Sitting of 2 May 2001

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

  STANDING ORDERS (PRIVATE BUSINESS)
  Ordered,
  That the Amendments to Standing Orders set out in the Schedule be made, with effect from 27th November 2001:—

  SCHEDULE
  Standing Order 1, line 46, at end insert:—
  'the term "minister of the Crown' means the holder of an office in Her Majesty's government in the United Kingdom and includes the Treasury;'.
  Standing Order 38, line 15, at end insert—
  '(2A) The printed memorandum shall include a statement of opinion, by or on behalf of the promoters, as to the compatibility of the provisions of the bill with the Convention rights (as defined in the Human Rights Act 1998).'.
  Standing Order 39, line 6, after 'Treasury', insert 'the Privy Council Office,'.
  Standing Order 85, line 6, at end insert—
  '(2) Without prejudice to the generality of paragraph (1) of this standing order, where in the case of a private bill which has been read a first time no report from a minister of the Crown has been presented to the House under Standing Order 169A, the Chairman of Ways and Means may, if he thinks fit, direct the attention of the House to that fact.'.
  Standing Order 144, leave out lines 12 to 15.
  Standing Order 158, line 16, at end insert—
  '(by being deposited in the Private Bill Office)'.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means]
  Ordered,
  That the following Standing Order be made, with effect from 27th November 2001:—
  Reports concerning human rights.
  169A. In the case of a private bill originating in this House or brought from the House of Lords, a report from a minister of the Crown on the statement of opinion required by Standing Order 38(2A) shall be presented to the House (by being deposited in the Private Bill Office) not later than the second sitting day after that on which the bill was read a first time.'.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Oral Answers to Questions
  CABINET OFFICE
  The Minister was asked—

  Rural-Urban Policy Co-ordination
  Mr. Simon Hughes: What recent reviews she has undertaken of the co-ordination of Government policy on rural and urban policy. [159095]
  The Minister for the Cabinet Office (Marjorie Mowlam): As chair of the ministerial rural affairs group, I have been closely involved with the preparation and implementation of the rural White Paper. Urban policy is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, but we work closely together.
  Mr. Hughes: The past few months have revealed considerable Government failings in co-ordinating rural policy. However, will the Minister, in her pivotal role, urgently examine urban policy with her colleagues? Will she try to ensure that, in future, instead of providing different sorts of funding, for which people apply by different means and at different times, there will be one commonly accessible one-stop shop so that people know what is available and can make bids? Local councils could then implement co-ordinated urban policy in their areas.
  Marjorie Mowlam: Policies on, for example, drugs and rough sleeping were already co-ordinated across Departments. There is joined-up government on many policies. Urban and rural areas experience problems with health, education and jobs.
  We have recently worked closely with local authorities and providers on neighbourhood regeneration schemes. Whatever the policy proposals, the same people are often involved in implementing them. Neighbourhood regeneration is the beginning of joining up government locally to avoid a cluster of policy announcements that people have to implement.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: As a start to policy co-ordination, should not we co-ordinate rural areas with each other so that they receive the same benefits? I am thinking of the effect of foot and mouth disease on tourism and the fact that some rural areas are not listed to receive rate benefits and other provisions. If the map was properly drawn, areas such as north-east Derbyshire might be able to get in on the act.
  Marjorie Mowlam: As my hon. Friend knows, we have invested £6 million in advertising tourism, and we hope that tourists will return to urban and rural areas throughout the country. He mentioned rate benefits for shops, pubs, garages and small businesses in villages. They were drawn up according to specific criteria, which will be reviewed. I am sure that his point will be noted.
  Mr. Dafydd Wigley: In the wake of foot and mouth disease, which has hit rural areas so hard in recent weeks, does the Minister accept that one of the

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  co-ordination challenges is ensuring that people in urban areas realise that rural areas are open for visitors? Will she join me in welcoming the news that from Friday, access to Snowdon is likely to be reopened? She will shortly have more time at her disposal, and I invite her to visit and enjoy Snowdon, as we invite thousands of people from all parts of these islands.
  Marjorie Mowlam: I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much. I shall come with the rest of my team, and we shall have an enjoyable day out.
  I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we have been doing as much as we can to increase tourism and encourage people to visit rural areas. Ministers have visited different places, and we have spent an additional £6 million advertising the fact that rural areas are open. Approximately 91 per cent. of tourist attractions and almost as many participatory attractions are open. I hope that the message will go out from the House today that rural and urban areas are open for business and that people can go and enjoy the facilities there. We have allocated an extra £4 million to speed up the opening of footpaths and assist local authorities with that. I hope that a full return to business will happen soon.
  Mr. Andrew Lansley: If it is the right hon. Lady's valedictory appearance at Cabinet Office questions, I wish her well on behalf of the Opposition.
  The Minister knows that the need for co-ordinating rural policy has never been more acute than in the past two and a half months since the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Will she tell the House whether the rural affairs group, which she mentioned earlier, has met during that period? If so, has it considered the proposal, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) has made for six weeks, for the introduction of an interest-free loan to support businesses that are hard hit by foot and mouth?
  Marjorie Mowlam: I do not know whether this is my last Question Time. The hon. Gentleman obviously knows more than I do about that, but I thank him for his comments.
  I assure the hon. Gentleman that the rural affairs group continues to work on the co-ordination of rural policy. We are working hard on aspects of the rural White Paper and we have rural proofing in place. Under the ministerial code, we do not have to announce whether the group has met, but I can say, as its Chair, that I have enjoyed a number of discussions with my ministerial colleagues and that we will continue to ensure that policies—particularly the one that the hon. Gentleman mentioned—are given full consideration.
  Mr. Lansley: If the right hon. Lady cannot, or will not, tell the House how many times the group has met, will she at least explain how the Cabinet Office has discharged its responsibility for the co-ordination of policy? Where was the co-ordination of policy in the Cabinet Office when the Minister for the Environment was saying the opposite of what the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was saying on safe areas; when the Minister of the Environment was announcing a public inquiry and the Prime Minister was saying the opposite; or when the
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  Prime Minister's official spokesman announced a change in the policy on slaughtering, and the Minister of Agriculture did not even seem to know about it? Has the Cabinet Office abdicated its responsibility to try to get co-ordinated decisions in the management of this crisis?
  Marjorie Mowlam: I withdraw my generous offer of consideration of the policy that the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier, only because it occurred to me that I have no idea how much it would cost. I would hate to make any indication that such a commitment would be given without some idea of the finance involved.
  In relation to co-ordination in the rural affairs group and the Cabinet Office, we co-ordinate on rural proofing, on the rural White Paper, and across Departments. When the foot and mouth crisis started, the Prime Minister decided that it was big enough for a taskforce to be created, chaired by the Minister of Agriculture, because the main problem was in areas covered by his Ministry. However, all the Ministers in the rural affairs group, as well as other people particularly relevant to foot and mouth disease, were represented round the table, and co-ordination took place in regular morning meetings. In a difficult situation such as the foot and mouth crisis, what is appreciated from the Opposition is support rather than vacuous criticism.

  Drugs
  Ms Rosie Winterton: If she will make a statement on progress made by the UK anti-drugs co-ordinator. [159096]
  The Minister for the Cabinet Office Marjorie Mowlam): The anti-drugs co-ordinator's annual report for 1999–2000 shows that we are making progress towards meeting the challenging targets that we have set as part of our 10-year anti-drugs strategy. The co-ordinator's role involves him visiting local community projects. He has, for example, recently visited Doncaster, where he saw at first hand the initiatives taking place. He is also responsible for enforcement by trying to work across national boundaries in Europe and elsewhere, to maximise the efforts to cut supply.
  Ms Winterton: My right hon. Friend may be aware that central Doncaster was awarded £52 million on Monday under the new deal for communities, and one of the flagship schemes is a drugs rehabilitation project. That is extremely welcome. The only concern of the local drugs action team is to find medical staff trained in detox programmes. Will she therefore discuss with the anti-drugs co-ordinator—particularly given their support for the efforts being made in Doncaster—whether we need to do more to encourage medical professionals to enter this field and have a fast-track programme to train detox staff?
  Marjorie Mowlam: I thank my hon. Friend for her question and the acknowledgement that the £52 million that has gone into Donny will make a big difference, as such funding has in other cities, in terms of the important project to which a locality chooses to allocate the money. Drug rehabilitation was chosen in Doncaster; other areas

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  will choose closed circuit television to try to halt crime. It is up to the local partnership to decide how to allocate the money.
  On recruitment, we advertised for more drug counsellors, as we were well aware that some areas had difficulties in respect of adequate staffing. As a result of a national campaign, we received more than 42,000 expressions of interest—far more than we ever expected.
  Additional funding has been provided to drug action teams, which have been working with local service providers to turn those expressions of interest into work on the ground by local people. To help with that, we have established a bursary scheme, which will create basic training for newly recruited workers. I hope that the follow through will begin soon, but I shall certainly watch the Doncaster situation to ensure that the money is matched by an adequate number of counsellors. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We must have order in the Chamber.
  Rev. Martin Smyth: I congratulate those who have been doing positive work in trying to deal with and curb drug addiction. Will the Minister say whether there has been much success, in sequestrating the funds of those who make large profits from drugs? Does she accept that those who try to educate people away from drug use often hear discordant voices in high places suggesting that some drugs are not harmful? Is not that a dangerous practice?
  Marjorie Mowlam: We have allocated more money, because of the difficulty caused by young people getting involved with drugs. We have put an additional £152 million into education recently and there are programmes in most schools—we are up to 96 per cent. of secondaries and 76 per cent. of primaries—to ensure that that education is of a quality that makes a difference. We have also put more funding into "positive futures", which I think operates in the hon. Gentleman's neck of the woods. I remember reading about a scheme in Northern Ireland.
  That positive initiative is aimed at keeping young people, whether they are excluded or truants, out of the culture on the street and encouraging them to involve themselves in activities such as sport. We have received a lot of support from sporting figures in getting the scheme going. That is what we are doing to get young people off the streets and, I hope, to make better choices in life.
  We have concentrated on heroin and cocaine because they are the killers, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no discordance in policy. We will do all that we can to ensure that young people become aware of the problems with drugs.
  Mr. Paul Flynn: The Government are about to make more widely available the deadly addictive drug alcohol, which is involved in 80 per cent. of crimes of violence and abuse. However, they still support the jailing of those seriously ill people who use cannabis medicinally, in spite of the fact that, a month ago, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's conference said that the drug has unique benefits for those who suffer from
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  severe pain and the effects of multiple sclerosis. Why are the Government soft on a hard drug and hard on a soft drug?
  Marjorie Mowlam: The first part of my hon. Friend's question relates to alcohol. We are considering what we can do to co-ordinate alcohol and drug policy, because there is clearly a discordance between drugs, alcohol and how they are treated. We are fully committed to taking action on alcohol. I come from an alcoholic family, so I know the difficulties that alcohol creates and I assure him that work is under way.
  In relation to cannabis and its medicinal use, as I have said to my hon. Friend on many occasions, we are considering that issue and we keep our policy under constant review. With DW Pharmaceuticals involved, we have a good chance of not being too far from producing a cannaboid, which will be tested by the Medical Research Council. That will provide comfort to those suffering from MS and other diseases. I assure my hon. Friend that the matter is not ignored; it is kept under constant review, and we will change policy when the scientific evidence merits that.
  Mrs. Ann Winterton: Is the Minister shocked by the recent adolescent assessment services group report, which calculates that drug abuse has become a regular part of the daily life of more than 400,000 under-16s who use cannabis—now accepted to be a gateway drug—heroin and cocaine? Does she accept that mere harm reduction education programmes have failed those youngsters, and scrap them by removing public funds from their wrong-headed liberal providers? Will she substitute a sensible, sustained campaign—pursued with real conviction—in which children are told the truth about the harmful biological, social and economic consequences of taking any illegal drug?
  Marjorie Mowlam: We share the hon. Lady's concern—as do most people in this country—about the increasing number of very young people who are experimenting with drugs. The situation is unhealthy and appalling.
  We have tried sending messages in the past, but "Just say no" had no effect, or at most a very limited effect. Now, with "positive futures", we are working towards better educational programmes, in which role models and mentors talk to children and try to steer them into a different life. To advertise the problems of drugs, we are trying—with the help of the £220 million over three years that has just gone into communities—to work with those communities, and to work with parents, and in partnership with voluntary and other organisations. The one way to get through to young kids in a community is to work with their parents, peers and mentors, and that is the approach that we are adopting.
  Mr. Bob Blizzard: If she will make a statement on the part played by treatment in the ant-drugs strategy. [159098]
  The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr. Ian McCartney): Treatment is a key component of the Government's 10-year strategy. We are committed to improving the provision of drug services across the country, such as the NORCAS agency in Lowestoft.

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  We have already seen a steady increase in the number of problem drug misusers attending treatment services, which was up by 8 per cent. in the six months to March 2000. We have established a counselling, assessment, referral, advice and through-care service in every prison in England and Wales, and through the spending review we have allocated an additional £167 million for drug treatment services over three years from 2001–02. We have also set up a new National Treatment Agency, which is engaged in an appointments process and will make announcements shortly.
  Mr. Blizzard: I welcome the extra £89,000 a year for the next three years that has just been announced for the local crime reduction partnership in my constituency, under the Government's communities against drugs initiative. It will really help the fight against the menace of drugs in my part of the country.
  We have had substantial funds for treatment purposes, but the problem is recruiting people to be trained to administer treatment. Will my right hon. Friend look into recruitment? Treatment is crucial to getting people off drugs, getting crime down, and preventing our streets from being littered with needles. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Before the Minister replies, let me say that there is far too much noise in the Chamber. It is unfair to Members who want to hear what is being said.
  Mr. McCartney: In replying to my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office gave an absolute commitment on the very issue that my hon. Friend has raised. Let me confirm that in spades: we will look into both the Doncaster situation and the situation in my hon. Friend's constituency as a matter of urgency.
  Resources have been made available, because 42,000 people want to do this job and need to be trained. I give my hon. Friend an absolute assurance that I will get back to him as soon as possible after considering his particular circumstances.
  Mrs. Teresa Gorman: The hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) gave the example of alcohol. When the Americans tried prohibition as a way of restricting alcohol use, was not the attempt a complete failure? Is it not time that we looked at the problem of drug taking more from the viewpoint of the victims—those who are attacked and robbed by drug addicts—than from that of people who are silly enough to take the drugs?
  Mr. McCartney: I hope that the hon. Lady will not take this wrongly, but her last comment was the silliest comment about drugs that I have heard in this place. As one who witnessed, on a daily basis, a son dying of drug abuse, I can say that that was not a self-inflicted injury, and also that it is not possible to take cannabis as something other than a gateway to more dangerous drugs.
  Frankly, I am sick and tired of Members in this House and people outside thinking that there is an easy answer to preventing children from falling into drug abuse traps—through cannabis and then from that to other drugs. This is a very difficult, complex issue. We have a 10-year plan. I hope that the hon. Lady will get behind it. Every year
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  we succeed with that, hundreds of children who would die if they did not have the plan will go on to be good citizens and good adults.
  Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): I welcome the setting up of the National Treatment Agency, but does my right hon. Friend agree that treatment should be more than methadone, methadone and even more methadone, and that choices of treatment must be made available? Will he encourage the NTA to offer those choices, including more abstinence programmes, so that we can wean people off methadone?
  Mr. McCartney: I make it absolutely clear that the whole purpose of building capacity in treatment is to provide an individual service to meet the needs of the individual. Many of those individuals have complex multi-drug problems, so each treatment has to relate to their needs and get them to buy into the treatment. Far too often, a young person starts treatment, goes off it and ends up using illegal drugs, getting damaged and sometimes dying from an overdose. My hon. Friend's point is well catered for in the new strategy. Additional resources are being made available to ensure at local level that drug treatment referral systems and capacity relate to the needs of the individual and not to the system.
  Jackie Ballard: The Minister will be aware that many drug addicts lead chaotic life styles that do not lend themselves easily to treatment within the community. What progress have the Government made in the past four years in the provision of residential treatment facilities for drug addicts who are not serving prison sentences?
  Mr. McCartney: That is a fair question. One of the key challenges for the Government is to provide growing capacity. We have set ourselves targets for 2002, 2005 and 2008. One of the aims of the National Treatment Agency and of the resources that are going into the Prison Service is to develop the strategy that she talks about: outreach facilities where individuals can seek what I would call asylum—a protected environment to deal with their specific needs. Some of those needs are to do with chaotic drug use, some with their mental health, and some with their physical health. Sometimes, it is all three. Because of that, treatment in the community is sometimes not a realistic prospect for them in the first instance, so the point is well made. I assure the hon. Lady that that is part of the strategy.

  Quangos
  Mr. Bob Russell: If she will make a statement on the extent to which quangos are being replaced by democratically elected bodies. [159099]
  The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr. Graham Stringer): Responsibility for 300 public bodies has been transferred to the newly elected Chambers in Belfast, Edinburgh, London and Cardiff.
  Mr. Russell: I wonder whether the Minister can say whether any quangos were involved in the Wembley fiasco. Many of us were expecting a Labour Government

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  to roll back the quangoland of the Conservatives. Why is new Labour so opposed to democratic control over the police, schools, hospitals and local colleges?
  Mr. Stringer: I can tell the hon. Gentleman that, for example, the Funding Agency for Schools has been transferred back to local authorities. That body had an expenditure of nearly £2 billion. However, if he wants to trade figures, 41 executive non-departmental bodies, 125 non-executive bodies, 16 tribunals and one board of visitors have been transferred. It means that, in net terms, although some have been created and some merged, there are 10 per cent. fewer quangos than when the Government came to office.
  Mrs. Louise Ellman: What recommendations would my hon. Friend make in giving powers to regional chambers, so that they could bring accountability to regional quangos before we have directly elected regional authorities? When does he anticipate that they will come into being in England?
  Mr. Stringer: It is Government policy to give the electorates in the different regions the opportunity to decide whether they elect regional assemblies. When such assemblies are elected—if the electorates so choose—they will have a transparent relationship with many of the existing regional public bodies.

  The Prime Minister was asked—

  Engagements
  Mr. Andrew Robathan: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 2 May.
  The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair): This morning, I spoke to Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in sending our congratulations to the Met police on a successful operation yesterday. I also had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further such meetings later today.
  Mr. Robathan: Tomorrow, our capital city will be brought to a standstill by the RMT. Will the Prime Minister explain to all those who will have to endure tomorrow's chaos that the RMT not only gives his Transport Secretary a flat in Clapham, but pays the Hull, East constituency Labour party in excess of £1,000 a year, which should have, but never has, been declared in the Register of Members' Interests? At this time, is it appropriate that his Transport Secretary is in hock to the RMT?
  The Prime Minister: First, what the hon. Gentleman says about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is simply not correct. Secondly, I agree entirely that the industrial action is unjustified.
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  As for the tube in general, I remind Conservative Members that this Government are investing in its future. The Conservative party cut that investment and is committed to privatising the tube.
  Mr. David Lammy: The Prime Minister will be aware that, in the last four years, his Government have taken 700 failing schools out of special measures, compared with just 27 in the last years of the Tories. The Government have also turned around failing local education authorities. Can my right hon. Friend assure Tottenham parents that, alongside the improvements in our primary schools, we can now have greater confidence in our secondary schools?
  The Prime Minister: No fewer than seven failing schools in Haringey have been taken out of special measures in the last few years. That stands in sharp contrast to what happened before. I know that my hon. Friend will realise that, today, we have the best primary school results that this country has ever seen. That is as a result of the investment that this party has put in. The Conservative party is still committed to cutting that vital investment in the services of the future.
  Mr. William Hague: On behalf of the Opposition, may I express my admiration for the tremendous job done by the Metropolitan police yesterday—not just by the senior police officers but by thousands of police men and women who had to put up with abuse and sometimes violent scuffles in order to maintain the peace in London yesterday?
  On a less successful aspect of Government management, will the Prime Minister tell us which project he thinks the Department for Culture, Media and Sport can be proudest of: the national lottery operator, the dome or Wembley stadium?
  The Prime Minister: As the right hon. Gentleman well knows, Wembley stadium is a Football Association project, not a Government project. Might I just remind him that the project was initiated in 1994, when he was a member of the Government?
  Mr. Hague: All of a sudden, it is not a Government project. The truth is that the Government's handling of each of those projects has been a fiasco and has poured £750 million down the drain. If it is not a Government project, why did the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport say last year:
  "We would have ended up with a fiasco if we had not taken action"?
  Why did he say that
  "we were right to take the decision we did. We will have emerged … with possibly the best of both worlds"?
  That would have been an own goal had he not taken down the goal posts. Why did the Culture Secretary describe the new designs for Wembley as stunning, only for the Minister for Sport to say that it was the wrong kind of stadium? The Government have been involved throughout. They scrapped the design, closed the stadium and dug up the

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  pitch. Will the Government now take responsibility and apologise to millions of sports fans for the huge mess they have created?
  The Prime Minister: The bandwagonning activities of the right hon. Gentleman know no bounds. This was a project that was agreed in 1994. In 1996, again when he was a member of the Government, they agreed £120 million of lottery money and it was agreed as a Football Association project. I regret the fact that it has fallen through, and we must now sit down and work out a way through it so that we have a proper national stadium. However, it is absolutely absurd, in circumstances in which the FA has made it clear throughout that it should be its project with private sector backing, for the right hon. Gentleman to park his bandwagon at Wembley and blame the Government.
  Mr. Hague: We are not taking lectures on bandwagons from a man who last week allowed the whole of Government policy to be dictated by Phoenix the calf. The Government never take responsibility for anything. They approved the design for Wembley stadium and said that it was magnificent. In the space of four years, they have spent £120 million closing Wembley stadium, one of the most famous sites in Britain, and £600 million turning the dome into one of the least popular sites in the world. Does not it sum up four years of this Government that they have spent a fortune of other people's money creating what did not work and wrecking what did work, while failing to deliver anything of practical value at all?
  The Prime Minister: I now take that as the right hon. Gentleman's view that Wembley should never have been closed. Perhaps then he will explain why, in 1994, the Government of whom he was a member actually took the decision to have a new national stadium. As we are talking about reputations and what works and does not work, I treated the House a few months ago to the views of Mr. Nigel Hastilow, and today I wish to bring a new figure before the House—the parliamentary candidate from Bridgwater, Mr. Liddell-Grainger, whose local Conservatives have put out a leaflet that reads
  "What we have to do is"—
  Hon. Members:Order.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Do not tell me how to do my job.
  The Prime Minister: Just listen. They said that they had
  "to explain to Conservatives who do not like William Hague that the only way to find a new leader is to get the Conservatives in power under William Hague so that a new leader can emerge from the more unknown Conservative Members".
  Fortunately, there is a very broad field.
  As for delivery, it is this party that has put a record amount of money into public services—schools, hospitals, transport and police—and it is the Conservative party that would cut the money.
  Mr. Gerald Howarth: Disgraceful.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Howarth, I hope that you were not referring to me. I know how to conduct my affairs and I hope that you are not attacking the Chair.
  Mr. Howarth: I shall raise a point of order at the end of Prime Minister's questions.
  Mr. Speaker: You are perfectly entitled to raise a point of order, and I will not deny you that, but no one will shout at this Chair while these proceedings are going on.
  Mr. Robin Corbett: Does my right hon. Friend accept that claims of a crisis in police recruitment and retention are as unhelpful to the police as they are untrue? West Midlands police last year recruited a record 547 officers and plan to do the same again this year. Will my right hon. Friend undertake to keep the investment that has made that possible at least at its present level?
  The Prime Minister: Yes, the fact is that the number of police recruits is up something like 77 per cent. on last year. That means that as a result of the additional finances that have been put into the police, we have around 1,300 additional police officers. That is good news for my hon. Friend's constituency and many others, but it comes as part of a whole programme that is putting more money into recruiting public sector workers. Today, incidentally, we can also announce a 26 per cent. increase in graduate training applications for teaching. That is the investment that we have put in on the basis of a stable economy, delivering for the people of this country.
  Mr. Charles Kennedy: Will the Prime Minister confirm that, on average over the course of this Parliament, investment in schools, hospitals and pensions as a proportion of our national income is lower under his Government than under the previous Government?
  The Prime Minister: No. It is absolutely true that, in the first two years of this Government's term of office, for the reasons that we have explained, we applied very strict spending rules to get rid of the large deficit. However, in the past couple of years, spending on health and education as a proportion of gross domestic product and the extra money that we have given to pensioners have meant that a steadily rising proportion of our national income is now going to those services and those people.
  Mr. Kennedy: Given what the Prime Minister does admit in terms of his policy, will he explain why, in the past four years, out-patient waiting lists have risen, secondary school class sizes have grown, and the number of pensioners plummeting into poverty has got bigger? Is not that a sad indictment of his premiership, and does not Britain deserve better?
  The Prime Minister: In respect of poverty and pensioners, the right hon. Gentleman is simply wrong. The minimum income guarantee, the £200 winter fuel

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  allowance and the free television licences for pensioners aged over 75 have lifted significant numbers of pensioners out of poverty.
  On class sizes, it is right that there has been a rise in secondary school class sizes of, I think, 0.3 of a pupil. There have been rises in class sizes for many years. We said that we would focus particularly on five, six and seven-year-olds, for whom there has been a dramatic reduction in class sizes. Overall, the figures for class sizes in all our schools are down, not up.
  In respect of waiting lists, our pledge was to reduce in-patient waiting lists by over 100,000. We have met that pledge. Again, it is correct to say that out-patient lists rose for the initial period under this Government. Now, out-patient and in-patient lists are falling together.
  Ms Hazel Blears: I am delighted that Kersal and Charlestown in Salford have been allocated an extra £53 million through the Government's new deal for communities. That will mean that there will be a health centre, jobs, money to tackle crime and a real future for young people. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that regenerating inner-city areas and reinvigorating their communities will remain a top priority for a Labour Government? Will not that be in contrast to the Tories, who condemned generations of our young people to a life without a decent future?
  The Prime Minister: It will remain a priority, not only because it is right that money goes into local communities but because it helps the people of those communities by giving them some chance for the future. One of the Government's proudest achievements is the creation of some 1 million extra jobs in our economy. As a result, the amount of money that we are spending on benefits has fallen dramatically. Giving people a standard of living and a good chance for the future is good not just for them but for the economy as a whole.
  I know that my hon. Friend will be the first to accept that the measures taken to reduce the national debt mean that, whereas when the Government carne to office we were spending more on interest payments on the debt than on the school system, we are now spending £10 billion a year more on the school system.
  Mr. Crispin Blunt: I know that the reports in the armed forces of the Ministry of Defence's planned cuts have already caused several soldiers to resign because they see no future for their regiments under Labour. Will the Prime Minister guarantee to those soldiers, the armed forces and the electorate that there will be no cuts in the regiments of either the Regular Army or the Territorial Army while he remains Prime Minister? Yes or no?
  The Prime Minister: The stories about the cuts in regiments were denied by the Ministry of Defence at the time. They are not true. It is also the case that, over the next few years, there will be the first real-terms rise in defence spending in this country for a long time. With the greatest respect to Conservative Members, their
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  protestations of affection for our armed forces would be a lot more credible if, when they were in office, they had not cut defence spending by 30 per cent.
  Mr. Michael Clapham: Does my right hon. Friend agree that yesterday's pronouncement by President Bush that he is to ditch the anti-ballistic missile treaty is likely to move the world into a more dangerous phase? Does he also agree that, in that context, the expansion of NATO ought to be put on hold, as going ahead with it now would move the world into a much more dangerous state?
  The Prime Minister: I understand entirely my hon. Friend's concerns, but I am afraid that I cannot agree with what he has said. I believe that the enlargement of NATO is vital to honour the promise that we gave to those emerging eastern European countries that are now democracies. I also think that President Bush has set out a case that we have to listen to about how this is a different world following the cold war—Russia is no longer an enemy of the west but, on the contrary, a partner. Therefore, it is important that we look at new ways of dealing with the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
  We will make our deliberations on the more general issue of missile defence once we have a specific proposal from the American Administration. President Bush has set out a new argument and we need to listen to it. I also welcome the fact that he has made it clear that there will be consultations not only with close allies such as ourselves but with Russia. This is an argument that we must watch.
  Mr. Tom Brake: Bob Kiley, the man who saved the New York underground, has described Labour's plans to part-privatise the London underground as fatally flawed, unworkable and dangerous. Why is the Prime Minister so committed to implementing them?
  The Prime Minister: Because that is not the view of many others, including those who advised us on the original options. It is not a question of privatising the tube; it is about making sure that the infrastructure of the tube—the capital renewal work that is desperately important and needs billions of pounds to carry out—is done in the most effective way, giving the best value for money for the taxpayer.
  We are prepared to put a record investment into the tube, but it must be done on the basis that the taxpayer gets value for money and that we do not repeat the experience of the Jubilee line, which ended up being constructed at a £2 billion overrun and a couple of years late. Therefore, it is important that we have the right relationship with the private sector so that the tube and the running of the tube remain publicly owned and in the public sector, but the construction work is done by the private sector.
  Helen Jones: The Prime Minister will be well aware of the despair felt by parents who discover that a child of theirs is taking drugs. What can he say to the parents in my constituency, whose anxiety is greatly increased because they cannot get the support and information they need to help their child?

  845
  Will he ensure that some of the £200 million that has been allocated for community partnerships against drugs is used to support the families of drug users and those who work with them, such as the Footsteps project in Warrington, so that we can get real assistance to those in the front line of this battle?
  The Prime Minister: The Footsteps project in Warrington is well known and highly successful. Part of the £200 million for community partnerships is precisely for that purpose. Something like £150 million will be put into drug action teams and projects around the country specifically to help families with drug problems.
  It is important to recognise that drugs are often linked with the problem of social exclusion and with high levels of poverty, unemployment and deprivation in our inner cities. The investment in our inner cities that I mentioned a moment ago will also play its part in reducing the temptations for those youngsters to get into drugs.
  Mr. William Hague: May I welcome the Prime Minister's disagreement with the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on defence matters, and ask him whether he thinks that Britain would benefit from the protection of a nuclear missile shield?
  The Prime Minister: As I have said to the right hon. Gentleman and to the House on many occasions, we do not yet have a specific proposal from the United States Administration. We do not know what technology they will use—sea-based or land-based. The United States is sending over a team to consult its closest allies next week, and we will be part of that consultation. When we have a proposal, we will make our determination. However, we have said that we understand the issues that the United States is raising and, of course, will always work closely with our American allies.
  Mr. Hague: The President gave an extremely clear speech yesterday. The Labour Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence said this morning that now that the President has said that America will develop a missile shield:
  "I think one has to decide yes or no are we going to support or not?"
  Is not what is needed the clearest possible public statement of principle that we want a defence shield to be developed and that such a shield would be in Britain's defence interest? Will the Prime Minister now give such a statement?
  The Prime Minister: I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. What is important is to make sure that we have a proposal from the United States Administration upon which we can give a considered view. I understand all the reasons why the right hon. Gentleman simply says that, whatever the proposal, we should agree with it. However, it is sensible, as we have said before, to wait until there is a specific proposal and to give our determination on that, recognising, as we do, that the issues raised by the American Administration are real and correct in respect of weapons of mass destruction but also knowing that it is a highly sensitive issue and that we
  846
  should handle it with care, as President Bush is indeed doing. The right hon. Gentleman seems more reluctant to do that.
  Mr. Hague: It does not follow that, because it is a sensitive issue, Her Majesty's Government should dodge the issue. The Prime Minister continues to avoid giving proper and clear support to a missile shield, and that position has been noticed in the United States. Does he agree that missile defence gives the people of Britain the chance of defending ourselves in the future against the unimaginable horror of nuclear terrorism? Our closest ally is taking the lead on this issue. Is not it time that the Government had the courage to come out and support it?
  The Prime Minister: It is not a question of courage. The question whether a missile defence shield could have an important role for this country is surely to be determined on the basis of the proposal that is actually put forward. It is important to study that proposal in detail and it is also important that we play a role in trying to make sure that whatever different views there may be are reconciled not just here but elsewhere. I believe that we can play such a role. We have made it quite clear already—I did so in the press conference that I held with President Bush at Camp David—that we understand the concerns that the Americans have raised. We recognise that it is a different world in terms of nuclear proliferation and missile defence than the world of 10, 15 or 20 years ago, but I believe it is important and right that we wait for a firm proposal before giving a firm decision.
  Mr. Tony McWalter: Will my right hon. Friend accept my congratulations on the recent publication of the pensioners' guide? However, does he accept that something needs correcting in it? It gives people who have been bereaved only three months in which to make their claim. MPs and others have people coming to them because of the major financial difficulties that those people face because of bereavement, so will my right hon. Friend take a real interest in the issue to ensure that that period is extended?
  The Prime Minister: I was not aware of the particular point that my hon. Friend has raised, but I shall certainly look into it. The purpose of the guide is to help pensioners—not just poor pensioners, but others as well—in difficulty. Therefore, I shall certainly look into the point that he makes.
  Mrs. Jacqui Lait: Immediately before the previous general election, the right hon. Gentleman called for the publication of the report by the Standards and Privileges Committee on Mr. Neil Hamilton. Will the right hon. Gentleman give the same commitment to seek to ensure the publication of the Committee's report on the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson)? If he feels powerless to do so, will he instruct the Department of Trade and Industry to publish its report on the same Member?
  The Prime Minister: It must surely be for the Privileges Committee to decide that; it is perfectly free to decide whatever it wishes.
  Mr. John Grogan: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, nearly 90 years after Lloyd George first introduced legislation insisting that all pubs close at a fixed time, this Government will at an early opportunity create a more modern, a more flexible and a more civilised liquor-licensing system?
  The Prime Minister: That may be one of the legacies of Lloyd George that the Liberal party is less keen to own up to. My hon. Friend is absolutely right and, in this day and age, such a change in the licensing laws is very important. I pay tribute to him, because he has campaigned so long and so hard for this change in the law. It is in part due to the persuasiveness of his arguments that the change has come about.
  Mr. Lembit Öpik: I know that the Prime Minister will join me in offering his sympathy to the families of the three Montgomeryshire farmers who have tragically taken their own lives since the foot and mouth crisis began.
  Because the welfare cull has been delayed, some livestock are dying in the fields of mid-Wales, so will the right hon. Gentleman be willing to respond personally to some proposals that I would like to send him on speeding up the welfare cull and to tackle the desperate levels of stress in our rural communities?
  The Prime Minister: I shall certainly respond to any document that the hon. Gentleman sends me. There have been real problems with the welfare scheme, partly because of the large number of animals involved and because the restrictions on movement have been so great. We have recently been able to lift many of those restrictions, and something like 16,000 farms have been removed from them within the past few days. The numbers in the animal welfare scheme are falling the entire time, the backlog is reducing and many animals are being withdrawn, so it is likely to be far easier to implement the scheme than we originally thought. In addition, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has provided invaluable advice.
  Of course, many farmers have suffered deep distress during the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, and that is one reason that we agreed to match the funding for such schemes as the rural stress network. I shall certainly consider any cases and documents that the hon. Gentleman sends me.
  Ms Julia Drown: Parents and parents-to-be will welcome today's announcement on the recruitment of more midwives and the £100 million that is to be spent on maternity units up and down the country. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the priority for maternity services should be 1:1 midwifery care for women during labour, a reduction in the unhealthily high caesarian rate in this country, and improved post-natal care for families?
  The Prime Minister: I agree with all my hon. Friend's points. Part of today's announcement is designed to deal with those issues. There will be about 500 extra midwives
  848
  in the health service by this time next year and an extra 2,000 over the next five years. We have been keen to expand that sector for some time. However, that policy should be seen alongside the additional money for accident and emergency departments, for the extra 17,000 nurses who now work in the health service and for the hospital-building programme, which is involved in 68 projects around the country, and the record investment that will go into the service in the next few years. Although it has taken time to achieve that, the money is going in and yielding a benefit.
  Mr. David Rendel: Is the Prime Minister aware that foot and mouth has had a devastating effect on a number of industries apart from agriculture, in particular on racing? Is he also aware that because of cancelled race meetings, many jockeys have lost many rides and will not be compensated through a business rate scheme? Will he provide another form of compensation?
  The Prime Minister: Additional money has, of course, been provided for various schemes, including for the tourism industry today. I am not aware of the particular issue that the hon. Gentleman raises, but I shall certainly look into it.
  It is worth pointing out that the single most important consideration is that we manage to eradicate the last of the foot and mouth epidemic. I should like to pay tribute to the work done not just by the Army but by MAFF officials, who have done a heroic job at a local level and have managed, within two months of the epidemic starting, to reduce the number of cases to single figures a day, which is where we are now. There are still many issues to work out and problems will arise, but, as the operation has reduced the number of cases substantially, the pressure both on the farming industry and others is reducing. However, I shall consider the specific issue raised by the hon. Gentleman, of which I was unaware.
  Dr. Norman A. Godman: Although we readily acknowledge the serious problems caused to farmers by foot and mouth, should not the same sympathy be shown to our beleaguered fishing industry? Many fishermen face ruin. If we are to have an adequate decommissioning scheme to reduce the United Kingdom fleet, should not Brussels aim to reduce the whole of the European Union fleet? It should not be aimed purely at the British fleet.
  The Prime Minister: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend; of course the scheme should not be aimed simply at the British fleet. The cut in quotas is severely affecting the fishing industries of all European countries. We are well aware of the problems of the fishing industry, which is why my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food recently announced the decommissioning scheme. We hope to build on that, and provide support and assistance for the fishing industry and its communities to adapt in the way that they must. However, we have come to recognise, over a long period of time, that the trouble is that there is no alternative but to cut the amount of fish caught in the North sea, because of the problems of conserving stock.

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  We face a difficult decision, which we cannot avoid, but we are doing what we can to help the fishing industry through these times.
  Sir Michael Spicer: Why does the Chancellor of the Exchequer keep pretending that the economy is not slowing down when it manifestly is?
  The Prime Minister: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman asked a question about the economy because it is rare for Conservative Members to do so. The reason that the Chancellor is, as he needs to be, cautiously
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  optimistic about the British economy is because under this Government we now have the lowest inflation in Europe; it is because after national debt doubled, we have reduced it very sharply; it is because we have a million extra jobs in the economy; it is because we have halved the rate of long-term unemployment; and it is because mortgage rates are half of what they were in the Conservative years. In other words, it is because we have a lot to be proud of.
  Mr. Gerald Howarth: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: I will take the private notice question first.

Wembley Stadium
3.31 pm
Mr. Peter Ainsworth(East Surrey)(by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will make a statement about the Wembley national stadium project.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr. Chris Smith): The Football Association's announcement yesterday that it could not deliver its plans for Wembley was very disappointing news, all the more so given the repeated assurances given to Sport England and the Government over the whole of last year, by the Wembley project team, that everything was on track. The Government have consistently supported the concept of a national stadium, and have done so on the basis of continued assurances from football that its project would be delivered.
In 1996, the then Great Britain Sports Council decided that Wembley should be the location for a national stadium. From 1998 onwards, the project has been led by the Football Association via a wholly owned subsidiary, Wembley National Stadium Ltd. From that point, the Football Association and its subsidiary drove the project forward in negotiation with Wembley plc over the acquisition of the land and in agreement with Sport England over the terms of lottery funding for the acquisition, the design issues and, most importantly, securing the necessary financing to make the project viable.
Wembley National Stadium Ltd., under its chairman Ken Bates, consistently assured everyone that all was well with the project. That has proved not to be the case. The first occasion on which that was demonstrated was in the autumn of 1999, when it became clear that the needs of athletics could not sensibly be met by the WNSL scheme. That was a result of the costs of creating and dismantling the concrete platform for athletics, the costs of acquiring the necessary land for the required warm-up track and the fact that there would be no lasting legacy for athletics at the national stadium.
I therefore decided that athletics should be removed from Wembley, and subsequently Lee Valley athletics stadium was chosen by UK Athletics as the national centre for athletics and the venue for the 2005 world athletics championships. That decision has been entirely vindicated by subsequent events, and work is now well advanced on the designs for the Enfield stadium.
The second occasion on which WNSL's assurances that all was well with the project proved to be misplaced was in November last year when the loan syndication to finance the whole project failed. The principal reason for the banks' reluctance to provide finance was their doubts about the WNSL business case and, in particular, the ambitious projections of hospitality and premium-seat income. Let us not forget that the project had escalated in estimated cost from a little over £300 million to a total of £650 million. The banks were also concerned that the FA stood to gain from the project but carried little or no risk.
At that point, some much-needed realism was injected into WNSL and the Football Association's thinking on the project. Following the failure of the loan syndication, the FA replaced Ken Bates with Sir Rodney Walker as chairman of WNSL and took a much closer interest in the
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project. The FA made clear its intention to address the banks' concerns that the FA itself was not taking its share of the risk in the project. Regrettably, the Government learned last week that the Football Association did not feel that it could do that without a further significant injection of funds. The FA initially requested up to £300 million from the Government. I am afraid that that is simply not on, especially when the scale of the current costly design of the new Wembley is due to the needs of the commercial interests in the project.
In the light of the FA's announcement yesterday, the Government will review all the options for a national stadium. To assist in that process, we have asked the existing ministerial group looking at cross-governmental issues surrounding the Commonwealth games to look at alternative solutions. I should stress at this stage that no options are ruled out. Therefore, a solution might be found to develop a new-build or a refurbishment solution at Wembley. Other alternatives may be considered. We want to play our part as the Government in securing a good, affordable and sustainable national stadium for England. That is what we will now do.
Mr. Ainsworth: I thank the Secretary of State for his reply. Does he accept that the failure of the national stadium project is a failure of public policy? Does he accept that the collapse of the project has brought humiliation to Britain and that people here and all over the world are shaking their heads in disbelief and asking why, under this Government, nothing seems to work any more? Does he accept that he carries heavy responsibility for the failure of Wembley? Does he acknowledge that his attempts to shuffle the blame on to Ken Bates and the Football Association are widely regarded as futile and cowardly? Did he not give his blessing to the appointment of Sir Rodney Walker, and did not Sir Rodney give his approval to the Bates plan earlier this year?
Does the Secretary of State accept that his claim that the project is not a Government one looks ridiculous, when it was his decision—and his alone—in autumn 1999 to abandon the original design after it had been approved by the British Olympic Association, the Football Association, the Rugby Football Union, Sport England and his own architectural advisers? If it was not a Government project, what right had he to intervene in that fatal way? Does he now accept that he was wrong to ignore the advice of the Select Committee, and that it was inexcusable, arrogant and contemptuous to dismiss that advice within minutes of it being offered?
Does the Secretary of State accept that his intervention plunged the project into controversy when none had previously existed, provoking 18 months of appalling publicity, when the project—of which we all wanted to be proud—became a fiasco and a byword for Government incompetence? Did not that do more than anything to undermine investor confidence in the project? Does he think it was helpful or responsible to describe the design as "stunning" and "magnificent" on 29 July 1999, when he later said in the House that
"at the time, I was concerned about the viability of the proposed solution".—[Official Report, 1 December 1999; Vol. 340, c. 305.]
Does he understand that the present appalling situation stems directly from his actions and the train of confusion that they set in motion? Does he agree that he is responsible for 18 months of dither, delay and millions of wasted pounds?

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What does the Secretary of State think his shambolic handling of this national project will tell the world about Britain's ability to host a future Olympic games? Is there not now, as a direct result of his actions, a real possibility that we will face the further humiliation of having to tell the International Amateur Athletics Federation that we cannot, after all, host the 2005 world championships?
The whole House wants to see the Wembley project back on track, but, if it cannot be revived, what will happen to the £120 million of lottery money that has already gone into it? Will the Secretary of State confirm that Wembley remains the Government's preferred venue for the national stadium?
It will be a relief to all who care about our national game that the Secretary of State has been shunted to the sidelines by the Prime Minister, but it is too late: the damage has been done. The Secretary of State has lost the confidence of the sporting world and of the public. He has lost the confidence of many of his right hon. and hon. Friends, including, by implication, the Prime Minister. If he had done the right thing and resigned when the first disastrous consequences of his actions became apparent, I honestly believe that we would now be looking forward to the opening of a great new national stadium. Instead, we are faced with a humiliating fiasco.
The Secretary of State is widely regarded as a decent man, but he has repeatedly proved himself to be an incompetent Minister. Will he resign today?
Mr. Smith: On my calculation, this is the 39th time that the hon. Gentleman has called for my resignation. I refer him to my first 38 answers.
The hon. Gentleman began by describing today's announcement as a "failure of public policy." I remind him that it was public policy put in place by the previous Government. It is their project that the Football Association has been valiantly trying to take forward.
The hon. Gentleman asked one or two questions. One related to the decision taken in December 1999 to take athletics out of the then scheme. I outlined in my initial answer why we took that decision, and thank goodness we did. If we had not taken that decision, we would now, as advocated by the hon. Gentleman, have no venue for the 2005 world athletics championships. We do have such a venue. Work is proceeding apace on that. The design work is well advanced and the Lee Valley stadium will be an excellent athletics-specific venue for those championships, with a long-term sustainable legacy for athletics as well.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the £120 million of lottery funds. Under the terms of the lottery agreement, if a national stadium does not proceed at Wembley, the money is returnable to Sport England for further use under the usual terms of the lottery.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether Wembley is the Government's preferred location. The answer is yes, because the Wembley site has been purchased with lottery funds. It is owned by the FA. It is the sensible place to start looking for alternative schemes, but we are not at this stage ruling out other options. We need to look first at Wembley, but other alternatives may emerge, at which we will want to look carefully and closely.
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The hon. Gentleman says rather breezily that under the Government nothing seems to work any more. I refer him to the Cardiff Millennium stadium, the Eden project, Tate Modern, the British museum great court, the Magna project in Rotherham, the Science museum extension, the Lowry centre, the Walsall art gallery, the Manchester stadium and swimming pool and countless other projects—indeed, more projects than the number of times that the hon. Gentleman has demanded my resignation.
Mr. John Maxton: Given that one English football team has just spent almost £20 million on one player, and given the enormous sums that both the Premier League and the FA obtain from television to show football, would it not be totally wrong for the British taxpayer to subsidise the building of a national football stadium? If the Government have such money available, would it not be much better spent providing facilities and coaching for the many youngsters who want the play the game of football, rather than simply watch it?
Mr. Smith: We already provide substantial funds for precisely the purpose of coaching, training and educating young people across the board in sport, and that includes large amounts for the sport of football.
My hon. Friend is right that we need to be prudent in our use of taxpayers' money, which is why, when a specific request came to us last week for an immediate Government injection into the project, particularly given the scale of the project, which is far in excess of the estimated cost of any other stadium anywhere else in the world, we did not feel able to agree to it.
Mr. Bob Russell: I welcome the Conservative Opposition to their latest bandwagon. I have heard some things for the first time today.
The Secretary of State reeled off a list of great successes, but he seeks to deny any responsibility whatever for the Wembley fiasco. Surely he will not claim that what happened yesterday came as a surprise. Six months ago, the national media and the City warned us of what was likely to happen, and it happened yesterday. There is cross-party support for early-day motion 1, which, in case the Secretary of State has not read it, I will put on the record.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is not going to put it on the record.
Mr. Russell: The right hon. Gentleman will know that the cost of the scheme was £660 million and rising. What is the point of destroying arguably the most famous stadium in the world, the scene of our most successful English sporting triumph, and replacing it with a McDonald's arch?
The right hon. Gentleman also has responsibility for tourism and heritage, and he knows that the demolition of Wembley is not helpful to football. As has been pointed out, we need to look again at whether Wembley is the right place for such a stadium. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that even a new Wembley stadium will still be accessed by inadequate rail, road and air

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links? The case for looking elsewhere for a national stadium should be considered—if we need a new national stadium.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Secretary of State should have an opportunity to answer the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Smith: I must tell the hon. Gentleman that six months ago I publicly expressed alarm at the way in which the figure was escalating, as a result of which the FA took a much closer interest in the project, under the leadership of Adam Crozier. It put in Rodney Walker to try to sort the matter out, and he did a valiant job of trying to make the figures work, but, at the end of the day, he was not able to do so to the FA's satisfaction.
Refurbishment of the existing stadium has to be an option. It would impose constraints on the number of people who could be accommodated in the stadium, but it is something that we need to consider carefully and seriously.
Mr. Barry Gardiner: Does the Secretary of State share my incredulity that the FA, which, during the past two years, has had an income stream of £1.8 billion, and which, only on Monday, announced £48 million in sponsorship from Barclaycard for the Premier League, will not put up the money to adopt an equity stake in the project to the tune of £125 million? Does he also share my concern that £170 million worth of infrastructure projects that are already under way, such as the stadium corridor, the refurbishment of Wembley Park, Wimbley Central and Wembley Stadium stations, are put in jeopardy by the decision taken by the FA, and that regeneration projects to the value of £620 million in north-west London submitted on the back of the stadium development are also in jeopardy? I welcome the Government's assurance, as well as the assurance that he gave earlier, that Wembley is still the preferred location, but will he ensure that the voice of local people and the importance of regeneration to the local community are among the prime considerations of the Cabinet Committee when it considers the issue?
Mr. Smith: I can indeed give my hon. Friend that assurance. The regeneration aspects of the area surrounding the stadium, on which the Wembley taskforce, under the chairmanship of Sir Nigel Mobbs, is working hard, are extremely important for the whole of north-west London. We will bear those issues very much in mind as we now look as rapidly and sensibly as we can at the various alternatives.
Sir Norman Fowler: The Secretary of State says that he will review all the options for the national stadium. I hope that he will learn from experience and remember the disaster of the dome at Greenwich. Above all, I hope that one of these national projects can be situated north of London, preferably in Birmingham, where the transport is in place, the land is available and public support is absolutely assured.
Mr. Smith: I noted this morning that Birmingham city council made an interesting proposal of precisely this nature. As I said, we want first to consider what is
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possible at Wembley, but we are not ruling out any other alternatives and we will look carefully at the propositions that are put to us.
Ms Claire Ward: Does my right hon. Friend accept that now is an appropriate time, given the review of Wembley stadium, to consider the future of Picketts Lock? As £120 million of public lottery money was originally put into Wembley stadium and a deal has been done for part of that money to go to Picketts Lock, is not it time, as we are going back to the drawing board, to consider the whole future for a stadium that can serve all our sports?
Mr. Smith: I am afraid that I cannot agree with my hon. Friend on that point. The 2005 world athletics championships have been bid for and won by London, and we must ensure that we provide a high-quality stadium for that event. The Lee Valley stadium at Picketts Lock is in the design phase. It is an extremely good design that gives us an opportunity to provide not only a good venue for the 2005 championships, but a high-class performance centre in perpetuity and very good community facilities for the whole of north and east London. That is a prize that is very much to be won, and we want to ensure that we win it.
Mr. Roger Gale: The Secretary of State will recall that the Prime Minister gave his personal support to the millennium dome and endorsed the view that it would form the first paragraph of his party's next election manifesto. He will also recall that the Prime Minister took personal charge of the foot and mouth crisis, and turned it into a disaster that has devastated rural communities. As football is rather important in England, will he give the House an assurance that the Prime Minister will not seek to take personal charge of the Wembley stadium?
Mr. Smith: I cannot accept either the conclusion or the premise of the hon. Gentleman's question.
Mr. Mike Gapes: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the decision taken to establish an athletics stadium in the Lee valley was absolutely right? When the athletics championships come to this country, many people in north, east and other parts of London will recognise that the Government made a wise decision.
On the future of the football stadium at Wembley, does he recognise that a large number of clubs in London, which are looking for new grounds, might be persuaded to reconsider moving to a new facility if the plan goes ahead?
Mr. Smith: I can wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend's endorsement of the Lee valley option for the 2005 world championships. As I said, work is well advanced. I am proud that we will have a purpose-built, dedicated athletics facility for those championships. One of the reasons why we were so successful in winning IAAF approval for the proposal in Paris last year was the fact that that facility would be designed and built specifically for athletics. We want to stick to that.
Mr. Nick Hawkins: The Secretary of State knows that, in the four years of the Labour

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Government, I and other members of the all-party sports committee have repeatedly questioned him about the project. On many occasions, he has preened himself in front of not only hon. Members but the world's media and taken credit for what he described as a "magnificent" and "stunning" project. Does he now acknowledge that his ambitions are crumbling to dust, that his claims that the stadium is not a Government project and that Macavity's not there and his attempts to distance himself from events have no credibility not only in the House but in the eyes of the world? Does he further accept that he must take responsibility and resign?
Mr. Smith: No.
Mr. Doug Henderson: My right hon. Friend's friends in the north are fed up with projects being directed to the southern part of the country. We cannot prevent the private sector from investing where it wishes. However, in the case that we are considering, the private sector has decided that Wembley is not viable because of the additional costs that such a location incurs. If any public money, including lottery money, is to be used, can we have value for money by considering options in other parts of the country? They include refurbishing existing football stadiums and spreading international football and rugby league matches throughout the country. Other countries, such as Italy, do that.
Mr. Smith: As I have already said, we are prepared to consider other options, and I will bear my hon. Friend's comments in mind. I am delighted that major projects under the Department's umbrella will go to the north of England. I am especially pleased that the Baltic flour mills and the Gateshead music centre are well under way.
Mr. Andrew Stunell: I welcome the Secretary of State's comments about keeping options open. He mentioned the Commonwealth games in Manchester in 2002. They will be the first big international sporting event in this country after the foot and mouth crisis and will afford great opportunities for regenerating international tourism. Will he assure hon. Members that he will bear regeneration in mind when he considers the stadium, which could properly be located in Greater Manchester?
Mr. Smith: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's endorsement of the importance of the 2002 Commonwealth games, which constitute a major sporting event. They will draw people from all around the world and we can use them in our campaign to boost tourism in the sad aftermath of foot and mouth disease. The announcement that we made this morning of an additional £12 million for the British Tourist Authority's promotion budget will help in that task.
Ms Joan Walley: I welcome my right hon. Friend's work to try to find a solution. Football is our national spectator sport, and it is therefore essential to find a long-term, sustainable solution. We want not a stadium that will cost people far too much to visit, but a venue that ordinary football fans and their families can afford. I welcome my right hon. Friend's
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decision not to rule anything in or out at present. I ask him to consider all the options. If Wembley cannot be refurbished, will he consider the principles of environmental sustainability in, for example, the distances that fans travel to and from football matches? Will he consider the possibility of a Wembley of the north, or even of the midlands?
Mr. Smith: We will consider all the options. I agree with my hon. Friend that is essential to find a good solution. We want a national stadium in England, and it is demonstrably possible to achieve that. The Millennium stadium in Cardiff was built for £126 million, a fifth of the estimated cost of the current Wembley project. Let us learn some lessons from the enormous success of that project and apply them to a national stadium for England.
Mr. Nigel Evans: Today is the fourth anniversary of the Labour Government, and what an appalling birthday present the Secretary of State has given the nation. Wembley stadium was world famous for all the right reasons, and the dome is world famous for all the wrong ones. If the new Wembley project had been a great success, the Government would have claimed credit for it. Now that it is an appalling fiasco, they are rubbing their hands and not taking any of the blame. In the dying days of this dreadful and appalling Government, will the Secretary of State—who obviously has a problem with the word "resign"—at least come to the Dispatch Box and say that he is sorry?
Mr. Smith: The one thing on which I can agree with the hon. Gentleman is that this is, indeed, the fourth anniversary of the election of this Government. I look forward to many more such anniversaries.
Mr. Peter L. Pike: My right hon. Friend will know that I have asked questions consistently on this subject over the past 10 years. Indeed, I had a question on it on Monday's Order Paper, which, unfortunately, we did not reach. I have always supported the need for a replacement Wembley. Wembley stadium, as it was, was not up to standard for the 21st century. We need a replacement that will provide good facilities for the majority of the crowd—ordinary people—and it need not cost £400 million. This is not the Government's fault, and they should tell the FA to get itself sorted out. We need a new national stadium, and I believe that it should be in London, and at Wembley. The FA needs to sort this out, because there is enough money in football to do so.
Mr. Smith: My hon. Friend has, indeed, been consistent in pursuing the need for a national stadium that will offer considerably better conditions than the rather dilapidated ones at the existing Wembley. We wish to see a national stadium, but we must get this right and we must not break everyone's bank in the process.
Mr. David Tredinnick: Will the Secretary of State accept that it was a terrible decision to take Wembley out of service before plans for a new stadium had been agreed? Will he also accept that he has totally underestimated the affection that the British public have for the old Wembley stadium? I say that as one who was lucky enough to go there with his father, on 30 July 1966, to watch that great World cup final. Is not the solution for

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the Secretary of State to make good as best he can the circumstances at Wembley, and to take up the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) and build a new stadium and all its ancillary facilities in Birmingham—in the heart of the midlands—to give the midlands a little? Is not it a fact that this problem is a national humiliation, and that it is happening on the fourth anniversary of this Government?
Mr. Smith: The decision to take Wembley out of service was taken by Wembley National Stadium Ltd. As I have already said, we shall consider a range of options to see what is most affordable and sustainable, both environmentally—as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) mentioned—and economically.
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: I find myself in a minority here. May I say, as a socialist, that although the Secretary of State's job is to promote sports and to provide all the academies, providing an affordable and sustainable—to use his words—national stadium for the industry of soccer is not core Government business, bearing in mind the critical issues now facing us in this country? In my view, it is good that the Government should try to facilitate and encourage this project, but not with public money or with too much energy.
As a socialist, I think that market forces should prevail in this case. We should call the bluff of the Football Association, because the money is there, and the FA will provide it and refurbish Wembley stadium. The one condition that I would like to lay down is that the towers should not be removed. Where else would a heritage building be allowed to have such features removed? I will tell the House why that is happening. It is because of the disproportionate clout and influence of the football industry. That needs to be curtailed, and the industry's bluff needs to be called.
Mr. Smith: I believe that it is the job of the Government to facilitate a good and sustainable solution to this matter. The twin towers are, indeed, deeply loved across the country, and that is why we will, of course, consider refurbishment as well as new-build options. We need to assess the aesthetics, the heritage, the football and the economic case for the various options in front of us.
Mr. Michael Fabricant: In the past few weeks, the Prime Minister has wrested control of foot and mouth away from the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and taken it on himself. Now we hear that control over this fiasco has been taken away from the Secretary of State and given to the Home Secretary. Given that, and the stinging criticism made by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport of the Secretary of State's intervention in 1999 and other issues, how does he feel about his stewardship of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport over the past four years?
Mr. Smith: Very confident.
Mr. David Hinchliffe: Does it remain the aim of the Government to ensure that the new national stadium will cater for sports other than association football—in particular, of course, the great game of rugby league? My right hon. Friend was at Twickenham on
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Saturday, with the Prime Minister and the Minister for Sport, for the rugby league Challenge cup final. For one or two of us—certainly those of us who are banned from rugby union for life—it was a rather uncomfortable experience. Can my right hon. Friend give an assurance that we will not have to go there again? He will be a popular man if he can ensure that rugby league is not played at Twickenham again.
Mr. Smith: The location for the rugby league cup final is a matter for the rugby league authorities, not for me. I suspect that my hon. Friend has influence in that quarter, and he may wish to make his views known there. However, his central point is important. It has always been envisaged, and should still be envisaged, that a national stadium should cater for football and for rugby league.
Mr. Owen Paterson: To prevent the project from collapsing altogether, what is the maximum expenditure of lottery or taxpayers' funds that the Secretary of State is prepared to endorse?
Mr. Smith: There has already been a contribution of £120 million of lottery funds to the purchase of the existing stadium.
Mr. Paterson: How much?
Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the Secretary of State answer.
Mr. Smith: We need to consider—
Mr. Paterson: It is an easy question. How much?
Mr. Speaker: Order. I tell the hon. Gentleman again: let the Secretary of State answer.
Mr. Smith: We need to consider all the various alternatives and the costs. We must also consider where the money can be raised. Those issues will be determined over the next few months.
Mr. Derek Wyatt: I wonder whether my right hon. Friend might ask the FA whether it might like to buy Picketts Lock. Rugby union, the sport with which I am familiar, rebuilt two thirds of Twickenham 10 years ago, based on the premise of debenture tickets and media sales of television rights. Am I right in thinking that debentures were ruled out completely for Wembley? If so, who made the decision?
Mr. Smith: The decisions about the methods of financing for the Wembley project were made by the FA and Wembley National Stadium Ltd. I am pleased that my hon. Friend has drawn attention to Twickenham, which represents an extremely good example of a sport deciding to reconstruct its stadium and doing so successfully by raising the money itself.
Mr. Steve McCabe: It is a pleasure, albeit a rare one, for me entirely to concur with the views of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler). I seek a categoric assurance from my right hon. Friend: if Birmingham is able to show that it

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can provide a first-class, easily accessible, brand-new stadium at a fraction of the cost of the Wembley project, will he ensure that no sleight of hand will be allowed to sabotage our efforts?
Mr. Smith: We shall consider any proposals that are put to us completely fairly and completely openly. We shall make an assessment based on what would provide the best stadium for football and rugby league and the most affordable cost.
Mr. Derek Twigg: Towards the end of last year, a deal to move the Wembley towers to Widnes in my constituency, where they would have formed part of the new national rugby league museum, was all but completed—the ink was nearly dry on the paper. If another opportunity to move the towers arises, will my right hon. Friend give his support for that?
I welcome my right hon. Friend's decision to take a fresh look at the problem of Wembley. We have heard nonsense from the Tories, who have put nothing of substance on the table today. It is right not to rule out other locations and my right hon. Friend might consider the north-west of England, where he will find the best rugby league and soccer teams in the country. Building a national stadium in the region would save supporters money as they would not have to travel back and forth to other venues.
Mr. Smith: There is a practical difficulty with moving the Wembley towers, because of the nature of their construction. However, if ingenious methods of moving them can be found and if the finance for the operation can be put together, such an option may be considered. I note my hon. Friend's bid for the north-west of England to host a national stadium. So far, we have had bids from Wembley itself, the north-west, the north-east, Birmingham and other parts of the midlands. Indeed, if market forces are operating, perhaps such competition is the best possible way to secure a good stadium at an affordable price.
Mr. David Taylor North-West Leicestershire): Was it not chronic and perverse metro-centricity that left the national showcase for the national game in a shabby stadium in an inaccessible, expensive and congested north-west London suburb when decades ago it could have been moved to the midlands or the north? Will my right hon. Friend look carefully at the potential of the east midlands to provide a home for the national game that is accessible, affordable and closer to the real supporters of football?
Mr. Smith: One of the good aspects of the Wembley project so far has been the commitment of all parties—the single regeneration budget panel, the Wembley taskforce and the mayor of London—to improving the accessibility of the Wembley area, and the regeneration of that area is one of the benefits that have been sought. I reiterate, however, what I have said to others: we will look at all the options, and we will consider alternative locations. We want to do the right thing and ensure that we end up with the best possible national stadium.

Points of Order
4.11 pm
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, of which I have given notice both to you and to the Minister concerned.
On 27 March I tabled two questions to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, to which I have received no substantive answer. Let me briefly explain. I asked the Minister from which countries whose standards of animal welfare, health or hygiene were lower than those of this country we were importing meat or poultry or their products. Neither question was difficult to answer—I should have thought that the Minister already had the information—and answering would have been neither time-consuming nor expensive; yet, 36 days later, there is still no answer.
The only reason I can think of for the fact that there has been no answer is that providing such an answer would be politically embarrassing. The Government are too embarrassed to admit that British farming has been put at a competitive disadvantage by the Government's failure to take action to ban products from countries whose standards are poorer than ours. The Government understand that products in those countries—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's point of order is already clear to me; he is now setting out his reason for tabling his questions. Would he leave it at that?
Mr. Sayeed: May I finish, Mr. Speaker, very briefly? Can you confirm that my two questions were in order, and that it is unacceptable for a Government to delay answers deliberately just because those answers are politically embarrassing to them?
Mr. Speaker: If the Table Office accepted the two questions, they must have been in order.
All hon. Members are entitled to timeous replies, but it must also be appreciated that the Department to which the hon. Gentleman referred is under a great deal of strain. Members should realise that, and exercise some patience. I put it on record, however, that the hon. Gentleman is entitled to a timeous answer.
Mr. Gerald Howarth: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I hope that you will deem me to have given you notice of it—if not entirely formally—during Prime Minister's Question Time.
During that Question Time, Mr. Speaker, you will have heard a great many cries of "Disgraceful" from Conservative Members. I am sure you will accept that they were aimed not at the Chair but at the conduct of the Prime Minister.
It is indeed disgraceful that the Prime Minister has changed the rules of the House: instead of coming here twice a week, he now deigns to come only once a week. His constitutional duty is to answer questions from Members in all parts of the House, but particularly from the Leader of the Opposition. I am sure that you will agree, Mr. Speaker, that, in response to very serious points that were made by my right hon. Friend about Wembley stadium, the dome and so on, the Prime Minister was gratuitously abusive to my right hon. Friend, referring to

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some remarks by some Conservative candidate—a matter for which the Prime Minister has no responsibility whatever. I am sure that you will agree that that behaviour tends to bring the House into disrepute with the public.
You referred to this matter in an earlier statement: "Questions are out of order if they relate to Opposition party policies rather than Government responsibilities."
You went on to say:
"Of course I recognise that over many years, Question Time has developed as a lively occasion on which political points are scored. That applies particularly to Prime Minister's Question Time. As I said last week, although the same constraints apply, I think it right to allow the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition a greater degree of latitude."—[Official Report, 14 February 2001; Vol. 363, c. 315.]
Given the widespread concern expressed by Opposition Members during Prime Minister's questions, to what extent do any constraints apply to the Prime Minister, who comes here only once a week? He should be answering questions instead of trying to score cheap points off my right hon. Friend on matters that do not relate to Prime Ministerial responsibilities.
Mr. David Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I must first answer the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth). Certainly, Prime Minister's Question Time this afternoon was very lively; I think that we can both agree with that. At all times, I must be able to use my judgment. The Prime Minister does not change the rules of the House. The House changes the rules. I am the custodian of those rules. I heard many hon. Members shouting, "Disgraceful." I did feel that some of those remarks were directed at me. I accept the hon. Gentleman's explanation that they were not directed at me—that is fine—but some were telling me to intervene and to stop the Prime Minister.
I will use my judgment at all times in the House. It is for me to use my judgment. Let me put it on the record that the worst thing that can happen is for hon. Members to tell me to intervene, because in doing so they are telling me how to do my job. Believe me: I will stay put and I will not intervene in those circumstances. I will use my judgment.
The hon. Gentleman has given me an opportunity to add that, when the House gets very noisy, it is unfair to those who are asking and, indeed, answering questions. The noise level has been very bad. I expect co-operation from hon. Members on both sides of the House during Prime Minister's questions and other parliamentary questions. The noise level can be far too high.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter. I am glad that he was not directing his cries at me, but he and others were out of order when they were shouting far too loudly in the Chamber. That goes for hon. Members on both sides of the House. It would be best to leave it at that. It was a noisy day. There was more than one excited hon. Member.
Mr. Andrew Tyrie: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have given notice in correspondence with you of the point that I want to raise, which connects directly with the point on which you have just ruled.
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I had understood that the Prime Minister could only answer questions for which he was responsible and for which the Executive were responsible. We had a contentious case today. Six weeks ago, you ruled that a question on Short money to the Prime Minister was in order. But the House vote that pays for the Short money is not a matter for the Executive or in any way a matter for the Prime Minister. As you know, it is a matter for the House of Commons Commission, which you chair. I hesitated to raise this in the House on a point of order, so I wrote to you. If I may, I will read out part of your reply:
"I am sure you will, on reflection, understand that it would not be appropriate for me to account to individual Members for my rulings or to enter into discussions about them."
Yours is a quasi-judicial rule, Mr. Speaker. Like judges, you are not required to provide any explanation, but explanations are generally given by judges of their decisions and rulings. I am rising now to ask whether, on reflection, you think it would be helpful to say whether the Prime Minister may now be asked questions on subjects for which he is palpably not responsible.
Mr. Speaker: I must say to the hon. Gentleman that that would not be helpful. If he wished to have a private discussion with me, that might be helpful.
Mr. David Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not the case, as Hansard will show, that previous Prime Ministers—Labour and Conservative—have used Question Time and every aspect of the agenda before them to try to defend the Government's record, and that the present Prime Minister has not departed from that? I refer you to 10 January, when the Prime Minister, quoting a Conservative candidate in Birmingham, said:
"It might be thought a strange form of madness for someone to nail their colours to the Conservative mast at such a time of crisis for the party."—[Official Report, 10 January 2001; Vol. 360, c. 1073.]
No Conservative objected to that. There were points of order—from what may be described as the usual suspects—but no Conservative objected to what the Prime Minister said. What has been said today has been said previously by previous Prime Ministers. Conservative Members—certainly those who are new to the House—should consult Hansard over the years to see what those Prime Ministers have done.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is not raising a point of order.
Mr. John Bercow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In common with other hon. Members, I am extremely grateful for the ruling that you have just given and the guidance that you have thereby provided.
On a different point, on several dozen occasions in recent months, at a time when right hon. and hon. Members have been asking questions, at best tangentially related, if related at all, to Ministers' responsibilities, right hon. and hon. Members have busily been chatting to you while you have been occupying the Chair. I wonder if I might put it to you that it would be extremely helpful to the efficient dispatch of business and the retention of good

865
order if they did not do that, because we wish, of course, to have the full benefit at all times both of your personal attention and of your intellectual resources.
Mr. Speaker: That is a bit like the kettle calling the pot black, as the hon. Gentleman is one of the chatterers.
Mr. Steve McCabe: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Could it ever be in order for a Leader of the Opposition to be afforded special protection in this House during Question Time or any other occasion, no matter how exposed, vulnerable or pathetic that Leader might be?
Mr. Speaker: We now move on.

BILL PRESENTED
  BANKING (INQUIRY)
  Mr. Christopher Leslie, supported by Mr. Phil Hope, Mr. Terry Rooney, Mr. James Plaskitt, Ms Sally Keeble, Maria Eagle, Shona McIsaac and Ms Rosie Winterton presented a Bill to require the Financial Services Authority to carry out an inquiry into the operation of overdraft facilities provided by clearing banks and deposit-taking institutions; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on 11 May, and to be printed [Bill 91].

Bereavement Payments (Entitlement Conditions) (Amendment)
4.24 pm
Mr. Roger Gale: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the timescale within which payments may be made to bereaved persons.
My Bill would require a change in the provisions of the Social Security (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations, laid on 14 March 1997. These regulations—which apply to widows' benefit and widows' payment, or bereavement allowance, as it became on 9 April this year—reduced from 12 months to three the prescribed time limit within which a claim for benefit may be made. The clock starts running, effectively, from the date of death of the spouse.
The need to change those regulations was drawn to my attention by the tragic case of my young constituent Mrs. Corinna Smith. I raised this matter in an Adjournment debate more than a year ago, on 6 April 2000, and I therefore propose only to give a summary of the details. On 2 June 1999, Alan Smith of Margate was working with highly inflammable chemicals which caught fire, inflicting terrible burns, from which Mr. Smith subsequently died on 18 June, leaving a 19-year-old widow, Corinna.
Mrs. Smith was required to identify her husband's body in the Broomfield hospital, Chelmsford and then, for a second time, at the Buckland hospital, Dover, to which his remains had been transferred and where a post mortem was carried out. Alan Smith's corpse was subsequently released by the Dover coroner, who provided to the undertakers the burial order necessary for a funeral to take place on 8 July 1999.
A postponed inquest into Alan Smith's death was eventually held on 12 October 1999 and the Chelmsford registrar was finally able to issue a death certificate on 14 October. That was posted to Mrs. Smith with a covering letter, saying:
"Please find enclosed a Certificate of Registration of Death which should be completed on the reverse side and returned to the Department of Social Security. The leaflets enclosed may be of some assistance to you."
That was the first official document that Corinna Smith had received since the death of her husband four months earlier.
As Mrs. Smith was under 45, she did not qualify for a widows' pension and so she claimed the £1,000 widows' payment—the only assistance available to women facing her tragic circumstances—that she needed to help to repay money borrowed to pay for her husband's funeral and related expenses. In a pro forma notice issued by the local DSS she was told that
"because more than three months had elapsed since the death of her husband"
she would receive no money. A subsequent appeal to a tribunal delivered the decision that
"there is no entitlement to a Widow's Payment in respect of a death occurring more than 3 months before the date of the claim."
I regarded, and continue to regard, the denial to Mrs. Smith of what was clearly a payment that should have been hers by right, as a considerable injustice and as an affront that added insult to dreadful injury. I engaged in an exchange of letters with the Secretary of State and

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the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for City of York (Mr. Bayley). I received much jargon and avowed sympathy for my constituent's plight, including the crass assertion that the Minister could
"appreciate that the time immediately after the death of a spouse will be traumatic and claiming may not be the main priority",
together with a rigid adherence to the book, which says that no payment will be made if a claim is made outside three months.
Given that the death certificate and letter of advice were not sent to Mrs. Smith until after the three-month deadline had passed, I assume that my constituent was expected either to read the fine print of every document in the DSS office or to have second sight in order to know of her entitlement. Without the necessary documentation and information it was not, of course, possible for her to claim in time.
My purpose in raising the matter in an Adjournment debate was not to win retrospective benefit which the Government were clearly determined, under rigid adherence to the regulations, to deny to Mrs. Smith, but to urge the Secretary of State to change the regulations so that no other woman would have to suffer, in similar circumstances, the indignity suffered by my constituent. In response, the Government Department charged with the duty of protecting the most vulnerable in society made it plain that, not to put too fine a point on it, my proposed and simple solution was "not thought of here", and it would not budge.
Replying to the debate, another Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle)—who, I am pleased to see, is in her place this afternoon—acknowledged that
"in Mrs. Smith's case there were good reasons for the delay in claiming benefit"
and that
"It was not her fault that the inquest was adjourned and that, by the time that it … took place … the three months had elapsed".
The Minister also offered, again, the helpful observation that
"at a time of traumatic loss, a widow may not be best placed emotionally or otherwise to make the business of claiming benefit"
the first priority. But the Government's bottom line was that, as the three-month time limit is
"an absolute rule, the reason for the delay is immaterial."—[Official Report, 6 April 2000; Vol. 347, c. 1259.]
This House of Commons has been devalued by an arrogant Executive, but if it has one useful purpose left it is, when necessary, to challenge and to change absolute rules—and that is what this Bill is about. I have made it plain that the regulations were laid by the last Conservative Government. They have been implemented and enforced by the present Government. As we all know,
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in politics there is a law of unintended consequences, and I do not for one moment believe that the authors of this nonsense intended to deny the thankfully very few Corinna Smiths of this world a pitiful bereavement benefit in their hour of need.
When I began this crusade I did not seek to apportion blame. However, it has become apparent that this Secretary of State and his Ministers are determined to perpetuate the injustice.
On 9 April, the widows' payment was replaced with the bereavement benefit, and the amount involved was increased from £1,000 to £2,000. It would have been easy to change the regulations at that time and, instead of starting the three-month clock running from the moment of death, to start it from the time when the death certificate—and the vital advice that goes with it—is issued.
That would have been easy, but this Secretary of State has chosen not to do it. It is to bring about that very simple change, and to make sure that others in the future are not denied Corinna Smith's widow's mite, that I seek leave today to introduce this Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Roger Gale, Mr. Peter Bottomley, Mrs. Helen Brinton, Mr. Ian Bruce, Sir Sydney Chapman, Mr. Nigel Jones, Mr. Andrew Rowe, Rev. Martin Smyth, Mr. Ian Stewart and Mrs. Ann Winterton.

BEREAVEMENT PAYMENTS (ENTITLEMENT CONDITIONS) (AMENDMENT)
Mr. Roger Gale accordingly presented a Bill to amend the time scale within which payments may be made to bereaved persons: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May, and to be printed [Bill 92].

STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGIONAL AFFAIRS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 117(6) (Standing Committee on Regional Affairs),
That—
(1) the matter of raising the economic performance of the regions and tackling regional imbalances, being a matter relating to regional affairs in England, be referred to the Standing Committee on Regional Affairs;
(2) the committee meet at half-past One o'clock on Thursday 10th May at Westminster to consider the matter referred to it under paragraph (1) above; and
(3) the proceedings at that meeting be interrupted at Four o'clock.[Mr. Dowd.]
Question agreed to.

Regulatory Reform
[Relevant documents: The First Special Report of the Deregulation Committee, Session 2000–2001, on the Handling of Regulatory Reform Orders, HC328.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker(Mr. Michael Lord): Before we proceed, I should tell the House that Mr. Speaker has selected amendments (a) and (b) in the name of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth).
4.32 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr. Graham Stringer): I beg to move,
That the following changes be made to the Standing Orders of the House—
A. That Standing Order No. 141 (Deregulation Committee) be repealed and the following new Standing Order be made—
Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee
(1) There shall be a select committee, called the Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee, to examine—

(i) every document containing proposals laid before the House under section 3 of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 (the 1994 Act) or under section 6 of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 (the 2001 Act);

(ii) every draft order proposed to be made under section 1 of the 1994 Act or section 1 of the 2001 Act; and

(iii) every subordinate provisions order or draft of such an order made or proposed to be made under sections 1 and 4 of the 2001 Act.

(2) The committee shall report to the House, in relation to every proposals document referred to in paragraph 1(i) of this order, either

(a) that a draft order in the same terms as the proposals should be laid before the House; or

(b) that the proposals should be amended before a draft order is laid before the House; or

(c) that the order-making power should not be used in respect of the proposals.

(3) The committee shall report to the House, in relation to every draft order referred to in paragraph 1(ii) of this order, its recommendation whether the draft order should be approved.
(4) The committee may draw the special attention of the House to any subordinate provisions order or draft order referred to in paragraph 1(iii) of this order, and may report its opinion whether or not the order or draft order should be approved or, as the case may be, annulled.
(5) The committee may report to the House on any matter arising from its consideration of the said proposals, draft orders or subordinate provisions orders.
(6)(A) In its consideration of proposals the committee shall consider in each case whether the proposals

(a) appear to make an inappropriate use of delegated legislation;

(b) remove or reduce a burden or the authorisation or requirement of a burden;

(c) continue any necessary protection;

(d) have been the subject of, and take appropriate account of, adequate consultation;

(e) impose a charge on the public revenues or contain provisions requiring payments to be made to the Exchequer or any government department or to any local or public authority in consideration of any licence or consent or of any services to be rendered, or prescribe the amount of any such charge or payment;

(f) purport to have retrospective effect;

(g) give rise to doubts whether they are intra vires;

870

(h) require elucidation, are not written in plain English or appear to be defectively drafted;

(i) appear to be incompatible with any obligation resulting from membership of the European Union.

(B) In the case of proposals presented under the 2001 Act, the committee shall also consider whether the proposals:

(j) prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom which he might reasonably expect to continue to exercise;

(k) satisfy the conditions of proportionality between burdens and benefits set out in sections 1 and 3 of the Act;

(l) satisfy the test of desirability set out in section 3(2)(b) of the Act;

(m) have been the subject of, and take appropriate account of, estimates of increases or reductions in costs or other benefits which may result from their implementation; or

(n) include provisions to be designated in the draft order as subordinate provisions;
and in the case of the latter consideration the committee shall report its opinion whether such a designation should be made, and to what parliamentary proceedings any subordinate provisions orders should be subject.

(7) In its consideration of draft orders, the committee shall consider in each case all such matters set out in paragraph (6) of this order as are relevant and the extent to which the Minister concerned has had regard to any resolution or report of the Committee or to any other representations made during the period for parliamentary consideration.
(8) In its consideration of any subordinate provisions order the committee shall in each case consider whether the special attention of the House should be drawn to it on any of the grounds on which (in accordance with paragraph 1(B) of Standing Order No. 151 (Statutory Instruments (Joint Committee)) the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments may draw the attention of the House to a statutory instrument; and if the committee is of the opinion that any such order or draft order should be annulled, or, as the case may be, should not be approved, they shall report that opinion to the House.
(9) The committee shall consist of eighteen members.
(10) The quorum of the committee shall be five.
(11) Unless the House otherwise orders, each Member nominated to the committee shall continue to be a member of it for the remainder of the Parliament.
(12) The committee shall have power—

(a) to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom, and to report from time to time;

(b) to appoint specialist advisers either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the committee's order of reference;

(c) to appoint a sub-committee, of which the quorum shall be two, which shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, and to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom;

(d) to communicate its evidence and any other documents relating to matters of common interest to any committee appointed by this House and to any committee appointed by the Lords to examine deregulation and regulatory reform proposals and draft orders.

(13) The committee and the sub-committee shall have leave to meet concurrently with any select committee appointed by the Lords to examine deregulation and regulatory reform proposals and draft orders and any sub-committee thereof.
(14) The committee and the sub-committee shall have the assistance of the Counsel to the Speaker and, if their Lordships think fit, the Counsel to the Lord Chairman of Committees.
(15) The committee and the sub-committee shall have power to invite Members of the House who are not members of the committee to attend meetings at which witnesses are being examined and such Members may, at the discretion of the chairman, ask questions of

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those witnesses; but no Member not being of the committee shall otherwise take part in the proceedings of the committee or sub-committee, or be counted in the quorum.
(16) It shall be an instruction to the committee that before reporting either
(a) that any proposal should be amended before the draft order is laid before the House, or
(b) that the order-making power should not be used in respect of any proposal, or
(c) that any draft order should not he approved,
it shall afford to any government department concerned an opportunity of furnishing orally or in writing to it or to the sub-committee appointed by it such explanations as the department think fit.
(17) It shall be an instruction to the committee that it report on every draft order (not being a subordinate provisions order) not more than fifteen sitting days after the draft order was laid before the House, indicating in the case of draft orders which it recommends should be approved whether its recommendation was agreed without a division.
B. That the following amendments be made to Standing Order No. 18 (Consideration of draft deregulation orders)—
(1) Title, after 'deregulation', insert 'etc.'.
(2) Line 1, after 'Deregulation', insert 'and Regulatory Reform'.
(3) Line 3, after 'Deregulation', insert 'and Regulatory Reform'.
(4) Line 5, after '1994', insert 'or under section 1 of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001'.
C. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 98 (Scottish Grand Committee (delegated legislation)—
Line 15, after 'order', insert 'or regulatory reform order'.
D. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 115 (Northern Ireland Grand Committee (delegated legislation))—
Line 15, after 'order', insert 'or regulatory reform order'.
E. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 118 (Standing committees on delegated legislation))
Line 14, after 'order', insert 'or regulatory reform order'.
F. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 151 (Statutory Instruments (Joint Committee))
Line 25, after '1994', insert 'or under section 1 of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001, or any subordinate provisions order made or draft proposed to be made under that Act'.
G. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 152 (Select committees related to government departments)—
Line 33, after 'Deregulation', insert 'and Regulatory Reform'.
It is now a little over three weeks since the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 reached the statute book. The debates on the Bill as it went through Parliament, both here and in another place, were for the most part characterised by thoughtful and well-informed contributions. The result, I believe, is an excellent tool for regulatory reform. The Government have already published six consultation documents and I fully expect to see more issued soon.
As was made clear in debate on the Bill, the superaffirmative process that applies to deregulation orders and now to regulatory reform orders is a model of thorough parliamentary scrutiny. In order to ensure that the superaffirmative order-making process remains effective, we need to amend the two Standing Orders now before the House so that they cover all the innovations introduced by what is now the Regulatory Reform Act 2001.
It is therefore with considerable satisfaction that I am proposing today changes to the Standing Orders which will rename the current Deregulation Committee and
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permit it to consider regulatory reform proposals as well as to complete its scrutiny of those remaining proposals for deregulation orders that are currently before Parliament.
Throughout the debates on the Bill, I stressed that it was a matter for Parliament, and not the Government, to decide the manner in which the Committee would consider proposals for regulatory reform. I am therefore happy to say that the Standing Orders that we are considering today reflect very closely those suggested by the Committee in its first special report of this Session, published on 16 March.
I am sure that it will be of interest to the House if I outline briefly the procedure for the scrutiny of regulatory reform orders. The 2001 Act requires that the relevant Minister undertake extensive public consultation on the proposal in question. Under section 5, this consultation m£
ust involve all interested parties, including those that might be adversely affected by the proposals.
The process is, therefore, front loaded, by which I mean that the onus is very much on the Minister to work the policy through fully. The Minister proposing a piece of regulatory reform would need to think through the possible consequences thoroughly and then convince the Scrutiny Committee of the merits of the case. That can only be done on the basis of evidence gathered during the consultation process.
Let me make it clear that the purpose of this extensive public consultation is not only to seek views on the policy but to elicit evidence against a prescribed list of matters without which the proposal cannot legally go ahead. During Third Reading, I placed in the Libraries of the House a draft of an advisory note for Departments on consultation. We will shortly be issuing the final version. I believe that it would be helpful if I reiterated some of the key points.
The consultation document must include all aspects of the proposal. Each consultation on a prospective regulatory reform order must elicit all the information needed to complete the explanatory document that the Minister must lay alongside the proposed order. The consultation responses will need to provide evidence to support any assertions. The Government therefore accept the need for Departments to structure their consultation documents so as to follow the list of matters at section 6(2) of the Act—in particular, the extent to which burdens are to be removed or whether any burdens are to be restated or created; whether any proposal could prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom that he or she might reasonably expect to continue to exercise, and if so, how he or she is to be enabled to continue to exercise that right or freedom; whether the proposals would create a burden affecting any person in carrying on an activity, and if so, how the conditions concerning proportionality, fair balance and desirability are satisfied; whether any provisions of the proposed order are designated as subordinate provisions, and if so, why they are being so designated; whether any savings or increases in cost are estimated to result from the proposals, and if so, the reasons why savings or increases in costs should be expected; and if it is practicable, the documents should make an estimate of that amount and how it is calculated, and any benefits—other than savings in cost—that are expected to flow from the implementation of the proposals.
The reason for this degree of detail in consultation documents has as much to do with the specific requirements of the Act as with the Standing Orders of the Scrutiny Committee. Consultation documents on proposals for regulatory reform have two purposes. First, they must set out the proposal against the tests and safeguards in the order-making process in such a way that the intended audience can readily supply the information that the Minister needs to satisfy himself and the Scrutiny Committees that the proposal meets those tests and safeguards. Secondly, they must explain clearly and comprehensibly the policy on which views are being sought, including the implications for the devolved Administrations. These aims may result in a longer consultation document than would otherwise emerge with a straightforward consultation exercise aimed at developing policy.
The Standing Orders require the Scrutiny Committees to pay special attention to the inclusiveness of the consultation process, such as the extent to which it captured the views of those who might be adversely affected, whether directly or indirectly, by the proposal. That is obviously entirely right. It means that the emphasis must be on a wide distribution, covering representative bodies, consumer bodies, trade unions, employers' representatives—including representatives of small business and the Small Business Service—and other likely interest groups. The document should be expressed in a way that all these different interests can understand. It must include sufficient background material for a newcomer to understand the proposal. It should not assume any prior knowledge.
During debate, undertakings were given that highly charged or politically controversial measures are—and will remain—better suited to the Floor of the House. The consultation process will be key to establishing whether a proposal is suitable to enactment as an RRO or whether it would be best dealt with as a Bill. Of course, some proposals, such as the trade union check-off deregulation order, may initially appear controversial but prove amenable to the consensual nature of the order-making process, based, as it is, on the careful gathering of evidence which is weighed up by a scrupulous and independent Committee. The Standing Orders before the House are key to ensuring that the Committee can continue in that vein. Committees have in the past rejected proposals on grounds of inadequate consultation, and the Government fully expect them to maintain their vigilance.
After the consultation process, the proposals are put before the Committee under section 8 of the Act. The Committee considers them for 60 days. The Standing Orders outline the areas that the Committee will study, which reflect the tests and safeguards contained in the Act. We discussed those at considerable length at various stages and I have already run through them today.
At the end of the 60-day period, the Committee will issue a report on the proposals and it is for the Minister to decide how to respond. However, there is a firm Government commitment—which I am happy to repeat—that they will not proceed with an order in the face of the Committee's opposition. The Standing Orders then lay down a further 15 days for the consideration of the
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Government's proposal, as amended if appropriate. At the end of those 15 days, the Committee will report again and the matter passes for the approval of the House.
If the Committee's report is favourable, the question to approve the draft order is put forthwith without debate. If the Committee's report is favourable but it had divided on the issue, the question to approve the draft order is put after a maximum of one and a half hours of debate. If the Committee's report is not favourable, the question to approve the draft order is put after a maximum of three hours of debate. Again, I stress that that is what is laid down in the Standing Orders. In practice, the Government have made a commitment not to proceed with an order following an unfavourable report.
Experience with the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 has shown that this is an excellent system for scrutinising orders. The Committee's input has frequently been invaluable and the Government have changed many of their proposals in the light of their comments. It has also, on occasion, taken us to task on what it has seen as inadequate consultation on deregulation proposals, and the Government have always taken whatever corrective steps the Committee has recommended.
Although the useful life of the 1994 Act has come to an end, the procedures that governed its use have stood the test of time. The requirements in the Act and the effect of the Standing Orders ensure that the emphasis is on getting it right first time. As a result, it would, for instance, simply not be possible for a Minister to introduce a skeleton order, nor would the Minister be able to make large-scale and piecemeal amendments while the proposal was before the House for scrutiny.
Departments will, of course, also need to address at an early stage the implications of the three devolution settlements for their policy proposals. They must be reflected in the consultation document. Although not expressly provided for, the Standing Orders, as drafted, will ensure that the Scrutiny Committee can address any devolution-related issues when it considers the vires of each proposal. The devolution settlements are reflected in the vires of the Act, and the Committee is charged specifically with considering vires questions.
I am sure that it will be of interest to the House if I outline briefly the changes proposed by the Committee concerning existing Standing Orders Nos. 18 and 141 and the other minor modifications that I am suggesting he included in the Committee's draft. The new Standing Orders take account of two issues. The first is the advent of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001. The Standing Orders before us reflect the new and strengthened criteria against which proposals will be judged.
Secondly, the Standing Orders take account of the fact that proposals under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act that were placed before Parliament before the 2001 Act received Royal Assent are still being considered by the Committee. Four such orders are currently before Parliament. Once they have been dealt with, there will need to be further minor changes to the Standing Orders to reflect the final disappearance of the 1994 power. This will not need to take place until later in the autumn.
I have said, the orders before us differ slightly from those drafted by the Committee in its first special report. Most of the changes are merely consequential to ensure that references to other Standing Orders remain consistent. The only change of substance is the addition

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of paragraph (1) in article (6)(B). This concerns the desirability test, which was—as hon. Members will remember—added by the Liberal Democrats during the progress of the 2001 Act through another place. It makes sense to include it in the Standing Orders along with the other safeguards contained in the Act. I hope that members of the Committee will welcome this small change.
Under these Standing Orders, the Committee members will focus on the new safeguards in the Act. They must ensure that no proposal removes any necessary protection or deprives people of any rights or freedoms that they could reasonably expect to continue to enjoy. They must test to see whether any burdens imposed are proportionate to the benefits expected from them. Any orders imposing burdens must also strike a fair balance between the public interest and the interest of those affected by the burden, and the extent to which they remove burdens or bring other benefits must make the proposals as a whole desirable.
The Standing Orders also include some matters that are not on the face of the Act. For example, the Committee will consider whether proposals are in plain English. Hon. Members will remember that I resisted including such a provision in the Act itself. I was, and remain, concerned that legal clarity should not be sacrificed for superficial simplicity. I know that many Committee members are keen to highlight the issue, and I have no objection to its inclusion in the Standing Orders.
Mr. Peter L. Pike: The Committee welcomes that. Although we included the provision in the draft Standing Orders, we did not expect it to be accepted.
Mr. Stringer: I am sure that the Committee's interest in plain English will give rise to interesting debates between its members and the lawyers who advise Departments. That should improve regulatory reform orders. The Committee is required only to "consider" the issue. As I agree that plain English is desirable wherever possible, I am happy for it to do that.
I am sure the House will agree that the Standing Orders are evidence of the Committee's positive input to the process. It is based on consensus, and the Government have been at pains to involve the Committee as much as possible. It has been an exemplary process, and I pay tribute to the Committee's work.
I note that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has tabled amendments. Amendment (a) would increase the Committee's quorum from five to seven. Its size and quorum remain unchanged from those that applied under the previous Administration. Had the Committee suggested a change—which it did not—the Government would have taken its request seriously. The fact that the matter was not raised suggests that there is no need for the quorum to change for those people who are involved in the Committee.
Mr. Eric Forth rose—
Mr. John Bercow rose—
Mr. Stringer: I give way first to the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst.
Mr. Forth: That is an interesting line of argument. According to the Minister, it is enough if those directly
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involved do not believe that the quorum should be changed. However, I believe that the House is entitled to take a view of the duties and responsibilities of Committee members, independent of people with a vested interest. I hope he will accept that it is absolutely proper that I should seek the opinion of the House rather than of Committee members, who might want to slide out of attendance in greater numbers than my quorum would allow them to.
Mr. Stringer: We are undertaking that process now by considering the views of the House. I am using the fact that the Committee did not think it necessary to change the quorum to support my argument. Other arguments could be used in favour of the current quorum. For example, it is an important consideration that all Select Committees in the past have accepted it.
Mr. Bercow: Further to the point made by my right hon. Friend, not only are the views of existing Committee members not the only consideration, they are—frankly—scarcely a consideration at all. I put it to the Minister, who has lived a bit, that it is hardly a surprise that a tiny coterie of individuals—who for most purposes are otherwise largely, if not totally, obscure—should wish to preserve and enhance what pettifogging influence they may have, and are thus likely to oppose an increase in the quorum. As the late Enoch Powell would have said, that is so blindingly obvious that only an extraordinarily clever person could fail to see it.
Mr. Stringer: I repeat that we are not relying totally on the Committee's opinions in reaching our conclusions. I remind the hon. Gentleman that on Second Reading, Report and Third Reading, it was brought to the attention of hon. Members that Conservatives were the worst attenders of the Committee. Of course all hon. Members have a right to have their views heard. In particular, it is important to take into account the opinions of people who have had the responsibility of serving as Committee members.
Mr. Pike: Is it not important to remember that the quorum was fixed by the Conservative Government when the Committee was set up?
Mr. Bercow: I could not give a stuff about that.
Mr. Pike: Would it not be useful to note the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) as possible volunteers for the Committee after the election? They might well want to help to make up the quorum.
Mr. Stringer: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is incumbent on hon. Members who want to amend a Standing Order to make the case for a positive change. It is interesting that the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) said from a sedentary position that he did not give a stuff about what quorum the previous Government had set. We think it important that they set that standard, and we are satisfied with it.

