Sitting of 25 February 1997

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

  KING'S COLLEGE LONDON BILL [Lords] (By Order)
  Order for Third Reading read.
  To be read the Third Time on Tuesday 4 March.

  LEVER PARK BILL (By Order)
  Order for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time on Tuesday 4 March.

Oral Answers to Questions
  SOCIAL SECURITY

    Benefits System (Discrimination)
    Sir Fergus Montgomery: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to reduce discrimination against couples in the benefit system. [15737]
    The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Peter Lilley): We intend to bring the benefits for new lone parents and couples with children more into line. From April 1998, new lone parents will receive the same rate of family premium and child benefit as do married couples with children. Existing claimants will continue to receive the current higher rates of cash benefit, but those rates will not be increased in April 1997. As well as being a more even-handed system, this will save around £0.5 billion a year.
    Sir Fergus Montgomery: As my right hon. Friend has confirmed, if his plan for a fairer family benefit system is brought in, it will save £500 million in the long term. If it is not implemented, will that not mean that public expenditure will have to be increased by £500 million or that the benefits of pensioners and disabled people will have to be cut? Has my right hon. Friend had any representations from the Labour party, which believes in what is called a fixed social security budget and which has opposed the reforms all the way through, to find out what benefits it intends to cut?
    Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend makes a telling point, and the answer is that I am afraid that I have received no reply to the repeated letters that I have sent to the Opposition spokesman to find out what the Labour party intends to replace those savings with, should it, alas, find itself in power. Labour Members have said that they will stick to
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    the departmental budgets laid down by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for the Treasury. If they are to forgo £500 million from those savings and spend more money on benefits for lone parents, they must, by definition, take it from other groups—families, single people without children, pensioners or the disabled.
    Mr. Alan Howarth: What has the Secretary of State to say about the shocking fact that, for one in five couples of working age, neither partner is in work? Is that not because the Government have vastly increased the number of households on means-tested benefits while holding down earnings disregards? Is not the perversity of the Government's policy that, when one partner loses a job, it makes sense for the other to give up work?
    Mr. Lilley: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will wish to welcome the decline by some 300,000 in the number of households in the position that he describes. I am sure that he does not wish to give universally benefits to the non-working partner in a household, regardless of the income of the person in work, because he knows full well that that would be prohibitively expensive. He certainly knows that Labour Front Benchers cannot commit themselves to anything like that because they have accepted our spending totals. It is all very well for Labour Back Benchers to demand more money; they should speak to their Front Benchers, who say that our spending totals are exactly right.
    Lady Olga Maitland: Does my right hon. Friend agree that married couples will welcome those reforms because not only are the reforms fairer to married couples, but they have felt discriminated against in recent years because they have been paying tax out of their pockets to support lone parents? Do not the reforms also pass a clear message that we want to encourage young people to have family relationships in which they are committed to each other and stay together for the sake of their children?
    Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend is right. There can be no basis in the long term for a less generous benefit system for married couples than exists for lone parents. I welcome the comments of the Chairman of the Social Security Select Committee that, if we seize this nettle, it should be supported by the Opposition. I have not noticed that it is being supported by the Opposition as yet.
    Ms Harman: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, for lone mothers, the most important thing is not to depend on benefits paid by other families but to get off benefits and into work? Having cut lone mothers' benefits and abused lone mothers at the Tory party conference with his little list, why has he now given lone mothers a little leaflet? Although it cost £750,000, the leaflet tells lone mothers nothing about jobs, child care or training; it tells them only about how to get more leaflets about more benefits. Will he acknowledge that his policy of saying to lone mothers, "Here is your income support; come back when your youngest child is 16," has left 1 million mothers on income support, 2 million children on the breadline and a £10 billion bill for the taxpayer? Why does not he take up Labour's welfare-to-work proposals and invite lone mothers into the jobcentre for help and advice?
    Mr. Lilley: The House will notice that the hon. Lady has not chosen to inform us where she will get the £500 million that she wants to spend on higher benefits for new lone parents.
    However, the hon. Lady is right to say that the best possibility for lone parents is to get back to work. That is why we have sustained in-work benefits, notably family credit. That is why we have improved them by giving a child care allowance within family credit. That is why we have improved them further by giving a carry-on of housing benefit at the existing rate for a month after return to work. That is why we are sending out a leaflet spelling out the advantages of getting back to work, spelling out those extra benefits and spelling out the availability of child care help. I am surprised and astonished that the hon. Lady chooses to ridicule it. On second thoughts, I am not surprised: it is typical.
    Mr. Clifton-Brown: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, for far too long, the benefit system has discriminated in favour of lone parents as opposed to married couples and that it is a long-overdue reform that married couples should now receive the same as lone parents? Has he received representations from the Labour party to the effect that it is prepared to pay lone parents another £20 a week on top of what they currently receive, and what would that cost?
    Mr. Lilley: I agree with my hon. Friend. He may be unconsciously echoing almost exactly the words of the only Opposition Member who has made similar points—the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who used very similar words. I understand that the Opposition now propose to allow a maintenance disregard, which effectively will give an advantage of up to £20 a week to lone parents who receive maintenance from the absent father as a result of our efforts, so it will be a disincentive for them to return to work. That must militate in exactly the opposite direction to that which the Labour spokesman advocated a few moments ago.

    Pensioner Incomes
    Mr. Flynn: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Sir A. Bowden) of 5 February, Official Report, columns 637–38, if he will uprate pensions in line with earnings. [15738]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Oliver Heald): No. If the basic pension had been increased by the higher of earnings or prices since 1980, the total extra burden on the taxpayer would be £8.6 billion in 1997–98.
    Mr. Flynn: Does the hon. Gentleman recall the pledge given in the 1979 election campaign that the Conservatives would increase pensions along with the prosperity of the country? In every one of the past 18 years they have cheated on that promise. Pensions will be £62.45 in April; they should be £82.60. Is it not true that, throughout those years, the Conservatives have never honoured that promise, and is it not the case that we cannot trust the Tories on pensions? Will the hon. Gentleman answer without blaming the last Labour Government or the next Labour Government?
    Mr. Heald: The last time that the hon. Gentleman asked me about that subject, I costed his proposals at
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    £65 billion by 2030, but, if one takes into account his proposals for income support, that figure is too low—the cumulative figure would be more than £100 billion by then. He might like to ask his Front-Bench team where the cuts would fall to pay for his proposals. However, the Conservative Government have maintained the value of the basic state pension, encouraged private provision and given extra help to those most in need, and average pensioner incomes have increased by 60 per cent.
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: Does my hon. Friend recall that the last time that pensions were uprated with earnings was under the last Labour Government? That was a time when the increase in earnings was less than the rate of inflation, so the population generally were less well off in real terms. The then Government wanted the pensioners to share with the general public being less well off in real terms. It saved money for the Exchequer. The Labour Government did that, not because they believed in it, but because they were required to do so by the International Monetary Fund.
    Mr. Heald: Under this Government, average incomes have gone up by as much each year as they did during the whole period of the last Labour Government. One has only to examine Labour's proposal to equalise the state pension age at 60, with a reduced pension of £40 a week, to see that that would spell disaster for those who later required income support and were refused it. Labour has always meant difficulties and poverty for pensioners, and it still would with its current policies.

    State Pension
    Mrs. Ann Winterton: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on the future of the state retirement pension. [15739]
    Mr. Lilley: The basic pension is the cornerstone of income in retirement. We remain committed to protecting the value of state pensions, and they will be increased in line with prices from April at a gross cost of £730 million.
    Mrs. Winterton: Bearing in mind that pensioners' incomes have risen 60 per cent. in real terms since 1979, will my right hon. Friend advise pensioners to beware of the Opposition's policies, which would undermine savings by allowing inflation to rise, tax private pension funds that had invested in the privatised utilities, and fail to match the Conservative record of uprating each year the state retirement pension by at least as much as price inflation?
    Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend can be reassured. We will give such warnings loud and clear to all the pensioners in this country. What she says is correct. The utilities tax would bear heavily on the pension funds that pay the pensions of retired people. She is right, too, to warn of the past failure and possible future failure of Labour Governments to uprate the basic pension. They did not do so properly in 1976, and it cost pensioners then £1 billion. Pensioners should be warned that the shadow Chancellor recently said:
    "there cannot be an assumption that totals will be automatically adjusted upwards in the event of changes in inflation."
    I asked for an assurance from the Opposition that they would continue uprating, but assurance came there none.
    Mr. Denham: Will the Secretary of State condemn every Tory candidate who claims that Labour would cut the basic state pension by £20 a week? Will he condemn that concerted lie campaign, which is designed to create alarm and fear among elderly people, or does he support that disgraceful campaign—yes or no?
    Mr. Lilley: I happen to have with me a copy of a letter from the shadow spokesman for social security, which she wrote to me spontaneously. It states:
    "We anticipate … a lower level of basic state pension."
    It also states:
    "We would seek the advice of the Government Actuary."
    I have sought that advice for her. He said that if her objective of making the pension available at age 60 were to be possible without a £15 billion extra cost, it would be necessary to reduce the basic state pension by £20 a week. Accordingly, I am happy to endorse my hon. Friends and candidates who are telling the truth loud and clear, far and wide.
    Mr. Fabricant: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I took advice from an expert on pensions—my mother? She is 85 years of age and has just moved up to Lichfield. She first went on the state pension in 1972. She tells me that the worst time for pensions was in 1975 and 1976, when inflation was running at 25 per cent. and the Government cut the Christmas bonus. Can my right hon. Friend tell me which party was in power at that time?
    Mr. Lilley: I can certainly remind my hon. Friend—I am sure that his expert mother has reminded him, too—that it was the Labour party which failed to uprate basic pensions at that time, which cost pensioners £1 billion and which is now warning us that, in order to keep within the totals that we have established for Departments, it will not necessarily adjust those totals upwards, in line with inflation.

    Habitual Residence Test
    Mr. Timms: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what recent assessment his Department has made of the operation of the habitual residence test. [15740]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): Our monitoring of the habitual residence test confirms that it is succeeding in its primary purpose of narrowing access to benefit for people who have little or no recent commitment to the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Timms: Does the Minister agree that there are continuing problems with the operation of the test, not least with the inconsistent way that it is being applied by different offices? First, does he agree that benefits offices should be encouraged to work as closely as possible with advice agencies to ensure that people attending habitual residence interviews are well informed beforehand as to what they will be asked and how the questions will be presented? Secondly, has the Minister considered the possibility of helping to provide interpreters when interviewees do not speak good English?
    Mr. Evans: I am happy to say yes to both the hon. Gentleman's questions. As to the first, the welfare action
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    rights group in his area of Newham regularly meets the local Benefits Agency representatives to discuss those matters. We are aware of questions about whether the scheme is operating equally in different districts, and that matter has been examined.
    Secondly, it is obviously important that interpreters should be provided for those people who require assistance as their command of English is not sufficient, and we shall look into that issue. If the hon. Gentleman has further constituency points to make on the matter, I shall be happy to address them. I have written today to the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), who has raised similar issues with me.
    Mr. John Marshall: Will my hon. Friend accept that the vast majority of taxpayers find it repugnant that individuals think that they can come to this country, present themselves at a social security office, and receive a cheque that is paid for by the British taxpayers, when those individuals have had no connection with this country for many years?
    Mr. Evans: My hon. Friend is right. We face some difficulty because European Union nationals are entitled to come to this country and, as a matter of legal entitlement before we introduced the habitual residence test, receive the full range of income-related benefits. We introduced the test because it is the one thing that we are allowed to do under European law, and it is embodied in one of the earliest European Union directives, 408/71.

    Income Support (Pensioners)
    Mr. Jon Owen Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what steps he is taking to ensure that pensioners claim the income support to which they are entitled. [15741]
    The Minister for Social Security and Disabled People (Mr. Alistair Burt): The Department and its agencies take extensive action to publicise income support and other benefits that pensioners may choose to claim. Help is there for those who need it.
    Mr. Jones: Clearly, the extensive action that the Minister talks about is completely inadequate. Will he confirm that 1 million pensioners are £14 a week worse off because they do not claim their full entitlement? What effective measures do the Government intend to take in order to deliver their fair and full entitlement to those people who have contributed to this country throughout their lifetime?
    Mr. Burt: A range of effective action can be, and is being, taken. The hon. Gentleman may be aware of the campaign that the Benefits Agency ran in January and the document entitled "Pensions and Benefits: a guide for older people". Publicity in the hon. Gentleman's constituency of Cardiff includes weekly benefit sessions at one of the community centres, fortnightly benefit advice at one of the hospitals and monthly benefit advice at another. Regular benefit talks are given to community groups and information appears in the local newspaper, of which I have some copies.
    We have discovered over the years that, unless we target campaigns specifically, take-up will not increase. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has anything

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    in mind regarding widespread take-up campaigns—those on his Front Bench have not mentioned it. For the time being, the Benefits Agency is doing extensive work in order to advertise benefits for those who need them.
    Mrs. Roe: Can my hon. Friend confirm that he has received no workable proposals for identifying additional pensioners who are entitled to income support beyond the measures that the Government are taking already? Will he confirm also that, even if it were possible, paying income support to an extra 700,000 pensioners would cost more than £1 billion? Has he received any representations from the Labour party about what other benefits it would cut by £1 billion in order to remain within a fixed budget?
    Mr. Burt: My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is often forgotten that more than 1.5 million pensioners already claim some £25 billion. My hon. Friend is correct to say that I have received no workable proposals from Opposition Members regarding a campaign.
    Mr. McLeish: What about the fraud Bill?
    Mr. Burt: That was not workable. Proposals that use the Inland Revenue, which does not have information on savings, for example, will not do the job. Benefits campaigns must be targeted and, in the absence of any workable proposals, Opposition Members are left spouting empty words and offering no sensible ideas about how to bring more people into benefit.
    Mr. McLeish: The Minister's response provides a chilling example of how callously indifferent Ministers are to the plight of Britain's pensioners. Is he not seriously embarrassed that 1 million pensioners in Britain—10 per cent. of the total number of pensioners, or 1,500 pensioners in every constituency—live not on the breadline but below it? Does he not appreciate that that is a blight on Britain's pensioners, who have given so much and are receiving so little from the Government? Will he acknowledge that, in a few weeks' time, a Labour Government will reduce VAT on fuel, provide better health care and start to attack the scandal of Britain in 1997 having 1 million pensioners who are not getting what they are entitled to?
    Mr. Burt: The hon. Gentleman is long on rhetoric but short on any practical proposals. I certainly deny the last part of his claims. Pensioners do not claim for a variety of reasons. It is wrong to suggest that all pensioners who do not claim income support are living below poverty levels; many live with families and enjoy the family life style.
    It is noticeable that the hon. Gentleman—for all his wind—does not come up with anything specific to bring more people into benefit. He does not give proper credit to the work done by many information officers at Benefits Agency offices throughout the country, who work hard with pensioners' groups and others. It is about time that we heard a little bit of credit for their honest hard work in trying to do their job.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: Surely the Labour party is the same party that, a few moments ago, was complaining about information leaflets being sent to single mothers. Were
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    not the Government criticised roundly for television campaigns and for the money that was spent on advertising to tell people about their benefits? Is it not the responsibility of individuals to find out what is available to them and for the Government to do their best, as they do in the clear leaflets that are provided in all social security offices, to get that information to them?
    Mr. Burt: My hon. Friend makes a good point. The departmental budget for publicity over the current three-year period is about £84 million. He is right. The Labour party cannot have it both ways: criticising the leaflets and not accepting that we have to get information across to people if benefits provision is to be sensible and good.

    Asylum Seekers (Benefits)
    Mr. Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what assessment he has made of the impact of denial of benefits on asylum seekers and their families awaiting (a) a decision or (b) the result of an appeal. [15743]
    Mr. Roger Evans: The changes that we introduced last year are reducing financial incentives for illegal immigrants and over-stayers to claim asylum.
    Mr. Cohen: Were not the Government humbled and shamed by the Court of Appeal decision on 17 February that asylum seekers should be entitled to food and shelter, not starved as the Government wanted? Were not the Government cruel and wrong to make families, especially children, destitute while the asylum seeker was awaiting his or her appeal to be heard? Will the Government accept that judgment, fully compensate local authorities and now act humanely and responsibly?
    Mr. Evans: The answer is simply no. As far as the Collins judgment is concerned, the courts have disturbed a construction of the National Assistance Act 1948 which has stood and been worked on for nearly half a century. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will be pursuing that matter further in the courts.
    The hon. Gentleman should also bear in mind that the measures have been strikingly successful in reducing the number of in-country applications. Taking the last quarter of 1996 as opposed to 1995, the number of such applications is down by more than 70 per cent. The gross savings involved in those measures are in the region of £250 million for 1997–98.
    Mr. Robert G. Hughes: Does my hon. Friend accept that, from the beginning, it was known that the changes to the benefit rules would have some impact on councils and charities and that councils would in the end be compensated for that? Will not most people think it reasonable and, indeed, justified that those people who came to this country on the basis that they would not be a burden on the state, who would not be able to claim benefits, should continue in that position and not suddenly change their minds and become a burden on the British state?
    Mr. Evans: My hon. Friend is right. The three groups that are directly affected by those measures are, first, illegal immigrants; secondly, people who have entered this country saying that they are visitors, business men or students and have means to support themselves; and, thirdly, those who have sought asylum and have had an unfavourable decision from the independent adjudicating authorities, which have said that they are not refugees.
    We have met, and are meeting, the extra expense placed on local authorities by special grant orders. We have said that, if voluntary organisations think that a case is genuine and deserving, and if they support that person in the meantime, almost uniquely in the benefits system, if the person wins his appeal, he will receive benefits backdated to the beginning of the period in which he made his claim.

    Child Support Agency
    Mr. Rendel: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what criteria are used by the CSA to decide which parent has care of the children when parents have separated but are still living in the same house with their children. [15744]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Andrew Mitchell): The Child Support Agency can take on a case only where the parents genuinely maintain separate households. The "parent with care" is the parent who cares for a child for the greater number of nights or, if neither parent satisfies that criterion, the parent who receives child benefit for the child.
    Mr. Rendel: Does not that lead to unfairness in some cases? For example, one of my constituents owns the house in which his ex-wife still lives rent-free. He pays for the housing costs and most of the clothing and food costs of his children. He is not even allowed to claim shared care, on the grounds that there is no date on which the children leave the home in which the mother lives to move to the home in which the father lives. Of course there is not, because they live in the same home the whole time.
    Mr. Mitchell: I have looked at the specific case that the hon. Gentleman raises. His constituents share a house, but they say that they maintain separate households, and they disagree on the amount of shared care under consideration. During the period in question, the hon. Gentleman's constituent was abroad for six months, so it is difficult to see how he can have had shared care in that time. If the circumstances change, he can appeal. He has already made an appeal, and it will be heard in due course. It seems to me that the agency has handled that specific case correctly.
    There has been a rapid improvement in the service provided by the Child Support Agency in the past 18 months. There is still a long way to go, but, in the words of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Social Security, the CSA is now running "rather well".
    Sir David Mitchell: Would my hon. and filial Friend look into the case of my constituent Mr. Flint? He remarried, had twins, received a pay increase of £31 a month and, on reassessment by the CSA, had his
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    maintenance payments increased by £41 a month. Would my hon. and filial Friend investigate that case further and see what he can do to put it right?
    Mr. Andrew Mitchell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me notice of that question. He sets a good example to the House for diligent representation of one's constituents. I shall look into the case, but although his constituent has recently had the happy arrival of twins, he has also had a significant pay rise of 20 per cent.
    Mr. Wicks: I am sure that the last two hon. Gentlemen who spoke have benefited from effective child maintenance policies during their lives. On a more serious note, will the Minister confirm that, all these years after the Child Support Act 1991, the great majority of lone mothers and their children receive no child maintenance? Does he accept that, in the absence of an effective and acceptable child maintenance policy, complemented by a welfare-to-work strategy, most lone mothers and their children are trapped in a dependency state on income support? Does he agree that that is bad news for the taxpayer, bad news for the mothers, and, most important, tragic for the children?
    Mr. Mitchell: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's first point. He is wrong to say that most parents and children do not receive maintenance. Recent published figures show that 78 per cent. of the mothers who have come within the remit of the CSA receive maintenance in part or in full.
    On the hon. Gentleman's second point, the Government have introduced a welfare-into-work strategy. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has described the parent plus scheme as one of the best schemes anywhere in the world. It will be extremely effective in ensuring that lone parents have opportunities to get back into work. While the Government are establishing a scheme and putting money on the table to run it, all we get from the Labour party is pious waffle and pre-electioneering soundbites, which will do no good and will not help lone parents.

    Child Care
    Mr. Roy Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what assessment his Department has made of the availability of child care for lone parents. [15745]
    Mr. Andrew Mitchell: The Government have taken, and are taking, effective steps to help those who need child care in order to work.
    Mr. Hughes: Will the Minister tell us at last why lone parents in Britain are the most dependent on benefits, and the least likely to work, in the whole of Europe? Is he not concerned about the fact that that is costing the taxpayer more than £10 billion a year, and that the figure is rising? Is there not an urgent need for a national child care strategy?
    Mr. Mitchell: The Government have made a good many changes specifically to help with child care costs. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the workings of family credit, and will know that the child care disregard was recently increased from £40 to £60. He should also know that, since 1993, the Department for Education and

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    Employment has provided start-up grants which have generated more than 72,000 out-of-school child care places, and that, in his recent Budget, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer put £24 million on the table for further out-of-school places. We have invested £64 million in that scheme.
    Again, all we hear from the Opposition is a reannouncement of our policies, along with a load of pre-election wind. The Government's out-of-school child care policies have been very successful.
    Mr. Viggers: A typical lone parent is a woman bringing up children, but is my hon. Friend aware that I have been corresponding with his Department about a different classification—men who are widowers, and have the dual problem of trying to do their jobs and bring up their children at the same time? Will my hon. Friend take full account of widowers' interests in shaping Government support measures?
    Mr. Mitchell: My hon. Friend makes a fair point. As he implied, some 5 per cent. of lone parents are men. I shall bear in mind what he has said.
    Rev. Martin Smyth: I welcome the steps that the Government have taken, but Ministers will know that children under 16 should not be left unattended. At times, that is very difficult for mothers who are alone—not necessarily because they are single parents but for other reasons: for instance, their husbands may be serving abroad. Have the Government taken account of that clash between the law and pressures on mothers bringing up children? Those mothers need more family credit.
    Mr. Mitchell: The Government recognise the tension to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. In such circumstances, they consider it right for a mother to choose whether to work or to remain on benefit. They also point out, however, that the way out of benefit and towards independence is returning to work. It is not good for a child to see the state as the sole breadwinner: it is important for the parent also to be seen as the breadwinner.

    Discrimination (Disabled Persons)
    Mr. Mark Robinson: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what steps the Government are taking to prevent discrimination against disabled persons. [15746]
    Mr. Burt: The Government introduced the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to spearhead the fight to prevent discrimination against disabled people. On 2 December, we implemented new rights for disabled people in employment, and in accessing goods and services. The Act is essential if disabled people are to live their lives fully and independently.
    Mr. Robinson: I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. How are the Government helping the National Disability Council in its task of monitoring the Act?
    Mr. Burt: We fund the National Disability Council—which is charged to deliver advice, either on our invitation or on its own initiative—for all aspects of monitoring anti-discrimination legislation in the United Kingdom.
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    The council differs from a commission. I noticed during last night's debate that the Labour party had changed its position crucially. It, and some members of the disability lobby, originally intended a commission to deal with cases on behalf of disabled people, but last night the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) excluded that definition from his description of the commission's work. I want to know whether that was because Labour agrees with us that a commission is not necessary because disabled people enforce individual rights, or whether, again, it is because Labour has been left without a budget, and would therefore have a commission in name only. The National Disability Council can do a much better job.
    Ms Lynne: The Minister said in the debate on health yesterday that the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was the flagship of Government policy on disabled people. If that is the case, why cannot it be used to force building societies such as the Halifax to give share options to the second named account holder, most of whom are disabled people? If the Act cannot be used in that way, surely he must agree that his flagship is missing at least a couple of masts.
    Mr. Burt: The hon. Lady will probably be aware that there is a dispute of opinion about whether the action by the building societies contravenes the Act. I believe that someone is preparing to test it because the Act does prevent discrimination against disabled people and it may yet cover that situation. However, to avoid doubt, I think that the House would welcome the action taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. French), who has introduced the Building Societies (Distributions) Bill, which will ensure that this problem does not happen in future. We have been delighted to give support and encouragement to his work.
    Mr. Llwyd: Is the Minister aware that some 43,000 women in the United Kingdom are discriminated against because, when they reach the age of 60, their incapacity benefit is discontinued, whereas if they were male it would continue until the age of 65? Does he know that, during an Adjournment debate last week, I had the privilege of debating that point and his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, told me, "Yes, it is discrimination, but don't worry: the Government will put it right in 2020."?
    Mr. Burt: I do not think the hon. Gentleman has it right. This is covered by the Graham case, which has been taken to the European Court of Justice. Our policies have been found not to be discriminatory in the way that he describes. This has been fully tested by the court and the British Government's position has been upheld.

    Child Benefit Register
    Mr. Thurnham: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what representations he has received about the provision of information on the child benefit register to other Government Departments and local authorities; and if he will make a statement. [15747]
    Mr. Heald: Although no representations have been received by my right hon. Friend, I know that a variety of uses have been suggested for the child benefit database, for example as part of efforts to combat truancy.
    Mr. Thurnham: Following the tragic disappearance and death of young Tommy Oakes in Bolton, will the Minister consider allowing local authorities access to the child benefit register to try to trace a missing youngster, and does not Bolton's new pupil attendance register allow child benefit to be linked to school attendance?
    Mr. Heald: I know that the hon. Gentleman has taken a particular interest in the case of Tommy Oakes, and that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, has taken an interest in the Bolton scheme to set up a register of school attendance, but it is too early to evaluate that scheme fully. The French scheme, which the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) has also raised with me, has been rarely enforced. The Benefits Agency co-operates with social services in cases involving children who are at risk, but child benefit data are sensitive and data protection has to be considered.
    Mr. Harry Greenway: Will my hon. Friend confirm that children between the ages of 16 and 18 would lose all chance of being on the child benefit register if benefit were taken away from them, as Labour proposes to do?
    Mr. Heald: It is, I suppose, a particularly stupid idea to impose on parents of 16 to 18-year-olds a tax that means that they cannot support their children through the difficult years when their children are training. For Labour—which talks so often of training—to suggest that is particularly stupid. I know that my hon. Friend has made that point on a number of occasions.

    Parent Plus Scheme
    Mr. Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what estimate he has made of the number of lone parents who will be eligible for the parent plus scheme. [15748]
    Mr. Lilley: The parent plus scheme is a key part of our strategy to reduce benefit dependency by encouraging lone parents to support themselves and their families through work. We estimate that the scheme will offer advice and help to up to 100,000 lone parents on income support who wish to return to work.
    Mr. Sheerman: Where have the Government been for the past 17 years? A dependency culture has grown over those 17 years, year on year, and ever more young lone mothers depend on low benefits. Those young mothers want an opportunity culture, not a dependency culture. It is too late for this Government, but the new Labour Government will introduce opportunity, not dependency, for those mothers.
    Mr. Lilley: We have been here: introducing family credit to help lone parents back into work; extending aid to provide a child care disregard to help lone parents back into work; and introducing parent plus to help lone parents back into work. The Leader of the Opposition—who has just entered the Chamber—goes off to Amsterdam to
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    announce Labour's policy to help lone parents back into work, as well he might. The second plank of his plan was that he
    "would relax the 16 hour rule for lone parents under 25 and without qualifications."
    He should know that there is no limit on the amount of study that lone parents can undertake. Therefore, he was completely misinformed. It is no wonder that he goes abroad to make speeches about domestic policy. If he made them at home, he would be laughed out of court.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Sheerman: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 25 February. [15767]
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Sheerman: Will the Prime Minister join me in condemning the Ministers and Conservative Back Benchers who queued up yesterday to denigrate the reputation and character of the former Prime Minister and Father of the House? Does he agree that such attempts to vilify the Father of the House do great damage generally to the democratic process and particularly to the reputation of the Prime Minister and his Ministers?
    The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) has had a long and distinguished career. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] We admire him and are fond of him.
    Sir Michael Shersby: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 25 February. [15768]
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave some moments ago.
    Sir Michael Shersby: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the privatisation of British Rail has been a great success story—so successful that it has confounded its critics? Is he aware that many of my constituents would like the same principles to be applied to London Underground, particularly if the proceeds were ploughed back into further investment?
    The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will make a statement on that matter very shortly. The plans that he will announce will give London the world-class underground network that we wish it to have. We will expect standards and investment to rise while prices do not.
    Mr. Blair: Most people remember who has been in charge of London Underground for 18 years. May I lead on from the question to the Prime Minister asked by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby)? The Transport Secretary has said that any proceeds from

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    selling London Underground will go back into transport investment. This morning, however, the Chancellor said that he is relying on at least some of those proceeds as greatly benefiting the Exchequer to pay off Government borrowing. Who is right?
    The Prime Minister: If the right hon. Gentleman will contain himself for a moment, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will make a statement that will answer all the questions that he and his hon. Friends are likely to ask about the proposed future of London Underground, but I shall not anticipate his statement.
    Mr. Blair: I am not asking the Prime Minister to anticipate the statement—
    Hon. Members: You are.
    Madam Speaker: Order.
    Mr. Blair: I am asking him to comment on the Chancellor's remarks this morning. The Chancellor said that some of the proceeds would be used to pay off the national debt, which he has doubled. Is that correct? If all the proceeds do not go back into transport, what will happen if they do not cover the investment requirement? Will the customer pay more, will the public pay more or will the service be cut? I think that the Prime Minister should tell us.
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman will be told in detail and at length by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport in just a few moments. The privatisation of any industry is always a complex matter. It deserves to be set out clearly, comprehensively and at length, which my right hon. Friend will do shortly.
    Mr. Blair: I assume that the Transport Secretary will tell us the precise percentage of money that will be reinvested in transport. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may shout, but is not London Underground worth £7 billion to £13 billion, and do not many people fear that, once again, a key public service will be sold off at a fraction of its true value so that a few people can make a vastly inflated profit with no guarantee of a proper service for the future?
    The Prime Minister: The answer to each of the right hon. Gentleman's questions is no. He is wrong on almost every point, as will become clear in a few moments. I find it extraordinary that the only two places in the world where privatisation is reviled and state ownership preferred are the Labour party and North Korea. No wonder the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) called the right hon. Gentleman the Kim Il Sung of the Labour party.
    Mr. Norris: Does my right hon. Friend agree that not the least of the advantages of the privatisation of London Underground would be the substantial capital receipts that could be reinvested in the system? How could any Government who voluntarily chose to deny themselves that capital receipt make good that funding other than through a substantial increase in public expenditure and the taxation necessary to raise it?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is correct, of course. I find it odd that the Labour party criticises the
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    level of investment in London Underground when the shadow Chancellor is committed lock, stock and barrel to every penny of my right hon. and learned Friend's spending plans, except that the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) has a £12 billion black hole in his plans, as he has failed to understand ours.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 25 February. [15769]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: May I return the Prime Minister to what is clearly a central contradiction in his programme for the general election—the statement by a former Prime Minister, Mr. Edward Heath—[HON. MEMBERS: "Sir."] Forgive me, Madam Speaker. Sir Edward Heath—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order."]—a former Prime Minister, who said that he agreed with the Labour party. He said that we were right on the social chapter, the national minimum wage and devolution. He agrees with us. Who is now standing up for the tradition of the Conservative party? Is it the Father of the House, a former Prime Minister, or is it the current Prime Minister, who has been manipulated by a bunch of extremists on his Back Benches?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman sits beside a bunch of people whom I would never consider calling extremists, but who hold almost every possible view on Europe and every other issue, so I find his question distinctly rum. It deserves to be ignored, which I shall do.
    Mr. Amess: Is my right hon. Friend aware that tomorrow, Her Majesty the Queen, in the presence of the President of Israel, will unveil a monument to Raul Wallenberg—a man whose bravery is an example to us all? Will my right hon. Friend also support the efforts of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to find out exactly what happened to Raul Wallenberg 50 years ago?
    The Prime Minister: I think that everyone will happily support my hon. Friend's request. The unveiling of the statue tomorrow is a welcome development and a just recognition of a great man who saved many lives during the last world war.
    Mr. Home Robertson: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 25 February. [15770]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Home Robertson: Lady Thatcher said back in 1974 that the establishment of a Scottish Assembly was a top priority. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) has now confirmed that the establishment of a Scottish Parliament poses no danger to the integrity of the United Kingdom. Can the Prime Minister remember the last time his two predecessors

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    agreed with each other about anything? How has he got himself into a position in which he appears to disagree with both of them?
    The Prime Minister rose—
    Mr. Home Robertson: Wait for it. Is the Prime Minister sure that Britain's fossilised constitution is the securest ground to choose for Major's last stand?
    The Prime Minister: It really was not worth waiting for, I have to tell the hon. Gentleman. He is trying to pick out what my noble Friend Lady Thatcher and my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) said 20 years ago. What the leader of the Labour party said in 1983 is contradicted today by the leader of the Labour party in every particular. The proposals of 20 years ago that the hon. Gentleman referred to were not comparable with the tax-raising monstrosity proposed by the Labour party today.
    Mr. Butcher: My right hon. Friend will need no reminding that any objective assessment of economic trends in Europe shows that Britain is now winning. Does he share the bewilderment of a number of foreign commentators, who cannot understand the logic of saying that it is time for a change? "Does that mean that you want to be losers?" they wonder. Will my right hon. Friend use every effort to make sure that that weird logic is not accepted by the British people?
    The Prime Minister: I certainly undertake to do as my hon. Friend recommends. The economic criteria right the way down the board—growth, investment or the fall in unemployment—make it patently obvious to those who wish to examine the figures for a moment that the United Kingdom is out-performing most of its comparable continental rivals. That is because of the policies that we have followed. The policies that they have followed, which have led them into greater difficulty, are the policies advocated by the Opposition parties.
    Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 25 February. [15771]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Prentice: The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) referred to the alleged success of railway
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    privatisation, whereby £19 billion of public assets went under the hammer for less than £2 billion. Is it not a disgrace that £13 billion of assets resting in London Underground could be sold off in a fire sale for less than £600 million?
    The Prime Minister: I suggest that the hon. Gentleman, like his right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party, waits for the statement that will follow in a few moments.
    Mr. Prentice indicated dissent.
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman produces all sorts of disparaging gestures. The interesting fact about the new Labour party is that it does not wish to know the arguments and it does not wish to know the facts; it just wants to parade the soundbites and prejudice invented by the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson).
    Mr. Allason: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the commitment—which became a promise, which became a pledge, which then became a withdrawal—by the Liberal Democrats to scrap the Christmas bonus in favour of an extra week's income? Does he agree that the best thing for pensioners, especially those in the south-west, is lower bills, which means no windfall levy on South West Water, whose customers are already paying far too much for their water?
    The Prime Minister: I entirely agree that a windfall tax would undoubtedly add to the cost of fuel, water and other utilities—how much, of course, we do not know, because the shadow Chancellor either does not know what his plans really are or cannot say. It was very unkind of my hon. Friend to draw attention to the consistency of the Liberal Democrats concerning the retired.
    Mr. Chris Davies: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 25 February. [15772]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Davies: What discussions does the Prime Minister intend to have with Governments of other nations to ensure that there are adequate international controls over the cloning of animals and other life forms?
    The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend is examining what discussions may be appropriate.

London Underground
Madam Speaker: Statement—Sir George Young.
Mr. Roger Gale: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: Points of order come after statements, as I am sure the hon. Member recalls.
3.30 pm
The Secretary of State for Transport (Sir George Young): With permission, I should like to make a statement about our proposals for the future of London Underground.
London Underground is the last of the traditional transport nationalised industries, and the only major transport operator that is not in the private sector. Since 1979, we have privatised a wide range of transport businesses—for example, British Airways, the British Airports Authority and, indeed, London Transport's bus operating companies. All of them have gone on to prosper, raising money from the market to invest in better services for their customers. Only London Underground remains in the public sector, its status becoming increasingly anomalous.
Most recently, we have of course privatised the national passenger rail network—a process that has now been completed, with the award of the last franchise for ScotRail. The benefits are already becoming apparent: an increase in passenger numbers; and new investment is already taking place or is in the pipeline. Railtrack has plans to spend £4 million a day on maintaining and renewing the rail network, and on stations, depots and network enhancements. By 2001, Railtrack estimates that it will have spent £1 billion more than the regulator expected. In addition, franchisees are committed to investing around £1.5 billion in new rolling stock and more than £100 million in improvements to stations and other facilities.
The decisions to proceed with Thameslink 2000 and the channel tunnel rail link show that major new projects can be undertaken within a privatised railway. Benefits for rail users are being achieved at a decreasing cost to the taxpayer. In seven years' time, the private sector franchisees will require only about 40 per cent. of the support that British Rail estimated it would have needed to run the same services this year. Rail privatisation has shown that the fact that an industry is loss-making is no barrier to its successful transfer to the private sector.
Against that background, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced in October that we would be considering whether the benefits of privatisation could be extended to London Underground. We have completed the initial stages of that work and the Government have concluded that privatisation is the right way forward. The package that I will outline to the House will deliver a higher-quality underground at an affordable cost to passengers and no extra cost to the taxpayer.
Our purpose is to structure the privatisation so as to ensure that the underground is brought up to modern standards as soon as possible. Our aim is to complete the modernisation and improvement programme—that is the elimination of the investment backlog—within five years
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of privatisation. In recent years, London Underground's management has raised customer satisfaction by a sixth, increased scheduled train services to a level not seen in 25 years, increased the underground's operating surplus from nothing to around £200 million a year, and reduced the investment backlog from £2 billion to £1.2 billion. Despite those great strides, much remains to be done if we are to achieve the standards of service that passengers want, at a cost which they and taxpayers can afford.
We believe that privatisation is the only means of achieving these goals. Privatisation will enable the private sector to invest in the network and respond to passengers' needs, unconstrained by the restrictions of public expenditure controls, and will create the stable financial environment which is simply not achievable in the public sector, with all the other competing demands on taxpayers' money. We want to privatise London Underground as soon as possible so that passengers can start enjoying these benefits without delay.
In deciding on the detailed structure for the privatised underground, we shall need to take account of the network's unique nature and operating characteristics, and to obtain further technical and financial advice. Specifically, detailed work will now begin on three possible models: the sale of London Underground as a single business; the sale or franchising of vertically integrated lines or groups of lines, under which a single operator would be responsible for the stations, track and trains on each line or group of lines; or a structure like the national railways model, with a track authority owning the network and franchisees running trains on individual lines or groups of lines.
We are already consulting London Transport and the railway inspectorate, and we shall now widen our discussions to involve the other key players in the railway industry, and those with an interest in London's transport system, such as the London Pride Partnership and the London Regional Passengers Committee. We also intend to start the process of appointing advisers. Our aim is to publish in the summer a White Paper with our detailed proposals for the best structural option for the future of the underground.
As with previous privatisations, there have been a number of scare stories in the media in recent weeks. I want to set the record straight by giving 10 commitments to passengers and employees. First, safety must always be a top priority. I shall be consulting the Health and Safety Commission in order to ensure that, whichever structural option we adopt, the very high safety standards of the network are maintained.
Secondly, we are committed to a fully integrated network for passengers, including through-ticketing and freedom of interchange between lines. There is no question of breaking up the network. Passengers will be able to use different lines for a journey and to choose the most suitable route, using one ticket in exactly the way that they do now.
Thirdly, the London travelcard will be retained. Regular tube users attach great value to the travelcard, which allows people to use the same ticket to travel by underground, rail or bus, without any restriction on the number of journeys they make. It is used by around a million people a day and accounts for more than two thirds of underground journeys. Our proposals will explicitly safeguard its future.

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Fourthly, the existing Londonwide concessionary fares arrangements, which are of critical importance to many elderly and disabled people who rely on public transport, will not be affected by our proposals. Fifthly, on wider share ownership, we shall seek ways of encouraging employees and passengers to acquire a real stake in the privatised underground.
Sixthly, for underground employees, pensions and travel concessions at the time of privatisation will be safeguarded. Again, depending on the option we choose, we will be seeking to encourage employees to participate in management or employee buy-outs.
Seventhly, we shall ensure that the private sector will be required to provide a guaranteed level of service broadly safeguarding the existing level of provision. The regulatory authority supervising the privatised underground, which will be independent of the train operators, will agree to changes in service levels only after carefully considering the benefits to passengers. Again, that is a wholly new safeguard.
The eighth commitment concerns station safeguards. We shall retain strong and effective statutory procedures to deal with any proposals to close stations. The safeguards will be just as rigorous as those that already apply to London Underground and to the national rail network.
The ninth commitment is that we shall introduce controls on fares. The guiding principle will be that, for at least the first four years after privatisation, average fare rises will be no more than inflation. That is a new safeguard; underground fares have not previously been capped.
We also intend to restrain fares in the run-up to privatisation, by capping average fare increases at inflation plus 1 per cent. a year. Again, there has been no such explicit protection in the past, and in practice fares have tended to rise faster than that. The House will recall, for example, that between 1974 and 1979 fares increased by 45 per cent. in real terms.
That brings me to the 10th commitment, on investment. In the recent debate about the future of London Underground, a consensus emerged on two key principles with which I believe that the whole House can agree.
First, it must be a top priority to accelerate investment in London Underground so as to bring the network up to the standards that passengers can reasonably expect for the 21st century. Secondly, that goal can be achieved only if we create a stable funding regime that will enable investment to be planned ahead with confidence.
We are therefore developing a special funding regime for recycling privatisation proceeds into investment, which recognises the unique situation and needs of the underground. Receipts from privatisation will be recycled to ensure that the modernisation of the underground's infrastructure is completed as quickly as possible, building on the work that London Underground is already doing.
Our aim is to achieve that end within five years of privatisation, with the private sector operator committing himself to modernising the assets for which he is responsible, in return for a guaranteed level of Government support to supplement the investment funds that he himself will raise.
After privatisation proceeds hav e been recycled to complete the modernisation of the tube network, most of any remaining surplus will be channelled into additional
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support for London Underground, or for transport investment elsewhere in London or in other parts of the country.
As for modernising the underground's basic infrastructure, the House will appreciate that there is a maximum level of annual investment beyond which it is not practicable to go. At a certain point, for example, disruptions to services from renewal works across the network would become too great, or the programme would be beyond the capacity of the supply industry. Subject to those practical constraints, we aim to privatise the underground in such a way that the network is modernised as soon as possible.
London Underground estimates that the upper limit for sensible investment in the core underground each year is about £750 million. Of course, passengers are interested in the results of investment—punctual and reliable services—not in the sums spent. I believe that the private sector will be able to deliver the results that passengers want, more efficiently.
Privatisation and the new regulatory regime will focus on the results of investment. But assuming that annual investment would be about £750 million, about £350 million a year would be needed to maintain the network and to renew assets as they became too old. The remaining investment would be aimed at eliminating the results of the under-investment in the underground in the 1960s and 1970s.
Sustained annual investment of about £750 million in the core underground would be significantly above what has been managed before. In real terms, that is more than four times what was achieved in the 1970s, three times the investment made in the 1980s, and 50 per cent. more than the investment made so far in the 1990s. I do not believe that that rate of progress would be possible if London Underground were to remain in the public sector.
The 10 commitments that I have given today show our determination to protect and enhance the aspects of the underground that are valued by tube users and by Londoners generally. At the same time, privatisation will introduce private sector capital, ideas and energy to increase investment and to raise standards.
That is an outstanding package for tube users and for Londoners. I do not believe that anything as attractive would be possible under continued public ownership, and I commend to the House the principle of privatising London Underground.
Mr. Gale: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: I take points of order after statements.
Mr. Gale: The statement has been made.
Madam Speaker: A statement is a continuation of Question Time. It has always been the tradition that we take points of order after questions.
Mr. Gale: My point of order is relevant to the statement.
Madam Speaker: In that case, perhaps it could be put in the form of a question to the Secretary of State—if the hon. Gentleman catches my eye. There may be a glint in it already, but he must wait.
Mr. Andrew Smith: Is not this statement the ultimate Tory abdication of responsibility for transport in London, neither equipping London for the future nor making good the mistakes of the past? Is it not totally half-baked when the Secretary of State cannot tell us whether privatisation will be sale as a job lot, line by line, or as a track company and franchises? What makes him think that it will work, when he cannot even tell us how it will be done?
The Secretary of State referred to a guaranteed level of Government support. How much will that be? Is not there confusion at the very heart of Government when the Secretary of State tries to have us believe that the proceeds will go into the tube but the Chancellor tells a news conference this morning that he is relying on the money to balance his Budget? Does not that show that, having neglected the tube for years, with so much decay and disrepair, all the Tories have left is the dogma of run it down and sell it off, regardless of passengers' interests?
What confidence can the public have in the Secretary of State's list of commitments when in one breath he tells us that he is considering selling off the lines separately and in the next that there is no question of breaking up the network? Does he recall his words in the leaked letter of earlier this month? He said:
"I do not want to set existing service patterns in stone—some services may well be uneconomic".
Was not his statement so qualified as to leave the way open for services to be cut and stations closed?
The Secretary of State extolled the benefits of rail privatisation. Is not the truth that under the Tories London would be threatened with the same chaos on the tube as we have just witnessed on South West Trains?
What notice has the Secretary of State taken of the warning from the chairman of London Transport, who said that privatising the tube was like putting a house on the market when the walls were falling down? What valuation has he made of the assets? Has he changed the estimate in his previous leaked memo that the sale could raise less than a tenth of the £13 billion reported value?
As with all the other privatisation excesses, would not this mean more fortunes for a few and misery for the many? Will the Secretary of State confirm what he said in that leaked letter: that it could cost more in subsidy to privatise the underground than the Government get back in sale proceeds?
How can privatisation some time in the next century raise the investment that is needed now? Would it not be far better to get moving straight away with public-private partnerships as Labour has proposed? Is not privatisation a desperate move by a Government bankrupt of ideas? Does not their dithering show that they know the dangers involved, and does the Secretary of State still agree with the Chief Secretary's assessment that the underground will be
"a unique and very difficult privatisation to sell to the public"?
Is not this privatisation bad for London, bad for passengers and bad for taxpayers, because the Secretary of State can give no definitive guarantees about services or investment levels and cannot even tell us how much of the money raised he would use for investment? This is a privatisation that the British people will throw out at the ballot box, along with the Government who dreamed it up.
Sir George Young: I am disappointed that the Leader of the Opposition, who asked several questions about the privatisation of London Underground, did not stay to hear the statement.
The House and, indeed, Londoners will be deeply disappointed by the response of the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, which offered no hope and no commitment. Old Labour will not let him privatise; new Labour will not let him spend more. He is a shadow Transport Minister with nowhere to go. We have a coherent strategy. We have identified the funding and the commitments. We believe that it is an attractive proposition for Londoners.
The confusion on privatisation comes from Opposition Members, as we saw at the weekend over the Tote. One day they were to privatise it, the next they were not, and on the third day, they discovered that it was not theirs to privatise. The same will happen with this privatisation as has happened with every other privatisation: they will oppose it before we do it and afterwards say that it was perhaps a good idea after all.
On the hon. Gentleman's specific question, we shall require the private sector to modernise the underground's infrastructure as soon as possible. That will entail a given amount of Government subsidy, the amount to be tested in the market. That subsidy will be recycled from the privatisation proceeds that we receive. If, as we expect, there are proceeds left over, the majority will go to additional investment in London Underground or for other transport investment. The message to Londoners is this: mind the gap between what we offer for their underground and what the Labour party does not offer.
Mr. Peter Brooke: Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who oppose the privatisation of London Underground must explain why it should be an exception from a philosophy that has been such a success not only in this country but throughout the world? Does he further agree that those who in the final days of the Greater London council poured public money into fares subsidy rather than investment will find it difficult to make that case?
Sir George Young: I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. It is true that, in the 1970s, resources did not go into catching up with the backlog but into keeping fares down. It is that backlog that we are trying to deal with. We have got it down from £2 billion to £1.2 billion over the past 10 years. I want to make faster progress with clearing that backlog. I believe that privatisation in the way that I have outlined is the key to that. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his support.
Mr. David Chidgey: Does the Secretary of State recall that his predecessor, at the beginning of rail privatisation, told the House that there would be no hiatus in investment? We have had four years of virtually no investment in our railways. [HON. MEMBERS: "What?] Up to now. The Secretary of State said that he expected the shortfall in investment to be made good over five years. If we take British Rail as an example, London Underground could be short of essential investment up to the millennium. That could leave the system in a state of disrepair, with services being cancelled and safety compromised.

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Surely he understands that the huge asset value of London Underground means that there are other options for raising the money necessary to bring it up to a decent modern metro standard. Surely he sees the sense of allowing it to use its assets as a resource to borrow money and get the investment that it desperately needs now to give Londoners an underground system in which they can again take pride.
Sir George Young: If the hon. Gentleman wants to outline a conventional approach of increasing public expenditure funded by increased borrowing or higher taxation, he should come into the open and do so. He is wrong about investment. In real terms, investment is 50 per cent. above the level of the 1980s, and twice the level of the 1970s. On top of that, the Jubilee line extension is due to be completed in March next year. On current investment, this year's settlement left provision for the LT core business in 1997–98 unchanged. With private finance investment, total investment in the core business over the next three years should total around £1.5 billion. That compares with London Underground's estimate that £350 million needs to be spent each year on average to prevent the tube's backlog from getting larger. That puts the matter into better perspective.
Dame Angela Rumbold: May I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on his announcement? After many years of trying to improve London Underground, those of us who live in London and use it all the time will welcome the opportunity for investment in London Underground continuing year on year rather than having to be considered annually. That has been one reason why it has been so difficult to plan and improve investment in London Underground. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that users of the Northern line, which culminates in my constituency, can look forward at long last to a programme that will improve both the stations and the running of that line so that they can get to and from their work comfortably, on time and at ease with the whole programme?
Sir George Young: My right hon. Friend is right. London Underground wants stability and confidence of funding for its long-term programme so that it can have a strategic approach. So long as it remains in the public sector, under whatever Government, it will be subject to the annual bids and counter-bids of the public expenditure round. Putting it outside the public sector guarantees it continuity of funding.
My right hon. Friend will know that new trains for the Northern line are on the way. As I outlined in my statement, it is my ambition that, within five years of privatisation, the backlog will have been removed. I have heard no other scenario that achieves that objective in that time scale.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Does the Secretary of State agree that the unhappy, packed travellers who are increasingly jammed in on an unsafe and ancient system will understand that his proposal is not a means of acquiring new investment, or of changing the savage cuts that he has imposed this year, which have put back safety measures like the replacement of escalators for at least two years, but a simple commitment to a brutal transference of taxpayers' assets at well below their worth? As with rail privatisation, large sums of money will go to accountants, estate agents and lawyers, without a penny going into a new rail system.
Sir George Young: What we have not heard so far from the Opposition is an alternative strategy for getting the necessary resources to drive up the quality and quantity of investment in the London underground. The Opposition are unable to match the offer that I have put before the House. On the hon. Lady's specific points, there has been no reduction in next year's resources from this Government for London Underground. So, far from being a "brutal" privatisation, it is a user-friendly privatisation with a transparency that we have not had before, with receipts being recycled back into the underground for the benefit of passengers. The hon. Lady's description of that as "brutal" defies belief.
Mr. John MacGregor: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Opposition's reaction was reminiscent of what they said when rail privatisation was first announced and that, in practice, all their threats and fears have been proved to be wrong? Will it not be the same in this case? Will not they quickly forget the words that they have used today? I agree with my right hon. Friend about capital investment. Given the shadow Chancellor's position and the many demands which Labour Back Benchers would make for other public expenditure if the Labour party ever came to power, is it not clear that there would be no hope of capital investment in London Underground under a Labour Government?
Sir George Young: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. He has been around the course before me in respect of British Rail, and I am inspired by his example. Last week we heard Railtrack's statement on its network management strategy for spending sums that would simply have been beyond our reach had the railways remained in the public sector. That is the goal that we want to secure for London Underground. My right hon. Friend is also right to contrast the posturing that we are seeing now with the reaction that we shall see in a few years' time, once we have successfully privatised London Underground. Labour Members will have to eat their words and recognise once again that our privatisation policy was the right approach.
Mr. Tony Banks: Is the Secretary of State really suggesting that London Underground will be sold off and that the receipts from privatisation will go back into London Underground, thus enhancing the value of the undertaking to the private owner? Is it not rather like me selling my house to the Secretary of State and then giving him the receipts of the sale to improve the house? It is like a burglar breaking in and then being given the compensation that the victim receives from the insurance company. Where is the economic model and sense in such a proposal?
When the Secretary of State sets his mind to getting the value of London Underground, will he take into account the enormous redevelopment value of the underground stations throughout the capital city? Lastly, will he tell us which other capital city with a metro system like ours has put it into private ownership?
Sir George Young: This Government are happy to lead the world in their policy on privatisation, and I am confident that others will follow us in our privatisation of London Underground, as they have followed us in privatisation of other state-owned industries. I did not follow the logic of the hon. Gentleman's questions.
Mr. Tony Banks: No, because there is none.
Sir George Young: Let me try to explain to him that the London Underground has value as a business, from two sources, and privatisation will crystallise that value. First, London Underground is already making an operating surplus, which covers part of the investment programme. London Transport expects the operating surplus to grow substantially. Secondly, a privatised underground will be much more efficient, which will result in better operating efficiency, better marketing and the more commercial use of property assets. Privatisation will, therefore, accelerate the Underground's progress towards self-sufficiency and help to unlock the value of the undertaking, thereby generating the receipts to attack the backlog.
Mr. Steve Norris: Having had a direct responsibility for London Underground for nearly five years, may I place on record my warm appreciation of the work of the management of the Underground, who have done a huge amount to increase the efficiency of the system? I assure my right hon. Friend that they are the first to point out that, even with those efforts, it has not been enough. There is a backlog, despite levels of Government investment of the order of six or seven times those under Labour.
If my right hon. Friend accepts that fare payers cannot be asked for limitless additional revenue and that taxpayers are already paying a record amount, does he agree that it would appear utterly perverse for purely ideological reasons to deny the Underground the substantial billions of extra investment that a privatisation could unlock? Is it not clear that the position in which the Labour party has put itself is laughable and perverse, and that the only losers by the adoption of such a policy would be the people of London, who will see through the sterility of Labour's argument?
Sir George Young: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The dogma comes entirely from Opposition Members. I draw their attention to a leader in The Independent on 29 January 1997, headed "Privatisation should be pragmatic, not dogmatic". That leader advocates the privatisation of London Underground.
My hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to the work of Peter Ford and his team, which I recognised in my statement, as I do now. I hope that, depending on which structure we choose, there will be opportunities for employee investment in a new structure. My hon. Friend again reminds the House to mind the gap—the gap between what we have put on the table for London Underground and what the Opposition have failed to provide to match it.
Mr. Ken Livingstone: Can the Minister explain the gap between his predecessor's promise to the House of Commons in 1984, when the Conservative Government passed legislation to take London Transport out of the hands of the Greater London council, that that was being done to tackle the gap in investment and end under-investment in the tube, and what he says 13 years later—that there is still under-investment in the tube?
Does the Minister recall that, in each of the three years of the Labour administration from 1981 to 1984, when London Transport was taken over by the Government, we made proposals for a major programme of investment in the London tube, and that each year the Conservative
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Government vetoed them? Those proposals included the proposal to build the Jubilee line, which would have been working for the past eight years if the Conservative Government had not vetoed it. Why should Londoners believe the Conservatives now when they were lied to in 1984?
Will the Secretary of State get in touch with Sir Horace Cutler, the leader of the Tory group on the GLC in the mid-1970s, who commissioned an internal report for the Tory group on the potential for privatising the tube, and decided not to proceed with the proposal when that report pointed out that the only way in which the tube could be privatised would be to decimate off-peak services and reduce them to no more than two trains an hour?
Sir George Young: I hope that the hon. Gentleman heard the commitment that I gave about services. That deals with the scare story at the end of his remarks. Let me give some figures, not from my Government but from his Government, to contrast our commitment to investment in London Underground. Core investment last year, excluding private finance, was more than three times as high in real terms as in 1979. At today's prices, core investment in 1979 was £172 million, compared with £576 million in 1995–96. Those statistics give the true story about commitment to London Underground.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: On the history of the matter, is it not true that, when the GLC controlled London Underground, it put political placemen on the board, held board meetings that went on hour after hour, and had virtually no capital programmes? I welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement. It is good for passengers, and makes economic, financial and political sense. The only people for whom it is bad are the Labour Opposition, who will have to explain to transport correspondents, political correspondents and passengers how they will achieve the levels of capital investment now promised to create a modern underground system.
Sir George Young: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. In his usual succinct way, he has put his finger on the key issues that will be of concern to Londoners between now and May.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: May I ask a question of fact? What figures does the Department of Transport have for the repair of all the aging Victorian tunnels—many of which are suffering deterioration—at the same time? There are those who are expert in stone who say that such structures do not last for ever, and that difficulties in tunnel maintenance will come together on a major scale. What figures are available to the Department of Transport?
Sir George Young: The principal figures available to my Department are those that have been supplied by London Underground, whose best estimate of the extent of the current backlog is £1.2 billion.
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the key consideration for my constituents who use the London underground regularly is the future quality and frequency of service? My right hon. Friend will have noted that the undertakings that he has given should be backed up when the privatizations

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take place. Is it not the case that any alternative must be demonstrated to have money behind it? If the Government still have their hands on the assets, private business men will not want to go near any investment programme, as they know what will happen halfway down the line when the Government pull out, as the Opposition would do if they were in power?
Sir George Young: My hon. Friend is right. I gave guarantees on service levels. I made it clear that the private sector will be required to provide a guaranteed level of service, broadly safeguarding the existing level of provision, and that there will be an independent regulatory authority supervising the privatised underground, independent of the train operators, which will agree to changes in service levels only after carefully considering the benefits for passengers. That is a wholly new safeguard.
Mr. Keith Hill: May I remind the Secretary of State that it was the Labour Government who opened Hatton Cross station, the three Heathrow stations and also the Jubilee line, which was the last major programme of underground construction in London? Which of the uneconomic services—I think I quote him correctly—does he expect to be cut under privatisation?
Sir George Young: I made no reference to any uneconomic services being cut; on the contrary, I made it clear that there would be guarantees based broadly on the current level of provision. I am interested in more provision. That is why we are investing in the Jubilee line extension—some £2 billion. That is why we are investing in the Croydon tramlink. That is why we are investing in Thameslink 2000. That is why we are building the channel tunnel rail link through Stratford into St. Pancras. That is why I welcome the Heathrow express. There has not been such a commitment to investment in the public sector transport network in London for many, many years.
Mr. Richard Tracey: My right hon. Friend will recall that London Underground asks the Government for £700 million every year, which is the sum that it needs to produce a truly modern metro. It is obvious that his solution is the only one that will work properly. Given the financial demands of health, education and law and order, there is no way in which taxpayers could be expected to produce £700 million for the London underground. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Labour party's analysis of service needs is totally hollow? No private sector investor would produce money for collapsing embankments and tunnels when there was no cash stream.
Sir George Young: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend's first point. I hope that London Underground, London First and other organisations that advocate more Government investment in the underground will welcome the initiative that I have outlined today. I also agree with my hon. Friend's second point.
Mr. John Fraser: Despite what the Secretary of State said in his opening statement, is he aware that a brand new Victoria line was constructed to Brixton in my constituency under a Labour Government in the 1960s? That line, which would never have been constructed by a profit-motivated privatised institution,
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now forms an indispensable part of London's transport system. Is it significant that the Secretary of State's 10 points contain nothing about the construction of new underground lines and concentrate entirely on shoring up existing structures? Where will new structures for the underground come from?
Sir George Young: The hon. Gentleman will know that the Jubilee line extension is being built. It is a £2 billion investment, and will be opened next year. I mentioned a number of other major investments in public transport in London in response to the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill)—such as the Croydon tramlink, which is not far from the constituency of the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser).
At the beginning of my statement, I explained that our approach to railway privatisation proved that it was possible to construct new lines with a privatised industry. That is how the channel tunnel rail link is being built. The new lines that the hon. Gentleman and I want to see will be more likely to progress if we can move the industry into the private sector.
Sir Michael Grylls: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best hope for a first-class underground system that will benefit all Londoners lies with moving it into the private sector and away from political control? Private capital—without limit, if that is viable—would benefit everyone. It is obvious that there is nothing new about new Labour: it is still old Labour, which lives for nationalisation and opposes anything to do with the private sector.
Sir George Young: My hon. Friend has summarised my views exactly, both on the right approach to the future of London Underground and on the Opposition's attitude to my policy. It is only a matter of time before they amend their views.
Mr. Clive Soley: There is a whiff of creative accountancy about the Secretary of State's statement which must be explained. If the travelcard is to stay the same and be interchangeable between the various companies that the Secretary of State must envisage, if the concessionary fare system is to remain, if services are to be broadly as they are today, and if prices are to be cut, where will the competition come from—unless it is based on a very cheap sale which, by its nature, must be short-lived?
Sir George Young: If we went down the franchising route, there would be an opportunity for competition among potential franchisees—as we have seen with British Rail. If we opted for privatising the organisation as a whole, there would an opportunity for bodies to bid in competition for it. If we opted for share flotation, there would be an opportunity to fix a price that maximised the value to taxpayers. There are many ways of introducing competition. I ask the hon. Gentleman: what sort of competition is there at present?
Mr. Harry Greenway: Does my right hon. Friend recall that the GLC not only cut London Underground's services savagely in the early 1980s, but doubled the fares in a single year? We do not need any lessons on underground service provision and fares from

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the Labour party. Its only proposal for London Underground is to do nothing. We must have some action. My constituents must have a better service: they need an escalator at Greenford station, better standards at Northolt station and improvements at Ealing Broadway station. That work will occur as a result of my hon. Friend's statement, and I support it.
Sir George Young: The largest single increase that I have been able to find took place between 1975 and 1976—an increase of some 25 per cent. in real terms. The House will remember that, when we approached the privatisation of British Telecom, there were many forecasts that telephone kiosks either would not work or would be closed. We have heard a similar propaganda campaign today. It was not true then. It is not true today.
Miss Kate Hoey: Will the Secretary of State give a categorical assurance that, between now and the general election, not one single penny of Government money will be spent on advisers, consultants, and all the trappings of even starting to look at the scheme? Does he agree that the voters of London should be given a choice in this matter, and that that will happen on general election day?
Sir George Young: Certainly not. I made it clear in my statement that I propose to consult a large number of organisations that have an interest in this policy. I see no reason why the potential benefits to Londoners should be delayed for a single day.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes: Does my right hon. Friend agree that he has announced today an enormous opportunity for London as a vibrant and successful city, and an opportunity for a much better rail service for all our constituents who use it regularly? Was not he right to say that the hysterical reaction from the Labour party spokesman is entirely in line with everything that the Labour party has said about every single privatisation, not just rail privatisation? Labour told us that British Telecom would have to close all its telephone boxes, and that British Airways would not be able to fly to regional airports. They have been wrong every time, and Londoners simply will not believe them this time.
Sir George Young: My hon. Friend is right. The House will remember that the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), who is now the Opposition Chief Whip, said that British Airways
"will be the pantomime horse of capitalism if it is anything at all."—[Official Report, 19 November 1979; Vol. 974, c. 125.]
That is the sort of hysterical pronouncement that we have grown used to from Opposition Members when we propose the privatisation of something in the transport industry.
Ms Margaret Hodge: How much money has the Secretary of State set aside for financial and technical advice? Advice on privatising British Rail cost the British taxpayer £450 million. How much will it cost to privatise London Underground? What expenditure has been cut? The Secretary of State, both in this job and in his former job, was a keen advocate of the private finance initiative.
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On the privatisation that he announced today, is he saying that his Government have failed to bring forward constructive private finance initiatives that would ensure proper investment in London's underground services?
Sir George Young: No expenditure has been cut to take forward the policies that I have just outlined. Any expenditure on advisers is a good investment if it secures an industry, if it drives up the quality of services, and if it improves its investment record and eliminates the investment backlog.
No Administration has taken the PFI forward with greater enthusiasm than this one. There are a number of private finance initiatives being advanced within London Underground, but as the chairman of London Underground made clear last week to the Transport Select Committee, the PFI cannot reach all the investment backlog. Some of the work cannot be completed under a PFI deal. Whatever progress is made with the PFI, we are still left with an industry in the public sector that is subject to all the public expenditure constraints of any other nationalised industry. Privatisation addresses both those problems.
Mr. David Lidington: Does my right hon. Friend agree that my constituents will judge his proposals by whether they work in practice: for example, by bringing forward the much-needed upgrade of Metropolitan line infrastructure; by assisting the cross-rail project to go ahead; and by ensuring that, when my constituents get to Baker street or Marylebone, the escalators work? Will he confirm that the purpose of his proposals is to allow capital investment to take place to provide the improvement in service that my constituents seek?
Sir George Young: On the latter point, the answer is, of course, yes. I hope that everybody will judge the proposals on their merits. It is not some dogmatic proposal. We have looked at London Underground. We have asked ourselves what its needs are. We have come up with a tailor-made package that addresses the problems of London Underground. That is not dogma, but common sense.
Mr. Harry Cohen: Have not the Government run down the London underground in the years leading up to this statement? The Minister's so-called commitments would not be worth the paper they are written on if the Tories got a dreaded fifth term. When the election was out of the way, the Chancellor would get his hands on the money and the Secretary of State would move on. The proposals would cost London passengers and taxpayers dearly. Have not the Tories shown by this privatisation proposal that they have given up on London commuters altogether?
Sir George Young: The people who have given up are those who have failed to produce an alternative scenario that provides the benefits to Londoners that I have outlined. We have not neglected investment in London Underground. I shall not repeat the figures, because I have already quoted them twice, but they show a dramatic increase in investment in the core network between the 1970s and 1980s and now.
Mr. John Marshall: My right hon. Friend will be well aware that I have instigated more

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Adjournment debates calling for increased investment in London Underground than any other hon. Member. London Underground was starved of cash when it was under the control of a strategic authority for London May I welcome the statement, which will lead to increased investment to complement the £430 million PFI initiative for the Northern line, and the £25 million investment at the Morden and Golders Green depots? I thank my right hon. Friend for giving Londoners the assurances on concessionary fares schemes, quality of service and maximum fares for which I asked on 10 February.
Sir George Young: My hon. Friend has always been a staunch advocate of London Transport, and I am delighted to have his support. He may have secured more Adjournment debates on London transport than anyone else, but I have answered more Adjournment debates than anyone else.
Mr. Gordon Prentice: Is it true that last year £1,229 million of debt was written off when British Rail assets were transferred to Railtrack? Why did the Secretary of State's list of 10 points not include debt write-off? In all the other privatisations, billions of pounds of debt was written off so that the privatised companies could start work with a clean sheet of paper.
Sir George Young: London Underground has no debt.
Lady Olga Maitland: Having travelled on the London underground all my life, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on taking this important step in privatising the service. Will he confirm that it will provide an excellent opportunity to recycle receipts into new services, such as the extension of the Northern line from Morden to Sutton? Does he agree that only with such new investment and privatisation can we pave the way for new services and provide badly needed resources, which the Labour party would deny London Underground?
Sir George Young: My hon. Friend draws attention to an aspect of the announcement that has not featured much in this question and answer session. The first call on the privatisation receipts will be the backlog that needs to be tackled. After that, we anticipate a surplus, the majority of which will be put back into transport in London and outside. People will be able to bid for projects, such as the one to which my hon. Friend referred. I hope that that additional feature of privatisation will be widely welcomed.
Mr. Paul Flynn: Did I understand the Secretary of State to promise that a privatised underground will be a financial triumph, just as the channel tunnel was? Will he make it clear what he is saying about services, because he keeps using the word "broadly"? Will the level of service be guaranteed? Will it at least be at the present level?
Sir George Young: The answer is yes, broadly. We shall ensure that the private sector will be required to provide a guaranteed level of service that broadly safeguards the existing level of provision. There must be an element of flexibility, but the regulatory authority that will supervise the underground, which will be
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independent of the train operators, will agree to changes in service levels only after carefully considering the benefits to passengers. That safeguard does not exist now.
Mr. David Winnick: Given that there are, at the most, nine weeks to go until the general election and six until the election campaign, does the Secretary of State realise how irresponsible it would be to spend public money on advisers, when there is every indication that the scheme will never go ahead? Will the right hon. Gentleman think again, and—as my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) rightly suggested—let the people of London decide at the election? To use public money in the way that he intends would be totally irresponsible, and could not be justified.
Sir George Young: The people of London will, of course, decide, and I hope that their decision will be influenced by our plans for London Underground. I hope that they will contrast what I have outlined this afternoon with the complete absence of any comparable strategy from any other party. As for making progress with the policy, I see no reason to delay the progress that I want to make. I believe that it will have real benefits for Londoners, and I want to get on with it as fast as I can.
Mr. Simon Hughes: What is London Underground's current asset value? Will it be possible to sell it at less than its asset value? Will there be a limit to the profit that can be made on the on-sale of any of the assets? Why does the Secretary of State not contemplate, as one option, retaining public ownership while allowing London Underground to borrow entirely as it would wish in the private markets? I understand that London Transport would be perfectly happy for it to do that.
Sir George Young: If we did that, it would simply score as public borrowing or public expenditure. There is no way of using creative accounting to solve the problem. As for the proceeds from this privatisation, as with other privatisations, the Government are not making an estimate of those in advance.
Mr. Gale: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I apologise for trying to intervene earlier, but the matter that I wished to raise related to the statement.
I seek your advice in regard to the conventions of the House. Just over a week ago, the Leader of the Opposition instigated a motion of censure against my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. When the likely result of the vote became known, the Leader of the Opposition ran from the Chamber and hid behind his spin doctors in his room behind your Chair.
This afternoon, in the full glare of the television cameras and in a public performance, the Leader of the Opposition asked three questions relating to the future of London Underground; yet, when the statement was made, he saw fit to leave the Chamber and not listen to the answers.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: And Major did?
Mr. Gale: With great respect, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister knew the answers. The Leader of the Opposition clearly did not.

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My question to you is this, Madam Speaker. Is it not a convention of the House that those who ask questions stay to listen to the answers? Whether or not the Leader of the Opposition has the courage to stay and listen to answers that he might not like, should he not have the courtesy to do so?
Madam Speaker: This is rather a political argument. The Opposition have their own shadow Ministers to ask questions of the Secretary of State.
As for convention, may I make this point? This morning, I heard the Secretary of State say on the radio that he had a statement to make to the House today, and that he would not divulge what was in it. I applauded that. He did go on a little to say what would be in it—but, if we are speaking of conventions, I have always applauded Secretaries of State who say, "Yes, I have a statement to make, but it will be made to the House of Commons first."
As for Leaders of the Opposition, I do not know where they sit on these matters. I do not know whether they want to watch the television in their room, or stay on the Opposition Front Bench.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Ministerial gesticulation from a sedentary position, however well intentioned, is no substitute for clear statements in Hansard. Will you give the Secretary of State an opportunity to say whether the £1.2 billion to which he referred covers simply tunnels, or a good deal else?
Sir George Young: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I will see whether I can obtain an estimate from London Underground of the proportion of the total backlog that relates to tunnels.
Madam Speaker: I think that it would be better to be absolutely clear, so that other hon. Members also know the answer, and to place a question on the Order Paper. I think that that would be very helpful.

BILL PRESENTED
  GREAT APES (PROHIBITION OF EXPERIMENTS)
  Mr. Tony Banks, supported by Mr. Elliot Morley, Mr. Gerald Bermingham, Mr. Jim Cunningham, Mr. John McWilliam, Mr. Tony Benn, Mr. Matthew Taylor, Mr. Roger Gale, Mr. Phil Gallie, Dr. Norman A. Godman, Mr. Harry Greenway and Mr. Ken Livingstone, presented a Bill to prohibit certain experimental or scientific procedures being conducted on great apes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28 February, and to be printed [Bill 115].

  POLICE AND FIREMEN'S PENSIONS BILL
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 90(1) (Second reading committees),
  That the Police and Firemen's Pensions Bill be referred to a Second Reading Committee.—[Mr. Coe.]
  Question agreed to.

  Local Government (Conduct of Officers)
  4.28 pm
  Mr. Chris Davies: I beg to move,
  That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enhance the independence and professional status of senior local government officers by providing for a statutory code of conduct requiring that their advice and actions be politically impartial, and to establish an independent tribunal with authority to investigate complaints made by the public and enforce the code as required, and related matters.
  The Bill has the objective of enhancing the professional status and protecting the independence of senior local government officers. Let me tell the House why the Bill is necessary.
  The work of senior local government officers is of great importance to the communities that we serve. It is the good fortune of many of us to work with officers of a very high calibre. Their role is, of course, different from that of their civil service counterparts. Chief officers do not serve council leaders as permanent secretaries serve Ministers. Instead they are the servants of the entire council: of the controlling party and of the opposition parties alike. They must also be accountable to some extent to the public for the services that they provide and administer.
  Chief officers have a duty to give their professional advice impartially, openly and without bias to each and every councillor. It is up to the elected representatives then to make the political judgments, accepting or rejecting the advice as they see fit. The House has recognised that, if the independence of local government officers is not to be compromised, they must be separate and removed from party politics. The Local Government and Housing Act 1989 forbids them from serving in a political capacity on another council. Although they may be members of a political party, they may not hold posts within it.
  The Local Government Management Board has published a code of conduct, but it is not statutory and need not even be accepted by a local authority, let alone enforced. Existing provisions are not sufficient to prevent the insidious subversion of officers' independence in councils that are run by one party, of whatever political persuasion, for a great length of time.
  Some 70 councils have been run by just one party since their inception in 1974. Thanks to the collapse of the Conservatives in local government, they are mostly Labour-run authorities by a factor of some four to one and they include 22 metropolitan districts and London boroughs. A short distance from my home, I think on the one side of the Pennines of Manchester, Salford and Wigan and on the other of Barnsley, Wakefield and the recently notorious Doncaster.
  The party in control can of course be said to command the support of the electorate, but, however good the reasons, where one party is in control for a great length of time, the checks and balances of the democratic process are greatly eroded. The will of the controlling party and the will of the council may all too easily come to be viewed as one and the same thing. There is then an ever present risk that officers will be put under pressure to subordinate their independent judgment to that of the political party in control.

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  At its most vile, I have seen that pressure applied by militant Labour councillors in Liverpool when they gained control in 1983. The atmosphere of a previously balanced and open council was rapidly transformed. Officers were sworn at and ridiculed in public committee meetings by their new political masters. They were physically threatened, I understand, in private. The stress placed on them was immense, and it contributed to the premature death of one at least, whom, I had known and worked with. Many others sought escape by way of early retirement.
  That was an extreme example. Much more common is the subtle pressure placed on senior officers because their careers depend on the good will of the politicians who influence the appointments committees, or the chief executive, who may have misplaced loyalties. How can impartial professional judgment be given if it has been privately indicated that an impartial view is not what is required?
  A friendly relationship between councillors and officers is of course fine, but each needs to know their role and their place. That is why the growth of what might be termed "a culture of familiarity" at the highest levels can be invidious. A council leader with firm control over the majority group works alongside a chief executive for, say, 20 years. Over the years, they help each other out of scrapes. The one supports the other to fend off criticism. It is not a conspiracy, just human nature, but the divisions between politician and officer are gradually bridged in ways that are in the interests neither of democracy nor of the public good.
  The Audit Commission, for example, may publish performance indicators that might prove embarrassing to the administration. The chief executive decides not to place them on the committee agenda for consideration by councillors. The council leader backs him up. It is a matter of, "You scratch my back; I'll scratch yours." Public debate is avoided. Embarrassment is saved all round. At the worst, there is a concentration of power, which is exercised arrogantly and influences officers at every level of the structure. They know that they must bite their tongues and blow no whistles.
  The scandals in Doncaster and Westminster exposed by the district auditor occurred only because, at some point, senior officers turned a blind eye to the unacceptable behaviour of some councillors or allowed them to pursue policies of dubious legality. I do not believe that that could have happened if officers had not been expected to toe the leadership's line or risk damage to their careers by speaking out.
  I regard the doctoring of officers' reports as particularly malign. When proposals for new legislation are introduced in the House, hon. Members know that many of them have been drafted by civil servants. The Minister who presents the legislation, however, will rightly defend it as his own. The practice can be quite different in local government. A chief officer's report and recommendation to a council committee supposedly represent his or her independent professional opinion, and the controlling party often will make the point that the council pays a great deal of money to employ the person for that advice. In practice, however, the so-called "independent" report may have been politically influenced before it reaches the council, leaving the decision-making process tainted and corrupted.
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  In such cases, the officer's professional judgment reflects nothing more than the wishes of the controlling party or of its leadership. It is a dishonest game of backroom political manipulation—which councillors detached from the leadership may suspect but can rarely prove. Opposition councillors are left complaining of political bias, but they are powerless to act. The public lose confidence in democracy and feel that there is no chance to redress their complaints. To whom could they appeal? The council's monitoring officer is perhaps the chief executive or someone who answers to him. Will he investigate complaints about himself? A behind-the-scenes fix may not necessarily be maladministration, which would rule out the intervention of the ombudsman. Judicial review is possible, but, in most cases, it is too expensive and cumbersome.
  I believe that the vast majority of local government officers profoundly resent being dragged into the political process and being told privately—by a politician or a chief executive with misplaced loyalties—what they must say and write when reporting to the council.
  My Bill would provide good officers with a cloak of protection. It would establish a strong and legally binding code that places on officers a duty to serve the council as a whole and to exercise their judgment free from partisan influence. It would also forbid discrimination in any aspect of their employment on partisan grounds.
  The code would allow an officer to remind councillors or even a chief executive that it is against the law to require officers to protect the interests of one particular group of councillors, or for them to be influenced by anything other than their own professional judgment when preparing reports for the council. The Bill would also provide the code of conduct with some real teeth. It would establish a tribunal with staff who would have the power to investigate complaints made by officers, councillors or members of the public. The tribunal could publish reports requiring that the council demonstrates that necessary disciplinary action has been taken or recommending the disqualification of councillors identified as having put political pressure on an officer.
  In practice, I hope and believe that the work of such a tribunal would be minimal. The mere fact of its establishment and the creation of a new code would help to change the nature of local government and allow a breath of fresh air to penetrate some of its more odorous recesses. Decisions affecting local communities should be taken openly and publicly by elected representatives of the community in council chambers and in committee rooms, not in back-room meetings held discreetly in private offices in the civic centre or town hall.
  The measures proposed in my Bill would allow local government officers to take pride not only in their professionalism but in their independence. The measures will raise the standard of informed debate on important issues affecting local communities, and improve the quality of decision taking. By more clearly defining the space between the roles—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. The hon. Gentleman's time is up.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Chris Davies, Mr. David Bendel, Mr. Don Foster, Mr. Peter Thurnham, Mr. David Chidgey, Mr. David Alton, Ms Liz Lynne and Mr. Simon Hughes.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (CONDUCT OF OFFICERS)
  Mr. Chris Davies accordingly presented a Bill to enhance the independence and professional status of senior local government officers by providing for a statutory code of conduct requiring that their advice and actions be politically impartial, and to establish an independent tribunal with authority to investigate complaints made by the public and enforce the code as required, and related matters: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 1 May, and to be printed [Bill 116].
  Orders of the Day

    Social Security (Recovery of Benefits) Bill [Lords]
    [Relevant documents: Fourth report from the Social Security Committee of Session 1994–95 (HC 196) on compensation recovery and the Government's response thereto (Cm 2997.]
    Order for Second Reading read.
    4.39 pm
    The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Peter Lilley): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
    The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that victims get proper compensation, those responsible for causing injury pay that compensation and the taxpayer neither subsidises the negligence of others nor doubly compensates victims. The full package of reforms will save the taxpayer an extra £50 million a year.
    The Bill deals with a less well-known part of the social security system. Nevertheless, it is an important reform because it brings the process of benefit recovery into line with a long-standing and widely agreed principle.
    People suffering injury, accident or disease may sometimes receive compensation from a third party, such as an insurer. They may also, independently of that, receive social security benefits to meet their needs for lost income, or to meet extra care needs. So they could be entitled to two lots of money for the same needs. Benefit recovery prevents that, by recouping benefits paid from public funds. The policy is founded on the principle that an individual should not receive double provision to meet the same need.
    Although that long-standing common law principle pre-dates the modern welfare state, Sir William Beveridge articulated it clearly in his historic report, "Social Insurance and Allied Services", published in 1942:
    "An injured person should not have the same need met twice over. He should get benefit at once without prejudice to any alternative remedy, but if the remedy proves in fact to be available he should not in the end get more from two sources together than he would have got from one alone."
    From 1948, double compensation was prevented by recovering benefits from compensation, but compensation recovery was an inconsistent business. Compensation was reduced to recover benefits already paid, but the amount deducted differed from benefit to benefit. For some benefits, 50 per cent. was deductible. For others, the full amount paid was brought to account. Compensation could be reduced to reflect the payment of certain benefits for up to five years from the date of the incident. For other benefits, there was no time limit. That inconsistent approach disadvantaged some accident victims.
    A key problem with the original rules was that the compensator kept the reduction on account of benefits paid. The taxpayer lost by subsidising the negligence of the person responsible for the accident, injury or disease. In a report produced in 1986, the National Audit Office concluded that it was wrong for public funds to be used to subsidise negligence.
    The NAO recommended that the amounts deducted from compensation should be recovered for the taxpayer. Subsequently, the Public Accounts Committee urged the

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    Government to set up such a scheme. The Government commissioned a review of the relationship between compensation and benefit payments. Following the review, we decided to act.
    In 1990, the Government shifted the advantage of recovery from the insurer to the taxpayer. That is the scheme we have now. The compensator deducts from the settlement an amount equal to the benefits that have been paid. He sends that amount to my Department and pays the balance to the victim. If the compensation is £2,500 or less, benefits are not recovered. It is straightforward and it keeps bureaucracy to a minimum. Compared with the previous system, it is also good value for money, and saved the taxpayer more than £130 million last year.
    The Select Committee on Social Security played a part in focusing attention on the current scheme, and on ways by which it might be improved. At the beginning of 1995, the Select Committee decided to
    "inquire into the policy and practice of the compensation recovery unit, and the legislation on which it is based".
    It took evidence from my Department and from a range of other interested parties and reported in July 1995. I pay tribute to the Select Committee and its Chairman, the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who is in his place.
    In its unanimous report, the Select Committee reached conclusions about the scheme that are of crucial importance. It stated:
    "it was right for the Government to shift the advantage of recovery to the taxpayer who lost out to the insurer under the pre-1990 scheme."
    It added:
    "the taxpayer should not be in the business of paying benefit for compensating individuals who have suffered injury or disease for which the courts would hold someone else responsible".
    The Government welcomed those conclusions, as they confirmed that we were right to introduce a scheme which has the protection of the taxpayer as one of its primary objectives.
    The scheme also has two unintended consequences. The first is that some victims do not get to keep all or indeed any of the compensation intended for their pain and suffering. It arises because compensators pay for proven loss, whereas the state pays for needs. Compensators reduce the amount of compensation that they pay by the total benefit already paid, regardless of what the compensation is for. So the compensation a victim receives for pain and suffering may in some cases be eroded by the recovery of benefits paid for need. A typical scenario would involve someone who is already out of work, perhaps through redundancy, before the onset of a disease caused by his former employment.
    While the person is out of work, his income needs are met by state benefits. After a time, a compensation settlement from the former employer is agreed. It might be £15,000, intended to cover his pain and suffering. There would be no compensation for loss of earnings, because the victim was already unemployed, even though the illness would have made continued unemployment likely. The amount paid out in state benefits might have built up to £10,000, so £10,000 of benefit would have to be paid back to the state. The victim would be left with only £5,000—a fraction of the amount intended to cover
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    his pain and suffering. To any reasonable person, that must seem unfair. The Government agree with the observation in the Social Security Committee's report on benefit recovery:
    "We cannot accept that the general taxpayer should be reimbursed out of damages awarded for an individual's pain and suffering."
    The other unintended consequence concerns the operation of the small payments limit of £2,500. For compensation payments below that limit, benefits are not currently recovered. The intention of the limit is a sensible one: it is to avoid the disproportionate administrative costs of recovering small amounts of benefit from large numbers of small claims. However it also unintentionally creates a loophole, providing incentives for insurers and victims to agree compensation at or below the small payments limit.
    One effect is that both the victim and the insurer may gain at the expense of the taxpayer. I can best demonstrate that if hon. Members allow me to lead them through a simple example. Let us suppose that a victim has received £3,000 in state benefits as a consequence of an accident at work. If the compensation agreed were £5,000, the insurer would pay £3,000 to the Department of Social Security and £2,000 to the victim. It would cost the compensator a total of £5,000. If instead the parties agree to compensation of only £2,500, however, the Department gets nothing and the victim gets the full £2,500. So the victim gets £500 more while it costs the compensator £2,500 less than if the settlement had been twice that sum.
    Another effect is that the insurer may gain at the expense of both the taxpayer and the victim. A disproportionate number of compensation settlements seem to be pitched at or around the small payments limit of £2,500. That suggests that many victims settle for compensation at less than the true value. We cannot let either of those circumstances continue. The Select Committee concluded that
    "it was right for the Government to shift the advantage of recovery to the taxpayer who lost out to the insurer under the pre-1990 scheme."
    Furthermore, the Select Committee suggested that the Government should recover 100 per cent. of benefits in every claim. To recover all benefits means removing the small payments limit.
    The Government published our formal response to the Select Committee report on 2 October 1995. As part of that response, I launched an extensive consultation exercise on the implications of reform along the lines proposed by the Select Committee, which was completed in November 1995. The compliance cost assessment of the Select Committee's proposals was published on 14 February 1996. A further consultation exercise to assess the implications of that assessment followed. The closing date for responses was in April 1996.
    All the key interested parties, including insurers, victims' representatives and the Trades Union Congress, were involved. A variety of organisations and individuals responded to the consultation exercise, including those who are now taking a keen interest in the Bill's progress. I am grateful for the constructive approach taken by respondents, particularly the Association of British

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    Insurers, the Law Society, the TUC, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, and Clydeside Action on Asbestos.
    Dr. Norman A. Godman: Hear, hear.
    Mr. Lilley: I do not often get that sort of response from the Opposition Benches, but I welcome it. I had a helpful meeting with John Monks of the TUC. I hope that he, too, found it fruitful.
    The consultation revealed a wide consensus for the reform of the scheme, in particular the protection of damages for pain and suffering, although there were differences on the details of how that could best be achieved.
    Our proposals offer a full and workable solution. They strike a balance between the views of practitioners and the protection of taxpayers. They place liability on the compensator to repay 100 per cent. of the benefits paid to an injured person in respect of accident, injury or disease. They allow the compensator to reduce compensation payments pound for pound only in respect of corresponding benefits repaid to the Department. That will enable victims of accident, injury or disease to receive full compensation for pain or suffering. Those changes are in the Bill.
    I also propose to remove the small payments limit, which is set in regulations as part of the current scheme. However, I intend to retain the power to set a limit in case it should be needed in future. Other measures in the Bill will simplify the appeals system, while still protecting the rights of parties to settlements to challenge benefit recovery decisions.
    The anticipated cost to insurers of implementing the new arrangements will be marginal. This area of the Department's work is specialised, and is set against the background of the insurance industry in which premiums for insurance against the sectors concerned exceed £8 billion a year. That is why we commissioned independent consultants to produce a compliance cost assessment. Fifteen major insurers were closely involved, and I should like to place on record our gratitude for their support and for the valuable assistance that they provided.
    The cost of operating the new arrangements is likely to be between only £3 million and £7 million a year. The compliance cost assessment estimated that insurers would face increased claims costing between £52 million and £72 million in each year following reform. If passed on to policyholders, the increase in costs is likely to produce only moderate increases in premium rates. The assessment concluded that employers' liability insurance premiums could rise by around 5 per cent. and public liability premiums by around 3 per cent. Motor insurance premiums are expected to rise by no more than 0.5 per cent. We believe that such a rise in premiums will be seen as acceptable, given the protection that the Bill offers to victims and to the taxpayer.
    The change that we are making is relatively straightforward, but the Bill may appear long and somewhat complicated. Rather than making piecemeal amendments to the existing statute, the parliamentary draftsman has restated the relevant part of the Social
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    Security Administration Act 1992 in its entirety. That will make it easier to see the proposed new scheme in the round without constantly having to refer back to a previous Act. Furthermore, if enacted in this form, it should prove easier for practitioners to absorb the changes that we are making. It should also help the scheme to run smoothly in the years following the reform.
    Naturally, the Bill contains the necessary amendments to effect an important shift in responsibility for the repayment of benefit, but we have thought it right to disturb as little of the detail of the present scheme as possible. I believe that there is widespread consensus that it works well, and we do not want to put that at risk.
    Subject to parliamentary approval, reform of the scheme will take effect from October 1997. Insurers will by then have had a year to prepare. The reforms will apply to cases settled from the date of implementation, including those in the pipe line. That is fair to accident victims. Otherwise, two accident victims in similar circumstances could receive different compensation on the same day simply because their claims were not initiated at the same time.
    The Bill will achieve three important objectives. First, it will be fair to victims, allowing them to keep all compensation for pain and suffering. Secondly, it will maintain the principle that individuals do not receive two lots of money to meet the same need. Thirdly, it will be fair to the taxpayer. I commend the Bill to the House.
    4.54 pm
    Ms Harriet Harman: The Bill was introduced in another place and was the subject of thorough discussion there for more than seven hours. I pay tribute to our noble Friends for their effort in scrutinising the Bill. Important issues were raised and questions answered, so I do not need to go through them again. I shall merely point out that the matters considered included the relevant period for the recovery of benefit, issues of certificates of recoverable benefit, heads of compensation and appeal.
    We support the Bill and look forward to seeing it on the statute book. It involves issues of principle and practicalities. If someone is injured and cannot work, the social security system must protect that person, but it is also right that those who are negligent should pay compensation. The state should not be required to pay instead of, or indemnify, an individual or organisation that, through negligence, injures another.
    The triangle of the taxpayer, the victim of negligence and the perpetrator of the negligence—or their insurance company—has presented us with problems. The system in operation since 1989 has been confusing and inconsistent, has been unfair to individuals and has discouraged them from making claims. The problem arises when, as a result of an injury, the social security system supports the victim—as is right—but then, sometimes many years later, the victim obtains a sum in compensation from the person who was negligent.
    The compensation, or a large part of it, will already have been paid out in social security benefits, so much of the money is owed to the social security system, not the individual. The current system claws back benefits from the total amount of compensation above the limit of £2,500—not only the money awarded for loss of earnings, but that awarded for pain and suffering. The whole of a

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    compensation payment can be clawed back, and individuals can feel that they have taken on a case for nothing. The Social Security Select Committee, to which I also pay tribute, pointed out that that is revolting to any sense of justice. It is a disincentive to claiming—if the victims end up with nothing, why should they bother to sue?
    We should remember that taking legal action is quite an undertaking: it might involve many meetings with lawyers; it might take many years; it might mean being subjected to an allegation of contributory negligence; it might involve having to give evidence in court and having that evidence criticised and challenged; and, without legal aid or the backing of a trade union, it might cost a great deal in legal fees. Many victims of negligence would rather stay away from the whole business, particularly if they stand to gain little from it. However, if they do not sue, the state gets no money back and the perpetrator of the negligence gets off scot free.
    It is in the state's interest that the individual should sue. By allowing the individual to keep the compensation for pain and suffering, the Bill goes some way towards ensuring that the victim has an incentive to sue, because that person will keep some of the money won in damages.
    That is right in principle. As the Secretary of State said, of course benefits do not compensate for pain and suffering and therefore any sum awarded in compensation for pain and suffering should rightly belong to the individual who has suffered and should not be clawed back by social security.
    A wider issue is the human and monetary price of accidents. It is unacceptable that, as we head towards the end of the 20th century, when we know so much about what causes injury and ill health and how to avoid it, accidents and ill health caused by work cost between £11 billion and £16 billion a year, according to the Health and Safety Executive. A number of my hon. Friends will raise issues concerning the shameful neglect of health and safety at work. It is unacceptable that there should be such high tolls of accidents at work and of personal injuries in road traffic accidents; the Department of Transport estimates that road accidents involving personal injury cost £9.5 billion a year.
    On behalf of the taxpayer, the Department of Social Security claws back part of the bill for accidents. Even taking into account the £130 million clawed back in compensation for those admitting to or being found guilty of negligence, however, the Department still pays out millions of pounds to maintain those who have lost their income or suffered permanent disability, mostly through injury at work or on the roads.
    Prevention is better than compensation. What is needed and is long overdue is a cross-departmental approach to accident prevention. Such issues are all profoundly affected by Government policy. If the Government take insufficient action to cut accidents at work or to make cars and roads safer, the individual suffers and the taxpayer picks up the Bill—yet many such accidents are preventable. It is in the interests of taxpayers and the Department of Social Security, as well as the individual concerned, to challenge other Departments to reach for yet higher safety standards and not simply talk about apportioning the bill for the cost of the accidents.
    The Secretary of State should be taking action to ensure that people claim wherever there is good cause of action. Unlike cases of medical negligence, where there is a very
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    low success rate and it is very difficult to predict which cases are likely to be successful, cases of traffic and work accidents are often very clear. According to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, more than 90 per cent of such cases, where there has been advice that there is a good cause of action, succeed.
    How can the Secretary of State encourage justified claims? As I have said, it is in the interests of the individual and the taxpayer—and it penalises those who have been negligent—that he should do so. I should like to ask some questions to which the Under-Secretary could respond in his winding-up speech.
    Has the Secretary of State considered whether he could do more to provide information about making a claim for personal injury? What information do benefit offices have and what information do they give people about the possibility of claiming for personal injury? Has the Secretary of State considered ensuring that information on claiming is given to all those who suffer injury at work or in traffic accidents? Has he considered whether such information could be available in general practitioners' surgeries and hospitals, where it could be picked up by a relative?
    Only one in three victims of accidents make a claim for compensation. Although, clearly, not all accidents are a result of negligence, it is clear that many more than one in three are the result of it. Clearly, good cases are being dropped because the individual feels that there is no incentive to sue. In fact, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) wrote to the Secretary of State on 20 February about a constituent of his who has a very good case but is not bothering to sue because it is not felt to be worth while. A problem has clearly been identified. Encouraging claims contributes to public policy objectives in two ways: it holds to account and penalises those who have been negligent, and therefore acts as a deterrent; and it recoups money on behalf of the taxpayer.
    As well as considering giving more information to claimants, have the Government ever considered piloting a system—I hope that, if he is bothering to listen, the Under-Secretary will respond on this point—in which legal aid rules have additional flexibility for people claiming where the DSS will be the ultimate beneficiary? The difficulty lies where there is a good claim and the DSS has a big interest in it being made but the person concerned is not eligible for legal aid.
    As I have said, although many claims have a good chance of success, they are not proceeded with because the plaintiff does not qualify for legal aid or, in the case of injury at work, have the legal backing of a trade union, and is not prepared to use his or her own money for a case where he or she sees little benefit. In its compliance cost assessment, Price Waterhouse estimated that every 1 per cent. increase in successful claims for personal injury—bearing it in mind that there is a 90 per cent. success rate—would save £21 million for the DSS in recoverable benefits.
    Although the measures in the Bill go some way towards solving the problem, how can further progress be made? How do we deal with a situation in which the one who stands to gain—the DSS—has no locus standi as the plaintiff, and the person with locus standi as the plaintiff does not stand to gain? The pain and suffering exemption goes only some way towards dealing with that problem.

