Under Class II, Vote 8, of the Consolidated Fund there is a fairly large section devoted to the Ministry of Overseas Development. I wish to raise tonight, for the first time, I believe, since 7th November last year, matters of administration of the overseas aid programme. Since that debate last year there has been a report by a Select Committee—House of Commons Paper No. 191 of Session 1975-76—devoted to the subject of the world food crisis and Third World development and the implications for United Kingdom policy. Also, there has been the Government reply, Cmnd. 6567. But, alas, last Wednesday we had the announcement of cuts by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his December measures.

I believe that this is the first opportunity which any Department has had, or any Back Bencher has had, under a departmental heading to discuss those measures. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will confirm what I believe to be generally accepted, namely, that there has been a cut of about 10 per cent. in this programme, which means that the programme has declined from about 0·89 per cent. of our domestic budget to about 0·8 per cent. Perhaps he will be able to tell us whether the consequence for the administration of the programme means that there will be non-implementation of matters which are planned or whether it will mean not putting into effect projects or schemes which it was hoped to undertake but which are not at the planning stage at the moment.

At this time of the year, some people might say that the Chancellor has cut gold, frankincense and myrrh by 10 per cent. I am not sure that that is right, because our overseas programme—it is the administration priorities which I am raising now—is not a straightforward matter. Here again, perhaps my hon. Friend may be able to tell us the extent to which our aid programme is not entirely altruistic in the sense that, certainly in terms of programme aid, there is some return to this country in purchases of products, especially manufactured products, which is valuable for our employment.

I do not believe that anyone would deny that that is so or would suggest that it was wrong. Obviously, if one puts a Third World country in a completed circuit, as it were, developments are taking place in that country which otherwise might not be possible. But this consideration draws to our attention the difficulty of seeing the shape of the overseas aid programme. Of the large expenditures involved—not as large as some of us would like, but considerable in absolute terms—there must be substantial sums spent on administration, on the assessment of programmes, on the maintenance of specialists in post and so on.

There is a large sum—over £100 million—in the technical assistance programme. I believe that this is one of the ways—I am sure that the Minister will agree—in which this country can be most effective, through its technical aid programme, especially in parts of the world where British assistance has been traditional over many years.

On the more direct side, there is the project aid under which particular projects are given assistance, and this is one of the first matters I wish to raise on the Minister's reply to the Select Committee's recommendations. Its seventh recommendation, in paragraph 61, was:

"The Ministry of Overseas Development should show more willingness to meet requests for the payment of local and recurrent costs."

The Minister's reply, in his paragraph 9, is a little vague on this, saying:

"We recognise that these problems may become more severe as we place more emphasis on poverty-focused projects. We shall need to look at these problems case by case."

In other words, the Ministry is reserving its position on what is in certain countries a very controversial matter. In my experience, the proportion of project aid which can be spent on local costs is often a constraining factor. I hope that my hon. Friend will be more forthcoming tonight than he was in his reply to the Committee.

The programme aid side of the Ministry's work is at least to some extent controversial. The Government quite properly wish to go along with local development plans drawn up by the Governments concerned. One would have no quarrel with that, but we might quarrel with the objectives or the manner in which the local development plan is being put into effect. In the White Paper "More Help for the Poorest", my hon. Friend states specifically what the objectives of British aid are. I know that he does his best to ensure that our aid meets those objectives. But when I was a member of the Select Committee on Overseas Development we had some unnerving answers to our questions about programme aid for certain countries. It appeared that at least locally there were not very clear indications how it was spent. That raises the whole problem of how one goes about development in a so-called underdeveloped country. The dialogue now taking place between the North and the South, a continuation of the UNCTAD talks in which my hon. Friend played a significant rôle, is part of the attempt to solve that problem.

We can say to many of the less developed countries that if we are providing aid to help the poorest we need some earnest of intent that there will be no exploitation, which can become rampant. A great deal of party politics has the object of ensuring that there is no exploitation in the United Kingdom, or that it is minimal. How far can we tell sovereign States "We shall provide aid only so long as there is no exploitation in your country"? I shall not dwell on the matter. Everybody knows that it is a very important political question. My right hon. Friend the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) included a chapter on it in her interesting book about aid matters. It is a dilemma that the Ministry and posts abroad must face, especially now that we have nailed our flag to the mast on the question of overseas aid policy. What do we do if in our view the local plan of a host Government does not give aid to those who need it most, and if it contains elements of exploitation, or the risk of exploitation, particularly of the rural poor, of which donors in this country and our Government would not approve?

How does the programme aid work? It is not something that we can cut off at once, because much of it involves spare parts and matters to which we are committed. In a sense the White Paper of 18 months ago deals with a quandary, but it is a welcome quandary, because if the policy did not exist we should not have the quandary.

The Select Committee welcomed the White Paper, which at least turned our eyes in the right direction. The Committee turned our bodies in the right direction, but I am not yet convinced that we are advancing in the right direction. In paragraph 56 of its report, the Select Committee said:

"Your Committee believe that unless some specific rules are prepared, then implementation of a poverty focussed approach to aid will proceed too slowly. Existing methods are not appropriate. They have an inertia of their own. They will not be changed by a statement of principle. Direct action is required."

That was not one of the paragraphs on which there was a specific recommendation, so I am not asking my hon. Friend to say what he will do about it. I believe, however, that the spirit of that sentence will be echoed, certainly on the Labour Benches.

Another important paragraph was paragraph 20, where the Select Committee pointed out the need for greater emphasis on rural development. It warned that if one benefited farmers as a whole one was more likely to benefit large farmers who were doing all right and not help subsistence farmers who lacked the ability to absorb the aid. I find some of the thinking behind the Minister's reply a little unnerving. For example, he believes that 30 per cent. of project aid is going to help the rural poor. Paragraph 16 of the White Paper says:

"half our bilateral project aid (which is about 30 per cent. of our total aid programme) went on projects to help the rural poor."

But the criteria are difficult to define. Simply providing employment in rural areas does not necessarily mean that the poor people's best interests are being served.

We can think of our own Industrial Revolution as an example. If coal mines were opened in the countryside, poor people might crowd in to work in those mines or in small workshops nearby, but the creation of paid employment per seis not necessarily the best thing that can happen to people who are outside a money economy.

I find the Select Committee's report, and particularly paragraphs 20 and 21, out of focus in this respect. In an area which has partly a money economy and partly a subsistence economy, creating more money wealth and bringing more people into the money economy probably pleases economists and makes the statistics look better, but it does not necessarily mean that people's security is improved, or that their real standard of living is any better, if the basic rural subsistence economy is undermined.

It has now been clearly recognised in aid circles that through forcing statistical development on a country, in terms of all the usual economists' indicators, one not only undermines the basic agricultural economy of an area, which may be a subsistence area, but may make people open to exploitation. That occurs particularly where there is mineral wealth, plantation agriculture or a new product. Paradoxically, some of the least wealthy countries, perhaps those with the least mineral or power resources, have turned to rural development in a more realistic way than those which have been apparently blessed with considerable mineral resources but where urbanisation acts as a magnet and it is difficult to get a meaningful rural development programme started.

I am glad that our Ministry has focused its attention on the least privileged in the least privileged countries, because I believe that rural development, undergirding the subsistence economy, is the best approach to overseas development and the best contribution that the United Kingdom can make. However, I have severe doubts about the speed and perhaps the efficacy of the strategy whereby this admirable programme can be achieved.

I know that since the Select Committee's report the ODM has introduced a Rural Development Division. The Commonwealth Secretariat has a rural development section following a most interesting conference that my right hon. Friend the Member for Lanark had in this country when she was Minister for Overseas Development. It was one of the good things that came out of the Rome Food Conference. There are unnerving rumours about the Rural Development Division not having the internal muscle or clout, or whatever political word one chooses to use, to fulfil the admirable aims contained in the White Paper.

Some time ago I was asking the Ministry about progress in appropriate technology—namely, technology that is not sophisticated but appropriate to rural people who do not have much access to machinery. I found the answers not very enlightening. I am reminded of the phrase that Guy Clutton-Brock, who is fortunately no longer in gaol in Southern Rhodesia, as it then was, used in his book about Nyasaland at the time of the troubles. He said:

"The problem is that Southern Rhodesia thinks it wants Cadillacs when all it needs is a fleet of Ford Model Ts."

I am not so sure that many countries want Ford Model Ts. Even they may be technologically too advanced and inappropriate for many countries in the world.

About a year ago I visited Malawi, Where the Kisungu Cured Tobacco Scheme was taking place. They may well have had the equivalent of Model Ts to get the agricultural scheme off the ground, but once that had taken place they went back, quite properly, to ox carts. Oxen eat food off the farm and not oil, which has to be imported, but reproduce themselves and produce milk and meat. Further, they do not need to be steered as they go along. There are all sorts of advantage to be found in appropriate technology. I am not so sure whether the Development Department, in its sophisticated and almost Westernised guise, has quite the right touch. Some of its agencies have, but I am not convinced that it has the right touch. I am not so sure that it is geared to that type of attitude.

The Minister's reply, and what I might call accepted development law, are not in disagreement with much of the thinking on the Government Benches and, indeed, throughout the world. As I understand it, the problem goes something like this—there is a reasonable amount of money for rural development but it is difficult to identify a project: and even if it is identified, is it possible to get people to run it? The departmental reply in paragraphs 25 and 13 rightly emphasises the difficulty of finding the right sort of personnel.

A great deal of help can come from the Rural Development Division. Specialised help can be gained from marketing, grading and storage experts from the Tropical Products Institute and other specialist bodies around the world, but in the end it is the person who is literally on the ground who has to co-ordinate and who has to be on the scene for a certain period.

Very often such people can come from the countries where the project is taking place, but that is not always the position. The best type of development that I have seen in this respect comes from the Colonial Development Corporation. In almost a worldwide organisation it is possible to develop a career structure for people who will devote their lives to overseas projects. In the past it might have been possible to do that within the Commonwealth Civil Service, but that is no longer true. However, it might be done through some large organisation such as the CDC. I know that in the Select Committee's recommendations there is reference to consultants. I do not know whether the CDC comes under that category, but it probably does. I do not know whether it comes under the category of consultant criticism in the Public Accounts Committee's report to which I shall refer—I think perhaps not.

The CDC has an important part to play. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to reassure the House that some career structure developments are taking place for those who are willing to provide a lifetime of service in other countries and to provide specialised skills. I hope that that form of career structure is on the move. It is clear that success in rural development depends on a person with a knack. Such a person may not be highly qualified in any one area, but it is necessary that he has a knack and has shown by his abilities in other roles that he can do this type of work. That is true abroad and it is probably true in this country.

That brings me to the courses available for Third World students in this country. Reference is made to this matter in paragraph 17 of the departmental reply. The Select Committee thought that many of the courses available in Britain were not especially suitable for people coming from Third World nations. It thought that there should be an extension of postgraduate research activities in Third World countries themselves. That was stated in paragraph 20. Paragraph 17 highlights the criticism—I must say that I have heard a criticism of this nature in Third World countries—that many of the courses in Britain are not suited to Third World conditions. This is a matter that we must consider carefully. Indeed, I am not so sure whether many of the courses in this country are entirely satisfactory for United Kingdom conditions.

Recently there has been some concern about the expansion of education in certain areas. I do not want to enter into that discussion now as it is not part of the debate, except to say that the late Richard Crossman, in my hearing at the time of the Robbins Report, said: "Robbins says that we are going to have more of what we have got, but is more of what we have got what we need?" My answer is "No" for the United Kingdom, and I suspect that that answer is even truer for the Third World countries.

As for rural development, I emphasise to my hon. Friend—I do not think he will need much persuading—that we need to ensure that the system of subsistence agriculture in many Third World countries is not destroyed by development proposals or techniques. There is a need for a balanced system, or a system of development surpluses that can be either broken or undergirded so that there is no breaking up of a society's rural system for statistical gains and developments.

We all know that in the end rural development depends upon proper surveys of soil and climate, potential crops and the potential for marketing, grading and storage. Those matters must be joint number one in the operations of the Ministry overseas.

I turn to a related topic that is one step away, as it were, from the PAC's comments on the funding of the Crown Agents. This is a topic that appeared in the PAC's Third Report 1975-76. On 25th October I asked my right hon. Friend the Minister for Overseas Development in an Oral Question if he would be quite sure that when the Fay Committee came to make its report it would thoroughly go into the question of the relationship between the Crown Agents and the Ministry. The Minister for Overseas Development made no mention of any expansion of the Crown Agents. I raised the matter again because my hon. Friend's reply on 25th October was not specific on that issue.

Since that time the PAC's report has been published. I refer to the Third Report, page xvii, where in paragraph 24 specific reference is made to a further extension of activities by the Crown Agents. It says:

"However, in April 1974 the Ministry became aware that without their prior approval the Crown Agents had provided £60 million in financial support operations for the United Kingdom domestic institutions. The Crown Agents told us that certain of the support operations had had the encouragement of the Bank of England".

Clearly, some of the other support operations have not had that effect. The reference to the evidence on page 22 did not back up that first statement.

In April 1974 there was a Select Committee on Overseas Development which began investigations into the Crown Agents. Everybody thought at the time that the Select Committee would come up with some information on this aspect in its report. However, I ask my hon. Friend to ensure that this matter is covered in the Fay Report—not only as to the way in which the Crown Agents were or were not given permission to extend their activities on this topic but on other matters. Clearly, the further support operations described in the PAC document occurred at a time when questions were being asked by a Select Committee. I believe that the matter should be thoroughly investigated and reported upon. I should not like the Committee to be silent on that matter, because otherwise some of us will still require to know more. Therefore, it is right that I should give my hon. Friend notice that some of us will be questioning him on these matters.

Many hon. Members recognise the great efforts made by the Ministry in the North-South dialogue. We have tried to be constructive, but we should like to see greater speed in terms of what is being done. We appreciate that we must examine the subject in a world perspective as well to have regard to the interests of the United Kingdom—not only in terms of an increase in world trade but in terms of decreased exploitation in the world, from wherever it may come. We also wish to ensure that some countries which have not had the advantage that we have enjoyed will be developed in a way that is suitable for all their people and not just for some of them.

I wash to apologise to the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) for not being here during the first few minutes of his remarks. A little earlier this evening we were both taking part in the proceedings of a Select Committee, and I regret that I missed his earlier comments.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising the important subject of the growing importance of rural development in the developing countries. As members of the Select Committee on Overseas Development, we have concentrated on that issue. As we in this country become more and more bogged down in our internal problems, we tend to forget the incredible importance and interdependence of the Western world on the developing countries. The EEC, for example, depends on the Third World for 55 per cent. of all its raw materials. Trading prospects in the Western world in the long term depend on increasing trade with the Third World. In my view, there is no prospect of political stability in the world unless the West encourages increased trade and a higher standard of living in the developing countries.

The developing countries, on the other hand, depend increasingly on the Western world—in other words, the industrialised countries—for their export markets. Already the less developed countries export three-quarters of their materials and commodities to the industrial democracies. That demonstrates the importance of the Western world to those countries. Secondly, the developing countries depend on aid from the industrialised countries or the developed countries to help them to expand their exports and thereby to improve their standard of living.

There have been a number of serious developments in the Third World in the last few years. For example, there has been the impact of the increase in oil prices, and certainly the latest increase will not assist the developing countries. We know that in the last three years the developing countries have seen a dramatic deterioration in their current accounts and a tremendous increase in deficits, rising from a total of £9 billion in 1973 to £31 billion in 1976. We know from the statistics that 650,000 people in those countries have to live on incomes of less than £24 a year. We also know that there is gross under-employment in those areas. It is estimated that in those countries 250 million people may be under-employed. In those countries we have seen a growing switch from rural areas to the cities, with all the concomitant social problems that follow. For example, in 1960 there were 45 cities with a population of I million and more. It is estimated that by 1985 there could be 285 cities with populations of 1 million or more. The vast majority of them are likely to be in the Third World.

All these factors demonstrably affect the nature of the problem we face. This brings me to the point mentioned by the hon. Member for Newham, South—namely, the importance of rural development. It is important that we should switch our aid towards a greater emphasis not only on the poor countries but on rural areas in those countries. By helping country areas to develop their agriculture and other labour-intensive industries, we can encourage them towards a policy of import substitution, which would help their balance of payments. We must encourage those countries to export more, and we must encourage them to create more employment and higher cash incomes to help them to cope with some of their social problems. The Select Committee has endorsed that approach.

Our thinking in terms of overseas aid must be more in line with the direction I have attempted to outline. I urge the Government to recognise the fact that there is a need no longer to look at aid and trade as separate issues. The two are entirely interrelated and must be seen as such by the Government. What we need in Britain and in the Western world, particularly within the EEC, is a comprehensive approach towards greater rural development in the Third World. We must aim at a policy that encourages more agricultural production, increased productivity, better yields, improved marketing and an integrated approach embracing roads, water, credit facilities, marketing problems, education, health and many other important facilities.

In addition, there is the assistance we can give in enabling the Third World countries to buy better seeds and fertilisers, better irrigation equipment and agricultural machinery and in improving the agricultural extension services. Further, there is the help we can give in improving communications and the marketing and processing of agricultural goods for export. All this is greatly needed.

There is so much that Britain and the West can do in our mutual interests in the less developed countries by way of rural development. We have a great deal to offer. There are the training facilities that we can provide and the expertise in agriculture that we can offer. There is all the experience of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, which has an admirable record. There is a great deal of technical co-operation that we can offer. All this must be done in close co-operation with the approach of the EEC to this issue which, as I understand it, is to encourage self-generating projects in the rural areas of these countries.

I hope that the Minister will say something about the way in which we are working in harness with the Community on these matters. My view is that until we in the West can work effectively with the countries of the Third World, particularly the poorer ones, to encourage a greater degree of rural and agricultural development, there will be continued political instability in the Third World and the long-term prospects for more trade between it and the Western world will be hampered. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's views and of the Government's approach to rural development.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) referred to the North-South dialogue while the hon. Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce) pointed out that questions of aid are inter-woven with questions of trade and the general relationship between the Third World and the West. With these points of view I entirely agree. It would be unreal for us to debate the British aid programme and our provision for that programme without taking into account the wider questions which arise in terms of relations between the Western World and the Third World.

I do not wish to go over the history of the current argument. I shall mention only that it came sharply into focus at the special General Assembly of the United Nations in April 1974 when there was a sharp confrontation between the developing world and the rich countries of the West. The argument went on into the General Assembly debates in September 1974 when there was produced a charter for the economic rights and duties of states, which tried to set out a new relationship between the poorer and richer countries. The argument continued at the Seventh Special Assembly of the United Nations in 1975, when there was some change of attitude on both sides.

On the one hand the developing countries made it clear that they wanted a new relationship and a better deal but seemed not quite so anxious for a sharp confrontation with the richer countries. On the other hand, the Western World saw the danger of a stark confrontation. It needed raw materials, many of which came from the developing countries. It also needed markets for its products.

Arising to some extent from the discussions that took place in the General Assembly just over 12 months ago, the scene was set for two major discussions on these problems of aid and development. The first such discussion was the UNCTAD IV conference in Nairobi which took place in May 1976, to which I shall return. The second major discussion was the conference for International and Economic Co-operation which was set up in Paris in December 1975 and which has been adjourned until next spring. This has been referred to as the North-South dialogue and it raises a great many questions in relation to the British aid programme and our contribution to aid and development.

The CIEC, as it has been called, or the North-South dialogue, had a tripartite constitution. There were the developed countries, the United States, Japan, Western Europe, Australia, Canada and one or two others. The second group, interesting enough, was made up of the OPEC countries which, although they are developing countries in the sense of needing technical and development aid over a wide area of economic and social development, are not poor. They include such countries as Saudia Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, which have enormous oil resources. Nevertheless, in some respects they need aid and technological advice such as we can give through our development programme.

The third element in the North-South dialogue was the developing countries in the more precise sense, countries like India, Jamaica, Zaire, Zambia, Egypt and a number of others. They are in need of aid and technological assistance but cannot call on the great resources enjoyed by the OPEC countries.

The interesting feature of the Paris conference was the alliance which developed between the OPEC countries and the other developing countries vis-à-vis the Western countries. The conference has operated in the form of four commissions which have tried to deal respectively with energy, raw materials, development problems and finance. The discussions have taken place within those four categories.

I do not wish to say much about the energy discussions since these are not a responsibility of my hon. Friend and in any case the British position on oil is changing in that we are moving from being a major consumer to a major producer. The energy discussion is important in the sense that it has shown, so far, a tendency for a common approach to be adopted by the rich oil-producing countries and some of the poorest countries. If this alliance continues, as it might, it will pose certain problems for the Western world. Within the context of the Paris discussions there seems to have been, in this area at any rate, a certain amount of meeting of minds.

The OPEC countries began to appreciate that the West has a genuine desire for security of the supply of oil and for the long-term development of the supply of oil. On the other hand, the Western countries have accepted that it is reasonable for the purchasing power of the oil countries to be maintained even though they are anxious that changes in price shall not occur in the violent and unpredictable manner which so upset the world economy in 1973.

There has not been the same degree of common ground on the second issue of raw materials. The principal interest of the developing countries has been to achieve reasonably stable and remunerative prices for basic commodities. They would like to see an integrated commodity programme backed by a common fund to help finance buffer stocks and similar techniques to iron out fluctuations in prices and supplies. A major demand of the developing countries has been for the indexation of the prices of their products so that, as inflation drives up the cost of the machinery and other technological material which the West can supply, they do not fall behind because of a decline in the prices of basic commodities.

Another major interest of the developing countries has been in the effective establishment of an international fund for agricultural development, something which clearly is of immense importance to them. The agenda in the third commission, on development, generally related to the question of access to the markets of the Western world for the industrial products of developing countries, the transfer of technology from the West to the Third World, and increased financial assistance to the poorest countries which depend directly on the size and scope of our own aid programme.

The fourth commission was concerned with finance, but specifically with matters such as export earning stabilisation schemes, the financing of investment programmes, and the re-scheduling of debt, which has become a major problem for some of the poorest countries.

Within these four areas we must consider whether the North-South dialogue has been a dialogue of the deaf or whether there has been a genuine meeting of minds at the Paris Conference. I have suggested that on the question of oil there appears to have been a degree of rapprochement between the two sides—representing, possibly the genuine power structure of the oil producers, on the one side, and, on the other side, the formidable financial and industrial power of the Western world.

On the question of debt and the problem this creates for developing countries there appears to have been rather less agreement on what could and should be done. The developing countries are anxious that there should be a general conference on debt problems and, perhaps, a multilateral agency to deal with the debt difficulties faced by the countries represented at the Paris Conference. In a recent speech Mr. McNamara, the President of the World Bank, pointed out that the medium- and long-term debt of the countries represented at the Paris Conference had risen from $18 billion in 1973 to $23 billion in 1975 and was likely to rise to $41 billion in 1980. The response of the Western world to the debt problems of those countries has been to suggest that they can be dealt with only on a case for case basis, that only by looking separately at countries such as India, Brazil, Tanzania, Bangladesh and Mexico could any sensible conclusion be reached to the different problems.

The Western world has also been rather anxious that any unilateral report on debts should not upset the commercial banking system in the Western world. I understand that commercial bank credits to developing countries have risen from $2 billion in 1970 to about $10 billion in 1976. Therefore, clearly the Western world would not want action to be taken which would cause serious instability in the banking system.

Nevertheless, the problem of debt is serious. The servicing of the capital borrowings by the countries represented at the Paris Conference is still a formidable problem for them which we shall have to help to resolve. I should like my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to tell the House whether the United Kingdom is interested in the creation or a new agency or in the use of an agency such as the International Monetary Fund to try to manage the debt problems of some of the countries represented at the Paris Conference; or are committed to the general Western stance that these must be dealt with case by case—Tanzania separately from India, India separately from Mexico, and so forth?

I have always thought that there was a case for trying to get a multilateral agreement with the countries most affected so that they would pay only a certain percentage of their export earnings in any year in capital and interest payments. Obviously, the figure would have to be agreed with the country concerned. If such an agreement could be made for four or five years, at least the Governments of the countries concerned would know that they had a fixed commitment related to their total earnings of foreign currency. This would help them to plan their economies over that period without either needing or wishing to repudiate any debt item.

This is a serious problem for some countries and I should like to know what the Government's view is about this in relation to our total aid effort. It affects our aid effort in international terms, because to meet the United Nations requirement a certain amount is deducted from our gross contribution representing what is repaid to this country in capital repayments.

The next major issue dealt with at the Paris Conference was that of commodities and the problem of the common fund. This will become a matter of discussion next year under the auspices of UNCTAD, but the OPEC countries have, for the moment, held their hand and restrained their demands on the price of oil. It appears that there are now differences of opinion between two groups within OPEC. It is a matter of speculation whether this betokens a break-up of the cartel. I doubt it. OPEC, having shown a degree of restraint, will expect that when the North-South dialogue resumes in the spring something will be forthcoming from the Western world on commodities. I do not believe that we have seen a break between the OPEC countries and the rest of the Third World over what they must appreciate is their common interest to establish reasonable and fair prices for basic commodities.

It is in our interests to try to evolve a system which will to an extent stabilise the prices of raw materials. Britain is dependent on overseas sources for almost every important industrial raw material, apart from oil and coal. Anything that can be done to iron out fluctuations of the type that we saw from 1972 to 1974 will be in our interests.

Another argument that has been advanced by the developing countries has been that there should be a reasonable relationship between the export prices of raw materials and the import prices to them of machinery and goods from the Western world. So far, the United Kingdom has resisted this concept, as have most of the rich countries. If they continue to resist it, they will once again face serious fluctuaions in raw material prices, and perhaps even the creation of new cartels to maintain the price of certain materials, where this is possible.

There does not appear to have been a great movement about the actual volume of aid, following the North-South dialogue. The President of the Royal Bank, in a very forthright speech at Manila in October, stated categorically that the Western world was not producing the volume of aid that was reasonable and was not coming anywhere near the agreed United Nations target of 0·7 per cent. Unfortunately, Britain cannot count herself among the leaders in this respect. It is true that our aid record as a percentage of the gross national product is not so wretched as that of the United States and Japan, but it is nowhere near as good as that of Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, France and our Commonwealth partners, Canada and New Zealand.

The announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week of our intention to cut the aid programme by £100 million was staggering and incomprehensible. I can think of few expenditures more directly to the advantage of this country than expenditure on overseas aid, which promotes development and increase in real wealth overseas, and thus creates markets for this country, which depends more than any other on the expansion and development of international trade.

In terms of the aid programme, I ask my hon. Friend the Minister how these cuts will affect aid to the poorest countries, how they will affect our aid in terms of rural development, and whether these cuts will affect our contribution to international agencies such as the International Development Association, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and so on. Goverrunent persistence in a policy of this kind could have a disastrous build-up effect in relation to other aid donors. Other donors in the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD may feel that if the United Kingdom is to reduce its aid effort it weakens the case they can make to their own electorates for doing as much as they are doing now or for doing more. I am seriously worried about the repercussions of this announcement in circles outside the United Kingdom. It is a bad example, and bad examples are sometimes a lot more infectious than good examples.

What has been called the transfer of technology, a very complicated problem, is linked with private investment in overseas countries and with the best way of transferring the technologies to which we are accustomed in the Western world to countries of a very different social and economic development. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South pointed out very clearly the snags which can be encountered merely by crudely transferring one type of technology to a situation which is totally different.

There are two points on which I should like to hear some comment from the Minister concerning our current policies on the training of overseas students in this country. The Government appear to be pursuing some rather strange policies in this connection. There is the fantastic increase in fees and the differential fee system, which I find entirely repugnant There is the idea that there is something improper or wrong in colleges, universities and polytechnics which have vacant places giving them to overseas students. I find this attitude puzzling, unconstructive and unnecessary.

No sensible person is suggesting that a local British student should be kept out in order that an overseas student may be taken in. I have never heard that suggested anywhere. But when there are places vacant in polytechnics, universities or other colleges, I find it hard to under- stand why there should be deliberate dis- couragement of overseas students taking those places. I should like some information from my hon. Friend the Minister on his Department's attitude on this issue.

With regard to the transfer of technology, I wonder whether we are making sufficient use of the enormous range of engineering and scientific expertise that we have in our public corporations. The Coal Board, the Gas Council, the Electricity Council, the railways and so on all have an enormous volume of knowledge and ability in matters which are fundamental to development. With all respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South, in some way or other the developing countries will have to get away from oxcarts. They may need a railway here and there, and they will eventually need electricity generation.

My hon. Friend will, I am sure, acknowledge that electricity generation is part of rural development.

I am sure it is. That is why I am anxious that the knowledge and expertise of the CEGB in generation and in distribution should be brought to bear, if this can be arranged, through the Ministry of Overseas Development or through some other means for the benefit of countries in Africa and Asia.

The North-South dialogue at the Paris Conference adjourned this month without very much accomplished after 12 months of on and off discussion. It has postponed its consideration of development and aid matters until the spring next year. In the meantime the OPEC countries —which have allied themselves with the developing world, since they have many common problems with it —have made a decision about the price of oil which can hardly be regarded as wildly unreasonable in relation to world inflation. But I am sure they have not said their last word on this and that, having, as it were, dealt with their card for the moment, they will be waiting for some cards to be played by the Western world when the North-South dialogue resumes next spring. I should like to know, in terms of our own United Kingdom aid programme and our United Kingdom aid policies, what we intend to offer them in regard to debt problems, commodities, trade, and the transfer of technology.

We are no longer a great front-rank industrial Power. We have been overtaken by Japan, the United States, Germany, France and other countries. But we are influential, we have a rôle to play, we should be putting forward ideas, and the House is entitled to know what those ideas are.

I do not want to speak about the issue just raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley). I want to refer to some of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), who initiated the debate. He referred to the role of the Crown Agents. The Crown Agents became involved in property matters several years ago. This became apparent some two or three years ago at the time when the property market fell through the floor.

Arising out of the serious problems facing the Crown Agents at that time, which were then revealed, the Fay Committee was set up in order to look into what was, without any doubt at all, a scandal. The Crown Agents had changed themselves from a servicing agency to a body involved in property speculation. They saw at that time that millions of pounds were being made—I am talking of the boom which lasted from 1970 until 1973—out of investing in property. The people responsible for administering the Crown Agents decided to put their money in as well.

Although the Crown Agents were acting illegally those activities have been shrouded in a great deal of mystery. People in the Establishment generally, both in this Government and in the previous one, have gone to great lengths to make it abundantly clear to the speeding motorist that he is committing a serious offence. The same attitude applies to the poor old mother who, in buying a few things for Christmas in the shops, quite inadvertently picks up something and is sent to prison for three months, just because she is trying to look after the kids. Persons convicted in that way must feel that it is a funny old law that allows the Crown Agents, involved in property speculation, to get away with it in the way they did, seemingly getting the backing of two successive Govern- ments for their actions. I just want to put that on the record, and I want to go a stage further with the more recent developments.

The Crown Agents, when they got involved in property speculation decided to use a sum of money, which was not their money, in what was known as the Stern Group, which was run, by and large, by William Stern, one of the architects of the Tories' ill-fated Housing Finance Act—or so he proudly claimed on BBC television. He was involved in making remarkable sums of money in property speculation, and this involved the Crown Agents, who decided to invest some of their money —although it was not their money really —in the Stern Group. William Stern was involved in shifting money around from one property to another. He had a pyramid-type business. The Stern Group invested large sums of money —money which did not belong to it —in William Stern's business, although it was apparent to some hon. Members at the time that he was on the verge of financial collapse.

Then a strange thing happened. On to the scene came Kenneth Cork, of Cork W. H. Gully and Co., one of the top accountants in the country. He was put in charge of the receivership of the Stern Group. His job—so most of us thought—was to ensure that William Stern became bankrupt, but he got a bright idea and put a proposition before the 32 creditors, who included the Crown Agents. He told the creditors that there was no need to make William Stern bankrupt after his company collapsed with debts of about £110 million. He suggested that William Stern should be allowed to buy and sell a few properties —to get them cheap and sell them dear, and thus make a few extra bob. The creditors would then get a little of their money back.

I want my hon. Friend the Minister to tell me when he replies why the Stern Group went to the 30-odd creditors at the meeting in July 1975 with a deed of arrangement put by Kenneth Cork to avoid bankruptcy. I want to know why the Crown Agents acted in accordance with that proposition. Why did they and the Government go along with the scandalous idea that this man, whose company had collapsed with debts of £110 million, should be allowed to get away with it? Why should there be a proposition which allowed him to earn £20,000 a year before he passed anything on to his creditors? That was the proposition which Kenneth Cork put to the Stern Group creditors, of whom the Crown Agents were one.

The Estate Times, which some of us read, published a list which made it abundantly clear that the Crown Agents were on the list of creditors under the name of Four Millbank Nominees Ltd., which is the company acting for the Crown Agents. Has the Minister kept in close contact with the Crown Agents in view of their abysmal record of breaking the law? As the British taxpayer has to bail out this company, it is the Government's duty to let us know what the Crown Agents were doing at that meeting and why they apparently agreed with the proposition put by Kenneth Cork.

Some prominent newspapers have been taking up the story month after month. Did the Government go along with this proposition? If they did, was it because they feared that the bankruptcy of William Stern would reveal a lot of important names?

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Could you clarify whether this is a debate on rural aid or on the Crown Agents generally?

In the papers which were issued to hon. Members, the title of the debate is "Financial assistance to the Crown Agents", so there is no difficulty.

As I made the point in the beginning, my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South was wise and shrewd enough to put down this subject on a very broad basis of rural development and the Crown Agents.

I have it firmly in my mind that had bankruptcy proceedings taken place one thing is certain: a lot of names would have been revealed. There were more than 30 creditors, and some of them were very important. Some were shady property companies, and all the dirty washing would have been hanging out to dry. Perhaps Kenneth Cork was asked to find a suitable deed of arrangement dating back to the early part of this cen- tury, in order to get William Stern off the hook so that the names would not be revealed. It was reasoned that the property business would pick up again and some of the losses could be recouped. This has been suggested in the Daily Telegraph columns this morning. It says that it is conceivable that some of the creditors—not the Crown Agents—might get a few bob back.

This is a very sinister scenario. The Minister should tell us why the Department for which he is responsible had not been informed, and why the Crown Agents took the position they did at the meeting in July last year. Why did the Crown Agents, as a Government body, allow Kenneth Cork to put this proposition in order to get William Stern off the hook? Why was he not made bankrupt? A lot of people—hundreds, I believe—in this country are made bankrupt every year. Some of the people in the Clay Cross affair were made bankrupt because they fought, not for themselves and not to line their own pockets, but for a principle.

rose—

Order. I anticipate the hon. Member's point of order. I was going to draw the attention of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) to the fact that he cannot go on to discuss Clay Cross.

There are some people who get very tetchy whenever I mention that. I am talking about the Crown Agents rôle in this very shabby affair. Why were the Crown Agents one of the principal creditors at that meeting in July 1975, and why have the Government allowed this matter to escape them when there are lots of people in the Press and outside who are keeping a very close watch on these proceedings and returning to them on many occasions?

It is even more sinister that when I raised this matter in the House a couple of months ago it was reported in one of the newspapers and the BBC invited me to make some comments about it on the "World at One" programme. Mr. Kenneth Cork was supposed to come along as well and explain his side of the affair. However, he threatened to issue a writ, and he asked people to write to the newspapers contradicting everything that I have said. But I am prepared to say everything that I have said today outside this place. It is strange that Kenneth Cork should threaten the BBC in this matter. The BBC told me that it could not have me on the programme because Kenneth Cork had threatened to take action. The BBC said that the Daily Telegraph and/or the Sunday Telegraph had published apologies when they had done nothing of the sort about the question of Kenneth Cork and the proposition that he made to Stern in the Sunday Telegraph published in September 1975. It is a shady business.

The Fay Committee must do a thorough job. It must take up the question of the way in which the Crown Agents acted when they tried to make money illegally out of property and nearly got away with it.

The Fay Committee should know how many properties Stern has been buying and selling in the last few months since the liquidator refused to make the company bankrupt. The Minister should tell the Crown Agents that, having been bailed out to the tune of £100 million by the British taxpayer as a result of their acting illegally a few years ago when they entered the property market, they have a duty to tell him what is going on now in view of the subsequent proceedings involving William Stern and the failure of Kenneth Cork to make him bankrupt as most people would be in that position.

After all this time, it is ironic that the one creditor, according to the Sunday Telegraph of 19th December, which is threatening to force the property tycoon into bankruptcy is none other than Kayser Ullman. That company has a record. It was the company that helped to bail out the Leader of the Liberal Party, his company, London and County Securities Ltd., and the chairman of the 1922 Committee. It is the company which, according to the Sunday Telegraph, has threatened to force William Stern, the property tycoon, into bankruptcy. Yet we know that the Crown Agents, which have sat idly by refusing to do anything about the situation, are accepting proposals which have been made in the past 15 months.

Some difficult and provocative questions have to be answered. If my hon. Friend the Minister cannot answer them now the Fay Committee must, because there are a few hon. Members and some people outside who will continue to press the issue until the truth emerges. It does not matter to me how big the names are. I know that there are a few big names, and my hon. Friend knows the many interests that the Crown Agents have in various companies. I intervene to help make the truth available.

I wish that at the time I set up the Fay Committee I had appointed my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), because he would have been a first-rate member of that committee. I do not know the truth or the merit of my hon. Friend's argument, but I think that it would be wise to take account of the reconstitution of the Crown Agents and of the fact that the situation is entirely different from that which existed in the early days and which led to the problems there.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister who is to reply to the debate will not be able to say much about these things because they are in the hands of the Fay Committee, but I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover that it would not be a bad idea if he got in touch directly with the committee. The committee is responsible to hear anything that anyone wants to say to it, and I am sure that my hon. Friend could make a contribution. I emphasis to my hon. Friend that, whatever happened about this matter in July 1975, he should get in contact with the committee. Kenneth Cork's name is not familiar to me. It reminds me of Pamela Hansford Johnson's novel about Cork Street. I do not know about these things. in all seriousness, if there is something that the committee needs to know about, my hon. Friend should get in contact with it.

We are debating aid administration, which covers the Crown Agents. I should like to touch on one or two aspects of aid administration. I know of the valiant efforts that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has made in the last few weeks on this matter —at least, I think that I know of the valiant efforts he has made. I want first to ask him, particularly as aid administration concerns rural development, which is our main subject matter tonight, what he supposes will be the effect on aid administration of the 10 per cent. cut in the aid programme this year and next year.

My hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that a 10 per cent. cut in any public expenditure programme of any Government Department is a good deal higher than any other percentage cut suffered by any Government Department in the last three or four public expenditure exercises. My understanding —again, my hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong —is that the maximum expenditure cut in all Departments except perhaps defence has been about 6 per cent.

A 10 per cent. cut over the next two years can to a certain degree be accommodated by the allowance that is made in any departmental public expenditure programme for carrying over from one year to the next, for the possibility of overspending or underspending —but not 10 per cent. in two years running. Therefore, it must mean that an element of the aid programme will have to be sacrificed next year and the year after.

Since the emphasis of the aid programme —as my hon. Friend appreciates, it has been my emphasis as much as that of his right hon. Friend since I left the Ministry—is on a poverty-oriented programme and rural development, one must then ask where programmes which had been planned will now not occur. I am not necessarily speaking of those agreed with other developing countries, and not necessarily of the point at which we have to abandon programmes agreed with them. However, how far shall we have to abandon programmes that within the Department have been settled?

Looking at this matter, I see one problem in the allocation of the aid programme that is much more serious in terms of a cut than would have been the case even three or four years ago. It appears to me that a far higher proportion of the aid programme is committed to multilateral programmes well in advance and automatically. For example —I make no complaint about this, and neither would any of my hon. Friends—we have a commitment to the IDA in the World Bank. One is glad about that. One would not want to cut it for an instant. It is one of the best elements of our multilateral programme. Equally, we have com- mitments taken on in advance to the United National Development Programme, and we have the new commitment, about which we can have no debate or argument, to the European Development Fund.

There is now a higher proportion of the aid programme which is automatically committed, with a little less latitude than in previous years for the disposition of our own aid. Even when there is a 10 per cent. cut, it seems—perhaps there is more complexity to it than I apppreciate—that it must fall on about 75 to 80 per cent. of the programme which is capable of being committed bilaterally. If that is the case, we are getting to the heart of the argument of programmes to the poorest countries and to rural development in the poorest countries—because we all agree that if we are talking about the poorest countries we are talking about rural development, with all the aspects of it which have been mentioned on both sides of the House tonight, and someone will come out very much worse at the end of this exercise as the result of a 10 per cent. cut in each of two consecutive years.

In the case of other departmental programmes such as education and housing, sooner or later, in one way or another, the House is given fairly precise information about where the cuts will have their effect. Even if the Government do not tell us, the local authorities tell us that they have a certain reduction in their school building, housing or roads programme. It has not been the practice for the Government to tell us where aid cuts fall, but perhaps that is because we have not had cuts in the aid programme for many a long year.

We have not had the increases that we might have wished, but we have not had the cuts. In 1969–70 we did not have cuts. We had a marginal reduction in the planned programme under the Conservative Government of 1970–74. We did not have cuts in 1974–75 or 1975–76. We only have them now. Perhaps it is a new experience and new questions should be put to the Government. I would not expect my hon. Friend to be able to give me an answer tonight, but I would expect him to take note of the fact that a 10 per cent. cut in the aid programme must be accounted for to this House.

We have a right to know where those cuts will fall and how far they will affect, for example, our commitment to the European Development Fund. In parenthesis, I must say that I should greatly welcome such a cut. I know that my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend have fought hard and without success on the matter of the European Development Fund and the whole aid programme of the EEC, but that has resulted in an absurdly nominal recognition of the need to provide European aid to countries which are not associated with the EEC.

The end of the long struggle of two, three or four years to try to get a decent aid programme from the EEC to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other non-associated countries has ended with a dismal pebble in the pool. My lion. Friend knows that as well as I do. I would welcome it if the 10 per cent. cut came on the EDF programme, because it has little to do with the priorities of the British aid programme as we have expressed them in the House. Given the scale of the cuts, we have a right to know where they will fall in terms of the programmes envisaged or semi-committed within the Department.

In terms of many of the aspects raised by my hon. Friends, in terms of the role of UNCTAD, the North-South dialogue and what is happening in the relationships between the rich world and the poor world, the Government and the Department are, if I may be subjective, taking an extremely good and positive approach. I should like, however, on the debt problem—and I think that it was this to which my hon. Friend was referring—to see some kind of compromise whereby we recognise that while a case-by-case approach is right because of the immense variations in the debt problems of the developing countries, nevertheless, we as a nation would be right to make a generalised commitment to understanding the debt problems of the Third World. So far we have not quite done that.

We have said rather rigidly "We take a case-by-case approach". We have not been ready to say that it is within the framework of a general agreement that the debt problems of the Third World must be understood that we should wish to take a case-by-case approach. The difference is between the narrow, rather sterile—I am using rather rude words but am doing so deliberately— and arid approach of the economists who advise the Government on these matters from various Departments, and the political understanding that only Ministers can bring to these problems. I wish my hon. Friend well in his efforts to advance political understanding instead of the rather narrow analysis of many of the advisers in Whitehall on this subject, as on other subjects, in relation to UNCTAD and the Common Fund.

There is something very wrong, and we have commented on this in this House time and again, when, in a debate on this whole matter of relationships between ourselves and the Third World, there is such a poor attendance in the Chamber. I know that we are debating this issue on the Consolidated Fund Bill, but this is the first opportunity we have had for about 18 months for a real discussion of these matters. Until this country wakes up, until the Government wake un and until the Opposition Front Bench wake up. nothing very much will be done. Not one Opposition Front Bench speaker has been present throughout the debate. Indeed, there has been only one contribution to the debate from the Opposition benches. The Liberals are not here. SNP Members are not here. Plaid Cymru Members are not here. Let us take careful note of that when our colleagues and our comrades responsible in this country with activities concerned with the Third World next ask us to initiate matters in this House.

It is time that these matters were regarded as being at the centre of our economic thinking, because until they are we shall never solve our nation's problems. We shall solve our problems only in the context of some kind of answer to the problems of the Third World.

As my hon. Friend realises, I could speak for another half hour on this sub-jest, but I shall not do so. I know how hard my hon. Friend is working on these matters. I know that he will not be able to give complete answers tonight, but I hope that sooner or later the Government will take note of the desperation that is now entering into this dialogue.

I join my right hon. Friend the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) in lamenting the poor attendance for what has been a thought-provoking debate. I am sorry that there will not be time, if we are to do justice to the other debates tonight, to do justice to all the points which have bene raised, because they have been profound and deserve detailed commentary.

It is clear that we are greatly indebted to our hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), and, to some extent, to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley), for having balloted for this subject. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham. South has a long-standing and unrivalled commitment to overseas aid. I have seen it at first hand both in this country and abroad. But his commitment is not surprising when one considers the witness of his political life and also his active life—though he does not brag about it—in the United Reformed Church. What is clearly stamped on him is Chapter 4, verses 2 to 5, of the Second Book of Timothy, and the more hon. Members take that text seriously on an issue of such profound importance as this the better.

What is the text?

My hon. Friend will find it instructive to go to the Library after this debate and read the whole of the Second Book of Timothy.

The aid programme for 1977–78 is being cut by £50 million in current prices to £494 million as against the £516 million that we are spending in this financial year. It amounts to a cut of some 10 per cent. This cut in the real value of next year's programme will reduce substantially our ability to respond effectively to the needs of developing countries.

It means that in real terms we shall do less than we are doing at present. Et means that we shall be able to achieve correspondingly less next year in our fight to help the poorer countries in overcoming hunger, malnutrition, disease and premature death, that more people will go hungry and will die, that more children will suffer, that less will be done to lessen malnutrition, infant mortality and diseases, that we shall have to refuse many requests for help with projects aimed at improving the lot of those living in the rural areas, and that the resources available to the multilateral agencies will be less than would have been the case otherwise.

The multilateral agencies are indeed in the forefront of the fight against rural poverty no less than the bilateral programme. The consequences of the cuts in the aid programme are therefore without doubt greater misery, greater suffering, more widespread disease, and more deaths in the developing world. About that there should be no illusion.

Naturally, it is my fervent hope and the no less fervent hope of my right hon. Friend—I have his authority to say so—that, as soon as circumstances permit, we should restore and more than restore the aid programme to the level at which we should all like to see it operating. Let us consider the challenge as spelt out not only in the context so eloquently expressed in the debate but in the international context.

We at present devote 0·37 per cent. of our gross national product to aid, whereas Sweden and the Netherlands have already passed the 0·7 per cent. target. Since 1961, the proportion of total Government expenditure on aid has fallen from 2 per cent. to 0·89 per cent. When we look at our record compared with other countries within the OECD, we find, by my reckoning, that only two of them are providing less per head of population for aid than we are. Surely we all agree that just when we have looked to others to come to our assistance with a significant loan from the IMF, it behoves us to look with an increasingly acute eye at our own responsibilities to those Governments who are struggling with problems against which our own begin to fade into insignificance.

This debate has been largely about rural development—though I shall come to other subjects later. It is now just over a year since we published the White Paper, for which we owe a great debt of gratitude to my right hon. Friend the Member for Lanark setting out our new aid policy on rural development. That policy expressed our commitment increasingly to concentrate our aid on the poorest countries in the world, defined as those with aper capitaincome of less than $200 a year, which is not much more than 6 per cent., or one-twentieth of the per capita income in the United Kingdom.

We have also said that we intend to concentrate in that strategy on the poorest groups within the poorest countries. Since the vast majority of the world's poorest people live in the rural areas, that inevitably means concentrating on rural development. Many of those whom we are trying to help live on the very margins of existence. In fact, to say that they "live" in any meaningful sense is probably an exaggeration.

They produce barely enough food to survive on. They have little or no access to the basic facilities of shelter, health care, or education. They are at the mercy of the elements and can face starvation or death if the rains fail and there is drought, or if the rains are too great and there is flooding.

In case anyone thinks that this is a partisan rendering by a Minister with special responsibility in this sphere, I shall refer to a speech made by Robert McNamara to the World Bank not long ago. He expressed the challenge far more clearly than has been done for a long time and spoke with all his distinguished record at the Pentagon:

"Malnutrition saps their energies, stunts their production and shortens their lives. Illiteracy darkens their minds and forecloses their futures. Simple preventable diseases maim and kill their children. Squalor and ugliness pollute and poison their surroundings. The miraculous gift of life itself and all its intrinsic potential, so promising and rewarding for us, is eroded and reduced for them to a desperate effort to survive. The self-perpetuating plight of the absolute poor simply cuts them off from whatever economic progress there may be in their own societies. They remain largely outside the entire development effort, neither able to contribute much to it nor able to benefit fairly from it. Unless, he said, specific efforts are made to bring them into the development process, no feasible degree of traditional welfare or simple redistribution of already inadequate national income can fundamentally alter the circumstances that impoverish them."

That is a challenge that no reasonable hon. Member can ignore.

The rural development projects that we finance normally have at their core an increase in agricultural production, to provide both food for the farmers themselves and an income to help develop the social and other services if the community is to succeed in raising its standard of living. But increasing agricultural production itself requires the provision of basic economic and social services. These may include agricultural extension, rural roads, water supply, credit and marketing systems and basic education and health systems—in other words, integrated rural development.

The contribution of inputs needed will vary from region to region, but we are prepared to finance projects involving either inputs into one or two sectors, or into a number of different sectors in order to promote the balanced development of a particular region. In particular, we need to take account of the impact which inputs into one sector can have on others. For example, we need to take great care when financing irrigation projects that steps are taken to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases such as bilharzia.

In the last year or so, we have become involved in a number of rural development projects which fit in with our strategy. These include projects in the Upper Region of Ghana and in Gambia, in both of which we are providing, along with other donors, inputs such as fertilisers, veterinary services and marketing facilities. In the Upper Region of Ghana, 125,000 farmers are benefiting from schemes in which we and the World Bank are involved. I was fortunate to be able to visit the Gambia recently and to travel through the area of the project there. I was impressed by the professionalism and dedication of British experts there and by the potential for using British aid in support of an imaginative Government programme to help the rural poor. Other projects in which we are involved include the setting up of three demonstration farms in the South Darfur province of Sudan as the first stage of a project in which Arab development funds are also involved, designed to halt the present decline in incomes of poor farmers, and involvement with the World Bank in a major irrigation and rural development scheme in Sri Lanka.

These examples show that we are making progress with our aid policy. More generally, the proportion of our bilateral project aid allocated to projects designed wholly to benefit the rural poor was greater in 1975 than in 1974. This trend is encouraging, but we still have a long way to go. Furthermore, it would be wrong for me to give the impression that implementing our policy will be easy or quick. It will not.

Rural development projects involve difficult technical problems in ensuring that inputs such as fertilisers and seeds are properly adapted to the areas where they are needed, difficult institutional problems in ensuring that channels exist for funds and equipment to reach those in the often remote areas who really need them, and complex social problems involving the changing of deeply entrenched social attitudes.

Furthermore, the development of the rural areas often presents difficult political problems for the developing country Governments themselves, and can involve us in delicate negotiations in pursuit of our policy. It will take time and experience to learn how best to overcome these various problems. As a result we shall need to continue to finance sound development projects in other sectors.

We are also having to adapt our own aid machinery in order to cope with the very special problems created by rural development projects. Measures we are taking include making more use of interdisciplinary missions to visit countries and discuss with Governments the scope for our involvement in rural development projects, the introduction or expansion of schemes designed to train British experts in the various aspects of rural development, and the appointment to the Ministry's development divisions overseas of social development advisers to take account of the social problems involved in projects.

We have in the Ministry and in our development divisions overseas professional advisers with a wide knowledge and experience of the various aspects of rural development, including agriculture, fisheries, education, social development and engineering. In addition, the scientific units of the Ministry, in particular the Land Resources Division, the Tropical Products Institute and the Centre for Overseas Pest Research, carry out research and provide technical advice which is respected throughout the developing world and in industrialised countries too. We have also set up a Rural Development Department within our Ministry to focus on the problems associated with our new policy. I can assure my hon. Friends that we do use CDC and are prepared to use public corporations to help us with consultancy where appropriate.