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We have not heard a good case for change, and we have heard nothing from members of the Committee about a change.
Mr. Brian Cotter: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Stringer: I wanted to move on, but I will take the intervention.
Mr. Bercow: There is plenty of time.
Mr. Cotter: I do not want to labour the point, but is it not bizarre that Conservative Members are talking about increasing the quorum when I, as a member of the Committee, know that we had frequently to make up the quorum without their attendance?
Mr. Stringer: That is a very good point. I said earlier that Conservative Members' attendance of the Committee has not been good. One conclusion that we can draw from the amendments and the comments that have been made is that Conservative Members do not want the Committee to function.
I must tell the hon. Member for Buckingham that I wanted to make progress because his colleague on the Front Bench, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), has courteously told me that he has a prior engagement, and I should like to finish my remarks to give him time to speak.
The second amendment seeks to raise from two to four the quorum of the sub-Committee that could be formed. Again, the proposals do not alter existing procedure. The sub-Committee could of course report only to the Committee proper, for which the usual quorum would be required. The Deregulation Committee did not recommend any change to the status quo.
I do not believe that the Standing Orders would benefit in any way from the amendments in the name of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, so in the light of the small changes that I have outlined, I am happy to accept the Committee's draft for the Standing Orders, and I commend it to the House.
4.52 pm
Mr. Andrew Lansley: I am grateful to the Minister for his understanding of my requirement to be elsewhere in the House. I intend no discourtesy if I have to leave the Chamber shortly after the introductory speeches, but of course I hope to return in time for the winding up of the debate.
As the Minister said, we have recently debated some of the important measures in the Regulatory Reform Act 2001. As I said in those proceedings, the powers are exceptional and go beyond what was intended in the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. The initial consultation documents issued in anticipation of Regulatory Reform Act orders show clearly that they will comprise not only deregulatory measures but those for re-regulation and restructuring of regulation, and will incur expenditure.
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For example, it is intended that the vaccine damage payment scheme should be reformed and extended by way of those orders. The review of fire safety legislation that we have discussed will no doubt proceed. That is a large, comprehensive measure, and it is important that we get it right. We are dealing with the amendment of primary legislation through statutory instruments, and the Committee's important work on that should not be under-estimated.
I agree with my right hon. and hon. Friends that the Committee's record of attendance and much of its activity, valuable though it has undoubtedly been, is of little account. It has been of limited effect in the past few years because the Government have taken relatively few deregulatory initiatives since 1997. The fact that there will now be a volume of orders to be considered means that we are coming to the matter afresh, with these new powers, and it behoves us to look forward rather than back. The addition of regulatory reform to the Committee's title is itself resonant of its wider powers and purposes, so we have to make sure that it is effective.
In that context, once again we touch on the membership of Select Committees, not just issues concerning the quorum and so on; I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friends will deal with that. I do not propose to reiterate arguments made by the Opposition in debates about the selection of members of Select Committees. However, it is important to recognise that there is a special need for Members chosen to serve on the Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee to have a critical approach to draft orders and a sense of independence. I hope that, when the Committee is reconstituted, it is borne in mind that a sense of independence and willingness to scrutinise is vital.
We are pleased to see the Chairman of the Deregulation Committee in the Chamber and, when he contributes to the debate, I am sure that he will stress the need for a critical approach and independence, and for the Committee to be reconstituted quickly after the general election, whenever it takes place. There is a 60-day limit on the work of the Committee and, although the clock stops for an election, it restarts immediately after, so it is vital for the Committee to be in place and able to discharge that function.
The Committee's effectiveness, as I am sure that the Minister recognises, will largely depend on the quality of the preliminary consultation under section 5 of the 2001 Act and, indeed, the quality of the document laid before Parliament. I have made points in Committee and on Report about the requirements for preliminary consultation. I am therefore grateful to the Minister for the further changes that he has made in the advisory notes to Departments about consultation documents, and I look forward to any future draft that he may introduce.
The Minister referred to consultation documents that have already been issued. I have addressed the first five, but I note that the sixth, which relates to removing the 20-partner limit and was issued by the Department of Trade and Industry the day before Report and Third Reading, seems to have avoided the errors—perhaps that is too harsh, inconsistencies may be a better word—that characterised previous consultation documents. In particular, the preliminary consultation document does not attempt to prejudge Ministers' opinions on proportionality in the relationship between burdens imposed and benefits

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derived; the desirability test to which the Minister referred; and the fair balance test in the Act between the public interest and the private interests affected.
Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend has rightly highlighted the importance of proportionality and fair balance. Does he not agree that it would be useful to gain from the Government an understanding of whether they intend that equal weight should be given to every word in the title of the Committee? Specifically, what are we to expect from a Committee that was previously called the Deregulation Committee and is now to be called the Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee? Does my hon. Friend, fair-minded specimen though he invariably is, not suspect, like me, that we are likely to get rather more of the latter than of the former?
Mr. Lansley: The weight and meaning of words should be considered carefully. The Minister may, or may not, wish to speculate on that, but I imagine that the title proposed for the Committee recognises its responsibility to continue to consider orders introduced under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 as well as orders that will be introduced under the 2001 Act. When, in due course, the Committee comes to consider only orders introduced under the 2001 Act, no doubt the intention is that it will change its name to the regulatory reform Committee. If Ministers ever get the chance to introduce such a further revised Standing Order, my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr Bercow) and I will, of course, observe and criticise it.
Mr. Pike: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is right. The first special report suggested that in the first instance the Committee should be called the Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee, but recognised that the name would probably be changed in due course. Whether or not it will, I cannot predict, but there has been no attempt to amend its name today. Two or three amendments have been tabled, but none proposes a change in the Committee's name.
Mr. Lansley: I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's comments. If I am to infer front what he says that the Committee, as well as Ministers, may in due course wish to rename the Committee the Regulatory Reform Committee, I would be critical of that. In the light of the passage of the Act, it seems reasonable that the Committee has a job to do in respect of both deregulation and regulatory reform. If titles matter—sometimes they do—it would be better for the Committee to retain the reference to deregulation, because the prime purpose of the measure was always to be deregulation and ought to be so.
I revert to the point that I was making about preliminary consultation. I note with interest that the Department of Trade and Industry's most recent consultation document on removing the 20-partner limit does not seek to prejudge the regulatory impact assessment, and proposes that that should be put together in the light of consultations. Sometimes that is desirable, although it is interesting that no attempt has been made to quantify in advance the extent of the impact.
We should not cavil about that. However, when the Minister comes to consider the form of advice to Departments about the preparation of the document under
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section 6 of the 2001 Act, I hope that he will encourage Departments, in the light of the preliminary consultation, to be as specific as they can about the impacts that proposed orders will cause to occur.
In particular, those impacts should be disaggregated as far as possible between persons affected. The fair balance test, as the Minister will recall, must balance the public interest with private interests. As the Minister knows, the public interest is often expressed in terms of large numbers of people or public bodies, for whom there is a marginal benefit, as distinct from persons affected, for whom there might be substantial detriments and disbenefits. It is important that such information should be available to the Committee for its work. If the impacts are disaggregated, the Committee can consider the specific impacts on categories of persons and establish whether it is reasonable for them to suffer such detriment, in addition to all the other tests that must be applied.
It will not surprise the Chairman of the Deregulation Committee or the Minister that I hope that when the Committee comes to do its work under the Standing Orders, it will attach special importance to the deregulatory effects. The Committee has two opportunities to do that, under paragraphs 6(A)(b) and 6(B)(1), which give an opportunity for the Committee to consider the extent to which the measures proposed will have a deregulatory impact. I am glad that the Liberal Democrats in another place joined my noble Friends in stressing that point, and that Ministers took it on board.
Before I conclude, I shall deal with the undertakings that Ministers have given and seek the Minister's further response. I also have a number of questions. First, the Minister has been helpful in reiterating the intention that Ministers will not proceed against the advice of the Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee. Does that undertaking extend to accepting that where the Committee proposes amendments to an order before it is made, which is one of the conclusions that the Committee can reach, those amendments will be incorporated?
My second question relates to the subordinate provisions orders. On that new responsibility for the Committee, will the Minister give an undertaking that where the Committee recommends that an order should be made by affirmative procedure, Ministers will respond positively to such a recommendation?
Thirdly, I was interested to hear that the Committee may divide on an order. I will be corrected if I am wrong but, to my recollection, that has not occurred in the past. However, such a Division on a matter of substance may show that it was more controversial than was anticipated. Ministers have said that orders will not be made in relation to large and controversial measures, and I suspect that any order which is substantially controversial should not be made using this procedure, so I hope that, in the event of such a Division, they will undertake to consider whether to proceed, without necessarily giving each Committee member a veto. The matter would have to be weighed and if there were a suggestion that it was highly controversial it should not necessarily be proceeded with.
Standing Order 6(A)(i) states that the Committee will consider whether the proposals
"appear to be incompatible with any obligation resulting from membership of the European Union."
That has been reflected unchanged in the new Standing Orders. However, I do not recall hearing how the Committee would consider, if it were thought relevant,

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compatibility or otherwise with the Human Rights Act 1998. Has the Minister considered whether that should also be reflected in the Standing Orders?
Mr. Stringer: The Government gave assurances that regulatory reform orders would have a statement attached to them, as Bills do now, expressing the Minister's view that they are compatible with the Human Rights Act 1998. The House has set up a special Committee to test such assertions.
Mr. Lansley: I am grateful to the Minister but, presumably, it has not been Ministers' intention to bring forward legislation using the deregulation legislation that they believe is incompatible with our obligations resulting from membership of the EU. The question is whether, since the Committee has a role in questioning other opinions of Ministers, the Committee has any role in testing that assertion of compatibility made by the Minister. The hon. Gentleman or the Chairman of the Committee may wish to reflect on that further.
I accept that the Minister was responding to our debates when he suggested that the Committee should consider whether orders were written in plain English, but the points made in Committee concerned not simply the quality and clarity of the language, but whether all the measures had been taken which could be taken to achieve simplification in legislation. Will the Minister consider further whether the Committee will be able to consider simplification as well as clarity.
I was surprised to see that, although the proposed Standing Orders include a series of additional considerations following the Regulatory Reform Act 2001, they do not appear to require the Committee to consider inconsistencies and anomalies, which the House will recall is one of the purposes of section 1 of that Act for which orders may be made.
If an order is concerned principally with the removal of inconsistencies and anomalies, alongside the reduction or removal of burdens, it would seem reasonable on the face of it that the Committee should examine whether those inconsistencies and anomalies exist or have been satisfactorily removed and whether additional measures could have been introduced to achieve greater consistency and lack of anomaly.
The Committee faces an important task. The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned consensus. We should not be disparaged for seeking to proceed by consensus in relation to regulatory reform orders, as it does not necessarily mean compromise. Controversial measures should not be proceeded with without proper agreement, and the exceptional powers and procedure of the House for making legislation should be used only when there is agreement between parties that such measures are desirable. As we all know, it falls substantially to the Committee—as to all Committees of the House—to undertake detailed and effective scrutiny. We know from bitter experience that if we do not provide such scrutiny, too much legislation is introduced that we later regret. I therefore hope that the Standing Orders will be effective, that the Parliamentary Secretary can assure me that they will serve their purpose and that the Committee will be effective in discharging its functions.
5.11 pm
Mr. Peter L. Pike: I should like to say a few words about the motion. In my last intervention on the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), in which I spoke about the name of the Committee, I may have inadvertently given the wrong impression about what could happen in future. It is right to say that the Committee recommended the name that is included in the proposed Standing Orders, but we did not say what it could or would be changed to. We said merely that it could be changed during the lifetime of the Parliament, so I want to correct any wrong impression that I may have given. We want deregulation to continue to be a main function of the Committee. The Government have said all along that they want to remove unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation that serves no useful purpose. I hope that hon. Members from all parties share that view.
Mr. Anthony Steen: As the hon. Gentleman is Chairman of the Deregulation Committee, of which I am a member, I think that it is right for me to refresh his memory. Only one order has been deregulated this year, and only one order last year. Are the Government genuinely committed to deregulation?
Mr. Pike: The hon. Gentleman has not been very noticeable by his attendance at our sittings, although I know that he has asked one or two questions in the House. Ministers have been most anxious for an increase. Indeed, the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 was introduced to increase the flow of activity and the pace with which matters are considered by the Committee.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire said that he could not recall whether the Committee had divided on any issues. The only matter on which there was a Division was the deduction of trade union subscriptions. It was debated and a vote was held on the Floor of the House, in accordance with Standing Orders. The Confederation of British Industry and all the employers who responded to the consultation strongly supported our recognition of the need to remove the bureaucracy that required everybody to sign the form every three years and to end the waste of time and money that was involved. If the Opposition had defeated the proposal, the main sources of concern would have included not only trade unions, but the employers throughout the country who wanted the change to be made.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire made a point about human rights.
Mr. Bercow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Pike: I shall finish the human rights point, which I have started.
We accepted the Government's comments as debates progressed and the Regulatory Reform Bill was enacted, but I assure hon. Members that the Committee will consider the human rights point. I do not know the identity of the members or whether I shall be Chairman, but I shall ensure that the Clerks know about the debate and that the human rights point is considered soon after the general election.
Mr. Bercow: In the light of the point about proportionality and the reference in proposed new

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paragraph (6)(A)(i) to European Union obligations, will the hon. Gentleman explain the connection between the principle of proportionality in the context of our debate and the principle of proportionality and its application under the protocol on subsidiarity and proportionality in the treaty of Amsterdam?
Mr. Pike: I did not mention proportionality and I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman referred to it. I have not reached that part of the proposed new Standing Order. I was responding to a few points that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire made in his opening remarks. I have not started to develop the main points of my speech. The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) is obviously anxious to serve on the new Committee so that he can examine every issue in detail in the next Parliament. Every item that we have to consider is listed on our papers and hon. Members ask questions about them.
Mr. Bercow: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's keen and continuing interest in my welfare. I do not want to poison the well of political debate or personal relations, and I therefore stress that I have no objection in principle to serving on the Committee. However, I would be in a position to do that only after I had been sacked from the Opposition Front Bench—or the Government Front Bench, as it will be in the next Parliament. I am therefore in no hurry to serve on the Committee.
Mr. Pike: The hon. Gentleman will not be on the Government Front Bench, but he may be sacked from the Opposition Front Bench a little sooner than he expects. I do not know what crime he intends to commit.
Mr. Forth: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will you confirm that membership of Select Committees is a matter for the House and that it should not be bandied about by hon. Members making countering offers?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Yes, that is true, but it would be a good idea to revert to the motion.
Mr. Pike: I was speaking about the motion; the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that I was not doing so is a misinterpretation of my comments.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire referred to the independence of members of the Committee. Since the Deregulation Committee was established under the Deregulation and Contracting Act 1994, there has been no evidence of its members displaying a lack of independence. Few measures have been approved in the exact form that the Government proposed.
Today's Votes and Proceedings outlines yesterday's proceedings and reports three items from the Deregulation Committee. They show that Government proposals were agreed, but with amendment. They state that the proposals,
"should be amended before a draft order is laid before this House."
Indeed, we recommended that the Government should not proceed with one of the proposals for the draft Deregulation (Bingo and Other Gaming) Order. We also recommended that the relevant Department should not implement the most important of the two proposals for the draft Deregulation (Restaurant and Licensing Hours) Order.
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All along, therefore, the Committee has shown its independence and carried out its judgments according to the criteria laid down under the present Standing Order. I am sure that it will continue to do that under the new Standing Order, once we have agreed it. Indeed, the Committee agreed yesterday that as soon as the new Committee is established, in the new Parliament, the first sitting would need to consist of a briefing with the officials of the Committee to ensure that everyone understood its workings and the differences in procedures resulting from the new Act. There are bound to be some new members on the Committee. Indeed, everyone could be new, because I fully accept the point that the House appoints the Committee. The first thing that the new Committee will do will be to get to know how it will carry out its business under the new Standing Order and in accordance with the new Act.
We have also made it clear to the Government that there should be a sensible flow of business in the Committee. After the original Committee was established, we recognised why, but thought it wrong, in one instance three items of business were tabled in the same week. Normally, there should be a sensible flow of business if the Committee is to be able to do its work in a sensible way. It cannot have a large number of items thrown at it all at once. That will be clearly stated in the report that we intend to publish this week.
There was agreement under the previous Government that there should be a forward report,, but because there have not been many measures the forward report has tended to disappear. We are recommending that it should come back into being, to show what is on the agenda so that everybody knows what is in the pipeline.
Mr. Steen: I always enjoy listening to the hon. Gentleman, but I do not understand what he is talking about. Either these new arrangements are right or wrong. If they are right, we should let them go through; if they are wrong, will he tell us what he has against them? I do not understand what he is talking about. He must forgive me, but perhaps he could explain.
Mr. Pike: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman, who came in late to the debate, is just trying to waste time or is in one of those moods in which he fails to understand anyone speaking plain English—which is mentioned in the new Standing Order. I have spoken in simple terms. All that I am saying is that the new Committee wants to ensure that it has a sensible flow of proposals that ensures that it can deal with them; that there is adequate discussion so that all members of the Committee—including new ones—know exactly how it will work; and that a forward report will be published so that everyone knows what is on the horizon and what the Government have in the system.
Mr. Forth: The hon. Gentleman says, quite correctly—and very responsibly, given his current, highly elevated position as Chairman—that he hopes that there will be a regular flow of work for the Committee in the next Parliament. Will he tell us what control the Committee will have over the flow of work to achieve that aim?
Mr. Pike: That is an interesting point. We hope that the new Committee will have more power to be proactive, rather than just reactive, and that we shall be able to ask

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what is happening and get Ministers to come before us and answer questions if we do not think that the system is working. That option is available to us.
My final point on yesterday's proceedings concerns one of the issues that my hon. Friend the Minister referred to as being part of the Home Office consultation process, and relates to gambling proposals. We want to take evidence from the Home Office on the way in which it intends to deal with legislation and deregulation measures on bingo, one-arm bandits, the lottery and other related issues. There needs to be a sensible approach, rather than a piecemeal one in which provisions overlap. For example, there are cases in which people do not know the age at which one can gamble in a pub as opposed to on a pier at the coast. All those measures differ, and we believe that it is time that the Home Office got those matters organised.
Mr. Steen: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his indulgence and for his giving way.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I always try to be helpful to the House. The regulation or, rather, deregulation that the Committee has dealt with tends to involve gambling, dancing or bingo, as if the whole country were governed by people who gamble, love dancing or play bingo. Does he agree that the new Committee's prime objective should not be merely to take evidence as to whether we should gamble, play bingo or go dancing?
Mr. Pike: The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonably valid point. Indeed, when his party was in government, I asked whether ours was the Committee on gambling and throwing dice. Yes, that is the main issue that the Committee has considered, but he has seen the list that was relevant to the debate that we held a few weeks ago, which contained a lot of other measures.
We have considered important suggestions such as the truncation of cheques, which involved the banks. That major proposal for improvement has saved the banks a lot of money, although I think that two phases are involved and it is not obvious from what one sees at the front of a bank whether that second phase has been implemented. The hon. Gentleman should not deride what the Committee has done.
Mr. Bercow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Pike: I am trying to speak to the proposed Standing Orders, but I give way for the last time.
Mr. Bercow: I am exceptionally grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whose generosity invariably gets the better of him in the House.
Further to the inquiry of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), I put it to the hon. Gentleman, who is a very important, very distinguished, very senior, very respected, very influential and very eminent figure in the House, that it would be useful if the Committee, under not only his chairmanship, but his tutelage, sought to anticipate potentially unfavourable developments rather than merely react to
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them. In that context, does he intend to use the full majesty of his office to take a view and to encourage his Committee to take a view on the proposed national works council directive?
Mr. Pike: I do not think that the Committee under my chairmanship will do more work, because a certain event may take place relatively soon. Although I am the only person who has been a member since its establishment, I do not know whether I will be a member in future. As the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) rightly said, that will be a matter for the House, which may not choose to put me back on the Committee. Let us leave the new Committee and the new Chairman to decide such matters. All we are trying to do is point a few issues in the right direction and approve the Standing Orders.
I intended to be brief, but, because of interventions, I have gone on much longer than I intended. The Standing Orders, which were included in the Committee's first special report, are based on the existing Standing Orders for the Committee, taking account of the 2001 Act. Only minor changes have been made, and the Committee and I welcome them.
In respect of proposed new paragraph (6)(B), burdens and benefit are covered by proposed new sub-paragraph (k). My hon. Friend the Minister referred in particular to the addition of sub-paragraph (1), which refers to
"the test of desirability set out in section 3(2)(b) of the Act".
We welcome that, because it proves that the Government were taking note, even at a late stage, of what the House was saying in order to meet concerns that were expressed, in particular by the Liberal party, but also by others. Therefore, the Government have included that additional measure. Proposed new sub-paragraph (m) refers to other benefits. Vital matters have been dealt with and the Standing Orders will enable the Committee, when it is appointed, to do its job.
Finally, I want to emphasise a point that I made on Report and Third Reading. We all recognise the difficulties that will exist, but if there is an early election—everybody seems to think that there will be—the Committee must he set up as soon as possible so that it can get on with its work.
I accept some of the points made by Conservative Members: I hope that, at times, the Committee will be more proactive and I believe that the 2001 Act and the Standing Orders will provide it with the opportunity to be so, if its members so wish.
5.30 pm
Mr. Brian Cotter: I thank the Minister for his full explanation of the proposed amendments, and the details of the various Standing Orders. The wording of the Standing Orders is perhaps as important as the wording of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 itself, in that it establishes the parliamentary framework within which the Act will operate. I am sure all Members present want to ensure that the Act can be a truly effective vehicle for the cutting of excessive regulatory red tape which bears down on small firms in particular but also on many other businesses. It gives us parliamentarians a chance to prove to such businesses that we are serious about creating an environment that small firms can use to maximise their potential.

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Owing to extensive pre-legislation scrutiny and the careful examination given to the Bill both here and in the other place, the Act that it has become represents a real opportunity for the achievement of that goal. Unless we get the scope of the Standing Orders just right, however—given that they constitute the nuts and bolts of our legislative framework—we shall find ourselves trying to cut the red tape with a pair of blunt scissors. That is why I was so pleased to hear some of the more sensible and constructive arguments that have been advanced today.
As a member of the current Committee, I have been involved with the Act from the outset. That includes the pre-legislation scrutiny. I am glad that we have reached this stage, and hope that the Act will begin to bear fruit in the near future. I welcome most of the changes to the Standing Orders. I especially welcome the name of the new Committee, and the work that it will do in examining the deregulation orders under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994—alongside the new regulatory reform orders that will ensue.
Further amendments to Standing Order No. 141 should be gladly received. I welcome the inclusion in the Committee's remit of consideration of parliamentary procedure for subordinate provisions orders. An amendment tabled by Lord Borrie means that the Committee will be able to choose the procedure to which such orders should be subject, and will have power to report to the House accordingly. Owing to the wide scope of the Act, the powers vested in the Committee are vital to ensuring that it is not open to potential abuse, and will allow the Committee to exercise extra precautions when it deems that to be necessary.
Probably the most important change to Standing Order No. 141, in terms of the Committee's work, is an addition to the criteria on which proposals for orders must be considered: the necessity for them to be written in plain English. That was mentioned earlier, but I ask leave of the House to repeat it. We are, I hope, seeing the start of a move towards the use of more plain English in Parliament generally.
It is essential for us to make regulations that the business community can easily understand. One should not have to be a legal expert to interpret legislation. I trust that by giving the Committee power to consider regulations in this way, we shall ensure that the Government produce better regulation that is easily understood, and therefore easily adhered to with the minimum of fuss and difficulty. I am glad that the Government are allowing the Committee to judge their legislation on the basis of that objective. Originally, Ministers rejected the idea of including the proposal in the legislation, arguing that a requirement for clear and concise drafting would be automatic in view of its reforming nature. The inclusion of the criterion in the Committee's remit will hopefully mean that we can gradually make poorly drafted, complicated legislation a thing of the past.
I welcome the inclusion of additional criteria against which regulatory reform orders will be judged, which will go alongside those that are relevant to the deregulation orders. It is necessary that the criteria—reasonable expectations, proportionality, desirability and cost—that have been included in the Act are placed within the Committee's remit. That will help to ensure that the Minister making the original order will focus on those issues, being well aware that the Committee will test them
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upon consideration of the order, which, again, should deter any rogue Minister who might seek to exploit the Act for questionable ends. Of course, I would not dream of suggesting that the existing Minister was a rogue Minister, but who knows who may come along in future—in the far distant future possibly.
Mr. Bercow: I am doing my best to preserve a certain sense of normality, but the atmosphere of consensus is becoming positively suffocating. It causes me to refer again to proposed paragraph (6)(A)(i) of the new Standing Order, which refers to obligations as a consequence of our membership of the European Union. If the Committee, which has such an august membership and such an outstanding Chairman, is to have a proper sense of its ambition, it should be prepared properly to scrutinise European Union directives and regulations that might adversely impact on this country. To fail to do so would be meek, mousy and myopic.
Mr. Cotter: It must be said that it was under the last Conservative Government that the original measure was put forward and a criticism of that measure is that it was rather meek, mousy and whatever else the hon. Gentleman said, because it did not allow the Committee to be proactive. It is incumbent on the new Committee and the new Chairman—we do not know who that will be—to ensure that it is far more proactive. I believe that it will be.
A couple of points with regard to the remit and composition of the Committee must be addressed. I note the amendments that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has tabled, which seek to increase the quorum of the new Committee from five to seven and the quorum of the sub-committee from two to four, with the stipulation that at least half that number should be from an Opposition party.
The amendments raise several important points with regard to the effective operation of the Committee. Whether one accepts that the quorum of the Committee should be increased or not, a valuable point is being made. The work of the Committee is likely to be plentiful and complex. In a written answer to the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) on 27 November last year, the Minister provided a list of the proposals that the Government planned to bring forward under the new Act. We have talked about those before. The list is extensive and wide-ranging and shows that the Government are striving to make great use of the Act across a number of legislative areas.
That means that the Act is likely to be used to a greater extent than its predecessor, but we must recognise that the Committee will need to have the appropriate resources to deal with an extended work load. The lack of work with which the existing Committee has been provided has meant that the resources available to it have been reduced over time. However, it is likely that orders under the new legislation will come in thick and fast. The Committee needs to be prepared for that to ensure that orders are adequately scrutinised.
The Committee currently has 18 members, yet it is rare for all its members to attend sittings. On Second Reading of the Regulatory Reform Bill, the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) said that he had to write to the Conservative Chief Whip in his capacity as Chairman of the Select Committee on Deregulation stressing the need

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for Conservative Members to attend. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) talked about the lack of an effective Committee, but it was noticeable that, during pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, Conservative attendance was very low, too—and that at a time when one would have thought that they would be there to ensure that future legislation was effective.
The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has tabled an amendment proposing that the sub-committee should include at least one Opposition Member. That highlights the importance of getting the balance on the Committee right and ensuring that Opposition Members make an effective contribution; although that does involve turning up, at least. Some of us hope that the Conservatives will be sufficiently enthused after the expected election to turn up. Of course there may not be many of them to turn up. We are looking for great participation by all parties, including my own.
The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has rightly concentrated our minds on the issues, but I feel that, on balance, the existing quorum and membership are about right. We look forward to the points that the right hon. Gentleman will be making later in the debate.
We must consider the Committee's role in the scrutiny of regulatory reform orders. We must ensure that all elements of the Committee have a valid input into proceedings, especially as the Government will now have the power to introduce new burdens. We must ensure that the composition of the Committee reflects all political opinions and views. I welcome the fact that the stipulation remains that once a Member is selected for the Committee, he will continue to serve on it for the duration of the Parliament—
Mr. Forth: Whether he turns up or not.
Mr. Cotter: Indeed. It will probably be impossible to build up any real expertise in the Committee because so many subjects will be brought forward, but it is important that there is consistency of membership.
Mr. Forth: Does the hon. Gentleman think that a stipulation in Standing Orders that a Member, once elected to a Committee by the House, should remain on that Committee for the duration of the Parliament runs somewhat against his criticism—with which I totally agree—of Members who persistently fail to turn up to, show interest in or support the work of the Committee? Would it not be preferable if a mechanism were available that said that if Members did not attend a Committee over a certain period, they could be removed in favour of Members who were more committed to its work? Does he think that there is a danger in giving Members automatic and unchallenged membership of a Committee for the duration of a Parliament?
Mr. Cotter: I bow to the great experience of the right hon. Gentleman in this area. My point is a fair one. If people are not doing their job, they ought to be kicked out. Perhaps that applies generally, but it tends to take elections for that to happen. We shall see at the next election how many will be kicked out.
Mr. Bercow: I always enjoy listening to the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot allow him to get away with that
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attempted response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). He should not seek to obscure the debate by chuntering on about the possible result of the general election. Will he focus on the contradiction that was appositely highlighted by my right hon. Friend between his advocacy, on the one hand, of the argument that members should sit on the Committee to which they are appointed throughout the Parliament and then, when challenged—in characteristically Liberal Democrat fashion—his apparent acceptance of the alternative point of view, that poor attenders should be kicked off? Is he in favour of security of tenure or not?
Mr. Cotter: The hon. Gentleman always talks about people chuntering on, but he is also quite capable of that. I stick by my original proposal, but I am tempted by the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst because the attendance of Conservative members of the Committee has been deplorable. It would be very nice if one could say to them, "Get off the Committee if you don't turn up," but that is not the right way forward.
Mr. Pike: I actually wrote to the Conservative Chief Whip on two occasions, but I never received a reply. One of the Conservative members of the Committee later became a Whip, and I was told that the party could not find any replacement who could attend the Committee.
Mr. Cotter: That is a very interesting point.
I was also pleased to learn that the Committee will retain its ability to appoint specialist advisers, which is important because of the varied and complex nature of the business we are expected to consider. I know that the Chairman of the present Committee agrees that the new Committee should be appointed soon after the election, because business will be moving along. I would also like an assurance that the Committee will have adequate resources to fulfil its new functions, in terms of legal and administrative support from civil servants and clerks. It is vital that the members of the Committee have access to as much expertise and information as possible, and that is especially important when considering complex issues.
Resources become essential once again when we consider the Committee's intention to produce an annual report. At least, it was the recommendation of the previous Committee that it should produce an annual report and I hope that the new Committee will take that on board. The Government have indicated that they would find an annual report acceptable, although it has not been included in the motion.
Standing Order No. 141 remains the same in that the new Committee will have the power to invite Members of Parliament who are not part of the Committee to attend meetings. With the permission of the Chairman, the Committee will have the power to ask those Members questions. Ministers will be required to produce documents under section 6 of the Act, but as an additional safeguard it might be appropriate to give the Committee the power to summon Ministers and legally require them to answer its questions. That might prove a further deterrent to any supposed rogue Minister seeking to abuse power in the future.

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I hope that the Minister will be able to provide me with some assurances on a few of the matters that I have raised regarding the Standing Order changes, which otherwise will—I hope—provide the basis for effective examination of regulation and deregulation in the future.
5.48 pm
Mr. Eric Forth: I beg to move, as an amendment to the motion, amendment (a), in paragraph (10), leave out "five" and insert "seven".
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I remind the House that with this we are discussing amendment (b), in paragraph (12)(c), leave out "two" and insert "four".
Mr. Forth: If one tries to rise above the mind-numbing, mutually congratulatory, consensual nonsense that we have heard so far in the debate, the truth is that we are talking about the legislative process. What the Committee does, if its members bother to turn up and if it bothers to do more than one thing a year—which seems to have been the productivity rate hitherto—is legislate: it makes law and affects people's lives. We are therefore entitled to ask whether we are satisfied that the arrangements in place for the working of the Committee are appropriate to that end.
The Minister, who is conservative to his fingertips, said in a very conservative way, "Because it has always been done this way, it must be all right." The Government are happy to accept that what happened under the previous Government is equally all right, and the conservative Minister would not dream of challenging or changing any aspect of it. I welcome the Minister to the ranks of conservatism, but I am a radical and I see need for change if we can demonstrate that the existing arrangements are unsatisfactory.
I confess that I am not encouraged by what I have heard about the Committee's procedures. It seems to operate extraordinarily slowly, and to rely on the Government for its flow of work. That is hardly appropriate. Members of the Committee often do not bother to turn up, and the Chairman told us that he had to write to the Opposition Chief Whip to ask where members were. That gives me little confidence.
I am delighted and honoured that my amendments have been selected for debate. It is time for the House to consider how Select Committees work, and the attitude to their work of those Committees members. The revised Standing Order requires the Committee to examine provisions, to report to the House, to recommend whether draft orders should be laid before the House or amended, and so on. In effect, that is the legislative process. As such, it has a majesty that requires a guarantee that the people of this country be properly represented on those Committees.
The provisions outlining the structure and working of the Committee horrified me, and the debate so far has not lessened that horror. Nothing said by those eminent members of the Committee who are present or its august, senior and respected Chairman has given me confidence or optimism about how the revised Committee will discharge its duties. I am more than ever convinced that my modest amendments are appropriate.
We are told that the Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee will consist of 18 members. That is an encouraging start. Eighteen is a good number,
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representative of the House and offering an appropriate spectrum of expertise and knowledge. It will allow the Committee to deal with the technical, specialist, difficult and complex matters with which it will be faced as it performs its scrutiny of one measure per year.
Will all 18 members always turn up, however? If not, how satisfactory are the quorum arrangements? This is where I get into difficulty. Amendment (a) deals with the provision in the Standing Order that states that the Committee's quorum shall be five.
In Committees such as this, we can guarantee that the Chairman will always be present, as—almost certainly—will dragooned members of the governing party. My worry, which the Committee's Chairman has more or less confirmed, is that the Committee could sit, deliberate and, in effect, legislate with as few as five Members present. Moreover, all five of those Members could belong to the party in government at the time.
I accept that the Opposition are under a responsibility to provide members of the Committee. I deprecate it when hon. Members serving on a Committee miss its meetings. I believe that my attendance record for the Committees on which I have the honour to serve bears considerable scrutiny. I have no hesitation in saying that all hon. Members serving on Committees should ideally be present at every meeting—but that is not the point. The point is that hon. Members should ask whether they are comfortable with a provision that allows as few as five hon. Members to make or change the law of the land.
I am not comfortable with that. I should have preferred the quorum to be set at an even higher level, but I accept that practicalities must be taken into account. My amendment proposing that the quorum be raised from five to seven is modest, but it would give at least a degree of assurance to hon. Members who are not on the Committee—and to voters and taxpayers—that at least seven people would be present when proposals to change the law of the land were being considered and enacted. That is not unreasonable. It would make it more likely—although it would not guarantee it—that those present embodied a spectrum of views and political representation.
Even more important are the proposals regarding the sub-Committee. Amendment (b) deals with paragraph 12(c) of the motion, which states that the sub-Committee
"shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, and to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom."
This is where we get to the freebies and jollies part of the consideration. Hon. Members really like to decamp to different places to do their no doubt important work.
Mr. Pike: I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Committee has never gone beyond the House of Commons on official business.
Mr. Forth: I am reassured to hear that, but I am looking to the future. The hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) may want to dwell on the past, but I am a visionary who looks forward to what may lie in the future. We have established that the Minister is a conservative at heart, and that the Chairman of the Committee looks to the past. By contrast, I am a radical who looks to the future.

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My aim is to establish the fact that the Standing Order contains an explicit provision that almost invites the sub-Committee to travel. I have never known hon. Members to be reticent or hesitant about accepting an invitation to travel. It would be a revelation to come across one that was, but we can examine the matter of travel later. [Interruption.] One of the greatest experts in the universe on parliamentary travel has just arrived in the Chamber. I welcome the right hon. Member for Swansea, but confess that I cannot recall just now whether his constituency is Swansea, East or Swansea, West.
Mr. Donald Anderson: I represent Swansea, East.
Mr. Forth: I am sure that the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) would not thank me for confusing the Swansea constituencies.
Mr. Anderson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Forth: Of course.
Mr. Anderson: My grandfather always said that the east is where the wise men came from.
Mr. Forth: I shall leave that for the right hon. Gentleman to sort out with the right hon. Member for Swansea, West. I do not want to intervene in the matter, although I know Swansea and like it enormously.
Paragraph 12(c) sets out the sub-Committee's extensive powers to send for "persons, papers and records", and to sit while the House is adjourned. The provision also allows it to travel, and hon. Members are clearly reluctant that reference should be made to that possibility. However, I suspect that those who have not examined the Standing Order will hardly be able to believe one of the other provisions.
The sub-Committee's work inevitably will be complex, technical and difficult, yet its quorum is to be set at two. It is therefore likely—or at least possible—that two Members of the House could bind this very important sub-Committee, which does such important work. Moreover, earlier provisions in the Standing Order mean that those two hon. Members could have a great deal of influence on what the House itself subsequently determines.
The House must decide whether it feels comfortable—in the context of Parliament and the legislative process—with the possibility that just two hon. Members might be able to discharge such important and onerous responsibilities. I do not feel comfortable with that possibility.
Amendment (b) is modest, as it would merely increase the sub-Committee's quorum from two to four. I could have tried to go further, but I want to try to persuade the House that that modest increase would at least provide the assurance that it would not be possible for two members of the sub-Committee to influence events in the way I have described.
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The Chairman has said that he has no control over the flow of work; he seems is to rely on the Government to feed his Committee with material. If the record is to be believed, one measure a year seems about the average. In a funny way that reassures me, because if we end up, as I fear we may, with a sub-Committee operating on a quorum of two and the Committee on a quorum of only five, I sincerely hope that they will do only one thing a year. I would be nervous if I thought they would do any more work of any great importance at any great rate.
Mr. Pike: A few moments ago the right hon. Gentleman said that he was a visionary, looking forward, but now he is looking back to what happened under the Tory legislation. Should we not be looking at what will happen under Labour's Regulatory Reform Act 2001?
Mr. Forth: I have been looking back because I was told—I hope reliably—that the Committee had dealt with one measure over the past year. [Interruption.] The Chairman of the Committee says with some pride that the Committee did three things yesterday. I will grant the Chairman that—the Committee has done four things in the past year, if my arithmetic holds up under this scrutiny. Even so, that does not strike me as anything to write home about, as my dear mother used to say.
Mr. Pike: That was under the Tory Act.
Mr. Forth: I accept the Chairman's interventions because I know that he offers them in a helpful way. He seems to be saying that under legislation passed by the wicked Conservative Government, progress was very slow, but that under the exciting and dynamic version of the legislation passed by this Government, there will be rapid progress. We will judge that in the future. We will wait until the next Parliament elects the members of the Committee—and I stress that this House elects the members of the Committee—and the Committee elects its Chairman. The hon. Member for Burnley will no doubt be a contender for that position if he seeks it, but there is no guarantee that he will be elected by the Committee. After that, we can see the pace at which work will be done.
Mr. Bercow: My right hon. Friend has just held out the prospect, which will be enticing for some but not for others, of a Committee which will never knowingly be undertravelled. May I put it to my right hon. Friend, consistent with the point that he has just made, that to have a titchy—one might almost say piddling—sub-Committee quorum of two trotting about, conducting their very important, distinguished and complex business, is not entirely consistent with the ambition for the Committee that the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) has described?
Because the declaration of a personal interest is always of the essence in our proceedings, and my right hon. Friend has several times dwelt, with a certain contagious enthusiasm, on the need for election of the Chairman and members of the Committee in the future, may I put it to him that he may wish to be considered for the chairmanship of the Committee under the revised Standing Order, and that if he were successful, he would thereby attain a peak of eminence to which he has never previously so much as aspired?
Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend is characteristically generous. I doubt whether my modest experience and

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humble aspirations would raise me to anything like the level that my hon. Friend suggests. However, that is something on which I should like to ponder if I am re-elected to this House—an assumption that none of us must make.
I hope that the House will give serious consideration to my amendments. I am honoured that my amendments have been selected, but I think that the argument goes wider. I am unhappy and uneasy about the low quorum numbers that apply to Committees of this House. I am also uneasy, not least because of the comments of the hon. Member for Burnley during this debate, that we are in danger of asking Committees and colleagues to do very important work in very small numbers. I wonder whether the extent to which very small and possibly unrepresentative numbers of Members can have a disproportionate influence on events is widely appreciated. I am assiduous in my attendance in the House on Fridays, and I am happy to say that, because so few other Members turn up, those who are here have a disproportionate influence on events which not all colleagues appreciate. That illustrates the importance of a realistic quorum figure. That this House, in its majesty, cannot even muster a quorum of 40 Members on a Friday indicates that the attitude of many Members to our work does not bear close scrutiny.
I hope that the House will consider my amendments carefully. I would like this to be the first exciting breakaway from the past—so beloved of the Minister—into a future in which we take our work more seriously and are prepared to commit ourselves to larger quorums. I hope that those fortunate enough to be elected in the forthcoming election will come here with an enthusiasm, vigour and commitment; and that they will not be afraid of a quorum of seven, as I suggest for a Committee of 18, or four, as I suggest for the sub-Committee "with passports".
I believe that my request is modest and that agreeing to it would be a step in the right direction. Accepting the amendments would be a strong signal for other Committees to follow the same course.
6.6 pm
Mr. Richard Page: I appreciate the way in which the Minister presented the case. However, I thought that he started on a rather unfortunate note when he referred, as I recall, to "mainly thoughtful" amendments. I thought that a gratuitous swipe at Liberal Democrat Members and their amendments—an unwise move, given that the whole House knows that the Labour party has entered into a tactical alliance with the Liberal Democrat party for the next election. To criticise one's partners in such a way is not a career-enhancing move. I therefore advise the hon. Gentleman to be careful about this in the future.
We are in favour of any measures that can reduce burdens, particularly on small businesses. We have seen such burdens increase over the past few years at an extraordinary rate.
Mr. Bercow: Exponential.
Mr. Page: It is not quite exponential, but we will not debate the correct arithmetical term. Nevertheless, the growth of such burdens has been exceptional, into record
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figures. Anything that can make life simpler and easier is to be welcome, provided, of course, that the process is democratically accountable.
I regard this as the latest step in a process originally started by my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) when he considered regulation and deregulation. I hope that nobody will ask me why we put into the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 a limit so that only legislation before 1994 could be considered, because I do not know.
The measure before us is a departure from the traditional process. It is exceptionally important to ensure that it is not and cannot be abused; otherwise we could create many difficulties for ourselves in the future.
I thank the Minister for his explanation—particularly for expounding how the process will operate, the importance and fullness of the consultation document and the way in which it will be adequately filled in by all the interested parties. That is most important. However, I am slightly worried about one or two aspects. The Standing Orders will provide estimates of the costs and savings attached to the new regulations. There must be independence when those costs and savings are calculated. There has been a strong feeling in the past in my party, if not throughout the House, that civil service officials may not have calculated the cost of implementing regulations fully and accurately enough. We want accurate figures that are accepted by the industries involved. Some organisations representing smaller businesses are talking about an extra £10 billion in the cost of implementing regulations.
I welcome the Minister's repetition of the Government's commitment that, if the Committee decides to reject a particular order, the measure will not proceed to the House for a vote. That is an important democratic commitment, which should be welcomed.
The Committee will have much greater responsibility than it had in the past. I heard the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) defend what has happened and defend the criticisms of my right hon. and hon. Friends. I understand why Conservative Members are not that keen to turn up at a Committee that is dealing with, for example, dancing on Sundays. I do not think that such an issue catches the popular mood or the interest of every Member of the House.
The issues that will come before the Committee are vital to the reduction of regulatory burdens, and I would like to think that a high quality of Member will serve on it. Their input will be important, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) alluded to that point.
Resources are another aspect of the issue. When, subject to the leave of the House, the Minister winds up, I hope that he will touch on the issue of the provision of resources. I am glad that the Committee will retain the ability to have independent advisers, because it will deal with a variety of subjects. It is not like the Select Committees on Home Affairs, Health or Trade and Industry; it will deal with regulations that cover the whole gamut of government. It will therefore need to be able to draw on the help of independent advisers.
Although I would like to express unadulterated praise for the proposal, one or two issues give rise to criticism. The aficionados who have followed this issue are well aware of the substance and shape of the changes that are being made to the Standing Orders. However, the fact that

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such long and complex proposals appeared on the Order Paper only on Monday is unsatisfactory. I am sure that some Members would have contributed to this debate if they had had longer to consider the proposals. As soon as I knew that the matter was coming up, I went to the Vote Office; but I obtained a copy of the proposals only on Monday morning. The time scale for consideration has been inadequate.
The provision relating to plain English is to be welcomed. I noticed how the Minister tried to weasel himself out of his previous comments by referring to his distaste for superficial simplicity. We are looking not for superficial simplicity, but for plain English that can be understood. That was why we tabled amendments to the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 and are glad that such suggestions are now being adopted in the Standing Orders. Legislation does not have to be in archaic legal language to have the clarity that he mentioned. We can achieve that aim without using the legalese that no one except lawyers understands. Provisions often appear in seven or eight paragraphs when one or two would be sufficient.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire made several comments on the issue of proportionality, and I hope that the Minister will respond to them. When the Regulatory Reform Act was being considered by both Houses and in Committee, we drew attention to the unsatisfactory nature of the test of proportionality, as set out in sections 1 and 3. The Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 allowed burdens to be imposed only when they were less onerous, but that is not the case now. More onerous burdens can be imposed, which shows the importance of the Committee's members not being lobby fodder for any particular party. They must be independent and consider the issues so that regulations are not approved if they would, on balance, disadvantage the whole cause of deregulation.
I shall finish as I started. Conservative Members want the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 to work and we want the burdens on our people to be reduced. We will do everything that we can to make sure that it works in the most effective and beneficial fashion.
6.15 pm
Mr. Stringer: With the leave of the House, I wish to reply to some of the points that have been made.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) asked several direct questions. Some of them were hypothetical, but others were not. His first question was whether the Government would give a commitment to accept any amendment that the Committee agreed should be incorporated in the new regulatory reform order. I clearly cannot give such a commitment; it was a hypothetical question. The answer depends on the nature of the amendment proposed. However, the Government have given a commitment that when the majority of the Committee disagrees with the Government's regulatory reform order, it can, in effect, kill the order. Given the consensual way in which the Government and the Committee have operated, it is much more likely that they would discuss any disagreement with a view to resolving the issues that divide them.
The hon. Gentleman's second question was about what would happen if the Committee recommended the affirmative procedure for subordinate provisions. Again,
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I cannot give an absolute guarantee that the Government would accept such a suggestion. Although I cannot think of them at present, detailed issues might arise that would not allow us to do that. However, if the Committee said that it preferred the affirmative procedure rather than the negative procedure, there would have to be extraordinarily good reasons for the Government to reject its suggestion. I expect that, in most circumstances, the Minister would accept its recommendations.
Thirdly, the hon. Gentleman asked whether the Government would agree not to proceed with an order if there had been a Division in Committee. The Government would not agree not to proceed on that basis because it does not necessarily relate to the definition of controversy that we used when we said that we would not take large and controversial matters through this process. A Division would show that a majority in the Committee were in favour of the order, and the procedures allow for a debate of an hour and a half on the Floor of the House in such circumstances. As my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) explained, that procedure has been used on one occasion in the past.
Mr. Page: The Minister must realise that such a procedure could be used on a party political basis to drive forward changes to legislation that may not be in the general interest or to which a certain section may not agree. To my knowledge, the Public Accounts Committee has operated for the past 10 or 15 years without ever holding a Division. It proceeds with a recommendation only when there is consensus. That is the approach and thinking that we want in this Committee. Everything that it sends to the House should have a consensus. Once it is subject to a Division, the purpose and reasoning behind the Deregulation Committee will be finished.
Mr. Stringer: I accept the spirit of the hon. Gentleman's comments, but if one Member divides the Committee, it will not be sensible for the Government to decide not to test its decision for an hour and a half on the Floor of the House. I am happy to repeat that the Committee and the Government have used deregulation orders on a consensual basis, and that we intend to use regulatory reform orders in the same way. We will not introduce large and politically controversial measures as part of the regulatory reform order process.
Mr. Pike: I can assure my hon. Friend that the absence of Conservative Members from Committee proceedings concerns me for exactly that reason: I never wanted it to take a decision with only Labour and Liberal Members present.
Mr. Stringer: I thank my hon. Friend for that useful contribution.
While accepting that it is the Committee's role to consider the simple and plain use of English without detracting from the accuracy of legislation, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire asked whether it would be part of its remit to consider the simplification of regulation. In one sense, that does not need to be in its terms of reference. The core reason for the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 was to enable the Government to introduce regulatory reform orders to consolidate many aspects of legislation, such as fire regulations, which were discussed at length in Standing Committee. In that way, all

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regulations that apply to fire could exist in one regulatory reform order, which is bound to be a simplification when one considers the number of regulations and the amount of legislation that apply to fire.
Mr. Bercow: I cannot help but think that the choice of example is not well advised. In apparently celebrating the fire regulations, is the hon. Gentleman aware that they are the subject of growing controversy? I received only a few days ago a detailed and persuasive complaint about them. I suggest that he is a little more cautious in his praise.
Mr. Stringer: In publishing the list of possible regulatory reform orders, which we did when the Bill was introduced, we quoted fire regulations as an example of what an order could simplify. Many people involved in commerce and business are not satisfied that fire regulations are clear. In many cases, that is also true of the fire service. They exist in more than 120 pieces of primary legislation and 120 pieces of secondary legislation. What makes them ideally suitable for a regulatory reform order is the fact that people are dissatisfied with them, not that they are very politically controversial.
The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Page) outlined the details of the Committee's procedures and explained some of the difficulties that might be encountered. He asked two direct questions: first, whether the Committee would have the resources to enable it to carry out its business, and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire made a similar point; and secondly, whether the Committee would have the right and power to force Ministers to attend. Both issues are a matter for the House. I understand that extra legal resources have been made available to the Committee. I also understand that, in the past, the House has exempted hon. Members from an obligation to attend when they are asked to do so. However, it would be an unwise Minister with responsibility for a regulatory reform order who refused to attend to say why he or she wanted it.
Mr. Bercow: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he has been most generous.
I am well aware that it is part of the Minister's style—not dissimilar to that of his celebrated colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office—to act as an impartial umpire, if such a person exists. I wonder whether I can tempt him to express an opinion on the vexed question that was highlighted by speech of the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Cotter) and in the interventions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) Should members of the newly formed Committee enjoy security of tenure from the start of a Parliament to its end, or should that be attendance dependent?
Mr. Stringer: That is a matter of resource and, like the ability and right of the Committee to force hon. Members to attend, is a matter for the House. When the House has appointed Members to this and other Select Committees, it has done so for a full parliamentary Session. I cannot remember the exact words used, but they are to the effect of "until the House otherwise decides". So the House
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reserves the right to remove Committee members—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman repeats from a sedentary position that he asked for my opinion. I believe that it is for the House to determine such issues. I am sure that it would be annoyed if I told it what to do. I see the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) nodding.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley for his work on the Committee. I also thank the Committee for its work on the Standing Orders. I am not at all embarrassed to agree with it on most things and to take its opinion into account when the Government reach their conclusions.
In proposing the amendments, the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst demonstrated an almost perverse and paranoid attitude towards the consensus building that the Committee uses when it accepts deregulation orders. Members from all parties have worked on a consensual basis, which has made for some good deregulation orders. He criticised my comments by saying that it is conservative to rely on what has happened in the past. If that was all we were doing, I would agree with him, but it is not.
We have considered whether the superaffirmative process that creates deregulation orders, which was established by the previous Conservative Government, has produced good law. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that that is the case. If he really wants to make an argument based on the evidence, he has to show that the procedures on which we are building have failed because of the quorum of five that has been applied to the Committee since its inception. Clever though the right hon. Gentleman's speeches are, he failed to show that the previous process had failed. The fact that we are building on that process bodes well for the future of the Committee under the 2001 Act.
The right hon. Gentleman gave away what he really wants. He is paranoid not only about consensus but about legislation—
Mr. Forth indicated assent.
Mr. Stringer: The right hon. Gentleman agrees. The third amendment in his name, which the Speaker did not select for discussion by the House, would have given a minority of members of the Committee, from the Conservative party or any Opposition party, a right of veto. He proposed that if Opposition Members did not turn up, the Committee could not work. That would not be a sensible or democratic way to proceed.
The right hon. Gentleman said that there was a problem with the sub-Committee having a quorum of only two because that is not a satisfactory number of people to make law. However, the sub-Committee has to report to the Committee, which has to lay the orders before the House.
I ask the House to support the proposals before it.
Amendment negatived.
Main Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the following changes be made to the Standing Orders of the House—
A. That Standing Order No. 141 (Deregulation Committee) be repealed and the following new Standing Order be made—

901
Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee
(1) There shall be a select committee, called the Deregulation and Regulatory Reform Committee, to examine—
(i) every document containing proposals laid before the House under section 3 of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 (the 1994 Act) or under section 6 of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 (the 2001 Act);
(ii) every draft order proposed to be made under section 1 of the 1994 Act or section 1 of the 2001 Act; and
(iii) every subordinate provisions order or draft of such an order made or proposed to be made under sections 1 and 4 of the 2001 Act.
(2) The committee shall report to the House, in relation to every proposals document referred to in paragraph 1(i) of this order, either
(a) that a draft order in the same terms as the proposals should be laid before the House; or
(b) that the proposals should be amended before a draft order is laid before the House; or
(c) that the order-making power should not be used in respect of the proposals.
(3) The committee shall report to the House, in relation to every draft order referred to in paragraph 1(ii) of this order, its recommendation whether the draft order should be approved.
(4) The committee may draw the special attention of the House to any subordinate provisions order or draft order referred to in paragraph 1(iii) of this order, and may report its opinion whether or not the order or draft order should be approved or, as the case may be, annulled.
(5) The committee may report to the House on any matter arising from its consideration of the said proposals, draft orders or subordinate provisions orders.
(6)(A) In its consideration of proposals the committee shall consider in each case whether the proposals
(a) appear to make an inappropriate use of delegated legislation;
(b) remove or reduce a burden or the authorisation or requirement of a burden;
(c) continue any necessary protection;
(d) have been the subject of, and take appropriate account of, adequate consultation;
(e) impose a charge on the public revenues or contain provisions requiring payments to be made to the Exchequer or any government department or to any local or public authority in consideration of any licence or consent or of any services to be rendered, or prescribe the amount of any such charge or payment;
(f) purport to have retrospective effect;
(g) give rise to doubts whether they are intra vires;
(h) require elucidation, are not written in plain English or appear to be defectively drafted;
(i) appear to be incompatible with any obligation resulting from membership of the European Union.
(B) In the case of proposals presented under the 2001 Act, the committee shall also consider whether the proposals:
(j) prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom which he might reasonably expect to continue to exercise;
(k) satisfy the conditions of proportionality between burdens and benefits set out in sections 1 and 3 of the Act;
(l) satisfy the test of desirability set out in section 3(2)(b) of the Act;
(m) have been the subject of, and take appropriate account of, estimates of increases or reductions in costs or other benefits which may result from their implementation; or
(n) include provisions to be designated in the draft order as subordinate provisions;
and in the case of the latter consideration the committee shall report its opinion whether such a designation should be made, and to what parliamentary proceedings any subordinate provisions orders should be subject.
(7) In its consideration of draft orders, the committee shall consider in each case all such matters set out in paragraph (6) of this order as are relevant and the extent to which the Minister concerned has had regard and to any resolution or report of the Committee or to any other representations made during the period for parliamentary consideration.
(8) In its consideration of any subordinate provisions order the committee shall in each case consider whether the special attention of the House should be drawn to it on any of the grounds on which (in accordance with paragraph 1(B) of Standing Order No. 151 (Statutory Instruments (Joint Committee)) the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments may draw the attention of the House to a statutory instrument; and if the committee is of the opinion that any such order or draft order should be annulled, or, as the case may be, should not be approved, they shall report that opinion to the House.
(9) The committee shall consist of eighteen members.
(10) The quorum of the committee shall be five.
(11) Unless the House otherwise orders, each Member nominated to the committee shall continue to be a member of it for the remainder of the Parliament.
(12) The committee shall have power—

(a) to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom, and to report from time to time;

(b) to appoint specialist advisers either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the committee's order of reference;

(c) to appoint a sub-committee, of which the quorum shall be two, which shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, and to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom;

(d) to communicate its evidence and any other documents relating to matters of common interest to any committee appointed by this House and to any committee appointed by the Lords to examine deregulation and regulatory reform proposals and draft orders.

(13) The committee and the sub-committee shall have leave to meet concurrently with any select committee appointed by the Lords to examine deregulation and regulatory reform proposals and draft orders and any sub-committee thereof.
(14) The committee and the sub-committee shall have the assistance of the Counsel to the Speaker and, if their Lordships think fit, the Counsel to the Lord Chairman of Committees.
(15) The committee and the sub-committee shall have power to invite Members of the House who are not members of the committee to attend meetings at which witnesses are being examined and such Members may, at the discretion of the chairman, ask questions of those witnesses; but no Member not being of the committee shall otherwise take part in the proceedings of the committee or sub-committee, or be counted in the quorum.
(16) It shall be an instruction to the committee that before reporting either

(a) that any proposal should be amended before the draft order is laid before the House, or

(b) that the order-making power should not be used in respect of any proposal, or

(c) that any draft order should not be approved,

it shall afford to any government department concerned an opportunity of furnishing orally or in writing to it or to the sub-committee appointed by it such explanations as the department think fit.
(17) It shall be an instruction to the committee that it report on every draft order (not being a subordinate provisions order) not more than fifteen sitting days after the draft order was laid before the House, indicating in the case of draft orders which it recommends should be approved whether its recommendation was agreed without a division.
B. That the following amendments be made to Standing Order No. 18 (Consideration of draft deregulation orders)—

(1) Title, after 'deregulation', insert 'etc.'.

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(2) Line 1, after 'Deregulation', insert 'and Regulatory Reform'.

(3) Line 3, after 'Deregulation', insert 'and Regulatory Reform'.

(4) Line 5, after '1994', insert 'or under section 1 of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001'.

C. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 98 (Scottish Grand Committee (delegated legislation)
Line 15, after 'order', insert 'or regulatory reform order'.
D. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 115 (Northern Ireland Grand Committee (delegated legislation))—
Line 15, after 'order', insert 'or regulatory reform order'.
E. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 118 (Standing committees on delegated legislation))—
Line 14, after 'order', insert 'or regulatory reform order'.
F. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 151 (Statutory Instruments (Joint Committee))—
Line 25, after '1994', insert 'or under section 1 of the Regulatory. Reform Act 2001, or any subordinate provisions order made or draft proposed to be made under that Act'.
G. That the following amendment be made to Standing Order No. 152 (Select committees related to government departments)
Line 33, after 'Deregulation', insert 'and Regulatory Reform'.

Working Group on Provision for Former Members
6.34 pm
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): I beg to move,
That this House is aware that many Members who leave the House, whether by retirement or otherwise, would welcome the opportunity to remain in contact with each other; believes also that former Members might benefit from being in touch with sources of personal advice and assistance with difficulties arising once they have left the House; and suggests that a small informal group be set up to consider how these issues might be addressed, to report to the Speaker and the Leader of the House.
I shall be extremely brief because the motion is an initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) and others, and testament to their dogged determination. My hon. Friend wants to provide means by which retired Members could, if they wished, remain in contact with one another. He is also conscious that there might be a case for modest advice or support for those who were Members and who have found difficulties, for example, in obtaining employment. The motion does not commit the House to take such steps; it merely allows us to establish a working group to consider what provision, if any, should be made and to report to the Speaker and the Leader of the House.
At present, there is no way in which ex-MPs can keep in touch with the House, and no provision for the small amount of funding that might be required. There are many routes by which that might be made possible—for example, I believe that there has been a suggestion that the scope of the Members' fund could be changed and that Members could each pay a small additional contribution to the fund. The current contribution is £24 a year. That, of course, would require legislation, which itself has some attendant disadvantages. Those complications make it clear that we need to think about these matters properly, and the motion invites us to set up a group to do so.
6.35 pm
Mr. Joe Ashton: This is a rather unusual motion, and I am deeply grateful, as are the colleagues who have worked with me on this, to the Speaker, who provided guidance on how to set about tabling it, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, who has been admirably supportive. The Labour Chief Whip has supported us, as have the Chief Whips of the other two main parties. Everybody has been very willing to try to do something about this serious problem.
Every MP has to face the fact that sooner or later they will no longer be a Member of this House. If the voters do not see us off, old age or the boundary changes will. That applies to me, because I am leaving after 32 years. Since 1986, approximately 660 MPs have left. Half of them retired and the others were rejected by the electorate. In the last election alone, 178 Conservative MPs lost their seats. The average stay of an MP today is eight years.
What happened to the MPs who left? Few people know. We know that democracy demands many victims. In the nine Parliaments that I have served in, there have been many anecdotes of ex-Members who have suffered nervous breakdown, divorce, heart disease, alcoholism,

905
depression, serious debt and even, in two cases, suicide. Where is the evidence? It exists, but it is mainly hearsay because few, if any, losers want to parade their unemployed grief or poverty in public, especially if local newspapers have featured pictures and headlines about them, perhaps exulting in their defeat. Their children may be verbally abused in the playground and end up in tears. There are some sad, sorry stories.
The proposals came about because a couple of years ago, in response to a request from a publisher, I started to write a book of memoirs. I tried to trace old comrades and opponents to check on facts such as times and places, and I found it impossible to do so. I could not get their address and telephone number or any other information. The Fees Office and the pensions unit were helpful and sympathetic, but unfortunately the Data Protection Acts prevented them from giving out addresses or telephone numbers and even from confirming that an ex-Member was still alive. They said that they were sorry about that, but occasionally, such as in June 1999, told me that if I were to check The Times obituary column I might find the information that I sought.
I then began to try to form an all-party lobby to compile that information on a voluntary basis, but we could not get the names and addresses—the database was not available. People outside the House, such as Norman Atkinson and Frank Allaun, came to me and said that they badly needed an organisation to speak up on their behalf but that they could not get the names and addresses of ex-MPs. I contacted old friends in the House, including my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding) and for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), the right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery), and the hon. Members for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), for Southport (Mr. Fearn) and for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie). I am sure that they would all be in the Chamber, had we started at 10 o'clock as we intended. Some of them had rallied round, but the earlier start has put us in a rather difficult position. However, a few have managed to make it.
Mr. Peter Snape: Even though I am not one of the distinguished Members on my hon. Friend's list—but I think that I should have been—I am here.
Mr. Ashton: Many people have said that; it just so happened that three Members were sitting in a tearoom when I made the suggestion, and that is how the group was formed.
To give a couple of examples, Ossie O'Brien, the head of a further education college, came to the House after winning a by-election in Darlington. He was in for only three months because a general election was held after that period and he lost his seat. He gave up a good job. The local newspaper said that it was a cheat that he should get six months' money for only three months' work; he had to face that sort of abuse. I was talking to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar) today about trying to get in to the House. He had had five months in the House before losing his seat in a by-election. If, in a democracy, we want able and talented people to stand for Parliament, who
906
will take that risk, especially if they are 35 or 40 and have two or three children? We should ask questions like that. Because of the turnover of Members, we do not know the traumas that they may have experienced.
The Speaker pulled everything together. Our group went to him for advice and he said that unless we put a motion on the Order Paper, we had no chance of achieving our aims on a voluntary or party basis. He said that we could not expect any accommodation, help and so on. He had had a lot of experience of dealing with his redundancy in his previous job. As a young woman, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House lost her seat in Lincoln, so she understands what that feels like. As a young woman, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor), lost her seat in Bolton because of boundary changes. The Speaker and my right hon. Friends therefore had experience of what can happen to MPs and understand that it is time to set up a group.
Obviously, the group needs accommodation, clerical staff and a database, so that people can ring in and get information. It was plain that the Speaker was right; we could not expect money from the taxpayer. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that as well. However, we are not asking for taxpayers' money, even though it would take only a small sum to pay for a part-time secretary to organise the database and make arrangements. We talked to the chairman of the pension fund and other experts to discuss funding the small number of staff who are needed.
There is a Members' fund in the House, and we all pay £2 a month into it. I have been paying into the fund for 30 years and I was astonished to find out how much money was in it. However, we could not use that for our purposes; legislation is needed to make that change. We therefore got to the stage where we had to set up a working group to analyse those problems and talk to people. Members need to remember that those who are pushing the proposal will not be here after the election, as they will have retired and will have no clout or status.
Thanks to the Speaker and my right hon. Friends the Leader of the House and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, a motion was tabled. I am sorry about the difficulty with timing, but it may be better to run the debate past 7 o'clock; I am sure that many people want to do that. I am willing to take the mood of the House on whether it wants to have a vote at 7 o'clock. However, now that a few people are in, it is as well to let everybody have their say. The matter should be discussed, as it has never been before.
We ran into the problem of a May election. It took time over Easter to organise things; we had a week off, so getting people together was difficult. A May election looked as if it would knock the proposal sideways, but we have had a stay of execution, so to speak, which has enabled us to have a motion put on the Order Paper.
In the past, the Whips' offices have undertaken certain duties. I was a Whip when a Labour Government was 17 Members short of a majority in the mid-1970s. People die; there have been cases of people committing suicide, even in the House and even during this Parliament. What a job it is to deal with those deaths. Very often there is a delicate situation in which the party wants to have a by-election as quickly as possible and choose a candidate within, perhaps, a few days of the man or woman dying.

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The family is aggrieved, and says that things are being rushed and there is no dignity or respect for the dead. It is a difficult job for any Whip to organise such things.
Even with the funerals of people who have left the House, including some very good friends of mine, there are problems. Having read their obituary or got news that they have died, I have tried to find their addresses. They may have moved house after leaving Parliament, and sometimes I have found their addresses after the funeral. However, I had sent a letter to their previous addresses or addressed it care of the House, so it never reached their families. There have been embarrassing situations at the funerals of former MPs who had not been long retired, when not one single Member has turned up. The funeral was held only five, six, or seven days after the person's death, so there was not time to get information across and spread the news.
There have therefore been embarrassing scenarios. I do not want to identify people because no doubt the media, who have already been on to me, would want to know who had committed suicide and who had had to sell their house. People want to keep their privacy; they are no longer MPs and do not want their circumstances reported. However, 1992 was a bad year for people who lost their seat because it was the year of negative equity. A lot of people who had been in the House had bought a flat or other accommodation in London; or perhaps they had taken on a long lease. They then found themselves without a job, and could not sell or rent their property. When the Labour party lost in 1979, we did a check a year later and found that 38 MPs still had not got a job.
It is not easy. If someone has been the MP for a small town and has been a well-known bigwig, to go for a job on offer at the Benefits Agency is tremendously—and understandably—embarrassing and demeaning. Such people will say that they are going to move to another town. At the last election, for the first time, a large number of women stood as candidates. Some of them won their seats, although they may not have expected to do so in 1997. They were simply going along for the experience but, lo and behold, they won a seat with a majority of a few 100 or a couple of thousand votes. A woman in that position would have had to tell her husband that they would have to move to midtownshire, for which she was the MP. They would have to move 100 miles and buy a house; the kids would have to move, the husband would have to give up his job and get a new job in midtownshire. I understand that one or two husbands have even become researchers, which may have been the only job that they could get. Four years later, however, such MPs may be out. Everybody knows that there is a winding-up allowance, but it is not much, especially for people under 50. All that they will get is six months' severance pay. It is not a happy situation.
When I have talked about that, people, especially the media, say that candidates know what they are doing when they stand for Parliament. Of course we do; we all know the old adage, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." However, in any battle, there will be casualties. Boundary changes can result in even worse problems. There may be a long, drawn-out, horrendous process of three local MPs chasing two seats; that can be worse and more stressful than an election.
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I am sorry to go on, but I have a lot to say. If the House does not mind, I shall keep going until 10 o'clock—[Interruption.] Okay, I shall take notice of the House by speaking for another few minutes and then conclude my remarks.
I have described some of the problems that we have had.
Mr. Edward Leigh: I very much support the hon. Gentleman who has talked about serious matters. However, I have often thought about one small matter. United States Congressmen who are defeated or have retired can go to any part of the building, apart from the floor of the debating chamber. Here, we are very restricted; former Members can go to the canteen, but not other parts of the building. I do not know why retired Members, especially those of pensionable age, are not allowed to go wherever they want in the building. It is cruel for somebody who has been sitting around all those rooms for 20 or 25 years to be told that they have to carry a pass, and can go here, but not there. Can we not be more open-minded?
Mr. Ashton: That is exactly one of the problems that the working party should consider. Everybody could ask, "What about this or that? How will it work? What are the questions? What are the answers?" We do not know. We must meet and probe. The media say that Vauxhall make mass redundancies, as do the pit villages, and the workers who lose their jobs must put up with it. However, those people can go down the road and meet in the pub, but defeated Members of Parliament cannot. They are scattered all over the country. They do not have the telephone numbers of other former Members, and may not want to spend the money coming down to London. They may meet up at the party conference. People in other trades and jobs—for example, a skilled fitter made redundant by Vauxhall—can go down the road and get a job somewhere else. A Member of Parliament cannot do that. It is four years before he gets another chance, and then he may have to move house again.
None of us are whingeing about our circumstances. We know how they come about, but a serious analysis of what happens and why has never been undertaken by a Committee of authority. After the election, everybody forgets about the matter until the next election, when a motion such as this is proposed. The single factor that has brought it about is the data protection legislation, which prevents us achieving our aims on a voluntary basis.
I shall make one last point. The same problems are faced by staff. What a horrendous situation when staff must sit watching the count at 1 am, not knowing whether they have a job to go to the following day. When The Sunday Times and the unions arranged a meeting in the House for secretaries not long ago, 350 of them packed Room 14. I know, and people find out only when they leave, that it is impossible to get any information from the Fees Office. It cannot give such information until a decision is announced that Parliament is to be prorogued. Once that decision is made, the Fees Office can provide information about pensions, possible redundancy pay for staff and so on. The matter needs looking into, and the Committee could undertake that.
With the backing of the Speaker, the Leader of the House and many others, the Committee will not just be the equivalent of an old British Legion meeting for a drink

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twice a year, to spin old yarns. It needs to be a bit more than a social get-together. It must undertake a serious analysis of what the House should be doing, like every other big company in the country—running a personnel department to help people who have worked here for a large part of their life.
6.52 pm
Mr. Dominic Grieve: The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) has done the House a good turn by raising the matter. I warmly welcome his remarks, which make eminent good sense. I know that my late father greatly enjoyed the informal contact that he had with his colleagues after leaving the House. He had the advantage of being able to come back to a number of dining clubs.
On the hon. Gentleman's last point, I was horrified by the number of requests that I received after the last election from former members of staff to come and work for me, in secretarial capacity or otherwise. They clearly had serious difficulties, and the situation must have been traumatic for them.
The hon. Gentleman has raised a number of important issues, and the sensible way of taking them forward is as he suggests. I appreciate that he wants to formalise matters for sensible reasons such as the requirements of the data protection legislation, and I hope that the informal group will come up with creative ideas which will make service in the House appear more attractive and, above all, ensure that we look after those who have gone on and left the House. All of us would say that the House is an enormously friendly place on a cross-party basis. A great deal of support is provided by other hon. Members to their colleagues. That must make it all the more difficult when people are turned out and cast adrift, so I am happy to welcome the motion.
6.54 pm
Mr. David Winnick: I should like to know, if possible, whether the House wishes to conclude the debate by 7 o'clock. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] In that case, I shall not speak long. I entirely support the motion and the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton). He has done a great service to the House and for former Members.
I speak as one who was defeated in 1970, when there was no resettlement grant and the salary ended when the election was called. There is one matter that I want to emphasise, and which I raised at Business questions: the pension. I asked the Fees Office for the average pension paid to former Member and their widows in 1987. The sum was just over £4,000. Although I appreciate that the sum would have been plussed up since 1987 because of inflation, and that that is an average, we should bear in mind that there are many former Members whose pension is a pittance. When we compare that to the pension that
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many hon. Members will now receive, even if their service is somewhat limited, because of the salary there is a vast difference.
If it were possible, would it be desirable for the Committee to consider whether the pension could be plussed up by more than inflation? Obviously, if that were done for former Members, it would also have to be done outside the House. There are many former Members who left as they were approaching retirement age or who were already of retirement age. Even if they had 20 years' service, bearing in mind the level of the salary in 1987 and before, the sum involved would not amount to much. I hope that the matter can be looked into.
6.56 pm
Sir Peter Emery: To help the House complete the debate by 7 o'clock, I shall be brief. I have been assisting the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) with his proposal, and it should be made clear that Conservative Back-Benchers strongly support it.
There is something that we can do to help the House. I understand from speaking to the Chairman of the Catering Committee that he would be delighted if former Members would dine in the Dining Room on a Thursday night or a Friday lunchtime. That would greatly assist hon. Members.
I have one question to put to the Leader of the House. Can we be certain that there will be some former Members on the Committee, which will appointed under the aegis of the Speaker? It is important that their views should be heard.
Mrs. Beckett: The right hon. Gentleman makes a very sensible point, which I shall certainly take on board. It will be a matter for Mr. Speaker. but I am sure that he will agree.
6.57 pm
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: [Interruption.] I sense the mood of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I shall resume my seat.
Mr. Deputy Speaker(Sir Alan Haselhurst): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), as is the House, I am sure.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House is aware that many Members who leave the House, whether by retirement or otherwise, would welcome the opportunity to remain in contact with each other; believes also that former Members might benefit from being in touch with sources of personal advice and assistance with difficulties arising once they have left the House; and suggests that a small informal group be set up to consider how these issues might be addressed, to report to the Speaker and the Leader of the House.
6.58 pm
Sitting suspended.

City of London (Ward Elections) Bill

  (By Order)
  As amended, further considered.
  7 pm
  Mr. John McDonnell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My point of order, of which I gave you notice, concerns the application of the Human Rights Act 1998. I appreciate that we have trawled over this ground before, but matters have moved on since our previous debate. You will recall that, during the previous debate, the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Ms Hughes), quoted a written answer from the President of the Council, which stated:
  "Section 19 of the Human Rights Act 1998 does not apply to Private Bills."
  We were aware of that. It went on:
  "However, like all legislation, any Act resulting from the passage of such a Bill can be judged in the courts, either in the UK or in Strasbourg, for its compatibility with the ECHR."
  We were assured:
  "In future, when Private Bills are deposited, promoters will be asked to undertake a full assessment of the compatibility of their proposals with the ECHR and to make a statement setting out their conclusion as to whether the Bill is compatible or not. A Minister in the Government department within whose policy responsibilities the subject matter of the Bill falls will make a formal statement saying that he believes that the promoters have undertaken a full assessment and that he does not (or, if necessary, that he does) see any need to dispute their conclusion".—[Official Report, 11 January 2001; Vol. 360, c. 1304–5.]
  Today, we have received another statement from the Bill's promoter that contains no reference to whether the Bill complies with the Human Rights Act. Are we tonight to receive a statement from the Minister in that regard? I accept that this is not a new Bill and has not been introduced today, but in the spirit of the statement made during the previous debate I would expect some statement to be made. If not, yet again, there would be no guidance from any Law Officer or the Government that the Bill complies with the Human Rights Act enacted in this Chamber.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Keith Hill): Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It may be for the convenience of the House if I make the following statement.
  Hon. Members present for the previous debate on the Bill will recall that the Under Secretary gave a commitment to make a statement on Third Reading on behalf of the Government in relation to the Bill's compatibility with the European convention on human rights.
  A copy of the legal assessment procured by the promoter of the Bill on its compatibility with the ECHR was sent to the Government by the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) on 29 January 2001. The assessment concluded that the Bill is compatible with the ECHR, as has been stated in previous debates on the Bill.
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  Having now considered the papers, I can report to the House that I believe that a full assessment of the Bill's compatibility with the ECHR has been undertaken by the City of London corporation and I see no need to dispute the conclusions of that assessment.
  Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Has the statement of compatibility with the ECHR been placed in the Library, in the domain of hon. Members? I have not seen it and I have been present throughout virtually all the debates on the Bill and took part in the debate on this very matter. If the Minister is to refer to a document that claims that the Bill is compatible with the ECHR, at the very least we should be privy to it. It has already passed from the Bill's sponsor, on behalf of the promoter, the City of London corporation, to the Government, and such an important document should not remain as private correspondence between the sponsor and the Government and we should not have to take their assurance on the matter. We should also have the right to see it.
  Mr. Peter Brooke: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I think that it is generally agreed that a further debate on this subject is not likely to be in order for long. I simply remind the House that the lengths to which the promoter has gone to demonstrate compliance with human rights, including an opinion obtained from leading counsel, is a matter of record. I have shared that advice with the Under-Secretary who was on the Front Bench during our previous debate, in accordance with the invitation that she extended to me on that occasion; the Under-Secretary present this evening, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill), has confirmed that.
  The promoter has complied with the relevant Standing Orders and will continue to do so. Moreover, provided that the House's authorities are content, the promoter has no objection to the inclusion of a statement on compatibility appearing on the front of the Bill when it is reprinted, even if that is not a requirement of the revised Standing Orders when reprinting is undertaken. I am conscious of the Standing Order that will come into force on 27 November 2001.
  I have to say in a gentle voice to Labour Members that the advice that the Government receive that enables them to say that a Bill is compatible with the appropriate convention is not subject to scrutiny in the way that has been described.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker(Sir Alan Haselhurst): I am not persuaded that the matter can continue to be pursued on a point of order. In view of the procedures that have now been followed after exhaustive earlier debate, it is a matter for the House to determine, at the appropriate moment, whether it is satisfied with the statements that have been made. That can be dealt with in the further proceedings of the House. There is no further point of order for the Chair.
  Mr. Corbyn: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You were the occupant of the Chair during the previous debate on the question of the Bill's compatibility with the ECHR. We have now heard that the document has passed from the promoter to the Government, but this is a private Bill, not a Government Bill. The Government are merely responding to it; it is the House's property.

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  Is it in order that the House should not be aware of the contents of private correspondence claiming compatibility between the promoter of a private Bill and the Government, when many hon. Members are extremely concerned that the convention might have been breached by the Bill, which does not allow free and unfettered elections as required under the convention? This is an important matter concerning the role of private Bills. I do not like the rules that apply to Government Bills, but I understand them, but this is not a Government Bill.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am satisfied that there is nothing out of order that should concern the House. This should now become a matter of debate that may influence the House's attitude to the Bill. Therefore, we should proceed with consideration of the Bill.

Clause 2

  INTERPRETATION
  Amendment moved [11 January]: No. 7, in page 1, line 18, at end insert—
  'business electoral college" means a body comprising voters appointed under section 3(1)(c) with responsibility for electing the business voters entitled to vote in ward elections.'.—[Mr. McDonnell.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 8, in page 1, line 19, at end insert—
  'employees' electoral college' means a body comprising voters appointed under section 3(1)(d) with responsibility for electing the employees' voters entitled to vote in ward elections.'.
  No. 19, in clause 3, page 2, line 33, leave out from `person' to second 'a' and insert—
  'elected from the business electoral college comprising voters appointed by'.
  No. 56, in clause 3, page 2, line 33, leave out from 'person' to 'ordinarily' in line 34 and insert—
  'elected from the business electoral college comprising voters appointed by qualifying bodies which are'.
  No. 22, in clause 3, page 2, line 37, at end insert—
  '(d) is a person elected from the employees' electoral college comprising voters who are employees of a qualifying body which is ordinarily in occupation for relevant purposes as owner or tenant of the whole or part of a hereditament situated in that ward which is shown in the local non-domestic rating list as having a rateable value of not less than £200.'.
  No. 58, page 2, line 37, at end insert—
  '(1A) The business electoral college shall reflect the range of business activity within the City, and shall comprise relevant business operational constituencies for which a qualifying body must register based upon its principal business operation; and the proportion of voters to be elected from a business operational constituency will be determined in proportion to the number of qualifying bodies registering for a particular business operational constituency in relation to the total registrations.'.
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  No. 57, page 2, line 37, at end insert—
  '(1B) The employees' electoral college shall reflect the range of occupations operating within the City of London, and shall comprise relevant occupational constituencies for which an employee must register based upon his/her principal occupation as defined under the DFEE Standard Occupational Classification Major Groups; and the proportion of voters to be elected from an occupational constituency shall be determined in proportion to the number of employees registering for a particular occupational constituency in relation to the total registrations.'.
  No. 23, page 2, line 37, at end insert—
  '(1C)The number of business voters elected from the business electoral college shall be no more than 2000.'.
  No. 24, page 2, line 37, at end insert—
  '(1D)The number of employee voters elected from the employees' electoral college shall be no more than 2,000.'.
  No. 59, page 2, line 41, at end insert—
  '(2A)—(1) For the election of voters to represent the business operational and occupational constituencies within the electoral colleges, each vote in the poll shall be a single transferable vote.
  (2) A single transferable vote is a vote—

  (a) capable of being given so as to indicate the voter's order of preference for the candidates for election as members for the constituency; and

  (b) capable of being transferred to the next choice when the vote is not needed to give a prior choice to the necessary quota of votes or when a prior choice is eliminated from the list of candidates because of a deficiency in the number of votes given for him.'.

  No. 29, page 3, line 18, at end insert 'subject to subsections (1C) and (1D) above'.
  Mr. McDonnell: At the weekend, we all filled in our census forms. When mine asked who I work for and what my job entails, I said that I work for my constituents and that my job is to represent their interests and to legislate in their interests. Tonight, we have the opportunity to legislate in the interests of all of London, and that is why I have tabled the amendments. We have the opportunity now to retrieve this flawed Bill—some would say fatally flawed—to save the Bill from itself and to rescue the City of London corporation, whose promotion of the Bill has been unacceptable, both in Committee and now. We are now in our third year on the Bill, during which time there has been ample opportunity to respond to the amendments, which were before the House previously.
  I wish to rescue the Bill's chance of instigating a proper reform of the City of London corporation. The amendments seek to institute a reform to enable all those who live and work in the City—and, yes, who possess property—to have a say about their environment and community. I accept that the City is not only a single community, but many communities. The amendments seek to reflect the complex, diverse and yet interdependent communities that the City comprises. That includes the residents, the workers—the "employees" to whom the amendments refer, who spend their working hours in the City—and the businesses that occupy or tenant the City area.
  The amendments are compromise proposals that could allow the Bill to pass through the House in a form that would make the new structure of local government and the governance of the City of London corporation so robust that it would render the City sustainable for another 800 years. They are a compromise. I recognise that they move away from the principle of one person, one vote, and accept that a business vote will continue in the City.

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  I understand that some of my hon. Friends will be anxious about such a compromise, but the amendments also ask for a compromise from the City of London corporation and the Bill's supporters in the House. Although they accept the continuation of the business vote, they also ask for an acceptance of workers' right to vote for the City of London corporation. That is a compromise that would not achieve what I would like—the establishment of a soviet in the centre of London—but which would balance the different communities: the residents, business and workers.
  I ask the City of London corporation to advise its representative—some would add the words "on earth"—the right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, the Bill's sponsor, and its friends in the Government, to accept these compromise amendments and to let the Bill soar on to the statute book. Failure to accept the amendments will mean that one of the key communities in the City—employees and workers—will remain disfranchised. It creates the wealth on which the City's reputation is founded, but it currently has no voice.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: On the question of workers' votes, I would like to get some answers at this early stage, as there could be some problems later. Will the workers vote on the basis of one member, one vote? Will the trade unions allow block votes? Will everybody vote on the principle of one member, one vote, or will some unions supposedly use block votes, if they want to do so? Would such votes be made on the basis of the parliamentary Labour party votes, which are divided into thirds? Finally, are we talking about the same City that 6,000 people were trying to get rid of yesterday? Is that the same City that we are trying to prop up?
  Mr. McDonnell: When I commenced discussion of the amendments in our previous debate, I proposed to begin by taking hon. Members through them. My hon. Friend raises issues of detail that I shall address in due course. We are referring to the City of London. The City of London corporation covers what we euphemistically call the square mile, so he is right about that point, and I give him that assurance.
  7.15 pm
  Mr. Andrew Dismore: My hon. Friend might recall an intervention that I made in our previous debate, in which I said that it might be easier for him to give us a general overview of how the amendments fitted together before he spoke in detail. Having re-read Hansard this afternoon, I am even more concerned that we are getting the detail before the overview. I am being given a lot of detail, but I am finding it difficult to fit that information together without getting the bigger picture first. I know that he has prepared his speech along those lines, but perhaps he could look further into his notes and make some comments of a more general flavour, so that we can see how it all fits together before we discuss the detail.
  Mr. McDonnell: Let me address the structure of the debate and resolve this matter. I suggested that I should proceed by taking hon. Members through the amendments and examining the implications of each one. I proposed to explain their role and how they operated together to introduce the electoral college mechanism, and then to
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  explain their purpose and the principles on which they are based: that is, the basic premises on which they were promulgated.
  Some of my hon. Friends were anxious about that approach and wanted me to give the bigger picture before I set about the detail. However, the very hon. Members who were concerned about getting bogged down in the detail then participated in a rather lengthy debate about white van men and so on—a discussion that was tedious at times. I do not want to take that route, tempting though some hon. Members might find it. Instead, I want to take a clear, decisive and expeditious route, and to set out the principles that underlie the amendments.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: I find the position that my hon. Friend outlines somewhat confusing. The batch of amendments that we are considering begins with amendment No. 7. We are being given details about the nature of the electoral college, but the lead amendment asks for further consideration of the Bill to be delayed for six months. I am concerned about the arguments, because that proposal sounds somewhat different from the suggestion that he is trying to accommodate the City in order to advance the Bill's progress.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I should explain to the hon. Member that we are not discussing the proposition to which he refers and that it is not the practice of the House to do so. We are discussing the amendments whose numbers were read out at the beginning of the debate.
  Mr. McDonnell: My hon. Friend is confused because of the numbering of the amendments on the amendment paper. Amendment No. 7 seeks to introduce a business electoral college. The establishment of the overall electoral college of businesses, employees and so on flows from that proposal.
  Mr. Barnes: I should like to clarify the position. When I entered the Chamber, I collected an amendment paper for 2 May, the first page of which is numbered as page 201. Amendment No. 7 states that on further consideration of the Bill—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have already ruled on this matter. I must say to the hon. Gentleman that the number 7 appears on the amendment paper in parallel with the name of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) and refers to what follows. All that appears above is a motion that is not part of the group of amendments.
  Mr. Barnes: I apologise for being so slow, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I now understand the point that has been made.
  Mr. McDonnell: Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  I do not want to speak in too much detail at this stage, but I should like to set out the principles that underlie the amendments—I shall, of course, explain their detailed implications in due course—and then argue a justification for their adoption on the basis of addressing the key concerns of each of the main political parties in the House. I hope fairly swiftly to send all hon. Members skipping through the Lobby in support of the

  917
  amendments. I hope that they will sing the "Marseillaise", even if I cannot persuade them to sing the "Internationale". Although I could explain at length to those who do not understand it the difference between the underlying principles of the two anthems, I shall not. If they wish to understand the difference, which is relevant to the amendments, between a bourgeois democracy and a workers' democracy, I simply refer them to Karl Marx's writing on the Paris Commune and V.I. Lenin's "Left-wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder".
  The Bill is basically undemocratic: that is the difficulty with it and the ground on which many of us oppose it. It undermines the principle of one person, one vote. The amendments maintain that principle at least in part. I accept that the City corporation does not want to give up its undemocratic—some would say anti-democratic—Franchise, which allows for a business vote. In the Bill and the amendments, that vote is based on a property qualification, which runs contrary to every other method of democratic election in this country.
  The amendments try to take account of the strong argument that has been presented in favour of maintaining the business vote. It has been argued that it is justified by the intensity of business activity in a small area. The City is a business district and I therefore accept that, to make progress, we need to create a structure of governance for that area that includes a business vote. However, I also want that structure to reflect the rights and responsibilities of the other stakeholders in the City of London corporation area.
  The amendments define the stakeholders as the employees—the workers—and the residents. I am trying to develop an argument that enables us to reach a compromise and leads to a swift passage for the Bill.
  Mr. Kelvin Hopkins: I have followed the debate with interest on previous occasions. My hon. Friend used the word "compromise" often this evening. Will he reassure me that he has not devised a compromise too far and that he is not conceding too much to those who take a different view from my hon. Friend and me about providing a genuinely democratic system for the City of London in future?
  Mr. McDonnell: If the franchise is to be reformed, the City corporation has made it clear in statements to the House and through the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, who sponsors the Bill, that there are some steps that it will not take. It will not relinquish the business vote or allow an amendment that provides for a straight residential vote or a combination of residential and employees' votes. In tabling amendments to provide for an electoral college, I am searching for a compromise that takes account of the three elements in the stakeholder society.
  Mr. Corbyn: Will my hon. Friend remind us of the number of residential voters and the number of business votes that will be added to it by the Bill and the amendments?
  Mr. McDonnell: I am told that there are approximately 5,000 residential voters, although I am open to correction.
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  They are currently swamped by the business votes. In the amendments, I am trying to create an electoral college, which means that residential votes are never outweighed by business or workers' votes.
  Mr. Dismore: Under my hon. Friend's proposals, would residents have at least half the votes so that their votes would equal those of businesses and employees, or would each group have a third of the votes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) suggested?
  Mr. McDonnell: As we develop the debate, my hon. Friend will realise that I am trying to introduce a mechanism whereby the residents will have a permanent majority over the combined votes of business and employees. That would provide some protection for the residents.
  Mr. Dismore: I am reassured by that. However, my hon. Friend said that he was trying to provide for all the stakeholders in the City. One group—customers—has been left out of the equation. If we use modern parlance and "stakeholder", customers constitute one of the most important groups. When we discuss railways or the tube, we hear about customers. However, the electorial college that my hon. Friend proposes makes no provision for the consumers of City services.
  Mr. McDonnell: In a subsequent group of amendments, I have tried to provide at least the opportunity for shareholders to have a vote. I could not devise a method of including a customer vote in the amendments that we are discussing because of problems of definition, inability to register and the cost that such a vote would incur. Perhaps one day, if the City publishes its accounts, we can ascertain the exact amount that it could afford for those administrative matters.
  Mr. Skinner: What about the Commission for Racial Equality? Will black business men or stakeholders have a specific proportion the votes? Will that also apply to women? Those are the two big issues of the day. Will people have to sign a document? What chance have we got if someone on the other side will not sign it? A hell of a lot of people in the stock exchange and elsewhere in the City may not sigh such a document. Another almighty row would follow.
  Mr. McDonnell: The Bill and subsequent amendments make some attempt to ensure that the voters reflect the composition, including gender and ethnicity, of the companies' work forces. That matter needs to be tackled. There is a dearth of women and members of ethnic minorities on the City corporation and its various committees. However, the amendments that we are considering do not deal with that, and I shall move on.
  The amendments would establish electoral colleges, comprising businesses and employees. Each would be able to determine the eventual composition of the City corporation's common council. If the amendments were

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  accepted, the electorate would comprise the residents, the voters elected by the business electoral college and those elected by the employees electoral college.
  Mr. Robert N. Wareing: I understand that the Port of London health authority is in the City of London corporation. Would the amendments encompass it?
  Mr. McDonnell: I believe that any organisation that is defined as a separate business entity and has property or employees in the City of London area would be covered by the business electoral college. There may be problems, for example, in the case of City corporation functions that are contracted out. If the contract is won in house, the workers are employees of the City corporation, not a separate business. However, a private company or separate agency that operated a service on behalf of the City corporation would be defined as a separate business and, in my view, would fall in the remit of the business college.
  7.30 pm
  Let me explain how the amendments that I have tabled fit together—the overview for which my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) asked. I shall consider the amendments individually and examine how they hang together. The amendments are tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), and he and I have now worked together on them in four or five debates. I shall describe each amendment and how it contributes to the new stakeholder edifice.
  Amendment No. 7 establishes the definition of a business electoral college as
  "a body comprising voters appointed under section 3(1)(c)"
  of the Bill—
  "with responsibility for electing the business voters entitled to vote in ward elections."
  This is an indirect system of election, and there are two stages to the process. The amendment proposes that the qualifying bodies defined in lines 12 and 13 of clause 2 should be gathered together into a business electoral college. The qualifying bodies would then be enfranchised to nominate—I have retained "in writing" from the original Bill—a person to persons to represent them and vote on their behalf in the business electoral college.
  Amendment No. 19 amends clause 3(c) to bring about that form of indirect election of the voter, who will eventually cast his or her vote on behalf of the qualifying bodies. The definition of "qualifying bodies" follows shortly, and basically covers the businesses themselves and certain other organisations. Those voters will then cast their votes in the overall City corporation ward elections. Amendment No. 19 therefore empowers the qualifying body to nominate its voter or voters, who will serve in the business electoral college, which will, in turn, elect the voters who will be qualified to vote.
  This will be a two-stage, indirect election—there have been arguments about its complexity, but it is no more complex than the constitution of the United States of America, which provides for similar electoral colleges—which will also involve the election of a council, council leader and chairs of committees under the existing
  920
  systems of local government. I reject the insinuation that this is closer to the election of a Pope or the canonisation of a saint. It is a straightforward indirect election system.
  Mr. Skinner: I want to bring this debate up to date. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has thought this through, but he sounds as though he is nominating people's peers. This would be no different. There would be people nominating someone to nominate someone to nominate someone else and, despite all my hon. Friend's best intentions of getting some decent people on to this body, we know what would happen. We would get the great and the good again, and the people at the bottom of the street would get left out.
  Mr. McDonnell: I understand my hon. Friend's concerns, particularly as both our applications to be people's peers were rejected. Never mind.
  The selection of people's peers—or however we like to describe them—was carried out by a committee constructed by the Prime Minister under advice. The committee then nominated the peers—that is true. Under the mechanism that I propose, there will be nomination but there will also be forms of election. There is a difference between the two examples. I accept that this is a form of indirect election, but at the end of the day the route will lead to an election, particularly within the employers' electoral college. I accept that there is an element of nomination in the business electoral college.
  Mr. Dismore: Following the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), I wonder how the aldermen and the mayor fit into the picture. As I understand the rather convoluted arrangements that exist now, they are chosen from among the councillors of the City—the members of the common council—who would be chosen by the people chosen by the college, who would be chosen by the college, which would be chosen by the electorate. There could be five or six different stages before we got to the most senior positions in the council, which are the Lord Mayor of London and the aldermen. Is my hon. Friend perhaps saying that they could be the people's aldermen, elected directly under his proposed arrangements?
  Mr. McDonnell: I am surprised at this lack of understanding of the arrangements by someone who has been in the Labour party for so long. The party has had the mechanism for electoral colleges for nearly a century. The amendments reflect that mechanism. The electoral college determines the voters, who turn up at a conference and elect a national executive committee, which then elects a Chair and has, in previous times, worked with the parliamentary Labour party to elect the leader of the party who has gone on to become the leader of the Government and of the country. My proposal is a reflection of a democratic practice that has gone on for some time in this country. I accept that businesses have not nominated representatives to the Labour party conference, but who knows?
  Amendment No. 56 would amend clause 3(c) and, as a result, a person would become entitled to vote in any ward of the City if, on the qualifying date, that person was
  "elected from the business electoral college comprising the voters appointed by the qualifying bodies which are"—
  ordinarily in occupation of a hereditament. I prefer the French pronunciation of that word, as it has a French origin, although other hon. Members prefer the English

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  pronunciation. Amendment No. 56 is a tidier and more comprehensive amendment than amendment No. 19, and it warrants support on that basis. It represents a slight variation on a theme.
  Amendment No. 58 deals with the composition of the business electoral college. Its objective is to ensure that the business electoral college—the BEC—reflects the range of business activity in the City corporation. Hon. Members will understand that I am keen to ensure that the City corporation has a balanced form of representation drawn from the expertise available to it in the different professions, business operations and companies operating within the square mile.
  Mr. Dismore: One thing that is starting to trouble me about this method of dealing with the issue is the question of nationality. To be a residential elector in an ordinary election in the United Kingdom, one has to be either a British or Commonwealth citizen, a citizen of the Irish Republic, or—in certain elections—a citizen of other European Union countries. It is not clear to me from the amendment whether my hon. Friend has addressed the issue of nationality. For example, in this new global economy, a business in the City whose head office and main operations were in the United States might have no real interest in the United Kingdom except for its business premises, which might be an offshoot of a conglomerate based in New York or Washington. Is my hon. Friend saying that such people should have a say in the democratic elections of the United Kingdom?
  Mr. McDonnell: I am seeking to find in the Bill—perhaps its promoter can help me—a restriction that states that the voter who is eventually elected to cast a vote on behalf of a company has to be a British citizen. I accept, however, that that does not mean that the company has to have its main interest in this country. It could be a multinational corporation based elsewhere, and I accept my hon. Friend's concerns about such a company's interest in the future and in its stake in the City corporation and in this country. That is perhaps a matter that could be examined subsequently, and I am sure that the City corporation would welcome amendments to that effect.
  In amendment No. 58, the City corporation is required to establish a structure of business operational constituencies within the BEC. Those constituencies would be operational, not geographical, and they should reflect the various business operations that take place in the City. Only the City corporation itself could draw up such a constituency structure, as only it has at its fingertips the required expertise and knowledge of the variety of business operations undertaken in the square mile.
  The corporation would establish which groupings and businesses were interested in appointing voters to the BEC. They would be invited to register for their particular operational grouping or business operational constituency and my amendment, based on the number of businesses registering for particular operational constituencies, would ensure that voters elected from a constituency were allocated proportionately. Voters would be distributed to
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  the various operational constituencies in proportion to the number of qualifying bodies registered for each business operational constituency.
  Mr. Skinner rose—
  Mr. McDonnell: I have obviously lost my hon. Friend.
  Mr. Skinner: No, I have sussed this out—it is pretty clear. My hon. Friend has gone a long way to accommodate the people in the City. I know that he has a long-standing interest in London and all the rest of it, but something tells me that some people will get more than one vote. We have had that problem with block votes and electoral colleges; it has always been difficult to live with.
  Before I go into the Lobby, I want my hon. Friend to give me an assurance. Would people in the City of London get more than one vote if they had more than one business interest? As sure as night follows day, we know that the Tories and their pals do not meddle in one business; they have their fingers in every conceivable pie. They would pile up votes left, right and centre while Joe Soap would not get one.
  Mr. McDonnell: I accept that there is a weakness in the proposal. An individual shareholder or owner of a company could participate in a number of companies. As a result, he could register in not one business operational constituency in the electoral college, but several. That is a definite problem but this is a compromise Bill. However, there is further a difficulty in that a resident with a vote could hold shares in a business, which could also have a vote. The Bill is not perfect, so I am simply trying to improve it.
  Mr. Barnes: Presumably, such a person could also be a City employee, so the electoral college could have three categories. A person might be involved in each and may have multiple votes.
  Mr. McDonnell: The proposed voting systems are similar to those relating to the constitution of the Labour party. People may have multiple votes, depending on their membership of and affiliation to the Labour party. There is an inherent problem here, but we have identified a series of problems with the Bill and the amendment represents an attempt to arrive at a situation for which we could garner support in the Chamber. Perhaps amendments to the review mechanism, which I hope to debate later, could be tabled.
  Mr. Kelvin Hopkins: I have been worrying for some minutes about my hon. Friend's reference to determining the operational and geographical constituencies according to which the election would be held. He suggested that those would be decided by the City of London corporation, but I am anxious that an external independent monitoring organisation such as the Local Government Commission has not been mentioned, even in respect of operational constituencies in the business community. Will he elaborate and reassure me? We do not want friends to be scratching each other's backs while the constituencies are determined.
  7.45 pm
  Mr. McDonnell: The amendment deals with operational, not geographical, constituencies. Operational constituencies are defined as the different elements of the business electoral college that reflect the different businesses that operate in their different ways in the City. I have confidence in the City corporation, which would be able to provide an accurate definition.
  Like any other organisation that acts in the public realm, the City corporation would be open to judicial review should it offend against reasonable behaviour. The Wednesbury principles, which provide that all relevant factors have to be taken into account and all irrelevant factors dismissed in determining a reasonable decision, would obviously apply to the City corporation's delineation of the business operational constituencies. Therefore, protection would be given to individual businesses and their members, residents and employees. I understand the argument for external verification, but the reality is that external verification could easily be pursued in the courts.
  Mr. Dismore: I am becoming confused about the reference to operational and geographical constituencies. It is not clear whether my hon. Friend is saying that there should be an operational constituency for each ward or one for the whole City. Establishing an operational constituency for each word would be complex and a different kettle of fish. Indeed, it could lead to multiple voting of the type described by my hon. Friends. Would there be one operational constituency for the whole of the City's borders?
  Mr. McDonnell: My view is that we are discussing one for the whole of the borders on the basis that elections would have to be run according to slates of candidates rather than lists of individuals. That would be manageable, given that there are only 5,000 residents. The amendment would also overcome some gerrymandering of ward boundaries, although we were given assurances by the City corporation that there would be reforms in that respect. However, I do not believe that any have been carried out.
  Mr. Dismore: Now I am becoming worried. My hon. Friend referred to slates. Did he mean open party lists or closed party lists? Did he mean any kind of party list?
  Mr. McDonnell: My remarks represented only a supposition, not a proposal. Rather than use geographical districts, we should pay regard to the reality of what is a business district in total. Therefore, rather than define geographical constituencies, we should define constituencies of interest in terms of the work force and the businesses. I have confidence in the City corporation being able to draw up a list of the various business operational constituencies adequately to reflect the range of activities that go on in the City of London.
  Mr. Dismore: If my hon. Friend is referring to slates of one sort or another, could a particular occupation dominate in the City? Could there be a solicitors' slate, whereby a batch of solicitors could outvote all the other occupational groups? Could the stockbrokers have a slate? We would end up with what we have already, so how would the reforms help?
  Mr. McDonnell: With great respect to my hon. Friend, no protection against solicitors is known to man or beast
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  or other, but let me explain by exemplifying how the structure would work. I shall draw on the City corporation's latest report on London's contribution to the UK economy, which was published in November 2000 and commissioned from the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
  In examining the financial contribution of London and the City, the report defines the major activities and business operations in the London and City economy. Therefore, it describes the industrial or business composition of the City of London area. It also shows that operational constituencies could readily be drawn up, although I accept that they could be numerous.
  The report says, for example, that separate operational constituencies could be established for banking, finance, insurance, business services and leasing as well as for service sectors including communications, transport, storage, distribution, hotels and catering. The amendment would allow for that. Alternatively, business operational constituencies could be constructed that would delineate a company with multiple roles and then determine which role was dominant within that company, or the company could opt for a particular business operational constituency.
  The corporation may wish to group businesses in broader and less numerous business operational constituencies. For example, banking and finance might form one group, insurance a second, business services a third, and distribution, communications, hotels and catering a fourth. If the amendment were accepted, the corporation's town clerk would invite all qualifying bodies—by advertisement and by letter—to register, allowing them to opt for a particular business operational constituency. The town clerk—I believe that the City corporation describes him as the chamberlain—could be required to investigate the appropriateness of a qualifying body's registering within a particular operational constituency, if the registration was challenged. There would therefore be an element of protection against abuse of that kind, and against practices that would constitute manipulation of votes.
  Mr. Corbyn: I apologise for having missed part of my hon. Friend's speech: I had to pop out briefly.
  In the case of a business involved in multiple operations and performing a number of different functions, how would the clerk decide on the sector to which that business should be allocated?
  Mr. McDonnell: I think that it would be open to the business to opt for a sector, and to demonstrate that it was opting for the sector in which most of its activity lay, by reference to its accounts. Its trading practices could point to the operational constituency in which it would fit.
  Mr. Corbyn: I take the point, but the profitability of one sector or another might well not be synonymous with the labour-intensity involved—the number of people employed. The Bill might give more votes to fewer people because those people produced more cash for the company, rather than giving more votes to a larger

  925
  number constituting, essentially, a service within the company. The latter group might well be disfranchised, or at least have a reduced franchise.
  Mr. McDonnell: Registration in the business electoral college is based on status as a business, not as an employer. Employees will be eligible for the employees' electoral college under the proposed system.
  Mr. Skinner: What happens when there is a takeover? We know that business is global now. That means that foreign firms become involved, but presumably they will not have votes at the outset. How will they get votes distributed once they have taken over British firms? This sort of thing is happening all the time. Moreover, banking firms are moving into production, consumerism and so forth.
  The more I hear about this proposal, the more I perceive that it contains the seeds of its own destruction. I am not all together happy with the great effort that my hon. Friend is making in regard to the electoral college. Furthermore, I want to know whether there will be a cap on political spending in the so-called constituencies, because I envisage a lot of fiddling.
  Mr. McDonnell: I would expect the normal rules pertaining to local government elections to apply to expenditure controls. As for takeovers, mergers and the like, they are an inevitable part of commercial life. In the event of a takeover, if a business changed its operation it would move into another category at a subsequent election.
  Mr. Dismore: What worries me is the possibility that a business would plump to go into an operational group that was under-represented, thus maximising its vote, perhaps out of all proportion to its real operational activity.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) mentioned election spending. Election spending is calculated, per voter, on the basis of residential qualification. How can that possibly work in terms of employees, of whom there may be a million? Will there be a million 10 pences to be spent, or will the system be run in a different way?
  Mr. McDonnell: That could well come within the remit of the new Electoral Commission, which is examining electoral practices overall. I think that the calculation should be done on the basis of a straightforward single amount for a business, rather than a quota basis relating to employment or turnover, but that is a matter for subsequent discussion.
  Certainly the issue of plumping between business operational constituencies needs to be tackled. I think the town clerk should be responsible for ensuring the appropriateness of a location within a business operational constituency, although that is open to challenge. A business might try to disguise its overall operation illegally: it might apparently be operating in one field but plumping in another. That would be a matter for the town clerk to investigate.
  Mr. Hopkins: Is there not a striking similarity between the system proposed by my hon. Friend and the system
  926
  adopted by the TUC general council in regard to industrial groups? The difference is that the earlier arrangement was determined by a democratic set-up, elected by ordinary people year on year Any irregularities or changes were monitored, and voted on democratically. This proposed system, however, is open to abuse: that is suggested by all that has been said so far. The problem is that the City corporation, rather than an external, independent body, will determine the arrangements.
  Mr. McDonnell: As we are both ex-TUC apparatchiks, my hon. Friend and I understand the flaws in the TUC system. However, when I deal with the employees' electoral college my hon. Friend will note that it strongly reflects the TUC's voting structure and occupational groupings.
  Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend said that the town clerk would determine whether a business was plumping. Would the determination be on the basis of the town clerk's own inquisitorial powers to look into the matter following a complaint from an aggrieved person, and would a business feeling that it had been ruled against unjustly have the right of appeal?
  Mr. McDonnell: According to normal practice in local government, when a matter is drawn to the attention of the chief executive or the monitoring officer—in this case, the town clerk—that is done on the basis of a complaint. Generally, however, that person will have powers of inquiry. Any further appeal is normally made either to the courts or, in some instances, to the Secretary of State. I think there is an opportunity here at least to instigate some form of appeal.
  Mr. Corbyn: I am sorry to return to the issue of the Human Rights Act 1998, but my hon. Friend will be aware that under that Act every citizen who feels aggrieved about any matter has a right to have the matter determined by an independent body—independent, that is, of those making the decision in the first place. Clearly the town clerk, as an employee of the council, can hardly be deemed independent of his own decisions and therefore able to take an objective view of them. There must either be recourse to the courts, or recourse to a similarly constituted, duly independent body. That is now a provision in the European convention on human rights, and in the 1998 Act, with which the Bill must comply.
  Mr. McDonnell: Any business person, any employee and any resident could, under the amendments, challenge the wrongful registration of a business within a business operational constituency. The town clerk would operate in the same way as the monitoring officer within local councils. The monitoring officer is seen to be independent, not operating at the behest of the political officers of the council or on behalf of the council itself, in undertaking a review and therefore a decision. My hon. Friend is right, however: there is a right of appeal to courts of law under the amendments, as there would be in other circumstances.
  Votes in the business electoral college will be allocated to each operational constituency on the basis of the proportion of registrations for each business operational constituency.