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    There is a strong argument for the DSS looking for further action to ensure that claims that are likely to be successful are pursued.
    Has the Secretary of State considered, for example, that, with the agreement of the plaintiff, the DSS could step into the plaintiff's shoes? Has he considered that, in some cases, the DSS could indemnify individuals against costs? Those proposals would bear looking at. They would have to be evaluated, and might even need to be piloted, but cases are clearly being dropped and the exemption for pain and suffering goes only part of the way towards solving the problem.
    In certain cases, the DSS could provide funding to support legal action; it could have its own fund to receive payments of compensation to provide further support for legal action. Those are only proposals, but they should be looked at, since we still have not found our way out of the triangle of different interests.
    By abolishing the £2,500 limit and allowing victims to keep compensation for pain and suffering, the Bill makes a vast improvement. It brings greater fairness to individuals and the taxpayer—but it is only a start. Hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money could be saved by more imaginative and purposeful cross-departmental work to prevent accidents at work and on the road and by supporting those involved in accidents and encouraging them to pursue justified personal injury claims.
    5.7 pm
    Mr. Eric Clarke: Coming from a background of industry, especially the mining industry, as you do, Mr. Deputy Speaker—I spent 26 years underground—I do not consider people concerned with the Bill to be numbers. They are colleagues, friends, and even relations. Many have passed away. When such people come to my surgeries, the disgust and anger expressed—especially by friends and loved ones—about the clawback makes me very angry, too.

    The effects of an industrial disease or injury, especially of pneumoconiosis, asbestosis and mesothelioma, on the victim and his family are astronomical. The loss of income as a result of injury in employment immediately affects not only the person but his family. The disabling effect on the individual is traumatic. Even an individual's character alters—sometimes not for the better—because he or she can no longer attend to many of the things that used to be done normally, such as pouring a cup of tea or going to the toilet.
    Mental anxiety and guilt are felt when the victims blame themselves for their predicament. We cannot compensate those people or their families for the sadness caused. It is said that to give one's life for one's friend is the greatest sacrifice. To give one's life and health for industry is, in my opinion, never compensated for properly and never can be. However, as a society, we must make life tolerable for victims and compensate them financially at least.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) mentioned the difficulty of claiming compensation. An ill person faces the ordeal of clinical examinations and cross-examination in court—in other words, humiliation from start to finish. If, because of delays, all the
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    settlement is recovered by the Government, why bother? People ask me why they should go through the traumatic experience of appearing in court and being criticised and humiliated. As the Secretary of State admitted, if the settlement does not exceed the clawback amount, the taxpayer has to foot the bill, and the firm that is liable can walk away scot free. The limit of £2,500 has caused people to give up on their genuine claims, because they fear losing even that pittance. It is a pittance in comparison with a life.
    There are exemptions to the £2,500 limit. The National Coal Board—later British Coal—had a pneumoconiosis scheme, which was exempt. The hearing loss agreement, the criminal justice compensation scheme and many others do not have the compensation awarded clawed back. Exemption has been sought for asbestos cases, especially mesothelioma. If the Bill comes into force with immediate effect, and the retrospectivity provisions are retained, asbestos cases may be more proactively pursued by the persons responsible for causing the diseases and their insurers, but that will not help mesothelioma sufferers.
    Mesothelioma is a category of asbestos damage that is readily diagnosed and cannot be confused with other conditions. The mean time of survival is 44 weeks from the date of diagnosis, and earlier diagnosis is extremely difficult. It therefore has a clearly defined period from diagnosis to death. It is a virulent form of asbestos disease that causes the person to become grossly disabled and bedridden in a short time. It is also notoriously painful, needing substantial administration of pain-killing drugs, including morphine. Against that background, cases have to be progressed with all the difficulties referred to in the Social Security Committee report, in paragraph 54 and the quotation from the Minister.
    The Government have recognised the urgency of cases of mesothelioma by dispensing with the period of 90 days for the award of industrial disablement benefit. They have therefore recognised the particular difficulties of the disease and the need for exemption. If the Government allow those responsible for such injuries to seek set-off under clause 8 or to apply for review and appeals—all of which cannot be determined within the mean time of survival—they will cause delays in progressing such cases.
    Any obstacle to progressing the cases should be removed. Given the limited survival time, in some cases benefit is awarded only shortly before death, and the Government would be in the absurd and harsh situation of giving benefit and taking it away at the same time or shortly afterwards. The benefit would invariably be taken away from the widow or widower and the deceased's estate. Although the benefit might be substantial for the mesothelioma sufferer or his estate, the cost to the taxpayer would be negligible.
    I hope that the provisions on retrospection will be taken into account. The Bill fails to address an absurdity, in clause 3, that occurs in the provisions on appeals, but the problem may be dealt with through regulation. As matters stand at present, judgment may be made in favour of the injured person. If an appeal is not made on the judgment, the consequent payment is subject to compensation recovery unit recoupment. If an appeal is made, additional CRU benefit accumulates after the judgment. Appeals can also take some time—in many cases, as long as, if not longer than, the original action. I ask that benefit be clawed back only for the period up to the original judgment.

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    The Bill will redress in part the gross injustice of the present regulations that recoup money from victims' damages, but some principles and issues will not be satisfactorily resolved by it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham said, the Bill is a beginning, not the end, in solving the problem.
    5.16 pm
    Ms Liz Lynne: The Bill also has my full support: it is modest, but much needed, and it will right some serious injustices; it will also save the taxpayer money. I hope that it receives Royal Assent before the general election, because it is important to get it on the statute book. It will stop state benefit being clawed back from persons who have been injured. If people sue their employers successfully, and the compensation awarded to them is above the £2,500 limit, all the state benefits they receive after the injury is clawed back. That cruel system was introduced by the compensation recovery scheme in 1990. It was bad for victims, bad for health and safety standards and bad for the Treasury and the taxpayer.
    The scheme was bad for accident victims because it gave insurers an incentive to drag out cases and put pressure on victims to settle early and for less money. The Secretary of State mentioned the Trades Union Congress, which has estimated that one in 10 compensation claims started in 1989 have still not been settled. Often, the accident victims have settled for less than £2,500 because any excess would be clawed back.
    The scheme was bad for health and safety, because it reduced the level of compensation. Most employers ensure that they practise good safety regulations, but some unscrupulous employers might have felt that they did not need to maintain a safe working environment because insurers no longer had to pay out large sums.
    The scheme was bad for the Treasury and the taxpayer, because victims often settled for sums below the £2,500 limit and the Treasury got nothing back. Unison gave me an example. In 1990, 40 claims were settled for £2,500; in 1993, 270 were. We can see the changes that the compensation recovery unit brought about. There was no increase in the overall number of cases, so we cannot use that as a reason for the higher figure.
    The GMB said that 12 of the 487 cases in 1990 were settled for less than £2,500, but that, in 1994, 56 cases out of 496 were settled for that sum. That is a fourfold increase. A similar increase has been mentioned by other unions, and I know that unions and personal injury solicitors have written in support of the Bill to hon. Members from all parties.
    The evidence has been ignored for too long. On 20 March 1995, in answer to a parliamentary question about the number of claims made for less than £2,500 since 1990, I was told that the information was not readily available. If the Government had monitored claims since the introduction of the compensation recovery unit, the injustice would have been sorted out far sooner. It is interesting to note that they did not do so, and that the figures were not available to me or to other hon. Members.
    The Bill will address the issue at long last. I do not claim, any more than other hon. Members do, that the Bill is perfect. Earl Russell, my colleague in another place,
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    pressed for amendments, and various organisations want minor changes. None the less, those organisations are keen for the Bill to become law.
    I hope that, in Committee, we shall be able to make improvements, especially by way of amendments to clause 8, so that the compensator will have to provide a breakdown of the gross compensation under the three categories in schedule 2. It would then be easier for victims to assess the offer before them.
    Although I want improvements, I welcome the Bill, and I believe that it must become law.
    5.21 pm
    Dr. Norman A. Godman: I must tell the Secretary of State that it was I who cheered him earlier when he rightly and properly complimented members of Clydeside Action on Asbestos on their sustained campaign on behalf of asbestosis sufferers throughout the United Kingdom, not just those who live near the Clyde.
    There is a question that I should like to ask the Under-Secretary of State who is to wind up. It was prompted by a telephone call that I received this morning from the representative of a voluntary association in Northern Ireland. The Minister will see from his copy of the Bill that the fourth paragraph of the explanatory and financial memorandum says:
    "The Bill extends to Great Britain. Corresponding provision may be made for Northern Ireland by Order in Council."
    I always like to see the word "shall" rather than the word "may" in such cases. I should be grateful if the Minister would confirm that, when the Bill becomes law, it will be followed immediately by such an Order in Council, for the benefit of all the sufferers in Northern Ireland. The Minister is smiling, but I am sure that he agrees that that is important.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): I was smiling only because I have the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question. It is yes.
    Dr. Godman: I am delighted to hear that. I am sure that the voluntary organisations and, much more important the sufferers and claimants, in Northern Ireland will be pleased with the Minister's emphatic assurance.
    It is not for me to ask the Minister lots of questions now, because I hope to be lucky enough to be on the Standing Committee, but may I ask him one more? I have received several complaints about the time that it takes for an appeal against a decision of the compensation recovery unit to be heard. If the Minister cannot respond to those complaints now, will he do so later in writing?
    I believe that an increasing number of appeals have been upheld over the past two years; it is doubly unfortunate if a person making an appeal has to wait an unconscionably long time before it is even heard, let alone decided.
    Having served my time in a shipyard as a shipwright, I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Clarke), have seen many serious injuries. As one who is closely associated with the fishing industry, I have also come across numerous fatalities in that industry, both when vessels are at sea and when they are tied up at the quay.

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    I welcome the Bill. It is an important measure—although the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State will not be surprised to hear that in my view it does not go far enough. The Secretary of State would be astonished if I were more complimentary than I already have been. I have frequently engaged him in debates on issues concerning constituents and others in the unfortunate position of having to seek social security incomes of some kind from the state. If nothing else, the right hon. Gentleman usually listens courteously—although he usually gives me an equally courteous dismissal.
    I have always thought that the CRU was engaged in a squalid exercise, but the record of the insurance companies is far more despicable than that of Ministers and officials in the Department of Social Security. Ministers have, at least partially, seen the error of their ways, but insurance companies seem much more concerned with providing benefits for their boards of directors than with dealing expeditiously with the legitimate claims brought by people, many of whom have been severely injured or are terminally ill.
    I am sure that I speak for every hon. Member when I say that I have seen such people in my surgeries—terminally ill people with asbestosis, for example. I do not say that that disease is peculiar to the shipbuilding and construction industries, but people in those industries who have given loyal, skilled and hard-working service to their employers have often been made to suffer dreadfully because of those employers' sheer negligence and indifference.
    The insurance companies have a poor record in that regard. Their conduct when dealing with such cases is always characterised by prevarication and procrastination. It is disgraceful that cases involving people who are seriously injured or who suffer from a terminal illness take so long to settle.
    What is the average length of a case involving such a person—three years, four years, five years? I have dealt with some cases recently, involving people making claims against the hospital board, and been told that the average is five years. Is it the same for asbestosis sufferers and people who have been injured because of the negligence of their employers?
    I wish to record my grateful appreciation of the efforts of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, the GMB, the Transport and General Workers Union and, last but not least, those of the members of Clydeside Action on Asbestos, including some of our Scottish colleagues who are in the Chamber today. The Scottish Trades Union Congress and the TUC have also played an important role.
    On behalf of my constituents and others in Scotland who have suffered the problems that we are discussing, I wish to express thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), the Chairman of the Select Committee. My hon. Friend had to attend a meeting at 5 o'clock, so he offers his apologies for his unavoidable absence from the debate.
    I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) for organising a remarkable meeting with the Chairman of the Select Committee and other interested Members of Parliament that enabled some
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    seriously ill members of Clydeside Action on Asbestos to present their cases to us. I am sure that that had an effect on those members of the Select Committee who attended the meeting.
    I received a letter and a briefing from Margaret Sharkey of UCATT. The briefing said:
    "Last year UCATT dealt with nearly 900 cases of industrial injury or disease winning over £5 million in damages for UCATT members with average settlements of £6,015. But at least half a million pounds was clawed back by the Compensation Recovery Unit."
    It went on to say:
    "Compensation is paid by employers/insurers because they have broken the law".
    That is an emphatic statement with which I have a great deal of sympathy.
    The briefing continued:
    "if the government is unhappy about the price of ill health and injury on our building sites they should settle the score with those who are responsible by tougher enforcement of health and safety regulations, stricter penalties for those who break them and clawback of DSS benefits, if needed, from the employers/insurers on top of the settlement to the victim."
    My reason for saying that I have a great deal of sympathy with that emphatic statement is that I have seen other accidents in the industries that I know well, largely—not always—brought about by the negligence of employers who demand that workers work excessive hours. Making workers do shifts of 10, 12 or more hours increases the incidence of accidents.
    The briefing continued:
    "The scale of death, injury and ill-health in the industry is a disgrace. Construction is Britain's most dangerous industry. There were 80 building workers and 3 members of the public killed on sites in 1995/96 and 88 in 1994/95. The death and major injury rate is three times higher than the average for other industries. Studies show most of these deaths are caused by poor management and failure to take basic precautions."
    To that I would add the lack of inspection by accredited inspectors. I have seen strange requests carried out by workers at the behest of their foremen and supervisors. They have had to engage in risky operations.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie quoted from the Clydeside Action on Asbestos briefing. I want to reserve a couple of quotations for the Standing Committee, but I should like the Minister to respond to the group's demand on the need to avoid the delay spelled out by the Secretary of State.
    Members of Clydeside Action on Asbestos said:
    "We are told that the reason for the delay between the Act being passed in April 1997 but only coming into force in October 1997 is to allow the CRU to prepare itself for the new system. We do not see why the CRU cannot prepare itself well before then. The Act has a broad party support, any amendments to the Act are unlikely to lead to substantial amendment and the CRU can therefore tool up quite adequately for the coming into force of this Act.
    If the Act was to come into force in April 1997 there would be certainty for plaintiffs and pursuers and it would prevent administrative delays which could be occasioned by the CRU trying to tool up for a new system while operating the present system."
    I consider that a legitimate complaint; matters could be expedited along the lines suggested.
    The Bill is a worthwhile measure: it does not go far enough, but it will bring some relief to many of my constituents who at this very moment are pursuing claims against negligent and careless employers. If those employers were to have a son or daughter injured because

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    of their negligence, that might bring home to them the scale of neglect and negligence on some of our building sites and shipyards and elsewhere.
    Shipyards today have a much better record than hitherto, but there are still too many accidents in workplaces throughout the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) is absolutely right to say that much more needs to be done, but at least those who are injured will derive some benefit from this legislation.
    5.35 pm
    Mr. Jimmy Wray: It is an absolute disgrace that a Bill of such substance and importance is given only two and a half hours to be debated in the Chamber. Think of the time that has passed: asbestosis and mesothelioma go back as far as 1889.
    It is also important to note that previous Governments have done nothing about a disease that is one of the biggest killers. Millions of pounds have been spent on prevention and training about AIDS and other diseases that are a much lower priority, but very little has been spent in the past seven years on mesothelioma: only £447,000.
    The disease affects not only bricklayers and plumbers, but members of the public. I remember, when I was a plumber, going into King's Park school where pipe coverers were stripping all the pipes and taking off all the asbestos. The place was polluted with dust. If a small speck of that dust gets into people's lungs, they are finished.
    We are talking about ring-fencing pain and suffering, but it is very sad that thousands of people before and after 1989 lost out on their claims. I am glad that the Secretary of State for Scotland has said that the Government are getting rid of the small payment of £2,500, because it has been a disaster, but is it right for the Government to have gained through the clawback system from the pain and suffering of people with mesothelioma? Will those people be re-compensated? This is grave-robbing, and the families are suffering. It is not only the person working with asbestos dust who dies: it is the woman who washes the clothes and the children who greet their father or mother. That is the seriousness of the case.
    I want to take a little time to explain some of the saddest cases. I want them to be recorded in Hansard, because I believe that the Government have taken a diabolical liberty over the years, especially as it has taken eight years, from 1989 to 1997, to get something done. Nothing would ever have been done if the Social Security Committee had not examined this unfair situation in 1995, or without the efforts of organisations such as Clydeside Action on Asbestos, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Trades Union Congress and all the other unions involved. People do not think that the matter is serious; but thousands of people are dying because the environment that they walk through to get to work means that they have contracted mesothelioma or asbestosis, which is not as deadly.
    Most people with mesothelioma, a cancer of the chest lining, die within one or two years of diagnosis. It is uniformly fatal and as ugly and horrible as it sounds. June Hancock, who is still alive, was diagnosed as having the disease in January 1994. She is still relatively active and mobile. She is enjoying some borrowed time, as she calls
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    it, because she was one of the first people to win a claim as having contracted the dust in the environment. She won the last round of her historic legal battle for compensation for the damage done to her health by asbestos. It was the first example of the so-called third wave of environmental asbestos cases to reach the British courts. Many more similar compensation claims are likely.
    June is now 60. When she was a child in Armley, a suburb of Leeds, she and her friends played in the streets around the former J W Roberts asbestos factory. White fibrous dust from the factory filled the air and built up in drifts in corners and against walls as the children played in the streets. In the loading bays of the factory, they would throw snowballs made of asbestos at each other in fun. The deadly particles steadily accumulated in their lungs.
    Fourteen years ago, June Hancock watched her mother die a painful death from mesothelioma. Now she, too, has the disease, but early on she decided to fight it rather than give in. She has been sustained by the fight to win compensation from T and N plc, formerly Turner and Newall, of which J W Roberts is a subsidiary. She is one among many victims of a man-made epidemic—I call it the silent epidemic—that makes few headlines but is becoming impossible to ignore. While we worry that eating beef might trigger a rare brain disease, thousands of people have died not through any choice that they made, but from having once inhaled asbestos fibre in their workplace, home or school. They are the innocent victims of our modern industrialised society.
    About 3,000 people die in Britain every year from asbestos-related disease; more than half die from mesothelioma. Asbestos has killed thousands of people since it was first exploited commercially at the end of the last century. It has been, and still is, the largest occupational killer in industrialised societies. It is not one among equals but the leader of the pack. The death toll is rising steeply.
    The Health and Safety Executive, not a body given to wild predictions, said recently that, by 2025, there could be 10,000 deaths annually in Britain from asbestos-related disease. That is far more than are killed in road accidents or by AIDS-related illnesses. It is 200 times more than Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease has ever killed in a year. Over the past 20 years, we have learned that asbestos is dangerous stuff, to be avoided at all costs. Less often do we hear that it is too late for many thousands of June Hancocks—the people dying and doomed to die—or that thousands more are still being exposed to risk. In many places and trades, asbestos is a plague to come, yet Governments have ignored the dangers for most of the century. We are looking forward to a Labour Government taking action to stop the killer once and for all.
    The basic dangers relating to asbestos have been recognised since the end of the last century. For example, the report of Her Majesty's lady inspector of factories of 1898 mentions the
    "evil effects of asbestos dust".
    In 1899, a 33-year-old man who came to consult Dr. Montague Murray at London's Charing Cross hospital seemed to be merely another victim of bronchitis until he mentioned that the other nine men who had worked with him spinning the new miracle substance—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. I hesitate to intervene, but the hon. Gentleman is going rather wide of the Bill.
    Mr. Wray: Those matters have never been raised in this Chamber. I do not see anything about it in Hansard.

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    However, they are important to the public and to my constituents. I have been dealing with cases of asbestosis and mesothelioma for several years. It has happened in schools, in the home, and in the workplace, and it is happening in the environment. It is time that the public had it brought to their attention and that the Government—and if not this Government, the next Labour Government—did something about it.
    It is a dying shame that, over the years, the Government have allowed the Department of Social Security to defraud people who have died and suffered. They have defrauded families of the claims to which they were entitled. I know that this is an important subject and that many hon. Members wish to speak, but it is time that the nation faced its responsibilities and banned the substances that are imported into this country to make quick profit at the expense of people's lives.
    5.46 pm
    Mr. Michael Clapham: Like other hon. Members, I welcome the Bill because it goes some way to remedying a gross injustice created by the Social Security Act 1989. Nevertheless, I have some concerns to highlight.
    The Bill is particularly welcome because it ring-fences general damages. The part of a payment that is made for pain and suffering is to be ring-fenced; deductions for social security payments will not be taken from that element of damages but will be restricted to the payment for loss of earnings. The 1989 Act allowed the deduction to be made from the global sum, which included pain and suffering, as well as payments for loss of earnings.
    The other major part of the Bill is the removal of the £2,500 limit below which benefit recovery does not occur. That is welcome because the present system deters people from pursuing claims if they feel that they are likely to be penalised. Claims of more than £2,500 are sometimes not pursued as rigorously as they might be.
    We should put the Bill in an historical context by considering the situation between 1948 and 1989 and then judge its worth. When the industrial injuries legislation was enacted in 1948, contributions were worked out between employer and employee. Because the employee contributed to the industrial injuries scheme through the national insurance scheme, it was agreed that the employer would be able to deduct 50 per cent. of all benefits from any settlement. The deduction was restricted to the loss of earnings element and did not affect that part of the payment relating to pain and suffering. The system worked well until the 1989 Act was introduced. The injustice that flowed from that Act has been illustrated by some of the examples given by previous speakers.
    Half the benefits paid at that time—industrial injury benefit, disablement benefit and invalidity benefit—were deducted. What is not always taken into consideration, however, is the fact that, although the deduction reduced the amount of damages, if a person returns to work but cannot do the job that he had been doing before his accident or an equivalent job, a cushion of support in the form of a special hardship allowance is available. That later became the reduced earnings allowance, which was abolished in 1990. Although it is no longer available, in many cases enormous sums are deducted from damages payments.
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    I wish to refer the Minister to a particular case. Following an accident in 1989, the compensation recovery unit calculated that the deduction would be made until 11 April 1997 and stated:
    "Amount to be deducted before payment and sent to us within 14 days of the date of payment of compensation"
    will be £50,500.99. The case involved a miner who had a small multiplier. The sum to be recovered by the compensation recovery unit has wiped out all the payment for loss of earnings and has taken a portion of the payment for pain and suffering.
    Although we welcome the Bill, it will still wipe out considerable amounts of damages in cases such as I have cited. A person earning £10,000 a year with a multiplier of eight, where the element for loss of earnings is as much as £80,000, would receive a payment of £80,000 for loss of earnings. However, the deduction from that loss of earnings payment over a five-year period would be considerable.
    As the Minister knows, in the type of case that I have quoted it would take a long time to determine the medical condition. It can take five or six years to determine whether an injury, particularly a head injury, is stable. Consequently, benefits accumulate while one is waiting for a medical condition to stabilise. Benefits that have accumulated over five years must be deducted in full, and, in many cases, the deductions wipe out the loss of earnings allowance.
    If a worker can return to work but cannot continue his pre-accident occupation, there is no cushion to help him in a job that pays less than his pre-accident job. The position is therefore much worse today than it was between 1948 and 1989. Reduced earnings allowance is an essential payment and the Minister will agree that most of our partners in the European Union have a similar payment which helps to cushion the effects of light work when a person returns to a job that pays less than his pre-accident job.
    Clause 2 provides that there is to be no retrospection. In effect, therefore, four different schemes are likely to operate. We shall be dealing, first, with cases of men injured under the old workmen's compensation legislation before 1948; secondly, with cases that occurred between 1948 and 1989; thirdly, with post-1989 cases that occurred before the introduction of this Bill; and, fourthly, with cases that occur after this Bill is enacted. The Minister should consider the complications that that is likely to cause and give some thought to retrospection, which would be enormously helpful.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray) made some important points about asbestosis. The Minister should consider whether it would now be wise to accept exemptions. It takes a long time for asbestosis to develop. Many people were exposed to asbestos in the 1950s. I am currently dealing with a claim by a miner who worked a machine that had asbestos brake linings and has recently developed an acute chest problem. He has been into hospital and part of his lung has been removed. His illness is attributable to the asbestos fibres that he inhaled during the 1950s when he worked that machine.
    It is difficult to determine when asbestosis developed. That fact must be determined, particularly for disablement assessment. If disablement assessment goes back for many years, a sizeable lump-sum payment has to be made.

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    Under the Bill, whenever an award is made to compensate for negligence, a lump-sum payment is deducted from the loss of earnings element for five years. However, the deduction could be considerable and, in cases of asbestosis, could greatly reduce the amount available in a negligence claim. Will the Minister consider whether, at this stage, he is prepared to consider exemptions because asbestosis should be exempt from deductions? The disease has special characteristics and it is only fair that it should be exempt from the provisions in the Bill.
    The Bill is to be welcomed because it takes us a little further down the road towards fairness, although much more needs to be done. I hope that we can outline that more fully in Committee.
    5.58 pm
    Mr. Tony Worthington: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me, and I apologise for missing the opening speeches because of other parliamentary business.
    I very much welcome the Bill, for the reasons expressed by other hon. Members. I worked for several years alongside Clydeside Action on Asbestos, to which tribute has been paid tonight. It is an enormous tribute to that group that, although a handful of the cases that affect the compensation recovery unit are asbestos cases, tonight's debate has been dominated by that issue.
    We should not be here today if Clydeside Action on Asbestos had not lobbied Parliament in November 1994 and if we had not together persuaded the Social Security Select Committee to investigate the unit's work. It is a credit to our democracy that a relatively small local group, working with Members of Parliament, can change the law. Had it not done so, the work of the compensation recovery unit would have continued unchanged.
    The Select Committee's report turned the tide. It was a tremendous eye-opener for all members of the Select Committee to discover what was happening in their name. The report was damning, and said that the results of many cases were contrary to natural justice.
    Let us consider the scale of the problem. In 1995, the compensation recovery unit was reclaiming much more than £100 million a year from more than 30,000 people who had been victims of accidents, diseases or illnesses for which other people were culpable. In that year, more than 1,500 people were paying back more than £15,000 in benefits. The highest sum that I could find was £94,000, which was paid back by a person who had neck injuries. Imagine the suffering that must have been involved to have led to the payment of £94,000 in benefits.
    When the issue received publicity in the Daily Mirror, I received more than 150 letters from people who were outraged by what had happened to them—not only asbestos sufferers but people who had been in road accidents, those with industrial diseases, and victims of industrial accidents or any affliction that had been caused by other people.
    One of the great evils of the CRU's work—implementing legislation and the Conservative Government's instructions—is that it has further undermined the insurance principle. My constituents and others believed that they had paid their stamp and would receive benefits in the event of catastrophe, but the Government clawed back that benefit. People were outraged: what was the point of paying the stamp if they were obliged to pay back the benefits?
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    I shall concentrate my remarks on the asbestos issues, which especially interest me because, regrettably, Clydebank in my constituency is the national leader for male deaths from mesothelioma. Our death rate is 11 times the national average because of the deadly cocktail in our background of shipyards, ship repairing and an asbestos factory.
    The 10 areas that head the Government's list—the Health and Safety Executive list—for asbestos deaths are all ports. Wherever there have been ports and shipbuilding, asbestos has caused carnage. Between 1976 and 1991, in Greater Glasgow, there were 500 deaths from mesothelioma alone—not asbestos-related diseases as a whole. According to the Government, the people who died came into contact with the dust between 50 and 60 years ago; as has been said, asbestos-related diseases are by far the biggest industrial killer, and the problem is getting worse.
    According to the Department of the Environment, there will be between 1,300 and 3,000 deaths from mesothelioma in 20 years' time, which dwarfs all industrial deaths, deaths on the road and deaths from any similar cause. If we take into account the fact that there are estimated to be between one and two deaths from asbestos-related lung cancer for every death caused by mesothelioma, we realise the scale of the continuing problem.
    Can the House imagine the appalling way in which we have treated those sufferers? They must prove that they are suffering from an asbestos-related disease, which is not easy when many of them have been heavy smokers. They must prove where they contracted the disease, perhaps 50 to 60 years ago, and find evidence. They must enter the legal system against an asbestos industry that knew decades ago that it was killing people but decided to go on doing it, and if they win they must pay back any benefit that they have received.
    The most immoral aspect of the Government's action is that they have clawed back money that was awarded for pain and suffering, although they had no right to it. That was repulsive, immoral theft, and I am glad that it is to end. I am pleased that the Government have moved on the issue, but they can claim no credit for being forced to amend what they set up. I nevertheless pay credit to the Minister, who has been unfailingly courteous on this matter.
    Mr. John Home Robertson: That is out of character.
    Mr. Worthington: I regret to say to my hon. Friend that it is true that the Minister has been unfailingly courteous on this matter.
    The Social Security Select Committee deserves credit for suggesting that the polluter should pay: that those who cause the accident, illness or disease should pay back any benefits to the Government. That should concentrate minds and lead to earlier and larger settlements, as the clock will be ticking, not against the employee—the victim-but against the employer and insurance companies.
    I pay a final tribute to Clydeside Action on Asbestos because I am convinced that without that group we should not be improving the law today. I express, as have others, the hope that improvements will be made in Committee.

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    There is a powerful case for exempting mesothelioma from the workings of a clawback. I also want to remember those people who have died feeling bitterly let down and angered by a so-called welfare state that kicked them as they were dying an appalling, painful death. They should be remembered today.
    6.6 pm
    Mr. John Home Robertson: I happily join my hon. Friends the Members for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington), for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray) and for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) in paying tribute to Clydeside Action on Asbestos, because I am sure that all my hon. Friends are right that we should not have made the progress that we have in this campaign but for the work done by that organisation.
    I am surprised that Conservative Members have not taken part in the debate because, although there are serious cases in shipyard and port areas, surely in every constituency there must be people who have had compensation clawed back by the compensation recovery unit—sometimes in grotesquely unjust circumstances.
    I have been involved in this issue from its fairly early stages. I recall initiating an Adjournment debate, which was replied to by the right hon. Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe), who is now responsible for prisons but was then responsible for social security—we may draw what conclusions we like from that. I also met her to discuss cases from my constituency.
    I must be courteous to the Minister. The Bill makes a small but important step in the right direction in recognising the iniquity of clawing back compensation awarded in respect of pain and suffering to people who have been injured at work through no fault of their own, but I share the complaint made by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham): that the provisions start from later this year. What about all those people, including several of my constituents, and no doubt people throughout the United Kingdom, who have had their payments for pain and suffering clawed back in the eight years since 1989? It was never right for the Department of Social Security to claw back money that was awarded by the courts for pain and suffering.
    Can the Minister give the amount that was paid in respect of pain and suffering and clawed back by the compensation recovery unit in those eight years? Will he please, even at this late stage, consider the overwhelming case for making the provision retrospective? If it is right not to claw back that money from claimants in future, surely it must be wrong for the DSS to hang on to the money that it has illegitimately clawed back from people who have claimed on the same grounds in the past.
    6.9 pm
    Mr. Henry McLeish: Important points have been made in the debate, but the overwhelming concern is to get the Bill on to the statute book. Time is running out. If, as expected, the Government call a May election, it is vital in the interests of all the considerations that have been mentioned this evening that we get the Bill into Committee and through its remaining stages, so that it will start to benefit people who have been suffering for many years.
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    I congratulate my hon. Friends who have contributed to the debate—my hon. Friends the Members for Midlothian (Mr. Clarke), for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman), for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray), for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham), for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) and for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson). The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) also contributed to the consensus that prevails in the House and the country on the matter.
    It is rare that we achieve consensus, and when we do, we should take advantage of it. Despite some of the concerns that have been expressed, the Bill is positive and it takes the issue forward. Legislation should always be seen to be building for the future. We may want to return to the issue in later months or years, but the Bill represents a significant step forward.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms Harman), the shadow Secretary of State for Social Security, said that prevention was better than compensation. That sends a powerful message to the workplaces of Britain that much of what has been achieved is fine, but much more remains to be done to make our workplaces safe, secure and friendlier environments for people to work in. The Bill does not deal with those issues but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Provan suggested, it is important that we debate the issues and record our concern. Progress has been made, but we have much more to do.
    I want to put on record my appreciation of Clydeside Action on Asbestos. If democracy is to work, we as the elected representatives must have groups to pressurise us to bring about positive changes. The action group, supported by others, has been influential, and helpful work has been done by the Trades Union Congress, which is keen for the Bill to be passed.
    It is important to recognise that we can have consensus on issues in Britain. The Government, the Opposition, the minority parties, the TUC and action groups throughout the country all say that changes are necessary to the payment of compensation, and we have almost completed the first part of the process.
    In Committee we must deal briefly with issues. Outstanding issues remain, and these have been highlighted by my hon. Friends. An important aspect is the start date for the legislation. We hope that the Bill will complete its passage through Parliament before April, but October 1997 is the date on which it is to be implemented. When the Minister replies, will he tell us why, if the legislation has been enacted by then, it cannot take effect from April 1997, instead of October? That would send another message: not only are we concerned to get the Bill enacted, but we are keen for it to benefit people at the earliest opportunity. That would reflect well on the House and on both Government and Opposition.
    I seek an assurance from the Government that with our wholehearted co-operation the remaining stages of the Bill's passage will be completed quickly. There is no reason why that should not be accomplished in the time span that we discussed, and I am sure that such reassurances will be forthcoming.
    The preponderance of Scots—complemented by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone—who participated in the debate is no coincidence. In areas that have undergone tough industrial times and years of hardship, the legacy of many industries

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    remains. As an economy is modernised, the products of the old are evident alongside the benefits of the new. It is no surprise that my hon. Friends should speak passionately from the Opposition Benches—I almost made a slip and said the Government Benches, but that is a few weeks ahead. Even in a debate on a technical measure, there is no reason why hon. Members should not show that they care.
    On issues that affect people's income and hardship, we must be clear that the Bill is not the end of the story. Many organisations will see it as a welcome step forward. There has been cross-party endorsement and endorsement from those who belong to no party. That is encouraging. The Bill should be seen as part of a process of improving working environments, improving compensation and ensuring that those who should pay up do pay up. If that message is sent out to the country, it will do a great deal for the victims and for the credibility of the House.
    6.16 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): I thank all hon. Members who have spoken for the support that they offered for the measure. The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) asked for reassurances from the Government that we would do everything in our power to speed up the Bill's progress. I hope that, by general agreement, that will be possible.
    If I may summarise the hon. Gentleman's winding-up speech, the main question—apart from collateral issues—was whether the measure could take effect in April rather than October this year. I shall deal with that shortly.
    It is important that I have an opportunity to respond to the hon. Members who have spoken. The hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman), who opened for the Opposition, made a point that was taken up by several speakers: that all personal injury action cases begin with a personal tragedy of injury or death, and that prevention is very much better than compensation. It is common ground that money will never compensate for the misery involved. The Bill, however, is directed at the narrow issue of the triangular relationship among the three parties involved, and how it should operate fairly and appropriately.
    The hon. Lady described that clearly, but she mentioned a number of other matters which arise out of the Bill but go beyond it—the question of the extent to which information should be provided by the Department to encourage the promotion of personal injury claims. Because the Bill removes disincentives in a particular group of cases, it will indeed encourage litigation in appropriate cases, but the hon. Lady went on to argue that further steps should be taken by the Government. Perhaps one of the strangest sights these days is the advertisements that appear on the back of buses for lawyers offering to take up these cases. Trade unions have had a distinguished record in helping their members to bring that kind of litigation over the years.
    The hon. Lady asked whether the Secretary of State could go further and either fund claims or step into the shoes of the plaintiff. She used the precise, professional language that I would expect of her: the language of subrogation. That is what occurs in private insurance—although one never bothers to read it on one's insurance policy. If the insurance company pays, it stands in the
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    person's shoes and controls the litigation. That is the end of it as far as the individual is concerned, and the insurer is in the driving seat.
    The Government deliberately rejected that model in 1989 because we believed that it would involve direct interference in virtually every personal injury litigation. We thought that it was more appropriate to allow the parties to determine how they pursue and conduct the litigation, but nevertheless to operate the process of compensation recovery after they had done so. I do not wish to describe such a proposal for subrogation too unkindly as nationalising personal injuries litigation. However, the Government were reluctant to become involved to that extent.
    I turn to the issue raised by the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Clarke) and by several other hon. Members regarding asbestos and the powerful and persuasive role played by the Clydeside Action on Asbestos group. Asbestosis has several formidable and unpleasant features. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray) graphically described the experiences and the misery of his constituents who suffer from that extremely horrible disease. Its consequences were not apparent in the past, and people either did not realise the danger or failed to take adequate precautions.
    Asbestosis cases are among the most horrible, graphic and difficult of personal litigation cases. I think that the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington)—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) corrects me on my Scottish pronunciation; it clearly is not adequate and I apologise to everyone involved. The hon. Gentleman correctly said that we must prove where the disease was contracted, prove the consequence and then establish the negligence. Many people, particularly the hon. Member for Provan, think that the latter issue should be easier to establish. However, the process of establishing the links in particular cases has proved long, bitter and difficult.
    Despite those problems, people have succeeded in bringing such claims. The unhappiest features of the 1990 scheme, which this Bill reforms, were most horribly and graphically displayed in relation to existing asbestosis cases. However, it is difficult to see how we could go further in respect of asbestosis, and exactly what remedy and course Opposition Members advocate. It may be argued that asbestosis cases should be taken completely outside common law litigation, and that a special compensation scheme should be established. The pneumoconiosis scheme and the criminal injuries compensation scheme were mentioned in that regard.
    The difficulty is that statutory schemes of compensation are not usually—I stress that this is the general rule—as generous as common law damages when one succeeds in proving one's case. Therefore, I suspect that there would be some reluctance to retreat from the common law situation. I appreciate that this group of people have suffered the worst effects of the 1990 arrangements. However, under the ring fencing for pain and suffering, that group is likely to benefit more than any other from the legislation. Mesothelioma, one of the worst manifestations of asbestosis, tends to strike many years after the event, often when a person has retired. Therefore, there would be no loss of earnings. As schedule 2

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    carefully limits what may be set off against what, the pain and suffering—as is intended by the legislation—should be recovered by the plaintiff, whole and undiminished.
    Mr. Worthington: A range of diseases are associated with asbestos, of which mesothelioma is one. If the Minister is not willing to exempt the whole range of asbestos-related diseases, will he examine the special circumstances of mesothelioma before the Committee stage—I shall not be able to serve on that Committee—and consider whether a case could be made to exclude it from the provisions?
    Mr. Evans: I am happy to examine that argument. If the hon. Gentleman or any other hon. Member wishes to discuss the matter further, I shall be delighted to do so.
    The hon. Member for Midlothian made one slip of the tongue, as a result of which I hope to encourage him. He referred to people dying as a result of asbestosis and to widows suffering recoupment of benefits. Fatal accident damages are excluded under the 1990 scheme for compensation recovery.
    The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) argued—we may return to the issue in Committee—that the Bill should provide for some form of breakdown of the defendant's offer. I am reluctant to be persuaded by that argument, as parties to a personal injury action do not need to agree upon anything other than the fact that both sides are prepared to go away for X thousand pounds, with costs to be taxed if not agreed. The parties may disagree totally about liability, contributory negligence and the medical issues, but they know that they are agreed upon whatever sum proves satisfactory to both parties. Once we start going beyond the process that is already embodied in the court rules of exchanging in the process of negotiations what each party's contentions are for particular heads of damage, we are likely to promote confusion rather than a speedy settlement.
    I am conscious that time is passing, so I shall deal with several specific points. The hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) gave an example, and I would be grateful if he will explain later the figures that he cited. I suggest that he is not necessarily correct in his example, as I understand it. Let us suppose that his case is the worst sort and takes a full five years to settle, resulting in a loss of earnings of £80,000. The loss of earnings benefit specified in schedule 2 can be set off against that. At common law, if the loss of earnings goes beyond the five-year period, or there is handicap in the labour market, there may be further damages for reduced earnings in the future, and Smith and Manchester damages for handicap in the labour market. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman needs to worry about that.
    I shall conclude with the important question whether the legislation should be brought into effect in April.
    Mr. Eric Clarke: I am concerned about the delay in the appeals procedure and the compensation recovery unit taking back money. As I have said, that process could take much longer than the original case.
    Mr. Evans: I apologise to both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman), who also raised that important point. They are right to be concerned about delays in the appeals process regarding compensation recovery. Happily, the
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    number of appeals even under the existing scheme has proved far fewer than anticipated or feared. The Bill will simplify, and one hopes speed up, the appeals process. I shall write to both hon. Gentlemen and provide the statistics on those delays. I will be happy to examine the issue further in Committee.
    Several hon. Members asked whether the measure might be introduced before October or retrospectively. I follow the argument of the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson): if the way in which it has been done since 1990 is wrong, should it not be possible to compensate those who have suffered unfair losses according to the new scheme?
    However, it would be difficult to unscramble cases settled over that period when we do not know the basis of settlement. For example, we do not have the information to answer his question as to how much pain and suffering damages have been eroded in specific cases, let alone in total. There may well, of course, be a small fraction of cases, in which a judge has determined the case, where there is a definitive breakdown, but those are a few cases out of a hundred. They are the exceptions. It is just not practical or possible to unscramble them. I regret that that must be my answer.
    Dr. Godman: The Under-Secretary of State speaks like a lawyer.
    Mr. Evans: I am a lawyer. I have practised on personal injuries at the Bar. I have seen these tragic cases while acting for people who have suffered from them. Every hon. Member who made the point that we are talking not about statistics but about human blood is absolutely right.
    This is not quite "no retrospection". When the accident occurred is immaterial. We will catch claims if they are in the pipeline. The difficulty with introducing that before October is that the regulations have to be made, and there have to be the usual consultation procedures. Perhaps the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) will offer to speed that up. I shall talk to him about that afterwards if he wishes. The second issue is the administration of the CRU. It is the Government's view that it is not practical to speed it up at this stage.
    I commend the Bill to the House for a Second Reading.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).

    SOCIAL SECURITY (RECOVERY OF BENEFITS) BILL [LORDS] [MONEY]
    Queen's recommendation having been signified—
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 50A(1)(a),
    That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Social Security (Recovery of Benefits) Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise—

    (1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenses of the Secretary of State incurred in consequence of the Act, and

    (2) the payment into the Consolidated Fund of sums paid to the Secretary of State under the Act and estimated by him to relate to payments out of money provided by Parliament.—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]

    Question agreed to.

    Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Bill [Lords]
    Read a second time.
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills),
    That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
    Question agreed to.
    Further proceedings postponed, pursuant to Order—[20 February].

    TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (SCOTLAND) BILL [LORDS] [MONEY]
    Queen's recommendation having been signified—
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 50A(1)(a),
    That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums so payable under any other enactment.—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
    Question agreed to.
    Bill immediately considered in Committee.
    Clauses 1 to 277 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (SCOTLAND) BILL [LORDS] [MONEY]
      Clause 278

        CITATION, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT
        Amendment proposed: No. 1, in page 184, line 34, leave out subsection (5).—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
        6.33 pm
        Mr. John McFall: We agree with the provisions of the Bill, and it is a welcome measure, but I would like the Minister to explain why the amendment was tabled. What is its aim? Who has he consulted? What are its implications?
        The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. George Kynoch: This amendment removes the privilege amendment that was inserted in another place.
        Amendment agreed to.
        Clause 278, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
        Schedules 1 to 18 agreed to.
        Bill, as amended, reported; read the Third time, and passed, with an amendment.

    Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Bill [Lords]
    Read a Second time.
    6.35 pm
    Dr. Norman A. Godman: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to take up your time and that of the House, but are you able to confirm that, during this procedure, I can ask the Minister a question relating to a clause in the Bill?
    Madam Deputy Speaker: Yes, on clauses.
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of bills), That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
    Question agreed to.
    Further proceedings postponed, pursuant to Order—[20 February].

    PLANNING (LISTED BUILDINGS AND CONSERVATION AREAS) (SCOTLAND) BILL [LORDS] [MONEY]
    Queen's recommendation having been signified—
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 50A(1)(a),
    That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase by or under the Act in the sums so payable.—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
    Question agreed to.
    Bill immediately considered in Committee.
    Clauses 1 to 41 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Question proposed, That clauses 42 to 53 stand part of the Bill.
    Dr. Norman A. Godman: A number of clauses concern buildings that have suffered severe deterioration. For example, the Gourock ropeworks in Port Glasgow is in the most appalling condition. What powers does the Minister have under clause 47 to acquire that building, or to allow the local authority to acquire it, so that it can be demolished? I am the last person to argue for a listed building to be demolished, particularly one with such a noted industrial and architectural heritage, but the Minister knows how long I have pursued this case.
    If the Minister cannot answer now, I hope that he will deal with the matter under this group of clauses. For the people of Port Glasgow, that appalling situation has festered for far too long. I believe that these clauses allow the Minister to act decisively, along with Historic Scotland, to bring an end to the matter by allowing the local authority to demolish the building.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. George Kynoch): The hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of the Gourock ropeworks on numerous occasions in the past. I am sure that he is aware that this is purely a consolidation measure: the Bill does not change any legislation; it consolidates it. I take his point on board, and I shall write to him with the updated position on that building, which I know is of great concern to him.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Clauses 42 to 53 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clauses 54 to 82 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

  Clause 83

    SHORT TITLE, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT
    Amendment made: No. 1, in clause 83, page 49, line 24, leave out subsection (4).—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
    Clause 83, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Schedules I to 3 agreed to.
    Bill, as amended, reported; read the Third time, and passed, with an amendment.

  PLANNING (HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES) (SCOTLAND) BILL [LORDS]
  Read a Second time.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 58A (Consolidation Bills), That the Bill be not committed.—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
  Question agreed to.
  Bill read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

  PLANNING (CONSEQUENTIAL PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL [LORDS]
  Read a Second time.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 58A (Consolidation Bills), That the Bill be not committed.—[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
  Question agreed to.
  Bill read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

  National Heritage Bill [Lords]
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
  National Heritage Bill [Lords]
    Clause 1

      FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FROM THE NATIONAL HERITAGE MEMORIAL FUND
      6.46 pm
      Ms Roseanna Cunningham: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 10, after 'aesthetic', insert 'anthropological, sociological,'.
      Clause 1 extends the list of bodies eligible to receive lottery funds. My amendment would include in that list things with a sociological or anthropological interest, thus enabling communities to be included. The Bill will allow the trustees to provide financial assistance to projects which would, among other things, secure
      "the preservation or enhancement of such things"
      and would encourage
      "the maintenance and development of the skills required for their preservation or enhancement".
      It would make sense to include in both those provisions the preservation of a community for a community.
      Clause 1(3) provides that financial assistance may be given to various projects, including projects to
      "acquire property of any kind (including land)".
      That aspect is of interest to me in my capacity as my party's spokesperson on both environment and land.
      The amendment arose from a discussion that I had in January with Ms Anthea Case, director of the national heritage memorial fund, as a result of the rejection of the bid submitted by the Isle of Eigg trust to buy the Isle of Eigg. The meeting was an attempt to clarify the reasons for that rejection. The decision was complex, but it was clear from the meeting with Ms Case that the board considered that, in the terms of the legislation, heritage did not include people or communities. She also said that, although the definition in the Bill was much wider, it still would not have included the interests of the community or objectives such as relieving poverty.
      In the case of the Isle of Eigg trust, there was a perceived potential for a conflict between the interests of the community and the interests of heritage as defined by the legislation. That was also described as a conflict between the private interests of the community and the public interests of the nation. In the trust's constitution, community representatives had a greater interest than the so-called national heritage interest, as represented by the Scottish Wildlife Trust.
      Mrs. Helen Liddell: I am well aware of the issue that the hon. Lady is raising. It has caused concern to me as well—and to my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), who has raised it with the national heritage memorial fund. My only anxiety is that this may be a rather complicated way of trying to resolve a problem which could be resolved more simply. I say that in as helpful a way as possible. Perhaps it is due to a natural reticence about seeing the concerns of people defined as sociological and anthropological, rather than being defined more precisely in terms of the community aspect of the heritage lottery fund.
      Ms Cunningham: We felt that the issue needed to be resolved, and we had a clear opportunity to do that—

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      especially in view of Miss Case's advice that, as the Bill currently stood, the definition of "heritage" would not cover the circumstances that arose in the Isle of Eigg trust. It was deemed that there was a risk that social and economic objectives on the island could take precedence over so-called heritage interests, and that that would continue to be an issue even after the present Bill, with its extension, went through—as it presumably would.
      The opportunity that the Bill presented to widen the definition to include community interests gave rise to the amendment, but if there are better ways of doing it I should be interested to hear about them. We want the change to be made so that bids such as that of the Isle of Eigg trust can be made and have a chance of succeeding without being ruled out on the basis of technicalities. I would argue—as would many other hon. Members—that the preservation of a community is not the same as the private interests of the individual, but the issue appeared to be being presented in those terms. A sustainable and healthy community is a prerequisite for a sustainable environment.
      Eigg is a very beautiful island, which ought to be preserved; but it is also an island of great need, where people live without mains electricity, gas, a public water supply or refuse disposal arrangements. All those are practical difficulties which must be dealt with.
      Dr. Norman A. Godman: Surely there is little or no difference between the acquisition of an island and the acquisition of an estate. There is no difference between an attempt by people living on an island to buy that island, and a similar attempt by people living on an estate.
      Ms Cunningham: The hon. Gentleman may be making an analogy with the Assynt crofters. There has been one other occasion in Scotland on which this kind of community interest has been paramount and has, in a sense, taken precedence over individual private interests. As Scottish Members will know, ownership of Eigg has received extensive publicity over many years, and we all know of the difficulties to which private absentee ownership has led for the community there. That is why there is so much anxiety about the decision in this instance.
      I have outlined some of the practical difficulties that the community has to bear and which are a result of the negligence of successive absentee landlords. The island and the estate had been allowed to deteriorate and the people faced a very insecure future.
      Dr. Godman: Many of us would much prefer the island to be owned by a trust rather than by such eccentric characters as Mr. Schellenberg.
      Ms Cunningham: The hon. Gentleman is right. The recent history of the Isle of Eigg has caused grave concern, and community ownership would seem a far more secure arrangement for the future than the current ownership by Mr. Marumma—which is in itself problematic—and the previous ownership by Mr. Schellenberg, which lasted for many years and during which very little was done for the community.
      The bid for the community was a partnership between Highland council and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, and won the support of many hon. Members on both sides of the
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      House. It was made in the recognition that securing a sustainable future for the community and securing the same for the island were inextricably linked. The same circumstances can be seen in other parts of Scotland, but they may also be in evidence in other parts of the United Kingdom.
      It is a peculiar and restrictive definition of "heritage" that excludes the survival of communities, as the Bill at present appears to do. In Scotland, certainly, heritage is about much more than the Churchill papers, the opera house or, indeed, the national museums. As the director of the Scottish Wildlife Trust said at the time of the rejection of the bid:
      "To buy back a Scottish island … from its absentee … owner and regenerate and protect it for future generations to come would seem to me to be a perfect heritage project."
      That was how it was seen on both sides of the political divide in Scotland.
      Arguably, community ownership in Scotland revives a much older aspect of, in particular, highland heritage: the indissoluble link between people and place. I believe that a concept of heritage that included people and community would be supported by the vast number of members of the Scottish public who buy lottery tickets every week.
      Mr. Robert Key: The hon. Lady is right in saying that cultural heritage is part of the general heritage. Is not the case of the Isle of Eigg, however, similar to that of the Isle of Raasay, or that of the Scilly islands off Cornwall? What matters is the sustainable development that can be encouraged on those islands, rather than the question of ownership. The infamous Dr. Green on Raasay was a prime example of the same thing more than 30 years ago. Encouraging the economic life of the community is more important than ownership.
      Ms Cunningham: That may be so in theory, but our experience in Scotland tells us that it is not necessarily so in practice. Certainly, the Assynt crofters have built a far more sustainable future for Assynt than they had under the previous ownership, and so far the individual ownership of the Isle of Eigg has not so far shown the possibility to which the hon. Gentleman refers.
      The people who live on Eigg put up with an extraordinary position for a long time. Only then did they decide that the only answer for the future was to buy the island as a community. They are, in a sense, following the precedent laid down by the Assynt crofters, although the land ownership and the issues are different. We should allow this development to take place. I shall be interested to hear the Government's response, especially in the light of Miss Case's view that under the Bill, even as it stands, the people cannot really be included in the concept of heritage. I know that views may differ, but in the absence of any clear guideline I intend to press the amendment.
      Mr. Brian Wilson: I support the principle of the amendment, which is interesting in an historical context. The national heritage memorial fund did not appear out of thin air: it has a distinguished pedigree which, sadly, has been largely forgotten in the course of time. Its origins lie in the

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      national land fund which was set up by the post-war Labour Government and which Hugh Dalton described in his Budget statement as a memorial to those who had fallen in the second world war
      "better than any work of art in stone or bronze."—[Official Report, 9 April 1946; Vol. 421, c. 1840.]
      The purpose of the national land fund was to acquire properties for the enjoyment of the nation and to ensure access for the enjoyment of the nation. The fund's achievements in its early years were stunning. Many properties and areas of land were bought for the nation in that period, and they are still enjoyed by the common people of every part of the United Kingdom.
      Mr. John McFall rose—
      Mr. Wilson: I think I know what my hon. Friend has to say.
      Mr. McFall: My hon. Friend will remember that one of the first uses to which the fund was put was to purchase land on Ben Lomond and Loch Lomond. Fifty years later, there has still not been any progress in that area. My hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong.
      7 pm
      Mr. Wilson: I think that my hon. Friend is right. The one that I was thinking of, which I believe is in his constituency, was Rowardennan —
      Mr. McFall: The same property.
      Mr. Wilson: It is the same property. It was bought for access by people, and particularly for the Scottish Youth Hostels Association, I believe. There is a long list. It was a fantastic period of acquisition, but not for the state—that is the important point—which used its interventionist role to acquire the land and property for third parties. The Balmacara estate in Lochalsh is another obvious example. It was bought through the national land fund and handed over to the National Trust for Scotland. Throughout Britain, such properties were acquired.
      I need hardly say that the Tories hated the concept from the outset. They resisted the setting up of the national land fund. They were not interested in war memorials which took the form of giving ordinary people access to the land. Stone and bronze might be all right, but certainly not land, so the Tories opposed the setting up of the fund, and when they inherited power in 1951 they set about destroying it.
      Initially the Tories did that by stealth. They allowed the national land fund to fall into disuse and there were no further acquisitions. Then, around 1955, Peter Thorneycroft in his Budget robbed the fund of its assets and returned them to the Exchequer, leaving a small fraction of what had originally been there. The Tories then slipped through an important clause which allowed the fund to acquire not only land and property, but the contents of property. In that way, with one piece of sleight of hand the national land fund was transformed from a land fund, as its name suggested, into an arts fund. It became a slush fund for the owners of stately homes and other properties. It was used for buying works of art and as a subsidy for the people who had such things to sell.
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      The Tories changed the fund's name to the national heritage fund and in the fulness of time that became the national heritage memorial fund, which in turn spawned the national heritage lottery fund, so there is a straight continuum.
      Sir Hector Monro: May I put the hon. Gentleman right? I took the legislation through the House in 1979 or 1980. The word "memorial" was added in Committee because we wanted to mark the relationship with those who had given their lives in the war. That was an important step. I am not saying that what the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) says in principle may not be right, but it would be worrying to change the principle of that legislation without more detailed consultation than we are having today.
      Mr. Wilson: The right hon. Gentleman can rest assured that we are not going to change the legislation tonight without having more detailed consideration, but it is an important marker to lay down. I have sufficient respect for the right hon. Gentleman to think that it may well have been he who did it. After a 40-year gap, the concept of "memorial" was restored to the fund. It is an important reminder that its origins, as I am sure he would endorse, were as a memorial fund to buy land for the enjoyment of the nation.
      Until recent years, the national heritage memorial fund would not consider the acquisition of land. It has been an advance that in recent years it has been prepared to recognise that land is a vital part of the national heritage and it has supported some important acquisitions on that basis. It has supported the acquisition of Strathaird on Skye by the John Muir trust, Glen Feshie in the Cairngorms and other lands of which the right hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) is well aware.
      That is good, but the fund still has to demonstrate a case in terms of the environment to have an interventionist role. The proposition that it should be able to intervene on social as well as environmental grounds is modest superficially, but has far-reaching consequences because it would be a device whereby Government could intervene to rescue not only communities such as Eigg, which has been mentioned, but many others, where there is a will and a need for community ownership as the only device for sustaining the economy and the social fabric of the region. But the money simply is not available.
      In other words, the fund could act as an interventionist instrument in the market for land. On that basis, it is an admirable concept to promote. I have advocated it in the past and I hope to do so again, but the key to the whole land question is that there must be ways of intervening in the market and that the highest bidder must not be allowed to prevail because the record of the highest bidder has been disastrous in many areas.
      For many years, Eigg was under the benign ownership of the Runciman shipping family, but paradoxically, just as with the Horlicks in Gigha or other benevolent landowners, it is they who best demonstrate the weakness of the system because, inevitably, the benevolent landowner dies and every time that happens the lottery starts all over again and the community do not know who they are going to end up with.
      Eigg ended up initially with a terrible man called Farnham-Smith, an imposter who claimed to be a commander. It turned out eventually that he had once been

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      a very junior officer in the London fire brigade, but by then he had scammed public money and visited a terrible blight on Eigg—followed by Schellenberg and Maruma, and we all know that story.
      However, Eigg is not an isolated example, but a general principle. There must be means of intervening in the land market. The one that we are discussing is interesting and has great potential and my main purpose in rising to speak was to point out that it has a strong and important historical pedigree.
      Mr. Robert Maclennan: As so often in these matters, I find myself in considerable agreement with the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), although I notice that he can speak with authority about the power of ownership—in his case, the power of the ownership of the press, which he never hesitates to use to the full to attack people who happen not to belong to his political party. I go along entirely with him in rebutting the arguments of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who suggested that ownership was not a significant factor in considering land matters.
      I take the history of this back beyond the history to which the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North referred. He might agree with me, as I do with him, that Lloyd George, after the first world war, played a notable part in making land available for soldiers returning from the war. The outcome of that role is that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is a significant landowner. In another measure, we are considering whether that land should be brought closer to the communities than it has been under the ownership of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
      I have also had a long history of seeking to bring the ownership of land in the community to the community. When I was in the Labour party, I proposed a Bill, which alas did not enjoy universal support from the Labour party at the time, to require owners of land either to disgorge their land or to accept higher tax rates on it if they were not prepared to meet certain community development standards. Unfortunately, those arguments fell on deaf ears until they were taken up by Sir Kenneth Alexander in the Highlands and Islands development board, who put forward proposals that were very close to those that I had advocated some years earlier. Those proposals were, once again, not acted on by the then Labour Government and fell when that Government fell, and no more has been heard of them since.
      Mr. Wilson: As we are swapping anecdotes in this potted history of the land issue, perhaps the hon. Gentleman will recall where he stood on the Crofting Reform Act 1976. If people such as I had been supported by people such as him—he was then representing the Labour party in Parliament—in advocating community rather than individual croft ownership of land, most assuredly the highlands and islands would be a much better place today.
      Mr. Maclennan: I must admit that I have always found it easier to represent the interests of my constituents, not as a whipped Labour Member but as an independent-minded member of an independent-minded party. The straitjacket that I was in in 1976 was made the tighter by the fact that I was a member of that Government.
      The reality is that land and land ownership is the key to the well-being of many communities, and that their future could be greatly assisted by the widening of the
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      ambit of the national heritage memorial fund, which is what we are debating today. I am glad that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) has moved amendment No. 1, because it has given us an opportunity to consider the matter in some detail. Like her, I have great sympathy with the objective of obtaining for the people ownership of the island of Eigg. However, I do not believe that the people who live there—some of whom have come quite recently—are a part of the heritage in quite the way that she described. The important feature is the capacity of those who are living there productively to develop their land, not to keep the land in aspic.
      The Assynt case to which the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross referred is important, both as a precedent and as a spur to other communities to do likewise. It is a precedent in that several public funds assisted the Assynt crofters trust to acquire ownership of the land. The trust was assisted by the local authority, by the local enterprise company, Highland and Islands Enterprise, and by many individuals across the length and breadth of the country.
      The virtue and value of ownership is demonstrable. Paragraphs 1(3)(1) and 1(3)(2) are too narrowly defined to take account fully of those opportunities, although I realise that clause 1 allows trustees to provide assistance when the interest to be protected is of a scenic, aesthetic, archaeological or scientific nature. I think that all those interests exist in the case of the isle of Eigg, and therefore find it hard to believe that the application was refused on the ground of the narrowness of clause 1. It is beyond argument that the island of Eigg is important, and that it is a suitable case for such treatment.
      7.15 pm
      The island of Canna was an example of beneficent ownership when owned by John Lorne Campbell. It came into the ownership of the National Trust through his bounty, and it remains a remarkable testimony to enlightened ownership—in sharp contrast to some of the other cases that have been mentioned in this debate, including the isle of Raasay.
      I believe that it should be possible to seek assistance from the national heritage memorial fund to acquire land for purposes of strengthening community existence in areas such as those under discussion. I am not certain that to describe the ends as "anthropological" or "sociological", as the amendment does, assists in the goal of strengthening community existence. Notwithstanding my doubts on that, however, I think that the purpose behind the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross merits our support. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell the House today that the Government's intention is that such cases should be open to assistance if such assistance is suitable in the view of the trustees, and that there is nothing in the Bill to prevent communities from so acquiring the lands.
      I can understand objections to using the national heritage memorial fund to provide electricity, water or other forms of aid that might be necessary to sustain the development of an island. That would seem to be a more appropriate task for economic or social development agencies, such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise or the local enterprise company. To acquire ownership of land, however, seems to go right back to the fund's original purposes, on which the current fund is based. I am entirely

      205
      at one with the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North on that, and I hope that he will say so in his columns in the West Highland Free Press.
      Dr. Godman: I promise that my speech will be exceedingly brief. I should like to tell the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) that I am at one with him in his comments on the use of the national heritage memorial fund. I should also like to tell the right hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro)—who was far too modest to mention his role in the 1979–80 proceedings—that his actions led to the insertion of the term "national heritage memorial fund". We owe him a vote of thanks.
      I have some sympathy for the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham), although I, too, winced when I saw the terms "sociological" and "anthropological". I am sure that she would argue that she used those terms merely as a technical device.
      As for the Eigg trust, I have every sympathy for the people who live on that beautiful island. The hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) asked the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross a question on sustainable development. I believe that the island could have sustainable economic development through, for example, tourism, and perhaps through fishing and one or two related activities.
      A few years ago, on one beautiful summer's day, I and other members of the then Scottish Select Committee visited the island. It was then owned by Mr. Schellenberg. I recall—not that it had anything to do with the right hon. Member for Dumfries or myself—that, on the very day that we visited, the island had its first robbery. He, my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey), the late Nicholas Fairbairn and I picked up quite a few fivers and tenners in the heather.
      The people of the island have been treated badly by a succession of owners. Mr. Schellenberg, with respect, could be described as an eccentric. More recently, a German who is supposed to be an artist promised all types of things to the islanders but delivered not one of them. In moving amendment No. 1, the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross has argued a good case for the Eigg trust, which I think is worthy of support. We should be able to use the national heritage memorial fund to enable communities to acquire land. I look forward to the day when the Scottish Grand Committee debates the important and controversial issue of who owns and manages the land of Scotland.
      The Minister of State, Department of National Heritage (Mr. Iain Sproat): As regards the terms of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham), I hope that I can satisfy her—although I have my doubts—that the words that she wishes to insert into the Bill are both unnecessary and undesirable.
      Clause 1 inserts into the National Heritage Act 1980 two new provisions defining the scope of the funding powers of the NHMF trustees. Under the first provision—that is, new section 3 of the 1980 Act—the trustees' powers will be
      "exercisable in the case of things of any kind which are of scenic, historic, archaeological, aesthetic, architectural, engineering artistic or scientific interest".
      206
      We are confident that that catalogue—bearing in mind particularly the inclusion of historic, archaeological and scientific interest—can be wide enough to encompass anthropology and sociology.
      A project relating to objects of anthropological or sociological interest would thus qualify for NHMF funding, provided—I emphasise this, as it was omitted from most if not all of the speeches so far—the trustees were satisfied that the project was of importance to the national heritage and of public benefit. Even under the existing legislation, the heritage lottery fund has already provided support for a number of museum projects where collections of local historical interest might be viewed as having a sociological emphasis. Examples include the local history collections at the Oxfordshire county museum and the ethnography collections at the Royal Albert Memorial museum in Exeter.
      I would further direct the hon Lady's attention to the second provision in clause 1 of the Bill—that is, new section 3A of the 1980 Act. This gives the NHMF a new power to support certain projects that the trustees consider relate to an important aspect of the history, natural history or landscape of the United Kingdom and are of public benefit. The projects concerned cover public exhibitions, archive projects and comprehensive works of reference.
      The aim of the new funding power is to enable the NHMF to help enhance understanding of the nation's history independently of its physical remains.
      Mr. Andrew Welsh: Is the Minister saying without any contradiction that the isle of Eigg could be purchased under the provisions of the heritage fund?
      Mr. Sproat: It could be done if the trustees were convinced that it would be of public benefit and in the national interest, not the sociological or anthropological issues that the hon. Lady is seeking to insert into the Bill. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the NHMF and the heritage lottery fund work totally independently of Ministers. I understand that on legal advice they felt that there was a conflict between the public interest and the interest of the residents, and for that reason they declined to give the go-ahead to the bid.
      Mr. Wilson: It is obviously a narrow and important point to define, but although the community interest and the public interest might not be synonymous terms, they are certainly not contradictory. If decisions by the trustees are made on the basis of language, it is important for the Minister to define those terms, particularly the use of the word "public". The definition may go beyond the community that is directly affected, so is it the local authority or, in the case of Eigg—
      Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. That is a very long intervention. I think that the hon. Gentleman has made his point.
      Mr. Sproat: It is a fair point. It is certainly true that the community interest and the national interest are not synonymous. It could be that on occasions they would not be in conflict, but as I understand it, on this occasion there was doubt that the crofters' interest was synonymous with the national interest. That was the

      207
      sticking point. It is up to the trustees of the NHMF and the heritage lottery fund to make a judgment based on their interpretation of that interest.
      The hon. Gentleman asked whether I could give a sharper, clearer definition. The answer is no. It would require a legal, forensic use of language that I cannot guarantee to produce off the top of my head, and it would also vitiate the principle that the judgment must be made by the trustees. Having taken expert and legal advice, which is what they nearly always do, the trustees believe that there could be a conflict between the narrow but, in the view of Opposition Members, good interest of the crofters and the national interest. To answer the latter part of the hon. Gentleman's question, the national heritage memorial fund would be looking for an access far more general than the community and the local authority area to which he referred.
      Ms Roseanna Cunningham: That narrow point is the nub of the matter. As the community interest had 50 per cent. representation on the trust board, potentially in future the community, the Scottish Wildlife trust and the Highland council could disagree. The decision was taken because the community was looking for 50 per cent. Had there been only 25 per cent. interest, it might have been okay. Is the Minister saying that any such application where the community is looking for 50 per cent. or more will always be ruled out?
      Mr. Sproat: No. I would say neither that nor reducing it to 25 per cent. would guarantee that it would be acceptable. It would be up to the trustees to judge for themselves whether any percentage was benefiting a particular or sectional interest to the disbenefit of the national interest. That is a matter that the trustees must decide for themselves in the specific circumstances of any application. On this occasion, the 50 per cent. to which the hon. Lady referred was present, and they decided that it was not in the national interest.
      I hope that, in the light of what I have said, the hon Lady will agree that the amendment she proposes would not serve the purpose that she seeks. Given that the list of heritage "interests" specified in new section 3 is already rather long, I would be most reluctant to extend it any further without good reason. The risk in adding further entries to the list is not just that it would become impossibly unwieldy but that the omission of any particular specialism might then be a source of misunderstanding and concern.
      Ms Cunningham: I shall not add anything further, but I must insist on the amendment.
      Question put, That the amendment be made:—
      The House divided: Ayes 99, Noes 169.

      Division No. 83]

      [7.27 pm

      AYES

      Adams, Mrs Irene

      Boateng, Paul

      Alton, David

      Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

      Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

      Callaghan, Jim

      Barnes, Harry

      Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

      Beith, Rt Hon A J

      Campbell-Savours, D N

      Bennett, Andrew F

      Canavan, Dennis

      Benton, Joe

      Chidgey, David

      Bermingham, Gerald

      Clapham, Michael

      Betts, Clive

      Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

      208

      Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

      McFall, John

      Clelland, David

      Mackinlay, Andrew

      Coffey, Ms Ann

      Maclennan, Robert

      Corston, Ms Jean

      Mahon, Mrs Alice

      Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try SE)

      Marek, Dr John

      Cunningham, Ms Roseanna

      Marshall, David (Shettleston)

      (Perth Kinross)

      Martin, Michael J (Springburn)

      Dafis, Cynog

      Meale, Alan

      Dalyell, Tam

      Michael, Alun

      Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

      Milburn, Alan

      Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H)

      Mortey, Elliot

      Dewar, Rt Hon Donald

      Mullin, Chris

      Dixon, Rt Hon Don

      Murphy, Paul

      Donohoe, Brian H

      O'Brien, William (Normanton)

      Eastham, Ken

      O'Hara, Edward

      Ennis, Jeff

      Olner, Bill

      Faulds, Andrew

      Pendry, Tom

      Fisher, Mark

      Pike, Peter L

      Flynn, Paul

      Powell, Sir Raymond (Ogmore)

      Foster, Fit Hon Derek

      Raynsford, Nick

      Foster, Don (Bath)

      Reid, Dr John

      Fyfe, Mrs Maria

      Robertson, George (Hamilton)

      Godman, Dr Norman A

      Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

      Golding, Mrs Llin

      Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

      Graham, Thomas

      Simpson, Alan

      Gunnell, John

      Skinner, Dennis

      Home Robertson, John

      Sutcliffe, Gerry

      Hoyle, Doug

      Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

      Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

      Thurnham, Peter

      Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

      Timms, Stephen

      Hutton, John

      Tipping, Paddy

      Illsley, Eric

      Touhig, Don

      Janner, Greville

      Turner, Dennis

      Johnston, Sir Russell

      Tyler, Paul

      Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

      Walley, Ms Joan

      Keen, Alan

      Wigley, Dafydd

      Kennedy, Mrs Jane (Broadgreen)

      Wilson, Brian

      Kilfoyle, Peter

      Wray, Jimmy

      Kirkwood, Archy

      Young, David (Bolton SE)

      Liddell, Mrs Helen

      Lloyd, Tony (Stretf'd)

      Tellers for the Ayes:

      Loyden, Eddie

      Mr. Elfyn Llwyd and

      Lynne, Ms Liz

      Mr. Andrew Welsh.

      NOES

      Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)

      Congdon, David

      Alexander, Richard

      Conway, Derek

      Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

      Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F)

      Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

      Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

      Atkins, Rt Hon Robert

      Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

      Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

      Cormack, Sir Patrick

      Batiste, Spencer

      Couchman, James

      Beggs, Roy

      Cran, James

      Bellingham, Henry

      Currie, Mrs Edwina

      Biffen, Rt Hon John

      Davies, Quentin (Stamf'd)

      Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

      Davis, Rt Hon David (Boothferry)

      Booth, Hartley

      Day, Stephen

      Boswell, Tim

      Devlin, Tim

      Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

      Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen

      Bowis, John

      Dover, Den

      Brandreth, Gyles

      Duncan, Alan

      Brazier, Julian

      Duncan Smith, Iain

      Bright, Sir Graham

      Dunn, Bob

      Brown, Michael (Brigg Cl'thorpes)

      Durant, Sir Anthony

      Browning, Mrs Angela

      Elletson, Harold

      Burns, Simon

      Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

      Butcher, John

      Evans, Nigel (Ribble V)

      Butler, Peter

      Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

      Carlisle, John (Luton N)

      Faber, David

      Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Linc'n)

      Fabricant, Michael

      Carrington, Matthew

      Fenner, Dame Peggy

      Cash, William

      Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

      Chapman, Sir Sydney

      Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

      Clappison, James

      French, Douglas

      Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth

      Fry, Sir Peter

      (Rushcliffe)

      Gallie, Phil

      209

      Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

      Paice, James

      Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair

      Patnick, Sir Irvine

      Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

      Patten, Rt Hon John

      Greenway, John (Ryedale)

      Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

      Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

      Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

      Grylls, Sir Michael

      Porter, David

      Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archibald

      Powell, William (Corby)

      Hawkins, Nick

      Richards, Rod

      Hawksley, Warren

      Riddick, Graham

      Heald, Oliver

      Robathan, Andrew

      Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David

      Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

      Hendry, Charles

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

      Hill, Sir James (Southampton Test)

      Rowe, Andrew

      Hordem, Rt Hon Sir Peter

      Shaw, David (Dover)

      Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

      Shepherd, Sir Colin (Heref'd)

      Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W)

      Sims, Sir Roger

      Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

      Skeet, Sir Trevor

      Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

      Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

      Jack, Rt Hon Michael

      Smith, Tim (Beaconsf'ld)

      Jenkin, Bernard (Colchester N)

      Speed, Sir Keith

      Jessel, Toby

      Spencer, Sir Derek

      Kirkhope, Timothy

      Spicer, Sir Michael (S Worcs)

      Knight, Rt Hon Greg (Derby N)

      Spink, Dr Robert

      Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

      Sproat, Iain

      Knox, Sir David

      Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

      Kynoch, George

      Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

      Lait, Mrs Jacqui

      Stephen, Michael

      Lawrence, Sir Ivan

      Stern, Michael

      Legg, Barry

      Streeter, Gary

      Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark

      Taylor, John M (Solihull)

      Lester, Sir Jim (Broxtowe)

      Taylor, Sir Teddy

      Lidington, David

      Temple-Morris, Peter

      Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

      Thomason, Roy

      Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)

      Thompson, Sir Donald (Calder V)

      Luff, Peter

      Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

      MacGregor, Rt Hon John

      Townsend, Sir Cyril (Bexl'yh'th)

      MacKay, Andrew

      Tracey, Richard

      Maclean, Rt Hon David

      Tredinnick, David

      McLoughlin, Patrick

      Twinn, Dr Ian

      Maitland, Lady Olga

      Viggers, Peter

      Malone, Gerald

      Walden, George

      Marshall, John (Hendon S)

      Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

      Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

      Waller, Gary

      Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

      Waterson, Nigel

      Merchant, Piers

      Wells, Bowen

      Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

      Whittingdale, John

      Mitchell, Sir David (NW Hants)

      Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann

      Moate, Sir Roger

      Wilkinson, John

      Molyneaux, Rt Hon Sir James

      Willetts, David

      Montgomery, Sir Fergus

      Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

      Needham, Rt Hon Richard

      Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesf'ld)

      Newton, Rt Hon Tony

      Wood, Timothy

      Nicholson, David (Taunton)

      Norris, Steve

      Tellers for the Noes:

      Oppenheim, Phillip

      Mr. Roger Knapman and Mr. Sebastian Coe.

      Ottaway, Richard

      Question accordingly negatived.
      Order for Third Reading read.
      Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[Mr. Sproat.]
      7.38 pm
      Mr. Tony Banks: In accordance with my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, I welcome the Bill as amended—or not as the case may be—but I want to say something about the trustees of the national heritage memorial fund, the way in which they are appointed and the powers that they will have under the Bill.
      The Bill extends the trustees' areas of responsibility and gives them the ability to spend that much more money from the national heritage memorial fund, which amounts
      210
      to about £280 million a year. I understand that they are not particularly good spenders. Indeed, they are among the slowest spenders. I think that the Secretary of State ought to look at the way in which the trustees' internal systems work.
      I find the sort of people who are trustees annoying. Who are they? Where have they suddenly come from? They have effectively become the arbiters of taste; they will decide what particular moneys will be spent on what particular schemes. They all share the same value system. I do not see anyone from Forest Gate or the east end in this little lot, yet in large measure the money that has been raised from the national lottery, which goes into the national heritage memorial fund, comes from communities such as the one that I represent. Where is our input into the decision making?
      The list of trustees includes Lord Rothschild, for example. I notice that there are at least four old Etonians among the trustees. Indeed, Eric Anderson is a former headmaster of Eton. I of course understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) might have some affinity with such individuals, but he knows that I love him dearly. Most of the trustees, if not all, came from public schools or were educated at one. What do they know about life in Forest Gate among ordinary working-class communities? Those people will be spending vast sums of money that are raised by the communities to which I have referred.
      Does Lord Rothschild ever do the national lottery? He is as rich as Croesus, so I doubt very much that he does. In fact, someone said that Lord Rothschild could lose a winning lottery ticket and not even be upset. Sir Richard Carew Pole, another trustee, is a 13th baronet. We have lots of those in Newham; we are always falling over baronets as we go around the place. I notice in "Who's Who" that Sir Richard is described as a farmer and a daydreamer. I hope that he does not daydream when he is out on a tractor—of course, he would not be out on a tractor, because he is a gentleman farmer and would let someone else to do the dirty work.
      Why should such people be making the decisions? Where is our input? They are all appointed by the Secretary of State. You can bet your life that a list of the great and good has been pushed forward and the Secretary of State has said, "Oh yes, I went to school with this one. Oh, he's a good chap." That is the way in which the system works. I find it obnoxious and unacceptable that the great and the good will decide exactly how our money will be spent. I want to know, for example, whether the Secretary of State or the Minister has considered getting some good working-class stock on the list. I am available—I did not go to public school.
      The trustees' powers are being extended, so they will undoubtedly be looking round at the sort of things that their friends are interested in funding. That is what it amounts to; that is what will happen. They will decide what is to be considered national heritage. After all, the same people decided to give £13 million, or was it £14 million, of lottery money—when one is the hon. Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) and gets so much money, it does not really matter whether the amount is an extra £1 million or £2 million either way—to Churchill's scribbling, which I found thoroughly objectionable. They thought that, since it was the 50th anniversary of the end of the second world war, there would be great acclaim for such a decision; that people would take great pride in it;

      211
      that the working-class would be throwing their sweaty caps up in the air and saying, "Wow, what a great thing to be doing!" Suddenly, of course, the roof fell in because people thought that the decision was distasteful and the wrong way in which to spend lottery money.
      I participate in the lottery every week—in fact, twice a week now. I would very much like to win. As I have said, I would fax from Mustique or wherever I happened to be my application for the Chiltern Hundreds when I won. I would not even bother to turn up. I object to these middle class and upper middle class public school boys and girls spending money that we raise in areas such as the east end. I want to ensure that they consider schemes in areas where they do not normally go, know nothing about and, frankly, do not care anything about.
      When my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central becomes the new Minister responsible for the arts, I hope that he will go through the lists of appointees and not show any affection for old Etonians merely because he is one of them. I hope that he will be cheerfully slitting throats. That is what we want in this place; we want a bit of red terror when the Labour Government come to power. I want Labour Ministers going through the lists of the great and the good, weeding out the Tories and all the friends of the Tories.
      One of my hon. Friends raised the fact yesterday that so many Tories who are connected with companies that give £4 million to the Conservative party serve on quangos. That is corruption because it is patronage. I do not think that we should be prepared to allow it to happen with money that is effectively public money—money that has been raised in areas such as mine in the east end so that a bunch of middle-class tossers can decide how it should be spent.
      I shall not oppose the Third Reading, but I hope that I have put on record my extreme distaste at the way in which people are selected by the Secretary of State and can decide how our money will be spent.
      7.46 pm
      Mr. Sproat): I should like to correct a minor inaccuracy in the tirade of vilification of the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). The trustees are appointed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I say sincerely to the hon. Gentleman that, if he has any suitable names in mind for membership of any of the 50 quangos that we have to fill in the Department of National Heritage, I would be extremely interested to hear them. There is certainly no superfluity of excellent candidates, so if he can suggest anyone, whether from his constituency or elsewhere, I would genuinely like to hear about them.
      Dr. Godman: Will the Minister assure me that the trustees play the game with applications from Northern Ireland and Scotland?
      Mr. Sproat: Yes.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Bill read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.

  Civil Procedure Bill [Lords]
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered. Order for Third Reading read.
  7.47 pm
  The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. Gary Streeter): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
  The Bill prepares the way for an important set of reforms which will serve the civil justice system well into the future. It enables us to introduce wide-reaching changes which will ensure greater access to justice for all. We will introduce measures to ensure that going to court is quicker, cheaper and simpler—measures that will create a system that is focused on the needs of litigants.
  High on our agenda is the establishment of a new civil procedure rule committee. A great deal of work will be necessary to ensure that we can produce a new code of rules that meets the needs of modern litigants. We realise the importance of recruiting the best possible candidates to serve on the new committee, and will proceed to initiate the necessary appointments process so that the committee can be up and running within the next few months.
  The establishment of the Civil Justice Council is important to ensure that all those with an interest in the civil justice system can play their part in the reform process. Clearly, the reforms that we are introducing will have a significant impact on, and pose new challenges for, all those involved in the system. The Civil Justice Council will enable all groups to co-operate in the development of the reforms and ensure that they are prepared for the changes. We are firmly committed to carrying forward the reforms in partnership with all other participants in the system, and the council will provide a key forum for that. Our intention is for the council to be established by the summer, and our plans will be set out shortly.
  Lord Woolf presented us with a blueprint for a dynamic civil justice system. He has done an outstanding job and deserves the gratitude of us all. The Government are working up the details of how to achieve the blueprint. In particular, the procedures necessary to support judicial case management—on the fast track and the multi-trackand the new costs regime need to be introduced carefully. We recognise the importance of consultation on the detail of the new procedural systems needed to ensure that cases are heard fairly and efficiently. In the next few months, we will meet interested bodies to discuss the procedures and will publish consultation papers later in the year. Our reforms go hand in hand with our major reforms of legal aid, which were announced last year.
  The Government remain fully committed to the October 1998 deadline for the introduction of the main aspects of the reforms, and the steps I have just outlined are a testament to that. A detailed plan of action has been drawn up to ensure that we keep on track. We are determined that our vision of a faster, cheaper and simpler civil justice system will be delivered.

  The debates in the House and in the other place have shown that our reforms have support from all quarters of society. I thank all hon. Members for their support and help in the Bill's progress through the House, especially the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng). The Government have proven that we place the highest value

  213
  on achieving access to justice for all, and creating a civil justice system of which we can continue to be proud and which will meet the needs of our citizens well into the 21st century.
  7.52 pm
  Mr. Paul Boateng: We have supported the Bill in the other place, on the Floor of the House and in Committee. It will provide a context for the implementation of subsequent reforms. We are indebted for all the work that has gone into preparing and improving the Bill.
  We welcome especially the creation of a Civil Justice Council, which will be an advisory body. Its function will be to promote the aims of the civil justice system and review its operation and development. For the first time, provision will be made for an input from the consumer of legal services, who all too often is forgotten in the development of our justice system. We welcome the fact that that will change, as a result of an amendment supported by Lord Irvine of Lairg in the other place. The important and significant voice of the consumer will be heard on the Civil Justice Council.
  As we give the Bill a Third Reading, we should remember that access to justice demands that those who use our court system are not burdened by excessive fees. Many Labour Members are concerned by the recent imposition of excessive fees which are designed to make the civil justice system self-financing, but which will exclude many from access to it. We condemn the imposition of those increased fees, because it runs counter to the Government's stated objectives in introducing the Bill.
  Nevertheless, we broadly welcome the Bill, because it provides the context for subsequent reform. That reform should be subjected to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, because it is farcical to imagine that the reforms encapsulated in Lord Woolf's report, "Access to Justice Final Report", can be implemented without considerable cost to the Exchequer. The taxpayer will have to pay a price for implementation of the Woolf report. We have urged the Government to publish the figures and tell us how much implementation will cost, and we will continue to press them in the remaining weeks before the general election.
  The Labour party welcomes the Bill, but we will review civil justice, including the legal aid system, as an early priority of the next Labour Government. Our priority is true access to justice; that cannot be achieved without a cost-benefit analysis, which is markedly lacking to date. With that warning to the Government, we welcome the Third Reading of the Bill.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

  Sex Offenders Bill
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
  Sex Offenders Bill
    New clause 2

      REGISTER OF SEX OFFENDERS
      '.—(1) It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to maintain a register of the information supplied to the police under this Act, whether on the Police National Computer or otherwise.
      (2) Nothing in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 shall prevent the retaining of details of a person on a register maintained under the provisions of this section.
      (3) In this Act, "register" includes data stored (whether or not with other data) on a computer database from which the information to which subsection (1) above relates can be retrieved.'—[Mr. Michael.]
      Brought up, and read the First time.
      7.56 pm
      Mr. Alun Michael: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
      Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): With this, it will be convenient to discuss new clause 3—Use of information on the register of sex offenders—
      '.—(1) The Secretary of State shall, following consultation, make regulations in respect of—

      (a) the means whereby information notified to the police under this Act is to be registered and maintained;

      (b) those persons who may have access to information so notified; and

      (c) the responsibilities of the police to provide information and to co—operate with others in using information so notified for the protection of the public, including, but not confined to, responsibilities for providing information and advice to members of the public and to statutory and voluntary bodies.

      (2) In addition to any regulations made under subsection (1) above, the Secretary of State may, from time to time and following consultation, issue guidance on good practice concerning the use of information notified to the police under this Act in child protection activities, including activities undertaken by, or in collaboration with, local area child protection committees and others.
      (3) Regulations made under subsection (1) above shall be laid before Parliament in draft and shall be subject to approval by a resolution of each House before being made.'
      Mr. Michael: The new clauses address a gaping hole in the Bill. Two provisions are missing from the legislation. First, there is no provision for a paedophile register, which was promised when the Bill was announced in the Queen's Speech. Secondly, although the Bill specifies that offenders must notify their address or change of address to the police, it does not say what the police should do with the information.
      We had some good debates in Committee, and I had hoped that Government amendments would be tabled to cover the deficiencies. I am disappointed that no such amendments have been tabled. Unless we get the Bill right, including the provisions in new clauses 2 and 3, we will leave children at risk. There is also a danger that we will leave the police at risk.
      The Bill would require those who have been convicted of the offences specified in the Bill to register their addresses with the police, but it contains no system for

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      handling the information. New clause 2 would place a duty on the Home Secretary to maintain a register of the information supplied to the police under the Bill. We have fine-tuned our suggestions after the debates in Committee and discussions with police officers at all levels. The simplest way to introduce the register, without extra bureaucracy and cost and new software, is to include the information in the police national computer. New clause 2 would allow the information to be kept on the police national computer, and it is sufficiently flexible to deal with developments.
      New clause 3 is needed to fill a gap in the Bill, by saying what should be done with the information when it is provided. There has been much debate concerning how information about the addresses of offenders, especially those who have been convicted of paedophile offences, should be dealt with. There is a problem in deciding whether it should be generally available, available only in specific circumstances, or retained as confidential, for the use of the police alone.
      A variety of organisations hold the strong view that such procedures need to be part of a system directed at protecting children, which will ensure that the information gets to the places where it is needed in order to achieve that objective.
      In Committee, we suggested a structure that would make that responsibility clear and, while requiring the Home Secretary to produce a code of practice, would also allow for informal advice. The view that is held in several quarters is clear. The chief constables, who have spoken to me and to my hon. Friends, and those who represent police officers say that, unless a structure is provided in the Bill, they could be left unprotected.
      There are two ways in which that could come about. If information is handed to the police station, what is to be done with it? Yes, it may be fed into the police national computer. We suggest that structure in new clause 2. But should the information also be distributed more widely to members of the public?
      The police could run into danger on two grounds. First, they could provide information that led to an individual becoming a target—perhaps an innocent person, as a result of mistaken identity. Events could flow from the fact that the police had made available information given to them under the Bill. That could lead to criticism and challenge, perhaps in a legal sense, and certainly by the public.
      The second element of challenge could occur if the police did not provide information—if, for instance, information arose about the identity of an individual who might be in an area, especially in relation to informal contact with children, a contact less likely to be covered by the provisions of the Police Bill, which is also now under discussion in Parliament. If the police had not provided such information, they could be criticised for not having done so.
      It seems to me that we are running away from those problems unless we put into the Bill a careful, but flexible, structure allowing for a balanced, reasoned and measured approach to this difficult and problematic area. That is why, in new clause 3, we suggest that there should be further consultation. We do not want to jump at it, which is why we made our suggestion in that particular form. Following that consultation, the Home Secretary should
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      make regulations in respect of the provision of the information. Clearly, parallel arrangements for Scotland would also be needed.
      We suggest that the regulations should involve not a code of practice but the minimum registration necessary to tie into the legislation a common-sense system and good practice in child protection. That is the way to avoid all the arguments of recent years about practices such as intrusive surveillance. There is nothing about that in legislation, so arguments have taken place on what the police are and are not entitled to do under the common law. That has built up into a major conflict, evidence of which we have seen recently in the House of Lords, the press and the other media—all because the problem had not been tackled at an earlier stage. It would be all the more sensible, therefore, for the House to recognise that there is something that needs to be dealt with, and to deal with it in a reasoned and measured way today.
      The Home Secretary, following consultation, would put minimal regulations in place to cover the three points in subsection (1) of new clause 3, the first of which is:
      "the means whereby information notified to the police under this Act is to be registered and maintained".
      From the point of view of the police and all the professionals, as I believe the Minister has acknowledged in discussion, that would be done by holding the information in a systematic way on the police national computer.
      Secondly, new clause 3(1) refers to
      "those persons who may have access to information so notified".
      That could be as simple as specifying the police and those whom the Home Secretary, on the advice of the police, has authorised to have access. The regulations do not need to be complicated.
      Thirdly—
      Sir Wyn Roberts: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
      Mr. Michael: May I finish this point first?
      Thirdly, the new clause covers
      "the responsibilities of the police to provide information and to co-operate with others in using information so notified for the protection of the public".
      It describes those responsibilities as
      "including, but not confined to, responsibilities for providing information and advice to members of the public and to statutory and voluntary bodies."
      We refer to "advice and information", because information without advice can be dangerous. That is the reasoned way of approaching the problem.
      We also allow for information to be provided to the statutory and voluntary bodies and to members of the public where appropriate. That adds up to a measured and rational approach to the ultimate objective of protecting children. Our aim is to provide a simple framework. I do not think that the regulations would need to go far beyond those words; perhaps those words are adequate in themselves.