However, we are aware that the new policy is likely to put a strain on our available manpower. We shall therefore be making more use of other sources of expertise, including consultants, experts from British universities and technical co-operation experts in between overseas assignments to help us identify and prepare projects. We are also strengthening our links with other donors, for example, the FAO and the World Bank, in order to share our expertise with them and to benefit from theirs.

My conclusion on this score, therefore is that in the first year of our new aid strategy—I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Lanark will be pleased with this news—we have made good progress in overcoming the difficulties which we face and in finding and beginning to implement projects which we believe stand a good chance of making a small but important impact on the alleviation of some of the appalling poverty which exists in the world today. In saying that, however, I take up one point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South. I freely recognise—I say this from my own experience both before and since coming to the Ministry and from my experience on field visits—that we cannot overestimate the importance of field liaison in the effective implementation of the rural development-oriented programme.

My hon. Friend asked also about local costs. Most of our bilateral aid is tied to the procurement of British goods and services, but rural development projects often involve a high proportion of local costs. In exceptional circumstances we are prepared to provide aid to cover these costs in certain cases where we consider that the need requires it—for example, on projects in very poor countries which the Government themselves cannot mobilise enough local resources to finance. We have to keep local cost aid within reasonable bounds, of course, but this has not, in my experience so far, been a hindrance to our ability to assist poverty focused projects in most countries, although there are some significant exceptions.

On the question of local costs, would not my hon. Friend agree that some of the most effective schemes in rural development are schemes allowing people to develop their own resources on their own, and that these most useful schemes probably require a higher proportion of local costs? Would he not agree that, although there is a dilemma here, that is probably one of the best ways forward?

I acknowledge the force of what my hon. Friend says. I put it again to him that where there are exceptional circumstances we are prepared to look at them. We have not always been able to overcome the difliculties, and to suggest otherwise would be to mislead the House, but we accept that the point which my hon. Friend makes is profoundly relevant to the whole effective operation of rural development work.

My hon. Friend referred also to exploitation. Again, I think that most of us in the House would agree that, if we are genuine about the concept of partnership in development, the most important factor in any development situation—nothing can compensate for its absence—is the style, the commitment and the priorities of the Government on the spot. I am convinced, therefore, that in the context of our new programme we would naturally emphasise the relationship where this was clearly established as something in harmony with everything we were trying to achieve.

I have noted what my hon. Friends have said about students, and I acknowledge the force of their feeling on this issue. As they will appreciate, this is mainly a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science, and I shall see that their observations are conveyed to her. I assure my hon. Friends, however, that in our Department we well understand the important contribution which the education of overseas students in this country can make to the whole development process, so long as we take steps to ensure that the sort of people we are financing and the sort of courses on which we are financing them are relevant to the priorities which we have established as of overriding importance in our programme.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South referred to a lot of matters—he always does, and rightly so—and I take next his reference to appropriate technology. We are conscious of the need to ensure the appropriateness of the tech- nology that we sponsor in our projects. We try to ensure that the machinery we provide under aid does not displace labour and can be easily operated by local people. Much of the initiative for the development of appropriate technology must come from the developing countries themselves, since they will be better aware than we are of the special needs of different regions and sectors. But we nevertheless play an important rôle in sponsoring the development of appropriate technology through our scientific units, particularly the Tropical Products Institute and the National Institute for Agricultural Engineering, and also through our support of the Intermediate Technology Development Group itself.

Now I come to the other important point, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). It would have been impossible for me not to recognise since taking up my present office the great significance that my hon. Friend attaches to the issues he has raised. I also recognise his strength of feeling. I assure him without qualification that the terms of reference of the Fay Committee of Inquiry are wide and powerful. It has been given every encouragement to leave no stone unturned. Like my hon. Friend, I look forward keenly to the committee's findings.

I am sure that my hon. Friend understands that we must await publication of the committee's report, but I must say two things to him tonight. First, an attempt by the administrator to execute a deed of arrangement between Mr. Stern and his creditors failed. My hon. Friend may have been misinformed, because the Crown Agents voted against the scheme.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will endorse my other point, which is that in his anxiety about the past—and it is a sad and sorry story on which we are waiting for the Fay Committee to report—he will not wish to overlook the debt of gratitude owed to the present Crown Agents. I believe that it is partly due to their professionalism and commitment that so much has been revealed, because they have been determined to put the Crown Agents on an absolutely honourable and proper course. They are sparing no effort to do it. I should like to place on record my appreciation of that.

If the Crown Agents representative at the meeting of creditors voted against the so-called scheme of arrangement, why have there been no proceedings in regard to the bankruptcy of Mr. William Stern subsequent to that meeting? Mr. Stern has gone on involving himself in buying and selling various properties. As my hon. Friend probably knows from various letters sent to the Department of Trade and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, I have received countless letters from people with investments in some of the concerns with which Mr. William Stern was involved. They have written about the money which they invested and have wondered whether they will receive anything at all.

I also receive letters from the Department of Trade, usually from the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Davis), who makes it plain that at this stage no money is coming back. Notwithstanding the long period—15 months—if there was no deed of arrangement, as reported in the Sunday Telegraph of 19th September 1975, why is Mr. Stern carrying on in the way that he is?

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that at this stage, when we are awaiting the Fay Committee's report, it would not be helpful to be drawn too deeply into an exchange on this matter. I can assure my hon. Friend that the Crown Agents are well aware of the significance of the issue. The way in which they voted demonstrates that.

No hon. Member should be in any doubt that the Crown Agents have been instructed to cease their property speculations and to withdraw, as rapidly as is conducive with proper dignity and proper care of public money, from the secondary banking activities in which they have been involved. That is a course upon which they have set out with deep commitment.

My hon. Friend will confirm that that instruction was given a year and a half or two and a half years ago.

My right hon. Friend rightly reminds the House that the instruction was given some time ago. She will be glad to know that it has been faithfully executed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heeley, with his unrivalled—

Is my hon. Friend leaving the Crown Agents?

I think that we shall leave them at this juncture.

I assumed that my hon. Friend was going to answer my other question. Will he now instruct the Crown Agents to take the appropriate measures to ensure that William Stern is made bankrupt in accordance with the law of the land as, indeed, some creditors are suggesting they might do?

That is not necessary on the part of the Crown Agents. That action has already been taken and the Crown Agents' position, as I am sure will be recognised, has been established in the way I have communicated to the House.

I return to the interesting speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Heeley. My hon. Friend has a long-standing commitment to international affairs and international development no less than other aspects of international politics. I shall say a word about the Conference on International Economic Co-operation in Paris. I remind the House that at that conference the EEC Community participates as an entity with the presidency and the Commission as its spokesman. As a consequence, whatever the practice of individual member States may be in aid-giving, any statement made on the Community's behalf and any decisions eventually adopted by the CIEC must also be acceptable to all member States. Decisions must also be acceptable to the other seven Western countries participating.

In some matters related to aid we can go further to meet the developing countries than some of our partners, although in others our present economic position does not make that possible. We shall be holding the presidency of the Community for the first six months of next year. I assure my hon. Friends that we shall do our best to give a constructive lead in the dialogue, subject to our own national constraint and the limits to what can be done by our partners.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heeley asked about the UNCTAD programme as it had been mentioned in the UNCTAD resolution. As we stated and voted at UNCTAD—I was there to cast one vote and I know what I am about to say from my own experience—we are committed to serious study of that programme. We are already participating in international talks about specific commodities listed in the programme. I shall always take every opportunity of telling the pessimists about the outcome of UNCTAD that it was exciting, because for the first time the international community produced a specific list of 18 commodities. We are considering that list seriously.

My hon. Friend also referred to the Common Fund. That is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, but I can say that we shall take part in the exploratory talks in good faith. We have deep reservations about the fund's effectiveness as a mechanism for supporting any international commodity programme. We have repeatedly expressed that view. I believe my hon. Friend will accept that it is because of the seriousness with which we treat the international community that we believe that it would be wrong to pretend that we do not have profound reservations when we have them, but it is a measure of our seriousness that we are determined to put our reservations before the international community, probing them in depth. We shall ascertain whether our reservations can be met and how far we can commit ourselves.

My hon. Friend also mentioned debt, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Lanark. The indebtedness of the developing countries was the second main subject at the UNCTAD Conference and continues to figure prominently in the CIEC. The proposals of the developing countries' Manila Declaration took the form of inviting creditor countries to agree to across-the-board measures of relief from debt service obligations for whole groups of developing countries. Britain and most other industrialised countries regard these proposals as misconceived for three main reasons.

First, they believe that debt service problems represent only one element, albeit in some cases a major element, in- balance of payments problems and need to be considered in that wider context. Secondly, they believe that the incidence and magnitude of such balance of payments problems vary widely and that where they exist they may be in varying degrees temporary or more deep-seated, and accordingly need different responses. Thirdly, they believe that there can be few developing countries that will not need to continue to borrow in future in order to sustain the development process.

But willingness by potential creditors to continue to lend must depend on confidence that debt obligations will be honoured. But confidence is a volatile commodity, and measures which involved generalised failure to meet debt service obligations, whether on ODA or commercial debt, would seriously risk undermining the confidence on which international credit—and, indeed, the whole system of international trade and payments—rests.

This is by no means saying that Britain, or other industrialised countries, are in any way unsympathetic to the difficulties of those developing countries which face serious balance of payments deficits and heavy debt service payments. Substantial measures have been agreed during the past year, in the IMF, to make finance more readily available to meet short and medium-term balance of payments difficulties. For those countries with a longterm structural problem, help in the shape of ODA on appropriately soft terms is particularly important. Our recent decision to provide bilateral aid to the poorest developing countries in the form of grants is part of our response, and we hope that other donor countries will progressively adopt similar policies. Nevertheless, we recognise that individual cases have arisen and will arise involving acute or structural balance of payments difficulties which will call for exceptional remedial measures. Well-tried arrangements exist for considering these cases in the shape of aid consortia, special aid groups and ad hoc meetings of debtors and creditors.

Against this background, creditor countries expressed their willingness at Nairobi at UNCTAD to give quick and constructive consideration to individual requests, with a view to taking prompt action to relieve developing countries suffering from debt service difficulties, in particular the least developed countries and the most seriously affected. The UNCTAD IV resolution also called for an examination of the features which might usefully be discerned from past operations and from the present situation, to provide guidance in future operations as a basis for dealing flexibly with individual cases. The British delegation worked hard throughout the Nairobi conference to achieve a marrying of the case-by-case approach with some general consideration of debt problems. It recognised the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lanark. The consensus which was ultimately reached at the conference was based on a proposal which we ourselves had put forward.

We have continued to take the lead in the CIEC in identifying features of debt situations in accordance with the Nairobi resolution. We believe that this work should go a long way towards meeting the concerns of the developing countries for speedy and sympathetic consideration of their problems, while preserving the case-by-case approach. The developing countries have expressed appreciation of our evident good will and have come a little way to meet us. But they still persist so far in arguing that in addition to this work, there is a need for an immediate once-for-all generalised debt relief operation.

This has been a thought-provoking and powerful debate. Hon. Members have expressed their concern at what has happened to the aid programme. In our work there are three points of which we are constantly convinced. The first is that an aid programme by Britain is right. One can qualify that statement by all kinds of rationale and different arguments, but the basic principle, as I am sure every hon. Member will agree, is that an aid programme is the right course. However we approach the technical problems, the principles at the basis of social justice and social morality are indivisible.

How often we hear the phrase "Charity begins at home", but the truth is that if we contract out cynically from our international responsibilities, we shall soon be contracting out of our responsibilities nearer home. The rot then cannot be stopped in either direction. The programme is right, and that is why these things matter.

It is obviously in our long-term interests as a trading nation to improve the trading abilities of the world community. I always remember Paul Hoffman, the distinguished American who headed the United Nations Development Programme, almost exploding with anger in a New York hospital bed once when I was talking to him and saying that aid was not charity. He said "When I was in the automobile industry I always said that it made nonsense to set aside less than 3 per cent. of your budget for market development. I am not asking for as much as that." One of the problems of Britain is that there are people around who do not have the vision to see that, just because of the difficulties now confronting us, the purchasing power of the developing world becomes more important than ever.

The third reason for continuing this programme is that of international stability. Those of us who have families must recognise that in today's world, where one quarter of the population monopolises access to three-quarters of the world's wealth, where there has been a revolution in communications so that the deprived three-quarters are well aware of the disadvantaged state in which they live, there is no prospect of future stability if the problems of social justice are not tackled in a way which affords them the highest priority. For everyone who cares about future world stability this is an investment in the future, because in tackling at the root the problems that cause instability and conflict we shall be making a profound contribution to the stability of future generations.

Above all, we have to remember that, while we have deep and acute economic problems, as a nation our problems are not exclusively economic. They are also psychological. They are problems of will and determination. One of the ways in which we shall find our self-confidence as a nation and in doing so begin to win the confidence of the world community is by facing up to our international responsibilities and answering them fully as we should. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the sphere of aid and development. On that score I again express my appreciation to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South for having given us the opportunity tonight to remind ourselves of what we should be doing.

All is not well today at Stonehenge, and since this is the most-visited ancient monument in Britain it is right that the House should know about the situation there. There is a dangerous assumption that if something has survived from prehistoric times it will continue to survive and a few centuries more or less will have no effect. Nothing could be further from the truth. The alarm bells are beginning to ring.

Hon. Members who have visited the cave paintings at Altamira in Spain and at Lascaux in France will know of the increasing attraction of those places and of the mounting anxiety lest the breath of the daily throngs of tourists will damage the paintings. Something of this anxiety is now apparent in Wiltshire, where the weight of numbers is becoming unmanageable. It was Dr. Johnson who said:

"Salisbury Cathedral and its neighbour, Stonehenge, are two eminent monuments of art and rudeness, and may show the first essay and the last perfection in architecture."

The practical care exercised in the maintenance of these two monuments has been in marked contrast.

From the first day that the spire of the cathedral was completed, with all of its 400 ft. and more, successive deans and chapters have accorded the highest priority to its maintenance. Architects, including Sir Christopher Wren, have strengthened it with iron collars. The lean from the perpendicular is measured regularly, just as a doctor takes the temperature of his patient. The result is that, although the spire dwarfs Big Ben and the Victoria Tower, it has stood up firmly through more than seven centuries.

Stonehenge is in melancholy contrast. For most of its life there has been no Department of the Environment. It is not just wind and weather that have done the damage. Stones have actually been removed through the years. Stones have been taken to build bridges or to dam streams. Moreover, in the past visitors have been allowed to chip away pieces of stone for the purpose of taking souvenirs, In the last century my constituents hired out hammers to visitors to facilitate their task. We all have to live. I see my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) smiling. It is a fact that wages in Wiltshire have always been below the national average. If visitors were too idle to chip away the pieces for themselves, instead they could buy pieces for mementos.

Moreover, at this time of the year severe storms sweep across Salisbury Plain. It was on 3rd January 1797 that one of the finest stone arches—trilithons, as they are called—fell. When one trilithon falls, as with a plantation of trees the pressures on the remainder increase. On New Year's Eve of 1900 another trilithon fell. It must be said, if only in fairness to those prehistoric builders, that a contributory cause of these falls has been digging by treasure hunters in the past too close to their foundations.

The greatest danger to Stonehenge today is what I have called the problems of popularity. The M3 motorway brings Stonehenge within an hour and a half of London. The coaches arrive there by mid-morning. The number of visitors grows week by week and year by year. Chatsworth, Blenheim, Longleat—they are all left standing in the league table. Stonehenge exerts a fascination which is insatiable.

Nobody knows what purpose Stonehenge served. Nobody knows who built it. Nobody knows where the stones came from. Some say that they came from the hills near Edinburgh. Some say that they came from Pembrokeshire in Wales. But at the rate of 16 men per ton it must have taken 800 men to pull one stone and it must have taken them decades to do it. Therefore, I suppose I can fairly claim that my constituents are not frightened of hard work.

Stonehenge was already old before the first Roman arrived here and already its history had been forgotten. Some people attach immense importance and significance to the fact that the main axis of the monument is aligned to the midsummer sunrise. There are a great many numbers and alignments at Stonehenge, and numbers and lines never cease to fascinate people. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris was set up to commemorate the victories of Napoleon's troops, and the French will tell one that Paris is aligned' so that on 15th August—Napoleon's birthday—the sun as viewed from the Champs-Elysées sets in the centre of the arch. These things are of great significance, or they are of none. It may be just the numbers game. It may be just a field day for the coincidentalists. It may be just the mass of legend. But, whatever the cause, the press of visitors to Stonehenge grows year by year.

In the short 12 years that I have represented Salisbury, the numbers have more than doubled. Each June the place becomes like a carnival site. There are whirring cameras, there are fireworks, there are Morris dancers, there are so-called Druids waving branches of oak, and there are incense burners—all of them waiting for 4·59 a.m. on 21st June.

But it is not all fun. Back in the relatively peaceful days of 1956, the Salisbury Journal reported that 15 military policemen had been called out in order to quell an unruly mob and to restore order. Ten years later it was mods and rockers on their motor-cycles.

This year things were more difficult still. The midsummer rally planned this year began earlier than expected. The authorities were caught on the wrong foot. The monument was engulfed long before the solstice sunrise was due. It was a friendly and easy-going crowd, but among them was a mere handful of potential troublemakers. The police were hesitant to go in and clear the site. Why was this? The Wiltshire Constabulary, as I know it, is second to none. The reason was not basically the wish to avoid a repetition of the events at Windsor, although I concede that that was a factor. I believe the basic reason to be that, had the police moved, the monument itself might have been damaged. In other words, and not to put too fine a point on it, for some days Stonehenge was hijacked and held hostage. This must never happen again.

Inevitably these problems spill over into the surrounding district. Local farmers speak of their woods being fouled. Amesbury householders find that milk bottles are stolen from their doorsteps. The people in the married quarters at Larkhill, which is more than a mile away, complain that with midsummer temperatures they have to sleep with their windows closed because of the noise.

It is the accumulation of these things that prompts me to speak tonight of these problems of popularity. I am concerned with the well-being of the monument, as is the Minister, but I am also concerned with the well-being of those living in the district.

I want to be fair to the Department of the Environment. I believe that it is alive to these difficulties, and I pay special tribute to Lady Birk, who has responsibility for ancient monuments and who has herself on more than one occasion been to look at matters on the ground.

Indeed, I remember appealing to the Department some 10 years ago, and receiving the fullest co-operation from it, when someone threatened to route an overhead power line too close to the monument. I believe that the Department has given thought to these matters and has drawn up fresh plans for the improvement and management of the site. It is these that I wish to hear about.

The neighbourhood of Salisbury was one of the most important areas of prehistoric England, and the city's museum has exhibits of almost every age. The Minister will know that the museum recently has been given what was the finest remaining archaeological collection in private hands—the Pitt-Rivers collection, which is beyond price. It is a museum which was provided, as were most museums, by Victorian benefactors. It is rich in treasure but poor in funds. The constant worry is how the curator's salary can be paid.

I appeal to the Minister on this matter. Stonehenge used to be in private hands, it used to belong to the family of Sir Philip Antrobus, who lives in Amesbury, and it was generously presented to the nation. The Minister enjoys a sizeable revenue each year from 750,000 visitors. I urge him to be generous in providing facilities at Stonehenge whereby the museum can make its existence known to those who visit the monument. For the sake of the museum, I would like to see a few crumbs fall from the Minister's rich man's table.

In closing, I would point out that Stonehenge probably took three centuries to build. It is a highly sophisticated building and a good many generations of my constituents must have devoted their whole lives to working on it. They created an interlocking series of astronomical observing instruments of remarkable ingenuity and which architecturally are of great simplicity. It genuinely ranks with the seven classic wonders of the world—the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pyramids and so on. The monument is worth safeguarding, and I hope the Minister will agree with me.

It is symbolic of the variety of aspects of the work in my Department that I am replying to this debate now, and at some time during tonight or tomorrow morning with the permission of the House, I shall reply to a debate on nuclear power and the environment. 1 only hope that 3,500 years from now there will be debates on whether Windscale is being properly looked after.

It has been recognised for many years by those concerned about our natural and man-made heritage that the popularity of a particular area or feature may damage, or even destroy, the very thing that has attracted visitors to it. I believe that the House and the public, will agree that we have a duty to future generations as well as to the present one in respect of our heritage.

The principle is well stated in the report of the National Parks Policies Review Committee which said in respect of national parks that their enjoyment by the public should be in such manner and by such means as will leave their beauty unimpaired for the enjoyment of this and future generations. This recommendation was endorsed by the Secretary of State for the Environment, then my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland), in a circular to local authorities in January of this year.

Hon. Members may perhaps wonder how this doctrine can possibly apply to the apparently robustly constructed Stonehenge Circle. But Stonehenge is more than the familiar stone circle; it is a "henge", comprising a ditched and banked enclosure containing within it an arrangement of upright stones, pits and the settings of former timber structures; and there are associated features, notably the Heelstone and the Avenue—the processional route to the circle which is severed only a few yards from the henge by the A344 road.

The effects on the monument of increasing numbers of visitors–120,000 in 1951, 300,000 in 1960 and 700,000 in recent years, coming second only to those who visit the Tower of London—have been worrying the Department and our advisers, the Ancient Monuments Board, for many years. I have been amongst those crowds on a Friday afternoon in August. The turf has been worn away, leaving a sea of mud in wet weather. We have replaced this by gravel, but then it was found that the bank and ditch surrounding the enclosure were being eroded. Fences were put up on each side of them. Since then, we have realised with growing anxiety that the stones themselves are suffering wear.

The wear is partly caused by adults and children climbing on the low and fallen stones, but there is more to it than that. Fairly recently it has been discovered that there are faint incisions on some of the upright stones representing axe and dagger symbols of Bronze Age date. These are of significance to archaeologists, but we have evidence that they are at risk by the amount of rubbing and fingering to which they are subjected.

The density of crowds in summer and at fine weekends throughout the year is such that the custody staff cannot control them. There is no room within the circle to fence off corridors within which large numbers of people can shuffle round in a queue.

Rationing by price was tried, and the price of admission was increased to 40 pence during the summer, keeping it to 10p in winter. That caused many complaints and hostility to our staff, and it had no significant effect on attendances. There has been a recent addition of overenthusiastic festivities—some would say hooliganism—during the night of the Summer Solstice. Because of the dangers to the monument and to people, it has been necessary for more than 10 years to surround the henge with dannert wire, and to admit inside it only the Druids—who have been allowed for over 50 years to perform their rites—and a limited number of local residents selected by the district council.

My hon. Friend the noble Lady, Lady Birk, who also is Under-Secretary of State in the Department, met representatives of the district council last April to discuss these arrangements. On police advice it was agreed that they must continue until there is evidence of an improvement in public behaviour. The organisers of unauthorised free festivals have in recent years made Stonehenge a target at that time of year. In 1975 they were deflected from the monument by the police, but invaded surrounding farmland. In 1976 the vanguard arrived well before the solstice and established themselves close to the monument. The police advised against attempting to dislodge them unless there was an alternative site available. There was and is no such site.

I appreciate that there is resentment in Amesbury and Salisbury against the festival because of the aggressive behaviour of some participants in the locality and because of the expense which falls upon the public funds. The Department is in touch with the police and the local authorities about the expected 1977 festival. We are anxious to co-operate with the police and the local authorities. We control only a small area adjoining the monument. While the defence of that area may be reasonable, it would not necessarily be to the advantage of the local community. Intruders would go somewhere else near by.

A group of drop-outs set up a sordid encampment adjoining the monument in 1974. After some months the Department secured their removal by an injunction from the High Court, after some rather bizarre proceedings lasting several days. All the trespassers claimed the same name—Wally. They then settled on the adjoining trackway from which they were eventually dispersed by the highway authority. They then squatted in Amesbury. Their leader has since died. The Department has no responsibility for any remnants of the sect who may survive in the locality.

However, I believe that the House will recognise that some other radical action is necessary. It has been suggested that the car park should be moved from its present site near the monument to another site so far distant that only the most robust and determined would-be visitors would ever get to the monument. There would be practical difficulties about that. There are abundant opportunities for unauthorised parking in the locality. It would also be unfair to less active and older visitors.

We have come to the conclusion, after much agonising, that the right course will be to ask visitors to remain outside the henge, that is about 30 yards away from the stone circle. We would not envisage erecting a formidable physical barrier: simply a line of rope to define the limits of access. That would enable visitors to have a view of the stones, undistracted by fences or by crowds of people milling about within and around them. We should also be able to restore the turf surface, thus enhancing the present appearance of the monument.

Like you, Mr. Speaker, as a teacher I frequently regret that I am not allowed to use visual aids in this place. However, I assure the hon. Gentleman that maps are available—I can show them to him later—to give a picture of the stones as they will be seen from the area where the public will be permitted. I do not deny that this proposal involves a sacrifice which many will regret. In return we propose to provide explanatory material at the outer part of the site, including a model of the monument as it would have been at various stages of its history. We shall also reduce the admission price to 20p.

I hope that these measures, taken as a whole, will prove acceptable to the public. We are relying upon their understanding and co-operation to save this unique monument from further damage. We owe this not only to our children and their children, but to Europe and the world, since Stonehenge is of international significance, no less than the caves of Lascaux and the Acropolis, where comparable measures have been found necessary.

We are working urgently on arrangements to implement these proposals. We hope in the long run to provide parking and other facilities a little further away than the present site. The site would be invisible from the monument. It would permit of more adequate facilities for visitors, in particular the provision of "interpretation" of the monument and other Wessex pre-historic monuments. Visitors would be told about related material—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be glad to hear about this—in Salisbury and Devizes Museums. The new facilities would be designed for visitors to the monument, not travellers in general. The main charge, probably the sole charge, would be for parking.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter. I look forward to co-operation between my Department, the local people and the many visitors who will continue to go to Stonehenge.