  927
  I was tempted to introduce a market performance incentive to the system by suggesting that the allocation of votes could be based upon the financial contribution of that particular sector to the City economy, or even more radically upon how many staff the businesses or a particular sector employed—but economically incentivising democratic participation was rejected as being too challenging and almost too Thatcherite.
  8 pm
  Amendment No. 23 limits the number of voters elected from the business electoral college to no more than 2,000. There will be about 5,000 residential voters—residents qualify under clause 3(1)(b) of the Bill. They will still continue to qualify for votes in City corporation elections. It is important that we protect the residents from being swamped by either business or employee voters, or a combination of the two. The amendment would cap the number of business voters elected from the business electoral college at 2,000, but I emphasise that it would not cap the number of voters eligible to be nominated by qualifying bodies to the business electoral college itself at the first stage of the indirect elections.
  Mr. Skinner: Will those be recorded votes? If so, people with tons of money will be buying them. It only needs someone like, say, Maxwell to come on the scene and to buy votes and all the rest of it. If they are recorded votes, he has got them in his pocket. He could be switching pension funds left, right and centre; he could be running the show before we could say Jack Robinson.
  Mr. McDonnell: I have not addressed in these amendments the issue of whether the votes will be recorded, or whether they will be by secret ballot. I have taken it as inherent in the democratic system of this country that all elections for a section of local governance of any nature would be by secret ballot, although that matter may be addressed in subsequent amendments. Alternatively, if we pass the Bill tonight, it may be addressed in the subsequent first report that is instigated under the legislation to review the operation of the new system.
  Mr. Dismore: I pick up my hon. Friend's point about the balance between the business vote, the employee vote and the residential vote. It was my impression that the residents would still continue to work in the historic wards that go back to mediaeval times, with those wonderful ancient names. Is he effectively saying that the amendments would sweep away all those great traditions of history and that residents would have to vote as part of the overall amorphous square mile mass, breaking down the historic traditions of the little wards in which they live?
  Mr. McDonnell: I would not wish to break down the honorific functions of the individual wards. I have maintained that tradition, which has been built up since mediaeval days. However, I envisage one single entity: the City corporation voting area. It is not, to be frank, unlike one of the individual wards of any particular borough within London. In fact, the residential population in an individual borough ward is probably higher than it is in the square mile as we know it.
  Mr. Barnes: If I understand my hon. Friend correctly, he is saying that there would be at out 5,000 votes for
  928
  residents. His amendments give 2,000 to businesses and 2,000 to employees, so there is a possibility that residents could rule the roost if they acted together. That has some attractions, but normally under electoral college provisions, especially those taken from the Labour party, which has seemed to influence a great deal of my hon. Friend's ideas, the practice is a third, a third, a third—no single group begins to dominate another. Can he explain why he has not picked up that particular position?
  Mr. McDonnell: Let me go through it step by step. I am sure that hon. Members would welcome the idea that the objective is to protect the residential vote—the residents themselves. The amendment would ensure that no stakeholder group—my hon. Friend is right—was able to predominate over the residential voters. That would set in the constitution of the City corporation what in effect is being set in the Bill: the primacy of the residential qualification as against qualification by business presence or ownership, and qualification by presence in the City as an employee.
  My hon. Friend is correct: it is primus inter pares. The residents are prime in terms of their status within the hierarchy. We need to protect the residential vote. That protection would be in the Bill if the amendments went through. It is an acceptance that the residential vote. because it reflects the overall tenure of democracy and every other section of government structure in this country, must be primarily protected.
  Mr. Corbyn: I support the amendments and, as my hon. Friend will know, I have endorsed them in any event, but another amendment perhaps needs to be considered: whether there should be a positive disbarment on people voting in both the residential and the business sector. It does not seem clear whether the amendments cover that issue. People could have two votes.
  Mr. McDonnell: There may be some opportunity to draft such an amendment at a later date or during one of the regular reviews. I have not undertaken that task with this batch of amendments, largely because I felt that it was too complex and unwieldy.
  The point of the first group of amendments is that they go some way towards a compromise, acknowledging that the electoral principles of the City corporation have come partly into line with those underlying the remainder of local government in this country: the primacy of the residential vote. The electoral qualification is and should be based on residency but, because we accept that it is a business district, other factors should be taken into account when determining qualification to vote—business operation and employment.
  Mr. Dismore: Can I put a suggestion to my hon. Friend? It seems that he is creating an enormous, complex bureaucracy that will no doubt cost a lot of money to administer. Has he considered simply using existing City structures to corporate the business college: the City livery companies and the guilds? There is already a prototype format. It would not take a great deal to tart them up a bit to meet the basic principles that he is trying to advance.
  Mr. McDonnell: Later, I shall address that issue. In effect, this group of amendments does that. They are a

  929
  reconstitution in a democratic form of the old system of guilds, but within what we describe as business operational constituencies.
  Amendment No. 8 defines an employees' electoral college as a body comprising voters who have been appointed—again, indirect election—and who have responsibility for electing the employees' voters, who are then entitled to vote in the ward elections for the City corporation. By ward elections I mean the election overall: the general election within the City corporation for the common council. The employees' electoral college is a straight comparison with the business electoral college.
  Amendment No. 22 amends clause 3 by inserting a description of how the employees' electoral college will be formed. The electoral college will be based on a form of employees' or workers' suffrage. The amendment enfranchises employees who are employed within the City of London. They will be eligible to elect from among themselves their colleagues, who will then serve in an electoral college reserved solely for employees: for workers.
  Those members of the employees' electoral college will in turn be eligible to elect voters, who will be qualified to cast their votes in elections for the City corporation for the first time since the original days of the guilds. It returns to the mechanism originally envisaged when the City corporation was established and empowered under the monarchy.
  Mr. Dismore: Is the definition of employee that my hon. Friend is using for the purposes of his franchise the same as that which commonly applies in employment law, or has he another in mind?
  Mr. McDonnell: We should maintain a consistency across legislation, and the definition will be that which is within employment law. My hon. Friend will have some points to make on that, but consistency is important as the matter has an impact on registration.
  Mr. Hopkins: I am interested in my hon. Friend's description of the employees' electoral college. I am concerned about whether the employee representatives will be independent of their employers. In other industries and the business world, we have trade unions, which guarantee protection for workers. Where trade unions do not exist, we see token representative organisations and staff associations, which are under the control and influence of the employer. How independent will the representatives be, and what guarantee will we have of their independence?
  Mr. McDonnell: It is not for this Bill to encompass those forms of protection, but there is the potential for protection in law for employees against intimidation by employers in no matter what respect of their activities. Some of this Government's trade union legislation would provide some protection, but I would welcome any further amendments that my hon. Friend might feel were needed.
  Mr. Dismore: On the definition of employee, I am sure that my hon. Friend has had many letters—as have I—
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  about the people affected by IR35, whose employment position is somewhat anomalous in terms of employment legislation; they are not technically employees but, for taxation purposes, they seem to be becoming employees. Bearing in mind how many people in the City are probably working under the terms of IR35, where would they fit into his mechanism? Are they employees or not? If not, will they be disfranchised?
  Mr. McDonnell: Under that definition, they would be seen as employees; otherwise they would fall outside the system altogether and would not be eligible for membership of the employees' electoral college. They might then be eligible for membership of the business operational constituencies of the business electoral college because they would be seen almost as self-employed. My own view is to corral them into the employees' electoral college.
  Mr. Skinner: What are we talking about here? Is it sweetheart unions? Is it just one union? Is it unions without strikes? Is it a works council? My hon. Friend chose his words carefully in response to the earlier intervention about the trade unions from my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins). We ought to get this straight; is this the German system, or what is it?
  Mr. McDonnell: Within the City corporation, very few employees operate within trade unions. Much as my hon. Friend and I may wish employees in the City to be trade unionists and their trade unions to represent them in some form through the employees electoral college, I do not believe that that is feasible at this stage. However, our proposal may be an incentive for trade union organisation within the City corporation, so that employees can come together and mobilise colleagues' votes to pursue policies through the City corporation.
  Mr. Dismore: It seems to me that my hon. Friend is actually proposing a disincentive to join a trade union. If the employee franchise were organised around the trade union system, that would be an incentive to join, as those concerned would get their vote within the system. What my hon. Friend proposes means, effectively, that it does not matter whether someone is a member of a trade union or not; they still get the vote. It would be much simpler to ask the trade unions to organise the franchise vote—they are used to organising elections, under the control of the Electoral Reform Society—to get rid of all the enormous superstructure that my hon. Friend seems to be creating, at great public expense.
  Mr. McDonnell: It may well be that that mechanism could be used in future, but it is open to us at the moment to facilitate the trade union role within the City of London corporation through this Bill, although that might be an incentive for a form of organisation at a subsequent date.
  8.15 pm
  Mr. Dismore: I wish to refer to the status of office holders who are not employees within the terms of employment legislation. For example, police officers who work for the City of London police are not employees, but hold the office of constable. Also, some of those who

  931
  work for the Port of London Authority are, I suspect, office holders rather than employees. Throughout the City, one finds all these ancient offices—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Interventions are becoming far too long. An intervention should be brief. If hon. Members wish to develop arguments about this group of amendments, they should seek to catch my eye later.
  Mr. McDonnell: Thank you for your protection, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon makes a valid point about office holders. I have sought in another amendment to delete the reference to office holders from the Bill, as that could produce a problem of corrupt practices. I understand that it might have a deleterious effect on others. The indirect form of election in the employees' electoral college mirrors that of the business electoral college, except in one instance.
  Amendment No. 57 seeks to ensure that the employees' electoral college reflects the range of occupations operating within the City of London. My aim is to ensure that there is a balance between the occupations and the expertise that can be drawn upon in electing the employees' voters. I propose that the employees' electoral college be composed of occupational constituencies. Under the amendment, employees will be invited to register for their respective occupational constituency.
  The constituencies that I have suggested are not geographical but occupational and should be based upon the Department for Education and Employment's standard occupational classification major groups. This classification categorises the various occupational groupings within our economy. These were recently changed. The changes received a fair amount of publicity because they were relatively contentious in terms of definition. Naturally, some of the groupings will be less relevant to the City of London or, in some instances, totally irrelevant: for example, agricultural occupations. If so, there will be either few or no employees registering in these categories.
  As the amendment would ensure also that votes allocated within the employees' electoral college—the EEC; a provocative title if ever there was one—are to be in proportion to the number of employees registering for each category, set against the overall total registered, it can be seen that categories of no or low registration do not undermine the concept or structure of the electoral college. This goes back to the roots of the City of London corporation in the original guilds. Here we have occupations grouped within occupational constituencies; in fact, we are now re-establishing the guilds in all but name. It is a form of guild socialism developed by Pannekoek, the Dutch socialist, in the last century.
  As with the business electoral college, I am proposing that the number of employee voters elected from the employees' electoral college be limited to no more than 2,000. This will mean, under the amendment, that the employees will not be able to swamp the residential voters or combine with the business voters to swamp the residents' interests. However, there will be opportunities of combinations between residents and employees versus business interests, or vice versa; that is the fair play of democracy.
  932
  Rateable value is an issue addressed in the Bill, because qualification will be based on it, in some form.
  Mr. Wareing: I am a little mystified about how some of the people who work in the City will be categorised. My hon. Friend mentioned those who work in banks and in transport, but what about cleaning ladies? Where do they fit in? For example, would a cleaning lady employed by a bank fit into the banking and finance section? What about academics who teach in colleges in the City of London?
  Mr. McDonnell: I apologise to my hon. Friend, but I have left behind the note that I received from the Library which lists the major groups in the Department for Education and Employment's standard occupational classification. It classifies people not with regard to their business operations but in relation to their profession, such as solicitor or teacher. I can supply my hon. Friend with the information later, but I am not sure which category cleaners would come under. However, the categorisation reflects the intent of his comments. It ensures that the electoral college reflects comprehensively all those activities that the employees undertake and is grouped according to the work that they undertake, rather than the business that employs them.
  Mr. Wareing: It seems to me that no matter what work is done by an individual in a bank, say, it would make sense for him to cast a vote in that section, because he would know the people involved. I gave cleaning ladies as an example, but there are many others who are spread out over diverse operations and should cast a vote within the operation that employs them.
  Mr. McDonnell: That is exactly what the amendment will achieve. It will group people who have a commonality of interest as a result of the work that they do, not as a result of the company for which they work. However, my hon. Friend may wish to examine subsequent amendments on qualifying bodies that consider how other groups of employees could exercise their vote.
  Mr. Dismore: How does my hon. Friend envisage the nationality qualification applying to employee votes?
  Mr. McDonnell: The City corporation has been helpful on that point in the past—anyone entitled to vote in the City of London area also has to qualify under the national and local government legislation that applies elsewhere with regard to citizenship. It is open to debate, now that our society is changing, whether other forms of citizenship will arise at a later date, especially in relation to the European Union.
  In terms of the business electoral college and the employees electoral college amendments, I have adhered to the requirement of the original clause in the Bill that the qualifying body should be ordinarily in occupation for relevant purposes as owner or tenant of the whole of or part of a hereditament situated in that ward that is shown in the local non-domestic rating list as having a rateable value of not less than £200. I have done that for simplicity's sake and in a spirit of compromise. My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr. Cohen) has criticised that level as too low in previous debates. However, my amendment, which caps the number of

  933
  voters derived from each electoral college, would serve more effectively to balance sectional interests than a crude hike in the rateable value qualification.
  Mr. Hopkins: I worry about the robustness of the democratic arrangements for the employees' electoral college. I am concerned about whether individuals will feel free to put themselves forward, lest they incur the displeasure of managers and those representing employers. When people cast their votes, will they feel genuinely free to do so, and will they feel that the secret ballot is genuinely secret?
  Mr. McDonnell: There will be opportunities for abuse, as exist in any electoral system. That is why the City corporation should have opportunities to examine codes of practice by which companies, individuals and others will have to abide in the operation of the system. For the GLA elections, hon. Members will recall that we endorsed a set of electoral rules to apply to those elections—
  Mr. Brooke rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now proposed.
  Question put, That the Question be now proposed:—
  The House proceeded to a Division.
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Sylvia Heal): I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.
  The House having divided: Ayes 99, Noes 36.

  Division No. 201]

  [8.26 pm

  AYES

  Amess, David

  Forth, Rt Hon Eric

  Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

  Garnier, Edward

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Gill, Christopher

  Baker, Norman

  Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

  Ballard, Jackie

  Gray, James

  Beggs, Roy

  Greenway, John

  Beith, Rt Hon A J

  Grieve, Dominic

  Bercow, John

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

  Blunt, Crispin

  Hawkins, Nick

  Boswell, Tim

  Hill, Keith

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Mrs Virginia

  Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot)

  Brady, Graham

  Jack, Rt Hon Michael

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Browning, Mrs Angela

  Jenkins, Brian

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  King, Andy (Rugby & Kenilworth)

  Burnett, John

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Butterfill, John

  Kirkbride, Miss Julie

  Campbell, Rt Hon Menzies (NE Fife)

  Laing, Mrs Eleanor

  Lansley, Andrew

  Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)

  Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Chope, Christopher

  Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)

  Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  McIntosh, Miss Anne

  Colman, Tony

  MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew

  Cormack, Sir Patrick

  Maclean, Rt Hon David

  Cotter, Brian

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Davey, Edward (Kingston)

  Madel, Sir David

  Davies, Quentin (Grantham)

  Mates, Michael

  Day, Stephen

  Maude, Rt Hon Francis

  Donohoe, Brian H

  May, Mrs Theresa

  Duncan, Alan

  Moore, Michael

  Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Evans, Nigel

  O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

  934

  Ottaway, Richard

  Swayne, Desmond

  Paice, James

  Syms, Robert

  Paterson, Owen

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Pearson, Ian

  Timms, Stephen

  Randall, John

  Tonge, Dr Jenny

  Redwood, Rt Hon John

  Tredinnick, David

  Rendel, David

  Tyler, Paul

  Robathan, Andrew

  Walter, Robert

  Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

  Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann

  Ross, William (E Lond'y)

  Willis, Phil

  St Aubyn, Nick

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Sanders, Adrian

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield)

  Simpson, Keith (Mid—Norfolk)

  Yeo, Tim

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  Soames, Nicholas

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Steen, Anthony

  Mrs. Jacqui Lait and

  Stunell, Andrew

  Mr. Peter Bottomley.

  NOES

  Bailey, Adrian

  Mallaber, Judy

  Barnes, Harry

  Marshall—Andrews, Robert

  Bell, Martin (Tatton)

  Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony (Chesterfield)

  Palmer, Dr Nick

  Campbell—Savours, Dale

  Pickthall, Colin

  Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)

  Pound, Stephen

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Russell, Bob (Colchester)

  Cousins, Jim

  Salter, Martin

  Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Godman, Dr Norman A

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)

  Heath, David (Somerton & Frome)

  Trickett, Jon

  Hopkins, Kelvin

  Vis, Dr Rudi

  Iddon, Dr Brian

  Wareing, Robert N

  Jones, Dr Lynne (Selly Oak)

  Wyatt, Derek

  Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston)

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Mr. Andrew Dismore and

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Mr. John McDonnell.

  It appearing on the report of the Division that fewer than 100 Members voted in the majority, MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER declared that the Question had not been decided in the affirmative.
  Mr. McDonnell: I am glad that we have been allowed to continue the debate on the amendment because it is so critical. I am a third of the way through my speech and wish to present my arguments to the House. I believe that they will enable me to engender sufficient support to ensure that the Bill will be amended in a suitable form.
  Mr. Corbyn: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I notice that you said that fewer than 100 Members had voted in the Division and that the debate must continue. That is absolutely right. However, we seem to have been here before with this particular miracle number of 99. Can you assure me that you are satisfied that the figure is correct and that someone is not about to run into the Chamber with a piece of paper saying that a hanging chad has been found in the Aye Lobby and that, by some miracle, a Jeb Bush lookalike will announce that 100 Members actually voted? Are you satisfied that we are in order in continuing this interesting debate with the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell)?
  Madam Deputy Speaker: It is a not question of whether the Chair is satisfied; it is a matter for the Tellers.
  Mrs. Jacqui Lait: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I reassure the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) that I personally counted everyone through the Lobby? The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) did not disagree with my figure at any stage.
  Mr. Stephen Pound: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I assure you that as I was in no way involved in the telling, it is almost certain that the figure is accurate?
  Madam Deputy Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment.
  Mr. Dismore: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I can certainly confirm what my fellow Teller, the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait), said. I watched very closely—particularly when we got into the 90s—to make sure that the count was accurate. I absolutely confirm that 99 is the correct figure.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman. I am sure that hon. Members are reassured that both Tellers are satisfied with the figure.
  Mr. McDonnell: It is further evidence of the achievements of the Government's educational policy that mathematics has improved so dramatically in this country in the space of just three months.
  Mrs. Lait: May I inform the hon. Gentleman that I learned my mathematics in Scotland when the Conservatives were running the country?
  8.45 pm
  Mr. Tony Benn: That is why the Conservatives have no Members in Scotland.
  Mr. McDonnell: There is a problem with counting the Conservative party's votes in Scotland, but it has never been one of large numbers.
  Let me proceed with my description of the amendments by returning to discussion of the employees electoral college. An argument has been made by the City corporation and by hon. Members that a college of the composition as determined in amendment No. 59 is not feasible because it is not practical to construct a register of employees eligible to vote for the members of the college. They also argue that such a register is not verifiable, is too costly or is too cumbersome to construct. That case has been advanced during informal discussions and formal debate in both the Committee and the Chamber.
  I find that argument extraordinary, and want to confront it now and knock it out of court. Let us grind our heels in the face of it. Numerous mechanisms exist not only to record the employment of individuals by a particular company, but to be used by statutory bodies on a regular basis to effect the implementation of laws enacted by Parliament.
  Mr. Tony Benn: I am sorry that I did not hear the earlier part of my hon. Friend's speech, but how would self-employed freelancers find a place on the register?
  Mr. McDonnell: They would register under the business electoral college as individual self-employed
  936
  businesses and would not he covered by the employees' electoral college. I forgive my right hon. Friend for not following all of my speech, exciting though it may have been. I could revisit some of the issues for him, but that might not be appropriate.
  To comply with existing legislation, every firm will have a record of its employees—its work force—for national insurance and taxation purposes, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon referred earlier. Every firm has a record of its employees for health and safety purposes. In addition, many have a record of the trade union membership of their employees. Those records are readily available, and the construction of an employees' register would be no more difficult, costly or cumbersome to establish. Recent legislation makes it possible to draw on such information for industrial relations matters and other purposes.
  Mr. Dismore: Is there a qualification for the length of employment, in the same way as someone has to be employed for a certain number of months before he receives the employment rights that entitle him to redundancy pay? Does my hon. Friend envisage that an employee would have voting rights from day one, which is when many employment rights apply, or would the employee have to work in the City for a given period before acquiring them?
  Mr. McDonnell: Amendments on qualifying bodies and the qualifying period relate to the length of time for which a business or director has a connection with the City. Indeed, the City corporation is covered by provisions on such connections. My firm opinion is that employees should have rights from day one.
  Mr. Wareing: My hon. Friend has not mentioned part-time workers. Do the amendments cover them?
  Mr. McDonnell: Any employee is eligible for registration under the scheme, including part-time workers. A growing number of people work part time in the City. My hon. Friend mentioned cleaners and other workers. They would be open for registration.
  The registers demonstrate the facility to construct a register of employees. Even if the records did not exist or were not accessible, it would not be beyond the wit of employees to compile a register within their firm of people who were eligible to vote. That could be organised by trade unions, as was mentioned earlier. I am sure that they would assist in the role of registration.
  The registration list would be open to verification or investigation by the City corporation's town clerk on demand, or as a result of a challenge by any individual or qualifying body, similar to the way in which the business electoral college could be challenged.
  Mr. Hopkins: I am concerned about the assembly of the register of employee voters. In normal elections it can be difficult to persuade people to put their names forward to be electors. There may be a large number of employees who would not bother to do so, and that might undermine the whole democratic basis of the elections and effectively invalidate them. If only a tiny minority of people chose to become electors, the situation would be like that in

  937
  Britain before the 1832 Reform Act was passed. What mechanism would exist to ensure that all employees were properly registered and exercised their right to vote?
  Mr. McDonnell: I do not believe that voluntary registration by employees would be a problem. It imposes no burdens on the person registering and would be seen as an entitlement. Many people would consider it an honour to be registered as an elector in the City of London corporation area.
  Mr. Tony Benn: It has been strongly argued that the whole basis of the Bill, as promoted by the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke), is the unique nature of the City which arises from the nature of the work that goes on there. That being so, is there any reason why retired workers should not have a vote? Someone who has retired will have retained the expertise that he acquired at work. As I understand it, my hon. Friend is trying to move from a catchment-based to an experience-based electorate, so has he given any consideration to the possibility that retired workers should be entitled to put their experience at the disposal of those who are elected to serve in the wards?
  Mr. McDonnell: It is interesting that my right hon. Friend raises that point, because I have based the employees electoral college on the TUC model for the registration of unions and individual memberships, which was mentioned earlier. The trade union movement has debated whether retired members should not only be able to maintain their membership in the retired members section, but have an entitlement to a full vote in all trade union activities. Interestingly, trade unions have dealt with that problem in different ways.
  I have not addressed that matter here, but it is open to debate. As my right hon. Friend suggested, it is clear that there will be a need, particularly as we move beyond the fixed retirement age, for greater flexibility to enable people to participate in democratic structures, especially within the City corporation. That needs to be considered, but I have narrowly defined an employee as someone who has a formal contract with a particular firm and is therefore registered with it for taxation and national insurance purposes.
  The amendment does not place a duty on the individual to register, but provides that the employee can exercise his right to register. That addresses the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins).
  Mr. Barnes: Is not voluntary registration a dangerous precedent? In this country's election system generally, it is obligatory to register if one meets certain conditions. To mix up the different elements of the college so that some people, as residents, would have a duty to register and others could voluntarily do so would create a dangerous precedent.
  Mr. McDonnell: My hon. Friend, who is an expert on electoral systems, has over two decades developed ideas for electoral registration reform, and I appreciate his point. I am trying to argue that we are not placing a duty on the individual. However, he is right to say that this is different from every other registration arrangement for local or
  938
  national elections in this country, in which there is a legal duty to register and failure to do so is punishable in law by a fine.
  Mr. Skinner: Who will pay for the elections? Will there be free distribution of literature? What about the homeless people in the City? As a result of the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes), we have just legislated to enable homeless people to vote for the first time. Is my hon. Friend telling me that, in 2001, he is proposing a system that will give a vote to all the homeless people who hang around the City in the naive belief that people with a lot of money will give them a handout—Although, of course, they will not? Will homeless people get a vote? By the way, will the Opposition get Short money? My hon. Friend has to think the whole thing through, otherwise people will not buy it.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is going slightly beyond the scope of the debate.
  Mr. McDonnell: May I deal with the question of homeless people and knock the matter on the head? In the residential vote, residents—people with a residential qualification who live within the area—will be entitled to vote. Arthur Scargill, for instance, has a flat in the Barbican—socialist that he is, he would be able to register to vote. People sleeping rough on the streets of the City of London would be eligible to vote as residents of the City. Legislative changes promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for North—East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) enable rough sleepers to register to vote elsewhere in the country and, similarly, they would be able to vote in the City. That would overcome the problem.
  With respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover, the matter that he raised does not relate to the amendment. With regard to funding the whole system, as I have said in previous debates, City cash available to the City of London corporation is never audited and is never published in accounts. It should be audited in published accounts to pay for the new electoral system.
  Mr. Wareing: I look forward to the day when Arthur Scargill becomes Lord Mayor of London. I understand how the provision would work within geographical boundaries at a by-election. However, what provision would be made in the event of one of the employee representatives in the electoral college passing away?
  Mr. McDonnell: The electoral college would come into being prior to the City of London corporation election. Under the amendment, the employees' electoral college would meet to elect voters who would eventually vote for the City of London corporation. Because the college would be elected by groups of employees within occupational constituencies, it would be open to a group of employees to elect a replacement within the relevant time scale. That would be the norm under any electoral system that is established. There would be one meeting of electoral college voters who would then determine the voters who elect the corporation.
  Mr. Corbyn: My hon. Friend inadvertently slipped into a difficult area a few minutes ago. He mentioned that the costs of the election would be borne by the City of

  939
  London. In fact, the norm in all United Kingdom elections is for the Home Office to bear the cost of electoral registration and, I believe, of electoral administration. Is there a different proposal for the City of London? Would an extra burden be placed on it or would it be borne by the Home Office, as is normal with other elections?
  Mr. McDonnell: I believe that an exception should be made for the City of London corporation because it is awash with money. No one can get their hands on that money and no one knows where the City cash is tucked away. It is treated as a private fund inherited from mediaeval times and is not audited publicly. In my view, the amendment could be a lever that opens those books for inspection.
  Mr. Tony Benn: On the question of money, it is a principle of the residential vote that residents pay council tax, so they get represented. There is no taxation without representation. Does my hon. Friend's amendment introduce the idea of representation without taxation? Surely, there must be mutuality. If somebody is entitled to vote in an election, he or she should also contribute by paying council tax. As I understand it, the business electoral college proposed by my hon. Friend does not lay upon electors with the right to vote any personal responsibility for council tax, which is a significant breach of the basic electoral principle.
  Mr. McDonnell: It does not breach that principle because two thirds of local government expenditure comes from national Government. The businesses therefore have a right to exercise their vote at the local level as well, because of their contribution through the business rates to the national coffers, which is distributed down to the City corporation and others. The individual employees contribute through national taxation, which funds local government by two thirds. In some ways, the system of employees electoral colleges could root out some of the rotten borough corrupt practices which continue to be reported and alleged. It would give greater transparency to business and employee registers and would assist in overcoming the registration of voters at accommodation addresses. I shall not go into the detail of the reports of the corrupt practices that need to be eradicated, but I refer hon. Members to the City of London and Dockland Times of 22 May last year.
  9 pm
  Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend spoke about the people elected to the college casting their vote at a meeting. Can he explain how those arrangements fit in with the new arrangements for postal and proxy voting? The regulations are, of course, much more liberal now. Can he also tell me whether employees voting for their representative in the college will be entitled to a personal or proxy vote, as that raises certain questions, and whether members of the college will be entitled to a personal or proxy vote?
  Mr. McDonnell: The same regulations that pertain to national and local government personal and proxy votes would pertain to votes within the electoral colleges and to the votes exercised by the voters elected from those electoral colleges, which go on to elect the City corporation.
  940
  The final amendment, No. 59—
  Mr. Hopkins: Before my hon. Friend goes on, I am concerned about elections within the employee's constituency and the employer's constituency, and I am worried about my hon. Friend's comments about rotten boroughs. One of the mechanisms that makes our democracy work is the party system. If people do not know candidates as individuals, at least they know which political party they represent. Does my hon. Friend envisage political parties being given rights to campaign in both the employers group and the employees group to make the system meaningful and democratic, so that those voting would understand who the candidates were?
  Mr. McDonnell: There are problems relating to the scale of the election. I understand that. The issues must be addressed, and that could be done in the review report for which the legislation provides. The report would come before the House. My hon. Friend may wish to take up the matter in three years, when my further amendment takes effect and provides for that report.
  Mr. Skinner: How does my hon. Friend propose to deal with the problem of voter apathy? Perhaps he will tell us all the answer. If we crack the problem in the City of London, we have a chance everywhere else.
  Mr. McDonnell: There is no problem of voter apathy in the City of London. The measure would provide the opportunity to serve in a form of local government that controls vast sums, exercises massive powers, beyond some of the powers of existing local councils and London boroughs, and provides possibly the greatest opportunity for municipal travel in all of local government. I do not believe that there will be any shortage of candidates coming forward to stand for election or any shortage of voters.
  Mr. Skinner: There is a further issue. How much will the representatives be paid? My hon. Friend just mentioned that the City was awash with money.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the House is discussing not candidates, but the electorate.
  Mr. Skinner: There will eventually be candidates—successful candidates. Before I enter the Lobby, I want to know how much they are to be paid.
  Mr. McDonnell: The amendments do not deal with the payment of candidates. The payment of councillors elected to the City corporation is not covered by the Bill, but I shall try to provide my hon. Friend with the information after the debate.
  Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend will write to me.
  Mr. McDonnell: I will write to my hon. Friend.
  Amendment No. 59 proposes that, for the election of voters to represent the business operational and occupational constituencies within the electoral colleges, the poll will be conducted under a single transferable vote system. It is put forward in a spirit of compromise to

  941
  garner the consensus of the House. The amendment contains a description of a single transferable vote taken from the Northern Ireland (Elections) Act 1998 enacted by the House. I do not wish to give an elaborate description of the system; I included it because it more readily allows one to be confident that the people elected have the majority consent of the electorate whom they seek to represent.
  In establishing a new system that seeks to balance interests and to bring together individuals, groups and organisations which have never worked together in such structures before, it is important to have an electoral system that garners majority support for the elected representative. The single transferable vote system set out in the amendment does just that by comprising a process which, by transferring preference votes as individuals either meet or fail to meet a quota for election, ensures that a majority is, in due course, as part of the process, assembled behind the elected representatives.
  Mr. Barnes: I understand that the single transferable voting system in Northern Ireland that has been described applies to the multi-Member constituency. We are discussing not the single transferable vote which operates within a single constituency, but a complex system. Some would argue that it is a form of proportional representation, but I do not think that anyone can explain how it works in a proportionate way.
  Mr. McDonnell: My hon. Friend obviously seeks to be constructive. For more detail on the system, I refer hon. Members to the House of Commons Library research paper 98/113. It was upon examination of that paper that I came to table the amendment. I would ask for a separate vote on the amendment. Amendment No. 29 is a consequential amendment.
  I come now to the supporting arguments for the amendments—the meat of my speech tonight.
  Mr. Dismore: I beg to move, That the House do sit in private.
  Question put:—
  The House divided: Ayes 2, Noes 109.

  Division No. 202]

  [9.9 pm

  AYES

  Bailey, Adrian

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Mr. Andrew Dismore and Mr. Jeremy Corbyn.

  Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S)

  NOES

  Amess, David

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James

  Browning, Mrs Angela

  Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Bumett, John

  Baker, Norman

  Butterfill, John

  Baldry, Tony

  Campbell, Rt Hon Menzies (NE Fife)

  Ballard, Jackie

  Beggs, Roy

  Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)

  Beith, Rt Hon A J

  Bercow, John

  Chope, Christopher

  Blunt, Crispin

  Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)

  Boswell, Tim

  Collins, Tim

  Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)

  Colman, Tony

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Mrs Virginia

  Cormack, Sir Patrick

  942

  Cotter, Brian

  O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)

  Davey, Edward (Kingston)

  O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

  Davies, Quentin (Grantham)

  Öpik, Lembit

  Day, Stephen

  Ottaway, Richard

  Duncan, Alan

  Paice, James

  Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Paterson, Owen

  Evans, Nigel

  Pearson, Ian

  Flight, Howard

  Pike, Peter L

  Forth, Rt Hon Eric

  Randall, John

  Fox, Dr Liam

  Redwood, Rt Hon John

  Garnier, Edward

  Rendel, David

  Gill, Christopher

  Robathan, Andrew

  Gillan Mrs Cheryl

  Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

  Gray James

  Ross, William (E Lond'y)

  Grieve, Dominic

  St Aubyn, Nick

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

  Salter, Martin

  Hanson, David

  Sanders, Adrian

  Hawkins Nick

  Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk)

  Heath, David (Somerton & Frome)

  Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)

  Hill Keith

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot)

  Soames Nicholas

  Jack, Rt Hon Michael

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Stunell, Andrew

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Swayne, Desmond

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Syms, Robert

  Kirkbride, Miss Julie

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  Laing, Mrs Eleanor

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Laing Mrs Eleanor

  Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Timms, Stephen

  Lansley Andrew

  Tonge, Dr Jenny

  Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)

  Tredinnick, David

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Tyrie, Andrew

  Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)

  Walter Robert

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Wareing, Robert N

  McIntosh, Miss Anne

  Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann

  MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Maclean, Rt Hon David

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield)

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  McWilliam, John

  Madel, Sir David

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Maude, Rt Hon Francis

  Mr. Dennis Skinner and Mr. Harry Barnes.

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Question accordingly negatived.
  Mr. McDonnell: Having dealt with the detail of the amendments in this group, I now turn to the meat of my speech and the supporting argument for the principle of the amendments.
  I want to persuade hon. Members to support the amendments by showing how they fit in with the philosophy and principles of each of the major political parties represented in this House and how they are congruent with the manifesto commitments given by each of those parties at the previous election.
  Mr. Pound: I shall be interested to see how my hon. Friend intends to win over the Ulster Unionists.
  Mr. McDonnell: My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) mentions the minority nationalist parties. I shall not deal with their philosophies in this debate, although we may wish to consider them at a later stage.
  I also wish to convince hon. Members who support the Bill unamended, out of loyalty to the City Corporation, that the amendments are in line with the history of the City Corporation and with more recent statements by its senior representatives on the role of the City and on its future.

  943
  First, let me address the Liberal Democratic arguments on these amendments. Liberalism has been the dominant ideology of this country for more than 300 years, from John Locke and J.S. Mill through to de Tocqueville. The liberal theory of what Macpherson described as possessive individualism has been the intellectual justification for the political and economic structures of this country. They have been adapted in support of the City corporation.
  Mr. Corbyn: My hon. Friend is getting slightly carried away. There is a history of undemocratic practices in elections in and around the City in the not-too-distant past. Indeed, I draw his attention to the fact that John Wilkes was the last radical to represent the City. He was removed from the House.
  Mr. Brooke rose—
  Mr. McDonnell: I am not sure that an intervention can be made on a Member who is intervening, but one can be made on the main speaker. I give way.
  Mr. Brooke: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is most courteous, as he has been throughout proceedings. I hesitate to correct the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), but Wilkes, though a great man and though Lord Mayor, was never Member of Parliament for the City of London.
  Mr. McDonnell: I suggest that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North visit Hogarth house on the A4 to see the picture of Wilkes by Hogarth, which portrays a demon who did not necessarily support the democratic system overall.
  Mr. Corbyn: I must insist on intervening again. The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) was hasty in attempting to intervene while I was intervening. Of course, he was not entitled to do so any way. My point was that Wilkes represented Middlesex and campaigned for a just electoral system, which did not apply, even in those days, in the City of London. Indeed, Wilkes represented the area that I represent, and the slogan was, "Vote for Wilkes and Liberty".
  Mr. McDonnell: May I return to my appeal to the Liberal Democrat Members in the Chamber to support the amendment? My argument has at its heart the fact that liberal theory identifies the individual as the basic unit of society. To quote the excellent book "Using Political Ideas" by Barbara Goodwin, the
  "preservation of the individual and the attainment of individual happiness are the supreme goals of a liberal political system".
  My amendment reflects the liberal philosophy of the primacy of the individual and it would recast the City corporation franchise not only by protecting and promoting the rights of the individual resident voters who
  944
  qualify to vote by living in the geographical area of the City of London, but by establishing the democratic rights of the individual as worker or employee.
  Mr. Edward Davey: To help the hon. Gentleman, I should say that he has already convinced me and my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell).
  Mr. McDonnell: I thank the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend did not convince them earlier. He is trying to woo the Liberal Democrats with his tin pot idea, but let me remind him that 99 Members went through the Lobby during the Division on closure. If 100 had gone through, his speech would have been cut short and he could never have referred to liberal democracy. The Liberals entered the Lobby with the rest of them.
  Mr. McDonnell: I say to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) that, although we may have convinced him personally, a number of Liberal Democrat Members have consistently voted against such amendments at previous stages. In particular, in the previous Session of this Parliament, the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) was happy to accept a business vote. He even said that he was willing to accept a business vote in Southwark, which represented an astounding admission in respect of anti-liberal theory.
  My amendment would protect and promote individual rights. Those rights would protect against the power of business by limiting the voting strength of voters enfranchised only by the possession of property, thereby reflecting the arguments made by those promoters of liberal pluralist democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville and Hamilton, the advocate of a liberal American constitution and author of "Federalist". Indeed, the constitutional arrangement that I propose for the City corporation is based on Hamilton's book.
  My amendment reflects the liberal philosophical principle of the protection of minorities or potential minorities. Under the existing electoral methods of the City corporation, the residents are a minority under political siege. In promoting the Bill, the City corporation proposed, nay promised, that a raft of measures would be voluntarily introduced to protect the residents. I do not believe that any such measures have been introduced, hence the need for my amendments. I argued for de Tocqueville-like amendments that would enshrine protection of the electoral and democratic rights of the residents, who are a potential minority.
  9.30 pm
  At the root of liberal philosophy—modern liberalism, and Liberal Democratic party politics—is the importance of a voting system that not only protects the individual, but ensures that the Government, councils and, in this context, the City corporation are elected with the demonstrable support of the majority of the respective electorates. I have sought to go some way towards that objective with amendment No. 59, which introduces the

  945
  single transferable vote system—that is, proportional representation—to the business and employees' electoral colleges.
  Mr. Dismore: Does my hon. Friend propose that the STV system should also apply to the residential element of the electoral college? If not, there would presumably be a rather mixed system—
  Mr. Corbyn: A mongrel system!
  Mr. Dismore: A mongrel system, indeed. We would have a system in which the residents would be voting according to the traditional first-past-the-post system, while the other elements of the college would be voting according to the STV system. Does such a mix of systems create a democratic process? Will my hon. Friend also say whether voting for members of the council will take place according to first past the post or STV?
  Mr. McDonnell: I am happy to compromise with the Liberal Democrats so far, but only so far. That is why I have restricted my proposal to the first stage of the indirect election in the employees' and business electoral colleges, and have not applied it to the second stage, which involves members of those colleges' casting their votes for members of the City corporation. It is also my reason for not extending my proposal to the residential vote.
  Mr. Tony Benn: The American constitution and the philosophy of the Conservative party contain a principle of equal access to the law. When the Supreme Court came to consider the question of districts in the United States, it put to them the argument that equal access to the law meant equal access to the lawmakers—in other words, one man or one woman, one vote. Once we depart from that principle, we deny equal access to the law. That is a constitutional principle that I would expect every Member to accept.
  Mr. McDonnell: I would as well, but we have discovered during our debate not only that the promoter and its protector the City corporation do not accept that principle but, regrettably, that despite a century of Labour party tradition a Labour Government no longer accept it. That is why a succession of Labour Ministers have come here, fairly cravenly—I naturally include the Minister who is present now—to justify the Government's reassessment of their position. Let us put it no more strongly than that.
  Mr. Pound: Before my hon. Friend proceeds with his stealthy seduction of the Liberal Democrats, may I counsel him to be slightly circumspect? By seducing the Liberal Democrats, he may lose the adherence of some Labour Members.
  Mr. McDonnell: My aim is to go from party to party represented here, and to identify a consensus on the basis of which we can all support the amendments.
  Mr. Corbyn: May I assist my colleague in his eternal search for consensus? He said that the Minister had been
  946
  "craven". Can he tell us whether the Government have had discussions with him, or with the City, about the amendments and his attempts to reach some form of compromise? Are they party to the compromise, or have they yet to be hauled on board?
  Mr. McDonnell: We have yet to receive a ministerial response to my amendments. I suggest, however, that the lines of communication between the City corporation and No. 10—and the Government overall—provide rather more access than those between the Government and me.
  As I have said, I have sought to go some way towards achieving our objective by introducing a transferable voting system. Proportional representation systems have now been introduced for the election of the London mayor, the Northern Ireland and Welsh Assemblies, the Scottish Parliament and the European Parliament. My amendment is potentially a victory for the Liberal Democrats in what they describe as their campaign for "a fair voting system".
  Mr. Dismore: For the sake of completeness, my hon. Friend would presumably wish to add the Greater London Authority to his list of bodies elected by proportional representation.
  Mr. McDonnell: I apologise to the members of the Greater London Authority. The omission has nothing to do with the effect, or lack of effect, that they may have had as an authority to date. I simply forgot them.
  If the amendment were passed into law, it would potentially be a victory for the Liberal Democrats in their campaign for a fair voting system. I appeal to all Liberal Democrat Members, including the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey, wherever he is in his taxi at the moment, to support my amendments on the ground that they are congruent with and based on the mainstream of Liberal political theory. In addition, the amendments flow directly from the statements by the Liberal Democrats in their last general election manifesto in 1997.
  Mr. Barnes: In the attempt to gain Liberal Democrat support with spurious proportional representation arguments about the single transferable vote in multi-member constituencies, Liberal Members need to be aware that 55 per cent. or so of the votes within the City of London elections would not be covered by the arrangements under the amendments.
  Mr. McDonnell: I was hoping that the Liberal Democrats had not noticed that, but never mind.
  The amendments are directly in line with the statements in the last Liberal Democrat general election manifesto. They fulfil the desire, as stated in their manifesto to
  "modernise our politics and give people more say."
  They are based upon that belief that
  "every citizen shares rights and responsibilities"
  and that
  "power … should be widely spread."
  My amendments fulfil most effectively that worthy Liberal Democrat vision of modernising "Britain's outdated institutions", tackling Britain' s "unrepresentative" political institutions—these are all direct quotes from the

  947
  manifesto—and thus renewing democracy. The argument that the Liberal Democrats advanced at the last election are the arguments of the amendments—that we should give people more of a say in decision making. If Liberal Democrat Members still believe in their manifesto statements of 1997, it behoves them to support the amendments.
  I turn to the reasons why Conservative Members should support the amendments.
  Mr. Skinner: I am getting a bit fed up of this big tent philosophy. My hon. Friend has tried to get the Liberal Democrats in. Now he is moving on to the Tories. Where will it end? Ever since he opposed the measure many years ago in this Parliament, and a sterling job he has done, opinion poll ratings for Labour have gone sky high, which points to the fact that we do not need the Liberal Democrats and we do not need the Tories. According to The Sun today, we will get 420-odd Labour Members. Forget the big tent.
  Mr. McDonnell: That is the form of political tribalism that the Prime Minister warns against.
  I turn to the reasons why Conservative Members should support the amendments. It is difficult appealing for support for the amendments on grounds of Conservative philosophy or ideology, largely because there is a Conservative tradition that generally rejects notions of explicit philosophies. However, I wish to seek the support of Conservative Members on the basis of their association with and support for what can be described as liberal conservatism—that one nation Torylsm that stems from the radical zeal of Disraeli and which the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) has shown throughout his career. My amendments seek to protect the individual while conserving the overall structure of the City corporation's electoral edifice.
  By its very name and nature, conservatism is against wholesale change. My amendments seek to introduce a variation to the existing electoral structure. Nevertheless, they do not constitute wholesale change and preserve most of the corporation electoral practices in the City.
  These amendments are very much in the mould of Edmund Burke, that great Conservative philosopher—or, as someone called him, "that drunken sycophant"—in that, in maintaining the existing corporation structure, they acknowledge the Burkeian argument that existing social and political forms have special virtue because they have been refined and sanctified by tradition. Having evolved over time, the conservative would argue that the existing structures have proven their success and viability.
  Mr. Tony Benn: Edmund Burke was my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Bristol—a little while before I came here—but I hope that my hon. Friend remembers that his most famous phrase was when he referred to the public as "the swinish multitude", which triggered Tom Paine to write "The Rights of Man'. Of the two, I must confess that, despite my civic connection with Edmund Burke, I am a supporter of Tom Paine.
  Mr. McDonnell: The record of my right hon. Friend in representing that constituency expunged the stain that Edmund Burke laid upon it.
  Mr. Pound: On the subject of Burke, I was wrestling with Hazlitt the other night. In one of his essays—on the
  948
  difference between great speakers and great writers—Hazlitt described Burke as "the dinner bell", as whenever he rose to speak in the House of Commons, the Chamber emptied. I am reluctant to compare my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) with the late Member for Bristol, but praying Burke in aid may not serve my hon. Friend best, as Burke was noted for very seldom convincing anyone, including himself, of his arguments.
  Mr. McDonnell: I am trying to ensure that members of each party know that when they vote for the amendments, they do so on the basis of the philosophy of their party, as well as the modern principles on which they stand. That is why I referred to the Burkeian argument.
  By maintaining the residential vote and the business vote and by accepting the concept—and even the level—of property qualification for many of the electors in the City, the amendments err towards the Conservative ideal of preservation of the status quo. The amendments do, however, ask Conservative Members to take a radical leap forward in terms of accepting the right of employees working within the City to have a role in electing the corporation.
  In doing that, I appeal to two elements of traditional and modern Conservatism. The first is the promotion of the individual and the protection of his or her rights; the other is the radical Thatcherite tradition of empowering the individual in economic and political structures. My amendment that provides the right to the employee to vote in these elections is related to, and directly comparable to, the rights introduced by Baroness Thatcher's Government, who bestowed on members of trade unions the right to have a ballot before industrial action. My amendments—which empower employees, to a certain extent—are akin to the rights and powers that were provided by that Government, in which so many current Conservative Members served and to which so many look back as a golden age of radical conservatism.
  I accept that there are some amendments with which many Conservative Members will not be happy, and I would be happy if they sought the Speaker or Deputy Speaker's permission to vote on these amendments separately. In particular, I expect Conservative Members not to be happy with amendment No. 59, which proposes the introduction of a form of proportional representation to the business and employees electoral colleges. If there can be no separate vote, I would urge Conservative Members nevertheless to vote for the amendment, while metaphorically holding their noses.
  Mr. Barnes: The amendments should appeal to traditional Conservatives—including the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke)—because they attempt to reconcile conflicting interests, which is an approach and tactic of traditional conservatism.
  Mr. McDonnell: That philosophy also appeals to the more modern Conservatism as displayed in recent manifestos.
  Mr. Pound: Surely the quintessence of Conservatism was expressed in the opposition to the Reform Act 1832, and the Conservatives' love for rotten boroughs can lead

  949
  them only to oppose the amendment, because we are dealing tonight with nothing more than one great rotten borough.
  9.45 pm
  Mr. McDonnell: That is why I have appealed to the Disraeli wing of the Conservative party, which formed a radical, reforming Government who addressed some of the abuses of power of previous Governments.
  In appealing to Conservative Members to support the amendments, I draw their attention to the congruity between the intent and content of the amendments and the policies set out in their party's manifesto at the last election. In particular, I draw their attention to the statement that strongly supports my compromise amendments, which reads:
  "Radical changes that alter the whole character of our constitutional balance could unravel what generations of our predecessors have created. To preserve that stability in future—and the freedoms and rights of our citizens—we need to continue a process of evolution, not revolution.
  Conservatives embrace evolutionary change that solves real problems and improves the way our constitution works."
  On that basis, I argue for support from Conservative Members and for them to embrace the evolutionary changes set out in the amendments.
  I now seek to persuade my comrades in the Labour party, or colleagues in new Labour, to support my amendments tonight.
  Mr. Dismore: Does my hon. Friend propose to advance two different arguments or the same argument with two different spins on it?
  Mr. McDonnell: This is a legitimate attempt to demonstrate that the amendments can straddle the different political philosophies, and the more modern manifesto statements, of the three major parties that are represented in this Chamber.
  The Labour party and its members and Government are not impermeable to rational debate, persuasion and conversion.
  Mr. Tony Benn: I am not sure about that.
  Mr. McDonnell: Let us not put the issue to the vote. I take the view that the amendments are the direct products of more than two centuries of socialist philosophy and a century of practical and pragmatic Labour party political activity.
  Mr. Corbyn: My hon. Friend is trying to appeal too widely. I recall some strong debates in the Labour party during the late 1960s and early 1970s about the role of independent, working-class, socialist organisations and the incorporation of those within the state, hence the debate on works councils versus independent trade unions. Does not my hon. Friend think that there is a danger that we are going down the road of incorporation?
  Mr. McDonnell: There is an argument that stakeholder democracy may be a form of incorporation. My view is that we need to engender support in the House on this
  950
  day and for these a amendments to enable us to legislate effectively. On a philosophical basis, I appeal to all the different political parties, and to the different strands in the Labour party, for support.
  The Labour party is a democratic socialist party. I know so not only by my own experience, but because the Prime Minister tells me so in the excellent text that he produced in 1996, "New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country". Indeed, the Prime Minister is a socialist: he told us so in his maiden speech in 1983.
  In my right hon. Friend's work, he sets out the analysis on which my amendments are based, and marshals the arguments and the justification for them. They would begin the process of constructing a stakeholder constitution for the City of London.
  In his book, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister described stakeholder politics, building on the concept of the late John Smith that we should aim for
  "a citizens democracy where people have rights and powers and where they are served by accountable and responsive government."
  Mr. Dismore: How does my hon. Friend square talk of giving people rights and powers with the amendment, which would give votes to businesses?
  Mr. McDonnell: Later in my speech, I shall demonstrate that the argument for democratic socialism under this Government is based on stakeholder participation. The compromise in this Bill is the extension of stakeholder participation to businesses in the City of London. We may not like that, but we have the opportunity to legislate on it tonight.
  John Smith died before he could embark, in government, on the task of establishing a responsive local democracy. However, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made it clear that amendments of the sort under discussion this evening represent the mechanism by which the stakeholder society could be created. He argued that people are disaffected with local government because they feel no sense of ownership and because they have no stake in the political process. My amendments would extend the franchise to employees, and give them a stake in the new structure in the City corporation that may loosely be described as democracy.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister supported my view when he stated:
  "If we are to renew our democracy, we must start with local government—the government closest to the people."
  My amendments strike at the heart of the renewal of democratic local government. They would make a reality of my right hon. Friend's vision of a stakeholder democracy—if this does not get me a job, nothing will—that involves residents, businesses and employers. All of them would have a stake in the successful operation of the City of London and its corporation.
  My amendments would empower the many, and not just the few.
  Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend has been at it since 7 o'clock, as near as dammit, and has never yet mentioned the word "class". There are bosses, and there are workers. I know that he wants to get everyone all lovey-dovey and

  951
  touchy-feely, but to this day bosses still sack workers. I hope that he will bear that in mind, despite his new-fangled ideas.
  Mr. McDonnell: There is an opportunity for lateral thinking when we look at the constitution of the City corporation and its powers in the future.
  Mr. Corbyn: I am getting quite alarmed. As I said earlier, I believe that there is a danger in incorporating just about everything into the new City of London. Would my hon. Friend be prepared to support a later amendment that may be tabled, which would simply put the process on hold? That would mean that all local government in the UK could be adequately consulted on the radical departure that my hon. Friend proposes in local electoral law and in its systems and administration. I realise that the amendments have been designed to fit the general ethos of the Bill, but does not he agree that there is a case for pausing and thinking a little more widely about the matter?
  Mr. McDonnell: As I am just getting going in my speech, I do not want to debate the contents of other amendments. However, there will be an opportunity to table further amendments, and I should be happy to discuss them then.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) mentioned the conflict that has gone on in the past in the City corporation area, and in capitalism in general. In developing a stakeholder democracy, employees and residents may gather together to widen the powers of the City corporation to intervene in disputes between bosses and workers, as my hon. Friend described, which would effectively enhance the powers of employees.
  Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend talks about stakeholder democracy and follows the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) about consultation. The essence of stakeholder democracy is consultation with all relevant parties. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. O'Donnell) has described how his amendments evolved, but he has not told us what consultation he has had with employees' representatives, such as trade unions, or with business in the City. He has mentioned the discussions that he has had with the City but not what other consultations he has had.
  Mr. McDonnell: The problem with this legislation is that because it was not dealt with as a draft under other procedures in Committee, I do not think that the Committee process allowed for adequate consultation. I accept that. It behoves us to take time to consult the various interest groups further, not over these amendments, because I hope to legislate this evening, but possibly on the first review of the new structure that will be in place three years after the introduction of this legislation.
  Mr. Michael Jack: I have been listening with interest to the hon. Gentleman. Was his amendment inspired by a reading of "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist"?
  Mr. McDonnell: Later in my speech we may be able to deal with the exploitative relationship between workers
  952
  and their employers, using the example of "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist" and the workers in the decorating industry. I am trying to avoid class conflict in the amendment and build a stakeholder consensus for the first time.
  Mr. Brooke rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now proposed.
  Question put, That the Question be now proposed:—
  The House divided: Ayes 91, Noes 34.

  Division No. 203]

  [9.56 pm

  AYES

  Amess, David

  Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)

  Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

  Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Baker, Norman

  McIntosh, Miss Anne

  Baldry, Tony

  MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew

  Beggs, Roy

  Maclean, Rt Hon David

  Beith, Rt Hon A J

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Bercow, John

  Madel, Sir David

  Blunt, Crispin

  Mates, Michael

  Boswell, Tim

  Maude, Rt Hon Francis

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Mrs Virginia

  Moss, Malcolm

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Browning, Mrs Angela

  O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  Öpik, Lembit

  Butterfill, John

  Ottaway, Richard

  Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)

  Paice, James

  Paterson, Owen

  Chope, Christopher

  Pearson, Ian

  Collins, Tim

  Randall, John

  Colman, Tony

  Rendel, David

  Cormack, Sir Patrick

  Robathan, Andrew

  Cotter, Brian

  Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

  Davey, Edward (Kingston)

  St Aubyn, Nick

  Davies, Quentin (Grantham)

  Sanders, Adrian

  Day, Stephen

  Simpson, Keith (Mid—Norfolk)

  Duncan, Alan

  Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)

  Evans, Nigel

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Flight, Howard

  Soames, Nicholas

  Forth, Rt Hon Eric

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Garnier, Edward

  Steen, Anthony

  Gill, Christopher

  Swayne, Desmond

  Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

  Syms, Robert

  Gray, James

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Greenway, John

  Timms, Stephen

  Grieve, Dominic

  Tredinnick, David

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

  Tyrie, Andrew

  Hawkins, Nick

  Walter, Robert

  Hill, Keith

  Wells, Bowen

  Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot)

  Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann

  Jack, Rt Hon Michael

  Willis, Phil

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield)

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Kirkbride, Miss Julie

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Laing, Mrs Eleanor

  Mrs. Jacqui Lait and

  Lansley, Andrew

  Mr. Peter Bottomley.

  NOES

  Austin, John

  Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S)

  Bailey, Adrian

  Donohoe, Brian H

  Barnes, Harry

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Bell, Martin (Tatton)

  Iddon, Dr Brian

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony (Chesterfield)

  Illsley, Eric

  Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)

  Jenkins, Brian

  Clwyd, Ann

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  McDonnell, John

  Cousins, Jim

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  953

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Skinner, Dennis

  Mallaber, Judy

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  Marshall—Andrews, Robert

  Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)

  Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)

  Vis, Dr Rudi

  Pickthall, Colin

  Wareing, Robert N

  Pike, Peter L

  Watts, David

  Pound, Stephen

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Quinn, Lawrie

  Mr. Jeremy Corbyn and

  Sarwar, Mohammad

  Mr. Andrew Dismore.

  It appearing on the report of the Division that fewer than 100 Members voted in the majority, MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER declared that the Question had not been decided in the affirmative.
  It being after Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed on Thursday 10 May.

PETITION

  Health Workers (Dorset)
  10.9 pm
  Mr. Christopher Chope: I wish to present a petition from thousands of health workers in Dorset which is also supported by the Dorset Healthcare NHS trust and all my parliamentary colleagues in Dorset. The petitioners complain that when they were part of the Wessex health authority they were eligible for a cost of living supplement, which they enjoyed with their colleagues from Wiltshire and Hampshire, whereas now, as a result of changes made by the Government, although nurses and health workers in Wiltshire and Hampshire remain eligible for a cost of living supplement, it has been taken away from those in Dorset. It is no exaggeration to say that Dorset health workers and their supporters are extremely angry about that and want the Government to think again.
  The petition states:
  This is absolutely unacceptable having regard to the cost of living in Dorset and will result in an exacerbation of the shortfall of nurses both in the community and hospitals in Dorset.
  Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House shall urge the Government to include Dorset within those areas eligible for the cost of living supplement for National Health Service employees.
  And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
  To lie upon the Table.

  School closures (Coventry)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pearson.]
  10.11 pm
  Mr. Jim Cunningham: I want to draw the attention of the House and the Minister to the proposed amalgamation and closure of schools in Coventry. I shall touch on the consultation that has been carried out; on the formula that has been applied; on the location of some of the schools; and on the questions whether there is an independent adjudication process, whether any new formulas have been proposed by the Government and who makes the final decision. Those issues arise not only in my constituency but in other parts of Coventry.
  I asked for the debate because I am concerned about the closure and amalgamation of schools in my constituency. The areas where those closures are to take place have in the past had high unemployment—for example, Hillfields, Willenhall and parts of Westwood. Much has been done in those areas, but the momentum should be kept up because there is a still a need for jobs and training, particularly for young people who for many years were unable to get a job. I readily acknowledge that the Government are trying to do something about that.
  It may help the Minister in her reply to the debate if I tell her the name of some of the schools concerned. In Hillfields, the two schools to be amalgamated are St. Mary's and St. Benedict's, with the new school on the St. Benedict's site. In Willenhall, Corpus Christi and St. Anne's are to be amalgamated on the Corpus Christi site. In Westwood, the schools affected are Alderman Harris and Sir Henry Parks. Those schools will close and a new one will be built on a new site. There is a new proposal for Howes Lane school in the Cheylesmore area of Coventry, and there are plans for an additional community centre and structural changes to the school.
  I readily acknowledge that a lot of work has been done by the local authority to improve the quality of life and the environment in those areas. In some instances, the Government have also provided assistance, which I may touch on later. However, there is certainly still a need for community facilities in those areas. More health care facilities, environmental improvements and, as I mentioned earlier, more employment opportunities are needed. May I pay tribute to the tremendous work of the residents' associations, which have done a professional job in responding to the local authority's consultation document? At public meetings that I have attended, they gave a professional response and used graphs, charts and other methods to outline their case. Most people who attended those meetings were very taken with those efforts.
  At the same time, one must acknowledge that Coventry city council has helpfully made available grants and, as I said earlier, there has been Government support, for in the last year or two, a new shopping area has opened in Hillfields, the funding for which was provided by the Government and the city council. In addition, new houses have been built which have been badly needed in that area for some time. Residents' groups have made major efforts to combat problems such as crime. Another environmental improvement in the offing is the relocation of Coventry

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  City football ground. There are all sorts of traffic problems and lots of congestion in the Hillfields area on a Saturday. Members whose constituencies include a football ground in a densely populated area know exactly what I am talking about. The new football ground will be located in the old gasworks site in Foleshill—not in my constituency—which has lain derelict for about 30 years. So there is improvement not just in my constituency, but in constituencies outside my area.
  As I said earlier, the consultation was carried out by the Department for Education and Employment and has now been completed. Parents' groups have produced their own alternatives to the city council's proposals because they feel that the present base formula sometimes works against them. They think that there is a case not only for the retention of the schools, but of other amenities such as playing fields, libraries and nurseries at some of those schools. Parents feel that the present formula needs to be more flexible. The assessment management consultation document is still out to consultation. Will my hon. Friend the Minister say what progress has been made on it and what responses she has had? Once the consultation is over, does she have a date in mind when its findings will be implemented? Lots of people would be interested in that.
  Some ideas have been incorporated in public thinking concerning experiments in primary education in the United States of America, in which infant classes were reduced to 18 to 20 pupils. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has seen that research, but I should be interested to hear her comments. When my hon. Friend responds to the debate, will she say whether there is an independent appeal body that can settle any disputes, either between the education authority and the parents or between the governors and the authorities? Many people would like to know the answer to that. Many parents think that schools like St. Anne's and St. Mary's mild be retained on a part-teaching basis, in which the premises are shared with, for example, community facilities. That would enable those schools to respond not only to teaching and educational needs, but to other community needs.
  In conclusion, will my hon. Friend enter into a fact-finding discussion with the local education authority, to try to save some of the schools? Will she say whether she is satisfied with the present formula? Will she ensure that serious consideration is given by the authority to the parents' views and to the documentation produced by parents to support alternative proposals?
  10.20 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Jacqui Smith): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) on gaining the opportunity for this debate. I know from previous conversations with him that he feels strongly about the matter and has already made representations to Ministers, as have his fellow Coventry Members. I am glad to have the opportunity to respond to some of the points that my hon. Friend made, and to emphasise the fact that the Government's approach to the organisation and funding of school places puts quality and raising standards at the heart of all our policies to support schools, teachers and pupils.
  As well as dealing with teaching and learning, those policies focus on a quality learning environment suited to the needs of the 21st century. That is why the Government
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  are investing more than £8.5 billion in school buildings over the next three years. The investment for this year is three times the amount in the last year of the former Government, in addition to more than £5 billion invested over the four years since 1997. Like my hon. Friend, we are committed to raising standards of education for all our children. In Coventry, as elsewhere, we are taking action to drive up standards and ensure that school buildings are fit for children to learn in and teachers to teach in. I know that my hon. Friend is concerned about that.
  My hon. Friend mentioned the importance of class sizes. Since 1997, we have taken action to reduce the numbers of infant pupils educated in classes of more than 30. In Coventry, that means that in January this year only 63 infants—that is, 0.6 per cent.—were in classes of more than 30. That is 3,157 fewer children than in January 1997, when 30 per cent. of Coventry's infant pupils were in large classes. Capital funding of nearly £300,000 has been provided by the Department for six new classrooms to help to achieve smaller class sizes in Coventry.
  That is part of the unprecedented national level of investment in school buildings, of which Coventry has received total capital allocations of £31.275 million over the four years since 1997–98, with a further £5.6 million for 2001–02. I know that my hon. Friend is aware of examples in his constituency of our commitment to improving school buildings with projects allocated funding under the new deal for schools. That has brought about improvements at Bagington Fields school, Bishop Ullathorne Roman Catholic school and St. Thomas More Roman Catholic primary school, the refurbishment of design and technology accommodation at Ernesford Grange school and community college, and improvements to science accommodation at Bishop Ullathorne and Ernesford Grange schools. That shows the Government's commitment to high quality accommodation for our children's learning.
  The main issue of this debate is local concern about the reorganisation. The school organisation plan published last October by the Coventry local education authority identified the need to reduce the number of school places in its primary schools because of actual and projected overcapacity. The need to rationalise school places was endorsed by Ofsted and the Audit Commission in their report on the authority last autumn.
  We believe that resources that are locked into maintaining surplus places in schools can and should be freed up wherever possible and directed towards improving standards. What we want, as my hon. Friend emphasised, is high-quality education provided in the most cost-effective way. The resources released when surplus places are removed can and should be spent on priority areas such as books and teachers.
  As my hon. Friend is aware, the authority has conducted a review of primary provision with a view to reducing surplus places by some 2,900 by January 2004, while leaving sufficient flexibility to allow for parental preference. It has drawn up proposals to reduce the size of some schools and amalgamate others for initial consultation locally. We understand that the authority will be considering the outcome of that consultation shortly and will decide what actions it wishes to propose in the light of that.
  My hon. Friend rightly raised the important issue of the process by which such decisions are made, and the opportunities for his constituents to contribute to and raise

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  understandable concerns about the process, so it would be helpful if I outlined that process, and the role of the various bodies involved in deciding statutory proposals.
  The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 introduced a new framework for local decision making in school place planning. Local education authorities must prepare a school organisation plan covering a five-year rolling period. That plan is subject to consultation locally and has to be approved by the local school organisation committee.
  The Secretary of State is no longer responsible for deciding proposals to reorganise school provision. That role was devolved to the local level from September 1999. Decisions are now rightly taken at the local level, by local people with a far greater knowledge of the priorities, needs, concerns and character of the local area. The system is designed to involve all stakeholders and to ensure that any decision on proposals is taken in the light of a full consideration of relevant factors.
  It is important that a full and informed discussion of any changes take place prior to the publication of proposals. I was encouraged to hear what my hon. Friend said about the active involvement that there has already been in consultation. It is because of that that the Secretary of State has required in, for example, sections 28 and 29 of the School Standards and Framework Act, that a full consultation process be undertaken prior to proposals being published. Further to that he has published, in circular 9/99, statutory guidance which specifies who should be consulted and the scope of such consultation.
  I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured to hear that his constituents and other interested parties will have an opportunity at that stage, and also during the objection period which follows publication of proposals—if it is decided to go ahead with the reorganisation after consultation—to make their views known and be fully involved in the process.
  All proposals which attract objections are considered by the local school organisation committee. In reaching its decision, the committee must have regard to a number of factors, including the content and outcomes of any consultation and the level and content of statutory objections. However, the committee is also required to consider issues such as standards of provision, the sufficiency of provision and the balance of denominational and non-denominational provision.
  The school organisation committee is independent of the LEA. It is made up of a number of groups consisting of local schools, the LEA, the diocese, and further education. A decision can be taken on proposals only if the committee reaches that decision unanimously. If that is not the case, the decision passes to an independent schools adjudicator for a decision. I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured about the independence of the decision-making process.
  My hon. Friend also referred to concerns that have been raised locally about the way in which surplus school places are quantified. I understand that that relates to the primary reorganisation scheme proposed by Coventry city council and, in particular, to the sufficiency of the space requirement per pupil to meet the needs of those pupils' education.
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  Whether there is sufficient space at a school can be assessed through the following means. The Department issues area guidelines for schools, which are laid out in "Building Bulletin 82". The guidelines set out defined ranges of total area per pupil and give guidance on the range of areas of individual spaces inside the school. They recognise that a primary school does not consist solely of classrooms for teaching, but will include other spaces such as the hall, library and practical areas. I understand that Coventry city council has indicated that it aims to provide towards the maximum end of the Department's recommended range, which is set out in the area guidelines. For example, that will be nearer 2.1 sq m per pupil in a classroom under any reorganised provision.
  As my hon. Friend said, the Department keeps those guidelines under review. We are currently reviewing the area guidelines in the light of the demands of the current and future curriculum, information and communications technology, inclusion and community use, and will consult widely later this year. I am sure that Coventry city council will want to avail itself of the latest thinking about that.
  In addition, all schools are currently assessed in accordance with a measure of capacity called more open enrolment—or MOE—which takes into account the number of rooms that are suitable for use as classroom accommodation. However, once again, the hall, library and other accommodation that is not used as a base for teaching groups is not counted in the method of calculation for primary schools, as that method derives the total number of pupils that can be accommodated from the number of teaching class bases. In the current MOE method, an area in a classroom of 1.8 sq m per pupil is taken as minimum provision to accommodate up to 30 pupils. If a classroom in a modern school was built to provide 2.1 sq m or more per pupil, that would not affect the overall assessment of capacity.
  That does not, of course, mean that spaces such as libraries and areas for information and communications technology and special needs cannot be provided by Coventry LEA. Quite the opposite: I understand that Coventry is aiming in its reorganisation and remodelling of schools to provide accommodation and facilities that are appropriate to the numbers that it expects to see in its schools and that the authority has indicated that the brief for any new schools arising out of the current round of consultations will be reviewed to ensure the best possible design to meet the current and future needs of children in schools.
  As my hon. Friend mentioned, the Department has recently issued guidance on asset management plans in relation to the sufficiency of school buildings. The guidance gives details of a new measure of overall capacity within a school and provides examples of how that will apply to both primary and secondary schools in future. The intention is for the new capacity measure to improve existing methods of assessing capacity and to replace the more open enrolment measure to which I referred. We think that that will be a fairer and more precise measure that will take account of both teaching classrooms and necessary support spaces. The new measure is being introduced following consultations in which the majority of respondents agreed that there should be a single, revised assessment of capacity that takes into account all the usable areas within the school,

  959
  and also makes realistic allowances for special educational needs, information and communications technology and community use.
  My hon. Friend rightly emphasised the importance of school buildings to the community. In rationalising accommodation, the authority could consider alternatives to disposal or demolition. For example, a local education authority might propose to transfer accommodation to other educational or non-educational uses, in line with other local and national priorities such as adult education and lifelong learning, or to another local authority service. In doing that, the authority needs to examine the benefits of alternative use, and whether it is value for money, as
  960
  well as the way in which its costs will continue to be met in future. I share my hon. Friend's view that it is important for authorities to maximise their use of buildings and devise imaginative proposals.
  I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured that his constituents will be fully involved in decisions about any changes that Coventry local education authority proposes, and that Government investment and policies are aimed at ensuring quality learning environments for all the children in his constituency.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes to Eleven o'clock.

Preamble
[SIR ALAN HASELHURST in the Chair]

Regional Arts Boards
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Touhig.]
9.30 am
Mr. Robert Maclennan: In recent years, the Arts Council of England has achieved laudable objectives. It embarked on a programme of devolution to the regions. It successfully advocated more central Government funding and sorted out the mess of lottery capital funding. For all those achievements, Mr. Gerry Robinson, the chairman of the Arts Council, deserves credit. Given such a record it was a surprise when, in mid-March, the Arts Council announced its plan to abolish all 10 regional arts boards by the end of April. The plans were sprung on the world and politicians without prior consultation. Whatever the chairman, Gerry Robinson, and his chief executive, Peter Hewitt, had in mind, they have disastrously mishandled their plan.
After the initial shock, anger has grown throughout the country at the Arts Council's unilateral attempt to remove local accountability from the arts funding system. The arts boards, elected politicians from all spheres—including Members of Parliament, the Mayor of London and councillors—universities, artists and regional consortiums have expressed their opposition to the plan. The Deputy Prime Minister is also opposed to it. It is an audacious and misguided attempt to centralise in an age when other organizations are moving towards devolution and localised decision making.
Moves to devolve arts administration began in the 1970s and were developed as a result of the Wilding report, when Richard Luce was Minister for the Arts. They have been vigorously pursued by successive Governments. ACE would sweep all that away. Everyone supports efforts to reduce bureaucracy and spending on administration in the arts, but ACE's proposals are not the way to achieve that. The plans are under attack from all sides and have created great confusion and uncertainty. It is high time that the House examined them and their genesis. It is also notable that the implementation of the plans is now behind the chairman's announced schedule.
What are the proposals? At present, 10 regional arts boards decide arts funding and policy in the regions with good input from local government and local education institutions and have developed links with regional development agencies and regional assemblies. ACE proposes to abolish those boards, take all decisions in London and execute them through subsidiary offices in the regions—a system similar to that which was abandoned as long ago as 1957. It argues that such action would deliver a range of benefits that most of us would happily support. They include a simpler, quicker, more arts-friendly service to the arts community, more
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flexible funding decided at regional level and reduced administration costs which would produce more money for the arts.
The press release accompanying the plans promised greater autonomy for the regions. It stated:
"more will be managed and delivered regionally than is currently the case."
The truth is, however, that such benefits are mere aspirations. No detail has been given regarding how they might be achieved. It is difficult to understand how requiring artists to engage with a regional office that must refer back to its boss in London about policy and funding will result in a more friendly arts service. While flexible funds may be further devolved to the regions, funding for regularly supported organisations will be clawed back to London. That amounts to more than 80 per cent. of regional arts boards budgets, but we will have gone through a complex and far-reaching process of devolution for nothing. Everyone would welcome reduced administration costs, but handing power to ACE in London is not the answer. Its record of restructuring to save money is not encouraging. In 1998, it promised to reduce its staff to fewer than 200 and plough an extra £2 million into the arts as a result. This year, ACE still has more than 200 employees, and staff costs at the centre have increased. Figures show that ACE employees cost a good deal more than RAB employees.
The promise of greater capacity to address needs and act on bold ideas for the arts throughout England sounds hollow when we consider how the inadequately bureaucratic London-based organisations respond to regional diversity and bold local innovation. The RABs were formed in 1991. They were built on regional arts associations, which were established independently to co-ordinate arts in the regions, and purposely involved local authorities. All RABs have guaranteed local authority representation, and local authorities pay financial subscriptions to them. ACE proposes regional offices accountable to London and advised by regional advisory boards, which will include local authorities. It also suggests that councils should hand over their financial subscriptions to RABs to new local partnership funds. Councils that have enjoyed a vote on the executive are extremely unlikely to be impressed with a post on an advisory board.
Already, in the south-west, councils are cancelling their subscriptions to the RABs. With local authorities providing half of arts funding in England, we cannot afford to alienate them from the arts scene. The proposed centralisation will do just that. RABs are also building relationships with regional assemblies. For example, South West Arts is a member of its regional assembly. In the capital, London Arts is currently developing a strong relationship with the Greater London Assembly and mayor—a model for progress under future moves towards regional governance. Both the mayor and the Assembly have rejected the proposals.
The Arts Council's prospectus promises a single agency that will
"provide the arts with one voice…a single voice and a single brand…and one funding organisation with one set of priorities and objectives."

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A clearer definition of a centralised body would be hard to find. In any event, is single branding the way to represent the diversity of the arts? We are not marketing sandwiches.
Chief executives of the regional offices will be line-managed by the chief executive of ACE. There will be regular reviews of their performance and agreement of targets. They will also sit on the executive board of ACE in London. While ACE makes sweet noises about devolution and decentralisation, the truth is clear. Taking back 80 per cent. of RAB funds and deciding priorities in London is indeed centralisation. Making regional chief executives accountable to a superior London chief executive is centralisation. Giving regional chiefs a job in London is centralisation. The many artists, business people and other volunteers who give their time and expertise to deliver the remit of the regional arts boards are unlikely to do so with as much conviction if their role becomes solely to advise London.
To understand the Arts Council's real attitude towards regional input and decision making, we need only examine how the root and branch changes were developed and proposed. Far from believing in consultation, it sent the proposals to the RABs 24 hours before they were launched to the press. Hon. Members received them at the same time as the press did, and it appears that even the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport had little notice. An article in Monday's Guardian painted a vivid picture:
"in mid-March…Gerry Robinson launched a dawn raid on England's ten Regional Arts Boards…Plans were drawn up in secret and sprung on astonished RABs, which were given six weeks to hand over all their assets to Gerry…The six weeks are up and no one has handed over anything. Eight out of ten of the RABs are in open rebellion."
The prospectus pledged that it would move swiftly to build a new structure, but only with the consent of the regional arts boards as to what form that new structure should take. ACE called on the RABs to sign over all their assets and staff, and then engage in consultation regarding the way forward. In other words, the main act of centralisation would be achieved before the new regional structures were agreed. At the time, such proposals were presented as having the support of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and most of the chief executives of the RABs. However, it has since emerged that the Secretary of State—and no doubt other Ministers—has serious concerns about the proposals and their effect on regional accountability in the arts.
Sue Robertson, chief executive of London Arts, who previously worked for the South Bank centre and the Arts Council of Great Britain, has resigned her post as a result of the proposals. RABs that regarded the plans as ill thought out and backward looking soon learned that they were not alone. All have registered their discontent about the lack of consultation. South West Arts noted:
"It would be wrong to under-estimate the offence this has caused and the extent to which it has undermined trust and confidence in ACE."
ACE's attempts to bounce the arts community and politicians, including the Government, into accepting its proposals have failed, and its timetable is in disarray. It
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had intended to have the new structures in place by the end of the year. The RABs are self-determining companies, and have rightly shown that they will not bow to ACE's calls to disband. ACE proposes a more detailed prospectus by June, perhaps to coincide with an election period and the first days of an incoming Government. ACE says that it will take on board concerns over loss of regional autonomy. Given its record on consultation, we should not be optimistic.
In a recent parliamentary answer, the Secretary of State said:
"I am looking forward to receiving formal, detailed proposals in due course and will consult".—[Official Report, 20 March 2001; Vol. 365, c. 171W.]
Such proposals are far from ready and, given that the Secretary of State's commitment to consultation is greater than that of ACE, it seems unlikely that satisfactory proposals will be in place for months.
All the uncertainty has a cost. Staff have been told that no post is safe, which has had terrible effects on morale. Artists have been told that flexible funding for 2002– must be put on hold. Local authorities and regional development agencies have no idea whether the bodies with which they are engaging will have any power within months. ACE's staff are running up and down the country trying to convince RABs that the plans are the best way forward. RABs have been forced into hurried meetings, consultations and press gatherings, as well as into efforts to reassure local artistic and political communities. That is expensive.
We also know that ACE was planning to hire change-management consultants from the end of April to effect the changes. With the timetable in flux, will the Minister tell us whether such consultants are in place, what that has cost, and what funds ACE has earmarked for them? It is a curious way for an organisation that proclaims its intent to watch the pennies to proceed.
The Government's reservations about the proposals are understandable because they have consistently supported the RABs. In 1998, the Department's comprehensive spending review document stated:
"At a local and regional level, many RABs have successfully developed a role as a wider investment agency for the arts in liaison with other regional bodies and in building local partnerships…ministers want to ensure that decision making takes place as close as possible to the point of delivery".
Such goals were publicly shared by an Arts Council that at that time had pledged to devolve responsibilities and reduce itself at the centre. That was restated time and again in the House. The Minister will recall that on 5 November 1998 he told the House:
"In January, Mr. Gerry Robinson was appointed Chairman of the Arts Council with a clear mandate to bring about changes. Mr. Robinson has recently announced his strategy to restructure and redefine the Council's future role, and the Secretary of State and I fully support him in that…The Arts Council has already committed itself to delegation. The aim is to devolve as much as possible of what is currently dealt with by the Arts Council to the regional arts boards, including in particular grant-making and stewardship responsibility for regional clients."—[Official Report, 5 November 1998; Vol. 318, c. 1120–21.]
On 18 March 1999, the Minister still supported ACE's mission to become
"a leaner, more effective organisation. Many of its current responsibilities will be delegated in future to the regional arts boards".—[Official Report, 18 March 1999; Vol. 327, c. 1378.]

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On 26 November 1999, the Secretary of State told the House:
"The Arts Council is devolving decision making…the process of delegation chimes well with the Government's own emphasis on the importance of regional decision making."—[Official Report, 26 November 1999; Vol. 339, c. 862.]
It is, therefore, small wonder that the Secretary of State is now seeking detailed proposals to gain reassurance that the voice of the regions will not disappear.
Why has ACE made those proposals in such a disastrous fashion? At first glance, it might appear idiotic to make major restructuring proposals without holding consultations or explaining matters in detail, and in such a way as to cause disruption, recrimination and financial loss. However, such a view might be regarded as charitable. It seems more likely that, following ACE's failure in 1998 to restructure at the centre and to reduce waste, senior people at the council decided that the axe should fall on the regions.
Moreover, those people have seen that the writing is on the wall for ACE in its present form. The Conservative party has pledged to abolish the Arts Council, and my party has pledged to devolve further to the regions and to reduce the role and size of the council at the centre. As regionalism enjoys an ascendant position in the Government's political agenda, perhaps Mr. Robinson thought that the best time to pounce was a few weeks before an expected general election. Perhaps he thought that the political community would be distracted in the pre-election period, and that that would allow ACE to bounce artists and politicians into accepting its plans. Fortunately, a strong Department for Culture, Media and Sport manages to keep such issues centre stage. The secrecy surrounding the launch, and the duplicity of the false suggestions that the chief executives of the RABs supported the proposals, appear sufficiently Machiavellian to suggest that ACE knew that its grab for power would be opposed unless it rammed them through.
What should happen now? With trust between the centre and the regions destroyed, and the future uncertain for artists and employees, what must be done? All the RABs have acknowledged that bureaucracy must be slimmed down and that reform is desirable. There are several available options. One option is to rely on a single, centralised arts council for England that dictates to the regions. My party's preferred option would be for most funding decisions to be devolved to the regions, and for the Government to take responsibility for funding the few national organisations. The Arts Council would become a small but authoritative advocacy body for the arts at national level, advising the Government, and acting as a repository of expertise for the regional arts boards. It might retain some funding for touring, and to support innovation. The RABs would be accountable to regional government, and they would work closely with regional cultural consortiums.
Arts funding underwent a significant restructuring in 1998, and the RABs were established only in 1991. It might appear macho to sweep away all that went before, but real savings will be delivered by creating a system that is based on consultation and consent, and which will not be uprooted again five ears in the future. I suggest that the Government make it clear that there is no question of the RABs' ceasing to exist. We do not
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need a new structure, as the existing one is fairly new and is only now beginning to function as intended. It must be made to work even better, and it should absorb less of the Treasury's grant in aid to the arts. It must be able to carry authority and trust, and to attract, at reasonable cost, regional managers of high quality. Its decisions must continue to be examined and endorsed at regional level: that will make it independent of central policy fashion. It must have an easy, close and knowledgeable relationship with artists and their organisations, and it must carry the respect of Parliament and the public.
I ask the Minister to invite the chairman and chief executive of the Arts Council of England to withdraw their unacceptable proposals and work within the system laid down by successive Governments and supported by all parties. Given the widespread rejection of the proposals, failure to do so may make the position of the chairman and chief executive untenable.
9.49 am
Mr. Phil Hope: I listened with great care to the issues raised by the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan), and I understand his concerns. Change is always a difficult process, but I am sure that everyone wants a system and a structure that is simpler to understand and navigate, has clear links between the regions and national decision making, and is responsive to local concerns, flexible in its way of working and funding and organised on efficient lines to remove unnecessary waste and duplication. The new proposals must be judged against such criteria.
I shall reflect on the impact that the Arts Council and East Midlands Arts have made in my constituency, in the hope that future structures and proposals can be secured and enhanced in years to come. Art is playing a key role in the regeneration of my constituency, especially in the town of Corby, and several exciting initiatives in the town are helping to raise people's aspirations and educational standards and involve people, especially young people who have in the past been excluded from art almost entirely, in planning Corby's future and tackling problems.
Corby Community Arts was established as long ago as 1977 and is possibly one of the longest-standing arts organisations in the area. It has a proud track record, established by the Arts Council, of supporting community development through art throughout Corby's history, and throughout the closure of the steelworks, when Corby faced difficult circumstances in the early 1980s. Indeed, it was through a project supported by Corby Community Arts, the Corby Balls Up juggling club, that I first learned to juggle—a skill that, regrettably, you would not permit me to demonstrate in this Chamber, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I could cite many examples of how such projects, supported by the Arts Council, help bring young people who are otherwise excluded from art into art and into Corby's future, and raise the standard of art performance and the quality of life in Corby.
Another example is the It Matters photo-stories group, a young people's photography group, which is supported by Arts Council and East Midlands Arts

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funding. It is a group of young people who have produced a series of photo-stories as magazines, similar to those that young people buy in newsagents. They have written them from a young person's perspective, using photography to explore issues such as bullying, smoking, racism and even the stress of taking exams. They are written by young people for young people, using art as the medium to make that contact.
The latest project involves a photo-story about stealing cars, a problem that I assume is found in other constituencies. Young people are saying to other young people, "Look, come on, there's a better way of living your life." The group is working with young people from a local school who would not be attending that school if they were not engaged in that project: they would be out stealing the very cars with which they are now dealing in a magazine photo-story. The It Matters group has been recognised by the Home Office for its work in countering racism in its photo-story magazines, and it even travelled to China, with help and sponsorship from the Arts Council, to share its ideas and work with young people from another country.
Another group that is excluded are the young people from the Kickstart project, who have been excluded in years 10 or 11 and will not return to mainstream schooling. It is using art to tap into the creativity and imagination of young people whom the rest of the education system has failed. The fantasy town planning project in which they are involved has arts workers motivating and exciting young people with whom others have been unable to connect.
In Corby, the Arts Council has supported dance in a big way. Young people in Corby are famous for their talent in dance. A former mayor of Corby adopted dance as his theme for his term of office, and the celebration of talent and skill that that unleashed was staggering. As you may know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Corby has a strong Scottish heritage, a legacy of the steelworks, and I am delighted to say that the two young national champions of Scottish dancing come not from Scotland but from Corby. Last year, the many different schools of dance came together to hold an evening of dance at Corby theatre, to raise money for Children in Need. They even managed to get me on stage, not juggling but tap-dancing, which is another hidden talent that—to the relief of all present—I shall not demonstrate. However, it raised hundreds of pounds for charity.
The Arts Council and East Midlands Arts have provided an arena for celebrating art and making art happen in Corby, as well as grabbing national lottery money. National lottery funding has paid for a "year of the artist" programme, a local residency and two artists working with young people at the Pen Green centre. It also funded the Shout youth theatre, which provides workshops for young people to explore issues of concern. The lottery also funded the Corby choral society, catering for an older age group, which provides musical performances for local communities and raises funds for churches and charities. Last year, millennium funding helped to pay for the making of a community banner to celebrate Corby's success, and, in the process, engaged people in talking about the problems and issues in the town.
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There is also a strong link, supported through the Arts Council, between art and education. I recently judged a "Stars in their Eyes" competition—I dare say that other Members of Parliament do similar things—at the Kingswood secondary school in my constituency. It was a showcase of musical and singing talent of young people in the school, and the whole evening was organised by the young people themselves. That school is also host to the Corby music school, which meets every Saturday and allows young people to sing, perform and learn musical instruments. Students from that music school can progress to the renowned Northamptonshire youth orchestra. I am grateful that Studfall junior and Rockingham primary schools will be receiving £450,000 from the space for sport and the arts scheme, which is supported by the national lottery and the Treasury with the Arts and Sports Councils, to create new multi-use arts and sports spaces in the area.
I would guess that all of those present have a love of art. We know that art is special because it gives us hope, pleasure, inspiration and excitement, and that art can connect to parts of ourselves that other activities cannot. We also know that art can connect to people who have low self-esteem and self-confidence, and help them to find self-esteem and self-confidence. It can connect with people who are not reaching their potential, but who, through art, can achieve spectacular results. We must prove that, however, in order to convince policy makers, especially the Treasury, to fund more of the arts. We must show how art can have a wider impact, and we must measure that impact in terms of raising educational attainment and regenerating rundown areas.
I am therefore delighted that Corby has been chosen by the Arts Council as one of two pilot areas to assess the impact that arts can have on raising educational standards. The arts and education interface programme will measure the long-term sustained impact on young people as well as the impact of short-term discrete pieces of art on young people, teaching, educational attainment and arts learning in and out of the school, and, in the process, it will be part of the education action zone. A new forum of teachers in the town—the Corby arts teachers forum—is now in place. It is planning a musical play to raise young people's self-esteem, and is even talking about staging a large-scale rock opera in Corby, which will involve hundreds if not all of the young people in the town. Those and other projects in Corby show how the contribution of the Arts Council and East Midlands Arts has been successful in Corby. Elsewhere in my constituency, Oundle has a nationally famous festival, the Stahl theatre and the Court House museum, which opened last month, and other marvellous events.
Art is alive and well, and that is because the Arts Council and East Midlands Arts are doing such an effective job. They are not only raising performance in the arts but tackling social exclusion and the Government's whole agenda of trying to raise educational performance. I shall listen to the Minister with care. I hope that the new structures will ensure not only that those initiatives survive, but that they flourish and develop in the years to come.
9.59 am
Mr. Peter Brooke: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Hope). My father worked for Stewarts and Lloyds before the war and once asked the chairman whether he had experienced any difficulty in introducing the concept of the works in Corby in the depths of the depression in 1932. The chairman replied that only one question was asked at the annual general meeting at which the concept was announced, from an elderly Glaswegian who stood up at the back of the hall and asked whether there was adequate provision for Presbyterian worship in the county of Northamptonshire.
There is an element of farce to the events that we are describing today. In an introduction by P. G. Wodehouse to a book of humour, he takes the line from "Julius Caesar" about "That day" we beat "the Nervii" after which he adds the results of a football match in brackets—Dulwich v. St. Paul's 3–0.
The right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) will recall me saying on the Floor of the House, in the words of Milton's "Lycidas", that
"we were nursed on the self-same hill."
I do not know whether this is his valedictory speech, but I think that all of us are grateful to him for instigating this debate. As a Unionist, I am grateful that the matter was raised by someone from the north of Scotland. That is good for the kingdom as a whole—I note that we are discussing the Arts Council of England.
I will not rehearse the narrative that the right hon. Gentleman deployed because he did that admirably and comprehensively, but I reinforce his comments on timing and consultation. I am surprised that there was no reference to a referendum, but perhaps referendums have gone out of fashion since the first spate took place, when the rules could still be changed from referendum to referendum to suit the Government's view. Now that we have rules, perhaps referendums have become less popular.
I echo the right hon. Gentleman's comments about Mr. Robinson, and about Mr. Hewitt, whom I knew during his time at Northern Arts. I have the greatest respect for him and, in the context of the regional network, he certainly knows how many ducks make five. I also admire and respect Mr. Robinson, whom I knew during my time in the National Heritage Department. I understand how the private sector operates when it is engaged in restructuring, and there may not be much consultation about it. However, one still expects to have some idea of where the whole thing is supposed to go, and how it will work. I grew up, in part, at the Harvard business school, where there was a famous phrase:
"If you do not know where you are trying to get to, any road will get you there."
I add to my words of respect for Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hewitt, by paying tribute to those who have worked in the regional arts field and on regional arts boards over the past 10 years, some of whom are among the most outstanding people whom I have met during my time in public life. As for the Government, they either knew what was going to happen or they did not—which is a tautology. If the Minister says that the Government were not consulted, and there was neither wink nor nod,
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I shall, of course, believe him implicitly. The arm's length principle is reinforced when a case such as this proves an exception to the rule. That should be a reassurance. The Government have a rare capacity to turn a problem into a crisis. On the first evening following the Wall street crash of 1929, the French ambassador in Washington, Paul Claudel, was giving a soiree at which he expressed the view that
"between the crisis and the catastrophe there is always time for a glass of champagne".
If I may say so, that is a very new Labour sentiment.
We live in the era of devolution, but the Government deliver—by actions louder than words—the message that the man in Whitehall knows best. If there is any doubt about that, one need only examine what is happening in the national health service, or the actions of the Department for Education and Employment. It is not surprising that non-departmental public bodies—if that is what they are still called—do not know where they stand. This farce is a good index of what can happen. There is a separate problem for morale in the regions.
I do not think that the following fact is relevant, but in this era of political correctness one cannot be too careful, so I should tell the Chamber that I am the president of the British Antique Dealers' Association and of the British Art Market Federation. At the BADA millennial dinner last November, the Secretary of State heard Sir Nicholas Goodison, the chairman of the National Art Collections Fund, rehearse eloquently the problems in provincial museums. That is an index of the very problem that we are discussing.
I have said that we owe a debt to the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross for introducing the debate, because we do not know where we are, how we got here or where we are going. That confers major importance on the Minister's speech and I remind him of Mr. Claudel's words that between the crisis and the catastrophe there is always time for a glass of champagne. I look forward to his sparkling proof that we have all got the matter wrong and that in this new Labour era, all is still for the best—in the Panglossian phrase—in the best of all possible worlds.
10.5 am
Dr. Lynne Jones: I should like to associate myself with the sentiments expressed by the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) and congratulate him on raising this issue. It was not prominent in my mind until yesterday, when I received several communications drawing my attention to today's debate.
I, too, am concerned about the manner in which it was announced that a centralised structure would be created, especially given the lack of consultation or any real attempt to assess the scope of the work being done in the regions. There was no consultation with the partner organisations and the clients of the regional boards. That does not augur well for the claim that the new structure is intended to give more autonomy to the regions. The manner in which the new arrangements were announced and the speed with which they are to be implemented do not suggest that there will be that devolution of power or autonomy.

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It would appear that, because the proposals have aroused such disagreement, the implementation of the structure has been deferred. However, there is concern that what consultation is taking place is based on the principle that the creation of a single organisation is non-negotiable.
It is clear to me, from the representations that have been made, that West Midlands Arts is valued as a partner by local authorities. I know that Councillor Andrew Coulson, the cabinet member responsible for regeneration in Birmingham, has written to the Secretary of State expressing his dismay. Staff of the board are also worried about the manner in which the proposals were announced and their lack of involvement in that process, and of course they worry about their own future. The arts organisations who have worked with West Midlands Arts value that partnership and are equally dismayed by the proposals.
I am heartened to learn that the Secretary of State is looking forward to receiving detailed proposals and that he will consult further on them. I hope that when the Minister responds to the debate, he will demonstrate that the Government are committed to the open consultation and debate without preconceived ideas or conditions that is necessary for us to progress and create arts organisations in this country of which we can be proud. I will not go into details of arts organisations in my constituency, but certainly the arts are an important part of generating an inclusive society. They are playing an ever greater role in our economy. It is essential that we get this right.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Nicholas Winterton): Order. I understand that the Minister wants slightly longer than is normal to reply to the debate. I think that we want to give him that time. If the next two speakers are prepared to use self-discipline and be brief they will both get in, but I hope to start the winding-up speeches at about 10.20 am.
The Minister for the Arts (Mr. Alan Howarth): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I emphasise that above all I want to hear the contributions that hon. Members wish to make? It may be for the assistance of the House if I have the opportunity to set out the Government's position a little more fully than is conventional in these debates, but I do not want anyone to feel constrained on my account.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: We are obviously grateful to the Minister for that response. It is an important subject.
10.10 am
Mr. Nick Harvey: I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) on securing this short debate on what he rightly described as an audacious smash-and-grab bid by the Arts Council. I was involved in a professional capacity in the previous reorganisation and when I heard about the
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proposal on the radio news, my heart sank. We are only just starting to make sense of the current system and it is premature to contemplate something as radical as this.
I echo the comments of my right hon. Friend and others in bemoaning the manner in which the reorganisation is being done. It was astonishing that the plan was whipped out of the hat in the middle of March and that those organisations were expected to hand over all their assets and amalgamate themselves by the end of April. I cannot imagine how the Arts Council supposed that anyone would acquiesce in the process on such a time scale. If it is attempting to convince us, the regional arts boards and the arts world that it will form a central organisation based in London, which will nevertheless be decentralist at heart and have the needs of communities at the forefront of its thinking, the manner in which it has gone about it could not have been less successful in persuading anyone of its noble intentions.
The prospectus that the council put forward advocating the changes spoke of creating an organisation that would be simpler, quicker and more arts-friendly. There was talk of greater flexibility for funding decisions at a regional level. As the council saw it, the reduction in administrative costs was behind the proposals. It is vital that more of those decisions are taken nearer to the community. The regional arts boards offer the right means for forming partnerships at a regional level with the emerging regional development agencies and the local authorities. I simply do not see how an office that is an outpost of a central organisation can possibly form the same meaningful partnerships at community level as an autonomous board, existing in the region in its own right.
The measures would have a hugely centralising effect. The majority of funding decisions would gravitate back to London and, with the best will in the world, no matter how talented the staff of an organisation based in London are, they simply cannot have the feel for what is going on in a region. They cannot know about emerging talents that have not yet hit their radar. They cannot know about a project that deserves to be given a break and some early funding so that it can go on to become successful.
My own regional arts board, South West Arts, looks after diverse interests throughout the south-west peninsula. I do not always agree with every decision that it takes. Even in its own notes on this subject, the recitation of the things that it has done reminds me yet again that I wish that it had done more for North Devon. My constituency is something of a rural outpost, although we have two good theatres and much emerging talent in the arts field. Nevertheless, I prefer my chances of persuading the regional arts board in Exeter of the need to support and fund specific projects in my constituency to my chances of persuading an organisation based in London.
No one claims that the current arrangements are perfect. It is always worth looking for improvements. It may well be that those organisations could have a lighter touch, or could respond more rapidly. The arts world could have a more effective voice in London, and no one is saying that the current arrangements must be preserved in aspic. However, the way in which the proposals have been brought forward, and the proposals themselves, are unacceptable. I am not surprised that there is open revolt throughout the country. There is no way that the arts world will be persuaded that this is the right direction to take. The

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Arts Council should withdraw from the proposals. We should have a blank piece of paper and start again from scratch.
10.15 am
Mr. Richard Burden: I congratulate the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) on securing the debate, the focus of which I thought would be narrow. However, having listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Mr. Hope), I realise that the debate is not just about the future of regional arts boards, but about procedures in the House. If we could find some way of allowing him both to juggle and to tap-dance in the Chamber, I would look forward to that.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Dr. Jones), I have had representations from the West Midlands about the genuine concerns of a wide range of people about the proposals for the regional arts boards. As the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross said, it is a shame that the proposals have provoked those criticisms, as many of the things that Gerry Robinson has done have been laudable and have met with a great deal of support. Last year, Birmingham celebrated its Forward festival—a massive extravaganza over the millennium year, involving hundreds of artists, more than 100 new works and 46 arts organisations—made possible by a whole range of organisations and bodies. The £1.7 million lottery grant was vital to the festival and the role of the Arts Council of England in that is to be applauded, welcomed and recognised. It put Birmingham back on the map as a city of culture, and we look forward to its bid to be European city of culture.
Coming on the back of those sorts of things and, as the right hon. Gentleman said, of the whole trajectory of policy making towards devolution and more local decision making, the proposals as they stand give cause for serious concern. Will the Minister give some indication of the kind of questions that will be asked of the Arts Council of England when it brings forward its proposals?
My hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak referred to a letter to the Secretary of State from the Birmingham city council cabinet member for regeneration. Some of the cabinet member's comments do seem to outline some of the existing concerns in the arts community and the region about disparities in arts funding. Those concerns may be aggravated if the proposals go through in their current form. He gave the example of the City of Birmingham symphony orchestra—world famous under Sir Simon Rattle, with massive progress and a commitment to excellence continued by his successor. Its excellence lies not only in its work in Birmingham's Symphony hall and around the world, and in requests for tours, but in its community and educational work in Birmingham. It has received enormous support from the people of Birmingham and elsewhere. Yet there are worries about funding reviews. Even under the current system, the City of Birmingham symphony orchestra received a 3 per cent. uplift in funding, whereas two competitor orchestras, based in the capital, received an uplift in funding of 160 per cent.
I do not want to present the difficulties as a row between London and the regions because, as the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter
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Ross mentioned, there have also been concerns from London about the proposals. However, I ask the Minister to recognise, and I am sure that he does, that there are real concerns in the regions that our ability to develop the arts in the way that we need to, and to do right by the communities that we serve, require an equity in funding. If there is to be that equity, there must be an element of local decision making. On the face of it, however, ACE's proposals—perhaps I have read them wrong—lead in the other direction. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will listen seriously to what is said today. I ask ACE to reconsider the way in which it has gone about the proposals, which seem to constitute a centralisation of power when all logic suggests that we should go the other way.
If we have read the proposals wrong, surely ACE needs to take the time to become involved in the consultative procedures. That would allow a dialogue to take place and a solution to be found with which everyone could feel comfortable. Unless that time is given and ACE has the confidence of people in the regions, the reorganisation will start on the basis of distrust, which sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I look forward to what the Minister has to say and I wish him well in asking questions of the Arts Council in the coming weeks. I ask the council to listen seriously to the genuine concerns that are being expressed in the regions.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful for the self-discipline that has been shown. I hope that the Opposition spokesmen will show similar discipline in winding up.
10.21 am
Mr. Mark Oaten: I will indeed show discipline, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I take as an optimistic sign the fact that the Minister wants to speak for some time. I should have thought that if he had bad news, he would have asked for a shorter period, so I draw the opposite conclusion and assume that we shall hear an encouraging speech.
I join other hon. Members in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) on securing the debate. The issue was in danger of being swept under the carpet, but by putting down a marker for it in what could be the final week of the Parliament, he has done a great service. He has brought the situation to the attention of the media and of many hon. Members who were unaware of what was taking place. The Minister has also been provided with a chance to respond, so the debate is very welcome.
I shall discuss the timing, the proposals and the way ahead. If I may, I shall also indulge in saying a little about Southern Arts, which has its base in my constituency. We should first place the debate in context. We have heard about the many aspects of the work carried out by the Arts Council that we should celebrate. As a vehicle for managing the considerable funding from Government and the lottery, it has been successful. Hon. Members have described projects throughout the country that would not have happened if we did not have the Arts Council.

