would be aware of that, it implies that the child may be pushed—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Morris—perhaps undesirably into the forefront of the case. Even then, I doubt whether it would achieve my noble friend's objectives. It would be a route open only to children of "sufficient understanding".
I may say in passing that keeping legal intervention in the workings of the tribunal to a minimum is decisive for me in considering the Bill's proposals to allow a solicitor as well as a barrister to attend hearings. At present, as I suggested earlier, only around 11 per cent. of parents are legally represented at hearings. I wholly support the president of the tribunal—Mr. Trevor Aldridge—in his wish to keep both hearings as informal as possible. He has, for that reason, so far decided not generally to allow "dual legal representation", though he has permitted it exceptionally. He has undertaken however to review that issue by the end of the year. I certainly would not wish to press further than this without seeing the conclusions of the review which he will be conducting at the end of the year.
The Bill, in Clause 4, would require tribunals to provide reasons for their decisions in full rather than in summary form. Quite apart from the question whether it is appropriate to amend through primary legislation a provision contained in secondary legislation, this falls also at the hurdle of legal bureaucracy. A summary decision is typically three or so pages long. I do not think parents would necessarily welcome the delays inevitable if full written decisions had to be provided—perhaps up to 25 pages in length. Nor would parents necessarily welcome the technical detail entailed. Indeed, Mr. Justice Latham found, in his decision of July of last year in S v. the Special Educational Needs Tribunal and the City of Westminster that the decision of the tribunal in summary form was,
"an admirable example of how matters should be dealt with".
I should mention the two remaining provisions of the Bill, both of which are unnecessary. One, Clause 3(1), attempts to provide an extra right of appeal when, after an annual review of a statement, the LEA decides not to amend the statement. In effect, a more powerful version of the same right is already in place. A parent can usually seek a reassessment of his child and can appeal to the tribunal if the LEA refuses the request. Since a reassessment is more onerous for the LEA than amending a statement, authorities are already likely to be responsive to parents in those circumstances.
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The second remaining point, Clause 3(2), which concerned the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), relates to the continuation of a statement where a parent appeals to the tribunal against an LEA's decision to cease to maintain the statement. There is, in some cases, a genuine difficulty here. But I believe it is one which is much more likely to be resolved by flexible local action than by hard and fast statutory rules. For that reason the Department for Education and Employment has recently issued guidance to LEAs. Until we have more evidence of the scale of any potential problems, I do not believe there is a case for change, particularly statutory change, at this level.
It has always been the intention of the Government—and I believe this House—to make the SEN tribunal as user-friendly as possible. It is a tribute to the president and his staff that they have largely been successful in so doing. This Bill would very much undermine and endanger that achievement. Having said that, I shall not, in the usual manner, oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, but I have to say to my noble friend that Her Majesty's Government cannot give their support to it.
8.33 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. Nothing that my noble friend Lord Henley said causes me the slightest surprise. It is a firm attitude of government that has been represented throughout all our discussions—courteously entertained but stonewalled. It is for that reason that I introduced the Bill. Broadly speaking, in principle, it appears to commend itself to all sides of the House. I am grateful to noble Lords for their support.
Clearly, grudgingly, my noble friend Lord Henley said that by convention the Government would not oppose the Bill. If the convention were not there, they would have opposed it tooth and nail. But we have to fight on for what we believe in and take issue with the Government, who I, in other ways, support. I am grateful for the suggestion made by the right reverend Prelate which I shall take up. It was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and it was supported to some degree in a different form—we all have our own views and our own ways—by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris. I agree that we should probably amend so that the child should have notice in any event. If the right reverend Prelate were to table an amendment, I would immediately be disposed to accept it. Other noble Lords may wish to table other amendments. That is something which we can consider at the Committee stage on 11th December. It is difficult to take it further today other than to express my gratitude for the suggestions that have been made.
I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I strongly resent that snide remark by my noble friend Lord Henley suggesting that the Bill might be of no benefit to the child but of some benefit to the profession of which I am a member. I do not think it very amusing. As he was or is a member of that profession, I think

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it comes ill from him in any event. There is none of that about this Bill. The Bill is presented as a matter of principle and not to "fat cat" the legal profession.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I totally withdraw the remark if my noble friend took it in that sense. What I was trying to get over was that I believed that the Bill would not be of benefit to the children because, as we made clear earlier, this is an area which one wants to keep as far as possible lawyer-free. That was the original intention behind the tribunals.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I hear what my noble friend says. I am grateful to him. I do not quite understand what it means.
I want to make one other point. The suggestion that there is some idea that the Bill would run against the user-friendly concept of the tribunal or would create a system which was not informal is nonsense. That concept is consistently held by the department—I
1020
cannot go too far because my conversations with the department were confidential—but perhaps I may put it this way. Nothing that my noble friend has said on the Floor of the House tonight surprises me. I maintain that there is nothing in the Bill which runs counter to the concept that we all have—that this must be user-friendly and informal. All we want is a measure of means of obtaining justice.
The question about the position of the child at this hour is too important to deal with. All your Lordships are concerned that the position of the child should be restored to what it was before this regime was introduced and put on the same basis—I am putting it very simply—as with all other children. With that, if your Lordships will allow, I commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes before nine o'clock.

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