Modern history seems to show that the advent of a Labour Government automatically leads to two things: first, an economic crisis; secondly, defence cuts. Of course, there is a relationship between those two, but I believe that there is some instinct in the Labour Party which is opposed to defence. I am not for a moment suggesting that the Labour Party is unpatriotic or anything like that. However, I am saying that there is a strain in the Labour Party ranging from the professional pacifist to the fellow traveller. This was well illustrated in an article in The Times of this morning by Lord Chalfont, entitled

"By the left, quick march to suicide or surrender".

The predecessors of the present Labour Party opposed rearmanent in the 1930s, and today the Labour Party advocates defence cuts and opposes any form of rearmament. In the 1930s the Labour Party took no notice of the threat from Germany. Today it takes no notice of the threat from the USSR. Today we even have Ministers who preach Marxism and a Trotskyite in charge of the Labour youth. It seems that the Tribune Group on the Government side of the House is self-confessed anti-NATO, anti-nuclear and anti-American, which are the three sure safeguards the country has at present. Obviously no one from the most extreme pacifist to the most extreme militarist on either side of the House wants to spend a penny more on defence than necessary. But surely in deciding what defence expenditure should be we must estimate what the threat is, because defence is obviously a reaction against a threat and a safeguard for the State against any possible threat from outside.

It seems to me that when we are arguing, as we did in the debate last week on the Estimates, no one on the Government side considers the threats. Government supporters either ignore them or feel that they do not exist and dismiss them out of hand. Yet, an article in The Times earlier this year said:

"The Soviet Union spent more than 50,000 million roubles"—

that is, £31,000 million—

"on defence last year. … Previous official estimates of Russian military spending put it at 7 per cent. of the country's gross national product. But the Ministry now believes it is between 11 and 12 per cent. and that spending has been increasing at an annual rate of 4 per cent."

Other sources put Soviet military expenditure between 15 per cent. and 19 per cent. of the GNP—these are largely American sources. Be that as it may, the former Secretary of State for Defence—now the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—put out a paper to all hon. Members last summer. I quote from the first paragraph:

"During 1976 the Soviet Union will bring into service over 200 new generation intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM); a variety of other missiles; 1,000 combat aircraft, mostly swing-wing types; over 700 helicopters; over 3,000 tanks; 4,000 armoured personnel carriers; up to ten nuclear submarines—of which six will each carry 12–16 ballistic missiles of 4,800 miles range; and major surface ships, including a 40,000 ton aircraft carrier."

Yet, at about the same time as that statement was put out by the right hon. Gentleman, the National Executive of the Labour Party demanded a further £1,000 million cuts in defence suggesting that they could be achieved by scrapping the AW cruiser programme or the MRCA, or by cutting the BAOR in half, thus violating the Brussels Treaty.

I am not suggesting that the hon. Gentleman who is to reply to this debate is implicated in this, but it should be said that members of the Labour Party who are putting forward this proposal are either stupid or subversive.

What is the threat? I suggest that today the threat is both direct and indirect. It is direct in Central Europe where the NATO forces are outnumbered by two or three to one. It is indirect in the subversion of our industries at home. It is direct on the Northern flank, as the Norwegians or Danes will tell us. Only the other day Danish parliamentarians were saying that Soviet exercises at sea and in the air were coming closer and closer to the Danish frontier and air space. It is indirect in the Mediterranean with an alliance with Libya and later with Mintoff's Malta. There is a threat to Yugoslavia when the president dies, and later to Italy.

It is direct on the southern flank with the takeover of Angola and Mozambique, with Rhodesia and Namibia to come, and then an indirect attack on Southern Africa. Why? Certainly not to abolish apartheid—the Soviet Union could not care anything about that—but to control 60 per cent. to 90 per cent. of the world's key minerals. This threat has developed and increased, as the Government have admitted in White Paper after White Paper since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, particularly at sea.

What have the Labour Government done in response? I want briefly to consider the cuts that have been made in defence since 1962. Labour Governments were in office from 1964 to 1970. In 1966 there was a defence review that was to end all defence reviews and stabilise the Forces for at least one generation. That led to a cut of 16 per cent. in the defence budget. It stabilised at £2,000 million in that year of crisis. That was in February. In July there was another cut of £100 million, followed the next year by another cut of £100 million, and in 1968 by yet another cut, this time of £110 million.

History repeats itself. When the Labour Government came to power in 1974, we again had a defence review to end all defence reviews, which was to stabilise the position of the Services£Navy, Army and Royal Air Force£for the next generation. There was to be a cut of £7,208 million at today's prices off the projected programme for the Services over the next 10 years. That was to stabilise everything. This time the Government did not wait for three or four months. They cut another £168 million off at today's prices within one month, and that was followed by three cuts this year: in February a cut of £626 million; in July a cut of £100 million; and last week a cut of £300 million; making a total at today's prices of £8,402 million. That is an enormous sum which, if carried out during the next few years, will successfully emasculate our defence forces and render them non-credible.

As the House knows, defence expenditure can be cut today but the results may not be seen for another five to 10 years. I suggest that the lessons of history today and a study of political geography will show that in about three or five years' time the Soviet Union will take over Southern Africa and affect our key communications at sea and in the air, we shall then feel the effect of the savage cuts that have been inflicted on the defence forces in the past two years.

I want to consider briefly four effects of the cuts. We talk about figures, and say "cuts of £100 million", but that does not mean anything to the man in the street. What do defence cuts mean in terms of manpower or effort? First, let me consider anti-submarine warfare, and here I hope that I carry the Minister for the Navy with me.

This is probably the greatest threat faced by the Western alliance. Soviet nuclear submarines outnumber those of all the Western Powers put together. The Soviet Union will have 24 of its new Delta class submarines at sea before the first American equivalent, Trident, gets to sea. lit was said by the Minister in the passage that I quoted that these vessels have missiles with a range of 4,800 miles. Therefore, they can cover the whole of Europe, China or America from the Barents Sea. They are formidable weapons.

What have we to counter this vast submarine fleet? I do not mean just this country, because we cannot do it, but NATO as a whole. In anti-submarine vessels compared with Soviet submarines it is about two to one, yet in the last war allied anti-submarine vessels compared with German U-boats were six to one.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we have considerably more helicopters than the Soviet Union has? An effective helicopter is as good as a frigate these days in anti-submarine warfare.

I agree that we have many more helicopters than we had in the last war, because then we did not have any. I do not agree that we have more than the Soviet Union.

Yes we have.

In the last war?

No, now.

I said that that was the situation in the last war. As I understood the hon. Gentleman's case, it was that we now have powerful anti-submarine helicopters, and the Sea King is worth a frigate. I was comparing our situation during the last war. I said that then we had no helicopters, but that today we have, and so does the Soviet Union. That country also has missiles to shoot down our helicopters. On the other hand, the hon. Gentleman must give me this, in the last war the German U-boats had to surface at night, and that is when the Royal Air Force got them. Today, the nuclear submarine does not have to surface at all.

Although I accept that we have helicopters as well as anti-submarine vessels, we have a far more difficult target. No one knows—and I hope that we shall never have to know—exactly which will prove the most powerful weapon, the nuclear submarine or the anti-submarine helicopter. But the disparity in forces is two to one. Those are the figures given by Admiral Kidd, Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, who says that he has two anti-submarine vessels to every Soviet submarine.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want to mislead the House. He is suggesting that by including helicopters one makes the position worse. That is not the case. He went from a proportion of two to one to four to one. I am sure that that is not what he intended to say. By including helicopters we are improving the balance in favour of the West. Let us get the figures straight.

Either I am getting confused, or the hon. Gentleman is. In the Second World War, the ratio was six anti-submarine vessels to each German U-boat. Today, the ratio is two NATO anti-submarine vessels to each Soviet submarine. We have also helicopters, but the Soviet submarines are true submarines and may well prove virtually undetect- able. Therefore, the threat is far more serious today than it was in either of the world wars, when submarines very nearly brought Britain and the allies to their knees. I hope that I have got that point over. I am dealing with antisubmarine vessels.

What are the problems? We have to get reinforcements from the Americas to Europe; our oil supplies come round the Cape, as do our minerals. What have we to contribute to NATO? I exclude the County and Bristol classes as light cruisers. We then have only two destroyers with four building; we have 39 general purpose frigates and 15 antisubmarine frigates, with four building. It is an appallingly low total. It means that the Royal Navy has a smaller number of ships at sea than at any time since 1875. That is our awe full position in facing this great Soviet threat.

When translated into hard facts, the cuts mean that nine frigates or destroyers which would have been used for antisubmarine purposes will not now be built. That is my understanding of the situation. The effects of the cuts will mean that over the next few years we shall have nine fewer frigates or destroyers than we would have had otherwise. The situation is shown in its full seriousness when we remember that it took six frigates to maintain the unlamented Beira blockade.

The Nimrod aircraft are another very powerful anti-submarine weapon. I believe that there are 43 of them. Does the cut of 5 per cent. mean that 10 of them are now to go. Or has the cut to be reversed in their case? Stories have been floating around that the Government have decided to maintain all the Nimrods, and I hope that the Minister will be able to assure me that that is so. I know that he, too, acknowledges the value of the Nimrods, and I am sure that he wants them maintained in service, because they are the finest anti-submarine aircraft in the world.

Not only do we have to watch the threat of Soviet submarines. We have the requirement to exercise suveillance over the growing Soviet surface fleet as well as over the new 200-mile fishery limits. Four Nimrods are to be allocated to watch those limits, so they will be heavily employed in that duty. I am convinced that there is no case for cutting the number of Nimrods.

The immediate reinforcements for NATO's northern flank are three Royal Marine commando groups and a Canadian battalion. Norway has in the north one Norwegian or NATO brigade. The Soviet Union has four front-line divisions there, with four in reserve and 400 front-line aircraft available. How are we to get reinforcements to Norway? In the past, they would have been covered by an aircraft carrier in support and have been carried in two commando carriers operating helicopters and so giving maximum mobility. Heavy stores would have been landed by assault ships.

These cuts mean that there is only one carrier left, the "Ark Royal", and she is in dockyard at the moment. The two commando carriers have also gone. I think that "Hermes" has a secondary role, but she is much more likely to be employed in anti-submarine warfare. One of the assault ships is in mothballs and one is used for training, and the Royal Marines have their helicopter lift cut by 50 per cent. In the recent exercise, to reinforce the northern flank we had to hire British Rail train ferries at a cost of £500,000, which would have been much better spent on maintaining some of the ships to which I have referred.

My third point relates to a subject which always excites some Labour Members below the Gangway£that of Rhodesia. They would love to send forces out there to do something about Mr. Smith. Let us consider what we could do, what mobility our forces have. Under these cuts, the United Kingdom mobile force has been cut by 66 per cent. The Belfast fleet, the only aircraft capable of carrying the Abbot or a light tank, have been scrapped. We only have Hercules left. I am not sure how many Hercules we have, but it was about 75. Can the Minister confirm that the number is to be cut to 55?

When UDI was declared, HMS "Eagle", an aircraft carrier, was sent to the Indian Ocean, I think with the idea of protecting Zambia, which we were supplying with petrol. There is no aircraft carrier left to do that and the Fleet train is being cut by 30 per cent. so the mobility of afloat support that we could offer has been seriously reduced.

These are the facts. We talk about a cost of millions of pounds. This is what it means today—and the picture will be much worse in a few year's time.

One other example is BAOR. Everyone is very proud of BAOR and says that it is the best army in the world. I think it is, but it is beginning to get a bit rusty. With 7,000 tanks, the NATO forces in Germany are facing Soviet tanks which have grown in number from 13,650 to 19,000 over the last two years. We claim to have the best tank in the world, the Chieftain, yet its engine sometimes gives trouble. I understand that the Chieftains are being re-engined, which will make them again the finest in the world. The only trouble is that all the re-engined Chieftains are going to Iran. We have also produced some new armour, which also is the best in the world, but it is also going to Iran. That is what cuts mean to soldiers in the field.

I turn to anti-tank weapons. We are told that we are going to replace our semi-obsolete weapon with Milan. Will Milan he postponed now, or shall we buy that Franco-German weapon? How long will our helicopters or what is left of them be equipped with the SS11, which is the thoroughly obsolete French weapon? When shall we get something like Tow or Hot?

NATO radio communications in BAOR are not good, because one army, the British, cannot talk to the Americans or the Germans without special arrangements being made. Communications need overhauling. Will these cuts mean that the new NATO communications, which should have been operational in the 1990s, will be postponed till the next century?

I turn to tactical nuclear weapons. Honest John, which we have used for many years, is now completely obsolete and Lance will replace it. Do these cuts mean that Lance will be postponed, or shall we get it in the field next year? The Institute of Strategic Studies tells us that we have 420 front-line aircraft in Germany. How long will they last—a week?

These are the practical effects of these continual defence cuts, year by year. I have not mentioned things like stockpiling and reserves. We are supposed to be preparing to fight a 30-day war. I should be very surprised if we have 30 days' stores. These cuts must also have an effect on training. If things go wrong, the cuts will have to be paid for in blood —and that has happened before in the history of this islands.

The blame must lie with the Government because they have the full knowledge of the threat. This year's White Paper said on Page 5:

"Nor can the West ignore the fact that during the past year the military capability of the Warsaw Pact has increased in numbers and in quantity."

It also says that there has been a steady improvement in the conventional forces of the Warsaw Pact countries, that the Soviet Union has a strong and effective naval air force, that the capability of the ground forces of the Warsaw Pact countries continues to increase, that the Warsaw Pact air forces and missile systems are being improved and so on.

The Government know the threat. The Secretary of State said that cuts on the scale advocated by some of his hon. Friends would entail a policy of, at best, neutrality and, at worst, surrender.

The Government can no longer pretend that these cuts are not affecting NATO. General Haig, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral Kidd, the Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, and Admiral Hill-Lawton, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, all say that the balance is shifting against NATO. All our NATO Allies, even countries such as Denmark and Norway are spending more on defence, yet we are cutting down.

The old argument that we spend more than anyone else is becoming less and less valid. It never was really valid because our gross national product was considerably less than those of France and Germany and the figures did not tally.

The fact that the Chiefs of Staff chose to go to Downing Street and exercise their prerogative for the first time for a long time shows how serious this matter is. It is serious not just because it weakens NATO, but because it weakens NATO's resolve. If other countries see us cutting, they will want to cut. Why should the Americans have divisions and forces in Europe when they see that the Europeans are not defending themselves? We are the key for America because we are closest to the Americans. If we cut, we shall weaken the will of the Americans to stay in Europe and we shall weaken the fabric and structure of NATO.

An hon. Member opposite said recently that if the Chiefs of Staff felt so strongly about this matter, they should resign. The Secretary of State said that this would be a matter for the Chiefs of Staff. It would not. It would be a matter for him. He is the political head of the Services and if things are so serious, he should take the advice of my right hon. Friend the Shadow defence spokesman and resign. If the right hon. Gentleman does not think the situation is serious enough to do that, I have no doubt that he will realise the seriousness of it in the next few months and, unless the Government go first, I believe that the Secretary of State will have to go.

The real blame lies on the shoulders of someone else—the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He came into office as a Minister of Defence welcomed by the Services. It was said that he talked their language and understood their problems, yet he cut and cut again. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, with five or six years' experience as Minister of Defence, he knows the threat, yet he still cuts and cuts again and is backed by the Government for party political purposes.

That is the indictment of the Government. They know the threat and the danger to the State, yet they cut defence for party-political purposes. I am only sorry that the old-fashioned penalty of impeachment can no longer apply to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I intervene briefly to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) on having raised this subject and giving us the opportunity to consider it once more. Perhaps the more often we put the facts to the Government, the more likely we are to get the message through.

One would not have expected it to be necessary for us to keep spelling this out to the Government. Every time they publish a defence review or White Paper, they become more explicit in their explanation of how NATO countries are slipping behind the Warsaw Pact Powers. The Government keep on spelling out this military threat, but, having spelt it out and having illustrated it with figures, models and drawings of ships and aircraft to make absolutely sure that we know what the threat is, they come back each time and cut our forces.

It is an extraordinary state of double-mindedness. I was in Rhodesia a while ago and happened to pick up a Gideons' Bible which was beside my bed. As there were great decisions to be made, I turned to the section marked "great decisions" and was referred to the Book of James, chapter one, verse eight, which read:

"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways."

I wonder what is happening to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Government side who spell out the threat and then assure us that it is all right to cut back still further.

We all know that there is great danger in complacency when we are facing the Russians. I do not trust the Russians, whatever conference is going on. We all know that on the central front there are regular offensive exercises which rush up to the Iron Curtain and then stop. We always assume that they will stop when they reach that point. No one seems to realise that one day they could roll straight on. We are told in the White Papers that we must differentiate between the political threat and the military threat—that the political threat is one thing and the military threat is another—and that we are going through a period of detente and would have ample time for reinforcement because there would be a time of rising political tension.

The time we need for reinforcements is immense, since the Russian troops are on the ground and have only to roll across friendly countries to cross the border, whereas the Americans have to fly large quantities of men and materials across the Atlantic and we have to use train ferries or whatever it is that we have adapted for our latest movements.

We are told that there will be time for reinforcement because the political threat does not exist while we are talking about detente. I warn the Government that if I were a member of the Soviet Government I would not start to increase political tension if I intended to make a rush to the Channel ports or beyond. I would have a conference on security and co-operation in Europe. I would have a Helsinki accord, in which I would agree to make great advances in humanitarian fields, and I would keep talking about detente until everyone in the NATO countries was lulled into a false sense of security. Having done so, when the moment came I would strike, and I would know perfectly well that I would be through to the Channel ports before real reinforcements were available. These are the facts, and that is why the complacency on the Government Benches is not only incredible but positively dangerous and could be disastrous.

I appeal to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Government side to remember that we depend on the credibility of NATO for the security of these islands. When it comes to the credibility of the whole operation and the morale of NATO forces, it is wrong to continue in this complacent way, spelling out how much the threat against us is getting greater and greater while continuing to cut further and further to the bone. Any Secretary of State for Defence who allowed the situation to continue to the extent that it has done, in the light of warnings he has given or that have been given by his predecessors, should resign.

I hope that the Minister tonight will carry back to the Secretary of State for Defence the message that, if he allows this to happen in the light of what the Chiefs of State have said, the only course is to resign.

I am glad to have the opportunity to take part in this debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) for providing the occasion. For reasons which will emerge, we will have a special interest in the subject which I wish to raise.

The general tenor of the debate is directed to the level of defence expenditure, and I shall not touch on the general considerations, which have been so adequately and eloquently covered by my hon. Friends the Members for Haltemprice and for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew), though I must observe in passing that in all the Chancellor's eight or nine Budgets we have always been told that defence must bear its fair share of cuts. The concept of "fair share" is highly subjective, and I should have thought that in comparison with other parts of public expenditure, defence has by now borne more than its fair share.

Without dragging personalities into the debate, I can only assume that the Secretary of State for Defence—I wish that he were here to contribute to the discussion—was chosen, after his experiences with such great subjects as the Channel Tunnel and Tameside, for his general pliability in the Cabinet and the likelihood of his being bruatalised with apparent ease by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I wish, however, to narrow the debate a little to the local consequences of the defence cuts and to focus the attention of the House on the impact on the town of Deal in my constituency. I believe that there is a risk that the depot of the Royal Marines, including the Royal Marine School of Music, may soon be phased out. I see but few hon. Members present on the Government side, which is some indication of their interest in and attachment to defence questions, but for those of my hon. Friends who are here perhaps I may be permitted to remind the House that Deal, like so many other parts of my constituency, has a great martial past.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) is soon to speak from the Dispatch Box, I think it not inappropriate to say that the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports has his seat at Walmer Castle. Moreover, Deal Castle has its Captain, and the present Captain is a distinguished ex-Royal Marine. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) for reviving that old and honourable office few years ago. Although there is no one now living in Deal who can personally recall the fleet lying at anchor off the Downs, such memories are cherished by the residents of Deal.

More important even that those factors, important though they are, for over 150 years now the Royal Marines have maintained a distinguished and notable presence in Deal. Although this has latterly been confined to the training of recruits and the Royal Marine School of Music, neither of those functions, notwithstanding anything that General Brown may have said in an unguarded moment in Washington during the past year, is an unimportant facet of our defence capability.

The connection which has been built up between the town of Deal and the Royal Marines is not just a sentimental connection, though I remind the House that it was from Dover, but a few miles away, that on St. George's Day the Royal Marines set off to assault the mole at Zeebrugge, in what I believe to have been a shorter and sharper engagement than that experienced by any other arm of the British Armed Forces. I did not myself have the privilege of serving in the Royal Marines, although I like to think that I served in as glorious a unit, but I recall that on that occasion the Royal Marines won more VCs and suffered more casualties than perhaps any other unit has ever done in a comparable engagement. We rememember that incident with great pride, and I have been privileged to take part in their services on 11th November in their own chapel at Deal.

In a more mundane fashion, however, the Royal Marines have contributed and still contribute greatly to the social and economic life of Deal. The economic life of Deal is, perhaps, a little narrowly based, but the Marines make a great contribution to the town's shops and hotels, and they provide a range of jobs which would not be open to residents of Deal if they were not there.

With the contraction of the Armed Forces, the contraction of the Royal Marines and the contraction of their amphibious role, there have for some years been ugly rumours about the closure of their depot. We have noticed that recruit training has taken place at other Royal Marine centres, and we have watched with alarm possible developments.

The Under-Secretary's predecessor was good enough to receive a delegation that I brought up from the town to emphasise the long connection of the corps with Deal and the grave effect there would be on the life of the town if the depot were closed. Now, only a fortnight ago, the blow has fallen. It must have been one of the first and least attractive duties of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy) as Under-Secretary to write to inform me and the commanding officer that the depot would be phased out between now and 1981.

I do not say that we had reconciled ourselves to the possibility, but there may have been certain military grounds for concentrating recruit training elsewhere. However, we had at least nourished the hope that we should be able to retain the Royal Marine School of Music. Apparently, this is not to be. There is the probability that the school will be transferred to the barracks at Eastney. The Under-Secretary told me in his letter that certain capital expenditure would have to be incurred there. Has he yet been able to ascertain in any detail just what it would cost to convert the barracks at Eastney compared with the cost of renovating and converting the depot at Deal? I believe that, making judicious allowance for the optimism of planners, it will be found that there are no real savings in hard cash if the move is made.

Minutes cannot adequately reproduce the vigour and feeling that we managed to convey to the hon. Gentleman's predecessor, so I emphasise to the Under-Secretary the damaging effect that such a move would have on the life of Deal and the surrounding district. I refer not only to the impact on the commercial, hotel and cultural life but to the loss of jobs. In a difficult period, between 100 and 200 jobs may be lost. It would appear that the social contract is designed to save jobs, but not defence jobs. I would like to feel that it at least covered the welfare and livelihood of those who serve in the Armed Forces and those who minister to their needs.

We recognise that in a period of financial stringency the Armed Forces must be as cost effective as possible. I have indicated one matter which I do not believe has yet been adequately explored and on which I and the residents of Deal will require reassurance. But there are wider considerations, which I urge those who speak from the Front Bench tonight and on other occasions to bear in mind. We want to see our Armed Forces as effectively deployed and well armed as possible, but there is also the crucial question of maintaining the interest and pride of the country as a whole in the Armed Forces, particularly in what we may describe as a prolonged period of peace.

In saying that, I am fully conscious of the forces' rôle in Northern Ireland and other parts of the world. It is par- ticularly important that there should be a visible presence, however small, in all the great martial areas of the country which have been used to providing the bulk of recruits and welcoming in their midst the Forces of the Crown, whether the Army, the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy or the Royal Marines.

I like to count the constituency which I am privileged to represent as one of those areas. We have always been very proud of our martial connections. It would be very damaging to the long-term future of the Armed Services, and the support which they rightly derive in full measure from the civilian parts of the country, if everything were concentrated in Portsmouth or on Salisbury Plain. There may be the best possible strategic reasons, but there are wider considerations. I hope that the Minister who replies to the debate will show that he is sensitive to them.

I hope the Minister will show that on this occasion he is capable of rising above the rather ugly wrangles that have obviously taken place inside the Cabinet Room. I hope he will demonstrate that he still preserves an open mind on these issues and will hold out the possibility at least that, when the sums have been done and all the wider factors that I have canvassed tonight have been taken into account, we shall retain a Royal Marine presence in Deal.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover and Deal (Mr. Rees) has made an important speech upon the effect that the cuts may well have upon a distinguished corps and upon a distinguished part of these islands that has sustained the corps for several centuries. In a brief intervention, I shall add my expression of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) for giving the House the early opportunity to comment upon the effects upon our defence forces and upon our defence as a whole of the cuts announced last Wednesday and to speak on a slightly broader canvas than that of my hon. and learned Friend.

Four cuts ago, in December 1974, the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence—the right hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Rodgers)—said that the cuts represented a cool and considered judgment of what the country needed to spend to secure its safety. I make no apology for reminding Labour Members yet again of those words. I do not flatter myself that the occasions when I have reminded them of them before are fresh or, indeed, present in their memories. It needs to be said time and time again that four cuts ago the Government's then judgment, which was said to be a cool and considered one, was that the defence budget was what was considered necessary to be spent by the country to secure our safety.

If I might ask a rhetorical question at this time of night, is it thought that the threat since then has receded? Is it thought that the threat has diminished'? Is it thought that the right hon. Gentleman's judgment was in some way not cool enough, that it was in some way ill considered and that it is not now found necessary to spend as much to secure our safety? What is the explanation?

I am certain that we shall hear tonight the phrase that is to be found in every Defence Minister's brief—no doubt it is to be found in the Under-Secretary of State's brief—that "Defence must piay its part".

indicated assent.

What meaning does that phrase have? Defence has no part unless the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. and hon. Friends in the Government choose to give it one. Unless the hon. Gentleman is prepared to supply a meaning for that phrase that is so often produced, I hope he will have the courage to delete it from the brief so sedulously prepared for him by those whose task it is to reinforce a policy so dangerous to the country.

No reinforcement is needed by the Eastern bloc forces that confront our Army in Western Germany. The reinforcement that we have always relied upon in the past to enable the Eastern bloc to achieve a full-strength surprise attack—namely, a nine-day warning of the reinforcement build-up—would no longer be necessary now that the preponderance of the Warsaw Pact forces is so great that the knockout blow could be delivered without that period of build-up.