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I join other hon. Members in paying tribute to the work carried out by some of the individuals whom we are now tempted to criticise. The tone of the debate is interesting, because there has been no anger, as there sometimes is when such proposals are made. Instead, there is bewilderment: we cannot quite understand why an organisation with such a reputation has done what it has, and in such a way.
The decision taken on 15 March to bring forward the proposals took the arts world by surprise. We rightly condemn the plans immediately to announce the abolition of the regional boards without giving them notice. I understand that six weeks' notice was given to wind up staff contracts, undertake the difficult process of talking to staff about the change and send through centrally all the contracts and administration. How can any organisation suggest that it can turn around in such a period? It was pleasing that it at least recognised that early and decided to extend the consultation period. However, it has been extended only until mid-May. Given the broad range of the issues that have been raised this morning, a much longer period is needed to enable us to work out where the organisation is going.
I am told that Southern Arts, for example, has still been put on notice that, subject to that consultation period, it is expected to wind up its organisation by the end of the year. It seems bizarre that those plans must be put in place before a consultation period has been completed. Let us imagine the reaction of the 400 or so staff who are affected by the proposal. They must be very worried, and we must ensure that their rights as employees are protected throughout the process.
Why was the process so rushed? Can the consultation period be further extended? It would help if the Minister said when the Government first knew about the proposals. There would be concern if the Government had been made aware of them before the arts world was. Might the system be examined to ensure that the Arts Council can never again do anything like that?
On the proposals, we have heard many arguments why it does not make sense to move towards a single tier. The Arts Council has argued that it would be a quicker, simpler and less bureaucratic structure. Why is it assumed that delays in the process have been caused by the regionality of the system? It has been put to me that one reason for those delays is the structure of the centre and the way in which it operates, and it has been argued that the centre has been at fault for not giving clear guidelines to the regions. I have heard examples of lack of clarity in communication. Will not centralisation prolong the decision-making process? If decisions are taken from the centre, will not fieldwork have to be done in the regions to try to establish local knowledge? Rather than speeding things up, suddenly removing the arm in the regions that gives immediate information about applications could lengthen the process.
The administration costs of the Arts Council run to about £36 million. It is estimated that the regions cost about £16 million. Why, then, is it assumed that the burden of responsibility for reducing costs should fall on the regions? Has the option of reducing costs at the centre been examined? I have seen nothing to suggest that such work has been undertaken. The board
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members of regional boards give up their time for no payment. If one is trying to reduce costs, it seems strange to remove a tier of individuals who give knowledge and expertise at no cost.
Will the Minister also comment on what assessment, if any, has been made of the administrative costs that will be involved in the proposals? Hon. Members have talked about what I would describe as the deficit of democratic accountability. A third of the members of Southern Arts are from democratically elected councils, which is extremely healthy. As other hon. Members have said, we need to protect the link between local government and local authorities, which already do so much for the arts. They have invaluable knowledge.
Do not the proposals go against the devolution to the regions that we are trying to enable? Do not regions know what is best for them? Do we not want to celebrate diversity? Do we not want a structure that allows different systems in different regions? What works best in northern England may not work in the same way in southern England. We could lose all that with a centralised system.
Southern Arts is based in my constituency and I am proud of the work that it has done in the area. Its chairman, Robert Hutchison, came to see me two days ago to express his concern about the proposals. In the time scale that Southern Arts has been given, it has done its best to consult some of the individuals that it supports. I do not know how scientific the consultation was, but the organisation claimed that 85 per cent. of the people to whom it had written, whom it has supported over the years, are against the proposals. I am sure that other hon. Members, like myself, have received several letters from high-profile organisations.
We are proud of the work that the regional arts boards have done. Incredibly, three years ago Winchester had no theatre or cinema—a bizarre anomaly for such a city. We now have a thriving cinema and hope to have a theatre opening within months. We do not, thankfully, yet have "Stars in their Eyes" competitions, but I was interested to hear the list of work that also goes on in other areas.
We need a sensible way forward. Hon. Members have demonstrated their willingness to try to work through the issue. No one is against change for change's sake—not even the regional arts boards, which recognise that the systems need to be improved. It is annoying that the Arts Council does not accept that some faults, and some of the need for change, could lie at the centre. Is the possibility of cuts act the centre being explored? The regional boards may need to be reduced in some way, but do we not need better decision making and clearer criteria on how decisions should be taken to speed things up? Above all—I am optimistic about it because I believe that the Minister can take a lead in this respect—we need to buy ourselves time to think about the proposals and to ensure that, at the end of the year, there is a robust organisation that supports arts in this country.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) for his co-operation in this important debate.
10.29 am
Mr. John Greenway: As I was driving back to Yorkshire last Thursday evening, wondering what on earth we would discuss in the debate called by the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan)—the area of responsibility is usually that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth)—I tuned into Radio 3 and heard the live relay of the first concert in the BBC tour of south America from a cinema in Montevideo. The orchestra was outstanding and it was given a tumultuous reception. It served as a timely reminder of how successful and precious the arts are to so many of us.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross on securing this timely debate. I am grateful for the presence in the Chamber of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke), who referred to the fact that the right hon. Gentleman came from Scotland. I cannot match the courtesy with which my right hon. Friend alluded to the incongruity of a Scottish Member securing a debate on the arts council for England and Wales and discussing our regional arts boards. However, we are grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and acknowledge his vast experience and interest in the matter.
We have too few opportunities to debate the arts and the debate is all the more welcome to the Conservative party as we highlighted the need for the reform and restructuring of the Arts Council and the regional arts boards in the launch of our arts policy on 13 March, to which the right hon. Gentleman briefly alluded.
The case for reform should not be ignored or underestimated. Hon. Members have referred in the debate to central and regional bureaucracy; staff in the regional arts boards have grown in number from 380 to 419 in the past four years and more than £16 million has been spent in administration. Levels vary significantly between boards, but in the most recent year for which figures are available South East Arts spent 34 per cent. of its entire budget on administrating. That is too much. Equally, too much of the Arts Council's budget is spent monitoring and administering the regional boards, and more money is wasted by the requirement for the Department to monitor the Arts Council. There are English regional arts boards, the club of the arts boards and the regional cultural consortiums set up by the Government—what are they for?—all of which are a potential waste of time and money.
It is disturbing that the Arts Council, the prime purpose of which is to distribute funds that sustain the arts—it is remarkably successful—appears to command so little respect or affection. I commend to hon. Members an article in the Evening Standard on 27 March by Mr. Brian Sewell, which encapsulates the attitude of many people to the Art Council.
Our policy paper, "Common Sense for the Arts and National Lottery", promised a fundamental review of ACE, its structure and function. If the present organisation, which is half a century old, proves incapable of further reform we will replace it with a new, simplified national body that will better reflect the contemporary needs of the professional and voluntary arts.
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Four principles should underpin any reformed structure, whatever emerges following the Arts Council's announcement. There must be consultation with the arts sector to achieve a system of funding in which artists can have confidence. We must reinforce the arm's length principle in arts funding, enabling decisions to be taken in the interests of art, rather than in pursuit of Government policy. We need to ensure that the voice of the voluntary arts sector is heard where decisions are taken and to ensure that more money from the arts budget is spent on the arts themselves and less on administration.
We were favourably surprised when, two days after making our views public, the Arts Council made its own announcement. We have heard what a furore that caused. At the same time, we were bewildered, if not astonished, that the Arts Council had taken its decision without consulting the regional boards or their many clients. There was no evidence of consultation with Ministers—not even a nod or a wink, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said.
Our own discussions with the Arts Council chief executive threw some light on why this stance was adopted. The Arts Council concluded that a single structure was essential to achieve the objectives of a new streamlined organisation with less bureaucracy, and wanted to signal that that was its clear and settled intention. It was a serious mistake not to consult because it generated great opposition and hostility, much of which has been articulated in the debate. A new maxim has been coined: how to displease all of the people all of the time.
The announcement may have been heroic but, having so clearly and controversially set out the stall, the chairman and chief executive now have the monumental task of explaining how the new structure will work, and how regionality, local decision making and accountability can be maintained and strengthened—the stated aim. How can the regions be represented on a single national council that avoids over-centralisation but must not become too unwieldy? How can more money be spent directly on the arts?
Part of the problem is that there is no obvious model or organisation that adopts the structure that ACE advocates. The right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross mentioned that ACE intended to publish a more detailed prospectus in June, which we look forward to reading.
Some critics say that the existing boards could be reformed and restructured. Several representations made by the regional boards to Members of Parliament advanced that view. The Southern Arts brief says:
"there are cheaper and better ways of achieving the aims stated in the prospectus".
Southern Arts spends more than a quarter of its budget on administration. Yorkshire and Humberside Arts in my region was slightly less critical, but is not persuaded that the removal of regional autonomy means anything other than increased centralisation.
Critics cannot argue that a regional structure is essential and then deny ACE the opportunity to establish a new, less bureaucratic structure based on regional committees with closer links to the council and perhaps including dual membership between the council

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and the regions. ACE already gives considerable resources—even more in recent years—to the regional arts boards, which demonstrates how regional committees could redistribute funds. Such a demonstration would be vital to winning over the regions.
As the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross said, the regions are independent now and cannot be forced into the new position. The council must take people with it and win the argument. An enhanced role for local government will be a crucial ingredient of any new arrangement if the new organisation is to be more responsive to local needs and local democracy.
The present arrangements are highly unsatisfactory and some reform is needed. The question is as to the form that any change should take. The Conservatives recognise the need for change in our own review of arts policy and emphasise the value of consultation to take the arts world along with any proposals. ACE should now do the same and put some meat on the bones of its ideas in an effort to win over the regional arts world. We say, give it a chance and then review. We believe that ACE has the interests of the arts in Britain at heart. Reference has been made to its achievements under the chairmanship of Gerry Robinson. I believe that Peter Hewitt, with his background in Northern Arts, has the interests of the regions at heart.
However, the one missing ingredient in the debate is the view and role of the Government. In light of all the furore, the lack of any leadership from the Secretary of State has been lamentable. We hope that the Minister will explain today—we are grateful for the opportunity to provide him considerable time in which to do so—how the Government view the matter and what they want the structure and governance of the arts to be in the long run. For our part, we have criticisms of the way in which the announcement was made, but the objectives are right.
The Arts Council may have bungled its announcement, but it is difficult to resist the temptation to rejoice at the prospect of a serious setback to the Government's regional agenda if the plans proceed. We feel sure that the Secretary of State will not allow that prospect to influence the eventual outcome of that sorry mess, because the arts in Britain are too precious for that.
10.41 am
The Minister for the Arts (Mr. Alan Howarth): You have noted, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this is an important debate. I welcome the opportunity to respond on the Government's behalf. I am most grateful to the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) for giving us the opportunity to debate these matters today. It is entirely proper that we should; they are serious and important. The right hon. Gentleman set out his anxieties fully in a passionate speech. He was wrong in some of his interpretations, but none the less stated some important issues.
I am most grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed. The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) was
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mellow—he hardly needs champagne. He will undoubtedly correct me if I am wrong, but I recollect that Disraeli characterised the speeches of Palmerston as ginger beer, not champagne. The right hon. Gentleman's speech this morning was sparkling, and we are all grateful for it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Mr. Hope) gave us all pleasure by introducing a thoroughly positive note and describing the successes that have been achieved in collaboration with East Midlands Arts in Kettering. My hon. Friend spoke of Corby Community Arts, with its long and distinguished history. He drew attention to the successes of the young people's photography group. He surprised us all by telling us how Scottish dancing is thriving in Corby—but we can understand the historical reasons for that. He spoke of the Northamptonshire youth orchestra, and I am grateful for what he said about the contribution of Government funding for the project to provide space for sport and the arts. He was right to stress the value of the arts in encouraging young people to have high aspirations, and the contribution that the arts can make to education and social inclusion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Burden) drew attention to the position of the City of Birmingham symphony orchestra—an orchestra of which he and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Dr. Jones) are, rightly, especially proud. I should just say that it has been offered a funding increase of 6 per cent., not 3 per cent., which will bring its funding level above that of the London orchestras. It is worth our reflecting on the fact that that decision, about which my hon. Friend to some extent complains, was a decision taken at regional level about an orchestra of national—indeed, international—standing. We must reflect on how things work now and how they might work. My hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak also set out her anxieties.
I am most grateful to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) for speaking in a thoroughly constructive spirit. He expressed some bewilderment—a well-chosen word—at what may be in train, but he was fair minded, and I am grateful to him for acknowledging that additional funding is entering the system. It gave me especial pleasure to hear what he said about Winchester, which is my home town. I am delighted that there should now be a cinema and hope, as he does, that a theatre will also be established.
We all appreciate the gallant efforts of the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) in deputising for the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth). I will return to some of his comments.
Let us be clear about what the Arts Council proposes. It is proposing that the regional arts boards and the Arts Council of England be merged into a single organisation, and that the offices of the regional arts board become regional offices of the Arts Council of England. It is proposing that the regional chief executives become members of a national executive team and that the Arts Council regions be aligned with the Government office regions, which would mean a reduction in the number of regional organisations of the Arts Council from 10 to nine. It also proposes that more funding be delegated to the regional offices and that new

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relationships be established between the regional structures of the Arts Council and other regional Government structures and local government.
The right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross was incorrect in what he said. The Arts Council wants to scale down the centre, reduce the overall cost of administration and spend more on the arts. We are all at one on much of this, as we desire greater simplicity, a smaller centre, less money spent on administration, more spent on the arts and—as the hon. Member for Ryedale said—an enhanced role for local government. I praise him as a repenting sinner, as that was not always his party's view.
The proposals emanate from the Arts Council. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State believes, as I do, that it is entirely appropriate that the Arts Council should have taken an initiative in this respect. My right hon. Friend has consistently enjoined the Arts Council to cut excessive bureaucracy, and it has made an important start in doing so. In 1999, 330 staff were employed in Great Peter street; in 2001, 220 were employed there. That process has been traumatic and painful for Arts Council staff, but none of us would dispute that it was important to scale down that central bureaucracy.
The overhead costs of the Arts Council and the total system, including the regional arts boards, are approximately £36 million. We should place that in context: the total turnover of the system is some £500 million, so the overheads represent some 7 per cent. Many may feel that that figure of 7 per cent. is too high, however. In all, some 660 people are employed in the system.
Mr. Maclennan: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Howarth: If the right hon. Gentleman will excuse me, we are tight for time.
For a long time, we have operated on an arm's-length principle in the funding of the arts in this country, which is a vital principle in a liberal state. I hope that if the Conservative party contemplates the abolition of the Arts Council, it will consider the possible risks in politicising arts funding decisions, because that would be a dangerous policy to follow.
If the arm's-length principle is to work, we would all agree that the precondition must be that there will be trust, that full information will be given and that there will be proper consultation. That is the strong opinion of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. Of course, it is true that Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hewitt came about a week before they made the proposals public to advise my right hon. Friend and myself of what they had in mind. We believe that it is proper, in an arm's length arrangement, that the Arts Council should initiate consideration of reform for a process that it is tasked to operate. However, let me make it clear that it is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to approve any eventual restructuring, because the proposals are plainly of major importance. They offer an opportunity for major benefits: reduced bureaucracy, devolved decision taking and benefits to the arts throughout the country.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is attracted by the objectives that the Arts Council has established and broadly supports them. I shall not dwell
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on the technical reasons why it would be necessary for my right hon. Friend to approve important proposals such as those for pay, pensions and conditions of employment. Under Treasury rules, matters concerning insurance and trusts all need to be approved by him. As Parliament wishes, he must be satisfied that public funds are applied efficiently. There can be no rushing headlong into a premature resolution of such matters.
Mr. Oaten: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Howarth: I am sorry; we lack the time.
I understand the worries that have been expressed about the time scale originally set by the Arts Council. It wanted to bring matters to a rapid conclusion to minimise the period of uncertainty. However, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I made it clear from the outset that it was important to be realistic about the timetable and to consult fully. The Arts Council has accepted that fuller consultation is needed than it envisaged originally. It made that clear in its letter to the chairmen of the regional arts boards on 30 April. The Arts Council has now proposed that the consultation period should close on 15 May, but said that it will remain in listening mode. I am sure that Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hewitt agree with us that it is a case of more haste, less speed.
I shall clarify the tests that my right hon. Friend will apply when he makes a judgment on the proposals that emerge from the process. He said what the tests would be when he first discussed the matter with Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hewitt. As a result of change, there must be more genuine power in the regions. The devolution of power must be real, not cosmetic. The regional directors must become not representatives of the centre but champions of their region. There must be a genuine increase in decision making in the regions. We require a reduction in bureaucracy, so that it would be genuinely simpler for clients to navigate the system and cut out duplication and waste. We must achieve real savings throughout the system, which should be genuinely deliverable and delivered. As a consequence, more money should be spent on the arts. There must be a clear benefit for the regions, one that must be sufficiently accepted in the regions.
We must ensure that the voice of the arts is enhanced in the emerging regional forums to make possible richer collaboration between the Arts Council bodies—whatever regional entities emerge—and other regional organisations sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. In response to a point raised by the hon. Member for Ryedale, I say that such policies must not run counter to other key Government policies for the regions.
I say to the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross that we need to emerge with an open, intelligent, collaborative pattern of dealings between the citizen and the Government. Gone are the days—if ever they existed—when culture was a matter of crumbs thrown down from Olympus or from some metropolitan Parnassus.
The main themes expressed in representations to us concur with the analysis of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. People ask how we shall ensure genuine local and regional distinctiveness under an altered system. How will regional autonomy and accountability be preserved or enhanced? How precisely

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will regional voices be heard under the new system? What decisions will be made at regional level? What relationship will there be with other regional structures? What will be the savings in bureaucracy and administration? Will the new model really mean less bureaucracy, a simpler structure and no duplication? "If so, good, but persuade us", people are saying. There is scepticism about whether such action is genuinely that of devolution, or centralisation as suggested by the hon. Member for North Devon (Mr. Harvey). Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak insisted on full consultation. As the hon. Member for North Devon said, people have told us that they agree that change is needed. They would welcome more simplicity and greater consistency and fairness across the country.
Let me note that the criticisms that have been expressed have come predominantly from politicians and people working in the system. Relatively few criticisms have come from artists or arts organisations. Ultimately, the crucial test will be how the system works for artists.
I join those who paid tribute to the work of those who are responsible for administering arts in the regions—I appreciated what the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said about that.
A distinguished theatrical manager and director has described the costs of operating the regional arts boards as a handling charge. That grossly underestimates the contribution that members and chief executives of the regional arts boards make. I have spent days alongside Felicity Harvest of South East Arts—the administrative costs of which are high, as we have noted—and with Sue Robertson, who, as was mentioned, has resigned because she does not see a future for herself in the model proposed by the Arts Council. I have no doubt that the work that they do in fund raising, mobilising local authority support, spotting talent, offering advice and
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counselling, in diplomacy and brokerage is an important and indispensable contribution to the vitality and success of the arts in this country. Some arts practitioners grumble about the very existence of the regional arts boards, but that is an overwhelmingly unfair change. We cannot decide everything at the centre.
The issue of the balance between the centre and the regions is an old conundrum. It has been a live issue in the administration of arts funding since at least the late 1940s. The Arts Council was set up in 1945 and, by the late 1940s, offices were being set up in the regions, in big cities outside London. People have gone to and fro with a variety of attempted solutions ever since. We now have an important challenge to arrive at the right solution in our time, and to do better than has been done previously.
Perhaps the most difficult set of issues are those in connection with regionalisation and relations with other regional structures and local government. The Arts Council recognises the strength of feeling on that point and the importance of it. Solutions must be found that genuinely command wide assent in the regions. Hon. Members will have seen the useful briefing note for Members of Parliament that the Arts Council issued yesterday. I hope that it will be recognised that that briefing note expresses a serious attempt to come to grips with issues of regionalisation and relations with local authorities. I am grateful to the Arts Council not only for initiating the discussion but for seriously addressing such issues.
Following the close of a two-month consultation period on 15 May, the Arts Council will draft a new prospectus, which will be submitted to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who will heed carefully everything that is said to him on the issue. We have set out our tests; if they are met—and only if they are met—my right hon. Friend will approve the proposed changes.

Common Fisheries Policy
10.59 am
Dr. Norman A. Godman: I think that this is the first opportunity that we have had to discuss the European Union's Green Paper on reform of the common fisheries policy. If I can catch the Minister's ear for a moment—someone is blathering away to him—I shall tell him that I think that this is also the first opportunity that he has had to comment on the Fisheries Council meeting of 25 April.
The subject is heavy and controversial, but I make my usual promise to be brief—unlike some hon. Members. I am grateful for the excellent briefing documents and advice that I have received from the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the World Wide Fund for Nature. I also thank personally Mark Dixon of the graduate school of environmental studies at the university of Strathclyde for his advice and assistance about the reform of the common fisheries policy.
My family's experience relates to distant water grounds, and I am hugely inexperienced in coastal fisheries. However, the Minister may be interested to know that my brother Keith, an ex-trawler deckhand, has received what, for an ex-trawler deckhand, is a substantial sum of money from the compensation scheme. However, I shall now take the smile off the Minister's face by telling him that my brother Leslie, who is the skipper of a freezer trawler, and is sailing at this moment off the north Norwegian coast, has not received a penny. I told him to appeal, because some of the decisions are fanciful, and I hope that all fishermen who are entitled to compensation receive their just rights. I thank the Minister for his support on the matter.
Every fisherman, and every hon. Member, knows that the common fisheries policy is the means by which the European Union manages and regulates the fisheries' fishing effort and the fish markets of the member states. As a system of fisheries management, it is over-centralised, over-bureaucratic and inflexible. The WWF stated in its brief:
"it is widely recognised that the system of management under-pinning the existing EU Common Fisheries Policy has not adequately protected target stocks or the interests of the fishing industry."
I think we all agree with that.
I shall outline three of the many failures of the existing CFP. First, over 40 per cent. of fish caught in the North sea are discarded. That is due to the CFP's system of fishing quotas. Secondly, most of the commercial stocks fished by UK fishing vessels are at historically low levels, with more than 50 per cent. in danger of collapse because of the CFP's failure to address the critical matter of over-fishing.
Thirdly—I speak as a Scots MP—the CFP fails to take account of the fact that, although numerous Scottish fishing communities are located close by what were once rich fishing grounds, they are on the periphery of the EU itself. Mark Dixon pointed out to me that while such communities receive sympathetic treatment from the social and cohesion polices, they are severely disadvantaged by the CFP. I have no doubt that my English colleagues would agree with that observation.
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The political management of the CFP is characterised by the annual round of bargaining or horse trading by national Ministers who attempt, at all costs, to maintain their national quotas in real terms. Such horse trading is always accompanied by jingoistic media coverage in all the maritime states of the EU, demanding the retention of the domestic fleet.
In a recent letter to The Herald—formerly the Glasgow Herald—Mark Dixon wrote:
"On every single occasion when the quotas have been set by the Council of Ministers of the EU the scientific advice relayed to them by the Commission of the EU has been ignored, due to the horse-trading that takes place annually in Brussels.
This is entirely down to the wishes of politicians who seek to come home and show their constituents how hard they are at negotiating with Brussels bureaucrats. This is however not true. The negotiations take place between national politicians and the Commission only relays scientific recommendations. Therefore, no real debate takes place with regard to the European fishing industry as a whole and it becomes pork-barrel politics of the worst kind."
That view is supported by the RSPB, which, in the briefing sent to all hon. Members, argues that there is a huge onus on the radical revision of the common fisheries policy in 2002. In fairness to the European Commission, because I am trying to be even-handed—
Mr. Austin Mitchell: Oh no.
Dr. Godman: I expected this kind of heckling from my old and hon. Friend. The European Union has produced a review of the CFP, and a Green Paper has recently been published on the future of the policy. That Green Paper is far more extensive than the requirements of the review, which I fear will not encourage a move towards the radical and comprehensive reform of the CFP that is necessary if we are to protect the interests of our fishing communities and the maritime environment. The Green Paper contains an admission of the pressing need for such reform. On page 4, it states:
"The CFP has yielded some positive results during the last 20 years."—
I think that one would have to look hard for them. However, it goes on to say that
"Today's situation calls for a thorough and urgent reform of the CFP independent from the legal requirements linked to the 2002 deadline."
Again, every fisherman and every hon. Member here today knows that. That deadline signals either the abolition or the renewal of the rules of access to the six to 12-mile limit, the Shetland box and the North sea.
The Minister attended the Fisheries Council on 25 April. Am I right in thinking that the Government expressed their support for the Green Paper, but that other member states were less supportive? Is it true that Spain and Portugal are resistant to the proposal to reduce the size of domestic fleets? In the absence of reform and change, is there not a strong possibility that Spain and Portugal will gain, or at least demand, access to the North sea? Many people believe that we will probably not achieve the reform of the CFP, because of the unwillingness of certain member states to accept change. Despite my own pessimism about the likelihood of reform, I want to outline some of the changes that the Green Paper will, I hope, bring about, which recognise the need for a reform of the CFP.
Mr. Lawrie Quinn: I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely

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debate. Based on his experience of the industry, has he made any personal assessment of the environmental damage caused by the common fisheries policy, especially in areas such as the North sea? Does he not think that the mainstay of any reform should be a consideration of the environmental consequences of the CFP in the past and future?
Dr. Godman: My hon. Friend refers gently to my experience of North sea fishing, which is confined to two or three days when I went out on Arbroath boats. I have also been out on a couple of Aberdeen boats. As I said, I am an observer of, not an expert on, this industry. However, we must recognise the need to protect the wider maritime environment, not only the fishing grounds. The Minister recognises that, as does the Green Paper, which is radical for the European Union, even if not radical enough for us.
One of the most important reforms should be the creation of regional systems of fisheries management. That should be at the heart of the reformed CFP. I would like the Minister's comments on that, but the Government should support the extension of exclusive national control of territorial waters to at least 12 nautical miles, as the Green Paper proposes. I support the resolution passed by the European Parliament that calls for national control to be extended to 24 nautical miles—that represents a rare occasion when that Parliament got something right. The resolution has the support of the Irish Republic and Portugal. What does the Minister think about a 24 nautical mile exclusive fisheries zone?
A larger territorial sea would make it much easier for a coastal state to control access to an area of considerable significance vis-à-vis spawning and nursery grounds. I fully support the joint advocacy of the RSPB and the Scottish Fisherman's Federation, which call for a permanent restriction of access to inshore waters. They argue for member states to control their inshore waters and the vessels that fish those waters. I fully support that; it is of profound importance to the Scottish fleet, more than three quarters of which—some 2,000 vessels—fish inshore waters. As the SFF and the RSPB say:
"These waters are vital not just to the fragile economies of our coastal communities but to all who value and enjoy Scotland's diverse coastline."
I am sure that hon. Members would agree with those sentiments.
Important stakeholders must be actively involved in any coastal fisheries management scheme, and none are more important than the local fishermen and their communities.
Many other elements of the reformed CFP, too numerous to mention in a brief contribution, should be given serious consideration—inter alia, the question of multi-annual total allowable catches. The CFP places an impossible burden on the catching and processing sectors, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for the Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) would agree. How can the catching and processing sectors make sensible and realistic plans on the basis of this annual horse trading? What is the Government's view of multi-annual TACs?
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Also, what do the Minister and his officials think of multi-species TACs? Fish are part of a dynamic and multi-layered environment. Multi-species TACs make sense in terms of stability and of focusing on responsible management by the fishermen.
I cannot allow a speech to pass without mentioning the disgraceful problem of discards, which makes a mockery of the present system of TACs. Perhaps the Minister will tell us that this is already being done, but why not examine the Norwegian method of dealing with discards? Am I right in thinking that the Norwegians compel fishermen to land all by-catch fish, for which a small price is paid? It appears that the discards problem is much less severe in the Norwegian catching sector than in the EU fishing fleet.
As for technical measures, Scottish fishermen have shown the way on increased mesh size. I come from a fishing family, but at the risk of angering fisherman throughout the United Kingdom, I say that we should examine closely developments in the United States of America and in Canada. The plan to increase our mesh size of 100 mm to 135 mm makes many fishermen deeply unhappy. However, in America the net size for certain species is to be increased to about 166 mm, on the basis that too many juvenile fish are being netted with 145 mm nets.
As for industrial fishing, it should be banned. I congratulate the Minister on his efforts to reduce such a dreadful wasteful form of fishing, but we must secure its total abolition. In a recent letter to The Sunday Telegraph, the Minister rightly said that we should not make the mistake of claiming that the decline of North sea cod stocks is due entirely to sand-eel fishing. Industrial fishing vessels should go the same way as the sailing smacks and the sidewinders. It is time that their day was brought to an end.
I thank the Minister for his letter about the recovery of cod. However, we must go further than that. We should be arguing for longer closures of the areas threatened by total collapse. I think that I am right in saying that, in the United States of America, 6,000 square miles of George's bank have been closed since 1994. There is now evidence of some recovery of fish stocks that were almost extinct.
The CFP must be altered radically. I have only touched on some of the management controls that need to be introduced. At the heart of any reform must be the implementation of zonal or regional management, and the active involvement of fishing communities in systems of management. Maritime states of the European Union must be given the right to develop and manage their coastal fisheries. At the least, such a management system would allow for a more adaptable response to economic and environmental needs at both local and national levels.
Such developments will be affected by the enlargement of the European Union. We must get the CFP right, in a way that will not be achieved with the common agricultural policy, before enlargement takes place.
When European Union fishing vessels fish in the waters of developing, countries, a Europe-wide code of conduct that ensures that those countries are not exploited by large fishing vessels from member states should be in place. Codes of conduct govern other

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interchanges and relationships with the third world, and we should be governed by such a code. We must put into practice in our fisheries policy a genuine and fair-minded application of the EU's principle of subsidiarity. Nothing less will do for our fisherman and their communities.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Nicholas Winterton): Order. This is an important debate, and winding-up speeches must commence promptly at 12 o'clock. If hon. Members share an element of self-discipline, I am sure that those who seek to catch my eye will be able to speak.
11.19 am
Mr. Alex Salmond: I congratulate my friend the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman)—I was about to call him "my old Friend", but he applied that term to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), and I am not sure that it was a compliment.
Mr. Mitchell: I am happy to be called that.
Dr. Godman: It was meant to be a compliment.
Mr. Salmond: I hope that that was not the valedictory performance in the House by the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde. Whether it was or not, it showed a wisdom that has characterised his speeches in Parliament on this and other subjects over the years. Of course, the hon. Gentleman comes from a fishing family, as he keeps telling us—although they were wise enough to push him into politics and keep him out of the family business, apart from that one trip on the North sea that he told us about. However, his experience in fishing is well known and well understood.
I shall focus first on the Green Paper that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Undoubtedly, no European Commission document on fisheries has been so well received as the Green Paper that has been published in the past few weeks. Considering what the previous documents were like, that is probably not saying much. None the less, the paper contains a number of substantial and positive indications. I look for the Minister's confirmation that, given the terms in which the Green Paper is written, we can be reasonably certain that relative stability will be secure.
There is a steer in the direction of multi-annual quotas, which the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde mentioned. There is also a hint that zonal management is moving up the agenda, and many of us who have campaigned for that over many years will welcome that, although we would like to see something more decisive. I am particularly interested in the passage that speculates that in the fishing environment into which we are moving, recovery plans and substantially enhanced funding for structural measures—including tie-ups—will be required. I certainly hope that the Under-Secretary welcomed the terms of the Green Paper, and will give us an indication of the Government's change of heart on that particular aspect, because it is very much part of an overall package. If we are going to engage in recovery plans, including
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temporarily closing off areas of the sea, there will have to be temporary structural means of dealing with that pressure, such as tie-ups. Otherwise, we run the risk of destabilising the entire fishery—a point that I will return to shortly.
Secondly, I shall refer to an interesting letter, not from the Under-Secretary but from his boss, which was published on 27 March in the Glasgow Herald—or rather The Herald; as I write a racing column for that newspaper, I should know its name. It is worth looking at exactly what the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had to say in that letter, addressed to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, which was that he had been "holding the line" against decommissioning grants. I had understood for many years that the Under-Secretary was an enthusiast for decommissioning grants in certain circumstances, and I remember many good speeches of his that I supported, and that hon. Members would also support. Now, however, we discover that the Minister's boss has been holding the line against decommissioning grants.
Even more interestingly, the letter goes on to say:
"I am facing heavy and renewed demands for the English fishing industry to respond to the economic pressures which they face as a result of the strict measures which have been further developed and imposed during February to conserve fish stocks. At present there is in prospect only the small package of measures to regenerate areas affected by the decline in the industry being prepared by the DETR, DIEE, and DTJ. And there is nothing planned which will respond directly to the problem of overcapacity."
That is a fair comment, and there have been some changes since the letter was published. It continues:
"We now face a development in Scotland, where the executive has responded to mass demonstrations by fishermen by offering a decommissioning scheme worth up to—25m for next year. The English industry is arguing strongly that this puts them at an obvious disadvantage and that I should offer a similar package.
This is a most unfortunate situation. The four fisheries departments of the UK have traditionally sought to move together on policy, but with devolution of fisheries policy we no longer have control over territorial handling."
That is a devastating leak. If the Minister does not comment on it, that will confirm that the letter is a genuinely leaked document. The Government do not comment on leaked documents, but if it is not genuine, I am sure that he will tell us. Much publicity and reaction were generated, so let us consider what the letter means. We already know that the Under-Secretary's heart is in the right place, but that leak certainly places substantial question marks over whether the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is genuinely in favour of structural measures to help the industry.
The letter goes on to tell us what we already knew in Scotland—that the impact of the massive fisheries demonstration was to force a substantial concession from the Scottish Executive. It then argues—reasonably, in my view—that the English industry should receive a similar concession. That shows how having a Scots Parliament and Executive allowed a different policy, and subsequently led reluctant English Ministers to go to the Treasury to seek equivalent funding.
What differences might Members of Parliament in fishing constituencies have with the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, in the light of the

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letter? First, they would be enthusiastic, rather than reluctant, about structural support for the fishing industry. Secondly, instead of having the problem of "holding the line"— "an unfortunate situation", to quote the Minister of Agriculture—Members of Parliament with fishing constituencies south of the border would be wise to learn the lessons and, when the fishing industry dominates the political agenda north of the border, they should view it as an opportunity to gain extra support for English fishermen.
It is difficult to sustain the proposition advanced by some hon. Members that the only place to which the fishing industry should look for structural support is this place. On the evidence of the letter, they should look for it north of the border, and argue the case for an English catch-up policy.
Mr. Mitchell: I agree absolutely, and if I could express my gibbering gratitude to the Scottish Executive—
Mr. Salmond: And the fishermen.
Mr. Mitchell:—and to the Scottish fishermen, and the incentive to demonstrate, but let me ask the hon. Gentleman a question. English vessels fishing from English east coast ports are registered in Scotland as Scottish vessels. Will we be able to share in the greater largesse that should go to vessels registered in Scottish ports?
Mr. Salmond: The scheme has not yet been published in detail, but is likely to be based on port of registration, so the hon. Gentleman effectively answers his own question. No doubt the Scottish Government will soon publish the details; perhaps the Minister is privy to them. We have been promised them for weeks, and keep being told that they are imminent.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me; no doubt his Scottish colleagues are even more enthusiastic in their agreement. Worryingly, he and I have been in agreement about fisheries policy in recent debates. I do not know whether that does more damage to the hon. Gentleman or to me, but we—as well as the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde—have a long-standing concern for the fishing industry and want the best for it. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby should learn from this letter that the impact on the political process of the mobilisation of an industry can be considerable.
Miss Anne Begg: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying. The Scottish Executive's offer of£23 million was on the table before the Scottish National party issued a press release inviting people to a demonstration. The demonstrations took place after, not before, the Scottish Executive made its announcement. I am pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman welcoming the news, because at the time the SNP was looking for something quite different.
Mr. Salmond: The hon. Lady is factually wrong. [Interruption.] I shall explain it to her. The fishing demonstration sailed up the river Forth on Monday night and Tuesday morning, and the package was announced to the Scottish Parliament on the following Thursday. The hon. Lady can check the facts, but that was the sequence of events. We also have it on no less an authority than the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who wrote:
"We now face a development in Scotland, where the executive has responded to mass demonstrations by fishermen by offering a decommissioning scheme".
If the hon. Lady disagrees with me, she disagrees with her colleague in the Cabinet. That may not too bad a thing in some circumstances, but it might not do her career prospects any good.
Mobilisation of the industry was a factor in making fishing dominate the agenda of the Scottish Parliament in a way that it has never dominated the agenda of this Parliament. I should have thought that English Members would be interested in that, to find out whether fishing could gain its proper importance in this place, as it already has in the new Parliament on the Mound in Edinburgh.
A final point, which is absolutely vital if we are to make sense of fisheries policy, is encapsulated in a good quote from the briefing by the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, which the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde outlined. The briefing states:
"It is necessary that the plan"
the cod recovery plan—
"should be truly comprehensive and include …potentially beneficial measures interacting in a coherent way. It is also necessary that the plan should have, at least, the tacit approval of fishermen and this will require action to minimise the level of economic disruption."
Those are extremely wise words. Attempts at a cod recovery plan were implemented quickly, resulting in substantial confusion and disruption of other fisheries.
Cod is the third most important whitefish species for Scottish fishermen, after haddock and whiting. It therefore does not make any sense to disrupt or jeopardise other main species unnecessarily as a result of an attempted cod recovery plan. Everyone supports a recovery of the cod species, but a cod recovery plan put the haddock stock in extremely substantial jeopardy in March, and forced the bulk of the Scottish whitefish fleet to fish in areas that they would not otherwise have been near at that time of year, right among a stock of juvenile haddock that is the largest in the North sea since 1965—a golden year class of haddock.
A recent deputation to the Scottish Parliament included John Goodlad, a well respected leader of the Shetland fishermen. He told MSPs in Edinburgh that in 1965 the Shetland economy was on its knees. That was before oil; agriculture and crofting were doing extremely badly. Then that year class of haddock turned up, and the number of fish-processing factories in Shetland increased from four to 13, purely on the back of that year class of haddock in the mid-1960s. That is the extent of the resource opportunity of such a massive stock of haddock in the North sea, and that is why fishermen were so angry at that stock being jeopardised, and almost sacrificed, in pursuit of protecting another species.

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Cod is an extremely important stock. Everyone hopes that a cod recovery plan can be successful, although international examples of attempts are not encouraging. There is a class of haddock in the North sea that is already two years old. Surely fisheries policy should be designed to protect that stock and that species, not to put them in great danger.
Although the three-week voluntary tie-up of fishermen was attacked and criticised, I estimate that over that three-week period, 10 million young haddock were saved that would otherwise have been discarded, dead, into the sea. Whatever people said about it, that voluntary tie-up of fishermen, which I enthusiastically supported, not only concentrated the minds of the Scottish Executive but was probably the single most important conservation initiative, saving a minimum of 10 million juvenile haddock in the North sea.
As it was with haddock, it is now with whiting. As the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde said, mesh size and technical measures are important, but for most boats it will be extremely difficult to pursue a whiting fishery in the North sea if boats fish with 110 mm nets: whiting will not be caught. We are pursuing a mixed fishery in the North sea, and it is not a case of one size fits all.
Those who are familiar with fisheries know that seine-net boats are probably the most selective in the North sea, and have the highest quality catches. Their pulling speed is 1 knot, and the fish in seine nets are not dead, as they would be in those of other trawlers, which pull at a higher speed. If seine-net boats must have the same mesh sizes and arrangements as boats with vastly greater pulling power and speeds, those highly selective boats will be unable to pursue their fishery. As other countries have sought derogations, will the Minister say whether it would be possible, for example, for boats to fish with one mesh size if they agree to take cod only as a by-catch, and with another size if they take cod as a major species?
The hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde talked about the substantial mesh sizes used in the American fishery, but the size depends on the fish that people are trying to catch. If we move to 135 mm, for which the Norwegians have argued, a directed cod fishery will emerge in the North sea, because at that mesh size, it is the only species that will be caught. In trying to recover a stock, we would in fact be encouraging boats to concentrate on that stock, because it would be the only fish that they could catch. That is why we are in a complex situation, in which reason and judgment are required.
I would like the Minister to give an undertaking that—unlike his boss, who does not even like decommissioning schemes—he is aware that if we engage in temporary closures of fishing areas, we must have temporary structural support through a tie-up to make that viable. I also want him to say that he is aware that in a mixed fishery, different boats catch different fish in different areas. He will have to produce regulations that make sense to all sectors of the fleet.
As the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde said, we must have a fishing industry in which industrial fishing does not take priority over fish for human consumption. No one in this place, and no one who fishes, can understand how the industrial fishery has
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managed to be sustained at its present size while other stocks are starving for lack of food in the North sea, and fishermen are struggling for their livelihoods. I would like assurances from the Minister on those points.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I repeat that the winding-up speeches need to commence at midday. If all those who want to speak are to be able to, perhaps hon. Members will bear that in mind.
11.37 am
Mr. Frank Doran: I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman) on securing this timely debate. I hope that it is not his valedictory speech, but the newspapers tell us that it might be. I do not disagree with much of what he said, so I shall not go through all the points that he covered.
The Green Paper certainly represents progress, but those of us with an interest in the industry feel that it is not radical enough. The starting point seems to be current practice and how we can develop from that, whereas I believe that we need a fairly strong cultural change in the way in which the industry operates in the North sea and is regulated, which is my main interest. Technical measures and gear changes are certainly necessary, but are not the whole solution to the problem. There is the prospect of some cultural change if we can have a proper scheme of regional and zonal management that allows partnership and the development of stakeholding in the industry. We want a lot of support for that, but the culture is wrong and we need to address that.
We must also consider the serious problems of a cyclical industry, which is sometimes cyclical in very short time frames. Currently, we are all trying to come to terms with the problems that have been created by a shortage of fish stocks. The processing sector has been especially seriously hit. Friends in the industry, however, tell me that we will see a glut of fish in July or August. The market will be awash with haddock and cod, and we are likely to see much-reduced prices.
Apparently, the catching side of the industry is doing well at present because, although fish are in short supply, quayside prices are good. However, in July and August, prices will plummet. With the shortage of fish stocks, the industry has been forced to adapt. In Aberdeen, a few years ago we could have said that the fish came from the North sea. We fished in distant waters—from Iceland, the Baltic and Norwegian waters. I am told that now in Aberdeen we can buy fish from virtually anywhere in the world. Fish from China, the far east, Australia, Canada and America are all available in the market. Of course, that affects the viability of the fish catching industry. Yesterday, one merchant told me that about 60 per cent. of the fish processed in his factory is now outsourced—coming from other than the marketplace in Aberdeen. It is a serious problem that must be considered.
Part of the cultural change in the industry is that until relatively recently we could never have said that we had a united industry—there was a great divide between the processing side and the catching side. Sometimes it was

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jocular: the processors worked on the basis that the catchers were all thieves and pirates and the catchers operated on the basis that the processors took the food from their bairns' mouths. During the past four or five years, however, there has been considerable change as the industry has come together to start addressing problems.
For example, through the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, the Scottish fishing industry encourages the Government to accept the introduction of the square mesh panel—a major advance in the industry's approach to the environment and its own sustainability. The Association of Fish Merchants and Curers in Aberdeen develops its own environmental policy and lobbies the Government on it—that is a fairly radical change. It is essential to have a united industry that can speak to the Government and persuade them of its case, so that Government and industry can go forward to argue their case in Brussels.
Unfortunately, there has been a fracturing in the industry of late. I had to chuckle quietly to myself when the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) accused the Government of destabilising the industry. Nothing has been more destabilising to the fishing industry than the recent action on the east coast of Scotland under the auspices of the Fishermen's Action Committee. That has rent the industry asunder. The fish catching side of the industry has been split, with the west coast fishermen based in the Clyde area and in Mallaig falling out with and threatening to withdraw from the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, and with a major split between the fish processing and fish catching side of the industry.
I attended a meeting of Scottish fish processors at Newburgh about a month ago, when they decided to withdraw their support from the action by the Fishermen's Action Committee—an organisation based in Peterhead. Like everyone else who has read the newspapers and seen the scene, of course I have sympathy with the catching side of the industry, which is going through difficult times. However, by the time of that meeting in Newburgh it was clear that the whole event was being stage-managed and heavily politicised. It was being organised by the Scottish National party as an assault on the integrity of the Scottish Executive.
I do not need to look hard for proof. One of my hon. Friends made a comment from a sedentary position about the burning in effigy of a Scottish Minister at a protest in Peterhead. I wonder what sort of image of the fishing industry that gives the general public. That event was called by a press release issued on 12 March by the Fishermen's Action Committee. It was issued on Scottish National party headed notepaper—I have a copy of it here. If that is not a political event, nothing is. I feel strongly about such politicisation of any industry.
Miss Begg: Does my hon. Friend agree that that event took place after the Scottish Executive had offered£23m for a decommissioning scheme?
Mr. Doran: It certainly was. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan juggled with dates to pretend that the Scottish Executive's decision to invest£27 million in the
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restructuring of the Scottish fishing industry was a result of the fishermen's protests. That is nonsense. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman spoke for 20 minutes and I now want to make my contribution.
Mr. Salmond: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Doran: No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman has spoken for long enough, and other hon. Members wish to contribute to the debate.
The hon. Gentleman's claim that the Scottish Executive announced the investment because of the fishermen's protests is nonsense. The Scottish Executive and the Fisheries Minister had been holding discussions with representatives of the fishing industry for about two months before the protests began.
It is a tragedy that the announcement of the largest single investment in the restructuring of the Scottish industry was treated as a cause for protest. Fishermen should have been celebrating. However, the welcome that the announcement received from the Clyde and Mallaig fishermen was perhaps more typical of the reaction of most people in the industry. They wanted a decommissioning scheme to be introduced, and they wanted to sit down with the Government to ensure that the investment scheme was properly implemented.
Mr. Salmond: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Doran: No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman has spoken for long enough.
Mr. Salmond rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan must sit down as the hon. Member for Aberdeen, Central refuses to give way.
Mr. Doran: I have made my point. A split industry would be ineffective. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan said that the fishing industries in England and Scotland had different profiles and priorities. I agree with him about that. The industry should have a higher profile in England. We recognise that it is an important industry in Scotland, but it is difficult to see how, in its present state, it can make progress by coherently communicating its case to the Government.
The discussions that I have held over the past few days with both sides of the industry have shown me that they are beginning once again to come together and to consult about matters. It is widely recognised in the industry that it is foolish to become involved in campaigns that are politically stage-managed. I hope that that will not happen again.
I want the Minister to encourage the industry to come together: his predecessors pursued that end by holding fisheries summits. I congratulate my local authority, Aberdeen city council, for holding a regular fishing summit that is attended by all sides of the industry, and which encourages people to pull together and to make common cause. The Minister should sit down and discuss matters with all sides of the industry from Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland to ensure that the best possible deal is secured as a result of the Green Paper.
11.47 am
Mr. Austin Mitchell: My intervention will be brief, although I would like to launch into a lengthy analysis of the common fisheries policy and its iniquities. We should never have accepted the CFP. It was cobbled together and forced on us when negotiations were beginning over our entry into Europe. It was a deliberate attempt to gain access to the richest fishing grounds in Europe, and it could have been resisted, as Sir Con O'Neil's memoir highlights: he was prevented from resisting it, at a time when it was malleable, because there was a desperate desire to enter Europe.
By accepting the policy, the Government of the day accepted the principle of equal access to a common resource. However, the proper approach to fisheries conservation can be taken only by the nation state, as it alone has an interest in maintaining stocks to be inherited by future generations of fishermen, and it alone can control all those who have an interest in exploiting stocks. That has been the experience in, for example, Iceland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
I would like us to withdraw from the CFP. The Scottish National party once shared that desire. It has now stood on its head with regard to that policy, as it has with regard to many others, but I will continue to carry the flame in favour of withdrawal—Interruption.] I do not want to discuss that matter any longer, as I did not decide the Scottish National party's policy on it; I want to express my own point of view clearly. My basic point is that the common fisheries policy is not a policy of conservation but a political policy. The process often consists of doling out paper fish to satisfy the conflicting demands of nation states, and proper conservation is not possible on that basis.
The CFP is also a policy that is remote from the fishing grounds and the fishermen. Some of the decisions on timing in relation to the opening up of areas under the cod preservation plan could have been made more sensibly if the Commission and its officials knew something about the spawning processes of fish, and what happens in fishing grounds, which clearly they did not. The policy has not worked effectively.
It is difficult for us to prevail, because we are just one voice. Our problem is unique because each country has a specialised interest—usually in specific species—whereas we are a country of mixed fishing. Therefore, we have interests in a wider spread of species, which involve many different approaches and types of net. We are therefore negotiating at a disadvantage. My hon. Friend the Minister has done a good job, but when other national interests intervene, fishing; has only a small voice, and is likely to be overruled by higher national priorities. That was certainly the case under Conservative Governments.
The overlap between national Government policy and the common fisheries policy causes another set of problems, as fishing tends to fall in between. The Treasury seems to have no idea about the needs and problems of fishing—it views fishing as a greedy supplicant, to be slapped back every time; it never sees it as a possible investment, or a framework for development. However, all the studies—the WWF study is fascinating in this regard—show that a proper policy of managed conservation and managed
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restructuring of the industry, which requires money, would increase the return and produce a much greater dividend on investment. That is especially important at present.
As the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations argued last night, there is a desire to progress from the present situation, in which fleets are too large and stocks too small, to the situation that we want to inherit—one of sustainable, growing stocks, on which to base a sustainable industry. The financial problem is that the Treasury is not willing to finance that process, which involves restructuring, support and subsidy for the fleet. It involves the modernisation of onshore facilities and investment to get from A to B and to reap the rewards of proper conservation and a proper common fisheries policy.
The British side has always been weakened by the Government's failure to provide the necessary finance, and their reluctance to accept finance from Europe. Finance has poured from Europe into the fishing fleets of every other country, which have been modernised, rebuilt and re-energised, whereas the British fleet has not had access to the European money that is available. Other countries' industries receive finance from Europe to install satellite surveillance, but ours does not. That is a ludicrous example of the way in which the British industry loses out every time because of the failure of national financing and our lack of access to European financing, to which other countries have access.
The consequence of that, as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) pointed out, is that our industry is run down. It is interesting to remember that we opposed the Government's plans to control fishing by limiting days at sea. We demanded a decommissioning programme, which the Treasury was too mean to finance. As a result, there were bankruptcies, closures and sell-offs of licences, which were bought up by quota hoppers who became yet another problem for our industry. That was the Treasury's fault. We are now back in the same situation. If finance is not available, the industry's restructure will he weakened. Licences will be sold on. Who will buy them? It will be the fishing industries that have been subsidised by their Governments and by Europe. That will be the inevitable consequence, unless financial action is taken.
I am about to sit down and shut up, because other hon. Members wish to speak—but first I must point out that there is a failure of co-ordination between a common fisheries policy that would be adequate to our needs, and a central Government approach to fishing that is narrow-minded and reminiscent of Gradgrind. That is damaging an industry that may have been pushed into the shadows by the foot and mouth epidemic, but which has an equal demand for fair and proper financing to keep it going from now into the future that we want it to inherit.
Mr. Quinn rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Quinn) said that he would speak for about four minutes, so I am happy to call him.
11.55 am
Mr. Lawrie Quinn: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am glad that you have been in some sale rooms in the fishing industry, understood the figures and accepted the bid that was being offered.
I have been a Member of Parliament for only four years, but I wish to take the opportunity to say how much I have enjoyed listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman) in fisheries debates. If, indeed, his speech was his valedictory performance, he will be of great service to the fishing community whatever he does in the future. What he has done in the past has been deeply appreciated by the communities in Scarborough and Whitby. It is important to put that on the record.
I never thought that I would be in a position to say that I was in some sympathy with the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), especially in respect of his argument for devolution. As he and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) know, I am a passionate advocate of English devolution. Eventually, there will be a Yorkshire and Humberside regional assembly. If any issue concerning the economy of our region demands such an approach, it is fishing. It is absolutely desperate that the need for a regionalised agenda is recognised in respect of our fishing industry north of the Humber up to the Tweed.
I hope that the Minister will continue to use whatever powers he has to influence the regional development agencies in the north-east and in Yorkshire to approach such an important part of our economy with greater seriousness than they have done so far. I thank the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan for encouraging fishing communities north of the Humber whose boats are registered in Scottish ports to take their fair share of the£23 million that has been negotiated.
Mr. Salmond: May I briefly acknowledge the support of several boats from the hon. Gentleman's constituency in the fishing demonstrations? That belied the argument that the fishing demonstrations were centred in Peterhead.
Mr. Quinn: I was about to come to that point. The hon. Gentleman indeed recognises the contribution of the boats from Whitby. Such matters concerned with the common fisheries policy show that not only do we need to take a United Kingdom approach but we must recognise the international aspects of the industry that are vital to this country.
In recent years, the shellfish industry in Whitby has been thriving. The Minister visited Whitby and Scarborough recently and the fact that refrigerated lorries leave the port of Whitby for places such as Barcelona and Paris with catches that are almost pre-booked shows that we are in a global marketplace. It supports the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen. Central (Mr. Doran).
I have three specific questions for the Minister. First, let me say for the record that I would like a response to the letter that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and I sent him recently regarding the Government's position on net sizes. He knows about the
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considerable concern in the north-east Yorkshire ports over the proposals that are on the table about net sizes in an attempt to assist with the cod recovery plan.
Secondly, will the Minister tell us how inshore fishermen such as salmon netsmen will be impacted by the CFP reforms?
Thirdly, as well as supporting the industry in discussions with the Treasury, will he argue the case in Europe on behalf of the Government? We must ensure that there is a contribution from the European purse in future proposals for environmental recovery plans, to fund the measures necessary for the industry to make sustainable progress and ensure the prosperity that many hon. Members wish to see in our communities all round the British Isles.
12 noon
Mr. Andrew George: Like other hon. Members, I strongly congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman) on securing this debate, and making a significant contribution to fisheries debates in the past. Today, he set out a sensible case for the reform of the CFP, welcomed the Green Paper and reminded us of his highly respected knowledge as well as his close family connections with the industry. As well as taking a robust attitude to me when I first spoke in fisheries debates, he has an honourable record of standing up strongly for the importance of safety in the fishing industry—a passion that we share. He has consistently maintained a line that is now gaining currency within the industry, which was considered less important some years ago. He has also made telling criticisms of the CFP in the past, all of which I agree with.
The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) emphasised the importance of maintaining relative stability, but from my own perspective, and that of Cornwall, it does not give fishermen in the western approaches—in area VII—the same fair share of fishing resource that Scottish fishermen managed to achieve. Therefore, fishermen in my area have mixed views about greater stability. Nevertheless, if that is making the best of a bad job, it is worth maintaining.
The hon. Gentleman quoted from an interesting letter from The Herald, and the Minister will no doubt deal with the issues concerned if not with the letter itself. He also made a good case for investment in the industry according to WWF models. If we are to establish seasonally closed areas to protect the collapse of target species, we should find the necessary finance over four or five years for all those circumstances in which tie-ups are required. I was encouraged by a recent statement by Commissioner Fischler supporting that line. The Minister should speak to his colleagues in Europe and encourage Commissioner Fischler to direct structural funds to support tie-ups.
Mr. Salmond: If the hon. Gentleman's colleague, the Scottish Minister for Rural Development, took the same view on tie-ups as he does, we could achieve the same progress on tie-ups as we made on decommissioning.
Mr. George: That causes me no discomfort because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the debate is ongoing and

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We must push the matter forward. We are all pushing in the same direction and the question is how that can be practically achieved in the immediate future. We are pushing towards finding medium and long-term solutions to establish a sustainable fishing industry, and short-term comments such as the hon. Gentleman's should be left for the party political scrap that is no doubt approaching. We should all take on board the responsible point that if we are to establish a sustainable fishing industry and fisheries, we must examine the matter and budget for it in the future.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) was right to suggest that the future of the fishing industry could be examined with cautious optimism. Many challenges lie ahead but, if we know what they are and are prepared to meet such management and financial challenges, there are good reasons to push the matter forward, given the opportunity afforded by a reform of the common fisheries policy.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby characteristically lambasted the CFP, as he always does. He is absolutely right. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] His fundamental criticisms are correct that the CFP is a political compromise and too remote in terms of where management decisions are made. However, his conclusion that we should pull out of the CFP, as if we could pull out willy nilly, is clearly unrealistic, although I agree with his criticisms. He is correct that the UK fleet was treated unfairly during the 1990s in relation to other European fleets.
The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Quinn) emphasised his passion for devolution, which I share—[Interruption.] I like passion, provided that we have passionate devolution to regions that people feel passionate about, rather than to sanitised, synthetic places that do not exist. Provided that it is on that basis, I am sure that we can passionately step forward.
I have a number of questions fox the Minister, some of which relate to points that have already been made. What progress is being made on the hake recovery programme? There was supposed to have been an announcement, and there may have been, although it has not yet reached my desk. The Commission's emergency powers are to be clarified, and it is disappointing that there is still an across-the-board cut in the hake quota for the western approaches that affects the whole fleet, although as far as Cornish fishermen are concerned, hake stocks are in a healthy state. Our fishermen are catching larger fish than their Spanish counterparts.
What progress has been made, on the scientific assessment of the use of pingers in the tuna driftnet fishery? I understand from the industry that the use of pingers is making such a method as eco-friendly as line-caught tuna. I would welcome the Minister's comments on that.
An interesting and telling article appeared on 20 April in Fishing News, which is an excellent publication, as the Minister knows. It appeared on the back page and mentioned a trawler owning family from Hull, the Boyds, who pointed out the problem of catching small fish, particularly cod, haddock and plaice. They made it clear from their long professional and family experience in the industry that there is a commercial advantage in purchasing small plate-sized fish. There appears to be an
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increase in the catching of small and juvenile fish. Will the Minister tell us what he knows about numbers of small fish being caught and about the actions being taken to address that?
The common fisheries policy presents major opportunities. I welcome the regional dimension in the six and 12-mile retention zone, although certain hon. Members, who seem strangely to be absent today, tell us that not all those reforms are possible in one round. I have been promoting multi-annual quota setting for years; I welcome that and the consideration of improvements in technical measures to enhance stock management.
Fundamentally, however, the regional dimension of the CFP is the most important focus. The Green Paper considers it from a purely advisory and consultative viewpoint. I urge the Minister to give those regional committees real teeth. If we want adequate pan-European enforcement and monitoring of the CFP, it must be seen to be even across the board. I encourage the Minister to establish bilateral agreements, whereby United Kingdom fishing inspectors might spot-check Spanish fishing ports or any other ports, rather than going down the route taken by the Green Paper, which would establish a joint inspection structure. In that way we might maintain national fisheries enforcement instead of setting up a new European structure.
12.11 pm
Mr. Malcolm Moss: I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman), not only on securing the debate but on his customarily authoritative contribution. He said that the CFP was over-centralised, over-bureaucratic and undemocratic, and I could not agree more with that assessment. The longer I listened to him, the more I thought that he was persuaded by Conservative party policy on fishing, as I agreed with about 90 per cent. of what he said. When he talked about taking back national control, I thought that he was with us, but he then qualified what he had said by suggesting that national control should stop after 24 miles. Why stop after 24 miles?
Sir Robert Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Moss: No, I have only eight minutes, and plenty to say.
I agree with most of the comments that the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde made about multi-annual total allowable catches and multi-species quotas, and with his important point about industrial fishing. It makes no sense to anyone in the industry that, when there is a huge ban on fishing in a large area of the North sea for the sake of cod recovery, in other parts of the North sea we are allowing industrial fishing that is reducing the base of the pyramid of the food chain. I know that the Minister supports curtailment of that industrial fishing, but it should come as no surprise if the stocks are under pressure.
The industry's view of that cod recovery programme and the closure of the area is that it is ill thought out. It is a panic measure introduced far too late in the proceedings, which, as the hon. Member for Banff and

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Buchan (Mr. Salmond) said, has forced fishermen into grounds and fisheries where they would not normally fish at this time of year. That has led to pressure on those fisheries, and the discarding of huge quantities of young year class haddock, which would not normally be caught at this time of the year.
Given the perilous state of the fish stocks, if the stock recovery programmes are to be repeated in the future, some thought must be given to how best to sustain the fishing industry when it is not allowed to catch its normal quotas. Several speakers alluded to that, in particular the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan, who asked the Minister a direct question that I repeat: what aid will be forthcoming from the Government to sustain the fishing industry during the tie-up periods? This year will not be a one-off. It is obvious that there will be a repeat, so the Government must tell us what aid they will give the fishing industry during such periods. Otherwise, the fishing fleet will ultimately be much diminished.
The core and heart of the CFP is, as we all know, regulation 101/76, the equal access principle—the acquis communautaire to which every country that has joined the EU has signed up. What is the CFP? We assume that it is a current entity that will continue after December 2002, but the CFP as we know it, and the two principles of the six and 12-mile national limits, and the relative stability are, as the policy is currently formed, derogations, as the European Court confirmed. A Commission paper states:
"the Court of Justice has itself recognised that the quota system, as a system of national quotas, is a derogation from the general rule of equal conditions of access to fishery resources … and the principle of non-discrimination laid down in Article 40(3) of the Treaty… And there are long-standing derogations for access to inshore waters. These two factors demonstrate that at this time in the CFP's evolution"—
the paper dates back to the early 1990s—
"there are respects in which there is not complete common access to resources."
What is the real CFP? Will the Minister confirm that he recognises that those are derogations? Will he confirm that the Green Paper that has briefly been discussed this morning is not part of a review of the CFP, but simply a requirement under the regulations to report by the end of the 10 years, which is next year?
The 1991 report produced at the end of the first 10-year period of the derogations contains some interesting statements, including the following:
"The years from 1993 to 2002"—
looking ahead, as that then was—
"must be regarded not simply as a continuation of the period from 1983 to 1992 but rather as a preparation for the years to follow, when access to the Community's fishing areas will in principle be free. It is for this reason that operators in the fisheries sector must be told as soon as possible how the rules are likely to change."
That was written in 1991. What have we done in the decade since then? We have not prepared our fishing industry for the likely outcome of the meaning of the CFP momentum.
Mr. Andrew George: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Moss: I shall not give way, as I do not have much time.
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The report goes on to say that
"the principle"—
of relative stability—
"would be maintained after 2002 subject to possible adjustments to the allocation key adopted in 1983 and"—
the crucial point—
"the specific limitations resulting from the Act of Accession of Spain and Portugal to be decided on the basis of this report and submitted before … January 2002."
Given the Commission's words, we should not be surprised that, although the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan said that the Green Paper was warmly welcomed, it was not warmly welcomed by Spain and Portugal, as they have a completely different agenda.
As the treaties and the Commission's 1991 report state, any relative stability that continues in future—I do not oppose a form of relative stability in principle—must involve a share-out on a sensible basis for all sea resource areas. However, that relative stability will not be based on the same apportionment and allocation that we currently see. The real message for the British fishing industry is that if it has to make way at some point for Spain, Portugal and the other countries that acceded later than the early 1980s, that will be at the cost of its quotas. The papers that the Spanish are submitting want the mechanism for that equal access to be tradeable quotas.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) made the important point that over the next few years, as our unaided industry runs down, the only fishing industries that will be economically robust enough to make the necessary bids for the quotas will be in the EU countries—I mentioned Spain in passing—that have received considerable quantities of state aid. They will be able to buy into the quotas, and our industry will atrophy on the vine as the fishing fleets of other EU countries buy up our quotas. It would be criminal to sit back and allow that to happen. The Minister must tell us how he sees the future, and how he will protect the interests of the British fishing industry.
12.21 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Elliot Morley): I add my words of congratulation to my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman) on securing the debate. I, too, hope that that was not his valedictory speech. For the record, I should say how much I have appreciated his encouragement over the years. His family experience, which is probably unrivalled in the House, has provided much valuable advice. I was also pleased to hear that at least one member of his family has benefited from the pay-out from the loss of the Icelandic waters. Like him, I am glad that the Government have honoured a long-standing commitment and put right a wrong for the distant water fleets.
Mr. Mitchell: Hear, hear.
Mr. Morley: I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) has long campaigned for that.

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A range of issues has been raised, and I will try to get through the points raised by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), for Great Grimsby and for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Quinn), and the hon. Members for St. Ives (Mr. George) and for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss).
First, I shall deal with discards. It is not altogether fair to blame the common fisheries policy for discards. Most discards are undersized and unmarketable fish. There were discards before the CFP, and there are discards in countries where there is no CFP. That is not to say that the CFP does not have its flaws, however, and we must address the issue. As has been outlined in the debate, it is a policy well overdue for reform and revision.
The Green Paper has been broadly welcomed because it has clearly been influenced by the debate in this country, and particularly within our fishing industry. The papers produced by the Scottish Fishermen's Federation and the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations have fed into it. I welcome that. In relation to the trade-off in the annual quota negotiations, it is fair to say that there has been a lot of horse trading over the years. Ministers have been anxious to come back with increased quotas to show to their domestic industries—but that it changing. There is more realism in the Council of Ministers, and I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde that in the last Council I did not argue against the scientific advice on any quota. I accepted that advice.
In 1999 the Council of Ministers accepted the precautionary principle as a basis for setting quotas. I argued against some of the figures when the Commission recommendations went against the scientific advice. Indeed, it is important to listen to the comments of the industry. I have always tried to take its views into account in the discussions and negotiations. There is less horse trading now. It is more about examining the science and talking about what is sustainable. That applies to all countries.
We had a preliminary debate on the Commission's Green Paper at the previous Council Spain was the only country to speak against it; even Portugal, which is keen on coastal limits, did not do so. Every country except Spain broadly welcomed it as a basis for discussion. It is clear that there is a consensus on taking the Green Paper forward.
In my contribution at the Council of Ministers, I stressed how essential coastal limits are for supporting sustainable low-impact fishing. They are an important conservation management tool. Some EU countries have argued for an extension of the limit from 12 to 24 miles; I am confident that we will be able to maintain our coastal limits, and I have no objection in principle to extension. My attitude would depend on what it means in practice. It would be a pointless and empty gesture to argue for an extension to 24 miles while accepting the historical rights of vessels currently fishing within the 12 to 24-mile zone. It is difficult to deal with the question of people's historical rights.
I do not know what the Conservatives' argument about national control means—nor, I think, does anyone else. We have national control over our own
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waters within the CFP. One can argue for national control, but does that mean confiscating quota or keeping out other vessels with historic rights? We would need another treaty to effect such changes, and a Conservative Administration could not have that without withdrawing from the European Union. If that is the Conservatives' policy, they should say so, and people could judge them accordingly.
The issue of national management is related to coastal management, which we can secure. I also strongly support the case for multi-annual quotas and welcome the fact that the Commission is making proposals about them. The principle of relative stability is also extremely important. It would not be in any country's interests to open up the principle of relative stability—a principle that is not under threat. My legal advice is that it will continue unchanged unless there is a qualified majority against it within the Council of Ministers. I do not believe that there is such a qualified majority.
Norway's policy of landing discards is an interesting one, which I have discussed with the Norwegian Minister—and the Icelandic Minister, when Iceland had the same policy. The problem, which those countries admit, is the difficulty of enforcement. Norway, Iceland and the Faroe islands have fewer discards because they use bigger mesh sizes. They do not have the mixed fishery that we have in the North sea; theirs is more of a single species fishery. Nevertheless, we need to learn lessons in that regard.
I agree with hon. Members' comments about industrial fishing. My own views have been well documented over the years. As a Minister, I take pride in the fact that we have introduced closed areas for industrial fishing, as part of a proper scientific analysis. We have also reached agreement with the Danes, to whose co-operation I pay tribute, on the science of industrial fishery, the impact on fish stocks and the ecological chain, and the levels of by-catch of whitefish. We need sound scientific information if we are to argue for change. I have consistently made it clear that fisheries for human consumption must take priority in the CFP and the Council of Ministers.
There are arguments about how the industry should be financially supported. I have always accepted our industry's case for support for structural change, and have kept my promise to argue for that: indeed, I have delivered a package of measures. There will always be argument about whether the money goes far enough, but that package consists of £11 million for the financial instrument for fisheries guidance package,£6 million for a one-year decommissioning package and£5.5 million for support for ports. There are additional funds for the regional development agencies in England, and money is even available through the rural development programme. Considerable funds can therefore be directed towards the industry.
Time does not permit me to go on. Suffice it to say that there are changes to the industry. We need effective recovery plans and the support of the industry to achieve them. The industry has a good future and untapped potential, which warrant the support that the Government are giving for structural changes. I do not believe that demonstrating is the right way to achieve that.

NHS Appointments (Political Bias)
12.30 pm
Mr. Graham Brady: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the matter of political bias in national health service appointments. As the Under-Secretary of State for Health will recall, it is about nine months since we lasted debated the subject in Westminster Hall. It is now more than a year since the Commissioner for Public Appointments published her report on 22 March 2000, in which she made some damning indictments against the Government's record on political appointments in the NHS. I shall quote briefly from her report:
"I conclude from the evidence…that there are examples where a candidate's political association has been a decisive factor in their early selection and appointment, and that decisions have not always been based on merit … the process itself has been politicised".
On 22 March 2000, the Department of Health responded to the report and, in a press statement, promised a fundamental overhaul of the NHS appointment system. That overhaul did not happen, and primary care trust boards were stuffed with Labour party activists in the same way that health authorities and NHS trust boards had been before. Instead of real action to tackle the problem, we had spin and media management.
Ministers repeatedly deny that there is a problem. They even deny that Dame Rennie Fritchie, the Commissioner for Public Appointments, criticised their actions and record. They point frequently to increased numbers of women and ethnic minority candidates who have been appointed. Such outcomes are welcome, but only if they come alongside appointment on merit—appointment of the best possible person for the job—and not instead of it. As Dame Rennie said in her report last year, positive discrimination would be a step too far.
I have been pursuing the matter for some time and, on 31 March 1999, I raised my concerns at Prime Minister's Questions. The Prime Minister's response was very interesting. He baldly stated:
"An independent system now appoints people."—[Official Report, 31 March 1999; Vol. 328, c. 1087.]
That was two years before the independent commissioner for NHS appointments was appointed. A written answer that was given to me by the Under-Secretary about a week ago points out that the independent mechanism has not yet come into action; therefore, in light of the evidence, the Prime Minister stated something two years ago that was hard to support. That, in turn, was a year before Dame Rennie's report, which was so damning.
On 22 March 2000, I again raised the matter with the Prime Minister. In typical fashion, he tried to avoid a straight answer and tried to manipulate facts to his advantage. He quoted part of a sentence from the commissioner's report:
"The issue of politicisation of appointments is not new—the practice of inviting MPs to comment on the shortlists of candidates was first introduced by the Conservative Government".—[Official Report, 22 March 2000; Vol. 346, c. 994.]
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He failed, of course, to conclude the sentence with the phrase
"but has gained a new momentum since the last General Election."
He went to the heart of the commissioner's report and pulled one sentence to pieces to try to excuse or justify conduct that had been criticised by an independent officer who was appointed to maintain high standards in public life.
Some people have raised the question whether an appropriate political balance has been maintained. I asked the Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office about that or 21 March 2001, and he replied to the effect that the number of councillors appointed to NHS boards reflected the proportion of councillors on the ground. Again, that is not supported by the evidence—by neither my experiences nor by rigorous scrutiny of evidence taken by the independent Commissioner for Public Appointments. Ministers might wish to ignore the facts and make other claims, but they should not be allowed to get away with it.
I raised my concerns with the Leader of the House on 30 March 2000. She stated that
"appointments are undertaken by a panel with an independent assessor".
Referring to me, she said:
"The hon. Gentleman…continues to raise a matter that is erroneous".—[Official Report, 30 March 2000; Vol. 347, c. 508.]
That is as though the commissioner's report, which had come out just a week before, had never been published. It also found that people were appointed for reasons other than merit. The commissioner raised doubts about the effectiveness of the independent assessors and said:
"Not all independent assessors are independent.
From 22 March to 5 July 2000, the Department of Health took no action apart from issuing a press release. On 11 April, the Minister confirmed in a written answer:
"We have no plans to meet the commissioner"
to discuss the findings of her report. Indeed, no Minister had taken the trouble to meet Dame Rennie before the Department issued its press statement on 22 March. The Minister also promised that
"a detailed response will be made in due course".—[Official Report, 11 April 2000; Vol. 348, c. 132W.]
However, there was nothing until 5 July. As we rehearsed in July's debate in Westminster Hall, that response came a day after I had succeeded in securing a 90-minute debate on the subject.
On 2 May, I asked how many hon. Members had been consulted on appointments, contrary to the recommendations of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Minister answered that the selection process had been largely complete when the Fritchie report was published. The implication was clear—that action had been taken but that it had been impossible for that action to impact on appointments already made. When I asked, nearly a year later on 26 April 2001, what representations had been made by hon. Members in connection with appointments to NHS trusts, health authorities and primary care trusts, Ministers avoided the question. The reply stated only that
"the process of consulting hon. Members was discontinued in September 2001".—[Official Report, 26 April 2001; Vol. 367, c. 333W.]

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I presume that that was a typographical error and that it should have stated September 2000. Even if that consultation of hon. Members was discontinued in September 2000, it would have been six months after the commissioner had criticised the Government on those grounds, six months during which the systematic politicisation of the NHS continued, and six months after the Government promised a radical overhaul of the appointments process.
In a written answer to me on 26 April, the Secretary of State confirmed that he had not met Dame Rennie during the past year. There is a damning report of the Government's record of politicisation in NHS appointments—a critique which suggests that the best person for the job is not appointed—and the Secretary of State has not even bothered to meet the Commissioner for Public Appointments since her report was published a year ago. The only ministerial meeting with the commissioner was on 29 November 2000, when the Under-Secretary of State paid her the courtesy of a visit.
On 26 April, I asked what undertakings had been given to the commissioner in respect of her report's recommendations. It was clear from the response that there was only one: that an NHS appointments commission was to be established, under the chairmanship of Sir William Wells. The body was established on 1 April and I was told in the written answer that it would begin making appointments shortly. That is a year after the Fritchie report was published, a year in which no action whatever was taken and two years after the Prime Minister told me on the Floor of the House that an independent appointments process had already been established.
What is the current position? To find evidence of what the Department of Health is doing, rather than what it says it is doing, I examined the evidence of appointments to primary care trusts. It is significant that the trusts were established on 1 April 2000. They have entirely come into being since Dame Rennie's report on appointments to NHS trusts and health authorities. The Government have had the benefit of the guidance, recommendations and evidence of Dame Rennie since the existence of primary care trusts Yet the evidence is that of all those appointed to primary care trust boards, 20 per cent.—one in five—declare a record of political activity for the Labour party, 6 per cent. for the Conservatives and 5 per cent. for the Liberal Democrats. That is almost exactly the same proportion as in NHS trusts and health authorities. No wonder that a report in The Times on 14 April stated:
"Dame Rennie Fritchie is said to be furious that Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary, has ignored her advice".
She receives as many complaints as she received 18 months ago.
I have pursued the matter for some time, as the Minister knows. I have tried to raise its profile and to ensure that action is taken. I took stock after a year or so and asked myself what was its significance, why it mattered, and whether I should continue my investigations. I concluded that it was a matter of the greatest significance and that I am right to pursue it assiduously; I shall continue to do so. It matters, first, because all parties accepted the basic principle of fairness embodied in the Nolan report and in the steps
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taken by the Committee on Standards in Public Life to try to raise the standard of behaviour. All parties pay lip service to those principles, but if they are ignored they are worthless and might as well be swept away.
Secondly, it matters because of the important question of competence. If people have been appointed other than on merit, the best people for the job have not taken the job and these vital posts in our NHS will end up in the hands of people who are not up to the job. That is a serious issue, especially now that primary care trusts are to be given an expanded role and more control over larger budgets. A certain person might have been considered competent when trusts had smaller budgets and a less important role, but the standard will need to be higher in view of the expanded role envisaged for primary care trusts.
Thirdly, it is indicative of a culture of dishonesty among the Government, who have refused to accept Dame Rennie's criticisms. Mr. Anthony Harrison of the King's Fund investigated the Government's record on the NHS prior to a likely general election. In a passage reported in the weekend press, he said:
"There is a reign of terror in the Department of Health. Nobody is talking to us about these activity figures."
A respected independent institution cannot acquire the information on which it depends because of a reign of terror.
Two million people—twice the number when the present Government came into office—are now waiting to see a consultant, and the average waiting time for inpatient treatment is also higher than in 1997. The president of the Royal College of Surgeons described the Government's health policy as unethical and said that patients were suffering as a result. This week has seen GPs adopt an unprecedented work to rule.
It is now more important than ever to have the most able people— not political placements—running the NHS, and to have people who are prepared to speak out when there is evidence of wrong-doing or incompetence. By ignoring the findings of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, the Government have shown contempt not just for Dame Rennie and her office, but for the House of Commons and the Nolan principles. It is a perfect demonstration of the arrogance of power and its ability to corrupt, so well exemplified by the Government.
12.47 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ms Gisela Stuart): I congratulate the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) on securing the debate on NHS appointments. One could be forgiven for thinking that it was a debate about the relationship of the Department of Health and the Commissioner for Public Appointments rather than the actual title of the debate— NHS appointments and political bias.
I realise that the subject is close to the hon. Gentleman's heart, but I am taken aback if he believes that repeating the same fact over and over again amounts to evidence. Neither is the quotation of isolated comments from favourable newspaper sources my idea of proper evidence. The hon. Gentleman might benefit from taking note of an old IBM maxim: one should not mistake activity for achievement. The hon.

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Gentleman may be right that we have not moved quickly enough, but I shall challenge and refute his allegation that we have not taken any action.
I am happy to affirm that people are appointed to NHS boards on merit and not as a result of political bias. If an NHS non-executive director has a declared political commitment to Labour, the hon. Gentleman seems to equate it with not being up to the job. Just because a Labour sympathiser is appointed, it does not mean that standards are dropping. The hon. Gentleman appears to believe that standards are falling simply because Conservative appointments are not made.
I shall outline what the Government have done. There is no evidence that party affiliation is connected with competence. I want to put it on record that we have the highest regard for our appointments.
Mr. Brady: Will the Minister give way?
Ms Stuart: I shall give way once, but only once.
Mr. Brady: I am grateful. The allegations that the Minister refuses to accept are not mine, but are contained in the commissioner's report. Does she accept that the commissioner found evidence of appointments being made other than on merit?
Ms Stuart: I take the line that we decouple non-political bias. Where is the evidence to support language such as "stuffing with appointees" and saying that they are not up to the job? Those are two different issues, and I should like to make it clear that we have the highest regard for those being appointed.
In a debate last year, I pointed out to the hon. Gentleman the comments of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. Even the commissioner's independent auditors, Ernst and Young, supported many of our arguments that the process is proper. The commissioner's report on NHS appointments stated:
"The data available suggest that the proportion of candidates declaring political activity at the application stage of the process are similar to the proportions declaring political activity at the appointment stage."
Almost two-thirds of applicants for primary care trusts declared no political activity. In other words, there was no suggestion that those with a Labour party background were any more likely to be appointed than anyone else. The fact is that if only a small number of Conservative activists come forward, only a proportionally small number are likely to be appointed.
I also pointed out in my response last year that since January 1999 the evidence showed that applicants who had declared political activity on behalf of the Labour party had a 39 per cent. chance of being appointed, whereas Conservative applicants had a 56 per cent. chance. The hon. Gentleman chose to ignore such evidence at the time, and he has done so again today. I have no doubt whatsoever that when Dame Rennie Fritchie concludes her current examination of appointments to primary care trusts, the same picture of a fair process will emerge.
On taking office, we wanted to ensure that NHS boards were firmly rooted in the communities that they serve. We therefore placed a premium on candidates'
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records of community service. We wanted people from all walks of life, not only business, so we advertised widely in national newspapers, specialist journals and the minority press to attract people who might otherwise not have come forward. In addition, all appointments to primary care trusts have been advertised locally to ensure a wide field of candidates. Also to widen the pool of candidates, we asked hon. Members and local authorities to make nominations from their local knowledge.
Our changes have been hugely successful in making NHS boards more representative of their communities. The proportion of women on the boards has increased from 39 per cent. before the election to 49 per cent. today. I am proud of that record; I make no apology for it. I resent the hon. Gentleman treating the matter as if it was used as a fig-leaf. It is a good record. We have an even better record on the proportion of black and ethnic minority candidates appointed, which has increased from 5 per cent. to 12 per cent. The proportion of people with disabilities has also more than doubled.
Equally successful has been the increase since 1997 of those appointed with a community background. The number of people from the voluntary sector or who are primarily users or carers has increased to 19 per cent. We have moved away from the domination of NHS boards by white middle-class business men that prevailed under the Conservatives. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman considers that they are the only people who are up to the job; I do not. Of course, our boards still need business skills, and people from that background are still represented, but overall the balance has changed to help boards focus on real local issues.
In planning the way forward, we have responded positively to the recommendations in Dame Rennie Fritchie's useful report. To suggest that the Government have failed to respond to her recommendations or to take them seriously is simply wrong. Dame Rennie herself has not suggested that that is the case. I know that the hon. Gentleman entered the House of Commons only in 1997, just like me, but one thing that we should have learned is that simply because one newspaper report cites sources close to someone does not, never has and never will amount to evidence. Let us just consider the facts.
We have, in fact, gone much further than the commissioner's own recommendations in order to meet her concern about the perception of politicisation. I take issue with the hon. Gentleman's definition of what is independent. He sneeringly refers to independent assessors who are not independent. The process was independent.
Mr. Brady: On a point of order, Mr. Gale. I should like to make it clear that I was quoting directly from the commissioner's report.
Mr. Roger Gale (in the Chair): That is a matter of record, but it is not a point of order for the Chair.
Ms Stuart: It has been the practice under successive Governments to involve Members directly in the appointment of trust and health authority chairs. Members' views have been sought at the short-list stage. It was not this Administration who introduced the

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process. We put at an end to it. Dame Rennie was critical that this part of the process did not meet her requirement for transparency at all stages. Critics were able to suggest that it introduced an element of political patronage into the process. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health therefore wrote to all Members advising them that their views would no longer be sought from last autumn's trust appointment round onwards.
We also adopted measures last year to streamline re-appointments. If candidates serving their first term had performed well and had received a satisfactory appraisal report, they were recommended to Ministers as the sole candidate where they wished to be re-appointed. Again those were suggestions that were put forward that we adopted. We accepted Dame Rennie's recommendation that we should continue to give members the opportunity to draw from their local knowledge and nominate candidates. That was always on the understanding that their nominees would be interviewed and treated in exactly the same way as all other candidates.
However, we did not accept the commissioner's recommendation on the issue of councillors on NHS boards. Dame Rennie suggested that we review whether
"the presence of so many councillors on NHS boards is healthy".
It should not be a surprise, particularly to hon. Members, that many of those applying for a position on an NHS board also show their public spirit through involvement in local politics. We do not see that as a disadvantage. On the contrary, it can be a positive advantage.
We have been quite open about our wish to see the NHS acting with its local partners so that all the issues that make for a healthy community can be considered together. When one sees how the NHS is working more closely with social services, it is obvious that that is the right way forward. Similarly, it should be noted that the Select Committee on Public Administration, including Conservative Members, also rejected that recommendation from the commissioner.
Most significant of all the Government's measures, however, has been our decision to establish an independent NHS appointments commission for all appointments to NHS trusts, health authorities and primary care trusts. That was not in fact recommended
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in Dame Rennie's report, although the Select Committee itself suggested it. We have gone further. We wanted to remove the process entirely from the political domain, going well beyond what is required by Nolan principles and the commissioner's guidance.
The commission came into being on 1 April, and all non-executive and chair appointments will be its responsibility from now on. However, it will continue to be subject to Dame Rennie's guidance, and subject to independent scrutiny and regular audit. The new chair of the appointments commission, Sir William Wells, has already met Dame Rennie and will be working with her closely over the coming months as the commission begins its work. Sir William was appointed as a regional chair under the previous Administration, and they awarded him his knighthood for services to the NHS. He has never been politically active, but has served the NHS in a variety of different positions for more than 30 years. It is for that reason that we made an appointment on merit irrespective of political background. That is now on the record.
There is more harmony between Dame Rennie's office and the Department of Health than the hon. Gentleman would like to believe. We have been able to discuss our proposals for the NHS appointments commission with it during the course of its formation. I know that the first official act of Sir William's term of office as chair has been to meet Dame Rennie. I understand that that meeting was constructive and fruitful. Neither are we ignoring the needs of those whom we appoint. I have recently discussed with the NHS Confederation how we might review the roles of chairs and non-executives. That was another recommendation in the report. Its role has moved on from the quasi-business model introduced to support the ill-conceived internal market. We need to ensure that everyone is clear about the contribution that he or she is expected to make to our new NHS and its development through the NHS plan.
I have agreed with the NHS Confederation that we will build on the extensive consultation that it has recently carried out with its members in setting out its new role. In conclusion, we value our non-executive directors. We draw them from the wider community. We would like to put on record our gratitude for the role that they play. Appointments are made on merit, not as a result of political bias.
I hope that the new system will move beyond even the suspicion of bias.

Asylum Seekers (North-East Lincolnshire)
12.59 pm
Mr. Austin Mitchell: I shall raise the specific issue of the transfer of use of Springfield Hall in Grimsby to accommodate about 209 asylum seekers and the general issue of the dispersal of an unknown but probably substantial number of asylum seekers to north-east Lincolnshire. That is being done without the consultation of North East Lincolnshire council. Indeed, it found out what was proposed only by accident. South Humber health authority and the education committee were not consulted either. They have all been treated with contempt as a result of what looks to be an administrative cock-up or mess. There has certainly been confusion, and I would like the Minister to say who is responsible for the mess and exactly what is going on.
The shaft of light that has fallen on dispersal procedures as a result of the situation shows neither an attractive picture nor a process that will win good will and consent. I emphasise that this is not a matter of racial hostility or hostility towards asylum seekers in general. Indeed, North East Lincolnshire council has shown the way by welcoming asylum seekers. Early in the process, the local authority made a voluntary offer to accommodate asylum seekers. I think that 50 or 60 have been going through—or 40 at any one time—and they are accommodated in the Towers.
The situation has worked well, as it should have done. Grimsby is a good place in which to be or to live. I hope that the asylum seekers have enjoyed being there and liked it, because they have certainly caused no problems. The reaction to them in Grimsby has been supportive and welcoming, which is in total contrast to the experience in Tetney, which is across the border of civilisation down in Lincolnshire. There have been problems with accommodation provided there, including fighting, racial hostility, the eventual disappearance of some asylum seekers and the closure of accommodation.
That has not been our experience in north-east Lincolnshire, but we share the circulation of a newspaper, so problems in Lincolnshire become headlines in north-east Lincolnshire even though the problems and the fault for them are not ours. I want to make it clear that north-east Lincolnshire is not hostile towards asylum seekers—I am not and nor is the council. The problem is the consequences that flow from the initial and maintained generosity of offering accommodation for asylum seekers. As a result, Grimsby, not Cleethorpes, was designated a cluster without being consulted or asked.
Answers to my parliamentary questions, however, show that we should have been asked. One answer says:
"All accommodation is acquired within defined Cluster Areas the extent and location of which is agreed between the local authorities concerned and National Asylum Support Service".
There was no agreement on the extent and location of the cluster, so that answer is wrong.
The answer to another parliamentary question—I have tabled a substantial number—says:
"The identification of suitable cluster areas for the dispersal of asylum seekers and their dependants is based on research conducted centrally by NASS. Information is obtained from local authorities and other organisations".
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No information has been obtained, so I am not sure about the quality of that research. The answer goes on:
"NASS consulted the regional consortium to enable the relevant local authority to have an input into the decision making process."—[Official Report, 30 April 2001; Vol.367, c. 541–42W.]
However, we had no input; North East Lincolnshire council was not consulted in the decision-making process.
More important North East Lincolnshire council was not told the consequences of any designation as a cluster area. The problem with being a cluster area is that it opens the door to larger numbers. Even if it had been told, the consequences that now apply did not apply in 1999 when the area took the first asylum seekers. Since 1999, private accommodation providers have been brought into the game, financed by NASS—that is, by the Home Office. Clearly, the incentive for private accommodation providers, who have access to the clusters for dispersal, is to buy where property is cheaper and where they can make the biggest profit. That has nothing to do with the suitability of an area; it has to do with local house costs.
One of the joys of living in Grimsby is that our house prices are comparatively low. I will bore you some time, Mr. Deputy Speaker, with the sad tale of the depreciation on my house in Grimsby, which was a heart-breaking experience. Property prices are an incentive for accommodation to be sought by private accommodation providers. Indeed, that will be a mandate.
On 30 April 2001, the Minister told me what neither I nor the local authority knew, that there are now four private contractors and one registered social landlord seeking to purchase property in north-east Lincolnshire. "Seeking to purchase" indicates that the process has gone some way. That does not give the number who have not yet found property, but shows the number who are looking for it. That is disastrous, because north-east Lincolnshire does not fulfil the criteria set down for an area to be designated as a cluster. Those criteria were set down by the Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), in answers to parliamentary questions and in a letter to me of 24 April 2001. She says:
"This will ideally include: where available accommodation is located; where a multi-cultural or multi-ethnic population is evident, and where there is scope to develop a voluntary and community support infrastructure. The nomination of Grimsby as a cluster area has been discussed and agreed between the Regional Consortium and NASS."
There is no mention of north-east Lincolnshire playing any role in that. The letter goes on:
"Accommodation Providers who wish to offer a property to NASS which includes more than 6 bedspaces must do so having obtained any relevant planning permission."
However, planning permission has been applied for, but not yet obtained. The letter continues:
"Thereafter, NASS will also consult with Local Authorities via the Regional Consortium".
NASS is clearly involved in the purchase, because it is coming to see the council tomorrow to discuss it. Therefore, NASS is playing a part at an earlier stage than the Minister said.
Grimsby does not fulfil the criteria. It does not have a substantial ethnic population that can provide asylum seekers with supportive networks and contacts. It seems

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at times that I am the only immigrant in Grimsby, because a total distaste for Yorkshiremen is advertised from time to time in graffiti—not, I hope, directed at me. There is only a small ethnic population, mainly of professionals. Indeed, the health service in Grimsby would not keep going without the ethnic community. However, many of the applications for education finance have been turned down because Grimsby does not have a sufficiently large ethnic population to qualify for special educational measures. Therefore, it seems ludicrous that Grimsby is supposed to have a large enough ethnic population to accommodate networks and support for asylum seekers, but is considered too small to qualify for anything else. That is nonsense.
I want to know what research has been done on Grimsby and who carried it out. Is it just opportunism that the Home Office is now working on its well-known principle of never giving a sucker an even break? Grimsby volunteered to take asylum seekers in 1999 and now it is facing the problem of accommodation providers coming in because property prices are cheap.
The Minister stated that another criterion was the provision of services and back-up, but health services and education provision are already under strain in north-east Lincolnshire, because of inadequate finance in the past. Neither South Humber health authority nor the education authority has been consulted. Responsibility for the decision to designate Grimsby as a cluster was attributed to the Yorkshire asylum consortium, which issued its own press release three days ago stating that Grimsby is not suitable to take large numbers of asylum seekers That is a clear statement that the consortium is not happy with the designation, so why was it given?
I want Grimsby's designation as a cluster area to be withdrawn, because it was imposed without consultation and without the consequences being explained. Local good will is needed if the necessary services and support are to be provided, but if a decision to designate an area as a cluster is imposed, that will not be forthcoming. If there is to be harmony and acceptance, there must be consultation and co-operation. Dispersal of sizeable numbers will not work if local opinion is not taken into account; if the local authority and local services are not consulted, they will not willingly co-operate or give their support.
An application has been made for the change of use of part of Springfield Hall, an old hospital which was in existence when I was elected Member of Parliament for the constituency, and which has been used as accommodation for students and nurses. There is an old people's home and a crèche nursery nearby in the hospital grounds, and old people's private accommodation in the surrounding area. It is a quiet area about a mile and a half from the centre of Grimsby and two miles from the more swinging centre of Cleethorpes—south Yorkshire's holiday paradise. There is not much to do in Springfield for 209 asylum seekers. The first that the local authority knew about the matter was the planning application, which caused alarm and concern, especially as one big application indicates that an unknown number of others are in process.
The locals are most upset and I have had a large amount of mail on the subject from my constituents. I was called to a protest meeting on Tuesday which was
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packed with very angry people. One gentleman at the back kept bawling, "We won't re-elect you." I had to point out that I could not do much for people if they did not re-elect me. However, that is the atmosphere that has been produced.
The only control available is planning. The local authority has to give its planning consent for the change of use; a planning application is pretty well automatic, but it does not consider local reaction or the needs of social services. It might be difficult to take such an application before November, but as substantial money is involved, if it is rejected the purchaser will appeal to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the cost of that appeal will fall on Grimsby. That is no way to decide a major issue which has considerable social repercussions.
The arguments about suitability will be considered only after the planning application. The Minister of State said in answer to earlier questions that local authorities may in some cases advise that particular areas, identified by postcode, may not be suitable for asylum seekers and that that information will be taken into consideration in determining whether to accept accommodation for asylum seekers. However, that consideration will come only after the planning application—which cannot take account of such matters. Suitability should be considered first, not second.
In conclusion—words that my hon. Friend the Minister has been eagerly awaiting —I say that the situation is a totally unacceptable mess into which the local authority should not have been put. It is a cock-up. Who is responsible for it? The Home Office owes us the consideration of reconsidering—indeed, of
withdrawing—the cluster status that has been imposed on us without our consent. It is no use approaching such a major and emotive issue as dispersal—right and proper though dispersal is—with a mixture of cock-up and opportunistic grabbing at the cheapest property around. Local good will, support and co-operation from the local authority are needed, as is careful management. That is why the acceptance of 40 or so asylum seekers into my area in 1979, which has been maintained since by careful management and preparation, has been successful.
For a policy to work, we also need to assure local people that we are working on a level playing field. There has been no dispersal to the neighbouring authorities of North Lincolnshire or the East Riding of Lincolnshire, for example. The only safe action seems to be to withdraw the cluster. NASS is seeking new cluster areas. It will not find them if it operates in such a fashion; it will not gather good will from the areas that it is approaching. We want the unsuitable planning application, which is conditional on the cluster status, to be withdrawn and to start over. The local authority has been treated with contempt, which is disgraceful. The people of Springfield have been upset and made resentful. As their Member of Parliament, I cannot justify or even explain what has happened. It is not a policy; it is a farce. I appeal to the Minister to withdraw the cluster status. We are happy to talk about the issue and to do our best to accommodate asylum seekers—voluntarily, and with good will, not in the way that it has been done.
1.17 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Charles Clarke): First, I apologise for being present instead of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), the Minister of State who deals with asylum matters. She is engaged in parliamentary business in the European Standing Committee discussing common asylum procedures, a matter close to her heart. She has asked me to stand in for her today, which I am happy to do. She had a substantial meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) on Thursday last week to discuss several of the issues that he has raised. I shall report on the progress made on them.
It is important to place on record our appreciation of my hon. Friend's point that his approach is not informed by racial or other hostility to asylum seekers or by a NIMBY—"not in my backyard"—syndrome. We also entirely accept his fundamental point that it is important for our dispersal policy to be warmly received by the local community. Before dealing with the issues that my hon. Friend addressed, it is appropriate to make a couple of remarks about the overall policy on asylum seekers.
When the Labour party came to office, the responsibility for providing housing for destitute asylum seekers fell on the shoulders of local authorities, in particular those in London and Kent where our main ports of entry are situated. That situation was not helped by the fact that most asylum seekers preferred, for a variety of reasons, to stay in London or other parts of the south-east, which has meant that those areas have had to bear a disproportionate responsibility for our obligations in regard to asylum seekers, with economic implications in certain circumstances of the type that my hon. Friend described.
We decided at an early stage that that situation was not sustainable. We attempted to devise a scheme that would lead to the transfer of responsibility for the support of destitute asylum seekers from local to central Government, and we set up the National Asylum Support Service to administer a support scheme. A feature of the scheme is the provision of housing that is located away from the south-east of England for those asylum seekers who need it.
In order to achieve that, it was necessary to ensure that the National Asylum Support Service had access to a range of accommodation across the country that was ready for use by asylum seekers who turned to the service for support. To that end, in the latter part of 1999, the National Asylum Support Service set in hand the procurement of accommodation from both the private and the public sectors through a tendering process. The aim was to negotiate contracts to provide for the delivery of accommodation in areas to be known as cluster areas—hence, the word "cluster", which my hon. Friend used.
Before going into detail about the situation in north-east Lincolnshire and Great Grimsby, I want to emphasise that I believe that our policy to disperse
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responsibility among different areas is the right policy. I did not hear my hon. Friend say that he does not agree with that policy, but he might correct me.
Mr. Mitchell: I accept that.
Mr. Clarke: My hon. Friend commented on the way in which the policy had been put into effect in his local authority and the constituency that he serves. I appreciate his comments, and we will examine the issue.
The approach that we took was to establish the cluster areas where there is suitable and available accommodation, where it is possible for asylum seekers to link with existing communities and where the support of voluntary and community groups can be developed. However, we accepted that at first it might not always be possible to achieve our aims completely, because all the criteria might not be in place before asylum seekers were dispersed. It is also the case that some support structures are unlikely to develop until asylum seekers are actually located in an area.
I now turn to the key point that my hon. Friend raised: the identification of cluster areas and the process by which that happened. The identification of areas relied on research carried out centrally by the National Asylum Support Service and on local and regional information fed through to us by regional consortiums, local authorities, voluntary sector groups and other organisations. The National Asylum Support Service has been circulating, and continues to circulate, information about the areas that we are using and are likely to use and the languages that we need to accommodate.
We understood that the Yorkshire and Humberside regional consortium had nominated Grimsby—there might be an issue for discussion here, to which I shall return in a second—and that Grimsby had been an active member of the Yorkshire and Humberside consortium until at least last June. However, it appears that there was a lack of understanding about what was involved in the process, and we are now addressing that.
The Minister of State, Home Office—my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green—wrote to all Members of Parliament on 25 May 2000, informing them of the cluster areas throughout the country. Grimsby was specifically mentioned at that time. None of that excuses the problems that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby raised, because a parliamentary letter or a particular process is not enough; it is necessary to have a proper dialogue about what one is trying to do. My hon. Friend said that, in his opinion, such a dialogue did not take place at the appropriate time.
In establishing the regional consortiums, including the Yorkshire and Humberside regional consortium, we tried to provide information. We also consulted on offers of accommodation where the premises would have more than six bed spaces. That is the basic structure that we established.
Turning to the provision of accommodation, we understood from the Yorkshire and Humberside consortium that Grimsby had been identified as a suitable cluster area for accommodation of that type. As I said earlier, we made it clear that we would seek accommodation from both private and public sector

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sources. Indeed, when the scheme started in April last year, we had some difficulty with public sector sources. In fact, we had a contract with only Glasgow city council, but I am glad to say that we now have seven contracts with local authority consortiums: Yorkshire and Humberside, Glasgow, north-east England, north-west region, Cardiff city council, west midlands and east midlands. We are now beginning to achieve the balanced approach that had been our policy ambition at the start. Whether it is a question of private or public provision, we tightly monitor standards of accommodation, because that is a particular issue.
Following my hon. Friend's meeting with my hon. Friend the Minister of State, a close conversation is now taking place between the officials of the National Asylum Support Service, the Yorkshire and Humberside consortium and North East Lincolnshire council to try to establish the precise situation. However, it is clear from what my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby said both to my hon. Friend the Minister of State and in this debate that there are serious concerns about the effectiveness of that dialogue and the process by which Grimsby was proposed to be considered by the consortium.
I am not this morning able to give my hon. Friend the clear answers that he has sought, but I can say—I briefed myself on the matter immediately before the debate, so as to have the most up-to date information—that conversations are actively taking place to try to clarify the situation. I hope that we can be clearer than thus far. I understand that NASS has dispersed only a limited number of people to Grimsby—no more than 10 as at the end of March; and, provisional figures suggest, not more than another 10 by mid-April. It may be of interest to the Chamber that the languages that are especially relevant in Grimsby—because language has been the basis of the cluster—are Albanian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Polish and English. That may be of use to my hon. Friend when considering how best to proceed with the matter.
My hon. Friend mentioned local speculation about Springfield Hall. Given that we were focusing on Grimsby as a cluster area, the policy has been to look for further accommodation and to invite bids from both private and public consortiums to provide it. Springfield Hall has been offered to NASS by one of our private accommodation providers, and NASS has consulted the regional consortium, but, as my hon. Friend accurately said, that cannot proceed unless planning permission is
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agreed in the normal way. The planning process will be honoured in every particular, as my hon. Friend would want.
My hon. Friend raised an interesting point about the chronological relationship between the offer to NASS of a particular form of accommodation and the planning process. I accept that we need to address that chronological issue, and I assure him that we will do so in policy terms. However, it is the old chicken-and-egg story: if there is to be accommodation, public or private, in a particular locality, that requires planning permission and to be accepted by NASS within the contractual arrangements. It may be that the chronological process is not perfectly established, but I know from my other responsibilities in the Home Office that it is difficult to get such issues exactly right. For example, when locating secure accommodation, the Home Office may view a location as desirable, but it is then for the local planning authority to take its decisions in the proper way. It is not always possible correctly to establish such matters.
Before concluding, I should say that there is also a range of systems of Government support, both in education—I am delighted to see my right hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards in her seat today, because she has pioneered the establishment of a proper system of support for education for asylum seekers throughout the country—and in health. Of course, all such resources would be available to Grimsby.
To return to my hon. Friend's fundamental point, he asked for explanations, assurances and removals, and we have heard clearly what he has said. My hon. Friend the Minister of State heard it at the private meeting held last week; I have heard it and will ensure that his case is passed on in the clear way that he has put it today. We are now explicitly holding conversations to try to disinter the basis of the misunderstanding that he described, and I can tell him directly that we accept his fundamental point that there must be a proper relationship between the local authority and NASS to produce a system that works. That is what we want, and I hope that we can achieve that. That conversation is now taking place.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising such issues and, in particular, for making it clear that it was not a NIMBY anti-asylum seeker, anti-racial point and that Grimsby is ready to play its part in the process. I want to put right the failures that he has described and we are working actively to that end.