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      Saying that the matter would be dealt with by regulation allows a period for consultation by the Home Secretary. The Association of Chief Police Officers wants to ensure that the regulations do not go too far and become binding and restrictive.
      Sir Wyn Roberts rose—
      Mr. Michael: If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue, I am explaining the new clause. I shall certainly give way to him as soon as I have finished, but these things hang together.
      That is all that would be contained in the regulations made under this part of the Bill. It would satisfy the desire of many who have spoken from the police side—to keep the requirements in the Bill simple—while allowing a hook in the legislation for the good practice and the protection of children that are our objectives.
      Against that background, subsection (2) of new clause 3 says that, in addition to the regulations,
      "the Secretary of State may, from time to time and following consultation, issue guidance on good practice concerning the use of information notified to the police under this Act in child protection activities, including activities undertaken by, or in collaboration with, local area child protection committees and others."
      That means that the activity that chief constables, superintendents and the police in general wish to undertake—using the information for the protection of children—can be carried out in a flexible way, but still within the ambit of the Bill.
      Having explained the intention of the new clause, I give way to the right hon. Member for Conwy (Sir W. Roberts).
      Sir Wyn Roberts: I believe that the hon. Gentleman is acknowledging that there is no easy ready-made answer to the problems that he has mentioned. But is he not mixing oil and water by prescribing both regulations and guidelines as to good practice? Surely we shall not know what good practice is until some time has elapsed.
      Mr. Michael: I am surprised at the right hon. Gentleman's making that point, which is a weak one. First, it is because good practice will develop that it should be covered by guidance rather than in the regulations. That is precisely why we framed the new clause in that way.
      Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman had responsibility in Wales in connection with the Children Act 1989, so he will know that that is precisely how that Act—I believe that he played some part in it—makes the distinction between requirements that need to be defined very simply and those that need to be dealt with sensibly, but in a structured way that recognises the need for co-operation between different agencies, which often work under different pieces of legislation.
      I want to underline the simplicity of our proposal. There should be a hook in the legislation: a legislative basis for the good practice and co-operation that everyone working in this connection wants. Our proposals avoid the introduction of excessive legal requirements or complex statutory instruments and keep the system flexible while making clear the intention of Parliament that there will be
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      a paedophile register and that it will be used to protect children. That is important, because neither of those points is made clear in the Bill.
      I call in aid the fact that chief constables have said that they are not clear about their responsibilities and those of officers under their control as a result of the legislation. The decisions would not be about how information on the police national computer is dealt with, because that is not how the information reaches the police; it reaches them in the first instance by an offender who has been identified under the Bill coming into a police station and presenting his new address.
      Unless we make it clear in the legislation that there is a system for handling that information, the Home Secretary may advise that it should be registered on the police national computer, but the police will also have to decide what their other responsibilities are under other statutes and in terms of the common law. I cannot understand why that point has not been accepted. Indeed, I thought that the Minister responded positively on it in Committee. I had expected him to come up with a new clause, one that might have been better than anything we could draft—although I cannot see anything wrong with the style and simplicity of our new clause.
      The Police Federation is worried that its members may not be protected unless those issues are dealt with in the legislation. Advice from the Home Secretary and decisions by the chief constable on how to handle information may provide useful guidance much of the time, but they will not answer the question about individual responsibility, which may devolve to the sergeant on duty at the time that information is given, or to the inspector or superintendent. Individuals will have to take decisions, and if there is no guidance for them, and no system established through which they should operate, there will be a glaring hole in the Bill.
      What are the expectations? The result of a survey of police forces in England and Wales undertaken by the chief constable of Gloucestershire was published recently. It shows that the Hampshire constabulary scheme—a multi-agency project between police, probation and social services, in which information is gathered on individuals and the risk assessed—provides information to local schools, for instance. The purpose is to raise awareness about specific issues that affect those schools and to ensure that information and advice on how to use it are available for those who have to deal with children.
      The report makes it clear that there have been occasions on which the media and the public have obtained inaccurate information, leading to misunderstanding, anxiety and even violence. People may take different views about an offender being targeted, but we should surely be concerned about protecting innocent people. That is why it is important for there to be a sensible, ordered and accurate way of dealing with information.
      There are other examples of the development of good practice. Merseyside and Lincolnshire are cited in the report as having well documented protocols. The Merseyside protocol covers the sharing of information; the assessment of risk; devising strategic plans to minimise risk; agreed implementation plans; and the monitoring and review of the way in which those systems work. That is logical and sensible. Risk assessment is the first step in protecting children. That is surely the basis of a sensible way of dealing with the matter.

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      It is curious that there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that information is dealt with in that way. The new clause would facilitate the reasoned, sensible and rational approach that has been exemplified by the practice of several police forces.
      8.15 pm
      The report by Mr. Butler, the chief constable of Gloucestershire, also raises legal points about the Data Protection Act 1988 and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and civil liberties are without doubt a major concern for all forces. It says:
      "At the moment there is conflicting legal advice on whether disclosing information to the public is illegal."
      It also says that some forces have been advised that it is, and others that it is not. On the basis of what is legal, forces have to decide what is responsible and what is their duty.
      The report says:
      "The Data Protection Act allows for the disclosure of information to 'prevent a crime', however, one force suggests that it is unlawful to have a policy which utilises this provision in every case. It is a fine line of assessment and due consideration must be given to each individual case."
      We want something in the Bill to ensure that precisely such consideration can be given.
      The report's conclusion is important:
      "Any warning system must form part of the overall strategy for managing the risk by paedophiles. The aims must be to facilitate information sharing, ongoing risk assessment and a variety of measures, preventative, proactive, investigative, tailored to specific circumstances. Positive steps must be taken at an early stage to track and control the activities of paedophiles, particularly predatory offenders. Any warning system needs to 'follow the offender' and be reassessed and updated as necessary. Decisions should be made on a multi agency basis following documented guidelines, taking into account all the issues raised in this report."
      I do not see how the legislation can be adequate unless it allows those recommendations to be implemented. The new clauses would do precisely that.
      Other comments have been made by a variety of organisations. The Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales expressed concern about the effects on general disclosure and highlighted the difficulties that can arise from it, underlining the need for the continuation and development of present inter-agency arrangements, although it went on to say that it might be useful to develop guidance in the light of experience, once the legislation is enacted. That is precisely what the new clauses are designed to do. The association refers to increasing international travel and communication and repeats its view about the need to consider a European database of paedophiles and their movements.
      The Association of Chief Police Officers issued a helpful statement. It said:
      "In our view, the way forward, based on existing good police practice across the country is for:
      proper co-ordinated risk assessment of each case, in conjunction with Social Services, Probation and other agencies where appropriate including, for example, Education Authorities."
      The new clauses would allow information and advice to be made available to agencies, voluntary organisations and, where appropriate, members of the public, in a flexible system that allows for guidance and the development of best practice.
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      The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, on behalf of the Children's Charities Consortium, underlined the difficulties. It said:
      "At present, the Bill does not include a mechanism for continuing registration of an individual where it is considered there is a continuing risk to children."
      It also pointed out that the Bill does not deal with the need for
      "an interface of this register with other registers which record information"
      and that, because of the Bill's sensitivities and the need for thorough working, it should include an inbuilt review process. We debated that matter in Committee, and I consider it necessary, but it has not been included. That makes it all the more important that we have a system of guidance from the Home Secretary, based on advice and consultation, as we have suggested.
      The NSPCC report—it is interesting that such statements come from organisations that are concerned first and foremost with the protection of children—continued:
      "The information … must be of actual use in protecting children and may benefit from the inclusion of a 'domestic profile' to help combat registration of mere postal addresses."
      We are addressing the handling of all that information in a co-operative framework.
      The report—again, it is important to note that this is the view of those whose prime concern is the protection of children—continued:
      "Open public access to a similar register in the United States has sometimes led to incidents of vigilantism that may merely encourage a 'registered' sex offender to disappear."
      The report stated:
      "there must be a process in place that will control how information is used"
      to make sure that it is used properly. It concluded:
      "In short, the Consortium supports the intentions behind the Bill but feel strongly that it must be co-ordinated with other measures."
      The report argued strongly:
      "The Sex Offenders Bill is not a 'magic wand' but can play a part in what needs to be a sophisticated, co-ordinated and workable response to those that seek to harm our children."
      The new clauses are based on our conversations with organisations that believe that we need to do much more to protect children and want a paedophile register that works, but appreciate the sensitivities that the police and child protection organisations must show. We have designed proposals that will tie simply into legislation a measure to allow a flexible response based on risk and the protection of children. I commend the new clauses, which I am convinced will make the Bill effective legislation for the protection of children. Without such changes, there will be a black hole at its heart. Further legislation will be needed to fill the gap, and we shall all regret not having amended the Bill when we had the opportunity.
      Mr. Peter Thurnham: I support the calls for a code of good practice. The issue must be addressed because it lies at the heart of the Bill. I am surprised that the Government have not tabled an amendment; in Committee, they suggested that they might.

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      I support the excellent and strong arguments of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael). I do not understand how we can leave such a provision out. The Government have not made a sufficient contribution to the debate. Although the Bill calls for changes of address to be notified, it does not say what should be done with the information. We must know more about the reasons for keeping addresses. Registers and databases protect no one; it is what is done with them that will protect children. There must be guidance and direction to the police on what decisions and action should follow from the knowledge that they are given by the new notification requirements.
      I agree with the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth that the use to which the register will be put must be carefully controlled so that it is primarily used in the prevention of crime and not open to abuse that leads to vigilante victimisation of offenders and their families—as happened in the tragic case in Manchester, reported at the weekend, in which an innocent pensioner was mistaken for a child abuser whose name and photograph had appeared in the Manchester Evening News. Notification must not be regarded as an additional punishment, but as a preventive measure. Information should be made available to other Government Departments and bodies that already keep lists to protect children.
      The answer to a question that I asked about the number of names on the paedophile intelligence database held by the National Criminal Intelligence Service reveals that about 25,000 known or suspected paedophiles are on its list. That is one of six lists held by Government and public bodies. We do not know the number of names on the Department of Health consultancy service index or the Department of Education's list 99. Obviously, we are dealing with a large number. We know from another question answered by the Government that some 100,000 paedophiles are at large in the community. All that information should be properly assembled.
      It is amazing that the word "register" is omitted from the Bill. In public parlance, it is known as the paedophile Bill and it is generally believed that a register will be kept. The Bill does not mention one; it is as if there were no such thing.
      The publicity surrounding the Bill has raised expectations, with calls for the introduction of an American-style Megan's law, whereby there would be public notification when a paedophile moves into an area. I urge that we do not go down that path. We should provide a coherent framework of who should be notified and in what circumstances. Area child protection committees should be informed and have access to information on paedophiles when they feel that it is necessary in their work. If we do not make things properly clear, I fear that we will find that we have a Megan's law in practice, if not in theory.
      There has been private publication of the names of offenders in Australia and New Zealand, and there is talk of a similar list being produced in Britain. That would be against the law on the rehabilitation of offenders, and it would be bound to be full of errors that could lead to innocent people being attacked. The Bill's purpose is to protect children, but it could end up having the exactly opposite effect—innocent children and families could
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      become the targets of arson attacks, as has happened in the past because the Government have not grasped the nettle and said how the police should act.
      I support what has been said about the view of the police: that they need strong guidance so that they can work with discretion, but within carefully laid down limits so that they know where they stand. Even if the Government have not been able to table amendments in this House, I hope that they will say that, before proceedings on the Bill finish in another place, a Government amendment will be tabled to give proper attention to the matter. In the meantime, I support the new clauses.
      Mr. John Hutton: Like the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham), I support the new clause moved so effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael). The right hon. Member for Conwy (Sir W. Roberts) was right: there are no simple solutions to some of the problems.
      The new clauses are important because they are reasonable and sensible and would strengthen the Bill by focusing it more closely on the central issue: how better to protect children in particular, and the public, from the predatory and criminal instincts of serial child sex offenders. That is what we must consider tonight. The Bill, though a significant step forward, fails to address the matter coherently.
      I, too, have seen the Association of Chief Police Officers survey, which was deposited in the Library today. It makes fascinating reading. Perhaps the Minister will explain what the Government intend to do about the existing practice of police forces in revealing information to local people, area child protection committees and other organisations about the whereabouts of known child sex offenders. That is clearly happening already, but it is happening without the benefit of a statutory framework to regulate the release of such information to the public and other organisations. That is not satisfactory, and I am sure that the Government do not regard it as satisfactory. The survey mentioned 14 police forces that admit that they release such information. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth said, a police force that releases such information risks civil action on several grounds. That is not acceptable.
      I strongly support new clause 3 because it focuses on the Bill's central issue, the protection of children. The key principle recognised in new clause 3 is that there may be some circumstances in which it will be appropriate for the police carefully and sensitively to notify the public of the whereabouts of a serious paedophile offender.
      Although the issues are complex, and range from protecting important civil liberties and the principle of rehabilitating child sex offenders wherever possible to the role of the media, the issue on which we should focus is how to protect children. If we were honest with ourselves and asked whether, as parents, we would want to be told if a serious child sex offender had moved into our neighbourhood, the answer would be yes. The ACPO survey reflects the fact that we might then be better able to protect our children from the criminal instincts of child sex offenders.
      If, as parents, we would want that information at our disposal so that we could look after our children as they played in local streets and parks, the Bill must provide for

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      it. If it does not, its principle and effect will be undermined; its purpose will be weakened and its focus will be disjointed. That would be in no one's interests, which is why many Opposition Members are surprised that the Government have not indicated their intention to legislate to ensure that the Bill covers that important issue.
      I hope that the Minister will say something more positive when he winds up the debate tonight. This is an important issue and we cannot run away from it. Our constituents who are parents would want this information at their disposal, and we must reflect their wish in a sensible way. Like the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East, I strongly oppose the more public disclosure of information, such as we have seen in some countries. The information must be disclosed carefully.
      The use of leaflets, flyers and newspapers printing photographs and names and addresses is not the way to proceed. I am interested to note that the ACPO survey reflected police concern about that practice. It is clear from the survey of police forces around the country that most police forces believe that the controlled and sensible release of information about the whereabouts of child sex offenders may reduce their offending profile, which means that our children would be better protected. For me, that is the only issue.
      8.30 pm
      If there is a role for the controlled release of information to certain members of the public, particularly parents and relevant organisations, it should be recognised in the Bill, because it is the best way forward. We cannot pretend that the problem will go away, or that we can sit on the huge register of information that the Bill will collect if we do not set out in the Bill how the use of that information to protect the public is to be regulated.
      I hope that the Minister will say something positive about these sensible and reasonable new clauses. We are used to being told that there is some technical deficiency in our amendments. The Minister may have some technical concerns about the drafting of the new clauses, but that is a secondary issue. The important issue is the principle of wider community or public notification of the whereabouts of sex offenders. There is huge popular support in the country for giving parents in such serious situations the right to know the whereabouts of child sex offenders. If it is done sensibly, having discussed the issue with the chief constable and interested organisations, it is the road that we should take.
      Mr. Michael Clapham: New clauses 2 and 3 lie at the heart of the Bill. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) about Megan's law and what could happen in terms of vigilante action if we take that route.
      The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Timothy Kirkhope)indicated assent.
      Mr. Clapham: I am pleased to see the Minister nod. I have the impression that he has taken that point on board. It is important to have an effective interface between the register and people working in the community to protect children. The Minister will be aware
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      that, in most areas, child protection teams work closely with the police to ensure that section 1 offenders are closely monitored. Whenever a section 1 offender appears in a new area, the police either inform social services or vice versa. In that way, the necessary protection is provided in the area covered by that child protection team and police force. We could use that model to ensure that the information on the register is applied effectively.
      If social services, who have the register, are informed by the police that a section 1 offender has moved into their area, they already ensure that the register is made available to probation officers and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The voluntary sector can then work together to ensure that it can effectively protect children in a community. That is the way to proceed.
      If we were to decide that informing the public would be the best way to proceed, the result could be mob rule. There are plenty of examples of that. We have read this week of examples in Manchester, Stirling and the midlands. We must avoid that route. Last week, an article in The Independent suggested that the Home Secretary may be thinking about divulging the names of paedophiles to the community. That would be the wrong way to proceed. We must use the route that is already established. The interface must be with social services; the link must be with the voluntary services, the NSPCC and probation officers, who work with social services.
      It is important that the Minister should say how we shall use the register effectively to inform the community generally, but in a sensitive way so that we do not create the over-reaction that we have already experienced. We must ensure that it is an effective way to protect children in the community.
      In Committee, I described the horrific constituency case of a young woman who lost her first husband and formed a relationship that led to marriage with a second man, only to find that the marriage had taken place because the man wanted to get to the children. If we ensure that the register works as I have described, such cases would not occur. When the man moved into the area, social services would have been informed by the police and monitored him to ensure that he did not come into contact with children and was no danger to them. Had the woman wished to proceed with the marriage, social services would have informed her about the man's past. That would have protected those children adequately without informing the public and creating the mob rule that we have read about this week. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's response.
      Mrs. Llin Golding: The Bill must be of use in protecting children, or it is worth nothing. I have sat through many Criminal Justice Bills in which we have returned repeatedly, when dealing with children and child abuse, to adjust and correct previous legislation. It has taken us years to make progress because we did not get it right the first time.
      I ask the Minister to consider these two new clauses seriously, especially new clause 3, because it would save our returning to the issue time after time after time. I do not want to do that, so I ask the Minister to consider the matter very seriously and give the new clause his support.
      Mr. Kirkhope: This has been a very useful debate; it follows a debate that we had in Committee and discussions in which I have participated to try to find a solution to these matters.

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      I shall discuss new clause 2 before I come to the main meat of the matter. In earlier debates on the Bill, I have made it clear that I do not believe that there is a need to create a separate register of sex offender information acquired under the Bill. As I told the Committee, the information that will be collected will be stored on the Phoenix database on the police national computer, and it will be instantly accessible by all forces and by the National Criminal Intelligence Service. It is not intended to create a separate register, although it has been convenient to talk in terms of a register when discussing the Bill's purposes.
      I am not sure what placing a duty on the Secretary of State would achieve. The police already store information on offenders, including sex offenders, as the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) knows. The Bill will enable the police to hold up-to-date addresses on convicted sex offenders. We have discussed the uses to which that information might be put, and I have no doubt that the police will develop strategies for ensuring that those officers who need to be aware of it are aware of it.
      In my submission, it is unnecessary to place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State, and I hope that in due course the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth will be able to withdraw the new clause.
      Mr. Michael rose—
      Mr. Kirkhope: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will allow me to develop my arguments to cover new clause 3, because the arguments relating to the two new clauses are linked. He may want to intervene later.
      I have listened very carefully to the hon. Gentleman's explanation of the case for new clause 3, as I have listened with enormous care in Committee and earlier tonight to other hon. Members who have spoken. There is nothing between us in our desire that the police should make the best possible use of the information that will become available to them under the Bill, or in our recognition that such use must be careful and responsible. I agree with the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) that use must be responsible.
      I note that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth has adjusted his approach since we last considered these matters in Committee—he knows that we have discussed them since then—but I remain unhappy about the approach that he proposes in these two new clauses. We need to clear up many points.
      The police already share information with those who need to be aware of it—head teachers, school governors, social services departments and so on. There is no reason to believe that the operational case for such sharing in appropriate circumstances is not fully recognised by the police, and there is no legal barrier to it—for example, under data protection legislation—when such disclosures take place for the purpose that we are discussing; the prevention or detection of crime.
      The police have also, very occasionally, and with due caution, disclosed information to individuals. I emphasise that they have done so cautiously, for all the reasons that were fully explained by the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone and me in Committee.
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      There is the danger of vigilantism, and some tragic cases have reminded us that, when individuals take the law into their own hands, the wholly innocent sometimes get hurt. There is also the danger of polluting evidence, so that the sex offender who offends again escapes justice because of the difficulty of receiving a fair trial. There is the danger that, if we prevent the offender from rehabilitating himself, we heighten the risk of further offences. There is the danger of driving the offender underground by providing such a massive disincentive to registration under the Bill that the police lose sight of the people with whom they need to keep in closest contact.
      Those are all sound reasons for caution, which were mentioned in Committee and earlier in tonight's debate. I argue that the police do not need a provision in the Bill to encourage or allow them to share information, or a provision to warn them of the need for caution. I do not believe that we need the first part of new clause 3, which would not advance us beyond the present position unless we were to go substantially further and effectively deal with some of the more detailed—and far more difficult—issues which lie behind the second part of the new clause.
      Subsection (2) of new clause 3 is about guidance to the police on the type of situation in which the police my decide to use the powers they already have to share information. As I have said previously, I fully accept that guidance in that area may prove necessary; but I believe that it is premature to consider the precise form that it must take.
      Leading police officers have told us—I believe that they are absolutely right—that any developments in warning systems must form part of an overall strategy for managing the risk posed by paedophiles. They have argued that this needs to cover information sharing between agencies—hon. Members have referred to the need to develop such co-ordination—on-going risk assessment and a variety of preventive and investigative measures, tailored to the specific circumstances of each case. I believe that they are absolutely correct.
      In Committee, I undertook to consider the suggestion that the Bill should contain powers for the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice. I have considered it extremely carefully, and discussions have taken place to discover what might be done to fulfil the obligation that I undertook in Committee. On full and further reflection, and in the light of the arguments that the police have made to us, I have decided that that would not be appropriate, but that we should respond to the police invitation for the development of a broader strategy. That suggests that we need to consider with the police and the other relevant agencies, in the light of current practice throughout the country, what form such a strategy might take. It would have to build on the substantial advances that have been made in inter-agency co-operation to counter child abuse.
      I remind the House of my commitment made at Stockholm last summer. The Stockholm conference showed that the success of the Children Act 1989 and our genuine multi-agency, co-operative approach were proving to be a model for the rest of the world.
      Mr. Thurnham: The hon. Gentleman spoke about the important part that voluntary agencies can play. I wonder whether he was aware that the NSPCC intends to issue a booklet tomorrow, giving advice to parents and others as to what action to take if a paedophile moves into their

      227
      area. I hope that he will welcome it and commend the NSPCC on the part that it has played. The NSPCC says that much stronger and more practical guidance needs to be given to everyone concerned.
      8.45 pm
      Mr. Kirkhope: I am not aware of the details of that booklet, but the NSPCC has been extremely positive and helpful, not only when we went to Stockholm, but in its general attitude to the need to tackle child abuse. It shows why it is necessary to be cautious in discussing the new clauses.
      Inter-agency co-operation does not preclude the idea of guidance, or a code of practice, at some date, and we shall return to the idea if it appears appropriate, although we are mindful of the view of the Association of Chief Police Officers that a Home Office circular is likely to provide a better and more flexible way to proceed.
      This is a difficult and sensitive area. I shall take an example of the type of difficult and sensitive situation that any guidance may have to address. It is not difficult to think of cases in which parents of young children might argue that they have a right to know of the offending history of an individual who has been housed near them. The hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone mentioned that point. We may have considerable sympathy with those parents, but it is clear in many such situations that, rather than disclosing information, with all the fear and possible violence that might follow, it may be better for the offender to be housed in another locality, perhaps away from schools or young families. It may, however, be a case where the authorities have no influence over the locality in which the offender chooses to live, but where there is reasonable confidence that offending will not recur, provided that the individual is not ostracised or isolated.
      Those are the sorts of difficult practical situations that may well arise, where careful—probably inter-agency—decisions would need to be taken. Any guidance that might be issued should allow the fullest possible flexibility in responding to the circumstances of individual cases, such as the example that I have just given, and not constrain the police or anyone else in trying to reach the best operational decisions.
      Mr. Hutton: I am grateful to the Minister for his courtesy in giving way. Does he accept the principle that there may be circumstances in which the public should be informed of the whereabouts of a serious child sex offender?
      Mr. Kirkhope: I have already told the House that, if it were treated in a cautious and sensitive manner, such a situation might arise, but I am nervous about the hon. Gentleman's reference to the public. I have given examples where the police, acting cautiously and sensitively, provided such information to an individual member of the public, or perhaps one or two members of the public. It is a complex matter, which is why I am in difficulties over the new clauses, worthy though their intent may be.
      Sir Wyn Roberts: We fully appreciate the difficulties that my hon. Friend describes. Will he take it from me
      228
      that there is widespread public concern about the timing of the implementation of the measure? Can he reassure us by saying when the strategy that he has described, and other developments that might follow the passage of the Bill, will be implemented?
      Mr. Kirkhope: We are extremely anxious for the legislation to be on the statute book and operating as soon as possible. With the requirements that it places on sex offenders, it will be of enormous help to the public. There is a clear case for the Bill, which we will try to get through as soon as possible, with the help of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth.
      I have outlined the way in which we intend to take matters forward. I cannot go further this evening. I have made our position clear to the hon. Gentleman and I hope that, in the interests of such an important measure, he will not press the new clause.
      Mr. Michael: I am grateful to the Minister for his response. There is no difference between us on the need for the information to be dealt with in a way that allows it to be used effectively for the purpose that Parliament intends.
      The Minister has engaged with the issues personally, and taken seriously the points made in Committee. I know that he has gone into the issues more fully following the Committee stage. There is no suggestion that he has not taken the debate seriously or that he has failed to take seriously his responsibility to move forward.
      The Minister said that the police "share information"—I quote his words—but the information does not have to be notified to the police. After the passage of the Bill, after people who have committed offences specified in the Bill have been sentenced, they will have to report to the police their address or addresses and any subsequent change of address. The Bill, however, does not state what is to be done with that information. That is the problem.
      Much of the Minister's speech will read as a speech in favour of new clause 3. He says that his view is based on advice from the police that the way forward is consideration with the police of a strategy to protect children. We agree with that. The new clause makes provision for that and links the information that will be provided under the Bill with the development of such a strategy.
      Mr. Kirkhope: The point about the police is important. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that we should do everything that we can to assist the police in such difficult work. Will he accept that, in our discussions with chief police officers, they have made it clear that they do not want a code of practice in the form that the hon. Gentleman suggests?
      Mr. Michael: I do not think the view expressed by chief police officers is so clear. They have made it clear that they do not want a code of practice, but may I point out to the Minister that he is referring to the amendment in Committee, not to the new clause. The new clause does not require a code of practice; it requires a hook in the Bill, followed by the issuing of guidance based on the pattern of consultation, discussion and development of good practice for which the Minister was arguing.
      Mr. Kirkhope: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is taking that position. In a letter on behalf of ACPO, the ACPO crime committee states that its position
      "would be to maintain maximum flexibility in the arrangements for exchanging and using information but, at the same time, to take an early opportunity to consider seeking national guidance on some limited areas. To achieve this goal, it is believed that the mechanism of a Home Office Circular would be the most effective option."
      The crime committee makes it clear that those considerations are not easily achieved through a code of practice.
      Mr. Michael: Indeed. The letter to which the Minister refers was sent to him and copied to me as a result of our debates in Committee. That is why the new clause does not include reference to a code of practice. It allows for guidance to be given through a circular from the Home Secretary. It meets the requirements of the letter, which does not refer to our new clauses, as I have pointed out in discussion with the president of ACPO and the chairman of the crime committee, who wrote the letter.
      Mr. Kirkhope: The hon. Gentleman will have heard what I said about the way in which matters might develop in due course—on a broad basis, we might examine inter-agency co-operation and so on. Does he accept that that is a clear position, from our point of view?
      Mr. Michael: It is a clear position, from the Minister's point of view, and nothing prevents that approach being taken if our new clause is accepted. The new clause allows specifically for that form of guidance and for the development of good practice. It allows for inter-agency working and for the flexibility that ACPO wants. It also deals with the concerns of the superintendents and the Police Federation that their members may not be protected unless there is provision such as new clause 3 makes.
      I take the Minister's point that new clause 2 gives a power that the Home Secretary already has. I also take it that information will be handled in the way that we sought in new clause 2. The problem is that the Bill has a big hole in it. It requires information to be notified to the police, but does not state what the police are supposed to do with it. The new clause does not contradict anything that the Minister has said, but the Bill must specify how the information is to be used.
      As I see it, it is not enough to deal with the matter simply through Home Office circulars or through informal advice. That advice and guidance must be hooked into the Bill or we shall face all the problems associated with the arguments about intrusive surveillance: long and complicated debate about the powers and responsibilities of the police and arguments about the powers of the Home Secretary, followed by legislation to clarify the matter and, I suggest, a much less flexible arrangement than would be allowed if my new clauses were agreed.
      I accept that it is possible to establish a register—as suggested in new clause 2—without the new clause. Therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
      Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

    New clause 3

      USE OF INFORMATION ON THE REGISTER OF SEX OFFENDERS
      '.—(1) The Secretary of State shall, following consultation, make regulations in respect of—

      (a) the means whereby information notified to the police under this Act is to be registered and maintained;

      (b) those persons who may have access to information so notified; and

      (c) the responsibilities of the police to provide information and to co-operate with others in using information so notified for the protection of the public, including, but not confined to, responsibilities for providing information and advice to members of the public and to statutory and voluntary bodies.

      (2) In addition to any regulations made under subsection (1) above, the Secretary of State may, from time to time and following consultation, issue guidance on good practice concerning the use of information notified to the police under this Act in child protection activities, including activities undertaken by, or in collaboration with, local area child protection committees and others.
      (3) Regulations made under subsection (1) above shall be laid before Parliament in draft and shall be subject to approval by a resolution of each House before being made.'—[Mr. Michael.]
      Brought up, and read the First time.
      Motion made, and Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—
      The House divided: Ayes 96, Noes 155.

      Division No. 84]

      [8.59 pm

      AYES

      Alton, David

      Graham, Thomas

      Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

      Grocott, Bruce

      Barnes, Harry

      Gunnell, John

      Barron, Kevin

      Hardy, Peter

      Beggs, Roy

      Harvey, Nick

      Beith, Rt Hon A J

      Home Robertson, John

      Bennett, Andrew F

      Hoyle, Doug

      Betts, Clive

      Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

      Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

      Hutton, John

      Caborn, Richard

      Illsley, Eric

      Callaghan, Jim

      Jenkins, Brian D (SE Staffs)

      Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

      Johnston, Sir Russell

      Chidgey, David

      Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

      Chisholm, Malcolm

      Kennedy, Charles (Ross C & S)

      Clapham, Michael

      Kilfoyle, Peter

      Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

      Kirkwood, Archy

      Clwyd, Mrs Ann

      Livingstone, Ken

      Coffey, Ms Ann

      Lloyd, Tony (Stretf'd)

      Corston, Ms Jean

      Lynne, Ms Liz

      Cunliffe, Lawrence

      McFall, John

      Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try SE)

      Mackinlay, Andrew

      Cunningham, Ms Roseanna

      Maclennan, Robert

      (Perth Kinross)

      Maddock, Mrs Diana

      Dafis, Cynog

      Mahon, Mrs Alice

      Dalyell, Tam

      Marek, Dr John

      Darling, Alistair

      Marshall, David (Shettleston)

      Davies, Chris (Littleborough)

      Martin, Michael J (Springburn)

      Dewar, Rt Hon Donald

      Maxton, John

      Dixon, Rt Hon Don

      Meale, Alan

      Donohoe, Brian H

      Michael, Alun

      Dowd, Jim

      Milburn, Alan

      Eastham, Ken

      Molyneaux, Rt Hon Sir James

      Ennis, Jeff

      Morley, Elliot

      Faulds, Andrew

      Mullin, Chris

      Flynn, Paul

      Murphy, Paul

      Foster, Don (Bath)

      Nicholson, Miss Emma (W Devon)

      Fyfe, Mrs Maria

      O'Neill, Martin

      Godman, Dr Norman A

      Pendry, Tom

      Golding, Mrs Llin

      Pike, Peter L

      231

      Powell, Sir Raymond (Ogmore)

      Timms, Stephen

      Primarolo, Ms Dawn

      Tipping, Paddy

      Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

      Touhig, Don

      Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

      Tyler, Paul

      Simpson, Alan

      Walley, Ms Joan

      Skinner, Dennis

      Wigley, Dafydd

      Straw, Jack

      Wise, Mrs Audrey

      Sutcliffe, Gerry

      Wray, Jimmy

      Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

      Tellers for the Ayes:

      Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

      Mrs. Jane Kennedy and

      Thurnham, Peter

      Mr. Kevin Hughes.

      NOES

      Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)

      Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archibald

      Alexander, Richard

      Hawkins, Nick

      Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

      Hawksley, Warren

      Arbuthnot, James

      Heald, Oliver

      Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

      Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David

      Atkins, Rt Hon Robert

      Hendry, Charles

      Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

      Hill, Sir James (Southampton Test)

      Baldry, Tony

      Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (Grantham)

      Batiste, Spencer

      Hordem, Rt Hon Sir Peter

      Bellingham, Henry

      Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

      Biffen, Rt Hon John

      Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W)

      Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

      Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

      Booth, Hartley

      Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

      Boswell, Tim

      Jack, Rt Hon Michael

      Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

      Jenkin, Bernard (Colchester N)

      Bowis, John

      Jessel, Toby

      Brandreth, Gyles

      Kirkhope, Timothy

      Bright, Sir Graham

      Knapman, Roger

      Browning, Mrs Angela

      Knight, Rt Hon Greg (Derby N)

      Burns, Simon

      Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

      Butler, Peter

      Knox, Sir David

      Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Linc'n)

      Kynoch, George

      Chapman, Sir Sydney

      Lait, Mrs Jacqui

      Clappison, James

      Lawrence, Sir Ivan

      Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth

      Legg, Barry

      (Rushcliffe)

      Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark

      Clwyd, Mrs Ann

      Lidington, David

      Coe, Sebastian

      Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

      Congdon, David

      Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)

      Conway, Derek

      Luff, Peter

      Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F)

      MacGregor, Rt Hon John

      Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

      MacKay, Andrew

      Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

      Maclean, Rt Hon David

      Couchman, James

      Maitland, Lady Olga

      Cran, James

      Malone, Gerald

      Currie, Mrs Edwina

      Marshall, John (Hendon S)

      Davies, Quentin (Stamf'd)

      Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

      Davis, Rt Hon David (Boothferry)

      Merchant, Piers

      Day, Stephen

      Moate, Sir Roger

      Dover, Den

      Montgomery, Sir Fergus

      Duncan, Alan

      Nelson, Anthony

      Duncan Smith, Iain

      Neubert, Sir Michael

      Dunn, Bob

      Newton, Rt Hon Tony

      Durant, Sir Anthony

      Nicholson, David (Taunton)

      Eggar, Rt Hon Tim

      Oppenheim, Phillip

      Elletson, Harold

      Ottaway, Richard

      Evans, Nigel (Ribble V)

      Paice, James

      Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

      Patrick, Sir Irvine

      Faber, David

      Patten, Rt Hon John

      Fabricant, Michael

      Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

      Fenner, Dame Peggy

      Pawsey, James

      Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

      Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

      Forman, Nigel

      Porter, David

      Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

      Powell, William (Corby)

      French, Douglas

      Richards, Rod

      Fry, Sir Peter

      Riddick, Graham

      Gallie, Phil

      Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

      Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

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

      Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair

      Rowe, Andrew

      Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

      Shaw, David (Dover)

      Greenway, John (Ryedale)

      Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

      Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

      Shepherd, Sir Colin (Heref'd)

      232

      Skeet, Sir Trevor

      Tredinnick, David

      Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

      Twinn, Dr Ian

      Smith, Tim (Beaconsf'ld)

      Viggers, Peter

      Spencer, Sir Derek

      Walden, George

      Spicer, Sir Michael (S Worcs)

      Waller, Gary

      Spink, Dr Robert

      Waterson, Nigel

      Sproat, Iain

      Wells, Bowen

      Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

      Whittingdale, John

      Stephen, Michael

      Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann

      Stern, Michael

      Willetts, David

      Streeter, Gary

      Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

      Taylor, John M (Solihull)

      Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesf'ld)

      Wood, Timothy

      Taylor, Sir Teddy

      Young, Rt Hon Sir George

      Thomason, Roy

      Thompson, Sir Donald (Calder V)

      Tellers for the Noes:

      Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

      Mr. Patrick McLoughlin

      Townsend, Sir Cyril (Bexl'yh'th)

      and

      Tracey, Richard

      Mr. Matthew Carrington.

      Question accordingly negatived.

    Clause 2

      EFFECT OF NOTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS
      Mr. Michael: I beg to move amendment No. 13, in page 3, line 22, leave out 'before' and insert
      'as soon as is practicable and in any event no later than'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment No. 14, in page 3, line 27, at end insert
      'or, where he also uses one or more other addresses, each of those addresses.'.
      Amendment No. 15, in page 3, line 28, leave out 'before' and insert
      'as soon as is practicable and in any event no later than'.
      Government amendments Nos. 40 and 41.
      Amendment No. 16, in page 3, line 32, at end insert 'or addresses'.
      Government amendment No. 42.
      Amendment No. 17, in page 4, leave out line 3.
      Amendment No. 18, in page 4, line 7, leave out 'or'.
      Amendment No. 19, in page 4, line 8, at end insert—
      '; or
      (c) if he lives or intends to live abroad, by sending a written notification of his decision to live abroad and his home address or addresses to a police station in his local police area or, in the case of a person who is living abroad, in the local police area in the United Kingdom in which he last lived.'
      Amendment No. 20, in page 4, line 14, leave out 'in the United Kingdom'.
      Amendment No. 21, in page 4, line 18, at end insert
      'or, if he lives abroad, the police area in which his last home in the United Kingdom was situated.
      Government amendment No. 43.
      Mr. Michael: Amendment No. 13 deals with the question of how quickly information about an offender's address or change of address should be notified. The Bill allows 14 days, but in some circumstances, especially if the offender is devious and dangerous, 14 days is a

      233
      considerable time. That is why we suggest that the wording in the Bill should b e replaced by the words
      "as soon as is practicable and in any event no later than"
      14 days.
      Amendment No. 14 would require an offender to notify each of his addresses if he uses more than one, rather than just a home address. The other amendments follow that logic.
      Amendment No. 41 would place a requirement on offenders who live abroad. I beg your pardon, Mr. Deputy Speaker, amendment No. 41 is the Government amendment that deals with that issue, although not in a totally satisfactory way. Our amendment No. 17 deals with people who live part of the time in this country and part of the time abroad, and would require notification so as to keep track of their circumstances, especially when other members of the family or extended families are involved in both homes. That important area is not covered in the Bill.
      Amendment No. 19 would make provision for those who live abroad all the time or part of the time. We suggest that, if an offender lives or intends to live abroad, he should meet the requirements of the Bill
      "by sending a written notification of his decision to live abroad and his home address or addresses to a police station in his local police area or, in the case of a person who is living only abroad, in the police area in the United Kingdom in which he last lived."
      The amendment gives a sensible, commonsense definition of what an individual would have to do, but avoids the gap in the treatment of offenders that would be created if offenders who moved abroad did not have to notify the police of their address. It provides sufficient flexibility so that responsibility can be placed on the offender. If someone moves abroad and does not return, failure to notify is not a problem. The amendment places the onus on the offender, and puts a residual power in the hands of the police should someone move abroad and then move backwards and forwards without due respect for the provisions of the Bill and the requirements placed on him as a result of his committing an offence that is identified in the schedules. I commend the amendments to the House.
      Mr. Kirkhope: I sympathise with the desire of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) for the police to have up-to-date information at the earliest possible opportunity, which I believe is being sought in amendments Nos 13 and 15. I do not, however, believe that that approach would work in practice. What would be the earliest practical moment is a highly uncertain basis for the establishment of a criminal offence. It would put a burden on the courts to decide whether it would have been practicable for an offender to register sooner than he did, even if he registered within the 14-day limit. I do not believe that we should give the courts, the police or the prosecutors such an uncertain issue to decide, or make criminal liability dependent on that outcome. Fourteen days is a reasonable time; it is not excessive, and the public would not be provided with any further protection through the proposed changes.
      9.15 pm
      Nor do I believe that the requirement in amendments Nos. 14 and 16 to register all addresses that an offender
      234
      visits—even for a period of one night—is practical. The police would be swamped with too much information. Moreover, I am not sure what the point is of recording an address that the offender has visited once and may never visit again. Nevertheless, I recognise the concern expressed in Committee that focusing the registration requirements solely on the offender's main residence might be insufficient.
      I have already said that we cannot attach registration to every address that an offender visits, but we have decided to extend the registration requirement to any other address at which an offender spends 14 days or more in any 12-month period. That is the basis of our amendments. Such a measure will catch both long periods away from home at a single address—such as away-from-home working and holiday periods—and regular visits to another address for shorter periods which have a cumulative effect. Our proposals are contained in amendments Nos. 40 to 43.
      Amendments Nos. 17 to 21, which seek to place offenders under an obligation to report overseas addresses, suffer from the same difficulties of impracticality and enforcement as the other amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) in respect of notifying addresses. We debated whether that would be possible at an earlier stage, and I made it clear then that, because the police would have no basis on which to determine whether an offence had been committed, they would not be able to prove where an offender had been when he was abroad. The matter has been carefully considered, but I am afraid that I do not see any way in which we can impose a registration requirement on those who leave, or have left, the United Kingdom. I invite the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.
      Mr. Michael: I am disappointed by the Minister's response to what I felt were constructive amendments, but I do not intend to delay the House by pressing the matter further. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Amendments made: No. 40, in page 3, leave out line 31 and insert 'this section;'.
      No. 41, in page 3, line 32, at end insert
      'or
      (c) his having resided or stayed, for a qualifying period, at any premises in the United Kingdom the address of which has not been notified to the police under this section,'.
      No. 42, in page 3, line 33, leave out
      'or, as the case may be, the effect of that change'
      and insert
      ,'the effect of that change or, as the case may be, the address of those premises'.
      No. 43, in page 4, line 18, at end insert—
      ' "qualifying period" means—

      (a) a period of 14 days; or

      (b)two or more periods, in any period of 12 months, which (taken together) amount to 14 days.'—[Mr. Kirkhope.]

    Clause 4

      YOUNG SEX OFFENDERS
      Mr. Thurnham: I beg to move amendment No. 8, in page 5, line 18, at end insert—
      '(1A) Subject to subsection (1B) below, this Part does not apply to a person who is under 16 on the relevant date.
      (1B) In the case of a person falling within section 1(1)(a) or (b) above who is under 16 on the relevant date, the court may direct that this Part shall have effect.'.
      This important amendment deals with whether children should be required to register. It amends the Bill so that notification requirements would not apply to a person aged under 16 unless the court directed otherwise. It is important because it affects sentencing, treatment and rehabilitation of children who have committed a criminal offence and, moreover, are themselves in need. It also highlights the complications involved in sex abuse by young offenders, and forces us to approach the problem of paedophiles realistically rather than in black-and-white terms of victims and monsters.
      We are talking about people who are required to register, but who themselves are probably the victims. Approximately 50 per cent. of those who abuse children were abused themselves, and many of the young offenders we are discussing are still being abused by the adults around them. Recent scandals of paedophile rings in local authority care homes in Wales and Cheshire have shown the appalling prevalence of such situations. I was disturbed to learn the other day that a young constituent of mine was in one of the homes in Cheshire.
      Any child who is in care should be looked after properly. The last thing that should happen is that they should be subject to abuse when they are supposed to be in care. Children who are suffering abuse can all too easily get mixed up in paedophile networks, abusing younger children because they think that it is the normal thing to do. The Bill is all about the protection of children, and child offenders should be treated separately from adult offenders. People involved in the treatment of young sex offenders, notably the National Association for the Development of Work with Sex Offenders and the Association of Chief Officers of Probation have both stressed that they do not believe that inclusion on a register is appropriate for children.
      Also, the Childrens Charities Consortium—the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Childline, the National Children's Home Action for Children, Barnardo's, Save the Children Fund, the National Children's Bureau, and the National Council of Voluntary Child Care Organisations—for which the protection of the victims of sexual abuse is the highest priority, has expressed extreme disappointment that the Government have included young offenders in the Bill because there are more appropriate ways in which to deal with child offenders, and extra stigmatisation could be detrimental to a child's chances of rehabilitation.
      Young child sex offenders highlight the importance of appropriate treatment procedures and full rehabilitation. I was extremely disturbed during the Second Reading debate at the lack of knowledge of the success of treatment programmes in dramatically reducing reoffending rates. If we want seriously to tackle the possibility of offenders reoffending—the issue at the heart of the Bill—we must look to proper treatment programmes.
      236
      Home Office research gives indisputable evidence of the effectiveness of treatment programmes, with an average 40 per cent. reduction in reoffending rates following the STEP programme—the sex offender treatment evaluation project. I was disappointed that the Home Office publication, dated 1994, is out of print. I asked for a copy of it. When I saw the Minister of State, Home Office, who is responsible for prisons, she indicated that she would let me have one. I never received it and I have had to borrow a copy from Don Finlater, who runs the excellent treatment programme at the Wolvercote clinic, directed by the Faithfull Foundation. The clinic has similar effectiveness. It is scandalous that the Department of Health has no plans for relocation of Wolvercote after selling off the present site.
      The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department may be interested to know that on Monday I visited Ashworth special hospital and understood that it might be possible to find room on the Ashworth site for the location of a paedophile treatment centre. Therefore, if the Government are interested in providing residential treatment, that would be one possible site. Obviously, there would not be any requirement for planning permission.
      If the Government view protection of children from sex offenders as a priority, they must make treatment a priority. If sex offenders are going to be released from prison once they have served their sentence, it is vital that we do all we can to ensure that they do not reoffend. Some members of the Children's Charities Consortium, for example the NSPCC and Barnardo's, have direct experience of working with young sex offenders through their treatment programmes. There is much evidence to show that young sex offenders are amenable to treatment and that appropriate intervention is likely to be more immediately effective than with adult offenders. It has been stressed to me that extra stigmatisation would not help treatment of such young children, so I call on the Government to provide more facilities for treatment for both adult and young sex abusers of children. For the Government not to do so is to fail in the duty to protect children.
      The registration periods in the Bill relate to the sentence given. For juveniles, that can mean detention in a young offender institution or training in a training school. For sentences of under 30 months, the Bill cuts to 50 per cent. the length of time that under-18s have to register, but once children cross that 30-month threshold, they are required to register for life. That may mean just 30 months in a training school. It cannot be viewed as being such a serious matter if a child goes to a training school, which may be the most important treatment that the child can have, but then in doing so he could be required to register for life. The offence might be no more than having a photograph. A nine or 10-year-old, for example, might have been given a photograph by an adult abuser, admitted having the photograph, be sent to a 30-month training school and consequently discover that he must register for life. The possibility is quite bizarre.
      Sentencing of child offenders should always place great emphasis on rehabilitation as well as on punishment. It is hoped that young offenders' treatment programmes will be extended because of their success in reducing reoffending rates. The time that a court decides is necessary for treatment should not be influenced by a judge's desire for the child not to come under the lifetime registration requirement provided in the Bill.

      237
      In Committee, the Minister said:
      "I emphasise strongly that there are no situations in which someone guilty of the relevant offences should be able to escape the registration requirement. Nor do I think that the registration period should be capable of alteration. The Bill sets tough periods of registration which will put a great obligation on people."—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 4 February 1997; c. 24.]
      However, the Minister seemed to realise the inappropriateness of such an approach for young sex offenders. When I raised the possibility of a nine or 10-year-old being in possession of an indecent photograph, he said that it is
      "unlikely that a court would handle such a case so as to leave such a young child liable for a lifetime registration."—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 6 February 1997; c. 771
      I read that statement to mean that the Minister could envisage a situation in which someone guilty of the relevant offence should be able to escape the notification requirement.
      The criminal justice system rightly treats juveniles differently from adults. The Bill should recognise that fact, rather than somehow, by sleight of hand, relying on judges not to be compromised in deciding the necessary treatment.
      The Children's Charities Consortium was concerned with the consequences of parental responsibility for young offenders' registration, because, in many cases, young sex offenders may well be experiencing sexual abuse within their own families. We must realise that much sexual abuse occurs within families, and that a child might be required to register when he or she is abused.
      I urge that area child protection committees should be the proper agencies for offenders aged under 16. Extra stigmatisation in such cases is unnecessary and unhelpful in children's treatment programmes, and courts should be able to order lengthy treatment programmes without feeling that they are inflicting on a child a lifetime's punishment. The principle of parental responsibility for the registration of young sex offenders is unsound because of the predominance of sex abuse within families.
      I therefore believe that children under 16 should be removed from the notification requirements unless a court decides that compliance is appropriate in the circumstances.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: I should like to say a few words in support of the amendment tabled and moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) and to give an example. Someone came to my constituency surgery who had served a sentence of imprisonment for an offence committed when he was a teenager, although he is now an adult. He would have been subject to the registration provisions of this legislation. However, he has now settled down, put his prison period behind him and, I believe, effectively escaped from that part of his life.
      Many believe that offences committed when one is under the age of 16 should be discounted for registration purposes and that, if we do not do so, there is no point in maintaining a statutory distinction between youths and adults. It is very important that society gets it right in establishing whether someone who has not reached his majority—even if he has reached the age of criminal
      238
      responsibility—should be dealt with differently and less seriously for offences committed at that age. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East argued, it is very important that young people do not carry a stigma with them for the rest of their lives. I hope that the Government will respond in a positive manner to an enlightened and sensible proposal.
      Mr. Kirkhope: The hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) has explained his desire to exclude some young offenders from the scope of the registration provisions. At an earlier stage in the consideration of the Bill, he sought to take under-16s out of registration altogether. Now he has modified that approach and seeks to give the courts discretion whether or not to impose the notification requirement in the case of under-16s.
      I am afraid that I remain equally opposed to that approach. The key point is that registration is not a punishment, but a device to secure public protection from those who have committed serious offences—and, as we all know, some under-16s have been responsible for horrific sexual crimes.
      In convicting an under-16 of such an offence, the court will already have considered whether the child appreciated that the action was wrong. The younger the offender, the more careful the court will have been in that respect, but having reached a decision on criminal liability, however, what possible basis could there be for the court to decide that registration was not necessary in a particular case? We have not provided for discretion elsewhere in the Bill, and I see no case for it in this instance.
      9.30 pm
      Mr. Thurnham: I am extremely unhappy that the Government are not prepared to consider the amendment, and have given no indication that they might consider it further and table amendments in another place. I feel that I have put strong arguments.
      The Bill is weakened by the fact that it contains bizarre provisions that could require an eight or nine-year-old to register for life. The Minister said that it was tough. On Second Reading, the Minister of State said that the Bill contained draconian measures. I find such requirements quite extraordinary. By not accepting earlier amendments that would have strengthened the Bill, we are in danger of producing a measure that is just a toothless soundbite. If it bites at all, it will bite on children themselves.
      The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean): Before the hon. Gentleman launches into rhetoric about toothless soundbites, may I point out the nonsense of the statement that he has just made? One cannot convict an eight or nine-year-old. The age of criminal consent is 10. If that is the strength of the hon. Gentleman's argument, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to resist his proposals tonight.
      Mr. Thurnham: I am amazed by that intervention, because the Minister of State professes to be something of an expert on Scotland. He comes from Scotland. The Bill would affect eight-year-olds in Scotland. I referred to nine and 10-year-olds. The age of criminal consent is 10 in England and eight in Scotland, so the Minister does

      239
      not appear to have read the Bill. That confirms once again that the Government have not addressed the matter properly.
      I should like to divide the House on the amendment, but as the Government have not indicated that they wish to continue with the business after 10 o'clock, I find it necessary to withdraw the amendment. If it was not for the pressure of time, I would certainly wish to divide the House. However, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Amendment made: No. 1, in page 5, line 20, leave out '(b) to (d)'.—[Mr. Maclean.]

    Clause 8
      EXTENSION OF JURISDICTION: SCOTLAND
      Amendment made: No. 9, in page 10, line 1, leave out 'proving his' and insert 'setting out the'.—[Mr. Maclean.]
    Schedule 1

      SEXUAL OFFENCES TO WHICH PART I APPLIES
      Mr. Michael: I beg to move amendment No. 22, in page 12, leave out line 32 and insert—
      '(a) Where the offender was under 20—

      (i)paragraph (a)(v) and (vi) does not apply;

      (ii)paragraph (a)(vii) and (viii) does not apply where the act would not have been an offence but for section 14(2) or section 15(2) of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, unless the court has imposed a term of imprisonment for the offence; and

      (iii)paragraph a(iii) does not apply unless the court, having regard to the circumstances of the offence and the offender, in the interests of child protection, so directs.'

      Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 23, in page 12, line 35, after 'over;' insert—
      '(bb) paragraph (a)(vi) above does not apply where the other party was 16 or over at the time of the offence and the offender was not sentenced to a term of imprisonment.'
      Mr. Michael: There is an anomaly in the Bill arising from the Government's wish to have a degree of flexibility in relation to teenagers. In schedule 1 the requirement to register in relation to three offences—intercourse with a girl between 13 and 16, buggery, and indecency between men—does not apply where the offender was under 20. The amendment rephrases that provision to deal differently with each of the offences.
      As I said in Committee, intercourse with a girl aged between 13 and 16 is one of the excluded offences. I understand that the Minister wants to avoid individuals involved in teenage sex being forced to register on a permanent basis under the terms of a Bill that targets paedophiles. However, by excluding the 18-year-old who has sex with a girl of almost 16, the Bill also leaves out the 19-year-old who has sex with a girl who has only just reached her 13th birthday. That illustrates the enormous range and variety of the offences that can be caught under the Bill; some are much more serious than others and the Minister must surely intend to catch those cases, particularly when the offence is very serious.
      240
      I pointed out in Committee that Lord Woolf ruled that indecency between men can only be consensual. We need to ensure that we target those who are a danger to children and not those who are not. The amendment would include for registration any serious cases of indecency involving 16 or 17-year-olds with someone over 20 if the seriousness of the offence was such that a court had imposed a term of imprisonment, but it would not catch cases in which there was a closeness of age, which is parallel to the exclusion that the Minister has allowed for heterosexual sex.
      The amendments are modest, aimed at ensuring fairness and that we hit the target of those who are a danger to children, without accidentally hitting those who are not a danger to children. The Minister has also sought not to target such people.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: I should like to intervene briefly to support the amendment.
      Mr. Kirkhope: The aim of the first main proposal in amendment No. 22 is to exclude from the registration requirement offences of indecent assault on a girl or boy under 16 in which the so-called assault is in fact consensual, and no custodial sentence is imposed. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) has focused on the fact that such behaviour may constitute an offence, even though consensual, because, under the 1956 Act, a child under 16 is not considered to be able to give consent to activities that, if non-consensual, would count as assault. The hon. Gentleman's solution is to seek to distinguish between serious and less serious cases with the test of imprisonment.
      I agree that the amendment identifies a theoretical anomaly. A teenager who has committed consensual unlawful intercourse with a girl under 16 would avoid registration, whereas the same teenager, if charged with assault as a result of consensual indecent behaviour falling short of intercourse, would be required to register. I agreed in Committee to consider the matter further to see whether there was a way round that point. We have thought very hard about the matter, but we have concluded that any problem is more apparent then real, and that any solution would make the Bill more complex than it is already.
      There could be difficulties, for example with offences tried before the passage of the Act, in knowing whether consent had been given, as the court would not necessarily have addressed that. We would have to put cases resulting in a custodial sentence in a separate category from, for example, those resulting in a community sentence, which could still be serious instances of the offence.
      I do not believe that there is likely to be a problem in practice. I do not believe that cases are likely to come to court in respect of teenagers engaged in what are patently consensual intimate acts. The problem, if it exists, is inherent in the structure of the offences. Such offences could, in theory, occur whenever young teenagers cuddle one another, but I am not aware that prosecutions frequently take place following dances and discos for youngsters.
      The second part of amendment No. 22 would toughen up the proposal in the Bill. Instead of our approach—under which the offence of unlawful sexual intercourse

      241
      with a girl between 13 and 16 would not attract registration if the offender was under 20—the amendment would give the court discretion to require registration when the interests of child protection made that appropriate.
      I have some sympathy with the motivation behind the amendment. I undertook in Committee to reflect on the hon. Gentleman's concern, but I am not persuaded that his proposal is the answer. It would make the scheme more complex and would create a further category of offenders subject to the registration requirement. It would make enforcement more difficult, because the police would not know, from the facts of the case and the sentence passed, whether the offender was liable for registration. The court would be invited to exercise discretion on whether registration was required in the particular instance, which we have avoided elsewhere in the Bill.
      I do not believe that there is a real cause for concern. We decided to exclude consensual teenage sexual activity from the scheme and have used the age point as the means of achieving that end. Any age point may appear somewhat arbitrary at the margins, but I do not believe that it is likely to mean that those who should register will escape the requirement.
      The effect of amendment No. 23 would be to exclude registration in any case of indecency between men where the victim is over 16 years old. I am aware of the arguments for reducing the age of homosexual consent to 16, but the fact remains that Parliament has decided that for homosexual offences the age of 18 must remain the threshold. That being so, I am not prepared to lift registration where the offence is committed against someone who is a minor for those purposes. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree not to press either of the amendments.
      Mr. Michael: I am grateful to the Minister for his response, which acknowledged that basically there is an inconsistency. It seems that there is an inconsistency in one direction in the Bill, and we have sought at least to install fairness. That is all that we have sought to do. I should make it quite clear that we have not tried to go beyond what the Bill can do. As the Minister says, there is an argument in respect of the age of consent, but we have not sought to address that in any way, and I hope that he was not suggesting that we have.
      Had the amendments been accepted, they would have taken us a step nearer fairness, balance and the protection of children. As the Minister clearly does not intend to accept them, I ask him to keep thinking and to talk to his colleagues in another place in the hope that we shall see fairness in the Bill before it completes its passage through Parliament.
      I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Mr. Maclean: I beg to move amendment No. 32, in page 13, leave out lines 30 and 31
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendment No. 33.
      242
      Amendment No. 10, in page 13, line 36, after '(x)', insert
      'subsections (5) and (6) of'.
      Government amendments Nos. 34 to 39.
      Amendment No. 7, in page 13, line 45, at end insert
      '; and
      (e) paragraphs (a)(viii) and (d)(x) do not apply where every person involved in the offence was 18 or over and was a willing participant.'.
      Mr. Maclean: The broad purpose of this group of amendments is to align the Scottish offences with those in the list for England and Wales. Clearly it is important that there should be as close an alignment as possible between the two jurisdictions, so that offenders in different parts of the United Kingdom will be treated in the same way for registration purposes.
      Half the amendments in the group cover homosexual offences, where we think it right to remove from the qualifying offences the Scottish offences that deal with procuring homosexual acts between two other men and those covering consensual adult homosexual activities. The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) and others are in similar terms. We clearly share the same objective of ensuring that there is parity of treatment between homosexual offenders on either side of the border.
      Similar considerations apply to exclusion of the procuring offences involving women, which would not trigger registration south of the border, and to the inclusion of the Scottish offence of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl below the age of 13 where the offender is a teenager. In the amendments we have sought to achieve consistency across the jurisdictions.
      Amendment No. 34 takes on board the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Dumbarton in Committee that there was an anomaly as between a person convicted of having intercourse with a step-child over the age of 18 and someone convicted of incest with a blood relative. The amendment cures that anomaly, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing it to the Government's attention.
      I commend the whole series of Government amendments to the House and I invite the hon. Gentleman not to press his own amendments.
      Mr. McFall: I shall not press amendments Nos. 7 and 10. I thank the Minister very much for his consideration of the points made in Committee. When the matter was put to the Scottish Office there seemed to be little forthcoming, but in Committee we had a very fruitful discussion. Those who are concerned about the issues in Scotland are certainly very pleased with the action that the Government have taken.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 33, in page 13, line 36, at beginning insert "subsection (5) of'.
      No. 34, in page 13, line 39, leave out '(vi)' and insert '(ii)'.
      No. 35, in page 13, line 40, at end insert—
      '() paragraphs (a)(viii) and (d)(x) above do not apply where every person involved in the offence, other than the offender, was 18 or over and was a willing participant;'.

      243
      No. 36, in page 13, line 43, leave out
      'paragraphs (a)(viii) and (d)(x) do'
      and insert 'paragraph (a)(viii) does'.
      No. 37, in page 13, line 44, leave out second 'and'.
      No. 38, in page 13, line 45, after "apply" insert "in the case of an offence in contravention of subsection (3) of section 5 (unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl over 13 but under 16)'.
      No. 39, in page 13, line 45, at end insert
      'and
      () paragraph (d)(x) does not apply where the offender was under 20 and—

      (i)where the offence involved an act of sodomy contrary to subsection (5) of section 13, every other person involved in the offence was a willing participant; or

      (ii)the offence involved an act of gross indecency or shameless indecency contrary to the said subsection (5).'.—[Mr. Maclean.]

    Schedule 2

      SEXUAL OFFENCES TO WHICH SECTION 7 APPLIES
      Mr. Michael: I beg to move amendment No. 24, in page 15, line 37, at end insert—
      '(ia) section 4 (Administering drugs to obtain or facilitate intercourse);'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendments Nos. 2 and 3.
      Amendment No. 26, in page 15, line 42, at end insert—
      '(vii) section 17 (Abduction of a girl by force).'.
      Amendment No. 27, in page 15, line 42, at end insert—
      '(vii) section 20 (Abduction of an unmarried girl under 16 from parent or guardian).'.
      Amendment No. 28, in page 15, line 42, at end insert—
      '(vii) section 22A (Causing prostitution of girls).'.
      Amendment No. 29, in page 15, line 42, at end insert—
      '(vii) section 24 (Detention of girl in brothel or other premises).'.
      Amendment No. 30, in page 15, line 42, at end insert—
      '(vii) section 25 (Permitting girl under 13 to use premises for intercourse).'.
      Amendment No. 31, in page 15, line 42, at end insert—
      '(vii) section 28 (Causing or encouraging prostitution of, intercourse with or indecent assault on a girl under 16).'.
      Government amendments Nos. 4 and 5.
      Mr. Michael: I shall be very brief, because we raised the issues addressed in the amendments in Committee. I tabled the amendments because of the undertaking given by the Minister to consider the issues further. I hope that he will be able to respond positively. The amendments would add additional offences to the list of offences in schedule 2, because it would be anomalous if they were not included. They include administering drugs to obtain or facilitate intercourse; assault with intent to commit buggery; the abduction of a girl by force; the abduction of an unmarried girl under 16 from parent or guardian; causing prostitution of girls; the detention of a girl in brothel or other premises; permitting a girl under 13 to use premises for intercourse; and causing or
      244
      encouraging prostitution of, intercourse with or indecent assault on a girl under 16. It seemed odd that those offences were not included in schedule 2 and, in Committee, the Minister undertook to consider their inclusion.
      9.45 pm
      Mr. Kirkhope: It is worth recalling the origin of the list in schedule 2. It is substantially the same as that contained in the Sexual Offences (Conspiracy and Incitement) Act 1996—that is to say, the offences of child sexual abuse in respect of which the UK courts now have jurisdiction when conspiracies or incitements take place in this country to commit those offences abroad. In a sense, that Act created a standard list of the acts of child sex abuse likely to be committed by sex tourists, and I do not recall that there were concerns that that list was incomplete or had missed out significant offences.
      In drafting the Bill, we followed that earlier list, but we decided to add the main child pornography offences. The member states of the European Union agreed last autumn, in the aftermath of the terrible Belgian case, on a joint action to combat the trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation. Taking extra-territorial jurisdiction over child pornography offences was one of the provisions in that agreement, in recognition of the link—whether causal or not—that often exists between the sexual abuse of children and child pornography.
      I was pressed in Committee to consider going wider, and to include a much longer list of offences in the Bill. I undertook to consider that proposal, and have tabled an amendment to add one further offence—assault with intent to commit buggery. I concluded that that was an offence that might be committed by a British sex tourist abroad. I do not believe that the same applies to the other offences that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) has proposed adding. Some are concerned with the organising of prostitution, or allowing the use of premises for under-age sexual activity to take place, and I do not believe they are likely to be committed by Britons who will subsequently return to this country.
      Others in the hon. Gentleman's list—for example, amendments Nos. 26 and 27—are focused on abduction for the purposes of sexual intercourse and, again, relate more to what may be done by those promoting prostitution abroad, rather than the actions of our own nationals and residents. The Bill is targeted at our own sex tourists, and I believe that it will, as drafted, and with the addition of the offence of assault with intent to commit buggery, catch the offenders at whom it is directed.
      Mr. Michael: I am grateful for the Minister's response and for the fact that he has taken the trouble to consider the matter further, as promised. We would have liked him to move further, but at least his consideration has proved fruitful.
      At every stage of the Bill, we have sought to improve it and speed its passage. It is a measure that we have long desired to see on the statute book. I therefore do not intend to prolong our debate now, and I am sure that the matter will be considered further in another place.
      I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Amendments made: No. 2, in page 15, line 41, leave out 'and'.

      245
      No. 3, in page 15, line 42, at end insert
      'and
      (vii) section 16 (assault with intent to commit buggery);'.
      No. 4, in page 16, line 1, leave out '(iv), (v) and (vi)' and insert 'and (iv) to (vii)'.
      No. 5, in page 16, line 11, leave out
      'indecent assault upon a male person'
      and insert
      '(assault with intent to commit buggery or indecent assault upon a male person)'.[Mr. Maclean.]
      Order for Third Reading read.
      9.48 pm
      Mr. Maclean: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
      Today's debate has covered a number of aspects of the Bill, some of which have been specific—for example, whether this or that offence should be included—and other points have been much wider, including, for example, the complicated issue of police practice in the use and disclosure of information.
      It has not been possible for the Government to accept all the points that have been made. None the less, I appreciate the spirit in which they have been put forward from both sides of the House. I thank the hon. Members who have taken part in our proceedings, whether tonight, in Committee or on Second Reading.
      Our debate on the Bill has strengthened and improved it as a measure for the protection of children. I am also grateful for the input to the debate provided by others with an interest. The police and other agencies involved with child welfare have provided invaluable insights into the practical aspects of how the registration requirement will work.
      Those have enabled us to develop and improve on our original proposals to ensure that the registration requirement will really work in practice. I cannot emphasise too much how grateful I am to those people, especially those in the Association of Chief Police Officers, who have been enormously helpful.
      I hope, therefore, that the Bill will conclude its parliamentary passage quickly, so that it can soon begin to provide the added protection for our children that is its prime aim.
      9.50 pm
      Mr. McFall: I welcome the progress that the Government have made. As has been said already, we had a fruitful discussion in Committee, Frankly, however, I do not believe that the Government have moved far enough. The Bill will play its part in what needs to be a more comprehensive response to child abuse. The omission that we tried to put right by tabling new clauses 2 and 3 will weaken it considerably.
      We must take account of public opinion. I feel that Parliament is out of synch with public opinion. The Minister is aware of the situation in Scotland. Only today, Scotland's best-selling newspaper, the Daily Record, devotes its front page to "Scotland's Child Abuse Scandal".
      246
      The Daily Record is setting up an eight-point campaign to highlight the issue—a campaign that I support in detail. The paper says that information on child sex offences in Scotland is not available. It points out that statistics on cruelty to animals are available, but that on sex offences the information is not forthcoming.
      People from the Daily Record contacted the Secretary of State's Office in Scotland but were told that he was too busy. Only last week the right hon. Gentleman contacted a local newspaper reporter whom I know. An open letter had been written, and the Secretary of State invited the reporter into his office to put his point of view. Yet when he was asked which information was available and which was not, he was too busy to reply.
      The newspaper also contacted the Crown Office for information, but there, too, the message was that there was none. When will the Government put that information into the public domain? By failing to do so, they do a disservice to the many hundreds, even thousands, of people affected.
      The sad fact is that paedophiles cause manifold damage. For every case that comes to court, hundreds of similar offences have been committed. Aberdeen university recently undertook a study in which 34 sex offenders, who had been convicted of 115 offences among them, confessed to having actually committed 1,500 offences. The court cases are the tip of the iceberg.
      It is ironic that it should be this evening, when "No Child of Mine" is being screened—it could be happening at this very moment—that we are passing legislation that does not go far enough. The hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) and I went to the presentation of "No Child of Mine". I did not see any other Members of Parliament there. It was a long film, and the hon. Lady walked out. So far as I know, she had first asked, "Why is this being shown?"
      That is symptomatic of the approach that our society has taken. We cannot deal with child abuse here: sure, we can deal with it when it is abroad—in Bangkok and other such places—but if it happens in Glasgow, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Bournemouth or wherever, then we cannot deal with it.
      We must face up to the issues. The Government's lack of resolve was illustrated by the fact that they wanted to enact the legislation through a private Member's Bill. Only the resolve of the Opposition ensured that we had a Government Bill. We want the Bill to succeed, but it does not go far enough. The Government have shown themselves out of sync with the people.
      The Minister mentioned Belgium and Marc Dutroux. We do not want to wait until such a situation arises here. That is why we want the Government to go further. The campaign will not stop here. It will go on and on. Vision has been required of the Government, but they have shown a lack of deep thought. This is unfinished business: the Opposition welcome the Bill, but there is much more to do to protect our young people. That message should go out loud and clear from Parliament tonight as we welcome the provisions in the Bill.
      9.55 pm
      Mr. Thurnham: I support the Bill, but I feel that it is only half or a quarter of a loaf. I hope that it will be strengthened in another place in the manner for which we argued on Second Reading, in Committee, and again today.

      247
      There should be a code of practice to give guidance to the police and, most of all, there should be a requirement for previous offenders who are known to the police to register. At present, about 50,000 previous offenders escape the provisions of the Bill. It should be simple for the police, when they are in contact with them, to require notification of a change of address.
      The Bill should be strengthened, and I hope that my arguments about children will be well considered in the other place, without the pressures of time that we have had tonight. I look forward to the Bill reaching the statute book, but I hope that it will do so in a greatly improved state.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

    EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(9) (European Standing Committees).
    EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
      FUTURE NOISE POLICY
      That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 11419/96, the Commission Green Paper on future noise policy; and endorses the Government's objective of opposing a number of the proposals on noise exposure when presenting the response of the United Kingdom to the Green Paper to the European Commission.—[Mr. Brandreth.]
  PETITIONS

    Child Protection
    9.56 pm
    Mr. Peter Thurnham: I have two petitions to present—one on the Lever Park Bill and one, most appropriately, on the Sex Offenders Bill that we have been debating tonight. Even more appropriately, the latter comes from Oundle school in Northamptonshire—the school that I went to and one that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, know well—and bears the signatures of more than 800 pupils and staff. The petition says:
    To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
    The Humble Petition of Staff and Students of Oundle School in the county of Northamptonshire with Members of Action for Children Campaign and other Citizens of the United Kingdom,
    Sheweth that we have deep concern at continuing reports that citizens of developed nations travelling abroad may be encouraging the use of children in prostitution and pornography, that we are committed to the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which seeks to protect children from sexual exploitation; and believe that Her Majesty's Government should seek to play an active role in bringing about concerted international action to tackle this problem and in particular examine ways of ensuring that individuals involved in such exploitation are brought to justice within the United Kingdom.
    Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House do introduce legislation to ensure that citizens of the United Kingdom who commit serious sexual offences against children abroad can be prosecuted in this country.
    And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
    To lie upon the Table.

    Lever Park Bill
    9.58 pm
    Mr. Thurnham: The second petition bears 5,807 signatures and concerns the Lever Park Bill. It says:
    To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
    The Humble Petition of the people of Bolton North East and the surrounding areas, including the members of the Owls Motorcycle Club,
    Sheweth that they oppose the proposed development of Lever Park in Bolton.
    Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House reject the Lever Park Bill in order to preserve free access to the park for the public, in accordance with Lord Leverhulme's wishes.
    And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
    To lie upon the Table.

    Empty Homes
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Brandreth.]
    9.59 pm
    Mr. Hartley Booth (Finchley): My debate relates to empty homes, but at this time of night it might better have related to an empty Chamber. There are 800,000 empty homes, and this important matter was the subject of my ten-minute Bill on 27 February 1996. Since then, the number of empty homes has fallen by 15,000 but that disguises the fact that public sector voids have risen. Great play is often made of the fall in the provision of new homes from nearly 400,000 in the 1960s to fewer than 200,000 in 1990.
    It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Brandreth.]
    While no one would suggest that the huge stock of void premises would resolve both the demand for new homes and the need to house homeless people, a fair analysis of the housing market would place much more emphasis on facilitating the release of more empty houses for use.
    House builders lament the fall in the number of new homes, perhaps not surprisingly. Luminaries such as Michael Ball of South Bank university and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation conclude that more house building is needed. They make powerful arguments but they must be put alongside other factors.
    The number of public sector empty homes rose last year. Local authorities voids went up from 2 to 2.3 per cent. of stock. In housing associations, voids rose from 2.4 to 2.5 per cent. In other public sector bodies, including Government Departments, voids went up from 16 to 17 per cent. More details have been supplied today to the Library.
    Conventional wisdom on housing policy gives almost exclusive attention to new building. We need a wider horizon. First, new buildings often infill existing housing space and destroy the character of our neighbourhoods in north London and elsewhere. Secondly, in consequence of infilling with new houses, it is less likely that we will be able to find places off the roads to park and store the burgeoning number of vehicles that this prosperous Government have produced.
    Thirdly, new land is often used because demolition and site clearance or, worse, decontamination of existing sites, are expensive. Fourthly, it takes pressure off the need to use existing housing. Fifthly, and fundamental to this debate, it is an indictment of us all that housing is kept empty. It is frustrating, and annoying to the homeless. It creates an eyesore and is a blight on adjacent housing stock. Finally, empty homes often lead to squatting, which is ghastly for all concerned.
    My debate aims to examine a new way in which to encourage, and in some cases compel, the use of empty public property. I have been greatly assisted by the Empty Homes Agency. I have advised the all-party group on homelessness and housing needs of my proposals. I am pleased that there is widespread interest and support. Everyone recognises the overwhelming need to make the best possible use of our housing stock, not least because the homeless deserve the support of the House.
    Dr. Robert Spink: I congratulate my hon. Friend on obtaining this most important debate.
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    Will he join me in paying tribute to The Big Issue for running a petition that seeks to bring into use empty housing stock, which would go almost all the way to resolving our homelessness problem?
    Mr. Booth: I am grateful for that intervention, which was perspicacious, if not telepathic, because my next sentence is that I commend the concern of the magazine, The Big Issue, which has also supported my Bill.
    Although this is not ten-minute rule procedure, I take this opportunity briefly to explain to the House the proposals contained in my Bill, which I believe will be useful. They are contained in an ambitious draft document entitled "The Empty Homes Bill 1997". The Bill gives formal expression to ideas on how we could better use unoccupied buildings. It requires local authorities to designate an empty property officer responsible for securing the re-use of unoccupied residential buildings owned by public bodies within the authority's area.
    It is always open to a Government who might wish to introduce the policy to allow for the appointment of a surveyor from the private sector to act as such an officer, rather than add to a local authority's payroll. The officer would be empowered to investigate ownership and order the reoccupation of all unoccupied buildings owned by local authorities, Government Departments and executive agencies, including housing associations, by people in housing need. I suggest that the residential building should have been unoccupied for six months, although the precise period could be settled later.
    My previous attempt to propose policy in this area was construed by some merely as an attack on local authorities. This Bill takes an all-party approach—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that in an Adjournment debate he cannot promote a Bill. I am sure that he is referring to a document or some other piece of material.
    Mr. Booth: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for being so courteous in your instruction.
    This document takes an all-party approach, and attacks all public bodies from both central and local government. Paragraph 2.4 of my suggested policy provides a comprehensive list of those bodies. It is important to give the new empty property officers some power, so the next section empowers them to investigate and obtain information about the ownership and control of void property, then to recover their expenses against the body responsible for that empty home.
    Officers may publish details of property if they feel that publication will, in itself, secure the swift re-use of residential premises. They are also empowered to contact the owner in writing, ordering reoccupation of the building within 28 days. They can further order that the residential occupant may be a family or household in housing need. Their power to order the use of an empty property has some exemptions, one of which is the Ministry of Defence in certain circumstances. Empty homes officers can also exempt those who have satisfied them that they will use their property within six months or demolish it within that period. Obviously, in the real world one must allow for those changes.
    The county court would be given the authority to supervise the proceedings and provide a safeguard to balance the needs of public bodies with the dire needs

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    of homeless families. The county court's power may include ordering a grant of freehold or leasehold to a family in certain circumstances. The business of property rights, however, is tricky. Public bodies own nothing in their own right but are simply trustees for all of us.
    The public need to be protected and, in addition to inserting the role of the county court, the next section of my proposal ensures that, if a conflict of interests arises between an empty homes officer and his local authority, a neighbouring authority should nominate an alternative officer through the good offices of the Secretary of State, represented tonight by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison).
    The proposers of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980, which allowed people to require the disposal of property, will find it interesting that there is an admirable example of a link with their pioneer legislation. I propose that the public request to order disposal of land and buildings procedure—what a mouthful—known as PROD for short, be harnessed to require disposal of certain homes to meet local authority or local housing need. In all cases, where freeholds are transferred, compensation will come into the equation.
    Last but not least, under my Bill local authorities would be required to prepare and publish an empty properties strategy each year, to secure the re-use of unoccupied residential premises in their area. The duty follows full consultation with landlords and professional advisers, and should include information on the number of unoccupied properties in the authority area and provide details of ownership and location. Annual targets should be set, and measures that the local authority considers practical should be agreed to achieve full occupation.
    It is our duty in the House to provide for the needs of those who find it hardest to help themselves, and those who are homeless must join the top of the list. It is to our shame that we have in our country so many empty properties yet about 150,000 people are defined by law as homeless. The Government have done a great deal, through the rough sleepers initiative, which I commend, and a host of other policies for the homeless, but I and others still identify a problem.
    Unlike most problems, the problem contains the seeds of its own solution; uniquely, we can solve one problem by putting another right. We can substantially resolve the problem of homelessness by putting right our failure as a community to use empty public property adequately. For the sake of our cities, for the sake of the good name of the House and for all those who have no homes tonight, I urge the House that, better than acting, we should enact my proposal.
    10.11 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. James Clappison): I welcome the opportunity to respond to this debate on an important subject. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) has demonstrated before the House his long-standing knowledge and expertise on this subject, in which he has taken a great interest for many years.
    I assure my hon. Friend that it is of continuing concern to the Government that every potential home in the public or private sector be used. The Government's best estimates point to a 4.4 million growth in the number of
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    households between 1991 and the year 2016 and, as my hon. Friend rightly argued, against that background we must have a strategy that makes best use of all existing housing. We cannot afford to have homes lying empty, for the reasons that my hon. Friend eloquently set out, and the desire to make best use of our homes is widely shared, as my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) emphasised in his intervention.
    The latest figures, for 1 April 1996, show a welcome overall estimated 9 per cent. reduction in the number of vacant dwellings in England since April 1993. That is welcome news, but every home lying empty unnecessarily—owned by a local authority or housing association or privately owned—is a wasted resource, which could provide a home for someone in housing need.
    As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration said when launching the empty homes week of action on 17 February, there is a role for each of us to play in addressing the problem. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and the House will agree, after hearing my response to his speech, that much is already being done by the Government and all the relevant agencies.
    Empty homes fall into different categories, according to their ownership. I will deal first with the local authority sector. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration announced on 14 February that the number of local authority "management" vacants—dwellings that are ready for occupation immediately, or after minor works—rose to 47,700 at 1 April 1996, from 41,000 in April 1995. That is disappointing news. My hon. Friend made some observations about that, with which it is hard to disagree.
    The Government encourage local authorities to find ways of maximising the use of their existing stock. Authorities can do that in a number of ways. For example, they can reduce under-occupation, first by ensuring that tenants are allocated homes that are the right size for their needs; secondly, by using transfers, exchanges and mobility schemes to release under-occupied dwellings, and thirdly, by using cash incentive schemes to encourage tenants to move to smaller homes or to buy a home in the private sector.
    Collaboration between housing associations and local authorities to tackle under-occupation is essential. Local authorities can use their nomination rights to housing associations' dwellings and they can work with housing associations on planning new developments so as to achieve the right size of dwelling and type of housing.
    Dr. Spink: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best things that local authorities can do, especially those who deal with run-down local authority housing estates, is to pass those estates to the ownership of non-profit-making organisations, which generally run them much better, in the interests of tenants and the homeless?
    Mr. Clappison: My hon. Friend will be aware of the efforts that we have made to promote housing transfer and to bring private investment into housing, and especially of the efforts that we have made to help the poorest estates, through the estates renewal challenge fund. It gave me pleasure yesterday to visit in Durham one of the first of those estates to pass to a housing association. That has been met with great optimism in Durham.

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    Housing associations' performance in minimising their empty properties is generally good, and their vacancy rate is fairly stable. Housing associations are now required, collectively, to generate 500 extra lettings each year, by bringing vacant levels down further. The Housing Corporation publishes performance indicators which show that the target is being met. We can expect continued improvements as the corporation takes an increasing interest in the performance of individual housing associations.
    The Government fully accept that they, too, should keep their own house in order. Government Departments have made great strides over the past few years to tackle the problem of empty homes. The number of empty homes on the civil estate fell by almost 600 between April 1995 and April 1996, and more exacting targets were set for 1996–97. That is on top of significant reductions achieved the previous year. We are particularly keen to ensure that Departments do not hold on to their empty properties for long periods. That is why we have set separate targets for tackling properties that are empty for more than six months.
    Our key objective remains that of getting empty Government-owned properties into the hands of those who can make best use of them, and we encourage Government Departments to consider the option of sale or lease for social housing. Sale to the private sector can also help to address housing need, by creating home ownership opportunities and expanding the supply of rented housing.
    One of the notable facts about empty homes is that by far the greatest number of vacancies is in the private rented sector. It is encouraging to see that the numbers of empty homes in the private sector have fallen, from 690,000 in 1995 to 667,000 in 1996. Nobody pretends that it is easy to find a solution to the problem, as the reasons for privately owned property lying empty are complex. Research carried out for my Department by a university showed that many privately owned properties are empty for valid reasons, reflecting normal transactions in the market. However, there are longer-term, problematic vacancies that require attention.
    Local authorities have a role in tackling that problem, not only by keeping their own empty properties to a minimum, but by developing a corporate approach, working in partnership with housing associations, private owners and developers, property professionals and other public and voluntary sector bodies.
    The problem of empty homes cannot be tackled in isolation. The most effective projects are part of broader-based regeneration programmes, tackling housing problems alongside unemployment, training, crime prevention and so on. For that reason, we have maintained the existing level of funding under the single regeneration budget for this year.
    However, the most important role for Government is to create the conditions for a healthier housing market and remove obstacles to its effective working. The housing market is now on a firm upward trend. Low interest rates and low inflation mean that housing is now more affordable than it has been since the early 1970s. There could not be a better time for the first-time buyer to enter the market.
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    We have also put together a package of measures that will make letting a home easier and safer, and that will play an important part in encouraging more owners of empty properties to let them. The Housing Act 1988 made letting an empty property a more viable option by removing rent control and introducing the assured shorthold tenancy. The Housing Act 1996 progressed the situation further, making it easier for owners to let their properties on an assured shorthold tenancy and for landlords to get their properties back if tenants do not pay their rent or cause a nuisance to local people.
    My hon. Friend went into some detail about his ideas for tackling these problems, such as appointing an empty property officer. I hope that he will not mind if I do not go into the details of his proposals. I know that my hon. Friend has had some interesting discussions about them. I assure him that we are anxious to see the records of some local authorities improve in this field. We want the worst performers to try to lift their standards to those of the best, who have set a good example in this area. The hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) seems unable to restrain himself, so I shall give way.
    Mr. Nick Raynsford: I have restrained myself from commenting in the debate so far. I apologise to the hon. Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) for arriving late to the Chamber owing to a prior housing engagement. Nevertheless, I told him that I was keen to be present for the debate. I welcome his initiative in raising the issue of empty properties. As to the percentage of properties that are currently void, no local authority in the country has as bad a record as some Government Departments. I hope that the Minister will adopt the view that the Government should take the lead by putting their own house in order before they lecture others about the proportion of empty properties.
    Mr. Clappison: I have already set out our approach to that situation, and the emphasis that we place on Government Departments' minimising the number of empty properties. However, I cannot allow to pass without comment the fact that the performances of local authorities vary widely in this area, as my hon. Friend correctly pointed out in his speech. The fact that some authorities are not reaching the standards of the best authorities means that hundreds—in some cases, even a thousand—properties are lying empty at a time of housing need.
    Figures issued recently show the different performances of local authorities. The London borough of Islington has slightly more than 4 per cent. management vacancies, which is approximately twice the average for England. Other prominent offenders are Blackburn with 3.59 per cent., Tameside with 2.73 per cent., and Trafford with 2.74 per cent. They are percentages, but we will get some idea of the housing need if we look at the absolute figures. Some 1,484 properties are standing empty in Islington, 408 in Blackburn, 510 in Tameside and 320 in Trafford—nearly 3,000 potential homes. Other authorities in a

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    similar position to those authorities manage to achieve a much better rate. It would be possible for the authorities to meet the housing needs of many hundreds of people.
    Mr. Raynsford: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This is a Back-Bench Adjournment debate, and it should not be abused by Front Benchers.
    Mr. Clappison: I hope that I have answered my hon. Friend's points and the concerns that he expressed about local authorities. While I do not want to go into all the details, we think that local authorities have an important role to play and we want them to meet high standards.
    We regard empty property strategies as important, and we encourage local authorities to include a means of dealing with those properties in their housing strategies. We have given them every encouragement in that regard.
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    My hon. Friend mentioned the Empty Homes Agency, which was launched in 1992 by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), the present Secretary of State for Transport. My Department is part funding the agency for three years to work with local authorities to develop empty property strategies. The agency has made considerable progress: it is in contact with more than 250 authorities, some 160 of which are now taking specific action to reduce the number of empty properties in their areas. I am confident that that number will continue to grow.
    We are playing an active role in addressing the problem on several fronts. It is a very important subject, and my hon. Friend has done the House a service by raising it this evening and by advancing his interesting, innovative and well-thought-out ideas.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes past Ten o'clock.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Scottish Grand Committee
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what has been the cost to public funds of the attendance of(a) Ministers and (b) officials of his Department at meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee in Scotland since December 1994; and if he will list the meetings of the Committee which (a) and (b) have attended, indicating the cost of attendance and the names of those who attended. [16571]

  Mr. Howard
  No Ministers or officials from the Home Office have attended a meeting of the Scottish Grand Committee.

  Young Offenders
  Mr. George Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what evaluation he has made of the effectiveness of diversion schemes for young offenders. [16869]

  Mr. Maclean
  A recent evaluation by the Home Office of the Milton Keynes retail theft initiative, which aims to help young offenders convicted of shoplifting resist further offending, showed a reoffending rate of 3 per cent. for first-time offenders attending the scheme, compared with 35 per cent. for first-time offenders dealt with in other ways. Evaluations of motor projects and physically demanding programmes run by probation services are currently under way.

  Interception of Communications
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 12 February,Official Report, column 215, what foreign organisations are permitted to receive data from the UK Cellnet system under existing interception of communications agreements. [16802]

  Mr. Howard
  The United Kingdom is not a signatory to any international agreements expressly providing for material obtained by the interception of communications to be passed to foreign organisations. On occasion, overseas law enforcement agencies may apply, through Interpol, for information concerning the subscriber to a particular telephone number, and requests may be received from overseas prosecuting or judicial authorities for data to be used in evidence, in which case an application may be made to a court for it to be produced under the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990.
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  The response by network operators to requests for data by foreign organisations is governed by their obligations regarding customer confidentiality under the Data Protection Act 1984, the Telecommunications Act 1984 and the terms of their operating licences.

  Environmental Audit (Departmental Buildings)
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the ways in which his Department has demonstrated the ability to improve efficiency and competitiveness through an environmental audit of the waste management within those buildings his Department occupies; and if he will make a statement. [16417]

  Mr. Howard
  My Department is committed to using the resources entrusted to it to secure best value for money at the least possible cost to the environment. The "Home Office Green Housekeeping Strategy", published in August 1993, requires that property managers carry out an annual audit against environmental objectives which include waste management. Home Office waste management initiatives currently focus mainly on the recycling of paper, aluminium cans and toner cartridges.

  Environmental guidance material promulgated to the Department's property managers has included the Environmental Agency's "Do-it-Yourself Environmental Performance Checklist", a draft of which was distributed on 9 August 1996, and the Department of the Environment's "Waste Guide", circulated on 4 November 1996.

  Hazardous Materials (Departmental Buildings)
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment his Department has made of the presence of(a) hazardous materials and (b) ozone-depleting substances within those buildings which his Department occupies; and if he will make a statement. [16275]

  Mr. Howard
  No central assessment has been made of the presence of hazardous or ozone-depleting substances within the buildings occupied by my Department. However, in accordance with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1988 and asbestos regulations, all managers are required to ensure that appropriate records of hazardous substances are maintained in buildings for which they are responsible. The Home Office continues to provide relevant training for this. Similarly, the Home Office's green housekeeping strategy requires local managers to be alert to the existence of ozone-depleting substances and to any opportunity of phasing these out.

  African National Congress (Office Bombing)
  Mr. Hain
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement about the progress of the police investigation into the bombing of the London office of the African National Congress in 1982. [16456]

  Mr. Howard
  I understand that the investigation is continuing. This has included interviews with a large number of people in South Africa, and is taking account of the disclosures which continue to be made in South Africa. When it is possible to conclude the police
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  investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service will complete its own review of the evidence and advise the police accordingly.

  Closed Circuit Television
  Mr. Brian David Jenkins
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the effect on the level of street crime in south-east Staffordshire of the introduction of closed circuit television in Tamworth. [17198]

  Mr. Maclean
  Information from the local police indicates that, since the introduction of closed circuit television in Tamworth on 1 January 1996, there has been a 15 per cent. reduction in offences of robbery, and reductions of 59 per cent. in thefts from, and 34 per cent in thefts of, motor vehicles. Overall, crime in the area covered by the cameras has fallen by 29 per cent. Furthermore, overall recorded crime for the whole police sub-division fell by 17 per cent. in 1996 compared with the previous year.

  Mr. Jenkins
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what analysis he has made of the success of the introduction of closed circuit television in reducing street crime in south-east Staffordshire relative to other west midlands areas. [17199]

  Mr. Maclean
  None. Data are not collected in a format which would enable such an analysis to be made.

  Deaths in Custody
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if it is the policy of the Metropolitan police to make available (i) all relevant information which they have and (ii) the relevant Police Complaints Authority report to(a) the coroner conducting an inquest into a death in police custody and (b) the next of kin of the deceased person; in what circumstances such documents are not made available; and if he will make a statement. [17053]

  Mr. Maclean
  I understand from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that the Metropolitan police make all relevant information available, including the Police Complaints Authority report, to the coroner for use at a public inquest into a death in police custody. The investigating officer does not have authority to disclose any documentation or evidential material to the next of kin without the direction of the coroner. However, I understand that the investigating officer will attempt to liaise informally with the next of kin or their legal representatives to keep them informed of the progress of the investigation.

  Electoral Fraud Prevention
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what plans the Government have to review the format of the absent voter forms to prevent fraud and misappropriation of proxy votes; [17137]

  (2) if he will instruct his Department to collate centrally the number of proxy votes at the next general election; [17135]

  (3) what steps are being taken to monitor the exercising of proxy votes in local government elections; [17139]
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  (4) what systems are in place to monitor the number of people claiming proxy votes in elections; and if he will make a statement; [17138]

  (5) if he will ensure the central collection of statistics on the use of proxy votes at local government elections. [17140]

  Mr. Sackville
  Absent voting application forms were amended in 1994 to ensure that electors indicate clearly whether they are applying to vote by post or proxy, and to ensure that all appointments of a proxy are signed by the elector. These amendments help to prevent fraud. The number of proxies appointed to vote by constituency in the general election will be published in the booklet "Election Expenses", printed by the Stationery Office after the election on the order of the House. Information relating to proxy voting at local government elections is not collected centrally, and there are no plans to do so.

  Arrests and Charges
  Mr. Boateng
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many(a) arrests and (b) charges were made by police forces in England and Wales in each of the past five years. [17119]

  Mr. Maclean
  Information on the number of arrests is given in the table. Data on the number of persons charged are not collected centrally. However, prosecution data are published in the Command Paper "Criminal Statistics, England and Wales 1995"—table 6A refers. Copies are in the Library.

  Number of persons arrested

  England and Wales

  Year

  Number

  1991

  1,729,121

  1992

  1,733,081

  1993

  1,702,101

  1994

  1,747,804

  1995

  1,708,851

  Sexual Violence
  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what resources are being provided annually for tackling the causes of sexual violence; and if he will make a statement; [16634]

  (2) if he will make it his policy to implement a national strategy to combat male sexual violence; [16635]

  (3) if he will provide financial assistance to the zero tolerance of sexual violence towards women media campaign; and if he will make a statement; [16636]

  (4) if he will set up an interdepartmental group on sexual violence against women and children to work in parallel with the interdepartmental group on domestic violence; and if he will make a statement; [16637]

  (5) what proposals he has to ensure the long-term funding of a national network of community-based women's centres providing advice and counselling to the victims of rape and incest; and if he will make a statement. [16658]
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  Mr. Maclean
  Substantial efforts are being devoted to tackling sexual offending in all its forms. The Government's current strategy includes: keeping regularly under review the robust framework of criminal offences which already exists, and moving as necessary to address new problems, for example, stalking; ensuring that the most serious repeat sexual and violent offenders receive life sentences, so that they are not released until it appears safe to do so; reviewing the maximum penalties currently available for sexual offences, with a view to ensuring that these remain adequate for dealing with the most serious instances; strengthening the powers of the police to monitor the movements of sex offenders, and their ability to prevent and detect sex offending; a vigorous crime prevention programme; the development of treatment programmes to help violent offenders, equivalent to the sex offender treatment programmes which have already been running for some time; a study of the reasons for low conviction rates in rape causes.