Is this the time to cut again? There is insufficient transport, as I believe, to support our forces for more than a couple of days in the event of a sudden attack. There is insufficient ammunition to support them for more than a couple of days. There are insufficient reserves of men to provide a rest for front-line troops who will have to bear the brunt. To continue to talk of a 30-day capability is sheer nonsense, and the awful thing is that it is known to be nonsense by those upon whom we rely to bear that brunt with their own bodies. I ask the Government to bear in mind the effect upon the morale of our troops, who see this as the third cut this year when they know that already they are down to the bone, as Sir Michael Carver said when the last cuts were imposed.

That is the third and last question I ask the Under-Secretary. What are the Government to say to the troops in view of what they have said before? I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not here. I am sorry for him, because it is clear that he has been put into his present job to be a push-over for the Chancellor. It is absolutely clear that he was put into the job to offer no resistance and to be a push-over to the Chancellor, who was Secretary of State for Defence for five years and who is known to be an infinitely tougher character.

What is to be said to sustain the morale of the troops? How can the Government square their present action with what they have said to the troops before? What are they to say about the capacity now to meet a sudden push by the Eastern bloc forces without a need for reinforcements?

I, too, am grateful to the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) for having given us the opportunity to have this debate on this important matter tonight. Some of us thought that we would intervene in tomorrow's debate, but it is probably better that we have had a chance to raise these important points tonight.

I join issue with the remarks made by the hon. and learned Members for Dover and Deal (Mr. Rees) and for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Mayhew). Those who have known my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence over the years know that he is a considerable authority on defence matters. He was for a number of years the chairman of the Defence Committee of Western European Union and he prepared a number of important reports on defence. It is unfair to suggest that he is not well-informed on these matters and that he will not do his best to ensure that the defence of Britain receives the resources that it deserves.

I apologise if I misunderstood the statistics of the hon. Member for Haltemprice when I intervened during his speech. I thought that he was comparing the present relative numbers of our forces and those of the Soviets rather than drawing the historical parallel. He will know that to discuss these matters and draw comparisons between likely anti-submarine warfare in these times and anti-submarine warfare in the last war we are not comparing like with like. We are restricted in what we say about the techniques available—not merely helicopters but other developments in comparison with ASDIC sets and frigates which were used in the last war to locate submarines. In NATO we are developing effective anti-submarine capabilities.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman absolutely—I, too, recall the remarks of Admiral Kidd—in what he said about maritime patrol aircraft. I am confident that the Nimrods have a continuing important role to play. I wish to see us co-operating much more closely with our allies in Western Europe and in NATO in operating Nimrods. Recently there has been an imaginative suggestion by the Dutch that they will place a squadron or perhaps two squadrons of Nimrods in Scotland to work alongside the RAF Nimrods there in exactly the same way as the Dutch marines are operating effectively in Arbroath alongside British marines. These are the practical ways in which we can co-operate in a period in which all Western countries face problems as a result of inflation, and get a better buy for the pounds and guilders that are available for defence.

I share a great deal of the concern that has been expressed tonight about the cuts. I am particularly concerned about ad hoc cuts. Inevitably defence has to take its share in any particular cut. If we must have cuts, we have to look at our resources and say what is available, and this must be part of an appraisal of our commitments. I am particularly concerned that we might be spreading resources even more thinly over the same number of our commitments.

If we have to look again at the resources available, we should look at the commitments. We should look at Cyprus, a subject to which I shall return later, and at our contribution to the strategic deterrent of the alliance. But at the moment, when we are talking of the conventional forces, we must surely be concerned because of the contribution we are making to NATO.

This is an extremely serious matter. If we reduce our contribution to the conventional forces in NATO on the central front, other people will follow us. The net result will be that the nuclear threshold will be lowered. Initially we might have to use tactical nuclear weapons, and then perhaps strategic nuclear weapons sooner if there were no adequate conventional forces in the central front in Europe. Therefore, we must look extremely carefully at the savings we are seeking to make.

In listening to the hon. Member for Haltemprice I had the impression that it was only Labour Ministers who ever made cuts in our contributions to the central front or, indeed, to our contributions as promised under the Brussels Treaty. The hon. Member may have noticed that I left the Chamber. It was, indeed, to get hold of the Defence White Papers of 1957 and 1958, because it was in those two Defence White Papers that we really began, under a Conservative Administration—when Lord DuncanSandys was Secretary of State for Defence—to sell the pass in regard to our commitment to the central front and to Western European Union.

The hon. Member will know that the commitment in the revised Brussels Treaty is to four divisions and to one tactical air force. There are no figures in the document, although the figure quoted at the time was 77,000 men. It was the Secretary of State for Defence who in the Defence White Paper of 1957 cut that commitment from 77,000 to 64,000. In the following year he cut it again from 64,000 to 55,000. Those were the serious cuts in our contribution to the central front.

It was Lord Duncan-Sandys who in his White Paper of 1957 said that we had to cut the size of the tactical air force in Germany by a half. That was in one White Paper. Those were cuts of much greater severity, in regard to the British contribution to the conventional forces of NATO, than anything that my right hon. Friend may have done in the last six months.

In view of the criticism made about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—

At that time, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate we had forces throughout the world—in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and so on—which we do not have today.

We had 100,000 men in the Far East and the Middle East at that time.

But the most interesting passage in the Defence White Paper of 1958—particularly in view of the remarks made by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Conservative side about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—is contained in paragraph 43. After having said that we were reducing the commitment to 55,000, the paragraph goes on to say:

"In this connection, the Government have, in accordance with the revised Brussels Treaty, asked the North Atlantic Council to consider the financial problem involved in maintaining these forces in Germany."

It goes on:

"The Government are most anxious to continue to make a substantial contribution to the NATO shield. But they have been obliged to state clearly that, in the event of adequate financial assistance not being forthcoming they will have to reconsider reluctantly the British land and air forces they can afford to retain on the continent."

That is the Conservative Government of 1958 in their own defence White Paper, and that after reducing the contribution to the central front from 77,000 to 55,000 in two years. Then they have the nerve to suggest that it is only Labour Governments which threaten our contribution to the central front, and make cuts.

Also it was the Government of that time who fell for the nuclear fallacy. They were more concerned about status than security. They were more concerned about being able to pretend to maintain the position of a great Power than about maintaining the security of this country with adequate forces on the continent of Europe. I hope that my right hon. Friends and hon. Friends will not suffer from the same illusion.

While the whole of the £100 million for the coming year, or the £200 million for the following year, cannot be taken from the Polaris programme or the research and development programmes for modernising and developing strategic forces, when the Government look at where the cuts must be made—if, reluctantly, there must be cuts—they should look at areas where we may be duplicating forces which are adequately provided by the United States rather than cutting the conventional forces which we contribute to the central front, and which, I believe, are vital for the continued security of this country and the alliance as a whole.

I cannot tell a lie—I came here to speak about motorway inquiries. But I listened to siren voices, and I did so not least because motorway inquiries is a topic which is very low on the list and may not be reached. Secondly, I was absolutely outraged by the remarks of the Secretary of State for Defence the other afternoon, when he was replying to questions on Defence. I am sorry that he is not here tonight. I wanted to put a skewer into him about this subject.

In answering an extremely difficult question, the Secretary of State said, in a throw-away line, that the Chiefs of Staff "could speak for themselves". They cannot speak for themselves, and the Secretary of State knows it. The two squirming Ministers on the Government Front Bench know it, too. They should be thoroughly ashamed of what their political boss has said. It is grossly unfair to the Chiefs of Staff to suggest such a thing, and to take refuge behind their skirts in such a way.

All they can do is go to the Prime Minister as a body and represent their professional judgment of the facts. That is a very rare event, and that is what they have done. It is not too strong to say that it was despicable for the Secretary of State to suggest otherwise.

Having got that off my chest, I want to say that since the cuts we have, of course, inadequate forces for waging war. We also have inadequate forces for preventing war. One of the troubles with discussing defence is that we so often escalate it into a declared war in which we are all shooting each other and rushing around sinking submarines. I was unimpressed, by the way, by the suggestion by the hon. Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper) that life was becoming easier for anti-submarines. As an old anti-sub-mariner, I assure him that if one is chasing a nuclear submarine, it is 10 times more difficult, not the other way sound.

I expect I am bound to be thought of as a crusty old—I almost said an unparliamentary word there—admiral, who wants squadrons of battleships sailing the seas, and hordes of aircraft flying through the skies. I admit it, I do! But, joking apart, I want to prevent war. Those who have seen a war at the sharp end are those most likely to want to prevent another. If a country is too weak in its conventional defence, a potential enemy may be tempted to exercise blackmail by the use of its greater strength.

Several hon. Members have spoken of the adverse effect on NATO of these ad hoc cuts. That is a strong argument because of the downward spiral in NATO which could be induced by our cuts. Members of NATO look up to Britain. They look up to our forces because they are professional—I think that they are the best. If we spiral downwards, others in NATO will do the same.

As in our own national defence, one of the greatest inadequacies in NATO is prevention. I fear that the arrangements within NATO for crisis control, for handling a situation before war is declared and for the prevention of war are inadequate. General Alexander Haig, the Supreme Commander of NATO, told me at a recent North Atlantic Assembly meeting in open session that he was dissatisfied with the security of his communications in time of crisis. He said that he had no adequate means of securely communicating with subordinate commanders in NATO. If that is so, it is a deplorable weakness which should cause the Government to think again about the cuts: the money that they are cutting could surely be used to remedy that weakness.

Another inadequacy is in our Home Defence reserves. Our reserves consist of good people with a vital role to play. They experience interesting training and I am not dissatisfied with the quality of the reserves, but we have virtually no reserves for home defence, and the Government in previous incarnation cut civil defence.

I talk of prevention and crisis control, not of war itself. We all remember the Orsen Welles broadcast about men from Mars landing on our planet and the way people screamed out of town in a panic. There could be a panic situation without a bomb being dropped or a rocket being fired if blackmail were brought to bear against this country. Just the threat of rocket attack could cause tremendous panic among civilians, but there will be no one to stand at the end of the street and say "Go back home: everything will be all right".

I would not dare to contradict the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) about submarines, but is it not the case that in addition to the Territorials, eight or ten, or more, battalions earmarked for the British Army of the Rhine will be made available for home defence? If that is so I do not know what he means by saying that no one will be available for this purpose.

As I understand it, all the reserves, of the Army and certainly the other Services, have war stations to which to go. There are not specific reserves for specific local areas with no other functions than that. That is what there should be.

A further point about the prevention of war is that we must have vastly improved arrangements for protecting our trade routes. It is at sea that an escalation of incidents, below the threshold of declared war can very easily be imagined. There are innumerable scenarios in which our merchant ships, going about the seas on their perfectly lawful occasions—as the old naval prayer has it—could be prevented, interrupted and harassed. In this short debate I need not say what an enormous increase we see year by year and month by month in the Soviet navy. Yes, month by month, because one additional nuclear submarine is launched for the Soviet navy every month.

This subject is world wide. The Cape route is perhaps one of our most vulnerable areas. Here I am totally dissatisfied with the Government's policy regarding Simonstown. Admittedly, navies may have longer legs these days. They can remain at sea longer. Sailors do not like it, but navies can do that. They can refuel at sea, and so on. However, what we cannot do without is the intelligence that the South African authorities have. I am talking about matters at sea, which have nothing to do with apartheid or the internal policies of South Africa, whatever one may think of them.

As I hope the Minister knows, there is a combined operational headquarters at the back of Simonstown called Silvermine, which I have visited. I have seen the secret shipping plot there, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill). That intelligence is vital to us for the prevention of war. But, as I understand it, we now have no contact with the South African authorities, no means of getting that Intelligence and no secure communications to enable us to do so. If that is the case, it is deplorable that just blind ideological prejudice prevents the Government from doing this, because very little money is involved.

Finally, at Christmas, which is a time for family gathering, it would be appropriate to pay tribute to those who will not be able to be with their families this Christmas. I refer, of course, to the troops in Northern Ireland. It is these men, together with the members throughout the United Kingdom. who are the defenders of our freedom under the law. And freedom under the law is our most precious heritage.

Last Tuesday, during a short debate on the Estimates, the Minister of State for Defence, speaking just 24 hours before the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose to announce spending cuts, said,

"We all wish that we could spend less on defence".

He went on to say—and I want to emphasise these words:

"but it would be irresponsible of any Government to make any major reductions in our defence spending outside the context of the mutual and balanced force reductions".

He concluded, in this passage of his speech:

"This is the environment in which we must take our decisions."—[Official Report, 14th December 1976; Vol. 922, c. 1241.]

Those of us who heard the Minister of State give that undertaking listened with incredulity 24 hours later to the words of the Chancellor. This is how the Chancellor put it to the House:

"Despite the big cuts which we have already made in defence expenditure, we cannot achieve the necessary reductions in public expenditure and the PSBR without a contribution from the defence budget. We are looking to defence for further savings of £100 million in 1977–78 and £200 million in 1978–79".—[Official Report, 15th December 1976; Vol. 922, c. 1529.]

Thus it is that we may put in marked contrast the words of the Minister of State on Tuesday with those of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Wednesday.

We are entitled to ask the Minister for the Air Force, who I think is to wind up this debate, whether between Tuesday and Wednesday there really was that mutual and balanced force reduction which the Minister of State said was a precondition for a reduction in defence expenditure. Was there that mutual and balanced force reduction in the 24 hours that elapsed between that undertaking to the House of Commons and the announcement by the Chancellor? Of course there was not.

We are entitled to point out that there seems to us to have been no co-operation, no discussion, between the five Ministers in the Defence Department and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Indeed, it is clear to us on this side of the House that the Government have betrayed their first duty to the country, because overriding every other consideration is the duty of the Government to provide, in so far as they can, for the safety of these islands. When the Minister of State tells us that there could be no further cuts except in the context of mutual and balanced force reductions and the Chancellor of the Exchequer comes to the House 24 hours later and announces those cuts without the mutual reductions, the House and the country are entitled to ask "Why?".

We are entitled to ask the two Ministers who bear this heavy responsibility what battles they fought in their Department. What battles did they or the Secretary of State fight in the Cabinet? My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Mayhew) gave the House the answer; that the former Secretary of State for Education and Science, the supposed victor of Tameside, was put into the position of Secretary of State for Defence because he was and is, and is shown to be, a push-over.

The charge that we level against the Government and against the two Ministers who sit opposite us tonight on the Government Front Bench, almost in lonely splendour, is very serious, because we are asserting that the cuts in defence expenditure have been made not at all on any grounds of national security but solely to gain the approval of this total package from the hon. Gentlemen who sometimes sit, but are not now sitting, below the Gangway on the Government side.

The question of Britain's contribution to NATO is the supreme contribution that this country now makes to defence. I am one of those—perhaps a minority on this side of the House—who look without bitterness and without regret at the concentration of Britain's Armed Forces in Europe. Our world-wide rôle has gone. It was without a tear on my part that we abandoned our rôle east of Suez. I know that I shall not carry my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) with me when I make that observation.

Hear, hear.

I believe that we need to concentrate our defence capacity exclusively in Europe, apart from the residual legacy that we have in Hong Kong, Cyprus and Belize. We need to formulate and frame our defence policy on the basis of defending these islands against an assault from the only quarter from which an assault is apprehended—namely, from the Soviet Union. For me, the supreme task therefore is to prevent an enemy from gaining control of the land mass that is adjacent to these islands in North-West Europe. That and the sea routes around these islands are for me the crucial element of our defence.

My hon. Friend and I will not differ seriously, but why only the sea routes around these islands? Where does the "Red Duster" go?

If my hon. and gallant Friend has leave of the House, no doubt he will be able to develop his case at greater length. I shall make my speech in my own way.

I was asserting that the overriding duty of the Government in defence relates to the task of preventing the land mass of North-West Europe and the sea routes around these islands from falling into enemy hands, and I believe that the further cuts over and above the other very extensive cuts we have had so far—£100 million next year and £200 million in the following year—cannot be carried out without a significant and meaningful reduction in the contribution that this country makes to NATO.

It is that reduction in our defensive capacity at the very moment when the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact countries are increasing their own military capacity which, I believe, is the ultimate in irresponsibility on the part of the Government. We are entitled to look to the alternative means of saving £100 million next year and £200 million in the following year, because public expenditure is a matter of priorities.

I believe that if the Secretary of State and his four ministerial colleagues had joined with the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff and the three Chiefs of Staff—five Ministers and four of the most senior officers in the Armed Forces—in saying to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor "We cannot fulfil our overriding duty to the country, the Armed Forces and to the people by allowing these cuts to go through", they would have carried the day. They would have done something more. If they had stood up to the Chancellor and the Cabinet, they would not only have fulfilled a duty to themselves, to the Armed Forces and to the country but their stand would have marked a turning point for the revival of the sense of national success, the sense of national priorities and the sense of national pride which their past conduct has done so much to undermine.

The two Ministers present—the Under-Secretaries of State for Defence for the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force—are patriotic, diligent and honest men. How much they would have added to their reputation and to the morale of the Armed Forces if they had done what, I suspect, in their hearts they know they should have done—that is, refused to accept these further cuts in our defence expenditure, this further humiliation being heaped upon the Service men for whom they bear ministerial responsibility.

There is today a real crisis of morale in our Armed Forces, a growing sense of disillusionment that their political heads are no longer prepared to fight the political battles which should be fought in the Cabinet. This is a serious charge, but Ministers must know as they go about the air stations and warships that such a crisis exists. If evidence is required, not from the senior NCO's or even the officers, would the Ministers dare to tell us what the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff and the three Chiefs of Staff said to the Prime Minister in the presence of the Secretary of State? It would be wrong to ask in detail what went on at that meeting, but the Ministers must know that the Chiefs of Staff said that these further cuts would be gravely damaging not only to our defence capacity but to the prospects of morale and recruitment in all three Armed Forces.

We hope to have some explanation of the grievous events of the past fortnight, the unprecedented meeting of the four most senior officers in the Armed Forces and the Prime Minister, and the contrast between what the Minister of State said on Tuesday last week and what the Chancellor said on Wednesday. Unless we have a convincing answer, the country will draw the only possible conclusion: that all five Ministers in the Ministry of Defence have betrayed the high trust which, temporarily at any rate, is placed in them.

It is a refreshing experience to be able to take part in a defence debate which is taking place between democrats, when we are all united in our desire to maintain the freedoms and the peace of this country which it has been the privilege of our people to enjoy for more than a generation. On both sides, we share a recognition of the need for a stronger British defence within the concept of NATO as a prerequisite for the maintenance of our freedom and of peace.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) on his excellent speech and, above all, on having given us all the opportunity of debating his subject at a time when our defences are uppermost in the minds of our fellow countrymen, who are deeply concerned at what has been happening for some months but particularly in recent days. They share the concern expressed by several of my hon. Friends, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow), that something must be gravely wrong with our defences for the Chiefs of Staff to take the step unprecedented in peacetime—unprecedented since 1921, I understand—of seeking a person interview with the Prime Minister to express their grave concern.

My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice has drawn attention to the Jekyll and Hyde approach of the Government—their schizophrenia towards defence. They recognise the threat; I am sure that none of the Ministers here tonight or the former Secretary of State, who had no doubt about the gravity of the situation, would seek to talk down the seriousness of what is facing us.

This is not a static threat—it is growing. It has been well set out in successive White Papers. In the face of mounting Soviet build-up on land, under the sea and in the air, however, the Government's only action is to cut, cut and cut again.

The latest cut, the fifth in two years, brings the total of cuts under this Administration to £8,402 million. This level of cuts must eat deeply into our defences. The level of troops must be affected. Even before this year's round of three cuts, it was proposed in the last defence review—which was supposed to be the review to end of reviews—that 30,000 should be lopped off Service manpower. Now we have hon. Members such as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover and Deal (Mr. Rees) voicing concern, which I share, over the future of the Royal Marine Commando.

Defence industries have also been affected. In its January report, the Expenditure Committee estimated that 200,000 job opportunities in defence industries and the Services would be lost because of the cuts proposed up to that time. The Government are allegedly concerned about unemployment. They have set up a job creation programme, but, despite the millions of pounds of taxpayers money and the great effort being put into that programme, it is as nothing when compared with the Government's job destruction programme in the defence industries.

Equipment is also affected. The introduction of new equipment will be postponed. We know that equipment programmes will be pushed back, but perhaps the Minister who replies will explain how this is to be done. Equipment and training cut-backs are among the few ways in which the £200 million savings for next year—proposed between the Chancellor's July and December measures—can be made.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice pointed out, there are already many deficiencies. We have great deficiencies in respect of airlift capability. That has been the major casualty of the Labour Government's cuts in this round. It has reached the point where we have to charter Fred Olsen ferries to get our troops to exercises in Norway. More seriously, it means—I do not expect the Minister to confirm this at the Dispatch Box—that we are unable to reinforce BAOR as we would wish and as we are under an obligation to do in time of crisis.

There is a great lack of deployment of anti-tank missiles. My hon. Friends have pointed out that the new communications systems are not to be introduced and that our equipment is not compatible with that of many of our allies. It is intolerable that this situation should not only exist today but should be allowed to continue into the future.

My hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Mayhew) also drew attention to the fact that we are under an obligation to our NATO allies to maintain in Europe a fighting capability of 30 days' stocks. I want to put a question to the Minister who is to wind up the debate. When do Her Majesty's Government intend to get BAOR and RAF stocks in Germany up to even half the fighting days' capacity that we are under an obligation to maintain?

My hon. Friends have draw attention to the danger of surprise attack. No longer can we rely on the 30 days' tension period which characterised the planning on which many of our arrangements have been based. The Yom Kippur War was a salutary shock not only to the Israelis but to some of us in Europe, because we saw how, with, on one side of the border—or, in that case, on one side of the canal—a large standing army that requires no reinforcement to move on to a footing of aggression, and, on the other, armies that depend on reinforcements from civilian sources, surprise attack can come about today.

There is no denying that Soviet units in Eastern Europe are deployed in an attack formation and that they are in sufficient strength to cross the border into Western Europe and make deep inroads towards the Channel without any reinforcement whatsoever. We can now rely on no more than 72 hours' advance notice of any such movement. This must be a matter of deep concern to all of us.

What is the significance of the latest cuts in defence? It is not in their size—£330 million. What is that compared with what the Services have suffered before? Nor is it even the fact that these £330 million worth of cuts come on top of an £8,000 million cut. The true significance of these cuts, and the reason for the unprecedented protest by the Chiefs of Staff to the Prime Minister, is something different. It is that for the first time the United Kingdom is cutting into its commitment and its capability within NATO. This has never happened before in the case of any previous cuts. I challenge the Minister to deny that none of our capabilities and commitments is to be cut in the next two or three years.

What is the reason for these cuts? I am sure the Minister will admit that they are certainly not for defence reasons at a time when the Russians are spending more on defence and are deploying more and more equipment. The cuts are not for defence reasons and not for economic reasons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne made clear, there are many other areas of expenditure where the burden could have been borne.

If the Government had dropped even a part of a single nationalisation measure, we would have been able to maintain our commitment in NATO and would not have had to cut the capability of our forces. To put that in terms which our citizens will perhaps appreciate more easily, the cuts in defence expenditure that we are being asked to make in the coming two years could be accounted for in terms of one bottle of whisky per family per year. I am sure that every one of our citizens would willingly make that sacrifice in order to ensure that our troops have the equipment they need and that we live up to our commitment in NATO.

The reason for the cuts is not defence or economics. The reason is politics, pure and simple. It is an appeasement by the Government of the extreme Left within their own party. It is always at times of economic crisis that the extreme Left gets its pound of flesh, or in this case, one could say, its £8 billion of flesh. In 1965 it was the TSR2. In 1967, in the wake of that year's November devaluation, it was the commitment of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his then capacity, to pull out all our forces from east of Suez, even though in the months before he and the then Prime Minister had been saying how vitally important it was to maintain our posture in the Gulf and Singapore. Now we have the greatest cuts that have ever been made to the defence budget.

I share the deep concern expressed by the hon. Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper), my Manchester neighbour across the Ship Canal, that the nuclear threshold in Europe is being lowered by a policy of unilateral disarmament at a time when the Soviet Union is boosting not only its strategic capability but also its conventional capability at an alarming rate. Ten years ago we hoped that we were moving out of the "trip-wire" philosophy towards a balanced response, but now we are cutting the ground from beneath that capability.

Finally, I share the determination of my hon. and gentleman Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) when he says that the single most important issue for Members in the Chamber tonight, and for our people, is the maintenance of peace. The word must go out that the threshold of peace is now being consciously and deliberately lowered by the present Government.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) on his success in winning a place in the debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill, and I rejoice that his position in the Ballot has been No.3, thus enabling us all to retire to our beds at what is, for the House of Commons, a relatively early hour.

I welcome the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) on his first appearance to speak at the Dispatch Box on behalf of the Opposition. I am sure that we shall hear a lot more from him in the years ahead as he continues to occupy, as I hope he will, a position on the Opposition Front Bench. But I must tell the hon. Gentleman that he will not enhance his reputation if he poses questions which could be very damaging to our security and the morale of our Armed Forces, posing them in the sure knowledge—or, at least, what ought to be the sure knowledge—that no responsible Minister could from this Box give him the answers which he requires.

The hon. Gentleman did that at one point tonight when he asked me about weapon stocks in Germany. No Minister in any Administration would give him or any other hon. Member that sort of information, since it could only be of assistance to those whose job it is to seek out our secrets if we were to respond to questions of that kind.

But will not the Minister agree that the only reason for that question put him in some embarrassment and an inability to answer, is that in this respect we are falling down on our commitments. If we had our proper requirement for 30 day's stock, he would be able to say that we were fully up to our commitments to NATO.

The hon. Gentleman is repeating his offence. Let me now turn to the other point which the hon. Gentleman made about the capability of reinforcement of British Army of the Rhine.

rose—

In a moment. The hon. and gallant Gentleman will have his opportunity, because I shall have something to say about his speech.

Will the Minister give way on the question of stocks?

I would rather get on with the debate. Otherwise, we shall be up and down like yo-yos all evening, thus defeating the good fortune of being in third place, on which I congratulated the hon. Member for Haltemprice.