London Borough of Sutton (School Places)
1.29 pm
Mr. Tom Brake: I am pleased to have secured the debate. The London borough of Sutton is right to be proud of its schools. Class sizes are lower than the national average; £130 more than the national average is spent on each pupil and there is a wide range of schools to choose from. One local school is ranked 13th out of 3,873 in England's GCSE league tables, while another is ranked 21st. However, Sutton has become a victim of its own success.
Sutton's schools are extremely popular because of their high quality and diversity. Decisions such as the Greenwich judgment and the Rotherham case mean that Sutton's schools now attract many pupils from outside the borough. I shall be brief, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) wishes to contribute to the debate, but I want to explain why popularity causes such a problem to my constituents who, understandably, wonder why they pay their council tax for a high quality of education, but then cannot get places for their children at the school for which their taxes pay.
In April, I wrote to the London borough of Sutton asking whether it was providing enough secondary school places for year 6 pupils in September 2001. It said that statistically it was, and that there were currently 2,003 pupils in year 6 in Sutton and that 2,483 places were available this September for year 7—a theoretical surplus of 480 or 20 per cent. However, the reality is no. Last year, 747 out-of-borough pupils were in year 7. Of those pupils, 428 attended selective schools that had only 662 places, making up 65 per cent. of the pupils attending selective schools in the borough, so only 35 per cent. of pupils were from inside the borough.
A total of 318 out-of-borough pupils attended community or voluntary aided comprehensives, which is 18 per cent. of the non-selective places. Therefore, out-of-borough pupils account for 30 per cent. of all places so we can expect there to be 267 in-borough pupils without places in local schools this September, a deficit of 10 per cent. of the places needed. That is before taking into account the desire of local parents to send their children to a particular type of school. One aspect about which the area can boast is a wide variety of different schools. There are 14 local education authority schools, of which five are selective, nine are comprehensive, two are Catholic, five are mixed, five are boys only and four are girls only.
While such a choice should be good for local parents, when there is a shortage of places it becomes a further restriction. If a child does not pass the selective entrance exams, is not Catholic, is female and her parents wish her to attend a single sex school, only one school in the borough matches such criteria. When there are not enough places for local children, the likelihood that the child will get into the school that the parents wish for that child reduces sharply even if they manage to get him into one of the borough schools at all.
The reason for the court decisions was to stop children being unable to attend the school across the road because they happen to live just outside the
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borough that runs the school. I agree that that is sensible. If the standard of schools were similar between adjacent boroughs, the court decisions would not cause any particular problems as pupils from within Sutton would attend nearby schools in adjacent boroughs at a similar rate as pupils who come into Sutton from outside. However, when a borough's schools are especially popular and successful, that is not the case. Surplus places are available in adjacent boroughs, such as 9 per cent. in Croydon and Kingston and 15 per cent. in Merton, but places at those schools are not so popular, so the flow of pupils to outside the borough is far lower than the flow into Sutton.
While Sutton does not have to fork out for the additional pupils in terms of the direct amounts spent on each pupil per year, additional pupils have a knock-on effect on what happens to the local council's resources. LEAs have a statutory duty to provide sufficient schools for the children living in their borough. Therefore, even though the reason why there are not enough school places in the borough is that pupils are coming in from outside the borough the LEA is still required, in effect, to sell off council as sets to increase the capacity of the schools for displaced local pupils. The local authority estimates that Overton Grange secondary school, which had to be built recently to accommodate pupils who could not find places at borough schools, cost £4 million to £5 million, which had to be raised through selling off assets. If there were not as many pupils coming in from outside the borough however, there would never have been a need to provide that school, as places could have been provided for in the existing borough schools. The cost to Sutton council and local people is therefore £4 million to £5 million.
I received a letter from Sutton borough council, dated 3 April, which states
"Sutton has carried out a major expansion of secondary provision since 1997 to cater for this demand. Compared to September 1996, there are an additional 361 places available. with an increase in the corresponding year 6 being only 163. There will be a further expansion of 92 places for September 2002, making a total of 2,575 year 7 places available.
Unfortunately this has not allowed all parents the school of their choice, and in some cases, any Sutton secondary school. This is mainly because Sutton schools, selective and non-selective are so popular. Whenever new places are added, they are taken up in full by pupils, a significant number being from out of the borough."
It continues:
"The borough only has finance to expand its schools so far—there are also planning issues for further expanding schools".
Sutton has also told me that it has experienced problems in seeking planning permission for extensions at Carshalton boys school and Carshalton girls school.
The borough is a victim of its own success—it is legally bound to provide school places, but it is so popular that demand will always exceed supply. Many constituents have approached me about this matter. How is the local council to explain to taxpayers the increasing amount spent on local education when they cannot get their own children into the schools that their council tax is being spent on? My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam has been approached by an even greater number of constituents, and meetings

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have taken place in his constituency on the subject. I have had 34 different cases drawn to my attention in the past 12 months, and have written to the LEA and the Minister on numerous occasions. In her most recent response, the Minister wrote:
"Our admissions legislation requires admission authorities in an area to consult each other over their admission arrangements, including neighbouring Local Education Authorities. And School Organisation Plans (SOPs) in which Authorities set out where there is a need to reduce or add places in their area, have to be copied to neighbouring Authorities."
I am afraid to say that copying plans to a neighbouring authority, especially if it is well pleased that Sutton borough is educating children and it is not, is a procedure that is hardly likely to generate a positive response.
The Government's approach seems to be to try to place responsibility for local problems solely on the LEA's back, although the LEA cannot do anything about the system within which it is operating. As the Minister will know, my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) raised that issue in a debate in 1998. He asked what would be done to solve the problem, and was told by the then Minister for School Standards, the right hon. Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers), that the problem would be solved when the School Standards and Framework Bill became law, as it would
"give an additional responsibility to individual LEAs to plan the places in their locality, devolving power to local levels so that they can more readily respond to the needs of local people, and parents in particular."—[Official Report, 20 May 1998; Vol. 312, c. 928.]
Three years later, however, the only effect that that has had in Sutton is to devolve the responsibility to the LEA without providing a solution. So far this year, there have been 263 appeals about secondary school application decisions. The number of appeals has been rising each year since 1998, when the Act was apparently going to solve the problem. Can the Minister explain how, over the past three years, the legislation has helped boroughs such as mine, which have popular schools?
In the letter that I received from the Minister yesterday, she informed me that the Government had no plans to reverse the Greenwich judgment and that they believe that it is not sensible that children should be prevented from attending their nearest school merely because they happen to live in another borough. I have already stated that I agree with them about that. However, it is not sensible that local people should see their council's assets being sold off to build schools to which their children are frequently unable to gain a place.
The Government appear determined to keep the Greenwich judgment. If that is the case, they must find a way to make it work. That is their responsibility, rather than that of local authorities. Their last attempt to make it work seems to have failed. During the debate about what became the 1998 Act, the Minister said that the Government must face the challenge of providing for parental preference with a fair, open and transparent admissions framework, and that the Act would achieve that end. However, many of my constituents have complained that they feel that the system is unfair, not
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open, and about as clear as mud. Therefore, the Government appear still to be faced with the challenge, and I want to know how the Minister intends to tackle it.
Mr. Roger Gale (in the Chair): By leave of the hon. Gentleman and the Minister, I call the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow).
1.41 pm
Mr. Paul Burstow: I wish to contribute briefly to the debate in the hope that the Minister will be able to address the concerns of several of my constituents who, like those of my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake), have been experiencing difficulties in obtaining places in Sutton's schools, despite being residents of the borough. I am, therefore, grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate, and for giving me the opportunity to speak.
As my hon. Friend said, Sutton faces a problem with regard to school places. The cause of the problem is not failure. On the contrary, it has been caused by the success of Sutton's education provision. It has a group of popular and well-regarded schools, to which parents in Sutton and beyond are attracted. The group includes both selective and non-selective schools. As well as a successful group of schools, Sutton has a well-regarded local education authority, which has sustained its investment in education at least in line with the standard spending assessment over the past few years, and which has met all of its obligations in respect of the funding of matched funding initiatives. Recently, it received a positive evaluation from Ofsted.
The problem is that one in three of Sutton's school places is taken by children who live outside the borough. That would be fine, if it were one of the local authorities that has surplus school places. My hon. Friend listed several such authorities, such as Kingston and Surrey, but Sutton is not one of them. Consequently, now, several months into the process of allocating places for transfer to high school, 93 children in Sutton have not secured a school place. I checked that figure with the LEA earlier today. Nineteen of those children live in Worcester Park, where residents have felt under considerable pressure as a result of the way that the system has let them down.
Sutton has tried to build its way out of the problem. Substantial additional capital resources have been invested in its schools: new buildings and classrooms have been constructed, and a new secondary school, Overton Grange, has been built. However, although investment in schools and raising educational standards is welcome, they cannot solve the problem. The LEA cannot simply build its way out of the problem. There are, for instance, limits with regard to planning. Glenthorn is a school that has land that could be expanded upon. However, if it were expanded, that would cause anxiety among many of my constituents who live nearby, as the school is on the border of Merton and it already admits many Merton children. Expansion would, therefore, be likely to benefit not only Sutton children who cannot at present secure places at Sutton schools, but also, under the terms of the Greenwich judgment, Merton children. As a result, investment was made for the benefit not so much of Sutton but of others.

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One cause of Sutton's problems is the operation of the Greenwich judgment. My hon. Friend and I have often raised that issue over the past four years, and in various ways, not least during consideration of the School Standards and Framework Bill. It has the perverse effect of displacing Sutton children from Sutton schools in favour of out-of-borough children. The Government have made it clear that they are not prepared to pass legislation to remove the judgment and its current effects, and I believe that is also the position taken by the Opposition Front Bench. Certainly, that is my understanding from earlier debates.
I ask the Minister, in considering the representations that my hon. Friend and I are making today and have made over the years, to reconsider how the judgment works in areas such as Sutton. Could some flexibility be introduced into the system around admission arrangements, not to prevent children from attending popular schools such as those in Sutton but to give Sutton children the real possibility of being able to go to Sutton schools? Would the Minister at least consider a meeting between Sutton officers and her officials to discuss how it works in practice? I am sure that the officials would be delighted to have such discussions.
Parents in my constituency who have experienced the problem tell me that in February people receive a letter explaining whether their child is getting a school of their preference. Many are disappointed in failing to get the school of their choice; some get an offer, but many do not. They receive a letter stating that no school place is available for their children and that they will receive more information later. That leaves the parents and children in limbo. Parents and grandparents sometimes come to my surgeries not necessarily in tears but deeply upset by that news. I have to tell them that I cannot do much to help them because of the way in which the system works. We try to navigate the appeal system to discover what can be done to achieve the outcome that they want.
The news that they do not have a school place is crushing for many children, because they feel that they have been rejected by the system. The issue is not one of selection but one of rejection through the process that allocates school places. They are told that some surplus places exist in boroughs outside theirs and that they should apply to those schools instead. But parents in those boroughs have voted with their feet, rejected those schools and come to Sutton instead.
The success of schools in Sutton should not mean that Sutton children are displaced to other boroughs. My constituents, like my hon. Friend's, require action on this matter. They hope that the Government will recognise that a genuine problem exists that will not simply go away, and want the Government to work with the LEA to find the flexibility that will solve the problem.
1.47 pm
The Minister for School Standards (Ms Estelle Morris): First, I acknowledge the sincerity with which the hon. Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) and for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) have spoken.
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As Members of Parliament, we all know how important secondary school choice is for parents. The description that the hon. Gentlemen gave of disappointed parents is one we all know from our advice bureaux. It is often the first time that parents feel out of control of delivering for their children. Up to the age of 11 they have been able to deliver for them: they are in their charge, and they can sort out their lives. Suddenly, when their children reach the age of 11, something happens that makes them feel that they have almost lost control of their children's destiny. I understand that well, but there is no easy solution.
Both hon. Gentlemen would probably accept that under whatever system—whether it is the Tories' free schools and selection, or our proposals, under which every parent is guaranteed a first choice—disappointments will happen. The months during which they wait to discover the outcome are necessarily hairy. In my constituency, at the start of May, there are parents whose children do not have places for September.
There is, however, a fundamental difference of opinion between us on the matter. I do not want to give any ground on that, but I wanted to start my speech by acknowledging the achievements of schools, teachers and pupils in Sutton. They are high-performing schools, because of hard-working teachers, a local authority that supports them well and a learning and supportive community.
I am also grateful for the comments of the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington about class sizes and achievement. I am sure that he is pleased that, compared with four years ago when 37 per cent. of infants in his constituency were in classes of more than 30, only 125 are now in such classes. That has contributed to the rising standards that we have seen in the borough and elsewhere. I want to place on the record the fact that we have not refused any request from Sutton for money to provide places for children who do not have them. The hon. Gentleman did not imply that, but much was said about the capital that had been put in, and I want to make it clear that we have coughed up the money every time since 1997 that the boroughs have come to us to say that they were short of places. As was acknowledged, we have allocated £10.2 million to provide extra secondary and primary places, too.
The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam seemed to view the situation in Sutton differently from the Government. Sutton schools are good; that is why parents want to send their children there. I probably should not say this, but my experience is that parents want a good secondary school place regardless of which borough it is in. If both hon. Gentlemen represented boroughs where schools were poor, they would not have parents queuing to say, "I defend my right to send my child to a school in my borough, despite the fact that it's performing poorly." All schools perform well in Sutton, and parents are probably saying, "I want a Sutton school for my child because I'm a Sutton citizen." However, if we explore the matter further, the issue will have more to do with Sutton schools being good than with their location.
In my constituency, we have both highly and poorly performing schools and a greater difference of performance than in Sutton. My constituency neighbours Solihull, and parents there want good

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schools, either in Birmingham or Solihull, rather than the right to go to a Solihull or Birmingham school. If they had to choose between sending their children to an under-performing school one side of the boundary and a high-performing school on the other, I know which they would choose. For the Government, the solution is to stop putting parents in the position of having to choose between high-performing and under-performing schools. That will take time, and I will not bore hon. Members by listing the measures that we have introduced to overcome the problem.
I do not wish to accuse schools in neighbouring areas of under-performing, but let us suppose that I said, "Fair cop, all right. I give in. I will ensure that every Sutton child may have a place in a Sutton school." That would mean that other children would have to go to under-performing schools in other boroughs. Whereas it is the task of the hon. Gentlemen to advance that argument, I hope that they will acknowledge that, as a Government, we could never rest on that solution. Some children will end up going to schools that are apparently unpopular.
The long-term dig on the problem is to ensure that we raise standards in schools throughout the borough so that parents do not mind where their children go. I suspect that if the hon. Gentlemen were in a borough surrounded by other boroughs with well performing schools, they would hear no complaints about children going outside the borough for their education. The argument is one of quality of education. Where we have diversity in quality of education—not the rich diversity in provision, which I applaud—parents will do anything in their power to get their child into a well-performing school, and look to the admissions arrangements to help. I can see how the hon. Gentleman's constituents have ended up believing that, if the admissions arrangements ensured their children a place in Sutton, they would get a high-performing school. However, that is not the answer.
It is not just a question of a school on the other side of the road. The nearest school for some of my constituents is in Solihull, although it might be three quarters of a mile away. The boundary makes sense for the local authority, but it is not always easy. Although it is difficult for some authorities, parents should be able exercise a preference for a school in the locality where they live. The over-subscription criteria that we apply must be fair, just, honest and open.
It would not be fair of me to go into too much detail and it may be a touch petty, but an increasingly large percentage of funding comes to schools from national Government rather than local government. If hon. Members rely too heavily on the argument that Sutton parents have paid for Sutton schools, they get into the argument that essentially the nation's taxpayers increasingly pay for the nation's schools.
Mr. Brake: On that specific point, I did not say that Sutton residents paid in the entirety for Overton Grange school. However, I spoke to the authority an hour or so ago and was told that there was a shortfall of £4 million to £5 million that had to be funded by the local authority for a school that would not have been needed had there not been such a significant number of out-of-borough pupils in Sutton.
Ms Morris: I am happy to accept the hon. Gentleman's explanation of the financial arrangements. That will not be the first time that a local authority has used its own resources to contribute to capital or revenue. I am sure that he would equally accept in return that, for good or ill, an increasing percentage of both revenue and capital comes from national funding.
I turn now to the core of the matter, which is how one deals with the admission system. There is an obligation on Sutton to ensure that there are sufficient places for children in its borough. It does not have to promise that all those places can be found in the borough. It should share that information with other boroughs and acknowledge that there is an inflow and outflow from schools. That makes it more challenging for local authorities. It would be simple if a borough had the responsibility to provide only for its own children, but I do not think that that would enhance parental preference nationally. It might be a better deal for Sutton parents because they would get the good Sutton schools, but nationally, if we are trying to ensure that parents are not left with the real dilemma that both hon. Members described of not getting their first preference, building walls around boroughs and saying that the schools within them are first and foremost for the children who live there is not a way forward.
We must ensure when we run over subscription criteria that we do so as clearly and accountably as possible. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington referred to the good Ofsted report that Sutton has just received. One of the things that Ofsted praised was Sutton's admissions arrangements. Although, without examining the details, and I suspect that they are not perfect because nothing is, the Department has no evidence that its admissions system is poor or is failing. I too spoke to the local authority in preparation for the debate. It said that it was at about the same stage as it was this time last year in the allocation of places. It is not more worried than it was then. It expects that by September every child will have a place. I suspect that when one looks at that in total numbers, the number of parents who get their first preference will be roughly similar to the figures across the nation.
We must always look for ways to improve. I looked through the correspondence from the hon. Gentleman. I noted that if one lives in an area, particularly a London borough, where one has to look at schools outside the borough to secure a place, one needs clear access to information about where there are places. I thought that we could both go back to Sutton and neighbouring boroughs and give some assurances to parents about that.
This is one of the issues in Sutton. It is born out of the success of the schools. To ask a Government to change a system where we are doing what we can to give as many parents their first choice of school, regardless of where they live, might satisfy Sutton parents in the short term, but it would not guarantee parental preference in the long term. The real challenge for us all is to make every school an improving or a good school so that parental preference means that—
It being Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Rapid Reaction Force
  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer of 10 April 2001,Official Report, column 532W, on the rapid reaction force, if a representative of the Danish Government was (a) present at and (b) participated in the discussion of the Presidency report on European security and defence policy; and how much time the Council spent discussing the report. [158815]

  Mr. Vaz
  Representatives of the Danish Government were present at and participated in discussion of the Nice Presidency report on European defence. Competent bodies of the Council discussed this report at length in the weeks leading up to the Nice European Council.

  Israel
  Dr. Starkey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will place in the Library the agenda for the meeting of the EU Association Committee in May to review the operation of the EU-Israel Association agreement. [158804]

  Mr. Vaz
  A copy of the provisional agenda, agreed by the EU and Israel, was deposited in the Library on 26 April.

  Dr. Starkey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action the EU Association Committee will consider at its meeting in May to stop the import into the EU under preferences of goods labelled "made in Israel" which originate in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. [158807]

  Mr. Vaz
  The EU-Israel Association committee will discuss goods from settlements under the agenda item entitled "Rules of Origin". We expect the EU to raise the post-verification requests for certificates of origin and to remind the Israelis that they have until June 2001 to respond.
  In consultation with the European Commission, the UK and other members states are carrying out a post-verification exercise in relation to a number of goods exported to the EU and described as Israeli. These are goods which benefit from preferential access to the EU under the origin protocol in the EU-Israel Association agreement.
  The UK continues to support the Commission's efforts to establish whether any infringement of the EU-Israel Association agreement has taken place.
  628W
  Dr. Starkey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs who will represent the British Government at the meeting in May of the EU Association committee reviewing the EU-Israel Association agreement. [158805]

  Mr. Vaz
  The EU-Israel Association agreement states that "the Association Committee shall meet at official level". The UK will be represented by an official from the UK permanent representation to the EU.

  Iraq
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent reports he has received concerning industrial activities undertaken at the Al Daura plant, near Baghdad. [159729]

  Mr. Wilson
  The Iraqi acting Minister for Foreign Affairs wrote to the UN Secretary-General on 28 March requesting that funds from the UN oil-for-food programme be used for the reactivation of the Al Daura facility for the production of foot and mouth vaccine.

  In the continuing absence of UN monitors, the United Kingdom has opposed this request for reactivation of a plant known to have been used for biological weapons production in the past.

  Gibraltar
  Mr. Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations he has made to(a) the European Commission and (b) the Government of Spain regarding the handling of internationally dialled telephone calls routed through Spain destined for Gibraltar. [156134]

  Mr. Vaz
  This matter was raised with the Spanish Government on 20 March, and with the Commission on 30 March.

  Mr. Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has received regarding using the Gibraltar international direct dialling code prefix 350. [156131]

  Mr. Vaz
  The Government of Gibraltar have brought to our attention various issues related to the use of Gibraltar's international direct dialling code.
  As my hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business and E-Commerce made clear in her answer of 6 April 2001, Official Report, column 305W, we remain deeply concerned about the unsatisfactory situation. We will continue to pursue the issue as a matter of urgency.

  Mr. Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the United Kingdom Government's relations with Spain regarding the freedom of movement of trade and services in relation to Gibraltar. [156132]

  Mr. Vaz
  When Gibraltar became part of the European Community upon the United Kingdom's accession in 1973, Gibraltar did not join the Customs Union. This is recognised by all member states. Subsequent EU legislation concerning the free movement of goods has not therefore been applied in relation to Gibraltar. EU legislation concerning the free movement of services has been applied.

  Clemency Pleas
  Mrs. Humble
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if it is Her Majesty's Government's policy to support a plea for clemency from a British national imprisoned overseas. [160352]

  Mr. Wilson
  Our objective is to support pleas for clemency in deserving cases, while respecting the sovereign right of foreign Governments to sentence prisoners according to their own laws. Following an internal review, we have decided to widen our existing criteria for supporting clemency pleas. We will now consider supporting clemency pleas from British nationals imprisoned overseas in the following cases:in compelling compassionate circumstances, such as where a prisoner is chronically ill or dying (particularly when prison conditions overseas are poor) or when a close family member is chronically ill or dying; where continued incarceration is likely to endanger life or is likely to reduce life expectancy significantly;
  in cases of minors imprisoned overseas;
  as a last resort, in cases where we have prima facie evidence of a denial or miscarriage of justice, where we have made representations, but where those representations have failed to secure a remedy. In these cases, our reasons for supporting a plea would not normally be mentioned explicitly in the plea itself.

  We will also take the prisoner's family circumstances into account when considering whether to support a plea for clemency. We will examine all pleas on a case-by-case basis.
  Our previous policy was to support clemency pleas in compelling compassionate circumstances, such as where a prisoner was terminally ill, or where the death of a spouse would leave young children with no one to care for them. The new policy demonstrates our commitment to protecting the human rights of British nationals.

  Humanitarian Crises
  Mr. David Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress has been made in Her Majesty's Government's consultations with international partners on UK proposals for international action in response to humanitarian crises. [160353]

  Mr. Battle
  We firmly believe that we have a shared responsibility to respond when confronted with massive violations of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity. The UK has played a leading role in this continuously evolving debate. We have spent the past year trying to build the broadest possible consensus around a set of ideas on the conditions and circumstances that make international action appropriate. We believe such a consensus could strengthen the Security Council's ability to respond effectively and promptly to humanitarian crises. Our ideas have been framed as policy guidelines to help the international community decide when it is right to act.
  The key elements of our ideas are:
  that any intervention is by definition a failure of prevention. Force should always be the last resort;
  that the immediate responsibility for halting violence rests with the state in which it occurs;
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  but when faced with an immediate humanitarian catastrophe and a Government who have demonstrated themselves unwilling or unable to halt or prevent it, the international community should take action;
  any use of force in this context must be collective, proportionate, likely to achieve its objective, and carried out in accordance with international law.
  Our consultations will continue, but progress has proved difficult. Many countries have reservations about the concepts involved, fearing that their endorsement would undermine the principle of state sovereignty.

  Copies of our set of ideas have been placed in the Libraries of the House of Commons and House of Lords.

  MV Etireno
  Mr. Welsh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what measures were taken by his Department during the recent hunt for the MV Etireno; and what steps his Department(a) has taken and (b) intends to take, to combat the trade in child slavery. [159859]

  Mr. Wilson
  The UK was the first to respond to the Benin authorities' request for help to search for the Etireno. HMS Glasgow was in the area and we offered her services. This offer was declined when it became clear that the Etireno had returned to Benin.

  The UK is firmly committed to eradicating slavery and bonded labour worldwide. We played a leading role in drafting and securing agreement to the International Labour Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labour. We are working with international and non-governmental organisations and industry to address the problem of child slavery, and are looking at what we can do to increase these efforts.

  I am meeting industry representatives, and also Ministers from the Government of Cote d'Ivoire, on 4 May.

ENVIRONMENT, TRANSPORT AND THE REGIONS

  Recycled Waste
  Mr. Brake
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will list the deliveries of(a) incinerator ash, (b) mixed waste containing organics and (c) compost to (i) Burnside Farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall and (ii) other farms by (1) Newcastle Council's Waste Department, (2) City Works and (3) Associated Waste Services from (A) domestic, (B) commercial and (C) institutional premises; and what tests have been carried out on animal feed for dioxin, furan and PCB content. [155313]

  Mr. Meacher
  [holding answer 26 April 2001]: Section 34 of the Environment Protection Act 1990 imposes a duty of care on waste producers and others who have control of waste. The parties to the transfer of waste are required to keep records but information on waste

  631W
  transfers is not held centrally. Duty of care records can, of course, be sought locally through the Environment Agency's serving a notice on the parties concerned.

  The Environment Agency advises that it has not carried out tests on animal feed and holds no information on any such tests carried out by others. In my reply of 30 March 2001, Official Report, column 818W, I have separately provided the hon. Member with a list of the sites which have received ash from the Byker Reclamation Plant—including farms.

  £ million

  1997–981

  1998–991

  1999–20001

  2000–011

  2001–021

  General Fund revenue account

  Total revenue expenditure4

  484

  522

  563

  575

  632

  Central Government support

  General grants

  Revenue support grant

  263

  285

  297

  298

  312

  National non-domestic rates

  103

  107

  114

  128

  124

  Ring fenced grants5

  18

  20

  20

  29

  71

  Total central Government support5

  384

  412

  431

  455

  507

  Housing revenue account (HRA)

  Total revenue expenditure4

  182

  182

  171

  160

  183

  Central Government support

  HRA subsidy6

  101

  94

  91

  85

  98

  Capital account

  Total capital expenditure4

  57

  73

  76

  146

  8—

  Central Government support

  Capital grants7

  19

  24

  24

  46

  8—

  Credit approvals

  18

  28

  31

  39

  8—

  1 Outturn

  2 Estimated outturn

  3 Proposed

  4Total expenditure is from all sources including central Government support and local sources such as Council Tax.

  5 Revenue account expenditure and central Government support figures are net of grants/loans outside aggregate exchequer finance (AEF) which flow through local authorities (eg rent allowances and rebates and mandatory student awards.) The revenue expenditure totals exclude capital expenditure financed from the revenue account (CERA).

  6 From 2001–02 housing subsidy includes the major repairs allowance (MRA) (£16 million in 2001–02). This is paid through the HRA but is intended to finance capital expenditure. Capital expenditure financed from the HRA (including from the MRA) has been excluded from total housing revenue expenditure.

  7 Including capital grants from non-departmental public bodies and the national lottery.

  8 Not yet available from a comparable source (i.e. local authority)

  Radioactive Waste
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what recent representations his Department has received in respect of the safety standards at, and hazards posed by, the high activity radioactive waste storage tanks at Sellafield. [156397]

  Mr. Meacher
  The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions has received two written representations on this issue within the past six months. In addition, the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee presented a Report, published in November 2000, on the Radioactive Waste Implications of Reprocessing. In their report, the Committee noted that the reduction of HAL stocks to buffer levels was extremely important and that HSE had set a target date of 2015 for this. The Committee recommended that progress

  Local Government Services (Liverpool)
  Mrs. Ellman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions how much(a) capital and (b) revenue has been made available for local government services in Liverpool since 1997. [157443]

  Ms Beverley Hughes
  The capital and revenue made available for local government services in Liverpool since 1997—in total and from central Government sources—are as follows.

  towards this objective should be kept under close review and I have pressed for this time scale to be brought forward.

  Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
  Mr. Green
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will list the locations of each development on areas of outstanding natural beauty that he has given permission for since 1 May 1997. [158708]

  Mr. Raynsford
  [holding answer 23 April 2001]: The information is as follows:
  Site Location
  Gun Hill Industrial Estate, Blackbrook Hill, Langham, Essex
  Folly Lane, Buckland St. Mary, Chard, Somerset
  Former RAF buildings, RAF Little Rissington, Cheltenham, Gloscestershire
  Binderton House, Binderton, West Den, Chichester, West Sussex

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  Spread Eagle Hotel, South Street, Midhurst, West Sussex
  Wrens Warren, Hartfield Lane, East Sussex
  Oakley Court, Nuffield, Oxfordshire.

  Sites of Special Scientific Interest
  Mr. Green
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will list the locations of each development on sites of special scientific interest that he has given permission for since 1 May 1997. [158707]

  Mr. Raynsford
  [holding answer 23 April 2001]: The information is as follows:
  Site Location
  Bank Farm, Wyre, Lancashire.

  A3 (Hindhead Improvement)
  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will make a statement on the timetable for completing A3 Hindhead improvement; what priority his Department is according to the project; and what measures remain to be taken prior to commencement of the scheme. [158926]

  Mr. Hill
  I have asked the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency, Tim Matthews, to write to the right hon. Member.

  Letter from Tim Matthews to Mrs. Virginia Bottomley, dated 2 May 2001:
  I have been asked by the Transport Minister, Keith Hill, to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the A3 Hindhead Improvement.
  The scheme was added to the Government's Targeted Programme of Improvements last March.
  Our first task is to appoint agents to carry out the detailed design of the scheme. After that we will have to complete the statutory procedures including an environmental assessment, a possible public inquiry and land acquisition.
  Subject to completing the design process and obtaining the necessary statutory approvals, we expect to begin construction within seven years.

  Railways
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will establish a common standard of training through the Rail Industry Training Board for all personnel in the train operating companies, Railtrack and companies providing personnel with access to the railway; and if he will ensure that an independent audit of such training is carried out on a regular basis. [158825]

  Mr. Hill
  Late last year a Joint SRA/DfEE Working Group was established to look at the current and future skills needs of the rail industry. The Joint Working Group recently published an 18-Point Action Plan which provides a strategic approach to recruitment, training, assessment and competence of key staff. The Plan is being taken forward and monitored by the high level Rail Industry Group, chaired by Sir Alastair Morton, which had also identified the need for action and had set up its own cross-industry group to tackle the issues. Initial outcomes of the various initiatives are expected to be seen in the autumn.
  634W
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will place in the Library a copy of the Strategic Rail Authority's template Franchise Agreement. [158833]

  Mr. Hill
  I am arranging to place in the Library a copy of the Strategic Rail Authority's latest template franchise agreement together with a list of amendments yet to be incorporated. The template is subject to development as franchise replacement progresses. When actual franchise agreements are entered into, the Strategic Rail Authority is required by statute to make them available on its public register.

  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will instruct the Strategic Rail Authority to extend the Service Quality Incentive Regime beyond those services provided by the Passenger Transport Authorities to all services provided by franchisees. [158827]

  Mr. Hill
  No. The detailed provisions of franchise agreements are for the Strategic Rail Authority to decide. I understand that the Authority does not consider that SQUIRE, which involves direct checking of inputs by PTE inspectors, is the most suitable or efficient way to control standards. It prefers to measure service quality through the National Passenger Survey, Customer Satisfaction Surveys and Mystery Traveller Surveys which reflect passengers' opinions. Bidders for replacement franchises are being asked to demonstrate how they will develop and deliver a step-change in customer service.

  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what plans he has to consult the railway industry on the proposed EU directive on railway safety; which Departments are involved in discussions with the Commission; and how many British representatives are on the working party to consider railway safety. [158824]

  Mr. Hill
  We will consult widely on the proposed EU directive on railway safety regulation once it is published by the Commission. We currently expect publication to be at the end of this year, as part of a broader package of proposed measures taking forward completion of the single market in the railway sector. My Department will co-ordinate the UK Government's input to any discussions convened on this directive, with support from all relevant bodies.

  A180
  Shona McIsaac
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will make a statement on replacing the concrete road surface on the A180 with low-noise surfacing. [159355]

  Mr. Hill
  My hon. Friend's question relates to an operational matter on the A180 Trunk Road. I have accordingly asked the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency, Mr. Tim Matthews, to write to my hon. Friend.
  635W
  Letter from Tim Matthews to Shona McIsaac, dated 2 May 2001:
  The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question on resurfacing of the concrete section of the A 180 with low noise surfacing.
  On 29 December 2000 the Agency wrote to all English local highway authorities, and other interested organisations, seeking their views on its proposed criteria for prioritising the resurfacing of concrete trunk roads. We also published the consultation letter and the proposed criteria on our website inviting comments. The closing date for receiving comments was 23 March 2001 and we are currently giving careful consideration to all the responses that we have received.
  It is anticipated that the final set of criteria will be announced this summer and will then be applied to determine the priority of concrete trunk roads, including the A180, for resurfacing.
  The Agency will write to you as soon as the final set of criteria have been finalised.

  Al2
  Mr. Jenkin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what was the accident rate on the Al2 Brentwood—Ipswich in the last 12 months; and what was the average accident rate on motorways carrying a similar volume of traffic in the same period. [159008]

  Mr. Hill
  [holding answer 26 April 2001]: The table shows the number of injury accidents per month on the Al2 between its junctions with the M25 and the A14 in 1999, for the last 12 months for which national statistics are available. Monthly traffic flow data are not readily available for this stretch of road and therefore it is not possible to present accident rates for comparison with other roads.

  Month

  Number

  January

  20

  February

  8

  March

  22

  April

  15

  May

  21

  June

  17

  July

  12

  August

  19

  September

  22

  October

  20

  November

  22

  December

  28

  Airport Provision
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what his policy is towards the predict and provide approach to airport provision in the south-east of England. [159250]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  Our policy is one of sustainable development, applying the principles set out in the New Deal for Transport White Paper (Cm 3950) to airports in all parts of the United Kingdom. We are currently studying a wide range of options for the future development of airports in the south-east of England. When we announced this study, we said that it would assess the economic, environmental and social impacts of the options, and that we would balance all these before 636W
  coming to a view about whether additional capacity should be provided, either at a particular site or at all. This remains our position.

  Commercial Property Market
  Mr. Cotter
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (1) what plans he has to address the issues of choice, flexibility and provision of information in the commercial property market; [159934]

  (2) what plans he has to introduce greater flexibility into the commercial property market; [159929]

  (3) what plans he has to review the 1995 code of practice for commercial property leases. [159930]

  Ms Beverley Hughes
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) on 23 April 2001.Official Report, columns 5–6W.

  Crash Barriers
  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, pursuant to his answer of 23 March 2001,Official Report, column 391W, if he will identify the type of crash barrier in use at the time for each of the fatalities that were involved in accidents involving vehicles crossing over the central reservation on (a) motorways and (b) trunk roads in each year since 1992–93. [160114]

  Mr. Hill
  The information requested is not held centrally.

  Animal Welfare
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will make a statement on the independent research to find alternatives to animal products used in traditional medicine, with special reference to bile from Asiatic black bears. [160073]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  My Department has commissioned research from Dr. Henry Lee, Head of Chinese Medicine Development at Middlesex University, to identify plant substitutes for four key animal species used in traditional medicine—Asiatic black bears, tigers, and white and black rhinos. The research, which is expected to report in early 2004, will identify the active chemical components of these animals, determine equivalent chemical substances from plant sources, and develop an appropriate strategy for introducing and encouraging the use of those plant alternatives. The total cost of this research is £135,472, towards which my Department is contributing £67,500. The remainder is being met by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

  Local Government Finance
  Mr. Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what the average Band D council tax was in the north-west for each of the years from 1997 to date. [160078]
  637W
  Ms Beverley Hughes
  Average Band D council tax levels in the north-west between 1997–98 and 2001–02 are given in the table:

  £

  Average council tax for a Band D dwelling in the north-west

  1997–98

  798

  1998–99

  856

  1999–2000

  901

  2000–01

  943

  2001–02

  991

  Malewick Lane Waste Transfer Station
  Mr. Loughton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he intends to publish the inspector's report on the Malewick Lane Waste Transfer Station, Sompting, West Sussex, planning application before 7 June. [160106]

  Ms Beverley Hughes
  The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions will publish the inspector's report when he determines the planning application for a waste management centre at Halewick Lane, Sompting, West Sussex. This decision will be issued as soon as possible.

  Incinerators
  Mr. St.Aubyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (1) when his Department intends to require incinerator plant permit holders(a) under the IPC regime and (b) under the IPPC regime to adopt the environmental standards being proposed by the EU; [160111]

  (2) what guidance his Department will issue to (a) planning authorities and (b) the Environment Agency on the latest EU proposals for environmental regulation of incinerator plants in respect of current projects; [160108]

  (3) what his Department's policy is relating to the latest proposals for environmental regulation of incinerator plants. [160109]

  Mr. Hill
  The UK Government are committed to transposing the EU Waste Incineration Directive (WID) and the provisions therein, into UK law by 28 December 2002.

  The new WID will apply to all new incinerators within its scope by 28 December 2002, and to existing plant by 28 December 2005. Incinerators are currently regulated under the Integrated Pollution Control or Local Authority Pollution Control systems.

  This directive updates the two Municipal Waste Incineration Directives of 1989. The Environment Agency is of the opinion that all new Municipal Solid Waste Incinerator (MSWI) projects can already meet the requirements of the new Directive without excessive cost and therefore will apply these standards as a "minimum" requirement. The Agency intends to review the performance of existing plant before the Directive applies.

  In addition, the Agency has already been setting limits for oxides of nitrogen and for dioxins for MSWIs. Most existing MSWIs already achieve dioxin release
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  concentrations of 0.1 ng/m3 and collectively the sector has shown almost a 30 fold fall with a share of UK emissions down from over 50 per cent. to under 5 per cent. since 1995.

  In transposing the WID into UK law the Government will consider whether further guidance for planning authorities and the Environment Agency is necessary. Planning guidance on incineration is contained within PPG 10 "Planning and Waste Management", which as with all planning guidance documents is periodically reviewed.

  Heathrow
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what conditions and guarantees were imposed upon(a) BAA and (b) Heathrow Airport by his Department after granting permission for Terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport. [159824]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  The information provided has been placed in the Libraries of the House.

  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (1) what factors were taken into account when final descent paths for aircraft approaching Heathrow were altered in 1995; [159826]

  (2) what plans he has to alter the final descent paths for aircraft approaching Heathrow. [159827]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  The final approach tracks followed by aircraft approaching Heathrow to land have to be aligned with the runways in order to comply with long established internationally agreed standards. They have not changed and cannot be changed unilaterally.

  The paths that aircraft follow before aligning with the runway are not fixed, in order to allow for safe tactical integration of up to four streams of traffic, but the area of airspace used for this purpose has been established in its present form for about 30 years. An "early morning landings trial" commenced in September 1995, which required aircraft during westerly operations at night (before 6.00am) to join the 3° glideslope of the instrument landing system (ILS) at or above 3,000 ft (instead of 2,500 ft) and to join the final approach track at not less than 10 nautical miles (18½km) from touchdown. The trial was evaluated and a summary of the findings was published in the November 1998 consultation paper on night restrictions at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports (copies of which were placed in the Libraries of the House). It was found that the trial procedure produced a reduction in noise exposure in the area between 16½ km and 31½ km from touchdown. Some noise increases were caused in parts of Clapham, Deptford, Lewisham and Blackheath because more aircraft joined the ILS final approach track further from touchdown. A redistribution of traffic over built-up areas can result in gains and losses but may be justified, as in this case, where the gains substantially outweigh the losses. The study also found a small increase in the achievement of the noise reducing continuous descent approach (CDA) procedure even though the CDA instructions were not changed for the trial.
  639W
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what measurements his Department takes of the impact of aircraft noise on residents in south-east England during the(a) day and (b) night. [159825]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  My Department publishes annual daytime noise contours for Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports. These contours cover the 16 hour day from 0700 to 2300 BST, averaged for the relatively busy period 16 June to 15 September. The contours for 2000 are about to be published by the CAA on the Department's behalf; and the explanatory booklets, including small-scale versions of the contours, will be placed on the DETR website shortly. All take-offs are monitored for compliance with the departure noise limits. The new daytime and night-time limits announced by my hon. Friend on 18 December 2000,Official Report, columns 11–12W, have come into effect. Readings from these and other noise monitors (covering both arrivals and departures) are used, along with radar data on the dispersion of aircraft tracks, to validate the model used to generate the contours. Other measurements are taken, and contours produced from time to time for various studies on behalf of the Department and of the airports.

  We do not routinely publish contours for aircraft noise at night at these airports, as research has suggested that, because of the uneven and distinct patterns of operation, these would not be sufficiently well correlated with sleep disturbance and annoyance. However, operations at night are subject to the restrictions, including movement limits and noise quotas made, after consultation, by Notice under s.78 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982; and are monitored and reported by the airports accordingly.

  Elsewhere in the South East, noise measurement and contouring are the responsibility of the individual airports. However, noise measurements collated from other airports will help inform the current South East and East Regional Airports Study (SERAS).

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Decommissioning
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what recent reports he has had from General de Chastelain on progress on arms decommissioning. [159633]

  Mr. Ingram
  On 22 March this year, the Independent Commission on Decommissioning issued a report stating that they believe progress on actual decommissioning can be made.

  I look forward to early and positive reports from the Decommissioning Commission that progress is being made.

  Royal Ulster Constabulary
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many completed applications for the most recent Royal Ulster Constabulary recruiting campaign were received by 30 March; and how many 640W
  were received from (i) Northern Ireland, (ii) the Republic of Ireland, (iii) Great Britain and (iv) outside the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. [158822]

  Dr. Reid
  I am advised that 7,843 completed applications have been received in response to the on-going Police Service of Northern Ireland recruitment competition. Analysis, in terms of applications received from addresses in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Great Britain or elsewhere is as follows:

  Number

  Northern Ireland

  7,208

  Republic of Ireland

  332

  Great Britain

  262

  Elsewhere

  41

  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many of the completed applications for the Royal Ulster Constabulary received by 30 March were from(a) Northern Ireland Protestants, (b) Northern Ireland Roman Catholics and (c) persons of no religion and from other religious backgrounds with addresses in Northern Ireland. [158823]

  Dr. Reid
  Equal opportunities analysis of the applications has yet to be undertaken.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), representing the House of Commons Commission, (1) when the Commission was advised of assessments by(a) the House personnel staff and (b) formal staff inspections of the overworking in the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards; [159203]

  (2) what the policy of the Commission is on acting on assessments of overload in support staff to departments of the House and in the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards; [159204]

  (3) if he will estimate the under-resourcing of staff assisting the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards; when the Commission was informed of the problem; what information it has on it; and if he will make a statement on the publication of this information. [159202]

  Mr. Kirkwood
  Officials carried out a preliminary review of the staffing of the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards in spring 2000, because of concerns which had arisen over the office's work load. The outcome of this work was reported to the House of Commons Commission on 3 July 2000, and temporary additional secretarial support was provided, pending a more thorough review of work load to be carried out by the staff inspector from the internal review service (IRS).

  The findings of the IRS review were reported to the Commission late in 2000. The Commission referred the matter to the Finance and Services Committee whose

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  advice was considered and agreed to in April 2001. The Committee's advice was that the case for permanent additional staffing had not been clearly established, and that the work load should be monitored over the early months of a new Parliament to ascertain what the long-term needs were. The temporary additional secretarial support would remain in place for the time being.

  Commission meetings are deliberative and it is not the practice to publish papers relating to them.

DEFENCE

  Type 45 Destroyer
  Mr. Quentin Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 20 March 2001,Official Report, column 105W, on type 45 destroyers, if a contract has been placed with Vosper Thornycroft; and if he will make a further statement. [157749]

  Mr. Hoon
  [holding answer 24 April 2001]: No shipbuilding sub-contracts for the type 45 destroyer have yet been let by the prime contractor, BAE Systems Electronics. Under the procurement strategy I announced to the House in July last year for the type 45 programme, the prime contractor is working to a target of September 2001 for a commitment to Vosper Thornycroft.

  Mr. Quentin Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford of 24 April 2001,Official Report, columns 232–33W, what lessons he has drawn from such ships. [159777]

  Mr. Hoon
  Our close co-operation with allies such as the United States in the development and operation of warships continues, particularly through visits and naval officer exchange postings. This type of co-operation will ensure that we continue to share best practice with our allies to mutual benefit.

  There has been no significant direct read across between the Arleigh Burke class, which includes the USS Winston Churchill, and our more recent type 45 programme. Although similar in size to the Arleigh Burke class, the type 45 anti-air warfare destroyer, equipped with the principal anti-air missile system, offers, we believe, significant acquisition and through-life cost benefits over earlier generations of destroyers.

  Army Training Estate
  Mrs. Gilroy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the outcome of the Army training estate site utility review. [160354]

  Dr. Moonie
  As I said in my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner) on 23 May 2000,Official Report, column 459W, the Ministry of Defence has been conducting a site utility review (SUR) of the Army training estate to identify training areas, camps and ranges which are no longer required in order that they can be closed or sold, thereby saving maintenance costs and where possible generally revenue.
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  The SUR has now been completed, and 21 sites have been identified for disposal. They are as follows:

  Site for disposal

  Location

  Nesscliffe—Brooklea

  West Midlands

  Nesscliffe—Tanglewood

  West Midlands

  Caerwent—surrounds

  Wales

  Kinmel Park (part of)

  Wales

  Hamsterley Forest

  North East

  Langdale Forest

  North East

  Ripon South Parks

  North East

  Stang Forest

  North East

  Fridaywood Farm Buildings

  East

  Stonebridge Camp

  East

  Flat 1 & 2, Grooms Cottage, Hawley

  Home Counties

  Rand Plantation, Ash

  Home Counties

  Land at Foxhills, Ash

  Home Counties

  Land at Junction 4a, M3

  Home Counties

  Binhill Range

  Scotland

  Marne Training Area

  North East

  Rowlston Range

  North East

  Halton Training Camp

  North West

  Pilning Range

  South West

  Wyke Regis Tented Camp Area2

  South West

  Quorn Terrace/Entrance Longmoor Camp

  Home counties

  1Part of

  2Tented camp area only

  The Ministry of Defence expects to receive between £10 million and £18 million for the sale of the sites listed. A proportion of this, some £6.8 million, will be used to replace training facilities currently at Rowlston range, Halton training camp and Longmoor camp.

  Reserve Forces (Pensions)
  Mr. Cawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when regulations A will be made governing the entitlement of members of the reserve forces to attributable pensions benefits. [160355]

  Dr. Moonie
  My hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces announced on 18 May 2000,Official Report, columns 2000–01W, that the Department had been reviewing its policy on attributable benefits for members of the reserve forces, in particular with regard to those who served in the Gulf conflict. Under the existing regulations, awards are made to individuals who were medically discharged when demobilised from active service. As a result of the review, it was agreed that the eligibility would be extended to reservists who were medically discharged from the reserve forces at other times.

  I am therefore pleased to announce that the new regulations, entitled the "Reserve Forces (Attributable Benefits Etc) Regulations 2001", have now been made and came into force on 30 April 2001. We will make payments under these regulations as soon as practicable after this date.

  Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency
  Mr. Michael J. Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what key targets have been set for the Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency for 2001–02. [160356]
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  Mr. Spellar
  The role of the Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency is to provide imagery intelligence and geographic support to defence policy, operations and training; to meet customer requirements for imagery intelligence and geographic support in accordance with defence priorities; to maintain and develop agency capabilities and readiness in line with future defence requirements; and to become progressively more efficient, while improving the quality and delivery of our products and services. The key targets for the agency for the 12 months from April 2001 are:Key Target 1:
  To satisfy operational requirements for imagery intelligence and geographic support within timescales and to standards agreed between the agency and its customers.

  (a) For imagery intelligence, by providing at least 95 per cent. of requirements overall, while delivering not less than 98 per cent. of priority 1 tasks.

  (b) For geographic support, by providing 100 per cent. of geographic products and services essential to support current and potential operations, both from the agency's UK-based capabilities and its deployable units

  Key Target 2:
  To achieve the required levels of operational readiness in line with defence planning assumptions while continuing to meet those deployable element outputs required under key target 1.
  To maintain agreed states of readiness as set by PJHQ for all contingency forces (JRRF)
  Key Target 3:
  To satisfy strategic and contingency requirements for imagery intelligence and geographic support within time scales and to standards agreed between the agency and its customers.

  (a) For imagery intelligence, by providing at least 80 per cent. of requirements overall, while delivering not less than 92 per cent. of priority 1 tasks.

  (b) For geographic support, completing at least 90 per cent. of a customer endorsed programme of work for geographic products and services.

  Key Target 4:
  To demonstrate a 1 per cent. improvement in the coverage of geographic information holdings in comparison with the baseline established in 1999 and to maintain their quality for defence use.
  Maintain the MOD map library collection at the agreed level of readiness and achieve a 1 per cent. improvement in coverage of geographic information holdings.
  Key Target 5:
  To achieve a 2.5 per cent. improvement in efficiency.
  Achieve departmental efficiency targets by identifying efficiency measures which, taken together across the agency, deliver the required savings target (2.5 per cent.—cash based).

  Chilean Military
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list all visits to the UK since October 1998 by Chilean military officers. [158990]

  Mr. Hoon
  [holding answer 26 April 2001]: We do not hold records of visits which Chilean military officers may have made to the UK for private purposes. Since October 1998, there have been four official visits to the UK by Chilean military officers which included contact with the UK Government. These are:
  A Chilean Navy ship visited the UK and made a port call in London in October 1998;
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  A Chilean delegation attended Farnborough international air show in July 2000;
  A Chilean delegation also visited RAF Cranwell on 31 October 2000;
  A senior Chilean Naval Officer visited the UK for discussions with Ministry of Defence officials this month.

  In addition, since October 1998 four Chilean officers have been present in the UK for various lengths of time attending military training courses.

  Nuclear Defence Policy
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) of 23 April 2001,Official Report, column 97W, on UK nuclear defence policy, if he will place in the Library the material on which he based his reply on the compatibility between the non-proliferation treaty and the 1958 agreement. [159756]

  Mr. Hoon
  Copies of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and the UK/US mutual defence agreement (MDA), with its subsequent amendments, are already held in the Library of the House.

  Article I of the NPT states that
  "each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly, and not in any way to assist, encourage or induce, any non-nuclear weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices".

  The terms and conditions of the 1958 UK/US MDA, and subsequent amendments, allow for the transfer of special nuclear materials between the UK and US. These movements are carried out in accordance with stringent safety procedures and, since they do not involve nuclear weapons or devices, they do not contravene the NPT.

  Foot and Mouth
  Mr. Gale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence on what date veterinary surgeons from the RAVC were first made available for duties related to foot and mouth disease; and how many Army veterinary surgeons were made available(a) on that date and (b) subsequently. [159818]

  Mr. Spellar
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: The first deployment of armed forces personnel in support of MAFF was of two Royal Army Veterinary Corps vets and a small number of logistics advisers on 16 March. The number of vets was subsequently increased to four. The current number deployed is three.

  MV Etireno
  Mr. Welsh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what resources from his Department were put at the disposal of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office during the recent hunt for the MV Etireno. [159860]

  Mr. Spellar
  The Benin Government issued a request for assistance in searching for the MV Etireno on 16 April. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office asked the Ministry of Defence what assets were available. We were able to offer the services of HMS Glasgow, a type 42 destroyer, and RFA Black Rover, a small ship tanker.
  645W
  This response was provided on the same day. The vessels were in the area as part of their patrol programme. Before they could reach the search area, the MV Etireno docked in Cotonou in the early hours of 17 April. We were subsequently informed by the Benin authorities that there was no further requirement for HMS Glasgow and RFA Black Rover.

HEALTH

  Quality Protects
  Ms Coffey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the outcome is of the evaluation of the quality protects management action plans submitted to his Department by local authorities; and if he will make a statement. [160257]

  Mr. Hutton
  All local authorities with social services responsibilities submitted their "Quality Protects" management action plans (MAPs) to the Department of Health by the end of January. The Social Services Inspectorate has now completed its evaluation of the MAPs and I have considered their findings. The MAPs from all 150 local councils have reached an acceptable standard. I have today written to the chief executives of the authorities to confirm that, subject to normal grant procedures, they will receive payment of their allocation of the children's services grant for 2001–02.

  The evidence nationally shows that "Quality Protects" is beginning to make a real difference to children's lives. Children who are looked after are experiencing fewer placement moves; more of them are finding new permanent families through adoption; and fewer are leaving care prematurely when they reach 16. We shall be publishing a national overview report on the evaluation of MAPs in the summer.

  Porton Down
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 6 March 2001,Official Report, columns 188–89W, on Porton Down, if he will request officials in his Department to conduct an evaluation of the 1993 report by the US Institute of Medicine entitled, "Veterans at Risk - the Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite". [157402]

  Yvette Cooper
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave on 6 March 2001,Official Report, columns 188–89W. As I made clear, the purpose of the Department's message was only to make general practitioners aware of the Ministry of Defence's medical assessment programme. The Department has no plans to review in detail the health effects of the chemicals that may have been used at Porton Down or international reports on such chemicals as this is a matter for the MOD.

  Ministerial Visits
  Mr. Stephen O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many visits abroad were made by his Department's Ministers on departmental business(a) in the three years up to 30 April 1997 and (b) in the 12 months up to 30 April 1997. [157616]
  646W
  Ms Stuart
  The information requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Non-departmental Public Bodies
  Mr. Stephen O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the total gross running costs were to his Department of the NDPBs accountable through his Department in the financial year 1996–97. [157615]

  Ms Stuart
  The table is extracted from data in "Public Bodies l997" and shows a total departmental contribution of £118.6 million to the gross expenditure of Department's executive non-departmental public bodies in the financial year 1996–97.

  NDPBs—gross expenditure funded by Government, 1996–97

  £ million

  Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work

  37.7

  English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting

  6.6

  Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority

  1.8

  Medical Practices Committee

  0.5

  National Biological Standards Board

  10.4

  National Radiological Protection Board

  6.2

  Public Health Laboratory Service Board

  55.4

  Total

  118.6

  Running Costs
  Mr. Stephen O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the total gross running cost to his Department was in the 12 months ending 30 April 1997 of(a) stationery and (b) printing and publishing. [157623]

  Ms Stuart
  During the financial year 1996–97 the Department spent £3.175,246 on printing and publishing and £1,589,895 on stationery.

  Sefton Health Authority
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people aged over 60 years have had eye tests in each year since 1995–96 in Sefton health authority. [158529]

  Mr. Denham
  From information obtained on the age of patients from an annual, national sample survey of opticians' work load, we estimate that the following numbers of sight tests were carried out among the 70,500 people, aged 60 and over, whom we estimate are resident in Sefton.

  Year

  Number of sight tests

  1995–96

  26,200

  1996–97

  27,000

  1997–98

  29,700

  1998–99

  28,100

  1999–2000

  32,500

  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many individuals within the Sefton Health Authority have had(a) hip replacements, (b) knee replacements, (c) hernia operations and (d) cataract

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  operations each year since 1996–97; what the age profile was of the people undergoing these operations; and what the average cost of these operations is in the private sector. [158515]

  Finished consultant episodes by operation and age where the patient was resident in Sefton health authority NHS hospitals, England 1996–97 to 1999–2000

  Age

  Year/operation

  0.4

  10–14

  15–44

  45–64

  65–74

  75–84

  85 and over

  Total

  1996–97

  Hip replacement

  0

  0

  —

  82

  123

  127

  64

  400

  Knee replacement

  0

  0

  —

  40

  64

  51

  6

  161

  Hernia

  36

  27

  7

  143

  89

  52

  14

  437

  Cataract

  2

  3

  2

  112

  277

  477

  224

  1124

  1997–98

  Hip replacement

  0

  0

  —

  85

  131

  136

  79

  440

  Knee replacement

  0

  0

  —

  29

  66

  45

  9

  149

  Hernia

  39

  20

  9

  145

  108

  54

  8

  465

  Cataract

  4

  0

  —

  109

  251

  479

  224

  1074

  1998–99

  Hip replacement

  0

  0

  1

  87

  116

  133

  69

  418

  Knee replacement

  0

  0

  —

  33

  84

  63

  3

  184

  Hernia

  31

  29

  8

  148

  88

  66

  4

  449

  Cataract

  0

  1

  1

  137

  362

  616

  274

  1403

  1999–2000

  Hip replacement

  0

  0

  —

  71

  113

  138

  81

  410

  Knee replacement

  0

  0

  —

  45

  76

  53

  7

  181

  Hernia

  37

  20

  9

  133

  103

  64

  13

  461

  Cataract

  3

  0

  2

  137

  374

  576

  257

  1369

  Note:

  An FCE is defined as a period of patient care under one consultant in one health care provider. The figures do not represent the number of patients, as one person may have several episodes within the year.

  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many qualified nurses are working in the NHS in Sefton health authority; and what the number was in 1997. [158510]

  Mr. Denham
  The information requested is given in the table.

  National health service hospital and community health services: Qualified nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff and general medical service practice nurses employed within the Sefton health authority area as at 30 September each year

  Headcount

  Whole-time equivalents

  1997

  Total Qualified Nurses

  2,420

  1,840

  Of which:

  HCHS Nurses

  2,360

  1,790

  60

  40

  2000

  Total Qualified Nurses

  2,160

  1,970

  Of which:

  HCHS Nurses

  2,080

  1,940

  Nurses

  80

  30

  Notes:

  1. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10

  2. Figures exclude learners and agency staff

  Source:

  Department of Health non-medical workforce census

  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many doctors worked in Sefton health authority in(a) 1996–97 and (b) 2000–01; and what the forecast is for 2001–02. [158511]
  648W
  Mr. Denham
  Consultant episodes by operation and age for the period 1996–97 to 1999–2000, the latest data available, are shown in the table. Data on private sector costs are not available.

  Mr. Denham
  The number of all National Health Service doctors in the Sefton health authority as at 1 October 1996 and 30 September 2000 is shown in the table. The Department does not currently produce projections of total doctor numbers for individual health authorities.

  All NHS doctors in the Sefton health authority 1996 and 2000

  Headcount

  1996

  2000

  All NHS doctors

  660

  820

  Of whom:

  General Medical Practitioners1,2

  160

  160

  HCHS3 medical and dental staff4

  510

  650

  Of whom:

  Consultants

  210

  270

  1General Medical Practitioners includes UPEs, Restricted Principals, Assistants, GP Registrars, Salaried Doctors (para 525FA), and PMS others

  2Excluding GP Retainers

  3Hospital, Public Health Medicine and Community Health Service staff

  4Excludes Hospital Practitioners and Clinical Assistants who are normally GMPs and has already been counted

  Note:

  Figures rounded to the nearest 10

  Sources:

  Department of Health General and Personal Medical Services Statistics as at 1 October 1996 and 30 September 2000

  Department of Health medical and dental workforce census as at 30 September
  649W
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many consultants were working in the NHS in Sefton health authority in 1996–97; and what the number is for 2000–01. [158512]

  Mr. Denham
  The number of all National Health Service doctors, including consultants, in the Sefton health authority as at 1 October 1996 and 30 September 2000 is shown in the table. The Department does not currently produce projections of total doctor or consultant numbers for individual health authorities.

  All NHS doctors in the Sefton health authority, 1996 and 2000

  Headcount

  1996

  2000

  All NHS doctors

  660

  820

  of whom:

  General Medical Practitioners1 (excluding GP Retainers)

  160

  160

  HCHS2 medical and dental staff3

  510

  650

  of whom:

  Consultants

  210

  270

  1General Medical Practitioners includes UPEs, Restricted Principals, Assistants, GP Registrars, Salaried Doctors (para. 525FA), and PMS others

  22 Hospital, Public Health Medicine and Community Health Service staff

  3Excludes Hospital Practitioners and Clinical Assistants who are normally GMPs and has already been counted

  Note:

  Figures rounded to the nearest ten

  Sources:

  Department of Health General and Personal Medical Services Statistics as at 1 October 1996 and 30 September 2000

  Department of Health medical and dental work force census as at 30 September

  Fluoridation
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will publish the health data for the fluoride compounds used in artificial fluoridation procedures. [158441]

  Mr. Denham
  Fluoride compounds used for artificial fluoridation break down to release fluoride and other ions when mixed with water. These ions occur naturally in water supplies. The recently published review by York University found no evidence of any harmful effects on systemic health from drinking fluoridated water and acknowledged benefits in reducing tooth decay. However, as the review was critical of the quality of the research available, we have asked the Medical Research Council how the evidence base might be strengthened.

  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on dental fluorosis with specific regard to links to systemic toxicity. [158440]

  Mr. Denham
  Dental fluorosis is considered to be an effect seen in teeth and is due to the presence of fluoride in the body while teeth are being formed. Its presence does not necessarily imply any harm to health or that fluoride is having any effect, good or bad, on any other part of the body.

  Cord-stem Cell Bank
  Mr. Wood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has for establishing a cord-stem cell bank and offering the facility to the mothers of all new-born children. [158783]

  Mr. Denham
  There are already three cord blood banks run by the National Blood Service in London, Newcastle and Bristol where mothers volunteer to donate their cord blood for the benefit of others. There are no plans to collect cords from mothers of all new-born children.

  Bone Marrow
  Mr. Wood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many(a) children and (b) other patients requiring a bone marrow match railed to find such a match in the year 2000–01. [158782]

  Mr. Denham
  This information is not collected centrally. Information from the experts indicates that between 70 per cent. and 80 per cent. of all people requiring bone marrow transplantation find a match. Newer technology is increasing the availability of bone marrow suitable for transplantation, especially in children.

  Health Budgets
  Mr. Heald
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what discussions have taken place between his Department and the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust and the East and North Hertfordshire division of the Hertfordshire health authority about the current and underlying deficits in the local NHS in East and North Hertfordshire; and if he will make a statement; [158947]

  (2) if there will be cuts in health services in East and North Hertfordshire in order to reduce the current and underlying budget deficits in the local NHS; and if he will make a statement; [158948]

  (3) what steps he intends to take to reduce the underlying and current budget deficits of the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust and the East and North Hertfordshire division of the Hertfordshire health authority; and if he will make a statement; [158940]

  (4) if he will make further funding available to the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust and the East and North Hertfordshire division of the Hertfordshire health authority in order to reduce the respective deficits. [158949]

  Mr. Denham
  holding answer 26 April 2001]: The Eastern Regional Office of the National Health Service Executive is working closely with the East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust and Hertfordshire health authority to address deep seated and longstanding financial and service challenges going back at least a decade. For 2001–02 the health authority received additional funding of £26.5 million (8.25 per cent.) to enable it to meet waiting time targets, to effect service improvements to deliver the NHS Plan, and to meet cost and service pressures.

  At the end of March 2001, as a result of reallocation of funding within the Department, the regional office was able to allocate a further £6.5 million to East and North Hertfordshire. In addition, two reviews on financial

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  management and on the management of waiting lists within that health system have just been concluded. The extra funding and the recommendations from the reviews for the more effective management of services will allow financial balance to be achieved alongside the significant service improvements outlined by the Government in the NHS Plan.

  Community Health Councils
  Mr. Hurst
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the Government's consultations regarding community health councils. [159367]

  Ms Stuart
  Chapter 10 of the NHS Plan proposed that community health councils be abolished and new structures set in place to increase patient and public empowerment across all sectors of the health service. Following the launch of the NHS Plan in July 2001 a public undertaking was given to involve national and local stakeholder groups in developing the detail of the new structures. A series of seminars was held in November and December 2001 and focused on the various elements of the new arrangements and involved key representative groups. Since then the proposal for abolition of CHCs and the development of the new structures have been subject to debate through the introduction of the Health and Social Care Bill. Key stakeholder groups have continued to be involved in the development of the new arrangements.

  NHS Beds
  Mr. Jim Murphy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the average number of beds is in NHS hospitals(a) built, (b) commissioned and (c) planned since 1 May 1997. [159438]

  Mr. Denham
  The physical stock of beds (defined as number of staffed in-patient and day case beds) in the major acute hospitals (capital value over £25 million) in England is as follows:

  Number of beds

  (a) Built and operational since 1 May 1997

  Carlisle

  444

  Dartford and Gravesham

  402

  South Buckinghamshire

  542

  Greenwich

  571

  Rochdale

  492

  Central Sheffield University Hospital (Stonegrove—maternity only)

  119

  (b) In the process of being constructed since 1 May 1997

  Norfolk and Norwich

  953

  North Durham Healthcare

  524

  Calderdale

  614

  South Manchester University Hospitals

  1,031

  Bromley Healthcare

  525

  Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals

  459

  Worcester Royal Infirmary

  474

  Hereford Hospitals

  340

  South Durham Healthcare

  347

  South Tees Acute Hospitals

  1,060

  Swindon and Marlborough

  594

  King's Healthcare

  902

  St. George's Hospital

  1,123

  University College London Hospitals

  664

  West Middlesex University Hospitals

  434

  Hull and East Yorkshire Maternity

  150

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  Number of beds

  (c) Planned since 1 May 19971

  Barts and The London

  21,200

  Central Manchester/Manchester Childrens Hospitals

  1,178

  Dudley Group of Hospitals

  830

  West Berkshire Priority Care

  203

  Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals

  1,890

  Walsgrave Hospitals/Coventry Healthcare

  969

  Leeds Teaching Hospitals

  3—

  Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals

  207

  Havering Hospitals

  798

  Portsmouth Hospitals

  908

  Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley

  274

  Southern Debyshire Acute Hospitals

  1,127

  University Hospital Birmingham/South Birmingham Mental Health

  1,128

  Bradford Hospitals

  1,791

  Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health

  605

  North West London Hospitals

  214

  East Kent Hospitals

  1,720

  University Hospitals of Leicester

  2,545

  Lewisham Hospital

  572

  Peterborough Hospitals

  716

  Salford Royal Hospitals

  1,014

  Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells/Invicta Community Care

  852

  Pinderfield and Pontefract Hospitals/Wakefield and Pontefract Community/Dewsbury Health Care

  1,686

  Forest Healthcare

  783

  Brighton Healthcare

  100

  United Bristol Healthcare

  1,261

  Sherwood Forest Hospitals

  921

  Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals

  566

  Mid Essex Hospitals

  973

  Essex Rivers Healthcare

  844

  Hull and East Yorkshire

  1,533

  North Middlesex Hospitals

  482

  North Staffordshire Hospital

  1,442

  Plymouth Hospitals

  1,432

  St. Helens and Knowsley Hospitals

  1,278

  Walsall Hospitals/Walsall Community

  749

  Paddington Basin

  3—

  Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals

  1,162

  Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals

  117

  Southampton University Hospitals

  112

  South Devon Healthcare

  939

  Tameside and Glossop Acute

  670

  Gloucestershire Royal

  3—

  Royal Berkshire and Battle Hospital

  806

  Guy's and St. Thomas'

  1,150

  1Numbers at this stage are provisional and may change

  2Approximate

  3Under review

  Mr. Sayeed
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many beds there are per head of population in(a) the National Health Service and (b) private facilities. [159559]

  Mr. Denham
  During 1999–2000, in the National Health Service in England, there were 3.74 beds per 1,000 population. Information on bed capacities at private facilities is not centrally collected.

  www.nhsonline.net
  Mr. Todd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what endorsement has been given by his Department to the website www.nhsonline.net. [159193]

  Mr. Denham
  The Department has given no endorsement for nhsonline.net.

  Mental Health White Paper
  Mrs. Ann Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he intends to publish the statutory guidance relating to residential options and refusals referred to in paragraph 7.12 (page 73) of the Mental Health White Paper. [159536]

  Mr. Hutton
  We intend to issue the guidance referred to in paragraph 7.12 of the White Paper "Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century" in summer 2001.

  Vitamins and Minerals
  Mr. Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) if he will make a statement on the progress being made by his Ad Hoc Expert Advisory Group on Vitamins and Minerals; and if he expects the group to produce its final report before the publication of the report by the European Commission's Scientific Committee for Food on the safety of vitamins and minerals; [159539]

  (2) what assessment he has made of the ability of the Ad Hoc Expert Advisory Group on Vitamins and Minerals to produce its report according to the timetable originally envisaged with its present level of resources; [159541]

  (3) what steps he is taking to ensure that the work of his Ad Hoc Expert Advisory Group on Vitamins and Minerals progresses with sufficient speed as to inform his input into the work of the European Scientific Committee for Foods. [159540]

  Ms Stuart
  The Ad Hoc Expert Advisory Group on Vitamins and Minerals have published the reviews of individual vitamins and minerals on the Food Standards Agency website at www. Foodstandards.gov.uk as the work has progressed. At the same time copies have been sent to the secretariat of the Scientific Committee on Food.

  The Expert Group on Vitamins and Minerals expect to complete considering the reviews of the relevant scientific information on the safety of individual vitamins and minerals by July 2001. The group's risk assessments for the vitamins and minerals reviewed will be issued for public consultation later this year. After the consultation process the group will publish its final report, a copy of which will be sent to the Scientific Committee on Food.

  Mr. Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the progress being made by the European Commission's Scientific Committee for Food in reviewing the safety of vitamins and minerals; when he expects that Committee will adopt upper safe levels; and for which nutrients. [159538]

  Ms Stuart
  The European Commission's Scientific Committee for Food have expressed opinions on the tolerable upper intake levels of beta-carotene, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, folate, manganese, selenium, molybdenum and vitamin B2 which are available on their website. Opinions on the remaining vitamins and minerals are being prepared by the Committee and will be published in due course. The timetable for the adoption of tolerable upper intake levels is not known.

  NHS Restructuring
  Mr. Hammond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the net number of administrative, clerical and managerial jobs lost in the NHS Executive, Department of Health and health authorities will be, as a result of the reorganisation announced by him on 25 April,(a) within the next 12 months and (b) upon full implementation of the restructuring he has outlined. [159603]

  Mr. Denham
  [holding answer 30 April 2001]: By 2004 control of 75 per cent. of the National Health Service budget will be devolved to frontline staff in primary care trusts and care trusts. The number of health authorities will be cut by around two thirds, and it is expected that around half of the posts currently in regional offices will go. Net savings will be at least £100 million. Precise staffing arrangements will be for local decision. Where possible, job reductions will be achieved by natural turnover.

  Correspondence
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what his target time is for replying to letters from hon. Members; and what his policy is on the issuing of acknowledgement letters from the Ministerial Correspondence Unit. [159792]

  Ms Stuart
  The Department has a Service First target of 20 working days to reply to correspondence from hon. Members. It is the Department's policy to issue acknowledgement letters to all correspondence received from hon. Members. Unfortunately, the Department had to suspend this practice in late 2000 due to problems with the system producing incorrect dates on acknowledgement letters. The problem has now been resolved and all correspondence is now being acknowledged.

  Sir Brian Mawhinney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire will receive a reply to his letter of 23 March on behalf of his constituents, Mr. and Mrs. McGuire. [159870]

  Mr. Denham
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: A reply to the right hon. Member's letter concerning his constituents Mr. and Mrs. McGuire was sent on 30 April 2001.

  Bed-and-Breakfast Accommodation
  Mr. Wilkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what his assessment is of the average cost of bed-and-breakfast accommodation per night for the relatives and friends of in-patients at(a) Harefield Hospital, Middlesex and (b) St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. [158605]

  Mr. Denham
  [holding answer 30 April 2001]: The information requested is not held centrally.

  Special Advisers
  Mr. Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many special advisers worked in his Department from 1997 to date. [160022]

  Ms Stuart
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: Since 3 May 1997, no more than two special advisers have been in post at any one time.

  Child Protection
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how compliance with the "Working Together" guidelines for child protection is monitored and inspected; which agencies are monitored; and which inspectorates discharge this function. [158888]

  Mr. Hutton
  The social services inspectorate social care regions and inspection groups and the SSI/Audit Commission joint review team all contribute to the assessment of the performance of each local council with social services responsibilities. Their work is informed by the performance information collected by the local council, through the performance assessment framework. Some inspections cover broad areas of services, such as children's services. Others focus on more specific tasks, such as monitoring the performance of authorities which are subject to special measures.
  The SSI social care regions monitor the progress made by all councils in implementing the "Government's Objectives for Children's Social Services", progress on major initiatives such as "Quality Protects", and action plans to address the recommendations of inspections and joint reviews.

  Many agencies beyond social services departments have child protection responsibilities. These responsibilities are set out in detail in "Working Together to Safeguard Children". For the first time ever, beginning later this year, there will be a programme of children's safeguards inspections. These inspections will focus on the working of area child protection committees in their implementation of "Working Together to Safeguard Children", and the inter-agency arrangements to assess and address the risks posed by dangerous adults. They will be undertaken by a team of inspectors drawn from each of the inspectorates for the range of agencies with regular contact with children, and will be led by the SSI. It will therefore include inspectors from Ofsted, the Commission for Health Improvement, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, HMI Prisons, and will be supported by the Magistrates Courts Service Inspectorate and the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate.

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

  Tourism
  Mr. Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what estimate he has made of the interim marketing budgets of the regional tourist boards for the next 12 months. [159345]

  Janet Anderson
  Regional tourist boards (RTBs) in England will receive £5.5 million during the current financial year. The funding, allocated to the RTBs by the English Tourism Council (ETC), is provided for work that complements the ETC' s role in delivering national and regional programmes—in line with "Tomorrow's Tourism", the Government's tourism strategy—rather than for direct marketing.

  However, the ETC have received an additional allocation of £3.8 million to fund a national and regional information and promotion campaign as part of the foot and mouth recovery plan. More than half of this additional money is being passed to the RTBs to help fund specific
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  regional promotions and information campaigns. RTBs will also benefit from the additional funding which regional development agencies (RDAs) will allocate for promotional work to support tourism. I do not yet have detailed information about this funding.

  Sports Funding
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how many young people from(a) the south-east, (b) London and (c) the UK have been given financial assistance for training for national squads in (i) boxing, (ii) cricket and (iii) football in the current financial year. [158210]

  Mr. Chris Smith
  The financial assistance provided by Sport England to assist young people with the potential to reach the national squads is currently provided through the lottery funded world class programmes: performance, potential and start.

  The funding is provided to both the national governing body for the main costs associated with the programmes and also to individual athletes included in the plans.

  In the current financial year, boxing has been awarded funding for world class performance, potential and start. The potential squad includes 14 young people around the ages of 18/19 who are receiving individual financial assistance. Two are from the south-east, one of whom is from London. Cricket similarly has been awarded financial support for its world class programmes. However, while no young people currently receive individual assistance they will benefit from the £2 million programme award. Football does not have a world class programme due to the lack of financial need, which therefore means that no young people currently receive financial assistance through the world class programmes.

  Helplines
  Mr. Levitt
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what telephone helplines to assist the public are administered by his Department and its agencies. [159507]

  Mr. Chris Smith
  My Department operates a public enquiry unit to assist the public. The unit can be reached on 020 7211 6200 or at enquiries@culture.gov.uk.

  The Department and the Royal Parks Agency operate no other helplines.

  Creative Industries Task Force
  Mr. McNamara
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will list the membership and terms of reference of the creative industries taskforce; what publications and reports have been completed to date; what work is under way; and what measures the group has taken to promote creative works among members of ethnic minorities, including the Irish community in Britain. [159554]

  Janet Anderson
  The creative industries taskforce was established in 1997. Its terms of reference were"to provide a forum in which Government Ministers could come together with a few senior industry figures to assess the value of the creative industries, analyse their needs in terms of Government policies and identify ways of maximising their economic impact".
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  It commissioned the first creative industries mapping documents, published in November 1998, and agreed a work programme in December 1998 to analyse key generic issues impacting on the creative industries.

  The reports and publications commissioned by the creative industries task force were:
  Creative Industries Mapping Document, November 1998
  Exports: Our Hidden Potential, November 1999
  UK Television Exports Inquiry, November 1999
  Internet Inquiry: Snapshot of a Rolling Wave, February 2000
  The Regional Dimension: the Report of the Regional Issues Working Group, February 2000
  Report from the Intellectual Property Group of the Creative Industries Task Force, March 2000
  Your Creative Future, April 2000
  Report on the Finance Conference: Connecting Creativity with Capital, May 2000
  Creative Industries Mapping Document, March 2001.

  Having fulfilled its initial remit, the taskforce was wound up in June 2000. The work of ensuring its analysis is turned into action is now being carried forward by the ministerial creative industries strategy group, whose current membership is:

  Right hon. Chris Smith, MP

  Right hon. Hilary Armstrong, MP

  Patricia Hewitt, MP

  Stephen Timms, MP

  Janet Anderson, MP

  Dr. Kim Howells, MP

  Michael Wills, MP

  Baroness Scotland of Asthal

  Michael McGimpsey, MLA

  Jenny Randerson, AM

  Allan Wilson, MSP.

  In terms of activities currently under way, we are working with Universities UK towards establishing a creative industries higher education forum to promote better communication between education and industry; we are encouraging the development of innovative approaches to funding creative businesses and are planning a finance good practice workshop this summer; we are examining the possibility of organising a workshop on creative industries in a rural environment to be held this autumn; we will shortly report to the better regulation taskforce on the regulatory burden facing creative businesses; Scottish Enterprise has identified the creative industries as a key industry cluster and announced a £25 million support programme over five years; the Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure, in partnership with three other Departments in the Northern Ireland Assembly, has launched a consultation exercise called "Unlocking Creativity" providing a career path from school to work; and we have established a creative industries statistical review group to consider how to improve data collection on the creative industries.

  We are also encouraging regional players such as the regional development agencies and cultural consortiums to work together to maximise the potential of the creative industries in their area, and similarly with local authorities, in terms of developing their cultural strategies.
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  Through efforts at these levels, we look to promote creative opportunity for all, including the Irish community in Britain.

  Analogue Switchover
  Mr. Baker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will make it his policy to include in the forthcoming communication Bill a statutory duty on OFCOM to promote(a) take up of digital television and (b) early analogue switchover date. [159600]

  Janet Anderson
  [holding answer 30 April 2001]: The Government are committed to encouraging the take-up of digital television and the early switchover from analogue to digital television so that the benefits of digital broadcasting can be universally available. Many responses to the communications White Paper, "A New Future for Communications", argued that we should place a specific duty on OFCOM to achieve this. We are currently considering them.

  World Cup 2002
  Dr. Whitehead
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what discussions he has held with the Kirch group about their proposals to restrict the viewing of World cup 2002 matches to pay-per-view only. [159830]

  Kate Hoey
  We understand that the Kirch group intends to hold an open auction for the live UK broadcasting rights to the 2002 World cup finals tournament but that they intend to comply with the UK listed event legislation. Through correspondence and a meeting with officials, we have made the Kirch group fully aware of the extent of this legislation: that the whole of the World cup finals tournament (all 64 matches) is a listed event, and that any broadcaster purchasing live rights from Kirch would have to comply with the provisions of the 1996 Broadcasting Act.

  Regional Arts Councils
  Dr. Whitehead
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what discussions he has held with the Arts Council about their proposals to reorganise regional arts councils. [159831]

  Mr. Alan Howarth
  My right hon. Friend and I were consulted by the chairman and chief executive of the Arts Council prior to the recent announcement of the proposed changes and further discussion will occur as the proposals develop.

  Special Advisers
  Mr. Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how many special advisers worked in his Department from 1997 to date. [160030]

  Mr. Chris Smith
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: Since 3 May 1997, no more than two special advisers have been in post at any one time.

  Inheritance Tax
  Maria Eagle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will list the allocations of items accepted in lieu of inheritance tax, made in the financial
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  year 2000–01 under sections 9(3) and (4) of the National Heritage Act 1980. [160256]

  Allocations made under National Heritage Act 9(3) of items accepted in lieu of tax in the financial year 2000–01—permanent allocations

  Item

  To whom permanently allocated

  Paintings by Jan Steen, Aelbert Cuyp and Adriaen van Ostade

  The National Trust for display at Waddesdon Manor and Ascott

  A collection of mostly 18th and 19th century architectural drawings

  Victoria and Albeit Museum

  A pair of rococo silver candelabra and a 17th century silver tankard

  Victoria and Albert Museum

  A group of Limoges Renaissance enamels

  The National Trust for display at Waddesdon Manor

  Paintings by Jan van Goyen

  National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (Walker Art Gallery)

  Five sculptures by Barbara Hepworth

  Fitzwilliam Museum (three on display at Snape, Suffolk and one at Church College)

  A silver-gilt William and Mary communion set

  Winchester Cathedral

  Two paintings by William Gear

  Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

  Four portraits of the Meynell family by Francis Grant and John Hoppner

  Temple Newsam House, Leeds

  Two Longton Hall 'Snowman' figures

  Stoke on Trent, Potteries Museum

  Cimabue: Virgin and Child Enthroned

  National Gallery

  Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger: Portrait of an Unknown Woman

  Tate

  The Dacre Beasts

  Victoria and Albert Museum

  Henry Moore: Mother and Child

  Leeds City Art Gallery

  William Gomm Library Furniture

  Stoneleigh Abbey Preservation Trust

  Richard Wilson: Landscape

  National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (Walker Art Gallery)

  George Romney: Viscountess Bulkeley as Hebe

  National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff

  Thomas Jones: Landscape

  National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff

  Allocations made under National Heritage Act 9(4) of items accepted in lieu of tax in the financial year 2000–01—temporary allocations (and not yet superseded by a permanent direction)

  Item

  To whom temporarily allocated

  Chippendale and Adam Chairs

  National Gallery of Scotland for Duff House

  The archive of Sir Ernest Makins and Baron Sherfield

  Bodleian Library, Oxford University

  Three mediaeval books

  The National Library of Scotland

  Walter Smith: The Wydow Edith (1525)

  British Library

  The Wentworth Muniments

  Sheffield Record Office and North Yorkshire Record Office

  A 14th century ivory mirror back

  Victoria and Albert Museum

  John Crome: Fishmarket at Boulogne

  Norwich, The Castle Museum

  Metsu: Lady at a Spinet

  English Heritage for display at Kenwood

  Tinteretto: Portrait of an Unknown Man

  Leighton House, Kensington

  George Stubbs: Lord Rockingham's Arab Stallion

  National Gallery of Scotland

  George Ehret: Deliciae Botanicae

  National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside

  Hendrick Goltzius: Drawing

  National Gallery of Scotland

  Three mediaeval books

  National Library of Scotland

  A collection of 18th century Scottish silver

  National Museum of Scotland

  A Norwegian 14th century ivory crozier head

  Victoria and Albert Museum

  Land at Ham Hill, Somerset

  South Somerset District Council

EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

  Departmental Policies (Sherwood)
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will set out, with statistical information relating as directly as possible to the constituency, the effects on the Sherwood constituency of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [158859]

  Mr. Wills
  [holding answer 26 April 2001]: Details of the effects of a range of the Department's policies on the Sherwood constituency and Nottinghamshire LEA have been placed in the Library.

  Departmental Policies (Wellingborough)
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will set out, with statistical information relating as directly as possible to
  660W
  Mr. Alan Howarth
  The information that my hon. Friend requests is as follows:

  the constituency, the effects on the constituency of Wellingborough of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [158858]

  Mr. Wills
  [holding answer 26 April 2001]: Details of the effects of a range of the Department's policies on Wellingborough constituency and Northamptonshire LEA have been placed in the Library.

  Departmental Policies (Bristol, South)
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will set out, with statistical information relating as directly as possible to the constituency, the effect on the constituency of Bristol, South of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [158857]

  Mr. Wills
  [holding answer 26 April 2001]: Outlined are details of the effects of a range of the Department's policies on Bristol, South constituency and City of Bristol LEA.
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  Sure Start

  Bristol has one Sure Start scheme in the Bristol, South constituency. A trailblazer project in the Hartcliffe, Highridge, and Withywood area of the city has been allocated £3,161,682 (to March 2002) towards offering increased play and family learning opportunities and will benefit the 1,328 under-fours in the area.

  The Knowle West area of Bristol also has a scheme to enable a comprehensive care and education service for children aged 0 to four to be created, a grant of

  Schools with specialist status

  City of Bristol

  Specialist School

  Designated

  1997–98

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  2001–02

  Speedwell

  September 1997

  57,480

  95,100

  107,856

  121,944

  123,000

  Capital

  100,000

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Cotham Grammar

  September 2000

  —

  —

  —

  74,000

  124,845

  Capital

  —

  —

  —

  100,000

  —

  Totals

  Recurrent

  57,480

  95,100

  107,856

  195,944

  247,845

  Capital

  100,000

  —

  —

  100,000

  —

  157,480

  95,100

  107,856

  295,944

  247,845

  There are no Specialist Schools in the Bristol, South constituency.

  School Achievement Awards

  £

  Novers Lane Junior School

  5,950

  Weston Park Primary School

  7,000

  Hareclive Primary School

  9,450

  St. Bernard's Catholic Primary School

  2,800

  Total

  25,200

  With the exception of Weston Park Primary School, all are in the Bristol, South constituency.

  Excellence in Cities

  Bristol LEA was included in the second phase of Excellence in Cities, announced on 23 March 2000. All 22 maintained mainstream secondary schools in Bristol are involved in the EiC programme, and special schools have been involved in the partnership planning process too.

  There are seven EiC secondary schools in Bristol, South constituency:

  Hengrove School

  Ashton Park School

  Bedminster Down School

  Withywood Community School

  Hartcliffe Secondary School

  Merrywood School

  St. Bernadette Catholic School.

  These have all benefited proportionately to need from Excellence in Cities but individual school allocations are determined within local partnerships.

  Small EAZs

  Bristol Excellence in Cities has approval for two small EAZs with a proposed starting date of September 2001 for both. One is in the Bristol, South constituency, covers
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  £2.5 million was approved for the first three years and will benefit the 990 under-fours living in the catchment area.

  Beacon schools

  There are three Beacon schools within Bristol local education authority St. Mary Redcliffe and Temple School, Hotwells Primary and Ilminster Avenue Specialist Nursery School. Of these only Illminster School is in the Bristol, South constituency.

  the Withywood area and is based at the Withywood Community School, and the other is the North Bristol Achievement Partnership which is based at Henbury School.

  Education Action Zone

  A group of 17 schools in the east of the city are included in the Bristol Education Action Zone formed in September 2000.

  Key activities:
  Teaching and learning
  Pupil engagement—setting up groups within schools to support young people in establishing their cultural and gender identity
  Children as effective communicators
  Parental engagement—developing groups to support parents from minority ethnic backgrounds
  Participation and progression
  Developing effective urban leaders and managers
  ICT—providing networked computers, free training for teachers, out of hours access for community use.

  Support from the Arts Council of England means that arts will form part of each of these strands.

  Infant class sizes

  Progress in implementing plan:

  KSI pupils in classes of 31 or more

  January 1997

  Number

  3,708

  Percentage

  29

  January 1998

  Number

  3,770

  Percentage

  29.5

  January 1999

  Number

  3,763

  Percentage

  29.5

  663W

  KSI pupils in classes of 31 or more

  January 2000

  Number

  2,382

  Percentage

  19

  January 2001

  Number

  444

  Percentage

  3.7

  In Bristol, South constituency the number has declined from 1,091 (26.7 per cent.) to 126 (3.3 per cent.).

  Funding revenue and capital

  Financial year

  Revenue (£)

  Number of teachers

  Capital (£)

  Number of classrooms

  1998–99

  0

  0

  203,000

  3

  1999–2000

  231,000

  14

  303,256

  3

  2000–01

  675,000

  40

  95,000

  1

  2001–02

  702,313

  19

  0

  0

  2002–031

  201,875

  19

  0

  0

  1Provisional summer costs only

  Performance Data (England averages include independent schools)

  Key Stage 2 test results: pupils achieving level 4 or above

  Percentage

  2000

  1999

  1998

  1997

  English

  Bristol LEA

  66

  62

  55

  54

  England average

  75

  71

  65

  63

  Maths

  Bristol LEA

  63

  59

  47

  52

  England average

  72

  69

  59

  62

  LEA capital funding

  £000

  2001–02

  2000–01

  1999–2000

  1998–99

  1997–98

  Total

  Credit approvals

  Annual Capital Guideline (ACG)

  3,952

  2,914

  1,422

  437

  174

  8,899

  Supplementary Credit Approval (SCA)

  1,783

  1,453

  1,712

  3,357

  162

  8,467

  PFI credits

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Grants

  NDS Devolved Capital

  2,007

  —

  —

  —

  —

  2,007

  NDS Condition

  1,155

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1,155

  NDS

  —

  4,457

  2,026

  355

  620

  7,458

  NGfL

  1,631

  1,099

  1,229

  764

  —

  4,723

  Voluntary Aided (VA) Grant

  256

  827

  251

  351

  165

  1,850

  Schools' Devolved/Formula Capital

  —

  2,417

  —

  —

  —

  2,417

  Science labs

  177

  177

  —

  —

  —

  354

  Nursery provision

  —

  75

  —

  —

  —

  75

  Energy

  —

  —

  —

  99

  —

  99

  Assist Management Plan (AMP) support

  —

  —

  46

  —

  —

  46

  SEED challenge

  234

  207

  —

  —

  —

  441

  Infant Class Size

  —

  5

  298

  203

  —

  506

  Outside toilets

  —

  —

  —

  40

  —

  40

  Access Initiative

  349

  —

  —

  —

  —

  349

  Security

  81

  116

  119

  117

  94

  527

  SSLU's

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Early Excellence Grant

  —

  210

  —

  —

  —

  210

  Total

  11,625

  13,957

  7,103

  5,723

  1,215

  —

  664W

  Key Stage 2 test results: pupils achieving level 4 or above

  Percentage

  2000

  1999

  1998

  1997

  Science

  Bristol LEA

  78

  71

  59

  56

  England average

  85

  78

  69

  69

  GCSE and GNVQ results

  Percentage

  2000

  1999

  1998

  1997

  5+ A*-C passes

  Bristol LEA

  31.2

  31.0

  29.0

  32.1

  England average

  49.2

  47.9

  46.3

  45.1

  5+ A*-G passes

  Bristol LEA

  81.1

  80.5

  80.4

  81.2

  England average

  88.9

  88.5

  87.5

  86.4

  No passes

  Bristol LEA

  10.4

  10.7

  10.9

  10.9

  England average

  5.6

  6.0

  6.6

  7.7

  GCE A/AS examinations and advanced GNVQs

  Percentage

  2000

  1999

  1998

  1997

  Average points for fewer than two A/AS levels

  LEA

  2.6

  2.5

  2.4

  2.9

  England average

  3.0

  3.0

  3.0

  2.9

  Average points for two or more A/AS levels

  LEA

  15.4

  13.8

  13.6

  13.7

  England average

  18.5

  18.2

  17.8

  17.3

  Advanced GNVQs

  LEA

  9.4

  8.8

  9.1

  —

  England average

  10.1

  9.9

  9.6

  —

  665W
  Funding per pupil

  In City of Bristol LEA, funding per pupil has increased by £590 in real terms between 1997–98 and 2001–02.

  Further education

  Student numbers at all FEFC funded institutions where home postcode is in the local authority district of Bristol.

  1996–97 to 1999–2000

  16–18

  Adult

  Full-time

  Part-time

  Full-time

  Part-time

  FEFC funded

  1996–97

  3,174

  1,115

  2,500

  20,718

  1997–98

  3,228

  1,113

  2,515

  21,140

  1998–99

  2,999

  1,269

  2,219

  20,904

  1999–2000

  3,192

  1,218

  2,102

  22,657

  Non-FEFC funded

  1996–97

  53

  262

  101

  933

  1997–98

  72

  395

  138

  770

  1998–99

  85

  430

  245

  1,231

  1999–2000

  82

  388

  424

  1,825

  Modern apprenticeships

  Information on Modern Apprenticeships for all English constituencies were placed in the Library of the House of Commons on 30 March 2001.

  New Deal for Young People

  In the Bristol, South constituency, 1,221 young people have joined the New Deal to end January 2001. 637 have found jobs, 479 of which are sustained.

  Labour market statistics

  The working age employment rate in City of Bristol in winter 2000–01 was 79.4 per cent., above the UK rate of 74.5 per cent. The rate in winter 1996–97 was 71.7 per cent.

  The claimant unemployment rate has fallen from 9.8 per cent. in March 1997 to 3.8 per cent. in March 2001 in the Bristol, South constituency.

  Children's Fund
  Mr. Kidney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what arrangements have been made for the administration of Children's Fund moneys in Staffordshire. [159194]

  Mr. Boateng
  I hope to be able to make an announcement about the second and third wave children's fund areas before the end of this year. An announcement on the areas to receive first wave children's fund local network funding will be made shortly. All areas of England will have access to the children's fund by 2003–04.

  Education Rights (UN)
  Mr. McNamara
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1) what the conclusions of his meeting were with the UN special rapporteur on the right to education on 7 February; [159564]

  (2) pursuant to his answer of 5 February 2001, Official Report, column 419W, on education rights, what the conditions of the meeting were with the special rapporteur on 7 February. [159575]
  666W
  Jacqui Smith
  I was scheduled to meet the special rapporteur on the right to education during the morning of 7 February but the meeting was cancelled at the special rapporteur's request owing to adverse weather conditions in Sweden.

  Individual Learning Accounts
  Mr. Etherington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will make a statement on plans for opening individual learning accounts by March 2002. [160197]

  Mr. Blunkett
  I am pleased to announce that nearly a year ahead of target the manifesto commitment has been met. There are now. over 1 million individual learning accounts in the UK, with over 3,000 opened every day.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Porton Down
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many times since 1 March 1998 the War Pension Agency has requested information from the Chemical Defence Establishment, Porton Down, with regard to former service personnel who are claiming disablement as a result of experiments at Porton Down. [159810]

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

  Occupational Pension Schemes
  Mr. Ben Chapman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to reform the system for appointing members of occupational pension schemes to serve as trustees. [159362]

  Mr. Rooker
  The Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 includes changes to the current legislation governing the nomination and selection of member-nominated trustees and directors. We are currently working on the supporting regulations and aim to bring the new provisions into force in October this year.

  The new provisions will ensure that employers can no longer "opt out" of having member nominated trustees, and will be easier and more flexible to implement than the current arrangements.

  Social Inclusion
  Dr. Cable
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how the Government measure the impact of their policies on social inclusion. [159107]

  Mr. Bayley
  Poverty and social exclusion are multi faceted problems. Therefore, we do not use a single definition but instead use a range of indicators to monitor the progress of our strategy. Information relating to the indicators can be found in the second Government "Opportunity for all" report on tackling poverty and social exclusion, "One year on: making a difference" (Cm 4865). The report also describes and monitors the impact of policies we have already introduced, and sets out our plans for the future.

  Unmarried Partners
  Mr. Dawson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) if he will allow the payment of widows/widowers benefit to be based on the national insurance contributions of deceased unmarried partners;[159950]

  (2) what steps he is taking to ensure that unmarried partners are given the same recognition as married couples in all aspects of social security legislation. [159949]

  Angela Eagle
  [holding answer 1 May 20011 A founding principle of the social insurance system is that all rights to benefit derived from another person's

  Helpline

  Description

  Benefits Agency Publicity Register

  For advisers to join the mailing list for information and receive a newsletter

  Benefit Enquiry Line

  Information and advice on disability benefits

  Child Benefit Enquiry Line

  Advice and information on Child Benefit and Guardian's Allowance

  Child Support Literature Line

  —

  CSA National Enquiry Line

  General advice on child maintenance and maintenance estimates

  Disability Living Allowance Customer Care helpline

  Advice on existing DLA claims

  Inherited SERPS Enquiry line

  For public to ask questions about the new plans

  Medical Benefits Direct

  Advises on the repayment of medical costs incurred by UK residents on a temporary visit overseas to another European Economic Area country and health cover for people getting UK Retirement Pension, widow's benefits, bereavement benefits or Incapacity Benefit who live permanently in another EEA country

  MIG (Minimum Income Guarantee) claimline

  For people aged 60 or over to apply for the Minimum Income Guarantee (paid as Income Support)

  Mortgage Payment Protection leaflet orderline

  —

  National Benefit Fraud Hotline

  For public to report suspected benefit fraud

  New Deal for Lone Parents helpline

  For public and advisers to request literature and ask questions about the programme

  Overseas customer service helplines

  Advice on transfer of pensions overseas, medical cover and making claims overseas

  Pensioners' guide orderline

  —

  Pensions Direct

  General advice about state Retirement Pension or widow's benefits paid directly into a bank or building society account

  Pensions Info-Line

  Leaflets orderline, primarily pensions education leaflets

  Print Direct Customer Services helpline

  For advisers to inquire about the progress of bulk literature orders and other miscellaneous queries

  Public Enquiry Office

  —

  Retirement Pensions Forecasting and Advice Service

  For public to make inquiries about their pensions forecast

  Retirement Pension Tele-claims line

  To make a claim for state Retirement Payment over the phone or to ask for a state Retirement Pension form to be issued to be completed at home

  War Pensions Agency Customer Services Unit

  For public inquiries and complaints

  War Pensions freeline

  Provides information and advice on all aspects of war pensions

  Welfare Reform leaflets orderline

  Stocks various leaflets

  Winter Fuel Payments leaflets orderline (seasonal)

  Primarily for advisers

  Winter Fuel Payments claimline

  Public can ask questions of Winter Fuel Payments or request a claim form

  In addition, there are a number of regionally based helplines administered by the Department or one of its agencies.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

  Refrigerants
  Mr. Laurence Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development to what extent her Department's headquarters buildings use hydrofluorocarbons for(a) refrigeration and (b) air conditioning; what amounts of hydrofluorocarbons have been purchased in each year since 1995; and what plans she has to phase out the (i) purchase and (ii) use of hydrofluorocarbons. [160012]

  Clare Short
  My Department's London buildings, all of which are leased, do not currently use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), but there is limited use of HFCs in our East 668W
  contributions are based on the concept of legal marriage. This principle applies equally to bereavement benefits. We have no plans to change the current arrangements.

  Helplines
  Mr. Levitt
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what telephone helplines to assist the public are administered by his Department and its agencies. [159504]

  Mr. Rooker
  The following national helplines and orderlines are administered by this Department or one of its agencies.

  Kilbride office. In our new London headquarters building, which we are due to move into later this year, we are replacing the old hydrochlorofluorocarbon-based (HCFC) systems with a HFC alternative, "134A", which has zero ozone depletion potential. This follows a detailed evaluation of the most appropriate system given the requirements and constraints of the existing building. We will also actively consider using hydrocarbon (HC) systems for smaller uses such as catering and small refrigerators wherever possible.

  Mr. Laurence Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what her Department's policy is regarding the purchase of(a) hydrocarbons and (b) other environmentally benign refrigerants to meet the refrigeration and other relevant energy needs of buildings and premises owned and leased by her Department; and if she will make a statement. [160016]
  669W
  Clare Short
  My Department already actively considers the use of appropriate alternative refrigerants, and leakage control systems, for our main headquarters buildings. For instance, we will be relocating to a new London headquarters building at the end of this year, and as part of the refurbishment works a wide range of refrigerants were considered for both their ozone depletion potential (ODP) and global warming potential (GWP). We have decided to replace the current hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) refrigerant—R22—with a modern HFC alternative, "134A", which has zero ODP. This will meet the requirements under the Montreal protocol to phase out the use of R22. We will also carry out a review of the suitable refrigerant alternatives for a second much smaller London building, for which we have just taken responsibility.

  Mr. Laurence Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development which London headquarters building or premises owned or leased by her Department use(a) chlorofluorocarbons and (b) hydrochlorofluorocarbons for refrigeration and other relevant energy needs. [160020]

  Clare Short
  DFID currently has a main London building at 94 Victoria street, SW1, and two much smaller offices at 20 Victoria street and Glen House, Stag Place SW1, all of which are leased. Information provided from the Landlords confirms that all of these make use of HCFCs in the air conditioning/refrigeration systems.

  West Timor
  Ann Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what steps are being taken to provide humanitarian relief to the refugees in West Timor; and what discussions he has had with the Indonesian Government over ensuring a secure environment for refugees and humanitarian agencies in West Timor. [159927]

  Clare Short
  Accurate information on conditions in the refugee camps in West Timor remains difficult to obtain, following the withdrawal of UN staff and international NGOs in the aftermath of the killing of three UN workers in Atambua last September. The Indonesian Government appear to be managing the situation relatively well, and there have been no reports of widespread hunger, or appeals for humanitarian assistance.