  Because this strategy consists of a range of different activities, often undertaken alongside other duties, by central Government, the criminal justice agencies, the social services, and the voluntary sector, it is not possible to give any meaningful estimate of the total resources devoted to this area.

  The remit of the interdepartmental group on domestic violence includes all instances of sexual violence that take place in a domestic setting, and we have no plans for any additional interdepartmental groups.

  The Government are also committed to helping the victims of sexual violence. We provide substantial funding—£11.682 million in 1996–97—to the national voluntary organisation Victim Support, which provides practical help and emotional support to all victims of crime and their families.

  There are no plans to fund a national support network specifically to help victims of rape and incest. The zero tolerance campaign, which was launched in Edinburgh, is a local rather than a Government project, although it received some initial financial support from Edinburgh safer cities project, which was then funded by the Scottish Office: there are no plans to make further Government funds available. Where the need arises, we initiate our own national campaigns, such as the domestic violence campaign, which was launched in 1994, and publications such as the "Practical Guide to Crime Prevention".

  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will review the criminal justice compensation scheme tariff system to give greater weight to the long-term emotional trauma suffered by women who are the victims of rape and sexual assault. [16657]

  Mr. Maclean
  We have made clear previously our intention to review the tariff of awards after three years.

  The present tariff was derived from examination of 20,000 awards made by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. It broadly reflects. Therefore, the level of damages payable under common law damages. The tariff awards for rape and sexual assault accordingly already include a significant element for the long-term trauma suffered by victims. Where, however, the mental injury is serious and permanent, the tariff provides for
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  £20,000 to be paid. In addition, if there are consequences for the victim's earning capacity and/or cost of medical care, additional compensation may be considered.

  Paedophiles and Sex Offenders
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 15 January,Official Report, column 267, how many names are contained on each of the lists relating to (a) paedophiles and (b) sex offenders. [17437]

  Mr. Maclean
  The National Criminal Intelligence Service paedophile intelligence database contains details of approximately 25,000 known or suspected paedophiles.

  Numbers of convicted and alleged paedophiles and sex offenders held on the Phoenix database, the microfiche collection of national criminal records, the consultancy service index and "List 99" cannot be identified separately.

  Mr. Robert G. Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will place in the Library a copy of the response from the Association of Chief Police Officers on the question of public disclosure of information on sex offenders. [17797]

  Mr. Maclean
  I have today placed a copy of the response in the Library.

  Jersey
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the performance of the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey; and what recent representations he has received on his performance. [17529]

  Mr. Sackville
  My right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State has this month received representations from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby. We have full confidence in the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey.

  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he gave permission for correspondence with his Department relating to the conduct of Senator Stuart Syzret to be published in full by the Jersey states. [17530]

  Mr. Sackville
  My right hon. and learned Friend has no objection to this correspondence being referred to in a report to the states of Jersey.

  Roisin McAliskey
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what factors underlay the decision to transfer Roisin McAliskey from Northern Ireland to Holloway prison; how many applications for bail have been made on her behalf since she has been in Holloway prison; what representations he has received concerning Ms McAliskey being returned to Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement. [17627]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  Roisin McAliskey was arrested in Belfast on the basis of a provisional arrest warrant issued by Bow Street magistrates court on 25 November under section 8 of the Extradition Act 1989. That Act makes no provision for a separate jurisdiction for Northern Ireland.
  133
  The court of committal under section 9 of the Extradition Act can remand a person in custody only to a prison in England or Wales.

  Applications for bail on Roisin McAliskey's behalf were made in hearings at Bow Street magistrates court on 4, 13 and 20 December 1996, and on 3 and 16 January 1997.

  Several inquiries have been received regarding the possibility of her transfer to prison in Northern Ireland: the powers under which she is detained allow only for her detention in England and Wales.

  Recharging Procedures
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will assess the advantages of changing the law to provide that a person may be charged with the same offence if the previous court case in respect of the same offence had not proceeded to the conclusion and a jury's decision; and if he will make a statement. [17404]

  Mr. Maclean
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: The law provides that a person cannot be tried for a crime in respect of which he has either been previously convicted or acquitted or could have been convicted on some previous indictment. Its purpose is to provide protection for individuals against repeated prosecutions for the same offence.

  However, a defendant may be prosecuted for the same offence in certain circumstances where previous proceedings have not been concluded: where the accused is discharged at committal proceedings; if the indictment has been quashed following a motion to quash; where the prosecution withdraws the summons in the magistrates court before the accused had pleaded; where an information is dismissed because the prosecutor did not appear before the magistrates court or where the information was so faulty in form and content that the accused could never have been in jeopardy of being convicted on it; where the prosecution serves a notice of discontinuance and if the jury was discharged from giving a verdict.

  Following the recent abandonment of the Whitemoor trial, my right hon. and learned Friend announced on 24 January that he was giving serious consideration to the possibility of legislation to provide for a review on appeal of decisions which bring a case to a final conclusion contrary to the submission of the prosecutor.

  Police Informants
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what disciplinary action has been instituted against individual officers of the Metropolitan police force and the immigration service in relation to the use of Jamaican nationals as informants. [17153]

  Mr. Maclean
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: I understand from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that no discipline cases have been brought against Metropolitan police officers. The immigration service has taken disciplinary action in respect of one immigration officer following an internal inquiry.

TREASURY

  Income Support
  Ms Corston
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the gross and net disposable average income for a family of two adults and two dependent children including one earner; and what was the combined average income entitlement to income support of such a family in Bristol, and in Great Britain, for each year since 1987. [15397]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  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 Tim Holt to Ms Jean Corston, dated 25 February 1997:
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me to reply as the Director of the Office for National Statistics to your recent question on gross and net disposable average income of a family.
  Data from the Family Expenditure Survey (FES) for the average gross normal weekly household income and average net disposable household income in 1993,1994–95 and 1995–96 for Great Britain are shown below in current prices. Data for earlier years could only be provided at a disproportionate cost. The FES is not designed to provide for areas smaller than standard statistical regions, so data for Bristol are not available.
  The FES records receipt of income support, not entitlement. I am advised by DSS statisticians that it is not possible to produce meaningful comparable figures for average income support entitlement. In the particular case of a family consisting of two married or cohabiting adults with two dependent children, there would be no entitlement to income support if one of the adults were working for 16 hours or more.

  Average weekly household income of households consisting of one man, one woman and two dependent children where there is one person who is self employed or a full-time employee

  Great Britain

  Gross income £

  Net disposable income £

  1993

  517

  405

  1994–95

  529

  411

  1995–96

  520

  401

  The figures are subject to sampling variations (which could affect the estimates by up to £30 either way); and have been rounded to the nearest pound.

  Government Borrowing (Scotland)
  Mr. Welsh
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan of 6 February,Official Report, column 681, what are the projected figures of the Scottish general Government borrowing requirement for each year between 1997–98 and 2001–02. [15688]

  Mr. Waldegrave
  [holding answer 13 February 1997]: Forecasts of the Scottish borrowing requirement are not available.

  Minimum Age Requirements
  Mr. Barry Field
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list the minimum age requirements his Department is responsible for enforcing. [15910]
  135
  Mrs. Angela Knight
  I am aware of no minimum age requirements which are enforced by the Chancellor's departments.

  Pension Plans
  Mr. Olner
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will estimate the savings which would accrue in the current year from reduced expenditure on tax relief paid on contributions made to appropriate personal pensions if(a) all and (b) half of those earning under £10,000 per annum who are currently opted out of the state earnings-related pensions scheme into APPs were to rejoin SERPS. [15590]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 14 February 1997]: The yield from reduced expenditure on tax relief for minimum contributions from the national insurance fund to appropriate personal pensions would be about £30 million for 1996–97 if all holders of APPs with earnings of under £10,000 per annum were to rejoin SERPS, and about half that amount if half of those were to rejoin SERPS.

  Distraint
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what powers the Commissioners of Taxes have to take a person's money, goods or chattels without a court order. [16104]

  Mr. Jack
  I assume that my hon. Friend is referring to powers available to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue—the board. The Inland Revenue is able to take tax defaulters' goods or chattels without a court order under its statutory powers of distraint. This is one of the legal processes available to the Inland Revenue to enable it to secure payment of outstanding taxes. Before taking distraint action for the amounts due, the taxpayer will have been sent a final demand giving warning of proceedings, as well as earlier written demands. In addition, the collector of taxes will in most cases have tried to make contact either by telephone or by a personal visit.

  Income Tax (European Union)
  Mr. Peter Griffiths
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the highest rate of income tax currently levied for each member country of the European Union; and at what level of income, in sterling equivalents, it becomes operative. [16433]

  Mr. Jack
  The information requested is provided in the table.

  EU member state

  Highest rate of income tax per cent.

  Level of income at which it becomes operative in £ sterling

  Austria

  50

  32,184

  Belgium

  55

  41,818

  Denmark

  62

  18,021

  Finland

  54–59

  30,114

  France

  56.8

  27,503

  Germany

  53

  37,165

  Greece

  45

  45,872

  Republic of Ireland

  48

  9,564

  Italy

  51

  122,399

  Luxembourg

  50

  22,325

  Netherlands

  60

  28,199

  136

  EU member state

  Highest rate of income tax per cent.

  Level of income at which it becomes operative in £ sterling

  Portugal

  40

  30,798

  Spain

  56

  52,964

  Sweden

  56

  13,413

  United Kingdom

  40

  25,501

  Environmental Audit (Departmental Buildings)
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list the ways in which his Department has demonstrated the ability to improve efficiency and competitiveness through an environmental audit of waste management within those buildings his Department occupies; and if he will make a statement. [16430]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  An environmental assessment using the Building Research Establishment "tool kit" has been carried out at the offices occupied by HM Treasury at Allington Towers in Victoria with a view to accreditation under ISO 14001. Officials are now considering the recommendations and ways of taking this forward. Extending the assessment to the main building in Parliament street—government offices, Great George street—will not be cost effective, given the proposed redevelopment and the short time we expect to remain in the building in its current configuration. The proposed redevelopment project places an obligation on the private sector partner to ensure that an "excellent" rating under the Building Research Establishment's environmental assessment method system is obtained. We intend to obtain a BREEAM rating for waste management once we reoccupy.

  Hazardous Materials (Departmental Buildings)
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what assessment his Department has made of the presence of(a) hazardous materials and (b) ozone-depleting substances within those buildings which his Department occupies; and if he will make a statement. [16283]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  All known asbestos is recorded in an asbestos register and Control of Substances Hazardous to Health—COSHH—registers, and data sheets are also held. Regular health and safety inspections, audits and tours are carried out to ensure compliance with COSHH regulations. All halon fire extinguishers have been replaced and regular checks for chlorofluorocarbon leakage detection are carried out on relevant departmental equipment.

  Unemployment Statistics
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will use the labour force survey as the basis for unemployment statistics. [16662]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  Estimates from the labour force survey on the internationally standard International Labour Organisation definition have been published by the Government on a quarterly basis since 1992—since April 1996 by the Office for National Statistics—and are
  137
  widely used for economic assessment along with the published monthly count of claimants of unemployment-related benefits.

  Profit-related Pay Schemes
  Mr. MacShane
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 7 February,Official Report, column 733, what is the total tax relief granted in respect of the profit-related pay schemes notified to the Inland Revenue (a) between September 1996 and the end of January 1997, (b) in 1996, (c) in 1995 and (d) in 1994. [17201]

  Mr. Jack
  The available information is in the table. This is based on the estimated total amount of profit-related pay which will be received for a profit period by participating employees in each scheme. The information is supplied on the application forms submitted by employers registering their schemes.

  Schemes registered in:

  Estimated cost of income tax relief £ million

  1 September 1996 to 31 January

  1,100

  1997

  1996

  1,650

  1995

  1,000

  1994

  550

  1 These figures are tentative and subject to a wide margin of error.

  Employment Statistics
  Mr. Clelland
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the proportion of(a) lone parents and (b) married women who are currently in work. [15749]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  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 Tim Holt to Mr. David Clelland, dated 25 February 1997:
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me to reply as the Director of the Office for National Statistics to your recent question on the proportion of lone parents and married mothers who are in employment.
  The estimates available for Great Britain from the summer 1996 Labour Force Survey are shown in the table below.

  Employment rate1 lone parents and married/cohabiting women with dependent children2 (Great Britain, Summer 1996)

  Per cent.

  All lone parents

  42.3

  Male lone parents

  51.0

  Female lone parents

  41.4

  Married/cohabiting mothers

  66.4

  Notes:

  1Those in employment as a percentage of all those in the relevant population.

  2Children aged 0–15 and 16–18 year olds in full-time education.

  Source:

  ONS, Labour Force Survey.

  Mortgage Interest Relief
  Mr. Welsh
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much mortgage interest relief at source cost in Scotland in(a) 1994–95 and (b) 1995–96; and what is his estimate of the cost in 1996; and what is his estimate of the cost in 1996–97. [17224]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: The cost of mortgage interest tax relief in Scotland was estimated to be £260 million in 1995–96. The amount of relief given through MIRAS—mortgage interest relief at source—was £250 million in 1994–95 and £190 million in 1995–96.

  These estimates are based on the regional distribution of the cost of mortgage interest relief from analyses of family expenditure surveys up to 1994. The estimates for 1995–96 are projections based on applying the same regional distribution as in 1994–95 to the total figure for 1995–96. It is not possible to provide reliable estimates below United Kingdom level for 1996–97.

  Fraud
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the number and value of fraud cases within(a) Government Departments, (b) agencies and (c) non-departmental public bodies reported to the Treasury in each of the last five years. [17644]

  Mr. Jack
  The number of value of fraud cases within Departments, agencies and non-departmental public bodies reported to the Treasury in the last five years are:

  Year

  Number of cases

  Total value £

  1991–92

  287

  1,536,900

  1992–93

  302

  2,108,900

  1993–94

  352

  1,688,500

  1994–95

  408

  2,124,700

  1995–96

  480

  2,848,700

  The data are provided by Departments in line with the requirements of chapter 37 of "Government Accounting" and cover frauds and suspected frauds committed by departmental and agency staff, including cases where staff have colluded with outsiders. The data include NDPB staff frauds where these have been reported by departments. However, complete data on frauds in NDPBs are not held centrally, nor are the data held centrally kept in a form which distinguishes between Departments and agencies. Copies of the Treasury's 1995–96 fraud report were placed in the Library of the House at the same time it was circulated to Departments.

  Privatisation (Administration Costs)
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what were the administration costs for the share offers relating to each privatisation since 1979 broken down by(a) selling and other commissions, (b) marketing, (c) receiving bank costs, (d) advisers' fees, (e) underwriting and (f) other costs; and in each case what was the total cost. [17643]

  Mr. Jack
  The costs of individual sales are included in National Audit Office reports on particular sales. Published reports are available in the Library of the
  139
  House. In addition, I refer to the replies given to the hon. Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong) on 23 March 1995, Official Report, columns 287–88, and on

  £million

  Commissions and fees

  Marketing costs and printing

  Receiving banks and logistics

  Advisers

  Total

  British Coal (1995)

  1—

  0.6

  2.4

  134

  37

  Genco2 (1995)

  29

  15

  9

  4

  57

  1Cost here are included in the figure for advisers.

  The estimated costs for the Railtrack sale were given in reply to a question from the hon. Member for York (Mr. Bayley) on 4 June 1996, Official Report, column 1429. The costs of the sale of British Energy will be reported to Parliament in the normal way in due course.

  This information relates to major privatisations. Information on all smaller sales is not collated centrally and could be collected only at disproportionate cost.

  Departmental Invoices
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many invoices owed by Government Departments to his Department have been lost in each of the last five years; and what has been the annual sum of money involved. [17523]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  The Treasury keeps records only of duplicate invoices that have been raised. Duplicates are raised where invoices have been mislaid, lost, are unreadable or have in some way been mutilated; it does not subdivide its records into these categories. The following breakdown shows the number of duplicate invoices raised in the years in question:

  1992–93

  1993–94

  1994–95

  1995–96

  1996–97

  Duplicates raised

  1

  9

  40

  9

  1Nil

  Value for year

  £335

  £8,820

  £39,143

  £20,017

  £0

  1To date.

  Single Premium Investment Insurance Bonds
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has to change the rules on the taxation of single premium investment insurance bonds; if he will estimate the yield of such a tax; and if he will make a statement. [17531]

  Mr. Jack
  The Government have no present plans to change the rules on the taxation of single premium investment insurance bonds. In November 1996 the Inland Revenue published a consultation paper containing a package of proposals, including draft clauses, for reforming the way a policy holder's profits from all kinds of long-term life insurances are taxed. No decisions will be taken until after the response to this public consultation has been fully considered and evaluated.

  Young People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list the percentage of 18 to 24-year-olds who are(a) full-time students, (b) in employment, (c) unemployed
  140
  16 May 1995, Official Report, columns 107–108, which contain available information on costs for the major sales. Costs for subsequent major share sales are:

  and (d) in other categories in (i) United Kingdom, (ii) France and (iii) Germany at the latest date for which information is available. [16779]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  [holding answer 20 February 1997]: 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 Tim Holt to Mr. Stephen Byers, dated 25 February 1997:
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me to reply as the Director of the Office for National Statistics to your recent question on the economic and educational status of 18–24 year olds in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
  The attached table gives estimates form the Labour Force Survey for the United Kingdom for spring 1996. Please note that full-time students can be employed, unemployed or economically inactive.
  Comparisons between European Union countries are published in the annual Eurostat publication Labour Force Survey Results. The latest edition is for 1995. Breakdowns by age are given for employment on table 18, unemployment on table 20 and economically inactive on table 22. Table 24 gives rates of participation in education for young people. Unfortunately the tables do not give the precise age group you have specified. This Eurostat publication is available in the House of Commons Library.

  Percentage of 18–24 year olds by economic and educational status (UK, Spring 1996)

  All persons of whom:

  Full time student

  Not full time student

  All persons of whom:

  100.0

  23.6

  76.4

  In employment

  64.7

  8.3

  56.4

  ILO unemployed

  10.5

  0.9

  9.7

  Inactive

  24.8

  14.4

  10.3

  Source

  ONS, Labour Force Survey.

  Income and Expenditure
  Sir Wyn Roberts
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what are the latest available figures for consumer expenditure per head in(a) Wales and (b) the United Kingdom; [17090]

  (2) what are the latest available figures for GDP per head in (a) Wales and (b) the United Kingdom; [17089]

  (3) what are the latest available figures for personal disposable income per head in (a) Wales and (b) the United Kingdom. [17091]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: 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.
  141
  Letter from Tim Holt to Sir Wyn Roberts, dated 25 February 1997:
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me as the Director of the Office for National Statistics to reply to your recent questions on the latest available figures for consumers' expenditure, personal disposable income and GDP per head for Wales and the United Kingdom.
  The latest information available on consumers' expenditure and personal disposable income per head relates to 1994 and was published in the May 1996 issue of Economic Trends. Estimates for 1995 are expected to be published in the June 1997 edition of Economic Trends.
  The latest available figures for GDP per head are for 1995, and were published in January/February 1997 issue of Economic Trends.
  Please note that the consumers' expenditure and personal income figures are consistent with the UK estimates published in the 1995 Blue Book, whilst the later GDP estimates are consistent with the 1996 Blue Book. GDP figures consistent with the 1995 Blue Book were published in the March 1996 edition of Economic Trends.
  Both Economic Trends and the Blue Book are available in the House of Commons Library.

  Unemployment-related Benefit
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) of 14 January,Official Report, columns 202–203, if he will express the number of people who have made at least one claim for unemployment-related benefits since April 1992 as a percentage of the working age population. [17429]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: 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 Tim Holt to Mr. Stephen Byers, dated 25 January 1997:
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me as the Director of the Office for National Statistics to reply to your recent question asking how many people have experienced at least one spell of claimant unemployment since April 1992, and express this as a percentage of the working age population.
  Between 1 April 1992 and 9 January 1997, an estimated 10,225,000 claimants in Great Britain experienced at least one spell of claimant unemployment. This represents approximately 27 per cent. of the population who were of working age at sometime over the period.

TRANSPORT

  Air Traffic Control
  Mrs. Anne Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects to make an announcement about the preferred bidder for the construction of the new Scottish centre air traffic control facility; when he expects it to become fully operational; and if he will make a statement. [17449]

  Mr. Bowls
  An announcement is intended to be made soon.

  The current expectation is that the centre will become operational in 2001. However, the timetable for the project will have to be finalised as part of the contract negotiations.

  M25 (Widening)
  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) what contracts have been let in respect of works relating to, or implementing the proposal to widen the M25 to 10 and 12 lanes between junctions 12 and 15; and if he will make a statement; [17639]

  (2) when he will respond to the objections lodged during summer 1996 to his plans to widen the M25 to 10 and 12 lanes between junctions 12 and 15; and if he will make a statement; [17641]

  (3) how many hon. Members representing constituencies in Surrey have objected to his proposals to widen the M25 to 10 and 12 lanes between junctions 12 and 15; [17638]

  (4) what plans he has to let contracts before 22 May in respect of works relating to, or implementing, the proposal to widen the M25 to 10 and 12 lanes between junctions 12 and 15; and if he will make a statement. [17640]

  Mr. Watts
  No contracts have been let for the widening of the M25 between junctions 12 and 15 and there are no plans to let any such contracts before 22 May.

  Representations received following publication of the environmental statement for the scheme are under consideration and an announcement will be made by the Secretary of State in due course. No hon. Member representing a constituency in Surrey has objected formally to the widening proposals.

  Bus Working Group
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will set out the work programmes of the four sub-groups of the bus working group. [17077]

  Mr. Watts
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: Three sub-groups are currently taking forward the work of the bus working group. The main items which have been considered at recent meetings, and which will be pursued in further discussions as appropriate, are as follows:
  Service provision and quality sub-group: the development of quality partnerships between bus operators and local authorities; strengthening the requirement for operators to demonstrate adequate financial standing; bus headway spacing; amendments to the five-minute rule on changes to registered timetables; encouraging good practice in handling customer complaints, and taking further steps to give a higher profile to bus services and encourage bus use.
  Passenger information sub-group: the development of a "practitioners' manual" on good practice on passenger information to follow up the publication last September of "Better Information for Bus Passengers"; provision of national and local contact points for information on bus services and developments in transport telematics.
  Bus priority sub-group: updating and revising the guidance to local authorities on bus priority measures; "Keeping Buses Moving", the revised version, will be published shortly.

  The sub-group on vehicle quality completed its work programme for the time being when it reported to the full bus working group at the end of 1995.

  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will ensure that the bus working group reviews the adequacy of bus operating companies' complaints procedures. [17078]
  143
  Mr. Watts
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: Steps to promote good practice by bus companies in dealing with customer complaints are already under consideration by the bus working group and its service provision and quality sub-group.

  Rail Franchises
  Mr. Keith Speed
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list the current investment programmes of the franchised train operating companies by(a) value and (b) equipment. [15708]

  Mr. Watts
  [holding answers 17 February 1997]: Rail franchisees are committed to an ambitious and extensive programme of investment both in rolling stock and in stations and other facilities. Their plans for new rolling stock investment, amounting to an estimated overall expenditure of £1.5 billion, include:
  Connex South East's plans to spend up to £400 million on a modern, air conditioned fleet for services in Kent, replacing all their slam door stock during the life of the franchise.
  Virgin Rail's commitment to spend an estimated £250 million to fulfil their commitment to replace Cross-Country's rolling stock fleet, and an estimated £500 million on a new fleet of tilting trains to reduce journey times on the InterCity west coast franchise.
  Great Western's £50 million refurbishment programme for its high speed train fleet, and a potential £20 million development programme to increase fleet flexibility. Great Western is to invest approximately £60 million replacing the entire North West Regional Railways mark 1 fleet.
  Stagecoach's planned £90 million order to replace some of the mark 1 trains in the South West Trains fleet.
  Chiltern's £12 million order for three four car new diesel multiple units to operate a 100 mph express service from London to Birmingham.
  144
  National Express Group's plans to spend in the region of £40 million on a completely new fleet of rolling stock on Gatwick Express by 1999.
  National Express's commitment to spend an estimated £20 million on new air-conditioned rolling stock for Midland Main Line, to run additional stopping services between London and Derby and Nottingham.
  Prism's plans to spend an estimated £100 million on new rolling stock on LTS to replace its existing class 310 and 312 trains with stock.
  MTL's plans to spend £30 million introducing 16 new three car electric multiple units for Regional Railways North East in West Yorkshire.
  National Express plans to invest £100 million for new rolling stock for the ScotRail franchise.

  In general, franchise plans commit operators to providing specified services with new rolling stock by a certain date. Whilst the procurement, cost, financing and accounting treatment of the rolling stock needed are matters for them, it is expected that the new stock will in general be leased, not purchased outright, by franchisees. The commitments on Gatwick Express, LTS and Midland main line are tied to conditional longer franchise terms. In the event of new stock not being delivered by defined dates, these franchises will revert to a seven-year term. Further details of each of the commitments referred to, including when the rolling stock is required to be in service, can be found in individual franchise agreements or plans.

  In addition, franchisees have committed to over £100 million investment in station improvements, including the installation of closed circuit television, improved passenger accommodation and better disabled access.

  The spending commitments given are the best present estimates, and may be subject to change. There are changes in coverage and definition from those quoted for British Rail in previous years.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  Deferred Maintenance
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what steps the Government have taken to monitor the impact of the deferred maintenance provisions enacted under the Pensions Act 1995. [15742]

  Mr. Streeter
  The Department has arranged for the Court Service to record numbers of periodical payments orders made under the provisions of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, as amended by section 166 of the Pensions Act 1995, and to conduct a monitoring exercise of the terms of such orders. In addition, the Government are considering carrying out research in the summer to examine the impact of these provisions, although a fuller picture is unlikely to emerge until they have been in place for some time.

NATIONAL HERITAGE

  National Lottery Distributing Bodies
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will publish(a) the names of those (i) groups and (ii) individuals who advise the national lottery and each of its distributing bodies about applications and (b) their duties and terms of reference. [16537]

  Mr. Sproat
  The national lottery distributors consult a wide range of organisations. The main ones are: Adapt Trust, all national governing bodies of sport including the British Olympic Association, area museum councils, Cadw, Central Council for Physical Recreation, Countryside Council for Wales, Disability Action, Disability Scotland, Disability Wales, English Heritage, English Nature, PRISM fund for preservation and restoration of industrial and scientific material, local authorities, local sports councils, London Video Film Development Agency, Museums and Galleries Commission, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Northern Ireland Environment and Heritage Service—Natural Heritage, Northern Ireland Film Council, Northern Ireland Environment and Heritage Service—Built Heritage, regional arts boards, Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland, Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Royal Fine Art Commission, Scottish Natural Heritage, Scottish Film Production Fund, British Film Institute, Crafts Council, British Library, Countryside Commission, Theatres Trust, Victoria and Albert Museum/Museums and Galleries Commission purchase grant fund and wildlife trusts.

  The National Lottery Charities Board has a series of regional advisory panels drawn from the voluntary sector for their local knowledge. The board also uses expert advisors on their medical and social research panels, and international grants programme panel.

  In addition, the distributing bodies seeks advice from a very large number of individuals or specialist firms and
  146
  organisations in assessing projects or groups of projects. It would not be practical to identify and list all those, as 12,446 awards have now been made.

  It is for the distributing bodies to determine the duties and the terms of reference for each particular organisation or individual concerned and these will vary accordingly to the nature of the work required.

  Executive Agencies
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage how much her Department estimates it cost to establish each executive agency associated with her Department. [16966]

  Mr. Sproat
  My Department was not responsible for the work in establishing either of the executive agencies now associated with the Department of National Heritage. Prior to the establishment of the Department of National Heritage in April 1992, royal palaces and royal parks were the responsibility of the Department of the Environment.

  Equipment and Furniture
  Mr. Ian McCartney
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will list the cost and number of items of equipment and furniture that(a) have been stolen and (b) are otherwise unaccounted for from her Department and its agencies during the past 12 months, listing by name any such items valued at £5,000 or more, and showing information technology material separately. [17072]

  Mr. Sproat
  My Department has not had any items of equipment, furniture or information technology material, stolen or unaccounted for in the last 12 months.

  In respect of my agencies, one item valued at £400 has been stolen from the Royal Parks agency. Five items of IT-related furniture and equipment, valued at £1,014, have been stolen from the Historic Royal Palaces agency.

  Millennium Exhibition
  Mr. Spellar
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage, pursuant to her answer of 29 January,Official Report, column 253, what is the Millennium Commission's estimate of the number of visitors who will attend the exhibition; and what is the estimated total income which will be generated. [15711]

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  This is a matter for the Millennium Commission. I have written to the hon. Member in my capacity as chairman of the commission and I will arrange for copies of my reply to be placed in the Libraries of the House.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Hong Kong
  Mr. Faulds
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his oral answer of 15 January,Official Report, columns 311–12, if he will list the provisions of the joint declaration and the Basic Law which envisage an elected legislative council for Hong Kong. [17527]
  147
  Mr. Hanley
  Sentence 49 of the joint declaration and its annexes provides that:"The legislature of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be constituted by elections".
  Article 68 of the Basic Law provides that:
  "The Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be constituted by election.
  "The method for forming the Legislative Council shall be specified in the light of the actual situation in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress. The ultimate aim is the election of all the members of the Legislative Council by universal suffrage."
  "The specific method for forming the Legislative Council and its procedures for voting on bills and motions are prescribed in Annex II: "Method for the Formation of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Its Voting Procedures."

  Annex II to the Basic Law describes the planned development in the composition of the HKSAR Legislative Council in its second and third terms, progressing to election of 30 seats by functional constituency and 30 by geographic constituency through direct elections in the third term. It does not specify the level of development after the third term, but does stipulate a mechanism to enable such further development to be made.

  Copies of the joint declaration and the Basic Law have been placed in the Libraries of the House.

  Mr. Faulds
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what reasons the Chinese Government have given for regarding an elected legislative council for Hong Kong as contrary to the joint declaration and the Basic Law; what response the Government have made to the Chinese Government's reasons; and if he will place the communications between the two Governments on this subject in the Library. [17528]

  Mr. Hanley
  The Chinese Government have provided no convincing reasons for replacing the legislature elected openly and fairly in September 1995 by more than 1 million Hong Kong people with a body chosen by a hand-picked group of 400 people.

  The Government gave a full account of Sino-British exchanges on representative government in Hong Kong in its White Paper, "Representative Government in Hong Kong", Cmd 2432 of February 1994.

  The Government's position on the provisional legislature is set out in my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary's statement of 20 December 1996 which has been placed in the Libraries of the House.

  Roisin McAliskey
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has received from(a) the Government of the Irish Republic and (b) others about
  148
  the detention at HMP Holloway of Ms Roisin McAliskey; and if he will make a statement. [17626]

  Mr. Rifkind
  The Irish Foreign Minister, Mr. Spring, has raised the question of Roisin McAliskey with our ambassador in Dublin. We have also received a number of representations from Irish Members of Parliament, US Congressmen and other individuals.

  Government Hospitality Fund and Lancaster House
  Mr Fabricant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has for a prior options review of the Government hospitality fund and Lancaster house. [17798]

  Sir Nicholas Bonsor
  In accordance with the Government's "Competing for Quality" initiative, this Department is undertaking a review of the Government hospitality fund-HF-and Lancaster house. The review will consider:

  (i) the functions and key outputs of, and the resources currently employed by, the GHF and Lancaster house;

  (ii) whether these functions are necessary;

  (iii) whether it would be appropriate and feasible to abolish, privatise or contract-out (with or without an in-house bid), some or all of these functions;

  (iv) ways of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of GHF within the current or restructured arrangements:

  (v) arrangements for departmental supervision; and will make recommendations to Ministers.

  In order to help ensure that all options are considered fully, an interdepartmental advisory group will be established. Interested parties wishing to comment on Government hospitality are invited to write by 17 March to:

  Mr. D. Broad

  FCO

  Room 4.2.5

  1 Palace street

  London

  SW1E 5HE

EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

  Departmental Policies (Bournemouth)
  Mr. David Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on the effect of her Department's policies on the residents of Bournemouth since 1992, with special reference to the effects of changes in the resources provided in real terms. [14953]

  Mr. Paice
  The Department's policies have been aimed at supporting economic growth and improving the nation's competitiveness and quality of life by raising standards of educational achievement and skill and by promoting an efficient, effective and flexible labour market.

  We are creating new opportunities and acting to raise standards for every child in Bournemouth; extending

  149
  choice and diversity throughout the education system; and ensuring that more power is in the hands of governors and parents.

  Total funding for schools will increase by £833 million in 1997–98; 4.4 per cent. higher than 1996–97 levels.

  The new unitary authority of Bournemouth will receive £49,533 million in 1996–97, an increase of 3.4 per cent. over last year.

  Sound macro-economic policies have led to a continuous fall in unemployment over the last four years by over a million in the United Kingdom, and by 4,481 within the Bournemouth travel-to-work area.

  The Department has provided funding to the Dorset training and enterprise council which has enabled them to offer a full range of training programmes and business services for the people living in Dorset. For 1996–97, the level of funding was £16 million. Dorset TEC has been successful in the modern apprenticeship programme and there are 650 young people in the county currently training to NVQ level 3 or above.

  There are a number of single regeneration budget projects under way in Dorset, including a community focus scheme to develop the areas of Turlin moor in Poole and Boscombe in Bournemouth. This four-year project costing nearly £800,000 aims to raise and sustain the levels of persona, social and economic achievement of those living in these areas and to also reintegrate the two communities into the main urban economy.

  GCSE Grades
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what percentage and how many children (i) sat and (ii) obtained grades A to C for the first time in(a) maths and (b) English language GCSE in England in the latest year for which figures are available; and if she will make a statement. [17155]

  Mrs. Gillan
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: The information is not available in the precise form requested. However, the following table shows the number and percentage of 15-year-old pupils who attempted GCSE and achieved grades A* to C in (1) mathematics and (2) English in England in 1994–95.

  Mathematics

  English

  Number attempted (thousands)

  522.3

  524.3

  Number attempted as a percentage of 15-year-old pupils

  90

  91

  Number achieved grades A* to C (thousands)

  232.5

  291.4

  Number achieved grades A* to C as a percentage of 15-year-old pupils

  40

  50

  Further Education Funding
  Mr. Timms
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment on what date she was informed that the Further Education Funding Council 150
  intended to issue its letter to colleges dated 27 January, indicating the abolition of the demand-led element of further education funding. [17268]

  Mr. Paice
  On 24 January.

  Mr. Timms
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment she had made of the impact of abolishing the demand-led element of funding on the numbers of students in further education. [17269]

  Mr. Paice
  The Government's spending plans are intended to provide for the continuing growth of the further education sector. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I look to the Further Education Funding Council for England to review the options open to it in consultation with the further education sector.

  Skills Shortages
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, pursuant to her answer of 13 February,Official Report, columns 266–67, on skills shortages, if she will publish the results of her Department's monitoring of skills shortages surveys. [17649]

  Mr. Paice
  The results have been published in an article entitled "Skill Needs in Britain: 1996 Report" which appears on pages 73 to 76 of the February 1997 edition of "Labour Market Trends".

  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, pursuant to her answer of 13 February,Official Report, columns 266–67, on skills shortages when (a) the last and (b) the next funded survey of employers' recruitment difficulties will be produced. [17648]

  Mr. Paice
  The last funded survey covering employers' difficulties was published as "Skill Needs in Britain 1996" on 15 January 1997. The next survey is expected to be published in October 1997.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

  Developing Countries (Aid)
  Sir Irvine Patnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the current UN target for aid for developing countries; how many countries currently meet this target; and if he will make a statement. [17286]

  Dr. Liam Fox
  The UN target for official development assistance to developing countries, which are on part 1 of the OECD development assistance committee list, remains at 0.7 per cent. of GNP. Only four countries currently meet it: Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden. In 1995, the United Kingdom development programme accounted for 0.28 per cent. of GNP, slightly above the average for all donors of 0.27 per cent. Among the G7, the UK provides a greater proportion of GNP than the US, Japan and Italy.
  151
  The UK exceeds the UN target of 1 per cent. of GNP for combined official and private sector flows to developing countries, providing 1.38 per cent. of GNP for such assistance—second only to the Netherlands. These substantial resource flows, coupled with the UK's record of support for international debt relief initiatives, represent a significant contribution to reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development in the world's poorest countries.

  Aid Contributions
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much United Kingdom overseas aid is devoted to each of the 10 countries his Department estimates to be the poorest in the world. [17435]

  Dr. Liam Fox
  In 1995–96, the UK provided over £175 million in bilateral development assistance to the world's 10 poorest countries, as defined by GNP per capita in the 1996 world development report. This figure, which represents about 13 per cent. of the bilateral assistance programme, breaks down as follows—figures rounded up/down:

  £ million

  Uganda

  39.98

  Malawi

  35.71

  Tanzania

  29.72

  Ethiopia

  25.72

  Mozambique

  22.03

  Rwanda

  11.95

  Sierra Leone

  8.69

  Burundi

  0.79

  Madagascar

  0.64

  Chad

  0.11

  Total

  175.60

  These countries also benefit from the UK's substantial contributions to the multilateral development institutions. Imputed UK share of multilateral disbursements to the countries listed totalled over £163 million in 1994, the last year for which figures are available.

ENVIRONMENT

  Pollution
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what assessment he has made of the cost of incremental damage per tonne emitted of(a) benzene, (b) 1.3 butadiene, (c) carbon monoxide and (d) carbon dioxide. [17122]

  Mr. Clappison
  (a) Benzene, (b) 1.3 butadiene and (c) carbon monoxide are three of the air pollutants covered by the forthcoming UK national air quality strategy. No robust data are currently available for computing, in precise terms, the incremental damage per tonne emitted for each of the three pollutants. There has been much less work by academics on these three pollutants than for other pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and fine particles. However, a programme of work is being put in place to improve on the current information on costs and benefits, including information
  152
  on incremental damage costs per tonne of pollutant emitted, for the first review of the national air quality strategy in 1999.

  On (d) carbon dioxide, the UK has taken a very active part in the work of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. At the end of 1995, the report of the IPCC working group three was published, which reviewed and consolidated all the relevant literature on the economic and social dimensions of climate change. The marginal or incremental damages per tonne of CO, emitted were estimated to lie between $5 and $125. This range of marginal damage estimate is associated with an aggregated monetised damage due to climate change of 1.5 to 2 per cent. of world gross national product. There will be future work to refine these estimates.

  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) what evaluation his Department has made of the levels of(a) sulphur dioxide emissions and (b) nitrogen oxide emissions resulting from the combustion of petroleum coke in power stations; [17189] (2) what studies his Department has (a) made and (b) commissioned into petroleum coke fuels; what assessment it has made of the environmental effects of petroleum coke burned in United States power plants; and which EU regulations cover emissions resulting from the combustion of petroleum coke. [17188]

  Mr. Gummer
  My Department has not made or commissioned any studies on petroleum coke burning, since regulation of such burning is the responsibility of the Environment Agency. I understand that the agency has examined National Power's recent application to carry out limited trial burning of petroleum coke at Drax power station and that, having concluded that emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide will be within currently authorised limits for Drax, the agency has authorised the trial. I further understand that the Environment Agency spoke with its US counterparts in deciding whether to authorise the trials, to confirm that it had properly considered all relevant issues, and that the agency will be closely monitoring the trial results from Drax.

  Whilst they do not explicitly refer to petroleum coke, the EU air framework and large combustion plant directives (84/360/EC and 88/609/EC) govern the processes which involve its burning. These directives are given effect in England and Wales through the industrial pollution control regimes introduced by part I of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, under which the Environment Agency regulates Drax. The recently adopted directive on integrated pollution prevention and control (96/61/EC), which must be implemented in EU member states by 31 October 1999, will also goven the processes which burn petroleum coke. Once implemented, 96/61/EC will have the effect of repealing 84/360/EC.

  UN Environment Programme
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) for what reasons the United Kingdom has decided to withhold its contribution to the UN Environment Programme's budget; [17222]

  (2) if he will make a statement on (a) the matters discussed at and (b) the outcome of the recent annual meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi. [17223]
  153
  Mr. Gummer
  The Government's main objective at the governing council was to secure decisions which would help to restore confidence in the United Nations Environment Programme. We believe that UNEP needs a governing structure which provides the organisation with political guidance and a mandate which gives it a clear direction. Although satisfactory decisions were reached on the budgets for 1996–97 and 1998–99, the programme of work for 1998–99, and on chemicals, oceans, and biosafety, the governing council failed to reach agreement on reform of UNEP's governing structure and on a review of its mandate. Agreement on these issues is essential if UNEP is to re-establish itself as the key environmental institution in the UN system and to reverse the sharp decline in its funding.

  Satisfactory proposals on the governing structure and on UNEP's mandate were proposed by the president of the governing council and gathered a wide measure of support from developed and developing countries, but were resisted by some members of the Committee of Permanent Representatives. The governing council was suspended and I took the view that we should suspend our voluntary contribution to the environment fund until these issues are resolved. The United States and Spain took the same view. The Government are now actively seeking ways of resolving this problem with EU partners, other members of the governing council and the UNEP executive director.

  Drinking Water
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many prosecutions have been undertaken in the past year by the drinking water inspectorate in respect of alleged breaches by water companies of the legal standards for drinking water. [17190]

  Mr. Gummer
  The standards for drinking water quality in England and Wales are set in the Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 1989, as amended. These incorporate all the requirements of the European Community directive relating to the quality of water intended for human consumption (80/778/EEC) and some national standards. Many of the health-related standards are based on lifetime exposure and generally include wide safety margins.

  Compliance by the water companies with the requirements of the regulations is monitored by the drinking water inspectorate, which carries out an annual technical audit of each company. As part of the technical audit process, the inspectorate examines each water company's water quality test results for each treatment works, service reservoir and water supply zone and checks them against the standards. Each failure to meet the standards is assessed by the inspectorate. If necessary, the inspectorate will initiate enforcement action against a company and the company will provide a legally binding undertaking to carry out remedial work as quickly as possible. The inspectorate has taken more than 2,000 enforcement actions against water companies since it was formed in 1990. There is an improvement programme in place, costing over £3 billion since 1989, and at a result drinking water quality is higher than ever before. In 1995, nearly 3.2 million tests on drinking water were carried out and 99.5 per cent. of them met the standards.
  154
  Water companies can be prosecuted under section 70 of the Water Industry Act 1991 for supplying water unfit for human consumption and under regulation 28 of the Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 1989 for breaches of the regulations relating to the use of products, processes or substances in contact with drinking water. In both circumstances there is provision for a statutory defence of due diligence. Water unfit for human consumption is different from water marginally failing to meet the standards and relates to water that is unhealthy or unpalatable as a result of an incident.

  Water companies are required to report to the drinking water inspectorate incidents which affect or threaten to affect adversely drinking water quality. All such incidents are investigated by the inspectorate. Most are found to be minor and there have been only a very few instances in which water unfit for human consumption may have been supplied and in most of those there were no grounds for prosecution.

  In the past year, Thames Water Utilities Ltd. was prosecuted for supplying water unfit for human consumption to an area of south-west London. Previously, in 1995, Severn Trent Water Ltd. was prosecuted for supplying water unfit for human consumption and Dwr Cymru Cyfyngedig was prosecuted for an offence under regulation 28 of the Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 1989. A prosecution of South West Water Services Ltd. for allegedly supplying water unfit for human consumption is before the court at the moment.

  Organophosphates
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what research his Department has(a) commissioned and (b) evaluated into the environmental hazard associated with organophosphates. [16984]

  Mr. Gummer
  My Department has commissioned a number of research projects into the environmental impact of pesticides and veterinary medicines. This work includes consideration of organophosphate compounds and covers the development of environmental quality standards, impact on headwater streams, the transport of pesticides colloids, indirect effects on farmland birds, and the impact of sea-lice treatments on sea loch ecology. All research is evaluated during and upon completion of the work.

  Home Energy Efficiency Scheme
  Mr. Wicks
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) how many pensioner households not on income support or other means-tested benefits have made use of the home energy efficiency scheme since the 75 per cent. charge was introduced; [17307]

  (2) how many pensioner households have benefited from the home energy efficiency scheme since its inception. [17308]

  Mr. Clappison
  A total of 784,803 grants were paid to householders aged 60 or more between 1 April 1994 and 31 January 1997, the latest date for which data are available. Information is not available for the period between 1 January 1991 and 31 March 1994 because age was not then an eligibility criterion. At 31 January 1997,
  155
  2,995 grants had been paid at the 25 per cent. rate, introduced on 1 April 1996 to focus the scheme more on the most needy households.

  Building Regulations (Charges)
  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what conclusions he has reached following consultations on the proposed Building (Local Authority Charges) Regulations; and if he will make a statement. [17905]

  Mr. Robert B. Jones
  Responses to the consultation have demonstrated marked differences of view. The local authorities are seeking significantly greater flexibility in fee setting than would be possible within the constraints imposed by the regulation-making power in the Building Act 1984. On the other hand, developers, approved inspectors and others are concerned that even the flexibility proposed in these draft regulations would not offer them sufficient safeguards.

  I have therefore decided not to proceed with the making of the draft regulations on which I consulted. Instead, I propose to institute a broader review which can take account of the roles for private and public sector bodies in building control, and the consequential arrangements for paying for the services provided. Further details of this review will be announced in due course.

  It is Government policy that the fees charged by local authorities for their building control work should fully cover the expenditure incurred. These fees were last revised in October 1994. In parallel with the review referred to above, I therefore propose to consult shortly on a review of these fees, any revisions from which would take effect as soon as possible thereafter.

  Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive
  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what progress has been made on designating nitrate-sensitive areas required under the urban waste water treatment directive; and if he will make a statement. [17906]

  Mr. Robert B. Jones
  Following advice from the Environment Agency, we have identified particular stretches of the rivers Waveney, Blackwater and Great Ouse as sensitive areas on the basis of elevated nitrate levels under the terms of the urban waste treatment directive. The Environment Agency will set nitrogen reduction requirements in the discharge consents of eight sewage treatment works which discharge into the three sensitive areas. The requirements will come into effect by the end of 1998 in accordance with the directive. I have today placed in the Library of the House a map of the three sensitive areas and a list of the eight sewage treatment works, all of which are owned by Anglian Water Services. The map and the list will also be available for inspection at the Environment Agency's headquarters and its main regional offices.

  Modelling work by the Environment Agency has indicated that the eight sewage treatment works contribute less than 5 per cent. of the observed elevated nitrate levels in the three rivers. Identification of these sensitive areas implements the part of the urban waste water treatment directive which seeks to control nitrate levels in surface waters intended for the abstraction of drinking water.
  156
  The nitrogen reduction measures to be implemented under this directive will contribute to our overall aim to reduce nitrate pollution at the abstraction points on these three rivers. They will complement measures already being taken to reduce nitrate pollution from agriculture and other diffuse sources.

  The effect of this package of measures in the three rivers will be influenced by the crops grown, soil type, previous agricultural practices and by local weather conditions, particularly rainfall, in each of their catchments. The Environment Agency will continue to monitor nitrate concentrations in these rivers for the purpose of identifying whether additional measures are required.

PRIME MINISTER

  Government Policy (Lichfield)
  Mr. Fabricant
  To ask the Prime Minister what assessment he has made of the effects of Her Majesty's Government's policies on people and businesses in Lichfield. [15774]

  The Prime Minister
  The people and businesses of Lichfield are benefiting fully from the Government's policies. The UK is enjoying a stronger recovery than any other large European economy, the longest run of low inflation for nearly 50 years, and mortgage rates at their lowest levels for a generation. This year the UK is on course to have the fastest growth in the G7 group of leading industrial nations. It should come as no surprise that, in the past four years, unemployment in Lichfield has more than halved.

  Albania
  Mr. MacShane
  To ask the Prime Minister what official gifts he has received from the Albanian President. [16475]

  The Prime Minister
  Gifts received by Ministers in their official capacity are dealt with in accordance with the procedures set out in "Questions of Procedure for Ministers". The details are not made public.

  Engagements
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 25 February. [16138]

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

  Cardiff European Council
  Mr. Forman
  To ask the Prime Minister what the dates will be for the 1998 Cardiff European Council. [17887]

  The Prime Minister
  The dates will be 15 and 16 June 1998.

SCOTLAND

  Police Officers
  Ms Rachel Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many police officers there are currently per 10,000 population. [17235]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  On 30 June 1996, there were 28.2 police officers per 10,000 population in Scotland.

  Recorded Offences
  Ms Rachel Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many recorded offences there were in(a)1979, (b) 1991, (c) 1992, (d) 1995 and (e) the first six months of 1996. [17234]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: For statistical purposes the Scottish Office Home Department draws a distinction between crimes and offences. The information requested for both crimes and offences is set out in the table. Information for 1996 is not yet available.

  Crimes and offences recorded by the police, Scotland

  Crimes

  Offences

  1979

  346,680

  327,275

  1991

  592,774

  427,883

  1992

  589,562

  433,896

  1995

  502,802

  451,869

  Full details of the classification of crimes and offences can be found in the annexe to the Scottish Office statistical bulletin "Recorded Crime in Scotland 1995".

  Conviction Rates
  Ms Rachel Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the conviction rates for(a) 1979,(b)1991, (c) 1992 and (d) 1995. [17236]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: The number of persons with a charge proved as a percentage of the number of persons called to court in Scotland for the years 1979, 1991, 1992 and 1994 is 95 per cent., 90 per cent., and 89 per cent. respectively. Information for 1995 will be published in March.

  Legal Aid
  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to his answer of 17 February,Official Report, column 430, what information the Scottish Legal Aid Board collates on the number of fee earners and fees per fee earner per firm. [16980]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: The Scottish Legal Aid Board installed computer software in spring 1996 to make it possible for the solicitor acting in each case and the fees paid for each case to be identified. However, the procedure in solicitors' firms varies. In some, legal aid certificates are issued in the name of a senior partner rather than in the name of the solicitor actually handling the case. Moreover, some routine work, such as precognitions, may be handled by another solicitor in the firm. Thus, in the absence of detailed information
  158
  concerning the activities of individuals, it is not possible for the board to identify accurately the earnings of "fee earners" in each case.

  Mortgage Repossession Orders
  Ms Rachel Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many mortgage repossession orders there were for each court district for each quarter since the first quarter of 1991. [17233]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: Figures in relation to repossession of property by mortgage lenders have been collected by the courts only since a revised system of collecting civil judicial statistics was instituted on 1 January 1994. The figures for 1994 and 1995 and provisional figures for 1996 are shown in the following tables. Not all lenders who are granted decrees actually enforce them.

  Decrees granted in mortgage lender actions

  1994

  Totals

  Ql

  Q2

  Q3

  Q4

  Aberdeen

  0

  0

  1

  14

  15

  Airdrie

  37

  20

  25

  22

  104

  Alloa

  0

  5

  1

  6

  12

  Ayr

  16

  8

  0

  15

  39

  Arbroath

  5

  5

  2

  8

  20

  Banff

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Campbeltown

  3

  2

  0

  2

  7

  Cupar

  13

  7

  7

  6

  33

  Dingwall

  2

  2

  4

  7

  15

  Dornoch

  0

  2

  0

  1

  3

  Dumbarton

  13

  11

  10

  11

  45

  Dumfries

  11

  4

  8

  3

  26

  Dundee

  25

  17

  17

  7

  66

  Dunfermline

  28

  28

  22

  17

  95

  Dunoon

  0

  3

  9

  3

  15

  Duns

  1

  2

  0

  5

  8

  Edinburgh

  2

  31

  123

  85

  241

  Elgin

  8

  8

  5

  7

  28

  Falkirk

  24

  13

  7

  23

  67

  Forfar

  5

  2

  2

  0

  9

  Fort William

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Glasgow

  51

  125

  139

  159

  474

  Greenock

  0

  3

  0

  0

  3

  Haddington

  23

  13

  13

  9

  58

  Hamilton

  7

  38

  30

  32

  107

  Inverness

  3

  0

  4

  15

  22

  Jedburgh

  3

  0

  3

  5

  11

  Kilmarnock

  9

  9

  16

  54

  88

  Kirkcaldy

  12

  0

  25

  15

  52

  Kirkcudbright

  1

  3

  1

  6

  11

  Kirkwall

  0

  0

  3

  2

  5

  Lanark

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Lerwick

  1

  0

  1

  0

  2

  Linlithgow

  32

  22

  19

  18

  91

  Lochmaddy

  1

  0

  0

  1

  2

  Oban

  3

  0

  3

  2

  8

  Paisley

  51

  56

  41

  53

  201

  Peebles

  3

  3

  3

  1

  10

  Perth

  0

  7

  23

  13

  43

  Peterhead

  16

  12

  12

  8

  48

  Portree

  1

  1

  1

  1

  4

  Rothesay

  1

  1

  2

  0

  4

  Selkirk

  6

  3

  5

  4

  18

  Stirling

  3

  11

  10

  9

  33

  Stonehaven

  8

  5

  2

  4

  19

  Stornoway

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Stranraer

  5

  3

  4

  5

  17

  Tain

  1

  0

  1

  2

  4

  Wick

  0

  2

  0

  0

  2

  Totals

  434

  487

  604

  660

  2,185

  159

  Decrees granted in mortgage lender actions

  1995

  Totals

  Ql

  Q2

  Q3

  Q4

  Aberdeen

  5

  5

  24

  56

  90

  Airdrie

  22

  26

  29

  27

  104

  Alloa

  7

  9

  9

  11

  36

  Arbroath

  0

  3

  4

  0

  7

  Ayr

  37

  26

  25

  17

  105

  Banff

  1

  5

  5

  6

  17

  Campbeltown

  1

  3

  2

  5

  11

  Cupar

  11

  7

  8

  6

  32

  Dingwall

  4

  4

  5

  13

  26

  Dornoch

  1

  1

  1

  1

  4

  Dumbarton

  36

  26

  36

  27

  125

  Dumfries

  16

  16

  10

  16

  58

  Dundee

  28

  13

  16

  34

  91

  Dunfermline

  24

  26

  39

  33

  122

  Dunoon

  5

  8

  1

  0

  14

  Duns

  2

  1

  5

  2

  10

  Edinburgh

  111

  72

  125

  109

  417

  Elgin

  7

  9

  5

  9

  30

  Falkirk

  29

  29

  25

  25

  108

  Forfar

  2

  1

  0

  5

  8

  Fort William

  4

  0

  0

  0

  4

  Glasgow

  155

  178

  176

  175

  684

  Greenock

  0

  1

  1

  6

  8

  Haddington

  13

  5

  27

  18

  63

  Hamilton

  44

  60

  50

  67

  221

  Inverness

  13

  17

  13

  17

  60

  Jedburgh

  5

  6

  7

  2

  20

  Kilmarnock

  43

  42

  50

  57

  192

  Kirkcaldy

  23

  45

  27

  31

  126

  Kirkcudbright

  1

  2

  5

  3

  11

  Kirkwall

  0

  1

  3

  0

  4

  Lanark

  9

  12

  10

  16

  47

  Lerwick

  1

  0

  2

  1

  4

  Linlithgow

  45

  43

  51

  39

  178

  Lochmaddy

  0

  2

  0

  0

  2

  Oban

  2

  2

  3

  0

  7

  Paisley

  21

  36

  81

  78

  196

  Peebles

  2

  2

  1

  4

  9

  Perth

  8

  22

  25

  19

  74

  Peterhead

  4

  11

  9

  11

  35

  Portree

  0

  0

  1

  0

  1

  Rothsay

  0

  2

  0

  2

  4

  Selkirk

  2

  5

  6

  3

  16

  Stirling

  6

  11

  11

  9

  37

  Stonehaven

  8

  5

  8

  9

  30

  Stomoway

  0

  0

  0

  1

  1

  Stranraer

  3

  6

  7

  4

  20

  Tain

  2

  0

  3

  2

  7

  Wick

  0

  4

  6

  0

  10

  Totals

  763

  810

  937

  976

  3,486

  f

  Decrees granted in mortgage lender actions

  1996

  Totals

  Ql

  Q2

  Q3

  Q4

  Aberdeen

  51

  54

  46

  46

  197

  Airdrie

  36

  26

  37

  37

  136

  Alloa

  13

  5

  7

  6

  31

  Total capital receipts: 1990–91 to 1995–961,2

  £000s

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94

  1994–95

  31995–96

  Total Scotland

  441,153

  435,542

  455,690

  472,843

  604,744

  565,035

  Borders

  2,650

  554

  2,026

  912

  887

  2,135

  Central

  5,354

  3,893

  10,020

  2,489

  26,470

  16,634

  Dumfries and Galloway

  1,487

  1,473

  1,333

  1,632

  3,049

  26,471

  Fife

  2,023

  4,404

  3,664

  3,343

  4,167

  6,048

  Grampian

  15,857

  16,448

  18,283

  22,944

  45,280

  36,329

  Highland

  1,149

  732

  1,678

  731

  3,867

  1,419

  160

  Decrees granted in mortgage lender actions

  1996

  Q1

  Q2

  Q3

  Q4

  Totals

  Ayr

  27

  15

  25

  28

  95

  Arbroath

  0

  0

  4

  10

  14

  Banff

  5

  4

  3

  2

  14

  Campbeltown

  1

  2

  1

  3

  7

  Cupar

  18

  12

  14

  8

  52

  Dingwall

  3

  10

  1

  0

  14

  Dornoch

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1

  Dumbarton

  31

  31

  23

  16

  101

  Dumfries

  13

  23

  7

  11

  54

  Dundee

  41

  46

  40

  31

  158

  Dunfermline

  39

  31

  32

  30

  132

  Dunoon

  0

  0

  8

  5

  13

  Duns

  4

  5

  5

  2

  16

  Edinburgh

  133

  122

  139

  98

  492

  Elgin

  14

  17

  14

  11

  56

  Falkirk

  40

  25

  38

  36

  139

  Forfar

  7

  10

  5

  5

  27

  Fort William

  0

  2

  2

  2

  6

  Glasgow

  241

  211

  230

  175

  857

  Greenock

  16

  15

  14

  5

  50

  Haddington

  23

  24

  18

  16

  81

  Hamilton

  53

  81

  76

  42

  252

  Inverness

  21

  16

  13

  10

  60

  Jedburgh

  3

  9

  2

  7

  21

  Kilmarnock

  66

  60

  50

  38

  214

  Kirkcaldy

  40

  38

  36

  37

  151

  Kirkcudbright

  7

  4

  5

  2

  18

  Kirkwall

  5

  3

  4

  0

  12

  Lanark

  24

  10

  16

  8

  58

  Lerwick

  2

  0

  0

  1

  3

  Linlithgow

  71

  54

  37

  43

  205

  Lochmaddy

  1

  2

  1

  3

  7

  Oban

  8

  2

  2

  0

  12

  Paisley

  85

  44

  2

  39

  170

  Peebles

  3

  1

  4

  2

  10

  Perth

  33

  23

  29

  21

  106

  Peterhead

  17

  22

  15

  10

  64

  Portree

  3

  2

  1

  2

  8

  Rothesay

  0

  0

  0

  2

  2

  Selkirk

  3

  5

  3

  4

  15

  Stirling

  11

  9

  7

  4

  31

  Stonehaven

  15

  11

  8

  5

  39

  Stornoway

  9

  2

  1

  1

  13

  Stranraer

  2

  8

  5

  5

  20

  Tain

  4

  4

  4

  1

  13

  Wick

  0

  0

  2

  0

  2

  Totals

  1,242

  1,101

  1,036

  870

  4,249

  Capital Receipts
  Ms Rachel Squire
  To ask the Secretary of Scotland what were the total and usable capital receipts for each local authority in each year since 1990. [17231]

  Mr. Kynoch
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: Total capital receipts for each local authority in t he years from 1990–91 to 1995–96 are shown in the table in those years, capital receipts were usable in full.
  161

  Total capital receipts: 1990–91 to 1995–961,2

  £000s

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94

  1994–95

  11995–96

  Lothian

  6,920

  11,906

  10,552

  10,264

  25,196

  9,741

  Strathclyde

  17,354

  11,855

  25,487

  14,729

  51,288

  40,681

  Tayside

  5,102

  7,725

  3,432

  3,767

  5,004

  2,996

  Orkney

  1,458

  3,122

  1,432

  1,410

  4,157

  2,385

  Shetland

  797

  1,017

  1,070

  1,364

  3,297

  1,715

  Western Isles

  1,458

  1,518

  2,128

  1,860

  1,421

  3,998

  Berwickshire

  1,481

  872

  1,125

  1,283

  1,131

  677

  Ettrick and Lauderdale

  1,083

  1,126

  1,411

  1,271

  1,408

  1,034

  Roxburgh

  1,528

  1,595

  1,596

  2,028

  2,481

  758

  Tweeddale

  394

  466

  565

  928

  1,545

  1,618

  Clackmannan

  3,368

  4,704

  4,678

  3,974

  5,558

  5,550

  Falkirk

  13,528

  13,896

  14,184

  12,817

  13,744

  10,008

  Stirling

  7,367

  8,441

  10,196

  10,963

  10,751

  13,002

  Annandale and Eskdale

  2,221

  2,034

  2,344

  2,806

  2,750

  1,795

  Nithsdale

  2,123

  4,213

  4,638

  2,833

  2,808

  3,197

  Stewartry

  706

  1,010

  1,127

  1,479

  1,609

  1,121

  Wigtown

  1,423

  1,354

  2,429

  2,542

  2,467

  2,287

  Dunfermline

  8,148

  7,202

  6,501

  7,365

  8,049

  6,454

  Kirkcaldy

  7,670

  7,745

  8,468

  7,524

  7,843

  7,648

  North East Fife

  2,529

  4,150

  3,024

  3,489

  4,343

  2,620

  Aberdeen

  11,903

  15,578

  22,951

  21,903

  21,854

  21,684

  Banff and Buchan

  3,445

  4,563

  5,834

  5,502

  5,583

  5,105

  Gordon

  2,685

  4,249

  4,658

  6,689

  7,783

  6,886

  Kincardine and Deeside

  1,790

  1,990

  2,978

  3,566

  3,048

  3,571

  Moray

  6,492

  5,083

  4,620

  12,604

  8,329

  5,392

  Badenoch and Strathspey

  413

  815

  548

  1,224

  851

  966

  Caithness

  641

  679

  1,000

  1,064

  2,270

  1,335

  Inverness

  3,847

  2,816

  5,078

  3,557

  4,259

  3,583

  Lochaber

  1,871

  1,341

  2,305

  2,399

  2,141

  1,755

  Nairn

  367

  453

  472

  595

  787

  562

  Ross and Cromarty

  2,442

  3,907

  3,768

  3,811

  3,175

  3,070

  Skye and Lochalsh

  477

  479

  417

  730

  482

  581

  Sutherland

  410

  840

  884

  832

  1,110

  658

  East Lothian

  7,391

  8,755

  8,148

  8,037

  18,402

  5,927

  Edinburgh

  57,031

  72,234

  45,265

  69,214

  39,954

  38,653

  Midlothian

  6,007

  4,319

  4,268

  3,812

  5,310

  3,305

  West Lothian

  7,055

  6,713

  8,403

  8,834

  9,551

  12,762

  Argyll and Bute

  3,290

  4,250

  4,095

  4,144

  5,601

  4,199

  Bearsden and Milngavie

  2,040

  1,553

  976

  984

  865

  1,057

  Clydebank

  7,935

  5,533

  6,471

  4,543

  3,021

  1,957

  Clydesdale

  2,237

  2,325

  2,464

  2,849

  3,085

  4,132

  Cumbernauld and Kilsyth

  1.143

  1,418

  1,536

  1,429

  1,381

  1,388

  Cumnock and Doon Valley

  2,063

  2,078

  2,584

  3,103

  3,745

  2,930

  Cunninghame

  7,324

  7,624

  6,661

  6,765

  7,128

  6,843

  Dumbarton

  5,153

  3,579

  5,773

  5,292

  6,573

  4,107

  East Kilbride

  1,710

  1,488

  1,806

  1,329

  9,762

  12,346

  Eastwood

  1,326

  476

  869

  751

  720

  584

  Glasgow

  72,271

  47,701

  48,915

  52,644

  53,468

  72,465

  Hamilton

  10,605

  8,179

  14,077

  9,592

  14,867

  13,638

  Inverclyde

  5,720

  4,894

  8,925

  12,539

  11,215

  26,572

  Kilmarnock and Loudoun

  4,566

  4,443

  4,685

  4,002

  4,333

  4,722

  Kyle and Carrick

  6,939

  7,377

  7,734

  11,173

  10,698

  8,360

  Monklands

  11,404

  12,507

  11,878

  10,512

  21,619

  12,494

  Motherwell

  14,965

  12,424

  11,909

  12,511

  19,031

  11,835

  Renfrew

  15,156

  16,539

  16,649

  13,353

  16,480

  21,712

  Strathkelvin

  4,922

  6,828

  6,281

  5,492

  5,342

  4,974

  Angus

  3,555

  4,250

  4,068

  4,166

  5,080

  4,881

  Dundee

  20,251

  14,741

  14,007

  12,117

  15,975

  11,690

  Perth and Kinross

  6,395

  5,989

  7,489

  9,276

  7,386

  7,020

  Lothian and Borders Fire

  30

  5

  97

  33

  18

  3

  Highland and Islands Fire

  8

  40

  23

  11

  3

  10

  Lothian and Borders Police

  562

  870

  637

  2,980

  1,624

  835

  Northern Police

  138

  162

  93

  133

  265

  165

  Notes:

  1 These figures cover receipts on all services, including housing.

  2 Receipts of the joint police and tire boards are provided separately. The regional totals of those areas not operating a joint board include police and fire service receipts.

  3 Figures for 1995–96 are provisional as they are still subject to audit.

  Source:

  Capital payment and receipts returns provided to LGF statistics unit by local authorities.
  162

  Publicity
  Mr. Darling
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what estimate he has made of the total expenditure of his Department and its agencies on publicity for(a) 1995–96 and (b) 1996–97; what estimate he has made of such expenditure for 1997–98; and if he will break these figures down to indicate expenditure on (i) advertising and (ii) press and public relations. [14298]

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  [holding answer 4 February 1997]: Details of expenditure by my Department, including the agencies—Historic Scotland, Scottish Prison Service, Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency, Scottish Agricultural Science Agency, Scottish Office Pensions Agency, Student Awards Agency for Scotland—on advertising and publications for the year 1995–96, and estimated expenditure for the year 1996–97, is as follows. Publicity is defined as advertising, publications and exhibitions:

  1995–96 £

  Advertising

  Fire prevention

  266,000

  Crime prevention

  295,000

  Road safety

  370,000

  Right to buy

  168,000

  Electoral registration

  57,000

  Organ donors

  36,000

  Children's panels

  88,000

  GP call out

  129,000

  NHS prescription charges

  20,000

  The Scottish Office

  1,429,000

  The Scottish Office agencies: promoting

  Historic Scotland properties

  293,000

  Total advertising expenditure by The Scottish

  Office and the agencies

  1,722,000

  Publications/exhibitions (Projects costing over £5,000)

  Crime prevention

  7,180

  Business rates appeals

  5,800

  Patients charter

  5,300

  "Don't make it easy for the thief

  27,840

  Water and sewerage

  45,100

  Transitional arrangements of revaluation

  9,410

  Holiday crime

  14,460

  "Eggvert"

  11,760

  Neighbourhood watch

  6,590

  Scottish Office road safety plan

  12,710

  Sports policy documents

  5,430

  Housebreaking

  5,330

  School board election

  6,890

  Bullying

  31,620

  NHS annual report

  23,630

  "Frances the Firefly"

  9,200

  Fire prevention

  6,260

  Building control

  9,810

  Government expenditure and revenue

  6,330

  Fire action plan

  22,950

  Business crime reduction strategy

  14,380

  What to do after a death

  9,810

  Organ donor cards

  10,250

  Organ donor leaflets

  27,100

  Crime prevention

  7,050

  Holiday crime

  13,670

  Organ donor leaflets

  24,190

  NHS complaints

  6,180

  Family guide

  21,990

  Medical and dental practices complaints

  8,050

  Pre-school education initiative

  11,600

  Drugs and solvents misuse magazine

  7,180

  164

  1995–96 £

  Fire action plan

  14,900

  Expenditure on publications/exhibitions costing over £5,000

  449,950

  Expenditure on publications/exhibitions under £5,000

  340,690

  Total expenditure on publications/exhibitions by The Scottish Office

  790,640

  Total expenditure on publications/exhibitions by The Scottish Office agencies (promotional/public information material)

  265,290

  Total publications/exhibitions expenditure

  1,055,930

  Summary of expenditure

  Total advertising expenditure by The Scottish Office and the agencies

  1,722,000

  Total publications/exhibitions expenditure

  1,055,930

  Total expenditure by The Scottish Office and me agencies on publicity

  2,777,930

  1996–97 £

  Advertising

  Fire prevention

  238,000

  Crime prevention

  228,000

  Road safety

  316,000

  Right to buy

  228,000

  Electoral registration

  63,000

  Organ donors

  42,000

  Children's panels

  82,000

  Food safety

  536,000

  Severe weather warning

  118,000

  Pre-school education initiative

  950,000

  The Scottish Office

  2,801,000

  The Scottish Office agencies: promoting Historic Scotland properties

  279,000

  Total advertising expenditure by The Scottish

  Office and the agencies

  3,080,000

  Publications/exhibitions (amounts invoiced to 28 January 1997 for projects costing over £5,000)

  Pre 5 quality

  5,550

  CCTV

  6,690

  Speedwatch

  20,090

  PFI

  5,400

  NADICS

  7,250

  The Scottish Office annual report

  7,260

  Translation, pre-school education

  16,680

  Art in partnership

  6,920

  Cot death

  5,810

  Diet action plan

  80,660

  "Teaching in Scotland" recruitment

  9,880

  Curriculum for pre-school children

  8,840

  Government expenditure and revenue

  5,400

  Crime prevention

  6,600

  NHS annual report

  20,250

  Violent crime

  98,870

  Pre-school education initiative

  9,810

  Expenditure on publications/exhibitions costing over £5,000

  322,000

  Expenditure on publications/exhibitions under £5,000

  236,090

  Estimated expenditure for remainder of the financial year

  512,000

  Total expenditure on publications/exhibitions by The Scottish Office

  1,070,090

  165

  1996–97 £

  Total expenditure on publications/exhibitions by The Scottish Office agencies (promotional/public information material

  232,670

  Total publications/exhibitions expenditure

  1,302,760

  Summary of expenditure

  Total advertising expenditure by The Scottish Office and the agencies

  3,080,000

  Total publications/exhibitions expenditure

  1,302,760

  Total expenditure by The Scottish Office and the agencies on publicity

  4,382,760

  Running costs for the press and public relations function of the Scottish Office information directorate, the press office of Historic Scotland and the communications branch of the Scottish Prison Service are:

  1995–96: £1,694,000

  1996–97: £1,723,000.

  The estimated expenditure by my Department, including the agencies, on publicity for 1997–98 is £4.7 million of which £3.5 million is for advertising. The estimate for the departmental running costs of the Scottish Office information directorate, the press office of Historic Scotland and the communications branch of the Scottish Prison Service is £1.645 million.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

  Private Employment Agencies
  Mr. Hall
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will list the private employment agencies used by his Department and its agencies in each of the last three years for which figures are available, indicating(a) the names of the agencies, (b) the numbers employed by the agencies in work for his Department, (c) the total cost to his Department of using employment agencies and the median cost paid to the agency per person recruited and (d) the average length of contract for persons recruited via such agencies. [16174]

  Mr. Bates
  This answer covers the Cabinet Office, including the Office of Public Service and its executive agencies, and the Central Office of Information. The responsibility for using employment agencies has been delegated to line-managers. Consequently, some of the information requested is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The details available are as follows:

  1994–95

  (a) the Department used Josephine Sammons Ltd., Alfred Marks, Office Angels, Parkside Recruitment, Genesis Recruitment, Wise Employment, Reed Employment Services, Professional Recruitment, Blue Arrow, Library Association, Manpower, Personnel People, Service Service, Yare Executive Services, Michael Page, Mac Recruitment, Centre Girl, and Computer People;

  (b) figures not available;

  (c) figures not available;

  Other details are not available.

  166

  1995–96

  (a) the Department used Josephine Sammons Ltd., Alfred Marks, Forrest Recruitment, Forward Recruitment, Computer People, Link Recruitment, Wilmington Agency, Hays Accountancy, Office Angels, Parkside Recruitment, Accountancy Personnel, Professional Recruitment, Blue Arrow, Robert Walters Associates, Reed Employment Services, Zenith Accountancy, Michael Page, ORS, Kelly Industrial Services, Plan Personnel, Securicor Recruitment Services, Staff Reinforcement, HMS Personnel Services, Manpower, Personnel People, Service Service, and Yare Executive Services;

  (b) figures not available;

  (c) the Department spent £411,795.63 on employment agencies;

  Other details are not available.

  1996–97 (to date)

  (a) The Department used Josephine Sammons Ltd., Alfred Marks, Forrest Recruitment, Forward Recruitment, Computer People, Link Recruitment, Wilmington Agency, Office Angels, Parkside Recruitment, Genesis Recruitment, Professional Recruitment, Hays Accountancy, Robert Walters Associates, Reed Employment Services, Zenith Accountancy, Michael Page, ORS, Kelly Industrial Services, Plan Personnel, Securicor Recruitment Services, Staff Reinforcement, HMS Personnel Services, Brook Street, Connections, PSD Contracts, Chase Employment Agency, Albany Personnel, The Best Connection, Myriad Computer Services, Paragon, Manpower, and Service Service.

  (b) figures not available;

  (c) The Department has spent £1,081,315.09 on employment agencies;

  Other details are not available.

  Equipment and Furniture
  Mr. Ian McCartney
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will list the cost and number of items of equipment and furniture that(a) have been stolen and (b) are otherwise unaccounted for from his Department and its agencies during the past 12 months, listing by name any such items valued at £5,000 or more, and showing information technology material separately. [17075]

  Mr. Bates
  The information requested from Cabinet Office, its agencies and the Central Office of Information is as follows:

  Information technology equipment

  Non information technology equipment and furniture

  Value £

  Number of items

  Value £

  Number of items

  Cabinet Office and its agencies Stolen

  123,805

  11

  2,353

  12

  Unaccounted for

  Nil

  3,960

  5

  Central Office of Information Stolen

  216,193

  18

  78

  1

  Unaccounted for

  188

  2

  171

  7

  1 Includes one personal computer and modem costing £7,500.

  2 The result of a single theft of processors and memory chips.

  Legislation
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, pursuant to his answer of 17 December 1996,Official Report, column 492, when he expects his analysis of new regulations introduced since 1995 will be (a) completed and (b) available. [16937]
  167
  Mr. Freeman
  [holding answer 20 February 1997]: During 1996 Departments introduced 388 orders which affect business. Of these, 160 were deregulatory orders which contributed to the repeal or amendment of approximately 500 existing regulations during the year.

  The total number of fee and local provision orders was 130. I understand that the total number of orders which have no effect on business, such as road closure and commencement orders, was 2,903.

  Also, pursuant to the answer on 17 December, I have placed in the House Libraries the latest list of over 1,000 regulations that have been repealed or amended since 1993 under the Government's deregulation initiative. I have also sent a copy to the hon. Member.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Northern Ireland Grand Committee
  Mr. McNamara
  To ask the Lord President of the Council how many representations he has received and from whom concerning an extension of the role and powers of the Northern Ireland Grand Committee. [17125]

  Mr. Newton
  I have been asked about this on a number of occasions during questions on my weekly business statement.

  Travel Expenses
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Lord President of the Council what is his estimate of the total cost to public funds for the present financial year of travel by hon. Members(a) between their homes, constituencies and Parliament and (b) on other journeys for journeys by (i) car, (ii) rail and (iii) air. [16623]

  Mr. Newton
  The information as provided by the Fees Office is set out in the table.

  1996–97

  Estimated cost of travel between, home, constituency and Parliament1

  Estimated cost of other journeys2

  Car

  6,283,000.00

  147,000.00

  Rail

  993,000,00

  38,000.00

  Air

  856,000.00

  38,000.00

  Average domestic gas prices within the EU, including all taxes

  Country1

  Pence/k Wh2

  National currency/k Wh3 (cash terms)

  National currency/k Wh3,4(real terms)

  Real change 1986–1995 (per cent.)

  1986 (a)

  1995 (b)

  1986 (c)

  1995 (d)

  1986(e)

  1995 (f)

  (e) to (f)

  Finland

  0.852

  0.970

  0.063

  0.067

  0.080

  0.061

  -23.57

  Luxembourg5

  1.763

  1.625

  1.154

  0.756

  1.254

  0.658

  -47.51

  UK

  1.433

  1.791

  1.433

  1.791

  1.818

  1.493

  -17.89

  Netherlands

  1.922

  1.963

  0.069

  0.050

  0.072

  0.044

  -38.08

  Austria

  2.773

  2.507

  0.620

  0.399

  0.686

  0.337

  -50.87

  Ireland5

  3.252

  2.581

  0.036

  0.025

  0.040

  0.022

  -44.31

  Germany

  2.192

  2.600

  0.070

  0.059

  0.077

  0.049

  -35.91

  Belgium5

  2.147

  2.656

  1.405

  1.236

  1.540

  1.095

  -28.87

  France

  2.669

  2.728

  0.271

  0.215

  0.305

  0.192

  -36.89

  Spain

  3.172

  3.322

  6.512

  6.536

  8.370

  5.016

  -40.08

  Italy

  2.041

  3.635

  44.611

  93.456

  57.862

  73.12

  +26.38

  Denmark

  2,890

  3.768

  0.343

  0.333

  0.397

  0.303

  -23.59

  168
  1The estimated costs for travel between Home, constituency and Parliament does not include expenditure of £40,000 in respect of public road transport and rail season tickets but includes travel within the constituency.

  2 The estimated costs of other journeys excludes estimated expenditure of £250,000 in respect of European travel which is based on travel and subsistence costs combined.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Privatisation (Utilities)
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade to what extent prices for(a) electricity and (b) gas have fallen in real terms for residential users since privatisation; and what have been the trends in prices in other EU countries over the same period. [16903]

  Mr. Page
  Annual average domestic electricity prices fell by 2.5 per cent. in real terms—9.5 per cent. excluding VAT—between privatisation, in 1990, and 1996. In addition, domestic customers received a discount of £50 during 1996 following the privatisation of the National Grid Company. Between privatisation, in 1986 and 1996 annual average domestic gas prices fell by 20 per cent. in real terms—26 per cent. excluding VAT. Further, domestic gas consumers in the south-west, who have switched supplier following the introduction of competition, will see additional reductions of up to 20 per cent. over the first full year of competition.

  Domestic electricity prices in the UK are among the lowest in the European Union on a common sterling basis. Between 1990 and 1995, the latest year for which full data are available, the movement in real domestic electricity prices in the EU has varied from a 27 per cent. fall to a 15 per cent. increase—a 27 per cent. fall to a 9 per cent. rise excluding taxes. In this period, UK prices rose by around 0.5 per cent. but fell in 1996 by 3 per cent. Domestic gas prices in the UK were the lowest of major EU competitors in 1995, only Luxembourg and Finland had lower prices. Movements in real domestic gas prices in the EU between 1986 and 1995 have varied from a 51 per cent. fall to a 26 per cent. rise—falls of 51 to 18 per cent. excluding tax.

  Detailed data including taxes are provided in the tables.

  Source:Retail price index; Office for National Statistics. International Energy Agency.
  169

  Average domestic gas prices within the EU, including all taxes

  Country1

  Pence/k Wh2

  National currency/k Wh3 (cash terms)

  National currency/k Wh3,4 (real terms)

  /tea/ change 1986–1995 (per cent.)

  1986(a)

  1995(b)

  1986(c)

  1995(d)

  1986(e)

  1995(f)

  (e)to(f)

  Greece

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  Portugal

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  Sweden

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  Notes:

  1Countries ranked in ascending order by 1995 price in pence/k Wh.

  2 Prices converted to pence/k Wh using average exchange rates for 1986 and 1995.

  3urrencies used are as follows: Austria (Schillings). Belgium (Belgian Francs), Denmark (Crowns), Finland (Finnish Marks), France (French Francs), Germany (Marks), Greece (Drachmae), Ireland (Irish Pounds), Italy (Lire), Luxembourg (Luxembourg Francs), Netherlands (Guilders), Portugal (Escudos), Spain (Pesetas), Sweden (Swedish Crowns), UK (Pence).

  4Prices have been converted to real terms by deflating national currency data (columns C and D) by each countries GDP deflator at market prices.

  5 GDP deflator not available. All items consumer price indices used to deflate to real terms instead. n/a denotes not applicable. There is no or only very limited gas supply in Greece, Portugal and Sweden.

  Source:

  International Energy Agency.

  Average domestic electricity prices within the EU, including all taxes

  Country1

  Pence/k Wh2

  National currency/kWh3 (cash terms)

  National currency/kWh3,4 (cash terms)

  Real change 1990–95 (per cent.)

  1990(a)

  1995(b)

  1990(c)

  1995(d)

  1995(e)

  1990(f)

  (e) to (f)

  Sweden

  4.934

  5.984

  0.520

  0.674

  0.520

  0.568

  +9.29

  Finland

  5.780

  6.888

  0.393

  0.475

  0.393

  0.432

  +9.88

  Greece5

  6.636

  7.209

  18.736

  26.346

  18.736

  13.729

  -26.72

  UK

  6.670

  8.060

  6.670

  8.060

  6.670

  6.717

  +0.70

  Ireland5

  7.500

  8.371

  0.081

  0.082

  0.081

  0.073

  -9.80

  Netherlands

  6.583

  8.610

  0.213

  0.218

  0.213

  0.195

  -8.58

  Luxembourg5

  6.965

  9.267

  4.140

  4.310

  4.140

  3.754

  -9.32

  France

  8.434

  10.563

  0.817

  0.832

  0.817

  0.745

  -8.82

  Italy

  8.809

  10.723

  187.90

  275.70

  187.90

  215.73

  +14.81

  Austria6

  8.745

  10.882

  1.770

  1.900

  1.770

  1.641

  -7.30

  Portugal

  8.268

  11.448

  20.976

  27.090

  20.976

  18.242

  -13.03

  Belgium5,6

  9.576

  11.502

  5.692

  5.880

  5.692

  5.288

  -7.10

  Spain

  10.676

  12.366

  19.354

  24.325

  19.354

  18.668

  -3.54

  Germany

  9.204

  12.960

  0.265

  0.293

  0.265

  0.245

  -7.56

  Denmark

  9.242

  13.221

  1.018

  1.169

  1.018

  1.065

  +4.64

  Notes:

  1 Countries ranked in ascending order by 1995 price in pence/kWh.

  2 Prices converted to pence/kWh using average exchange rates for 1990 and 1995.

  3Currencies used are as follows: Austria (Schillings), Belgium (Belgian Francs), Denmark (Crowns), Finland (Finnish Marks), France (French Francs), Germany (Marks), Greece (Drachmae), Ireland (Irish Pounds), Italy (Lire), Luxembourg (Luxembourg Francs), Netherlands (Guilders), Portugal (Escudos), Spain (Pesetas), Sweden (Swedish Crowns), UK (Pence).

  4Prices have been converted to real terms by deflating national currency data (Columns C and D) by each country's GDP deflator at market prices.

  5 GDP deflator not available. All items consumer price indices used to deflate to real terms instead.

  61995 data not available. 1994 data used instead.

  Source:

  International Energy Agency.

  Executive Agencies
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how much his Department estimates it cost to establish each executive agency set up by his Department since the start of April 1992. [16962]

  Mr. Lang
  No executive agencies have been established by my Department since 1992. The Employment Tribunals Service will be launched as an agency in 1997–98. The costs of establishing the ETS are not separately identifiable, and for the most part will be met from within existing budgets for financial and strategic planning in this area.

  Companies House
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when the lease on the Companies House premises in London is due to expire; what its proposed new location is; how many staff will be employed at the new location and at what cost; and if he will make a statement. [17298]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  I have asked the chief executive of Companies House to reply to the hon. Member direct.

  Letter from John Holden to Mr. Nick Harvey, dated 25 February 1997:
  You recently tabled a question regarding the future of Companies House's premises in London. I have been asked to reply to you direct.

  171
  Companies House's lease on the property in City Road, London has a break at the landlord's option in December 1999. There is a requirement that parties give notice of any intention to break the lease by December 1998. Our present understanding is that the landlord will wish to exercise the break, and that we therefore need to plan to vacate the premises by then. No decisions have yet been made about a new location and the options are being reviewed as part of the planning process. We envisage that there will be at least one site in London which is readily accessible to users of Companies House services.
  Decisions about premises and staffing are bound up with our plans to move to new, electronic services for our customers which will mean, eventually, that we will not need to accommodate a microfiche library in London. However, we will only take this step once we are confident that we have a satisfactory set of alternative products to offer our customers. We do expect to be in this position before the end of 1999 and that we will therefore occupy a much smaller site in London.
  There were 72 permanent and 15 casual staff in the London office in March 1996 (full time equivalents); 25 of the permanent staff will reach retirement age between now and the year 2000. Our internal plans, which we have disclosed to staff and are discussing with them, include figures on possible staffing requirements once we have introduced the new technologies. However, these figures are indicative only and may well change as our plans are implemented. Our provisional planning assumption is that there will be a requirement for around 12 staff in London by the year 2000. However, I must stress that it is particularly difficult for me to be precise about the likely impact on staffing and related costs at the London office at this stage, since we have not yet established the nature of the presence which we will need in London beyond the turn of the century. One of the key uncertainties at present is how many users of our services will have switched to the on-line methods of information delivery we will be offering, and will, therefore, not need to make use of a physical presence.
  If I can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

  Metrication Regulations (Prosecutions)
  Mr. David Howell
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many prosecutions have been brought against traders since October 1995 for failure to comply with metrication regulations. [17180]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  Enforcement of the metrication provisions of the Weights and Measures Act 1985 and the Prices Act 1974 is the responsibility of local authority trading standards departments. To the best knowledge of the Department, there have thus far been no prosecutions of traders for failing to observe the requirements of the metrication regulations.

  Assistance to Business (West Midlands)
  Mr. Brian David Jenkins
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what support his Department currently gives to businesses located in the west midlands. [17194]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The Department provides a wide variety of business support measures which are available to west midlands enterprises, including regional selective assistance in assisted areas, the small firms merit award for research and technology, support for products under research, overseas trade services and subsidised services from business links.

  The Department has targeted its support measures towards small and medium-sized enterprises. Increasingly these measures are being designed with and delivered through local and sectoral partnerships. This is
  172
  demonstrated by the recent introduction of local competitiveness challenge and sectoral challenge schemes.

  Mr. Jenkins
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what was(a) the number of applications made for regional selective assistance, (b) the number approved,
  (c) the total financial value of the approved applications and (d) the average time taken to process and approve the applications since 1992 in each constituency in the west midlands. [17196]

  Mr. Taylor
  The information requested is as follows:

  Number of applications for regional selective assistance by parliamentary constituency in the West Midlands region since January 1992

  Constituency

  Number of applications

  Aldridge-Brownhills

  53

  Birmingham Edgbaston

  5

  Birmingham Erdington

  34

  Birmingham Hall Green

  3

  Birmingham Hodge Hill

  14

  Birmingham Ladywood

  81

  Birmingham Northfield

  8

  Birmingham Perry Barr

  16

  Birmingham Selly Oak

  14

  Birmingham Small Healh

  102

  Birmingham Sparkbrook

  65

  Birmingham Yardley

  37

  Bromsgrove

  23

  Cannock and Burnt wood

  43

  Coventry North East

  32

  Coventry North West

  15

  Coventry South East

  24

  Coventry South West

  13

  Dudley East

  60

  Dudley West

  60

  Halesowen and Stourbridge

  45

  Hereford

  3

  Ludlow

  9

  Meriden

  10

  Mid Staffordshire

  5

  Mid Worcestershire

  44

  North Warwickshire

  43

  Nuneaton

  23

  Rugby and Kenilworth

  3

  Solihull

  10

  South East Staffordshire

  39

  South Staffordshire

  22

  Stratford-on-Avon

  10

  Sutton Coldfield

  11

  The Wrekin

  32

  Unassigned

  31

  Walsall North

  42

  Walsall South

  62

  Warley East

  52

  Warley West

  50

  West Bromwich East

  14

  West Bromwich West

  73

  Wolverhampton North East

  35

  Wolverhampton South East

  77

  Wolverhampton South West

  21

  Wyre Forest

  17

  Total

  1,485

  173

  Number of applications for regional selective assistance approved and the value of offers by parliamentary constituency in the West Midlands since 1 January 1992

  Constituency

  Number of offers

  Value of offers £

  Aldridge-Brownhills

  39

  1,235,500

  Birmingham Edgbaston

  5

  459,500

  Birmingham Erdington

  22

  3,474,500

  Birmingham Hall Green

  2

  38,000

  Birmingham Hodge Hill

  10

  6,597,000

  Birmingham Ladywood

  56

  5,026,500

  Birmingham Northfield

  7

  2,634,000

  Birmingham Perry Barr

  12

  756,000

  Birmingham Selly Oak

  11

  2,002,000

  Birmingham Small Heath

  79

  6,120,400

  Birmingham Sparkbrook

  51

  8,013,500

  Birmingham Yardley

  31

  1,959,000

  Bromsgrove

  14

  1,540,000

  Cannock and Burntwood

  32

  1,349,100

  Coventry North East

  27

  1,995,000

  Coventry North West

  12

  11,246,000

  Coventry South East

  20

  2,347,000

  Coventy South West

  14

  575,000

  Dudley East

  48

  2,039,500

  Dudley West

  53

  2,054,500

  Halesowen and Stourbridge

  38

  1,021,000

  Hereford

  3

  57,000

  Ludlow

  6

  785,000

  Meriden

  7

  462,000

  Mid Staffordshire

  5

  107,500

  Mid Worcestershire

  33

  1,052,000

  North Warwickshire

  25

  769,000

  Nuneaton

  18

  3,180,000

  Rugby and Kenilworth

  2

  1,225,000

  Solihull

  8

  1,445,000

  South East Staffordshire

  29

  1,628,500

  South Staffordshire

  18

  885,500

  Stratford on Avon

  3

  59,500

  Sutton Coldfield

  9

  2,169,000

  The Wrekin

  18

  2,619,000

  Walsall North

  32

  921,000

  Walsall South

  47

  2,345,500

  Warley East

  39

  2,629,000

  Warley West

  36

  3,408,500

  West Bromwich East

  13

  762,000

  West Bromwich West

  51

  3,546,500

  Wolverhampton North East

  26

  5,439,000

  Wolverhampton South East

  64

  4,824,000

  Wolverhampton South West

  15

  2,150,000

  Wyre Forest

  11

  617,000

  Total

  105,569,500

  105,5569,500

  Information on the average time taken to process and approve applications for regional selective assistance by parliamentary constituency in the west midlands could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The following table shows performance in the west midlands assisted area as a whole since 1 April 1996 against the speed of service targets set out in the RSA application form.

  Size of application

  Working days to decide (target)

  Number of applications decided

  Number decided within deadline/ per cent.