The hon. Member for Stretford asked me about reinforcement of our Army on the Rhine. There is no problem whatever in this respect. The planned capability is there, and we can meet the NATO timetable requirement. There need, therefore, be no problems or anxiety in the hon. Gentleman's mind or in the minds of our allies or our soldiers in Germany about our capability to meet our requirements in that respect.

I turn now to the main burden of the debate. I recognise the concern which has been expressed in the House about the reductions in defence expenditure announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week. Unlike some of my hon. Friends, I do not welcome these cuts, let alone wish that they had been larger. I take the view that anyone who feels that the cuts are not enough is either seriously misinformed or has deliberately set his face against some very hard facts.

My hon. Friend the Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper) does not welcome cuts in defence expenditure. Neither do I. I must add that, like my hon. Friend, I regret just as much the cuts which have been made in overseas aid, in housing, in roads and in education. But I believe that they are a regrettable necessity.

There is no need for me to go over those considerations of our economic performance and foreign confidence in our future which have led to the cuts in expenditure as part of the Government's overall strategy for economic recovery. It is widely accepted that the share of the national product which is accounted for by the public sector has grown too quickly, is now too large, and must be reduced if British industry is to regain the cutting edge which is crucial to our future well-being and indeed survival as a humane, tolerant society able to safeguard the interests of all its citizens.

I say to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) that that is a responsibility that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I fully accept. It is a responsibility to ensure that public expenditure is brought within bounds which are sustainable by the country's economy. The Government's strategy should be to embark upon a period of recovery so that we can discharge all our responsibilities—our domestic responsibilities to our citizens and our responsibilities in Europe to our NATO allies.

The hon. and learned Member for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Mayhew) said that he expected me to use certain words, and I do not intend to disappoint him. It is the Government's judgment that defence must play its part, because it is inextricably bound up in the community which pays for it. When other sectors of the community are being asked to draw in their horns, it would be wrong to exempt defence. But we must acknowledge that the defence budget is not an inexhaustable fund—at least not if we are to continue to be a credible member of NATO and to make a meaningful contribution to the mutual protection of our society which it affords.

When this Government came into office, the money we spent on defence and the world-wide commitments we still held were out of all proportion to what we could afford and, as a medium-sized European Power, could be expected to afford, especially in relation to the defence effort of our partners. The Defence Review was a sensible slimming down of the resources we commit to our Armed Forces, which are now almost wholly committed to NATO. It is in NATO that our future lies and where we can do most good.

Subsequent cuts in expenditure, which have admittedly been made for budgetary reasons, have so far been found from the support area and not the front line. I hope that we can repeat this in implementing these latest cuts, although there is obviously a limit to the extent to which the tail can be cut without the teeth being affected.

Some hon. Members argue not only that the defence cuts which have been imposed since the Defence Review are wrong but that spending in this field should have been increased. But it is the Government's duty to distribute the available resources fairly and according to the needs and wishes of the people they govern. It must be true that, within a given overall level of Government spending, if one spends more on defence one must spend less on schools, hospitals, roads, assistance to industry, university places and so on.

Quite right.

The hon, Gentleman must assist his right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench to spell out just how much they would cut from the expenditure on all those other things.

Will the hon. Gentleman direct his attention to the remark made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow), that the first priority of any Government is to guarantee the security of the State against external aggression? Many people who know a great deal about European defence have stated time and again in the past two years that our defences have been cut below what is acceptable. Will the hon. Gentleman now direct his remarks to that point, and perhaps say that if there are any further defence cuts he will do the proper thing and resign, as he should have done already?

The first responsibility of any Government is to ensure that the economic base upon which the whole strength of a nation depends is such that it can meet not only its military security requirements but its domestic requirements, which include all the matters I have mentioned. If our citizens cannot have adequate treatment for their illnesses, if their children cannot be educated in reasonable buildings and in acceptably sized classes, if our pensioners cannot be given enough money—as a right and not as charity—to make their retirement anything more than a struggle, are they not entitled to ask, and would they not ask, whether the Government have their priorities wrong? There is no God-given level—

rose—

I should like to press on. I wish to respond to many points which were made seriously. If Opposition Members will contain themselves, I shall get down to the nitty gritty in a few moments.

There is no God-given level of defence spending, and we must allocate our resources as best we can according to the judgment that we make in the light of the nation's available funds.

rose—

I take some comfort from the fact that some say we spend too little while others say that we spend too much. Given that the Government are now following a strategy that is to bring about our economic recovery, our defence expenditure will be playing an important role in allowing us to achieve our economic objectives so that we may meet our military requirements.

rose—

rose—

I shall not give way as I want to press on and try to deal with the points that have been made.

The hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) described himself as a crusty old admiral. I must say that I do not share that view of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. We have had many exchanges in the House and joined in many debates on naval affairs, and I have never found him a crusty old admiral. I can recall discussing the rum ration for the Royal Navy on one occasion when we almost came to accord.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman, as well as other hon. Members referred to the visit by the Chiefs of Staff to the Prime Minister. The Chiefs of Staff saw the Prime Minister 10 days ago and the Opposition—I do not hold it against them as Oppositions will take advantage of whatever opportunities they can seize—have made great play of their visit. They have used it to mount what I can only describe as a somewhat illogical demand for the resignation of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. No doubt this highly party-politically motivated demand will be rehashed again and again by some Opposition Members.

The matter is quite simple. The Chiefs of Staff were exercising their undisputed right—and their duty, as they saw it—to represent their views to the Prime Minister on the effect of the cuts in expenditure and to convey to him their concern about the build-up in the forces of the Warsaw Pact. They did what was for them the right and honourable thing, since the Chiefs of Staff are the Government's professional advisers on defence matters and it must be appropriate for them to offer their views on these cuts.

The fact that the Prime Minister, having heard their views, felt obliged to confirm that cuts in defence spending would still have to be imposed does not reflect badly on either the Government or the Chiefs of Staff. When cuts are being considered it would be unwise for the Cabinet to formulate its package without the benefit of advice, solicited or otherwise. Having received advice, it is the Government's ultimate responsibility to take the measures they consider most appropriate.

The Chiefs of Staff must of necessity look to the defence field and to that alone, since it is part of our way of conducting public affairs that their influence does not extend beyond this. The Government, on the other hand, must direct the activities of the nation across the whole spectrum, of which defence is only a part, albeit a very important—indeed, a vital—part. As I have already said, it is the Government's firm belief that defence should bear a share, but not a disproportionate share, of the burden of spending cuts which demand sacrifices of the whole community of which the Armed Forces rightly wish to be considered a part.

But is it not the duty of the Secretary of State to represent in Cabinet the views of a Department? Does not this incident show a clear lack of confidence on the part of the Chiefs of Staff in that they took this unprecedented step in peace time to approach the Prime Minister?

There the hon. Gentleman goes again. Neither of us was party to the discussions that take place in Cabinet. We may make assumptions, unwisely, based upon reports that have appeared in the Press, but none of us, except those who are present at a Cabinet meeting, knows precisely what goes on.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State accompanied the Chiefs of Staff on their visit to the Prime Minister. I have no doubt from my knowledge of my right hon. Friend, of the discussions that I have had with him and of the knowledge and understanding that I have of his views, that in those places where it is his responsibility to take and express a view to his colleagues he took a line that made quite clear the state of the threat and the state of the requirements of the Armed Forces. However, my right hon. Friend, like every member of a Government, must look at the situation in its totality as it affects the nation. It is sometimes necessary to give as much weight to other factors as to those which are of a particular departmental interest.

The Under-Secretary cannot have it both ways. He cannot tell us half the story and then say "But I was not at the meeting and my right hon. Friend was". If he purports to speak from the Front Bench, representing the interests of that great Department of State, he cannot leave it there.

The question I am putting to him is a very simple one susceptible of a fairly simple answer. Are we to infer from as much as he was condescended to tell the House this evening that it was the considered professional view of the Chief's of Staff, given to the Prime Minister—it was their perfect constitutional right to do so, as the hon. Gentleman has admitted—that the cuts proposed and to be debated in Cabinet, presumably, were likely to bring the defence capabilities of this country below an acceptable level?

They are that already.

The hon. and learned Gentleman is asking me to make a quite impossible statement. The Chiefs of Staff visited the Prime Minister. They expressed to the Prime Minister their concern about the effects of the cuts and their impact upon our defence posture. I have gone on to explain a number of other issues. I do not believe that I should be asked to go further.

In what is a highly political debate in which the lines are drawn clearly and sometimes stridently, I believe it is right for me to pay tribute to the Service men and the civilians of the Ministry of Defence who have worked to put into effect the very substantial economies that have already been called for. This task has not been an easy one, and it does not get any easier with practice. Some difficult decisions have had to be, and will have to be, made. But they have carried out their duties with a dedication and enthusiasm that sets an example to the rest of the country. I believe that the great majority have, without applauding the cuts, recognised the need for and the purpose of them. Morale, a fickle and intangible quality which can react unpredictably, has held up well.

Without wishing to offer too many hostages to fortune, I hope that we can now look forward to a period of greater stability in defence. If our forecasts are right, the cuts in public expenditure just announced should, together with other measures the Government are taking, put the economy on the right course.

We all realise that the next year is going to be tough going, but, as British industry moves forward, stimulated, I hope, by a general upturn in the world economy, and as North Sea oil comes ashore in ever greater quantities, the rate of economic growth should climb. This will allow our national wealth to grow enough to pay off our external borrowing, reduce unemployment whilst keeping inflation in check, and hold the level of public expenditure, including defence, steady. I hope that this scenario will prove to be realistic, because I earnestly believe that the Armed Forces need a period of stability to adjust to their new size and roles and to digest the economies they have had to make.

rose—

I should not wish the House to gain the impression that the defence horizon is one of unrelieved gloom and that the Services are at best standing still and more likely irretrievably regressing. We have heard a lot about the effects of cuts on the Armed Forces, and I would not pretend that the Services are not smaller than they were a few years ago, or that we have not lost some items of equipment, either in-Service or on order, which the Services would have liked to have.

But it is important to acknowledge the improvements which have been made recently. For example, orders placed by the Royal Navy since the Defence Review announcements were made last year include the second ASW cruiser, HMS "Illustrious", a Fleet submarine, two Type 42 destroyers and two Type 22 frigates. These orders represent a major contribution to the workload of the shipbuilding industry and to the maintenance of the Royal Navy as the major European member of NATO.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is there any protection for hon. Members when a Minister is simultaneously struck with a twin affliction of blindness and deafness?

The hon. Gentleman can only hope that it is the season of peace on earth and good will towards all men.

The hon. Member for Eastbourne should take note that throughout the whole course of his eloquent but none the less party-politically biased speech, nobody from the Government side sought to intervene. I hope that while I am not delivering a biased party-political speech I shall receive even greater courtesy from the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends.

rose—

I would rather press on, because I have not yet got to the many points raised, and I owe the hon. Member for Haltemprice some replies to the very serious points he addressed to me during the course of the debate.

A radical restructuring of BAOR is in progress. We shall be able, without increasing the overall size, to increase the number of company size combat teams by over a quarter. Instead of the present three divisions and supporting formations, there will be four new-styled armoured divisions, an artillery division, and a new style formation to be known as the 5th Field Force.

We hear quite a lot about the growing potential of the Soviet Union to reach the United Kingdom with its bombers and reconnaissance aircraft such as the Bear and the Foxbat, but we hear very little about the improvements we are making in the Royal Air Force's air defence capability. We have nine air defence squadrons, seven in the United Kingdom and two in Germany.

With the transfer of Phantoms to this role and the running-on of some of the existing Lightning squadrons, I believe that we shall have greater strength in air defence than we have had for some time. And, of course, now that full development has been approved, we have the air defence variant of the Tornado to look forward to.

Aircraft are, of course, only the most visible part of our air defence system, and I should refer very briefly to the developments in other fields such as the deployment of Bloodhound and Rapier missiles, the major improvements proposed for our ground-based early warning system, the hardened aircraft shelter programme, and the impending decision on a successor to the Shackleton AEW aircraft.

The hon. Member for Haltemprice raised the subject of Milan. On 22nd October we signed a memorandum of understanding with the French and German Governments on the purchase of the Milan guided missile for the British Army. This will provide a really important additional anti-tank capability. After an initial purchase to ensure that the system is in service as soon as possible, production will be under licence in the United Kingdom and will create employment for about 2,000 people. We also agreed to collaborate on studies for future anti-tank guided weapons systems. I cannot give the assurance the hon. Member sought that we shall not seek to rephase expenditure on the Milan in 1977–78, and 1978–79, but I can say that we have no intention of cancelling this important weapon.

The hon. Member referred to the Lance nuclear weapon which the alliance has procured from the United States. It is being introduced into service with BAOR. It is not an expensive project, but it is an important one. Other NATO countries are buying it, so it is unlikely to appear in the list of savings.

He also referred to anti-tank weapons for helicopters. Having considered the priorities of the defence budget, we find that by accepting some deferment, provision can be made for a helicopter antitank guided weapons system to be mounted on Lynx helicopters. An evaluation of suitable systems, including the Franco-German HOT and the American TOW is now under way, and it is expected that a decision will be made next year.

The hon. Member for Haltemprice also asked about the RAF Transport Force. This Force was reduced by 50 per cent. as a result of the defence review—the Comets and Britannias were phased out, and reductions made in the numbers of Andovers, VC10s, and Hercules. Following the 1975 public expenditure survey, there were further changes in the Transport Force. The Belfast squadron was withdrawn, and the numbers of VC10s and Hercules were increase above the earlier level, so that we now have 11 VC10s and 45 Hercules.

These decisions mean the more economic overall use of the Transport Force, and also yield useful economies without detriment to our reinforcement plans. I want to emphasise that last point. Although it is true that we have lost a little of our flexibility by disbanding the Belfast squadron, the resources we have are sufficient to carry out our military air transport commitments to NATO and our main overseas non-NATO commiments. While I cannot give a cast-iron guarantee that there will be no reductions in the Transport Force, and in particular the number of Hercules, it is highly unlikely that we should reduce it in the absence of a reduction in our commitments.

The hon. Member asked a number of questions about off-shore protection. The Defence Under-Secretary for the Royal Navy only last week visited Rosyth, went aboard HMS "Jersey", one of the new Island class ships, and reported to my right hon. Friend on the state of play in that area. I know that the hon. Member for Haltemprice has taken the view in the past that the Ministry of Defence has not given sufficient priority to off-shore protection of fisheries and oil rigs, but I can give the assurance that we are fully aware of our responsibilities in this direction.

The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force will commit as much of their resources as is considered necessary. So when we talk about the level of forces, in terms of ships and aircraft, whose prime task is offshore protection it is important to bear in mind that these operate as an integral part of the Royal Navy and RAF and that the response to any situation which demands action beyond the normal surveillance and patrolling will come from the total resources of the Armed Forces.

There have been criticisms not only of the resources we are committing to offshore protection but the capabilities of those forces. I take the Nimrod aircraft first, since I am more familiar with it in my everyday job as RAF Minister. This aircraft, which has a long-term future in the Air Force as our long-range maritime aircraft, was chosen as the best military solution.

Its endurance, range, and specialised surveillance equipment all make it an entirely suitable vehicle for the task it must undertake. It is certainly superior to any other aircraft in terms of performance and cost-effectiveness in the RAF's inventory for this job. Four Nimrods will be added to the existing squadrons at Kinloss and St Mawgan and will begin operations on 1st January. We reckon that 180 hours' flying a month should be sufficient but we shall natuurally keep a very close watch on events and we are ready to increase the flying effort if we consider this necessary.

As far as the Royal Navy is concerned, the offshore protection force will consist not only of the five ships of the Island class which will be in service by the end of 1977, but seven or eight mine counter measures vessels, a fast patrol boat, two ships of the Bird class as well as the resources of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland. While there has been criticism of the Island class ships because of their supposed lack of speed the characteristics required for a small ship designed specifically for the peacetime protection role are primarily good sea keeping and endurance and the five new ships will have both. Neither high speed nor extravagant armament is required since, as in the case of the RAF, if the need arises support will be avail. able readily and rapidly and at the right level to meet the situation.

I have been asked about the ASW capability. The Government recognise that aspect of the Soviet threat and decided in the defence review to maintain the core of the Royal Navy's anti-submarine forces—the new class of antisubmarine cruisers and the nuclear powered fleet submarines. The ASW cruisers will take the effective, large Sea King anti-submarine helicopter to sea in increasing numbers.

Hon. Members will recall that we have ordered two of these cruisers. We have nine nuclear powered fleet submarines in service and more are being built. The Royal Navy is the only European NATO navy which operates these vessels.

The hon. Member also asked about the number of Nimrod aircraft. The four additional aircraft to be used in offshore protection are composed of part of the eight additional Nimrods ordered as part of the measures to maintain employment at the manufacturers, Hawker Siddeley Aviation. The remaining four are still in the course of delivery. In 1977 we shall have four squadrons of Nimrod based in the United Kingdom and one in Malta. For obvious reasons it has never been the practice to reveal the detailed numbers of front-line aircraft.

The hon. and gallant Member for Winchester referred to the security of communications between SACEUR and his major subordinate commanders. This is of course a collective NATO responsibility rather than a matter for this or any other country. The hon. Member will be pleased to hear that a new and improved NATO integrated communications system is being introduced, funded collectively from NATO infrastructure funds, to connect NATO headquarters with capitals and with the headquarters of the principal NATO commanders.

The hon. and learned Member for Dover and Deal (Mr. Rees) raised an important constituency matter which causes concern to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for the Navy and myself. The hon. Member has had discussions about the matter with the present Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Overseas Development when he was Under-Secretary for Defence for the Royal Navy. My hon. Friend the present Under-Secretary has corresponded with him. He has taken note of what the hon. and learned Member said. My hon. Friend will contact the hon. and learned Member. He is prepared to discuss the matter and to go to Dover to see the situation at first hand. I hope that the hon. and learned Member will regard that answer to his problem as fair and reasonable.

I am grateful for the offer of the Minister's hon. Friend to come and discuss the matter again. He appreciates that this matter is of intense local concern. The point on which we should like particular reassurance—I realise that this may be a little Premature—is that if turns out that the cost of converting the barracks at Eastleigh for the Royal Marines School of Music is roughly equivalent to the cost of keeping the school at Deal, the school will be kept at Deal.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy made a specific note of that point. He will give consideration to that aspect and any others which come to the fore when he gets down to taking the final view on this matter.

The hon. Member for Eastbourne made great play with the statement made in the House by my hon. Friend the Minister of State. If anyone studies the Hansard report of my hon. Friend's speech. I think that we will observe that my hon. Friend was speaking in the context of a great number of points made—and replying to them—by some of his hon. Friends below the Gangway. It think that it is fair for me to say, therefore, that the Minister of State's comments and statement must be seen in the context of that debate.

I share the conviction of the hon. Member for Eastbourne that we must concentrate our defence capacity in Europe. The hon. Gentleman has taken a very courageous line in his own party in putting that point of view forward quite consistently for some time. I pay tribute to him. However, our policy must be based on our economic ability, because we cannot defend these islands unless we have that economic ability to sustain a military capacity. Therefore, if we are to concentrate—as we are—in NATO and in Europe and to be able to defend these islands, we must have the economic ability.

I know of no hon. Member who would wish to see this country surrender to a threat posed against it. Hon. Members have differing views as to what is required to meet that threat, but I do not think that it can be a charge against any hon. Member that he does not wish to preserve the freedom and independence of this country.

Does the Minister agree that there are some of his hon. Friends who wish that the United Kingdom would withdraw from NATO? Secondly, does he agree that our defence policy is really in the nature of an insurance policy? When the threat to this country is increasing, does the Minister think it wise to diminish the insurance policy?

I have several insurances on my life, as a private citizen, to protect the future of my family. One of the things that I have observed in life is that if I wish to ensure that those insurances shall pay out upon my death, I have to maintain the premium, and I have to maintain that premium by an ability to earn money, to create the resources for my family that can pay for that insurance premium. That is precisely what the Government are seeking to do in respect of our premium for security by our membership of NATO and by our defence expenditure and to ensure that we have the economic ability to pay the premium. I believe that that would be more readily achieved if the Governments policy were more wholeheartedly supported in all its aspects by a larger number of hon. Members.

I turn to the very interesting speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Farnworth. He brings to bear on our defence debates a wealth of experience. He is a distinguished member of the Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee of the Select Committee on Expenditure. He raised several interesting points. I shall consider them all and draw to the attention of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department those which are more appropriate to them.

My hon. Friend was right to remind us of what has gone before in terms of defence expenditure and policies. I am particularly grateful to him for bringing out into the open the White Papers of 1957 and 1958—particularly paragraph 43. I assure Opposition Members that they will hear more about paragraph 43 if they initiate further debates on defence affairs.

I am also reminded by my hon. Friend in his reference to those two Defence White Papers that it was the same Government who virtually stripped this country of an air defence capability. When I hear Conservative Members talking about what this Government have done and about the responsibilities of the Government I ask them to recall that it has been Governments since 1964 who have replaced the capacity of this country to put up an air defence of these islands.

The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) looks a little bewildered. I think that he would do well to spend a little time in the Library with the Defence White Papers of his own party in those years—

I do not live in the past.

The hon. Gentleman says that he does not live in the past. It is of little use coming to a debate as this and having all sorts of emotional—[Interruption.] I am sorry if I am keeping hon. Gentlemen opposite up. Many emotional speeches have been made and we are entitled to try to set the matter in some perspective. I do not take kindly to people who in the past have put this country and its defence at grave risk and who now come along and make the sort of emotional claptrappy speeches that some of them have chosen to make during the debate.

I know that the House would not expect me, and even if it did I should not be prepared to do so, to tell hon. Members at this stage how the cuts will be shared out among the Services, or how the savings will be found. No. doubt the defence White Paper will have more information, and this can be discussed more fully in the debates which will follow.

Once potential savings have been identified, and obviously we cannot drag our feet on this, NATO will be fully informed and invited to offer its views on how the alliance as a whole sees the savings being found. I hope that our allies will understand the reasons for the cuts and accept that in difficult times we are making strenuous efforts to maintain our contribution to the alliance. I am sure they will appreciate that ad- justing the defence budget at this time will help put Britain on the road to recovery and that only in this way can we guarantee that the part we play in the alliance will be based upon an economy that can sustain that commitment. A short-term defence establishment of disproportionate size which helps to bankrupt us is certainly not in the interests of our partners or of our security.

Can the hon. Gentleman give the House the categoric assurance that I requested—namely, that these cuts will not result in any cut in Britain's commitment to our capability in NATO?

The statement that I have made it clear. The details of the cuts have not been fully considered by—

What?

The details of the cuts have not been fully worked out as to the precise areas on which they will fall. It is the intention of my right hon. Friend and my colleagues in the Department to give the most careful scrutiny to this matter, and when we have made our final—

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No. When we have completed our studies, those facts will be put to NATO in the normal consultative process.

I hope that I have answered all the points raised by the hon. Member for Haltemprice. I hope, too, that the next time we have a defence debate it will be conducted at an earlier hour and with the same amount of good will as we have experienced on this occasion.

I make no apology for raising this subject again at this hour and following upon the last debate. It has to do with the defence of the realm, albeit against vandals within the journey rather than attackers from outside. Vandalism is an evil, expensive and all-pervading problem which seems to have the ability to increase with prosperity and to go on increasing in adversity. It has now reached the staggering cost to the nation of over £100 million. By coincidence, that is almost the same sum as the defence cuts we have just debated. It is a sorry thought that the wave of vandalism we face may have in some way contributed to the invidious cuts in the defence expenditure.

Vandalism is of deep concern to all thinking people. That is why I am glad to raise the problem again, to reestablish its size and nature as well as its cost, to attempt to identify where possible the extent of juvenile vandalism, to propose some avenues of investigation aid to ask questions about future plans.

This subject has been raised more than once in the past year. It was raised in an Adjournment debate a year ago yesterday by the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright), supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley). It was raised in an Adjournment debate with regard to Scotland by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Craigen). It was mentioned by the Prime Minister in the debate on the Queen's Speech, when he said:

"Levels of crime are a cause for serious concern, especially offences committed by young people. There is a disturbing increase in vandalism, especially among teenagers."—[Official Report, 24th November 1976; Vol. 920, c. 30.]

It was mentioned also by the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Bradley), supported by me, in Questions to the Secretary of State for Education and Science only a few days ago.

I believe that the number of times the subject has been raised illustrates the continuing concern and the breadth of the concern in geographic terms. Also, it is a problem of enormous breadth in its variety and types. It can vary from daubing and writing, carvings on wood, paintings with aerosol cans—some in loving terms and some in the crudest of language—to casual vandalism such as broken windows, ripped-up benches, destroyed sporting facilities, pulled-up or cut-down trees, ripped-off car aerials, damage to parks and recreational facilities, and even, sadly damage to cemeteries. It can culminate sometimes in organised vandalism by gangs in trains and damage to people and property as such gangs arrive and depart.

It is difficult to differentiate between these types when assessing extent and cause. On present statistics, that is virtually impossible. But one point is clear—the number of people under the age of 17 who are vandals has increased dramatically in recent years. Those proceeded against for malicious damage and criminal damage increased in numbers by one-quarter from 7,412 in 1971 to 9,205 in 1975, compared to an increase of only 8 per cent. for the period of six years between 1965 and 1971. Between 1971 and 1975, the number of young girls in this overall group of young people almost doubled.

Those who were cautioned as an alternative to prosecution more than doubled in number from 1971 to 1975, from 2,982 to 6,108, and the number of girls cautioned rose by more than four and a half times. This does not include all offences, because not all are reported, and it does not include those involving property worth less than £20. The Home Office report last year said in paragraph 5.2:

"We have little doubt that unrecorded minor damage of a value in each case of less than £20 has increased correspondingly; this is the kind of damage to which the younger age groups are particularly prone."

Therefore, applying that sort of increase, one can almost double the extent of vandalism as a whole.

These statistics, dramatic though they are, are only the tip of the iceberg. A Home Office survey was conducted in Liverpool some time last year. We were told on 19th December:

"Early findings of the study"

among 600 Liverpool schoolboys

"confirm that vandalism is prevalent among 11- to 15-year old boys in the city and that police records represent only the tip of the iceberg."—[Official Report, 19th December 1976; Vol. 902, c. 1954–5.] So this country sadly faces an avalanche of wanton destruction, from Scotland to the English Channel.