  Staff from my Department and from the Embassy in Jakarta participated in a meeting last week at which a draft Government of Indonesia plan to resolve the refugee situation in West Timor was discussed. This included a discussion of security, particularly ensuring a secure environment for the planned registration of refugees due

  Project

  Date

  £ million

  Sexual and Reproductive Health Phase 2

  2000–04

  20

  Rural District Councils Capacity Building Programme

  1996–2001

  10.6

  Civil Society Land Resettlement Challenge Fund

  2000–04

  5

  Integrated Poverty Monitoring and Analysis System

  2000–03

  1.06

  Wills and Inheritance Laws

  2000–02

  0.86

  Bikita and Lupane Integrated Rural Water Supply and Sanitation projects

  1995–2002

  6.27

  Social Marketing of Condoms

  1996–2001

  2.8

  Small Dams Rehabilitation

  1997–2001

  1.96

  670W
  to take place in late May. A UN mission to review security conditions in West Timor is expected to visit in mid May.

  Fish (Research)
  Mr. Alan Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to her answer of 25 April 2001,Official Report, column 300W, on genetically modified fish, if she will identify the two environmental impact assessments referred to in her answer, indicating where the reports are available. [159864]

  Clare Short
  Results of the first study are described in "Transgenic fish: an evaluation of benefits and risks" published in Fish and Fisheries. Results of the second study are described in "Growth and nutritional trials on transgenic Nile tilapia containing an exogenous fish growth hormone gene". This paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Fish Biology.

  Mr. Alan Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what contractual relationship exists between her Majesty's Government and fish geneticists at the University of Wales; and what returns her Department has had to date from the profit-sharing agreement. [160059]

  Clare Short
  The University of Wales was contracted to manage my Departments fish genetics research programme until 31 March 2001 when the contract ended. From 1 April 2001, the programme has merged with the aquaculture research programme managed by the University of Stirling.

  Fishgen Ltd., a company established by the University of Wales to market the products of fisheries research, uses a proportion of its profits to supplement funding from my Department for fisheries research of benefit to the needs of poor people in developing countries.

  Mr. Alan Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to her answer of 10 April 2001,Official Report, column 547W, if she will list Departmental staff involved at the Hanoi conference in November 2000 other United Kingdom participants who attended and those assisted to do so by Her Majesty's Government's funding; and where the conference report and papers are available. [160058]

  Clare Short
  I shall send my hon. Friend a summary note of the meeting and a list of participants. A report of the proceedings is in preparation.

  Zimbabwe
  Mr. Wells
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if she will list the projects funded by her Department in Zimbabwe. [159567]

  Clare Short
  DFID is currently operating the following projects in Zimbabwe:
  671W

  Project

  Date

  £ million

  Empowerment of Farm Worker Communities

  1999–2002

  1.6

  Credit for the Informal Sector

  1995–2002

  1.3

  Agribusiness Entrepreneur Network and Training Development

  1997–2001

  0.49

  Bulilima-Mangwe Water Supply and Environmental Rehabilitation project

  1998–2001

  0.31

  Election monitoring

  2000–01

  0.25

  Community Based Maintenance of Water Points in Binga

  1998–2001

  0.24

  Food security Risk Mapping

  1997–2001

  0.23

  Dynamics of Rural Poverty study

  1999–2001

  0.2

  Emergency Preparedness

  2000–01

  0.17

  Education sector HIV/AIDS impact assessment

  2001

  0.13

  Emergency cholera control

  2001

  0.05

  I have closed 12 development projects and suspended or substantially modified five others over the last 12 months. I continue to keep the Zimbabwe programme under regular review to ensure it is still effective and appropriate in the current difficult circumstances.

  Vision 2020
  Mr. Alan Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what support her Department has given to the Vision 2020 proposals for agricultural reform in Andhra Pradesh, India. [159759]

  Clare Short
  DFID is providing £15 million over seven years to support a major rural livelihoods project in Andhra Pradesh. A key objective is to support the development of agricultural productivity in the state's rain-fed drylands. Another objective is to support the state Government's capacity to address key policy issues in agriculture, natural resources management and rural development.

  We are also currently financing a review of public expenditure in the state. This review will assist the state Government in reallocating resource s to meet the Vision 2020 objectives, including those in the agricultural sector.

  With the World Bank, we are considering budgetary assistance to Andhra Pradesh. In the rural sector, the proposed programme would help the state Government provide the necessary enabling environment for faster agricultural growth.

TREASURY

  Minimum Wage
  Mr. Salmond
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many people between the ages of 18 and 21 years are entitled to receive the minimum wage in(a) Scotland and (b) the United Kingdom. [159853]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.

  Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Alex Salmond, dated 2 May 2001:
  As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent question about the number of 18 to 21 year olds in Scotland and the United Kingdom who are entitled to receive the minimum wage (NMW) (159853).
  672W
  All 18 to 21 year olds who are in employment are entitled to NMW rates, except those on apprenticeships. For people aged 19 and above, exemption from the NMW is only for the first year of the apprenticeship.
  The latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates, for winter 2000 (not seasonally adjusted), show that there are 1,800,000 18 to 21 year olds in employment in the UK and 169,000 in Scotland. Among these, further LFS estimates available for the UK, but not for Scotland, show that 43,000 18 year olds on apprenticeships would not be entitled to receive NMW rates. A further 73,000 19 to 21 year olds in the UK were on apprenticeships, but no information is available about the number of these in the first year of their apprenticeship who would not be entitled to receive NMW rates.

  Foot and Mouth
  Mr. Chope
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) pursuant to his answers of 26 April 2001,Official Report, column 341W, if he will list by valuation office area the number of appeals (a) made and (b) decided at the most recent date for which the information is available; [160065]

  (2) on what date the Valuation Office agency began its consultation on the approach and timetable for determining appeals for a temporary reduction in rating assessments on the grounds of the impact of foot and mouth disease; and when the consultation will be complete;[159961]

  (3) what additional resources are being made available to the Valuation Office Agency to enable appeals for a temporary reduction in rating assessments on the grounds of the impact of foot and mouth to be decided quickly. [159962]

  Dawn Primarolo
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: The Valuation Office agency opened consultations about FMD with the national ratepayers valuation forum on 30 March 2001.

  As I said in my answer of 26 April 2001, Official Report, column 341W, the Valuation Office is continuing to receive appeals. It is not possible to give a final figure.

  The need for additional resource is being considered.

  Stamp Duty
  Mr. Loughton
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he will present his detailed proposals for the operation of differential stamp duty rates in areas of deprivation. [160107]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The Government are working closely with the devolved authorities to ensure that the stamp duty relief for disadvantaged communities is
  673W
  targeted at the most disadvantaged areas in all parts of the UK. The areas to qualify will be published as soon as possible.

  Fuel Smuggling
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the estimated loss to the Treasury was in unpaid duty arising from fuel smuggling from the Irish Republic into Northern Ireland; and if he will publish the tonnage of legitimate fuel deliveries on which duty has been paid in Northern Ireland in each of the last five years. [159819]

  Dawn Primarolo
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: For an estimate of the revenue lost through oils fraud and legitimate cross-border shopping in Northern Ireland, I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) on 21 March 2001, Official Report, column 233W.

  For the tonnage of fuel deliveries in Northern Ireland I refer the hon. Member to "Digest of UK Energy Statistics", table 3.9, published annually by the Department of Trade and Industry, which sets out these estimates.

  Research and Development
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has to increase research and development tax credits for large firms. [159670]

  Mr. Timms
  The Government have already introduced an R&D tax credit for smaller firms, in order to address the particular difficulty that these firms face in accessing capital to invest in innovation and R&D. In order to complement this measure and further to improve the UK's innovation performance, the Government have published a consultative document, "Increasing Innovation", which sets out the Government's proposals for a new tax credit to encourage R&D among larger firms and consults on the design of such a measure.

  The consultation document was published at the time of Budget 2001 and can be found on the Inland Revenue internet site at the following address:
  www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/consult new/index.

  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has to increase support for near-market high-technology research and development, with particular reference to technology demonstration projects designed to prove concepts and to reduce technical and financial risk. [159672]

  Mr. Timms
  The Government have in place a range of measures aimed at enhancing the innovative capacity of the UK through investing in, facilitating and regulating innovation and R&D, as set out in the 2001 White Paper on enterprise, skills and innovation, "Opportunity for all in a world of change".

  An R&D tax credit for small firms was introduced in April of last year, and all companies are entitled to an immediate 100 per cent. tax allowance for capital investment in R&D. In addition, the Government published a consultation document in March 2001, entitled "Increasing Innovation", which sets out the Government's proposals for a new tax credit to encourage R&D and innovation among larger firms and consults on the design of such a measure.

  Petrol and Diesel
  Mr. Evans
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the total combined tax revenue from petrol and diesel was for each of the years from 1997 to date. [160077]

  Dawn Primarolo
  The amount of excise duty raised from petrol and diesel for each of the financial years from 1997 to 1999–2000 is published on the HM Customs and Excise webside www.hmce.gov.uk/general/about/ ann-report-conts.htm.

  Fiscal Incentives
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what fiscal measures he is planning to shift resources from household consumption to business investment. [159668]

  Dawn Primarolo
  The Government keep all taxes under review, and changes are considered as part of the Budget process. New measures to build opportunity and prosperity for all were set out in the Economic and Fiscal Strategy report and Financial Statement and Budget report March 2001, which can be found in the Library.

  Public Investment
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on his measures to increase investment in(a) infrastructure, (b) lifelong learning and (c) research and development. [159669]

  Mr. Andrew Smith
  The Government's plans for investment in infrastructure, lifelong learning and research and development are detailed in "Spending Review 2000—Prudent for a Purpose: Building Opportunity and Security for All", published in July 2000, as Command Paper 4807.

  Climate Change Levy
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has to review(a) the impact of the climate change levy and (b) negotiated agreements associated with the levy. [159674]

  Mr. Timms
  As with any tax, the Chancellor will keep the climate change levy under review as part of the normal Budget process.

  For the levy negotiated agreements, the first review of performance against targets will take place at the end of 2002. The first review of the targets themselves will take place at the end of 2004.

  Free TV Licences
  Mr. Russell Brown
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many households are entitled to free TV licences in each parliamentary constituency. [160357]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  Information concerning the number of pensioners aged 75 or over by parliamentary constituency, given in written answers by Treasury Ministers between 14 December 2000 and 2 April, was derived from estimates published by the Department of Social Security. These estimates were incorrect. The Department of Social Security has corrected the error and published revised and updated statistics in "Retirement
  675W
  Pensioners, by Parliamentary Constituency and Age in Great Britain—at 30 September 2000", a copy of which is available in the Library of the House.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Correspondence
  Mr. Colman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the hon. Member for Putney will receive a reply to his series of letters on behalf of his constituent Mrs. Truong (Ref. P402281). [158889]

  Mrs. Roche
  I replied to my hon. Friend on 2 May 2001.

  Sham Marriages
  Mr. Crausby
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many suspected sham marriages reported under section 24 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 he has accepted as sham marriages; [159840]

  (2) how many marriages have been reported by registrars as sham marriages since the introduction of section 24 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999; and from which registration district they were reported [159839]

  Mrs. Roche
  Since 1 January this year, superintendent registrars have reported a total of 201 marriages which they suspect to have been contracted solely for immigration purposes. These figures cannot be broken down into registration districts. However, of the total number reported, 115 were from the London metropolitan district, 20 from the midlands, 14 from the south-west, 12 from the north-west, 11 from the south-east, 10 from the south and seven from Wales. Figures are not available for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

  Good grounds have been given in these reports to suggest that the relationship may not be genuine, but many of the cases are still under investigation.

  Lord Birt
  Miss Widdecombe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, (1) pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard), of 27 March 2001,Official Report, column 594W, what the nature of the work undertaken by Lord Birt was; and if he will make a statement; [159978]

  (2) if he will place in the Library copies of the research on crime undertaken by Lord Birt in his capacity as the Government's adviser on crime; [159982]

  (3) pursuant to his answer of 25 April 2001, Official Report, column 285W, what were the conclusions of Lord Birt's analysis of existing data on offenders, offences, victims and crime reduction; and if he will place them in the Library;[159979]

  (4) what work Lord Birt has undertaken in his role as the Government's adviser on crime other than that which contributed to "Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead" (Cm 5074); and if he will make a statement on work being undertaken by Lord Birt. [159868]
  676W
  Mr. Straw
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: Lord Birt's work has ranged widely over the criminal justice field. His advice, research and analysis are reflected in the Government's strategy document, "Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead" (Cm 5074). Lord Bin continues to provide advice on issues as requested by the Prime Minister.

  Asylum Seekers
  Mr. Crausby
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many asylum seekers have been issued by the National Asylum Support Service with a Department of Health certificate HC2 entitling them to free NHS services in the last 12 months; and what services are available with an HC2 certificate. [159836]

  Mrs. Roche
  33,0001 asylum seekers have been provided with National Asylum Support Service (NASS) support during the period 3 April 2000 to 28 February 2001. All principal NASS applicants are issued with a HC2 on successful application to NASS for support. Details of dependants, if any, are included on the certificate. The HC2 lists the services available. This includes free NHS prescriptions, free NHS dental treatment and free NHS sight tests.
  1Figures rounded to the nearest 10.

  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what opportunities for appeal(a) local authorities and (b) local electors have against the designation of their areas as a cluster for asylum seekers; [159678]

  (2) how many places have had their designation as cluster areas for asylum seekers removed; and for what reasons. [159740]

  Mrs. Roche
  The National Asylum Support Service consults regional consortiums which are local authority-led about the identification of cluster areas. Any evidence put forward about the suitability of the area for the accommodation of asylum seekers received as part of this consultation process will be taken into account. Once an area has been identified as a cluster area there is no formal appeal process against its use for accommodating asylum seekers, but any evidence put forward as to why a particular area should no longer be a cluster would be given due consideration. No area has had their designation as a cluster area removed.

  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether North-East Lincolnshire council was consulted about the suitability of Springfield hostel, Grimsby for asylum seekers; and to whom it can now make representations on the suitability of that location. [159763]

  Mrs. Roche
  The Springfield hostel Grimsby has not been presented to the national asylum support service (NASS) as possible accommodation for asylum seekers by any of its providers. In the event that it is presented to NASS it will, if it contains more than six bed spaces, be subject to a 28-day consultation period with the local authority.
  677W
  If North-East Lincolnshire council wishes to make representations to NASS about the potential use of this property in advance of its possible future presentation it should contact the NASS regional manager for Yorkshire and Humberside.

  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many places have been designated as cluster areas for asylum seekers; and if he will list them, giving the area covered by each. [159747]

  Mrs. Roche
  To date 71 cluster areas have been identified throughout the United Kingdom. These areas are recorded by region:

  Region

  East of England

  Ipswich

  Norwich

  Cambridge

  Great Yarmouth

  Peterborough

  East Midlands

  Leicester

  Nottingham

  Derby

  South Central and East

  Brighton and Hove

  Hastings and St. Leonards

  Portsmouth

  North East

  Newcastle

  Middlesborough

  Sunderland

  North Tyneside

  Gateshead

  South Tyneside

  Redcar and Cleveland

  Hartlepool

  Darlington

  Stockton on Tees

  North West

  Manchester (Greater Manchester)

  Bolton (Greater Manchester)

  Bury (Greater Manchester)

  Oldham (Greater Manchester)

  Rochdale (Greater Manchester)

  Salford (Greater Manchester)

  Stockport (Greater Manchester)

  Tameside (Greater Manchester)

  Trafford (Greater Manchester)

  Wigan (Greater Manchester)

  Burnley

  Blackburn

  Liverpool

  Nelson

  Scotland

  Edinburgh

  Glasgow

  South West

  Bristol

  Gloucester

  Swindon

  Taunton and Bridgewater

  Exeter

  South Gloucestershire

  Torbay

  Plymouth

  North Somerset

  Bath

  Wales

  Cardiff

  Newport

  Swansea

  Wrexham

  Bridgend and Porthcawl

  678W

  Region

  West Midlands

  Birmingham

  Coventry

  Wolverhampton

  Dudley

  Sandwell

  Solihull

  Walsall

  Stoke on Trent

  Yorkshire

  Sheffield

  Bradford and Keighley

  Leeds

  Rotherham

  Wakefield

  Hull

  Kirklees

  Doncaster

  Halifax

  Barnsley

  Grimsby

  Destitute asylum seekers may also be accommodated in Northern Ireland, although they are not dispersed there.

  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the membership and location are of each regional consortium for the dispersal of asylum seekers; and how the members were appointed. [159736]

  Mrs. Roche
  Regional consortiums have been established through out the United Kingdom as follows:

  London

  South East and Central

  North East

  North West

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  West Midlands

  East Midlands

  East of England

  Scotland

  Wales

  Northern Ireland

  Arrangements exist for the South West of England.

  Each consortium is responsible for appointing its own members, but it is recognised that no one agency or organisation is equipped to deliver the full range of services. Accordingly, they should have a structure that enables input from a wide range of agencies such as local authorities, the police, health and education authorities, the voluntary sector, accommodation providers and other organisations with in interest.

  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what account is taken of local(a) unemployment rates, (b) health services and (c) education provision in the designation of cluster areas and the allocation of asylum seekers to them; [159733]

  (2) how he intends to secure a fair and equitable dispersal of asylum seekers between areas designated and areas not designated as cluster areas; [159749]

  (3) what control (a) the local authority, (b) the Health Service and (c) the education authority have on the number of asylum seekers allocated to a cluster area; and how their views are taken into account; [159725]
  679W
  (4) if the Commission for Racial B quality is consulted about the dispersal of asylum seekers, the designation of cluster areas for their reception and he numbers sent to each area. [159726]

  Mrs. Roche
  The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) conducts research to identify cluster areas. Information is received from the local authority led regional consortiums, voluntary groups and other organisations with an interest in asylum. There is a consultation process in place to seek advice from local health and education authorities. Any information received will be taken into account, and this can include information about unemployment rates, health services and education provision. The Commission for Racial Equality is consulted on specific issues.

  Ideally, NASS aims to establish cluster areas where there is suitable and available accommodation and where it would be possible to link with existing communities and to develop the support of voluntary and community groups. In some cases not all of the above criteria will be in place before asylum seekers are dispersed and it is recognised that some support structures are unlikely to develop until asylum seekers are actually located in an area.

  NASS is continuing its research to identify further cluster areas to ensure that dispersal is fair and equitable.

  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what the(a) total population and (b) ethnic minority percentage are of each cluster area for dispersal of asylum seekers; [159744]

  (2) what the criteria are for the designation of luster areas for the reception of asylum seekers; [159745]

  (3) what weighting is given to the size of the ethnic minority population as a factor designating cluster areas for asylum seekers; and what racial or ethnic affinities are taken into account; [159750]

  (4) in taking account of the size of the local ethnic minority population in designating cluster areas for the reception of asylum seekers, whether asylum seekers already there are included; and what part the numbers of the latter play in the decision to locate further asylum seekers there. [159751]

  Mrs. Roche
  The identification of cluster areas follows research conducted centrally by the National Asylum Support Service and on information fed through by the local authority led regional consortiums, voluntary groups and other organisations with an interest. When considering if an area is suitable for accommodating asylum seekers a number of factors are taken into account. These include the make up of the local population, the number of asylum seekers already present in the area and the effect on the local area of placing additional asylum seekers there. The weight given to actual numbers will vary between areas. Information on the total population and percentage from ethnic minorities in individual cluster areas is not recorded centrally.

  Mr. Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department on what grounds and when Grimsby was designated a cluster area for the reception of asylum seekers; and if he will set out the consequences of this designation. [159746]
  680W
  Mrs. Roche
  The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) consulted all regional consortiums to identify suitable cluster areas for the accommodation of asylum seekers before Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 came into force. As part of this consultation process NASS sought the views of the Yorkshire and Humberside regional consortium, of which Grimsby is part. The consortiums provided a list of towns and cities that were considered suitable to accommodate asylum seekers and the list from the Yorkshire and Humberside regional consortium included Grimsby. Grimsby has been designated as a cluster area since 3 April 2000, when the new support arrangements came into force.

  Designation as a cluster area means that an area is deemed suitable to send asylum seekers under the dispersal arrangements operated by the National Asylum Support Service. Further, schools with asylum seeking children dispersed to the area by NASS on their registers were able in the last financial year 2000–01 to apply for additional grant of up to £500 per pupil. This grant could be used to assist the child to settle quickly into school. In addition the grant to the local authority is based on the standard spending assessment which takes account of rises in the local population.

  Mr. Coleman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many asylum applications made in each year since 1996 are yet to be determined by his Department. [159581]

  Mrs. Roche
  The information is not readily available, and could be obtained only by examination of individual case records, and is, therefore, available only at disproportionate cost.

  Information on the total number of applications awaiting an initial decision is published monthly on the web page: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/ immigrationl.html

  The provisional number of applications awaiting an initial decision at the end of March 2001 was 36,390.

  Mr. Coleman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many asylum applicants whose applications were refused for non-compliance were subsequently granted(a) refugee status and (b) exceptional leave to enter or remain in each month of (i) 1999, (ii) 2000 and (iii) 2001; and what proportion this represents of the total numbers refused on that basis;[159586]

  (2) in how many cases where asylum applications were refused for non-compliance those decisions were subsequently withdrawn in each month of (a) 1999, (b) 2000 and (c) 2001. [159585]

  Mrs. Roche
  The information is not readily available. Reliable data could be obtained only at disproportionate cost by examination of individual case files.

  Mr. Coleman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were granted(a) refugee status and (b) exceptional leave to enter or remain in (i) 1999, (ii) 2000 and (iii) 2001, including those granted such status following an initial refusal of asylum. [159584]
  681W
  Mrs. Roche
  The information requested is not readily available and would be obtained only by examination of individual case files relating to the outcomes of initial decisions and of appeals, which would incur disproportionate cost.

  Information on the outcomes of initial decisions, and on the outcomes or appeals determined by the immigration appellate authority, is published monthly on the Department's website at:
  www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/index.htm.

  Mr. Coleman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many persons whose asylum applications were refused in each month of(a) 1999, (b) 2000 and (c) 2001 were refused for (i) failing to return a statement of evidence within the time specified, (ii) returning a statement of evidence in a language other than English and (iii) returning a statement of evidence on time but inadequately completed. [159583]

  Mrs. Roche
  Information relating to asylum applicants who did not submit their statement of evidence form (SEF) within the 10 working day deadline, or submitted it within the time specified but inadequately completed or in a language other than English, is not currently routinely collected and so could be obtained only through examination of individual case records and is therefore available only at disproportionate cost.

  The available information relates to total refusals of asylum on non-compliance grounds (failure to comply with our procedures and regulations) including failure to provide further evidence as required, failure to respond to invitations to interview to establish identity, failure to complete a SEF correctly and within the time allowed.

  Information on the number of refusals, and the number of refusals on non-compliance grounds, is published regularly on the Department's website at:
  www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/index.htm.

  The statistics show that at least three quarters of applicants do complete their SEFs in time.

  Mr. Coleman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when his Department makes a decision to refuse an asylum application on non-compliance grounds and later withdraws that decision to grant or refuse asylum in that case, if the second decision on that case is included as a decision made in the monthly statistics published by his Department. [159582]

  Mrs. Roche
  A small number of refusals on non-compliance grounds are reconsidered for a variety of reasons. Those cases are granted asylum, exceptional leave to remain or are refused based on the individual merits of each case. If in due course we find that a significant number of those cases result in the grant of asylum or exceptional leave to remain, we will consider what is the best way to publish the data on the outcomes of reconsidered decisions once we are satisfied that it is reliable.

  The monthly statistics published by the Home Office are based on initial decision only.

  Ms Rachel Akuary
  Mr. Hilary Benn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to be able to 682W
  confirm the identity of Ms Rachel Akuary of the Leeds, Central constituency in respect of her claim for income support. [158941]

  Mrs. Roche
  [holding answer 26 April 2001]: I understand that Alexis Cleveland, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency, will be writing to my hon. Friend shortly regarding Ms Akuary's claim.

  Immigration Detainees
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the date and place of all suicide attempts by persons held under immigration law for each year since 1992. [158971]

  Mrs. Roche
  [holding answer 26 April 2001]: Central records are not maintained specifically for suicide attempts by individuals detained under Immigration Act powers. Information is, however, maintained on actual self-inflicted deaths. In terms of immigration service detention centres, there has been one such incident: this occurred in January 2000 at Harmondsworth detention centre. Similarly, in terms of immigration detainees held in Prison Service accommodation, there has been one incident of self-inflicted death: this was in August 1995 at Her Majesty's prison, Norwich.

  Asylum and Immigration Act
  Miss Widdecombe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prosecutions there have been under section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 in(a) 2000 and (b) the period to April 2001; and if he will make a statement. [159441]

  Mrs. Roche
  For the year 2000, provisional data from the Home Office Court Proceedings database show that for the first three quarters of the year there were eight cases.

  Data are not yet available about the number of section 8 prosecutions in the first quarter of 2001. The latest provisional information is that there have been 18 prosecutions to date under section 8 of the 1996 Act.

  We are aware of the problem caused by unscrupulous gangmasters, and by others who commit offences under this section. Operation Leighton is a recent example of our commitment to combat illegal working and the exploitation of vulnerable people. Conducted on the morning of 24 April, it resulted in the arrest of 18 people on suspicion of involvement in facilitation, production of false documents and organising labour and the arrest of a further 107 people on suspicion of entering the United Kingdom illegally, overstaying or working in breach of entry conditions. To date, 111 people have been removed. The arrests mark the outcome of a comprehensive investigation demonstrating the value of a multi-agency approach against highly sophisticated and organised criminal activity.

  Licensing Laws
  Mr. Grogan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will announce the outcome of consultations on the proposals for reform of the licensing laws set out in the White Paper, "Time for Reform". [160121]
  683W
  Mr. Mike O'Brien
  We are grateful for all the responses to our proposals. We have concluded that they confirm the case for comprehensive modernisation of the alcohol and entertainment licensing laws in England and Wales. They show that the White Paper proposals represent a sound basis for legislation and strike the right overall balance between the needs of business, the enlargement of consumer choice, and the interests of local residents.

  Two issues raised by the White Paper attracted most comment: which body should be responsible for the new integrated licensing arrangements and whether licensing hours should be extended.

  As to the former, the responses to the White Paper showed a great divergence of opinion. We have considered with care the views of those who argued that the new licensing authorities should be based on magistrates courts. However, there remains a clear need to bring greater democratic accountability to licensing, and we remain persuaded that local authorities are the right bodies for this purpose. It will of course be important for all licensing decisions to be taken, as the White Paper stressed, in accordance with fair and consistent procedures.

  The balance of opinion among those who commented specifically on licensing hours in responding to the White Paper clearly supported our proposals for more flexible arrangements. They will make an it important contribution to dealing with the problems of alcohol-related crime and disorder, alongside the provisions in the Criminal Justice and Police Bill.

  The responses to the White Paper include a number of reservations or suggestions which are helpful, and which we shall want to pursue as we work up the detail of legislative proposals to bring before Parliament in due course. There is, however, one major point on which we have been persuaded by the consultations that a substantive change to the White Paper proposals is required.

  The appeal arrangements described in the White Paper gave rise to considerable anxiety for many interested parties. We now intend to provide in legislation that appeals against licensing decisions should go to local magistrates courts on both law and merits, rather than to the Crown court.

  We will continue to consult closely with all the interested parties as work on preparing the necessary legislation proceeds.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Electrical Goods
  Mr. Chope
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in what respects average prices for each of the categories of electrical goods subject to the Restriction on Agreements and Conduct (Specified Domestic Electrical Goods) Order 1998 have altered in each of the last five years in(a) cash terms and (b) real terms. [159963]

  Dr. Howells
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: The Office for National Statistics does not publish retail prices for individual goods. Rather, official retail price statistics are
  684W
  compiled in categories. The categories which include those electrical goods covered by the Restriction on Agreements and Conduct (Specified Domestic Electrical Goods) Order 1998 are:
  audio-visual equipment (includes TVs, video recorders and hi fi systems);
  household electrical appliances (includes washing machines, tumble dryers, dishwashers and cold food storage equipment); and
  toys, photographic and sports equipment (includes camcorders).

  The following table lists the year on year nominal and real price changes for these categories.

  Percentage

  1995–96

  1996–97

  1997–98

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  Audio visual

  Nominal

  -5.1

  -62.

  -12.6

  -16.9

  -13.6

  Real

  -7.3

  -9.1

  -15.5

  -18.2

  -16.1

  Electrical appliances

  Nominal

  -2.9

  -3.5

  -2.4

  -2.9

  -4.9

  Real

  -5.2

  -6.5

  -5.6

  -4.4

  -7.6

  Toys, photographic and sports equipment

  Nominal

  0.5

  -0.4

  -1.4

  -2.7

  -4.3

  Real

  -1.9

  -3.4

  -4.7

  -4.2

  -7.1

  Engineering
  Mr. Crausby
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps he is taking to protect employment levels in engineering. [159837]

  Mr. Alan Johnson
  Our framework for encouraging macro-economic stability, together with our policies to help manufacturing and engineering companies to invest, innovate and to grow, are the best way to facilitate the long-term success of the UK engineering sector and enhance the job prospects of those within it.

  Internet Access (Merseyside)
  Mr. Hesford
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps he has taken to increase internet access for businesses in the Merseyside sub-region. [159561]

  Ms Hewitt
  Options for high-speed internet access for businesses in Merseyside have increased significantly in the last year.

  BT have been upgrading exchanges across the UK to deliver ADSL services. Some 839 exchanges, serving over 50 per cent. of households and businesses, have been upgraded, a number of which are in Merseyside. Cable modem services are also being rolled out, and on Merseyside are available from the cable operator, Telewest.

  Last November the Government auctioned licences in the 28 Ghz radio spectrum band which will enable the delivery of internet and multimedia services using wireless technology. Three licences were awarded for the region encompassing Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire.

  Post Offices
  Mr. Hurst
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much financial assistance will be made available to those post offices identified by the Government as most vulnerable. [158767]
  685W
  Mr. Alan Johnson
  The Cabinet Office PIU report on modernising the post office network identified post offices in the rural network and in deprived urban areas as in need of special protection.

  The Government have accepted all the recommendations of the PIU report on the post office network and under the spending review 2000, as the first stage of modernising the post office network, have ring-fenced support of £270 million over the next three years for new investment to start the implementation of the PIU report. £15 million of this ring-fenced funding has been allocated specifically to help sustain and improve post offices in deprived urban areas. A report from the Postal Services Commission advising the Government on the best way to channel financial assistance to rural post offices is expected in the autumn, following consultations and discussions with the Consumer Council for Post Services, the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters and other key post office network stakeholders.

  In addition, a fund of £2 million has been set up to support relocation and refurbishment initiatives by volunteer or community groups to maintain or reopen post office facilities in areas where the traditional post office is closing.

  Export Licences
  Ms Glenda Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when the Government will respond to the Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Trade and Industry Committees' revised proposals for prior parliamentary scrutiny of export licences. [159708]

  Dr. Howells
  We will be publishing our official response to the quadripartite committee in due course.

  World Trade Organisation
  Ms Glenda Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on the use of World Trade Organisation-sponsored trade sanctions against developing countries which produce and export generic medicines used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis and other diseases. [159706]

  Mr. Caborn
  I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on 27 March 2001,Official Report, columns 585–86W.

  Ms Glenda Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if it is his policy to support the reform of the World Trade Organisation's TRIPS agreement to improve poor people's access to essential drugs and medicines. [159705]

  Mr. Caborn
  I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) on 9 March 2001,Official Report, column 348W.

  Export Control and Non-proliferation Bill
  Ms Glenda Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if, in developing the proposals in the draft Export Control and Non-Proliferation Bill, the Government will be evaluating measures to monitor the use of controlled goods once they have been exported from the UK. [159709]
  686W
  Dr. Howells
  The Government keep all export control procedures under continuous review, including the need for monitoring, where appropriate, the use of controlled goods once they have been exported from the UK. The Government will consider carefully any comments received on the issue of end-use monitoring during the current public consultation on the draft Export Control and Non-Proliferation Bill, which ends on 24 May.

  Rural Post Offices
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he will respond to the recommendations of the PostComm inquiry into the future of the rural post office network. [159936]

  Mr. Alan Johnson
  The recent responses to the PostComm discussion paper on preserving access to post offices in rural areas will feed into PostComm's annual report on the rural post office network and their advice to the Government in the best way to channel financial assistance to rural post offices due later in the year. The Government will then respond to the report's findings and to PostComm's advice.

  Miss McIntosh:
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on the rural post office network. [153643]

  Mr. Alan Johnson
  [pursuant to his reply, 22 March 2001, c. 480W]: The reversal of the recent year-on-year trend of increasing rural closures is both welcome and important. However, I now realise that I was mistaken in claiming, as I did in response to the hon. Lady's supplementary question, that the 20 per cent. reduction in rural post office closures in the nine months to December 2000 compared with the corresponding period of the previous year was the first reduction of any sort in the past 18 years. I apologise for the error.

  Universal Bank
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he will announce the final details of the proposed universal bank; and when he expects the new accounts to become available to post office users. [159935]

  Mr. Alan Johnson
  Our intention is to sign a memorandum of understanding with the banks on universal banking services shortly. Detailed implementation is for the longer term and subject to further negotiations between the Post Office and the banks, and between the Post Office, their clients and potential suppliers. Universal banking services are scheduled to come on stream either before or at the time of transfer of benefit payments to ACT in 2003.

  Helplines
  Mr. Levitt
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what telephone telephones to assist the public are administered by his Department and its agencies. [159502]

  Dr. Howells
  My Department operates an enquiry unit, which refers those members of the public contacting our general enquiry number 020 7215 5000 (Minicom for the hearing impaired: 020 7215 6740) to the range of sources of help and advice provided by the Department. DTI's website: www.dti.gov.uk also provides a number of links to such sources of information and advice.
  687W
  A list of those individual helplines currently operated by the Department, which have been notified to the enquiry unit, as well as those provided by Companies House, the Employment Tribunals Service, the Radiocommunications Agency and the Small Business Service has been placed in the Library of the House.

  The chief executives of the Insolvency Service and the Patent Office will reply direct to my hon. Friend.

  Trade Partners UK, which brings together the work of my Department and the FCO in support of British trade and investment overseas, operates an UK enquiry service—020 7215 5444/5445—to assist UK businesses to find the appropriate contact within their network.

  Individual Government offices for the regions also advertise their main contact points on their websites and in selected directories and publications.

  Miners' Compensation
  Mr. Todd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps are being taken to secure access to the health records of retired miners when the holders of these records refuse access. [159742]

  Mr. Hain
  Assessing compensation is part of an on-going legal process and they are required by law to release the records.

  If there are difficulties of non-co-operation, Healthcall (who manage the medical assessment process for the Department) in liaison with the Department, issue two warning letters in sequence. If there is no satisfactory response within one week of the second letter, the Department will begin court proceedings. It has not been necessary to go beyond the second warning letter to date.

  Zimbabwe
  Mr. Wells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will list the projects funded by his Department in Zimbabwe. [159569]

  Mr. Caborn
  My Department is not currently funding any projects in Zimbabwe.

  Appointments (Age Limits)
  Tony Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what age limit is placed on appointments to public bodies in his Department; if this limit is mentioned in advertisements for such posts; and what the basis for this limit is. [158107]

  Dr. Howells
  As a general rule, none of the public appointments made by my Department has age limits, whether upper or lower, attached to them. The only exceptions to this general rule are a number of judicial appointments. They are:Employment Tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal
  The retirement age is 70 for current members of these tribunals and will be 65 for all members appointed after 2000. Advertisements generally specify that applicants should be in a position to serve a full three year term before reaching the retirement age. This is based on the need to obtain a reasonable return of service for the investment in recruitment and training of the successful applicants.
  688W
  Central Arbitration Committee
  The current CAC Chairman is a High Court Judge and is therefore subject to arrangements for the judiciary. In the last recruitment round for Deputy Chairmen and Members no age limit was stipulated in the advertisement.

PRIME MINISTER

  Lord Birt
  Miss Widdecombe
  To ask the Prime Minister (1) how the work on crime undertaken by Lord Birt contributed to his speech "Improving Your Local Environment", delivered on 24 April; and if he will make a statement; [159967]

  (2) which of the proposals in his speech "Improving Your Local Environment", delivered on 24 April, were put forward by Lord Birt in his capacity as the Government's adviser on crime; and if he will make a statement. [159966]

  The Prime Minister
  [holding answer 1 May 2001]: The proposals in my 24 April speech which related to crime reduction drew on the Government's strategy document "Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead" (Cm 5074).

  Global Health Project
  Mr. Browne
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the performance and innovation unit's progress on the global health project. [159113]

  The Prime Minister
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) on 19 March 2001,Official Report, column 9W.

  Ms Glenda Jackson
  To ask the Prime Minister if the Performance and Innovation Unit's global health project will examine the issue of patents protection and its impact on access to medicines; [159608]

  (2) if he will make a statement on the PIU's progress on their global health project. [159609]

  The Prime Minister
  I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) on 19 March 2001,Official Report, column 9W. The project includes consideration of intellectual property protection.

  Sanctions
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will discuss with President Bush the consequences of sanctions against(a) Libya and (b) Iraq on the availability of oil supplies to the West. [159171]

  The Prime Minister
  UN sanctions against Libya have been suspended since April 1999. Therefore, they have no impact on the availability of oil supplies from Libya to the West.

  Following the adoption of UN Security Council resolution 1284 (1999), Iraq is permitted to export unlimited amounts of oil under the UN oil-for-food programme.

  Laeken Summit
  Mr. Maude
  To ask the Prime Minister what the conclusions were of his recent discussions with the Belgian Prime Minister on the preparations for the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council and the Laeken Summit. [159862]

  The Prime Minister
  Mr. Verhofstadt and I had useful discussions on a range of issues likely to feature during the Belgian Presidency of the European Union. We agreed to work closely together throughout the Presidency.

WALES

  GM Crops
  Mrs. Lawrence
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what discussions he has had with the Secretary for Rural Affairs of the National Assembly for Wales about the proposed trial growing of GM maize at Mathry, Pembrokeshire. [159996]

  Mr. Hanson
  I have regular discussions with the Secretary for Rural Affairs of the National Assembly for Wales on a variety of issues, including GM issues.

  The decision on locations for the trials was taken by the scientific steering committee, on the basis of advice from the research consortium and information about the availability of sites from the supply chain initiative on modified agricultural crops (SCIMAC).

  Mrs. Lawrence
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what discussions he has had with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Cabinet Office concerning the National Assembly for Wales's policy on GM crops. [159993]

  Mr. Hanson
  As a member of the Ministerial Committee on Biotechnology and Genetic Modification, I have regular discussions with the Minister of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, on policy on GM crops.

  European Directive 90/220/EEC governs the release and marketing of GMOs in the European Union. It recognises two broad categories of release of GMOs into the environment: part B releases for research trials and part C releases for marketing purposes.

  Applications for part C consents in any EU member state are circulated to the European Commission and to all other member states, who forward them to their experts and competent authorities (including the devolved Administrations in the case of the UK). When all member states have commented and if there are no objections, then the application will proceed. Once a part C consent has been approved in any one member state of the European Union, it is valid throughout the European Union. GM Maize already has a part C consent.

  However, the Government have negotiated a voluntary written agreement with the industry biotechnology body, SCIMAC, that there will be no commercial growing of GM crops for a three-year period during which farm scale evaluations (FSEs) are undertaken. This means there will
  690W
  be no widespread planting leading to general market access of GM crops grown in the UK until the FSEs are complete.

  In Great Britain, directive 90/220 has been implemented by part VI of the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) 1990 and the Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) Regulations 1992, as amended in 1995 and 1997. The functions of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food under part VI of the EPA have been transferred to the National Assembly for Wales. The Assembly has now recognised that it does not have a sufficient basis for the exercise of its powers under section 110 of the EPA 1990 to restrict the planting of GM crops on the sites currently proposed. It now proposes to place existing separation distances between sites of GM and non-GM means of production on a statutory basis. This will trigger a notification to Europe under article 16 of European directive 90/220, affording the Assembly an opportunity to take its concerns directly to the European Commission.

  UK Ministers continue to keep the issues under review and are committed to ensuring the coexistence of different types of farming.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  Helplines
  Mr. Levitt
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what telephone helplines to assist the public are administered by her Department and its agencies. [159499]

  Jane Kennedy
  The departmental headquarters operates a general telephone helpline facility for members of the public. The Court Service headquarters operates two helplines; a general customer service line and one that deals specifically with disability issues. The Crown court at Blackfriars operates a jury summoning helpline, Central London county court and Birmingham county court operate general helplines, as does the Immigration Appellate Authority in Loughborough. Most of the associated offices operate general inquiry lines that are manned during normal working hours; the judge Advocate General's office (four lines), the Public Guardianship Office (four lines), the Official Solicitor's Office (two lines), the Legal Services Ombudsman (one line) and the Council on Tribunals (one line). The Public Record Office has a contact centre to respond to inquiries from the public that uses an automated system with the option to speak to a member of staff The 24 district land registries along with the Land Registry headquarters and land charges department operate a mixture of automated and manned helplines to assist the public.

  Domestic Boundary Dispute
  Mr. Laxton
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how many(a) double registration and (b) other domestic boundary disputes were handled by the Land Registry in (a) 1997, (b) 1998, (c) 1999 and (d) 2000; of these, how many were (i) the subject of court action, (ii) resolved in court and (iii) settled in court on the basis of (A) loser pays winner's costs, (B) each party pays its own costs and (C) other

  691W
  arrangements for bearing costs; how long on average it took to settle such disputes; and what the average legal costs were for both parties combined. [159676]

  Jane Kennedy
  The Land Registry does not keep a record of the total number of boundary disputes which arise in cases it handles. It does, however, maintain a record of those cases in which an error in the extent of a registered title leads to the payment of indemnity under the Land Registration Act 1925. The figures for the last four financial years are as follows:

  Number of cases

  1997–98

  231

  1998–99

  288

  1999–2000

  359

  2000–01

  329

  To determine how many of these related to (a) double registrations and (b) domestic properties would be possible only at disproportionate cost.

  Immigration Appeals Tribunal
  Mrs. Ewing
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what plans she has to review the Immigration Appeals Tribunal established in Scotland in February 1997. [159858]

  Jane Kennedy
  There are no current plans to review the tribunal in Scotland. In view of the impending move of the tribunal tier of the Immigration Appellate Authorities to a new premises in London later this year it is intended to undertake a review of the administrative process of the tribunal. The review will be carried out in consultation with users and will consider the most effective and fair way to deal with the increase in work resulting from the Government's dispersal initiative.

  Special Advisers
  Mr. Evans
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how many special advisers worked in her Department from 1997 to date. [160037]

  Jane Kennedy
  The Lord Chancellor's Department has one special adviser, who joined the Department on 5 March 1998.

  Mr. Evans
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what the total cost was of employing special advisers in her Department from 1997 to date. [160046]

  Jane Kennedy
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to him by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office on 1 May 2001,Official Report, column 607W.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  BSE
  Mr. Campbell-Savours
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if the results from the second BSE survey of cattle aged over five years begun in may 2000 are available. [160400]

  Mr. Nick Brown
  Yes, 9,256 samples taken from cattle 692W
  over five years old slaughtered in Great Britain under the over-30-months scheme (OTMS) between May and December 2000 were tested for BSE by histological examination of the brain. Of these 0.41 per cent. (39) tested positive. This compares with 0.45 per cent. (18) positive results by the same method of examination in the first survey in 1999 when 3,951 cattle aged over five years old were tested. These brain samples, and others that proved unsuitable for examination by histological examination are being further tested by means of a rapid test, and results will be reported as soon as they are available.

  These results will be used to evaluate results of additional surveys of fallen stock or casualties, and to enable the decline of the BSE epidemic in Great Britain to be more fully analysed. Because of the OTMS none of these cattle would have gone into the food chain.

  Foot and Mouth
  Mr. Baker
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will set out his policy in respect of the vaccination of rare breeds during the present foot and mouth outbreak. [159591]

  Mr. Morley
  [holding answer 30 April 2001]: The chief scientific adviser's foot and mouth disease science group said last month that it did not recommend a vaccination programme for rare breeds. In the light of this, the Government have not sought EC approval to vaccinate rare breeds. Following consultations, my right hon. Friend announced measures to protect rare breeds of sheep in his statements to the House on 26 April and these were covered in the joint instruction on slaughter policy on contiguous premises issued by the Ministry on 27 April.

  Mr. Duncan
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what his estimate is of the number of dairy herds unable to be inseminated for the purposes of continuing milk production. [156914]

  Ms Quin
  [holding answer 5 April 2001]: We are aware that the current ban on artificial insemination (AI) by technicians in infected areas will pose problems for some farmers, although we are not in a position to quantify the extent. On 29 April there were around 8,000 dairy holdings (as classified in the June 2000 agricultural census) in the infected areas in England. Not all of these will use AI; some will own a bull. Of those that do use AI, some will use the DIY method (where licensed movement of semen is permitted, subject to certain conditions) and others AI companies. We have already taken some action to alleviate the problems faced by farmers and we are actively considering other ways in which we can provide assistance in this area.

  Flood Defences
  Mr. Todd
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list local authorities which have(a) indicated that they are unwilling or unable to inspect flood defences and critical watercourses and (b) failed to respond to the Environment Agency's inquiries on this. [159351]

  Mr. Morley
  The Environment Agency has provided the following information:
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  (a) local authorities who have so far indicated that they are unwilling or unable to inspect flood defences and critical watercourses.
  Local authorities not prepared to inspect defences

  Bedford Borough Council

  Forest Heath District Council

  Haringey London Borough Council

  North Hertfordshire District Council

  Reading Borough Council

  South Cambridgeshire District Council

  South Oxfordshire District Council

  Local authorities not prepared to inspect but have informed where defences are

  Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council

  Gedling Borough Council

  Merton London Borough Council

  Newark and Sherwood District Council

  Oxford City Council

  Richmond upon Thames London Borough Council

  Rushcliffe Borough Council

  Wandsworth London Borough Council

  Woking Borough Council

  Wokingham Council

  Local authorities willing but unable1

  Alnwick District Council

  Ashford Borough Council

  Bath and North Somerset Council

  Barnet London Borough Council

  Basildon District Council

  Baskingstoke and Deane Borough Council

  Berwick upon Tweed Borough Council

  Borough of Blyth Valley Council

  Bournemouth Borough Council

  Bracknell Forest Borough Council

  Bromley London Borough Council

  Bromsgrove District Council

  Broxbourne District Council

  Bury Borough Council

  Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council

  Cannock Chase District Council

  Canterbury City Council

  Carrick District Council

  Castle Morpeth Borough Council

  Chester le Street District Council

  Christchurch Borough Council

  Coventry City Council

  Crawley District Council

  Croydon London Borough Council

  Dacorum Borough Council

  Dartford Borough Council

  Derwentside District Council

  Dover District Council

  Dudley Metropolitan Council

  Durham City Council

  Easington District Council

  East Dorset District Council

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  East Hampshire District Council

  East Hertfordshire District Council

  East Northamptonshire District Council

  Eastleigh Borough Council

  Elmbridge Borough Council

  Enfield London Borough Council

  Epsom and Ewell Borough Council

  Greenwich London Borough Council

  Hackney London Borough Council

  Harlow District Council

  Hart District Council

  Hillingdon London Borough Council

  Ipswich Borough Council

  Kent County Council

  Kerrier District Council

  Kington upon Thames Royal Borough Council

  Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council

  Lewisham London Borough Council

  Maidstone Borough Council

  Maldon District Council

  Malvern District Council

  Medway Council

  Mendip District Council

  Newcastle upon Tyne City Council

  North Dorset District Council

  North Norfolk District Council

  North Shropshire District Council

  North Somerset Council

  Penwith District Council

  Plymouth City Council

  Poole Borough Council

  Purbeck District Council

  Reigate and Banstead Borough Council

  Richmondshire District Council

  Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council

  Rushmoor Borough Council

  Salisbury District Council

  Sedgemoor District Council

  Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council

  Sevenoaks District Council

  Sheffield City Council

  South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council

  Southend on Sea Borough Council

  St. Albans District Council

  St. Helens Borough Council

  Stafford Borough Council

  Stevenage Borough Council

  Stoke on Trent City Council

  Stratford on Avon District Council

  Stroud District Council

  Suffolk Coastal District Council

  Sunderland City Council

  Sutton London Borough Council

  Swale Borough Council

  Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council

  Tamworth Borough Council

  Taunton Deane Borough Council

  Telford and Wrekin Council

  Test Valley Borough Council

  Three Rivers District Council

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  Tonbridge and Mailing Borough Council

  Wakefield City Council

  Waltham Forest London Borough Council

  Wansbeck District Council

  Watford Borough Council

  West Berkshire Council

  West Dorset District Council

  West Somerset District Council

  West Wiltshire District Council

  Weymouth and Portland Borough Council

  Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council

  Wrexham Borough Council

  Wyre Forest District Council

  1Have identified where defences are and some are actively seeking resources to carry out inspections
  (b) local authorities who have so far foiled to respond to the Environment Agency's inquiries regarding these inspections:

  Breckland District Council

  Castle Point Borough Council

  Ealing London Borough Council

  East Cambridgeshire District Council

  East Lindsey District Council

  Fenland District Council

  Huntingdonshire District Council

  King's Lynn and West Norfolk District Council

  Lambeth London Borough Council

  Milton Keynes District Council

  North East Lincolnshire Council

  Norwich City Council

  Shepway District Council

  Tunbridge Wells Borough Council.

  Animal Welfare
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will set out, with statistical information, the effects of his Department's policies and actions in relation to animal welfare since 2 May 1997. [158904]

  Mr. Morley
  This Department has concluded a range of measures since May 1997 to improve farm animal welfare, both at EU level and domestically. We have successfully negotiated a protocol to the treaty of Rome that recognises animals as sentient beings; agreed minimum EU welfare standards for all farm animals; and secured detailed EU rules for the welfare of laying hens. At home, we have introduced an updated code of recommendations on the welfare of sheep; continued our advisory campaigns for farmers on welfare issues; and committed substantial sums to farm animal welfare research and development. Full details of these, and many other, measures may be obtained from the Department's website http://www.maff.gov.uk/.

  Environmental Impact Assessment Directive
  Mr. Todd
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he will publish proposals on implementing the uncultivated land provisions of the environmental impact assessment directive. [159350]
  696W
  Mr. Morley
  The Rural White Paper gave an undertaking that MAFF would consult on the application of environmental impact assessment procedures to projects intended to make more intensive agricultural use of uncultivated land. The consultation paper will be published today.

CABINET OFFICE

  Positive Futures
  Ms Blears
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what plans she has to involve more young people in Positive Futures projects in the north-west region. [159100]

  Mr. Ian McCartney
  We have set aside an extra £5 million over two years to help expand the scope and scale of Positive Futures. Up to 80 new projects will be set up and we aim to expand those already in place including Blackburn, Bolton and Salford.

  To help with this expansion major sports stars, including Sir Alex Ferguson, Tammi Grey Thompson and Andy Cole, have offered their support and will act as role models for the kids. There is no doubt that the participation of heroes from the world of sport can make all the difference in helping a vulnerable young person reach their potential.

  The areas being earmarked for expansion include Coventry, Leicester, Sunderland, Liverpool, Leeds, north London, Brighton, the West Country, Essex and South Wales.

  Special Advisers
  Mr. Clifton-Brown
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will make a statement on the Government's policy on employing special advisers during a general election. [159102]

  Mr. Randall
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will make a statement on the Government's policy towards employing special advisers. [159106]

  Mr. Day
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will make a statement on the Government's policy towards employing special advisers. [159110]

  Mr. Stephen O'Brien
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will make a statement on the Government's policy towards employing special advisers. [159112]

  Marjorie Mowlam
  The rules are unchanged from the previous Administration. Special advisers who remain in post during the election period will continue to be governed by the Model Contract for Special Advisers. Guidance has also been issued to them on their activities during the election period. The Guidance that will be issued to all civil servants as soon as the election is announced will also apply.

  Mr. Blunt
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what the salary bill for special advisers will be for the 2001–02 financial year assuming they all receive the maximum performance increments during this financial year. [159103]
  697W
  Marjorie Mowlam
  The estimated salary bill for special advisers for 2001–02 is £4.4 million.

  European Regulatory Environment
  Miss McIntosh
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what progress she has made on reform of the European regulatory environment; and if she will make a statement. [159104]

  Mr. Stringer
  We have worked closely with other member states for instance through joint statements and initiatives, such as the Mandelkern Group and the Commission to achieve the real progress my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister reported to this House on 26 March following the Stockholm European Council.

  Mr. Borrow
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what action her Department has taken to tackle the problem of drug misuse in South Ribble; and if she will make a statement. [159105]

  Mr. Ian McCartney
  We are making good progress nation-wide in all areas of the Government's anti-drugs strategy as reported in the UK Anti-Drugs Coordinator's Annual Report for 1999–2000, published on 7 November 2000.

  South Ribble lies within the boundary of the Lancashire Drug Action Team—one of the largest DATs in the country. To date, over 230 individuals have benefited from Arrest Referral Services.

  New Government resources are being targeted at increasing GP shared care, service capacity and child specific services.

  Dr. Iddon
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office how much the Government are spending in the financial year 2001–02 on misuse of drugs across all its Departments and agencies. [159114]

  Marjorie Mowlam
  The Government have made available substantial resources for directly tackling the problem of drug misuse. These are planned to increase from £700 million in 2000–01 to over £1 billion in 2003–04.

  Details for 2001–02 are set out in the tables.

  Key expenditure figures:

  2000 spending review—resources directly allocated for tackling drug abuse (by main aim of the national anti-drugs strategy)1

  £million

  2001–02

  Drug Treatment2

  328

  Protecting Young People

  90

  Safeguarding Communities

  79

  Reducing Availability3

  373

  Total

  870

  1Excludes expenditure by devolved Administration

  2Comprises mainstream spending by Department of Health, local authorities and the pooled National Treatment Agency budget. Excludes additional Prison Service treatment spend, brigaded under Communities

  3Based on projected anti-drugs allocation from anti-Organised Crime shared funding

  698W

  2000 spending review—new resources provided for related programmes1

  £ million

  2001–02

  Criminal Justice System

  1,420

  Neighbourhood Renewal Fund

  200

  Children's Fund

  100

  Connexions2

  77

  1Excludes expenditure by devolved Administration

  2This was added to existing provision for the careers service. Funding will go to the careers services in areas where Connexions is not yet running

  Budget 2001—new resources for anti-drugs measures1

  £ million

  2001–02

  Strengthening communities

  50

  Extending drug testing in the CJS

  0

  Providing more help to find jobs

  5

  Strengthening DATs

  5

  Expanding Positive Futures

  2

  1Excludes expenditure by devolved Administration

  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what progress has been made in multi-agency co-operation in tackling drug abuse problems in the last year. [159123]

  Mr. Ian McCartney
  Co-operation between agencies is essential to the success of the Government's anti-drugs strategy, particularly at local level. The Lancashire Drug Action Team is working closely with 12 Community Safety Partnerships on a Lange of initiatives designed to tackle drug misuse in the area. Examples in Burnley include targeting action to increase child specific services, reducing waiting times for specialist treatment, auditing service provision to ensure new resources are targeted where they are most needed, and encouraging opportunities for residents to voice their views on substance misuse.

  We have also made available nationwide an additional £220 million to Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships working with Drug Action Teams to build stronger community links and help police and local communities tackle neighbourhood drug problems and the crime associated with them. Partnerships will be free to use this money imaginatively on what will work in their own areas—for example, CCTV in key places, better street lighting or other environmental initiatives that improve visibility and make people feel safer, or to fund police actions against crime associated with drugs.

  Mr. Waterson
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what progress has been made on establishing baseline figures for measuring the Government's targets on reducing drug use. [159118]

  Mr. Ian McCartney
  The Government have set demanding targets in all four areas of their 10 year anti-drugs strategy—halving drug use among young people, halving re-offending by drug-misusing offenders, doubling the numbers of people entering treatment and halving the availability of Class A drugs—and have put in place comprehensive research and information projects to measure progress.
  699W
  In one of the areas—halving drug misuse among young people—a baseline figure has been established using the 1998 British Crime Survey. This showed that the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds reporting use of Class A drugs in the last years was 8.3 per cent. and in the last month was 3.4 per cent.

  Baselines for the other areas will be established within the next 12 months.

  Mrs. Gilroy
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what assessment she has made of the impact of the Government's anti-drug policies on the south-west. [159124]

  Marjorie Mowlam
  We review the progress of local Drug Action Teams annually, through their reports and plans. Reports for 2000–01 are due from Drug Action Teams by the end of April, which will allow us to assess progress of the Government's anti-drugs strategy nationally, regionally and locally.

  Emerging information indicates that all Drug Action Teams in the south-west have submitted treatment plans. In addition, a Public Health Observatory has been established to assess the health impact of drug use in the region; Arrest Referral Schemes have been implemented in custody suites in all police force areas; and Drug Treatment and Testing Orders continue to be rolled out across the region.

  Departmental Advertising
  Mr. Swayne
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will make a statement on her departmental budget for advertising. [159108]

  Mr. Stringer
  The UK Online project has a budget for Marketing Communications, including advertising, in the current financial year of £5 million. Apart from that, the departmental budget for advertising in the current financial year is under £200,000, most of which is for civil service recruitment.

  Senior Civil Service
  Mr. Derek Twigg
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what percentage of the Senior Civil Service has been recruited from the private sector. [159109]

  Mr. Stringer
  In 1996, 23 people were recruited from the private sector into the Senior Civil Service. In 1999–2000 this had increased to 44 (27.9 per cent. of appointments made). 158 vacancies in the Senior Civil Service were filled by open competition
  in this period, and nearly two-thirds of them were filled by people from outside the civil service. In addition people are brought in on secondment; last year there were 354 from other sectors into the Senior Civil Service

  Public Appointments Commission
  Mr. Robathan
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office on how many occasions since May 1997 the Public Appointments Commission has rejected candidates on the grounds of political affiliation. [159115]

  Mr. Stringer
  The Commissioner for Public Appointments is responsible for overseeing the process for appointments to public bodies. She has no involvement in individual appointment decisions.

  Modernising Government
  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what recent progress has been made on items contained in the latest annual report on modernising Government. [159116]

  Mr. Ian McCartney
  I have been impressed with the progress I have seen since the publication last September of the Modernising Government annual report, "Citizens First". For example:Employment Service Direct, which featured in "Open All Hours", our "Citizens First" report on extended hours services published in March, is available for anyone looking for a full or part-time job. And a network of employer service centres will be running by October to help employers advertise their vacancies quickly and easily.

  In my hon. Friend's own constituency, modernisation is going well. For example, the Thurrock Youth Service is supporting young people in the period of their transition from dependence to independence by offering a wide-ranging curriculum that facilitates personal and social development and enables young people to gain a voice, influence and place in society.

  Better Regulation Taskforce
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will make a statement on the work of the better regulation taskforce. [159119]

  Mr. Stringer
  Further to my reply of 21 March to the hon. Gentleman, the Better Regulation Taskforce studies of the economic regulators, the impact of Housing Benefit on lone parents, and regulations affecting local shopkeepers will be published over the course of the summer.

  Rough Sleepers Strategy
  Mr. Hope
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what recent meetings she has had with charities and local service providers to discuss the Government's rough sleepers strategy. [159125]

  Marjorie Mowlam
  In the past six months I have met with or had visits to the following organisations involved with helping rough sleepers: Huge Move, Help the Aged, Look Ahead, St. Thomas's Nightshelter, Brighton Housing Trust, Passage House Nightshelter, Bethnal Green Training Centre for the homeless.

  I also regularly meet my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and the Regions, the Minister responsible for the Government's strategy on rough sleeping, and Louise Casey, Head of the Rough Sleepers' Unit, who is in contact with charities and local service providers on a day-to-day basis.

  Regulatory Burden (Public Sector Workers)
  Mr. Levitt
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what steps are being taken to reduce the burden of regulation on public sector workers. [159126]
  701W
  Mr. Stringer
  In November 1999 the Minister for the Cabinet Office established a Public Sector Team within the Regulatory Impact Unit with the remit of cutting red tape and burden in the public sector.

  The team has focused on reducing the burden on frontline public sector workers and in the last 12 months has produced reports on:
  the police saving an estimated 166,000 hours annually;
  headteachers saving an estimated 200 hours per school annually; and
  most recently GP doctors, launched by the Prime Minister, saving an estimated 7.2 million appointments and 750,000 hours annually.

  The reports were widely welcomed among public sector workers and the Public Sector Team is continuing with this work. There are plans for a further three reports during the next 12 months.

  NHS Appointments
  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office when she last met the Commissioner for Public Appointments to discuss NHS appointments. [159127]

  Mr. Stringer
  NHS appointments are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health.

  Government Websites
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what steps her Department has taken to co-ordinate the development of protocols for providing content for Government websites. [159097]

  Mr. Ian McCartney
  In 1999 my Department published a Framework for Information Age Government Websites. Included within these guidelines is information on the type of content to be expected on Government sites.

  The websites are subject to the conventions on Government publicity. Basically they require that information should:
  be relevant to Government responsibilities; be objective and explanatory;
  not be, or be liable to misrepresentation as being, party political; and
  be conducted in an economic and appropriate way, having regard to the need to be able to justify the costs as expenditure of public funds.
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  These guidelines are available on the Cabinet Office website.

  Rural Affairs Committee
  Mr. St. Aubyn
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office how many meetings of the Government's Rural Affairs Committee she has attended in the last 12 months. [159101]

  Marjorie Mowlam
  It is established practice under exemption two of Part II of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information not to disclose information relating to the proceedings of Cabinet Committees.

  Iran
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to her answer of 21 March 2001,Official Report, column 325, what action she has taken following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran on drugs co-operation; and if she will make a statement. [159111]

  Marjorie Mowlam
  Since signing the Memorandum of Understanding on drugs co-operation on 27 February, UK and Iranian specialists have commenced a UNDCP facilitated technical mission to examine ways of sustaining the reduction of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. We are also discussing ways of furthering our bilateral assistance with the Iranian customs. Both the UK and Iran are committed to vigorous anti-drugs efforts.

  Departmental Policies (Amber Valley)
  Judy Mallaber
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will set out, with statistical information relating as directly as possible to the Amber Valley constituency, the effects on Amber Valley of her Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [157136]

  Mr. Stringer
  The Cabinet Office is responsible for a range of functions which cover England as a whole, or in relation to non-devolved matters, Great Britain or the United Kingdom. It is therefore not possible to say what their specific impact is on a particular constituency. Additionally any policy changes arising form reports by Cabinet Office units, such as the Social Exclusion Unit and the United Kingdom Anti-Drugs Co-ordination Unit, are implemented by the appropriate Government Department, rather than by the Unit itself.

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

Sierra Leone
Lord Geddes Lord Geddes asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the objective of keeping United Kingdom troops in Sierra Leone, and when that objective will be achieved.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): My Lords, British troops are in Sierra Leone in order to assist the democratically elected Government to establish effective and democratically accountable armed forces capable of defending against brutal rebel attacks.
Under the current package of short-term military training, we will have trained 8,500 soldiers by the end of September. After that, assuming a stable and permissive environment, we envisage that a UK-led International Military Advisory and Training Team will take over responsibility for continuation training.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that reply and warmly endorse the objective that she has reiterated. I also acknowledge the very real skill and professionalism of British forces in Sierra Leone. However, what has been the cost to date to the British taxpayer of the presence of those British forces, and what benefit has the British taxpayer received from such sum?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the total cost of the military training and equipment support to the Government of Sierra Leone is estimated to be some £48 million, split between the financial years 2000–01 and 2001–02. The largest element of that is the cost of the equipment for the SLA at some £24 million.
The noble Lord asks what is the benefit to the British taxpayer. The British taxpayer has a vested interest in ensuring that we live in a safe and proper world. The British taxpayer also has an expectation that Her Majesty's Government will behave honourably, will support friends in times of need and will not turn their back when those friends are in need of sustenance and help. This Government will not betray them.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, perhaps I may commend the Minister on that stirring and very essential reply. Have the British forces in Sierra Leone been able to do anything to assist the desperate plight of some Sierra Leoneans who have fled across the
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border into Guinea, and can the Minister tell us what is the current situation of those many tens of thousands of refugees?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Baroness a specific answer in relation to the assistance given. However, we know that there is movement across the Guinea border, and that is being monitored closely. We know that there have been incursions by the RUF forces and those are also being monitored. I undertake to write to the noble Baroness if I am able to provide her with a more specific response.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, will the Minister tell us what the United Nations operation in Sierra Leone is costing and what contribution it has been able to make, if any, to the restoration of peace throughout the country?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, implicit in the last part of the noble Baroness's question is a criticism or a suggestion that UNAMSIL has made no contribution. That is wholly wrong and quite unfair. UNAMSIL has been faced with a most difficult and complex situation. The United Nations as a community has responded robustly. It is correct to say that it has not been as easy as some would have wanted, but it was never going to be easy. We need to give all the support that we can to that initiative.
I shall be more than happy to write to the noble Baroness in relation to her specific question about cost. However, the money has been well spent if it has stopped the situation degenerating into one from which it would be impossible to return to peace and stability. It has not gone that far yet.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, following the question of my noble friend Lady Park, does the noble Baroness agree with the views of Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, that the whole UN operation in Sierra Leone is now a bit of a shambles? I believe that those were very nearly her words. Can the noble Baroness tell us something about the future relationship between our own troops and those of the United Nations? Is it intended that they should work together more closely? What prospect is there of tackling the RUF, regaining the diamond fields and bringing peace to Sierra Leone, which was the original objective of sending our troops there in the first place?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the noble Lord says as a throw-away line that that was the original objective. The noble Lord knows very well that we made clear from the beginning that the objectives were very narrow. They were: to get out the British and other citizens for whom we were responsible; to secure the airfield; and, thereafter, to give proper support to the UN and provide training to the Sierra Leonean army so that the army could become a source of succour to the people of Sierra Leone. I say that as a prerequisite to understanding the

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situation. The troops are supporting the UN and they are working together very closely. Efforts are being made to regain the areas referred to and those efforts are increasingly successful. We have a realistic expectation that the situation will be resolved in the long term.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, can the Minister say what measures are being taken to prevent the regime in Liberia supporting the rebels in Sierra Leone?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, we have made clear efforts in relation to that issue. Noble Lords will know that Liberia's support in relation to the RUF has been a matter of concern. An independent panel of experts was set up by the United Nations under UN Security Council Resolution 1306 (2000) to investigate the links between the diamonds, the arms and the conflict in Sierra Leone. It produced its report in mid-December 2000. The report presented unequivocal evidence that Charles Taylor and his cronies have been instrumental in the theft of Sierra Leone's rich natural resources, especially diamonds. In return, they have supplied arms and safe havens to the RUF. Charles Taylor's meddling has now extended to Guinea, where the humanitarian situation has deteriorated further. It is clear that Taylor must be stopped. We have responded strongly by co-sponsoring with the United States the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1343 (2001), which imposes sanctions on Liberia and which was passed unanimously by the Security Council on 7th March.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, was the equipment worth £24 million a donation or an ethical sale? Is it our intention to provide more arms to Sierra Leone?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I have not got specific figures about the equipment but I shall write to the noble Lord giving him a detailed response to his question. The equipment may be part donation and part sale.

Teacher Training "Salaries": Description
2.44 p.m.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the distinction between the current training grant paid to Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students and a training salary.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Baroness Blackstone): My Lords, training salaries are the bursaries paid to postgraduate trainee teachers attending institutions in England, which my right honourable friend announced on 30th March last year.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Does she not think that it is somewhat misleading to refer to the training grant as a salary when it carries neither national insurance contributions nor any pension element? Is she aware that, on the basis of a 40-hour week, the grant works out to be less than the minimum wage? Does she not therefore feel that it is wrong to refer to the grant as a salary? Doing so gives a very misleading impression.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, the term "salary" has been used because the £6,000 is paid in monthly instalments like a salary. It is of course formally a bursary. I do not think that anybody has been misled. Not a single letter making a claim to that effect has been received in my department by my right honourable friends who are responsible for policies on teachers. The £6,000 has been hugely welcomed by the teaching profession—by those who are already teachers, because it will help with the recruitment of more teachers, and by those who are considering becoming teachers. We should view the grant in those terms.
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, the shortage of teachers, I think it is agreed, has reached crisis proportions, as any perusal of the advertisements in newspapers demonstrates. Have the Government any plans to extend the support they give to PGCE students to include those studying education at university? That would proportionately advantage those who intend to teach in the primary sector where the crisis is as serious.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, we need to look at the figures in a calm and rational way. There is always concern when there are vacancies. There has been a net increase of 12,600 teachers in England since January 1998. There are now more teachers in our schools than at any time during the past 16 years. We have just had the biggest single increase in the total number of teachers for a quarter of a century. Those figures should be welcomed. Only last week in this House I said that there had been a 24 per cent increase in the number of applications for students wishing to do PGCEs. The latest figure shows a 26 per cent increase. The increase for secondary schools, which is where the most serious shortages are—I stress that to the right reverend Prelate—is 30 per cent. We are en route to seeing an improvement in the general position concerning teacher recruitment and teacher supply.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the Minister's response does not answer the particular question that the right reverend Prelate asked. I shall press it in a different way. Why do the Government help PGCE candidates but not bachelor of education candidates, who make an important contribution to teaching in our schools?
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, the focus up to now has been on PGCE students, partly because that route is becoming more popular with increasing numbers of students who come into our universities and enter the

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teaching profession as graduates. That has been our focus also because, as I just said, the most significant shortages occur in certain subjects in secondary schools. The normal route for the vast majority of secondary school teachers is to complete a degree and a one-year PGCE course. The Government are looking at ways in which we can provide further support for those who take the route of undergraduate education.
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, does the Minister accept that, despite the increase in the number of applications, it is a fact that the number of vacancies in secondary schools has doubled over the past year and trebled since 1997? Although the number of applications has increased, the number of acceptances of potential maths teachers on to PGCE courses has fallen in the past year. Maths is a shortage subject.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, the latest figures show that there has been an increase in the vacancy rate. The Government are concerned to do as much as we possibly can to reduce that rate. However, I stress that larger numbers of teachers are now coming into the system. There are now more vacancies, partly because there are far more posts. There are more posts in the system because the Government have been able to provide schools with an average increase of £540 per pupil per year, which is a substantial increase. That is allowing head teachers to create more posts in our schools.

Fluoridation of Water
2.50 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Durham The Lord Bishop of Durham asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have any plans to amend the law so that decisions about fluoridation of water rest with them rather than local authorities or the water industry.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, a review of the research evidence on fluoride and health undertaken by the University of York reported last September. The report confirmed that the fluoridation of water reduces tooth decay and found no evidence of serious risk to overall health, but was critical of the quality of the evidence available. We asked the Medical Research Council for advice on how the research base might be strengthened and we are consulting the water industry about the report. Once we have its responses, we will decide if changes should be made to the current legislation.
The Lord Bishop of Durham: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. However, I should like to press him a little more in view of the fact that, as long ago as 1998, the Minister for public health said that the legislation was a mess and the White Paper published in 1999 said that the legislation
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needed revising. How much longer are we to wait while the responsibility lies with those bodies which are accountable to their shareholders rather than to the public?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is right to point out that health authorities have found it a major problem in that they went through a proper consultation process and requested water companies to add fluoride to the water but found themselves frustrated. However, we committed ourselves to a course of action which included asking the University of York to undertake this review. As I said, while overall the conclusions were satisfactory, York did identify weaknesses in the whole fluoride research base. It is appropriate therefore to ask the Medical Research Council to review what further research might be undertaken. On the basis of those findings and discussions with the water companies we shall consider whether or not legislation needs to be brought forward.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, how many current local authorities or water authorities who are responsible for these matters either do or do not undertake fluoridation of water? Can the Minister say a little more about whether or not there are adverse effects from fluoridation in view of the fact that it was promulgated strongly in the 1980s that it was a major benefit and appears largely to have been just that?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I am happy to give the detailed information to the noble Lord in writing. Essentially, around 5.5 million people in this country are covered by fluoridation schemes and another 500,000 receive fluoride because it is naturally present in the water. A number of health authorities would like to add fluoride to the water but have been frustrated because of the policies of water companies.
The York review looked at a number of studies and found that, in essence, there was no evidence of adverse effects other than dental fluorosis. I say again that, because there was concern about the quality of the evidence reviewed, we felt it right to ask the Medical Research Council to give us further advice.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, perhaps I can declare a non-financial interest as president of the British Fluoridation Society. Is my noble friend aware that the parts of the West Midlands that I represented formally, both in another place and in the European Parliament, benefited substantially from the fluoridation of water supplies by Severn Trent Water? Is he aware also that the benefits of that fluoridation are well reflected in dental health statistics for individual health authorities in the West Midlands? Should not those benefits be more widely available and soon?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that a number of districts in the West Midlands which have fluoridation schemes have a low incidence of dental disease, particularly among young

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people. That is why the Government still recommend to health authorities that in those areas where dental disease is high, fluoridating the water remains the most effective way of improving oral health. However, it is right in an evidence-based approach to ask the Medical Research Council for further advice on potential further research evidence.
Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, while broadly supporting the Minister in his referral of the matter to the Medical Research Council, does he agree that the key issue is that these decisions should be taken locally? Will he undertake, before the MRC comes up with its conclusions, to investigate whether or not these matters can be determined by local referendum, which in many ways would be the most satisfactory way of determining the matter?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, the noble Lord's comments will always be given the utmost consideration. The current position is that health authorities are responsible for consulting with the local community before making a formal decision on whether or not to apply to a water company for fluoridation. When my right honourable friend Mrs Tessa Jowell developed the policy of the current Government, she said that one part of a review of legislation would be to see whether or not we should transfer the responsibility for fluoridation to local government. We will of course consider that matter. It is also worth making the point that in the current Health and Social Care Bill we envisage local authority overview and scrutiny committees taking on a scrutiny role in relation to health service matters and that may be an issue we need to look at in relation to fluoridation.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, I have always understood that a high level of fluoride in the water supply may have an adverse effect on the kidneys. Has that issue been properly investigated?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, the work undertaken by the University of York looked at a total of 31 studies which considered the possible negative effects of fluoride in relation to various potential diseases. Overall the studies examining those negative effects indicated that they provided insufficient evidence on any specific outcome to permit confident conclusions and that further research needed to be undertaken in those areas. That reinforces our decision to seek further advice from the Medical Research Council. Overall the York review concluded that, apart from fluorosis, there was no evidence of serious diseases being caused by fluoridating the water supply.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, is the Minister aware that I took the fluoridation Bill through this House in order to clarify the legal position for new areas to become eligible to introduce fluoridation? Is he further aware that, as a result of fluoridation, which
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Birmingham started in the 1960s, Birmingham now has the best teeth in England? I wish that I had lived in Birmingham in those days so that I did not have to smile at myself at night!
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, it is not too late for the noble Baroness to join us in Birmingham. I pay tribute to her work in taking that Bill through the House of Lords. If only the word "shall" had been in that Bill instead of "may"!
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the University of York study showed that only a moderate 15 per cent of the children's group benefited from fluoridation? Is not that scant reward for compulsory mass medication, which I believe to be against the interests of the whole of the population of this country?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, a 15.5 per cent reduction in the prevalence of dental disease is a worthwhile result from the fluoridation of water. The debate on mass medication has been well and truly aired in this House. The fact is that almost all water contains some naturally-occurring levels of detectable fluoride. That is not mass medication.

Government Advertising
2.59 p.m.
The Earl of Courtown The Earl of Courtown asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the current levels of expenditure on government advertising represent value for money for the taxpayer.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Falconer of Thoroton): My Lords, government advertising is the responsibility of individual departments. It is subject to strict guidelines published by the Cabinet Office. Those state that it is essential to conduct a rigorous value-for-money examination for all publicity proposals, including advertising.
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Can he tell me where Her Majesty's Government draw the line between advertising a government initiative and the promotion of new Labour?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I have indicated that a rigorous approach to value for money is taken. The reference to advertising expenditure in the past three months includes such matters as £2.1 million for police recruitment; £2.1 million for blood donation; £3.2 million for nursing recruitment; and £1.9 million for Royal Navy recruitment. Those seem to us to be appropriate matters on which to spend such sums.
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we would be helped by guidance from those who are questioning that expenditure on where they would like the cuts to fall? Are they just against money being spent on informing people of the areas to which they should not go in order to avoid spreading foot and mouth across their land, or do they also want the Government to stop telling people who are poor where they may get the benefits to which they are entitled?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I agree that it would be helpful to know where those raising this question suggest that the line should be cut. I cannot help but refer to an article in a publication called Campaign, written by Mr Michael Ancram, chairman of the Conservative Party, which begins by stating:
"The Conservative Party is to block the Government's recruitment campaigns for police and nurses",
when Tony Blair announces that a general election is expected in June.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, I rise in an effort to be helpful on behalf of the Cross Benches. Does the Minister not agree that in the Printed Paper Office is a large glossy document headed with words to the effect, "The Government's Achievements". Subsequent paragraphs then discuss future government achievements. Will the Minister take on board the fact that there may not be total unanimity on the degree to which the items listed are achievements?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I have no idea what document the noble Lord is referring to. The question raised by the noble Earl concerns government advertising. I am trying to stress that the advertising referred to is for the recruitment of nurses, police officers and so forth, which I regard as a good thing.
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, perhaps the question can be put another way. Can the Minister tell us what testing of the concept of any campaign was carried out before its release to ensure that the advertisements did not convey a party political point? If the Government budgeted for such campaigns to run for six months, one year or two years, as is normal, why has expenditure shot up in the past four months?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, the campaigns have nothing to do with politics. The recruitment of police officers and nurses is something which all parties across any political divide would wish to encourage. I am amazed that the Conservative Party is to stop the recruitment of police officers and nurses. The expenditure for advertising this year has risen to levels comparable to those in 1986 and 1987. Between 1992 and 1997 there was a substantial drop in advertising. Was that because the Government were doing nothing during that period?
Lord Hardy of Wath: My Lords, does my noble friend accept that at a time of massively increased job availability, it has been vital to advertise to promote applications for jobs in essential public services?
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Further, given the improvements in the wide range of welfare benefits, does he agree that it is perfectly reasonable to advertise to ensure that people are aware of their entitlements and rights?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I agree entirely with both premises. I particularly emphasise the fact that the Armed Forces have made clear that campaigning should be consistent throughout the year. That is what we have done. There is not much point in having a working families' tax credit unless people know about it. It is appropriate for a Government to take steps to that effect.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords—
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, perhaps I may return to the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Marsh. Would the Minister explore the precincts to see whether he can find the document to which the noble Lord referred? It is at least possible that the Minister might then conclude that it is a rather sombre example of the incredible being offered to the incredulous.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, the Question asked by the noble Earl concerns government advertising. I do not know what the document is but it does not seem to fall within that rubric.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords,—
Lord Gordon of Strathblane: My Lords, I shall be brief in the hope that the noble Lord is able to intervene subsequently. The noble Baroness has had a distinguished career in the advertising industry. She will know that the industry has moved on a long way since the days of Lord Leverhulme, who said that he knew that half his advertising worked but he did not know which half. Does the Minister agree that officials at the COI and the CIGS are rigorous in ensuring a distinction between party politics and government information? Further, they have been in the vanguard of pressing for what is known in the industry as "media auditing"; that is, ensuring that the client receives value for his advertising pound.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I agree that government officials involved in such matters as advertising, recruitment drives and the promotion of benefits available to people as a result of government initiatives are utterly rigorous in ensuring that they are effective. They have also been in the lead in ensuring that there is an appropriate media audit.

Business
3.6 p.m.
Lord Carter: My Lords, with the leave of the House, between the two short debates this afternoon my noble friend Lord McIntosh will repeat as a Statement an Answer to a Private Notice Question in another place on the Wembley National Stadium project.

Business of the House: Debates this Day
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Jay of Paddington): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the debates on the Motions in the names of the Baroness Noakes and the Lord Howell of Guildford set down for today shall each be limited to two-and-a-half hours.—(Baroness Jay of Paddington.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

The National Health Service
3.7 p.m.
Baroness Noakes Baroness Noakes rose to call attention to the state of morale in the National Health Service; and to move for Papers.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the state of morale in the NHS is of great concern. The NHS is a great institution in which I had the honour to serve for three years as Director of Finance and later as a member of its policy board. It is an essential part of the social and economic fabric of our land, but it is in crisis.
That crisis has no easy measurement. Most of the data that we have about the NHS are hard data. They tell us how many people have been treated; how many are waiting for treatment; how much money has been spent; how many new hospital schemes are under way; and how many staff are employed in the NHS. But crucially, those data do not tell us how the 1 million or so NHS staff feel. That feeling is critical to how well the NHS can deliver.
Anyone who has been involved in running any kind of organization—I imagine that will cover most, if not all, noble Lords here today—will know that people are the most important element. As the late Lord Sieff said:
"Ultimately, whatever the form of economic activity, it is people who count".
It is fair to say, although I derive no personal comfort from saying it, that four years ago many in the NHS welcomed the arrival of the Labour Government. They felt that the NHS would improve and that life for NHS staff would improve. They were wrong, and now more and more are saying so, although some are still too afraid to say so openly. The cumulative effect is of plummeting morale and dissatisfaction with the way that the NHS is being run.
A recent survey found that 84 per cent of nurses and doctors felt that stress levels were increasing in their jobs and that 10 per cent thought that stress might have resulted in clinical error. An increasing clinical error rate is truly frightening.
When we talk of morale we are not simply talking of the personal happiness of NHS staff or the latest fashion in HR initiatives. We are talking about a very real impact on patient care and that is why the current crisis in morale is so worrying.
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I want to spend most of my time today talking about morale in various staff groups within the NHS. However, before I do that, I shall refer to one small group within it: community health councils. CHCs have done much valuable work for patients and carers over the past 30 years, particularly when the NHS made errors. But they were not perfect. The Government decided, without any consultation, to abolish them.
That decision caused much heartache and concern to the committed staff and volunteers in CHCs. For the past nine months, they have had to fight for their own survival while at the same time continuing their good work for patients. I know that morale in CHCs will have been lifted last week by your Lordships' wise decision to reject abolition in the Health and Social Care Bill—and we can only hope and pray that the Government will not inflict yet more pain on this group by seeking to reverse your Lordships' decision in another place.
The main experience of the NHS for most people is their general practitioner. Around 78 per cent of us saw a GP last year. If morale is poor among GPs, it can have devastating consequences for patient care. And morale certainly is poor. A recent survey for Doctor magazine showed that four out of five GPs would quit the NHS if they could, which is much higher than in any previous survey. Nine out of 10 thought that NHS reforms were lowering morale. More than two-thirds of GPs are now less likely to recommend a career as a GP than five years ago.
That seems extraordinary. Have we not frequently heard from the Government about their plans for general practice with the aim of improving everything from premises to the access times for patients? The NHS Plan proudly proclaimed a commitment for a further 2,000 GPs on top of the existing 36,000. But the GPs pointed out that the existing plans for new GPs already had 1,100 pencilled in; and the profession's own calculations showed that more than 10,000 new GPs were needed if the Government's various initiatives were to be delivered.
General practitioners believe that the Government are dragging their heels over the promised new contract. They are getting increasingly angry about this lack of progress. We saw that anger yesterday as some GPs even closed their doors to non-urgent cases. The BMA is balloting GPs. To date, all that GPs have had from the Government are some promises about freeing them from paperwork and various financial inducements, which were described by one despairing GP as "pathetic and insulting".
General practitioners genuinely want to deliver improved care to their patients. They want to increase the average time spent with each patient from the current level of eight minutes. But they can see only that clinical time will be squeezed further by central requirements. They worry that that will lead to dangerous medicine. That is why they would opt out if they could.
The picture is no happier when we look at consultants. They were pretty satisfied with the Government's commitment in the NHS Plan to an

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extra 7,500 consultants by 2004, a rise of 30 per cent. Consultants think that that would be a good start to closing the gap with the rest of the EU, which has roughly double our rate of consultants. Consultants believe that our low consultant numbers are a major cause of our long waiting lists and stress within the consultant community.
However, the consultants were definitely not happy with the NHS Plan's proposal that new consultants should work for up to seven years exclusively in the NHS. Doctors do 12 or more years of hard work for low pay before they earn consultant status and the Government are now telling them that their ability to work privately will be severely constrained for a further seven years.
Even with the promised extra pay, consultants will not be paid well compared with their peers. Young doctors look at their university colleagues, now working in the City or in the professions, generally with less stress and earning far more money. Small wonder that many are considering whether it is worth it. If more quit, unfilled vacancies will continue to rise and the planned growth in the consultant population could very easily go negative.
The Government have belatedly started negotiations on the new contract. Just before that, consultants were,
"deeply frustrated and annoyed by the failure to make progress on negotiations".
If these negotiations do not bear fruit to the taste of consultants, they will be very dissatisfied. Behind them, the junior doctors, who work so hard with the aim of becoming consultants one day, will also lose heart. The NHS cannot afford this level of dissatisfaction.
No story of NHS morale would be complete without reference to the largest professional group—nurses. The NHS Plan set out a fairly modest increase of 20,000 nurses, on top of the existing 390,000. But there are 22,000 vacancies at present and an increasing number of our nurses are leaving to go abroad; there were more than 5,000 last year.
At the same time, we are becoming increasingly dependent on nurses from overseas. Twenty-five per cent of London's nurses are foreign. The Department of Health has even created a director with specific responsibility for recruiting nurses from abroad. My noble friend Lady Cumberlege put the spotlight on this last week during the Report stage of the Health and Social Care Bill. She described how we are simultaneously depleting the scarce skills base of countries with desperate healthcare needs, such as South Africa, while not even solving the problems of work pressures on our own hard-pressed nurses.
A recent survey of nurses in London, where vacancies are particularly acute, had eight out of 10 saying that the NHS was not a better place to work than two years ago. Most nurses do not feel that they are adequately paid. Many do part-time agency work, which is itself costly for the NHS, merely to survive. More than two-thirds of nurses received only an inflationary increase last year. The new cost-of-living
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supplement is not being paid to all nurses with high housing costs. This has done little for morale or recruitment.
At the same time, the Government are introducing modern matrons. This is yet another call on our over-stretched front-line nursing workforce without any additional resources being provided for implementation. Described by one commentator as "an evidence-free political wheeze", this is no substitute for policies which will make the NHS a better place for nurses.
Let me now turn to managers in the NHS. Over the past year or so we have seen a steady trickle of the most senior managers leaving the NHS. We have seen scapegoating on an unprecedented scale, with chief executives and even chairmen being forced to resign for little or no good reason. The newly appointed NHS HR director said, before his appointment, that the "heads must roll" approach is,
"seriously eroding the confidence of senior managers".
Targets and priorities rain down from on high and new initiatives arrive daily. The Government are introducing traffic lights which would see 25 per cent of all health bodies graded red, the bottom of the pile, set to be interfered with to an even greater degree. The books still do not balance without massive intervention, a process described by the NHS Confederation as "bruising".
Let me quote the words of one long-standing NHS manager:
"You are always being watched. But it is not just that. It's the number of people watching you—the regional office, the health authority, the primary care group not to mention the media and all the formal inspection bodies".
The Minister may well say that all that will change following the Damascene conversion we apparently witnessed last week when the Secretary of State for Health announced a new-found love of decentralisation. But this promises yet more reorganisation. My instinct is that the burdens on managers will be increased in the short term for little or no long-term gain. It is not surprising that managers are worried; the last thing they want is another reorganisation. Many managers already complain that they work a 10 to 12-hour day, sometimes six days a week, which is way beyond European Working Time Directive rules.
I could go on. There are some groups of NHS staff that I have been unable to cover this afternoon, but I am keen to hear the views of other noble Lords. Before I sit down, I remind your Lordships that a poor state of morale exists in the NHS despite the fact that winter pressures have been almost non-existent. We had no flu or similar epidemic, and almost all the statistics were benign. The workforce is not exhausted by a hard winter but by initiative overload, a failure to address recruitment and pay and, above all, a failure to listen to the concerns of people in the NHS. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.21 p.m.
Baroness Northover: My Lords, I welcome this debate on a very timely and topical subject and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for introducing it. I declare a kind of interest. On a daily basis I see evidence of the stress of working in the NHS. My husband is a surgeon at one of the London hospitals. I can assure noble Lords that his 80-hour week hardly makes for an easy life. Some flourish under such pressure, but for many the workload, stress and feeling that constraints simply prevent best practice destroy morale.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence about morale in the NHS, but we now have the most systematic survey ever conducted of NHS staff at all levels. In 1999 the NHS Executive developed a human resources framework called Working Together as part of the Government's NHS national plan. Central to the plan were the objectives of increasing staff numbers and improving their working lives. All trusts were asked to conduct surveys of their staff. No doubt trusts groaned as they undertook yet another instruction from the centre, but, one hopes, with an understanding of its purpose. After all, the NHS is its staff, and it would be a negligent employer within any organisation, whether a huge public service or a business, who did not look to see whether his or her employees were happy, focused on their work and not about to leave.
The results of the surveys were reported to trust boards in the autumn of 2000. The views of almost 80,000 NHS personnel are recorded, which makes this the most comprehensive picture of NHS staff attitudes ever compiled. But no doubt noble Lords will be surprised and alarmed to hear that no analysis has been made of the material. No lessons could, therefore, be drawn from it had not my colleague in another place, Paul Burstow, taken it upon himself to carry out that analysis himself. Surely the Government could not have feared the results of the survey, could they? But the results are dynamite. "Stressed out and overworked" sums up the views of the 80,000 NHS staff. Fifty-two per cent of staff in the eastern region said that there were insufficient resources to do the job properly; 60 per cent of staff in the northern and Yorkshire region said that morale was not good in their trust; 71 per cent of staff in the West Midlands said they were not coping with work-related stress; 77 per cent of staff in the north west region said that they were not coping with their workload, and so on. These surveys are a snapshot of the views of NHS staff and will not make pleasant reading—should be get round to it—for the Minister.
Another appalling indicator of low morale and stress is the suicide rate. I was horrified to discover that the suicide rates among doctors is twice the national average, and among nurses it is almost four times that. There are many within the health service who find their work very rewarding, but it is clear that for more and more staff the mounting pressures increase stress, diminish the sense of satisfaction and undermine morale, and we ignore that at our peril.
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Why is the position as it is? Endless bureaucratic changes, a feeling that staff are not in control and that the wrong decisions are being made, long hours, low pay, long waiting lists and dissatisfied patients have all contributed to this sense. But the key factor time and again is simply lack of staff. Take an operating theatre not too far from here last Thursday. It could have been any Thursday, or any weekday. The list had been set up: two major cases were to be followed by a few minor ones. The first case took longer than expected because complications arose, which is common enough. Therefore, the list could not be completed on time. The nurses pointed out that there would be no one to replace them when they finished their shift and the list must be curtailed. The surgeon and his team would have liked to continue to operate on the cancer patient, who was ready and waiting, but there were not enough nurses to do that. Therefore, it was the surgeon who had to explain the position to the anxious patient and her relatives. Thus, the doctor is pitted against the nurse and the patient against both, and all go home angry and upset.
Why has this happened? It is a supreme irony—or maybe evidence of a change of heart—that this debate is today led by the Conservatives. The Tories cut the number of nurse training places in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The number of nurses recruited fell from 37,000 in 1983 to only 6,000 in 1995, and the number of doctors in training also declined. We are now paying the price for that. Low pay and high stress levels mean that many nurses leave the service, and 62 per cent spend hours in excess of those for which they are contracted. Forty-two per cent of nurses have caring responsibilities, which is not a matter that is being satisfactorily addressed.
We shall not keep these nurses unless we address their needs, and we shall not replace them if we do not train them. We believe that we need 27,500 more nurses, 4,500 more doctors and 10,500 more professionals allied to medicine, and we have that costed. The real answer to the problem of morale is to have a proper commitment to the NHS. Only by doing that will the investment in the staff take place which is so essential. Let us call for papers but, more than that, let us call for action.
3.28 p.m.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, I have no connection with the NHS apart from being a patient from time to time. The noble Baroness asks about the state of morale. I believe that in such a vast organisation which employs over 1 million people a generalisation about the state of morale is quite meaningless. A generalisation may be unfair to the thousands of skilled and hard-working people who are dedicated and committed to the NHS. When the noble Baroness spoke about different groups—GPs, consultants, nurses and managers—she was perhaps getting to the core of the problem. However, morale is a matter for even smaller units than that. Within an organisation morale varies from part to part and goes up and down.

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For example, morale must be high in a hospital where a new treatment that has been tried results in unexpected improvements in patients' health. Equally, morale will be low in the hospital where an injection was administered incorrectly into the spinal cord of a patient resulting in death. Therefore, a vast generalisation about morale is quite meaningless. Morale concerns the smaller parts of an organisation. But that is not to say that there is no value in high morale; there certainly is.
Of course people matter. High morale produces better performance; people work more cheerfully and are more helpful. The hope is that that is transmitted to patients who will get better. So I agree that it is important to create circumstances where morale flourishes. But that is not solely in the hands of the Government; it is also in the hands of health managers, health professionals, doctors, and, indeed, the patients. I am sure that when Lord Morris of Castle Morris came to your Lordships' House from his hospital bed especially to thank and compliment the nurses at the Midlands Cancer Unit who treated him, morale there went up. To make sure that there was no mistake, noble Lords may remember that he read his hospital details off his wrist band. Sadly I learnt that he died yesterday.
Morale is under pressure in the NHS because the organisation is under pressure of change; change for the better. So it is a pity that the noble Baroness is challenging and putting on the defensive those who want to make the change rather than those who want to preserve the status quo. There are three changes taking place; one by the Government, one by patients and one by science. All are taking place simultaneously.
First, the change from the internal market. The Government are right to move from a service where doctors and hospitals were in competition with each other to a service encouraging collaboration and the setting of high standards. The noble Baroness has plenty of experience in business. She knows how difficult and hard it is to introduce customer care. There is a world of difference between providing what management thinks the customer wants and providing what the customer actually wants. One has to listen to one's customers to find out what they want and not just talk to them. Then one has to find the money, the staff and the facilities to provide it while sacrificing one's own sectional interests. The NHS and the Government are getting on with the matter. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will give us the details.
Secondly, there is the change in the public's attitude towards the medical profession. Today patients are better informed about medicine; indeed, they can challenge doctors, not only by finding out about illness from the Internet, but also because of the emerging relationship between illness and lifestyle. A cardiologist, as well as being skilled at heart transplantation, must also know about exercise and good diet and discuss it with someone who perhaps knows just as much. Patients with such diseases as rheumatoid arthritis now want to know whether the reason for their suffering is genetic or environmental.
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Nowadays all professions are more stressed, not only doctors. Since the public stopped being deferential towards professions, ever-increasing demands are being made on them. That means that their effectiveness and efficiency have to be open to public scrutiny and measurement. That is always a stressful experience which can raise or lower morale.
That leads me to the third change. With new science, expectations are increasing; 100 per cent success is expected. Of course that is impossible. There are always risks. Doctors are struggling to find better and more open ways of communicating risks and the limitations of knowledge. But the naming, shaming and blaming culture that we have today only adds to the stress on doctors. It also affects morale.
All these are very complicated changes which are happening simultaneously. They have to be managed. Inevitably, managing changes of this kind means that there is more centralisation, bottom-up reporting, top-down guidelines, budgeting, bureaucracy and paperwork.
I believe that the initial stage has been passed. The grip is being loosened. Step by step, difficulties and problems are being attacked. Two Budgets have promised more money for staff and better facilities. More doctors and technicians are being trained and more nurses recruited. Today there was a scheme announced to recruit more midwives. As these initiatives begin to take effect and as the grip loosens, morale will improve in every surgery, hospital and laboratory. As patients, we, too, can help morale by being better informed and more discriminating and understanding users of the health service; making a fuss when we experience negligence and errors but also acknowledging good work and high standards; and being realistic about our demands of what a public health service can deliver.
3.35 p.m.
Baroness Eccles of Moulton: My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for introducing the debate. I have contracted a common cold. I have no need to go to the doctor, but I hope that my voice will hold out.
I had connections with the health service in west London for many years, but I no longer have to declare a direct interest. I too should like to use change as my theme, not in order to defend the status quo, but more to explain the impact that change has on the health service and some of the ways that it affects doctors and managers. I do not mention nurses and other related professions specifically, but many of my comments apply equally to them.
I start with organisational change. Each time the management of the health service is reorganised, there is a loss in human terms. That is not compensated for by projected cash savings, which are seldom realised anyway. Changes to the structure make managers worry about their future job prospects. That makes it difficult for them to give their full attention to the job in hand. A degree of stability and continuity is essential if people are to feel secure enough to give their best.

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Organisational change can be justified only if in the medium to long term it provides an improved framework to support and enable the front line. Reshaping management for the sake of it can exacerbate rather than address deep-seated problems. The unease is increased by the assertion that there are too many managers. How many times have we heard that said? How does that equate with the plea from doctors to be relieved of the increasing load of form filling and red tape? To believe that the health service can be run efficiently without adequate, competent and valued management is fantasy.
Another aspect of change that is worth mentioning is the speed of technological advance. As we know, that makes possible more sophisticated diagnosis and treatment, but it tends to move ahead of an adequate supply of staff trained and experienced in the use of new techniques. Also investment in sufficient modern equipment will inevitably lag behind. The increasing number of new drugs and the complexities surrounding their introduction and use place yet another burden on the profession. Working out which patients' needs are greatest, and trying to assess outcomes, gives rise to dilemmas that are both practical and ethical. Distorting comment in the media, not always refuted by government, does not help.
Another aspect of change is behavioural change. That is perhaps the hardest to define, but it is relevant in this context. In general, society's respect for people in the professions has declined in recent years and health professionals are no exception. To attempt to analyse the causes of this decline would be a subject in itself, but I shall spend a moment looking at the effects that it has on consultants and GPs.
Because ill-health can cause pain and disability and because we all die in the end, we would like to place doctors on a pedestal of infallibility. That puts them in a unique and impossible position. Realistically we know this. But each patient wants to believe that the doctor in charge of their case has sufficient knowledge and skill to provide the best care available. Nowadays, with patients having access to far more information than ever before—both individual and general through the Internet and other sources—the relationship is changing and doctors have to be prepared to be more closely questioned or even challenged during a consultation, and to discuss the case with the patient in more detail than ever before. Those who previously thought explanation unnecessary can no longer remain aloof. These new relationships will be difficult and painful for those doctors who are not skilled in talking to their patients, but the old ways are becoming unacceptable.
When a service is having to contend with rapid and sometimes confusing change, strong and supportive leadership is essential. Sadly, there are times when the Government have failed in that respect. They have been known to seize the opportunity provided by damaging media stories to castigate the profession, and doctors are held up as examples of the forces of conservatism which have no place in our "modernized
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Britain". When the Government realise that they have gone too far, that the sense of being undermined and of being held in low esteem felt by doctors will rebound on them, and that public opinion is shifting in support of doctors, they change their tune and praise the profession for the valuable contribution that it makes to society.
The Government have also allowed public expectations to be raised far above achievable levels. We are told of the extra billions going into the health service, which themselves can be misleading owing to a tendency by the Government to double count. They also announce additional funds as if they will be spent today and with instant effect, whereas in fact there is always a time-lag. Furthermore, funds alone cannot achieve stated objectives. In primary care, for instance, skilled staff and accessible high quality premises cannot be produced out of a hat. As a result, disgruntled patients hold doctors to account for failing to deliver what they have been led to expect.
To end on a brighter note, some good things have happened without which the pressure on competent GPs would have been even greater. Primary care groups have benefited practices that are single handed or very small. They have reduced isolation and provided mutual support and performance scrutiny. GPs themselves are now more critical of their weaker members and cases being reported to the GMC have increased in number and are being acted on more speedily. Out-of-hours co-operatives have helped a great deal and, looking back, many GPs in demanding urban areas wonder how they survived being on call round the clock. Now they can plan their time between work and home in a more reasonable way.
The vast majority of people working in the health service are loyal and committed. They need to be working in an organisation which will support and encourage them and give them enough space to get on with the job.
3.43 p.m.
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for introducing this debate. I agree with her that what is important about the poor morale in the NHS is its devastating effect on patient care.
We have heard from my noble friend Lady Northover the hard evidence of the chronic state of morale. However, I have gathered some anecdotal evidence by talking to health professionals working at the cutting edge—not all of them surgeons! They were unanimous in their claim that morale in the health service is at an all-time low. That is not just because they are overworked and underpaid but because they believe that the shortage of staff and resources limits their ability to care for patients. Health service workers are some of the most conscientious in the workforce. It matters to them that they are unable to do the job as well as they know they could. For Britain to have reached a position where large numbers of GPs are threatening to resign in 12 months is a clear indicator that something is very wrong.