  Less than £25,000

  25

  71

  64/71

  90.14

  £25,000 to £99,999

  35

  99

  94/99

  94.94

  £100,000 to £249,000

  45

  24

  21/24

  87.5

  £250,000 to £2 million

  60

  21

  20/21

  95.23

  174
  Mr. Jenkins
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list the value of grants awarded to(a) inward investors, (b) existing indigenous British companies and (c) new indigenous companies since 1992 for each constituency in the west midlands. [17195]

  Mr. Taylor
  The value of regional selective assistance offers made to foreign-owned companies in the west
  midlands since 1 January 1992 by parliamentary constituency is as follows:

  Constituency

  Value of offers £

  Aldridge-Brownhills

  135,000

  Birmingham Edgbaston

  12,000

  Birmingham Erdington

  2,030,000

  Birmingham Hodge Hill

  260,000

  Birmingham Ladywood

  830,000

  Birmingham Northfield

  950,000

  Birmingham Perry Barr

  250,000

  Birmingham Selly Oak

  965,000

  Birmingham Small Heath

  2,000,000

  Birmingham Sparkbrook

  4,740,000

  Birmingham Yardley

  240,000

  Cannock and Burnt wood

  345,000

  Coventry North East

  80,000

  Coventry North West

  8,970,000

  Coventry South East

  1,390,000

  Coventry South West

  45,000

  Dudley East

  315,000

  Dudley West

  570,000

  Halesowen and Stourbridge

  65,000

  Ludlow

  500,000

  Mid Worcestershire

  185,000

  Nuneaton

  2,250,000

  Rugby and Kenilworth

  1,200,000

  Solihull

  900,000

  South East Staffordshire

  1,010,000

  Sutton Coldfield

  1,370,000

  The Wrekin

  1,050,000

  Walsall North

  270,000

  Walsall South

  1,870,000

  Warley East

  1,040,000

  Warley West

  2,282,000

  West Bromwich West

  517,500

  Wolverhampton North East

  3,400,000

  Wolverhampton South East

  815,000

  Wolverhampton South West

  1,725,000

  Wyre Forest

  90,000

  Total

  44,666,500

  The value of regional selective assistance offers made to UK-owned companies in the west midlands since 1 January 1992 by parliamentary constituency is as follows:

  Constituency

  Value of offers £

  Aldridge-Brownhills

  1,150,500

  Birmingham Edgbaston

  447,500

  Birmingham Erdington

  1,499,500

  Birmingham Hall Green

  20,000

  Birmingham Hodge Hill

  6,107,000

  Birmingham Ladywood

  3,932,500

  Birmingham Northfield

  1,684,000

  Birmingham Perry Barr

  506,000

  Birmingham Selly Oak

  1,037,000

  Birmingham Small Heath

  3,870,400

  Birmingham Sparkbrook

  3,593,500

  Birmingham Yardley

  1,809,000

  Bromsgrove

  1,525,000

  175

  Constituency

  Value of offers £

  Cannock and Burntwood

  1,004,100

  Coventry North East

  1,915,000

  Coventry North West

  2,151,000

  Coventry South East

  947,000

  Coventry South West

  464,000

  Dudley East

  1,669,500

  Dudley West

  1,466500

  Halesowen and Stourbridge

  956,000

  Hereford

  57,000

  Ludlow

  285,000

  Meriden

  462,000

  Mid Staffordshire

  107,500

  Mid Worcestershire

  855,000

  North Warwickshire

  769,000

  Nuneaton

  930,000

  Rugby and Kenilworth

  25,000

  Solihull

  515,000

  South East Staffordshire

  593,500

  South Staffordshire

  873,500

  Stratford on Avon

  59,500

  Sutton Coldfield

  799,000

  The Wrekin

  1,569,000

  Walsall North

  646,000

  Walsall South

  1,280,500

  Warley East

  1,589,000

  Warley West

  1,876,500

  West Bromwich East

  762,000

  West Bromwich West

  2,454,000

  Wolverhampton North East

  1,946,000

  Wolverhampton South East

  3,762,000

  Wolverhampton South West

  425,000

  Wyre Forest

  527,000

  Total

  60,903,000

  The value of offers to UK-owned companies in the west midlands by parliamentary constituency since 1 January 1992 includes the following in respect of start-up companies:

  Constituency

  Value of offers £

  Aldridge-Brownhills

  185,000

  Birmingham Hodge Hill

  7,000

  Birmingham Ladywood

  1,089,000

  Birmingham Small Heath

  132,000

  Birmingham Sparkbrook

  60,000

  Birmingham Yardley

  164,000

  Bromsgrove

  175,000

  Cannock and Burntwood

  22,000

  Coventry North East

  20,000

  Coventry South East

  17,000

  Coventry South West

  5,000

  Dudley East

  151,000

  Dudley West

  123,000

  Halesowen and Stourbridge

  34,000

  Meriden

  15,000

  North Warwickshire

  295,000

  Nuneaton

  499,000

  Rugby and Kenilworth

  25,000

  Solihull

  15,000

  South-east Staffordshire

  124,000

  South Staffordshire

  127,000

  The Wrekin

  48,000

  Walsall North

  22,000

  Walsall South

  130,000

  Warley East

  125,000

  Warley West

  45,000

  West Bromwich East

  40,000

  West Bromwich West

  480,000

  Wolverhampton North East

  101,000

  176

  1996–97

  Value (£)

  Wolverhampton South East

  629,000

  Wolverhampton south West

  111,000

  Total

  5,017,500

  Equipment and Furniture
  Mr. Ian McCartney
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list the cost and number of items of equipment and furniture that(a) have been stolen and (b) are otherwise unaccounted for from his Department and its agencies during the past 12 months, listing by name any such items valued at £5,000 or more, and showing information technology material separately. [17066]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  Details of equipment stolen or otherwise unaccounted for from the Department during the last 12 months are as follows. All incidents involving losses exceeding £5,000 are listed individually, to the nearest £1,000.

  1996–97

  Value (£)

  IT equipment incidents

  34

  375,000

  Other equipment incidents

  1

  3,000

  Items over £5,000, as follows:

  Irreparable damage to personal computers

  60,000

  Theft of:

  Memory SIMMs

  20,000

  File Server

  100,000

  Memory SIMMs

  16,000

  Memory SIMMs

  7,000

  Theft of personal computers

  5,000

  File server

  100,000

  Theft of PC

  10,000

  Medical Research
  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what guidelines exist for the procedures to be adopted by the Medical Research Council when it seeks contributions to research work from individuals who might benefit from the outcome of that research. [17144]

  Mr. Ian Taylor
  External sponsors of research may frequently stand to benefit from the outcome of that research whether they be commercial organisations or Government Departments. The MRC finance guide, which is distributed to all unit directors, contains broad guidelines on seeking and managing external funding. The MRC's policy is to accept external funding only under explicit terms of contract which protect the council's independence. In particular, the council will not carry out research with external funding unless it fits clearly within its mission. Under its terms of contract, the council retains freedom to publish results, and there are restrictions on the use of results, and of the council's name, without prior consent.

  Workplace Bullying
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade (1) what is his Department's estimate of the number of working days per year lost as a result of workplace bullying; [17459]
  177
  (2) what is his Department's estimate of the annual cost of working days lost as a result of bullying in the workplace. [17458]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: Workplace bullying is an imprecise concept and therefore difficult to define. Legal remedies exist to deal with some forms of unreasonable behaviour in the workplace. It is impossible to estimate the number and cost of working days lost as a result of workplace bullying.

  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what action his Department is taking to tackle workplace bullying. [17467]

  Mr. Taylor
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: The Government would always encourage employers to ensure their employees are treated with due consideration. Legal remedies exist to deal with particular instances of unreasonable behaviour in the workplace.

  Publicity
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade (1) what was his Department's expenditure on contractors to provide publicity and news services for each agency and non-departmental public body in each year since 1979–80; [15368]

  (2) what was his Department's expenditure on staff employed full-time and part-time in each agency and non-departmental public body to provide (a) publicity and (b) work on press and media in each year since 1979–80. [15369]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  [holding answer 11 February 1997]: For the agencies, responsibility for expenditure on these areas and for staff resources devoted to them lies with the chief executives. I have asked them to reply direct. The information requested in respect of my Department's non-departmental public bodies is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Letter from Peter Joyce to Mr. Alan Milburn, dated 25 February 1997:
  You asked the President of the Board of Trade two questions about the Department of Trade and Industry's expenditure on contractors to provide publicity and news services; and on staff employed to provide publicity and work on press and media. I am replying in relation to The Insolvency Service.
  Official Receivers have a statutory obligation to advertise each compulsory corporate and personal insolvency in the London Gazette and one other newspaper; but this is not a Departmental expense as it is funded by the estate of the insolvent company/individual.
  Generally publicity material for The Insolvency Service is provided via the Department's central press office. This includes all press releases and notice of publication of for example the Insolvency General Annual Report and The Service's Agency Annual Report and Accounts. The Central Office of Information deals with publicity for Company Directors Disqualification matters.
  Costs charged to The Insolvency Service for the last two years have been:

  1994/95: Nil

  1995/96: £34,996.

  Figures for earlier years could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
  178
  The 1996/97 figures will not be available until the end of the current financial year.
  There are no staff employed full-time or part-time specifically to provide publicity and or to work on press and media issues. Any such work falls within general staff duties.

  Letter from John Holden to Mr. Alan Milburn, dated 25 February 1997:
  You recently asked the President of the Board of Trade about expenditure on publicity and news services. I am replying in respect of Companies House Executive Agency.
  External expenditure on publicity, including paid advertising, for each of the financial years since 1991–92 is set out below:

  1991–92: £332,000

  1992–93: £445,000

  1993–94: £307,000

  1994–95: £367,000

  1995–96: £353,000.

  These figures include the costs of various campaigns to encourage companies and their directors to meet their obligations to file promptly at Companies House.
  The staff effort devoted to publicity and press media activities has been approximately 3 full-time equivalents throughout the period. However this includes effort devoted to activities such as preparation of the Companies House Annual Report and Accounts, which currently derives from a statutory requirement, and other related matters. This is equivalent to a financial cost of some £75,000 a year.
  I regret that information about earlier years is only available at disproportionate cost.

  Letter from P. R. S. Hartnack to Mr. Alan Milburn, dated 25 February 1997:
  I am replying for the Patent Office to your Parliamentary Questions to the President of the Board of Trade on the use of contractors for publicity and news services and on the cost of civil service staff employed on such activities.
  Publicity press and media relations are part of the Patent Office's work on marketing and information. This work ranges from a Central Enquiry Unit which responds to questions from intellectual property specialists and the general public to a programme of Roadshows around Britain aimed at stimulating interest in patents and trade marks. In line with Government policy much of the specialised work connected with marketing and publicity is contracted out to the private sector. In 1995 the Patent Office's marketing and information work was reorganised and the expenditure on this activity in 1995/96 and subsequent years was as follows:

  Contracted out £

  Total budget including civil service staff costs £

  1995–96

  338,000

  1,012,000

  1996–97

  309,000

  948,000

  1997–981

  294,000

  935,000

  1 Planned.

  I regret that figures for 1979/80 onwards could only be provided at disproportionate cost. However the figures would not be directly comparable because of various reorganisations that have taken place in that time.

  Letter from Seton Bennett to Mr. Alan Milburn, dated 25 February 1997 The President of the Board of Trade has asked me to reply on behalf of the National Weights and Measures Laboratory to your questions about expenditure on contractors and employed staff providing publicity and news services.

  179
  This Agency does not employ contractors to provide these services, neither are there any full-time or part-time staff employed solely for such work. Three full-time staff have publicity activities included in their job descriptions among other responsibilities. It is therefore not possible to separate the cost associated with publicity and media work.

  Letter from Jim Norton to Mr. Alan Milburn, dated 25 February 1997:
  The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Corporate and Consumer Affairs, John Taylor, MP, has asked me to reply, on behalf of the Radiocommunications Agency, to your two questions concerning expenditure by contractors, and staff employment, in respect of publicity and news services since 1979–80.
  I am unable to supply any information before the inception of the Agency on 1st April 1990, prior to which the work of this Agency was undertaken by a Division of the Department of Trade and Industry.
  PQ 96/1170 - To ask the President of the Board of Trade, what was his Department's expenditure on contracts to provide publicity and news services for each Agency and non-departmental public body in each year since 1979–80.
  I am unable to provide a detailed breakdown with respect to the individual amounts spent by contractors on behalf of publicity and news services for the Agency since 1990, but I have listed below the total Agency expenditures for these combined items in each financial year. It is the Agency's policy to retain contractors to provide the bulk of the Agency's requirements for publicity and I can confirm that the majority of the expenditure shown was incurred by contractors on behalf of the Agency.

  Publicity and news service expenditure

  Financial year

  £

  1990–91

  140,511

  1991–92

  188,695

  1992–93

  228,123

  1993–94

  188,706

  1994–95

  211,634

  1995–96

  369,732

  PQ96/1176 - To ask the President of the Board of Trade, what was his Department's expenditure on staff employed full-time and part-time in each Agency and non-departmental public body to provide a) publicity and b) work on press and media in each year since 1979–80.
  From 1 April 1990 until December 1993, the Agency employed one member of staff on publicity matters, which was increased to two members of staff from January 1994. I am unable to provide a breakdown of staff salaries for the period, but the current costs are in the region £44,000.

  Mr. Y. Habanako
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what plans he has to seek the extradition of Mr. Y. Habanako; and if he will make a statement. [16915]

  The Attorney-General
  [holding answer 20 February 1997]: I have been asked to reply.

  I take the hon. Member's question to refer to Mr. Y. Hamanaka who is at present in custody in Japan having pleaded guilty to fraud and forgery. The Serious Fraud Office is also investigating suspected offences in relation to Sumitomo Corporation. The question of charges and possible extradition does not arise until that investigation has been completed.

HEALTH

  Executive Agencies
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much his Department estimates it cost to establish each executive agency set up by his Department since the start of April 1992. [16972]

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

  Lariam
  Ms Corston
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if his Department has considered the advice against the use of Lariam by aircrews contained in the Civil Aviation Authority's United Kingdom information circular of January 1995 in relation to the use of the drug by other visitors to overseas countries; and if he will make a statement. [17181]

  Mr. Malone
  Lariam is not recommended for people such as pilots and aircrews because of the possible side effects of dizziness and loss of fine precision movement, as advised by the manufacturer. This information was considered and included in the United Kingdom Health Departments' 1995 publication "Health Information for Overseas Travel", copies of which are available in the Library.

  Residential Homes (Coventry)
  Mr. Butcher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 11 February,Official Report, column 161, if he will investigate Coventry's half-way house pilot scheme to determine whether the allocation of patients to residential and nursing care home placements under the scheme is impartial, as between the profit and non-profit sector. [17054]

  Mr. Burns
  The placement of patients leaving the Coventry half-way house pilot scheme will be arranged in accordance with current national guidelines for the discharge of patients from national health service care and placements in residential accommodation. The scheme is due to end in May, when a full evaluation, including the views of patients, their families, carers and local general practitioners, will be carried out by Coventry health authority, the community health council and the Coventry department of social services.

  Dissolved NHS Trusts (Financial Arrangements)
  Mr. Congdon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what financial arrangements are being made in respect of NHS trusts dissolved on 1 April 1996. [17889]

  Mr. Dorrell
  The national health service trusts dissolved on 1 April 1996 were reconfigured with parts, or all, of other trusts or directly managed units. I propose to create new originating debt for six new trusts equal to the net assets transferred to them and to remit the outstanding originating debt of the dissolved trusts.

  These operations involve no overall loss to the Exchequer. Her Majesty's Treasury has today presented a minute to the House giving the particulars and circumstances of the proposed remission which it has approved in principle.

  Meningitis
  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what funding was provided(a) for the current year and (b) for each of the previous five years for increasing awareness of the early symptoms of meningitis; [16655]

  (2) what funds are available to local community-based groups that provide advice and counselling to victims of meningitis and their families and to groups which help to increase awareness of the symptoms of meningitis; and if he will make a statement; [16652]

  (3) if he will institute a programme of awareness amongst child minders, pre-school playgroups, nurseries, schools and places of further and higher education regarding identifying the early symptoms of meningitis and providing appropriate immediate treatment. [16653]

  Mr. Horam
  The Department of Health takes meningitis very seriously and recognises that appropriate awareness of the disease and parental alertness remain the best general protection. Meningococcal infections peak with most cases in children under one year; there is a second, smaller, peak in later teenagers. Information is, therefore, targeted in these areas. Health visitors provide new parents with the Health Education Authority's leaflet "A Guide to Childhood Immunisations", which includes advice on recognising the signs and symptoms of meningitis. Advice on recognising meningitis can also be found in the HEA's "Birth to Five" book which is issued to all first-time parents.

  The Department of Health and the National Meningitis Trust collaborated in providing an information leaflet for parents of small children and teenagers. Public information leaflets on meningitis and septicaemia were sent to all general practitioners to be made available to the public. The HEA has also produced a leaflet and

  Public health laboratory service meningococcal reference unit isolates of neisseria meningitidis by age group

  Age group

  Year

  under 5

  5 to 14

  15 to 24

  25+

  Not known

  Total

  1988

  672

  161

  260

  178

  83

  1,354

  1989

  665

  165

  272

  197

  54

  1,353

  1990

  745

  169

  283

  231

  70

  1,498

  1991

  716

  155

  232

  187

  108

  1,398

  1992

  687

  159

  229

  165

  61

  1,301

  1993

  670

  161

  189

  210

  68

  1,298

  1994

  591

  134

  184

  171

  48

  1,128

  1995

  707

  195

  300

  237

  18

  1,457

  1996

  647

  183

  336

  270

  56

  1,492

  Meningococcal infections; deaths by age groups

  age group

  Year

  under 5

  5 to 14

  15 to 24

  25+

  Total

  1988

  88

  21

  28

  37

  174

  1989

  97

  20

  41

  45

  203

  1990

  93

  15

  24

  37

  169

  1991

  92

  18

  34

  26

  170

  1992

  72

  15

  31

  44

  162

  1993

  81

  20

  23

  49

  173

  1994

  77

  8

  24

  41

  150

  1995

  88

  19

  46

  43

  196

  Source:

  Office for National Statistics Mortality Statistics: Cause, Series DH2.
  182
  accompanying poster, "Look out for your mate", targeted at students which has been very widely distributed to colleges and universities. The chief medical officer held a press briefing for journalists last year to raise further public, professional and media awareness of meningitis. The chief medical officer also wrote to all doctors in January giving up-to-date advice on the early diagnosis of suspected cases of meningococcal infection and on the need for antibiotic treatment and urgent referral to hospital.

  The Department of Health provides funding in a number of ways, for example to the National Meningitis Trust and the Meningitis Research Foundation to support their valuable information, advisory and support work. These organisations are also active in raising public awareness immediately prior to and during the winter peak and in providing support to those who have experienced meningitis. Through the Department's section 64 scheme, the National Meningitis Trust was awarded £15,000 in 1996–97 and the Meningitis Research Foundation was awarded £19,840 in 1996–97. Both are national organisations with local community branches.

  The costs of preparing, printing and distributing leaflets and posters such as "A Guide to Childhood Immunisations", which is updated annually, are produced each year, and more than 1 million "Look out for your mate" leaflets and 9,300 posters have been distributed since October 1996.

  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people by age group suffered from meningitis during the past 10 years; how many of those cases resulted in fatalities or contributed to death; and of he will make a statement. [16654]

  Mr. Horam
  The number of isolates of Neisseria meningitidis and number of deaths by age group are given in the tables. The information is available only from 1988; for deaths, data are to 1995.

  Human Growth Hormone Treatment
  Ms Roseanna Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what monitoring for Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease he has undertaken among patients who have received human growth hormone treatment; and if he will make a statement. [17259]

  Mr. Horam
  The monitoring of patients treated with human growth hormone has, since 1992, been undertaken by the human pituitary growth hormone follow-up unit at the Institute of Child Health, London.

  Ms Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people in England and Wales(a) before 1 July 1977 and (b) after 1 July 1997 have (i) received human growth hormone treatment, (ii) died as a result of human growth hormone treatment, and (iii) been diagnosed as ill as a result of human growth hormone treatment; and how many court actions have been raised, or are currently pending, as a result of death or illness following such treatment. [17260]

  Mr. Horam
  The available information covers the whole of the United Kingdom.

  (i). The number who received human growth hormone treatment

  Number

  Up to 31 December 1976

  641

  1 January 1977 to 31 December 1977

  138

  Since 1 January 1978

  1,122

  The data are available by calendar year only.

  (ii) The number of human hormone patients who have died of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease: 20

  (iii) The number of human growth hormone patients with the symptoms of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease: two

  (iv) Number of court actions: one

  (v) Number of court actions pending (including appeals): two

  Nurses
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many nurses in England were aged(a) between 20 and 30, (b) between 31 and 40, (c) between 41 and 50, and (d) over 50 years in each year from 1987–88 to 1995–96. [12690]

  Mr. Horam
  [pursuant to his reply, 18 February 1997, c. 543–46]: I regret that one of the figures provided in my previous reply was incorrect.

  The figure for unqualified nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff with ages not known in 1989 should have read 1,140, not 8,950.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Punishment Attacks
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many persons have been(a) prosecuted and (b) sentenced for paramilitary punishment attacks in each of the past three years; and if he will make a statement. [8335]
  184
  Sir John Wheeler
  These crimes are brutal, unjust and have no place in a civilised society. It is not possible to provide figures in precisely the form requested as there is no specific offence of carrying out a "punishment attack". However, the RUC statistics indicate that between 1994 and 1996, 62 people were charged with what appears to be punishment beating-related offences, as follows:

  Republican

  Loyalist

  1994

  2

  6

  1995

  25

  9

  1996

  8

  12

  To date, five convictions have been served as follows:

  Republican

  Loyalist

  1994

  1

  4

  1995

  0

  0

  1996

  0

  0

  However, cases against a further 26 persons are pending.

  Republican

  Loyalist

  1994

  1

  0

  1995

  8

  7

  1996

  0

  10

  Despite all the RUC's efforts, groups of terrorist thugs continue to attack those within their own communities whom they wish to intimidate, including those accused of alleged anti-social behaviour and assisting the security forces. In recent months, these attacks have increased in ferocity and many young men and women have been left with horrific injuries and will bear the scars for the rest of their lives.

  Such attacks are against all concepts of justice and human rights. They are carried out by those who are most keen on their own rights, but are happy to deny similar rights and to play the part of judge, jury and executioner when it comes to dealing with others. The RUC is the only legitimate law enforcement agency in Northern Ireland, and the Government urge anyone who knows anything about these brutal attacks to tell the police. They also incur substantial costs to the community in NHS, compensation claims and other costs.

  Housing Executive Waiting List
  Dr. Hendron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people in west Belfast are currently registered with A1 status on the Housing Executive waiting list. [16454]

  Mr. Moss
  This is a matter for the Northern Ireland Executive, whose chief executive has advised me that there are 401 people in west Belfast with A1 status on the waiting list.

  Executive Agencies
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how much his Department estimates it cost to establish each executive agency set up by his Department since the start of April 1992. [16968]

  Sir John Wheeler
  The information requested is not available as the establishment of next steps agencies follows from an administrative process involving wide consideration of various aspects of proposals for agencification. There is therefore no unique cost attributable to agencification.

  Nature Reserves, Historic Buildings and Country Parks
  Mr. Illsley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what proposals he has for the contracting out of the management and maintenance of(a) national nature reserves, (b) historic buildings and (c) country parks in Northern Ireland; and whom he has consulted on these proposals. [17388]

  Mr. Moss
  Responsibility for the subject in question has been delegated to the Environment and Heritage Service under its chief executive, Mr. Robert C. Martin. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Robert C. Martin to Mr. Eric Illsley, dated 24 February 1997:
  As Chief Executive of the Environment and Heritage Service, I am responsible for operational aspects of the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland's work heritage properties.
  I am therefore responding to the Parliamentary Question which you put down in the House of Commons:

  "to ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what proposals he has for the contracting out of the management and maintenance of:—

  (a) National Nature Reserves,

  (b) Historic Buildings, and

  (c) Country Parks in Northern Ireland, and with whom he has consulted on these proposals."

  The Environment and Heritage Service of the Department of Environment for Northern Ireland has begun a 3-year programme to assess the opportunities to disengage from direct management of its nature reserves, historic properties and country parks. Each property will be assessed individually and its management will be contracted out if a competent body is able to undertake the necessary work efficiently, effectively and economically. All 26 district councils and relevant voluntary conservation bodies have been approached.

DEFENCE

  Gulf War Syndrome
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what criteria were used in the choice of the senior researcher appointed by his Department to investigate the psychological aspects of Gulf war syndrome; and if he will list the other short listed candidates indicating their qualifications. [16993]

  Mr. Soames
  Professor Simon Wessely and Professor Anthony David of Kings' college school of medicine and dentistry, London, are conducting a controlled epidemiological and clinical study into the effect of Gulf war service on service men and women of the UK armed forces. This study is being fully funded by the US 186
  Department of Defence; it was one of 12 studies announced by the US Government in June 1996 following an exhaustive, independent peer review. The main objective of the study is to determine whether service in the Gulf war, and factors specific to the Gulf deployment, are associated with an increase in physical or psychological morbidity. This study will be closely co-ordinated with those announced last December, being undertaken Dr. Doyle and Professor Cherry, which are being funded by my Department.

  Defence Medical Services Organisation
  Mr. Patrick Thompson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement about the restructuring of the Defence Medical Services Organisation. [17904]

  Mr. Soames
  The Defence Medical Services Organisation is established primarily to provide care for service personnel deployed on operations. This is a vital task. To provide this capability, the DMSO must comprise peacetime structures and a recognised training base which can produce uniformed medical personnel with the right skills and in sufficient numbers to meet forecast operational demands. That peacetime structure can also make a significant contribution to the provision of secondary medical care for all service personnel and, in certain circumstances, for their dependants, to facilitate effective training, it works closely with the NHS.

  Since 1984, there has been a series of separate studies into the Defence Medical Services Organisation, aimed at rationalising an area which was consuming over 2 per cent. of the defence budget and adapting them to the changing strategic environment. This work culminated in the defence costs study in 1994, which recommended major restructuring of the DMSO to enable it to provide sufficient rapidly deployable units, primarily manned by regular personnel, to support forces deployed on operations, and a more efficient and cost-effective support structure, including establishing a number of agencies to provide secondary medical care and recognised training for medical personnel.

  These necessary changes have meant major upheavals for the DMSO which, naturally, not all those involved have welcomed. The DMSO was suffering from some shortages of personnel—particularly anaesthetists, orthopaedic surgeons and intensive care nurses, mirroring shortages in the NHS—and we are striving to improve this situation. We have established all the key elements of the new organisations and we are now focusing on achieving the right balance in their relationships with the NHS and their function as military units in the light of experience with the operation of the new structure.

  Three regular field hospitals of 200 beds have now been established with permanent command and administrative staff. The clinical staff to support the field hospitals will be drawn from the Defence Secondary Care Agency. There are currently gaps in some specialities which we look to fill, as we did in the Gulf and in Bosnia in other specialisations, by volunteer reservists under the provisions of the Reserve Forces Act 1996. We have provided the proper level of medical support to British troops on operational deployment in the Gulf, Bosnia and elsewhere.
  187
  Defence planning to reflect the changing strategic circumstances has already evolved further since 1994. We have therefore set up a study team to examine whether these new circumstances, together with recent changes in medical practice, require further changes to our detailed assumptions for the provision of medical support to the front line. This should report by the middle of the year.

  We continue to improve our holdings of medical equipment and supplies. Two sets of containerised modular operating theatres are now in use in Bosnia. We intend to purchase more of those in the future; the next will be delivered later this year. We also plan to improve medical facilities in RFA Argus for its role as a hospital ship.

  At the time of the restructuring of the DMSO—which involved the closure of three service hospitals and the concentration of medical facilities at the Royal hospital, Haslar and in three Ministry of Defence hospital units at Derriford, Frimley Park and Peterborough—waiting lists increased. They have now been substantially reduced through robust management action by the new Defence Secondary Care Agency. There is also a programme of improvements at the Royal hospital, Haslar. Most of the enhancements to the clinical facilities should be completed by June 1997, with the remaining programme of capital works—for health and safety—completed over the next two years.

  Work to align terms of service for medical personnel in each of the three services and so produce a more cohesive DMSO is well in hand. The first measures will be implemented in April. Naval and Army medical and dental officers will be allowed to extend their

  Costs of decommissioning and lay-up of nuclear submarines

  £ million

  Financial year

  Project

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94

  1994–95

  1995–96

  1996–97

  Total

  Warspite

  1.6

  9.6

  —

  0.1

  —

  —

  —

  11.3

  Conqueror

  —

  4.7

  5.7

  —

  0.2

  —

  —

  10.6

  Courageous

  —

  —

  9.9

  0.9

  —

  —

  —

  10.8

  Churchill

  9.0

  2.2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  11.2

  Swiftsure

  —

  1.6

  9.9

  —

  —

  —

  —

  11.5

  Revenge

  —

  —

  8.2

  6.5

  4.0

  —

  —

  18.7

  Resolution1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  0.3

  2.1

  13.8

  16.2

  Total at outturn prices

  10.6

  18.1

  33.7

  7.5

  4.5

  2.1

  13.8

  90.3

  1. Valiant, Renown and Repulse have not yet completed their de-fuelling, de-equipping and layup preparations (DDLP) so are not included in this table.

  2. It is not possible to provide costs of HMS Dreadnought's DD and LP; the information insofar as it is available could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  3. Average annual maintenance costs of decommissioned nuclear submarines are £50,000 and ten yearly dockings are approximately £3 million.

  4. Financial year 1993–94 costs for HMS Warspite spread into years financial year 1992–93.1 HMS Resolution's DD and LP completed January 1997. Final costs are not yet available.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL

  Crown Prosecution Service (Charges)
  Mr. Boateng
  To ask the Attorney-General how many charges were received by the Crown Prosecution Service from each of the police forces in England and Wales in each of the past five years; and how many of these were(a) discontinued and (b) withdrawn or otherwise not proceeded with during the same period in respect of each force. [17118]
  188
  short-service commissions in line with current RAF policy to enable them to complete their clinical training in uniform, and there will be a common return of service for that training.

  Young officers are being attracted into the DMSO on cadet schemes, and there are early and encouraging signs that an increasing number of them are prolonging their service to take advantage of the improved facilities and opportunities offered by the new structure. We are determined to build on this, and to provide the armed forces with the medical support appropriate to their needs.

  Nuclear-powered Submarines
  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what has been the cost of the decommissioning and lay-up of nuclear-powered submarines in each of the past 15 years. [16561]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  This is a matter for the chief executive of the Ships Support Agency. I have asked the chief executive to write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from R. V. Babington to Mr. Alan Simpson, dated 25 February 1997:
  I am replying to your question to the Secretary of State for Defence about the costs of decommissioning and laying up of nuclear powered submarines in each of the last fifteen years, as this matter falls within my area of responsibility as Chief Executive of the Ships Support Agency.
  The cost details on the attached table relate to the period 1990/91 to 1996/97 exclusively; prior to that date only HMS DREADNOUGHT underwent decommissioning and lay-up, in 1982/83, and it is not possible to provide costs for this vessel.

  The Attorney-General
  Cases discontinued by the CPS fell from 193,110, or 13.3 per cent. of completed cases in magistrates courts, in 1992 to 153,274, or 12 per cent. of completed cases, in 1996.

  Tables providing detailed information about the outcome of cases conducted by the Crown Prosecution Service in each of the past five years were placed in the Library of the House as part of my written answer yesterday to the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox), Official Report, 24 February 1997, column 22. The Crown

  189
  Prosecution Service records the outcome of proceedings by numbers of defendants rather than charges, and statistics are maintained for CPS areas which correspond to the police forces as shown on a new table which, to assist the hon. Member, I have added to the tables in the Library.

  List of police forces served by each CPS area

  CPS area

  Police force

  North

  Cumbria

  Durham

  Northumbria

  Cleveland

  Yorkshire

  North Yorkshire

  West Yorkshire

  Mersey/Lancashire

  Lancashire

  Merseyside

  Humber

  Humberside

  Lincolnshire

  South Yorkshire

  North West

  Cheshire

  Greater Manchester

  East Midlands

  Derbyshire

  Nottinghamshire

  Leicestershire

  Northamptonshire

  Wales

  North Wales

  Dyfed-Powys

  South Wales

  Gwent

  Midlands

  Staffordshire

  West Midlands

  Warwickshire

  Anglia

  Bedfordshire

  Cambridgeshire

  Hertfordshire

  Essex

  Norfolk

  Suffolk

  Severn/Thames

  West Mercia

  Gloucestershire

  Wiltshire

  Thames Valley

  South West

  Avon and Somerset

  Devon and Cornwall

  Dorset

  South East

  Hampshire

  Surrey

  Sussex

  Kent

  London

  City of London

  Metropolitan

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Certified Herds Scheme
  Mr. French
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he intends to submit proposals for a United Kingdom certified herds scheme to the European Commission; and if he will make a statement. [17888]

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  I have, today, submitted to the Commission papers that explain how the UK has fulfilled the pre-conditions laid down under the Florence agreement, our proposals for a UK export certified herds scheme and the scientific basis for that scheme. A copy of these papers has been placed in the Library. I have urged the Commission to ensure that the consultation procedure laid down in the Florence agreement is initiated immediately so that we can resume exports of meat from animals in export certified herds as quickly as possible. I have also written to my counterparts in other member states to explain how we have implemented the BSE eradication programme in the UK and to seek a constructive contribution to the discussion of our proposals.

  Illegal Animal Imports
  Dr. Strang
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many animals were reported as illegally landed in the United Kingdom in 1996. [15638]

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Notices were served on 554 consignments in 1996 for offences against animal health legislation governing the importation of live animals into the United Kingdom. Information on the numbers of animals involved could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  BSE
  Mr. Alan W. Williams
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current cost per animal of the incineration process for cattle diagnosed as suffering from BSE. [16243]

  Mr. Baldry
  The current costs of having cattle suspected of showing clinical signs of BSE incinerated in one of the nine plants currently contracted to the Department ranges from £105 to £135 per beast.

  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what regulations govern the disposal to landfill of cattle carcases with specified bovine material removed. [16232]

  Mr. Baldry
  The landfilling of controlled waste is subject to the waste management licensing provisions of part II of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Waste Management Licensing Regulations 1994. Waste management licences contain appropriate terms and conditions. Among other matters, these will specify the types and quantities of waste which may be disposed of the in each site. The Environment Agency is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the licensing system. Landfill site operators are also subject to the duty of care provisions in section 34 of the 1990 Act and the Environmental Protection (Duty of Care) Regulations 1991.
  191
  It is relevant that all cattle suspected of displaying clinical signs of BSE are slaughtered and their carcase sent for direct incineration and that cattle slaughtered under the over-30-months scheme are either incinerated or rendered and destroyed.

  The Animal By-Products Order 1992 and the Specified Bovine Material (No. 3) Order 1996 are also relevant.

  Mr. Williams
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the total amount of meat and bonemeal in storage from the over-30-months scheme; what is the cost of storage; and what plans he has for its disposal. [16195]

  Mr. Baldry
  The total amount of meat and bonemeal held in storage following the rendering of carcases under the over-30-months scheme was 168,100 tonnes as at 17 February 1997 and the cost to the Intervention Board executive agency is estimated to be about £60,000 per week.

  The Government are actively pursuing a number of options for the disposal of meat and bonemeal arising from the OTMS. The Intervention Board recently agreed a contract with a high-temperature incineration company, ReChem, to burn MBM at its Fawley plant and has an exercise under way for further incineration facilities from which additional MBM disposal capacity is expected to emerge. Combustion trials have been carried out at PowerGen's test facilities at Ratcliffe on Soar, Nottinghamshire, and at National Power's test facilities at Didcot, Oxfordshire, to establish the feasibility of burning MBM in power stations. These trials have been monitored by the Environment Agency and the results will be placed on the public register. The test results are being fully evaluated, and full weight will be given to the protection of human health and of the environment before any decisions are reached.

  Mr. Williams
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many carcases are in storage under the over-30-months scheme awaiting rendering and final disposal; and what is the current weekly cost of storage. [16245]

  Mr. Baldry
  As at 16 February 1997, the carcases of some 208,000 animals slaughtered under the over-30-months scheme were being held in cold storage awaiting disposal at an average cost of some £270,000 a week.

  Mr. Williams
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many cattle carcases were incinerated in 1996. [16246]

  Mr. Baldry
  A total of some 52,000 cattle were incinerated in 1996 by this Department or the Intervention Board executive agency, of which about 81 per cent. were animals purchased under the over-30-months scheme and about 19 per cent. BSE suspects.

  Ms Walley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list for each county the number of carcases slaughtered as a result of the BSE crisis currently in cold storage and awaiting disposal; and if he will make a statement. [16528]
  192
  Mr. Baldry
  As at 16 February 1997, the number of carcases of animals slaughtered under the over-30-months scheme and held in cold storage by county is as follows:

  County

  Carcases

  England

  Avon

  10,100

  Cambridgeshire

  3,300

  Devon

  2,700

  Greater Manchester

  3,800

  Hereford and Worcester

  1,300

  Humberside

  7,900

  Kent

  34,200

  Lancashire

  7,100

  Lincolnshire

  27,400

  London

  1,400

  Shropshire

  8,600

  South Yorkshire

  2,700

  Staffordshire

  800

  Tyneside

  1,600

  Total England

  112,900

  Wales

  Ynys

  3,500

  South Glamorgan

  2,600

  Newport, South Wales

  3,900

  Total Wales

  10,000

  Scotland

  Border Region

  2,300

  Dumfries and Galloway

  9,100

  Grampian Region

  2,600

  Highland Region

  17,800

  Strathclyde

  2,700

  Total Scotland

  34,500

  Northern Ireland

  County Armagh

  27,000

  County Down

  8,600

  County Fermanagh

  5,800

  County Tyrone

  9,200

  Total Northern Ireland

  50,600

  Total United Kingdom

  208,000

  Disposal of this material will be completed at a pace determined by control requirements and the availability of rendering and incineration capacity.

  Mrs. Jackson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in which locations in the past 10 years(a) cattle infected with BSE, (b) rendered meat and bonemeal, (c) cattle carcases slaughtered under the over-30-months scheme, (d) specified bovine material and (e) ash from incinerated cattle, have been landfilled. [16847]

  Mr. Baldry
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to her on 11 February 1997, Official Report, columns 143–45.

  Mrs. Jackson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make an assessment of the relative safety of(a) landfilling and (b) incineration as methods of disposal of cattle waste, under the BSE eradication schemes; and if he will make a statement. [16849]
  193
  Mr. Baldry
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: Cattle suspected of displaying clinical signs of BSE are disposed of by direct incineration in plants contracted to MAFF, which are subject to authorisation by the Environment Agency or relevant local authority under part I of the Environment Protection Act 1990. Cattle slaughtered under the over-30-months scheme are incinerated, or rendered and destroyed in accordance with the requirements of Commission regulation 716/96/EEC. Specified bovine material is also removed from cattle slaughtered for human consumption and consigned for rendering or direct incineration.

  The independent Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee has considered the current and proposed methods of dealing with waste material from the slaughter of cattle, including landfill and incineration, and concluded that these are safe. A news release reporting its conclusions was issued by MAFF on 7 June 1996 and a copy is available in the Library.

  Mrs. Jackson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1) what is the quantity of rendered meat and bonemeal presently stored in Britain under the BSE eradication programme; [16896]

  (2) if he will list the tonnage of (a) cattle carcases, (b) rendered meat and bonemeal and (c) tallow by location of storage. [16898]

  Mr. Baldry
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: I have provided the information requested on the number of carcases in cold storage by location in the answer given to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) today.

  Returns of meat and bonemeal and tallow delivered to store continue to be collated. However, as at 17 February 1997, these indicate that there were some 168,100 tonnes of rendered meat and bonemeal—130,600 tonnes Great Britain—and 101,800 tonnes of tallow in store in the UK from animals slaughtered under the over-30-months scheme, as is shown in the table:

  County

  Meat and bonemeal (Tonnes)

  Tallow (Tonnes)

  England

  Devon

  41,500

  —

  Essex

  —

  30,400

  Lancashire

  58,000

  —

  Merseyside

  5,500

  71,400

  Total England

  105,000

  101,800

  Scotland

  Fife

  4,000

  —

  Midlothian

  21,600

  —

  Total Scotland

  25,600

  —

  Northern Ireland

  County Antrim

  29,600

  —

  County Tyrone

  7,900

  —

  Total Northern Ireland

  37,500

  —

  Total UK

  168,100

  101,800

  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what has been the level 194
  of infective units (a) per gram and (b) per tonne, found in rendered meat and bonemeal under the BSE eradication programme. [16897]

  Mr. Baldry
  [holding answer 24 February 1997]: No tests have been conducted to ascertain the level of infective units in the rendered meat and bonemeal produced under the over-30-months scheme. This is because the only way of achieving this would be to inject groups of mice with a number of samples of different dilutions of each sample to be tested. These tests would take two years and would be extremely expensive.

  The independent Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee has concluded that there was no epidemiological evidence to suggest that the handling of MBM presented a risk to any of those engaged in the related trades. The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens has also considered the health risks associated with the handling of MBM and has issued generic guidance for all occupational groups, including those involved in storage. The Intervention Board executive agency has drawn the guidelines to the attention of storekeepers storing MBM.

  Parliamentary Questions
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many questions were tabled for reply by his Department in each Session since 1979–80; in how many instances in each year the reply has been that providing the information involved disproportionate cost; and in how many instances in each year questions have been given the reply that the information was not available centrally. [16784]

  Mr. Boswell
  A list of the number of written and oral parliamentary questions answered by the Department in the Sessions 1982–83 to 1995–96, as supplied by the parliamentary on-line information service unit, has been placed in the Library. Figures for 1979–80 to 1981–82 are not available. The rest of the information requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost but is a matter of public record.

  Quarantine
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the date by which owners of quarantine kennels must indicate whether they will agree to abide by the voluntary code of practice on welfare standards in quarantine premises. [16691]

  Mrs. Browning
  [holding answer 20 February 1997]: Owners of quarantine kennels who have not so far indicated this may indicate at any time that they will agree to comply with the voluntary code of practice for the welfare of dogs and cats in quarantine premises. We intend to publish a list of quarantine owners who have agreed to abide by the code of practice when inspection of their quarantine premises has been completed.

  Food Safety
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what research his Department has(a) commissioned and (b) evaluated into the food safety aspects of manufacturing practices in the canning industry; and what guidelines his Department issues to the industry. [16985]
  195
  Mrs. Browning
  In 1993 the Department funded detailed modelling of heat penetration into cans under different heating environments and heating times. As a result, a number of technical notes to be used for guidance by canneries were published. The Department also funded a review of canning operations which resulted in the book "Guidelines for the Safe Production of Heat Preserved Foods", which was published by the Department of Health in 1994. In 1994–95, the Department commissioned surveillance of the technical expertise and the application of good manufacturing practices in UK canneries. In response to this survey, which was published in 1996, the Department of Health has been in discussion with local authorities to ensure that they have appropriate technical support to enable them to assess the safety of canneries.

  Warfarin-based Rodenticides
  Sir Cranley Onslow
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action his Department has taken to alert users and manufacturers of warfarin-based rodenticides to the danger these products present to barn owls and other raptors. [17113]

  Mrs. Browning
  The Government work closely with manufacturers and trade associations to achieve an effective means of pest control while at the same time seeking to ensure the safety to wildlife. Promotion of the safe use of rodenticides, including those based on warfarin, is an on-going process and includes a campaign against illegal poisoning of wildlife, supported by industry and wildlife organisations and articles specifically on the safe use of rodenticides for trade journals and presentations to industry.

  The statutory labelling requirements for all rodenticides make clear to users the means by which secondary risks posed by rodenticide products must be minimised. Guidance to users on the protection of wildlife is also contained in the code of practice for the safe use of pesticides on farms and holdings.

  Renderers (Compensation)
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what arrangements exist compensating renderers for the non-recovery of meat and bonemeal products. [17041]

  Mr. Baldry
  The Government are providing temporary financial assistance to the rendering industry as part of our package of measures designed to maintain essential links in the meat supply and disposal chain in the aftermath of the BSE crisis.

  During 1996–97, rendering companies are receiving support estimated to total about £100 million. This is based on loss of income by comparison with 1995–96, with adjustments to take broad account of renderers' actual levels of throughput and costs this year.

  We are currently consulting on proposals for delivering support, amounting to up to £59 million, during 1997–98. The disposal chain now has to come to terms with the changed value of animal by-products. At the same time we want to inject greater competition and market choice into the chain. We therefore intend that support should be phased out during 1997–98. Copies of our consultation papers are available in the Library.

  Antibiotic-resistant Micro-organisms
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (1) what measures were taken and on what dates to publicise the request from the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food for information concerning the risks to human of antibiotic-resistant micro-organisms entering the food chain; and if he will make a statement: [16952]

  (2) if he will list the (a) names and (b) employers of the members of (i) the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food and (ii) the working group set up by the committee to assess the risks to humans of antibiotic-resistant micro-organisms entering the food chain; and if he will make a statement; [16954]

  (3) when the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food announced that it had set up a working group to assess the risks to humans of antibiotic-resistant micro-organisms entering the food chain; what were the date and method by which requests for information were first publicised; what was the last date on which responses could be sent to the secretariat; and if he will make a statement. [16953]

  Mr. Horam
  I have been asked to reply.

  The Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food's working group on microbial antibiotic resistance in relation to food safety has sought objective scientific information by writing to industry, academia and a wide range of interested organisations including those in medicine. The fist mailing exercise was on 5 and 6 December 1996 and responses were requested by 17 January 1997. There have been two further mailings since, on 27 January and 14 February 1997, and over 2,000 letters have been sent. Specimen copies of the letters have been placed in the Library. Another similar exercise is planned for this week and the secretariat will be asked for responses by 10 April. The secretariat will accept responses from previous mailings up to this date.

  The ACMSF announced that it was setting up the working group in its press release of 25 January 1996. Copies are in the Library. Information on the ACMSF and working group members and their employers is as follows:

  Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food

  Membership

  Chairman

  Professor D. L. Georgala

  Independent scientific consultant. Retired Director of the Institute of Food Research

  Members

  Mrs. F. Anderson

  Nurse tutor and consumer representative

  Mr. D. Boon

  London Borough of Croydon

  Mr. D. Clarke

  Granada Purchasing Ltd.

  Dr. R. J. Gilbert

  Central Public Health Laboratory, Public Health Laboratory Service

  Dr. A. M. Johnston

  Royal Veterinary College University of London

  Dr. M. J. Painter

  North West Infection Control and Surveillance Unit, Public Health Laboratory Service

  Professor S. R. Palmer

  Public Health Laboratory Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (Welsh Unit)

  197

  Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food

  Membership

  Dr. T. Roberts

  Retired Head of Microbiology, Institute of Food Research

  Ms B Saunders

  Consumer Consultant

  Dr. N. A. Simmons

  Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital Trust; Honorary Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, the London Hospital Medical College

  Dr. W. C. S. Smith

  University of Aberdeen and Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine, Grampian Health Board

  Mr. R. Southgate

  Northern Foods plc

  Dr. G. Spriegel

  J. Sainsbury plc

  Dr. M. Stringer

  Campden and Chorleywood Food Research Association

  Dr. T. Wilson

  Northern Ireland Public Health Laboratory, Belfast City Hospital

  Working Group on Microbiological Antibiotic Resistance in Relation to Food Safety

  Membership

  Chairman

  Professor D. L. Georgala

  Independent scientific consultant. Retired Director of the Institute of Food Research

  Vice Chairman

  Dr. G. Spriegel

  J Sainsbury plc

  Members

  Mr. J. A. R. Dewhirst

  Farmer; member of the East Yorks National Farmers' Union Pigs Committee and Farm Animal Welfare Council; Vice Chairman of the British Pig Association; UK Chairman of the European Pig Producers' Organisation

  Professor A. T. Hart

  Department of Medical Microbiology and Genito-Urinary Medicine, Royal Liverpool Univeristy Hospital

  Dr. A. M. Johnston

  Royal Veterinary College, University of London

  Dr. L. Piddock

  Department of Infection, University of Birmingham

  Ms B Saunders

  Consumer consultant

  Dr. N. A. Simmons

  Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital Trust; Honorary Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, the London Hospital College

  Dr. D. J. Taylor

  Department of Veterinary Pathology, University of Glasgow Veterinary School

  Dr. P. Wall

  Consultant Epidemiologist, Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Benefits (Parents)
  Mr. Soley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what liaison he has with the Department of Education and Employment to co-ordinate benefit payments with the needs of parents with children at school. [15750]
  198
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  We regularly discuss issues of mutual interest with the Department for Education and Employment.

  Child Support Agency
  Mr. Robathan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what steps he intends to take to prevent parents making fraudulent submissions to the CSA. [15751]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  The Child Support Agency already requires a high level of verification of information provided by parents. Also the departures system, introduced in December last year, allows the agency to deal with cases where there is an allegation of misrepresentation of circumstances. Nevertheless, we are actively considering whether to make it an offence to give a false statement to the Child Support Agency.

  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will estimate the number of staff who have resigned from the Child Support Agency as a result of stress. [15758]

  Mr. Mitchell
  Figures are available only for the past two years. During this period 15 members of staff, out of a total of some 6,000 in post, have resigned from the Child Support Agency citing stress of some type as a reason.

  Mr. Gunnell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the average administrative cost of delivering a girocheque to the parent with care with particular reference to the average number of weeks between assessments. [15760]

  Mr. Mitchell
  In cases where the Child Support Agency collects maintenance, it is transferred to the parent with care by automated credit transfer wherever possible. When computer-produced girocheques are used, the average cost of production and posting is 50p. The frequency of maintenance assessments has no bearing on this cost.

  Ms Lynne
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will provide a monthly breakdown of the amount of uncollected maintenance owing to the Child Support Agency collection service since 1994 showing the amount attributable to(a) type A interim assessments and (b) other assessments. [15608]

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

  Letter from Ann Chant to Ms Liz Lynne, dated 24 February 1997:
  I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about uncollected maintenance.
  I am unable to provide you with the exact information you have requested. An enhancement to our systems provided information on interim maintenance assessments outstanding and full maintenance assessment debt from January 1997. This showed £585,514,053 outstanding related to interim maintenance assessments; of this amount it is estimated that £193 million is as a result of interim maintenance assessments imposed prior to April 1995. £448,903,181 related to full maintenance assessment debt; approximately £271 million of this amount is currently the subject of agreement for repayment by instalments, which are closely monitored by the Agency. This leaves approximately £178 million of full maintenance assessment debt to be pursued.

  199
  A further system enhancement is currently being developed which will provide monthly information on category A interim maintenance assessments and other assessments for the financial year 1997/98.
  I hope this is helpful.

  Income Support
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many people are dependent on income support currently; and how many were dependent on the equivalent benefit in 1978. [15754]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  There were 9.8 million people living in families receiving income support in February 1996. In November 1978 there were 4.6 million people living in families receiving supplementary benefit.

  Notes:

  1. Numbers include claimants, their partners and dependants.

  2. Figures are rounded to the nearest thousand.

  3. Sample size 1978 supplementary pension cases one in 200.

  4. 1978 supplementary allowance cases one in 50.

  5. 1996 income support cases 5 per cent.

  Source:

  Income Support Statistics Quarterly Enquiry February 1996.

  Supplementary Benefit Statistics Annual Enquiry 1978.

  Mr. Skinner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the estimated number of people receiving income support; and what was the number in equivalent benefit terms, in 1979. [15764]

  Mr. Evans
  There were 5.71 million income support recipients in February 1996. In November 1979 there were 2.855 million supplementary benefit recipients.

  Notes

  1. Figures are rounded to the nearest thousand.

  2. Sample size 1979 supplementary pension cases one in 200.

  3. 1979 supplementary allowance cases one in 50.

  4. 1996 income support cases 5 per cent.

  Source:

  Income Support Statistics Quarterly Enquiry February 1996.

  Supplementary Benefit Statistics Annual Enquiry 1979.

  Sir Andrew Bowden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what would be the value of the £8,000 upper capital limit for income support in 1997–98 if it had been uprated by (i) prices and (ii) earnings since its introduction. [14284]

  Mr. Evans
  The £8,000 capital limit for income support would be worth (i) £10,704.40 if uprated by prices, and (ii) £11,410.30 if uprated by average earnings.

  Sir Andrew Bowden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what would be the value of the £3,000 capital limit for income support in 1997–98 if it had been uprated by (i) prices and (ii) earnings since its introduction. [14283]

  Mr. Evans
  The £3,000 capital limit would be worth (i) £4,421.40 if uprated by prices, and (ii) £5,111.65 if uprated by average earnings.

  Sir Andrew Bowden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will estimate the cost in 1997–98 of uprating(a) the £3,000 capital limit and (b) the £8,000 capital limit for income support for (i) pensioners and
  200
  (ii) all recipients of income support to the level it would have been in 1997–98 if it had been uprated with prices since introduction. [14287]

  Mr. Evans
  The estimated costs in 1997–98 if the lower and upper capital limits in income support had been uprated each year since their introduction in line with prices are (i) £50 million if only pensioners are included and (ii) £60 million if it is applied to all income support and jobseeker's allowance recipients.

  Notes:

  1. This is estimated using the 1994–95 family resources survey, uprated to 1997–98 case loads and benefit levels.

  2. Estimates exclude cases in residential care and nursing homes.

  3. Estimates include consequential costs in housing benefit and council tax benefit from new income support claimants being passported or to these benefits.

  4. Estimates for all claimants include the costs of introducing the same capital limits in jobseeker's allowance.

  5. Adjustments to these estimates are made using the May 1995 income support Quarterly Statistical Enquiry and the May 1995 housing benefit/council tax benefit management information system.

  6. Estimates are rounded to the nearest £10 million.

  Lone Parents (Employment Schemes)
  Mr. Luff
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will develop pilot schemes to involve the private sector in helping lone parents into work. [15755]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  Up to 100,000 lone parents on income support will be offered help to get back into work under the parent plus scheme, which will be piloted in 12 areas over three years starting in April. Parent plus will involve both public and private sector teams in competing to find the best ways of helping lone parents to reduce their dependency on benefits.

  In Preston, Wiltshire, Northamptonshire and Manchester the private sector have been invited to tender to provide innovative services to help get lone parents into work. Contracts will be issued to successful tenderers by the beginning of April and will stipulate that payment will be dependent on how many lone parents are helped into jobs. This will be the first time that private enterprise has been harnessed in this way to help people into work.

  Child Benefit
  Mr. Nigel Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on the procedures for the payment of child benefit in respect of children over 16 years of age in full-time education. [15756]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  If a child chooses to stay on in full-time education after 16, parents can continue to receive child benefit worth £560 per year towards the cost of maintaining him until education finishes or his 19th birthday, whichever is sooner.

  Withdrawal of child benefit for this age group would involve the complex procedures of means testing, with the parents of many 16 to I 8-year-olds unable to gain any help.

  Housing Benefit
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will act on the advice of the Social Security Advisory Committee on his proposals on housing benefit for single people under 60 years. [15757]
  201
  Mr. Roger Evans
  We expect to receive the Social Security Advisory Committee's report on our proposals regarding housing benefit for single people aged under 60 years later this month. We shall consider the committee's findings and recommendations carefully before taking final decisions.

  Pensioner Incomes
  Mr. Patrick Thompson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to introduce a guaranteed minimum income for pensioners above current income support levels; and if he will makes a statement. [15759]

  Mr. Heald
  We have no plans to introduce a guaranteed minimum income for pensioners which, if set at 5 per cent. above current income support levels, would cost an estimated £2 billion per year.

  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what research his Department has evaluated into the extent of poverty among the population over retirement age. [15761]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  We conduct and evaluate many different pieces of research into the incomes of pensioners and other groups. These show that pensioners' average incomes have risen by 60 per cent. in real terms since 1979.

  Mr. Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on the level of pensioners' incomes. [15753]

  Mr. Heald
  Since 1979, pensioners' average incomes have increased by 60 per cent. in real terms.

  Personal Pension Charges
  Mr. Burden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what steps the Government have taken to assess the impact of personal pension charges on individuals' future pension entitlements. [15762]

  Mr. Heald
  The level of charges was considered by the Government Actuary in his report on contracting-out terms, Cm 3221.

  Incapacity Benefit
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the current average waiting time for a tribunal hearing for those who have appealed after loss of benefit following an all-work test. [15763]

  Mr. Burt
  It currently takes an average of 21 weeks from the time an incapacity benefit appeal is lodged to the date of the tribunal hearing. During this time the appellant can claim unemployment benefits, or income support if they choose not to register for employment, without affecting their appeal.

  Regulations on appeals processes were introduced last October to reduce waiting times.

  National Insurance
  Sir Colin Shepherd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what his estimate of the total national insurance yield would be if the employer's contribution were increased by 1 per cent. [15765]
  202
  Mr. Heald
  If each rate of employer's national insurance contributions was increased by 1 per cent. from April 1997, the additional yield for 1997–98 would be approximately £3.25 billion.

  State Retirement Pension
  Mr. Leigh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will estimate the extra cost to public funds if pensions had been linked to earnings rather than prices since 1983. [15766]

  Mr. Heald
  The extra cost to public funds of uprating contributory basic retirement pension by the higher of earnings or prices since 1983 is estimated to be £7.9 billion in 1997–98.

  Note:

  All costs are rounded to the nearest 0.1 billion.

  Source:

  The gross costs of uprating were estimated by the Government Actuary's Department.

  Mr. Dykes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will estimate the level of basic state pension which would allow payment from the age of 60 years at no additional cost to taxpayers. [15826]

  Mr. Heald
  The payment of basic state retirement pension from age 60 at no additional cost to the national insurance fund would mean reducing the basic state pension for a single person by £20 a week to around £40 a week. People retiring at 60 would remain on this decremented rate for the remainder of their lives.

  Source:

  Government Actuary's Department.

  Mr. Forman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if it is his policy to retain the basic state pension as a universal contributory benefit; and if he will make a statement. [15827]

  Mr. Heald
  We consider the basic state retirement pension to be the cornerstone of income in retirement. We remain committed to protecting the value of state pensions and they will be increased in line with prices from April at a gross cost of £730 million.

  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what estimate he has made of the cost of introducing a state pension age of 60 years. [16137]

  Mr. Heald
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave him on 10 December 1996,Official Report, column 176.

  Pensions and Benefits (Earnings Link)
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what have been the savings to his Department in each year since 1980 in constant prices of ending the link between state retirement pensions and average earnings. [16781]

  Mr. Heald
  The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is in the table.
  203

  Year

  Extra gross cost (£ billion)

  1980–81

  0.2

  1981–82

  0.6

  1982–83

  1.0

  1983–84

  0.9

  1984–85

  1.8

  1985–86

  2.0

  1986–87

  3.1

  1987–88

  4.5

  1988–89

  5.5

  1989–90

  6.2

  1990–91

  6.9

  1991–92

  7.3

  1992–93

  8.5

  1993–94

  9.2

  1994–95

  9.2

  1995–96

  9.9

  1996–97

  10.1

  1997–98

  10.9

  Notes:

  1. The table shows the extra costs to the national insurance fund that would have arisen from uprating contributory basic retirement pension by the higher of earnings or prices in each year since 1980–81

  2. Gross costs are in 1997–98 prices, rounded to the nearest £0.1 billion. The estimates cover contributory basic retirement pension only and do not include any linked benefits or other benefits paid to pople over pension age.

  Costs net of any income-related benefits are not available.

  Source:

  Cash estimates were provided by the Government Actuary's Department and uprated to 1997–98 prices.

  Benefits Agency Medical Service
  Mr. Alan Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what steps he plans to take to ensure that the chairman and board members of each of the companies contracting for the Benefits Agency medical service are fit and proper people to undertake such a public function; if he will promulgate a code of conduct for staff; and if he will publish the advice he gives on the values and standards of probity and accountability he expects them to observe. [17164]

  Mr. Burt
  The companies chosen to negotiate with the Department for the provision of the medical service were shortlisted according to EC procurement regulations. The criteria applied included integrity, capacity to provide the services, financial and economic standing.

  All shortlisted companies confirmed that none of the circumstances described in article 29 of directive 92/50/EEC—UK Public Service Contracts Regulations 1993, regulation 14—applied.

  The successful contractor will be required to ensure that the staff undertaking delivery of the medical service must conform to present published principles of public service.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to publish a performance review of the companies' efficiency strategies and financial plans of the companies running the Benefits Agency medical service. [17162]

  Mr. Burt
  There are no such plans.
  204
  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) who will be the accounting officer for private sector companies contracting for the Benefits Agency medical service; [17176]

  (2) what plans he has to ensure that the private companies which will run the Benefits Agency medical service are accountable to Parliament for the functions that they perform. [17156]

  Mr. Burt
  The contracting out of the Benefits Agency Medical Service will not change the nature of accountability in respect of its functions and finances. Ministers will remain accountable to Parliament and the chief executive of the Benefits Agency will continue to act as accounting officer.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what methods he intends to use to follow up audit recommendations and requirements in respect of the private sector companies taking over the functions of the Benefits Agency medical service; and if the Comptroller and Auditor General will have a right of access to contractors; [17178]

  (2) if he will make a statement on the role of the National Audit Office in relation to private companies contracting for the provision of medical services to the Benefits Agency. [17436]

  Mr. Burt
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave him on 23 January,Official Report, columns 721–22.

  Any audit recommendations will be followed up in line with departmental practice. In line with all Government contracts, full audit access provisions will be contained within the contract or contracts. The Comptroller and Auditor General will also have full right of access.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what computer systems he will require to be used by companies contracting to provide medical services to the Benefits Agency in order to secure the confidentiality of the health records of benefit claimants; [17165]

  (2) if the companies contracting for the Benefits Agency medical service which have other databases deriving from other contracts to provide public services will be able to match the information between databases used in the performance of these functions; and what principles concerning the transfer of information will apply. [17172]

  Mr. Burt
  There will be no requirement to use specific computer systems. However, the successful contractor(s) will have a mandatory requirement to take measures to ensure the confidentiality, correct use and security of all data held or transmitted electronically. They must ensure that any data passed to them by the Department or by a third party, in relation to, or revealed during the course of the contract, are used only for the purpose of delivering the medical service by the appropriate personnel, and that the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1984 are complied with.

  All data obtained during the course of the contract will remain in the ownership of the Department.
  205
  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what system of penalties for under-performance will be in place for contractors providing medical services for the Benefits Agency; [17167]

  (2) what default procedure will be incorporated into contracts for the provision of medical services for the Benefits Agency for the notification of unsatisfactory performance. [17168]

  Mr. Burt
  In line with standard practice for Government contracts, a breach of contract including unsatisfactory performance or under-performance would result in a lower level of payment to the contractor(s). Continual unsatisfactory performance will entitle the Department to damages and may result in termination of the contract.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if copies of contracts agreed with public sector companies for the provision of medical services to the Benefits Agency will be placed in the Library. [17169]

  Mr. Burt
  Copies of the contract(s) will not be placed in the Library as to do so would prejudice the effective conduct of contractual activities between the Department and the successful contractor(s). However, when the contract(s) are awarded, information regarding the services and targets for output performance that form part of the contract, the criteria for the award and the overall contract value will be published in the line with existing Government and EC procurement guidelines.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social security who will evaluate the bids by contractors for the Benefits Agency medical service; and by what criteria. [17158]

  Mr. Burt
  The project team taking forward the contractorisation process responsible for carrying out the evaluation.

  Evaluation of the bids will be based on financial risk and qualitative criteria which will be signed off by the appropriate authority within the Benefits Agency in line with best practice. Recommendations will then be put forward to the project steering group prior to submission to the Benefits Agency management team. The final decision will rest with Ministers.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will place in the Library the financial memorandums setting out the terms and conditions attached to the funding of the Benefits Agency medial service following its contractorisation. [17160]

  Mr. Burt
  There will be no financial memoranda. Funding for the medical service provided by the successful contractor(s) will be provided by the Department.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if directors and other staff of the companies contracting for the Benefits Agency medical service will be required to declare any relevant interests; and where such information will be published. [17163]

  Mr. Burt
  A formal declaration of interest will not be requested. However, staff will be required to sign a confidentiality undertaking and comply with any requirements regarding security of information and conflicts of interest.
  206
  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what standards of service he will require companies contracting to provide medical services for the Benefits Agency to achieve; and if he will list each area where a higher standard than that currently in force will apply. [17179]

  Mr. Burt
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave him on 19 February,Official Report, columns 590–91.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what plans he has for a code of practice covering(a) public access to information on, and (b) regular publication of key information from, private companies contracting for the Benefits Agency medical services. [17171]

  (2) what statistics concerning the activity and performance of the companies contracting for the Benefits Agency medical service he intends to publish. [17161]

  Mr. Burt
  The successful contractors will have a mandatory contractual requirement to comply with legislation and policies which apply to this Department, including the open government code of practice on access to government information.

  The arrangements for the provision and publication of statistical information are currently being developed as part of the system for contract monitoring.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what requirements of confidentiality he intends to include in(a) the contracts of employment and (b) the contracts for sessional staff working for the private contractors which will be operating the Benefits Agency medical service. [17173]

  Mr. Burt
  There will be no change to the current rules governing confidentiality of information.

  Anyone working for, or on behalf of, the successful contractors will be subject to the provisions of section 123 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 which makes it a criminal offence to disclose information acquired in the course of employment without lawful authority.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what mechanism he intends to establish for complaints against private companies running the Benefits Agency medical service. [17174]

  Mr. Burt
  The successful contractors will be subject to a mandatory contractual requirement to ensure that there is an effective procedure in place for all complaints received. The contract will not specify a mechanism for handling complaints. However, an effective procedure for handling all complaints will be a mandatory requirement.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will lay before Parliament the accounts of the private companies contracting for the Benefits Agency medical service in respect of this work. [17175]

  Mr. Burt
  No. The accounts of the shortlisted private sector companies, with the exception of Andersen Consulting, are available at Companies House. As a partnership, Andersen Consulting are not obliged to file accounts with Companies House. However, their
  207
  corporate report which was considered as part of the evaluation process to choose the shortlisted companies is available on request.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what audit requirements he intends to impose on the contractors taking over the Benefits Agency medical service; in what respects these will differ from the statutory requirements of audit in the private sector; and if he will list the specifications on which audit of the contractors will be based. [17177]

  Mr. Burt
  In line with standard practice for Government contracts, the contract(s) will include audit requirements which will be contained within the contract and will give the Department, and its statutory auditors, audit access provisions over and above the statutory requirements. The audit of the contractors will be based on the audit specifications contained in the contract.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what performance measurement systems will be included in contracts to provide medical services for the Benefits Agency. [17166]

  Mr. Burt
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave him on 10 February,Official Report, column 75.

  The performance of the successful contractors will be monitored rigorously. The system by which performance will be monitored is under discussion with the shortlisted contractors and the users of the present medical service.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has for the auditing of the Benefits Agency's performance of its responsibility to ensure that its obligations are met by the companies with which it contacts for medical services. [17170]

  Mr. Burt
  Contract management procedures will be set in place to ensure that companies meet their obligations under the contract. There will be regular reviews with the suppliers of the medical service.

  Contract management will be subject to normal audit requirements.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what specifications and operating instructions he will give to the private contractors which will run the Benefits Agency medical service; and what are the minimum standards which he will require. [17157]

  Mr. Burt
  The successful service providers will have to meet a minimum set of mandatory requirements which will be as stringent as existing standards for the provision of the medical service.

  Disability Payments
  Mr. Alan Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what estimate he has made of the cost of raising the level of invalid care allowance to the level of(a) the jobseeker's allowance and (b) long-term incapacity benefit for each of the years 1997–98 and 1998–99. [17095]

  Mr. Burt
  The information is in the table.
  208

  £ Million

  1997–98

  1998–99

  Jobseeker's allowance (25 and over rate)

  £130

  £140

  Long-term incapacity benefit

  £270

  £300

  Notes:

  1. Estimates are in cash prices rounded to the nearest £10 million.

  2. Estimates take account of offsetting savings in income-related benefits.

  3. The estimates compare invalid care allowance with the 25 and over rate of jobseeker's allowance.

  Mr. Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many(a) lone parents, (b) couples with children and (c) single people who receive (i) family credit and (ii) disability working allowance and are employed are (1) earning below the lower earnings limit, (2) earning below the tax threshold and (3) paying income tax. [17097]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  The information is in tables:

  Level of earnings of family credit recipients shown by family type as at 31 August 1996

  Level of earnings

  Family type

  Below lower earnings limit

  Below tax threshold

  Paying income tax

  Lone parents

  78,000

  149,000

  164,000

  Couples

  80,000

  135,000

  258,000

  1. Couples and single people without children are not eligible to receive Family Credit.

  2. Sample size is 5 per cent.

  3. Figures are rounded to the nearest 1,000.

  Level of earnings of disability working allowance recipients shown by family type as at 31 July 1996

  Family type

  Level of earnings

  Below lower earnings limit

  Below tax threshold

  Paying income tax

  Lone parents

  413

  692

  604

  Couples with children

  1,042

  1,512

  1,400

  Single people without children

  1,646

  2,394

  2,823

  Couples without children

  504

  674

  461

  1. Sample size is 100 per cent.

  2. Figures are not rounded.

  Parliamentary Questions
  Mr. Alan Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what internal guidelines are used by his Department on the manner of responding to parliamentary questions. [17159]

  Mr. Burt
  A copy of the internal guidance used by officials preparing replies to parliamentary questions has been placed in the Library. Departmental officials also use the guidance recently published in annexe C to the Public Service Committee's first special report, Session 1996–97, HC67.

  State Earnings-related Pensions Scheme
  Mr. Olner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what estimates he has made of(a) the impact on the revenue of the national insurance fund and (b) the savings in the current financial year from reduced expenditure on national insurance rebates and incentives

  209
  paid on contributions made to APPs if (i) all and (ii) half of those have opted out of the state earnings-related pension scheme into appropriate personal pensions and earn under £10,000 per annum were to rejoin SERPS. [15593]

  Mr. Heald
  [holding answer 14 February 1997]: The net present value of the additional expenditure on SERPS in future years would be approximately £120 million at current prices if all those with earnings less than £10,000 were to rejoin SERPS for 1996–97 and £60 million if half of those with earnings less than £10,000 rejoined.

  The savings on national insurance rebates and incentives for 1996–97 is estimated to be around £240 million if all those with earnings less than £10,000 were to rejoin SERPS and £120 million if half of those with earnings less than £10,000 rejoined.

  Notes

  1. A discount rate of 3.75 per cent. has been used to calculate the net present value of future expenditure. This discount rate is consistent with the Government Actuary's review of contracting out.

  Disability Benefit Unit
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what responsibility the director of the disability benefit unit has for replying to letters from hon Members; for what reasons the hon. Member for Walsall, North was told in a letter of 31 January (ref. J9627090C) that the official correspondence section would be replying to him; and if he will make a statement about the internal organisation of the disability benefit unit. [16977]
  210
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  The administration of disability living allowance is a matter for Peter Mathison, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Peter Mathison to Mr. David Winnick, dated 24 February 1997:
  The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking what responsibility the Director of the Disability Benefit Unit has for replying to letters form honourable Members; for what reasons the honourable Member for Walsall North was told in a letter of 31st January (ref. J9627090C) that the official correspondence section would be replying to him; and if he will make a statement about the internal organisation of the Disability Benefit Unit (DBU).
  Can I first of all explain that as you copied me your letter of 28 January to the Director of Disability Benefits, I arranged for the issues raised to be investigated and replied personally on 20 February. Therefore the acknowledgement letter of 31 January from the Disability Benefits Director should have advised you that I would be responding. I apologise for any confusion this may have caused.
  As I explained in this letter, much of the correspondence received by the Disability Benefits Director relates to the operational handling of individual cases. The Director has arranged for all issues arising from correspondence to be investigated by front line managers within the 11 Disability Benefit Centres and also the DBU. I should stress, however, the Director remains fully responsible for all replies and will, of course, respond personally if a customer remains dissatisfied,
  The Agency issues guidance to managers on how to deal with official correspondence, including that from Members of Parliament. We are currently reviewing this guidance and will consider the processes in place at the DBU as part of this review.
  I hope you find this reply helpful.

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chichester.

UK Bathing Water: Quality
Lord Campbell of Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What proportion of the recognised bathing beaches in the United Kingdom now meet the standards prescribed by the European Union.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, during the 1996 bathing season, 90 per cent. of the 472 United Kingdom bathing waters identified under the Bathing Water Directive met the directive's mandatory coliform bacteria standards. A full report of results for all the parameters under the directive for which sampling is required has been placed in the Library.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her reply and I welcome what appears to be a substantial improvement. Is it largely due to the installation of new treatment plants and more effective sewage outfalls? If so, will this process continue with the aim of 100 per cent. of beaches reaching the standard?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I am grateful that my noble friend has pointed out how good the improvement is, and that is the case. It is due to all the significant new sewerage plant that has been constructed and all the effort that has gone into that. Since the bathing water improvement scheme came about in 1989, there have been 117 schemes; 83 have already been completed. Another 12 are due to be finished soon and improvements are continuing.
As regards the figure of 100 per cent. mentioned by my noble friend, it is practically impossible to reach 100 per cent. because in order to pass the test the beaches are tested on 20 occasions. If they fail on even one out of the 20 tests, the beaches do not receive the 100 per cent. standard. However, we are delighted with the improvement.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, while we accept that the tide is turning on Britain's dirty beaches, perhaps I may ask whether the Minister agrees that one in nine of British beaches still fails to meet the minimum standards for bathers, particularly because of sewage problems. Bearing in mind the encouraging responses last year, when 31 UK beaches were awarded the European blue flag, does the Minister have any forecasts on how many beaches are likely to be awarded the European blue flag for 1997?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, in a way, if I may say so to the noble Lord, the European blue flag is a bit of a red herring. Perhaps a more polite way of describing it is to call it a misunderstanding, because 23 different tests are carried out, and from memory I believe that about 20 have nothing to do with water quality. The blue flag is only given where the local authority applies for it. So, frankly, the fact that we have only a few blue flags is no indication of the state of our beaches and bathing waters.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: My Lords, first, does the Minister agree that the number of bathing places that have failed increased over the last year? It is merely because a higher total overall was identified that the proportion remained roughly the same. Secondly, does the Minister agree that it is only because of pressure from the European Union that we have progressed as far as we have in the improvement of bathing places?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: No, my Lords, I do not agree. I am pleased to tell the noble Baroness that since privatisation of water, the figures for our bathing waters that meet the requirements have increased from 68 per cent. to the 90 per cent. that I was glad to mention just now.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House whether our Department of Health still believes that the £13,500 million so far spent on the directive is largely wasted? Can she say how much our European competitors have spent on the directive and to what genuine effect?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I have no information on how much our European partners have spent on the directive. I know that we have spent £2,000 million, which accounts for the 117 schemes which I mentioned. We are pleased about it and feel that it is a good indication of a project where we work together to try to improve the bathing water quality of all countries across the European Union.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, can the Minister say how many bathing beaches in Britain reached the prescribed temperature at which people would like to bathe?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I am afraid that I am unable to help the noble Lord. As a non-swimmer who uses a rubber ring in the swimming pool, I have no information on the temperature of the sea water.
Viscount Allenby of Megiddo: My Lords, from the work carried out by her department, can the Minister say how many cases of illness are attributable to beaches which do not reach EU standards?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: No, my Lords, I am unable to give my noble friend that information.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House whether there is any kind of league table of performance in the area such as exists for the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Baltic states?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, data are compiled on how European countries are doing, but

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there must always be a degree of caution used when trying to make direct comparisons because all the states have different sampling and analytical methods. So it is difficult for us to work out the figures. However, I am pleased to tell the House that we are placed in the middle of the table and are getting better all the time. We certainly produce better results than Germany, France or the Netherlands.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware of a recent report which showed that the major pollution of our beaches is now caused by the users of the beaches?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I am not aware of that report; but that may very well be so.
Lord Pender: My Lords, is my noble friend interested to know that my home beach at Sandwich Bay has just had over £1.4 million spent on improving the foreshore and sewage treatment, and, having been red listed or contaminated listed, it now proudly flies the blue flag?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I am delighted to congratulate my noble friend on that excellent result for Sandwich beach.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that two causes of unclean beaches are garbage and debris from shipping, discarded and washed up on the beaches, and pollution from dirty rivers and estuaries? Are those two sources also being addressed?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: Yes, my Lords, they are.

Organic Farming
2.47 p.m.
The Earl of Clanwilliam The Earl of Clanwilliam asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they propose to increase the area payments of the organic aid scheme in view of the imbalance of trade in organic produce between the United Kingdom and other European Union states.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, our policies are designed to encourage a soundly based, not subsidy driven, organic farming industry. We have no plans at present to increase organic aid scheme payments, but we have recently launched the organic conversion information service which offers a telephone helpline and free advisory visits. We also spend £1 million a year on research into the economic and practical aspects of organic farming.
The Earl of Clanwilliam: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that interesting reply. He suggests that he is interested in organic farming, which is not subsidised. May I introduce him to something called the
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common agricultural policy, which is responsible for enormous subsidies to foreign producers of organic foods? They are responsible for imports of £260 million-worth of organic produce a year, of which £180 million-worth is from CAP-supported European Union states. Does not that imbalance of trade compare terribly with the organic aid scheme, which produces a paltry £1 million spread over five years?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, my noble friend underestimates the value of the organic aid scheme, which runs at about £1 million a year at present. Certainly, subsidies by our continental neighbours are much higher than our own—of the order of two to three times higher. But we do not see the need to enter into a competition on subsidies. There appear to be quite enough subsidies to agriculture at the moment without adding to them needlessly. It would only result in a weak and vulnerable organic farming industry if we were to water and fertilize it too heavily at this stage.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, does the noble Lord realise that organic farming reduces the energy used on the land to the benefit of the environment and increases the labour used on the land to the benefit of the community? For both those reasons, does he agree that it would be a good thing for the OAS to be as fully funded as our competitors in the rest of Europe?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord about some of the benefits of organic farming. Indeed, it has many good environmental spin-offs. But I still do not see that as a reason for subsidising it so extensively as in Europe. Research has shown that the levels of aid that we provide cover the costs of conversion, and that seems to us to be sufficient.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the environmental benefits of organic farming are considerable? Given that the United Kingdom is reputedly in pursuit of sustainable development of all kinds, including sustainable farming, is it not time to rethink the attitude shown in his first Answer to the noble Earl, Lord Clanwilliam? It seems to me unfair that the subsidies to what is now called conventional farming should be so much more than those now given to organic farming. Will he accept that the benefits environmentally and to the health of individuals are great enough to justify another look at this question?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, the noble Baroness misunderstands the present situation. All the subsidies which are available for ordinary conventional farmers are available for organic farmers. We have designed the way in which we deal with set-aside, for instance, so that those converting to organic farms can benefit from the regulations. We have designed our environmental schemes so that they are much easier and much less costly for organic farmers to comply with than those on conventional farms. So there are many additional benefits already available to organic farmers. In our view, looking at the present situation, they are sufficient.
Lord Moyne: My Lords, is it not mad to subsidise set-aside, which, after all, produces mainly weeds, and not to subsidise organic farming?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, as I said, we subsidise organic farming substantially; we do not see the need to subsidise it more.
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the vast majority of farmers regard organic farming—to use an old phrase—as mystery and magic? Until recently the same attitude permeated the Ministry of Agriculture, ADAS and most of the agricultural research establishments. Is the Minister further aware that organic farming, low-input farming and environmentally friendly farming—what might be termed generically as alternative farming—is much more demanding, both technically and intellectually, than conventional, high-input farming? There is a shortage of people in research who could help farmers to convert if a large number wished to do so. I do not believe that a telephone helpline will be enough.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I do not disagree with the noble Lord that a lot of mystery surrounds conversion to organic farming. One reason why people may not have taken advantage of the help available to them is that they are fearful of the risks involved. That is why we launched the organic conversion information service. It involves free visits and free consultation as well as the telephone helpline. A lot of research is directed at exactly what are the costs of conversion and how best to go about it. Indeed, one of the experiments at ADAS, Terrington, is showing that conversion of a pure arable farm with good farmland can yield significant profits over conventional agriculture and may be worth doing without subsidy.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, while organic farming can produce food that many people may wish to buy, without conventional farming and the input of synthetically produced nitrogen the world would starve?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, that is taking the Question a little wide. I am not an organic vegetable eater and I am content to eat the products of conventional farming rather than pay double the price for the organic alternative.
The Earl of Clanwilliam: My Lords, perhaps the Minister will bring to the attention of his right honourable friend in the Ministry the fact that there is an imbalance of trade of 180 million a year to this country. That amount is being wasted by the failure of the Government to support the organic movement properly.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I do not take such a segmented view of free trade. If there is a deficit in organic farming then the farmers who are not farming organically are producing other crops which are either generating a deficit in that regard or producing a surplus elsewhere. We do not have to have an equality in the balance of payments in every individual product or type of farming.

Scottish Select Committees
2.52 p.m.
Baroness Elles Baroness Elles asked the Leader of the House:
Whether he is satisfied with the operation of Scottish Select Committees in scrutinising Scottish public Bills.
The Lord Privy Seal (Viscount Cranborne)The Lord Privy Seal (Viscount Cranborne): My Lords, yes.
Baroness Elles: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that detailed reply. Does he agree that the new procedure which is applicable so far to three Scottish public Bills has been successful? It enabled direct links to be created between selected Members of your Lordships' House and members in Scotland who are concerned with the details of the Bills as they arise. Will my noble friend further agree that this form of practical devolution is infinitely to be preferred both as to price and as to efficiency rather than some form of proposed parliamentary devolution?
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, I agree with the suggestion of my noble friend. I was heartened by the support of the Opposition parties, after understandable caution, which is only right and proper, when this experiment was first tried. I agree that it has been extremely successful in making sure that people who were particularly interested in the proposed legislation were given a chance to give evidence in Scotland. In parallel with the initiatives of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, it brought Parliament closer to the Scottish people. The experiment has proved good value in the sense that the costs have varied between £7,000 and £11,000. I agree also that the experiment ensured that it is one Parliament that has been brought closer to the people rather than breaking up the United Kingdom with several.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, I sat on two of those committees. Does the noble Viscount agree that the knowledge acquired by the members of those committees probably saved parliamentary time at later stages in the Bill? The Deer (Scotland) Bill and the Transfer of Crofting Estates (Scotland) Bill were specialised subjects and the knowledge acquired of the subjects probably enabled Members of the Committee and the House to concentrate their amendments and thereby take up less parliamentary time at later stages.
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, I agree with the implication of the noble Lady's question that better prepared legislation is likely to enter into a virtuous circle in the legislative process. The more that consultation can take place, the better. I am sure that the Select Committees played their part in that, just as other government initiatives—for example, the increased publication of Bills drafted in advance—have helped in the same direction, though the steps so far have been only modest ones.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, despite much trouble being taken by

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a large number of groups and individuals to give evidence on the three Bills that have so far been scrutinised in that way, there has been scant reporting by the Scottish media? Is there any way that the House itself could make it clearer to the public when and where the special Scottish Select Committees are meeting and what they are about? Perhaps also reports could be published afterwards containing the gist of the business that was contracted.
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, I am distressed to hear from my noble friend that the coverage in the Scottish press was rather exiguous. I equally deplore the lack of coverage of proceedings in your Lordships' House we so often receive in the national press. In that respect I hope that the appointment of a new senior information officer—I am glad to say it was approved by all sides of the House—will begin to make some impact on the amount of press coverage that takes place. Nonetheless, I am reliably informed that in relation to the Transfer of Crofting Estates (Scotland) Bill there was considerable coverage on Scottish television and in the press. Specific interests were served, in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Macaulay of Bragar, who I understood was able to inform the inhabitants of the Isle of Skye of the contents of the Bill in Gaelic.
Lord Richard: My Lords, is the Leader of the House aware that we regard this experiment as having been a modest success? We would be content for it to continue, provided it is done on a pragmatic, practical basis and in respect of one Bill at a time. However, if the Leader of the House really believes that going up to Inverness to look at the deer and going to Skye in order to consult the crofters is any substitute for the legitimate aspirations for devolution of the Scottish people, frankly, he is crazy.
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, knows as well as I do that I never claimed more than a modest ambition when I suggested this device to your Lordships. He knows that that ambition, in his opinion as well as mine, has been satisfied. We will continue to choose, through the usual channels and by mutual agreement as is the way of this House, which Bills would be appropriate for that procedure. I am tempted to go down the road the noble Lord asks me to go down. I merely remind him that one of the difficulties that I suspect his party and the leader of his party will suffer from perennially on this subject as well as others is that they fail—I use the phrase used by Mr. Blair in the John Smith Lecture advisedly—to get stuck into the thickets of detail and that is where the devil always lies in their proposals.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the new extended system of Scottish parliamentary committees is an effective constitutional improvement? The development has produced the only advances in the past 23 years since the Royal Commission reported on the constitution. Nothing
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whatever was done and no steps were taken during the period of a Labour Government when their previous devolution scheme collapsed totally at a referendum.
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, as a distinguished former Secretary of State for Scotland, my noble friend can yield to no one in his knowledge and experience of these affairs. Reverting to the remarks of my noble friend Lady Elles about cost, I am told that the latest estimate in sterling terms of the cost of what is proposed for what will unquestionably be an ill-thought-out attempt at a Scottish parliament which will split up the United Kingdom is £70 million. That seems an awful lot of money to spend on an experiment that is doomed to failure for the very reasons my noble friend gives.
Lord Sewel: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that at least on one occasion in one of the Bills the weight of Scottish opinion as collected through the evidence obtained by the Select Committee was not reflected in the final shape and content of the Bill, thus underlining the need for a Scottish parliament to make Scottish legislation more responsive to and representative of Scottish opinion?
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, the fact that evidence is collected and the issues are aired by this device will inform the proper procedures of this House when it comes to scrutinise legislation in its remaining stages. It is for your Lordships' House to decide, in the light of that and other information, how it wishes to proceed. I certainly do not think that this is any more ambitious in its aims than the noble Lord, Lord Richard, made out a moment ago.

Asylum Seekers: Local Authority Support
3.2 p.m.
Earl Russell Earl Russell asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether, in the light of the Court of Appeal judgment on 17th February, they will fully compensate local authorities for their expenditure in complying with their duties to asylum seekers under the National Assistance Act 1948.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, the Government intend, in the current financial year, to reimburse local authorities for reasonable expenditure incurred in accommodating asylum seekers.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. I notice she gave no answer to the word "fully". May I take it that that was the proverbial stern reply? Does she agree that the fact that, for example, the London Borough of Westminster is supporting asylum seekers, some of whose claims go back to 1988, is no fault of that borough and that, in present circumstances,

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for the Government to treat their remaining friends in this way is not good justice, good administration or good politics?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, in my reply I told the noble Earl that we are going to reimburse local authorities their reasonable expenditure. That is fair. With regard to the councils that are having to support asylum seekers—they are mainly London boroughs—we recognise that this is beyond the duties they expected to have to finance in this year and therefore we are supporting them financially and in other ways.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, will my noble friend go a little further than in her answer to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, bearing in mind that Westminster is something of a special case for compensation? Given its geographic position and other attractions, some 65 per cent. of its temporary housing stock is now taken up by asylum seekers, and that percentage is growing by the week.
Baroness Cumberlege: Yes, my Lords, we are having discussions with the London boroughs and the other local authorities concerned. In fact, Westminster is third in terms of the number of asylum seekers that it has to accommodate. We have taken into account the case that has been made to us and we believe that we are treating it fairly.
The Lord Bishop of Hereford: My Lords, the outcome of the Government's policy on asylum seekers was made abundantly clear by many people, not least by Church leaders. Does the Minister not now agree that, in view of the legal judgment that asylum seekers are not to be allowed to be destitute, in view of the indignities at present suffered by asylum seekers, in view of the unfairness created by the fact that different local authorities offer support at different levels and in view of the fundamental injustice that local authorities should be expected to solve a national problem, the right course of action is to restore entitlement to benefit for those who are applying for asylum and whose cases remain to be heard?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, this Government support very strongly genuine asylum seekers—those who really come here because they are being persecuted abroad. As I am sure your Lordships are aware, if they declare their intentions at the port of entry, they get their benefits while their case is being heard. It was a great surprise to the Government that the court should rule that it was the National Assistance Act which should be used for this purpose. We have never accepted that the National Assistance Act applies to adults who are not elderly, infirm or disabled or in need of community care services. As your Lordships may be aware, we are appealing to the House of Lords for that ruling to be overturned.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, will the Minister kindly confirm the figures supplies to me by the Refugee Council this morning that an adult asylum
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seeker who applies at port of entry and gets benefit on average costs public funds £110 a week but an adult asylum seeker who applies in-country and is therefore refused benefit is now costing public funds on average £200 a week, nearly twice as much?
Baroness Cumberlege: No, my Lords, I dispute those figures. They are not correct. Our discussions with the local authorities have revealed that local authorities are spending on average £165 a week for an asylum seeker.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, what has happened to the number of asylum seekers since the benefit rules were changed?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, my noble friend asks a very pertinent question. Before benefits were withdrawn from asylum seekers we had enormous numbers coming to this country. When we passed the Act and the regulations initially, between March and August the numbers of asylum seekers fell by 35 per cent. over the same period last year. Since then it has been 50 per cent. month on month. When the benefits were restored, the number of applications from asylum seekers already in this country rose by 82 per cent. in one month alone.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that it is the Government's intention that this support for local authorities will be through an order to be placed before Parliament shortly? Given the complexities of the issue and the heat that has been generated in discussing the subject, will the Government consider publishing that order in draft so that the details can be debated before the final Motion is presented to Parliament?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I understand that the special grant report has already been laid in another place and that it is up for debate next month.

Business
3.8 p.m.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m., my noble friend Lord Goschen will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the future of London Underground.