In my own area of East and West Sussex, vandalism for the 10 months to October 1976—probably the most up-to-date figures in the country—is up by 45 per cent. over a whole 12-month period three years earlier. This again applies to vandalism of property worth more than £20. That, Sussex police confirm, is almost entirely vandalism by juveniles. I guess that there is not a city, town, village or even hamlet untouched by this offensive, distressing and costly destruction.

I must stress the cost, although it is difficult to assess. I would substantiate my belief that it is gargantuan by picking up first the costs of the random selection of 13 authorities reported in the Home Office report "Protection against vandalism" and applying a very restrained inflation factor to allow for increases in costs since 1971–72 when these measurements were made, but making no allowance for the increased incidence of vandalism. Vandalism to lighting and transport would now be costing £233,000, to street furniture and parks £165,000, to housing £237,000 and to libraries and schools £362,000. The total cost for those 13 authorities would now total £1,050,000.

Another instance is fires in schools, reported in the Department of Education and Science report "Fire and the design of schools". This shows that fires measured as being caused by malicious ignition—which is a way of describing arson—rose from 53 in 1962 to 398 in 1973. Half as many fires are caused by malicious arson as by heating and cooking processes or by the operation of heating and cooking appliances. The cost in 1973 of all fires causing total damage of more than £10,000 was £4,470,000. Even that estimate pales into insignificance beside the estimate in The Times on 11th January 1975 that total school fire costs were £9 million in 1974, which would be £12½ million at today's prices.

My next illustration is one cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) but reported last December that the city of Manchester faced damage by vandals to the average value of a horrifying £10,000 a day. He also cited a report from London Transport that vandals were costing them £200,000 per annum. Only last November, in a debate on vandalism in Scotland, mention was made of an equally horrifying figure for that part of the United Kingdom—a total cost of £12 million per annum. The Home Office report "Protection against vandalism" also said that vandalism had cost British Rail £1 million per annum and the Post Office £426,000 for damage to kiosks alone.

Taking all these figures together, leaving out figures which might overlap and implying an incerase in costs to allow for inflation—but not to allow for the increased incidence of acts of vandalism, since that might tend to inflate the results—I arrive at the horrifying minimum estimate of vandalism in England, Wales and Scotland of £114,327,000. Since juvenile vandalism accounted for 22 per cent. of total proceedings for offences involving more than £20 reported in 1975, the juvenile share of that total at the lowest projection is over £25 million.

With costs of that gargantuan proportion, vandalism must be a prime area for the application of cost-benefit analysis when considering what counteraction might be mounted and what costs might be involved. Action to counter this destructive and costly avalanche of vandalism was never more necessary than now, as the Government cut building and maintenance projects and local authority programmes particularly are squeezed.

All actions, however, minor, require increased expenditure, but, if that expenditure can of itself erode in any small way that horrible figure of £114 million, cost-benefit analysis will clearly show how that increased expenditure will reduce costs, to the benefit of all. I would suggest five areas of action for inclusion in the Home Secretary's plans for next year.

First, the Home Office has said that the gathering of information should be encouraged and that people should be encouraged to report occasions of vandalism, without fear of complicated process or reprisals. The Home Office report last year suggested that this could be arranged very simply and encouraged relatively easily. What has the Minister to report on that front?

Also under this head, local authorities and local police forces need to be encouraged to identify types of vandalism more accurately, particularly to separate deliberate vandalism from genuinely accidental breakage and to identify age and characteristics of vandals, where possible. I am glad that—according to the Home Office—the Sussex police will be reporting age categories from the beginning of next year. Cannot others be encouraged to follow? What lead is the Home Office giving.

Also under this head, cannot the Home Office establish a reasonable national nomenclature for vandalism, so that reports from different sources can be coordinated and combined and, what is perhaps even more important, compared? Should not some measurement of vandalism costing under £20 now be made? Until such measurement is made, it will not be possible to reflect properly in the budgets of different Departments the cost they are having to bear for vandalism under their own heads. Lastly, should not the Home Office establish a central information source, where records of counteractions, both successful and unsuccessful, can be available as source material for others to study? I should appreciate answers from the Minister to all these points.

The second area in which I suggest the Home Office should instigate action is in terms of applying more persuasion to all those who have some point of influence on this horrible problem. For children—and here liaison with the Department of Education is crucial—clear standards of behaviour need to be set. I refer not to dictatorial rules but to useful yardsticks against which children and adults can compare and measure children's behaviour. If children are allowed to behave exactly as they like, it is a disservice to them and to their parents, because it leads almost inevitably to lower-quality child behaviour levels, or levels which are of the lowest quality possible.

I suggest to the Home Secretary that persuasion can be applied much more strongly to teachers, magistrates, parents and grandparents, because a greater knowledge of the immense proportions of the problem of vandalism—what it is and what should be done to combat it—cannot but lead to better, and better-directed, counter-actions. Publicity can play an important part. In the same way as the Government are at the moment about to mount a campaign to draw people's attention to the dangers of drink and driving, could not a campaign be mounted by the Home Office at the beginning of school terms?

The third area in which I suggest action should be mounted is in the study of statistics concerned with the causes of vandalism. It has been reported that the Home Secretary was planning to call a special conference next month to study all the aspects of vandalism, its causes and methods of control. Can the Minister make any report on that plan? What further research projects have been undertaken by the Home Office Research Unit since its last report in June 1975? What further study has been made in conjunction with the Department of the Environment on ways of designing out vandalism when erecting public buildings without dehumanising the architecture within which we wish humans to behave more humanely?

There can be few areas of national expenditure in which greater benefit could be expected from a careful study of cause and effect and where different approaches to containment and deterrence can be tried, measured, improved, changed and tried again. I shall be grateful to have the Minister's comments on this aspect of the problem.

The fourth area in which I wish to make suggestions is that of policing and the prevention of vandalism. Prevention must be the first call on police and local government resources. I would advocate the installation of alarm systems and the institution of dog patrol schemes and the like. It is also interesting that East Sussex County Council has reported that buildings such as school assembly halls that are used on a more continuous basis than their prime function requires seem likely to receive less than their fair share of damage from vandalism. Surely it is better for local authorities to organise more extra-mural use of their buildings, even if it costs extra in terms of heating and supervisory time, than to have to pay the same or greater cost that destruction by vandals entails.

When vandals strike, it is imperative that they are caught after the first misbehaviour for maximum beneficial effect on themselves and for maximum deterrent effect on others. This requires a fully-manned and properly motivated police force. I hope that the Home Secretary's review of police negotiating machinery and the full meeting that he has promised between his own advisers and the Police Federation will lead to reconsideration of the honest claim of the police for a £6-a-week wage increase. Parliament must not and cannot take for granted the forces of law to preserve order in our community. In the end police and parents must co-operate, but the police must be in a position to give a lead.

The fifth area in which, I suggest, there is room for greater action than at present lies in establishing responsibility for vandals' actions and in punishing them. Cannot the Minister do more to ensure that the vandals pay more towards the cost of repairing their vandalism, either by cash or by community service? Is not more action required by the Home Office to encourage magistrates to impose such penalties?

Why is it that parents or guardians are liable under civil law for the actions of their children only in exceptional circumstances such as when they actually instigate the act? Why should adults have greater responsibility in law for their dogs than they have for their children? Should not the Home Secretary examine yet again whether the law should be changed as it pertains to parental responsibility for the actions of their children?

When such huge sums of money are involved, it is unsatisfactory to claim, as the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science claimed recently, that if the problem were as large as I have made it out to be proposals to deal with it would have been put before the House long ago if such proposals were possible. Surely that cannot be so.

I appreciate that this is a complicated area in which to legislate. The role of foster-parents, adoptive parents or those acting in loco parentis requires particular consideration. I hope that the Minister will take another look at the problem and will not stand pat on his most recent statement, which he made to me in a letter earlier this month. He said in his closing sentence:

"This matter has been carefully considered but we can at present see no equitable way in which parental responsibility might be further extended."

If we want our younger generation to behave kindly and treat our goods gently and carefully, we must show consideration for them and their ways. One mark of consideration is to have proper rules, to encourage people to abide by them and to encourage people to apply them fairly. In this effort, the Home Office and the Home Secretary can provide the genesis for improvement.

I hope that this debate, in contributing to a better understanding of the ghastly extent of vandalism in our country, particularly among those under 17, and even more particularly among young girls, will reinvigorate the Home Office in its catalytic role among Government Departments, local authorities, the police, teachers, professionals in child psychology, civic groups, parent groups and all interested and worried individuals, so as to encourage all these to reappraise vandalism and bend their energies to reduce it in the fture. If it achieves that in some measure, even at this early hour of the morning the debate will have been worthwhile.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) has done the House a fine service by so ably discussing the important subject of juvenile vandalism. It is a deeply disturbing national problem and I congratulate my hon. Friend on the research he has done into its size, scope and cost. I found his figures quite staggering.

There are, I believe, no easy answers or simple solutions to the problems, especially at a time in our society which could, perhaps, be labelled in common parlance as the era of "Public apathy rules—OK." I hope that this debate is a small step towards countering that apathy and in expressing Parliament's growing concern about lawlessness and vandalism. Concern is certainly deeply felt among our constituents. Time and again one hears such questions as "Are children and young offenders above the law? Can the police cope with the problem any longer? Do the courts have the powers to punish them when these young offenders are caught? Does Parliament have the will to support the courts and the police in a drive to fight this evil cancer which is growing in our society?"

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes mentioned the question of parental responsibility in this matter. I believe that the roots of juvenile vandalism are to be found in the increasing indiscipline and breaking down of family life in today's society. We have reached a stage when we should make families more responsible for acts of vandalism committed by their children. I believe, too, that parents should be made to foot the bill when children go on the rampage. It is not enough just to make parents responsible for nonpayment of fines. Under civil law they should be compelled to pay at least some of the cost of the repairs made necessary by acts of vandalism and violence.

There is the special problem of vandalism in schools. It is, I suppose, a truism that a school which has created an atmosphere of good discipline and school pride and spirit will see far less vandalism among its pupils than will one which has been neglected by the authorities, by the teachers or by parents. I think I can illustrate that by reference to two schools in my constituency. I refer, first, to the Conynghame School at Ramsgate, a modern comprehensive school. When it was first built—and especially when it was under construction—there was a serious problem of both truancy and vandalism, to such an extent that many parents of children in the area even went so far as to refuse to send their children to that school. Once the builders were out of the way, however, and the school had settled down, once it was able to take pride in its new facilities and all the excellent equipment, the truancy rate fell and the vandalism rate dropped to almost nil. Today it is one of the finest and most respected schools in the area.

Another school in the constituency, called Hereson School, also in Ramsgate, is rather neglected by the authorities, at any rate in financial terms, and the facilities are well below par. It has a high truancy rate, and it is believed that some of the vandalism in the neighbourhood is by truants. But on recent visits to the school I learnt that, although the truancy rate is high for most of the classes, it falls almost to zero in the craft classes—carpentry, engineering and so on.

The school is in particular trouble, however, because the plant—as it might be described—in the craft classrooms is seriously under-utilised. Because of the lack of one craft teacher, one of the major craft classrooms is used for only six periods out of 40 a week. As the craft classes appear to produce a nil truancy rate, as in many other schools throughout the country, the Department of Education and Science could profit- ably consider the allocation of resources to make sure that those parts of school life which have that result should be helped by the provision of adequate numbers of teachers.

I turn to the subject of football hooliganism, perhaps the nearest thing in our society to primitive ritualistic tribal warfare. We welcome the Government's indications of concern, as shown in the Queen's Speech, in which higher penalties were promised. But they will not be enough. Magistrates and judges must become tougher in using the existing powers. It is surprising how rarely magistrates order a convicted soccer hooligan to attend an attendance centre on Saturday afternoons for the duration of the soccer season. If it is said that there are too few attendance centres for the purpose, the Home Office might consider prescribing certain practice grounds and training areas of League soccer clubs as attendance centres under the Criminal Justice Act. In that way, soccer could put its own house in order.

My hon. Friend was right to stress the role of the police in combating the rise of juvenile vandalism. Prevention is, of course, better than cure. Such areas as can still afford the manpower for the traditional beat policing methods have higher success rates than metropolitan areas which lack the manpower. We still need more police. The Thin blue line is far too thin. I am glad that it is my party's policy to make the police an exception to our general rule of reducing public expenditure. We have promises that we shall spend the extra money to increase police manpower generally.

I deplore the Government's Scrooge-like attitude to the present police pay claim. It is a complicated matter, but an overwhelming majority of policemen and, I believe, of the public find it difficult to understand the Government's curious double standards. These allowed them to settle swiftly, almost embarrassingly swiftly, the seamen's pay claim, which was on all fours with the police pay claim, by devices within the fringe benefit arrangements, but the Government have not so far been able to make any such fringe benefit arrangements available to the police, who have a far better claim that the seamen had. This neglect of the police pay claim will have the sad consequence of driving the Police Federation into the hands of the militants. I urge the Government to be extremely careful in the steps they take and to reconsider their so far rather unsympathetic handling of the claim.

In passing, I make reference to the Special Constabulary. I have constantly urged the need to strengthen and expand the constabulary, because the presence of special constables on the beat is as good a way as any of preventing juvenile vandalism from occurring. I believe that the Home Office has recently published the working party's report on the Special Constabulary. I wonder whether the Minister will be able to comment on the Government's attitude.

Lastly, I refer to the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, which has been an almost unmitigated disaster in terms of the courts' powers to control juvenile vandalism. Undoubtedly the authority of society as a whole has been sadly eroded as a result of the Act's abolition of approved school and fit person orders. It has managed to confuse the children in need of care and protection with young delinquents who need stiffer penalties. There is a desperate need for more secure places for juvenile offenders of a certain category.

Recently at one of my constituency surgeries I was visited by a probation officer from Broadstairs, who told me that on his patch alone there are two or three young male offenders in the 15–16 age bracket who definitely need to be in secure places and who, because of the inability and impotence of the courts to sentence them to secure places of custody, are out on the streets and almost certainly practising their criminal habits. The alternatives of sending them to prison or abusing unruliness certificates are unacceptable, and as a result, in one area alone—there are 80 such areas in Kent—there are two or three young offenders out on the streets who should be in secure places.

The Government's belated White Paper recognises that there are serious defects in the Act but sets out half-hearted half-measures and completely fails to propose any adequate powers for the courts to make secure care orders. I am pleased that a report has been produced by eminent members of my party, including my hon. and learned Friends the Members for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner) and Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) and my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims). Under their authorship an admirable report has been produced which suggests much-needed reforms. It suggests that there should be provision for the juvenile courts to make new orders, including residential care orders ad short says in detention centres. It suggests a number of other amendments to the Act. The Government should turn their minds urgently to these much-needed reforms.

There are no easy answers to these probelms. Whether it is law reform, stiffer penalties, more money spent on the police or improvements in schools or in the hearts of families, there are no simple solutions. But at least the House has now spent a few moments, thanks to the initiative of my hron. Friend the Member for Lewes, in seriously discussing this problem. I hope that the Government, including the Minister, will take the reigns firmly in hand and will do something to pull in this serious and growing disurbing problem of juvenile vandalism.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rath-bone) for performing a very valuable service in raising, with some very vivid illustrations, one of the two issues which, probably more than any others, concern ordinary people who do not generally take much interest in the affairs of the House. The two issues are vandalism and hooliganism.

The extent of the concern in the country about these matters is well illustrated by the fact that in various parts of the country people of no particular political persuasion but worried about these matters have got together to form an organisation called HAVAC—Hooliganism and Vandalism Action Campaign. Members of the Yorkshire branch of this organisation have sent a number of hon. Members a circular describing their concern and putting forward their suggestions for dealing with the problem. The extent of their worry is demonstrated by the fact that they came to Westminster at their own expense and sought to meet hon. Members from both sides of the House.

I believe that the Government share this concern. I should greatly like to hear the Government say so tonight. It was depressing a few days ago to hear a Minister at the Department of Education and Science argue at the Dispatch Box that there is not widespread vandalism in schools. Every hon. Member knows that, unhappily, there is.

The worrying aspect is the mindlessness of the hooligans and the vandals. They display a complete lack of respect for other people and other people's property. Some acts of vandalism—for example, the wrecking of telephone meters—may have an aim: there is something to be gained from them. But most cases of vandalism, such as defacing a wall, wrecking the windows of a bus shelter, or wrecking an occupied council flat, are purposeless.

Why do vandals do these things? Perhaps it gives them some momentary satisfaction, the same sort of feeling as some of us experience when smashing china at a side show at a garden fete. It is difficult to find any other explanation for some of the behaviour which goes on in such a widespread fashion.

Some of the responsibility must lie with the home and the school. Do parents teach respect for property and persons? Do they even exercise such respect themselves? Do some of them show concern for their children? We frequently read of children brought before the courts for such offences and the parents not knowing where the children were. Some schools teach and maintain the proper standards. Others, alas, seem to regard self-expression as more important than self-discipline.

Part of the answer must lie in the attitude of the community as a whole. All of us individually as parents and as teachers, but also collectively, should look after community property just as we would look after our own property. It some times takes courage to wade in and stop a crowd of lads from doing damage, but we should all be able to feel that we can do so and that in doing it all our fellow citizens would support us, but, unhappily, we are inclined to think that if we "have a go" on the most modest scale we shall get very little support.

If children are inclined to vandalism, we can at least make it a little more difficult for them. This should be taken into account in the design of buildings—in the type of materials used—and in the layout of estates. A large council estate in East London has no public convenience. As one resident said, is it surprising that visitors use the lifts as lavatories?

God forbid that we should be obliged to live in jungles made of rough concrete, but surely there is some scope for a degree of vandal-proof architecture. As was suggested, the real deterrent to vandalism would be more police patrolling, preferably on foot or even in a car, but rather more frequently than passing one spot once a night. After all, the possibility that a copper will come round the corner at any moment is likely to put off any vandal. The trouble is that at the moment there are just not sufficient police.

I do not propose to embark on a lengthy discussion of the position of the police, but I remind the House that our police forces up and down the country are still well under strength. There are no more police in metropolitan London now than there were in the 1920s. I share the hope expressed by my hon. Friends that the Home Secretary will give the most sympathetic consideration to the pay claim at present being made by the police. Their hours and their conditions surely merit every possible consideration so that we can reward them adequately for the very onerous work they do, and in that way also add to the happily improving flow of recruits.

If a child cannot be educated or brought up to eschew vandalism or to be deterred from it, he will have to be dealt with when he perpetrates vandalism and is caught. Here we come, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East said, to the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. As the House will know, a Select Committee of this House, the Expenditure Committee, very carefully examined the working of the Act. Although it was a Committee which included people with a wide spectrum of political views and attitudes on these matters, it produced a unanimous report in September 1975. Unfortunately, it was not until May of this year that the Government felt able to produce their White Paper giving their observations on that report.

There were 40 recommendations in the original report but, unhappily, there has been remarkably little action on any of them. I shall refer to a few of the outstanding matters. First, there is the need to restore to the juvenile courts the power to place the sort of child who is evidently a young criminal in some sort of secure accommodation under the secure care order, to which reference was made.

This is a matter which the Government have not faced. The Expenditure Committee urged that such an order be instituted. The Magistrates' Association has constantly supported this view. The study group has urged it again after having looked at it from many points of view, yet the Government will not accept the need to restore this important power to the courts.

Then there is the desirability of short sentences. The trouble is that at the moment a court can send a juvenile to a detention centre for only three months. Many magistrates feel that a much shorter sentence would be extremely useful, particularly for this sort of offence, but the Home Office seems reluctant to grant such powers to the magistrates' courts.

It is rather curious that at the annual meeting of the Magistrates' Association a couple of months ago the Lord Chancellor was actually urging magistrates to think very seriously about much shorter prison sentences for adults, yet in regard to the juvenile equivalent, the detention centres, the Government appear unwilling to agree that the courts should be enabled to make shorter sentences. These can quite obviously be very effective in certain circumstances. There is a strong case for strengthening supervision orders, which have now replaced probation orders for juveniles. But the point about a probation order is that the lad or girl had to agree to go on probation and there were certain conditions attached to an order. If these conditions were not complied with, the delinquent could be brought back to court. There are no such conditions attached to a supervision order, and the child who is the subject of such an order can do virtually what it likes, because the supervisor has no power other than to bring the child back to the court, when the court either renews the supervision order, which makes bringing him back seem rather pointless, or makes a care order to bring the child into care. It may well be using a hammer to crack a nut. As far as that recommendation—that conditions should be attached to supervision orders—is concerned, the Government have indicated that they are seeking views. I hope that the Minister will tell us what progress has been made.

Reference has been made already to the desirability of fining vandals. However, the trouble at present is that a vandal can be fined in a juvenile court but there is no means whatever of getting the money out of him. He knows that if he cares not to pay, nothing can be done until he is 17. Clearly this is ridiculous, and it brings the law into disrepute. There are very strong arguments for introducing some form of sanction for non-payment of fines, not only against the child, but against the parent. Also, there is a case for not just a fine, but compensation. There are some proposals in the Criminal Law Bill which go part of the way towards this, and I hope that we can go further.

The Minister told me recently in an answer to a question that there were at present 60 attendance centres. There has been no increase for some years, and there are no immediate plans for any increase. There are parts of the country where there are no attendance centres at all. Although a juvenile court may have a vandal or delinquent who is particularly suitable for a centre, if there is no centre available, there is nothing the court can do.

These centres are places—usually schools—where the lads are required to work out their 12 or 24-hour sentences in two-hour stints on Saturday afternoons. While they lose their liberty, they do not lose their schooling, or lose time from their jobs. They must turn up, well presented, and do a couple of hours of physical training, or some suitable activity. This is an acceptable way of dealing with offenders, and a pretty effective one in many cases.

Plenty of premises are available in schools all over the country, and plenty of staff are available. There are many police officers who are perfectly willing, for a modest remuneration, to give up part of their spare time to work with these lads on Saturday afternoons. There are many handcraft teachers also willing to do so.

I urge the Minister to think again about plans for increasing the number of attendance centres. Of course it will involve some expenditure, and one knows the constraints, but we must balance this against the cost of vandalism. A police chief in the West Midlands said that vandalism cost about £9 a minute. Although it is difficult to calculate any accurate figure, the cost of vandalism is likely to be about £100 million a year, or not far off. Against that we must balance the relatively modest expenditure on attendance centers—a very valuable investment.

I hope that in his reply the Minister will accept that vandalism among juveniles worries many of our fellow citizens. They look to the Government to do something about it. I hope that the Minister will display a greater sense of urgency than his Department has shown hitherto, and that he will give us not words, but actions.

Before calling the Minister to reply I remind hon. Members that in any debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill it is not in order to advocate legislation, for example, as a means of suggesting how a problem should be solved by amending the law. That is strictly out of order. Hon. Members must restrict themselves to matters of pure administration.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If there is a direct relationship between the change in the law and a reduction in the expenditure on which we vote within the Consolidated Fund, is it in order to refer to it.

It would not be in order. Strictly speaking, anything which requires legislation is out of order.

I hope that I shall keep within your guidelines, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall not propose new legislation but I shall refer to legislation.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) for the opportunity to underline that the Government view the vandalism problem seriously. In his otherwise constructive and moderate speech, the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) suggested that the Government lack determination to deal with the problem. I assure him that they do not. We may disagree about the remedies, but the Government acknowledge juvenile vandalism as a problem.

The hon. Member for Lewes acknowledged that statistical information about the monetary value of damage attributable to vandalism is not reliable. I acknowledge that the total amount of damage may well exceed £100 million annually. That is not all caused by juveniles, although they cause a significant proportion.

I have no doubt that responsible parents should not only be instilling into their children a responsibility towards property which belongs to another person but should encourage young people to look at publicly owned property in a different light. Too often people regard publicly owned property as no one's property. That is a fallacy and is the source of many wrong attitudes towards public telephone kiosks and bowling greens, for instance.

If the sheer amount of damage done in financial terms is not enough to convince people, they should weigh the cost in terms of deprivation of enjoyment. There is, for example, the deprivation of a person who wants to play bowls when the green is marked, or the anguish of a person who wants to phone a doctor in an emergency but who has to walk a mile or more to another kiosk because of vandals. Such anti-social acts should be taken seriously by those who have responsibility for young people in our society.

The problem has neither a ready solution nor a ready and easily identifiable cause. In penal policy, if the causes of this type of offence were easily identifiable and if the deterrence of them were a mere function of harshness of penalty, clearly criminal reform and penology would he a very simple subject. However, it is an extremely complex subject. It is a matter of understanding it better and of gradually completing our knowledge, or making it rather fuller, of the causes of this type of offence before we pronounce with certainty upon policies which may do good but may do as much harm as good.

Let me deal with publicity in this context. We are studying whether publicity in itself and programmes of publicity would be desirable. However, the hon. Gentleman must recognise, as we do, that publicity could be counter-productive. It could provoke people instead of turning them away from vandalism. That is why when we study publicity we study the types that are not themselves likely to be counter-productive. That does not admit of quick dramatic gestures, but it means that when action is taken, it is taken in full knowledge of the consequences and the likely harm as well as good that might arise from a measure.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been studying the problem of vandalism with considerable care. It is a matter that has been raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House. It is clearly something that affects many constituents of all of us. My right hon. Friend has already met chief officers of police to discuss the problem. He is to hold a conference in the new year. The hon. Gentleman almost seemed to ask whether I could give the result of the conference before it was held. It is to be held in the new year. It will be taken seriously.

It will be based upon a number of factors which have become available. For example, the Home Office has recently finished a number of inter-related studies in co-operation with some local authorities that had shown interest in measures to combat vandalism. The extent and causes of particular types of vandalism will have been studied.

However, the results, at any rate in publishable form, will not be available until the middle of next year. Some of the studies are coming towards fruition. Before too long we should see their results becoming apparent and available so that they can inform the debate on this subject which must continue.