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That is not the only indicator. Look at the outcomes—for example, the cancer survival rates for the UK compared with other European countries and the US. We have the worst survival rates for every single common cancer of every single major organ. I know that it is not just a matter of money, but is it a coincidence that these outcomes correlate with spending? The UK spends less and more people die prematurely. That is a terrifying fact.
The first port of call for most people is their GP, who, according to the BMA, is facing a crisis of morale. A recent survey conducted across the country by the Liberal Democrats has shown a worrying level of dissatisfaction with the length of time patients have to wait to see their doctor. Half of those surveyed said they had to wait between two and five days for an appointment and 19 per cent had to wait longer than that. I recently had to wait nearly two weeks myself. No wonder people are dissatisfied and doctors are worried.
Delegation is not the answer because there are not enough practice nurses and district nurses either. They too are demoralised. One district nurse I spoke to told me that morale is at an all-time low because Department of Health officials do not listen to the people on the ground. She and her colleagues believe that money is not being spent in the right way—on patient care. People do not think problems through properly and nurses have to waste time as a consequence For example, computers are provided, but not in the right place, at the district nurse's base. She then has to go somewhere else to input her data, wasting time that could have been spent visiting patients. Hard-pressed district nurses cannot spend time during visits doing that vital bit of health education that can avoid problems in the future. This is short-sighted and not really cost-effective in the long term.
No wonder the suicide rates for doctors and nurses have been so high for the past 10 years. Lurking beneath these figures is a level of stress which, even where it does not lead to suicide, compromises the health of the staff involved and their efficiency in dealing with patients. We need more doctors and more nurses and certainly not privatisation of the health service.
Another area where anecdotes abound is dental services. Everybody knows how difficult it is to find an NHS dentist and as a consequence many people go without dental treatment. The previous administration gave grants to dentists to improve their surgeries as long as they agreed to take NHS patients for five years. Just as this scheme was beginning to work, along came the Labour Government and changed it. Now we have NHS dental access centres, which are a sort of A&E for teeth. They may work, but there is a danger of their perpetuating the two-tier dental service that we now have.
Part of the demoralisation is caused by foot dragging and poor decision-making. One example of that is cervical cancer screening. Despite having one of the most comprehensive screening programmes in the
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world, with 85 per cent coverage, the UK has among the worst death rates from cervical cancer in western Europe, with over 1,300 women dying every year. Yet the condition is 100 per cent treatable if detected early.
The Pap smear is the current test used for screening. Introduced in the 1940s, it has been very successful in reducing deaths from cervical cancer. However, the Pap smear does not test for the cause of the disease. It tests for the symptoms by examining a sample of cells taken from the surface of the cervix. Screeners review several hundred samples a day and spend only a few minutes examining each slide. Many abnormal cells can go undetected. I know this very well because when I left university, my first job was at the Christie Hospital, Manchester, a centre of excellence for cancer treatment and research. I was a cytologist screening cervical swears, looking down a microscope al] day. It was a very difficult job that required immense concentration for long periods. No wonder this kind of screening has only around 70 per cent accuracy. Having done the job, it is very obvious to me NA, by that is. Human beings simply cannot be 100 per cent sure that every cell on a slide is healthy. Besides, a smear could have been taken from an area away from the lesion.
However, there are three other tests, all of which have potential to be a great deal more accurate and save money as well as lives. High-risk types of a virus known as the human papilloma virus or HPV have been shown to be present in 99.7 per cent of cervical cancers. There is a DNA test that can detect high-risk, cancer-causing types of HPV with 95 per cent accuracy. Unlike the Pap test, HPV testing is predictive and thus can detect and track the cause of the disease. Many people, including the readers of Cosmopolitan magazine, would like to see the HPV test introduced as part of the national screening programme. A petition carried out by Councillor Patsy Calton, in Cheadle, Cheshire, near where I live, brought an unprecedented level of support for adding this test to the screening programme.
The National Screening Advisory Committee recommended in September 1999 that a pilot be carried out, but it was not until February last year that a decision was made to carry out a year's pilot. That did not start until last summer. In the meantime, although the screening programme saves thousands of lives, 1,300 women could die. In 1996–97, 200.000 women in the UK had a borderline smear result and 100,000 were referred for examination, at a cost to the NHS of£26 million—money that could have been spent on more doctors and more nurses. In the end, only 4,000 women were diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer that year. Those figures reveal the inefficiencies in the current system and yet the Government have dragged their feet over introducing a more efficient, well researched and cost-effective scheme which would also avoid the terrible anxiety undergone by patients who are called back for further tests.
It is that kind of situation that really gets to NHS staff and adversely affects recruitment and retention. Can the Minister say when the results of the HPV pilot

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scheme will be known and how soon action could be taken? Casting wider than that, I should like to know what the Government are doing to ensure that other demoralising inefficiencies of this kind do not persist in the NHS.
3.50 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for her timely debate. As the Minister knows, in November I had a most unfortunate accident when, at the Parliamentary Dog Show, my Great Dane decided to protect me from a pug dog which had come too close. I landed on my knees, fracturing my legs in five places. My treatment involved three hospitals.
The good morale of patients is as important as good staff morale. I received excellent support from many noble Lords, as well as some lovely flowers and cards. I thank especially the Minister for his support.
The first hospital, in which I spent five days, was the Chelsea and Westminster. I found that in general the morale there was rather good. As a patient, I was pleased with the telephone system in the hospital. Every patient had a telephone which took telephone cards, which they could buy if they wanted to use the telephone. In other hospitals where no such system is in place, so many patients have a frustrating time trying to use trolleys, which take up valuable staff time. I recommend this service.
After five days of having my legs in plaster in a general hospital, and being a paraplegic, I became concerned as conflicting views were held on how to treat me. My usual bodily functions were incredibly difficult to perform as none of the nurses knew how to cope with a paraplegic. It would have been quite easy, had they listened to the patient.
I was fortunate to be able to go to the spinal unit at Stoke Mandeville hospital where I received the nursing care that I needed. Even more important, however, was the medical treatment. When my plaster casts were removed, I had two black heels from the pressure caused by the plasters. Having explained about pressure to the Chelsea and Westminster, I cannot stress how important it is for patients to be treated in specialised units, where their different needs will be understood. Otherwise things go wrong and morale can fall to rock bottom.
My heels are only just healing, after a period of six months. Because of osteoporotic bones, I had external fixators instead of plaster casts put on my legs. I am grateful to the Russians for inventing this procedure. It was a quick way of getting soldiers back to the front lines. While I was in Stoke Mandeville, the Government announced that they were going to give a masterchef the job of improving hospital food. That would be a boost to patient morale. Can I ask the Minister whether this statement was just spin, or is it going to happen? It would be interesting to receive a progress report on this matter. I am sure that better food would raise morale.
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Another statement was made saying that matrons were going to be put on the wards again. Having someone in place whom people could rely on, seeing that hospitals were clean and that someone was taking overall responsibility would provide another boost to morale—as long as the people appointed have the level of ability needed. The spinal unit at Stoke Mandeville is crying out for a good senior nursing officer who would be dynamic and thus attract the much-needed capable nurses which the hospital urgently needs. Stoke Mandeville is now under new management. I hope that it will move forward and give patients the specialist healthcare that they need. When all the interested parties work together, good morale will follow.
I have noticed that many consultants are now coming up to the age of retirement. The shortage of doctors is of great concern to patients. In hospitals, good consultants who can become effective team leaders and who can become expert in specialties win the respect and trust of patients. They can provide the biggest boost to morale in the health service, but unless there is good leadership, the standards will fall and so will morale.
There are many keen young doctors, some from the Commonwealth countries such as South Africa, who are queuing up to be accepted on a training rotation. It seems that there are not enough surgical trainers. Universities appear to be understaffed. What can the Government do to release this blockage? Until 1997, a trained surgeon could come over to Britain to work, but after that time, the ruling was changed. I am told that the relentless pressure is making many surgeons retire early from the new National Health Service. I shall quote one surgeon who said to me that:
"It is now no longer good enough to do your best".
To make available specialist training for people coming from the colonies would be one way of opening the door to more specialists, thus raising morale. It is important that we have dedicated, keen young people who can speak English well and who can become experts in the many fields of medicine which at this time are very short of doctors and surgeons. Yet it is impossible for some of them to secure training. This seems to be a problem which should be a priority for the Government to rectify.
All governments seem to want to change the National Health Service. There has been so much change, which can be bad for morale. We have heard of many cases of dilapidated wards filled with sad, elderly people who need feeding and some TLC in their difficult lives. Good people would volunteer to help in this kind of work if the leadership was forthcoming. Good management, close to patients, will raise morale and lessen growing frustration and low morale due to the ever-growing patient population, paperwork and pressures throughout the NHS.
I have a moment in which to say how sorry I was to hear of the death of Lord Morris of Castle Morris. I am sure that he would have spoken in support of nurses in the debate today. The whole House will miss him.
3.58 p.m.
Lord Rea:: My Lords, about one-and-a-half hours ago, just before I came to your Lordships' House, I had my speech nicely prepared on a lap-top computer. I was about to print it out when the whole thing disappeared. Noble Lords will have to listen to some rather more disjointed remarks than perhaps is usual.
Since I retired from front-line duties in the National Health Service, like the noble Baroness, I have gained more experience as a consumer than as a provider. However, I keep in touch with what is going on in the health service because I have a son who is a consultant oncologist, along with a daughter and a niece who are both nurses. Furthermore, I keep in contact with my professional colleagues.
What is morale? According to Chambers, It is the,
"condition or degree of confidence, optimism or strength of purpose in a person or group".
When one looks at individual health workers in the National Health Service, they appear to have those qualities to a great degree, in particular when they start out. Most summon up that kind of spirit whenever they are treating patients. People who have had any experience of the health service have no complaints to make about those who work in it.
It is the system which gets you down. Morale is eroded in a work situation where there is an excessive workload, especially if it consists of tasks set by someone over whom the individual concerned—perhaps a nurse or a doctor—has no control. Of course, health workers get a great deal of intrinsic satisfaction from their jobs—that is why they are able to tolerate a much higher workload and more unsociable hours than people in most other professions—but their tolerance can be over-stretched by pressure to carry out tasks which perhaps could be carried out equally as well by people with lesser training, against a background of increasingly critical patient demand. It is possible to work extremely long hours for a limited duration—and perhaps for a bit longer if you are well paid for it—but if there is no light at the end of the tunnel disillusion tends to set in.
We were all delighted when the Prime Minister announced great increases in spending on the National Health Service to bring us up to the average GDP expenditure of the European Union a year or so ago. The Prime Minister's intervention occurred after he was brought face to face with the reality of the situation in a famous televised interview which took place with NHS staff at St Thomas's Hospital. This happened at about the same time as the frank and, again, famous interview given by my noble friend Lord Winston in the New Statesman, in which he said that the situation in the National Health Service was becoming intolerable. That made the Prime Minister sit up and a lot of money was promised.
The Prime Minister said at the time that it would take a long time for that money to show through at the workface. People had a momentary sense of euphoria when it was announced, but a certain amount of disillusionment has now set in because it seems to be taking such a long time for the fruits to be experienced by the people working with patients.
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But some good plans have been laid. The national service frameworks are universally approved and the NHS Plan is, on the whole, welcomed and has the backing of professional colleagues from right across the spectrum.
One way of improving morale in the health service would be for little things to be done locally. Most workers have innovative ideas about what could be done to improve their personal situation at their workplace. These ideas should be encouraged by trust managers. Local forums should be established and the Government should provide extra money to enable managers to implement such plans. This would make people in the front line feel that they are being listened to, and that in itself would improve morale.
As to the situation in general practice, the BMA suggests that we need 10,000, not 2,000, new doctors. This is based on the fact that each of three extra jobs that GPs will have to carry out will require the equivalent of 3,000 general practitioners. That is three times 3,000, which makes 9,000—so 10,000 doctors altogether.
At the moment, the new contract for GPs is being discussed at the Department of Health.I hope very much that during the coming year there will be a full and frank exchange while the contract is being developed. If any new jobs are given to GPs in that contract, the money to back them must be offered as well. I hope that the new contract will provide more incentives for doctors to work in deprived areas.
Finally, I hope that tomorrow my noble friend will be able to agree to an amendment to allow doctors providing personal medical services—as well as those providing general medical services—to have their terms and conditions of work discussed with the General Practitioners Committee of the BMA. This would set the tone for fruitful negotiations on the contract for the following year.
4.5 p.m.
Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, I wish to speak about my experience as chairman of the Guy's and Lewisham Trust from 1991 to 1993. A shadow trust was formed in February 1991, and when I arrived I was surprised to find that morale was very low—that is something of an understatement—but that the staff, especially the nurses, were very committed to the NHS.
Quite honestly, management did not know what to do. When one considers that Guy's and Lewisham had a budget of £148 million controlled by a general manager and a financial director, that is not surprising. Budgets were overspent in all departments; we closed eight wards at that time and operations were being cancelled.
When I agreed to become chairman of the trust I was told that there would be a £1.5 million surplus that year. In fact, there was a £1.5 million deficit. When I asked for the budget for the next year—1991–92—I found that one had not been prepared. So the finance director, myself and the general manager worked

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through a budget. If we had carried on in exactly the same way as we were, the next year would have seen a £7 million deficit.
My first job was to get a management team in place: a chief executive, a finance director, a director of nursing, who came from inside, a medical director, who came from Lewisham, two general managers—one for Lewisham and one for Guy's—and a board of non-executive directors. The team was in place within four months. I made the non-executives responsible for different parts of the hospital: one for patient care, which is very important; one for the hospital personnel; one for building maintenance; and one for buying equipment.
Perhaps I may give the House two amazing figures. When I arrived at Guy's, the drugs budget was£2.8 million per year. When I left two years later, the drugs budget was £850,000 per year—a huge saving which went towards patient care. The wastage in drugs at Guy's was colossal.
Of course, we had to make £7 million-worth of savings. It was very difficult to explain to staff that we had to make those savings—after just getting there and becoming the flagship trust in London. Of course, most of the savings had to come through staff redundancies. We did not take any doctors, nurses or sisters—we made sure that patient care was strong—and most of the posts were lost through natural wastage. Of course, it was not a popular decision at the time.
However, we worked closely with our staff; we had meetings, and staff morale started to improve. I believed that it was not a case of throwing money at the problem but about better management of the money that we received.
After six months, I produced charters to tell people what we were going to achieve and how we were going to achieve it. At the beginning, everyone thought that this was a gimmick; at the end, they were very pleased with what we were doing. If any noble Lords would like copies, I shall be pleased to provide them.
As to the charters, I first made sure that we did not run out of money every February and March. I budgeted that we spent 45 per cent of our money in the first half of the year and 55 per cent in the second half. That meant that when other hospitals were running out of money and could not treat patients, we could. In the first full year of our trust we treated 6,000 more in patients—a 10 per cent increase on the previous year. Eighty-five per cent of people waited no longer than 30 minutes in the out-patients department; 90 per cent of patients waited less than 12 months to be admitted—a 12-month wait is not very good, but in the previous year the waiting time was more than double that. We improved the sign-posting of the hospital; and we sent a card to every patient asking what he or she thought of our service. We did all that without any increase in income.
The big change took place on 6th January 1992. We gave all low-paid staff—those earning less than £4.92 an hour—a £6 bonus for turning up to work five days
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a week. The attendance rate was less than 70 per cent. After we started paying the bonus it rose to over 90 per cent. Our approach was self-funding, and over a full year it produced a saving of over £1 million.
When the details of the running of Guy's were looked into, it was found that 2,000 staff were paid weekly in cash. Imagine the cost. So we changed to paying those people monthly, and that paid us back over 12 months. We took a risk and we lost some money, but overall it saved us more than half a million pounds—more money for patient care. Any new staff were subject to the same conditions.
In 1992, supervisors in the NHS received £2.50 more than an ordinary worker—about £5.15 per hour. We changed that. There were 45 supervisors at Guy's hospital and about 38 at Lewisham. At Guy's alone we cut the number back to 25, but we gave those people £1,500 more in the first year and £2,500 more in the second. That represented a saving to the hospital of £290,000—again, more money for patient care.
We reduced the hours of junior doctors. By the end of 1992, no junior doctor worked more than 72 hours a week. We did so by changing the way in which blood samples taken by junior doctors were delivered to the laboratories for testing. It was done by the doctors themselves. We introduced a system whereby porters did it for them, which meant that the doctors spent more time treating patients rather than carrying samples around.
In 1992–93 we treated 6,500 more in-patients—a rise of over 10 per cent. Over the year, our waiting list was reduced from 2,200 to 680. The goal for the following year was to reduce the figure to nil. In fact, we got it down to 150.
It is important that a hospital should be clean and tidy; so we decided to paint the exterior of the whole hospital. We received an estimate of over£2.5 million for the work. We decided to employ 22 of our own painters. They took 12 months to do the job and the cost was under £1 million—again, a big saving to go towards patient care.
In order to increase morale in the hospital, which was already rising sharply, we gave the nurses in each ward a small budget, a small equipment grant, of £2,500 every six months. We let them choose what they wanted for their wards instead of making the choices ourselves, not knowing what they wanted. We put a system in place whereby out-patients would be seen within 30 minutes and GP referrals would receive a response within 10 days, against a previous period of three weeks.
Those are just a few of our achievements over the two and a half years of my chairmanship. In real terms, we saved £20 million each year. Over the two years we treated over 13,000 patients, and we provided a much better service for patients. I am still proud of the fact that the unions wrote to the hospital management stating:
"It is the best the hospital has been run in the last 20 years".

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I am very pleased to say that when I left Guy's morale was very high. Throwing money at problems is not the answer. It is a matter of getting the right management in place.
4.14 p.m.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I am delighted to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Harris. He did so many practical things of which I thoroughly approve, and with marvellous results.
Listening to the complaints from those in the health service, morale certainly appears to be low. Complaints relate to paperwork, bureaucracy, long hours, staff shortages and the lack of relief staff when someone is off sick. Even today we have heard of the discredited position in which NICE finds itself. We were waiting to hear about the abolition of postcode prescribing, but that has not happened. It is still considering whether or not certain drugs for multiple sclerosis should be available on the NHS. It is my belief that a decision has been put off because of the election.
There was a Question earlier today from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham about fluoride. The water authorities have made it clear that unless fluoridation of the water supply is made mandatory they will not go ahead with it because they are not prepared to face possible litigation; also, there is an added cost and their shareholders would complain about that. I hope that fluoridation will be made mandatory.
Two other speakers referred to the loss of status in the professions. That is true whether one is a GP, a consultant or a dentist. All those in the caring professions have been left so far behind financially in comparison to those working in the financial industries or in big business that people feel it strongly. There is the question of stress. There is also the threat of litigation. Now, everyone has to be so careful in every thing that is done because we have become a litigation-conscious country. The National Health Service has to keep putting more money away to deal with that. It used to be good enough if you did your best for patients; now, it is not good enough.
There are also the constant announcements of what is supposedly new money going into the health service. People then find that it is not new money at all; it is money that has been mentioned before. All their hopes are raised and then dashed. Expectations are possibly the worst aspect. I know from personal experience as a hospital trust chairman that people believed that when the country had a Labour government all their problems would be solved. Yesterday, a right reverend Prelate said that people had even prayed for a Labour government in order to solve the matter of compensation for the miners. That is a typical example.
Over the past four years, in answer to almost every Question I have asked about the health service, I have been told that the Government inherited the problems from the Conservative government. Fortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has stopped saying that. Four
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years on, I cannot honestly accept that story. The question now is: "Well, what have you done in the four years?".
I practised as a dentist in the National Health Service for 35 years. That was the bottom end of the line. Dentistry is almost a thing of the past in NHS terms, although outside London it is still working well in some areas. I was fascinated to meet a dentist recently who is building new surgeries in the north-east of England and who has been told that for his five surgeries he must have 20 car-parking spaces. It fascinated me—in London, one would be lucky to have a surgery, let alone a car-parking space.
There are good things, and there are things that are mixed. The mixture was referred to my noble friend Lady Eccles. There are too many changes. For as long as I can remember people have been reorganising the health service. Every time it is just beginning to run smoothly, someone comes along and reorganises it again. We have had area health authorities; and when I first started there were executive councils. There is constant change. People are so busy adjusting to all the changes, and they involve so much extra work, that they are never able to catch up. Now it is the intention to involve the local authorities again. I was a member of an area health authority at a time when we had local authority representation. It certainly did not do us any good—in fact, it did a great deal of harm. The local councillors never turned up to meetings because they had so much else to do. They could not spare the time for the health service as well. All these things are about the swing of the pendulum. We had all the problems about junior hospital doctors being overworked. By the time that problem was solved, it was a case of the consultants being overworked.
We all wanted a higher status for nurses. Sure enough, they can now gain degrees, which is marvellous. But the entry qualifications required have prevented those who do not attain sufficient A-levels from entering nursing. I believe that those people have a great role to play in the health service. There should be an opportunity for them to work for the NHS under some kind of nursing assistant scheme.
I am delighted about the major role that pharmacists will play. They will take a load off the doctors in terms of prescribing, and so on, and provide an immediate first base for people to approach. Everyone has a local pharinacist—certainly in built-up areas—and this is a good move. However, I accept that there will never be enough money for the health service. I believe that it is time for the Government to review prescription charges; indeed, only a Labour government could do so. As I am the right age, I receive all my prescriptions free; but why should I? I could well afford to pay for them. I read in newspaper reports—and I know it is true—that many people go to their GP simply to get a prescription for something that might cost them less than £1 over the counter. But because they can get it free, they go to a GP and take up his or her time in order to get the prescription.

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As I said, there will never be enough money for the NHS. But morale and pride in one's work are the really marvellous concepts that exist in the health service. All of those working in it are to be congratulated on the wonderful job that they carry out under difficult circumstances. Above all, they need to know that the work they are doing is appreciated both by those receiving the care and the public in general. The patient is the most important consideration. The true, genuine and dedicated National Health Service worker does put the patient first. That will always help people to retain pride in their work, and lead to good morale.
4.21 p.m.
Lord Vivian: My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lady Noakes for introducing this debate today. However, at this stage I have to declare an interest as I am a special trustee at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and, up until last month, I was Honorary Colonel to 306 Field Hospital of the Territorial Army.
Although the NHS is in a critical state with trusts, consultants, GPs, nurses, administrators, ancillary staff and porters whose morale can go no lower, it should not be forgotten that all these people do a magnificent job under the most frustrating conditions. I praise them for the way that they continue to do their work; I praise them for their dedicated commitment to their profession; I praise them for their concern for and care of their patients; and I praise them for their loyalty to the hospitals where they work.
The NHS will not improve unless radical steps are taken immediately, not over a period until 2004, but now, this year. According to various surveys, more than 75 per cent of personnel in the North West could not cope with their workload and in the South East some 70 per cent said that there was a shortage of staff. Forty eight per cent of hospital staff felt communications in their trust were poor; 37 per cent thought they were not well enough protected from attack and abuse; and 30 per cent thought they had not been trained well enough.
The Government must stop pretending to the general public that everything is all right within the NHS and that their proposals due to be implemented over the next few years will solve the state of low morale and resolve all the problems that are causing this crisis in the NHS. They will not. Unless urgent action is taken now the NHS may implode.
So what are these problems? One is increasing workloads, bureaucratic form filling and staff shortages. And one of the reasons for deteriorating morale is the low rates of pay that the Government are prepared to pay consultants, GPs and nurses. Clearly the solution here lies in even higher levels of pay, although they were increased from 1st April this year. The pay for Inner London nurses has risen between 3.7 per cent and 9 per cent. This brings the starting pay for a new nurse to about £19,000, including all allowances. The basic pay for a grade D nurse is only some £15,000.
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One survey stated that there are 20,000 vacancies for nurses and that vacancies for physiotherapists had nearly doubled. If it is not possible to increase the rates of pay further, the Government should make even greater efforts to recruit doctors and nurses from overseas English-speaking countries. Some years ago, the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital recruited successfully Dutch and Finnish nurses on a three-year contract, and they much enjoyed being in London. I spoke to them on several occasions and they fitted in well, were highly efficient and were well liked by patients and staff. Perhaps the Minister will address that point when he responds.
Another factor is the high cost of living in London. The Inner London allowance of £2,635, plus 5 per cent of salary, goes virtually nowhere towards covering these high costs. There is a lack of affordable accommodation and staff at all levels have difficulty finding somewhere to live, particularly in the centre of London. It is clearly necessary to pay a meaningful London allowance to those working in London. Perhaps the Minister, again, will comment.
There is a lack of childcare facilities. This is becoming more and more important to staff in their choice of their workplace and employer. There has been an increase in aggression and abuse against staff, which is demoralising and upsetting. It is certainly no help to those suffering from low morale and stress. It would appear that NHS staff have no recourse to any form of redress. There is a general feeling of not being involved in management issues and decision-making processes, brought about by a clear lack of leadership.
Lastly, I should like to touch on funding, which currently does not allow the system to have the flexibility that managers need. The dissemination of funding from central government can have a stop/start effect as it is distributed in tranches which does not allow for seamless planning of schemes.
Ministry of Defence health units located in National Health Service hospitals come under the Defence Medical Services secondary care system linked to the NHS. There is a strong requirement for close liaison between the MoD and the NHS. There are three important aspects about the military use of the NHS since military hospitals were closed. These are the need for fast tracking of servicemen and women for hospital treatment and operations; the removal of families from hospital waiting lists every time that they are posted to new stations causing, in some cases, years of frustrating delay; and the immediate need for physiotherapy when Armed Forces personnel damage limbs in training and sport.
Key targets were set earlier this year for the Defence Secondary Care Agency by the MoD. Key Target 2 concerning outpatient waiting times was intended to ensure that 45 per cent of service patients were offered a first outpatient appointment within four weeks of a referral and 90 per cent within 13 weeks. Key Target 3 concerning inpatient waiting times was to ensure that 80 per cent of service patients were offered a treatment date within 13 weeks of the decision to give inpatient treatment. Perhaps the Minister will say what

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instructions were given by the NHS to ensure that these targets are met and what action is being taken about waiting lists when service families are moved from one station to another. Can the Minister also confirm that the successful Treasury-funded waiting list initiative will be extended?
I do not wish my comments to be seen as criticizing the hard working and dedicated people—the GPs, consultants, and nursing staff—who are carrying out an excellent job under stress and under bad management from the NHS. They are to be praised. My criticism is directed at the Government who have allowed the NHS to reach a critical stage where it has clearly lost its ability to manage personnel and is in need of greater leadership in running the service.
4.29 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Eccles, I must confess that I have an interest to declare: I am not well. I have a cold, but I have brought myself here today, as the noble Baroness did, because of the subject under debate. I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, most sincerely not merely for tabling the debate but also for the manner in which she introduced it. I believe that that has helped the tenor of the debate; indeed, there has been no acrimony at all.
Of course, there has been some hard hitting in the debate based on experience. I am delighted to observe the level of experience that rests in this House, which is of the highest level. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the contribution made by the noble Lord. Lord Harris, who pointed out just what a dismal record the NHS had in 1991 in the hospital of which he subsequently became chairman and which he then improved. I enjoyed particularly the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, who speaks with great authority as the chairman of a successful hospital.
One of the topics that I studied for my Open University degree in the early 1970s was that of decision-making. In that connection I considered the National Health Service. Of course there is scope for improvement in the way in which a big organisation with hundreds of thousands of employees takes its decisions. However, it is a colossal task to manage the National Health Service.
People have spoken from their experience and I shall speak from mine. Perhaps noble Lords can see a scar just below my eye. That scar resulted from a fight in which I was involved at the age of 11, some 65 years ago. The noble Lord, Lord Burlison, will know Rye Hill which runs down to Scotswood Road where I then lived. In that fight a boy stabbed me. Fortunately for me I was stabbed in the cheekbone. If I had been stabbed half an inch higher, the knife could have entered my eye and I could have been killed. My dad was not even on the dole; he was on a means test. Seven of us lived on 37 shillings a week. The doctor gave my mother a bill for his services which she paid at the rate of threepence a week for two years. When I think of the situation at that time I reflect on the ease with which
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people, quite rightly, are now able to receive treatment. I ask noble Lords to mention morale and to point out shortages and what is wrong, but also to remember the situation before the National Health Service came into being.
In 1948 there was a great political battle with regard to establishing the National Health Service. My noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington is present. He was the PPS to Aneurin Bevan at that time. We should try to remember what has been achieved. Reference has been made to our dear friend Lord Morris of Castle Morris. When I was Chief Whip he was my deputy. Sadly, he passed away. He rose from his sick bed in June 1998 to ask an Unstarred Question in your Lordships' House. He said:
"My Lords, I am not what I seem. I am No. 445590 Morris, Brian, d.o.b. 4.12.30, male, C of E. I know this because it was written on the little plastic bracelet placed on my wrist on 21st January last when I became a patient in The Royal Hospital, Chesterfield, whence I came this morning to ask the Question standing in my name".—[Official Report,16/6/98:col.1539.]
My noble friend died of leukaemia. I quote further from his speech of June 1998. That was made some three years ago within 12 months of a Labour Government taking office. He further said at col. 1539:
"The facts are not in dispute. We are facing the worst nurse shortage crisis in 25 years: the first ever shortfall in applications for nurse education places in England. In 1993/4 there were 18,100 applications for 12,000 places. In 1996/7 there were 15,400 applications for 16,100 places. Turnover among registered nurses was 21 per cent. in 1997, up from 12 per cent. in 1992. Vacancies remain unfilled. One report in 1997 suggested that there was a shortage of more than 8,000 full-time posts across Britain. The Royal College of Nursing reports that the number of nurses aged over 55 will double over the next five years, with 25 per cent. of registered nurses in the NHS eligible for retirement by the year 2000".
Some may ask: what is new? I listened with deep respect to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham. Lord Morris of Castle Morris had great experience of the National Health Service.
In addition to the incident that I mentioned earlier, during the war my guts were shot out accidentally. I lay on a hillside in Wales at death's door. That incident resulted from what is now known as "friendly fire". I had my intestines in my hand, but I survived. The House has heard of the thrombosis that I suffered some three years ago when I flew back from Australia. On landing I was rushed into Whipps Cross Hospital where I received wonderful treatment.
My local GP is Dr Anwar Khan at the Loughton Health Centre. My wife suffers from the hereditary condition of Dystrophia myotonia which she has passed on to our two sons and I suffer from thrombosis, my prostate situation and diabetes. We visit the surgery regularly. We are one of Dr Khan's best customers. Round the corner there is a Co-op chemist. Therefore, I have good facilities at my disposal.
I doubt whether anything has been said this afternoon that was not already known to the Minister and his advisers. I hope that he will recognise the concern that has been expressed and that he and his

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colleagues will do a great deal to improve the situation. However, at the end of the day, I say, "Thank God for the National Health Service".
4.37 p.m.
Baroness Fookes: My Lords, I speak with some diffidence bearing in mind how many noble Lords have direct, extensive experience of the NHS which I do not have except as a very occasional patient. However, I am deeply grateful for the service that it has given my family. I was particularly pleased to hear the comments of my noble friend Lord Harris, as my mother was a patient at Guy's at the time of his beneficent reign there. She greatly profited from the great care and skill that was accorded to her in that hospital.
However, I am concerned about the extent to which we organise and reorganise the NHS. That point was touched on earlier, but I make no apology for mentioning it again as we must learn from experience that we need to allow time for reorganisations to be put into effect and for people to settle down in a stable environment.
I give an example which is personal in the sense that it affects a friend of mine who in early middle age left the commercial world, of which she had a great deal of experience, as she wanted to enter management in the NHS because she felt that it was a caring, serving organisation to which she wished to contribute. It was an idealistic decision. She worked in a difficult area of London at a time when fundholding was the "in" thing. It had been introduced by the previous government. She worked extraordinarily hard among about 64 GPs in a multiple fundholding system. She developed the system successfully and she felt that the doctors were happy and that the patients received far more services as a result of the change. She felt that she had done a good job.
However, scarcely had she reached that point when a change of government occurred and fundholding was "out" and primary care groups were "in". She started all over again with renewed enthusiasm to develop what was asked of her by the incoming government. However, she subsequently discovered that primary care trusts were proposed. Her previous work is now being subsumed in a new system. When I talked to her earlier in the week, I detected a certain weariness. Her sparkle and enthusiasm had disappeared to some extent. She still wanted to be of service to the NHS but there was the feeling that whatever one did, and however well one did it, before the benefits could be reaped there would be a further change and one would start all over again. I ask this Government or any other government to think carefully. However good is the theory for changing organisation, there is a limit to what individuals in the health service or any other organisation can take and still retain their enthusiasm.
I turn to the issue of GPs. I am not sure that I have ever heard so many complaints from doctors as we have done recently. It indicates an underlying malaise
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which is extraordinarily worrying bearing in mind that the majority of work is carried out in the front line by GPs. If we are not retaining them—they seek early retirement or other posts—that is worrying.
I note that the BMA has sought to increase the average amount of time that a GP spends with a patient to 15 minutes. That implies that at present, on average, the period must be well under that. I can recall the days when MPs had "surgeries". Unless the matter was very easy indeed, I should have found it extraordinarily difficult to deal with someone in under 15 minutes. Perhaps I was not a good manager of time, but it seemed to me that people often needed to relax before one came to the main problems from which they were suffering. For patients and doctors, too short a time is very dispiriting and demoralising. If we are going to see further shortages of GPs the situation can only get worse; and that worries me greatly.
I am also worried about the excessive targeting and monitoring to which the medical profession and the professions ancillary to it are now subject. Of course in theory it is wise to know what is happening: that we have certain important targets to reach. But if those targets are impossible to reach, that, too, can have a demoralising effect. Let us take one issue about which the doctors are worried. We understand that the "great paper" proposes that by 2004 every patient must be seen by a GP within 48 hours of asking to see a GP. Many doctors believe that the proposal is impossible: that it is another worry. One wonders whether such a general target is valuable. Presumably, the period covers both emergency and routine appointments. If it is routine, 48 hours is not remarkable. If the situation is an emergency, or very urgent, 48 hours may be too long. For a mother whose child turns out to be suffering from meningitis, it would undoubtedly be too long. Therefore I ask the Minister to query this obsession with targets and monitoring. We need to attract GPs and other health service workers by offering good conditions. Then I believe that many of those other matters will fall into place.
4.44 p.m.
Lord Turnberg: My Lords, I apologise to noble Lords for missing some of the earlier speeches, and for missing my slot. I had assumed that I would be speaking rather later. I am grateful for being allowed to speak in the gap, perhaps mercifully in a somewhat abbreviated form.
The pressures of work on doctors and nurses are undoubtedly heavy. It is not just clinical work with patients; many are working at or beyond the limits of their capacity and feel that they are failing their patients. I know that the Government have started the process of reversing this downward trend and we are grateful for that. But it will take time—perhaps 10 years or more—for the effects to be felt. Unfortunately, meanwhile we are beginning to lose the good will and energy of our most precious resources—our disillusioned nurses and doctors.
With noble Lords' permission, I should like to suggest three or four actions which, taken now, might make a more immediate difference. First, I know of

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many consultants in hospitals who are retiring in their late 50s. They want to be relieved of the burden of full-time responsibility for all that a consultant job now entails but would like to work perhaps part time, concentrating simply on caring for patients and teaching young doctors, free of all other administrative burdens.
The Government have accepted that it is a shameful waste of a precious, trained resource not to take advantage of those people. But in practice I know of many such doctors who are being refused by trusts which say that they cannot afford to re-employ people in this way. What a ridiculous waste of an opportunity when we are trying to reduce waiting lists and to bring in more young doctors from the medical schools to help to plug the gap. We must find a way through the problem.
Secondly, I am told that doctors on the wards are constantly distracted by having to do clerical work: seeking case notes; tracking down X-ray and laboratory results; or phoning for patients to come in. Those are jobs which ward clerks and secretaries could and should do, but in many hospitals there are nowhere near enough of these essential support staff. We need more secretaries, clerks and porters. If we double the current numbers, we shall have a more effective and efficient use of our doctors and nurses as those unnecessary pressures are taken off them.
Thirdly, we should be taking a grip on the computerised IT systems supporting the clinical work at the ward level. Current systems are often either out of date or inadequate. Yet we know that good supportive IT, providing, for example, rapid bedside access to tests results—one might think that that would be fairly simple—would bring welcome relief to staff who spend too much of their precious time phoning around for information.
I realise that different hospitals need many other types of action which, taken now, would have an observable effect perhaps within 10 months rather than the 10 years projected for the major government initiatives in train. I propose that the Government set up yet another task force with the specific remit to develop ideas for short-term—for perhaps a period of one or two years—improvements and efficiency. I suggest that this task force be made up of the great and the good; namely, a ward sister; a non-political doctor in training; a good manager; a GP; and, of course, a patient. They know so much more about how the NHS could be run more effectively at the coalface. I could even suggest some names if the Minister cares to take forward the proposal, as I hope that he will.
4.48 p.m.
Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on raising the issue of morale in the NHS. It has been a superb debate, drawing on the personal experience of so many noble Lords. That is one of the great strengths of this House.
Morale is not a new issue. The NHS has suffered for decades from under-investment, most notably during the 18 years of the last Conservative government, and
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we on these Benches would say from the demoralising effect of the internal market reforms of which the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, was such an enthusiastic architect. As was pointed out by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, the very training cuts instituted by the Conservatives under their term have impacted on patients and NHS staff morale.
At the last general election, the Labour Party promised to save the NHS within a period of days. Instead, the Government spent three years unnecessarily locked into the Conservative spending plans that they inherited, which had caused the problem in the first place. We now know that this Government have spent less of the national income on the NHS than the Conservatives did in their last term of office.
Even the new NHS Plan falls far short of the Prime Minister's declared aim of bringing health spending in Britain up to the levels of our European neighbours. By 2004, it will account for about 7.5 per cent of gross domestic product but it will still fall far short of our European neighbours. As my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, outcomes in many areas are very poor compared with the United States and with other European countries.
The Liberal Democrats agree with many of the goals in last year's belated national plan, but there has been a mad dash to get things done over the past year, with no time to build capacity. At the end of the year, some of the money was underspent. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, rightly pointed out that there had been very little time to produce results.
That failure to spend early enough in the course of the Parliament has resulted in the problems outlined by so many noble Lords today: a shortage of beds, unacceptably long waits for treatment and a crisis in numbers for all staff—nurses, midwives, doctors and professions allied to medicine. That has led to overwork and breaches of the European Working Time Directive, which is a very important means of protecting NHS staff. I was interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, refer to that. NHS staff are still woefully underpaid and leaving in large numbers. The Government have failed to create enough consultant posts, as a result of poor workforce planning. There are arguments about the regulatory arrangements in many professions. There are also changes in clinical governance and problems of revalidation.
As many noble Lords have pointed out, change is at the root of some of the problems and it is all taking place at the same time. There are arguments about contracts, particularly for hospital doctors and GPs. We have a lack of training places for young doctors in a large number of specialties. We have over-centralisation of funding, which a number of noble Lords have mentioned. There is micro-management, with a proliferation of targets for issues such as waiting lists and throughputs, the introduction of performance management and a welter of centrally driven initiatives in primary and acute care. As a result, we now have a major crisis of morale and a massive number of

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unfilled vacancies, especially among senior consultant posts. Those problems have resulted in yesterday's industrial action by general practitioners, the ballot of GPs and the threats to resign next year. The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, put the problem very well: that spark of enthusiasm has been or is being snuffed out among many staff.
Four out of five GPs surveyed want to leave the NHS. My noble friend Lady Northover mentioned suicide levels. There has been a massive loss of confidence in the NHS. We should tackle that rather than denying it. Some 65 per cent of people recently surveyed said that the NHS was either the same or worse under Labour compared with the situation under the Tories. The figures are even worse among doctors, with 75 per cent believing that the situation is worse. The retirement figures evidence that. I wonder how many doctors or other health professionals would advise their children to go into the NHS. I am afraid that the answers would be highly negative in many respects. That is very regrettable.
Even on current plans, the NHS will continue to lack the capacity to give patients the first-class treatment that they deserve. It is still short of staff and beds—acute, critical, intermediate or residential.
As my noble friends have explained, that view of NHS morale is not just anecdotal but is based securely on a survey of staff opinions carried out by NHS trusts in England and Wales last year, collated by my honourable friend Mr Burstow. That important collection of hard data paints a poor picture.
I do not intend to go through the worrying figures that the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, mentioned. Some 48 per cent feel that communication in their trust is not good. Communication is essential to morale, even excluding any overwork or capacity problems. Those results are stark evidence of how low morale has sunk in the NHS.
It is extraordinary that the Government have made no attempt to standardise the questions in the survey, pull the results together and publish them. The Minister ought to tell us why, because the Government intended trusts to carry out those surveys. The trusts did so, but nothing further happened. The results provide a unique snapshot of the views of NHS staff. We should start producing real information as a matter of urgency.
Belatedly, at the 11th hour, the Government are introducing a system of golden hellos, golden goodbyes and extra cash to attract GPs to deprived parts of the country. This morning, the Secretary of State made an overdue pledge to increase the number of midwives.
The key issue is not purely management or purely leadership. It is a matter of resources and capacity. At the coming election, the Liberal Democrats will pledge to provide extra training places for doctors, nurses and professions allied to medicine, as my noble friend Lady Northover outlined. We cannot deny that the shortage of staff is the main problem that faces the NHS at the start of the 21st century. Given how long it takes to
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train doctors or nurses, we should have started some time ago because we have an urgent problem on our hands. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, about other staff whose services are key to the efficient deployment of those highly trained professionals. The failure to invest in staff training places through the late 1980s and the 1990s, compounded by the failure of the present Government to grasp the nettle early enough, has been one of the key problems.
Pay has been at the root of many of the problems. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, was particularly cogent on that. Nurses, midwives and other professional staff have not received the financial remuneration that they need. We must improve their pay as a matter of urgency. We have many proposals for doing that.
We also need to provide additional beds. To an extent, the number of beds relates to the number of staff available, but it is also a matter of facilities. The Government's track record on PFI has not been happy. We do not believe that PFI is the best instrument for delivering additional beds. There is no transparency in the comparison between financing beds through PFI and through pure public spending. PFI has not helped to increase the number of beds—indeed, if anything it has led to a decline. All that contributes to a feeling that the NHS is changing beyond recognition and to a lack of morale. It is vital to review the criteria by which PFI contracts are judged.
The Liberal Democrats are strong supporters of the NHS. We want to give members of staff cause for optimism. They do a fantastic job under the current circumstances. I agree with many noble Lords who have said that. We have the diagnosis and the prescription. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues will now administer the correct treatment.
4.59 p.m.
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Noakes for drawing attention to morale in the NHS, which is an emotive subject at the moment. She is right that it is the people who really count—the doctors, the nurses, the consultants, the midwives, the managers and all the other NHS staff, who are working under such trying circumstances. We pay tribute to them. I am proud of my sister, a registered general nurse, married to a consultant surgeon in the NHS.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that we have heard some excellent and well informed speeches. I doubt whether the Minister will have enjoyed listening to many of them. He may enjoy tomorrow even less!
Like other noble Lords, I very much associate these Benches with the warm words said about Lord Morris of Castle Morris.
My noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham spoke movingly of the very great achievements of the Guys and Lewisham Trust during his chairmanship. My noble friend Lord Vivian mentioned the Defence

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Medical Services. I join him in stressing to the Minister the urgent need for the NHS to ensure that there is a fast-track system for the Armed Forces and that, on a new posting, service families receive priority medical treatment.
As my noble friend Lady Noakes said, four years ago, almost to the clay, many in the NHS welcomed the arrival of the Labour Government. That good will has been completely eroded by the constant flow of new government initiatives and targets, the witch hunts and the failures to tackle recruitment and retention. Now GPs and hospital consultants are on the verge of open warfare; Ministers face growing militancy from midwives; and nurses have major concerns over their workload. Managers are defensive and demoralised. It gives my party no pleasure to see that happening. We all want a strong and flourishing NHS.
A survey to be published in tomorrow's Health Service Journal will show that poor morale, an ever-increasing workload, a lack of resources and a keen desire for less government intervention are the starkest findings. Like patients, those who work in public healthcare recall the Prime Minister's,
"24 hours to save the NHS".
Within little more than a year, the Prime Minister was saying that huge sums of money would also be needed.
Despite the much vaunted extra money and the massive increase in advertising for Labour's health policies, people began to ask why things were getting worse. The Prime Minister identified numerous scapegoats. Whatever the problem and however serious it was, someone other than the Government was always to blame. Doctors were particular targets for scapegoating from the Secretary of State.
The UK has the lowest ratio of doctors per head of population in the OECD—1.7 doctors per 1,000 people, compared with the EU average of 3.4. Therefore, doctors are working long hours, to a high intensity, under considerable stress. That is compounded by the setting of targets which are often little more than wish lists and, in many cases, largely undeliverable.
The NHS Plan states that between now and 2004 there will be 2,000 more GPs. However, according to the GPC joint deputy chairman, morale among GPs is so low that,
"those who can afford to go will do so as soon as they can. In 2004, there could be 2,000 fewer doctors—not 2,000 more".
Nursing is at the core of health provision, and the success of the Government's plans for the NHS depends upon adequate numbers of skilled nurses. However, the Government are failing to increase their numbers or to augment retention. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, mentioned nurse training places. I point out to her that those were very much on the way up, not on the way down, when my party left office.
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Eight out of 10 nurses feel that the NHS is a worse place in which to work than it was two years ago. For them, as for other NHS staff, too many changes have taken place too quickly: first, the primary care groups and trusts; now, the modernisation plan. For most nurses, just getting through a shift is difficult enough. My noble friends Lady Eccles, Lady Gardner of Parkes and Lady Fookes each emphasised the burdens that change puts on health professionals.
Nurses are increasingly subject to ever-higher patient expectations. That has led to more aggression and abuse. They are three times more likely to be assaulted on the job than are police officers. In many hospitals, basic working conditions are sub-standard. The Government's disastrous handling of the care homes sector is having a knock-on effect on bed utilisation in hospitals and adds to the pressure on nurses.
The RCN is asking for the creation of more consultant nurse posts across the UK and for the provision of thorough support, combined with clear monitoring of trusts to ensure that their pay adequately reflects their role. I should be grateful if the Minister would clarify the Government's thinking on that point.
Declining morale in the NHS has a knock-on effect on patients, who have suffered the consequences of being fast-tracked through the system, being squeezed as extra appointments into out-patient clinics, and discharged at lightning speed. That increases the risk of accident and error. Doctors should not be practising at a pace which jeopardises patient safety. The pressure on GPs to reduce consultation periods cannot possibly mean that patients receive the level of treatment that they have every right to expect.
However, despite the Government's distortion of clinical priorities through the waiting list initiative, patients are waiting longer than ever before. According to a King's Fund analysis, more than 2 million people are waiting to see a hospital consultant either for diagnosis or treatment, and the number shows no sign of declining. Last September, 436,000 people had waited more than three months to see a specialist. More than half of them were in pain.
Managers feel battered by the constantly enlarging management workload and by the Secretary of State's implied, but strong, criticism of health authority managers last week. My noble friend Lady Noakes pointed out that a steady trickle of the most senior managers are leaving the NHS.
We on these Benches have always realised that the challenges that continuously face the NHS are formidable: the pace of technology; the need for highly trained and experienced staff; the demographic changes taking place in Britain; and the aim that we all share to keep the NHS free at the point of delivery. Yet, the response of this Government has been very damaging.
Hard-working medical professionals are tired of the spin; they are tired of being the scapegoats for the Labour Government's failures; and they are tired of

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more interference, centralisation and red tape. That was well articulated by Dr Lockley from Bedfordshire in Doctor magazine, who said:
"The Government doesn't relate to the real NHS at all. Instead, Ministers have a virtual reality NHS into which they put all their efforts, and to which they look for their answers. This shiny new NHS is quite different from the gritty, grimy NHS in which we all work".
After four years of hard Labour, Britain, the world's fourth largest economic power, really does deserve better.
5.9 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on securing this debate. I congratulate her also on the quality of her speech, which set a very high standard. It has, indeed, been a very good debate, and all noble Lords have brought a wealth of experience to the House this afternoon.
Morale has been much talked about. As my noble friend Lord Haskel suggested, the issue of morale has been around for as long as the NHS has been in existence. When I joined the NHS in 1972, I remember being told by my more experienced colleagues that morale had never been lower. Those of us who have been in the NHS know that morale never having been lower is a characteristic of our working experience.
I take the advice of my noble friend Lord Graham, who suggested that we must always keep the NHS's achievements in mind. One characteristic of the NHS has been the fact that it talks up its problems and talks down its achievements. In saying that, I do not discount the pressures that people are under. The pressure is there; there is no question about that. Public expectations are rising all the time; again, there is no question about that. We are asking a lot of the people who work in the NHS.
Unlike some noble Lords who spoke today, I have been struck over the past few years by the excitement and enthusiasm of many people who work in the NHS. They are driving forward necessary change, breaking down the barriers that have often existed between the different professions in the NHS, producing real innovation and securing improved services for patients. I place on record my thanks to the dedicated staff of the NHS and stress how much we owe to them. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, who praised those people.
Noble Lords opposite were unsparing in their criticisms. I regret that in their critique of this Government's record they failed to mention the contribution that their government made for 18 years to the problems that the NHS has had to face up to. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, that I still consider it to be my responsibility to draw the attention of noble Lords to the many failings of the previous government in their stewardship of the NHS.
It is worthy of note that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who has made an extraordinary contribution to the NHS—I suspect that she is the only person in
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this country who understands the full mechanism of NHS finance—did not mention the paper-chase of the internal market; the glaring inconsistencies and inequalities in the service received by patients under the previous government's stewardship; their neglect of staff, which was most notably indicated by the staging of pay awards recommended by the independent pay review bodies; or the 28 per cent cut in nurse training places.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, who promises me a rough time tomorrow, that there may have been a move away from the damaging cuts of the early 1990s but, frankly, those cuts were so great that it would have been almost impossible not to have improved on the situation. Finally, noble Lords opposite made no mention of the utter lack of ownership among NHS staff in relation to the internal market changes.
In contrast, this Government have placed the NHS at the core of their endeavours, as my noble friend Lord Rea said. We have set record levels of investment in the NHS. We have set new national standards for services for cancer, heart disease, mental health and the care of older people. We have created much greater transparency over local service performance. We have created a new legal duty of quality and a new system of clinical governance to enshrine improvements throughout the NHS. We have established the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which evaluates new treatments. We have for the first time an independent inspectorate, the Commission for Health Improvement. We have established new systems for when things go wrong and that help us to learn from what goes right. We have met the pay award recommendations of the independent pay review bodies in full over the past three years. We are giving staff such as nurses a much greater say in deciding the shape of local services. I respond in a positive manner to the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Rea that we should build on that. The £5,000 sums that we have given to ward sisters to spend on environmental improvements to their wards has been a remarkable success. I was interested in the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, on that matter. There is a real sense of ownership because we have given responsibility back at that level.
We are moving towards a patient-centred service with immediate benefits. Who can discount the impact of the booked-admissions system, which was introduced in each trust in at least two high-volume specialties or conditions? Long patient waiting times are being reduced.
Expansion is under way. There are more staff—and more staff yet to come—and there are more beds in hospitals. I listened with great interest to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on the PFI. However, he did not acknowledge that we have in place the biggest hospital-building programme that this country has ever seen. It involves modernising 220 accident and emergency departments and more than 1,100 GP surgeries. More operations are also being undertaken. I say to the noble Lord that there is of course a long way to go. I know that staff are under

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real pressure. I also acknowledge that it takes time for investment to be felt at the front line. However, investment is getting through and it will be sustained.
I take very seriously the comments that noble Lords made this afternoon on the involvement of NHS staff. Such involvement ensured that the views of NHS staff on the NHS were vital to the formulation of the NHS Plan. What NHS staff wanted became apparent to us in the consultation that we undertook. They wanted to see more staff; more training; more joined-up working with social services; less bureaucracy; more action to prevent ill health; better working conditions; faster delivery of services; more focus on patients; less variation in services across the country; and less control from Whitehall. The whole idea of developing the NHS Plan was to involve the staff. All the provisions in that plan are being delivered somewhere within the NHS—the challenge is to have them applied consistently.
We have no hope of delivering the NHS Plan unless we can increase our capacity. One of our first priorities was to get more staff into place. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, was absolutely right to point to the crucial importance of doing that. It is important to understand, as the noble Baroness suggested, that the shortfall that we have had to face up to—it involves many thousands of doctors, nurses, therapists and scientists—came about because of decisions that were made in the early 1990s. If there is one lesson that must be learned from that, it is that we must never again engage in such drastic cutbacks in training places.
The NHS Plan, which was published last July, stated that by 2004 there will be 7,500 more consultants, 2,000 more general practitioners, 1,000 more specialist registrars, 20,000 more nurses and 6,500 more therapists and other professionals. We are beginning to see the impact of that. Between 1997 and 2000, the number of staff in the NHS expanded significantly: there are 6,700 more doctors, more than 17,100 additional nurses and more than 9,600 additional scientific, therapeutic and technical staff. Like other noble Lords, I mourn the absence of our late noble friend Lord Morris of Castle Morris. How he would have enjoyed today's debate; he would have enjoined us to recognise the contribution of nurses.
Between September 1999 and September 2000 alone we saw 6,300 more nurses. Over 7,500 qualified nurses have already returned to the NHS since February 1999 and a further 2,000 are preparing to join them. Applications for nurse training have increased by 86 per cent over the past two years. UKCC figures published yesterday show a 13.2 per cent increase in the number of new registrations for newly-qualified nurses and midwives.
That is substantial progress in which we should rejoice. But we face a shortfall. That is where international recruitment comes into play. But I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that it is a two-way process. Welcoming staff from abroad surely enables the transfer of experience and the sharing of ideas which can be extremely beneficial both to the
734
patients in this country and to those in the other countries concerned. I stress, as I have stressed before in your Lordships' House, that guidance issued to the service ensures that international recruitment is carried out effectively and appropriately, and only in relation to those countries where there exists a surplus of nursing staff.
My noble friend Lord Haskel also pointed to the announcement we made today in relation to the expansion in maternity services and our intention to see an extra 500 midwives working in the NHS over the next five years. That too is extremely important.
The noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, referred to waiting times and waiting lists. It has been a substantial achievement to reduce the number of people on waiting lists. We made it abundantly clear that clinical priority must be the main determinant of when patients are seen as out-patients or admitted as in-patients.
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, cast some doubt on the role of modern matrons. I doubt whether that will be shared by many Members of your Lordships' House. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, pointed out the problems that arose in the NHS when ward sisters particularly were disempowered by having responsibilities taken away from them. It is little surprise that in looking at the experience of patients in our hospitals, many complaints arise from issues in the wards relating to cleaning and catering—issues which once upon a time would have come under the firm control of the ward sister. We are turning that around. The whole role of modern matrons is to give responsibility back to senior nurses. I am convinced that patient experience will be enhanced as a result.
Many noble Lords—the noble Baroness, Lady Eccles, and my noble friend Lord Haskel in particular—talked about the pressures under which doctors work and the changing relationship between doctors and members of the public. There can be no doubt that patients are more informed and more demanding. In addition, the work of doctors has come under ever greater scrutiny. And patients expect to know more; they expect to consent to what is happening to them. That in itself presents new challenges to the medical profession.
But those of us who know people working in other professions would say that those pressures are not only relevant to the medical profession; many other professions have to face up to new ways of working. We in the NHS of course have to provide support to enable the profession to face up to those pressures and challenges. One thing is for sure, they will not go away.
A number of contributions suggested that doctors in particular are feeling "under the cosh" at the moment, and of course we must address those issues. But there are indications that the latest figures show that there has been a fall in the proportion of hospital medical staff and GPs taking voluntary early retirement. I say also to my noble friend Lord Turnberg that we wish to encourage people to continue working for the NHS on a part-time basis. I am happy to pick up any specific instances of concern and examine them. It is clearly in

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the interests of the health service to encourage people who wish to reduce their commitment, but nevertheless continue to work in the NHS, to be enabled to do so. That is part of the NHS becoming a better employer.
We have listened to staff; we are tackling their concerns. We are investing heavily in more training places. We are looking at how to encourage more flexible and family-friendly working practices—more childcare, more flexible retirement policies. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, that we have appointed a senior official to help us provide more accommodation for nurses, particularly in central London, because I well recognise the problems that he raised.
Being a good employer applies to primary care and GPs as much as to any other member of staff. GPs work hard and we know that they are under pressure. That is why we set out in the NHS Plan our intent to recruit at least 2,000 extra GPs by 2004. We have laid the foundations for that in increasing the number of trainee places. We set out a number of measures to encourage trained GPs to return to practice, particularly women following career breaks, and GPs who wait until they are 65 to retire are being offered £10,000 golden goodbye awards.
Of course we are also committed to cutting bureaucracy and to freeing up appointment times to the equivalent of nearly 1,000 GPs. Indeed, as Dr John Oldham pointed out,
"A lot of very simple things can add up to making a significant difference. It's all about working smarter, not harder".
Perhaps Dr Oldham goes a little too far. But he makes the point powerfully that it is not just about making more resources available; it is about making the best use of them. So I was disappointed yesterday. I noticed that the action taken by a small number of GPs was not supported by the BMA or by any significant doctors' organisation. We want to agree a new contract for GPs. But that is surely best delivered through discussion and negotiation and not through protest action which can only impact upon the experience of patients.
Most people recognise that the growth in resources is a substantial change. But it is not just a question of resources; it is a question of improving the way we work. The NHS Plan revolves very much around breaking down some of the boundaries and barriers that exist at the moment in order to produce an integrated approach to care across so many of the organisational boundaries that have always existed in the health and social care local community.
Staff must be in the driving seat of change. Doctors, nurses and scientists must use their know-how; make their innovations felt; redesign their services. I fully accept the comments made by many noble Lords that where staff are put firmly in control of what they do is where we will see the innovation that we require.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talked about the dental strategy. We are committed to NHS dentistry, and that is why we are developing dental access centres. It is why the Prime Minister made the
736
pledge about access to NHS dentistry and it is why we are making it abundantly clear to health authorities that they need to re-engage with the dental profession. I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, an enthusiasm for fluoridation. But we must wait for the results of the MRC review. The noble Baroness knows where my heart lies on that question.
Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, made an important point in relation to the pharmacy programme. I believe that pharmacies can contribute much more, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, also stated, and that is why we are encouraging people to go to community pharmacies for advice where that is appropriate.
I was interested in the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, about her experience when she unfortunately had to use the NHS some time ago. I agree with the points regarding consistency of approach. That is what we are trying to do. That is what national frameworks and specialised commissioning are about.
Information technology in NHS hospitals is important. For many years the NHS has had a poor record of introducing IT. One of the key lessons from the NHS Plan discussions with staff is the need for us to get IT right. That is why we are investing £l billion in modernising NHS information systems over the lifetime of our information strategy, 1998–2005.
I refer to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, concerning Defence Medical Services. I am responsible in the department for liaison with the MoD on those matters. I am happy to write to him with more details. However, perhaps he will take it from me that I am committed to ensuring that the partnership works effectively. I believe that we can make that partnership work.
I was interested in the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, concerning public health. That is an important matter which perhaps did not get sufficient airing in our debate today. I shall follow up with details of the screening pilots about which she asked. It is important that screening is done in the right way. That is why we have the National Screening Committee and take advice from it. There is sometimes an assumption that all screening is good. However, some screening is not particularly effective and can sometimes cause harm. Therefore, we must get it right.
I shall pass up the challenge to debate with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, the question of community health councils. We have debated that in your Lordships' House in the past few weeks and may well do so again next week.
Perhaps I may conclude with the issue of centralisation and decentralisation, which ran as a thread through contributions of all noble Lords today. The point about the NHS is that it is a national service. I do not believe that the public will tolerate inconsistency in either the quality or the range of

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services which are available in the NHS throughout the country. That is why Ministers are accountable to Parliament for its performance. It is inevitable that we will have national standards and national targets. However, we accept that we have to limit those and leave room for staff to grow and lead at local level. In essence, that is what the Secretary of State announced in his launch of the Modernisation Agency only last week.
Looking back over my 25 years of working in the National Health Service, I have never been more confident about its future than I am today. The NHS has always had the right ethos, dedicated staff and public support. We are building on that with more resources, more capacity, more staff and a plan which, for the first time in any reorganisation in living memory, has the support of all people working in the NHS. Putting that together, I believe that the NHS is in good shape. It is ready to take on the challenge of change, to innovate, and to put patients first. Surely that walks step by step with high morale among the staff. There is no better challenge for a great public service. I am confident that it is one which will be fulfilled.
5.34 p.m.
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I have been passed a note which says that I have two minutes in which to wind up. Therefore, I shall make only one or two final remarks.
We are all aware of the great love and respect there is for the I\ HS. The noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, reminded us of that. That is why we care about the state of morale in the NHS. There is widespread agreement around the House that morale is in a poor state. Several noble Lords have suggested remedies. Unfortunately, I do not have time to go through the more interesting of those.
The purpose of this debate was not to solve problems. I am grateful for the Government's response. Indeed, I am glad that the Minister is confident about the future. We on these Benches would be happier if he stopped looking in the rear-view mirror, in which he is getting a distorted view of the past, and concentrated on looking forward.
The Minister referred to a number of systems and structures and constantly brought us back to the NHS Plan. The issue is whether the NHS Plan will be anything like enough to deal with the real crisis of confidence we have debated today. However, I shall take up no more of your Lordships' time. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Wembley National Stadium Project
5.35 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given by my right honourable
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friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to a Private Notice Question in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"The Football Association's announcement yesterday that it could not deliver its plans for Wembley was very disappointing news. It was all the more so given the repeated assurances given to Sport England and the Government over the whole of last year by the Wembley project team that everything was on track. The Government have consistently supported the concept of a national stadium and this has been on the basis of continued assurances from football that the project would be delivered.
"It was in 1996 that the then GB Sports Council decided that Wembley should be the location for a national stadium. From 1998 onwards, the project has been one led by the Football Association via a wholly owned subsidiary, Wembley National Stadium Ltd.
"From that point it was the Football Association and its subsidiary that drove the project forward in terms of negotiation with Wembley plc over the acquisition of the land, agreement with Sport England over the terms of the lottery funding for that acquisition, the design issues and, most importantly, securing the necessary financing to make the project viable.
"Wembley National Stadium under its chairman, Ken Bates, consistently assured everyone that all was well with the project. This has proved not to be the case. The first occasion on which this was demonstrated was in the autumn of 1999, when it became clear that the needs of athletics could not sensibly be met by the WNSL scheme.
"That was a result of the costs of creating and dismantling the concrete platform for athletics; the costs of acquiring the necessary land for the required warm-up track, and the fact that there would he no lasting legacy for athletics at the national stadium.
"I therefore decided that athletics should be removed from Wembley and subsequently the Lee Valley athletics stadium has been chosen by UK Athletics as the national centre for athletics and the venue for the 2005 Athletics Championships. That decision has been vindicated by subsequent events; and work is now well advanced on the designs for the Enfield stadium.
"The second occasion on which WNSL's assurances that all was well with the project proved to be misplaced was in November last year when the loan syndication to finance the whole project failed. The principal reason the banks were reluctant to provide finance was that they had doubts about: the WNSL business case, and in particular the ambitious projections of hospitality and premium seat income. Let us not forget that this was a project that had escalated in estimated cost from a little over £300 million to a total of £650 million.

739
"The banks were also concerned that the FA stood to gain from the project but carried little or no risk. At that point some much needed realism was injected into WNSL and the Football Association's thinking on the project.
"Following the failure of loan syndication, the FA replaced Ken Bates with Sir Rodney Walker as chairman of WNSL and took a much closer interest in their project. The FA made clear its intention to address the banks' concerns that the FA itself was not taking its share of risk in the project. Regrettably, Government learned last week that the Football Association did not feel it could do this without a further significant injection of funds. The FA initially requested up to £300 million from government. I am afraid this is simply not on, especially when the current costly design of the new Wembley is on the scale it is due to the needs of the commercial interests in the project.
"In the light of the FA's announcement yesterday, the Government will review all the options for a national stadium. To assist in that process we have asked the existing ministerial group looking at the cross-governmental issues around the Commonwealth Games to look at alternative solutions. I should stress at this stage that no options are ruled out. Therefore it may well be that a solution can be found to carry forward a new-build—or a refurbishment—solution at Wembley. Other alternatives may be considered. We want to play our part, as government, in securing a good, affordable and sustainable national stadium for England. That is what we will now do".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
5.40 p.m.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement which was made in another place by his right honourable friend. It is indeed dismal news today. It seems that instead of gaining a national stadium we are facing national disgrace.
I am disappointed with the Statement. The Government have sought to heap the blame totally on to the FA and Wembley National Stadium Limited without taking any responsibility for their own actions. Does the Minister recall how effusive the Secretary of State used to be about the selfsame Wembley plans?
I might remind him that in a press release on 29th July 1999, the Secretary of State said:
"Trying to match a stadium as legendary as the current Wembley was a daunting challenge but Norman Foster and his team have come up with a stunning design. Wembley will be the centre-piece of our campaign to attract the world's premier sporting events to this country. It will be a magnificent venue for athletics as well as football".
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Despite saying that, he later admitted that he had doubts about the plans all along. When being questioned by the Select Committee in another place, the Secretary of State said:
"I was unhappy about the proposals. It was only as we tested the detail in the following weeks that the difficulties became clear".
Today the Government say that they had repeated assurances from the Wembley project team that all was well. Did they take those assurances at face value without further detailed consideration? What monitoring have the Government carried out of the Wembley proposals since 1999 when, according to their own statement, they saw that there were faults in the plan? Throughout there have been many stories in the press about the problems, but I believe that we have the right to expect that the Government have kept themselves properly informed.
The Minister referred to action taken by the Secretary of State when he questioned and scrapped the plans for a combined football and athletics stadium. Surely, that action dealt a massive blow to confidence in the project. Is that not the reason why potential City backers have decided not to put money into the scheme?
Today the Minister referred to the replacement of Ken Bates by Sir Rodney Walker as chairman of WSNL. Does he recall the statement by the Secretary of State in another place as recently as 26th March this year that:
"I have confidence that Sir Rodney and his team will deliver the goods"?—[Official Report, Commons, 26/3/01: col. 673.]
Where is that confidence now?
Can the plans be adapted for a cheaper version of a national stadium still at Wembley? The Minister properly referred to the escalating costs. This morning on television the Secretary of State in an interview fuelled speculation that Wembley may be abandoned as the site for the national football stadium. The NEC site outside Birmingham has been mentioned as a possible alternative. Is that indeed on the Government's agenda?
The whole House will want to see the Wembley project back on track. But if it cannot be revived, what will happen to the £120 million of National Lottery money given to the FA for the purpose of purchasing the Wembley site? Will it be repaid and, if so, at what stage?
The Secretary of State's handling of the Wembley project has been dismal. The Prime Minister decided yesterday to put the Home Secretary at the head of an existing committee which we are told will suddenly change its job. However, his decision to do that is the clearest sign yet that he has lost any confidence he had in his Secretary of State. Why else really would the Home Office be asked to clear up the problem of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport?
Finally, the vital question of interest to everyone in this country, whether or not we are sports people—it is of interest to everyone around the world—is: when will the report by the Home Office group be made available? All of us will be waiting to see what happens next.
5.44 p.m.
Viscount Falkland: My Lords, we on these Benches thank the Minister for repeating the Statement today. Its content and import are, as the noble Baroness said, dismaying to say the least. They are dismaying not only to Members of this House but to the public at large because the media have already taken up the topic on radio and television. As one would expect, a great deal of criticism is already flying about regarding personalities. That is not necessarily very helpful.
Anyone who like me was lucky enough to go in 1966 to Wembley to see England beat Germany in the final of that year's World Cup will regard the event as a moment in their lives which they will never forget. Many noble Lords will have been to Wembley on other occasions, not necessarily relating to sport. It is in that respect that the whole project has gone wrong because a national stadium is not only about football and sport; it is about national prestige.
The Stade de France, which was backed with utter commitment in France, not only holds great national sporting events but is a theatre for international artists. It has been an enormous success. It was hoped that the excellent design of the new Wembley Stadium would achieve the same success. However, the problem is that again the Government wanted to be involved in what they saw as a large national project but they were not prepared to put in money or commitment.
It was a mistake that the Government should have gone to the Football Association. I do not believe that the association can be blamed because the project was beyond the scale of what they were able to deliver. The costs have now risen to £660 million, with running costs of £50 million per annum. The business plan which the FA put forward to the banks on the basis of income against investment did not meet the banks' criteria. The FA should never have been put in this position.
Now the Government are able to say that they have been let down by the Football Association—or, to be more precise, Wembley National Stadium Limited. I do not want to blame personalities—I shall leave that to the media—but we in this country have not taken seriously and thought through what should have been a major enterprise in this country to support our national prestige.
Football is very important, but a national stadium is extremely important. To some developing countries it is more than an airport and is something which they point to and wave their flags for. It provides enormous stimulus not only to a country's reputation abroad but to its morale at home. That was shown in France with its Stade de France. France has been lucky enough to have an excellent national football team and has excelled in other sports and we could do the same.
In my view, the project began to look shaky when it was decided that the new stadium could no longer accommodate an athletics track. There were good commercial reasons for that; the costs of rebuilding the foundations and the cost of acquiring the necessary land for warming up, as described in the Statement, were outside the possibility of the financial plans.
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I am not sure what is meant by the statement that there is no lasting legacy for athletics at the stadium. If I understand that modern language correctly, it means that athletics beyond 2005 will take place at the new stadium. In the Statement, the Government brightly state that everything in regard to the new athletics stadium is going extremely well and it will be a huge success. But how much greater success we would have had had we made a commitment to Wembley Stadium, done the sums properly and not thought in a parochial way merely about football or sport. We should have seen the whole potential of the project and the international prestige that we would have gained and made a commitment financially and philosophically to a project which would have held us in good stead in this country for many years to come. As it is, the project is a mess. We have had messes before, for example further down the river, and I hope that this will not be the same. We also have a situation similar to the one down the river, because the stadium at Wembley is now almost derelict and unkempt, although I understand that several hundred people make sure that it does not deteriorate to the extent that it is completely unusable or unsaleable. There is a cost to that while all of these things take place.
Many people must be dismayed—I am sure that the media will make something of it—that yet another government task force is to look at it and make recommendations. I do not blame Chris Smith. I have been longing for the opportunity to say that in this country it is nonsense to have a department of state which deals with culture, media, sport and tourism. To blame Mr Smith, who has been very successful in some areas but not in others, for this matter is to forget that it is hard enough for someone on these Benches in this House to be expected to cover these four topics. I enjoy it, but the remit covers a wide area.
I believe that in a modern country there should be one department which deals with culture and another department to deal with sport. Sport is very important and it is not adequate to deal with it in this way. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, would deal with the remit more than adequately. He is one of the great performers at the Dispatch Box who can deal with anything, even if he has seven or eight matters to cover at the same time. However, I believe that the burden on Mr Smith is intolerable. If I was talking to a betting man, I would hazard the guess that in the near future there will be a reshuffling of these responsibilities, with the possibility of a new department. I hope that that happens. Sport requires a department of state to handle it. If we had had such a department we would not be in this muddle.
A national stadium is not about football but national status and how we stand in the world and relate to other countries, not only through sport. We act as hosts for international stars. For heaven's sake, the Pope has been at Wembley; and Madonna has also appeared there, if that is not an unhappy conjunction. As in other countries, various international music stars have appeared at Wembley.

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If the Government get to work now and form a body which can produce a sensible business plan to go ahead with Wembley, I am absolutely sure that it will be a success, assuming it is run by the right people. I have the greatest possible admiration for Birmingham, which has stepped in with great energy, as I would if I were involved in anything in that city. To have a stadium in Birmingham is an excellent idea, but it should not be the national stadium. The national stadium deserves to be here in London; this is where we and the world expect it to be. Football teams used to chant "We're on our way to Wembley". Wembley has a history and culture that cannot be ignored.
It is a sad day when we have a derelict site at Wembley with the prospect of a hiatus and, at best, if the Government get their act together, the provision of a national stadium to compete with the best stadia in the world in the next five or six years. The Statement is necessarily low key, but I believe that it is a very sad day.
5.53 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, in many ways I share the emotional feelings of both noble Lords for Wembley. I first went to that stadium to attend the Olympic Games in 1948. Afterwards, I was even known to go from school to speedway racing at that stadium, although that is perhaps not so politically correct given what has happened to Wembley more recently. We must maintain a sense of realism about this matter and address the issues as they are rather than with wishful thinking.
The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, suggested that there was some conflict in our support as expressed in 1999 for Lord Foster's stunning design of Wembley Stadium. We did support what is still a stunning design, but we never indicated that we would support it with a blank cheque of taxpayers', or even lottery players', money. I do not believe that the Conservative Party seriously suggests that we should do that now. I notice that both the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and Mr Ainsworth in another place held back from such a suggestion.
The noble Baroness asked whether the Government believed in the assurances given by the Football Association and whether we had monitored the Wembley proposals. The test of the Wembley proposals and their financing have come to the fore very much in recent months with the failure of the loan syndication issue. Right up until yesterday J P Morgan, one of those institutions that had been approached for financing, indicated that it would still be willing to participate in the financing of Wembley Stadium if the Football Association took some share of the risk. The FA indicated to government some weeks ago that it would be so willing. The news now is that it has changed its mind and it is not willing to take a share of the risk. In those circumstances, I do not believe it can be said that the Government have been in any way irresponsible in its consideration of these issues.
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The noble Baroness also appeared to suggest, although I am not entirely clear that she really meant it, that somehow the removal of athletics from the stadium was a contributory cause of financial failure. I am not quite clear whether the Conservative Party supports the athletics proposals. Those proposals consisted of an £18 million concrete platform which would take six months to assemble and dismantle on each occasion. Contrary to the removal of athletics having complicated the financial problems, the truth is that it has simplified it and enabled us to look for a better solution for athletics somewhere else for the 2005 games. I believe that, on reflection, all sides of the House would agree that that was the right thing to do.
The noble Baroness suggested that somehow the Government had changed their attitude to Sir Rodney Walker. We are not responsible for the chairmanship of Wembley National Stadium Limited. However, when it was suggested that Sir Rodney, as chairman of the UK Sports Council, should also be chairman of that company, we expressed our continued confidence in him; and we still hold that view. But it is a matter for the company, not the Government.
The noble Baroness also asked whether the Government were giving serious consideration to other sites as well as Wembley. Yes, certainly we are. That includes consideration of sites in Birmingham, Coventry or other places. The advantage of Wembley is that Wembley National Stadium Limited owns the site. We have put £120 million into the acquisition of the site and design costs. The noble Baroness asked me what had happened to that sum. That money is returnable if no new stadium is built at Wembley. If, for example, there was simply a refurbishment of the stadium the £120 million would no longer be available and no doubt there would have to be some negotiations on that point. However, the money is for that purpose and is in principle returnable.
The noble Baroness asked about the Cabinet committee. The ministerial group to which the Statement refers is not a new group but already exists under the chairmanship of the Home Secretary, and it is entirely rational that it should take on this additional responsibility. That shows no disrespect for, or lack of confidence in, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. It will report as soon as possible. It has been asked to report quickly, but it must consider the whole range of issues described in the Statement.
The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, drew a contrast between the support of the French Government for the Stade de France and our support for a national stadium in this country. I remind him that the French Government's support for the Stade de France is approximately £125 million, which is comparable with our support from the lottery to Wembley and the cost of the entire Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
I do not want to comment in more detail on the relationship between the Football Association and the banks, except to repeat my response to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that, if anything, the removal of athletics from the stadium made its financial planning considerably simpler and more hopeful. It is

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unfortunate that it has not occurred. But the failure of Wembley Stadium cannot be assigned to the governmental failures ascribed by noble Lords opposite.
6 p.m.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I declare an unpaid interest as a director of the Cardiff Millennium Stadium, nominated by Cardiff County Council to protect its public interest responsibility as special shareholder and as guardian of the Millennium Commission's grant of £46 million for the stadium.
Today's sad Statement repeated by my noble friend will not come as a surprise to many of us who have followed this issue over the past few months. As long ago as December 1999 we were aware that something was amiss with Wembley's costings. The managing director of the stadium company told the All-Party Sports Group that the cost per seat at the new Wembley Stadium would be roughly the same as Cardiff. However, the correct figures are £1,650 per seat for Cardiff and £7,200 for Wembley. That makes Wembley well over four times more expensive than Cardiff.
Is my noble friend aware that there will be general understanding why the FA's request for the additional £300 million of public money could not be granted, particularly given the FA's unwillingness to accept a share of the risk? Can the Minister give an assurance that when all the options are looked at they will include not just Birmingham and Manchester—both those places have strong support—but the possibility of refurbishing the existing Wembley on a more modest scale or the option of having no national stadium and following, let us say, the Italian example and moving major matches and events from one ground to another around the country? There are enormous sums of money at stake. It is possible that the games concerned, not just football, could benefit substantially if that money was not sunk into a national stadium.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am glad to have my friend's support and description of the financial situation of the Government and, above all, the Football Association. Yes, I can confirm that the reason why matters have gone wrong with Wembley is, first, that the Football Association has not been willing to take any share of the risk, although it previously indicated that it would; and, secondly, there has been this vast increase in the costs, and, as my noble friend said, in the cost per seat. A significant part of that increase is new provision for commercial or semi-commercial uses. It is exactly for that reason that it would not be appropriate for taxpayers' money to be put into the Football Association's proposals for Wembley.
My noble friend asked me whether we are genuinely going to consider other options. The answer certainly is yes. Those options include refurbishment at Wembley. They also include the Italian possibility of moving major events around the country. That is what has happened since Wembley closed. The experience
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is—even the Football Association would agree—that it has worked rather well. Moving to Anfield and to other grounds has not only been successful and popular but has probably saved the Football Association a great deal of money. So, indeed, we shall also be looking into that option.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, is it not the case that Wembley, even within the context of London, is a bad location for a major sporting centre because of its poor communications and transport links? While it has a huge amount of history and nostalgia, as detailed by my noble friend on the Front Bench, its future—if it has a future in football or sport—should perhaps be as a museum and a major national training and coaching centre.
There is no reason why a national stadium has to be in London. That is simply the normal arrogance of people who think that London is the only really important place. Birmingham in the West Midlands has a very good case. That does not alter the case that greenfield sites or fresh sites in areas of good communications in the north of England might be considered, particularly as association football, and especially the professional game, have their historic roots in Lancashire and Yorkshire, which remain the powerhouse of the game in this country, as we have seen tonight in the Leeds United game. May I therefore urge the Government to think Wigan or perhaps Warrington, Wakefield, Crewe or even Doncaster, but above all to think River Trent, north thereof?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, it is certainly true that the planned use for a national stadium was always going to be football and rugby league. Your Lordships can draw their own regional conclusions from that.
What Wembley has going for it is very simple: we paid £120 million for the site and for the design work. It starts ahead on those grounds. But it does not start ahead on the grounds of any presumption on the part of government that a national stadium, if we are going to have one, has to be in Wembley or London. Our minds are genuinely open on that point. We think north of the River Trent as well as south of it.
Lord Glentoran: My Lords, I declare an interest as a millennium commissioner. The right honourable Secretary of State, Chris Smith, is chairman of that commission. This is not one of his finest hours, although I have a great deal of respect for him as chairman of that commission.
I have a number of points, some of which have already been made. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, well made the point that in a short space of tine the New Millennium Stadium in Wales was successfully built by a joint group led by the Welsh Rugby Football Union, the banks, the devolved assembly in Cardiff, the local authority and the Millennium Commission, but without interference from central government.

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Is the Minister aware that the same situation is true of the Hamden Park of Dreams? That was also a major project and cost about the same as the Millennium Stadium in Wales. Each stadium cost in the region of £120 million. In today's context I may say "only £120 million". They are both capable of multi-use, but not of staging athletics. Is the Minister aware of how long the argument has been going on in sport and with those promoting sport about whether one can successfully run an international athletics circuit within a football stadium? I first had that conversation with Jimmy Hill probably 20 years ago. In those days it was absolutely clear, and Jimmy was clear, that one could not do both, even in a 9,000-seater stadium, let alone in a 70,000-seater.
I know the Minister will not agree with me, but I believe that there has been a considerable amount of muddled thinking. I am concerned, having sat and watched the mismanagement of the finances of the NMEC by the government department. I feel that there has been mismanagement of the project by government departments in this country not paying enough attention to the detail of business plans.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, that there are valuable lessons to be learnt, particularly from Cardiff, but also from Hamden Park. Those lessons are very much before the ministerial group which is now considering the matter.
With regard to the problem of athletics in a football stadium, Chris Smith, in his Statement which I have repeated, made that clear. There are problems of size and sight lines and problems, in particular in the original proposals for Wembley, with this concrete platform. That is very expensive and difficult to move. In contrast to some of the responses to the Statement, I adhere to the view, and the Government adhere to the view, that, by taking out athletics from the Wembley project, we have both simplified it and made the financial prospects better. Some way has to be found of making use of that lesson. I am glad to know from the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, that it has been known for a considerable period of time. What we have here is an example of the pursuit of the best at the expense of the good. That is often a dangerous thing to do.
Lord Hoyle: My Lords, the Statement omits one important point. The problem is not just the geographical location of Wembley but the infrastructure cost. Can my noble friend say what sum would be involved in improving the infrastructure? I join other noble Lords in asking for consideration to be given to projects other than Wembley. I can tell my noble friend that we are applying for a new stadium at Warrington. We could hold up the plans and make them even grander if we thought that the national stadium was coming up there.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I shall not risk my life by saying anything antagonistic towards
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Warrington or indeed Wigan. I confirm what I have already said. Options north of the Trent, including Warrington and Wigan, will not be neglected. My noble friend asked about the infrastructure at Wembley. The issue is complicated. Wembley National Stadium Limited bought land from Wembley plc but it did not buy all the land. In particular, it did not buy enough land to have both adequate car-parking and the kind of warm-up track that would have been necessary for athletics there. There are all kinds of restrictions on the site—it is owned by Wembley National Stadium Limited—which create difficulties. Those considerations will have to be taken into account when we are seeking a successful conclusion to this problem.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, as a rugby fan, and a Welsh rugby fan at that, I intervene to make a suggestion. One of the problems of all national stadiums—it will eventually be a problem at Cardiff—whether used for one sport or two sports, is that they have a very limited income. Not only has the initial cost to be borne in mind but also how to generate income. If only international matches are held at a national stadium, the income is limited. One could, on the other hand, have a rotating system for football internationals. There are so many fine stadiums available in the country which have large attendances for home matches anyway and can generate a large income. An international match would add to that income and add to the geographical spread for so many soccer fans. Should not the idea of a rotating system between the top clubs in the country attract a good deal of attention?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, those are all valid and interesting points. I certainly take the noble Lord's point that to have restricted, occasional use of an expensive building is a poor use of financial resources. One of the possibilities that cannot be ruled out is whether one of the London football clubs might wish to relocate to Wembley. That, again, will be taken into consideration.
Lord Palmer: My Lords, will the Minister clarify the position with regard to the £250 million that has already been spent? If I understand him correctly, if Wembley is not redeveloped, that money will be repaid to the Government. Is my understanding of the position correct?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the figure is not £250 million; it is £120 million; and it is not from the Government; it is from the lottery. That commitment of £120 million is legal only if a new stadium is built at Wembley. If nothing is done at Wembley, the money has to be repaid; if there is only refurbishment at Wembley, the money has to be repaid. The money has not of course been spent; but it would not be paid out.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, my noble friend has referred to looking at all alternatives. Has he looked at

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the alternative of perhaps converting the Dome into a national stadium? After all, that might solve two problems at the same time.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, it slopes the wrong way, I should have thought.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I do not think that criticism can be levelled at the Government for the way that they have handled this difficult situation. It is unfair to blame the Secretary of State, who has tried his best. My criticism of the Government is that they are involved in media, culture and sport at all. It would be much better if they left those alone. People are appalled at the escalation of the cost of this project from £300 million to £700 million—six times the cost of the Cardiff stadium. People will want reassurance—I certainly want reassurance—that no further public money will go into this project. People will be appalled when they see the money that is thrown about in football generally, in salaries of £3 million a year paid to players and £19 million transfer fees. Football is well able to finance the stadium itself and through private borrowing. I sincerely hope that my noble friend can give us an absolute assurance that no further public money will be invested in this or any other such project.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I shall gladly convey to Chris Smith my noble friend's expression of confidence in him. I shall consider whether I want to convey to him my noble friend's more fundamentalist view that the Government should not be involved in culture, media or sport. That is rather more radical. I do not say that in a critical way. My noble friend is a radical. But it is a rather more radical view which I do not think will find much support in the House. My noble friend asks for an assurance that no more public money will be spent. The position is that £120 million of lottery money has been spent. It has been spent in acquiring the site. Of that £120 million, £14 million is design costs. I hope I have made it entirely clear that if there is no new stadium at Wembley the Football Association will have to repay that money; and it will have to repay that money from its own resources. The whole impact of the Statement is that no more public money is available for this purpose.
Lord Northbrook: My Lords, what contribution did the Government expect from the Football Association? What asset base does it have to enable it to contribute to the project? Did the Government have a ballpark figure in mind?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, that has not been a matter between the Football Association and the Government. It has been a matter between the Football Association and the banks. As I understand the position, the banks—to me entirely reasonably—said, "Here is the Football Association. It is a rather rich body. It is a commercial body and not a purely charitable body. But it does not appear to be willing to take any of the risks in this project, from which it
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would be taking all the benefits in future". The banks did not think that that was a very good idea. I do not either; but it is a matter for the banks and for the Football Association.

Anglo-American Relations
6.18 p.m.
Lord Howell of Guildfordrose to call attention to developments in relations between the United Kingdom and the United States; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will regard it as timely and appropriate that we should be discussing today the theme of US-U K relations. It is certainly the case that the new Bush administration has just completed its first 100 days. Whatever one feels about some of the decisions and views that have emerged from Washington, no one can say that those 100 days have been dull. On the contrary, they have been enlivened by some extremely intense debate on some of the new policy positions being taken up by the Bush team.
On this side of the Atlantic, all around Europe, a good deal of shrill invective has been vented about Mr Bush and his team. They have been branded as "isolationists" and "cowboys". Another phrase used was that they are the "toxic Texans". A number of other cries of dismay have come from those whose preconceptions and presumptions about the ways in which global policy should be formed were being rudely interrupted.
On the Left and centre Left, I heard expressions of dismay that here was a candidate, a governor, who campaigned as a "compassionate conservative", who has turned out to be a conservative. I for one do not find it difficult to unite those two concepts. Experience proves that any administration or government who opt for low taxes and tax reduction end up helping the poor and those most in need of care rather more effectively than governments who are committed to high taxation, in particular when those high taxes are borne by the poorest people. I believe that there might be a lesson in that for our own Government. Indeed, that has been confirmed by the most recent figures published by the Office for National Statistics. They show that the gap between rich and poor is widening as more taxes are piled on.
As to the charge of isolationism, I believe that to be a nonsense based on no facts or groundwork. The new Bush team is highly internationalist. Its members are realists. Their tone and approach is different from their predecessors in the Clinton White House administration. Furthermore, they are very much moved and informed by concerns about energy matters. One would expect that, given the background of some of them, and given the reality of the fact that America is moving into what has been described—with perhaps a little hyperbole—as an energy crisis. If it is not a crisis, certainly America's reliance on imported oil is now heavy. I said only the other day

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from this Dispatch Box that that reliance is now twice what it was 20 years ago when I had some responsibility for energy matters. Imports have risen to above 60 per cent. This exposes America to the intense need to conserve its own appetites, to ensure that its supplies are secure and reliable, and to develop its domestic supplies. That may be not unrelated to the decision that the administration seem to have taken on the Kyoto Protocol, which I shall address in more detail later.
In my speech to open the debate, I shall concentrate on four areas of US/UK relations as well as US/EU relations, since on this side of the Atlantic we operate in the EU context. These are first, security issues; secondly, attitudes in Washington to the European Union integration process and the role of the UK in Europe—which I believe to be changing; thirdly, the whole question of economics which, given the American slowdown, is rather crucial to us all; and, fourthly, environmental issues and the Kyoto Protocol decision.
I shall turn first to security matters and deal with the European security strategic defence project. I hope that it will not be denied that there is no doubt at all that the United States administration now in office in Washington dislike and are confused by plans for the new so-called Rapid Reaction Force. I believe that it has every right to be confused because it has received a number of conflicting messages. Furthermore, the administration must be puzzled by the change in mood from only a couple of years ago.
Recently, I was reading the interesting book written by the noble Lord, Lord Shore of Stepney, entitled Separate Ways: the Heart of Britain, in which the noble Lord reminds us of exactly what was said by the Prime Minister only two summers ago about defence in Europe. The Prime Minister came to the House of Commons and stated that the goals of defence:
"will not be achieved through merging the European Union and the WEU or developing an unrealistic common defence policy. We therefore resisted its unacceptable proposals from others. Instead, we argued for—and won—the explicit recognition, written into the treaty for the first time, that NATO is the foundation of our and other allies' common defence".
He went on to say that,
"the UK saw its future defence not in the European Union but in NATO".
As I said, that was the thinking two summers ago, but it has gone now. We seem to have embarked on a completely new and not very clear tack. It is one that is constantly being confused by authoritative pronouncements which appear to contradict those of Her Majesty's Government.
General Kelche, the Chief of the Defence Staff in France, recently said to the Select Committee in another place,
"why should we have to go through NATO to select an option?".
We have heard General Hagglund, the new chair of the EU Military Committee comprising 130 planning staff, state that:
"We are not talking about a subsidiary of NATO. This is an independent body".
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Given messages of that kind, it is not surprising that Washington fears that there is a danger that NATO will be undermined. I think that its representatives are right to hold those fears. If the spirit of the Nice Treaty prevails—in its codicils it specifically considers separate planning arrangements, both pre-decision planning and operational planning, which are two separate phases—this will be the biggest breach between the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as between Europe and the United States, in 50 years. That is what the Americans now most fear. We should not go into this except with clear minds as regards what is intended and what is being planned. We should not rely on ambiguity to allow us to finesse and slip through the situation.
The second issue of security which I should like to discuss is that of missile defence, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the view set out only last night by the President of the United States to the National Defence University. Personally, I am puzzled by the reluctance of many people in Europe to support this project and the idea of a new umbrella combined, as the President pointed out in his speech, with a substantial reduction in existing missile arsenals. The new umbrella would respond to the new contexts—technological and political—in which nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction are now being deployed around the globe.
Of course Russia and China will say immediately that they do not like this. Russia will do that because it is playing for a negotiating position and because it is the possessor of the second largest arsenal of weapons. Furthermore, the Russians are good chess players. China will voice concerns for the even more obvious reasons that it is in the business of missile production and export, along with arms production and export on a massive scale. Anything which gets in the way of those activities will be objected to. We were reminded of that this morning by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, when he spoke to the BBC. He said that one should not be at all surprised that China has spoken out against this move into the new world—one into which I believe that we have to move.
As regards the fondness generally expressed in the EU—and demonstrated in some parts of our own body politic here in London—for mutual assured deterrence (the old order) I find it curious that so many who were once opposed to it now wish to hang on to it. Even more curiously, they do not understand that new technology has completely redistributed the patterns of power which govern the use and projection of nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles and missiles carrying other terrifying warheads. It is my view that, in this new context, the British Government should be completely forthright in pledging the necessary support required by the United States. We should ensure that we allow the adaptation and upgrading of Fylingdales, which will be necessary for the forward sensors for the project to develop in the way now outlined by President Bush. I do not understand—perhaps I do understand, but I deplore—the reluctance to speak out boldly on this matter, but rather to take cover behind the argument that a precise

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proposal has not been made and so forth. The Americans need a firm pledge of support and we should provide it.
Doubts expressed by Washington about what the Europeans are up to seem to extend to the entire European integration process. The Americans have long admired and encouraged the idea of the European Union as a pillar, an Atlantic partner. Kennedy produced the idea of an Atlantic partnership some 40 years ago. However, that is one thing. If this is going to turn Europe into a rival superpower with its own competitive ambitions, I think that that is quite something different. I am not surprised that a good many Americans are having second thoughts about the whole undertaking.
I do not know what they make of what I regard as Chancellor Schröder's proposed highly undemocratic reforms for European governance, but I am sure that they view with contempt certain European Union posturing on foreign policy, of which this latest attempt to upstage the Americans over North Korea is, I think, a sad and rather pathetic example.
The Americans want, as should the British, co-operation in Europe, not dangerous rivalry. They do not want dangerous rivalry over whether the euro will be a rival currency to the dollar; over whether protectionism will be a rival to American trade policy; over whether a defence policy will rival American hegemony. This is not the language of partnership; it is the language of competition and rivalry. We should step well clear of such language and achieve a secure and good policy in relation to the United States.
As to the economy, there has been a sharp US slow-down. It is ludicrous to suggest, as some people have, that we will be immune from the slow-down. Forecasters say that they are surprised. All that tells me is that they are wrong again; that they are looking at the wrong indicators. In one area I agree with the European Central Bank and the much criticised Mr Duisenberg. The US theory that jiggling with interest rates—or fiddling with abstracts, as the US Treasury Secretary calls it—can offset recession and slow down or alter the business cycle is deeply misplaced. Central banks are much more marginal than their pretensions suggest, and the ECB is quite right to stick to its lathe and to realise that it does not have the power to switch Europe into a recovery mode merely by altering short-term interest rates.
As to Kyoto and the treaty on greenhouse gases, the American reaction should not be a surprise. Congress was never going to accept the passage of the whole package. The US is very concerned with its energy needs at the moment and the rejection of the protocol in its previous form was bound to come. We on this side of the House support the Kyoto process—although the scientific basis for it may not be wholly secure in all aspects—and we are very glad that the United Kingdom is hitting its targets. This is due, of course, to the move away from coal-fired generation, which has been going on for some years.
The task now is to negotiate in a friendly and understanding way with the Americans because a credible alternative to Kyoto exists. This will be
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important. I do not have time to elaborate on it now, but I hope that the noble Baroness or other Ministers will ensure that that message reaches the Deputy Prime Minister. It does not seem to have reached him so far.
At the end of the Cold War, a number of people thought that the Atlantic linkage, the relationship with the United States, would matter less; that there would be more inclination for countries to do their own thing. Experience has shown that the relationship matters more than ever in a disordered and fluid world with changed power centres. It matters more also because of the enormous vigour of the US economy. It is taking a break now, but it has driven the entire global system forward with great benefit to millions of people—despite the kind of riots that we saw yesterday—over the past decade.
At the same time, anti-Americanism is latent in Europe. One sees it in a number of aspects and attitudes all around us. In my view, it is directly against UK interests to see that anti-Americanism fostered and inflamed. Avant-garde European policymakers talk about rejecting American culture. In fact, the USA today embodies and conserves some of the best of our values and principles better, possibly, than the European region. I was very interested in a television series organised by Lucy Worsthorne—Old New World—which makes the point that we need to look in America to find the best values that we want to preserve in Europe.
The time has come to rid ourselves of prejudices about America and to renew the UK/US partnership—and indeed the US/European Union partnership—and to back the American concerns, not by dividing NATO but by expanding it, ideally to include the Baltic states. The US needs engagement in Europe as much as we need the United States. Within Europe, that applies to the UK most of all. The government who forget that will not be lightly forgiven. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
6.35 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to debate the close and complex relations between the US and the UK. It enables me to highlight the constructive policies and action of the Government in working with the rest of Europe in developing a mature and more equal relationship with the United States. Like many others in the UK., I and my family have enjoyed living and working in the USA—in our case, off and on for 30 years, from the turbulent times in the 1960s to the technological transformation of the 1990s.
The relations with the USA of individuals and political parties are usually coloured by how they look at American practices and customs. Like many on the left, I could not and cannot understand the highly unequal and ineffective social welfare arrangements in the United States. It was the fear that the UK might move in that direction that first drove me into politics and the Labour Party after returning from the United States.