Local Government and Rating Bill
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That it be an instruction to the Grand Committee to whom the Local Government and Rating Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order:

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Clause 1,

Schedule 1,

Clause 5,

Schedule 2,

Clauses 2 and 3,

Clause 6,

Clause 4,

Clauses 7 to 33,

Schedules 3 and 4,

Clauses 34 and 35.—(Baroness Miller of Hendon.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Bill
3.9 p.m.
Read a third time.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Baroness Denton of Wakefield): My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass. Since the introduction of the Bill in another place last November, the security situation in Northern Ireland has provided little ground for optimism. On 12th February, Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick was cold-bloodedly murdered by terrorists. This despicable and cowardly act is one of a series of terrorist actions clearly intended to kill and maim, and it is a tribute to the vigilance and professionalism of the security forces that there have not been many more fatalities.
This background of worsening violence might cause some to wonder about the justification for proceeding with the Bill. In fact, of course, it underlines the need to do all we possibly can to facilitate the decommissioning of paramilitary arsenals and remove the gun and bomb from Irish political life forever.
The Government's message, and the message which they share with all who seek to make progress free from the shadow of the gun, is simple: all violence must stop and stop for ever and the implements of violence must be removed safely, visibly, and for good. And to ensure lasting stability in Northern Ireland there needs to be political agreement, widely endorsed.
It is important to be clear that decommissioning in the context of the Bill is essentially a voluntary process. Any arrangements must therefore secure the confidence of those with arms to decommission. Without that confidence there will be no decommissioning.
But your Lordships may be assured that the Government's overriding aim is to decommission the terrorist arsenals. They do not seek to remove the guilt that terrorists bear for the misery they have inflicted upon the lives of the people of both Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom and the security forces will continue to seek and bring to justice those responsible for terrorist crimes. Some may well find it abhorrent that in this Bill we should be contemplating the decommissioning of the weapon which was used to murder Stephen Restorick. The necessary loss of evidence which decommissioning
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would entail must be weighed against the opportunity to ensure that the weapons will never be used to murder again. But I emphasise that there will be no decommissioning of the crime itself. Ultimately, the Bill is a question of balance, and I believe we have chosen the right one.
The possibility of a return to full-scale terrorist violence brings home the importance of the Bill, which opens up a different, better prospect for the people of Northern Ireland. Senator Mitchell referred in his report to the need for the decommissioning of minds in Northern Ireland. He concluded that all were agreed on the principle of arms decommissioning; differences could be distilled into the question of timing. That is profoundly true. The tragedy is that guns and bombs are once more being used as an expression of minds which appear for ever locked in the past.
The Bill represents a pledge of the Government's determination to pursue the goal of permanent peace and stability in Northern Ireland.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Baroness Denton of Wakefield.)
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the Minister rightly says that this is a very important Bill. When it becomes law it will need extremely careful scrutiny in practice. We have to bear in mind that it allows an effective amnesty in criminal proceedings. A decommissioned weapon of whatever seriousness or gravity, however many crimes it was used to commit, will be destroyed; evidence potentially available from it is ruled inadmissible in criminal proceedings; and forensic scientific tests are specifically prohibited.
I asked one or two questions at Second Reading on 30th January and the Minister was courteous enough, as always, to give me a very full reply in her letter of 11th February. That reply was placed in the Library and has also been provided to the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham. The Minister confirms that a weapon decommissioned in Northern Ireland may not be available for use in criminal proceedings in the rest of the United Kingdom. She confirms that in practice all decommissioned weapons will be destroyed, and says,
"so it will not he possible [with a decommissioned weapon] to tell where and when, if ever",
that weapon was used for criminal purposes. The evidence which might have been available will not be available in civil proceedings. I have confirmation from her that there is a question at least about the position of co-accused where there is more than one defendant in criminal proceedings.
I gave the Minister notice of a question I wish to put about the circumstances relating to Lance Bombardier Restorick, killed recently for no other offence than doing his duty. The fact is that he was killed with a single shot from a high-velocity weapon unlawfully introduced into Northern Ireland from the United States. The further fact we need to bear in mind on this occasion is that if that weapon is handed in and decommissioned in Northern Ireland, it is likely to be the only probitive evidence against the murderer of Lance Bombardier Restorick. The effect of the Bill becoming part of our law is that that

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murder will go unprosecuted and the murderer unconvicted. That is why I have trespassed on your Lordships' patience for a moment or two to indicate the gravity of what we are doing.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, I shall be equally brief. I subscribe to the question which the noble Lord, Lord Williams, asked rather than repeat it. At the time we last discussed this issue the noble Baroness was kind enough to take issues about the North Report. I would like to trespass on her time and that of the House to raise a question on the report and on parades. I am sure she agrees that we have 65 very dangerous days ahead of us between now and the putative date of the British general election. We have a deteriorating security situation in Northern Ireland.
I am sure that the Minister also agrees that it is the overwhelming duty of the Government to do everything they can to ensure stability at a difficult and precarious time. When we last discussed this matter three weeks' ago, the Government said that they needed to consult further on the issue of Dr. North's report on parades. I offered from these Benches—I believe my noble colleague did the same—that there would be every possible assistance for the Government from the Opposition parties and that they would be available for consultation to allow conclusions from the North recommendations to be brought forward so that they could be implemented during this year's marching season.
The Liberal Democrats have not had any approach from the Government. I do not know whether the Labour Party has been approached for consultation. I would very much like to hear what progress the Government have made on urgently reviewing Dr. North's recommendations. I do not really apologise for raising these issues because we have so little chance to discuss general matters relating to Northern Ireland as regards decommissioning and a peaceful settlement. We read in the newspapers that there is a proposal to rush into the closing days of this Parliament a proposal for a Northern Ireland Grand Committee. That may or may not be a good thing—there are powerful arguments in favour of it—but I cannot believe that it is a good thing to do at this point. What sort of signal will it give in Northern Ireland to the minority community? Has it been discussed at all with the Irish Government? And is it the right way to proceed?
On both issues the noble Baroness will be well aware that I do not point a finger at the Northern Ireland Office which labours unceasingly in the vineyard of peace and political settlement. However, I do point a finger at the Whips of the party opposite who seem extremely concerned to secure the continuing support of the Unionists at a time when their first consideration ought to be the maintenance of peaceful progress in Northern Ireland.
Lord Alderdice: My Lords, it must be very unusual indeed for a Bill to come to this House from another place virtually uncontested yet with everyone fairly sure that the measure will not be implemented even though
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it has been passed, particularly on a matter which is so extraordinary—the disarmament of organisations within the United Kingdom.
The reason is not that it is just a practical matter: the passing of the Bill is not just a question of setting up a structure for decommissioning. It is a political matter. It has come to the fore because of a deep absence of trust, not just occasioned by 25 years of violence but also because when the peace process began the terms were set out and the most crucial term of all was acceptance of the principle of consent. When the republicans made clear that they would not accept that principle there was a search for other evidence of bone fides and the matter of decommissioning was turned to. It is a matter of some regret that that became such a leitmotiv, such a significant issue, rather than the issue of consent which is so fundamental.
However, it is to be welcomed that Mr. John Bruton, the Taoiseach of the Irish Republic, has made it very clear that he and his government will demand and require from republicans that they cease their violence for good and that he has emphasised the centrality of the principle of consent. Surely, it must also be welcomed that yesterday in Belfast Mr. Bertie Ahern, the leader of Fianna Fail and of the opposition in Dublin, also made it clear that the republican movement must come to the mountain of democracy—not the other way round. I hope that we can depend not only on the surety of Her Majesty's current Government, but on anyone else who may fill that position later this year, to ensure that there will be an absolute and steady requirement that the republicans accommodate themselves to the principles of democracy, and not any alternative.
These matters apply to us all. The rule of democracy is not something that can be applied to some, but not to others. When we see not only republicans returning to violence, but also those who gather outside the Catholic church at Harryville every Saturday evening now almost making it traditional to shout abuse and to intimidate Catholic worshippers as they proceed to worship their God; and when we see the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party proclaiming that he insists that Orangemen will walk down a particularly contentious route, not waiting for the advice of the police, despite all the difficulties of last year and the year before—we continue to remember that picture of him wagging his finger at the RUC—I trust that the current Government and any future government will insist that the rule of law is maintained and that the rights of all are protected. Without that, there is no future for our community or for the cause of peace.
I trust that no matter of political expediency or difficulty will press any government, current or otherwise, here or in the Irish Republic, to do anything but hold to those principles not only on the matter of the republicans, but also with regard to the Orangemen who have in their own way turned to the politics of political intimidation and street action.
Lord Fitt: My Lords, the Bill has now almost passed through both Houses with the minimum of difficulty, yet it contains all the elements that could cause great

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controversy among Members of this House, another place, and the people of Northern Ireland. The reason that it has not resulted in controversy is that no one in Ireland, north or south of the border—no one in any of the communities of Northern Ireland—believes that there is any possibility of it coming into force.
On Second Reading I said that there would be great opposition to the announcement that had been made—it has been reinforced today by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn—that if weapons are handed in for decommissioning, no forensic tests will take place on them to determine whether those guns have been used to carry out murders. I cannot believe that that is right.
Both the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Williams, mentioned the killing of the young Lance Bombadier only recently. The noble Lord questioned whether, if the weapon that killed that young man was handed in for decommissioning, it could be used to further a prosecution against the person who fired it. That is only one case among the hundreds of unsolved murders in Northern Ireland which have been carried out by both sides—by nationalist terrorists and unionist terrorists. The relatives are still alive. They will bitterly resent any legislation which states that if a gun is handed in, no forensic tests will be carried out on it. That gun might ultimately be the only evidence that could be used in court to convict a murderer, but that evidence will not be available. That means that scores of murderers in Northern Ireland will be told by this legislation, "If you hand in your gun, you will never be tried for the brutal and vile murders you have carried out." I cannot believe that that is right.
At the moment it seems from her remarks that the Minister is living in hope, a hope perhaps destined to die in despair. Since the so-called peace talks began in Northern Ireland, the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, will be able to confirm that day after day, hour after hour, there has been controversy about decommissioning. Absolutely no agreement that would bring about decommissioning can be reached at the forum between the existing political parties. I do not think that any of them believes that it will ever come about. However, I reiterate what I said then and I fully support what has been said today by the noble Lord, Lord Williams. The Government will be taking a very retrograde step if they give an indication that the people who have used guns for murders and handed them in for decommissioning will never be charged with murder. That cannot be correct in Northern Ireland terms.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I know that on many occasions in your Lordships' House, the Motion, "That this Bill do now pass", is not spoken to, but I believe that those noble Lords who have spoken are rightly deserving of a reply. This is a very important Bill. I believe that it is necessary to have it on the statute book. I can report that the Republic of Ireland took its decommissioning Bill through its final stages last week. Both governments are committed to finding a peaceful future for Northern Ireland and, indeed, for the island of Ireland.
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I understand some of the frustrations which the noble Lord, Lord Fitt, raised. The rest of us can never ourselves live the suffering of someone who has seen so much violence in Northern Ireland and seen friends and colleagues suffer from it. We sympathise with and understand the noble Lord's concerns.
However, there is a balance to be struck between looking to the future and making very difficult decisions. I emphasise the difficulty of those decisions. We must consider the balance of whether it is better to take a weapon out of commission—there must be confidence in decommissioning if it is to be viable—and thus to ensure that that weapon is never again used to murder as against the chances of pursuing the killers. I would not pretend that the decommissioning provisions will not make it more difficult for the police to pursue their investigations. However, I believe that, on balance, we must protect the future. All of us listened with pride to the Lance Bombardier's parents express their concern that their son's death should not result in more violence in Northern Ireland. I believe that this Bill works towards their wishes and that we should follow it through.
The police will not stop pursuing criminals. We are decommissioning no crimes whatever. As prosecutions are often mounted in the absence of the weapon used and as other evidence of involvement in a crime plays a more central role, we believe that other evidence unconnected with the decommissioning process can be used to support a prosecution. The important point to remember is that our aim is to persuade those in possession of unlawful armaments to decommission them. If they feel exposed they will not participate and arms will not be handed over in any other circumstances.
It is a great pleasure both to me and, I am sure, to your Lordships to hear Northern Ireland voices speaking on these matters. I welcome the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, to finding a peaceful solution. It is important to stress that if the republican movement continues to reject the path of democratic dialogue in achieving a peaceful resolution of the problems of political instability in Northern Ireland that dialogue will continue without it. If the republican movement does not make it possible for Sinn Fein to be invited to join the talks process it is essential that the legislative foundations for a suitable decommissioning scheme are already in place. I believe that we would be doing less than our duty if we failed to bring forward this Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme, raised two matters that perhaps fell slightly outside the scope of the Bill. But, as the noble Lord rightly points out, this House has very little opportunity to discuss Northern Ireland issues. It also has very little opportunity to discuss them with so many noble Lords in their places. I am sure that all of us who are involved in trying to find solutions gain a great deal of satisfaction from knowing that there are more people who recognise the needs of Northern Ireland and are working towards meeting them. As the noble Lord said, we have taken the opportunity, instead of making a Statement on the North Report, of discussing it at Second Reading of the Bill. I am sorry

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that the noble Lord has not been kept up to date with progress but I assure him that I am aware of considerable efforts on the part of my colleagues in moving forward this matter. We are all well aware that the clock is ticking and that these dates come very quickly. People are being consulted on the formation of the commission. There is no lack of urgency. I hope that this is a matter from which everyone learned a lesson last year. There can be no disguising the fact that there must be a sense of urgency.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme, referred to the Northern Ireland Grand Committee. The Government view the existing Northern Ireland Grand Committee as a way of making government in Northern Ireland more accountable and giving MPs from Northern Ireland greater responsibility. The Prime Minister has said that Northern Ireland MPs should be able to question Ministers and scrutinise government policy directly in Grand Committee, meeting sometimes in Northern Ireland. I welcome the opportunity to be directly responsible for answering matters that fall within my portfolio. The Government are likely to bring forward proposed changes in line with recent alterations to the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees.
We in Northern Ireland work constantly to find movement. We believe that if people are not given responsibility it is difficult to ask them to behave responsibly. We are trying to make progress. It would be wrong to tell your Lordships that it is always easy. But I should like to reassure the House that this is a peace process because that is the way in which the two governments, with the support of the United States Administration, seek to take violence out of Northern Ireland and remove the arms, bullets and bombs. I am sure that if that day arrives everyone in your Lordships' House will celebrate.
On Question, Bill passed.

London Underground
3.35 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Viscount Goschen): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement that is being made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport in another place. The Statement reads as follows:
"With permission, I should like to make a Statement about our proposals for the future of London Underground.
"London Underground is the last of the traditional transport nationalised industries and the only major transport operator which is not in the private sector. Since 1979, we have privatised a wide range of transport businesses—for example, British Airways, the British Airports Authority and indeed London Transport's own bus operating companies. All of them have gone on to prosper, raising money from the market to invest in better services for their customers. Only London Underground remains in the public sector—its status becoming increasingly anomalous.
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"Most recently, of course, we have privatised the national passenger rail network—a process which has now been completed with the award of the last franchise, for Scotrail. The benefits are already becoming apparent: an increase in passenger numbers; new investment is already taking place or is in the pipeline. Railtrack have plans to spend £4 million a day on maintaining and renewing the rail network, on stations and depots and on network enhancements. By 2001, Railtrack estimate that they will have spent £1 billion more than the regulator expected. In addition, franchisees are committed to investing around £1.5 billion in new rolling stock, and over £100 million in improvements to stations and other facilities. The decision to proceed with Thameslink 2000 and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link show that major new projects can be undertaken within a privatised railway. Benefits for rail users are being achieved at a decreasing cost to the taxpayer. In seven years time, the private sector franchisees will require only about 40 per cent. of the support that British Rail estimated they would have needed to run the same services this year.
"Rail privatisation has shown that the fact that an industry is currently loss-making is no barrier to its successful transfer to the private sector.
"Against that background, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced in October that we would be considering whether the benefits of privatisation could be extended to the London Underground. We have now completed the initial stages of that work and the Government have concluded that privatisation is the right way forward.
"The package that I will outline to the House will deliver a higher quality Underground, at an affordable cost to passengers and at no extra cost to the taxpayer. Our purpose is to structure the privatisation so as to ensure that the Underground is brought up to modern standards as soon as possible. Our aim is to complete this modernisation and improvement programme—that is the elimination of the 'investment backlog'—within five years of privatisation.
"Over recent years, London Underground's management have raised customer satisfaction by a sixth, increased scheduled train services to a level not seen in 25 years, increased the Underground's operating surplus from nothing to around £200 million a year, and reduced the investment backlog from £2 billion to £1.2 billion. Despite these great strides, a lot remains to be done if we are to bring about the standards of service that passengers want, at a cost which they and taxpayers can afford. We believe that privatisation is the only means of achieving these goals. Privatisation will enable the private sector to invest in the network and respond to passengers' needs, unconstrained by the restrictions of public expenditure controls, and will create the stable financial environment which is simply not achievable in the public sector, with all the other competing demands on taxpayers' money. We want

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to privatise London Underground as soon as possible so that passengers can start enjoying these benefits without delay.
"In deciding on the detailed structure for the privatised Underground, we shall need to take account of the network's unique nature and operating characteristics, and to obtain further technical and financial advice. Specifically, detailed work will now begin on three possible models: the sale of London Underground as a single business; the sale or franchising of vertically integrated lines, or groups of lines, under which a single operator would be responsible for the stations, track and trains on each line or group of lines; or a structure like the national railways model, with a track authority owning the network and franchisees running trains on individual lines or groups of lines.
"We are already consulting London Transport and the Railways Inspectorate, and we shall now widen our discussions to involve the other key players in the railway industry, or with an interest in London's transport system, such as the London Pride Partnership and the London Regional Passengers' Committee. We also intend to start the process of appointing advisers. Our aim is to publish in the summer a White Paper with our detailed proposals for the best structural option for the future of the Underground.
"As with previous privatisations, there have been a number of scare stories in the media in recent weeks. I want to set the record straight by giving 10 commitments to passengers and employees. On safety standards, safety must always be a top priority. I shall be consulting the Health and Safety Commission in order to ensure that, whichever structural option we adopt, the very high safety standards of the network are maintained.
"Secondly, on a fully integrated network for passengers, including through-ticketing and freedom of interchange between lines, there is no question of 'breaking up the network'. Passengers will be able to use different lines for a journey and to choose the most suitable route, using one ticket in exactly the way that they do now.
"Thirdly, on the London Travelcard, regular Tube users attach great value to the Travelcard, which allows people to use the same ticket to travel by Underground, rail or bus, without any restriction on the number of journeys they make. It is used by around a million people a day and accounts for over two-thirds of Underground journeys. Our proposals will explicitly safeguard its future.
"Fourthly, on concessionary fares, the existing London-wide concessionary fares arrangements, which are of critical importance to many elderly and disabled people who rely on public transport, will not be affected by our proposals.
"Fifthly, on wider share ownership, we shall seek ways of encouraging employees and passengers to acquire a real stake in the privatised Underground.
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"Sixthly, as far as the employees are concerned, pensions and travel concessions at the time of privatisation will be safeguarded. Again, depending on the option that we choose, we will be seeking to encourage employees to participate in management or employee buy-outs.
"Seventhly, on service levels, we shall ensure that the private sector will be required to provide a guaranteed level of service broadly safeguarding the existing level of provision. The regulatory authority supervising the privatised Underground, which will be independent of the train operators, will agree to changes in service levels only after carefully considering the benefits to passengers. Again, this is a wholly new safeguard.
"Eighthly, on station safeguards, we shall retain strong and effective statutory procedures to deal with any proposals to close stations. These safeguards will be just as rigorous as those which already apply to London Underground and to the national rail network.
"Ninthly, on fares, we shall introduce controls on fares. The guiding principle will be that, for at least the first four years after privatisation, average fare rises will be no more than inflation. This is a new safeguard—previously, Underground fares have not been capped. We also intend to restrain fares in the run-up to privatisation, by capping average fare increases to inflation plus 1 per cent. a year. Again, there has been no such explicit protection in the past, and in practice fares have tended to rise faster than this. The House will recall, for example, that fares increased by 45 per cent. in real terms between 1974 and 1979. Which brings me to the tenth commitment.
"On investment, in the recent debate about the future of London Underground, a consensus has emerged on two key principles with which I believe that the whole House can agree: first, that it must be a top priority to accelerate investment in the London Underground so as to bring the network up to the standards which passengers can reasonably expect for the 21st century; secondly, that this goal can only be achieved if we create a stable funding regime which enables investment to be planned ahead with confidence.
"We are therefore developing a special funding regime for recycling privatisation proceeds into investment which recognises the unique situation and needs of the Underground. Receipts from privatisation will be recycled in order to ensure that the modernisation of the Underground's infrastructure is completed as quickly as possible, building on the work that London Underground is already doing. Our aim is to achieve this within five years of privatisation, with the private sector operator committing himself to modernising the assets for which he is responsible, in return for a guaranteed level of government support to supplement the investment funds which he himself will raise.
"After recycling privatisation proceeds to complete the modernisation of the Tube network, the majority of any remaining surplus will be channelled into

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additional support for London Underground or for transport investment elsewhere in London or other parts of the country.
"As far as modernising the Underground's basic infrastructure is concerned, the House will appreciate that there is a maximum level of annual investment beyond which it is not practicable to go. At a certain point, for example, disruptions to services from renewal works across the network would become too great, or beyond the capacity of the supply industry. Subject to these practical constraints, we aim to privatise the Underground in such a way that the network is modernised as soon as possible.
"London Underground estimates that the upper limit for sensible investment in the core Underground each year is around £750 million. Of course, passengers are interested in the results of investment—punctual and reliable services—not the amounts. I believe that the private sector will be able to deliver the results that passengers want, but more efficiently. Privatisation and the new regulatory regime will be focusing on the results of investment. But if we assumed that annual investment was around £750 million, about £350 million a year would be needed to maintain the network and renew assets as they become too old. The remaining investment would be aimed at eliminating the results of the under-investment in the Underground in the 1960s and 1970s. Sustained annual investment of around £750 million in the core Underground would be significantly above what has been managed before—in real terms, over four times what was achieved in the 1970s, about three times more than in the 1980s, and 50 per cent. more than so far in the 1990s. I do not believe that this rate of progress would be possible if London Underground were to remain in the public sector.
"The 10 commitments that I have given today show our determination to protect and enhance the aspects of the Underground which are valued by Tube users and Londoners generally. At the same time, privatisation will introduce private sector capital, ideas and energy to increase investment and raise standards. This is an outstanding package for Tube users and Londoners. I do not believe that anything as attractive would be possible under continued public ownership. I commend to the House the principle of privatising the London Underground."
That concludes the Statement.
3.48 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made by the Secretary of State in another place concerning the 10 commitments, which are unlikely to be tablets of stone. Is it not somewhat ironical that this Statement should have been made in the very week of the misery caused to thousands of commuters by the negligence of South West Trains and the inordinate gains made by the directors of Eversholt, which the Minister characterised when I mentioned them as the politics of envy? It is
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not the politics of envy but the politics of inevitability under many of the privatisation schemes which have been launched by this Government.
This Statement is made at the very time that the chairman of London Transport has complained about the news of reduced government funding, leading to £700 million of cuts affecting trains, signalling and track systems. The Minister did not deal with those immediate issues.
Is it not unusual for a government to make a Statement in Parliament, not on what they propose for this Parliament but on what they intend to include in their election manifesto? Are we now to expect that a whole series of Statements will emanate out of the ragbag of ideas that this desperate and bankrupt Government propose as to their suicidal intentions? Why do the Government find it necessary to issue with such haste, despite its length, such a flimsy imprecise Statement which, upon their own admission, is not based on expert opinion—they have not taken expert opinion—and does not even declare the shape of the proposed privatisation? Will the Minister explain that blinding ray of darkness? Why was it necessary at this time?
If, as the Government assert, this will be wildly popular with the electorate, how does he reconcile that with the assessment made by Mr. William Waldegrave that London Underground will be a very difficult privatisation to sell to the public, and even, to use the words of the Secretary of State, that:
"it may be necessary for the Government to pay somebody to take it off their hands."?
There is not one mention of that in this very long Statement. Therefore, is this not yet another example of this Government living not by reality but by make-believe? The reality is that for Londoners it will prove to be about as popular as Sir Edward Heath is with the Conservative Party at present. Can the Minister comment on the projected proceeds and subsidies and the question raised on page 6 about surpluses?
The Minister said that:
"After recycling privatisation proceeds to complete the modernisation of the Tube network, the majority of any remaining surplus will be channelled into additional support for London Underground or for transport investment elsewhere in London or other parts of the country".
How much is that majority? Is it to be 51 per cent.? Where does the rest go? How is it to be apportioned? There is not a word; just an assertion.
What assurances is the Minister able to give that the proceeds of sale will amount to perhaps £600 million—he says perhaps a little more—knowing full well, based on past experience, that there is likely to be another grotesque give-away of some £13 billion-worth of public assets and that the subsidy to be provided—the carrot—might well exceed the net sale proceeds? That comes from the Secretary of State's own lips. What happens in that event?
Does the Minister agree with the view expressed by the Centre for Policy Studies—the Right-wing think-tank—that privatisation could lead to "the commercially advantageous" closure of stations outside Zone 3?

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Yes or no? What guarantees can he give that the present PFI, with all its imprecision, failure to allocate risk and huge and wasteful tendering procedures, and with the absence of national and regional transport objectives, can deliver the goods? That was the precise question raised by the chairman of London Transport.
Our belief is that the whole system needs to be restructured. It is right that private sector skills and capital should be injected, but that should be done on the basis of a much more sensible system that we have devised—the public-private partnership scheme—thereby giving real value to taxpayers. That also involves ensuring that we have national and regional transport strategies, which, perhaps conveniently for the Government because they do not wish to talk about it, are missing from the Statement.
The Government's transport policy, if one can dignify it by that term, like so much else, is in a huge mess. In their pretence to be magicians, they resemble a somewhat humourless Tommy Cooper, with all the blunders for which he was famous, but which were at least harmless. We are content to join issue with this Government on the means that they have chosen in principle—they have dealt with the issue only in principle—to deal with under-investment and the future of London Underground. We will put them before the electors and we are confident that we, rather than they, will be required to deal with these vital matters.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his courtesy in ensuring that I had an early sight of the Statement. Obviously it was not that early and I had a brief canter through it rather than a careful analysis. However, I have managed to gain some overall impressions.
I shall deal first with what the Statement does not contain. There is no mention of the importance of public transport in the context of sustainability, in which the Government claim to believe. That is extremely important because once one adds in the need to provide public transport in order to create a sustainable future, much of the costing and the obsession with cost which the Statement contains must be altered. Nor does the Statement give any indication as to the importance which the Government place upon public transport in general and London Underground in particular as a contribution to London as a "liveable" world city.
Another impression is of the vagueness of the plans, despite references to a "package". Perhaps it is natural that there is little mention of the price that the Government seek, because they have not thought about any of the other details as regards what they will do en route to privatisation. However, an assurance that the asset will not be sold off at a price well below the network's true worth would have been valuable, considering that it is one of the many so-called scare stories which have been around for some time. Today's Evening Standard suggests that the network could carry a price tag of about £2 billion. It will be interesting to hear the Minister's comments on that.
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Furthermore, there is a lack of clarity about the timing of the project. The suggestion of the publication of a White Paper in the summer may sound ridiculous—it does to me—but it points to a fairly leisurely attitude towards implementation. That may be sensible, but it raises the question of what will happen to the current investment programme during the next two years while London Underground's ultimate fate is being determined in detail. The Evening Standard suggests that the privatisation process will not be completed until 2001. That sounds about right, bearing in mind that we start on the White Paper next summer, if for this Government next summer ever arrives.
The Statement does not indicate whether in the Government's view privatisation means less or more investment within the current London Underground plan period, which also lasts until 2001. What will happen to that investment programme in the meantime? It is impossible not to conclude that Conservative Ministers may believe that even the promise of privatisation will bring them votes. I doubt whether many people would agree with that assessment.
The Minister referred, in the self-congratulatory mood to which we have become accustomed, to the virtues of rail privatisation in general. I suggest that among dispassionate observers the verdict on that would be "too early to tell". However, the verdict among many rail users is that the present situation is more or less catastrophic. In particular, in the general context of the privatisation of the railways, there never has been any indication as to how the privatised rail companies can satisfy the need not merely to attract commercially viable passengers and freight but also to play their part in ensuring that increasing percentages of passengers and freight are moved by public transport in the interests of a more sustainable economy. I believed that the Government shared that ambition.
As regards London Underground, broadly safeguarding the present levels of service is not enough. Those with a major interest in London's future health and well-being—for instance, London First, representatives of the City and the president of the CBI—all want London to benefit from a well-run, expanding public transport system which will increase accessibility, create an attractive environment and ensure the movement of goods and employees. They fear that otherwise they will be overtaken by other capitals where those benefits are provided. The president of the CBI has specifically called for a combined public and private investment programme, whether or not London Underground remains in the public sector. It may be that he agrees that proposals to privatise the Underground are irrelevant to the desperate need to maintain and modernise London's vital transport system.
We should like to see a fresh initiative to bring in capital investment to provide the nation's capital city with a modern metro, meeting the needs of the business community, Londoners and the millions of tourists who visit this city each year. We need to follow the example of every other modern industrial country. We must free London Underground from the dead hand of the Treasury under the cloak of the PSBR. London

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Underground should be able to raise capital in the market by issuing bonds in partnership with the private sector.
It is certain that a steady and stable funding system is essential.
A noble Lord: Reading!
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, why should I not read? The Minister read his Statement. Why should I not read what I have to say as well?
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: Because it is boring.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, it may be boring but I am standing here, I have the Floor and unless somebody gets up and makes me sit down, I shall continue to hold the Floor.
It is certain that a steady and stable funding system is essential to the future of London Transport and the London Underground—the very point that London Transport made to the Transport Committee hearing which dealt with London Underground's finances and investment on 19th February. No doubt the Government will respond to that point when they meet the committee tomorrow. That seems to me to be another aspect of the curious timing of this Statement. I await with great interest to see how the Minister will respond to the points made both by myself and by other speakers in the debate.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, for her far from boring intervention. I should like to pick up a number of points which they made.
First, there was an attack on railway privatisation from both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. Remarks were made about independent commentators and where they feel that the success or otherwise of railway privatisation has led us. I believe that there is now a firm recognition across the country that rail privatisation has worked. We have seen massively increased investment; we have seen better and more services; we have seen new and imaginative service levels; we have seen statutory protection. All that is added to a steadily reducing cost to the taxpayer. Whatever one's political beliefs, that must be good news, and I believe that where there is good news, it should be welcomed.
The thread of that goes directly to the views of the parties opposite about London Underground. It is clear, and most people will realise, that something major must be done about London Underground to bring it up to modern standards. Considerable quantities of fresh investment are needed. It is equally clear that government are not going to be in a position to provide all that investment. Therefore, let us consider proposals put forward by the parties opposite. I heard none this afternoon.
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The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, complained that I had come to the House with a Statement clearing up what the Government intend to do about London Underground—and yet only a few weeks ago I was asked by the noble Lord himself and by others in the Chamber what the Government's response was and what we intended to do. It is entirely appropriate that I should come to this House and make a Statement first to Parliament. Ministers are criticised regularly by the Opposition for not doing that.
The noble Lord complained that my Statement was too long and then again that it was not long enough. I have attempted to bring all the detail that we have to the House at an early stage because it is important that Parliament should know about this.
The simple fact is that this package has taken a number of people by surprise because of the additional safeguards that it contains—the 10 commitments that people did not anticipate—and there is surprise at the bold claims that we should be able to promote a new and modernised London Underground within five years of privatisation.
I was asked about value and the subsidy. On the amount of ongoing subsidy, it is too early to say before we have decided on the model. But we shall ensure that the taxpayer gets good value for his contribution and that the Tube passenger benefits from a better service. That has happened in relation to rail privatisation, and there is no reason why it should not happen as regards tube privatisation in just the same way.
The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, asked me to say a few more words about the recycling point. We shall require the private sector to modernise the Underground's infrastructure as soon as possible, as I have outlined. That will entail a given amount of government subsidy, the amount to be tested in the market. The subsidy will be recycled from privatisation proceeds which we receive. If, as we expect, proceeds are left over, a majority will go to additional investment in London Underground or for other transport investment.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, what does a majority mean?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, the noble Lord asks me what is a majority. My understanding of the word is that it means more than half.
I was asked about closures. Again, what I have outlined should be welcomed by the House. Just as in the case of rail privatisation, firm and rigorous procedures will have to be followed if there is any proposal to close a station. Those procedures exist for the national rail network and they have worked.
The noble Lord attacked the private finance initiative as being wasteful—and yet I understand that that is the sole plank of his policy and that he intends to broaden the PFI. The PFI has been a success. We have managed to attract private investment into the Underground network and also into many other areas. But there is a limit to what can be achieved through that device. We

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believe that a major structural change in terms of privatising the London Underground is what is required to produce the benefits which we seek.
The noble Baroness asked whether I could give a commitment as regards public transport. Of course I can. The Government believe that public transport is very important indeed, and particularly for London. That is why we have come forward with these bold proposals.
I do not know what the noble Baroness's objection is to bringing forward a White Paper in the summer. That would seem to be an eminently sensible way of proceeding. There is still a lot of work to be done. We need to decide on the model. I am sure that noble Lords will accept that. The fact is that the proposals that I have outlined today are very exciting indeed. For decades noble Lords and other commentators have been asking how we can attract more money and innovation to the Tube network. This is the way that that can be achieved and this is the way in which we can achieve a better Underground system for Londoners and for all those who travel on it.
4.7 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, does the Minister not have any anxiety about this vast undertaking that he has just announced, particularly as it affects the infrastructure of the country's capital city?
The Minister justified this on the basis of the success of the railway privatisation. Is it not too early to make that assessment? Would he come with me, away from the comfortable Benches of Westminster, to King's Cross station and wait for two hours, as was the case during a two-hour delay two weeks ago? The following day there was a delay of three hours and the day after that there was a delay of two hours. Does he have any feeling about the frustration which is suffered by the passengers who line up at Waterloo only to discover that there has been a management error in dismissing drivers from that particular route? There is a considerable question mark over the success of that privatisation and in any case it is far too early to judge.
Will the Minister advise the House as to who are those expensive advisers who will work on this great undertaking? What amount is likely to be spent? Will it be the same advisers who sold off £19 billion of public assets for £2 billion? As a result, vast profits were made by the people who invested in these give-aways.
The Minister said that railway privatisation has inevitably brought increased investment. But that is not what the regulator says. He has said that Railtrack has fallen down on its investment programme. All we are getting now in the glossy booklet from Railtrack are promises of additional investment. What kind of guarantee can the Minister give us in that respect? Further, is the Minister aware that his right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said today that he expects to get assistance in paying off the national debt by the sale of London Underground? However, it has been said that the proceeds of sale will be invested in modernisation. Can the Minister say who is right and how much is involved? Perhaps the Minister can just
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think for a moment that this is a vast undertaking and he should hold on a little to see how railway privatisation works—and I hope that it will—before embarking on such an exercise.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, says that it is too early to say that railway privatisation is working. However, I recall his noble friends condemning it before it even started, so I believe that there are strictures that can be put both ways. If one takes, for example, investment, we see that Railtrack now plans to invest some £10 billion on the network by the year 2001; £4.9 billion on renewals, £0.7 billion on property maintenance, £4 billion on day-to-day maintenance and £0.9 billion on developing the network, £600 million of which is committed expenditure on identified schemes. These are very bold plans and, indeed, represent massive figures. British Rail had no such plans. In reality, I believe that the noble Lord does welcome Railtrack's bold plans.
The noble Lord referred to what the regulator said. The regulator was concerned that Railtrack had not spent all of the investment that it had planned for the first year. That is indeed correct. Railtrack had fallen short of its target. Nonetheless, for the period that I have outlined many times in the House, it had spent over £100 million more than British Rail had in the comparable period beforehand. So these are improvements. The noble Lord criticised Railtrack for the rate of improvement. Nevertheless, I believe that he really recognises that we are talking about very significant improvements.
The noble Lord also mentioned the services offered by the train operating companies. Another interesting statistic is that complaints from passengers are down some 30 per cent. That is a huge figure; indeed, it is a truly remarkable figure. I believe that that represents good news and something that we should all recognise. The noble Lord pointed to trains being late. Of course it is always very regrettable when trains are late. However, I certainly do not think that the noble Lord will stand up and tell me that he was never late on a train in the old days of British Rail. If he does, I am sure that there will be plenty of other noble Lords who take a contrary view.
This privatisation is working. One has only to look at what independent commentators are saying about it. Yes, it has been a political hot potato but now we have seen the party opposite withdraw from their commitments. The Opposition have no policy regarding any plans concerning the railways. They have not decided whether they want to take certain bits back into public ownership. Therefore, there are no alternative plans from the Opposition. We firmly believe that we can produce the benefits that we have from rail privatisation and build them into the Tube network.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I listened with great care to the Statement repeated by my noble friend the Minister and listened with equal care to the responses from the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood. I found myself thinking that rational Members of this House must

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welcome the Statement. Having said that, I also found myself for a moment wondering what the reaction would have been if my noble friend had made the Statement and then said, "Oh, by the way, we intend to do this next week." That seems to me a response which is perfectly legitimate in view of the criticism of the timing of the Statement. In fact, I personally would prefer my noble friend to do it next week.
I should like to spend a little time talking about money. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said that we must get London Underground out of the hands of the Treasury. Of course, the purpose of the Statement is to do precisely that. Therefore, the noble Baroness really ought to support the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, talked about public/private partnerships in finance. I do not know quite what that means. However, I do know—as we all know—that the private finance initiative, with a great deal of promotion and hard work, has not yet been able to produce the sort of funding that businesses like London Underground require.
As to the question of the sale price of the assets, I should point out to the House that you can get valuers to value businesses in all sorts of ways. But I have never yet been able to discover the value of an asset when it is losing large sums of money. I give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Richard: My Lords, I am much obliged. I should like to make one point. In my brief experience in this House, I had understood that there are 20 minutes after the Statement and Front-Bench responses within which Back-Benchers are supposed to ask questions. I know that the House is generous and flexible in its attitude towards its rules but, with great respect, the speech that we have just listened to does not seem to me to accord with the convention.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I apologise to the House. For a moment I had forgotten the rules. I shall put my question. Will my noble friend the Minister agree that, in what we heard in response to the Statement, there was nothing likely to provide a viable long-term future for London Underground?
Viscount Goschen: Yes, my Lords. I agree that we heard no proposals from the party opposite—just a faint attempt to answer the question of how to produce a modern railway system for our capital city. My noble friend asked about the timing considerations and the use of a Statement to Parliament at this time. I should like to re-state the position. I am sure that noble Lords opposite would be complaining very loudly if announcements were made other than to Parliament concerning such a major move. The complaint is normally that too little notice is given rather than too much. We are confident about our plans and we feel that it is appropriate to announce them to Parliament. It is most unusual to be criticised for taking that approach.
My noble friend also asked about income streams and the removal of the influence of the public expenditure round on the financing of an organisation such as London Underground. My noble friend is right to draw
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attention to that point. Indeed, it is the point that the management of London Underground makes over and again: what it needs is stability. The only way that the Government can guarantee that and remove it from the public expenditure round is by the device of privatisation. Not only will it deliver a stable investment climate for the first time for this railway; it will also allow the private sector to bring forward its own management practices and raise its own investment.
My noble friend also asked about the private finance initiative. I certainly agree with him; it has certainly been a great success. We have seen large amounts of private finance put into public projects. Moreover, the party opposite has picked that up and now agrees with it but in a modified form. There is of course a limit to what can be achieved through the PFI. For this major undertaking we firmly feel that privatisation is the best option.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I wish to ask a question on investment. The noble Viscount did not answer the question put by my noble friend Lady Thomas of Walliswood; namely, what will happen on investment in the Tube system between now and the time that privatisation comes about if the Government were in a position to do it? It would take at least two to three years. In the meantime, as the noble Viscount is surely aware, a recent press statement by London Underground management shows that it is short of £150 million in the current financial year and will continue to be short in the succeeding two financial years. As a result, it has had to put 200 maintenance projects on hold, and it cannot answer for the basic efficiency of the system following the cuts in what it had originally expected to receive. Is it the Government's intention that in the run-up to privatisation part of the strategy should be to continue to run down the capability of the system?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, the noble Lord asks a valid question. I apologise if I did not answer it the first time around when it was asked by his noble friend. I can of course give details about this year's settlement. It left provision for the London Transport core business in 1997–98 unchanged. With PFI investment, total investment in the core business over the next three years should total around £1.5 billion. This compares with London Underground's estimate that £350 million needs to be spent each year on average in order to prevent the Tube's backlog getting larger. We have heard of the success in reducing the backlog from around £2 billion to £1.2 billion. Therefore, considerable progress has been made. We recognise there is a large backlog still to be addressed. That is why we believe that the only long-term solution is privatisation. However, for the intervening period we have detailed our investment plans in this year's settlement.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, does the Minister recall my supplementary question of several weeks ago? I am glad that he has taken my suggestion on board. Is he aware that the possibilities for employee participation that he mentioned will be welcome to the employees of that business? Does the Minister agree that London

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Underground enjoys stable demand which is the envy of many capital intensive industries and which would make it easier to raise funds in the private money markets rather than from the Treasury? Does the Minister also agree that most of the questions that have been put to him illustrate exactly why these measures are so desirable?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I certainly recall the noble Earl's supplementary question during Question Time a couple of weeks ago. At that stage I was not able to give the answer that I can give to the House today. I thank the noble Earl for his support. I believe he is right to recognise that none of the other alternatives we have heard offer a long-term solution to the problem, which we all agree exists, of how to bring massive investment into London to modernise the Underground. Certainly, share ownership is an important point. The Government have long felt that increasing share ownership and broadening the shareholding base is a good measure, particularly within a business such as this. We shall concentrate hard on the issue and bring forward as many innovative plans as we can on that basis.
The noble Earl mentioned stable demand. Clearly, he is right. The London Underground is heavily used, particularly at peak periods, and train frequency is high. For many journeys there is little alternative to the Underground. It is extremely popular with Londoners, but they recognise that major improvements need to take place. I believe that they will welcome the Statement.
Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on one of his 10 key "commandments"; namely, that passengers will be able to use different lines for a journey. It is so blindingly obvious that the same words were used in the privatisation of the railways four years ago. Since then thousands of passengers have been prevented from doing that on the railways through the break-up of the system and there have been many complaints. Similar commitments were made at that time. The Government have reneged on the pensions provisions for the railways. Will the same happen as regards the Underground? Will the Minister explain how the House or the public can believe any of these commitments after all the commitments as regards railway privatisation have been reneged on in the past four years?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I do not accept any of the criticisms that the noble Lord puts forward. The network benefits have been preserved for the railways. There is nothing to justify what the noble Lord said. We have heard some criticism about, for example, the selling of tickets. I recall a discussion on that matter in which I believe the noble Lord participated. We are clear that the inter-availability of lines and tickets occurs on the national rail network. The noble Lord mentioned pensions and the railways. The Government have not reneged on what we said in that regard. Indeed, our provisions are built into law. I recall clearly the passage of the Railways Act
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through your Lordships' House. One of the major concerns was the rights of pensioners. Indeed, this House made changes to that Bill to guarantee the rights of pensioners. We take extremely seriously the pensions of employees and pensioners. We have given a commitment even at this early stage—it is widely recognised that we are at an early stage—that those rights will be safeguarded.
Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, spent much time talking about other privatisations and the effect on the taxpayer. Does my noble friend agree that we should never forget that before privatisation nationalised industries cost the taxpayer £50 million a week and now those same companies are bringing £60 million a week into the Exchequer?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, the privatisations that have occurred in so many different sectors of the economy have resulted in benefits. Indeed, we have now seen a lack of political opposition to those privatisations which were opposed tooth and nail by the party opposite. If we had caved in to that pressure, those privatisations would not have occurred and the £2.6 billion a year in taxes which privatised companies now contribute—they paid only £37 million a year when they operated in the public sector—would not have been received. We would not have had the benefit of that. We recognise the dogmatic opposition to privatisation of the party opposite. Of course we accept that its political views make it opposed to this measure. However, I am sure that the practical advantages that privatisations have given to the country are now widely recognised.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, is the Minister aware that this morning I bought an annual season ticket for zones 1 and 2 which cost me £628? In the ninth commitment he gave earlier, he said that fare increases would be capped. Why cannot he give a commitment to reduce fares and thereby encourage greater use of the London transport system as a whole? There may even be a few votes in it.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I always take the noble Lord's recommendations for electoral advantage extremely seriously. I am glad that the noble Lord has invested in London transport by purchasing his ticket. I believe that the noble Lord, as a user of the service, should welcome the fact that fares will be capped. Inevitably, there is a balance to be drawn between those who use the service and the general taxpayer. A level has to be set at which the Government feel that an appropriate balance has been drawn between those who benefit from the service and the general taxpayer. We hear a lot about Scottish taxation these days. Perhaps people in Scotland might object to subsidising the noble Lord's rail or Underground travel card. That is an illustration that a balance must be drawn between the general taxpayer and those who benefit from the service.

Education Bill
4.28 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Lord Henley): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Henley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord Murton of Lindisfarne) in the Chair.]
Lord Henley Lord Henley moved Amendment No. 42:
Before Clause 3, insert the following new clause—
("Enlargement of premises
RELAXATION OF CONTROLS ON ENLARGEMENT OF PREMISES
. After section 259 of the Education Act 1996 there shall be inserted—
"Significant enlargements for the purposes of section 259.
259A.—(1) For the purposes of section 259 an enlargement of the premises of a grant-maintained school is a significant enlargement of those premises if (and only if) the effect of the enlargement, taken with all previous enlargements (if any) taking place since the appropriate date, would increase the school's capacity by more than 50 per cent. or 30 pupils (whichever is the greater) as compared with—

(a) its capacity on the appropriate date; or

(b) if at any time after that date its capacity was lower than its capacity on that date, its lowest capacity at any such time.

(2) An enlargement of the premises of a grant-maintained school is accordingly not a significant enlargement of those premises for the purposes of section 259 if its effect, taken with all such previous enlargements (if any), would not he to produce such an increase in the school's capacity.
(3) In subsection (1) "the appropriate date" means whichever is the latest of the following dates—

(a) the date falling four years before the date on which the governing body form the intention to make the enlargement concerned,

(b) the date when the school was established,

(c) where any proposals for a significant enlargement of the premises of the school have been approved by the Secretary of State under—

(i) section 261 below or section 98 of the Education Act 1993, or

(ii) section 37 or 43 above or section 12 or 13 of the Education Act 1980,

the date (or latest date) on which any such proposals were implemented, and

(d) where the local education authority have determined to implement any proposals for a significant enlargement of the premises of the school under section 38 above or section 12(7) of the Education Act 1980, the date (or latest date) on which any such proposals were implemented.

(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations prescribe the method for determining a school's capacity for the purposes of this section; and in this section references to a school's capacity are references to its capacity to accommodate pupils.
(5) Nothing in this section applies to a school requiring special measures to be taken.").
The noble Lord said: I am delighted to be able to propose the reintroduction of this sensible clause to the Bill. It has, as I think the Committee knows, had a somewhat chequered history. I shall explain the purpose of the new clause. Quite simply, it increases the freedom of grant-maintained schools to offer what parents want. It will enable grant-maintained schools to enlarge their premises by up to 50 per cent. without the need to publish statutory proposals. Grant-maintained schools are popular with pupils and parents. The clause will help more parents to get their children into the school of their choice. The clause is firmly in the mainstream of the Bill, which aims to extend the choice and diversity of educational provision.
New Section 259A(1) introduced by the clause effectively changes the definition of "significant" enlargement for a grant-maintained school to one that is greater than 50 per cent. or 30 pupils (whichever is the greater). To avoid very rapid, cumulative increases occurring, schools will be required to look back over a four year period to assess whether a change is significant.
As I said, the increased freedom that the clause provides will enable grant-maintained schools to respond to the wishes of parents. It will also enable schools to decide for themselves what size of school will most usefully serve their particular area. Such changes will not necessarily require the investment of additional public funds because putting these decisions more directly into the hands of schools will increase the incentive for governors to explore alternative ways of financing the necessary capital work.
Nor is this freedom without responsibility. The Bill makes it absolutely clear that governors proposing to make an enlargement must consult those who have an interest in the matter before making a decision to go ahead. In deciding who should be consulted, and in what way, those proposing changes must have regard to guidance to be issued by the Secretary of State. This will specify those who should be consulted and will include among others the local education authority, other schools in the area and, in the case of a Church school, the appropriate diocesan authorities.
I appreciate that there may be some concerns that this change is limited to the grant-maintained sector. But we consider that it is appropriate for grant-maintained schools to take the lead in this area. Not only are many grant-maintained schools popular with pupils and parents, but they are also in the best position to look for innovative approaches to funding the additional provision. This should enable them to expand to meet the demand. I realise that in some areas this could lead to surplus places in other schools to which parents do not want to send their children, but governors and planning authorities have powers to deal with that.
I also recognise that there are many popular schools outside the grant-maintained sector. These schools will continue to be able to make proposals for significant enlargements in the normal way. We have made it clear that there will be circumstances where, in the interests of increasing choice and diversity, we shall be willing to approve increases in places where there are surplus

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places in the area, especially where there would be likely subsequently to be the possibility of removing unsatisfactory provision.
I trust that the Committee will accept that this is a useful step to increase the autonomy and responsibility of grant-maintained schools and give them the opportunity to respond imaginatively to the wishes of parents. I commend the clause and the amendment to the Committee. I beg to move.
[Amendments Nos. 43 and 44, as amendments to Amendment No. 42, not moved.]
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood Baroness Thomas of Walliswood had given notice of her intention to move, as an amendment to Amendment No. 42, Amendment No. 45:
Line 24, leave out ("four") and insert ("eight").
The noble Baroness said: I apologise to the Committee that I am not quite au fait with the procedures.
Lord Henley: Perhaps I may intervene. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Morris, and I share a degree of confusion. It was my impression, and I believe that of the noble Lord, Lord Morris, too—I appreciate that I may be wrong—that we would debate the substantive Motion and then move on. I presume that it will be possible to debate the substantive Motion and possibly at Report stage discuss the amendments to it, if the noble Lord prefers to deal with the issue in that manner.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: Yes.
Lord Henley: That might be more appropriate. In that case we can skate through, if I may so put it, the various amendments to Amendment No. 42, returning to the substantive Amendment No. 42.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I had thought that that is what we would do. From the groupings on the Marshalled List I had thought we would dispose of Amendment No. 42 before we considered Amendment No. 43, which we did not wish to move. If the noble Lord's suggestion is the wish of the Committee, it is certainly my wish.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: I apologise that I am unable to hear instructions.
Lord Henley: The noble Baroness might find it easier if she did not move her amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Morris, and I consider that the best approach. We can discuss the basic principle of putting Amendment No. 42 back in the Bill. The subsequent amendments can be considered at Report stage.
[Amendment No. 45, as an amendment to Amendment No. 42, not moved.]
[Amendments Nos. 46 to 48, as amendments to Amendment No. 42, not moved.]
Lord Henley: I have spoken to Amendment No. 42. However, I hope that other noble Lords will have the opportunity to respond.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: I do not have the remotest idea where we are. However, if we are considering, as I think we are, Amendment No. 42, the Government's new clause before Clause 3, I have to tell the Committee that with one grammatical improvement the Government's new clause is exactly the same as that which has twice failed to be agreed in another place. The grammatical improvement, which adds a pleasing touch of literacy to the Bill, is that the word "latest" has replaced "later" in the second line of subsection (3). That is in accordance with contemporary ideas of grammar, although I can remind the Members of the Committee that there is one line in Shakespeare which refers to the "most unkindest" cut of all, which would not be considered particularly grammatical in our day.
The new clause introduces parallel provisions to those on selection. It enables grant-maintained schools to step outside the requirements to publish proposals in respect of the enlargement of their premises. A threshold of 50 per cent. or 30 pupils (whichever is the larger) is set, up to which grant-maintained schools may expand with requirements only to undertake such consultation (if any) as they consider appropriate. Expansion can be repeated after four years so that the grant-maintained school can more than double its size in a period as little as eight years.
The innocent phrase in brackets "(if any)" leads us to believe that the response will be no consultation. Who in his right mind would become involved in a long process of consultation which might not bring him the result that he wishes when he finds a bracket like that in his instructions? He is running what is, after all, a business as well as an educational establishment.
I draw the period of eight years to the Committee's attention because that is the time it takes a pupil to complete secondary education. He might well find that the school had doubled in size while he was attending it.
The Government have clearly decided to pursue a new route to the expansion of the grant-maintained sector, the rate of schools transferring into that sector having slowed down to a very small trickle. The concentration is now to be on allowing those already in this sector to grow without any regard to the need for the places which will be created. It will be a matter of places first and pupils following, if they happen to be around.
Linked directly to the ability for grant-maintained secondary schools to select up to 50 per cent. of their intake without having to go through a publication procedure or seek central approval, the intention is clearly to introduce half the grammar school system through the grant-maintained sector and to enable it to grow at a faster rate than any other part of the system.
In addition to the educational issues raised by the new clause, there is a legitimate question for the Committee to consider. The new clause has been rejected once in Committee in the Commons by what I can only describe as a piece of careless indiscipline by Whips, when the

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Government had a built-in majority sitting there day after day, doing its correspondence, with no fewer than 16 Sittings. Someone was allowed, I believe—I say this subject to correction—to slip out for some personal purpose and was then pursued by another. The result was an unfortunate one, to say the least, for the Government.
It was not agreed again on a second occasion on the Floor of the House at Report stage. On the second occasion, the Minister sought to explain the defeat in the House of Commons as due to "procedural problems". He went on, quite properly, to say that the result at the Report stage had been a tied vote. The fact remains that the clause not only arrives without the endorsement of the Commons but has actually been excluded from the Bill on two separate occasions by them.
The question therefore arises as to whether the Government are right to ask the House of Lords to insert into the Bill a clause which has twice been excluded by the Commons. The Minister might like to inform the Committee—I am sure that he has looked it up—whether there is a precedent for the Government acting in that way. New clauses are quite naturally frequently introduced in your Lordships' House as proposals develop or in response to earlier amendments. This new clause arises quite differently: it is tabled in the Lords purely and simply because it could not be agreed in the Commons. Can the Minister point to previous instances when it has been thought proper to proceed in that way?
The importance of the clause is underlined for us by the Government's apparent adamantine determination to seek to reintroduce it. For that very reason, however, we believe that it ought to have the approval of the Commons before the Lords are asked to endorse it.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Tope: I start where the noble Lord, Lord Morris, concluded. I too share the constitutional—if it is not too strong a word—concern about the amendment, even before we consider its merits or otherwise. The Minister pooh-poohs that statement, but I question whether it is right for the House of Lords to introduce by way of amendment the approval of a clause which is both important and demonstrably controversial when they have failed to get it through the elected other place. I look forward to the Minister's answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Morris, about what precedent there is for the proposal under these circumstances. It is potentially quite a serious and perhaps even a dangerous step for your Lordships' House to take and it is one which we should contemplate seriously before we judge the merits or otherwise of the argument.
It will come as little surprise to the Minister or other Members of the Committee that I do not see much merit in the arguments for the clause either and will accept that to some extent that may prejudice my concern about its constitutional aspects.
It is self-evident that a school increasing its capacity by up to 50 per cent. is bound to have a significant effect on other schools, whether they are LEA schools, grant-maintained schools or even schools in the private
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sector. If I heard the Minister right, in his opening address he said that there would be consultation arrangements which would be covered in guidance. I hope I heard him right and that he said the guidance would include a requirement to consult LEAs. The Minister nods, so I did hear him correctly.
That is important because if a school is to propose to increase its size by such an extent, the consultation arrangements are crucially important, particularly with the LEA but not only with the LEA. When the Minister replies, would he care to enlarge a little more on what he expects to be in the guidance? Who is to be consulted, on what terms and under what circumstances? Who then decides, as a result of the consultation, whether proposals should or should not go ahead? The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that it is not the Secretary of State who decides. Who does decide where it goes?
The Minister also acknowledged that it is probable—highly probable, I suggest—that a measure like this will increase surplus places at least in the short term. Again, that is a matter of great concern to LEAs. We were discussing yesterday Trading Places, the report from the Audit Commission which drew attention to the large waste, as the commission describes it, of public money in surplus places. I wonder how to deal with, and who will deal with, the question of the surplus places that are bound to arise, should the measure come about.
I conclude that the whole purpose of the clause is to try to pump some life back into what was yesterday admitted to be the failed policy of grant-maintained schools. That is what it is about. We discussed it yesterday. The Government have failed to encourage either governing bodies or a sufficient number of parents to ballot for schools to go grant-maintained. This is now a sixth attempt to relaunch what is demonstrably a failed policy—grant-maintained schools. It should therefore be buried more quietly than the previous five attempts and we should not go ahead with it.
Finally, another point which concerns me is that it is also a way not only to expand the number of grant-maintained schools but also to expand faster than would otherwise be the case the selective intake in grant-maintained schools. For all those reasons, this is a bad clause which should be rejected, as the other place has rightly seen fit to do. I hope that the Committee will think seriously not only about the issues in the clause but about whether your Lordships' House should pass a clause which has failed to get through the other place.
The Earl of Onslow: It is interesting that the noble Lord should bring up the constitutional issue. It is simple: if the House of Commons does not like it, it does not accept it. We know that and it has been the case since 1911. We all know, because it was admitted by both the noble Lord, Lord Morris, and the Liberal spokesman, that it was through Whip incompetence that the clauses were not put through in another place. It was not to do with the merits of the case.
There is one further small point. I believe that the clause does not go nearly far enough. Schools should be allowed to expand and contract as their market demands and as parents want them to do, without having

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complicated number systems. If there are surplus places in schools, the schools should be closed down. If the school is not working, why should we as taxpayers go on subsidising something which does not work? The way to get proper education is to ensure that parents can choose the children they want—I mean the school places they want. With modern scientific developments, it looks as though my slip of the tongue may be only too accurate anyway. Parents should be allowed to choose the schools they want and the schools will rise to the requests that parents make of them. In my view, the clause does not go nearly far enough.
Lord Monkswell: Until the noble Lord, Lord Morris, advised us of the import of what had happened in the other place, I had not intended to intervene in the debate. But I have to point out to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, that it is not a question of how the result was determined but of what the result was. There is no question of impropriety, of wrong numbers being counted or anything of that kind.
The noble Earl introduced another element—that schools should respond to market forces. One could consider that the assisted places schemes keep in place quite a number of public schools. Maybe he feels that that is wrong as well.
Baroness Young: I am certain that my noble friend the Minister will respond on the constitutional point. When I heard the noble Lord, Lord Morris, I could not help but feel that he would agree with me that Lady Bracknell would have had something quite definite to say about carelessness on both occasions. That is perhaps rather more fitting a point to make in relation to this whole matter than a debate on the merits of the case.
On a more serious note, it is a very important amendment. I rise merely to reply to the point that was raised yet again by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, about grant-maintained schools failing. I suppose that one continues to make that assertion in the hope that people will come to believe it. But it simply is not true and needs to be rebutted every time the point is made. Grant-maintained schools are doing very well. They are getting very good academic results and they are very popular with parents. This is an opportunity to build on success and give opportunities to children who might not have them otherwise. I hope that the Committee will support the amendment.
Lord Walton of Detchant: I ask the Minister a question purely for clarification. This clause deals with enlargement of premises and enlargement of numbers within grant-maintained schools. May I take it, as my reading of the Bill implies, that it does not refer to enlargement of provision; in other words, as it stands, it would not allow a grant-maintained school which does not have a sixth form to establish a sixth form? My reading of the Bill suggests that that would fall
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under Clause 5 and not under this proposed clause. I should welcome the Minister's clarification of that point.
Lord Dixon-Smith: There is perhaps one final point that is worth reintroducing into this discussion. We continually hear that the introduction of a selective stream into a school is the reintroduction of the selective system pre-1965 with the differentiation between grammar schools and secondary modern schools. Of course, that is not the case. What we are talking about constantly and of what we ought to remind ourselves is the introduction by a proportion of all schools, if they so choose, of a selective element. That is completely different from a situation in which a very limited number of schools have total selection and other schools have none. That very clear distinction needs to be reiterated time and again.
Lord Skidelsky: I want to say a brief word in support of the amendment presented by my noble friend. It is a very important amendment. It goes to the heart of the Bill as it was originally presented. By allowing grant-maintained schools to expand their capacity in response to market demand, it establishes a very important principle. It is, I believe, the first time that the Government have acknowledged that to make a system of choice work, there needs to be a flexible supply of places to allow places to expand and contract in relation to parental demand. The Bill also establishes a mechanism for that. I agree with my noble friend that it is too complicated a mechanism to enable that to happen, but it is still a first step.
This amendment is a litmus test for those people who profess to believe in parental choice. It is self-evident that without some such mechanism for matching supply and demand, the value of parental choice is very much diminished. If the number of places in each school is fixed and parental demand varies from school to school, it means that a proportion of pupils will not be able to get their children into the school that they want. Those children will have to be reallocated to schools to which their parents do not necessarily want them to go. As the Audit Commission pointed out, that is happening. About one child in five on average is relocated and in some areas it is a much higher proportion.
Bureaucratic allocation is the opposite of choice. It goes with planning. That is why I believe that the Opposition spokespersons oppose the amendment. They are against choice. Time and again they have said that parental choice undermines local authorities' ability to plan the education provision for their area. That is a tenable position but one must not then say that one is in favour of parental choice. Those are opposite principles.
If parental choice is to be taken seriously, market demand must be allowed to have some influence on the supply of places. Successful schools should be allowed to expand. If that means empty places at schools to which parents do not want to send their children, so be it. That arises as a result of free choice freely exercised. It might at least act as a spur to those schools to make their education provision more desirable.

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I ask the Opposition parties not to concentrate so much on the risks in this system. There are always risks attaching to choice. Things may not work out so well as one might hope. I ask them rather to concentrate on the opportunities for better education which might be created. They should ask themselves, if they believe in parental choice, what policy that belief entails. What obligations on action does it impose? It seems to me that at the moment they bandy around the phrase "We believe in parental choice", but whenever anyone suggests extending parental choice, they say, "No, that will interfere with our planning system and make it impossible".
If Members on the Benches opposite regarded the matter in that light, I believe that they would see more virtue in the amendment than they are prepared to allow.
Baroness Warnock: I join for a moment the Benches opposite. I myself would never put parental choice as a first priority in education. It is very often impossible for parents to choose. For example, if they want a child to go to a selective school and that child is not selected, they cannot choose that he goes to that school. They can try but cannot choose to obtain a place.
I ask the Minister for information. Let us suppose that a grant-maintained school became larger or even supposing that it did not. Would it be within the terms of this legislation for it to become selective both of able children and of disabled children? That is rather an important question. Given a large and popular school which was expanding and parents who had children with special educational needs—not necessarily statemented children but those who manifestly needed special help—would it be open to one of those enlarging grant-maintained schools to say that they would take 30 per cent., say, of specially able children and 30 or 20 per cent. of specially non-able children, and have a middle range?
If that were envisaged, I should feel very much less hostile to the idea of schools which are both expanding and going up to their permitted limit of selection according to ability. I also feel that a very large number of parents would continue to prefer that school: parents of children who were specially able, parents of children who were in the middle and, it was hoped, would become specially able by being at a specially good school and parents of children with disabilities. When he comes to reply, I wonder whether the Minister could answer that question.
5 p.m.
Lord Henley: Perhaps I may deal first with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, when he asked whether the new clause would provide for the setting up of sixth forms. The new clause is nothing whatever to do with that. He was almost right when he referred to Clause 5. Clause 5 will deal with those matters once this clause is inserted because the numbering will be adjusted upwards from 4 to 5, if my mathematics are correct.
I start with the constitutional points made by the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Morris, which were palpable nonsense, to put it more or less in the words of
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my noble friend Lord Onslow. I agree with him entirely, which is not something that happens with great frequency. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Morris, of what his colleague, Mr. Peter Kilfoyle, said in another place at Report stage. I appreciate that I should not quote him directly, but perhaps I may paraphrase the arguments over his lengthy speech—some five lines. He said: "As we fully deployed our arguments in Committee on some earlier occasion, we see no reason to rehearse them again and I suggest we move straight to a vote". I was interested therefore in the detail with which the noble Lords, Lord Morris and Lord Tope, felt it necessary to bring this matter before the Committee.
The fact is that there were procedural difficulties in another place—and they were merely procedural difficulties—with regard to these amendments. The noble Lord seemed to be implying—I believe it to be nonsense—that if an amendment is put forward in another place, perhaps by the noble Lord's party, and happens to be defeated twice, it would be wrong for the noble Lord to move it again in this Chamber. As I said, that is palpable nonsense. As my noble friend Lord Onslow said, it is right that we now put the clause back in so that the Commons have another chance on consideration of Lords' amendments to think again. On many occasions I have heard noble Lords opposite say that this Chamber must pass an amendment so that the elected Chamber has the opportunity to think again. I am asking this Committee to do just that on this occasion.
Perhaps I may deal with one or two of the points raised by noble Lords opposite. First, the alleged lack of consultation was mentioned. I do not want to repeat what I said yesterday on consultation. As I made clear to noble Lords opposite, that consultation will be thorough. We will expect the LEAs to be consulted; we will expect the diocesan or other Church authorities to be consulted as appropriate; and we will be putting out guidance as to how that consultation should take place. As always with the consultation-friendly Department for Education and Employment, we shall be consulting on the guidance and noble Lords and others will have an opportunity to comment on that in due course.
Secondly, this amendment has nothing whatever to do with grammar schools, selection, partial selection or whatever. Grant-maintained schools can be selective; they can be fully selective. There are grant-maintained grammar schools; there are grant-maintained voluntary secondary schools; there are also grant-maintained comprehensive schools; in fact, the vast majority are probably just that—comprehensive schools. The amendment is about expanding their numbers.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, asked whether the school could select both able and special needs children. The answer is that they can, within the 50 per cent. threshold available to grant-maintained schools. That is why we use the word "ability" at this stage. On other occasions when we talk about grammar schools we talk about "high ability" to differentiate between the two. I hope that a gleam of light has come to the noble Baroness and she understands what I mean.
The last point on which I want to pick up—I am grateful for the remarks of my noble friend Lady Young—is the allegations made by the noble

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Lord, Lord Tope. The first is that the policy of grant-maintained schools has failed, and the second that I had admitted that it had failed. That is grossly misleading. The noble Lord will remember that I intervened on more than one occasion yesterday to say that I did not believe that grant-maintained schools had failed; I believed that they had been an enormous success and I can give the figures again. There are now almost 1,200 self-governing grant-maintained schools; 84 out of 119 LEAs have at least one grant-maintained school; they are educating 700,000 pupils, including nearly 20 per cent. of all secondary pupils in England; and there has been a marked increase in the grant-maintained primaries over the past three years—they now make up 40 per cent. of the grant-maintained sector. I go on to add that there are even 19 grant-maintained special schools, which again is enormously encouraging.
Quite simply, this amendment gives greater powers to the good grant-maintained schools that wish to expand to expand. I hope that the Committee will recognise it for just that and agree to accept it.
5.5 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 42) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 169; Not-Contents, 127.

Division No. 1

CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Clanwilliam, E.

Ailsa, M.

Clark of Kempston, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Coleraine, L.

Ampthill, L.

Coleridge, L.

Anelay of St. Johns, B.

Cornwallis, L.

Annan, L.

Courtown, E.

Arran, E.

Cowley, E.

Ashbourne, L.

Cranbome, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Astor of Hever, L.

Cross, V.

Attlee, E.

Cuckney, L.

Balfour, E.

Cullen of Ashboume, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Beloff, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Biddulph, L.

Davidson, V.

Birdwood, L.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Blatch, B.

Denbigh, E.

Bowness, L.

Denham, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Braine of Wheatley, L.

Dilhorne, V.

Brentford, V.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Donegall, M.

Brigstocke, B.

Dunrossil, V.

Bruntisfield, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Burnham, L.

Elles, B.

Butterworth, L.

Elliott of Morpeth,L.

Byford, B.

Elton, L.

Cadman, L.

Feldman, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Gage, V.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Geddes, L.

Carnock, L.

Gisborough, L.

Chadlington, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Goschen, V.

Charteris of Amisfield, L.

Gray, L.

Chelmsford, V.

Gray of Contin, L.

Chesham, L. [Teller]

Griffiths of Fforestfach, L.

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Grimston of Westbury, L.

Munster, E

Hambro, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Hanson, L.

Newall, L.

Harding of Petherton, L.

Noel-Buxton, L.

Hardinge of Penshurst, L.

Northesk, E

Harmar-Nicholls, L

O'Cathain, B.

Harris of Peckham, L.

Onslow, E.

Haslam, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Hayhoe, L.

Palmer, L.

Henley, L.

Pearson of Rannoch, L.

Hogg, B.

Peel, E.

Holderness, L.

Pender, L.

Hood, V.

Perry of Southwark, B.

Hooper, B.

Prentice, L.

Howe, E.

Pym, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Quinton, L.

Iddesleigh, E

Quirk, L.

Ilchester, E.

Rankeillour, L.

Inchyra,L,

Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

Inglewood, L.

Reading, M.

Jakobovits, L.

Rees, L.

King of Wartnaby, L.

Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, L.

Kinnoull, E.

Rennell, L.

Kitchener, E.

Rowallan, L.

Lane of Horsell, L.

Saatchi, L.

Lauderdale, E

St. Davids, V.

Lindsay, E

Sandford, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Seccombe, B.

Long, V.

Shaw of Northstead, L.

Lucas, L.

Simon of Glaisdale, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Luke, L.

Skidelsky.L.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Slim, V.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Mackay of Clashfern, L. [Lord Chancellor.]

Sudeley, L.

Swinfen, L.

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Terrington, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Teviot, L.

Malmesbury, E.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Marlesford, L.

Torphichen, L.

Middleton, L.

Trumpington, B.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Ullswater, V.

Milverton, L.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Wakeham, L.

Monson, L.

Westbury, L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Wharton, B.

Mottistone, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Mountevans, L.

Wise, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Wynford, L.

Moyne, L.

Young, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Addington, L.

David, B.

Alderdice, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Allen of Abbeydale, L.

Desai, L.

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Diamond, L.

Barnett, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Donoughue, L.

Berkeley, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Blackstone, B.

Dubs, L.

Blease, L.

Eatwell, L.

Borrie, L.

Falkender, B.

Broadbridge, L.

Falkland, V.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Farrington of Ribbleton, B.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Gallacher, L.

Calverley, L.

Geraint, L.

Carlisle, E.

Gladwin of Clee, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Glenamara, L.

Carter, L.

Gould of Potternewton, B.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Clinton-Davis, L.

Grey, E.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Hampton, L.

Crook, L.

Hamwee, B.

Dahrendorf, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

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Haskel, L.

Paul, L.

Hayman, B.

Perry of Walton, L.

Hereford, Bp.

Peston, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Prys-Davies, L.

Holme of Cheltenham, L.

Ramsay of Cartvale, B.

Hooson, L.

Redesdale, L.

Howell, L.

Richard, L.

Hughes, L.

Ripon, Bp.

Hunt, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Irvine of Lairg, L.

Rochester, L.

Jay of Paddington, B.

Rodgers of Quarry Bank, L.

Jeger, B.

Russell, E.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Serota, B.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Sewel, L.

Judd, L.

Shepherd, L.

Kennet, L.

Simon, V.

Kilbracken, L.

Smith of Gilmorehill, B.

Leicester, Bp.

Stallard, L.

Lockwood, B.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Longford, E.

Strabolgi, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Symons of Vernham Dean, B

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Thomas of Walliswood, B.

McNair, L.

Thomson of Monifieth, L.

McNally. L.

Thurso, V.

Mallalieu, B.

Tope, L. [Teller.]

Mar and Kellie, E.

Tordoff, L.

Marsh, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Merlyn-Rees, L.

Wallace of Saltaire, L.

Merrivale, L.

Walton of Detchant, L.

Meston, L.

Warnock, B.

Methuen, L.

White, B.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Whitty, L.

Molloy, L.

Wigoder, L.

Monkswell, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Williams of Mostyn, L.

Nicol, B.

Winston, L.

Ogmore, L.

Young of Dartington, L.

Resolved in the affirmative, and amendment agreed to accordingly.
5.15 p.m.
Clause 3 [Relaxation of controls on changes relating to selective admissions]:
[Amendments Nos. 49 to 58 not moved.]
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [Relaxation of controls on changes in age groups for admission etc.]:
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton moved Amendment No. 59:
Page 5, leave out lines 9 to 12.
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 59 is grouped with Amendments Nos. 60, 61 and 62. In moving the amendment I intend to spare your Lordships repetition because others who intend to speak to this group of amendments will deal with the nursery aspect. I shall deal with the sixth-form aspect.
The purpose of Amendment No. 59 is to remove the power of grant-maintained schools to add sixth forms without affecting their selection threshold. An earlier amendment sought to remove the equivalent provision in relation to county schools. The arguments there apply to this amendment also. This amendment, however, deals with a particular freedom given to
1076
grant-maintained schools to move to full selection in their sixth forms or even to create a fully selective sixth form where none existed without affecting their selection threshold. In practice, therefore, a grant-maintained school could have rather more than 50 per cent. of its places on a selective basis, taking pupils post-GCE on a fully selective basis.
The danger for the structure of sixth-form provision as a whole is clearly that resources and pupils of higher ability may become disproportionately concentrated in grant-maintained sixth forms to the disadvantage of adjacent provision—be it a separate sixth-form college, a tertiary college or a voluntary or county school. In periods when the school rolls have been low the structure of sixth-form provision has often required considerable planning. I note that on the Government Benches there are those who appear to use the term "planning" in a pejorative way.
For those who can buy from a free market perhaps the idea of planning in the private sector is anathema. Perhaps there is a degree of logic in that. Those of us who have our children educated within the publicly provided sector want a degree of planning. When our children turn up at the local school to be enrolled we like to know that there are enough places for them. Similarly, in sixth-form provision, those with children within the state sector would like to know that provision is properly planned so that it is capable of being of a uniformly high quality and so that the interests of the second year sixth-form student are not distorted by a temporary whim which may occur. Those children are entitled to properly planned and resourced education. I beg to move.
Lord Walton of Detchant: Perhaps I may say at the outset that I am not in any sense opposed to the principle of selection or setting within schools. I believe that that is greatly to the benefit of children who have special educational needs, whether they are individuals of high ability or whether, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, said a little earlier, they are individuals who have special educational needs of a very different type.
One of the major planks of the Education Commission which I had the privilege to chair was that there should be a substantial broadening of the sixth-form curriculum in the 16-to-18 provision not just in relation to academic provision but also in relation to vocational education. There is no doubt that many of the sixth forms in grant-maintained and LEA-maintained schools are providing a high standard of education, but so, too, are the 110 sixth-form colleges which have been progressively established throughout the country. My concern about this provision in the Bill is that it could theoretically encourage grant-maintained schools, without due consultation—the relevant wording in the clause says "consultation (if any)"—which do not at present have sixth forms to establish small sixth forms. They would be incapable of offering the wide range of academic and vocational education which is relevant at the present time and which the sixth-form colleges, funded as they are through the Further Education Funding Council, are able to provide.

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As I have done in the past on occasion, perhaps I may use the health service analogy. One of the concerns that many of us have in the National Health Service is that, with the creation of independent hospital trusts, there is some evidence to suggest that independent trusts are ignoring previous plans of regional health authorities relating to the distribution of so-called "super specialties" throughout the health service sector and are seeking to establish consultant posts in super specialties in hospitals where, under previous planning arrangements, they would have been regarded as being unsatisfactory or incapable of attracting all the ancillary facilities required.
I believe very much in the future of specialised education, and it is absolutely right that in parental choice schools should be able to embark on specialisation. But I am gravely concerned that this particular clause in this Bill could allow grant-maintained schools, without proper consultation and without taking full account of local educational needs and of the other provisions being offered by sixth-form colleges in the relevant areas, to establish small and perhaps non-viable sixth forms. I believe that that would be contrary to the interests of the children, particularly in the light of the Dearing proposals to broaden the sixth-form curriculum very much in line with what the education commission, which I chair, suggests. Hence, I support these amendments which make it clear that full consultation would have to be carried out before a grant-maintained school without one was able to establish a sixth form.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale: I support Amendments Nos. 59 to 62, but I would like to speak specifically to Amendments Nos. 60 and 62. The purpose of these two amendments is to ensure that no new nurseries are created without procedures being followed which safeguard effective planning and the effective use of resources—two laudable objectives with which I hope the Minister will agree.
The Bill proposes an expansion of the grant-maintained nursery sector without reference to statutory procedures and following only such consultation as the governing body sees fit. That could mean that the LEAs have to meet the cost without being able to express a view on the need for it. There seems to be little regard paid to the question of the LEAs' existing provisions or plans for expansion.
At present grant-maintained schools are funded either through the annual maintenance grant or an allocation under the common funding policy. Costs are recouped from the relevant local authority. The introduction at short notice of new nursery provision in grant-maintained schools could undermine that process, which is currently subject to a well-established planning procedure under which local authorities at least know what their obligations will be and can plan accordingly.
Nursery education is a discretionary service and the level of provision the LEA chooses to make is not directly reflected in its standard spending assessment. Indeed, the AMA had correspondence with the Minister
1078
for schools in another place in 1994 about whether it would be constitutionally improper to force an authority to pay for provision that was neither statutorily required nor funded by an SSA. That was discussed at the Committee stage of the Bill in another place. The Minister's honourable friend, Mr. Eric Forth, undertook to write to Mr. Win Griffiths, which he duly did last December. I am sure that the Minister is well aware of all this. I shall be very grateful to him if he can tell me—because I do not find it at all clear—whether the letter from Mr. Forth means that, even though the clause will remove the requirement to publish statutory proposals where a grant-maintained school proposes to expand or establish nursery provision, the Government still intend to continue to take account of LEA policy in considering whether to approve the change in nursery capacity or the establishment of new nursery provision. We shall all find it very helpful if the Minister can give us a reply to that when he has the opportunity.
Baroness David: My name is attached to Amendment No. 61, which is part of this group of four amendments. Its purpose is to prevent new schools being established or existing schools being closed without reference to statutory procedures. This amendment incorporates the purpose of Amendment No. 62, which seeks to retain the requirement of published proposals in the case of pre- and post-compulsory school age provision by ensuring that proposals must be formally published to introduce or to end provision for any age range.
Clause 5(1) specifies those circumstances in which existing publication procedures would not apply. Instead, the governing body may carry out whatever consultation it sees fit. The existing requirement to publish statutory proposals under the Education Act 1996 ensures that all those who may be affected by the proposals, in particular local schools, colleges and nurseries and local residents, have the opportunity to express a view on how they will be affected.
What I am particularly concerned about—and I have had a great deal of correspondence on the subject—is the likely effect on sixth-form colleges. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, has made many of the points that I would wish to make. I have had a huge correspondence on this subject. I have been sent a copy of a letter from the FEFC to the Secretary of State. It has great concerns about this matter and it has expressed its reasons to the Secretary of State. It fears that the numbers recruited by colleges will be reduced and the range of subjects offered will become much more limited. The curriculum will, of course, become narrower.
The council also asks the Secretary of State to retain power to reject proposals. If the 24 grant-maintained schools which have had proposals rejected previously take advantage of the new opportunities now provided in the Bill to establish a new sixth form, that could be disastrous for the colleges which have been such a tremendous success. Two schools which have resubmitted proposals have already had approval granted. The Funding Agency for Schools has also questioned the ability of the boards of governors of

1079
grant-maintained schools to operate responsibly in an unregulated market. Surely the FAS is in a good position to comment.
As regards the cost-effectiveness of the proposals, most colleges can find extra places at the demand-led element (DLE) rate, which is about £1,000, but the new grant-maintained schools sixth forms would recoup £2,500 plus per year per full-time place. Where is the logic of such an arrangement? It seems absolutely illogical to me when the Government, I thought, were rather keen on being careful about money. I hope that the Minister can be persuaded to look again at these disquieting proposals in the Bill. There are very real anxieties and, I believe, they are rightly founded.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My name is also attached to Amendment No. 59 and I would like to speak briefly in support of all of the amendments in this group. I was particularly struck by the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, in supporting the amendment relating to sixth-form education. I am extremely concerned about the totally disorderly increase in nursery provision and the effect that that could have on the finances of local education authorities. Some Members of the Committee may remember that on Second Reading I raised the matter of how the provisions of this Bill would impact on the finances of LEAs. This is quite a good illustration of the relevance of that concern. I support the amendments and hope that, even if the Minister does not accept them today, he will at least reconsider the matter and perhaps return at a later stage with some thoughts in this direction.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Dean of Harptree): The Question is—
5.30 p.m.
Lord Henley: I think that I should be allowed to respond to the amendment. I am sure that it would be appropriate.
I am afraid that I cannot accept the amendments, which seek to wreck our policy to give grant-maintained schools more freedom to introduce sixth forms or nursery provision and to extend choice for parents. We think that it is right that they should have more freedom. Grant-maintained schools are more than able to make a considered judgment about whether such provision is needed and is likely to be attractive to parents and pupils. It would clearly be foolhardy of any school to attempt to add new provision where there was no demand for it.
I made it clear earlier that there will be consultation. Consultation will be a requirement. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, was concerned about that consultation and quoted the words "consultation (if any)". I cannot remember whether the noble Lord was in his place yesterday when, if I remember correctly, we discussed that phrase. I think that I made it clear then that the provision sought to rule out consultation in those cases where the change being proposed was so small as not to warrant consultation. However, in the vast majority of cases—and obviously when a school is setting up a sixth
1080
form or a new nursery—consultation is appropriate. Again, I have made it clear on a number of occasions that the consultation will be thorough and that we shall be issuing guidance on it. As I made clear on an earlier amendment, the guidance itself will be issued in draft for consultation and we shall await interested comments on who should or should not be consulted—
Lord Walton of Detchant: Although I fully appreciate the strength of the Minister's argument, I wonder whether he would agree that the inclusion of those words on the face of the Bill would allow a maverick grant-maintained school to go ahead and establish a sixth form without any consultation whatever when in all the circumstances it was quite inappropriate to do that. That is my principal concern.
Lord Henley: That would not be the case. If a so-called "maverick" school went ahead and did such a large thing without consultation, it would obviously not be acting reasonably. I am sure that there would be ways and means and legal processes to stop such a school from acting in that way. Again, I have made it clear that we shall be issuing guidance on the consultation. I hope that when in due course the noble Lord sees that guidance, he will agree that it is appropriate in all the circumstances.
I appreciate that many Members of the Committee feel that new provision could sometimes appear to be a threat to other providers. We have heard about sixth form colleges from various noble Lords and I agree that, in the main, sixth form colleges do a very good job. I am very pleased with how they work. However, there is always a tendency to try to protect existing provision whatever the cost. I do not think that it is necessarily a line that we should pursue. If we are truly to increase choice within the system and the quality of what is available, individual governing bodies need the freedom to respond to the needs and wishes of pupils and parents in the area.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, also asked about the funding of nurseries. The power contained in the clause for grant-maintained schools to set up nursery classes does not change in any way the existing funding mechanisms. It will remain the case that the money will not necessarily be recovered from the LEA for the running costs of the new nurseries. In that case, the LEAs have nothing to fear.
As I said at the beginning, the amendments undermine our policy of giving grant-maintained schools the greater freedoms that we think are necessary in order to extend choice for parents. Therefore, I urge the Committee to reject the amendment.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: The Government are behaving in a very strange and illogical way. I say that because, after many years of experience in local government—the Minister has had such local government experience—surely the Government are aware that parents do not think in groups in a discrete way and do not all follow a logical grouping. The result of totally free parental choice without control or planning is that parents demand half a sixth form in

1081
place A, half a sixth form in place B while retaining the choice for the next child in the family in place C. Only two things then occur: either the young people have their resource diminished because—sometimes part way through the year—the range of options is not available to the second-year pupils who started a particular course; or, the amount of money has to be increased at the expense of other parts of the system.
The Government's view that parents meet in groups and make logical, joint decisions on their own shows that the Minister has never consulted parents day after day. Schools do not close on their own. Sixth forms do not close on their own. When one or two parents are gathered together, they demand that the resource stays open in terms of choice. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has been through that experience. Maintaining choice for the remaining parents and providing an alternative for the rest costs money. I shall read carefully what the Minister has said—and I hope that he will read carefully what we have said on this subject—but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 60 not moved.]
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 [Consultation and notification where proposals do not need to be published]:
[Amendments Nos. 61 to 64 not moved.]
The Lord Bishop of Ripon The Lord Bishop of Ripon moved Amendment No. 65:
Page 6, line 13, at end insert ("and if the school is a Church in Wales school, a Church of England school or a Roman Catholic school they shall consult the appropriate diocesan authority unless the implementation of the proposals requires that authority's consent.").
The right reverend Prelate said: Amendment No. 65 seeks to amend that part of Clause 5 which refers to consultation. I begin by making clear the attitude of the Church of England Board of Education towards grant-maintained schools. We have taken the view that it is not the responsibility of the board to make recommendations about whether it is right or wrong for a school to seek grant-maintained status. That is a matter for the governors of the school. The hoard's responsibility has been limited to drawing attention to those factors of which a governing body ought to take account and to suggesting that the governing body examines those factors before reaching any conclusion about whether to seek grant-maintained status.
It is clear that those schools which were formerly voluntary schools continue to be church schools after they have achieved grant-maintained status—if that is what happens. A considerable number of church schools have sought and achieved grant-maintained status. Therefore, within the total grant-maintained sector is a group of schools that are still church schools—that is made clear by their trust deed and by the appointment of foundation governors—but those schools have all the rights and privileges that belong to that status.
Clause 5 gives rights of consultation. We have already had considerable debate on that. In particular, we have already considered the provision which speaks of,
"consultation (if any) as appears to [governing bodies] to be appropriate".
In the case of those schools which have grant-maintained status and were church schools, and therefore continue to be church schools, surely it is right that the consultation should always include the appropriate diocesan authority. I was grateful that earlier the Minister referred to consultation, in particular with the appropriate diocesan authorities. The Committee has already heard a description of those diocesan authorities, and I will not repeat it. Surely, it is always appropriate that a grant-maintained school which is a Church in Wales, Church of England or Roman Catholic school should consult the appropriate diocesan authority. I believe it is right that that should appear on the face of the Bill. I shall be most interested to hear the comments of the Minister. I beg to move.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: We support this amendment and await the Minister's reply.
Lord Henley: We do not believe that this is the most appropriate way to approach these matters. I repeat—perhaps for the third or fourth time—that I agree with the right reverend Prelate that consultation is necessary and that the diocesan or appropriate church authorities should be consulted about changes to church schools. However, we do not believe that there is any need to place the requirement on the face of the Bill. Governing bodies will be required to consult having regard to the guidance issued by my right honourable friend. Obviously, such guidance will include dioceses in the case of church schools. I ask the Committee to accept that that is the way in which these matters are normally handled in education legislation. I refer the right reverend Prelate to the present statutory guidance along these lines contained in Circular 23/94. Sadly, I do not have a copy with me, but if the right reverend Prelate wants one I shall ensure that he receives it. We will be issuing guidance and consulting on it in due course. I hope therefore that the right reverend Prelate will not feel it necessary to press his amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: I am grateful for the Minister's assurance. I would be glad to receive a copy of the circular, although I suspect that there is already a copy of it somewhere within the board's library. I take the points that the Minister has made and I shall read carefully what he has said. It may be that at Report stage I shall return to the matter with an amendment of this kind. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Morris Lord Morris of Castle Morris moved Amendment No. 66:
Page 6, line 13, at end insert—
("(2A) In addition to the requirements of subsection (2) above, the governing body shall, before determining whether to implement their proposals, give notice of them to every registered parent of every registered pupil at the school, such other parents, governing bodies of schools affected by them or other persons as appear to them to be concerned, and the provisions of section (Objections on notification

1083
to proposals which do not need to be published) of the Education Act 1997 shall apply to the governing body as though it were the admission authority under that section.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment was spoken to earlier. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 67 and 68 not moved.]
The Lord Bishop of Ripon The Lord Bishop of Ripon moved Amendment No. 69:
Page 7, line 10, at end insert—
("Notification of objection.
265E.—(1) Any person who has been consulted by the governing body under section 265C or who has been given notice by the governing body under sections 265C or 265D may within fourteen days of such consultation or notification give notice in writing to the Secretary of State and to the governing body that he objects to the proposals.
(2) Where the Secretary of State receives notice of objection under subsection (1) he may direct that the publication procedure shall apply to the proposals if he considers that the proposals if implemented could be detrimental to the interests of—

(a) pupils attending the school,

(b) the local community,

(c) the local education authority for the area in which the school is situated,

(d) other maintained schools in that area, or

(e) if the school is a Church in Wales school, a Church of England school or a Roman Catholic school, the appropriate diocesan authority.".").

The right reverend Prelate said: Amendment No. 69 gives to the Secretary of State a reserve power in certain circumstances to direct that the publication procedures shall apply to proposals. Surely, there is in principle no hostility to the idea of a reserve power. Indeed, Clause 11 gives such a power to the Secretary of State. We had understood that it might have been slightly wider than that provided by Clause 11. Clause 11 provides that in certain circumstances the Secretary of State may designate a particular area as one within which the provisions for overcoming statutory consultation shall not apply. Why is that right for certain areas but not in certain circumstances? Is it not the case that in certain circumstances the Secretary of State may need such a reserve power that does not apply to all schools in a particular area but simply to one?
The amendment provides the Secretary of State with a reserve power in the particular case referred to in the amendment; that is to say, when a person gives notice in writing to the Secretary of State and the governing body that he objects to the proposals. The Secretary of State has a permissive not mandatory power. He may direct that the publication procedure shall apply to these proposals. I argue that this is a modest amendment which expands the reserve power already provided in Clause 11. It will provide the Secretary of State with a power that he or she may want to use in the limited circumstances described in the amendment. I beg to move.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Henley: I did not know whether noble Lords from the Benches opposite wanted to leap to their feet and offer their usual support to this amendment. We do not believe that the increased freedoms that we are providing to grant-maintained schools are such that they require the extra safeguards that the right reverend Prelate proposes in his amendment. We believe that the consultation and notification requirements of the clause, together with departmental guidance, will be sufficient. We do not believe that it is right to introduce new freedoms and then undermine the way in which they operate by re-introducing—which is what the amendment amounts to—a requirement to publish proposals. We believe that that would only result in unnecessary delay and confusion. I regret that I cannot offer any comfort to the right reverend Prelate or any support for his amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps he will clarify the intention of Clause 11. As I understand it, it provides such a reserve power. Why is it right in those circumstances but not in the circumstances described in the amendment?
Lord Henley: I refer to the Notes on Clauses to the Bill. Clause 11 is designed to provide the Secretary of State with certain safeguards in areas where it is felt that there is a degree of selection that interferes with the provision of places for other people; in other words, that there is almost too much selection. Obviously, that will give the Secretary of State the reserve power to designate by order those areas where schools' freedom to select up to those thresholds should be curtailed. Therefore, they will be in the old position of having to publish proposals as and when appropriate if they want to go beyond those levels. The circumstances in which the Secretary of State may decide to make or revoke such an order will be set out in regulations, which will obviously come before this House.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: I am a little disappointed by the argument of the Minister, but at this stage I do not propose to press the matter. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede moved Amendment No. 70:
After Clause 6, insert the following new clause—
(" . After section 266A of the Education Act 1996 there shall be inserted—
"Schools requiring special measures: transfer etc. to local education authority.
266B. Regulations may make provision—

(a) for the Secretary of State to direct that any school to which subsection (1) of section 266A of this Act applies shall cease to be a grant-maintained school and shall instead be a school maintained by the local

1085
education authority in whose area the school is situated and for the Secretary of State to make further provision consequent upon such a direction; or

(b) for the Secretary of State to direct that the local education authority in whose area the school is situated shall have the power to appoint such number of additional governors to the governing body of the school as the Secretary of State may specify in such a direction.".").

The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 70 is a probing amendment, and I shall speak to it briefly. In the Government's White Paper there is a promise that grant-maintained schools can be placed under education authority control should special measures not work. The purpose of the amendment is to place a grant-maintained school under the control of the local authority if it is not working. This is intended as a probing amendment to see exactly what will be the fate of a grant-maintained school. Is it to be looked after by a LEA or is it to be left to look after itself? I look forward to hearing the reply of the Minister. I beg to move.
Lord Monkswell: I support the amendment. As I understand it, the resources and abilities of the LEA to provide assistance to a failing grant-maintained school would not be available unless some specific measure such as this were implemented to allow it to provide that assistance. The Minister may be able to comment on that point also.
Lord Henley: I am grateful to the noble Lord for making it clear that this is merely a probing amendment and was not to be taken seriously. The idea that a grant-maintained school which happened to be failing and which happened to be in Islington should then be handed back to the authority filled me with horror. As regards the matters about which the noble Lord was probing, I can say that to date the FAS school improvement unit and the power to appoint governors have done the trick. But in a few cases such a remedy may work far too slowly and that is why last summer's White Paper, Self-Government for Schools, to which the noble Lord referred, suggested the possibility of an education association-type arrangement for grant-maintained schools.
I should remind the noble Lord that to date about 1 per cent. only of grant-maintained schools that have been inspected have failed, compared to nearly 3 per cent. of LEA-maintained schools. The White Paper proposed a range of other measures to strengthen the governance of grant-maintained schools, including some prompted by the recommendations of the committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nolan. Those proposals were set out in fairly general terms. They need further development and consultation. It is premature to legislate on those matters now, but work is proceeding with the aim of introducing legislation on the whole package—that is, the remainder of the White Paper, because as the noble Lord will remember not all the White Paper proposals are contained in the Bill—in the next Parliament.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: I am somewhat surprised by that response. If 1 per cent. of
1086
grant-maintained schools are failing, I find it difficult to see why there should not be a clear path for those schools to be changed. The amendment suggests that they return to the LEA. The Government White Paper suggests that they go under the control of an education association. But why do we have to continue thinking about it? Why cannot there be some proposal from the Government to make the position of those schools clear? However, I shall read with interest what the Minister has said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Henley: Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may make it clear that the mere fact that a school is failing does not mean that an education association—in the case of an LEA school—goes in immediately. Other measures are taken first. It is rare to get as far as an EA. What I made clear was that so far, with those that are failing, a school improvement unit and the various other powers seem to have done the trick.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: I thank the Minister for that clarification. Nevertheless, there is a discrepancy between the status of failing schools and the type of school that they are. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 [Duty of governing body to review selective admission policy]:
[Amendment No. 71 not moved.]
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 [Alteration of admission numbers for grant-maintained schools]:
[Amendments Nos. 72 to 75 not moved.]
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clauses 9 and 10 agreed to.
Clause 11 [Secretary of State's reserve power to limit appropriate threshold]:
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede moved Amendment No. 76:
Page 11, line 41, leave out ("20") and insert ("10").
The noble Lord said: This, too, is a probing amendment. Its purpose is to amend the upper limit for selection which the Secretary of State may impose from 20 per cent. to 10 per cent. The reserve powers in Clause 11 are important to enable the Secretary of State at least to step in where a selection may get out of hand and threaten the operation of an admissions system. The figure to which the Secretary of State may reduce the selection, however, is less effective than it might be. The 20 per cent. fixed figure equates with the levels to which county schools, GM primary schools and GM schools with special measures will in any case be able to select. In other words, the powers are operative only against specialist schools which can select up to 30 per cent. or GM secondary schools which can select up to 50 per cent. That may betray the Government's anxiety as to the point of pressure in the system, but it does not produce an effective remedy.
It would surely be better were additional powers to be included to enable the Secretary of State to push selection down to a lower figure across the board. If the Government are sympathetic to that, it is possible to envisage an amendment that enabled the Secretary of State to lower the selection threshold as she thought appropriate. Perhaps that should be down to a minimum of 10 per cent. That would preserve some flexibility. At this stage, the amendment is designed to test the principle with Ministers as to whether a lower figure would not be more attractive and more likely to preserve the functioning of the admissions system. I beg to move.
Lord Dormand of Easington: The Minister may remember that yesterday I asked him what was magic about some of these figures. He does remember. It seems to me that this is slightly different today, so I partly repeat the question. What is magic about 20 per cent. in these circumstances?
Lord Henley: It is a marginally different discussion from yesterday's. I am grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the question: what is magic about these figures? As he will be aware, on the amendments moved by his noble friend Lord Monkswell we did to some extent discuss the 15 per cent., 20 per cent., 30 per cent. and 50 per cent. figures and what was the magic about them. We believe that a 20 per cent. threshold is sensible. There are no grounds for believing that a 20 per cent. threshold would adversely affect the supply of places in an area so designated under Clause 11.
Obviously pitching the threshold is a matter of judgment rather than an exact science. There can be no science in this, and that may be why the noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, preferred to use the word "magic". We believe that 20 per cent. is about right. It makes it a real option for a school, rather than just tinkering around the margins. For many schools, 10 per cent. would not be sufficient to produce a separate form of entry if that is how they wished to teach their pupils admitted on the basis of selection.
I do not think that I can take the matter further, other than to repeat that it is not a matter of science; it is a matter of judgment. We believe that 20 per cent. is about the right figure.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: I am disappointed that the Minister did not pick up the point I made that there may be a case for the Secretary of State to be able to lower the threshold if she was so disposed down to a minimum figure of 10 per cent. The Minister talked about judgment. Perhaps we should give the Secretary of State the power to make that judgment and give her greater flexibility in doing so. I am sorry that the Minister did not feel disposed to give the Secretary of State that flexibility and wanted to stick with the blanket figure of 20 per cent. Nevertheless, as I said, this is a probing amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 11 agreed to.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clause 13 [Extension of power of funding authority to establish grant-maintained schools]:
6 p.m.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton moved Amendment No. 77:
Page 12, line 26, at beginning insert ("Subject to subsection (1A) below").
The noble Baroness said: It may be for the convenience of the Committee if I speak also to Amendment No. 78. The purpose of the amendments is clear. It is to require the FAS to investigate whether there is a genuine need for a school and to require it to publish an analysis of need before creating a new school. The amendment would cause the FAS to have to meet the same requirement as LEAs before it proposes to establish a new school in the area.
The department's Circular No. 23/94 outlines the principal factors that the Secretary of State will take into account where she is required to consider proposals for the new school capacity. The circular acknowledges that the planning of school places requires careful consideration of local circumstances. The planning of school places in an area is a complicated matter which requires all providers and users to work closely together. This function has been performed fairly successfully by LEAs in partnership with their schools and neighbouring authorities. The Education Act 1993 established the FAS and gave it powers in some LEA areas to share and in others to be wholly responsible for planning to achieve the required supply of school places.
There is little point in rehearsing many of the arguments that have previously been made. It is important that the FAS must have regard to educational, financial and organisational factors prior to determining whether a new school is needed. That is only fair. The same rules apply to the voluntary sector for capital allocation and to the local authority county schools in their separate form of capital approval.
The FAS must be required to publish the basis for its case for a new school in the light of the following: information from LEAs as they are required, including plans for rationalisation places at other schools; census information; birth rate; present pupil population; actual capacity; projections of pupil population; new building development; and cost-effective analysis of need.
That requirement is logical; it provides a level playing field; it applies to the voluntary-aided sector; and it applies to the local authority sector. It is a built up, tried and tested practice in the interests of the good use of public money. I commend the amendment to your Lordships and I beg to move.
Lord Tope: I support the amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, set out the case very well. It is self-evidently right and necessary that the FAS should investigate whether there is a genuine need for a school

1089
and that we should know in what way it has done that. We are pleased to support the amendment and we look forward to receiving the Minister's support.
Baroness Young: Would it not be the case that when the FAS was considering such an issue it would of necessity have to consider whether there was a need for this rule and whether there was a genuine demand from parents for such a school? The whole principle behind grant-maintained schools is that they give a wide measure of freedom to the schools to act. Anyone who is in any way responsible for a school would hardly be likely to attempt to establish a school in an area which, for clear educational reasons, would not be successful. I shall listen with great care to what my noble friend says, but I should have thought that it would self-evidently be the case that the FAS would not wish to go ahead and establish a school unless it had satisfied itself on all those matters.
Baroness Warnock: There is an important point to be made. I entirely take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that of course the FAS will consider the need for a school before wantonly setting one up. On the other hand, unless the amendment is accepted there is nothing to suggest that the FAS must publish the analysis which points to the need. It is important that it should do so in order that the parents in the area as well as the LEA can understand why there is felt to be the need for a school. Therefore, I support the amendment largely on the ground that it would require the publication of the analysis of a situation which demands a school.
Lord Henley: Perhaps I may begin by making it clear to the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, that the LEAs' powers to propose new schools are not restricted to circumstances where all the extra places to be provided are required to meet basic need. So Clause 13 does not restrict the FAS's parallel powers in this way.
But new schools are expensive, and capital funding is always limited. For these if no other reasons we would expect the FAS to propose new schools where extra places are needed and not to propose a new school where there was reasonable doubt that the extra places would not be filled, as my noble friend Lady Young made clear.
The need for extra places would have to be demonstrated in the statement of case for the new school, which would have to be submitted to the Secretary of State as part of the statutory proposals process. To support proposals for a new school, the FAS would have to analyse projected need for pupil places in the area. It would also have to include the results of this work in its statement of case. So the agency would be bound to carry out the kind of analysis mentioned in the amendment.
As for making the results more widely available, the guidance given to the FAS on statutory proposals for new GM schools is likely to recommend that the agency should make the statement of case it has submitted to the Secretary of State available on request. That will
1090
be in the guidance. Given that such statements will be substantial and detailed documents, I think this is a much more sensible way of making them available to interested parties than publication.
Two years ago, our policy on the provision of extra places—including new schools—was set out in Circular 23/94. The circular stated that, in considering proposals for new schools, the Secretary of State would take account of the educational as well as financial merits of the proposals. In other words, she would look not only at the extent to which a new school was needed to provide extra places but also at the extent to which it would enhance the diversity and quality of educational provision in the area.
The circular made it clear that, in certain circumstances, the Secretary of State would be prepared to approve a new school even if there was no projected shortfall of places in the area. This might happen where, for example, the new school would significantly enhance choice, diversity and quality, and there was scope for rationalising places at other schools in the area. The circular also made it clear that this policy applied equally to proposals for new schools from the FAS and LEAs.
Clause 13 is consistent with that policy. LEAs' power to propose new schools is not limited to circumstances where all the places proposed are required to meet basic need, and the FAS's power is also not limited in this way. I hope that the noble Baroness will not find it necessary to press the amendment.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: I cannot help but believe that the Government are investing on a whim in a mad rush—a Gadarene swine rush—towards allowing the wasteful duplication of public resources in a way which the average parent concerned about what happens to their child in the local school will find incomprehensible. I find it incredible that it is possible to consider, in the interests of notional choice, having more school places than are needed in order to satisfy the whim of a minority of parents in any particular school. Therefore, I wish to seek the view of the Committee.
6.9 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 77) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 96; Not-Contents, 135.

Division No. 2

CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Carter, L.

Barnett, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Berkeley, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Blackstone, B.

David, B.

Blease, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Borrie, L.

Desai, L.

Broadbridge, L.

Diamond, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Donoughue, L.

Calverley, L.

Dormand of Easington. L.

1091

Dubs, L.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Eatwell, L.

Meston, L.

Elis-Thomas, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Falkender, B.

Molloy, L.

Farrington of Ribbleton, B.

Monkswell, L.

Gallacher, L.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Geraint, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Gladwin of Clee, L.

Nicol, B.

Glenamara, L.

Ogmore, L.

Gould of Potternewton, B. [Teller.]

Perry of Walton, L.

Peston, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Gregson, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Grey, E.

Ramsay of Cartvale, B.

Hampton, L.

Rea, L.

Hamwee, B.

Richard, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Rodgers of Quarry Bank, L.

Haskel, L.

Russell, E.

Hayman, B.

Sewel, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Shepherd, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Simon, V.

Howell L

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Hughes, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Jay of Paddington, B.

Symons of Vernham Dean, B.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Taverne, L

Judd, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Kennet, L.

Thomas of Walliswood, B.

Kilbracken, L.

Thomson of Monifieth, L.

Lockwood, B.

Thurso, V.

Longford, E.

Tope, L. [Teller.]

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Walton of Detchant,L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Warnock,B.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

White, B.

McNair, L.

Whitty, L.

McNally, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Mallalieu, B.

Williams of Mostyn, L.

Mar and Kellie, E.

Winston, L.

Marsh, L.

Young of Dartington, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Courtown, E.

Ailsa, M.

Cowley, E.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Craigavon, V.

Anelay of St. Johns, B.

Cranborne, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Ashbourne, L.

Cross, V.

Balfour, E.

Cuckney, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Belstead, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Biddulph, L.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Birdwood, L.

Denbigh, E.

Blatch, B.

Denham, L.

Bowness, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Dilhorne,V.

Brentford, V.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Brigstocke, B.

Dundee, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Elles, B.

Bruntisfield, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Burnham, L.

Elton, L.

Butterfield, L.

Erroll, E.

Butterworth, L.

Feldman, L.

Byford, B.

Flather, B.

Cadman, L.

Gage, V.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Geddes, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Gisborough, L.

Carnock, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Goschen, V.

Charteris of Amisfield, L.

Gray, L.

Chelmsford, V.

Gray of Contin, L.

Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Griffiths of Fforestfach, L.

Clanwilliam, E.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Clark of Kempston, L.

Hambro, L.

Coleraine, L.

Hardinge of Penshurst, L.

Coleridge, L.

Harris of Peckham, L.

Cornwallis, L.

Haslam, L.

1092

Hayhoe, L.

Onslow, E.

Henley, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Holderness, L.

Peel, E.

Hooper, B.

Perry of Southwark, B.

Howe, E.

Prentice, L.

Iddesleigh, E.

Pym, L.

Jeffreys, L.

Quinton, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Rees, L.

Lindsay, E.

Rennell, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Rotherwick, L.

Long, V.

Rowallan, L.

Lucas, L.

St. Davids, V.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

St John of Fawsley, L.

Luke, L.

Shaw of Northstead, L.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish,

Skidelsky, L.

L. Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Marlesford, L.

Strathcona and Mount Royal

Merrivale, L.

Sudeley, L.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Swinfen, L.

Milverton, L.

Taylor of Warwick, L.

Monson, L.

Teviot, L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Teynham, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Mottistone, L.

Torphichen, L.

Mountevans, L.

Trumpington, B.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Ullswater, V.

Munster, E.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Newall, L.

Wise, L.

Northesk, E.

Wynford, L.

O'Cathain, B.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
6.17 p.m.
[Amendments Nos. 78 and 79 not moved.]
Clause 13 agreed to.
Clause 14 [Grants to promoters of grant-maintained schools]:
Lord Tope Lord Tope moved Amendment No. 80:
Page 13, line 9, at end insert ("for which the authority is satisfied that there is demonstrable public support,").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 82. The purpose of the amendment is to test whether public money should be given to promoters to generate public support for the establishment of a GM school. The amendment is an attempt to prevent the spending of public money on the promotion of new GM schools in areas where there is no demonstrable need. It is about avoiding waste, although those grants pale into insignificance when compared with the huge sums which this Government have already wasted on the promotion of GM schools.
The issue was raised in Committee in the Commons and the Government responded on Report with what are now subsections (2) and (3) of the new Section 213A. Those import a test of inability or potential inability before grants can be made. While those changes show that the Government recognise the legitimate concern, they do not solve the problem. As the clause stands currently—and there was no debate on the government amendment to the clause in the other place—subsection (2)(b) seems to

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give carte blanche or at any rate a blank cheque for the promoters of a GM school to spend public money to drum up support for a school in any area of the country, including areas in which there are plenty of places in existing schools and no demand for a new one.
It is ironic that this Government, who have repeatedly criticised local education authorities for failing to remove surplus places, now believe that it is all right for the FAS to encourage the establishment of new schools with no notice being taken of the local situation. While it is considered a vice to have a few too many places in an LEA school, it seems that it is a virtue to have whole new GM schools where there is no shortage of places. A private company seeking to enter any market will, as a first step, undertake some market research to see whether there is a need for its product in an area. As the clause stands, the FAS will be able to pay for that market research out of the public purse in order to establish that a school would be viable. The amendment will require there to be "demonstrable public support" before any public money is handed out to GM promoters. That must mean taking account of, and being accountable to, the public; that is, the local community. It seems that the Government are not happy with the concept of public support for a GM school, believing it,
"too difficult a concept not only to describe but to institutionalise".
That was said by the Minister of State, Mr. Eric Forth, in Committee in another place. The Government prefer the notion of viability or, in the case of subsection (2)(b), potential viability. Viability is defined in subsection (3) as a school for which,
"there would be a sufficient demand for places … to ensure that a satisfactory education was provided there".
There will be a very high level of interest in how the concept of "viability" is to be defined. The responsibility for such definition, however, will be delegated to the FAS.
The amendment suggests replacing the subjective judgment of a quango with the objective judgment of the local community. If parents know best, as we are constantly told, there can be scant reason for not seeking their views before more of their money is spent in promoting a type of school which they may not want. I beg to move.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: In supporting what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, I should like to ask the Minister three questions. First, the noble Lord said that, as the clause currently stands, subsection (2)(b) appears to give carte blanche to promoters of a grant-maintained school to go around spending public money to drum up support for the kind of school they want. Can the Minister say what controls there are on such activity? Do these promoters, whoever they may be, have to satisfy any form of examination or inquiry before they start promoting?
Further, can such promoters specify what sort of school they would wish to promote? For example, could a Quaker promoter say, "I want to set up a Quaker GM school?" One would perhaps have no objection to that but some people, alas, might have an objection if the
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promoter were a Moslem who wished to set up a Moslem school. Perhaps even more people might have their hackles rising if it was a Moonie with plenty of money who wished to propose a Moonie school. What are the limits to be placed on promoters?
Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, drew attention to the fact that, as the clause stands, the FAS will be able to pay for market research out of the public purse in order to establish whether or not a school will be viable. So, Her Majesty's Government and, behind them, the British taxpayer, will be sponsoring a feasibility study. Can the Minister give some idea as to how much all that will cost?
Thirdly, the noble Lord drew our attention to the fact that there will be a very high level of interest in how the concept of "viability" will be defined. However, we notice that the responsibility for establishing such a definition is delegated to the FAS. Therefore, is not the agency judge, jury and hangman in its own case?
Lord Dormand of Easington: When the Minister replies, perhaps he can give the Committee some indication—or, indeed, some accurate figures—as to how much public money has been spent in promoting GM schools? If we are to have a realistic debate on the amendment, it seems that we ought to have that information.
Baroness Young:Once again, we are discussing a most important issue which concerns the whole establishment of GM schools. Before one is set up, everyone needs to be satisfied that it is both needed and viable. I should tell the noble Lord, Lord Morris, that many of the detailed questions that he raised are answered in the Notes on Clauses, which I shall not read out. As I understand the Notes, the promoters are people other than the funding authority who propose to establish a GM school under the terms of Section 212 of the Education Act 1996. The Notes provide that where promoters propose to establish such a school they must, after consultation with the funding authority and other interested parties, publish proposals and submit them to the Secretary of State. The Notes go on to say that the funding authority is prevented from paying grant unless it is satisfied that the proposed school is likely to be viable. It has to be satisfied, if necessary, that further steps need to be taken before it would be viable.
One might well answer the noble Lord, Lord Dormand, by saying, "Very well, this is public money to promote GM schools. But how much public money has been spent in preventing some being set up?" We do not know the answer to that question. Noble Lords opposite may shake their heads but I can tell them that the number of letters sent out in some cases must have amounted to a certain amount of public expenditure. However, as I said, we do not know the sum involved.
Where it is believed that there should be a grant-maintained school it seems to me most important that there should be the opportunity to assess the situation and find out whether it would be viable before

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going ahead. That is a perfectly reasonable expenditure of money for something which has a proven track record.
Lord Henley: I shall start by dealing with the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Morris, over who, in effect, controls promoters. I can tell the noble Lord that anyone can put forward proposals for promoting a new GM school; that is only right and proper. All a promoter can do is publish statutory proposals for setting up a school. The decision to approve such proposals obviously rests with the Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State welcomes any sound proposals from promoters of all kinds. To date the Secretary of State for Education and Employment and the Secretary of State for Wales have, I understand, approved proposals from six Roman Catholic schools, one being in Wales. I also understand that there are a further 11 proposals from Jewish, Moslem and Christian promoters, including a Seventh Day Adventist promoter, which are under consideration in England. A proposal for a non-denominational all-age school is also under consideration in Wales. Those are matters for the respective Secretaries of State to consider in determining statutory proposals. They will be considered on their merits against the specific criteria. I give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: I am much obliged to the Minister. Perhaps the noble Lord can go further. For example, would the Secretary of State be liable to approve such a proposal if it were put forward by, shall we say, the Co-operative Society?
Lord Henley: As I made clear, that is something that the Secretary of State would consider on its merits. It would be wrong for me at this stage to say, "No, the Secretary of State would not consider one from the Co-operative Society but she would consider one from Sainsbury's". As I said, such matters would be considered on their merits, taking account of the specific criteria.
I turn now to the amendment. Under Clause 14 the funding authority is able to help prospective promoters of new GM schools develop their proposals by providing grant. The purpose is to ensure that sound proposals can go forward to publication which might not otherwise have done so without such development grant. I should tell the noble Lord, Lord Dormand, that I cannot give a figure as to how much has been spent in that area. However, I shall endeavour to find out whether there is such a figure and, if there is, I shall communicate with the noble Lord.
Amendment No. 80 makes it a condition of grant payment that there should be demonstrable public support for the proposed school. I have every sympathy with the view that public resources should be used sensibly and that grant should not be paid to help promoters develop their proposals where it is perfectly clear that the new school would not attract sufficient pupils. The noble Lord will be aware that there was considerable discussion at the Committee stage in
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another place on these issues. My honourable and right honourable friends listened carefully to the arguments put forward. But they feel that the clause as it now is achieves that purpose because they introduced the government amendment in another place at Report stage—which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, accepted—to address that point.
We believe the issue to be whether or not a school is likely to be viable; that is, likely to attract sufficient demand from parents to secure a satisfactory standard of education. We do not believe that a test of demonstrable public support adds anything to the clause, or the clause as amended at Report stage. I am grateful to the noble Lord for underlining the two subsections which were added. Expressions of public support are not necessarily synonymous with expressions of parental demand. Such a test gives no clue as to the persons demonstrating support or how many would be required to demonstrate support before the test was passed.
The viability test has sufficient merit in itself. It includes evidence of demand in terms of expressions of parental support for a proposed new school and that would be a significant factor in the assessment. It also enables the funding authority to take account of other factors in assessing viability such as future parental demand arising, for example, from a new housing development. Those parents obviously would not be present to express their views but they would want a school with places for their children.
Amendment No. 82 would remove an important aspect of the funding authority's powers contained in subsection (2)(b). That subsection takes account of circumstances where the funding authority might consider that further work needs to be done before it is satisfied as to viability, but thinks it likely that it will be so satisfied when that work has been done. In those circumstances the funding authority would be able to pay grant to enable the further work to go ahead.
If I may, I shall give the noble Lord an example. The promoters might be able to present the funding authority with initial evidence of parental demand in response to fairly embryonic proposals for a new school, for example, the new Co-operative Society school put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Moms. The funding authority may take the view that there is a reasonable prospect, once the proposals have been developed a little more, that a further parental survey would produce a more informed and complete response. In those circumstances the funding authority would be able to pay grant linked to the further work required.
It is important that the funding authority is able to exercise such judgment where it believes there is a reasonable prospect that the school will be viable. Otherwise, promoters who could demonstrate viability satisfactorily if grant was available for further work, would be unable to do so precisely because they were ineligible for grant.
I fear therefore—put briefly to the noble Lord—that his amendments are not acceptable. I feel that Clause 14 as it stands secures that public funds will be used properly. I do not believe that these two amendments would add to its merits.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: Before the noble Lord sits down, he has been so helpful to me on the first of the three questions that I asked that I wonder has it perhaps slipped his mind inadvertently that I asked him two others: one, whether the feasibility study as I called it is costed in any way? Any private company going into a market will undertake market research to see whether there is a need for a product. As the clause stands, the FAS will be able to pay for that market research out of the public purse. Can the noble Lord give us some idea what will be the order of magnitude of the cost of this kind of feasibility study? What will it include? Secondly, could he address himself for a moment to the question of why it is the FAS which will decide what viability is? As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, memorably said, this amendment that we are putting forward suggests replacing the subjective judgment of a quango with the objective judgment of the local community—parents know best.
Lord Henley: I am afraid that the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Morris, put his name to—the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Tope—does not achieve that. We believe that the FAS is perfectly capable of deciding on viability. But obviously in the end the decision of the school itself—as the noble Lord well knows—will be made by the school. We are talking here about the promoters looking at the possibility of a school. It is quite right that the FAS should be able to consider spending money on these matters. If I have any more information on possible costs, order of magnitude, and that sort of thing, I shall, if I may, write to the noble Lord if he would find that more helpful, because I certainly cannot answer that question at the moment.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: I am grateful to the noble Lord.
Lord Dormand of Easington: The Minister said that if he could get the information that I asked for he would write. If he cannot get the information, will he also write to me? I ask that quite seriously for two reasons. First of all, I think that is of immense importance to the amendment we are discussing. But, what is perhaps even more important, this is the Government who are always, they say, looking after the pounds and the pennies the whole time and who criticise the Labour Party for what they consider to be profligate spending. Therefore we are entitled to know that this Government are keeping a careful eye on the money they are spending on something which is strongly opposed by people on these Benches.
Lord Henley: I think we have a pretty good record of keeping a tight control on public finances, particularly compared to the promises amounting to some £30 billion of extra expenditure offered by the party opposite. I do not think today is the time or the place to engage in financial or economic debate, but I just thought I would have the beginnings of it. Certainly I give an assurance to the noble Lord that
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I shall write to him whatever the case may be. Or, if I may write to the noble Lord, Lord Morris, I shall copy that letter to the noble Lord, Lord Dormand.
Lord Tope: I am grateful to the Minister. I shall resist the bait that he offers me to consider how either party will pay for its proposals. Perhaps we should not pursue that tonight. I am grateful to the Minister for his careful reply. I am sure that he will copy to me as the mover of the amendment the prolific correspondence he is about to engage in as a result of my amendment. I shall consider both the report of his speech and the correspondence. In the meantime I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 81:
Page 13, line 10, at end insert ("or professional development fees").
The noble Baroness said: We are continuing the debate on expenditure with this amendment. The purpose of this amendment is to define more specifically the purposes for which the funding agency may make grants, thus seeking to safeguard the effective and efficient use of public funds, which we know is almost priority No. 1 for the Government. Therefore I am sure that the Minister will look favourably on this amendment.
The power proposed in Clause 14 for the funding authority not only conflicts with the Government's original remit for the FAS, but, more significantly, it introduces the risk of wasting public money on formulating proposals which are already the responsibility of the LEA.
The current drafting of subsection (4),
"Grants may be made under this section on such terms and conditions as the funding authority think fit",
lacks adequate definition to prevent the funding agency from making grants to promoters for public relations activities which might include lobbying in support of their proposals. One hopes, of course, that that would not occur. But whether or not it is likely that such expenditure would occur is a matter for conjecture, and the intention is not to cast aspersions on the motivation of the funding agency. The purpose of this amendment however is to ensure that it is not legally possible for money to be spent in such a way.
Public expenditure should be constrained to those professional development fees which are legitimate costs incurred in the preparation of proposals. This may include fees, for example, for architects, quantity surveyors, engineers, building control inspectors, legal advice or preliminary planning applications. This would reflect the services which LEAs are currently entitled to pay for in developing proposals.
During debate of this clause in another place, the Minister indicated that he would seek advice on whether the clause as it currently stands would enable the FAS to permit money to be spent on propaganda. That is at col. 336 of the Official Report of 10th December. It would be helpful to have clarification on this point and

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to understand how the Government would ensure that sufficient safeguards are in place to prevent public funds from being abused.
The amendment would clarify the purpose of such grants and constrain the funding agency's expenditure in the interests of public probity to fees for services which are a legitimate contribution to the formulation of proposals. I beg to move.
Lord Henley: As an aside, I am interested in the news about the miscounting by our Whips on an earlier amendment. They seem to have been two out, out of 171. Our colleagues in the Commons were only out by one out of 273. I suspect from now on that we should refrain from criticising our colleagues in another place. It might reflect upon the golden age of education from which many of us ventured so long ago.
Turning to the amendment, prospective promoters of new grant-maintained schools can incur a number of costs in developing their proposals. Typical examples might be architects' and surveyors' fees on premises-related aspects of proposals and legal advice on land tenure and trust arrangements. They might also incur expenditure related to advice on curriculum and financial matters or on a survey of parents. Some items of expenditure might be described as professional development fees. Others will not.
The point is that the term "expenditure" in Clause 14 includes all types of costs, including professional development fees. The amendment is therefore unnecessary.
The noble Baroness expressed concern as to whether the grants could be used for propaganda purposes and referred to the consideration that one of my honourable friends gave to these matters. I cannot say that the wording of Clause 14 in itself expressly prohibits the payment of grant for the purposes of propaganda, whatever that means. However, I think it odd to focus on that aspect of the funding authority's power to pay grants to help prospective promoters to develop their proposals.
The funding authorities are themselves responsible bodies. In Wales, the funding authority is the Secretary of State and in England it is the Funding Agency for Schools. It is not a function of the Funding Agency for Schools in England to fund propaganda or to promote the grant-maintained sector. The functions of the agency are set out in legislation and in its management statement and corporate plans. The agency's management statement and the code of conduct made clear that board members have a key responsibility to ensure that activities undertaken by the agency are consistent with the legal framework governing the operation of the agency. Moreover, the terms and conditions attached to the grant to be paid to the FAS are set out in the financial memorandum. Responsibilities placed on the agency's accounting officer include safeguarding all public funds and assets in the agency's charge and ensuring that they are applied only to the purposes of the agency as approved by Parliament.
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I hope that that will reassure the noble Baroness that the money will not be spent on what she describes as propaganda, whatever that might mean.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: Since the intention of the amendment is, if I understand it correctly, to define more specifically the purposes for which the funding agency may make grants, first, can the Minister assist us as regards the problem which my noble friend put forward? She said that the power proposed in Clause 14 for the funding authority conflicts with the Government's original remit for the FAS. Is that the case? If so, can the Minister reconcile the discrepancy, or should we be considering some other amendment?
Secondly, as regards propaganda, can the Minister take us a little further and give some clarification? For example, if it were alleged that propaganda had been supported by public funds, how would this be tried, proved or not proved? What sanctions would the Government have against alleged offenders found guilty by whatever means we hope to employ?
Lord Henley: The usual accountancy processes would be the obvious route through which one would pursue these matters. The fact that the funding agency accounts have to be approved by whatever bodies—I forget them—would surely allow for that.
As regards the noble Lord's first point, I shall read carefully what he said. I fail to understand how Clause 14 conflicts with the original purposes for which the funding agency was set up. I shall read carefully tomorrow what the noble Lord said, but I do not see any conflict.
Baroness David: If the Minister is willing to find out exactly how the proposal in Clause 14 conflicts with the original remit, perhaps he will have another look at the amendment in the light of his lack of knowledge. That would be helpful. Will the noble Lord agree to look at the provision so that he can tell us what he really thinks?
Lord Henley: As always—it is one of the points of the Committee stage of a Bill—one gives a commitment that one will look at a particular clause and concerns. I shall study carefully what the noble Baroness said as regards Amendment No. 81 and what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said on other amendments. I am content with the provision. If I have misunderstood some of the concerns, it would be right that I should consider the matter again. But I am not sure that that is the case.
Baroness David: I think that that is almost a commitment that the noble Lord will have another look at the position. In the light of that, I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment at this stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 82 not moved.]
Clause 14 agreed to.
Clause 15 [Recovery from local funds of sums in respect of start-up grants]:
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 83:
Page 14, line 8, leave out ("determine") and insert ("consider, after consultation with the local education authority or with any appropriate body which appoints foundation governors to one or more schools in the area, corresponds to the amount which the authority or as the case may be that body would have been likely to have expended during that period in respect of the initial costs of the school if it had been a school provided by them.").
The noble Baroness said: We are still discussing money. The purpose of the amendment is to limit the amount of money which might be recovered from the LEA to the level which would have been spent on the start-up costs of a county or voluntary-aided school: the GM school is not to be treated differently.
Clause 15 gives the Secretary of State powers to recoup the start-up grant paid to a new GM school before it opens. This amendment seeks to limit the amount of money which might be recouped from the LEA to the level which would have been spent on the start-up costs of a new county or voluntary-aided school. The underlying principle here is the need to ensure consistent treatment between GM and LEA maintained schools.
The principle of equity between GM and LEA-maintained schools is particularly important in this context. The Secretary of State, in exercising her powers to recoup moneys from the LEA, would in many cases be making a precept on the LEA's budget in circumstances where the LEA had initially opposed the establishment of the new GM school since it considered that the establishment of the new school was unnecessary. The exercise of the power to recoup by the Secretary of State, in circumstances where the LEA considers the establishment of a new school to be unnecessary, would cut across a fundamental principle of public accountability. It is quite unacceptable to expect any public authority to bear the costs for decisions for which it was not itself responsible and accountable. Rather than recoup from the LEA in these circumstances, the costs of the establishment of the new GM school should be borne by the Secretary of State or the Funding Agency for Schools, or by the third party (if any) which was promoting the establishment of the school in the first place.
Most new LEA schools are generally replacement schools, albeit that they may sometimes be larger than their predecessor school. It is rarely the case that a new school is needed simply to cater for a wholly new set of pupils. Therefore, in most cases, the effect of establishing a new GM school will be to decrease further the overall level of efficiency of administration within the LEA area, mainly through reduction in economies of scale. It will reduce the viability of neighbouring schools and it will impose further burdens on the already overstretched education budget of the LEA concerned, where there will not have been a corresponding increase to the roll-related element of the education grant for the LEA.
It would be quite unacceptable if LEA-maintained schools were to be penalised by any measures under this clause which sought to claw back more funding than
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was strictly fair or necessary—to the benefit of the new GM school—at the direct expense of the majority of pupils in the area attending LEA-maintained schools.
The funding arrangements for new county or VA schools would normally be determined in accordance with the LEA's scheme of local management of schools formula. This amendment simply aims to restrict the Secretary of State's powers in respect of recoupment to ensure that any recoupment from the relevant LEA would be in accordance with the agreed local funding formula. The amendment also provides for appropriate consultation with the LEA concerned (or the appropriate denominational body concerned in respect of VA schools)—something which (at cols. 343 and 344 of the Official Report, Commons, for 10th December 1996) the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, Mrs. Cheryl Gillan, conceded should take place when the Opposition moved a similar amendment in Standing Committee D. The Minister also conceded that,
"The Secretary of State must use her powers to recoup start-up grants reasonably … [and that] she would consider each case on its merits, taking account of LEA representations, before making decisions".
If this is the Government's stated position, can they now accept an entirely reasonable amendment which is apparently in accordance with the Government's own views? I hope so. I shall listen with great interest to the Government's response. I beg to move.
Lord Henley: Before reaching decisions on recoupment under Clause 15, as my honourable friend said in another place—and the noble Baroness quoted her—the Secretary of State will consider each case on its merits, in the light of representations from LEAs. The noble Baroness also made the point that my honourable friend made it quite clear that the Secretary of State would have to react reasonably. Indeed, the Secretary of State could be challenged in the courts if she did not take the views of the LEAs into account and did not act reasonably.
It is our intention to consult the LEAs in individual cases so that the LEA view can be taken fully into account. We already engage LEAs in consultation as necessary on recoupment questions which arise under existing provisions in the 1996 Act. In this way, the Secretary of State ensures that she is able to come to reasonable decisions on recoupment.
But the amendment would require the Secretary of State, in reaching her decision, to take into account what might be a corresponding sum for start-up costs if the grant-maintained school had been an LEA-maintained school. It would certainly be part of the process of consideration to look, where we can, at LEAs' own practices in relation to the support they provide to new schools before they open. But not all LEAs, I have to say, would necessarily have recent experience of setting up a new school; or if they did, it would not necessarily be a school of the same type or similar size. Ascertaining likely costs would be bound to be speculative in the extreme in such LEAs.

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A further factor is the extent to which LEA support for a new school would be indirect expenditure in the form of overheads, such as advice and support from LEA officers, which is not available to a new grant-maintained school and might have to be bought in. Such support would not appear to be caught by the amendment. The Secretary of State would therefore need to come to a judgment on whether some or all of the indirect expenditure might be recouped in individual cases.
I think, therefore, that the noble Baroness will understand that my reservations about the content of her amendment point to the very good sense of consulting LEAs in individual cases, without any pre-set agenda imposed by legislation. But above all, I am unconvinced that such matters are in any case for the face of the Bill. I am unhappy about provisions which attempt to prescribe the sorts of considerations which the Secretary of State necessarily brings to bear on questions of recoupment, in order to reach a reasonable decision. I hope, therefore, after I have explained it in that manner, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness David: The Minister raised a great number of objections. I shall have to read them carefully before I decide whether or not he has a case. I think the LEA has a good case. It is possible, if it has not just built a new school itself, to find out easily what the costs might have been. I do not think I am totally convinced by the Minister's arguments, but I should like to read them carefully and decide whether it would be suitable to come back at a later stage with the same or a similar amendment. I am not altogether convinced by the Minister's arguments, but for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 15 agreed to.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood Baroness Thomas of Walliswood moved Amendment No. 84:
After Clause 15, insert the following new clause—
CHANGE OF STATUS OF GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOL
(" .—(1) At the end of section 184(1) of the Education Act 1996 there shall be inserted "and any school with that status shall he eligible to become a county school (unless it was previously a voluntary school, in which case it shall be eligible to become a voluntary school)".
(2) At the end of section 185(1) of that Act, there shall be inserted "or which are grant-maintained".
(3) In section 185(2) of that Act, after the word "status" there shall be inserted "or, as the case may be, county or voluntary school status". ").
The noble Baroness said: This new clause is directed to the peculiar situation where a school which is currently a county or voluntary school can become a grant-maintained school but a grant-maintained school cannot decide to become a county or voluntary school. In other words, the current situation is a one-way track. The amendment was argued as long ago as the Education Reform Act 1988 when the late Lady Faithfull moved an amendment to similar effect.
In terms of the competition model of schools which the Government appear to be pursuing, it is paradoxical that schools may exchange one status for another, but only in one direction. That appears to cut against the notion that schools should be able to choose the structure which best suits them. Equally, the creation of a once-and-for-all decision over grant-maintained status has always meant that a particular group of parents was in the position of binding the hands of its successors. if the principle behind grant-maintained status is that the wishes of parents at the time should be followed, then a logical conclusion would be that future groups of parents should similarly have the right to determine the direction of the school, if they so chose. An opt-back provision would be needed to enable that principle to be effective. In the most serious cases, grant-maintained schools may find the experience uncongenial, or the practical difficulties that they faced might be such that they might wish to move under the umbrella of the local education authority for the purposes of ensuring their survival.
Given that the primary concern must be the educational well-being of pupils at any school, it follows that the maximum range of choice should be available to a school and its staff and to the parents who have been called upon to approve such a move. I beg to move.
Baroness David: My name is also to the amendment and I support it wholeheartedly. I was here in 1988 when the Education Reform Bill was going through the House. I well remember the efforts we made to get the proposal accepted at that time. It seems a totally reasonable amendment. If parents, who apparently are now all-important on this side of the House, can choose that they shall have a grant-maintained school, surely the parents can then decide that they have had enough of it and they would like the embrace of the local education authority, for the greater comfort of having its advice, help and its wide knowledge available to them. This is a very important amendment and I hope that it will have support from all round the Committee. I am very keen that we should push this matter.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: I do not wish to oppose the amendment but I should like to raise a particular difficulty in relation to voluntary schools, which are mentioned in the amendment.
As the Minister will know, voluntary aided schools are required to contribute 15 per cent. toward capital costs. But when such voluntary aided schools become grant maintained, that requirement is removed and the capital cost is provided by the funding agency. Were such a former voluntary aided school to wish to return to its voluntary status, what would it be required to do by way of refunding funds that had been spent in capital expenditure?
The Minister may say that that is an entirely hypothetical situation. But I should be grateful if he would give the matter a little thought. Would it be the case that, after so many years, a contribution to capital

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funding might be written off? Might there be some kind of sliding scale? Would voluntary aided schools wishing to revert in status be required to pay the full amount of their 15 per cent. contribution? I wonder whether the Minister can give any indication of what the position would be.
7 p.m.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: For once I should like to spring in advance to the defence of the Government and express concern that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon could think that the Government would be so churlish as even to consider that a period of absence followed by the return of a prodigal to the voluntary aided fold would lead to some kind of penalty for that period of time when the voluntary aided school had ceased to be a voluntary aided school. I beg the right reverend Prelate's pardon but I am quite sure that the Government would never take that view.
If the Government were to take that view, presumably they would take the same view about former county schools which had benefited from the greater percentage—that seems to be the least pejorative term—of capital availability for grant- maintained schools than for county schools. I well remember at the North of England Education Conference in Nottingham the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he was Secretary of State, saying that if there was a belief among voluntary aided schools and county maintained schools that capital preference was given to grant-maintained schools, they knew the answer, which was to opt out.
Should a voluntary aided school's governing body or a county maintained school's governing body have been tempted, lured by Mammon, for a short period of time to avail itself of the need to repair a leaking roof, I am quite sure that this Government could not possibly ask successive children and parents to repay that particular deliberate piece of government overfunding, generous funding or, as the Government would perhaps have said, just realistic funding to meet its needs. Similarly, I cannot see that the concern expressed by my noble friend Lady David and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood, about the Government having any doubts about parental choice could possibly be founded in fact.
The Government's whole policy is about parental choice; the Government's whole view is that there should be diversity and freedom; and the Government's whole theme is that every governing body in a county or voluntary aided school should have the opportunity at governing body level once a year to decide that the school wishes to avail itself of grant-maintained status. If, misguidedly, that group of parents, governors and teachers should decide that it is in their interests, or if it is their view at a particular time, that they would like to go in the opposite direction, I believe that this Government would welcome it because they have stated
1106
so often that parental choice is the most important issue. Here we make the Government a present of an extension of parental choice.
Lord Henley: I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts and I fear the noble Baroness's support equally. I ought to make our position clear. We have always made it clear that becoming grant maintained is a permanent change in a school's status. That means that governors and parents need to think very carefully about the issue before making that change. It would be wrong to have a situation where a minority of parents who remain discontented with the status of the school could continue to campaign for the school to return to LEA control. That could create a permanently unstable situation and distract the school from the main task of improving the quality of the education that it has to provide for its children.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: Would the Minister care to comment on the following situation? If there is a parental ballot and parents vote against grant-maintained status and are in a majority, would a small minority of parents be allowed to continue to campaign to have that ballot decision reversed in subsequent years?
Lord Henley: I think it is unlikely that they would do so, there having been a ballot. We have always made clear that moving to grant-maintained status is a permanent change and that is it. That is the reason why I shall resist the amendment most strongly. We do not believe that there should be to-ing and fro-ing through the system. Once a school has become grant maintained it should stay grant maintained.
That leads me to the question put by the right reverend Prelate, which in fact is a question that should not be put to me but to the promoters of this particular amendment. It is for them to answer. It is a hypothetical question and is not one that I am prepared to answer, on the basis that we are not prepared to accept this amendment.
Baroness David: Parents change and the parents of one set of school children will not be the parents of the next set. There will possibly be very different views between the generations, half generations, quarter generations or whatever. In another five years there may be some sisters and brothers but the children may be quite different and the parents may be quite different people.
Lord Henley: It is perfectly true that parents change. That is why we believe that this change should be permanent, to allow the school to have stability—that very stability that noble Lords ask us to bring to the education system.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: Does the Minister care to answer not whether in his opinion parents who have lost a ballot in favour of going to grant-maintained status would or would not hypothetically be likely to continue in subsequent years

1107
to raise the issue, but whether legally the Government, having given them that right to continue to raise the issue each year, if that is what they wish, in turning down this amendment deny exactly that right to parents who have lost the battle in the other direction?
Lord Henley: We believe that the advantages of being grant maintained are so self-evident that it is right that a school should consider it every year. That is why the existing legislation proposes it. We do not believe that there is a case once a school has gone grant maintained for reversing that decision.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: I listened with great interest to the responses of the Minister and also to his suggestion that I should respond to the point made by the right reverend Prelate. I simply say that when schools go grant maintained, they take with them schools which have been created by the taxpayers' investment. I do not see why it should be any different when they come back again. That would be my response to that particular point. Nevertheless, we have heard some very obdurate responses from the Minister. I should like to test the opinion of the Committee.
7.9 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 84) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 49; Not-Contents, 102.

Division No. 3

CONTENTS

Blackburn, Bp.

Kilbracken, L.

Blackstone, B.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Carlisle, E.

McNally, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Monkswell, L.

David, B.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Nicol, B.

Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, B.

Perry of Walton, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Peston, L.

Durham, Bp.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Farrington of Ribbleton. B.

Ramsay of Cartvale, B.

Gallacher, L.

Ripon, Bp.

Geraint, L.

Rodgers of Quarry Bank, L.

Gladwin of Clee, L.

Russell, E.

Gould of Potternewton, B. [Teller.]

Sewel, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Symons of Vernham Dean, B

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Gregson, L.

Thomas of Walliswood, B. [Teller.]

Grey, E.

Hampton, L.

Tope, L.

Hayman, B.

Tordoff, L.

Hereford, Bp.

Whaddon, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

White, B.

Hooson, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Jay of Paddington, B.

Winston, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Young of Dartington, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Balfour, E.

Addison, V.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Anelay of St. Johns, B.

Belstead, L.

Annan, L.

Biddulph, L.

Ashbourne, L.

Birdwood, L.

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Blatch, B.

Howe, E.

Bowness, L.

James of Holland Park, B.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Lindsay, E.

Brentford, V.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Brigstocke, B.

Long, V.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Lucas, L. [Teller.]

Bruntisfield, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Burnham, L.

Luke, L.

Butterfield, L.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Byford, B.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Carlisle of Bucklow, L.

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Mackintosh of Halifax, V.

Carnock, L.

MacLehose of Beoch, L.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Chesham, L.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Clanwilliam, E.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Clark of Kempston, L.

Mottistone, L.

Coleraine, L.

Mountevans, L.

Coleridge, L.

Munster, E.

Courtown, E.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Cowley, E.

Newall, L.

Cranborne, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Northesk, E.

Crickhowell, L.

O'Cathain, B.

Cross, V.

Oxfuird, V.

Cumberlege, B.

Peel, E.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Prentice, L.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Pym, L.

Denbigh, E.

Rennell, L.

Denham, L.

Rowallan, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

St.John of Bletso, L.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Seccombe, B.

Elles, B.

Shaw of Northstead, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Elton, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Flather, B.

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Gage, V.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L

Geddes, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Gisborough, L.

Torphichen, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Trumpington, B.

Goschen, V.

Ullswater, V.

Gray, L.

Walton of Detchant, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Weatherill, L.

Harris of Peckham, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Haslam, L.

Wise, L.

Henley, L.

Wynford, L.

Holderness, L.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
7.17 p.m.
Clause 16 [Ballot observers]:
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede moved Amendment No. 85:
Page 14, line 35, leave out ("may") and insert ("shall").
The noble Lord said: The purpose of Amendment No. 85 is to ensure that ballot observers are appointed for every ballot, removing the need for case by case consideration by the Secretary of State and making the appointment of an independent ballot observer an integral part of the GM ballot process. That would enhance public confidence in the fairness of GM ballots which are sometimes very sensitive and highly charged matters of central importance to local parents and communities.
In the Government's White Paper, Self-Government for Schools, paragraphs 56 to 57, it was acknowledged that the case for the appointment of ballot observers to oversee GM ballots was sound. However, in Standing

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Committee D, on 10th December last, Ministers chose to reject an amendment which sought to ensure that ballot observers be appointed in every case. The Government argued that that was unnecessary. They took the view that sensible, reasonable people would generally conduct ballots "sensibly and reasonably". The Minister of State, the right honourable Eric Forth, conceded that there were regrettable exceptions to that which would undoubtedly occur on both sides of the argument and the observer mechanism in the Bill is intended to deal with such occurrences.
The central issue underlying the amendment is the extent to which the introduction of ballot observers under the Bill will serve to enhance the credibility of the GM ballot process in practice if the decision to appoint ballot observers is not left entirely to the discretion of the Secretary of State but is made automatic, as the amendment would provide.
In December, the DfEE published a consultation paper which set out the Government's developing policy on how they would envisage the GM ballot observer arrangements working. That consultation period closed at the end of January and Ministers have hitherto made no further announcements regarding the comments received in response to the consultation nor indicated the Government's current position and future intentions. This may well be the first available opportunity to probe the Government's position in the light of the consultation which Ministers were, perhaps understandably, reluctant to pre-empt.
The Local Authorities Association made a number of points when it responded to the government document. It said that there were significant weaknesses in the Government's approach in that the Secretary of State would not be under a duty to appoint a ballot observer upon receipt of a request from any interested party. A second point it made concerned the Government's apparent predisposition to consider favourably requests from schools and parental petitioners while simultaneously proposing criteria of very dubious validity which appeared to suggest that LEAs would automatically request the appointment of ballot observers in every case, regardless of the circumstances and real need for such appointments. The LEAs would support a more pragmatic solution which provided for an exception to be made so that ballot observers would not automatically be appointed if all parties could agree following consultation.
A third point was the desirability that GM ballot observers should have prior knowledge and experience of the education service and of GM issues, which contrasts with the Government's position in paragraph 20 of the consultation paper. It states:
"Candidates would not he required to have prior knowledge of the education service and of GM issues in particular".
In paragraph 18, the consultation paper conceded:
"Criteria for eligibility would need to be set identifying useful or necessary skills, capacity and experience".
But it gave no indication as to what the government criteria might be. I hope the Minister will have something to say on that.
An additional point made by the LAA concerned the detailed procedural issues where further clarification was required in relation to the selection of ballot observers under a system which might be administered by the electoral reform ballot service. Lastly, it made the point that important issues of principle relating to the functions of the ballot observer required further consultation. Some of those go well beyond the monitoring or observer role envisaged in the Bill: for example, the screening or vetting of published written material for parents; and an interventionist role for the observer in correcting misinformation during the course of the ballot and even, maybe, chairing public meetings. I look forward with interest to the Minister's response. I beg to move.
Lord Tope: I support the amendment. It is undeniably the case that a number of ballots have been controversial. Accusations have been made, whether fairly or otherwise, of undue pressure, some have said from the LEA side. There have certainly been cases, albeit fewer, where Ministers have accepted that there has been undue pressure on the part of those promoting GM status. Experience shows that it has happened. Regrettably, it is quite probably going to happen again. Therefore, rather than leaving it in the hands of the Secretary of State to decide in each and every case whether it is necessary or appropriate to have a ballot observer, it would be much quicker, simpler and straightforward were that to be an inherent part of the ballot process. Where a GM ballot was to take place, simply by virtue of that, a properly qualified ballot observer would automatically be appointed. Perhaps there could be an exception where all parties agreed that it was not necessary. Nevertheless, that should be the exception rather than the norm.
The purpose of the amendment is to make it the norm that where there is to be a ballot, before any possibility of accusations arise from either side of improper practice, a ballot observer is appointed who can oversee it and can so judge. This is a fairly simple, straightforward and practical amendment which we hope will be accepted by the Minister.
Lord Henley: The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, asked whether I can respond to the consultation initiated in December. We are not yet in a position to do that, but in due course we shall. With regard to the amendment itself, I am grateful that noble Lords opposite now accept the general principle of ballot observers but I do not accept that there should be a ballot observer on every occasion. The purpose of observers is to help avoid or deal with problems arising in the course of a ballot.
Most ballots are perfectly orderly and peaceful events. It is only in a minority of cases that parents are misled or intimidated, or irregularities occur in the carrying out of procedures. It is in those cases that the ballot observer has a role. Therefore I think it is right that the Secretary of State should have as much discretion as possible in deciding whether or not to make the appointment. I do not think we should be wasting other people's time and, for that matter, money

1111
by appointing a ballot observer on every occasion. We will develop and use that resource where it is most needed. For that reason, I cannot accept the amendment.
Lord Tope: Does the Minister accept that appointing a ballot observer after irregularities have taken place or after there are allegations of irregularities is a little late? Would it not be preferable to have the ballot observer there in the first place so as to avoid the irregularities arising or at the very least so as to be able to say authoritatively and independently whether or not there have been irregularities? To come in after the event is surely too late.
Lord Henley: They would not necessarily always be coming in after the event. On certain occasions one would be fairly clear that parents had been misled or that there had been intimidation. In such cases a ballot observer could be applied. However, I do not accept the noble Lord's point. I do not accept it would be right to waste other people's time and money by having a ballot observer in every case, bearing in mind that the vast majority of ballots are orderly and peaceful events.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: I thank the noble Lord for his reply. I am sorry that he was not able to enlarge on his response to the consultation process. However, having said that, he enlarged to the extent that he was not considering any mandatory appointment of observers. He did not quite go far enough to say that he would have observers as a norm but said that in cases where all parties agreed there would not need to be observers. I am not quite sure how open the noble Lord's mind is on the issue. Nevertheless, this is a probing amendment, although it did not probe very far. I shall have to consider whether to return to the issue at a later stage of the Bill. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: I beg to move that the House do now resume. In moving the Motion, perhaps I may suggest that the Committee stage begins again not before 8.30 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

West London Hospitals: Specialties
7.30 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur Lord Glenarthur rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress is being made on reallocation of specialties among West London hospitals and what is their expectation of the effect upon research of any further reallocation.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in asking this Unstarred Question I must declare an interest. For over five years now I have been chairman of St. Mary's, Paddington, NHS Trust, one of those important elements in the NHS in West London whose activities and skills could be affected by any reallocation of specialties.
I am delighted that so many noble Lords with deep knowledge of health issues have chosen to speak this evening. I am sure that I speak for the whole House when I say how particularly pleased I am that the noble Lord, Lord Hussey of North Bradley, has chosen this occasion to make his maiden speech. His experience in the health field as well as in many other fields, is enormous and I know that we all keenly look forward to his intervention.
I begin by saying that I am an enthusiastic supporter of reforms introduced to the National Health Service over recent years—reforms which were beginning when I was a Minister in the then DHSS in the early 1980s. I am a supporter particularly because, in my present role, I have seen just how much the reforms have improved the care of patients, and that, surely, is what all of us in the health service, indeed in this House, want above all. But any attempt to introduce a more businesslike approach to such a complex service as the NHS was never going to be easy. It was never guaranteed to bring perfect results, not least because technical developments continue to grow apace and with them grows the number of patients needing, and able to benefit from, more advanced treatments.
The health service is about combining medical science and research, both academic and applied, and teaching with established facilities for patients. Each element has its vested interests. But each can work—and does work—together for the good of patients, coupled inevitably and quite properly, with careful use of resources.
The introduction of the internal NHS market in parallel with the autonomy of trusts, has helped bring back a sense of purpose and focused management at a local level. I would, however, be the first to accept that the health service market cannot be a "pure" market—a total free-for-all. It must to some degree be a "managed" market.
My reason for asking this Question this evening primarily relates to the management of this market. Despite the Tomlinson Report, the specialty reviews of about four years ago and the work of the London Implementation Group, uncertainty still exists in West London. There have been positive developments in medical education (for example the integration of medical schools through Imperial College) which have helped set the scene for the future. Indeed, a huge amount has been settled. London's health service will be the better for it. But recommendations to resolve site issues in West London have never been wholly followed through and further studies are in train.
Academic medicine, and the institutions in which it is mostly practised, is an essential element in NHS provision. The recent report of the King's Fund London Commission, The Contribution of London's Academic Medicine to Healthcare and the Economy, rightly makes that clear. It highlights the strengths and world-wide reputation of the capital's academic medicine, and describes its contribution to the population's healthcare. But let me inject a note of caution from where I see things: we must not allow academic institutions to be the tail that wags the health service dog.
The health service must not be reorganised simply in order to suit academic strategists, important though they may be. That would be folly; it would ill serve patients and it would undermine existing real centres of excellence.
At the risk of what may sound like special pleading, but more to make my point, perhaps I may give your Lordships two examples of how such a policy could affect my hospital, St. Mary's. We have a long tradition of treating patients with end stage renal failure. We have been performing kidney transplants for many years and we have now developed into pancreatic transplants. We perform about 50 kidney transplants a year. The Hammersmith—a famous hospital and academic foundation, in which the noble Lord, Lord Winston, plays a major part—does less than 30 renal transplants. St. Mary's has 100 per cent. survival rate at one year after the operation, which is something that we take particular pride in. At St. Mary's we are the largest provider of haemodialysis in Greater London. Our standards are above those set by the Renal Association. We deal with more acute renal failure cases than others and we have all the necessary pathology services to support them. We have developed a ground-breaking "hub and spoke" model, so that patients can be treated closer to their homes. But all these achievements would be put at nought if some of the thinking that we believe is taking place becomes a reality. It would spell the end of St. Mary's renal service apparently because having such a specialty at St. Mary's simply would not fit the academics' plans, regardless of the needs of the patients.
Perhaps I may give noble Lords another example at St. Mary's and that is cardiac care. There are four hospitals primarily involved in cardiac care in West London—Harefield, The Brompton, Hammersmith and St. Mary's. Each of course has its special features. The Harefield has an outstanding surgeon, Sir Magdi Yacoub, among many others. The Brompton specialises in cardio-thoracic care. The Hammersmith is the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, the only one of its kind in the United Kingdom. And St. Mary's uniqueness in part stems from its wide range of other specialties, which are intrinsically linked to our cardiac care. Both our renal and our vascular expertise means that we are better able to deal with any associated complications that arise from cardiac work. However, if one looks at a breakdown of activity by procedure at each of these four world-famous hospitals, the stark facts are that the Hammersmith, the leading academic base for tertiary work, treats the lowest number of cardiac patients. The Brompton, focusing as it does on cardio-thoracic work, treats only about half as many again as St. Mary's, which is a teaching hospital, has many specialties and is a local district general hospital. This is not in any sense to denigrate the enormously high standards of any of those other institutions, I merely use them to illustrate a statistical fact.
Since the initial specialty reviews, St. Mary's has been able to double the number of heart operations performed and has pioneered new techniques such as angioplasty and stenting. We have developed and taught
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these procedures. Without such advances many patients would have required coronary artery surgery. So what we are doing is good news for all our patients.
About 30 per cent. of our activity is from our immediate local purchasing health authority, Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster, which the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, knows so well, and 70 per cent. from our top four purchasers. So we are providing support for our local populations in each case. I would argue that this must not be put at risk. St. Mary's is now a leader in a number of fields because we have made the internal market work. In both renal and cardiac specialties we went out and won the business and that is what my noble friend and her colleagues in the department have been keen to encourage others to do as well. We have developed far higher standards and considerable expertise. Now they are a success at St. Mary's and for St. Mary's patients. We cannot loosen our grasp on such advances. It would be more than foolish; it would be a derogation of our duty to patients.
The underlying purpose of my Question is to seek an assurance from my noble friend Lady Cumberlege that she will not allow the intellectual might of academic institutions to be the main driving force in the provision of high quality, local healthcare and this must be a question which affects other trusts in London as well as my own. What are the considerations her department is weighing up? What are the timescales involved? Does she accept the effect upon business planning for trusts of the uncertainty the current review generates? And will her department bear in mind that what matters above all else is that collaborations and partnerships bring effective academic science to bear, without putting at risk the stability of institutions which have increasingly demonstrated an ability to manage resources, improve patient care and help make a success of the internal market.
7.39 p.m.
Lord Winston: My Lords, it was a pleasure to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, who is a wonderful advocate for St. Mary's Hospital. He has introduced a most important debate which is obviously very dear to my heart also. I promise your Lordships that I shall not be speaking on behalf of Hammersmith Hospital; I am not sure that I could match the noble Lord's advocacy. I am sure that all noble Lords will listen with great pleasure to the noble Lord, Lord Hussey of North Bradley, who is to speak next and to make his maiden speech.
I should like briefly to draw your Lordships' attention to what is truly a unique opportunity. It is a world-class opportunity for west London. With the opportunity afforded by Imperial College School of Medicine, we have the opportunity to make what by any standards will truly be a world-class medical school with St. Mary's Hospital, the National Heart & Lung Institute, Hammersmith Hospital, Queen Charlotte's Hospital and Charing Cross and Westminster Hospital. That medical school will have a budget which will probably exceed that of Harvard and which will compare more than favourably with the Mayo Clinic and with Johns Hopkins Hospital. There is no doubt that it is a fantastic

1115
opportunity for Britain and for British medicine. It is most important that it does not founder. As your Lordships will know, it has an outstanding HEFCE rating which is improving all the time. We are pleased to see that happening at St. Mary's Hospital. It is great news. We are dealing with five-star institutions which will contribute greatly to medical education.
There is no doubt in my mind that the research done at that medical school will have the most major impact on the whole of the NHS. It is not just a question of individual specialties, although some have been mentioned, such as chest disease, vascular medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology and renal and liver medicine. It is also important to point out that at St. Mary's Hospital major and important research has been conducted into the value of primary care. Added to that, which is of crucial interest and great importance to the health service, there has been throughout the medical school an increasing focus placed on the need for evidence-based medicine and the evaluation of results.
Two essential problems face Imperial College School of Medicine. The first is the inevitable concern about the Culyer exercise. It is an important exercise and it is understandable that the Government want to spread the funding across the country, but there is a risk of diluting academic funds to be truly competitive. We feel strongly that the Government are right to recognise the need for selectivity. That is something that the Government have emphasised and this is an ideal opportunity to implement it. We hope very much that the funds will not be diluted too much. Of course, they need to be competed for, but they are important. Clearly, one problem is that if those funds are withdrawn to any extent, the effect on the trusts will be profound. They may founder in consequence because they depend on that sort of money.
The other concern was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur. I refer to the question of competition between trusts. It is most important that we find a way to increase co-operation between trusts. We have done that in my own group. We have a close collaboration with St. Mary's Hospital on reproductive medicine. I believe that it could be a model for many other branches. It is ridiculous, for example, that 50 renal transplants are carried out at St. Mary's with rather a few more than 30 being carried out at Hammersmith. Whatever the figures, surely it is much more sensible to share the proceeds and the academic value. It would be terrible if such a strong academic institution which has such potential foundered simply because of failed NHS partnerships. I hope that the Government will do all that they can to support this.
7.43 p.m.
Lord Hussey of North Bradley: My Lords, it is a great honour, albeit a daunting one, to address your Lordships for the first time and I hope I may crave your customary indulgence to those making their maiden speech.
I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, for raising this important issue. I must first declare an interest. I have been chairman of the Royal
1116
Marsden Hospital since 1985 and on the board of the Institute of Cancer Research. They work as one. On behalf of the King's Fund, I am chairing for the second time its Commission on London Health—possibly another triumph of hope over experience.
We have just received a formidable report from the deans of London's medical schools stressing that London is a medical power-house with a world-wide reputation for clinical care, research and education. It is an under-valued national asset, contributing notably to our economy. Brains, ideas and their application are the currency of the future. Top quality patient care depends on top quality research. Yet university funding for equipment has been cut by 30 per cent. and core staff numbers are being reduced. Investment in London's academic medicine must be a priority for our national prosperity.
What is true of London as a whole is certainly true of west London which on its own has an outstanding concentration of medical excellence. Many changes have taken place since the Tomlinson and King's Fund reports. Among their recommendations was further rationalisation in research and patient care. I firmly supported that, but I did not support the suggestion that the Royal Marsden and the Royal Brompton should be closed and rebuilt on the site of Charing Cross Hospital. Happily, those eccentric proposals were blown away. The Marsden was not closed and I should like to thank your Lordships for your great support, for which the hospital and, more importantly, its patients are deeply grateful.
Five years later, I hope that your Lordships will feel that your efforts were not wasted. For each of its first three years, the Marsden Trust has operated within its budget. Moreover, in the recent HEFCE review, the institute and the Marsden came second out of 30 undergraduate and post-graduate medical schools—second to Oxford University. If it had to be a university, I must say that I am glad that it was Oxford.
Imperial College, the Hammersmith and the Brompton also finished high in the merit table. We need not fear for the quality of research in west London, but for its funding. The Marsden's research grant is reduced by £15 million and NHS prices will increase by 140 per cent. Although the money is redistributed among the authorities, I fear that they may use it for purposes other than the referral of their patients to specialist hospitals. That is bad for patients, bad for research and bad for the hospital. We must maintain the necessary patient flow critical to our clinical research programme. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said, there is increasing collaboration. I believe that the most important is the grouping around Imperial College. I hope that the Institute of Cancer Research will shortly become involved in that.
However, there are problems. More people are reaching an age when they are likely to need treatment and are living longer just at the moment that that treatment becomes more expensive. There has been an explosive growth in medical technology, especially in expensive but effective drugs. The cost of treatment in some areas outweighs the savings in others. More capital investment is needed. In the Marsden, we have

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opened a new breast and diagnostic unit, entirely paid for by voluntary contributions. I believe that it will be increasingly difficult to sustain the health service on its present funding, a point also made by the academic deans.
Finally, I should like to pay a tribute to the nursing profession with which I have been connected for many years, starting during the war when I was nursed by German Catholic nuns who tended us prisoners with dedication and compassion, demonstrating also an unexpected talent for bartering our cigarettes for eggs and vegetables on the black market. In retrospect, they were quite exceptionally politically correct. The part played by nurses and their impact on the morale and health of patients is often overlooked, as is the benefit of nursing research. There is increasing evidence that the care of specialist nurses, accustomed to handling the challenging problems of pain, disability and emotional stress can lead to patients getting better more quickly or at least to making their lives more comfortable. For that reason, the institute has recently established a Chair of Nursing Research. Specialist cancer nurses are at the forefront of cancer treatment.
I believe in the health service. Support for it is deeply rooted across the nation and across all political parties, but in the past 50 years the terms of trade have changed. The equation between what the national budget can afford and what treatments the developments in research technology and medicine have made possible is increasingly difficult to balance. In some way, that balance must be restored.
7.50 p.m.
Lord Butterfield: My Lords, I am greatly honoured that I have been given the opportunity to speak immediately after my old colleague the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, and to congratulate him on his splendid maiden speech. That is the main responsibility of the immediately following speaker. He has spoken knowledgeably. I shall spend most of my few minutes praising Duke Hussey rather than developing the themes that may come forward in the health service.
I agree with much of what previous speakers have already said. As a former professor of the University of London who is very concerned about the London schools, I hope that there will not be a battle between the academic units and the clinicians. What this city needs is collaboration. That word has been used on all sides of the House. Whatever happens, I make the plea to leaders and Ministers that collaboration should be encouraged.
I should like to say a little about the noble Lord, Lord Hussey. In the summer of 1942 a number of cricketers were sitting around in Vincent's Club in Oxford. They were greatly worried about how they would dismiss John Bridger, who was then a leading and prolific all-rounder for Cambridge. Somebody said that there was a chap in Trinity who had got Bridger out in all of the house matches when he was at Rugby. We called in Duke Hussey who did exactly as we wished. He got Bridger out at the very beginning of his bowling spell. He complained, quite rightly, that I had taken him off
1118
too soon; otherwise, the match would have been won before tea. Never mind. He then went off to join the Grenadier Guards and served bravely and splendidly in Italy. He was wounded and lost a foot. Noble Lords have heard that he was nursed by some splendid German nuns.
Since the Second World War he has had what can only be described as an incredible career. I consulted Who's Who and Dod's and made a few notes. This man was managing director of Harmsworth Publications soon after his return in top gear. He was on the executive board of the Thomson Organisation. He was chief executive and managing director of The Times during a very difficult period for that newspaper. Those of us who watched him in his time there were firmly of the opinion that Duke would make sure that good sense prevailed rather than wild politics.
He went on to become director of William Collins, and for 10 years was chairman of the BBC. Some of your Lordships went with me to a luncheon with Duke just before he stepped down. He made a prodigious after-lunch speech. We have much to look forward to if we can get this man on his feet many times. The most memorable point in the speech that I remember, which is related very closely to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, about the need to watch the costs of the health service, was Duke's comment that he was the man who taught the BBC a four-letter word. I was rather shocked. He said that the word was "cash". One had to appreciate that one could not do everything one wished because there were cash limits.
Duke Hussey has been on the board of the British Council and chairman of the King's Fund London Committee. He is also a trustee of the Rhodes Trust, which is quite an achievement, and also an honorary Fellow of his college, Oxford Trinity. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, that we look forward with immense pleasure to hearing him make many contributions from the Floor of this House, and perhaps elsewhere, in the future.
7.54 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, I am sure that many noble Lords share my sense of frustration in not being able, because of constraints of time, to hear a longer contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, whose distinction in so many fields, as the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, said, is outstanding. He has given us an intriguing foretaste of things to come; we trust that we shall hear from him many more times.
In discussing this Question, I propose to depend to an extent on my personal experience in many years of practice in neuroscience. When I first began training in this field there were consultants who worked for part of the time at the London teaching hospitals and for part of the time at hospitals like the National, Queen Square, or Maida Vale. They were able through their observational and descriptive skills to make major advances in that field. How the situation has changed. There has been the development of new technology—magnificent new methods of imaging—and the related clinical neurosciences of neurophysiology and so many

1119
more, and the burgeoning advances in molecular biology bringing in sight gene therapy for some of the most crippling neurological disorders which have transformed the situation. All are demanding of time, expertise, expensive equipment and, very largely, demanding of collaboration between doctors and scientists working in the laboratory.
Why does this Question concentrate on research? Research is the lifeblood of medicine. Today's discovery in basic laboratory research brings tomorrow's practical developments in patient care. I believe that in today's health service it is increasingly difficult to bring home that message to some managers who are obsessed, very reasonably, with the crucial importance of increasing patient throughput. In neurology one can take the example of Parkinson's disease. The discovery by some Viennese pharmacologists many years ago revealed that the substance dopamine was not being secreted by cells at the base of the brain. This led to the introduction of levodopa.
When the Tomlinson Committee and the King's Fund Committee began their work there were 11 departments of clinical neuroscience scattered throughout London and 10 departments of oncology. Frankly, some of them were not viable because of limited resources and staffing. Hence, it has become crucially important that these highly specialised skills should be concentrated into much larger units where doctors can work alongside basic scientists, with particular emphasis on their being placed in association with multi-faculty colleges such as Imperial College, to which the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and others have referred. That policy is bearing fruit. Previously many of those isolated departments scattered throughout London received rather low ratings in the research assessment exercise. But as the Deans Report on academic medicine in London has clearly demonstrated, these multi-faculty institutions and the departments of clinical science with which they are associated are now rising steadily within the research assessment scale.
I had the privilege of chairing an inquiry by your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology into academic medicine, particularly medical research in the light of the NHS reforms. We were pleased that the Government were committed to devoting 1.5 per cent. of the NHS budget to R&D. It is crucial that part of that budget should be used to preserve the infrastructure for biomedical research within our teaching hospitals and within these institutions in London. It is also crucial that part of that money should be used to preserve the tertiary referrals that are the lifeblood of clinical research and which have seriously declined. In particular, as a consequence, the interests of the special hospitals such as Hammersmith, the National Heart and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery must be preserved.
Finally, there is a very serious concern about the future of clinical academic medicine. There are 57 vacant chairs in the UK, and far too many early retirements are occurring at the moment. We trust that the inquiry sponsored by the committee of vice-chancellors and chaired by Sir Rex Richards will come up with firm
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recommendations on the future of clinical academic medicine of which the Minister and her colleagues will take careful note.
8 p.m.
Lord Dainton: My Lords, perhaps I may first express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, for asking this Unstarred Question. I should like also to congratulate my noble friend Lord Hussey of North Bradley on his maiden speech. I hope that his future contributions to our debates will be frequent and as persuasive as the one we have just heard. I hope also that having hitherto been known universally as "Duke Hussey" he will not feel too diminished by being addressed in this Chamber as a mere Lord.
In accordance with the rules of your Lordships' House, I must declare formally an interest in my role as president and formerly chairman of the Royal Postgraduate Medical School based at the Hammersmith Hospital, which, as has already been said, is the only academically led hospital in the country. I need not speak about its international reputation which is well known.
For well over 40 years I have had a deep personal and professional interest in research in clinical medicine carried out by staff of university medical schools and institutes. For various periods in my life—for example, as chairman of the Advisory Board for Research Councils and its predecessor, the Council for Scientific Policy, and subsequently as chairman of the University Grants Committee—I was responsible for the allocation of public funds to be used for that purpose. I learned many lessons.
First and foremost was that the quality of future patient treatment rests upon the quality and extent of medical education and research today, which in turn are increasingly and critically dependent upon basic scientific research, as the noble Lord, Lord Walton, eloquently stated. That is why I have always advocated close collaboration between high quality departments of biological and physical sciences and with medical schools and institutes of the University of London. Therefore I welcome the marriage of Imperial College to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.
It is equally important that the specialist referral hospitals and their units associated with those institutes and schools but owned by the NHS should be funded appropriately for their special purposes. There is abundant evidence that for obvious reasons, not least the longer investigations and therefore longer patient stay and more sophisticated equipment and technical support in those research hospitals, the cost per patient treated is necessarily higher than the average elsewhere. That is why, as chairman of the UGC, I supported enthusiastically the proposal of the late Lord Ennals to establish special health authorities with their own funding streams. But now the SHAs have gone, and I do not mourn that necessarily, and the Government have accepted the Colyer Report's recommendation that special funding for those hospitals and what is called the special increment for teaching and research should be replaced by a single funding stream.

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Unfortunately, the NHS Executive has interpreted that stream as coming from purchasers anywhere within the UK. Because of that differential cost, as I pointed out to your Lordships on 2nd December 1992, such an arrangement could only mean rationing by price of referred patients and a very doubtful financial future for those special hospitals.
It is no wonder that many who work in those hospitals, and especially clinical academic staff, are deeply worried. I should be grateful if in her reply the Minister could answer a few questions. First, does she accept that without special safeguards the quality of research in hospitals such as the Hammersmith and the Royal Brompton will diminish to levels which will adversely affect the postgraduate medical schools and institutes; secondly, that such a diminution will inevitably work through in time to lower the quality of patient care in the future; thirdly, that that is such a grave matter that steps should be taken now to remedy the situation? Could she—I should be grateful for this—tell us what those steps are or will be? I am sure that her department must be well aware of that problem.
8.4 p.m.
Lord Phillips of Ellesmere: My Lords, I must first add my tribute to those that have already been paid to my noble friend Lord Hussey of North Bradley on his notable maiden speech. I shall return in a moment to one of the important points that he made. Before that, however, I am bound to recollect that just three years ago Sir Rex Richards and I reported to the Secretary of State for Health on how the research strengths of the Hammersmith and Charing Cross Hospitals could best be preserved and extended if the two institutions were brought together on one site. At that time our main concern was that adequate resources should be made available to allow the creation of an outstanding and fully integrated medical school, comprising a new centre at Imperial College and the associated hospitals and research institutes in west London.
Happily, in the past three years enormous strides have been made towards the creation of that medical school and all seems set for the intake of the first cohort of students in the autumn of 1998. Those students will have the privilege of completing modular intercalated science degrees during their training and engaging in project work during that time within a clinical environment.
When I decided to intervene briefly in this important debate I had two points in mind that I wished to make in particular. The first was to express concern that so far the Royal Marsden Hospital and Institute of Cancer Research had not yet agreed to be associated—however loosely—with the new medical school. I was therefore enormously pleased to hear my noble friend say that he confidently expected the Royal Marsden and ICR to join the venture before long.
My second concern has been shared by a number of other speakers. It is that the abandonment of the special health authorities and the incorporation of their resources in the general NHS research funds will lead to an erosion of clinical research in west London just
1122
as the plans to create a medical school of international standing are coming to fruition. I hope that in replying to this short debate the Minister will be able to reassure your Lordships on that point.
8.7 p.m.
Lord Annan: My Lords, even though I have only four minutes I must congratulate my noble friend Lord Hussey on his maiden speech. He is what those English aristocrats who used to control boxing in the 18th century (the Corinthians) called a glutton for punishment. As chairman of the Kings' Fund, as chairman of the governors of the BBC, as director of Times Newspapers, he knows what it is to be assaulted by fire from all sides. Few have had more courage or sagacity than he. That is why we very much hope to hear him in the future.
I do not want to follow the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Dainton, for example, who have intimate experience of the West London situation, except to say that I hope that the Minister will give us some optimism that anomalies can sometimes be ironed out, such as the example which I heard only this afternoon, of a great research hospital which keeps patients in bed longer than a district hospital for the very good reason that it wants to observe those patients to see what is wrong with a complicated case.
I want to say something in defence of the Government's policy of reallocating specialties. Since the 1960s when Lord Todd reported on medical education, the department and the funding authorities have been trying to rationalise resources in the West London hospitals. It has been a long and discouraging task, opposed often tooth and nail by the doctors concerned. But in the end it has been successful and, for example, the pre-clinical schools are now integrated in multi-faculty schools and the institutes of London are now following suit.
I must warn the Minister that from what I hear there is keen competition between the four main centres to lure those institutes with promises of additional funding to join them. Institutes which for long have been linked with one multi-faculty school are now being wooed to move to another. Will the Minister say who monitors, and, if necessary, intervenes to thwart palpably inequitable arrangements?
Nevertheless, great progress has been made in bringing together specialists, but the difficulty arises when one has such a galaxy of talent as exists in the four West London schools, as to how to proceed further in rationalising the particular specialties in those schools. Can the noble Baroness give an indication of the troubles ahead? Having listened to the speeches, it is clear that there are great troubles and difficulties ahead. Naturally, each school wishes to preserve what it regards as the specialty for which it is world famous. No doubt, some accommodations will have to be made and I am asking the Minister whether she is optimistic about that.
I wish to comment on a matter which perhaps is not totally relevant but is of concern in relation to specialists. How far has the new scheme of specialist

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registrar training affected the supply of specialists and their distribution? The European Union ruled that anyone who was a specialist was eligible to apply immediately for a consultancy post. That led the General Medical Council and the Royal Colleges setting up a specialist training authority to supervise the mechanism of issuing certificates of specialist training. That shortened the time before which registrars could apply for a consultancy. Is the Minister satisfied that the problem referred to in Section 17 of the guide to specialist registrar training is viable? Is she convinced that those who opt for a period of research—that is, for a Ph.D—will not be handicapped in their competition for a consultancy post?
8.12 p.m.
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, for asking this important Question tonight. I am delighted to have the opportunity to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, on his characteristically powerful and lucid speech. He has been a long distant but admired acquaintance ever since our paths first crossed some 25 years ago in the world of journalism. More recently I very much enjoyed the experience of working closely with him on the second version of the London King's Fund Commission. I must declare that interest tonight as many of the issues we discuss are relevant to the debate.
Another interest that I must declare, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, is that I am a member of the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Health Authority, which is the main purchaser of the health services provided by the St. Mary's Trust, which the noble Lord chairs. It is as a purchaser that I wish to make my few remarks tonight.
As one would expect in your Lordships' House, we have heard several distinguished contributions from highly distinguished academic experts in the field of medicine. But my main preoccupation is the impact of the Question on services to patients and on the overall effective use of NHS resources in London. I echo the concerns that the noble Lord expressed in that regard. Obviously, we must continue to provide high quality specialist services in London which are accessible on an equitable basis to the whole population. But that does not preclude sensible rationalisation of those specialist services.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the past few years has been the fact that there has been so little change in the organisation of specialties since the original King's Fund Report, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, the Tomlinson Report entitled Making London Better, and the Government's response to that, and the six detailed speciality reviews which were commissioned after Making London Better was published. The progress has rightly been described as glacial in that there has been virtually no movement at all. One could take the totally revisionist view that that was simply because all the proposals made in the special reviews and in the original reports were completely wrong. I am more inclined to agree with the review of one paper recently submitted to the second King's Fund Commission which states:
"The only conclusion to be drawn",
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about specialist rationalisation being so slow,
"is that powerful vested interests have been able to frustrate some of the objectives of the specialty reviews".
It would be useful if in reply the Minister could address the general question of why change has been so slow and what her department is inclined to do to improve the management of change in the next period in order to improve services and benefits for patients in West London.
I wish to ask a further specific question relating to the influence of the private finance initiative on change. Have the uncertainties about the existence of the private finance initiative made a considerable difference to progress, because people are concerned that the capital expenditure needed to make some of the changes will not be forthcoming?
As several noble Lords have emphasised, there has been considerable progress in the reorganisation of the medical schools. Of course, we are enormously impressed and delighted by the strength of the Imperial College reorganisation. We support and applaud its aspirations to nationally excellent standards in research as well as being a base for clinical services. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, said in his introductory remarks, we must be careful that that tail does not wag the dog.
In practical terms, I would be disturbed as a west London purchaser if it were the case that for academic reasons, which might be very good, all the serious and important specialties were concentrated on the Hammersmith site. I should be grateful if the Minister would indicate the department's reaction to that possibility if it becomes a practical reality. That cannot be the best possible solution for patients, however good it may be for the academic situation seen in isolation. Although my noble friend Lord Winston is constantly reassuring me about the accessibility of Hammersmith Hospital, my personal experience, and the experience of the patients to whom I have talked, is that it is still a difficult hospital to reach, despite what I understand are very important changes to the car parking.
My overall feeling is that it is refreshing, if slightly depressing, to revisit the original specialty reviews which were published four years ago and to see what their proposals were. Their overall ambition of reorganising specialties had a great deal of sense, although, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, one might quarrel with the individual proposals, in particular in his case concerning the Royal Marsden Hospital.
I conclude by quoting what is succinctly put in the specialty review on cancer, which should guide our thoughts about how the whole enterprise on specialties should be challenged. I should be grateful if the Minister would respond to the question of whether the Governments as a whole accept the overall recommendations of the specialty reviews. In the specialty review on cancer, the simple conclusion was:
"The overwhelming majority of cancer specialists in London accept that the historic pattern of specialist centres need major change and that a smaller number of larger centres would he more effective in delivering high quality service, teaching and research".
Is that still the Government's position?
8.18 p.m.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Glenarthur, who among many other things is a distinguished trust chairman, for tabling the Question and for opening the debate. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hussey of North Bradley, on his maiden speech. It was a speech which befits a noble Lord who is not only admired and respected throughout the country for his courage, achievements, charm and prodigious talents, but in your Lordships' House, as my noble friend Lord Butterfield said, for his huge bravery.
I have no experience of warfare, but I know that the noble Lord fought not only on the battlefield for us, our futures and our children's futures, but for his own life in a hospital bed. Six consecutive birthdays were spent in some hospital or another. That surely demonstrates a will to live. And what a life, what a contribution to the welfare of the nation's good. We are enriched by his membership of this House, and the quality of speakers in tonight's debate is a testimony to that.
London occupies a unique position in world medicine. It is recognised for its expertise, excellence and talent. Not only does it excel in clinical medicine but also in scientific achievement. In a recent report from the University of London, the contribution to this country is made clear.
Academic medicine generates £225 million each year from undergraduate students, a quarter of whom come from abroad. Every year around 1,000 overseas postgraduate students (from 115 countries) come to study medicine and dentistry in London. Each of those will also of course make a contribution to the local economy, but most important of all, they will return to their homeland taking with them knowledge, techniques, skill, wisdom and often affection for the United Kingdom.
On a recent visit to South Africa I was heartened to hear of the good experience which the Minister for Health, Dr. Zuma, had of her medical training in this country. As the leader of health policy for the emerging South Africa, her experience will influence not only the way in which healthcare is provided but also teaching, research and academic medicine in South Africa.
London has great strengths, not least in pharmaceuticals—46 of the world's top 50 companies and more than 40 American bio-technology companies have chosen London or the south-east as their base. Our capital city has many fine hospitals and medical research institutions which are nationally and internationally recognised as centres of world excellence. I am told that we have more than Boston, Paris or New York. A number of your Lordships, as we have learned tonight and as many of us have known for some time, are of course not only associated with these great institutions but indeed have made them what they are today.
But London is of course the place where Londoners receive their healthcare and while it strives to excel in all fields, it also has to provide day-to-day health services. As a Government, we are conscious of this and have adopted four clear principles: first, we seek to develop high quality, more accessible primary and
1126
community services; secondly, to achieve a better balanced hospital service on fewer sites; thirdly, to concentrate specialist services, reinforcing and building on their excellence and improving their effectiveness; and, fourthly, to ensure London retains its premier position by merging free-standing undergraduate medical colleges with institutes and with the University of London's multi-faculty colleges to form four world class institutions—a move welcomed by the noble Lord, Lord Dainton, who has such a deep knowledge of those issues.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, mentioned the framework for the future of London medicine which was set out in Making London Better, the Government's response to Professor Tomlinson's report. The Government accepted that there was duplication of specialist services. There was a need to improve the quality of patient care and to maintain the critical mass essential for world-class education and research. Given the number of NHS trusts, health authorities and academic institutions, it has been a complex business to bring the parties together.
Although I understand the concern of my noble friend Lord Glenarthur about the uncertainty, we have achieved a great deal in the past four years. I understand too the impatience of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, but we all know that when we are trying to achieve what appears to be a Herculean task, many people need to be involved and reaching decisions is not easy.
The noble Lord, Lord Hussey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, quite rightly highlighted cancer services. We have developed our strategy to ensure the best possible services for patients. Starting at the beginning when patients first suspect a problem, we have set out to improve primary care so that frightened and worried people can get a speedy and accurate diagnosis, with a quick referral from a knowledgeable GP. If necessary, they should be referred to a cancer unit of sufficient size to support a multi-disciplinary team, a team with the expertise and facilities to treat common cancers; lastly, if it is a rare or complex carcinoma, to a centre specialising in the treatment of these sometimes obscure but always difficult cases.
These proposals are in hand, with each region designating cancer services as centres or units. In North Thames, the process has been led by health authorities with the region in a co-ordinating role. Centres will be designated provisionally this spring and given an action plan. Confirmation of the designation will depend on the level of progress made in 12 months towards implementing the plan, but designation is only the beginning of a longer-term programme. Decisions about cancer centres will of course affect research in two ways: first, the London centres, which currently lead the field in terms of research, will be encouraged to link with others in order to widen the research base and encourage patients to take part in clinical trials; secondly, changes in referral patterns will be gradual and influenced by the type of cancer to be treated. I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Glenarthur that we want to ensure that trusts are able to align their services with research interests and not simply be feeders for research.

1127
As my noble friend mentioned, health authorities have jointly reviewed the specialist cardiac activities of the four centres—at the Royal Brompton, Hammersmith, St. Mary's and Harefield hospitals. They have been working with the trusts and Imperial College and have been discussing the options for future development as it affects not only cardiac services but the impact on teaching and research. We hope the work will be completed later in the year.
Renal, neurosciences and children's services are also under discussion. Good progress has been made. Health authorities and academic bodies in west London have agreed on a process but further discussion is needed before a decision can be reached. I know this will be disappointing for my noble friend but I can assure him that patient care will not be eclipsed by the needs of teaching and research. They are not competing demands but ingredients which when combined form the bedrock of a forward looking healthcare system, in which I know St. Mary's will play a pivotal role.
The noble Lord, Lord Winston, drew attention to the excellence of research in west London which has been independently recognised by the recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) published by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Five star rating (the highest possible) was awarded to not only the Institute of Cancer Research (associated with the Royal Marsden) but also the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (associated with Hammersmith Hospital), the National Heart and Lung Institute (associated with the Royal Brompton). Imperial College (associated with St. Mary's) obtained a grade 4 for both clinical laboratory sciences and hospital clinical-based research. The Institute of Cancer Research also obtained a grade 5 for pharmacy and a grade 3A for nursing. As the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, said, those ratings were among the best in the country.
I have talked about both research and service excellence in general terms but it is important to translate that into practice. What have been the contributions to science and improved services? What have been the benefits to patients? I do not have time today to list all the developments there have been but I should like to mention a few of them.
The MRI scanner—the magic magnet, as it is known—at the Hammersmith Hospital is the only one of its kind in the world. It reduces the potential problems of brain-damaged children. In his modesty, I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, mentioned the fact that the Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research carry out more research than any other cancer centre in Europe. Harefield Hospital has undertaken the world's largest programme of heart and lung transplantation and carries out more thoracic surgery than any other centre in England. The Royal Brompton Hospital runs leading edge services, including a unit for cystic fibrosis services, which is a world leader. In addition, the medical informatics team is at the front of an eight-country project to develop networked medical information systems for diagnosis and the tracking of patients. At St. Mary's, as my noble friend Lord Glenarthur is so aware, there are important
1128
developments in heart surgery. A team is developing a new technique for early detection of abnormal electrical activity.
Those are all exceptional innovations. But I understand the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Winston. However, I am heartened that with his expertise and inside knowledge he supports the Culyer proposals. I endorse the views expressed by many noble Lords this evening in regard to collaboration. In particular, the noble Lord, Lord Walton, mentioned that. I can assure your Lordships—in particular, the noble Lords, Lord Annan, Lord Dainton and Lord Phillips—that funding has been a top priority in our considerations.
We believe that the Culyer proposals will show a way forward. In future, R&D support funding will be allocated competitively where it will be best used. Indeed, it is hard to argue against that principle. The NHS Executive has already published assessment criteria which cover dimensions such as quality, importance and cost. In assessing bids, it will also give careful attention to how R&D funding is to be co-ordinated with other education and training and, of course, patient care.
Trusts in England have until the end of June to make a bid for funding for up to four years ahead. Clearly, I cannot say at this stage what the outcome will be for any trust or, indeed, for any part of the country. That will depend on their bids. However, I can say with confidence that the new system will allow us to make increasingly good use of the enormous capacity for R&D in the NHS and the money that we allocate to the NHS locally to exploit that capacity, which is considerably more than £300 million a year.
We have had a most interesting debate. I know that many noble Lords will continue to play a key part in the development of services in west London. It is a challenging agenda, but a worthwhile one, which should deliver even better standards to patients and encourage the development of high quality teaching and research. As the noble Lord, Lord Hussey, told us, top quality patient care depends on top quality research.
I am aware that I have not answered all the questions that were put to me, not least those posed by the noble Baroness. I shall certainly follow them up in a written form later in the week.