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Over the years since then, the Labour Party and the Labour governments have not disappointed me or their many supporters. They have not only maintained and strengthened our welfare state but have been proud to associate themselves with the other countries of Europe and the idea of a social Europe with overarching human rights legislation. We can be proud that this is presented to the world as an alternative to that offered by the American state. If anything, this message needs to be made even more strongly by the Government. The views of the Opposition on this point continue to be rather confused.
Perhaps I may now turn to the more exciting and constructive aspects of our relations. Since its inception, the United States has provided to the world a veritable cascade of innovation—social, political, cultural and technological. The British have not only benefited hugely from these developments, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, quite rightly emphasised, but, through our great creativity, we have participated and contributed to them. One thinks of Tom Paine in the 18th century and his seminal contributions to openness in the United States; Charlie Chaplin in films; the inventor of the jet engine; and even the world-wide web. The USA is always generous in its acknowledgements, as I know it is in its reports of hurricane predictions and the superior accuracy of those from the UK Met Office.
A vital aspect of the future of US/UK relations concerns how the UK manages its business and technology policies in the face of the highly competitive practices of the US Government. How is the UK Government working to meet this challenge? My comments are based upon my experience as a scientist, a civil servant and as director of a small company. I declare an interest.
Through increased government support for the UK's involvement in world-leading European science and technology projects—in biology (such as the Genome), in space, in nuclear (such as CERN at Geneva), in plasma physics (such as the European TORUS at Culham), and climate prediction research—UK scientists and industry are competing and collaborating with the US on equal terms. This is essential to ensure a proper international debate and open arrangements for the new scientific problems and technologies, such as climate change and global positioning satellites.
This is also the best way in which we can help the USA, which will ultimately suffer and probably make the wrong decisions if it dominates excessively the world. We have the worrying new dimension of the United States international technology policy with its threatened unilateral abrogation of international treaties of climate, and now arms, control.
In negotiating with the USA on these treaties—I again echo some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Howell—it is very important that the UK Government should emphasise the industrial aspect, and particularly the support of Kyoto by many
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industries such as the major energy corporations. In a recent statement at Nice, a senior technology representative of Shell commented on the fact that it is the constraints of Kyoto which is driving forward the technology.
My second point on this aspect of our relations concerns the dissemination of information, especially that of commercial value. On the one hand, the USA has an admirable policy of openness about government data which greatly benefits the competitiveness of US science and industry. The UK is moving slowly in this direction through international agreements and our new Freedom of Information Act, both, of course, stimulated by the USA. However, in these respects, I believe that we still remain a poor relation, as the Royal Society has noted in its representations to the Government.
On the other hand, the US is using its international law and organisations and its own restrictive practice to inhibit certain uses of scientific data and commerce, and is even having a big impact on agriculture and medicine in developing countries. Compared to the US, there is a different approach to intellectual property rights in Europe and in the rest of the world. The Government need to emphasise and publicise these differences and to win the argument both in this country and abroad.
My third point is that if you talk to US businessmen they will tell you that their government and all their agencies are probably the best in the world at supporting their business. I am afraid that in my many interactions with UK business I have never heard a similar sentiment expressed—although I am well aware of the enormous efforts made by our civil servants in the DTI and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in regard to many projects and companies. To indicate the difference between the UK and the USA, perhaps I may tell your Lordships a story about my dealings with a Minister in the previous government. He admonished me for suggesting that UK agencies should be working in that direction. He said, "That is the sort of thing they do in France and the United States".
So there is more to do by way of enabling our Government and all their agencies to work and to compete with the United States. The present Government have made a good start. We should be confident about their continuing success as we enter a new and difficult phase.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, listening to the interesting speech of the noble and Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, I was reminded of a remark that I greatly enjoyed made by Peter Rodman, now a member of the new administration, to a congressional committee a couple of years ago:
"Rather than joyously falling in behind American leadership, the Europeans are seeking to counter American hegemony".
I believe that the noble and Lord, Lord Howell, would like the British to fall in joyously behind American leadership. I should prefer Britain to be a partner of

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the United States, not a follower—and in order to be a partner with the US we need to be a partner with our European allies.
The first few months of every new US administration are a shock to transatlantic relations. Some of us can remember the strange period when we went from Nixon to Ford, to Carter, to Reagan, all in a period of about seven years, with each new team coming over and saying, "Forget about what our predecessors told you. This is the line you have to follow". The new Bush administration has appointed a mixture of the reliable, the expert and the experienced alongside ideologues, America-firsters and the purely self-interested. It will take us some time to discover which group has emerged on top, and on which issue.
But the first signs are not entirely encouraging. Insistence that the rest of the world should closely follow the rules of international law—as in transatlantic disputes over trade—while asserting that America itself cannot be constrained by rules negotiated with others represents a claim to moral and political supremacy which none of America's allies can accept. The influence of American business over policy seems excessive: on energy and the environment, on military procurement, and on trade. Almost no one in Washington seems to recall Bush's repeated campaign promise that the United States needs to be "humble" in the deployment of its power in order to co-operate with its partners and allies. The message that British Ministers and political leaders need to carry to the new administration is that it is in America's interests to work with its allies and not to take repeated unilateral initiatives and demand that its allies follow.
My noble friend Lady Williams will say more about the new administration's approach to missile defence and the abrogation of the ABM treaty. I merely want to remark on the dangerous language used to dismiss treaties as "relics" when they no longer suit immediate political interests. If all states start to pick and choose which treaties they will continue to observe, we shall really be in trouble. The North Atlantic Treaty is, after all, 23 years older than the ABM treaty. Should that be considered a relic too?
The depth of concern over the missile defence proposals in Europe seems to me entirely rational, partly because we see in Washington a perception of the world as fundamentally hostile to the United States—irreconcilably hostile, composed of rogue states, terrorists etc. We even see, as in one submission to Congress, the idea that selling an American software company to the Dutch suggests that it might fall into the hands of a potentially hostile state.
The noble Lord, Lord Lester, will say more on American attitudes to the International Criminal Court and to international law and human rights. Again, I merely want to note the recklessness with which conservative groups in Washington are now lobbying to wreck the OECD initiative on offshore financial centres—justified on the ideological grounds that lower taxation is an existential good, that tax evasion is therefore justifiable and that the collapse of multilateral efforts to limit tax evasion will force
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democratic European states to move away from welfare spending and public investment. That is deeply irresponsible and aggressively unilateral. I hope that the Bush administration will resist the pressure from its Right.
Every new US administration sparks off articles in the British press about the future of the US/UK special relationship. I wish that the British could get away from the fixation about having a special relationship with the United States. America has several special relationships with other countries: with Israel—perhaps the most special of all; with Mexico—particularly important for a Spanish-speaking former Governor of Texas; with Germany—the relationship which the first President Bush deliberately emphasised as being more important than the US relationship with Britain, as transatlantic partners in leadership.
There was a very special relationship between the US and British governments which grew out of the common experience of the Second World War. But that generation retired 30 years ago. Beyond the shared language, Britain as a country attracts no special respect or attention within Washington, except through the peculiar alliance between the libertarian Right in the United States and in Britain, which attempts to capture the Conservative Party for a free market ideology which is revolutionary but which lacks common sense. What remains of the old special relationship, and of the Cold War privileged position of Britain as the unsinkable aircraft carrier on this side of the Atlantic, is a limited nuclear relationship and a group of intelligence agreements.
The UK/USA Agreement is a relic of a long-lost age: signed by the US and Britain in the immediate post-war years in the face of an evident enemy, when Britain was still an imperial and global power. Fifty-four years later, 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is no longer a justification for Britain to accept an agreement that gives American intelligence agencies extra-territorial rights on British soil without any form of accountability to the British Parliament. That is a negation of British sovereignty far more direct than the limitations on sovereignty which Conservatives complain of as flowing from our membership of the EU.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, made much of the dangers of the current European defence proposals. These are modest proposals to fulfil modest Petersberg tasks. They are long overdue and they respond to American demands for the European allies to carry a larger share of the common defence burden, repeated over decades. It is absurd and against British interests for lain Duncan Smith and others from the Euro-sceptic Right to go round Washington think-tanks and congressional committees attempting to persuade the Americans that this is a dangerous innovation and should be resisted. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, says that the United States is confused. Well, his party is helping to add to the confusion.
It is rational for the United States to run down its forces in Europe, perhaps even to withdraw them over the next 10 years. Yesterday I read an interesting piece

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on how President Eisenhower did indeed foresee that the United States would withdraw all its forces from Europe by 1962—which was entirely rational in his terms. The European region, apart from the former Yugoslavia, is thankfully now a zone of peace which no longer needs a major US military contribution. European states should be able to manage the security of their own region on their own, transforming NATO into a broader security organisation. We cannot preserve in aspic the NATO of the 1950s. If we attempt to do so, NATO itself will become a museum piece.
So I believe in a US/UK partnership with an active British engagement. But it must be an equal partnership. It must therefore be a partnership in which we are solidly rooted within the European pillar of the alliance and can therefore make our voice heard.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether he can confirm whether or not I heard him correctly. Did he say that there are significant figures in the United States who are advocating, or justifying, tax evasion? If I am correct, would the noble Lord be kind enough to give the House some examples?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, I recommend that the noble Lord reads the article by Amity Shlaes in yesterday's Financial Times which dealt precisely with this subject and a number of articles published in the International Herald Tribune, especially one by Reginald Dale which I particularly remember over the past two weeks. There is, indeed, a very active lobby in Washington that wishes the United States to sabotage the current OECD initiative. The argument is precisely that it is entirely open and acceptable for corporate bodies to avoid paying taxation by operating through off-shore financial—
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I thought that the noble Lord used the word "evasion". However, if it was "avoidance", I shall withdraw my intervention. Can the noble Lord confirm which word he means?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, we could have much discussion on the issue at another time. The line between avoidance and evasion depends partly on how international regulations are drawn. That is precisely why the United States wishes the current initiative to collapse.
6.50 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for initiating today's debate. In a sense, I was puzzled as to why he did so. It reminded me of what Lord Whitelaw once said about stirring up apathy. I do not believe that there was any problem that I could have imagined between our relations with the United States, or as regards the US/European relationship. However, by talking incessantly about there being problems, the party opposite is making the situation worse—I mean the party opposite, not the party oblique. I have learned this little bit of geometry.
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I turn to the activities of the Shadow Secretary of State for defence and foreign affairs in going to Washington and saying things that are really not the kind of comments that those in opposition parties should make when they are abroad. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, put it much more politely than I would have done. Had we made such remarks when we were in opposition, the Conservative Party would have denounced us for betraying the nation, and so on. I believe that the Conservatives have confused the American Government about the role of the rapid reaction force. They have exaggerated its importance and then asked them to disown it.
The American administration are new; and all new administrations have a learning curve. As yet, the Bush administration are very low on the learning curve. They have not sorted out their policies, even those regarding the national missile defence. A first proper statement was made only yesterday because, quite rightly, there was a defence review—and we do not even know the results of that review. The administration are tentatively thinking about national missile defence. As far as I know, every time that anything has been said from across the water about national missile defence, the British Government have welcomed it. We have not opposed it; indeed, we are willing to consider it.
Therefore, I do not know why this alarm and despondency is being spread around by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I do not believe that there is any problem about national missile defence, as between us and the Americans. I also believe that there is no problem with the rapid reaction force. Again, there are clear accounts of where the joint planning will be carried out—for example, whether it will be at national or at NATO level. There was a long article on the subject in the Financial Times just two days ago, which I recommend to noble Lords. I do not have time to go into all the details involved.
We must stop exciting things that are actually not worth disturbing. The relations between the US and the UK are good; indeed, they continue to be good. What we need is a little cross-party co-operation in order to keep them good, rather than this unilateral attempt to go across the Atlantic and undermine, so to speak, the stance of the British Government who are in a difficult position. I shall tell noble Lords why I believe that to be so important. Given globalisation, about which the noble Lord, Lord Howell, knows a great deal, it is most important that relations between the United States and the European Union should not in any way be derailed. We shall need much co-operation in the forthcoming round of the WTO talks. We cannot fall apart. If we do so, the pace of globalisation will be altered. It is not in our interests at any stage to start exaggerating the differences between the United States and the European Union or those between the US and the United Kingdom.
If we stop the process of WTO enlargement, expansion and deepening, there are forces in the United States, in Europe and elsewhere that do not like globalisation. They will take the opportunity to stop the process. As I have said several times, I strongly

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believe that globalisation is the best hope for the poor of the world. Therefore, this is more important than narrow party interest. The US and the EU must stay on very good terms with one another, despite all the quarrels that they have about hormone beef, bananas, and many other matters. We must stay together.
The United Kingdom has a very good role to play precisely because it has strong ties with the US—I shall not use the expression "special relationship"—and because we are an important member of the European Union. Therefore, we have formed a sort of bridge. Again, I believe that we should emphasise the variety of ways in which the UK Government can play a crucial role in building the bridge and in keeping the US and EU glued together in a trade partnership. That will be the most important element for the WTO. If that is lost, things will get very bad. The world was once globalised, and then it de-globalised; the result was the First World War. We cannot afford any kind of battles now because the situation is much worse. I believe that it is best to emphasise friendship and cooperation rather than alarm and despondency.
I should like to make a few further remarks. I turn, first, to slowdown. I do not quite agree with the noble Lord about the US slowdown. The first quarter figures of US GDP show that perhaps there has not been a slowdown. Again, I am not normally a friend of central bankers, but I believe that Alan Greenspan has read the situation correctly in this instance. His aggressive interest rate cutting, somewhat followed by the MPC here, was a good move. The European Central Bank can do whatever it can do; that is not the issue. However, I believe that the current monetary policy of the United States has succeeded in averting a slowdown. That is good.
I see from the Clock that my time is running out, so I shall conclude by making one point. Yes, there is a good deal of common culture between us and them. I welcome that fact. However, as friends, we should also be critical in those values; for example, I do not believe that we share the President's love for capital punishment. I certainly do not share it. In terms of human rights protection, we should point out to the US that that is a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is our right to say so. I shall stop on that kind of conciliatory note.
6.59 p.m.
Lord Howe of Aberavon: My Lords, it is interesting to follow the noble Lord and to identify the very large area of common ground between him and my noble friend Lord Howell as regards his opening speech. The noble Lord was quite right to warn against hysteria and over-reaction, especially to a new government in their post-campaign stage. He was quite right also to stress the huge importance of the transatlantic inter-continental partnership. I would not, of course, endorse everything said by the noble Lord, Lord Desai; indeed, he would be astonished if I were to do so. However, I should like to start off on a conciliatory note.
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I move on to my central point, which really amplifies one made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. I refer to the so-called "special relationship", about which the noble Lord, Lord Desai, also spoke. It is of huge importance for us not to mislead ourselves by having false expectations of that phrase, as is so often the case. Lest that should seem unfriendly, I should stress that it is certainly not my intention to be so.
I have many interests to declare. I am on the advisory councils of two American financial institutions, one university and one law firm. They all emphasise the links between our two countries. Indeed, the law firm link is one of the strongest because of the strength of the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition which we share and which has brought great benefit to many other parts of the world. Again, the English language and our common culture are of enormous importance. There are other matters that are of diminishing importance, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, rightly identified. The nuclear relationship, which is crucial to us for as long as it lasts, is of diminishing, if any, significance to the United States. The intelligence relationship is much more important to us than it is to the United States.
I want to emphasise that none of these links gives, or should be allowed to give, us any assurance of a huge special clout in our relationship with the United States on major issues which are of importance to its national interest. The early warning sign which led to some understanding of that occurred way back in the Suez crisis. Colleagues in the more recent administration of which I was a member will well remember the impact upon our position of what happened in Grenada when there was no doubt whatsoever that not only was there no effective consultation but it was consciously avoided. The special relationship did not count for anything then. Therefore, it is important for us not to overrate our own standing, as we may be tempted to do.
The real truth about the transatlantic UK/US relationship was well identified way back in 1962 when Harold Macmillan set out in a long pamphlet his reasons for launching the first attempt to join the European Community. He stated:
"If we remain outside the European Community, it seems to me inevitable that the realities of power would compel our American friends to attach increasing weight to the views and interests of the Community, and to pay less attention to our own".
He stated that if we followed that path we would lose influence both in Europe and in Washington.
The same point has been carefully and sensibly repeated not by all American ambassadors to this country but certainly by Ambassador Raymond Seitz, who emphasised the central point that,
"America's transatlantic policy is European in scope. It is not a series of individual or compartmentalised bilateral policies … There is a simple observation that if Britain's voice is less influential in Paris or Bonn, it is likely to be less influential in Washington".
That seems to me to be the central argument we must understand which shapes the hugely important and continuing UK/US relationship.

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There are, of course, times when this impression appears to have been altered significantly. Sometimes particular statesmen in Europe acquire a standing in the United States which appears to shift the intercontinental perception. I suppose someone like Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who was in office for years, by his sheer experience enhanced German input during his period in office. There is no doubt whatsoever that the enduring experience, achievement and personality of my noble friend Lady Thatcher certainly heightened Britain's impact during her period in office.
Some might have cherished the illusion that the arrival of the present Prime Minister at No. 10 heralded the development of a new personal relationship, partly because of the Blair/Clinton relationship and partly because of the sheer scale of his electoral success. However, expectations of that kind have been increasingly disappointed on both sides of the Atlantic. I was struck by an observation of the American author, Owen Harris, in an article in his journal, The National Interest, where he describes the Prime Minister as a kind of British Gorbachev,
"in that he believes that statesmanship consists of taking flying leaps into the future without any clear idea of where one will land".
That is paralleled by the rather extraordinary way in which he set off in almost unseemly pursuit of President Putin in Russia and the fluency with which he talks of the European Union as a super-power. One has to be realistic when trying to build these relationships.
I emphasise the most important point in the American/European relationship which we need to develop—here to some extent I differ from my noble friend—and that is not to point to the difficulties in developing the security and defence initiative and not to identify the insurmountable problems of developing what was originally an Anglo-French scheme for a rapid reaction force, but to emphasise the overwhelming need for us to succeed in that in a way that is acceptable to the United States.
My noble friend was entirely right to draw attention to the points which are causing concern in the United States. However, as my noble friend Lord Hurd pointed out in a speech about a month ago, if we can develop that project it will enable us above all to galvanise the quality and quantity of European input into its own defence. There is tremendous American interest in that. Of course we must do it in a fashion that is NATO friendly and which can be made to work within the alliance. The command structures and the emergency plans must be worked out. There must be an agreement which will placate the Turks.
The project is exactly the kind of mechanism through which we could and should fulfil our role in the transatlantic relationship, using the United States/United Kingdom relationship to strengthen the capacity of Europe to come together. I sometimes despair of the extent to which our European partners fall short of our expectations in that respect. However, that is no reason to give up and conclude that we
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should abandon the project because the Americans do not like it. It is in their and our interests that it should succeed and it is an important facet in the US/UK relationship within our European framework.
7.6 p.m.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the wise words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, with which I entirely agree. I am delighted by the prospect of his being joined in this House by his much better half. We shall soon hear her independent wise counsel.
I cannot be accused of anti-Americanism. Relations between my immediate family and the United States are close and intimate. We have all benefited from graduate education there, thanks to the generosity of American foundations. I have returned there again and again. When Roy Jenkins was Home Secretary and I was his Special Adviser in 1974, we visited the States together to learn about equality legislation, freedom of information legislation and policy on criminal justice.
What we learned was valuable. It was derived from a public philosophy shared on both sides of the Atlantic by those committed to democratic government, the effective protection of human rights and the rule of law, internationally and nationally. It was a philosophy exemplified by the way in which great Justices such as John Marshall, Holmes, Harlan, Brandeis and Cardozo developed judicial review and the values of the American Bill of Rights and English common law, protecting the individual and minorities against the tyranny of majorities and the abuse of power by public officials.
Those civic values continue to inspire liberal democrats of whatever party everywhere and are shared by our European allies. But the vicissitudes of elective, politics have given effect at present to a different set of values in the governing class in the United States—those exemplified by President Bush's administration and by the British Conservative Party under current management. Their values include a troubling failure to recognise that the most pressing and difficult problems that beset the world do not respect national frontiers; that the problems of nuclear proliferation, over-population, energy depletion, environmental degradation, racism, terrorism, drug trafficking, organised crime and abuses of human rights require supranational co-operation and supervision and effective international safeguards and remedies.
Nothing exemplifies the gulf between the two public philosophies better than the debates about the International Criminal Court. President Bush's administration refuse to ratify the statute of the court and the British Conservative Party bizarrely opposes UK ratification unless and until the United States ratifies the statute.
There are enlightened and informed voices in the United States that need to be heeded. The American Bar Association has called for the States to ratify and to enact appropriate domestic legislation. Mr Monroe

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Leigh, former Legal Adviser to the State Department and to the Defence Department, wrote on 21st February to the Chairman of the House Committee on International Relations to rebut the views expressed by a number of distinguished former Cabinet officers. His letter was supported by 10 former presidents of the American Society of International Law including its honorary president and former United States judge on the International Court of Justice, Stephen Schwebel, who tried to teach me what I know of public international law at Harvard Law School.
The joint letter explained that the testimony opposed to the creation of the International Criminal Court,
"suffers from a fatal misconception as to fundamental principles of international law. This is the assumption that if the opponents of the ICC succeed in preventing the International Criminal Court from coming into existence, or even in preventing the United States from becoming a party, they will have saved American officials and service members from trial in a foreign court if charged with one of the crimes within the limited jurisdiction of the proposed new court: i.e., genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity".
The letter continues:
"Seldom in the course of public discussion of a great national issue have so many great and good former officials been so misinformed about fundamental principles of international law. Without some international agreement to the contrary, the American airmen shot clown, for example, while carrying out a bombing mission over foreign territory, will under customary international law be subject to the territorial jurisdiction of the target state.
The point we make is that unless there is agreement to the contrary, every high American official, whether military or civilian, when that official enters the territory of a foreign sovereign, is subject to its jurisdiction if he or she violates its laws. This is true now; it was true when the twelve distinguished signatories served their country in the past. It will be true in the future whether officially serving the United States abroad or not. The same is true, incidentally, for every American tourist travelling abroad and reciprocally for every foreign tourist visiting the United States.
We believe the American negotiators have done an outstandingly effective job in negotiating a Treaty which protects both the national security interests of the United States and the individual rights of American nationals, including those in military service abroad.
We dissent only from the continuing attempts of the U.S. negotiators to obtain agreement for the exemption of nationals of the United States and of other non-parties from the jurisdiction of the proposed court. This exceptional demand has been repeatedly rejected by our principal allies in NATO, many of whom also have troops at risk outside their homelands. The persistence of the United States in pressing this demand for exemption, can only exacerbate relations with our allies and undermine the cohesion of the alliance".
After some further argument, the letter concluded that,
"if and when the new Court exercises its jurisdiction it must do so subject to a list of due process protections for the accused which are at least as comprehensive as the American Bill of Rights—in certain cases even more detailed and specific.
For all these reasons we believe the Treaty is consistent with the security interests of the United States and the due process interests of U.S. citizens. Accordingly, we as current and former Presidents of the American Society of International Law (as well as the current Honorary President)—but speaking only in our personal capacities—favour U.S. acceptance of the Treaty without change in the text".
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Let us hope that this wise and well-informed advice is heeded by American Republicans and British Conservatives, in the interests of the international rule of law and effective protection of the peoples of our troubled and dangerous world.
7.13 p.m.
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for initiating this most important debate in which we can examine crucial elements of our relationship with the US. In that relationship, I am clear that the United Kingdom operates on the world stage as a leading and fully paid up member of the European Union. Yet, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, I am not defensive about calling it a "special relationship". I believe that we have a cast-iron, industrial-strength relationship—or perhaps we should call it a "partnership"—with the United States and that we shall always continue to do so. My daughter's recent wedding in San Francisco's City Hall has given me a whole new take on the phrase "special relationship".
As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, our shared history creates the strong ties of kinship between Britain and North America which are an immense asset to us in the modern world. That has been recognised and acted on by our Government. As the United States and Britain, we are each other's closest allies, but our value as an ally to our friends in Washington is in direct proportion to our influence with our partners in Europe.
I do not accept, and never have done in my 15 years in elected European politics, that our European identity diminishes our Britishness; neither, I believe, does it diminish our ties with America—in fact, quite the opposite. Yet there are those who would seek to drive a wedge between ourselves and our European partners in the dynamics of that cast-iron relationship that I believe we have with the United States. Indeed, some Eurosceptics now argue that Britain's destiny lies outside Europe as part of the English-speaking world and as a member of NAFTA. The reason that over 4,000 US companies have located here in Britain is because they want to export to Europe. If they wanted only to sell to NAFTA, they would have stayed at home. Our strong relationship with our EU partners enhances the special relationship with the United States.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell, sought to raise as a problem the question of European defence. I disagree with the thrust of his argument although I accept his remarks about the anxieties which may be prevalent in the US at present. As we know, it was agreed at Nice to give the European Union the capacity to conduct military operations in response to international crises when NATO is not engaged. The report agreed at Nice explicitly states that this does not involve the creation of a European army. Therefore this latest myth—that the European defence will weaken NATO and undermine our relationship with the United States—needs

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exploding. The fact is that better European capabilities will strengthen the contribution of the European countries to NATO as well as the EU.
I touch on another aspect of our US/UK relations. There are those politicians who claim to have Britain's best interests at heart. Yet we are told that they have recently been criticising—some might even say bad-mouthing—this country to anyone in the United States who will listen to them. As we are all too aware, the tourism industry in some of our regions is under severe pressure and jobs are under great threat because of the foot and mouth outbreak. I chair the West Midlands Regional Cultural Consortium. This week we received a report of the current difficulties that face the tourism industry in my region. It makes sober reading. We need our American visitors to keep coming to our great attractions and our historic sites such as Stratford and Warwick Castle. Those visits have become part of the American experience in our country. The last thing this country needs is political representatives, who should know better, warning off American visitors, claiming that our countryside is closed, our food is not safe and our country is washed up.
Finally, I share the unease expressed by many noble Lords about some aspects of the first 100 days of the Bush administration. As well as the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol, there has also been a rolling back of work-safety measures as well as policy developments which favour large corporations at the expense of the little man and woman. These measures are not good news to many of America's European allies. But we must also realise—here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell—that US policymakers have their own frustrations with some of those allies. I refer, for instance, to US perceptions of foot-dragging on enlargement; and the distinctly underwhelming military capabilities of the EU countries, as evidenced during the Kosovo air campaign, to name but two factors. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, Britain and America need to open up an even stronger dialogue to overcome those points of difference about global norms and governance. I am optimistic that there is good will on both sides for that to happen.
7.20 p.m.
Lord Wright of Richmond: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for giving the House this opportunity to debate perhaps the most crucial aspect of the Government's current foreign policy: namely, our relations with the new United States administration.
Those who have heard me speak in previous foreign affairs debates will not be surprised if I concentrate on a subject that deserves more attention than it sometimes receives in the House—the situation in the Middle East, and most particularly the highly dangerous situation in the Arab occupied territories of Palestine.
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Having spent two years of my diplomatic service career in Washington exchanging views on the Middle East on a daily basis with the United States administration, I know how closely our two governments have always kept in touch about that part of the world, which has such vital implications for our mutual interests, even if our approaches have not always been closely in line.
I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us about the more recent contacts and discussions between our two administrations at official and ministerial level on the current situation in the Middle East since President Bush was inaugurated. The House has had several opportunities to hear from the Government and to debate the respective policies of the United States and British Governments towards Saddam Hussein and the question of sanctions against Iraq. We also had a useful opportunity last week to discuss the current situation in Iran. I therefore hope that the Minister will be able, on the basis of contacts and discussions with Washington, to give us some reasons to hope that the United States administration is fully seized of the serious dangers in the current situation in the occupied territories and that it is readier to use its influence in the Arab-Israel dispute than it seemed to be in the first few weeks after the inauguration.
I hope that the Minister might also be able to tell us something about Mr Shimon Peres' current diplomatic efforts and give us her assessment of whether they are likely to bring some alleviation to the suffering of both sides from the violence that has erupted since Mr Ariel Sharon's infamous and provocative visit to the Dome of the Rock last September.
The Minister and her predecessor have reiterated on several occasions in the past few years the view of Her Majesty's Government that Israeli settlement policy constitutes a serious infringement of international law. I hope that she can tell us something of our exchanges with the United States administration on this subject, given the appalling infringement of human rights that the continued presence and expansion of those settlements has caused for their Palestinian neighbours. I have often wondered whether those American Jews who become Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories have any concept of the illegality of the settlements that they are helping to expand or of the real dangers that Israeli settlement policy under successive governments poses for them. As long as those settlements continue to expand, what sort of future can their children or their grandchildren expect?
We should not underestimate the deep resentment and anger that the repeated ill treatment and expropriation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is causing among even the most moderate Arabs in Palestine. Mr Sharon is on record as saying that the security of Israel is his first priority. That is understandable. It must be a matter of deep concern to all Israel's friends and supporters. However, I question whether Israel's security is likely to be enhanced by the policies and the systematic breach of human rights that the Israeli Government have been pursing since Mr Sharon became Prime Minister. Is it not time that

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Mr Sharon's supporters in Washington—who are the only people who can exert any effective influence on him—tried to persuade him that there is no greater threat to Israel or to her settlers, now and in the future, than the continued expansion and development of settlements in the occupied territories and the wanton destruction of Palestinian farms and orchards, often under the slender pretext that olive trees, many of which have taken generations to become profitable, are being used to hide terrorists?
It is worth noting that there have been a few encouraging signs in recent weeks. First, the United States Government have been unusually prepared to describe the recent Israeli action against Gaza as excessive and disproportionate. Secondly, Yasser Arafat is now showing genuine determination to try to reduce and restrain the violence on the Palestinian side. I strongly believe that unless and until the Israeli Government take the admittedly difficult political decision to Freeze any further Jewish settlement of the Occupied Territories, and, hopefully, to withdraw, there is little hope that Yasser Arafat's calls for moderation can be effective.
I shall be interested to hear the Government's views on those issues and whether they see any prospect of getting Washington to persuade the Israeli Government that their present settlement policy is doing nothing to further security in the West Bank and Gaza, or even in Israel itself. I believe that it is having the opposite effect. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, emphasised the importance of resisting the tendency to anti-Americanism. In the same vein, I hope that my remarks will not be regarded as anti-Israel. I sincerely believe that Israel's own interests argue for a change of policy.
7.27 p.m.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wright. I enormously respect his intellect and his expertise. However, I shall not speak about the same subjects as he has dealt with. I shall talk about two very different matters—Kyoto and European defence.
We all read the papers over the weekend. The polls seemed to show that, in the eyes of the American public, the President has made a good start. I suspect that they like a man who does not flannel and who says what he believes rather than what he imagines people might want to hear. We should be pleased, because President Bush's economic policies, particularly his determination to cut taxes and to cut government spending as a proportion of GDP, offer the best hope of preventing America drifting into recession, to the disadvantage of us all.
However, there are some dangers. An EU wedded to a mixture of socialism and corporate capitalism and an America imbued with the spirit of free enterprise are not natural soul mates. Disagreements could fuel the long-standing European resentment of American economic and military dominance, which in turn could encourage America into a damaging isolationism—although I sincerely hope that it will not.
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There have been plenty of recent examples of anti-Americanism here as well as in Europe, warping judgment and souring debate. It surfaced in the other place, where some truly infantile remarks have been made about the President and Kyoto. In 1997, the Senate voted 95 to nil against even considering ratification of a Kyoto deal that exempted 80 per cent of the world. Today, Democrats and Republicans alike would be even less likely to give the green light to Kyoto, because, following spectacular economic growth in the past few years, it would mean America having to cut emissions by more than 40 per cent, which could not be done without catastrophic effects on the American and the world economy.
It is absurd to talk of the President giving way to pressure from the oil industry when in fact he was facing up to the political arithmetic and recognising that to attempt to implement Kyoto when America is facing an economic downturn and an energy shortage would be an act of supreme folly.
Therefore, now that the President has faced facts, everyone can get to work in America to develop an alternative energy strategy, allowing for growth and conservation. Now that the administration has made clear that it is not turning its back on the whole issue of global warming but will attend future talks on the subject, what is needed in Europe is less self-righteous anger and more appreciation of America's difficulties and encouragement to her to find a way forward.
Neither has the proposal for a European rapid reaction force helped relations between Europe and America or, thanks to the Prime Minister's leading role in the matter, relations between Britain and America. Shortly after the initiative was unveiled, Mr Cook insisted that,
"the American President, Defence Secretary and Secretary of State have all warmly endorsed the initiative".
Since then, he has continued to assert that the administration is quite happy. However, when he says that, he is inviting us to ignore completely statements of concern made time and time again by people in authority in America. Concern there indeed is; confusion there indeed is; and it has not been generated by shadow Ministers visiting Washington.
I remind the House that within days of Mr Cook's original statement, the then Defence Secretary, Mr Cohen, was making plain his concerns. His successor, Donald Rumsfeld, has repeatedly raised worries that the rapid reaction force will "endanger NATO", "inject instability" and "put at risk something special".
Although our Government have asserted repeatedly that the force would not be independent of NATO and would not act without the agreement of NATO, and although Mr Blair personally assured the President at their meeting in America that there would be a joint command and that the planning would take place within NATO, all those statements have been flatly contradicted not only in statements by European

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leaders but by the plain words of Annex VII of the Presidency report on European security and defence policy after Nice. I remind the House that that refers to,
"the development of consultation and co-operation between the EU and NATO in full respect of the autonomy of EU decision-making".
to,
"the EU keeping NATO informed of the general progress of an operation";
and to,
"the entire chain of command having to remain under the political control and strategic direction of the EU throughout the operation".
I have no doubt that the Americans would like the countries of Europe to pay more for their own defence and peace-keeping. But they know full well that France's policy has long been to undermine American influence in Europe and that many leaders in the EU believe, as does President Chirac, that—I quote the President—
"the EU cannot fully exist until it possesses autonomous capacity for action in the field of defence".
It is a sad and sorry tale. One can only hope that wiser counsels will prevail and that this or another government will work to bring about a change in what at present is bound to damage NATO. However, currently things seem to be moving quickly in the wrong direction with, first, the appointment of a general from Finland—outside NATO—to chair the EU's permanent military committee; secondly, the French Chief of Staff, General Kelche, saying that the force must be declared operational by the end of the year, even if agreement is not reached with NATO, and that it must have its own planning staff; and, thirdly, General Wesley Clark reporting to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that talks are currently taking place back-stage in the EU in relation to the EU considering refusing to share crucial information with NATO and having its own command and staff organisations. No one can be happy about any of that.
7.35 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, although I welcome the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, in tabling this Motion, I believe, as he knows from my views about the matter, that it would have been more valuable to consider the relationship, and the developments in that relationship, between the United States and the European Union. In my experience, today that is increasingly the way that most Americans consider us—that is, as part of the European Union.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that a great feeling of affinity exists between the United States and Europe. Obviously, we have areas of mutual interest. However, I believe it is fair to say that, although we emphasise the special relationship between our country and the United States, other parts of Europe are also expressing their special relationship with the United States. Of course, we have the additional advantage of sharing with the US a common language and a common background. In
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particular, the basis of American democracy and civil rights lay in the knowledge of, and often the reaction against, what had developed here.
The Library of this House obtained for me the tabulation of population by selected ancestry group and region from the American census. The American census was taken in 1990 and the figures were collated. Another census took place recently, but the figures will not all be collated and published until 2002. However, according to the information supplied to the Library by the American Embassy, it is not thought that many changes will occur, apart from a considerable increase in the Hispanic ancestry group.
It is interesting to look at those figures because it gives us an idea of the basis for the affinity between America and Europe. It will not surprise some people to know that by a long way the largest ancestry group is the German one. In the census, the figure for German ancestry was found to be 58 million, far out-distancing, for example, Italian ancestry at 14.5 million and Irish ancestry at, surprisingly, nearly 39 million.
So far as concerns our country, very few people put down their ancestry as British but many more listed it as English. There were also entries for Scottish, Scottish-Irish, which I presume to be the Ulster connotation, and Welsh ancestry. If those figures are added together, they do not begin to reach the figure for German ancestry. However, added together, they create the second largest group at approximately 47 million people.
When one looks at the table, one sees that there is a relationship with every country in Europe. From Scandinavia to Russia down to the Mediterranean, all countries are represented in the ancestral groups of the United States. That, of course, is the basis of the great importance of the union and alliance between North America—indeed, the Americas—and Europe.
Perhaps I may address the question of security. Years ago when I was the defence spokesman for the Liberal Party in another place and when I received valuable advice from the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, who, in those days, was not in the House but gave me guidance, we used to regard the Atlantic Alliance as having two pillars: the North American pillar, which was already established, and the European pillar, which everybody hoped would be established. Eventually, the goal became the achievement of a balance between the two pillars; they would both contribute in important ways to the security of Europe and the United States. Although the American pillar is in place, we have singularly failed in Europe, whether as independent sovereign states or as the European Union, to create that second pillar. It is high time we did so.
My second point relates to trade. The EU is eventually going to become—indeed, it already is—a huge economic power. It will in time rival the Americans, although there is no rivalry as such about it. It is essential to establish the basis of the relationship between the United States and the Americas, as she seeks to create a free trade area in her

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region. We have created a free trade area in Europe. The chances of success for a peaceful, established and secure future for the world depend on the alliance between the United States, which will lead in the Americas, and the European Union, which will lead in this region. Our contribution must be to ensure that the European Union is effective. If we fail to support the basis of the relationship and the affinities that exist between the United States and Europe, we shall have let the world down.
7.42 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Howell for initiating this most interesting debate. I am also grateful to the unknown person who has conferred "Lordship" on me!
Both the Foreign and Commonwealth Office review and the defence policy review for this year recognise that Britain's strategic partnership with NATO remains fundamental to the interests of Britain and the United States and that NATO and the continuing engagement of the United States in Europe continue to be the primary means of ensuring British and European collective security and defence.
With the strong support of Harry Truman, General George Marshall, Dean Atcheson and our own Ernest Bevin, NATO was formed after the Soviet Union had rejected the Marshall Plan for herself and her subject peoples, had invaded Czechoslovakia and had been prevented from seizing Berlin by the 323-day American and British airlift. Since that shield was created, we have had peace. NATO guaranteed the marriage of defence and détente. West Germany was brought into NATO as early as 1954.
I had the honour to serve for a time in SOE instructing and briefing a special force, the Jedburghs, which was created to jump into occupied France before, during and after D-Day to support and direct the efforts of the Resistance in Europe. Many later operated against the Japanese in the Far East. The Jedburghs were three-man teams—two officers and a wireless operator—of which one was British, one was French, Belgian or Dutch and one was American. We have met at intervals ever since and we are still close friends.
NATO has created rather similar bonds. Lord Ismay once called it:
"The decent club where friends can fight and even agree".
I have gone on having that relationship with Americans throughout my life. However, we should never take friends for granted. There is now, as the noble Lord. Lord Hooson, said with far more detail than I can offer, a very significant Hispanic element in the United States. It is, however, largely a Latin American Hispanic element, which has no special affinity with the Anglo-Saxon or even the European world and which shares neither language nor legal and other traditions with us. The growing number of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese Americans look to the Pacific, not across the Atlantic. Both their economic interests and the potential threat
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from a new and aggressive superpower lie there. This is not therefore the moment to take American support for, or even interest in, our policies for granted. The special relationship, though not unique, does exist, but it is being tested now, not least by the Russian strategy in Europe and the evident wish of both the French and perhaps the Germans to assert the autonomy of the new European force.
I shall not cite the abundant evidence—my noble friend Lord Waddington did so to great effect—in the various Council annexes of the EU intention to plan, direct and operate independently of NATO. Unfortunately, those who created the text did not take the admirable advice that was given when the Atlantic Treaty was framed; namely, that it should be,
"written in such simple language that even a milkman in Omaha can understand it".
I fear that the newly appointed Finnish head of the EU military committee also seems to suffer from a certain lack of understanding.
What concerns me, and is likely to concern Washington, is the quiet, unpublicised and virtually unacknowledged special relationship that the EU high representative, Mr Solana, is building under the umbrella of the common strategy on Russia with Russia precisely in the area of European security for which the special status of Russia with NATO under the Founding Act was designed. Solana has proudly claimed that that is a very intensive and important relationship. At the EU summit in Paris in October 2000 the Russian press reported that Solana, Presidents Chirac and Putin and Señor Prodi approved a document in which Russia expressed readiness to co-operate with the EU on defence and security; they thought that it was important to create a single security system in Europe. The causes that gave rise to NATO no longer existed. Ivanov, the Russian spokesman, added that the EU and Russia share the same views on the American proposals relating to the ABM treaty and the NMR.
The Minister of State did not, when asked, remember anything about that agreement but later wrote to confirm that we had been consulted. He said that it was a declaration and,
"a purely political text which imposes no legal obligation on either the EU or Russia—it meets the objectives that we should seek to involve potential partners in European crisis management, not least Russia, by engaging in dialogue on European security issues".
It was published as a joint declaration but does not appear among any of the annexes to the Treaty of Nice.
The declaration states—I quote only part of it—that:
"In order to give substance to the strategic partnership between the European Union and the Russian Federation … we decided to institute specific consultation on security and defence matters at the appropriate level and in the appropriate format".
It stated that an aim was:
"To develop strategic dialogue on matters particularly in regard to security which have implications for the Russian Federation and the European Union".

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It also referred to the aim to:
"Extend the scope of regular consultation at expert level on the issues of disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation, and promote cooperation in operational crisis management".
The implementation of those decisions will be a priority.
Apart from crisis management, those are precisely the issues for which NATO created the Founding Act to provide a mechanism for discussion with the Russians. The EU is thus enabling Russia both to make NATO's role redundant and to open a door for Russia to achieve access to intelligence and strategic planning that NATO knows how to contain but which the EU does not. Russia is entitled to extend her influence in Europe in every way in which she can, but does anyone doubt that her object is to bring about the withdrawal of the US from Europe and to frustrate US policy? She will use the relationship with the CFSP and with Solana to advance her view on the NMR as a European view. Arms control and non-proliferation are on the agenda. Robert Schuman said of NATO when the Atlantic Treaty was signed that:
"Only a potential aggressor would have any grounds for considering itself threatened by the Treaty".
I submit that that is relevant to the present Chinese and Russian opposition to the NMR, which is also a defensive mechanism, as I believe Her Majesty's Government have recognised.
What will be on the agenda at the next EU-Russia summit in Moscow in May, and what happened at Stockholm? The Russians will lose no opportunity to drive a wedge between the EU and the US. Can we afford to allow Mr Solana's initiative to pre-empt or to commit us to—or at the least to associate us, as a member of the EU, with—policies that could have as a result the undermining of NATO? Who will be representing the EU, and therefore us, in the discussions about arms control and arms proliferation with a country which is still selling nuclear weapons and know-how to potential aggressor countries and which has still not disposed of one ounce of the 40 tonnes of chemical weapons that it holds?
It will not be surprising if the US—without whose support, particularly in the realm of intelligence, we shall be in great difficulty—should begin to consider withdrawal from the affairs of Europe. Already the same people who led the campaign against the stationing of SS-20s in Europe many years ago are beginning to emerge once more. We have no Sakharov today to warn us.
7.50 p.m.
Baroness Maddock: My Lords, as someone who has had an active interest in energy efficiency and the role it plays in protecting our environment for over 30 years, in this important debate I want to concentrate my comments on how our relationship with the US can proceed in the light not only of the breakdown in the climate change talks in The Hague last year, but also of the more recent comments by President Bush on the Kyoto Protocol.
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I start from a belief that everyone should recognise the fragility of our environment and the impossibility of maintaining current lifestyles without damaging it. I believe that governments have a responsibility to set a framework to enable individuals to respond to the need to reduce pollution and so protect our planet. But as has already been alluded to by my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, such matters cannot be contained within national boundaries. We therefore need to work with others to introduce clear environmental objectives into all international institutions to ensure that we have action across the globe.
There have been climate cycles in the past. But there is evidence accumulating to suggest that the changes we have been experiencing are occurring faster and on a larger scale than any climate cycle in recent times. The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now says that scientists are convinced about global warming by a majority of 98 to two or 99 to one. It is unfortunate that President Bush seems to agree with the one to two per cent. Since the US, with barely five per cent of the world's population, is responsible for one-quarter of its carbon dioxide emissions, that is serious. One of the most devastating effects of global warning is the threat of flooding. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that one of the areas under threat is Miami—the state that returned President Bush to the presidency.
When Kyoto was originally negotiated in 1997, each industrialised country agreed to meet reduction targets, based on 1990 emission levels, and set the date of 2010. The world target was 5.2 per cent. The US agreed to reduce by 7 per cent and the UK by 12.5 per cent. Since that time many of the major players have produced their programmes as to how they intend to meet their targets. We produced ours last autumn and agreed to cut greenhouse gases by 23 per cent. But as has already been alluded to, the previous US administration did not endorse any similar type of programme. Now there is a forecast in the US that there will be a 40 per cent rise in its emissions by 2010.
Many people have spoken about the special relationship between the UK and the US and how it has changed over the years. But with others in the Chamber I believe that, in the matter of Kyoto, our relationship with Europe is important in trying to bring about a change. I am not saying that the EU can save the world. But it is big enough to start the cycle of negotiation turning in another direction on Kyoto.
I want to highlight three main areas. First, President Bush believes that implementing the Kyoto Protocol will damage the American economy. Not for the first time I am grateful to the research done by Andrew Warren, director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy. His research shows that America could be every bit as wealthy today, if not more so, if it ensured that every time a new product was bought or a new building erected and refurbished, the most energy-efficient option was adopted. On average, Americans waste one dollar in every three that they spend on buying fuel. I am advised that consumption has been rising in America and it is now double for every person compared with Europe. If we

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cut out the profligacy, we would have a more resourced, productive society; fossil fuel consumption would be reduced and it would be relatively simple to meet the Kyoto criteria.
Secondly, we should be trying to persuade the new government in America not to act too hastily in these areas. Already they have announced a 33 per cent reduction in their energy efficiency programme. That is disappointing because their own government General Accounting Office showed that over the past 20 years or more there has been a fourfold saving from any investment made in those areas.
Again—this too was alluded to earlier by another noble Lord—President Bush declared an energy crisis in America, pointing in particular to California and the availability of electricity. Yet he is poised to block new rules designed to save electricity used by air conditioners and washing machines. Those new standards had been mandated by Congress and developed with manufacturers. We also hear that he is considering allowing millions of acres of US public land and offshore waters that were previously off limits to be opened up to drillers.
Thirdly, I come to the proposed meeting in Bonn in July at which we and others intend to try to keep the Kyoto Protocol on the road. It is important to persuade the US Government that if they have views on this matter, they must table them well in advance of that meeting. If they bring them up a few days before the meeting we shall end up with the same debacle that we had at The Hague.
I hope that the Government are broadly in agreement with those views and look forward to hearing from the Minister.
7.57 p.m.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, it is not just a convention to thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for initiating this debate. It is a most important debate and has been, for the most part, an extremely good debate. I am only sorry that, for a debate of this kind, it is such a thin House. It is a sad reflection on our priorities that more people attend this House to talk about a football stadium than about one of the most important parts of the whole of our foreign policy.
I set out my stall at the beginning. I regard the United States as our closest, most important and most powerful ally. Anyone who takes a realistic view of the world power structure would be unwise to ignore the fact that this ally of ours is the world's only superpower. Let us not despise entirely the principles of realpolitik; this is our most important ally. To suggest that we have no special relationship is a misunderstanding of what "special relationship" means.
I shall return to that at the end of my brief remarks. But at this point I want to say this. If there is a special relationship in no other field, there is a special relationship in the world of intelligence—one of the most important elements in the formulation of foreign and strategic policy. We have a relationship with America in the field of intelligence which no other
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country in the world shares. Those of us who have a taste for recent history need only look to the battle for the Falklands to realise that without American intelligence, and without our relationship with the Americans, that campaign might have gone a very different way.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, made a reference to anti-Americanism. It is undeniable that a good deal of that exists, some of it even in this House. Of course I would not accuse the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, of anything so crude as anti-Americanism. But anyone listening to his remarks tonight might have come to the conclusion that he is not an unqualified admirer of our American allies. Incidentally, perhaps not on an entirely serious subject, if the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, really makes no distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance, I would not want to employ him as my tax accountant—or perhaps, on second thoughts, I would!
I should like to mention two aspects of the relationship that we are discussing. It will come as no surprise to noble Lords that they are the European strategic defence initiative and the missile defence programme. I certainly take a different view on the ESDI from that taken by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe. Indeed, I go as far as to say that everything that I wanted to say about this lamentable and ill-advised venture has already been said by the noble Lord. Lord Waddington.
I make only one peripheral comment. I wish that the Government would stop telling us that everybody in America is happy about it and agrees with it. I wish that they would also stop telling us that our policy in this matter is exactly the same as that of the French Government. Frankly, that is poppycock. We all know perfectly well that there are people in the United States who are extremely worried about this initiative. The Government may be able to quote people who are in favour of it. I can quote an equal number of people who are extremely worried about it. Similarly, it is no good the Government telling us that the French attitude towards this and our own, in terms of separate planning, separate intelligence and separate command structures are identical; they are not. One has only to read the French press to realise that in many cases the two views are diametrically opposed.
These are complex matters on which, as we all know, there are different views. I do not suggest that either one is right or entirely without fault. However, let us at least admit that there are differences and set about trying to resolve them.
I shall not bore your Lordships further with my views on missile defence except perhaps to say that one of the most important points to note is the paucity and poverty of some of the arguments against it. One which is constantly reiterated is that if the Americans continue with this, the Chinese will start working on their own ballistic missile programme. The Chinese have been working on that for years. To know that, it is necessary only to read the White Papers issued from Beijing. The Chinese have ambitions to be a world power. As part of that they are building up a ballistic

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missile capability and have been doing so for some considerable time. To suggest that they might do that if the Americans set up a national missile defence is to misunderstand totally the realities of world power.
My other point concerns the old chestnut of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. That is regarded by some people with a tenuous grasp on reality as a cornerstone of world stability. It is nothing of the kind. It is an obsolete relic of the Cold War. It was designed to make the populations of the west and the Soviet Union vulnerable to each other's missiles. It was the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. It was condemned as immoral in those days by the very same people who are complaining because we are trying to move away from it and away from massive retaliation to defence.
I have come to the end of my brief remarks. Perhaps I may return to the question of the relationship with the United States of America. We have other allies in Europe and elsewhere. However, I repeat that it would be unwise to dismiss too readily the fact that the United States is our most important and most powerful ally. We have ties of history, language, law and religion and of such vulgar matters as geo-politics and strategy. As I have said, we have other allies. However, I firmly believe that if we do not cherish this relationship with our most powerful ally and look after it with great care, we shall live to regret it.
8.7 p.m.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, not only for instigating this debate but for his introduction, which was of great interest. For fear of being charged as an unqualified admirer of the United States, which I am not, perhaps I should briefly declare my interests.
For 12 years I have been a professor at the John F Kennedy School at Harvard. I am a member of the Advisory Council of the Council on Foreign Relations. I am a trustee of the Century Foundation and a member of the board of Rand Corporation Europe. I could go on, but I shall not.
However, I make these comments in order to make clear that in my view, and I believe in that of most of my American friends and colleagues, unqualified admiration is not what they ask for. They are too grown-up, too mature and too wise to want anything of the kind. If they want a relationship with us, it is not that of master and poodle but of two mutually respectful and intelligent friends who are free to say to one another what they believe. Therefore, I am not an unqualified admirer but a great qualified admirer of the United States.
In the years after the war the United States made a contribution so visionary, generous and far-sighted that there has been little like it in the entire history of the modern world. I put that on record for fear that anybody may decide or try to pretend that I am other than a great admirer of America and of what she has achieved.
During the Cold War we had a single enemy and a single purpose. The United States was absolutely central to the opposition of that enemy and the
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achievement of that purpose. Nobody doubts that. However, as my noble friend Lord Lester stated, the end of the Cold War brought with it a completely different set of challenges. As recently as yesterday, the spokesman for the new American administration said in terms that the world of today is a very different world from that of the Cold War: one which has changed everything, and where there are multiple and complex challenges, civil wars, failed states, famine, disease, AIDS and, alas, global warming, people trafficking and much else. As my noble friend said, that can be addressed only by multilateral responses which go beyond the borders of every nation state.
In the UK we were somewhat unilateralist in our approaches to foreign policy in the decades between the wars. To our great detriment, between 1919 and 1930 we believed that we could effectively run unilateralist foreign policy. We learnt after the war that those foreign policies had to be multilateralist. That is a lesson we have learned within NATO since 1949, within the European Union since 1972, with the Commonwealth over the post-war period and with regard to peacekeeping under the United Nations. Therefore, it is not surprising that we should suggest to our American ally, which until recently has been profoundly multilateralist, that we will not find answers to the world's problems in unilateralism.
My noble friends Lady Maddock and Lord Lester have already pointed out the necessity for multilateral approaches. However, I turn to two issues in particular. The first is the Rapid Reaction Force. I mention that precisely because there have been many charges and counter-charges made across the Floor of this Chamber tonight. Perhaps it is wise to begin by quoting directly from the communiqué of NATO in April 1999. This is what it states about the Rapid Reaction Force. I shall quote from it, not least because of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, which I have to say, with respect, were somewhat misleading. It states:
"We acknowledge the resolve of the European Union to have the capacity for autonomous action so that it can take decisions and approve military action where the Alliance as a whole is not engaged. We therefore stand ready to define and adopt the necessary arrangements for ready access by the European Union to the collective assets and capabilities of the Alliance for operations in which the Alliance as a whole is not engaged militarily as an Alliance".
Please note that they refer both to an autonomous power and to the power of the European Union.
I believe that the muddle has arisen from two sources. One is the change in administration, which has meant that the new one has said different things. We can quote to and fro for ever, but that is the truth. The second is that we have had a muddle—and I believe that it could be cleared up—about when the European Union is free to act on its own. That is why we in my party strongly believe in a right of first refusal; in other words, NATO should say clearly whether it wants to be involved or not. If it is, it should have a veto over the use of any NATO machinery by the European Union if it does not approve of the action. That I believe to be the de facto position. That is simply de jure as well.

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During the last couple of minutes I want to refer quickly to the missile defence issue, to which the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, referred. The ABM treaty is all we have. I do not believe for a moment that is it a relic. It is all we have and all we shall have for the six or seven years before any missile defence can be brought into operation. These will be dangerous years, because unquestionably no one expects even the initial stage of missile defence—the so-called Alaskan first stage—to be achieved before 2008 or 2009. The Americans do not claim that; no one claims that.
What then will protect the world in the intervening period? The answer must be the network of multilateral arms control agreements which exist at the present time. The system is also technically insecure. So far there has been no evidence of technological success and it may take more than seven or eight years to achieve it.
The second danger is, quite straightforwardly, that there is an undermining of the deterrence principle. That could be a good thing but in the short run it is highly probable that Russia and China will attempt to build up their offensive deterrent forces if they fear that there is no multilateral solution to the problem presented by national missile defence. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, to whom I listen always with respect because he is greatly knowledgeable, referred to rearmament by China. It is worth pointing out that China has about 20 nuclear warheads at the present time. Rearmament means going from 20 to something more like an effective nuclear missile force.
Furthermore, there are nuclear powers, frighteningly India and Pakistan, referred to by American foreign policy experts as the most dangerous region in the world. It would be highly dangerous for those countries to remain outwith the multilateral arms control network that exists at the present time. And there is some reason to believe that they are being persuaded to consider joining in with those multilateral structures.
Last of all, there is what one might describe as the dangers of a Maginot Line mentality, where we take action against the threats a previous time, failing to recognise that the most dangerous weapon of terrorists could well be the suitcase full of anthrax or the box full of Sarin gas.
For all those reasons, it is not unfair to suggest that there should be full consultation at the present time. We hope and believe that by "consultation" the United States means that nothing is yet set in steel; that it is still possible to alter the details of what it proposes; that it will truly listen to its allies, who in turn will truly take what it says very seriously. And within that context both the United Kingdom and Denmark are of central importance. Without their co-operation in improving the early warning systems it would be difficult to mount an effective missile defence or even a theatre missile defence. That means that both of them will be involved in either supporting or breaking the ABM treaty effectively by proxy.
In conclusion, I believe that the overwhelming responsibility of the United Kingdom, and with that, of the European Union—and here I want to refer in
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particular to the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon—is to persuade the United States that any missile defence advances should be made within the context of the multilateral arms control agreements of the world. God help us if that does not happen at a time when Russia still has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and of fissile materials. If Russia cannot be brought within the ambit of a new arms control system—and one addresses the problems of the post-war and post-Cold War world—she could become a dangerous source of nuclear materials to some of the more dodgy states in the world.
Finally, I want to respond to what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, who speaks with great experience. It is true that under the Nun-Lugar system, which tragically the Bush Administration is proposing to cut hack, there was a degree of co-operation between the United States and Russia at the level of precise knowledge about nuclear weapons, and about the retention and protection of those weapons, which goes far beyond anything to which the noble Baroness referred. The United States showed great imagination in trying to calm, soothe and involve the Russians in greater co-operation on arms issues. I believe that it is a model and an example that we would be well advised to follow.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, perhaps I may acknowledge her powerful and lucid piece of advocacy. Will she confirm that there can be no question of Britain and Denmark doing anything that is against the ABM treaty because it is signed only by the United States and the Soviet Union? No other country can possibly break it.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord said. He will notice that I said by proxy.
8.16 p.m.
The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Howell for initiating today's debate. I should add that I am ordinarily resident in the United States. Whether or not that improves my understanding of the issues before us tonight I leave to the judgment of others. However, based upon the contributions of some of your Lordships I am not sure I should be too optimistic about that.
Let me say at once that I have enjoyed tonight's debate. Not surprisingly, it has covered a lot of ground and I hope only that I can do it justice. Like my noble friend Lord Howell, I begin with the European Rapid Reaction Force, a topic expanded on by a number of other noble Lords. It is well known that we on these Benches are opposed to the establishment of a European defence identity that is independent of NATO. As an aside here, current speculation of the £1.2 billion-worth of cuts in the defence budget begs the question whether we will be in a position to honour the contributions to that the force which the Defence Secretary committed us to in November of last year. No doubt the noble Baroness the Minister will in due

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course offer the customary reassurances that our concerns are misplaced; that the proposals are, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, insists, "modest".
However, the mood music of our European partners persists in painting the picture of a structure outside NATO. For example, General Kelche, the French Chief of Defence Staff, recently said:
"European politicians need to know what is going on. They need to be able to select options and then conduct operations. Why should we have to go through NATO?".
Against that background, we should not be surprised that concerns are manifest in America about the way in which the agenda is developing. My noble friends Lord Howell and Lord Waddington have provided ample evidence of that. Here I would make a simple point. Some noble Lords have suggested that the Shadow Cabinet is in some way directly responsible for the confusions about this in Washington. But is it not the case that the Government are much better placed by definition to allay American concerns than we on these Benches are to, as it were, "stir it up"? Therefore, what reassurances has the Foreign Secretary, even the Prime Minister, offered to the Bush administration? Surely, if there is really no cause for alarm about this in the United States, the Government have both the wit and resources to explain that. How are the Government satisfying the wish of the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, that "the myth be exploded"? I believe that, as the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, pointed out, the concerns in the US about this matter are both legitimate and real.
Following on from that, there is the very much wider issue of the approach of the Bush administration to European integration. Mr Clinton's commitment to foreign policy was one of the hallmarks of his presidency, but inevitably Mr Bush is a very different person. There are no more cosy soirees about the third way. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be too surprised if we detect a certain cooling of enthusiasm within the US towards Europe. As my noble friend Lord Howell said, much of the rhetoric in Europe at the moment is a source of amazement in America. Yes, Europe is creating the single market, but to the perception of many in America—here my experience is somewhat at odds with that of the noble Lord, Lord Hooson—the culture of European integration is antipathetic to their entrepreneurial instincts and democratic traditions.
To many in America there appears to be an increasing prevalence within Europe of sniping at the US, which my noble friend Lord Howell described as "shrill invective". Is it not credible to suppose that this is having an effect on American attitudes? As a commentary on that I give an example. I hasten to add that I gave notice to the Minister about my interest in this matter. There is increasing American irritation, from the President down, about the way in which the Commission seems to be attempting to impose its regulatory framework for data privacy upon the US, particularly because in many respects it is deemed to be contrary to the American constitution. But from our perspective in the UK what should really worry us
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about it is that it has the potential severely to damage the competitiveness of the City. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to comment on that in due course.
As for the economic situation, despite recent figures for growth the US is not out of the woods yet. Mr Bush's chief economic adviser warned today that America could still face a recession. As he has said, it continues to be "hard to tell" whether the current slowdown will see the economy suffer its first contraction in a decade. It may be that there is further American irritation, perhaps even scepticism, with Europe here, as with the failure of the ECB to take action on interest rates for the benefit of the world economy.
President Bush's speech yesterday on his administration's plans for ballistic missile defence guarantees the topicality of this debate, and many noble Lords have referred to it. I believe that it is worth quoting directly from the observations of President Bush:
"We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defense to counter the different threats of today's world. To do so we must move beyond the constraints of the 30-year-old ABM … Treaty".
It is perhaps also worth making the point that even the Prime Minister accepts that the character of the threat to global security has changed. As he observed in February,
"There are a number of states now—some of them not very stable—that have got a nuclear capability … It is one of the most difficult problems that the world faces, and we underestimate its significance at our peril".
Despite that acknowledgement, we express concern that the Government have approached BMD with such equivocation. The views of the former Foreign Office Minister, Peter Hain—I wonder why he was moved—speak volumes in this context. That the Foreign Secretary has today expressed approval of President Bush's commitment to consultation is perhaps a step in the right direction, but do not the Government believe that our national interest would be better served by being more proactively engaged with the US in the development and deployment of BMD? Of course, the issue raises difficulties with respect to the 1972 treaty, and it is right to be aware of the sensitivities of our fellow Europeans, of Russia and of China. We believe that that makes it all the more important that the UK Government assume their traditional role of, as it were, bridging the gap in opinions on both sides of the argument.
A number of noble Lords, notably my noble friend Lord Waddington, referred to the vexed topic of the Kyoto Protocol. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, to the extent that progress on issues such as that can be made only by international agreement (and, in terms, that was the virtue of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro). We on these Benches regret the opposition of the Bush administration to Kyoto, but, in common with the inference of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, during Question Time a couple of days ago, we are sanguine about it. As my noble friend Lord Waddington made abundantly clear, the reality is that

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the chance of Kyoto being ratified by the US legislature was, and is, negligible. It is extraordinary that so many appear to advocate that the Bush administration should work against the grain of their democratic process.
We believe that we should continue to strive to meet our own Kyoto targets. At the same time, the Government should entertain constructive talks with America not only to recognise its particular difficulties in that context but also to take the matter further. As John Prescott has said,
"The President of the United States has said that he accepts the need for action to combat climate change".—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4101; col. 149.]
It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that, although he was knocking on an open door, he singly failed to make any progress on the matter during his recent visit to Washington. On his return he announced to another place (at col. 152) that he,
"did not have a meeting with the Administration, nor did I seek one when I visited Washington".
Is that not an extraordinary way to conduct negotiations on what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, described as
"probably the most important issue to face world leaders"?
More seriously, can the Minister advise the House how the Government intend to take this matter forward proactively with the Bush administration, or do they intend to let it cool on the back burner until July in Bonn?
I conclude with the observation of President Bush yesterday:
"Together, we can address today's threats and pursue today's opportunities".
While that was an invitation aimed very much at Russia, should not its tone inform our own approach to America? As my noble friend Lady Park said, we should never take friends for granted. However the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, may wish to represent the approach of these Benches to the US as "followership", we believe that that would ensure a proper partnership of equals and serve the interests of the people of both the UK and the US.
8.27 p.m.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I join all noble Lords by warmly thanking the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for tabling this most important Motion. I also thank noble Lords who have made such valuable contributions to the high quality of the debate.
I start by reassuring the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that the United Kingdom has not, and never will, participate in anti-USA posturing. He can be confident that Her Majesty's Government will steer a course far from that. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that the United States has a number of important relationships. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, that US citizens share a wide European ancestry; and some other European states would claim a greater number of ancestors than the UK.
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However, I depart from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in his contention that the special nature of the relationship vests solely in the breasts of those who fought together in the two world wars. I remind the noble Lord that the depth of that relationship now vests in younger breasts and that in the past 50 years we have continued to stand shoulder to shoulder in theatres of war, culturally and in other arenas, including marriage which was alluded to by my noble friend Lady Crawley. I also agree with my noble friend Lord Desai that this relationship should transcend party.
Although I disagree with the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, about my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, I most warmly welcome his balanced, sage approach. I assure him that we shall not overrate but shall value our relationship. I also assure the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, that we shall not take that relationship for granted either. We need balance in this as in all things. The relationship is fundamentally strong because it is based on close ties between our peoples at every level. Our political systems are founded on a shared outlook and shared values: freedom, free speech and free trade. They go beyond individual issues of policy.
The relationship is fundamental to our economies and to our strategic interests. The US is our closest ally and biggest export market. We are the biggest investors in each other's country. The relationship will continue to be strong because: first, our vital national interests coincide now as much as they ever did; secondly, Britain's strategic partnership with the US in NATO remains fundamental to the national security of both our countries; and, thirdly, our leading role in the European Union enhances the relationship between Britain and the USA. That was alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Howe.
In this global era, the relationship increasingly covers the breadth of public policy. We face similar challenges and are eager to learn from each other. We have much to learn from each other, particularly in education, which is a top priority for both the UK and US Governments. We also have experiences to share in areas as diverse as welfare reform, the fight against crime and drugs, the IT revolution, poverty reduction. urban regeneration and transport systems. For example, we have used the experience of several US states to reform our UK welfare system towards helping people to help themselves and by making work pay.
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister was the first European leader to meet President George W Bush at Camp David in February. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has also met his opposite number, General Powell. Good working relationships have already been established.
The trade and investment relationship between the UK and the US is hugely important. I was glad that this issue was raised by my noble friend Lord Hunt and that he sought to emphasise the importance of science and technology. I would reassure my noble friend that

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Her Majesty's Government are, through BCI, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DTI doing all they can to promote British business and science and technology. British interests in many of the 50 states individually outweigh our interests in most other countries. Last year Britain sold £28 billion worth of goods to the American market. We sell more to Boeing than we do to many countries. Five thousand six hundred American companies see Britain as their base in the European single market. My noble friend, Baroness Crawley, was right to highlight this aspect.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, that there are occasional disagreements between us over trade, but the numbers are tiny and the disputes can be solved. On 11th April, the European Commission and the United States' trade representative reached an understanding in the long-running and damaging Bananas dispute. Many noble Lords will recognise the light I feel in that resolution. This is very welcome. Both sides deserve our congratulations and support.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, that he was right to raise the differences of view in the United States in relation to the ICC. The views of the legal fraternity are important and there is a genuine debate on that issue. That debate has not been concluded and will go on. We need not be too pessimistic about the long-term outcome.
Many noble Lords have rightly raised the issue of climate change. I share noble Lords' concerns that climate change is one of the most challenging international issues we face. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, in that regard. The science is accepted. To say anything different would be akin to defending the idea of a flat earth. But we need to work through differences. "Working" means that we have to understand partners' reservations and unease. We cannot ignore the recent developments in the US climate change policy. The lack of US commitment to the Kyoto Protocol is a huge disappointment. But it will not prevent the United Kingdom and the EU from continuing to work for ratification and entry into force. We must also seek ways to bring the United States on board sooner rather than later. We shall therefore be working hard with EU colleagues, the US and negotiating partners in the umbrella group and developing countries to agree rules at the next climate change talks in July in Bonn. I can certainly reassure the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, about that issue.
Many noble Lords rightly concentrated on the international security dimension. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, talked of a new track and confusion. I must say to the noble Lord that no such confusion lies between us and the USA. I do not know whether the noble Lord wishes it were otherwise. I cannot believe that be does. But in defence co-operation we are building the European Security and Defence Policy on solid foundations. President Bush—I hope the noble Lord will believe that he is of sufficiently high calibre to be trusted and relied upon as expressing the American view—supports our ambitions for ESDP.
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After meeting the Prime Minister, when ESDP was discussed in detail, President Bush said that,
"the United States welcomes the European Union's European Security and Defence Policy, intended to make Europe a stronger, more capable partner in deterring and managing crises affecting the security of the transatlantic community".
The US Secretary of State, General Powell, who I am sure the noble Lord would say should be given credibility, said:
"We welcome a more integrated, robust and stronger Europe … Our Allies are in the midst of important efforts to improve their defence capabilities. We will support any such efforts as long as it strengthens NATO, not weakens it".
So I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, that we do not say that there are no differences between the plethora of people who have thought it right to express a view. What we do say is that if one looks at the EU's collective expressed view and the US view, there is agreement. We need to concentrate on developing and enhancing that agreement.
A number of noble Lords have spoken on the subject of missile defence. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, commented on what has been said by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. Therefore, perhaps I should quote some of the statements made. Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary said:
"We welcome President Bush's commitment to early consultations at a senior level on missile defence.
President Bush has made clear his wish to develop a new framework for the US relationship with Russia. It is good news that President Bush spoke to President Putin. And we welcome the President's commitment to reductions in US nuclear weapons.
The important issue is the clear commitment we have seen to work together with allies and with Russia. We will work closely with the Bush Administration as we always do—as close allies, with common strategic interests".
Earlier today in the other place my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said:
"I welcome the fact that President Bush has made it clear that there will be consultations, not only with allies, but also with the Russians".
So I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that we have recognised for some time that missile defence can play a role in responding to the threat posed by the growing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles for their delivery. We look forward to continuing consultations with the US team in relation to those matters.
This is the support of a partner and an ally. I would agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that a true friend is not an uncritical one. We need to be able to identify the bear traps and give our friends early warning to help them to ensure that they avoid them and we must play our part to facilitate a better understanding of each other. Comity is worth working for. It is not in British interests for our closest ally to feel vulnerable to attack or to be deterred from taking action in regional crises. It is not in British interests to say to the US, "The answer is yes, now what is the question?" The USA understands our position and we understand theirs.

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My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary recently met US Secretary of State, General Powell, at NATO Headquarters. General Powell gave a strong affirmation of the new US administration's commitment to the alliance, and said that NATO would remain the bedrock of the US relationship with Europe. He added that the alliance had provided the foundation for over 50 years of peace and prosperity for its member states and was as critical today as ever. He also voiced support for the European Security and Defence Policy, which strengthens the alliance and adds to European capabilities, and emphasised US determination to consult fully on missile defence.
So I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Park, that she need have no fear that the history which brought NATO into being will ever be forgotten or dishonoured;, certainly not by the party of Ernest Bevin. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, that a decoupling from NATO is not, has never been, and will never be within our contemplation.
In Britain today we have a Government who are both pro-European and pro-American; a Government who have finally done away with the false proposition that we must choose between two diverging paths—the transatlantic relationship or Europe. We believe that this is not just in Britain's interest, but also America's and Europe's. And we use our position as a leading member of the EU actively to serve as a bridge between Europe and America, consistently rejecting isolationism and protectionism and advocating engagement and openness with the wider world.
What has the past 50 years taught us? It was right that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, in her usual eloquent and erudite way, raised this issue. It has taught us that we are stronger when we build multilateral alliances; we are stronger when we build multifaceted policies; when we work together for the common good; when we talk and share. It is not a lesson that we would lightly forget. We have neglected none of our friends, be they old or new—in the Commonwealth, Europe or across the Atlantic—and we are not about to change.
The noble Lord, Lord Wright, raised the issue of the US position in terms of the Israeli-Arab difficulties. The issue of settlement is a sensitive one. That has formed part of our contacts with the new US administration about the situation in the Middle East. For example, the Foreign Secretary raised Israel's settlement policy in his conversation with the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, on 18th April. On Monday 30th April, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister's personal envoy, my noble friend Lord Levy, raised the issue with senior US contacts during meetings in Washington to discuss the Middle East.
The US position of settlement was restated by a State Department spokesman on 20th March, who made it clear that continued settlement activity does not contribute to peace and stability. The US, like the UK, is opposed to all unilateral actions which make achievement of a permanent agreement more difficult. Our clear view is that settlements are illegal under
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international law and an obstacle to peace. Our EU partners and the international community share our position. The UK Government call on the Government of Israel to stop all settlement activity in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. It is an issue that will continue to have great importance.
Lastly, I turn to an issue touched on by the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, in relation to the data protection difficulty. He asked a number of questions about that. I can certainly reassure the noble Earl that the European Commission has made a formal finding that the US safe harbour arrangements provide an adequate level of data protection for the purposes of Article 25 of the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and that transfers of personal data from the United Kingdom to organisations ill the United States which have made a formal commitment to comply with the safe harbour principles will be taken as meeting the requirements of the data protection principle in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. I hope that gives the noble Earl some comfort.
The debate has centred on agreement about the importance of the nature of our relationship and anxiety about some of the changes and differences that we have had in the recent past. The noble Lord, Lord Howe, was right to refer to the views expressed by the US ambassador to the UK, Raymond Seitz, in 1994. With your Lordships' leave, I should like to repeat those words, because they are worth repeating. He said:
"America's transatlantic policy is European in scope. It is not a series of individual or compartmentalised bilateral policies, and never has been. It is the policy of one continent to another. There is a simple observation that if Britain's voice is less influential in Paris or Bonn, it is likely to be less influential in Washington".
I wholeheartedly agree with him. An influential voice gets heard. Concerns that noble Lords have raised about climate change and missile defence will be heard. The decisions of the US will be made on what they have heard. Nothing has yet been writ in stone.
A false question does not become less false the more often it is asked. There is no decision to be made by Britain between the EU and the US. To pretend anything different is to act in a way that is more harmful to the United Kingdom's national interest than anything else.
8.46 p.m.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, it remains for me to thank most warmly both the Minister and all those who have taken part in the debate. All speakers seemed to agree that the Atlantic relationship is in transition. Some speakers seemed to conclude that, nevertheless, everything is fine; others suggested that there are storm clouds ahead. I confess that I belong to the second category. In such conditions, my advice would be to carry an umbrella and, if possible, wear a raincoat or mac. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Abnormal Loads on Motorways
8.47 p.m.
Lord Hoylerose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy regarding the employment of persons other than police officers to escort abnormal loads on motorways.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, my Unstarred Question relates to the issue of replacing police escorts with civilian ones. Anyone who has ever driven on a motorway will have experienced the delays that take place when abnormal loads are being moved. They are often moved at peak traffic times and so queues build up, often more than a mile in length. In addition, escorting abnormal loads takes up police officers' time—time that could be used for other purposes. Apart from the frustration that is caused to users of the motorway, there is also the cost to those who are transporting the goods. There is delay and frustration all round.
Is there not a better solution to the problem? Should we not consider replacing the police with properly trained and equipped civilian escorts who have gone through a rigorous training scheme so that safety is not put at risk in any way? Such escorts would be equipped with vehicles that were in contact with the load being driven, so improving safety. That would free up the time of police officers who are currently engaged in these duties and would mean that the movement of loads was quicker and more efficient. It would reduce the inconvenience to which I referred earlier and would lead to a reduction in hauliers' costs.
Delays are caused as a load goes through each area. It has to wait for a new police escort to be made available to it. If civilian escorts were used, the loads could probably travel more often at night when there is little congestion on the motorway. Certainly civilian escorts could avoid the peak-time movements that lead to the frustration and inconvenience that I mentioned earlier.
This is not a new idea. In fact, this was first mooted as long ago as 1994. It was then proposed that consideration should be given to the proposal to use civilian escorts rather than police escorts. Four years later, in November 1998, a consultation paper was produced and sent to all the interested organisations. Replies to that paper were due back on 14th January 1999. One wonders what happened to that consultation paper. Were replies to it received and, if so, what did those replies say? What general feeling did they reflect? If the response was positive, again I ask: why are we still waiting for this proposal to be implemented?
Of course I have raised this matter on several occasions since I came to your Lordships' House. I have done so because I think that it ought to be given attention. It is an issue which has been held up for far too long. Indeed, I last raised it—I do not think that it has been raised since—in the form of an Oral Question on 7th November 2000. At that time my noble friend seemed to be quite pleased—almost excited—to be able to say to me that there had been a relaxation.
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A paper had been sent out by the Association of Chief Police Officers which, if implemented, would bring about a 35 per cent reduction in police escorts. That suggested some movement, but it came seven years after the original proposal and even then only just over one-third of the police escorts would be removed. That was no great success in itself. However, I looked at the paper and I found that it was not quite as simple as that. On the matter of implementation, the paper states that the changes to the guidance require both Home Office and DETR approval and that consultations are likely to take three months. It then goes on to state that the legislative requirements may be capable of resolution through secondary legislation— good, in that respect—but that that is "some way away". What is meant by that? The paper states that the reductions could be implemented locally without the need for legislation, but that is not quite the same thing. I wish to make the point to my noble friend that that was not the good news that my noble friend intended to deliver.
Once more I return to my earlier point: how long will it be before even the revised regulations are put into operation if legislation is required? When I asked that Question, several supplementary queries were also put forward. My noble friend was asked exactly what would be reduced by 35 per cent. My noble friend said that it meant a reduction of 1.5 million movements. That in itself could not be correct because even the notification of abnormal loads in one year does not amount to anything like that figure. Furthermore, the number of notified loads that are then escorted is fairly small. Again, I should like an explanation of the figure of 35 per cent—35 per cent of what?
Another interesting exchange took place during that particular Question Time. The noble Earl who is due to contribute from the Opposition Benches suggested that there is no direct radio link between a police car and an abnormal load. Again, my noble friend will probably remember expressing extreme surprise that that might be the case, despite the fact that my noble friend Lord Simon had travelled with a police escort for an abnormal load. He confirmed that that certainly was the case when he travelled with the police.
I have read with interest the Written Questions and exchanges that have taken place since then between the noble Earl and my noble friend. I must say that I am still perplexed as regards whether there is a direct link, whether there is no direct link, whether there is a direct link between the driver's mate for the abnormal load leading not directly to the police escort car, but back to the police control room and, from there, to the escort car. If that is so, I am quite sure that safety could be improved in that respect.
Finally, I should like to ask my noble friend several questions. First, what has happened to the consultation paper issued in 1998? What were the replies received to it? Secondly—I ask this question in relation to his last response to me in November—when will the revised guidance issued by ACPO in October 2000 and leading to a possible 35 per cent reduction be implemented? Again, can be give the House a more

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accurate explanation of the 35 per cent reduction in relation to vehicle movements? What number of police escorts will be affected?
We have been looking at this since 1994. Again I must ask: why are we waiting and when will a decision be implemented? Lastly, because not much has happened since 1994, I ask my noble friend to tell me what this exercise has cost.
I look forward to my noble friend's positive replies. I hope to hear that soon we shall be able to say goodbye to frustration, inconvenience and the waste of police officers' time when finally we bring in civilian escorts.
8.58 p.m.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, I know that the House will be obliged to my noble friend Lord Hoyle for giving us the opportunity to question and debate the issue of abnormal loads on motorways and whether the police or some other proficient organisation should be involved in shepherding these loads on the roads.
My noble friend asked specifically what is the policy as regards employing persons other than police officers to do this work. But it would appear from previous Answers to Parliamentary Questions that as a result of long consultations—they have been very long—between the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers revised guidance would be issued to police officers on the criteria for escorts. The guidance would state that they will reduce the occasions when a police escort is thought to be necessary.
On the occasion to which my noble friend has already referred, the Minister was glad to say that it has been estimated that that could reduce police involvement by as much as 35 per cent. No doubt the Minister will be able to tell us how that is to come about. It may well be a good start, but it does not provide the answer to the other question. The motorway travelling public may willingly accept that, but they are still concerned about daylight movements. Indeed, as the Minister said on 7th November last year, we have also,
"to see what further progress can be made to introduce private escorts to reduce further the burden on already over-worked and over-burdened police forces".—[Official Report, 7/11/00; col. 1361.]
True—but it is only part of the solution.
When one looks at the size of the problem, one can see that it certainly requires more urgency. My noble friend Lord Hoyle and I know very well that the consultations designed to make progress on this subject have been going on for far too long. There should be an urgent look at ways of proceeding towards our goal of cutting out daylight movements, introducing night-time movements, ensuring that the police numbers required are reduced and that some other proficient organisation does the job.
When I raised this issue in my debate of 29th January 1996, there were 1.5 million movements in one year, of which 150,000 were escorted by police
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officers at a cost of £7 million from police resources. According to the Minister's latest figures in Parliamentary Questions, police-escorted movements rose last year to 200,000. Obviously, so has the cost.
Five years ago—in one year—some 1,781 abnormal loads were escorted by the police in South Yorkshire alone. A survey at that time by 16 forces over a nine-year period revealed that notifications of abnormal load movements had increased by 12 per cent. That was the national trend. It must have increased in recent times because the roads are much busier now. The burden on the police is increasing, and so is the frustration of road users.
The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, extracted some useful information from the Minister in Written Answer 119 on 5th June last year. It was revealed that the Cambridgeshire Constabulary had estimated that approximately 540 abnormal loads require a police escort in one year, and that about 134 police car hours are spent escorting these loads each quarter a t an estimated cost to the Police Service of about £5,700.
If these figures are available for South Yorkshire, for Cambridgeshire and for each county, why does not the Minister inform the House of the real national picture? Every time a Question is tabled on this issue we get the reply, "We do not keep central records". It would be no problem to get the figures from each county. We should like to know the annual number of notifications; how many are escorted; the police man-hours involved; and the cost to the police.
We recognise that in moving towards a satisfactory solution to this problem we must consider safety as paramount. That means that there is no simple solution. That is evident from the final report of the EDMC Management Consultants of 7th January 1998. Like my noble friend, I ask what has happened since that report.
Bearing safety in mind, why cannot midday movements of abnormal loads on motorways be phased out and replaced by night-time movements only, which is a safer period in which to travel? Why cannot we ensure that hauliers start paying the police? After all, it is our money.
As motorway travellers—and I am one; I travel on motorways every week and have done so for many, many years—we are aware of some of the problems. Abnormal loads under police supervision reduce three-lane motorways to two lanes. The result is miles of tailbacks, frustration, impatience, bumper accidents, road rage and the ruination of schedules. We could be relieved of much of that by night-time movements, which would make motorway travelling safer.
9.4 p.m.
Viscount Simon: My Lords, while the question is directed at escorting abnormal loads on motorways, ACPO has been considering escorts on motorways and link dual carriageways for some time. The subject was mentioned in paragraph 5.2.18 of the Home Office

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document, Review of Police Services and Ancillary Tasks, in 1994, where the proposal was to introduce private escorts of abnormal loads on motorways.
Perhaps at this juncture it may be worth addressing certain of the facts regarding abnormal loads and their movements. The law does not place a direct responsibility on police to escort any load. What is required is that, in order to move any load that exceeds 2.9 metres width, 18.65 metres rigid length, 25.9 metres total length, load overhang in excess of 3.05 metres or 100 metric tonnes in weight, the haulier must notify the police, giving two working days' notice of the movement. The chief officer must either accept the details of the route given or may give directions varying the date, time and part or whole of the route. It is at this point that, by implication, police should be involved in order to enforce or control traffic management, to mitigate traffic congestion and to promote road safety.
ACPO set up a working group on the matter and considerable discussion has taken place between ACPO and the Home Office. ACPO has been supportive of the moves towards privatisation but has been concerned about the quality of a privatised company and would require some form of quality assurance to be carried out. There has also been concern about control and regulation of the traffic powers of a privatised company and, therefore, ACPO would wish to see regulation of the companies carrying out this work in what is a quasi-policing function. The challenge of progressing this function has proved particularly difficult and has not been finalised.
The problem therefore lies in how to provide suitable regulation to enable private companies to perform the duty of accompanying abnormal loads. Powers to control traffic are restricted by statute. Section 35 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 requires the driver of a vehicle to comply with the directions of a constable who is,
"for the time being engaged in the regulation of traffic".
Section 37 makes a similar provision for pedestrians. Section 67 of the Road Traffic Regulations Act 1984 permits a constable or a person acting under the instruction of the chief officer to place signs to,
"prevent or mitigate congestion or obstruction of traffic, or danger to or from traffic, in consequence of extraordinary circumstances".
There is no authority in law for any other individual to control traffic, and it is my contention that that is where the difficulty lies. The police would be supportive of privatisation if the issues of regulation, training and the quality of organisations could be dealt with and if the safety of the public could be assured.
Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to make a personal observation about what can happen. I have only once accompanied an abnormal load on a motorway. That was in a marked police vehicle with the appropriate lights flashing. There were only two lanes on one section of the motorway. Notwithstanding the police vehicle being correctly positioned in respect of following traffic, there were
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still drivers who tried to force their way past us and the abnormal load. If I were not speaking in your Lordships' House, I might even consider calling them "absolute prats". It is for the silly or inconsiderate driver that a police presence is needed. As I have mentioned, a civilian has no power to stop or direct any traffic.
It is accepted that abnormal loads move every day without causing any form of conflict. However, where conflict does occur, it demands timely intervention—which can only be by a police constable. Surely, therefore, good practice dictates that, if police are on the scene, the likelihood of conflict is reduced and that where it does occur, it is correctly managed.
Finally, I am led to believe that there are some chief officers who, because they are not prepared to recognise the dangers involved, abrogate their responsibility and the wish of Parliament. Many hauliers would be willing to add in what might be termed "special services of police" to the cost of any load movement if they knew that the payment would not compromise road safety. However, should a formal contract be struck between two parties—one to carry and one to escort—for gain, I suggest that road safety would immediately be jeopardised.
The challenge of overcoming technical and operational matters to the satisfaction of all interested parties remains.
9.10 p.m.
Viscount Falkland: My Lords, this is a fascinating debate. I feel that I have intruded into a private club, as a number of noble Lords have spent some time discussing this matter on various occasions. My noble friend Lady Thomas, who usually speaks on transport matters, is not here and she has handed over the task to me. I am delighted to be able to talk without a great deal of authority. I have listened with absolute attention to every contribution so far. Many of the questions that I would have asked the Minister have been answered in those contributions.
I had assumed that underlying the Question was the fundamental matter of cost—cost to the police and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, said, the cost of taking police officers away from other duties where there is a possibility that civilian escorts could be provided. I understood from the noble Lord's remarks that there was also some concern about the existing practices of police escorts. I, too, am fascinated as regards the revised guidance of ACPO and the strange "35 per cent" mentioned by the noble Lord. I dare say that we shall receive an answer ere long from the Minister on that point. It would be interesting to know what a reduction of 35 per cent means.
Looking at the matter superficially, one can see all kinds of reasons why we should seek to replace a police escort with a civilian one if it were possible. But all kinds of matters come to mind. As the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, said, the underlying principle that must be borne in mind is safety. As the noble Lord said, safety is paramount. If safety is in any way threatened or reduced by the changes proposed by

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the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, we should be very concerned. I, too, should be fascinated to read the consultation paper.
In my experience, as a motorist who has followed cautiously these kinds of loads both in this country and abroad, a far higher proportion of loads move by night in France and Spain than they do here. I am puzzled as to why so many abnormal loads should move in the middle of the day, causing hold-ups, congestion and frustration.
One point concerns me about the idea of even a highly trained civilian operation with motorcycles—I must mention motorcycles because they are a particular interest of mine. Motorcycles are ideal for use by outriders in this kind of operation, together with four-wheeled vehicles before and aft. But the problem arises—
Lord Hoyle: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble Viscount. I believe that the Metropolitan Police do use motorcycles.
Viscount Falkland: My Lords, I have indeed seen them used—not by the Metropolitan Police but in Hampshire, with whose police authority I am familiar and friendly, having advised its members over the years. It uses Japanese motorcycles these days, if that is of any interest. It is a pity that we cannot produce a British motorcycle to do the job. However, the Japanese models are most suitable for all kinds of police work, including the work under discussion, because they have the ability to carry equipment and are reliable.
In theory, I believe that you could train people to undertake the work required to ensure that the rules and regulations regarding the secure loading of whatever commodity it is—whether it be a large pipe or a combine harvester—are correctly observed. That seems to me to be absolutely essential. Presumably the permissions for such movements come not only from the police but also from the local authority concerned. It seems to be quite a complicated process. If you are crossing various county or police authority lines, surely you need separate notifications and communications with each of those authorities and police forces.
I am surprised to hear from other noble Lords that they have experience of loads being carried where there is no telephonic communication between the police escort and the driver, or drivers, of such equipment. In this technological age, that seems to me to be almost improbable. Surely such communication is absolutely essential.
I believe that cost may well be added to the exercise if you have a well-trained and approved civilian body that can replace the police and the use of such powers. I would not use the language used by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, to describe drivers these days, although I absolutely agree with him. Indeed, outside the Chamber, I might even express it in stronger terms. That applies particularly when the weather is bad. As we all know, when the weather is bad in this country
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the traffic is heavy and people become frustrated. The presence of a police escort, together with the flashing blue lamp, will inhibit rash behaviour caused by frustration.
I see that the noble Viscount is shaking his head in disagreement. I find that very strange. Perhaps I belong to a generation that is frightened of police officers. I am told by some police officers that they have more trouble nowadays with members of the public then was the case even 10 or 15 years ago. However, that usually applies to young men. If young men will overtake in bad weather and ignore police outriders, what will they do with civilian outriders who do not have such powers? That seems to me to be a fundamental consideration.
If there is to be a reduction in cost, and a reduction in the number of police officers used for this type of work, that is all well and good. But surely those who contract to do this work—the haulage companies, and so on—need to pay currently for the amount of police and local authority time that is spent in such operations. Therefore, they would certainly have to pay a civilian operator to carry out the work. Presumably that aspect is covered by the consultation paper. Disregarding the difficulties that I have outlined as regards powers and all the other matters concerning security of the load, and so on, can the Minister say whether we know if that would be more or less expensive on an average load?
I have nothing further to add. I am absolutely in sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, who has obviously carried out a great deal of work on the matter. This may be a surprise to noble Lords, but I have to tell the House that motorcyclists are now used in a professional capacity, especially in courier services. Indeed, many former police riders are now engaged in that kind of work. In this ageist society, there are plenty of older riders, like myself. They are probably better trained than me, but, as noble Lords know, my record is exemplary. If my term here as an hereditary Peer should end, there will perhaps be a few years for me as an escort for one of loads described by the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle. There are expert and safe riders out there who could do much of this work. I should be interested to know whether that is a possibility. We shall look to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, to tell us whether or not that is so.
9.18 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, and other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I remind the House that I have an interest as I am president of the Heavy Transport Association. I also have my own personal abnormal load vehicle: it is a tank transporter at the REME museum at Bordon. Just to give your Lordships an idea of its size, I should point out that it is about 105 tonnes gross, up to 13 feet wide and 90 feet long.
I agreed with nearly every word spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, with one exception. He implied that there was a need for very detailed training. I am not

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convinced about that, and shall explain my reasons later. The noble Lord also referred to the relaxation in escorting criteria. I, too, share his anxiety on that point. The vehicles carrying heavy abnormal loads may weigh 100 tonnes but have only a 400 horsepower engine. That means a power to weight ratio of four horsepower per tonne. One can imagine that if one's car, which weighs about a tonne, had a four horsepower engine it would not go fast uphill. Abnormal loads may not necessarily be wide but when they crawl uphill they travel extremely slowly. There is a danger that other vehicles may run into the back of them.
The noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, has destroyed half my prepared speech by speaking in detail on the issue of mobile phones. However, I am undeterred. The noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, mentioned the increase in abnormal load traffic. That is a symptom of a welcome increase in the size of the economy. However, I cannot agree with the noble Lord's comments on exclusive night running. I agree that it is desirable for abnormal loads to travel at night and at other unsocial hours. But it is for the police to decide the optimum time for abnormal loads to travel. Of course, different constabularies will adopt different rules in that regard. We should remember that night running of abnormal loads, especially on dual carriageways, is a relatively new phenomenon. About 15 years ago, with the exception of the Metropolitan Police, most constabularies did not allow such night running.
The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, referred to the difficulty of implementation of the measure. He also said—and he is right—that there is no legal requirement for the police to escort such loads. However, we need to emphasise the fact that we are talking about escorts on motorways and linked dual carriageways. The principal role of an escort vehicle on a motorway or dual carriageway is to ensure that the lanes being used are completely blocked off. If an abnormal load travelling in lane one overhangs both the hard shoulder and lane two, the escort vehicle will sit in the middle of lane two to prevent any motorist from trying to squeeze between the load and the high-speed traffic in lane three. If that is done in a dangerous manner it can cause an unnecessary obstruction. However, if it is necessary to obstruct a lane for reasons of road safety, I do not see that a difficulty arises.
I admire the skill of the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, who spoke high-quality waffle! He referred to the security of loads. It is interesting to note that traffic police do not have much experience as regards how to secure an abnormal load. One requires specialised knowledge to secure a load that may weigh 100 tonnes. A load may weigh only five tonnes but be delicate and be six metres wide. I believe that the police would hesitate to interfere unless a load was obviously insecure.
Several speakers have rightly praised the performance of the police. However, it is worth recalling that an experiment was carried out in which two civilian vehicles carrying abnormal loads were escorted as they travelled from one end of the country to the other. One was escorted using experimental
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methods and the control vehicle was escorted in the normal way. The control vehicle took five days longer than the other vehicle to reach its destination because of the need to wait for police escorts. Obviously the police have to adopt priorities in their work.
I regret that this is another example of the Government's failure to deliver and to make a decision. Other examples of that are the Bowman Army radio system, Terminal Five, nuclear waste and the Dome. As many noble Lords have said, this issue is not new. It was proposed by the previous administration, who did not succeed in implementing it. It is not a controversial issue. There is broad agreement that this is the way we should move forward. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, will probably say that it is a sensitive issue, as he did on the previous occasion we discussed it. However, I do not think that it is a sensitive issue.
Some constabularies have required abnormal load operators to use a premium rate fax number. They are statutory safety notifications. Is that morally or legally right? Are there legal powers for them to do so? Would it be in order for a motoring organisation such as the AA to use a premium telephone number so that it costs the police money to phone the AA or the RAC to notify it of an accident or a broken down vehicle? It is a peripheral point.
We are talking only about motorways and linked dual carriageways. We are not talking about private escorting on single carriageways. That is a different situation. There are many arguments against that: issues of security; cash in transit vans; and so on. If we go for private escorting, the police will be released from the task and able to undertake more important duties. It is important to remember that escorting an abnormal load is an extremely boring job but, worse than that, it is also very demanding.
As the noble Lord, Lord Mason, said, if we go for private escorting, those loads can be moved at unsocial hours. An abnormal load could be moved between five o'clock and ten o'clock on a Sunday morning—but not late on a Sunday because we know that the traffic builds up.
The job could also be better carried out. A vehicle could be specially equipped for the job. It could carry a range of specialist equipment. It could have traffic cones in case something went wrong. The vehicle would have appropriate signing and high visibility markings. But, most importantly, it could have communication equipment.
Although ruining half my speech, the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, referred to my supplementary question last year. I shall let the Minister into a secret. I knew that his answer should have been either that he would write to me or, yes, there is not normally a direct radio link. I believe that that is the point the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, raised. The Minister indicated that he would be extremely surprised if there were no direct radio link. I was surprised by his answer, as was the noble Viscount, Lord Simon. However, I agree entirely with the Minister's sentiments. One of the advantages of going for private escorting is that we should have

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extremely good communications between the escort vehicle and the crew of the abnormal load. In addition, the escort vehicle would have a cellphone link to the police. If the police wanted the load diverted, they would have only to ring the escort vehicle.
The noble Lord's position about mobile phones is at variance with my experience and that of my contacts in the industry. If the noble Lord still insists that we use mobile phones in the way indicated in his answers, is it a direct link between the crew of the abnormal load, patched through the police control room? There would be a genuine two-way communication. Alternatively, is it a message relayed through? We need to be clear about the Minister's position. Are mobile phones used to organise the escort? That may be what the Minister was thinking about when he answered me. Alternatively, are mobile phones used when the load is trundling down the motorway and the driver of the abnormal load wants to pass some information to the police car? He may be losing power; perhaps he needs to pull up unexpectedly; there may be an obstruction. We need help from the Minister on that point.
There are two ways forward on this issue. First, we could "contractorise" the police functions in escorting abnormal loads. I believe that to be quite dangerous. We would have a shedful of complex regulations. There would be criminal and civil safety and liability issues if something went wrong.
We have touched on training considerations. We have had reference to the EDMC report. I think that that report was somewhat over the top. If we are not careful, we will end up with the escort driver being far more qualified than the driver of the abnormal load. As I have said, the duty of the escort vehicle is simply to sit behind the load, fully blocking off a lane. Escort vehicles are not required to perform complicated operations such as going the wrong way round a roundabout or a "Keep Left" sign; they just trundle down the motorway.
The driver of the abnormal load needs only a C&E licence. The escort driver should be a "competent person". That is a well understood legal term. Crane inspectors are referred to as "competent persons". No special qualifications are required, but I would not set myself up as one, because I would not be a "competent person". Does the Minister think that anyone could be better qualified than an experienced low-loader driver to be an escort driver?
The better alternative is for the police to authorise the move for a certain time and to tell the haulage operator to organise the escort, in accordance with the ACPO guidelines on the necessary communications equipment and the size and type of vehicle.
A big, regular heavy haulier would provide his own escort, but a small or occasional haulier would select a contractor, rather than relying on the police nominating one. He should be responsible for it, not the police. If something went wrong, the police would have no problem investigating it, because they would have no conflict of interest. They would be dealing with a commercial operator who had made a mistake. It would be a problem for the haulier, not the police.
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The ACPO guidelines are non-statutory, but if the operator did not adhere to such custom and practice, he would be vulnerable to an accusation of driving without due care and consideration, and possibly even of recklessness if, say, he did not have a direct radio link.
Some people believe that new legislation is required now. Does the Minister believe that primary legislation is required, and if so, what sort of primary legislation? I agree that there may be a requirement for small changes to the lighting regulations. The Minister might have a chat with his noble friend Lord Whitty on that to allow escort vehicles to operate amber flashing beacon lights, but that is a very small point.
Some noble Lords have referred to the cost. The cost of providing the police service is insignificant compared with the cost of the delays to industry caused by expensive equipment being held up for days in a lay-by waiting for a police escort.
Will the Minister introduce private escorting—yes or no? If not, will be say so now? If he will, he should stop dithering and just do it.
9.33 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bassam of Brighton): My Lords, I am grateful, as ever, to the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, for stimulating a debate on this evidently very important issue. I have been quizzed on it at least twice at Question Time. No doubt I shall continue to be quizzed on it. I enjoy quizzing others on the subject as well. If ever I was to be persuaded that this was the very complex matter that it evidently is, the learned exposition of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, over the past 15 minutes or so—
Earl Attlee: Fourteen.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: Fourteen. The noble Earl has utterly convinced me that the issue is far more complicated than I even began to imagine before we embarked on this short debate.
Before I address the specific issue, I shall take a few minutes to explain the Government's policy and thinking on the escorting of abnormal loads on motorways. As has been said, driving in today's traffic calls for patience. The patience of any motorist, on two or four wheels, can be greatly tested when they are held up by a slow-moving abnormal load. However, it is important to appreciate that the movement of such loads on our roads, whether the load be a power generator or a cement factory chimney, is both unavoidable and absolutely essential for the functioning of our economy, commerce and industry, and, more importantly I suspect, for the future of the competitive export of goods from our heavy industries and manufacturing sector.
There is no ideal time at which to move such loads on motorways. Having listened to the debate and having read the briefing, I have long since concluded that no simple solution exists to the problem of delays caused to other drivers.

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I turn to the matter of police involvement in escorting. Traditionally, the police have provided escorts for abnormal loads. They are not required to do so by statute, but rather, for reasons of road safety, public safety and traffic management, in many cases choose to do so for loads which are above a certain size and weight.
For some time the Association of Chief Police Officers has been concerned that escorting is an unnecessary and costly burden on the police. Its view, which is sensible and is certainly one that I share, is that it should be possible for some other agency or body to discharge the function in the same way as private escorts are provided on the Continent. Having listened to the contributions this evening, I believe that there is a fair consensus towards that overall objective.
That view is further supported by work undertaken by the Association of Chief Police Officers which shows that the use of police powers is not normally necessary during load movements on motorways and dual carriageways linked to them. Private escorts, possibly provided by the haulier companies—a solution that has certainly been aired this evening—would allow loads on those roads to move more quickly where they pass through a number of police force areas by removing the need to stop at each police force boundary and pick up a new escort.
The introduction of private escorts would, of course, reduce the police resources committed to that work by allowing other, properly qualified escorts to take on the responsibility, albeit with overall control of the arrangements remaining with the Chief Officer of Police. The police are satisfied that road safety would not be compromised. Such an arrangement would also benefit the hauliers by providing a predictable escorting service. It would also be easier and quicker to move the loads to their intended destinations.
As my noble friends Lord Hoyle and Lord Mason pointed out, in 1998 we undertook public consultation on our proposals to transfer some of the responsibilities for escorting abnormal loads from the police to private escorts. It is no great mystery. Consultation took place previously in the early 1990s when members of the party opposite were in government. Indeed, at the time I was an official on the other side of the debate and pushed to see abnormal loads guided by means other than using valuable police traffic expertise and time.
We are now looking carefully at the responses to the consultation. As we develop our thinking and proposals in this area, we remain in close contact with the police service. I made that point on the previous occasion that this subject arose at Question Time.
I shall be making further concluding comments and I also have some important information to relay to your Lordships. However, I believe that it is only right that I work through one or two of the points that arose by way of questions during the debate, because obviously they inform our views on these matters.
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My noble friend Lord Hoyle asked a number of questions. I shall try to answer as best I can the points that he raised. He asked the question: 35 per cent of what? The number of abnormal loads moved on the road system is estimated to be approximately 1.5 million. The number of escorted loads is thought to comprise some 2 per cent of that figure. They are round figures but they suggest roughly 30,000 to 40,000 loads per year.
My noble friend also asked whether direct links by radio exist. That point was also raised by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and it also arose at Question Time some time ago. ACPO has confirmed to me that there is usually no direct radio link between the police and abnormal load crews. That is no great mystery; it is information that we have shared previously. Communication is normally available via mobile phones from the abnormal load's second man and/or through the police control room to the police escort. That appears to be the normal method of working.
My noble friend Lord Hoyle asked about the replies to the 1998 consultation paper. The proposals were sent out to 258 consultees and we had responses from 57 of them. They included letters from the Road Haulage Association, the Heavy Transport Association, the Freight Transport Association and ACPO. All those organisations were involved in the preparation of the proposals before they were issued for consultation. Responses have also been received—rightly and understandably, in view of the important role that these bodies play—from the Highways Agency, the Association of Police Authorities, the Police Federation, the AA and the RAC. We received a broad range of responses from about 20 per cent of consultees to whom we distributed the consultation paper.
My noble friend also asked when revised guidance would be implemented. The revised guidance has in fact been implemented. I said in Question Time on the last occasion that this matter was raised that a reduction of some 35 per cent was anticipated as a result of issuing the revised guidance. The guidance has been implemented as of 1st April this year. I shall later report on its impact.
My noble friend also understandably asked about why we had been waiting for the exercise for so long. The consultation took longer than all of us had expected. That was due to a number of factors, including the wide range of responses that we received and the number of bodies that expressed reservations about the viability of the proposals contained in the consultation document. Several very technical points emerged from the exercise, which obviously need to be addressed. I believe that it is fair to say that we are trying to achieve consensus. One can draw from that the implication that there was not absolute consensus on the way forward. I understand and fully share some of the frustrations that have been expressed.
My noble friend Lord Mason made understandably trenchant comments about shifting increasing numbers of abnormal loads to night-time movements. That would have huge resource implications for traffic policing because the majority of forces need to have

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their manpower resources available during peak demand daytime periods to keep traffic flowing and to respond to unexpected new operational priorities. With traffic, one can easily imagine what they might be. My noble friend's case is based on the assumption that all, or perhaps the majority, of abnormal loads could be moved with private escorts. That may not be the case—that goes to the heart of the debate in ACPO. The question of resources is very important and that is a matter for local chief constables.
To sum up, I confirm that the introduction of private escorts is still very much on our agenda. I should emphasise that that is a longer-term objective. We are in close contact with the police service and we are developing proposals. In the mean time, ACPO has, as I said, issued new guidance that took effect from 1st April. The guidance reduces the occasions on which it is considered that a police escort is required. I have already given a figure for the estimated reduction.
Most police forces have now adopted the new guidance from 1st April. The early indications—only one month on—are that police involvement in escorting has so far reduced by around 29 per cent. I take that as being very encouraging in the first month of the impact of the guidance. I willingly confess that that is based on a trawl of a sample of police forces to enable us to obtain a view on the early impact.
Comparing the March and April figures for Warwickshire showed a reduction of 23 occasions when a police escort was required, down from 44, which equates to a 52 per cent reduction. By comparison, in Thames Valley the figures showed a decrease from 102 to only 95—a 7 per cent reduction. But in the West Midlands the drop was from 169 to 114, a 32 per cent reduction. There are large and impressive reductions in Gloucestershire—44 per cent—Essex and Derbyshire.
So it is an improving picture and the 35 per cent figure to which I referred at Question Time in November is readily attainable if progress can be maintained in the way in which it clearly has been over the first month of the operation of the new guidance. We shall have to see whether or not those early results are replicated across all police forces over a longer time span as the new guidance properly beds in. I asked my officials to do a more thorough check of all police forces so that we can obtain a fuller picture.
I hope that your Lordships will agree that that is a significant improvement and step forward in reducing the burdens of this time-consuming task on our police forces. It will help to facilitate the easier and quicker movement of the loads and, as has been eloquently
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argued in your Lordships' House, benefit both the haulier companies and the ordinary motorist by reducing delays.
I accept that there is more to do. The Government will continue to work with the police on the introduction of private escorts to reduce the burdens of this work on the police still further. I shall shortly be meeting the chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, who takes the lead for the Police Service on this issue, to review progress on the introduction of private escorts. I hope to be in a better position to provide a fuller picture of those improvements following that meeting—improvements which clearly resulted from the coming into effect of the new guidance.
I believe that we have now made real progress, perhaps for the first time, towards our longer-term objective. I am extraordinarily grateful to those noble Lords who helped us towards that important end by being so persistent—rightly so—in bearing down on this issue over a number of years. The cost benefit to the Police Service may only be £7 million, but that is a real benefit. If we can achieve it, we shall have achieved beneficial cost savings which can perhaps be usefully deployed to other areas of Police Service work, in particular areas of traffic policing, and of course it will bring greater efficiency benefits in the longer term.
I am grateful to all those who participated in this short debate, which I am sure has been most illuminating.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, there are safety implications in relaxing the criteria. Will be talk to ACPO and make sure steps are taken to record all accidents involving abnormal loads? They will not show up in convictions because in a rear-end shunt accident it will not be the fault of the abnormal load driver. Also, does the Minister recognise that, even if we go to private escorting, it will always be possible for the chief constable to decide to have the load escorted by the police?
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, as I explained, I am shortly to meet the chair of the relevant ACPO committee, the chief constable of Nottinghamshire. I shall raise both of those issues with him and hope to advise the noble Earl of the outcome of that advice.

Social Security Fraud Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with a privilege amendment; the amendment considered and agreed to.
House adjourned at eleven minutes before ten o'clock.

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