Education Bill
8.31 p.m.
House again in Committee on Clause 16.
[Amendment No. 86 not moved.]
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede moved Amendment No. 87:
Page 14, line 41, at end insert
("(2A) Any person appointed as a ballot observer under this section shall be an independent person who has appropriate experience of either the conduct of ballots or the provision of education.").
The noble Lord said: The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that any person appointed as a ballot observer is both independent of the particular grant-maintained ballot concerned and can, therefore, command the support and confidence of all interested parties to act properly as an impartial observer, and also to ensure that such persons are appropriately experienced either in the conduct of ballots or have appropriate experience in the provision of education.
The amendment is straightforward and essentially pragmatic. It seeks to ensure that, whatever the process adopted for administering the appointment of ballot observers, the question of the impartiality and independence of the ballot observer should not be in question. It is this issue, which needs to be incorporated on the face of the Bill, which will ultimately determine the extent to which all interested parties in the GM ballot process can have real and well-founded confidence that the introduction of ballot observers will serve genuinely to enhance the procedures as they currently stand.
The role of independent ballot observer is very well established and familiar. The DfEE's December consultation paper acknowledged, in paragraph 19,
"the existence of the pool of observers of elections abroad maintained by the international side of the Electoral Reform Society",
as one of the options for sources of suitably experienced candidates for ballot observers. It should not therefore be necessary for us to debate at length the issue of independence nor the specific personal qualities and attributes that any person would require properly to fulfil the role of independent ballot observer under the Bill.
The amendment does, however, suggest that, as an alternative requirement, an independent person should have appropriate experience of the education service. The law and procedures for ballots on GM status are complex. While an independent person with experience of observing ballots in other contexts might reasonably be expected to be able to familiarise himself with the necessary specific knowledge required to fulfil the responsibilities envisaged quite readily—providing there is sufficient training—it is clear that an appreciation of the context in which ballots on grant-maintained status can occur, gleaned from some prior experience of the wider education service, would greatly enhance the observer's ability properly to carry out his duties expected under the Bill.
However, how realistic is it to expect that a lay person, with no experience of the education service, could undertake competently and expeditiously, as would be necessary, the sort of roles envisaged by the Government's consultation paper, particularly where the Government appear to envisage that such a role might go beyond that of monitoring, observing and reporting on the conduct of any ballot? I have in mind the screening/vetting of published written material for parents or intervening to ensure that any misinformation is corrected as necessary if a complaint is received during the course of ballot, and, indeed, the possibility,
1130
allowed for in the MEE consultation paper, that the observer might be invited to chair a public meeting on the question of acquiring GM status for a particular school where all parties consented to such a role for the observer.
Those are examples of where some specialist knowledge of the education service and of the special complexities surrounding the balloting of grant-maintained schools would lead to a greater degree of expertise being needed by the observer. I beg to move.
Lord Tope: I express my support for the amendment. It is clearly in the best interests of the smooth, rather than the proper, conduct of the ballot if a properly experienced and qualified person undertakes that duty. It is a very sensible amendment and one which I wholeheartedly support.
Lord Henley: I agree with the noble Lord that it is of considerable importance that observers should be of the right calibre and that they should have the appropriate skills and experience which will enable them to do the job properly. Obviously, the selection of such people will need to be handled with considerable care. Officials in the department have given much thought to the matter.
Having said that, it would be unfortunate if one allowed such an amendment to go through. I say that because it would actually reduce the Secretary of State's discretion by imposing limitations on who can or cannot be appointed as a ballot observer. We have been talking to neutral and very well-respected organisations, especially the Electoral Reform Society which administers grant-maintained ballots. The society has agreed to select observers and make the appointment where the Secretary of State has decided that that is appropriate.
I am sure that the noble Lord will accept that it is not appropriate for this to be spelt out in legislation. If it were to be, I would not support the particular formulation which has been put forward by the noble Lord. For example, there may be very highly suitable candidates for such a job—I have in mind retired judges—who do not have the experience spelt out in the amendment. I can assure Members of the Committee that we shall continue to discuss these matters with the ERS. I believe that the approach we are proposing is probably a more appropriate one.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: I thank the Minister for his reply which seems entirely reasonable. I should point out that the consultation document says in paragraph 20 that candidates would not be required to have prior knowledge of the education service. However, as the Minister indicated, that would indeed be in a person's favour when the Secretary of State is considering who to appoint. In the light of the Minister's response, I feel content to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 16 agreed to.
Clause 17 [Provision of advice and assistance by funding authority]:
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton moved Amendment No. 88:
Page 16, line 8, leave out ("free of charge or").
The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 89. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the provision of advice and assistance to grant-maintained schools by the Funding Agency for Schools (FAS) is chargeable to the GM school receiving the service from the agency.
A similar amendment was only briefly debated in Standing Committee D on 10th December when the Government defeated the amendment and made no pretence to debate the issues underlying it. These were that GM schools should be expected to pay for services from the FAS on the same basis that LEA maintained schools pay for a range of advisory and support services provided by LEAs, and sometimes other providers, out of their delegated budgets.
The amendment is proposed on the basis that there should be a fair and consistent approach to GM and LEA maintained schools. GM schools should not benefit from the ever increasing range of support services provided under the auspices of FAS and out of public funds on a "free ride" basis when LEA maintained schools cannot similarly benefit but are expected to pay for such services out of their delegated budgets.
The Minister of State, Eric Forth, refused to address the arguments put forward by Opposition MPs and did not attempt to debate the real issue arising from the powers in Clause 17 which would have the effect of giving the FAS unlimited powers to supply advice and assistance to the governing bodies of GM schools in connection with the discharge of any of the functions of the governing body. The Minister simply argued that the Opposition amendments were unnecessary but conceded that the Bill gives great flexibility to the FAS.
Surely it is not right that within the education system there should be an extension of the powers of the FAS in this particular model and in the way proposed by the Government. The Government make great play with the need for parental choice and with the importance of public accountability for public money that is spent. Yet here we have an example where the Government appear to have denied the argument that there ought to be public accountability and a level playing field. I look forward to hearing the Minister say that the Government have now had time to consider this matter at greater leisure and that he will be prepared to consider approving this amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: In rising to support this amendment I wish to add another line of argument. After 12 years in local government, where everything one does has to be paid for and accounted for—that includes everything that is done in terms of services delivered to, or required by, our schools—it seems to me extraordinary that side by side with that system, which has been forced on most of the public
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service, one sets up another publicly funded series of institutions which do not have to obey those rules. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response to that.
Lord Henley: The funding agency, as we all know, already offers support to grant maintained schools experiencing financial difficulties and offers assistance to grant maintained schools which are operating under special measures. I think it is something of the order of under 1 per cent. or about 1 per cent. This support is at no extra cost to the school. What Clause 17 proposes is a modest extension of the circumstances in which non-financial support can be provided. It envisages no more than the targeted additional support given by LEAs to LEA maintained schools in difficulty. We do not expect many grant maintained schools to be caught by the new provisions. The cost will be accommodated within the existing arrangements.
If I may, I wish to turn to Amendment No. 89. The funding agency is already accountable to the Secretary of State and operates within a clear framework of accountability and reporting consistent with the department's other non-departmental public bodies, sometimes known as quangos. For that reason Amendment No. 89 is unnecessary.
I now turn again to Amendment No. 88. I can assure the Committee that the Secretary of State will issue guidance on the instances where an offer of support would be appropriate. This guidance will make clear that the funding agency will expect to offer assistance only in a limited number of cases of serious difficulty. The funding agency is not expected to incur substantial new costs. Grant maintained schools will be able to accept or decline an offer of support from the funding agency and other avenues of advice will remain open to them in the usual way on a paid or unpaid basis. For that reason I feel that the first of the two amendments moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, is unnecessary. I hope therefore that the noble Baroness will feel able, with that explanation, to withdraw her amendments.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: I find it difficult to understand how a school faced with an offer of free advice from the funding agency would then go elsewhere and pay for help and support from another source. The Government seem to be absolutely determined to create an unaccountable cuckoo in the education nest. Every time we make any suggestion that the FAS or the grant maintained schools should be subject to scrutiny or that the planning arrangements have to relate to the Audit Commission, the Government dismiss it as unnecessary. Either what we have is the beginning of a total U-turn in terms of the Government's attitude towards public spending and public spending controls, or we have a blatant fear on the part of the Government that grant maintained schools would be neither popular nor able to survive without allowing them favourable conditions. The Government have to keep resorting in every piece of legislation to treating them differently from other schools. With these amendments we are not arguing that schools should not have additional help. We are merely arguing that they

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ought to pay for that in the same way as they do for other services. The Government's response is disappointing. However, at this time of night, with the indulgence of the Committee, I shall withdraw the amendment, though I do so with disappointment. This is a subject that will not go away because the position is blatantly unfair. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 89 not moved.]
Clause 17 agreed to.
Clause 18 [Extension of assisted places scheme to schools providing only primary education]:
Lord Morris of Castle Morris Lord Morris of Castle Morris moved Amendment No. 90:
Page 16, line 17, after ("education),") insert ("for").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 90, I wish to some extent to speak also to Amendment No. 91.
Lord Henley: We did originally group Amendment No. 90, I think, with Amendment No. 91 and one or two others. Obviously the Opposition decided not to do that and have decided to put forward Amendment No. 90 on its own. However, Amendment No. 90 on its own is meaningless, as I think even the noble Lord would accept. Even the meanest intelligence would accept that is meaningless. Are we now grouping it with Amendment No. 91 or not?
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: I think it would be sensible to put the two together. I am not at all sure how they became separated. When I left them, certainly they were grouped. They then went somewhere else and came back severed from one another.
Lord Henley: I am perfectly happy to accept the noble Lord's explanation, which seems to imply a degree of—dare I say it?—incompetence.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: It certainly does, but not on our part. With the leave of the Committee I shall move Amendment No. 90 and speak to Amendment No. 91. I shall speak principally to Amendment No. 91, although it is a fact that the amendment that we have before us is a fairly wide-ranging amendment. The purpose is to ensure that the interests of children benefiting from the assisted places scheme are safeguarded by requiring that participating independent schools meet the standards expected of maintained schools in relation to the national curriculum and assessment; the reporting of the results of inspection; ensuring that inspection standards apply as they do in the maintained sector; and that children's safety in relation to the vetting of criminal records of potential employees is the equivalent of the standard required in the maintained sector. We wish to be vigilant about the comparison.
The issues covered by the amendments were debated in depth and at length—I hesitate to say at inordinate length, but at great length—in Standing Committee D in another
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place on 10th December, reported at cols. 374 to 414. It was quite some debate. It ranged extraordinarily widely and produced a great deal of irrelevant material as well as some useful nuggets which I think even Members of the Committee would find helpful to read. I shall not read them out tonight but it was a wide-ranging debate on this topic.
In the course of the debate, reference was made to research work carried out by Professor Edwards, who interviewed a number of headteachers of private schools which had benefited financially from the assisted places scheme. Reports of two headteachers in particular were mentioned. The first headteacher said:
"I think there are self-employed people with good accountants who do extremely well from it. I know, we have someone here … who was the only daughter of a family where there were three, if not four, sons and they were all in independent schools and she came here, her father was a barrister at law, they lived in Riverside, they had a Volvo".
The second headteacher said that,
"one of the things that we have found irritating is paying … for people's divorces, you know there are occasions when, because a mother is living with but not married to another chap, who will not take responsibilities for the fees, then because of her income or lack of it then she's eligible. Now that doesn't mean that there isn't money in the household and I think that's something that has rankled a bit".—[Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee D, 10/12/97; col. 381.]
I remind the Committee that those are headteachers of schools which have benefited from the assisted places scheme.
In the course of that long debate, the Government resisted arguments from Opposition Members and claimed that their rejection of the amendments stemmed from the fact that subjecting independent schools to the provisions in statute would have the effect of nullifying their status as independent schools. I must confess that although initially that argument seems to have force, it perhaps has less force than was originally apparent when one considers that they are taking public money in quite large amounts.
The Government attempted to avoid the logic and force of Opposition arguments and simply sought to ensure that schools choosing—no one forces them—to participate in the assisted places scheme, choosing to take public money, should be held to standards consistent with the statutory framework which ensures effective public accountability for the vast majority of schools in our maintained schools system which, I remind Members of the Committee, educates some 94 per cent. of our children. Choosing to take part surely implies the need to conform to some extent with national standards. This means surely that the APS schools must conform, for example, to the national requirements in the national curriculum.
The amendment provides a further opportunity for reasoned debate on these important issues. The lengthy debate in Standing Committee highlighted significant concerns in relation to the quality of education provided in those independent schools which participate in the APS scheme. We learn that Ofsted has published just 14 inspection reports on schools participating in the APS in the past five years and it has revealed plans to carry out full inspections for "up to 3" further schools in

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the current academic year, 1996–97. Ofsted, this mighty monster, so efficient, dashing around the nation's schools, can get round to inspect up to three schools; that means either three, two, one or none. Is this not tantamount to dangerous complacency on the part of Government as to the standards of the education provided in those participating independent schools?
The debate in Standing Committee also highlighted some further issues of concern which related to allegations of fraud or abuse on the part of some parents whose children benefit from places under the scheme which the DfEE, it was alleged, had failed to investigate thoroughly. Again I shall forbear to quote any of the debate but refer Members of the Committee to the Sunday Times of 12th November 1995, the report of which is given at col. 380 of that debate on 10th December. If one tenth of those allegations has any foundation, then surely that requires pretty immediate investigation.
The debate also highlighted research findings published in the Journal of Educational Policy, which is a good, refereed, important journal, which cast grave doubts over the Government's claims that the assisted places scheme is, as it hopes to be, successful in opening up independent schooling to children who otherwise would not have been able to benefit from such opportunities. The discussion on that is to be found at col. 382.
Finally, the discussion drew attention to the stringency, or lack of it, with which some participating independent schools follow the DfEE's advice to carry out proper police checks on members of staff employed in independent schools. That serious issue, this dynamite issue in our days, is discussed at length at cols. 387, 394–395, and 406–407. I suggest seriously that it should be compulsory reading for those of us concerned with the Bill. Standing Committee D met on no fewer than 16 separate occasions to discuss the Bill. I have read every word of the debates. I was not particularly illuminated by most of the discussions, but that debate stands out and is relevant to the amendments before us. I think that it reveals real causes for concern and none for complacency. That is why I put forward the amendments for the Committee to discuss tonight. I beg to move.
Lord Tope: I am grateful to the Minister for his intervention at the beginning of the debate. I have been sitting here as an innocent victim of the groupings, whoever was responsible for them. My party certainly is not. It is always a puzzle for me to know how to follow the noble Lord, Lord Morris. However, I was trying to work out what Amendment No. 90 means. For once I was grateful to have the Minister tell me that the amendment means nothing unless it is taken with Amendment No. 91.
I support most strongly all that the noble Lord, Lord Morris, said. Like him, I have looked at the debate in Standing Committee on 10th December. Unlike him, I could not bring myself to read the reports of all 16 sittings. I have them but I could not quite manage that. However, he is right to say that the debates drew attention, even allowing for a certain degree of
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overstatement on these occasions, to matters of considerable concern. To a large extent, that is addressed by the amendment.
The nub of the matter is what the noble Lord, Lord Morris, said at the beginning of his speech. In the other place the Minister seemed to be concerned that if the amendment were passed it would somehow impinge upon the independence of the independent schools. However, it could just as easily be said that that independence is impinged upon by the schools' choosing—a word emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Morris—to accept public money through the assisted places scheme. That is a self-chosen restriction, to a small extent, on their independence. I should have thought it was entirely reasonable that if schools choose to accept public money in that way they must similarly accept the responsibility that goes with it to meet the same standards in terms of both curriculum and inspection as those required in the maintained sector. That seems an entirely fair and proper arrangement. It would stand regardless of what may or may not have been said in the other place. It becomes even more the case when we examine the concerns expressed in the other place, to which the noble Lord. Lord Morris, referred so ably. It is an important and fair amendment which I am pleased to support.
9 p.m.
Lord Henley: I start with an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Morris. I possibly made a somewhat intemperate response to him in describing as "incompetence" getting the groupings wrong. As we all know, on the morning of any Committee or Report stage or, for that matter, Third Reading of a Bill, getting the groupings right is a difficult art. I think it is right to describe it as an art and not a science. As the note at the top of the groupings list states every day:
"Although every effort is made to secure agreement to these groupings, they remain informal and not binding. It is therefore open to any Peer to speak to an amendment in its place in the Marshalled List".
The noble Lord eased our job on this occasion by grouping together the two amendments that were ungrouped. I offer him my wholehearted apology.
Having said that, the amendment seeks to apply the various maintained sector provisions to APS schools. The assisted places scheme is about providing different opportunities for children. It is not about bringing the independent sector into line with the maintained sector. Perhaps I may say that in response to the noble Lord, Lord Tope. Independent schools are not part of the maintained sector of education. It is not, therefore, appropriate simply to import such provisions.
Existing levels of regulation, both for the independent sector schools generally—and there are a number of regulations to which I shall come in due course—and APS schools in particular have been framed to take account of the particular ethos of the sector. They strike the right balance between freedom for those independent bodies—and they are independent—and central controls.

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As we all know, the best independent schools are models of high standards which help create the climate of excellence. We are firmly committed to the existence of a healthy and vigorous independent sector, free from unnecessary interference by the state. We do not believe that any part of the independent sector should have to comply with provisions designed specifically for the maintained sector. Independent schools obviously value highly the flexibility available to them to shape provision in the light of parental demand and their own circumstances. Their achievements are testament to the sense of that approach.
Schools which participate in the assisted places scheme have been selected on the basis of stringent criteria for admission and are among the best independent schools in the country. One of the conditions of acceptance into the scheme has always been that the school has to offer a broad and balanced curriculum. Although APS schools are not statutorily obliged to implement the national curriculum, many have implemented it in total, and most track it closely. They have indicated their support for its fundamental aims of raising standards.
The Secretary of State's responsibilities in relation to all independent schools require her to be satisfied that they meet certain standards in terms of premises, accommodation, curriculum and instruction and for the welfare of pupils in boarding establishments. All schools are covered by the cycle of inspections carried out by Ofsted and that includes the independent schools which are inspected by Her Majesty's chief inspector and by Ofsted over a five to eight-year cycle to ensure that they maintain standards required for registration. Virtually all, I think 98 per cent., of the 355 schools now in the assisted places scheme have been inspected within the past eight years. Over 80 per cent. of them have been inspected in the past five years. The performance of those schools is also monitored through examination results and audit surveys and through analysis of the school's statistical returns.
The noble Lord, Lord Morris, raised a number of other concerns which I should like to address. Part V of the Police Bill seeks to widen access to full criminal record checks for more sensitive areas of employment. That includes the tightening of the existing arrangements to allow checks to be performed on staff, even where their access to vulnerable people like children might be minimal. Independent schools will be able to gain access to the service. Independent schools, in common with the maintained schools, cannot employ teachers who appear on what I am told is described as List 99, the department's register of barred teachers. Furthermore, all independent schools are provided with relevant information on how to conduct criminal background checks on staff who will have access to children. The arrangements for undertaking checks are not materially different for independent schools compared, for example, with grant-maintained schools.
To place the requirements outlined in this amendment on independent schools would amount to a restriction which would be inconsistent with their status as independent institutions. These schools achieve
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excellent results and can demonstrate very high standards of achievement. We support their right to exercise appropriate discretion over curricular and other matters. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may ask him one question, genuinely for information. How many of the Ofsted reports on those schools are available to the public?
Lord Henley: As I said earlier about bearing gifts, what I really fear are questions merely asking for information. I do not know the answer to the noble Lord's question. I shall let him know in due course.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: I too wish to ask a question on a point of information. The Minister may not have the answer but can possibly find out. Among the prep schools of excellence that he mentioned are the cathedral choir schools which provide not only a superb education in singing, in instrumental music and in understanding music but also a wide ranging education. As one who has a close connection with a particular choir school, I am aware of the importance of what might be described as a balanced social intake. Most choir schools attempt to provide this by having bursaries or scholarships of some kind, but clearly their resources are stretched. The assisted places scheme would seem to be an opportunity for ensuring that such schools are open to a wide range of youngsters. Among the schools which have been invited to bid for such assisted places, are there any choir schools?
Lord Henley: I can imagine the particular choir school with which the right reverend Prelate has some connection and that it is not unadjacent to Ripon. But having said that, I cannot answer his question at this moment. I do not know whether there are any choir schools involved. Certainly I shall write to the right reverend Prelate.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: The Minister will not be staggered to learn that I find his response less than totally satisfactory. It is not a matter of trying in any way to bring one kind of school in line with the other, making the one the same as the other—the Lord forfend! We have heard enough times the myth that every comprehensive school is the same as every other comprehensive school. One only has to visit three to see the enormous difference between them.
But in this case, he who pays the piper must to some extent call the tune. In the assisted places scheme there were 335 schools at the last count, costing over £100 million per annum to the taxpayer. We can add to that the service boarding schools, which also benefit and which take £110 million plus from the public purse. So the cost in total seems to be nearer £350 million per annum from the British taxpayer. All that we ask in these amendments is that for that price there should be a certain degree of conformity.

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But I see I have not penetrated the noble Lord's armour. I seldom do. In fact, I do not remember an occasion in the last two Bills that we have debated together on which he has ever given me the sheer shock and pleasure of saying, "Well, there might be just something in what the noble Lord and his noble friends have said and, although I shall not in any way commit myself to anything whatsoever, I shall perhaps take it away and give it a few moments' thought before I come hack and reject it".
In the hope that before we finish with the Bill I might just crack the noble Lord's iron resolve never to let anything past his bat, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 91 not moved.]
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton moved Amendment No. 92:
Page 16, line 18, at end insert—
("(2) In subsection (4) of that section, at the end there shall be added the words "and to the availability of places in grant-maintained schools and schools maintained by local education authorities".").
The noble Baroness said: The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the Secretary of State, among other considerations which are a requirement upon the Secretary of State when having regard to the allocation of places under the assisted places scheme, has regard to the availability of places in the LEA maintained schools and in the grant-maintained school sector.
In seeking to introduce a further requirement in that regard, the amendment raises the important issue of surplus places in the maintained school system. While surplus places are inevitably a part of any system to a limited degree to allow a reasonable level of choice, it would be a very unfortunate result if the unplanned consequences of the Government's proposals in the Bill to extend the number of places in the assisted places scheme preparatory schools were seriously to increase the level of surplus places in the maintained sector.
There are arguments about whether or not the Government will seek to portray this proposal as a deliberate attempt to restrict parental choice in opposition to their proposals to extend the scheme. The Minister in the other place, in Standing Committee D, refused to address the issue of the risk of an increase in surplus places in the maintained sector and the consequent threat of rising unit costs for the children to be educated in maintained schools.
This is an issue that needs to be addressed seriously. Local government, local authorities and the schools within the grant-maintained school sector, notwithstanding their more favourable treatment, are constrained not to undertake action which deliberately wastes public resources.
It is important that the Government are challenged seriously on not duplicating the spending of money. Two outcomes may result: one is the reduction of parental choice for other parents in the locality; the other
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is that the Government push the situation in the grant-maintained and local authority-maintained sector to a higher unit cost to sustain the level of provision they require of that sector, but do not require of the independent sector. I beg to move.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Henley: I can assure the noble Baroness that the Secretary of State is already required to have regard to the desirability of securing an equitable distribution of assisted places throughout the country and between boys and girls. Those are proper considerations in the allocation of places. The noble Baroness is seeking to place an additional requirement on the Secretary of State; that is, to consider the availability of maintained school places.
We do not accept that it would be proper to restrict parental choice in that way. Parents should be able to choose an independent education for their children regardless of income and regardless of whether or not a specific LEA has a high number of surplus places. Children who happen to live in those areas where there are a high number of surplus places should not be denied the chance to benefit from the scheme. Parents should have the opportunity to make an informed choice for the best education of their child. The exercise of that choice should not be dependent on where they live. I hope therefore that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: I am disappointed in the Minister's response. The Government persist in behaving as though parents were evenly spread; as though the number of children they have is equally evenly spread across the country; and as though all other elements can be applied regardless of local circumstances. There may be a degree of logic in the Government's argument in relation to some areas of the country, but not in relation to others.
In the Lancashire and Yorkshire fells there is a pressure to maintain provision of small, rural primary schools. In those areas the demand from the parents, under parental choice, is not for an Anglican denominational school alone to serve each village, but also for a Catholic school. The local authorities maintain access to those primary schools at exceptionally high cost.
Village schools, by their nature and the nature of the settlement, inevitably have surplus places. How can it be sensible, rational or fair to deliberately impose on them the requirement to spend public money to exacerbate that situation in those localities? The Government's attitude is incomprehensible in any other terms than those of dogma. I heard the Minister's reply. As my noble friend Lord Morris said. I despair of obtaining a sensible response to any logical case put forward. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 93:
Page 16, line 18, at end insert—
("(2) In subsection (5) of that section, at the end of paragraph (b) there shall be inserted "and
(c) shall require priority for the remission of fees to be given to pupils who have not previously attended an independent school".").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment relates to the assisted places scheme. Its purpose is to give priority,
"for the remission of fees…to pupils who have not previously attended an independent school".
The arguments underpinning the amendment are that there are two disturbing trends in the assisted places scheme and the proposals of the Bill will only serve to exacerbate them. The point was debated in Standing Committee D on 10th December, when the amendment was lost.
The two issues are that, first, preparatory schools may arrange links with independent secondary schools to offer continuity in the assisted places scheme. Parents who want an assisted secondary place are encouraged to go for an assisted primary place in preparatory schools to enhance their chances of securing a place in the independent secondary school of their choice. An artificial inducement is provided by the Bill for parents to move into the independent sector earlier by means of the expanded assisted places scheme.
Secondly, the fact that the assisted places scheme effectively gives an unnecessary state subsidy to parents who can afford a place at an independent school anyhow or to families who are already paying makes it more difficult for those who have not benefited under the scheme to secure support for their children. The amendment would counter both these undesirable aspects.
The Government's response to the amendment in the Commons failed to address these two issues and the Minister, Mrs. Gillan, sought to reject the amendment on the grounds that it would,
"entail undue fettering of schools' freedom over pupil selection and could result in the most deserving candidate not receiving an assisted place".—[Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee D, 10/12/96; col. 412]
This is not a credible or sufficient response to the issues which the amendment sought to address. I hope for a better response from the Minister. I beg to move.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: I very much support this amendment. I have a rather personal attitude towards the whole business of assisted places. I think that when the Government are spending money they should spend it in their own schools. However, that may be beside the point. Meanwhile, as that is something we shall not achieve during the course of proceedings on the Bill, I support the amendment.
Lord Henley: The noble Baroness, Lady David, hoped for a better response from the Minister than her colleagues received in another place. I hope that on this occasion she will be grateful for a consistency of responses, because we believe in consistency within the Government.
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The assisted places regulations, which this House and another place debate annually, provide for schools to select children for places in accordance with such methods and procedures as appear to them appropriate. But the regulations also place an important restriction on schools' discretion over the allocation of places. They are required to fill at least 60 per cent. of their assisted places with pupils from the maintained sector.
The amendment seeks to place a further restriction on schools' freedom over the allocation of places. It would require a school always to give priority to a maintained sector applicant even over a better qualified independent sector applicant. That would severely restrict schools' freedom as regards pupil selection and might result in the most deserving candidate not receiving an assisted place. It could lead to an independent school candidate being ruled out of consideration even if on income grounds he or she was eligible and had previously only attended that independent school by virtue of, for example, a scholarship. If the amendment were passed, schools would not have the discretion to take account of individual circumstances such as that.
We believe that a balance has to be struck between the school's discretion over the selection of pupils and the conditions the Government attach to the exercise of that discretion. We believe that the present arrangements—the 60 per cent. I mentioned—strike an appropriate balance. I hope, therefore, that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness David: I do not find that a very convincing answer. If the young person has a scholarship, he or she is presumably not really in need of an assisted place. It seems to me that it really is pre-empting choice for other pupils. I am not in favour of the assisted places scheme but at least it ought to work fairly if it does work. This seems to be giving an unfair advantage to those children who are already in independent schools and their parents.
We may think again about this. I am not convinced by the Minister's argument but I shall not divide the Committee at this time of night. The provision seems to be very discriminatory. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton moved Amendment No. 94:
Leave out Clause 18 and insert the following new Clause—
EDUCATION IN PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS
(" .—(1) Sections 479 to 481 of the Education Act 1996 shall cease to have effect save to the extent that they shall continue to apply to provision made prior to the coming into force of this Act, whereby education is provided in participating schools as defined in section 479(2) of that Act.
(2) The Secretary of State may apply monies available to him for the purposes of the implementation of sections 479 to 481 of the Education Act 1996 prior to the passing of this Act and not required under subsection (1) of this section for such other purposes as he considers appropriate.").
The noble Baroness said: The effect of this amendment, as a replacement clause, would be to limit the assisted places scheme to its current provision prior

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to that which would be made with the coming into effect of the Act. It gives the Secretary of State the power to use the funding allocated to the proposed extension of the scheme for such other purposes as she or he considers appropriate.
We oppose the assisted places scheme, injecting as it does public resources into the private sector at a time when almost all areas of the public sector are being squeezed of resources. Furthermore, as my noble friend Lord Morris of Castle Morris has indicated, evidence suggests that the majority of places on the scheme do not necessarily go to children of parents on low income to increase opportunity, as the scheme is intended to do. Sir George Walden MP commented during the Queen's Speech debate that there are only two things wrong with the assisted places scheme—the principle and the practice. A further extension of the assisted places scheme to the independent schools providing primary education is an attempt to expand and revive the scheme and it is a misuse of resources.
The Government seem to believe that the education system in this country needs to be starved of resources with the exception of a small sector which they favour and to which they are prepared to give in some cases uncontrolled, unlimited and ever-expanding resources. The Government's belief that this is what the country needs and what the overwhelming majority of parents want to see could not be further from the truth. We on these Benches believe that at a time when the Government have taken money from local government and circulated nursery vouchers to parents—this is relevant because it is a case of coals to Newcastle—who are on the maximum income and whose vouchers are worth £1,800 a year approximately, as opposed to parents on the lowest incomes, they should relent for once and see that the majority of the nation's children should come first.
Giving cake to the few and meagre rations to the many is not a way to equip us for the future. I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, was indicating disagreement when I referred to "meagre rations" for the rest. Parents in this country whose children are being educated in local primary schools with ever-increasing class sizes view that as meagre rations, while even the crumbs are kept on the rich man's table. I beg to move.
Lord Tope: I support this amendment. The Minister responded to the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Morris, that he had been unable to accept any Opposition amendment on the last two Bills—in fact they are the only two Bills that I have had to deal with—and explained it by saying that it was consistent. It is certainly that; we cannot disagree with that. The Minister is saying that he will consistently oppose amendments from the Opposition Benches regardless of the merits of the arguments and the strength of the case but simply on the grounds that they come from those Benches. At least we are clear now that our suspicions are well founded.
I never had any expectations of the Government accepting this amendment. We on these Benches have consistently opposed the assisted places scheme—and still do. It must follow logically from that that we shall
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oppose the extension of the scheme into the primary sector. The Government have consistently supported the assisted places scheme and I suppose that in their endeavours to spread it wider from their point of view it must be logical to extend the scheme to the primary sector. I have no expectations of the amendment, but nevertheless think that it is important.
The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, explained all the reasons why in our view the scheme is a wholly inappropriate use of public money. On the previous amendment my noble friend Lady Thomas put it succinctly but extremely well. In her view—a view which all of us on the Opposition Benches share; I certainly do—government money should be used in what we might call "government schools". I hasten to add that I use the term loosely.
The assisted places scheme is a wrong priority for the use of public money. I said earlier that one of the problems facing this country's maintained education sector is its chronic underfunding. The additional money that is being used for assisted places would not go very far towards helping to ameliorate that chronic underfunding, but it would at least be a step in the right direction. In my opinion, this is very much a misuse of public funding. It is a wrong priority. As resources are always scarce, the priorities that we set for using that money are what is important. None of us will ever be able to have the resources to do all that we would wish, so we must prioritise. It is wrong to prioritise the assisted places scheme; extending the scheme to the primary sector is even worse. We resist that wrong priority. Therefore, I support the amendment most warmly.
9.30 p.m.
Lord Haslam: I have been wincing now for some time when listening to Opposition speeches about the assisted places scheme. I happen to be chairman of the governors of Bolton School, which has 2,000 pupils. We have over 550 assisted places. The present school buildings were endowed by the first Lord Leverhulme in 1926. One of his criteria was that any child in Bolton who had the academic ability to benefit from an education at Bolton School should have the opportunity irrespective of the financial circumstances of the family. That concept is revered in Bolton.
What would happen if the assisted places scheme was to be abandoned? As I have said, we have 550 assisted places and we could find at least 550 or even 1,000 parents prepared to pay the fees for Bolton School. The result would be that 550 talented children from humble families would be denied that education, but the Government would still have to finance their education elsewhere. To pretend that the assisted places scheme is a great bonanza is nonsense.
This matter needs putting into perspective. The Opposition are on the wrong track in trying to abolish the assisted places scheme. I come from Bolton and I have seen the benefits of the scheme for quite humble

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families whose youngsters have benefited enormously. It is nonsensical for the Opposition to talk in these terms.
Lord Henley: I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Haslam for his support for the scheme. I believe that that support is shared 100 per cent. on the Benches behind me.
The noble Lord, Lord Tope, implied that I was unbending, as did the noble Lord, Lord Morris, earlier, when he said that I refuse ever to accept any Opposition amendments. However, I have written to both noble Lords following Second Reading, setting out just where I was prepared to unbend a little and outlining a number of government amendments. Furthermore, the noble Lords are aware of the amendments that have been tabled by the right reverend Prelate—I appreciate that the right reverend Prelate does not sit on the Opposition Benches, although sometimes the Benches on which the right reverend Prelate sits can appear not dissimilar to the Opposition Benches—and I can give the teeniest weeniest hint that we might be prepared on Monday to accept the right reverend Prelate's amendments. Noble Lords also know that we listen to all the arguments that are put before us, as I explained earlier to the noble Baroness, Lady David.
I was somewhat concerned by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris. When speaking to an earlier amendment he referred to those going to the private sector with support from either the Armed Services or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I believe that the electorate and all those serving in the Armed Forces and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be interested to know whether the arrangements from which they now benefit may suffer as a result of the faint possibility of a Labour Government coming to power. I believe that that ought to be spelt out to those who serve this country in both the Armed Forces and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: All of us are breaking conventions, and so will I. The noble Lord asks me a perfectly fair question. I will give him an answer. We have nothing against the service boarding school scheme. I simply point out what it costs.
Lord Henley: I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I imagine that his comments will be greeted with cheers throughout the land. However, I believe that it would have been more helpful had he spelt it out at the beginning because his earlier remarks might have caused some alarm.
I shall not spend time in outlining why this particular amendment is technically flawed, save to say that legally binding participation agreements govern the availability of assisted places at schools that currently participate in the scheme. Schedule 35 of the 1966 Act defines procedures for their termination. I say to the noble Baroness that, whatever she believes, the amendment is defective and does not achieve exactly what she wishes to achieve.
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Having said that, under this Government the assisted places scheme will continue and expand. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has given a commitment so to do. We have no intention of providing for its phased reduction. On the contrary, we want to widen access for parents in every part of the country. That is why we are committed to doubling the number of places available and providing for preparatory schools to participate. Since its inception the scheme has supported over 80,000 children. Future generations should not be denied the same opportunities, as my noble friend Lord Haslam put it so well.
We believe in extending opportunities for pupils. The assisted places scheme plays a vital part in this process. It is achieving its objectives of giving access to some of the best independent schools to children who would not otherwise have been able to contemplate them. We intend to give twice as many children that opportunity and extend the scheme accordingly.
Despite the overwhelming success of the scheme, noble Lords opposite seek its abolition. We have heard much about their plans to use the funds released to reduce class sizes in the maintained sector. But it is not clear whether their figuring takes account of the costs of educating children who would otherwise have benefited from the scheme in the maintained sector. A range of figures has been quoted. What is clear is that savings from the abolition of the assisted places scheme would not cover the cost of a maximum infants class size of 30, as has been proposed on a number of occasions. A recent report by the Institute of Public Finance demonstrates that savings from abolition would be at least £250 million short of what is required by the party opposite.
We do not accept that any arbitrary limit on class sizes would have a significant effect. As Her Majesty's chief inspector has made quite clear, the educational benefits of small reductions in class sizes are not proven. Such a limit would restrict the head teacher's discretion to make the best use of his resources. In stark contrast, spending on the assisted places scheme provides very real benefits for thousands of children. Recent research by the London School of Economics, which is so well represented on the Benches opposite, confirms that assisted places pupils achieve better A-level results than their counterparts of similar ability in maintained schools. I hope that with that explanation the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: In considering the response of the Minister, my understanding of this amendment is that it deals with the non-extension of the assisted places scheme. The Government and the Minister may repeat for evermore that if a child is in a large class to reduce the class size by a small amount makes no difference and that only if one is able to reduce class size to that being considered in assisted places schools can there be a difference. It may convince those whose children are already in small classes, but those of us whose children are educated in large classes know that, if a teacher has to deal with one, two or three extra children, particularly if those one, two or

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three extra children have non-statemented special needs, the amount of time the teacher can spend with them is reduced.
Nothing we on these Benches have said can have caused the Minister to end up wondering where in the Committee are the Benches upon which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon sits. The Benches have not moved. The Government have moved. The Government have moved away from the Conservative philosophy of my childhood, which sought to extend opportunities to more and more people. This surplus places proposal, extending the expenditure of public money to a small number of children who the Government have admitted are selected on grounds of ability, and who are not within the large bulk of average and below average attainment children who need help and additional high quality teaching, is a foolish and folly-driven plan.
With the Committee's agreement I shall withdraw the amendment, but I find it tragic that those who speak on the Government Benches seem to feel that, with the exception of a few who are lifted out of large classes, to take money from the rest and worsen their education opportunity is acceptable. On these Benches we can never accept that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Carlisle of Bucklow: The noble Baroness and I come here from the same area of the country. I had something to do with the introduction of the assisted places scheme. Does she agree with me that the education provided at Bolton Grammar School, Blackburn's grammar school, Manchester Grammar school, and Bradford Grammar School, is of a standard which should be open to those other than those whose parents can afford to pay the bills? Surely the whole purpose of the assisted places scheme was to give to the bright child from the inner city the opportunity to benefit from those advantages. As someone who was involved in the inception of the scheme, I am bound to say that I have never understood the Labour Party's objection to it. I bitterly regret that New Labour appears to be equally opposed to it.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: We remain opposed to it. The answer to the noble Lord's question is simple. It would be inaccurate and churlish to deny that the schools he mentioned are good schools. It would be equally unacceptable for me to deny the existence of excellent comprehensive schools, grant-maintained schools, and comprehensive voluntary aided schools in the North West.
All the evidence, including the evidence provided by the Government, shows that children with higher than average ability do well in the comprehensive system and achieve well. They make up a large percentage of the children who go on to university as a result of the increase in the number of pupils going to university and into higher education. None of us on these Benches nor any Member on the Liberal Democrat Benches seeks to deny that the majority of schools to which pupils are sent with public money under the assisted places scheme are good schools. That is not the point at issue. The
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question is whether more money needs to be spent on sending them to such schools rather than sending them to equally good schools in their own locality as part of the comprehensive system. Our attitude is not churlish. This is an unnecessary diversion of public resources and it is not necessary for the ablest young people in our country that those resources are diverted.
Lord Haslam: I wish to underline something that I have already said. Bolton School is very high in the league tables; higher than Manchester Grammar School, which is a very renowned school. Out of 2,000 pupils it has 550 with assisted places. If in future those 550 places were to be abolished, we could fill them by means of willing fee-paying parents. Therefore, the Government will not have an extra bundle of money but indeed will have to educate 550 pupils elsewhere. Hence, there will be no pot of money available to reduce class sizes.
9.45 p.m.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: The subject of the amendment is whether the assisted places scheme should be expanded. The subject of the amendment is not that there are no places for pupils and therefore the Government are buying places through the assisted places scheme. The noble Lord who has just spoken—forgive me, but I do not know his name—referred to the fact that pupils are going to Bolton School and that money is being spent there. During the period of the assisted places scheme, the Bolton education authority has to my knowledge carried surplus places in schools which could have been filled by those pupils.
The noble Lord, Lord Haslam, knows well that if two more pupils are taken into a class of 12 learning French one does not have to provide an extra French teacher.
I do not seek to denigrate Bolton School. I am aware that it has excellent results. However, on behalf of those schools which take pupils with moderate and severe learning difficulties, whose pupils are counted for league table comparisons with Bolton School, I am bitterly resentful of the comparisons that are made. The issue of comparing like with like is one of the most important in establishing how we measure educational attainment. To the best of my knowledge, under the assisted places scheme or outside it, Bolton School does not take children with moderate or severe learning difficulties. It cannot then ask to be compared with schools which do.
We all know that an important issue is being debated here. I have no vested interest. On 1st May I shall seek to be a county councillor in the Lancashire County Council, but Bolton is no longer in Lancashire. I have no interest, but I demand that when we discuss the results of Bolton School we do so on the basis of fair comparison with the schools which take children with moderate and severe learning difficulties and with those which serve the entire community regardless of the child's ability, be they voluntary-aided or comprehensive in the maintained sector. I believe that those comparisons are important.
When resources are scarce, I believe that we should garner them wisely and spend them on those children whose results show the greatest need for additional

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support and help. It is my belief—and all the research shows this—that those who would be selected by Bolton School would do well in all schools. The level of their results would be as high. The average is dragged down when schools serve those with special educational needs. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 18 agreed to.
Clause 19 [Responsibility for discipline: LEA-maintained schools]:
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale moved Amendment No. 95:
Page 16, line 29, after ("shall-) insert ("in consultation with the local education authority and, in the case of a voluntary school, the body which appoints its foundation governors").
The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 96 and 99. The purpose of the amendments is to ensure that the LEA or, in the case of voluntary schools, the relevant diocesan authority is consulted on school behaviour policies; and that the governors of maintained schools have regard to the advice issued on that subject. The amendments will also require grant-maintained schools' governors to be aware of the plans and policies of the relevant LEA.
These amendments are very straightforward and are simply intended to acknowledge on the face of the Bill the role which LEAs have in supporting schools in drawing up and implementing sound and effective pupil behaviour policies at school level. LEAs routinely offer guidance and advice to schools on a wide range of matters. Teachers, governors, parents and the wider community accept and value that as a vital element of the LEA's role in supporting and promoting the efficient and effective running of schools.
The Bill as currently drafted rightly acknowledges that, in drawing up individual school policies to promote good behaviour and discipline, the governing body should have regard to any guidance which the Secretary of State may give from time to time.
The Bill does not appear to acknowledge the contribution which LEAs similarly can and do make, and indeed which the Bill requires them to make. These amendments are intended to rectify that apparent oversight. LEAs have considerable expertise and experience in the administration and management of schools. They have a unique contribution to make in the provision of support to local schools. As a chair of governors of a county primary school, I know that that support is of outstanding value. I hope that these amendments can be accepted. I beg to move.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: We now come to a part of the Bill which is a good deal less contentious than the one that we have just left and where the Government can reasonably claim to have hit several spots quite well. These amendments suggest a small but significant change to their proposals. I hope that the
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Government will be moved to indicate that the amendments are not entirely out of order or, perhaps, even to accept them.
Lord Henley: As the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said, we have come into calmer waters. I have got through Clauses 1 to 19, possibly bloodied but unbowed.
We believe that it is important that the head teacher and staff should be seen to be implementing and operating a behaviour and discipline policy with the full support of the governors. That is why we are placing a new duty on the governing body to draw up and review periodically a written statement of general principles upon which the head will determine the school's discipline policy. By so doing, we have increased the role of the governing body in promoting good behaviour and discipline within the school. Many governing bodies already do this, but that good practice needs to be disseminated more widely. Clauses 19 and 20 will ensure that every governing body determines the broad principles for its school's behaviour and discipline policy.
It is clear that the governing body and head teacher have distinct roles in that process: the governing body makes the statement of general principles; the head teacher determines the measures which make up the school's code of conduct. Each school is unique. The behaviour and discipline policy needs to reflect the particular circumstances of each school and of its pupils. We believe that the governing body and head teacher are best placed and have the principal roles in determining that. It would be impracticable to impose a blanket policy on all schools in an LEA or diocesan area reflecting those bodies' priorities or philosophies on disciplinary matters. If I may say so, that would be the implication behind, and potential unwelcome effect, of the amendment.
Since the Education Act 1988, schools have been autonomous in a significant number of ways. Even before the 1988 Act, the measures for maintaining behaviour and discipline were determined at the school level. We believe that schools are best placed to carry this out. They are, of course, free to seek the advice of the LEA and diocesan authorities as they see fit. But I do not think that it is sensible to require them to do so. For that reason, I certainly would not want to go down the line proposed by the noble Baroness, although I appreciate the good intentions behind Amendment No. 95.
As for Amendments Nos. 96 and 99, when the governing body is making its written statement of general principles it will be important that it should have access, as needed, to guidance on pupil behaviour and discipline. That will ensure that the governing body is as well informed as possible about these important issues. That is why Clauses 19 and 20 require the governing body to have regard to any guidance given from time to time by the Secretary of State.
I believe that many noble Lords will be familiar with our circular of guidance 8/94, which I bring forward again as an exhibit, issued in May 1994 which dealt specifically with pupil behaviour and discipline. It built on the findings of the report of my noble friend

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Lord Elton of 1989 entitled, Discipline in Schools, and offered guidance to help schools maintain good behaviour. I am pleased to see that my noble friend is present in the Chamber this evening. The report gave advice—and I stress that it was advice—among other things, on the responsibilities of head teachers and governing bodies; and it encouraged them to develop whole-school behaviour policies. I believe I can say both to Members of the Committee and to my noble friend that it was genuinely well received and widely used. We intend to build on that guidance in the light of the provisions on discipline in the Bill and on further consultations with all appropriate interested parties.
There is some attraction in the amendments put forward by the noble Baroness. But the effect would be specifically to require the governing body to have regard to any guidance given either by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State or by the LEA. That could have far-reaching implications for how a governing body approached the important task of making its statement of general principles.
No two LEAs are identical in every respect; indeed, the noble Baroness will know that better than I do. Their approach to, or their philosophy about, pupil behaviour could differ markedly and the guidance could be variable in quality. More importantly, a governing body could be faced with guidance from an LEA which conflicted with or contradicted that from the Secretary of State; for example, on which particular sanctions to use as a reasonable response to a disciplinary incident.
Further, Amendment No. 99, which relates to grant-maintained schools, would be wholly inappropriate. Grant-maintained schools are self-governing and, as a result, are independent of LEAs. It would, therefore, be quite inappropriate to require them to have regard to any guidance given by the LEA. It would be for GM schools themselves to decide whether or not to do so. With that explanation, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
10 p.m.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale: I am afraid I join the ranks of the disappointed on these Benches tonight. The response of the Minister is rather mean spirited. All the amendments sought to do was to put on the face of the Bill an acknowledgment of the role that LEAs play in the general advice they give to schools. The amendment states,
"in consultation with the local education authority".
Therefore there is no question of LEAs imposing any blanket formula on schools and certainly not as regards a whole LEA area. I am sure the Minister is well aware that that is not what happens in these cases in local education authorities. Local education authorities can lay down some principles and give advice but each individual school and governing body makes its own decisions on whether to accept them, reject them or amend them. The fears that the Minister expressed about a blanket imposition from an LEA do not stand up. As it is late and I do not wish to
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divide the Committee I shall reserve our position to think again; in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 96 not moved.]
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 97:
Page 17, line 5, at end insert—

("(c) the registered pupils at the school, and

(d) teaching and non-teaching staff at the school.").

The noble Baroness said: As the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, and indeed the Minister, said, we are now moving into rather calmer waters. I think there is a certain amount of agreement about what happens in the ensuing clauses.
We are trying in a number of amendments to improve the Bill and to make what the Government propose just that little bit better. I hope that the amendments will be accepted in the spirit in which they are proposed. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Elton, is present. I shall refer to him and I may echo a few of the points that the Minister has just made.
In moving Amendment No. 97, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 98. The amendment requires governors and head teachers to give consideration to the views of pupils, staff and parents on discipline measures. It seems to me an obvious amendment.
The amendment places a duty, first, on the governing body when drawing up the general principles underpinning the behaviour policy, and, secondly, on headteachers when determining the details of the policy to seek to give due consideration to the views of pupils, staff and parents. At Commons Committee stage the Government agreed to amend the Bill so as to require the governing body to consult with heads and parents on the general principles. The amendment to subsection (3) was introduced at Commons Report stage. It seems strange that the Government declined to accept the involvement of the school staff and pupils in this process, given that they are both in situ and crucial to the success of the policy.
It is perhaps important to note that the amendment does not give pupils, staff and parents any powers to decide these measures; it simply represents the commonsense principle that measures will be more effective if the whole school community has been involved in the process of drawing them up.
The amendment represents the advice of the most recent government guidance on Pupil behaviour and discipline (circular 8/94) to which the Minister has just referred, reflecting the recommendations of the government inquiry chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, into Discipline in schools in 1989.
That report recommended all schools adopt a "whole school behaviour policy". This was accepted by the Government who sent out guidance after the Education Act 1993 with the express aim of,
"encouraging a whole-school approach to behaviour and discipline".

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As regards pupils it said:
"Schools can … nurture a greater sense of responsibility in pupils, and greater commitment to the aims of the school, by encouraging them to discuss the aims and rules of the school … Many schools have found that pupils can play a positive role; for example in exposing bullying in their school, in helping design play areas … Schools' councils … are possible means of encouraging pupils to become involved".
The recent Ofsted report Exclusions from secondary school noted:
"The great majority of schools (and almost all high excluders) made little effort to involve pupils themselves in fostering and setting high standards of behaviour. The senior pupils interviewed by HMI showed a perceptive understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their schools and a broad appreciation of what the staff were trying to achieve, yet they felt insufficiently consulted or trusted by staff; expectations of behaviour were set by staff. Sometimes this lack of trust was reciprocated, and a quite unnecessary distance between staff and pupils grew, as it were, by default".
As regards staff, it should go without saying that a good head teacher would involve his teaching staff in the formulation of the school behaviour code. The amendment, however, refers to "staff' which includes the non-teaching staff. This is deliberate because, for example, it is playground and lunch supervisors who are at the sharp end of dealing with disruptive pupils and incidents of bullying or vandalism. It is obvious what the amendment seeks to do and I hope that the Government will accept it. I hope, too, that I shall have support from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who advised this policy in his report. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I thank the noble Baroness for her kind remarks and my noble friend for his. I welcome the introduction of a whole school policy with statutory force. I believe that that goes in entirely the right direction.
However, I should like to reassure the noble Baroness that if I understand the Bill as drafted her amendment is unnecessary and might detract from the simplicity of the process that should take place. I agree with her that it is necessary to involve both the teaching and non-teaching staff and the pupils in the generation of school rules and a school discipline management system. But the process starts with the governors and the head teacher agreeing the sort of school it is, the governors laying down the policy. That is not a level at which involvement of the children can positively be encouraged, in particular in a large school. It would not have the benefit that the noble Baroness suggests. She drew attention to instances where there was a gap between, not the governors and the pupils, but the staff and the pupils. The stage at which consultation should take place is when the aims of the policy have been set by the governors and the method of the policy is arrived at by the head teacher with his staff, both academic and otherwise.
If I understand correctly—my noble friend will tell me if I am wrong—when drawing up the policy under subsection (5)(b) the head teacher shall,
"have regard to any notification or guidance given to him under subsection (2)(b)".
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The head teacher has to have regard to what the governors advise and in preparing that advice the governors have to have regard to what the Secretary of State advises. At present what he advises is in circular 8/94. Paragraph 19 states:
"The policy should be discussed with parents and pupils, and should feature in the annual report to parents".
In other words, in his circular or guidance the Secretary of State is in a position to direct the governors to advise the head teacher to evolve the policy in the only way that really works: that is, to obtain the support of the children by giving them the feeling that they, in some way, own it. When we wrote the report, we saw that policy working and it is magic.
Lord Henley: I am most grateful to my noble friend for quoting from circular 8/94. As I mentioned, I have a copy in front of me, open at paragraph 19. It was not planted on my noble friend but I have highlighted exactly the same extract from which my noble friend quoted. Paragraph 19 also makes it clear earlier on that, although the governing body should take a clear lead in proposing principles and standards, the school's behaviour policy should be worked out in a spirit of co-operation with the head teacher and the whole of the teaching and non-teaching staff.
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness about the importance of involving pupils and staff, whether teaching or non-teaching, in the development of the school's disciplinary code. That is clearly good practice. It is recommended in Circular 8/94 which has now been in existence for three years. I shall make sure that the point is given added emphasis in the revised guidance that we shall need to issue following the enactment of the Bill. As always, I can assure the noble Baroness that the revised guidance will go out to consultation, so she will have her opportunity to make comments on it.
However, the important issue here is at what stage in drawing up the school's discipline policy it would be most beneficial to involve pupils and staff. It seems to us that the nature and timing of such involvement will need to vary to fit the circumstances of individual schools. Some may consider that the involvement should be before the governing body makes its statement of general principles. Others may take the view that it would be sensible and more beneficial if the head teacher were to consult pupils and staff when determining the school's rules and codes of conduct and their day-to-day application. Circular 8/94 offers an illustrative model of how the head could involve others in the school community in developing the discipline policy.
I do not wish to sound as though I am totally rejecting the noble Baroness's amendments—which of course I am—but I am not convinced of the need to put this on the face of the legislation, nor of the need to write the particular details that we have in the amendments. They could well constrain the dialogue which the noble Baroness, my noble friend Lord Elton and I would like to see happen. Difficulties could be created in formalising it. There would be the obvious problem as

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regards nursery and infant schools. The necessary flexibility can on this occasion be much better encompassed in guidance than in primary legislation.
Therefore, with that explanation, which was as sympathetic as I am sure the noble Baroness would expect, I hope that she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness David.Baroness David. Perhaps I may ask a question. Circular 8/94 was obviously highly praised and admirable in every way. But is it actually working? It is nearly three years since it came out. Are we satisfied with what is happening? Discipline in schools is a very tricky point.
Lord Henley: We heard late last year of one or two problems about discipline in schools. I suspect that whatever code of practice and whatever polices are pursued by a school, that will always be the case. As we all know as parents, by their very nature children can often create disciplinary problems. The system is working well but, as I made clear, the guidance, good though it is, will need a degree of revision in the light of the Bill.
As I said to the noble Baroness, when the Bill gets on the statute book and we start producing new guidance, we shall put it out to consultation, as always.
Lord Elton: Before we close the discussion, I wish to put on the record in support of the noble Baroness—though not of the amendment—the great importance of involving the non-teaching staff. It is essential that all teachers understand and adhere to the policy and that all other members of staff do so as well. It is just as easy to have a really ugly incident happen in the dinner break under the care of non-professionals as it is in the classroom. We noticed that, having expected things to be quieter in the afternoon because of the spotted dick and other heavy consumables that had gone down the red lane, we found a considerable increase in disorder and activity. It was because at that time dinner breaks were not properly supervised. Two of my colleagues witnessed the unintentional but very skilled escalation of a private quarrel into a general riot by the well-meaning dinner lady. So the head teacher had to be brought in to quell it.
I have many anecdotes, but I just want to say that everyone must understand the code and obey it. If teachers expect pupils to be courteous, the teachers must be courteous. If the teachers expect the pupils to be well dressed and properly turned out, the teachers must be well dressed and properly turned out. Otherwise it all becomes hypocrisy and does not work.
Baroness David: It has been very interesting and indeed fascinating to hear the noble Lord's contribution. I shall of course have to read it in Hansard. Perhaps I may make just one comment. The Minister spoke about primary school pupils and nursery school pupils not being able to be involved. I believe that it is perfectly possible for the teacher to have discussions with the class about discipline and how the children should behave. That is quite possibly
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because they cannot make written contributions or whatever. Discussion is very good. I do not want to rule out primary pupils and even nursery pupils from the whole discussion.
I have had a fairly sympathetic response from the Minister. It is just a case of whether or not this point should be written into the Bill. I should like to read carefully what both the Minister and the noble Lord said before deciding whether it is worth bringing back this point at a later stage. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 98 not moved.]
10.15 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 19 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Elton: I am sorry not to have given notice of my question. In new subsection (7)(b) the head teacher is required:
"in particular, at least once in every school year, [to] take steps to bring [the rules or the policy] to the attention of all such pupils and parents and all persons employed at the school".
In many schools English is not the first language and in some cases it is not a language at all of the parents. I merely ask my noble friend, after due thought perhaps, to let me know what provision there will be to ensure that such vital information is transmitted to parents who are not familiar with the English language. Even if pupils bring back the incomprehensible document, they can tell their parents that it means anything that the children like. That is very dangerous. I know of a large school in London where a charity with which I am concerned is launching a mentoring scheme and there is a difficulty in that the parents do not know anything about the school rules or anything at all about the school except what the children tell them, which often is nothing. That has a disastrous effect on discipline.
Lord Henley: My noble friend makes a very good point. Also, the children might not tell the parents nothing but tell them something which is in fact wrong. My noble friend's point is that there are a number of schools where there are a large number of non-English-speaking parents whose children's mother tongue is not English. In the main, most of those schools have fairly good arrangements about communicating with their particular parents.
I should like to consider the point made by my noble friend and perhaps I may write to him in somewhat greater detail about the kind of arrangements that we expect schools to make in those circumstances.
Clause 19 agreed to.
Clause 20 [Responsibility for discipline: grant-maintained and grant-maintained special schools]:
[Amendment No. 99 not moved.]
Clause 20 agreed to.
Clause 21 [Power of numbers of staff to restrain pupils]:
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 100:
Page 19, line 23, leave out from ("himself)") to end of line 28.
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 100 I shall speak also to Amendment No. 101. These are probing amendments. Clause 21 seeks to give staff members of schools power physically to restrain pupils who are injuring persons or damaging property. It is welcome to members of a joint working group of the Council of Local Education Authorities (CLEA) and the teachers' organisations, which has produced guidelines to deal with allegations of physical or sexual abuse made against classroom teachers and heads. The working group is aware of many allegations made against teachers which would have been difficult to sustain had teachers the right physically to intervene in a range of situations; for example, from fighting between pupils and bullying to destruction of property. Existing common law rights are not sufficient by way of a reassurance to teachers faced with the need to act.
It is unfortunate that the new clause was needed, but it was accepted at Report stage in the House of Commons. I have a briefing, the meaning of which is not very clear to me. Perhaps I can read it because apparently it contains genuine queries which should be resolved. It states:
"There are, however, two aspects of the clause which CLEA and the local education authority associations believe should be explored further. First, 37A(1) and sub-clauses (a) and (b) are precisely to the point; (c) is less so because it is altogether more subjective and begins to blur the otherwise clear difference between physical restraint and corporal punishment. The Government should be asked to provide illustrations of circumstances in which, while no pupil was committing an offence nor causing injury to, or damaging the property of, any person, yet it was necessary for a member of staff to use force to change these circumstances.
"Secondly, and arguably more seriously, the Government should be asked to reconsider sub-clause (4) which defines 'member of the staff', in relation to the school as a teacher and any other person who, with the authority of the head, has lawful control or charge of pupils at the school. At present the definition includes, for example, classroom assistants, laboratory assistants, welfare assistants and parent and other volunteers in respect of whom there can be no guarantee they will have received appropriate training either in the necessary skills to be employed in physically restraining children and young people or in the particular circumstances when the use of force is appropriate".
"If members of the Lords are not satisfied with Government responses to questions on sub-clauses (1)(c) and (4), then it is recommended that support for clause 37A be confined to (1)(a) and (b), (3) and (4), subject to a re-definition in (4) of 'member of staff' to be restricted to a teaching member of staff".
I apologise that the wording is not clear, but there may be some genuine queries in the briefing. That is why I read it out. I do not understand it, but I hope the Minister will have a good response from his civil servants. I beg to move.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: There is a wide welcome for the statutory enactment of what has been the common law position with regard to teachers' rights; that comes in the first part of this clause. The noble
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Baroness, Lady David, tabled two amendments as probing amendments and I look forward with interest to the Minister's reply.
Lord Henley: The noble Baroness, Lady David, did not understand what she was saying and I must admit that I too have some doubts about it. I will read Hansard carefully and there may be some points to which I need to respond.
It may help if I say a little about what the clause seeks to do. It is intended to help teachers, and on all sides of the Chamber we welcome that, as the teacher unions welcome it. Its purpose is to clarify the circumstances in which teachers and other staff—it is important that other staff be included—authorised by the head teacher may use reasonable force where necessary to stop pupils from harming themselves or others, committing a crime or causing serious disruption.
As we all know, at present many head teachers and teachers—we hear this from the unions themselves—are afraid to lay a finger on pupils for fear of being accused of assault of one kind or another. There have been cases of teachers being investigated by social services departments or by the police for trivial instances of restraint of pupils such as intervening to break up a playground fight. Obviously that is not right and we feel that teachers should be afforded some protection from charges of assault which can arise in those situations. We believe that keeping discipline is a major part of a teacher's job. Again, I think there would be general agreement on that.
Teachers, and other supervisory staff, should be allowed to use physical restraint in certain prescribed circumstances without fear of prosecution. I stress, though, that this has absolutely nothing whatever—I say this knowing the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady David—to do with corporal punishment. That, in the maintained sector, remains unlawful. Prevention and punishment are two very different things.
I must also emphasise that where a teacher has to restrain a pupil, he or she may only use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances. Ultimately it is for the courts to decide what is reasonable or not in the circumstances. It is not something the department can lay down. But I can say that we shall issue detailed guidance on the use of physical restraint, again, after consulting with the relevant interests. I have to stress again that what is or is not reasonable has in the end to be decided by the courts.
I shall look carefully tomorrow at precisely what the noble Baroness had to say. Should I feel that it is necessary to respond to any further points, I shall be more than happy to do so.
Baroness David: I thank the Minister for that reply. I am very pleased indeed that he has repeated that there is no question of bringing back corporal punishment in schools. I just wish that it was also forbidden in independent schools. It is quite ridiculous that it is not. I am grateful for his response. I hope that this rather mysterious amendment will become clearer in the course of time. I do not know whether the Minister

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might be willing to write to me if he manages to discover anything more about it. I should be grateful if he would. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 101 not moved.]
Clause 21 agreed to.
Clause 22 [Detention outside school hours lawful despite absence of parental consent]:
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton moved Amendment No. 102:
Page 20, line 39, after ("given") insert ("directly").
The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment I shall refer briefly to Amendment No. 103. Amendment No. 102 deals with the issue of parental notification with regard to a child being detained outside school hours. All parents have come across the situation where notices that came from the school may have been slightly reluctantly accepted for delivery by pupils and have occasionally ended up in the pocket of school clothes in the wash rather than being handed to the parents. There is also the forgetting to give the parent the notice and the quite genuine case of the parent not being given information.
If we are to have good relationships between home and school it is important that the home knows what is happening. It is also important because in a variety of circumstances, particularly with the older pupil of, say, 14, the parent may assume that he or she is carrying out a responsibility with regard to younger siblings such as being available when they are home from school. The amendment is quite clear. Anyone who has had children knows that they have a marked reluctance to pass on bad news. If we are to have good relationships between home and school, this is a good way of achieving them.
The 48 hours' notice in rural areas would allow for the direct transmission of information and the possibility for parents to make alternative provision. I recollect that on previous occasions the Minister has said that this would be a normal practice in rural areas. I believe that it would be helpful to strike a good balance between the crime being committed, whatever it is, and the punishment following shortly afterwards and ensuring that there is adequate time for parents to make alternative arrangements.
We are dealing with wording that is put on the face of the Bill. We have to consider that there are occasions—I say this as someone who has very seldom come across them, but I am sure that even the National Association of Headteachers and CHA would accept it occurs once in a blue moon—when a head teacher may behave unreasonably. It is remotely possible. I know that it will come as a shock to most Members of the Committee who have never come across it, but it is a very serious point.
We tend to talk about the relationship between home and school as though it was always dealing with two parties who are in a state of calm deliberation and making judgments very carefully. Just occasionally things go wrong at the school end and at the home end. I am talking about a time when one of the parents may be terminally ill and there may be enormous stress
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within the family. This is a mere safeguard, and it would not be required on many occasions. But as the Government propose to put 24 hours on the face of the Bill in rural areas not less than 48 hours would be appropriate. I beg to move.
10.30 p.m.
Lord Henley: The noble Baroness suggested possible criticisms of the NAHT and CHA. I would never wish to do that.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: Neither would I. I said that even NAHT and CHA, whose opinions I respect at all times, may have to admit that just occasionally a head teacher, possibly not even one of its members—probably not one of its members—could behave in an unreasonable way.
Lord Henley: Even Homer nods and even I occasionally might get certain things wrong. I return to the amendments. We want detention, as I believe do Members of the Committee opposite and the noble Baroness in particular, to be an effective punishment in the armoury of sanctions available to schools. Clause 22 therefore allows a pupil to be detained on disciplinary grounds after the end of the school session without the consent of the parent. That does not give the schools an unqualified right to impose detention. That is why we have specified on the face of the Bill, among other things, the requirement of at least 24 hours' written notice. I make it clear to the noble Baroness that detention can only be used where reasonable. If, for example, the child was unable to get home the school would have to find some other form of punishment. The noble Baroness gave the example of a child over the age of 14 being wanted at home to look after a younger child. That would be appropriate.
I believe that 24 hours' written notice allows for that to take place. The Bill requires that notice to be given by effective means. Pupil post could be an effective means of giving that notice but only if backed up by a phone call. We all know what happens to those odd little messages that get stuck at the bottom of the satchels of much younger children. Obviously, all that will be covered in the guidance that we shall put out to the schools.
Turning to the second part of the amendment, I am not persuaded that a pupil's parents in a rural area need the extra 48 hours' written notice. The requirement of 24 hours reflects the response to our consultation on this new statutory framework. Our original proposal required parents to be given at least two days' written notice in all cases. Many respondents argued that two days could be too long. It would weaken the effectiveness of the sanction by delaying its imposition. That is something well worth bearing in mind. Many schools, including those in rural areas, argued that one day's written notice was sufficient and already worked well in practice. We accepted the force of those arguments. I accept that it is a question of balance here, but we feel that 24 hours are better than the 48 hours that have been suggested for rural areas. Therefore, I hope that the noble Baroness will accept that, although these are difficult balances to

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get right, we have come to the correct decision. We shall ensure that appropriate guidance is given on making sure that the information reaches the parents by the most effective and appropriate means.
Lord Elton: I endorse what my noble friend said about the immediacy of punishment. The effectiveness of a punishment diminishes with delay. Therefore, unnecessary delay is to be avoided, but the safety of the child is an important consideration, as is the parent's knowledge of the child's whereabouts. My noble friend said that a telephone call would do it, but an awful lot of parents do not have a telephone, so some other means must be found. That point needs to be borne in mind when writing the guidance.
Lord Henley: I accept my noble friend's point. Obviously, the guidance will reflect that point. We were talking about written notice going by means of what I understand is called "pupil post", but in those circumstances and knowing well what the little mites can do with the notes that are sent back with them, such communication might be more appropriately backed up by means of a telephone call.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: The Minister was right when he said earlier that he should at least give careful scrutiny to those bearing gifts. The gift that I bring him (because I believe that his children are fairly young) is the information that the capacity of the fairly young child to lose things at the bottom of his satchel is as nothing compared to the capacity of the 14, 16 or even 18 year-old to lose information. The Minister has not yet got to that stage, but I ask him when drafting the guidelines to bear in mind the fact that on this sort of front things occasionally get worse before they get better. With those words of warning to the Minister and in the hope that he will take advice from his noble friends behind him who are smiling in agreement with the points that I am making, at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 103 not moved.]
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 104:
Page 20, line 46, after ("case;") insert—
("( ) whether regard has been had to the safety of the child, the length of the walking route between the school and the pupil's home having regard to his age, and whether the cost of transport if required would be available to the school other than from resources otherwise allocated in its annual budget;").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment would add reference to the length of the walking route and additional transport costs as issues to be taken into account in considering whether a child's compulsory detention is reasonable.
The issue was debated in another place, when the Minister of State argued that it was unnecessary to put such a reference on the face of the Bill as it already contained the all-inclusive phrase "any special circumstances". He argued that the sort of detail that the
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amendment seeks to introduce into the Bill is best dealt with in guidance - doubtless "after further consultation", a phrase that we seem to hear a good deal.
The purpose of tabling the amendment is to seek information from the Government as to what progress has been made on the drafting of suitable guidelines and to seek assurances as to the nature and timetable for the consultation on guidelines upon which the Minister gave a commitment. The Minister apparently offered assurances that there would be no cost implications for schools and made clear the Government's position that the responsibility for transport arrangements should lie with the parents. I beg to move.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: I rise to add my support for the words of the noble Baroness, Lady David.
Lord Henley: I think I have got this right and that the noble Baroness is really putting this amendment forward as a probing amendment to ask where we are on the guidelines—sorry, on the guidance. I can remember one Bill on which we had long arguments about the difference between "guidelines" and "guidance". Fortunately, that is not a problem that we have today. I prefer to write to the noble Baroness explaining exactly where we are with the guidance and what it will and will not include. As always, I repeat—for the umpteenth time—that when the guidance appears we will consult upon it. We shall welcome the views of the noble Baroness as well as those to whom we will send the guidance for consultation.
Baroness David: Given the Minister's response, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No.105:
Page 21, line 17, at end insert—
("(6) Any failure by the pupil to attend a detention shall not constitute grounds for exclusion under section 23 below." ").
The noble Baroness said: I beg to move Amendment No.105. Clause 22 provides that a school may impose detention outside school hours without parental consent. This amendment would ensure that failure to attend such a detention would not of itself constitute grounds for exclusion.
Exclusions continue to rise and pose a problem for the education system. Refusal to accept detention or to attend one imposed without parental consent should surely not be grounds for exclusion of itself unless there are other associated factors. There is otherwise a real risk that detention may lead to a more confrontational approach between schools and parents and to further increases in exclusion. This amendment, even if unsuccessful, provides an opportunity for the Government to record in Hansard that failure to comply with this new legislation will not necessarily be grounds for exclusion. This must make sense, not least if non-attendance is due to sickness, failure to make transport arrangements and so on. Such a statement might help to reduce any further pressure on the exclusions system.
It may be useful to refer back to experience of corporal punishment when that was available for use in schools. Many LEAs would have had a number of exclusions cases running a year where a school had suspended and then excluded children because of their or their parents' refusal to accept corporal punishment. The problem would have been exacerbated if neighbouring schools had run the same policy. Is there not a danger that this problem might be recreated? The simple question is whether, if a parent refuses detention for a child or if the child refuses to be detained, there are reasonable grounds for exclusion and, if the child is then excluded, whether it will be a justifiable response by a school or an LEA, in considering whether to direct re-admission, that the child or parent had refused detention. It would be helpful to have an answer to this in Hansard. At the very least the DfEE must be pressed to provide clarification about this in its exclusions document.
Lord Henley: I regret that I am unable to give the noble Baroness the assurances that she seeks. We have already made clear that it is the head teacher who is responsible for determining measures to secure discipline and good behaviour in schools. The head is responsible for enforcing the school's discipline policy on a day-to-day basis. If a pupil fails to attend detention given within the provisions of this clause for a disciplinary offence I believe that it is for the head teacher to determine how the pupil should atone for that non-attendance and the original misbehaviour that led to that detention. Normally, that would call for a more severe sanction. I agree that the disciplinary offence for which the pupil has been given detention may well not be one which in the normal course of events warrants exclusion.
However, what follows detention in a school's hierarchy of sanctions is for the head to determine. There may be circumstances in which the head will give the pupil a fixed term exclusion for failing to attend a detention. Such cases will be relatively rare. During that time efforts could be made to reach an accommodation with the parents about that detention. If that failed and the circumstances were repeated and the pupil and parents continued to defy the head teacher, as a last resort I believe that the head could well be justified in permanently excluding the pupil. But to put on the statute book a provision of the kind suggested by the noble Baroness which provides that in no circumstances can failure by the pupil to attend the detention constitute grounds for exclusion is wrong, in that it limits the options available to the head concerned. I repeat that I expect such circumstances to be very rare indeed, but I believe that this should still be part of the armoury of measures available to the head concerned.
10.45 p.m.
Baroness David: I hope that the Minister did not mean one thing that he said, which I believe I heard correctly, which was that it might lead to permanent exclusion. That would be quite unjustified. As the Minister probably knows, we are not happy with the clause and this after-school detention. I shall read what
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he said. I think that he has tried to give us some reassurance. Whether I am happy enough with what we have heard remains to be seen. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 22 agreed to.
Baroness Young Baroness Young moved Amendment No. 106:
Before Clause 23, insert the following new clause—
EXCLUSION OF PUPILS: CONSIDERATIONS
(" .—(1) Schedule 15 to the Education Act 1996 (reinstatement of pupils excluded from county, voluntary or maintained special schools) shall be amended as follows—
(2) After paragraph 2 there shall be inserted—
"2A. In deciding whether the pupil in question should he reinstated, the authority shall have regard both to the interests of that pupil and to the interests of other pupils at the school and members of its staff.".
(3) After paragraph 3 there shall be inserted—
"3A. In deciding whether to direct reinstatement of the pupil in question, the governing body shall have regard both to the interests of that pupil and to the interests of other pupils at the school and members of its staff.".
(4) After paragraph 5 there shall be inserted—
"5A. In deciding whether to direct reinstatement of the pupil in question, the authority or governing body shall have regard both to the interests of that pupil and to the interests of other pupils at the school and members of its staff.".
(5) After paragraph 9 there shall he inserted—
"9A. In deciding whether the pupil in question should he reinstated, the governing body shall have regard both to the interests of that pupil and to the interests of other pupils at the school and members of its staff.".
(6) After paragraph I I there shall be inserted—
"11A. In deciding whether to direct the reinstatement of the pupil in question, the authority or the governing body shall have regard both to the interests of that pupil and to the interests of other pupils at the school and members of its staff.".").
The noble Baroness said: The amendment would require at each decisive stage of the appeals process relating to exclusions that the interests of other pupils and the staff of the school are considered in addition to those of the pupil being excluded. It is a straightforward point. The amendment makes that clear.
The Bill rightly introduces a requirement that, in considering reinstatement of an excluded pupil on appeal, an appeal committee must have regard not just to the interests of the pupil concerned but the interests of other pupils in the school and members of the staff. Rather than merely introduce that requirement at the final stage of an exclusion process, it seems sensible, not least in order to establish consistent criteria against which a decision to exclude can be properly judged, that the same obligation be required throughout all the appeal stages.
There is no reason why, if it is accepted that considerations relating to other pupils and staff are valid in deciding whether to uphold the head teacher's decision to exclude at the final appeal, their validity should not also be made clear at the earlier appeal proceedings. It is obvious why this matter is considered, because clearly when one is considering discipline matters one needs to consider the effect on all the pupils, not just the one who is being disciplined.
My understanding is that in Committee in another place an undertaking was given that the new guidance that the department of my noble friend the Minister is to put out on exclusions would reflect the effect of the amendment. Such an assurance is of course welcome, but it has been put to me that in the light of the Government's proposals to require an appeal committee to consider the interests of staff and other pupils during its deliberations, it is sensible for the above reasons to reflect that throughout all appeal stages and to put it in primary legislation. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: In support of my noble friend I would just say two things. First, we have a spate of reports of schools most reluctantly being forced to receive pupils they do not want to contain. Without knowing the facts of the cases, one can do little more than guess. There is a suspicion in my mind that on some occasions those hearing an appeal have very much considered the case of the individual child and not the effect of the return of that child on the upwards of 20 children in the class in which he or she will be taught.
Secondly, we live in an increasingly litigious age. I hope that the reassurance that is given to my noble friend that the matter rests on guidance or circulars will be lawyer-proof; in other words, that appeal bodies can be confident that if they are taken to court for not upholding an appeal—I believe that that is justiciable—they will be protected in the court from that suit by whatever guidance or other measure my noble friend has in mind.
Lord Henley: I have considerable sympathy for the idea behind my noble friend's new clause, though not in terms of putting it into primary legislation. What it seeks to do is to replicate provisions in Clauses 24 and 25 relating to the independent exclusion appeal committees and to require those committees to consider the interests of other pupils and members of staff at the school as well as the interests of the excluded pupil when considering reinstatement. That is an important point. We do not want, as it were, one rotten apple corrupting the rest of the barrel.
However, I do not consider that we need to prescribe this in primary legislation. As it stands, Schedule 15 to the 1996 Act does not go into this kind of detail on arrangements for LEAs and governing bodies when considering reinstatement of pupils at the first stages of the exclusion appeal procedures; nor was it intended to do so. LEAs and governing bodies are closer to the life of the school than independent appeal committees and are quite naturally going to take account of the wider interests of the school in considering reinstatement.
The present provisions in Schedule 15 allow significant flexibility at local level in the handling of procedures for hearing parents' representations. That seems right, given the variation in local circumstances, and I would not want to start laying down detailed procedures in statute for those first stages of the appeal arrangements.
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However, I take the point that it is important to ensure that the wider interests of the school are never overlooked when reinstatement is being considered, and we shall ensure that the new guidance which the department will be producing on exclusions will give added emphasis to this point. I will also ask my officials to look at the new guidance and other matters in terms of what my noble friend Lord Elton described as "ensuring that they are lawyer-proof'. Most of us would recognise that as being difficult to achieve, but no doubt they can give thought to it. I hope that with those assurances my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her new clause.
Baroness Young: I thank my noble friend for that reply. I am sure that he has taken on board the point, but I did not follow the argument that one should not go into such detail at the first stages of an appeals procedure. The difficulty of one child coming back into the class and disrupting everybody else is just as serious at the beginning as at the end. In fact, for teachers and head teachers in particular, weighing up the balance between the difficulty with one ill-disciplined child and the effect of that on the rest of the class is tricky. I believe that they require a great deal of support in discipline matters.
However, it is late and this is not a matter which I should think of pressing to a Division. I shall look closely at what my noble friend has said and I hope that he will bear closely in mind what was said by my noble friend Lord Elton. One of the ways that teachers can be helped is to strengthen the law and to prevent the possibility of litigation when they believe that they are acting perfectly reasonably in trying to enforce discipline in schools, which is essential for the good learning of the children and very much desired by the parents. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 23 [Variation of limit on fixed-period exclusions: all maintained schools]:
Lord Tope Lord Tope moved Amendment No. 107:
Page 21, line 20, after ("school)-) insert—
(" (a) after subsection (1) there shall be inserted—
"(1A) Where the head teacher of a school exercises his power to exclude a pupil for a period of more than three days, he shall ensure that the educational needs of that pupil continue to be met.": and.
(b)").
The noble Lord said: It has been agreed that Amendments Nos. 107 and 108 should be taken together. I intend to speak primarily to Amendment No. 107 and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, will primarily address Amendment No. 108 which stands in his name.
The purpose of Amendment No. 107, which is part of a package designed to clarify and strengthen the section of the Bill relating to exclusion from school, is to put beyond doubt the duty of the school to be responsible for contributing to the continuing education of a pupil who has been temporarily excluded.
There is a clear distinction between a fixed-term exclusion and a permanent exclusion. The distinction is perhaps better expressed in the old terminology of

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"suspension", in terms of the fixed-term exclusion and "expulsion". When pupils are expelled they are removed from the roll of the school. The connection between school, pupil and parent is severed and the school no longer has a duty to educate the pupil. That duty remains with the parent and reverts to the LEA to secure suitable provision. However, when a pupil is excluded for a fixed period—suspended, as we used to say—the school still retains its responsibility towards that excluded pupil.
The sanction of fixed-term exclusion should be understood properly as part of the school's tool kit for upholding its disciplinary policies. There is some debate about that but I understand that the weight of professional opinion is that a fixed term exclusion should not be seen as a punishment in itself. Withdrawing the opportunity to be educated from a troublesome individual is, from society's point of view, a self-defeating policy. The lack of a successful education is associated closely with socially damaging behaviour later in life.
Rather, a temporary exclusion is a device to facilitate other measures designed to deal with the disciplinary problem which is being experienced. During fixed exclusion that has been imposed as a matter of urgency, it may not be practical to require the continuation of the excluded pupil's school work. Nevertheless, it is always important that the school should seek to take positive steps to ensure that the excluded pupil's education continues while he is out of school.
It is clear from the advice and guidance set out in the DfEE circular on the topic that that is government policy. Paragraph 51 states:
"The head teacher of the excluding school should wherever practicable make arrangements for the pupil who is excluded for a fixed period to receive school work to do at home and to have it marked until he or she returns to school. The governing body should keep these arrangements under review".
However, that is not made explicit on the face of the legislation and it is possible to misread Section 19 of the Education Act 1996, which provides that LEAs should have responsibility for "excluded pupils" without drawing a distinction between temporary and permanent exclusions. This amendment seeks to put the matter beyond doubt by setting out that the duty of the head teacher to prevent a temporary exclusion from being a complete interruption to a child's education appears clearly in primary legislation.
The current framing of statute law appears to conflict with government policy that schools should take a measure of responsibility in these matters. The amendment brings the position more into balance and makes clear that schools and LEAs must both have a role in securing the education of excluded pupils. I beg to move.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: Amendment No. 108 empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations, under Clause 23, to secure that head teachers take appropriate steps during any period of fixed term exclusion to return the child to school as quickly as possible, including assessing special needs and meeting parents, pupil and staff.
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This amendment does not prescribe the precise content of those regulations, which can be left, as it happens, until after the general election. But it flags up three main principles. First, the head teacher should aim to get the pupil back in school as quickly as possible. That means that even if a pupil is told that he is suspended for the full 45 days, he can and should be readmitted at an earlier date if the school is satisfied that his behaviour has improved or will improve.
Secondly, the pupil's special educational needs should be considered. That is extremely important. Very few excluded pupils do not have special educational needs. Ofsted, in its report found that:
"Most support to pupils with behavioural problems was reactive, disciplinary and seldom sufficiently linked to learning, rather than planned and rooted in a diagnosis of pupils' learning difficulties. Many excluded pupils (58 of the 112 whose case-histories were studied) had literacy difficulties which were often undetected, detected too late or not deemed sufficiently severe to warrant allocation of scarce additional support … Only about a quarter of the schools had good systems for modifying the curriculum or for varying either its organisation or the groupings of pupils, for pupils in difficulty. By contrast, about a third made no concessions when pupils presented behavioural problems, providing no opportunities, for example, for pupils to change sets to resolve personality clashes with other pupils or with teachers".
Discovering that pupils have special educational needs does not, of course, mean that they must be moved to a special school. Mostly they can, and by law should, be kept in ordinary mainstream schools, with the national curriculum modified where necessary to meet their abilities and with additional help provided, either out of the school budget or from the LEA under a statement of special needs.
The third recommendation is that there should be meetings with the pupil, parents and teachers to identify and remedy the causes of the behaviour giving rise to the exclusion. It should be self-evident that schools ought to take these steps during a fixed-term exclusion, so there ought to be no problem about making this a legal requirement.
The amendment was debated by Standing Committee D on 17th December 1966 (Hansard cols. 463–69); indeed, it was quite a brief debate for that committee. The Government did not argue with the aim of the amendment. They simply said that it would appear in the guidance to schools which would be issued under the amendment. But, given the need for schools to treat fixed term exclusions as serious emergencies needing immediate action, rather than just—and this is highly tempting—breathing spaces from difficult children, and given the great temptation that overstressed schools are under to treat a fixed-term exclusion as just a breathing space from an impossible child, it is surely wise to give the Secretary of State powers to require schools to take more active steps to identify what is wrong and put it right.
11 p.m.
Lord Elton: I find myself less attracted to Amendment No. 107 than Amendment No. 108. Almost by definition, a child who is excluded is already not having his educational needs met. Indeed, even if it is a case of him causing so much disruption that other

1169
children's needs are also not being met, he is not being taught the lessons that he ought to learn. Merely sending the material that he should have been studying home with him is unlikely to achieve any improvement in his situation. A statutory requirement to make arrangements for his educational needs to be met that went beyond that is something which the head teacher would probably not have within his command. I believe that this is just an occasion to air opinions on the system.
However, perhaps I may also use the next amendment to air opinions. The speed of what I call "re-entry" into the normal system is an absolute requirement because the longer a pupil stays out of his study of the curriculum the more difficult it will be for him to pick up where he should be, the greater the drag he therefore becomes on the rest of the class and, indeed, the more likely that difference between them will cause further friction and get him excluded again.
Exclusion must always be a matter of last resort because, however unavoidable, it is a confession of failure in ability to contain a pupil and must indeed be a matter of great regret in a school. As for the other aspects in subsection (4) of the noble Lord's amendment, I do not believe that it matters too much how they are dealt with. If my noble friend the Minister says that they will be dealt with by guidance or a circular, I shall be happy. They are certainly counsels of best practice.
Baroness David: Perhaps I may make one point as regards reasons for not allowing children to be out of school for long. The Audit Commission recently found that 42 per cent. of offenders of school age who were sentenced in the youth court had been excluded from schools and that, conversely, 78 per cent. of permanently excluded and 31 per cent. of temporarily excluded pupils commit offences. The Home Office Research Unit has also identified school exclusions, including temporary exclusions, as one of the four main factors characterising young offenders. I hope that that information adds another reason for getting such children back into school as soon as possible.
Lord Henley: I shall start by posing a question for the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and I do so out of general interest. I believe that he quoted from circular 8/94—
Lord Tope: 10/94.
Lord Henley: I see; hence my confusion. I had only 8/94 in front of me. I shall read most carefully in Hansard what the noble Lord said. His paragraph 51 was different from my paragraph 51.
I start by saying to the noble Lord that I am sympathetic to the reasons behind Amendment No. 107. It is clearly important to ensure that exclusion from school does not mean exclusion from education. Schools do not lose responsibility for pupils who remain on their roll but who are not currently attending.
The amendment, however, goes too far in the practical burden it would place on schools. For a school itself to meet fully the educational needs of each
1170
individual excluded pupil, which in most cases would presumably mean individual tuition at home, would be extremely difficult to arrange, not to mention expensive—all the more so, of course, if that pupil had special educational needs to be met. Moreover, as phrased, the amendment would apply not just to pupils on a fixed period exclusion but also to permanently excluded pupils who were no longer on the school roll. I appreciate that is probably not the intention behind the noble Lord's amendment, but I hope he would agree that it would be unfair to expect schools to continue to educate pupils in those circumstances.
I believe it is much more appropriate in the case of pupils excluded for any significant period for local education authorities, rather than individual schools, to take responsibility for ensuring that suitable education is provided. That is why in the 1993 Act, for the first time ever, we placed a statutory duty on LEAs to arrange for suitable education to be provided for pupils who would not otherwise receive it, by reason of exclusion or otherwise. That duty, now contained in Section 19 of the 1996 Act, applies in the cases both of pupils who have been permanently excluded and of those excluded for a fixed period. So I think the noble Lord's amendment would conflict with the existing statutory duty on LEAs.
I can give an assurance to the noble Lord that after this Bill is enacted the department will as always be issuing comprehensive new guidance to schools and LEAs about all aspects of school exclusions. That guidance will certainly cover their respective responsibilities towards excluded pupils in ensuring their continuing education.
Turning to Amendment No. 108, I acknowledge that there may be occasions when a teacher, having excluded a pupil for a fixed period, may then find that the pupil is ready to return to school before that period is completed. In the majority of cases, however, the punishment of a fixed-term exclusion should be exactly that. Commuting the sentence—if I can put it in Home Office terms—would not be appropriate. Nevertheless, I agree that there may be circumstances where an earlier return is justified and we shall certainly include advice on this point in the new guidance which the department will need to issue to schools on exclusions. No pupil should be kept out of school longer than is necessary.
The actions to be taken by head teachers during a fixed period exclusion are also, it seems to me, best left to guidance—as I think my noble friend Lord Elton put it—rather than being prescribed in regulations. Head teachers will be best placed to judge what should be done on a case-by-case basis, bearing in mind the circumstances of the exclusion, any problems underlying the individual pupil's behaviour and the length of the exclusion. We intend to put into guidance relevant factors for head teachers to consider which will cover among other things the specific points raised by this amendment as regards pupils with special educational needs and the involvement of a pupil's parents.

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I hope therefore with those explanations of the sort of guidance that will be available, both noble Lords will feel able to withdraw their amendments.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: Before the Minister sits down, is he prepared to offer a response, now or later, to the following query? With regard to Amendment No. 107, would he consider it reasonable that where immediate remedial action is deemed to be appropriate, where a pupil is referred to a specialist team, place or system to try to get the child back in the system as quickly as possible, there ought to be some provision whereby the school at the very least uses the money that was provided for that child's education to pay for such immediate action?
Lord Henley: I take the point that the noble Baroness makes. I should like to consider it. I shall write to her.
Lord Tope: I apologise to the Minister if I said circular 8/94. I do not think that I did so. I am reassured that I did not; it was a mishearing. A little earlier I inadvertently left out a couple of words when referring to the period of a fixed exclusion. I meant to say during the first three days of a fixed exclusion. That is probably clear from the amendment. However, the record should indicate clearly what I meant.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, is temporarily not in his place. I took his point about it not being of great benefit to send school work to be done at home to a pupil who has had to be excluded. I merely point out that those were not my words but those of the DfEE circular. I think that the Minister was talking about permanent exclusions. The amendment amends Clause 23, which deals specifically with fixed term exclusions. That is what we refer to.
I have made my points. I am sorry that again I have failed to convince the Minister. It leaves me with little choice at this stage but to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris Lord Morris of Castle Morris had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 108:
Page 21, line 27, at end insert—
(3) The Secretary of State may make regulations requiring the head teacher to take steps to ensure that a pupil who has been excluded for a fixed period returns to school as quickly as possible.
(4) The regulations made under subsection (3) may, in particular, make provision—

(a) for any special educational needs of the excluded pupil to be identified; and

(b) for meetings to be held with the pupil, the pupil's parents and the pupil's teachers with a view to identifying—

(i) the cause or causes of the behaviour giving rise to the exclusion, and

(ii) steps which can be taken by the school, parents or pupil to prevent reoccurrence of that behaviour.".").

The noble Lord said: With the same regrets, and for the same reasons as those eloquently expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I shall not move the amendment.
[Amendment No. 108 not moved.]
Clause 23 agreed to.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale moved Amendment No. 109:
After Clause 23, insert the following new clause—
CONDITIONS FOR PERMANENT EXCLUSIONS
(" . In section 156 of the Education Act 1996, after subsection (1) there shall be inserted—
"(1A) The articles of government for every maintained school, grant-maintained school, maintained special school and non-maintained special school shall provide that no pupil shall be permanently excluded unless—

(a) all reasonable steps have been taken by the school to avoid excluding the pupil; and

(b) allowing the pupil to continue to attend the school would be seriously detrimental to the education or welfare of the pupil, other pupils or staff at the school.".").

The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 109 brings into law what is already in government practice. Circular 10/94 provides that,
"The Secretary of State believes that it should be clear in each case of permanent exclusion that: it is a last resort: the school has taken all reasonable steps to avoid excluding the child; and allowing the child to remain in school would be seriously detrimental to the education or welfare of the pupil, or to that of others at the school".
When these grounds were formulated in 1992, and debated both in this House and in another place for the Education Act 1993, they had the support of most of those working with children in schools, including the main teaching and head teacher unions. It does not seem right or sufficient that the measure should have been put into guidance only. I do not wish to quote at great length at this time of night from the recent Ofsted report but, among other things, it said:
"A few [schools] were irresponsibly profligate in the use made of exclusion, devaluing it as a sanction".
Perhaps I may paraphrase what would otherwise require lengthy quotation to justify. The message is that significant numbers of pupils should not have been excluded, and, to a lesser extent, that a few schools had failed to exclude under those grounds and thus have put other pupils in the school at risk.
The amendment seeks to correct that by stating a clear principle of last resort, as well as seeking to improve relationships between schools and families, and schools and LEAs. The arguments for having the grounds in law are many. I limit myself to two. First, if the new clause's criteria were established, parents and governors would have a much better and fairer opportunity to question unnecessary exclusions, and schools would have to be more careful about why they excluded. On the other hand, maintained schools would be in a stronger position to challenge what they regard as unfair reinstatement orders by the LEA.
The second point I wish to make as an argument for having the grounds in law—and I feel very strongly

1173
about this—is that pupils are frequently excluded because they have special needs, for example, learning difficulties or emotional problems. Often the school could manage these needs during a period of assessment and statementing and then acquire additional resources from the statement to keep the child on. Instead, often the child is thrown out and is assessed out of school or in a special school and so loses any chance to have mainstream education. Exclusions are therefore vitally connected to the issue of how schools are to be helped to make adequate special educational provision. The amendment would assist schools to distinguish between those special needs they can cope with during a period of assessment and those regrettably with which they cannot cope. I beg to move.
11.15 p.m.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: It is extremely late and I will be brief. I very much support the amendment. First, everyone knows and agrees that permanent exclusion is a serious matter for the child and its family. Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Morris, said in speaking to an earlier amendment, many of the people who are permanently excluded are children with particular difficulties. Thirdly, although the Minister has suggested to us on a number of occasions that he dislikes having matters put in the Bill, particularly those which appear to limit the absolute freedom of schools to manage their own affairs, I believe this is an area where absolute clarity would be of great help to everyone involved in this serious matter: teachers, head teachers, parents and in some cases pupils. I therefore very much support the amendment.
Lord Henley: I shall respond with extreme brevity. As the noble Baroness put it, the words in the amendment—and I imagine that she took them from it—are almost identical to what is said in paragraph 5 of the department's guidance to schools on exclusions in Circular 10/94. I got it right this time.
In my view, this is another attempt, that I would try to discourage, to put into legislation what properly belongs in guidance. In answer to the point put by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, the new clause, if we accepted it, would deny heads the flexibility they need to make judgments on individual cases and would put into legislation what belongs in guidance. I appreciate that both noble Baronesses differ from me on the matter, but we will have to agree to differ on this occasion.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale: I am sorry the Minister does not feel he can accept this, which is, after all, just the guidance. But, for all the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, and I have put, we think it would be much better in legislation. I regret that the
1174
Minister cannot see his way to including it, but in view of what he said I will go away and think about it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 24 [Exclusion or reinstatement appeals: LEA-maintained schools]:
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 110:
Page 22, line 14, at end insert ("and
(e) in a case where the appellant is the parent, the pupil to make written representations and to appear to make oral representations.".").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment is linked with Amendment No. 111 in the name of my noble friend Lord Morris. The amendment aims to entitle pupils to attend appeals hearings. I am often involved in trying to get children more involved and to get their rights acknowledged and this is another attempt.
It is unclear why pupils are not entitled to attend their own exclusion hearings. The proposal is obviously sensible, given that the pupil needs to understand the reasons for his exclusion and it is a vital source of information about the causes of that behaviour to the appeals committee. The amendment does not force pupils to attend appeals hearings. Probably young pupils would not attend the whole of the hearing or sometimes they would not come at all. It simply requires the appeals committee to allow the pupil to attend.
The right of parties affected to attend arbitration is an essential principle of natural justice. It is also an undertaking under Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Committee on the Rights of the Child specifically criticised the UK for not allowing children to attend their exclusion appeals and has recently issued guidelines worldwide encouraging their attendance at exclusion hearings.
Children attend other hearings deciding their fate, principally criminal and care proceedings, without administrative or psychological difficulties. It is our understanding that at present many exclusion appeals committees do invite the pupil to attend. This amendment seeks to make that good practice standard practice. I beg to move.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: Amendment No. 111 seeks to change the emphasis of the Bill in relation to the matters that independent appeals committees are required to take into account in their deliberations. It is right that such committees should have regard to the interests of the excluded pupil in an appeal hearing. It is also appropriate that the interests of other pupils at the school should be taken into account. But this amendment would require that the appeals committee should consider specifically the safety of members of staff rather than the vaguer notion of the interests of members of staff.
While it is quite right for an appeals committee to consider broader issues in relation to the welfare and provision of education which the excluded pupil and

1175
other pupils receive when directing that an appeals committee had to have regard to the consequences of reinstating or not reinstating an excluded pupil, so far as staff are concerned it is appropriate to identify this more precisely in terms of the safety of members of staff. Teachers and all other staff in common with all other employees have a legitimate expectation that their employer will have regard to the need to ensure that they are working within a safe working environment. Obviously, that is a primary responsibility on all employers.
However, it is in the interest of teachers to have an easy and quiet life and to avoid, if they can, being exposed to pupils who might be very difficult and troublesome. But teachers are expected to work professionally and should not be encouraged to exercise any form of veto as to the particular pupils that they are expected to teach.
The clause as presently worded provides just that encouragement. There have been a number of high profile cases recently where groups of teachers have sought by industrial action to overturn the decision of a governing body to reinstate a pupil. The Government seem to be offering an open invitation for that sort of action to be emulated up and down the country. Enshrining teachers' interests on the face of legislation will provide backing to just the kind of activity that Ministers so recently condemned.
There would appear to be a significant risk, if no steps are taken by the Government to clarify what is meant by the word "interests", that the preference of individual teachers or teachers in general in a school not to teach a particular pupil could override the rights and interests of the pupil concerned to be educated in that particular school.
During the debate in another place, the Minister, Mrs Gillan, said at column 472 of Hansard of Standing Committee D on 17th December 1996:
"It will always be appropriate for an appeal committee to have regard to the broader interests of the school staff. The amendment could mean that appeal committees might not consider the interests of staff members other than those related to their safety".
That is, in fact, the precise intention of this amendment. It is our contention that safety is the only legitimate interest of staff that should be taken into account. It is the only consideration sufficiently important to override the educational interests of children.
If the Government wish to defend the wording in their Bill, they should be prepared to say exactly what staff interests other than safety would be sufficient ground to uphold an exclusion that might otherwise be unnecessary or unsatisfactory. Provided that an independent appeals committee is satisfied that the reinstatement of a particular pupil would not pose a threat to the safety of members of staff in that school and by implication necessarily to that of other pupils in the school, the appeals committee should primarily be
1176
focusing on what is in the wider interests of the pupil in question and those of other pupils in the school.
So, this amendment simply seeks to clarify these issues in order to ensure that independent appeals committees are properly directed to have regard to those issues which it is necessary for them to balance when coming to a decision over the future of an excluded pupil. It should be made crystal clear that where there is a conflict of interests, the interests of the pupils should be overridden only if there is an actual threat to the safety of staff.
Lord Henley: We are nearing the end of a long day. Perhaps I can start by saying that I have some sympathy with the first amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady David. It is right and sensible that, at least in some circumstances, an excluded pupil under 18 should be able to attend an independent exclusion appeal hearing on his or her case and to speak at that hearing. I acknowledge that the interests of parents and pupil will not in every case be identical. It may be that the pupil will have useful information to offer to the committee which his parents would not be able to provide.
However, having considered the matter carefully, we are not persuaded of the case for amending the law in this way. First, I understand that the department has not received any representations or complaints about the operation of the law as it stands in this regard. That suggests that appeal committees are generally exercising sensibly their present discretion to allow any pupil to attend the hearing and speak on his or her behalf.
Secondly, there would be obvious practical problems in giving all pupils, even the young and immature, a separate, unfettered right to attend a hearing and address the committee. But providing a qualified right would be no substantive advance on the present discretionary provision and, on balance, the Government believe that it is preferable to continue with that.
However, I can assure the noble Baroness that we recognise the importance of the issue that she raised in Amendment No. 110 and I am grateful that she did so raise it. We will ensure that it is given greater emphasis in the revised guidance we plan to issue after the enactment of the Bill. The matter will certainly be kept under review.
Turning to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Morris, Amendment No. 111 would appear to be unnecessary. As presently worded, Clause 24 requires an independent appeal committee, when considering whether or not to reinstate an excluded pupil, to,
"have regard to both the interests of that pupil and the interests of other pupils at his school and members of its staff".
An appeal committee will therefore have to take account of the interests of members of staff of the school which excluded the pupil.
It seems to me that the interests of members of school staff will necessarily involve their safety. That is one of

1177
the important interests that individuals have. However, it is better to have in the clause a broad term like,
"the interests of members of staff",
rather than to use the narrow term "safety", for the simple reason that not all exclusion appeals arise from incidents of violence and therefore the safety of members of staff will not always be in question when the reinstatement of pupils is being considered. For an appeal committee to have regard to the broader interests of school staff will always be appropriate.
I hope therefore that the noble Lord will agree that his amendment is not necessary and that, if we were to accept it, it would mean that the interests of staff members other than those related to safety might not be considered by the appeal committee. It would therefore exclude certain matters that ought to be included. I hope that when it comes to his turn the noble Lord will therefore feel he does not wish to pursue his amendment.
Baroness David: I thank the Minister for that reply. He gave some slight encouragement. I hope, as he says, that the guidance, when it comes, will be positive. In the light of that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 111 not moved.]
Clause 24 agreed to.
[Amendment No. 112 not moved.]
Clause 25 agreed to.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
House resumed.

Planning (Consequential Provisions) (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to.
Planning (Hazardous Substances) (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to.
National Heritage Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with an amendment; the Commons amendment ordered to be printed.
Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with a privilege amendment; the amendment considered and agreed to.

Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with a privilege amendment; the amendment considered and agreed to.
House adjourned at half past eleven o'clock.

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