Great point was made about the incompleteness of the statistics. I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman—the hon. Member for Chislehurst also mentioned this matter—that concerning the readiness of the report, police forces have designed special report forms on this type of incident. They now record all acts of vandalism that are reported to them, irrespective of the amount of money involved, so the arbitrary £20 limit has been removed. That should give us a much clearer and more complete picture of the total cost of vandalism in the future.

I welcome that piece of information. As to the conference in the new year, am I right in understanding the Minister to say that that conference will take place in the knowledge of the reports of those local authorities? If not, what will be the conference agenda and what will be its point? I was not trying to anticipate the conclusions. I wanted rather to seek information about the direction.

It will clearly be fashioned by the information which is steadily, and to a growing extent, becoming available. Obviously, the inter-related studies of the causes and extent of vandalism are just some of the data that becoming available. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the booklet "Protection against vandalism." I intend to deal with that in a little more detail.

That is just some of the information that is becoming available, and I think that at the meeting the causes and other matters will be discussed. I have no doubt that some of the practical matters that have been adumbrated here about buildings and so on will be considered. I shall return to that matter later.

The argument about prevention being better than cure takes us only so far, because we must acknowledge the certainty that not everyone will be prevented from being a vandal by good example or better teaching. My view—and it has never materially shifted—is that the greatest deterrent against crime is not necessarily the harshness of the punishment when caught, but the probability of detection. That is the greatest deterrent against crime, and that view has commanded fairly general support. Following the publication of the booklet the police have formed anti-vandal squads. They have undertaken anti-vandal and anti-vandalism campaigns in various areas to bring home to members of the public the point about the cost and the sheer misery that is created by this sort of crime.

I do not want to be thought to be complacent about police strengths, but I am happy to inform the House that the net strength of the police has risen by nearly 2,000 in the past year, and that the strength of the Metropolitan Police has risen by nearly 1,000. The hon. Member for Chislehurst may say that that is only taking us back to the position in the 1920s, but that improvement represents a step in the right direction and I believe that it is a welcome sign.

I return to the booklet "Protection against vandalism". It is not merely a factual study. In the appendices it sets out measures that can be taken in the design of buildings to make the vandal's task much more difficult. I can tell the House that 18,000 copies of the booklet have been circulated to interested bodies, including the Royal Institute of British Architects, the CBI, the TUC, and so on. It has been distributed to those who may form opinion and those who may lead discussions, and I believe that the information in the booklet will prove extremely valuable in that context.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned police pay. My right lion. Friend has made clear the Government's attitude on the matter. He does not believe—nor do I—that the seamen's case is at all comparable. I do not think that in a delicate situation such as this we help the situation by engaging in controversy, particularly if the matter arises tangentially out of a debate on a different subject. My right hon. Friend has made certain proposals to the police, and those who know my right hon. Friend realise that he is sincere about those proposals and would welcome discussion of them.

I propose to deal now with the problem of the law. I detect a number of points that arise out of the discussion on the part that the law plays in combating juvenile vandalism. It is no part of the Government's duty to tell the courts what penalties they must impose. That is right and essential to the independence of the legal process. It is tempting at times to say "We must tell them to be stiffer in their penalties", but we do not see individual cases, and if there is a hallmark of our justice it is that the penalty imposed is not a procrustean measure but one designed to fit the case and the needs of the individual. We should with the greatest difficulty enter that course without endangering the independence of the courts which we value so much.

What is done in the courts is not a matter of ministerial control, and I would not wish, and never do in correspondence, to comment on decisions in individual cases. But the House has a duty to ensure that a wide range of measures is available to magistrates, measures appropriate to the particular case, so that if they choose they may impose a sentence which best fits the needs of the case.

Despite the strictures against the Children and Young Persons Act, but one must remember that it was introduced in response to the failure of the previous policy, with the approved school system built in, significantly to halt the rise in juvenile crime. So when we talk about the Act, we are not talking about something which was replacing a successful and tried and true measure but something completely untried. It was a response which, in its inception and idea, was designed not only to fit the needs of the individual and, where appropriate and possible, to keep him out of the criminal court process, but to place emphasis, parentally and socially, upon the need for care and control where that, too, was appropriate.

The response of the Government to detailed recommendations then was appropriate. We would all at times wish that responses were quicker to particular issues, but I think that we tried to meet this situation by our own suggestions and by our response to others. By so doing, we have helped to instil a rebirth, if one accepts the terms used by the hon. Member for Chislehurst, of magistrates' courts working under the present system.

We have completed our consultations with the bodies involved and have concluded that it would be feasible to add certain requirements which courts might impose in addition to those already available under the 1969 Act. We have provided sanctions which might be administered by the courts in the event of breach of a supervision order. In the light of these consultations, we hope soon to be in a position to make positive proposals. Here we have not only commented but moved towards action. I hope that hon. Members will agree that that is a constructive move towards a solution of the problem.

The third strand of the matter is that of parental responsibility. There has been a slight duality of advocacy on this matter. If we took too literally and seriously the doctrine that the parents were automatically to be responsible for what the child did, however hard they had tried themselves. it would be imposing a very heavy burden. It would breed resentment and could lead to a breakdown in the confidence which we need to build up among all sections of the community so that parents feel it right, in their interests and in the interests of society, to inculcate into young people values and behaviour that take account of the need to concern themselves with the welfare of others in their actions. We shall not do that best by imposing a code that is obviously unfair, and any code that automatically made parents responsible for the default of their children would be unfair.

The courts have significant powers to make parents responsible for fines and compensation awards incurred by juveniles. This is included in Section 55 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. I know of the objection that a person can always prove that he did not conduce to the default.

The 1969 Act provides that in care and criminal proceedings, parents may be required to enter into a recognisance to take proper care of the child and to exercise proper control of it. The maximum sum in which parents can be bound will be increased from £50 to £200 by the Criminal Law Bill which is now in another place.

I think that the hon. Member for Chislehurst spoke about the law as it is rather than how it will be. If he will consider Clause 35—

Order. I understand that the hon. Gentleman gave an assurance earlier in his speech. He is now straying from it and getting on to legislation.

My assurance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, was that I would not get on to new legislation. However, I have mentioned the clause number and hon. Mem- bers who look it up will see that the position is more reassuring than they have sought to suggest to the House.

The tackling of juvenile crime, particularly vandalism, is a combination of social awareness and social responsibility on the part of parents and children. It is a function of the police through their strength and the probability of their detecting crimes. It is, in part, legislation and, in part, greater understanding by us all of what prompts this sort of activity and the cost and misery it can wreak on a community.

It is because I believe that the debate has furthered consideration of these matters and has, perhaps, highlighted them that I am grateful to the hon. Member for Lewes for initiating it. I hope that he will accept my assurance that we are no less concerned than he and his hon. Friends to tackle the problem.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter which is of great concern to me because of the experience I have had with a case in my constituency and which I know is of equal concern to the Minister, whom I thank for being here, and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan), whose advice I have sought on this case on a number of occasions in the past few weeks.

In response to your admonitions, Mr. Deputy Speaker—

I do not think that the Chair should be accused of admonishing anyone. I simply stated the Standing Orders.

I think that what I have to say will be in order and within the ambit of Class XI of the Supplementary Estimates, which is the heading under which this topic has been placed.

The matters I shall raise include medical technicalities in which I am not well versed as I have no medical qualifications. Some of the matters impinge on legal complexities and I am not a lawyer. I am trying as a Member to use a layman's judgment to ensure a fair deal for a constituent and to put forward fair representation in commonsense terms of a problem which has implications well beyond my own constituency. The matters I shall raise are a labyrinthian combination of political, medical, ethical and administrative affairs. I start by setting out simply the position of the Price family in Christchurch.

The Price's young daughter, Tanya, now aged 20 months, is suffering severely from a damaged brain which the parents claim results from a vaccination against whooping cough, but which, it has been represented, may be a condition from which the child suffered from birth. There are four points which I put to the Minister. First, can we somehow get at the facts and ascertain whether Tanya Price was brain damaged before or by the vaccination? Secondly, can doctors or medical science tell whether a person can suffer brain damage by a vaccination? Thirdly, can the parents of an infant child expect either for themselves or, on their behalf, a medical adviser, access to the medical records of their child? Fourthly, has there been in this case any unacceptable delay either by the Department of Health and Social Security centrally, or by the area health authority and, attendant upon that delay, has there been any attempt to cover up the fact and prevent Mr. and Mrs. Price from having access to the medical records and, through them, information about their daughter's health?

The Minister wrote to me on 21st October, some weeks after I first raised this case with the Department on 6th August. The hon. Gentleman said:

"I have received a report from the East Dorset Health District which indicates that the fits suffered by Tanya were not caused by a vaccination procedure but were due to a condition which began about two months after birth."

That was hotly disputed by the Prices and, after I had shown them the Minister's letter, Mr. Price wrote to me:

"It goes without saying that we disagree with his decision, as we are sure that Tanya was not having convulsions before the whooping cough injection."

The other side of the case is put by the Chairman of the Dorset Area Health Authority, Sir David Trench, who is quoted as saying in an interview in the Daily Mail on 29th November:

"There is no doubt in my mind that Tanya's condition was caused by the injection."

One of those propositions—the Minister's or Sir David Trench's—must be factually in error.

The point is that if Tanya was brain damaged before she had the vaccination, she should never have had it in the first place. I maintain that her medical records are the best way of checking her condition in the first six months of her life prior to vaccination, and it is because these records are being consistently withheld from the Prices and also from their medical adviser that I have sought to raise this matter in the House tonight.

Alternatively, if Tanya was not damaged prior to vaccination, there would seem to be either an extraordinary coincidence of timing or—as seems to me much more likely in the light of evidence from many other people—the vaccination itself was the cause of the brain damage from which this poor child is now suffering.

The second proposition involves discovering whether medical science is sufficiently sophisticated to enable us to know whether the vaccine can cause brain damage. I quote from the Sunday Times of 31st October this year—from an article entitled "Lifespan", in the colour magazine, which contains a section on vaccination:

"Vaccination has played an essential part in the decline of infectious disease over the last 50 years. Routine vaccinations, however, have declined by about a third over the last year because of worries over the effectiveness and safety of whooping cough vaccine. However, other vaccinations which your child should have at each age are detailed in the accompanying chart. Whooping cough vaccine is officially recommended but is excluded from the list because experts still argue whether the benefits are worth the risks."

I said that the case that I wished to deploy tonight was not of an isolated incident in my own constituency. This is confirmed in a letter to me from Dr. James Loring, Director of the Spastics Society, one sentence of which reads:

"We have a number of children whose handicap stems from the triple vaccination and they are indeed tragic cases."

Clearly, therefore, the Sunday Times and the Director of the Spastics Society are convinced that there is something very wrong indeed with this whooping cough vaccination.

I am awaiting from the Minister information—which I am sure he will pass on to me as soon as he gets it—showing whether whooping cough vaccination, apparently recently withdrawn in West Germany, is the same as the vaccination that is still being administered in this country. Perhaps, to save my tabling a Written Question, the Minister will be kind enough to publish in the Official Report the answer to that question, when he receives the answer. There are now so many cases where parents are claiming that their children are suffering from vaccine damage that we surely cannot go on much longer believing either that all these cases represent a coincidence of timing or that they are subject to the lack of certainty which is and remains the Department of Health and Social Security's attitude to the whole question.

It would not be appropriate on this occasion to go into a discussion of the Pearson Report, but I have no doubt that it is eagerly awaited by many people who will take some interest in the proceedings here tonight. In reply to a Question tabled by me on 2nd November the Minister himself said:

"It is not possible to be sure whether brain damage has resulted from vaccination or is due to an unrelated cause."—[Official Report, 2nd November 1976; Vol. 918, c. 549.]

I must tell the Minister that I have a sufficient number of letters in my possession—some of which I have sent to him and many more that I shall be happy to send to him—to enable me to assert, on behalf of a large number of parents, that they, together with the Sunday Times and the Director of the Spastics Society, are in no doubt about the damage that whooping cough vaccine is doing and has done.

I have letters from places as far apart as Dunfermline, Devizes, Macclesfield, Parkstone, Bournemouth, Poole and Blandford, both in Dorset, and New Milton, in my constituency. I shall certainly make sure that the Minister receives all these letters. He has asked me to pass on to him any information that comes to me.

I have no wish to be sensational, but the Minister must know that there is increasing concern about this whooping cough vaccine.

Order. The hon. Gentleman is creating some difficulty for the Chair. The subject that the hon. Gentleman was anxious to discuss was the availability of medical records in National Health Service hospitals. Earlier he made a very fleeting reference to a desire to gain access to records, but he is now going on to develop the question and to argue about the efficacy of vaccines, partticularly the vaccine against whooping cough. I think that that is not really in accord with what he sought to discuss in this debate.

I mentioned this to Mr. Speaker earlier, because the precise wording of the heading to my debate was not of my choosing, and Mr. Speaker advised me that anything under the heading of the National Health Service would be technically in order under the Supplementary Estimates that we were discussing. I am trying in my argument now to explain why I believe that the Prices' medical records have been withheld, which has a great deal to do with the lack of certainty—

What I have heard has been an argument as to whether one should use vaccines against whooping cough, and the hon. Gentleman has been trying to adduce medical evidence, letters, and the rest. I can still see the point that he wished to urge on the Minister, that records should be available to establish his first case on whether the girl had convulsions, or whatever she suffered from, before she had the injections. That is reasonable and relevent. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will keep that in mind.

I intend to revert directly to the wording on the paper before you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I said before that I had no wish to be sensational. The Minister knows that there is increasing concern about this vaccine and concern about symptoms similar to those found in the early years of the thalidomide saga. The severe brain damage from which many children are suffering is even more distressing than that suffered in that tragedy.

I return to the subject of the access of parents to the medical records of their infant children. It is clear that the medical profession takes good care to ensure that its actions and its possible mistakes are as well protected as possible. That is understandable. I have been seeking some form of guidance on the subject of disclosure of information by doctors, consultants and so forth. I referred to S. R. Speller's "Law Relating to Hospitals and Kindred Institutions". I should like to quote one sentence from page 332 relating to the release of information.

"Even when there is no legal compulsion on a medical practitioner or other member of the staff of a hospital authority to give information to the police, there may still be a public or social duty to do so".

Of course the police are not involved in this particular case, but I submit that the question of public or social duty is very much part of the argument which I am trying to deploy. I believe that the behaviour of certain medical and administrative people in this case shows that they put their interest in secrecy as their top priority, and that is a situation which I am not prepared to tolerate on behalf of my constituents and which I shall fight in every way possible.

My constituent Mr. Price is a bricklayer, and Mrs. Price is a confused young housewife. I believe that they are being baffled by scientific arguments put forward by people who have at their disposal the finest legal and medical brains. In my view that was confirmed to me by the Minister himself when he wrote justifying the failure to give some information to Mrs. Price by saying, in his letter of 26th November:

"I understand, for example, that when she approached the general practitioner she asked about 'clinic records' and understandably was referred to the Pokesdown Clinic. Her inquiry of the Area Health Authority referred to 'medical records' and she was correctly advised that these were held by Tanya's general practitioner."

That is all fine and dandy if one is fully conversant with the legal niceties of the differences between these various records, but for ordinary folk who are not medically or legally qualified there is a complex verbal jungle through which it is almost impossible to cut unless one has a great deal of time, money and knowledge.

I wish to make clear that the Minister has never failed to be helpful to me on every occasion, and, if anything has emerged from the discussions on this case, it is that the Minister himself has far less power and authority than perhaps he would wish—and certainly less than I would wish—if he is to be able to give practical assistance to my constituents in obtaining these medical records.

The Minister may recall that on 1st November I wrote to him to describe in some detail the run-around which Mrs. Price was given over a period of two days when she was merely trying to establish where her daughter's medical records were. I remind him that I wrote in these terms:

"On Wednesday last, 27th October, Mrs. Price saw Miss Routh, the health visitor who had looked after Tanya from the date of her first visit until the time she had to go into hospital after the vaccination. On being asked for Tanya's medical records, Miss Routh said she did not have them, and that they had been posted to Dr. Mrs. Brown last November after Tanya's vaccination. Dr. Mrs. Brown has now retired, and the Prices are registered with Dr. Hill in Boscombe. Mrs. Price went to Dr. Hill's surgery and asked if the records were there. She was told they were not, and was referred to the Pokesdown Health Clinic. Mrs. Price went to Pokesdown and asked if the records were there, and was told by Mrs. Day, the health visitor, that the records were not at Pokesdown and suggested that she should contact the Dorset Area Health Authority office at Ferndown. Mrs. Price got in touch with Ferndown, and was told that the records were not there and that she should contact her doctor. She then got back in touch with Dr. Hill's secretary, who repeated that they did not have the records and suggested that she try Pokesdown again. This she did and on this occasion Mrs. Day admitted that the records were there."

This is not some smart young housewife being driven around in a Rolls-Royce. Mrs. Price is the wife of a bricklayer, using her own initiative and finding her own transport, very often by bus, and carrying with her her little daughter who is completely incapacitated.

Where now is the Dr. Mrs. Brown who has retired and who was the person who administered the vaccination? Why did Mrs. Day say on one day that the medical records were not in the place where she admitted they were on the second day? Is Mrs. Routh willing to come forward to help to unearth the information which the Prices need to establish the medical facts about their daughter?

What is the true role of the Dorset Area Health Authority? I believe the chairman, Sir David Trench, to be a good and charming man, and I have no doubt that he is doing his best to help me and to help Mr. and Mrs. Price. But, like the Minister, he seems almost powerless in the face of a bureaucratic machine which is relentlessly pursuing its own ends, and—dare I use the phrase?—a medical Mafia which seems determine to make protection of its own interests its first priority. All this time my unfortunate constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Price, are being driven near to distraction. They are now being forced to have recourse to the law merely to gain access to their daughter's medical records.

At the meeting of the East Dorset Community Health Council on 1st November, somebody raised the question I have been asking about the transfer of medical records. The minutes record:

"Mrs. E. Cook replied that the patient's records belonged to the Health Service".

What is this all-powerful Health Service that it, an inanimate "it", decides that "it owns things"? I have reason to believe that many Community Health Councils are concerned about the way in which these questions are handled. I am extremely unhappy about the way in which the whole case has been dealt with.

Sir David Trench wrote to me:

"it would seem inappropriate to endeavour to persuade the general practitioner, who has now retired, to obtain from her successor and produce her records at this stage."

Everybody seems to have good reasons for preventing the records being uncovered and diligently protecting those who could help uncover them.

My fourth question is whether there has been a cover-up in this matter of the availability of the medical records.

:(Reading, South): This is clearly a complicated and serious matter. My hon. Friend has said that the health authority refused to release the records to the parents. There may be strong reasons for that. Is my hon. Friend also saying that it has refused to release them to the parents' legal representatives or to a doctor acting on the parents' behalf? That would be a very serious accusation.

The answer to both questions is "Yes". Only this morning I received from Sir David Trench a letter in which he said:

"as soon as the agreement of all concerned with the hospital and clinic records to so doing has been received (which we are pressing for to the best of our ability) these records can be released, subject of course to any conditions which may be made by the Medical Defence Union. The question of the release of the general practitioner's records is a different problem in view of the complaint made to the Family Practitioner Committee, as I have already explained."

The Family Practitioner Committee had seemed to be another key to the problem, one which the Prices hoped would help them unlock the records, but only a few days ago we learnt that the family practitioner committee for Dorset had refused an examination of the case because Mr. Price made his claim too late.

I remind the House that Mr. Price is not medically or legally qualified. His concern has been for his daughter, and he has been doing a great deal. He has taken his child to France, where he heard there was a possibility of treatment. We have tried to raise funds locally. Mr. Price has been concerned not with the niceties of administration but with trying to help his daughter. In a letter dated 16th December, the family practitioner committee turned down his request for an investigation, the administrator saying:

"The Committee do not accept that ignorance of the complaints procedure can be regarded as a reasonable cause for failure to submit a complaint within the time limits and I regret to inform you therefore that the Committee are unable to accept that Mr. Price's delay in raising his complaint was occasioned by illness or other reasonable cause."

Another door has been slammed in Mr. and Mrs. Price's faces. I can tell my hon. Friend that I have a doctor in Lymington standing by who is ready, willing and able to give what he describes as an

"impartial opinion of the value of the records"

to the Prices just as soon as he is able so to do. But the chairman of the area health authority, in a letter I received this morning, states that it has

"traced a general practitioner of that name"—

that is Dr. Rogers, the doctor whom on my suggestion the Prices have picked as their assessor—

"in Lymington and are checking that he is indeed the doctor concerned. One can presume he is, but the possibility of a retired consultant of the same name in Lymington being the doctor concerned is a remote possibility."

For God's sake, when will people stop writing formal letters? I have spoken to Dr. Rogers this evening. He has not been approached so far by anyone. His telephone number is Lymington 73063 and the code for Lymington is 0590. Perhaps that information can be passed on to the Dorset Area Health Authority. It seems unbelievable that one has to go to the lengths of recording these matters in Hansard to get something done.

It was as long ago as 30th November—about three weeks ago—that the Minister told me that

"The Dorset Area Health Authority is urgently pursuing the possibility of disclosing Tanya's hospital and clinic records to a medical adviser nominated by her parents. I understand that the agreement of the clinicians concerned in the case is still awaited."—[Official Report, 30th November 1976; Vol. 921, c. 93.]

That was the answer I received when I asked the Minister about the records being made available to a medical adviser.

The Prices are fed up with waiting, and I am getting fed up too. The whole story, which started when I wrote to the Minister on 6th August, is one of delay, muddle and administrative arrogance. From 6th August to 21st December I have had no satisfaction, and I do not believe that the Minister has had any either. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a kind, compassionate and concerned man who similarly wants to ensure that something is done.

Disclosure of medical records is a thorny problem, and I am not advocating that every person should always have access to his or her own medical records. I am saying that the parents of an infant child should have the right—I stress "the right"—to have the child's medical records examined by an impartial medical adviser. That was the advice that the Minister first gave me in a letter he wrote on 17th October in which he said:

"When we met, I also mentioned that it is possible in certain circumstances and with the agreement of the clinicians responsible for medical records, for those records to be disclosed to a medical adviser nominated by and acting for a patient or, in the case of a child, the patient's parents. I confirm that I am now using my best endeavours for such a procedure to be followed in Tanya's case."

I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman has used his best endeavours. What alarms me is that his best endeavours and his powers are insufficient to obtain what I believe is a fairly simple and unrevo- lutionary measure of justice for the parents of a child who has suffered a tragedy that may be hard to imagine, presumably, by many of the people who go under the glorious name of administrators.

Tanya Price is a small, blonde, helpless victim of medical science and of an automated machine called the National Health Service. I apologise to the Minister, my hon. Friend and the House if my temper has been raised slightly as I have gone through the debate, but I hope that the debate will somehow cause those who seem only to want to secrete information for their own protection to think and to feel a little shame.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley) for his kindly reference to me and for indicating that he and I have already been in touch—indeed, that we have met at length—to discuss the various issues raised by the very unfortunate case of Tanya Price.

The hon. Gentleman may find it helpful if I preface my remarks on the principles governing disclosure from medical records with an explanation of the different types of such records which may be compiled for patients in various parts of the National Health Service. This has an important bearing on the particular case with which the hon. Gentleman and I have been concerned.

Every doctor involved in providing health care compiles his own clinical case notes for every patient with whom he deals. To these may be added information from other health professionals concerned in the treatment of the patient. The general practitioner has his own set of records, and so does every hospital consultant. These two types of records are held quite separately, each under the control of the responsible doctor, and there is no linkage of general practice and hospital notes. Other medical records are also held separately—for example, in the school health service and in child health clinics run by area health authorities. It may be confusing for a patient, or his representative, who is seeking access to "medical records" covering every episode of treatment which he has received, but this is the way health care is organised in this country. It reflects a complete and comprehensive system in which many different disciplines and specialisms are involved.

In any consideration of the circumstances in which it might be appropriate to make the contents of all or part of a patient's medical records available to him or to the parent of an infant patient, it is first necessary to understand the purpose for which these records are compiled. They are the doctor's clinical notes, intended by him to be of assistance to all those properly involved in the care of the patient's health. As such, they are under his personal control, or the control of any doctor who succeeds him in the care of the patient. Any disclosure from the records is a matter for the doctor responsible for the patient at the time that a request is made. He would, of course, consult other professionals who may have contributed to the record, but the decision on disclosure rests firmly with him.

The basic principle applied to clinical case notes is that information from them will not be used for any purpose other than that for which it was supplied or obtained without the consent of the responsible doctor and, usually, of the patient. The decision whether or not to disclose information from them to anybody, including the patient himself, is one which involves clinical judgment. It is not one which can be taken lightly.

There could be many sound medical reasons why it might not be in the best interests of a particular patient for him, or for a relative, to learn the details of his medical records. Much of what was in them would be highly technical. Moreover, even where they appeared comprehensible to a lay person, they might be capable of misinterpretation. Wrong conclusions might be drawn from which much unnecessary distress could result. There could also be many occasions where, in the judgment of the doctor concerned, it would not serve the medical wellbeing of a patient for him, or his relatives, to learn of the nature of his illness.

Thus the patient does not have automatic right of access to his medical records. This applies both to personal details provided by the patient himself and to information compiled by doctors and others relating to the patient's health. Access is under the control of the doctor responsible at the time for the patient's treatment, and confidentiality is safeguarded both by the ethics of the medical profession and of the other professions which contribute to health care. The doctor concerned will wish to keep his patient properly informed, but the extent of any disclosure is a matter for individual clinical judgment.

The prime purpose of the medical ethic of confidentiality is to protect the interests of the patient. When he presents himself to a doctor for treatment, the patient does so in the knowledge and expectation that all that passes between them will be treated in strictest confidence.

There will be cases, however, where litigation of one sort or another is in process or contemplated and where the patient, or his representative, may wish to see more of his medical records than the doctor concerned has judged it appropriate to disclose. In this situation, although the doctor may be reluctant to disclose information direct to the patient or his representative, he may be prepared to make it available to a nominated medical adviser who is able to interpret it without risk of misunderstandings.

In the particular case of Tanya Price, as I have already assured the hon. Gentlemen, there has been no intention whatever to cover anything up. It was her way of referring to the notes she was seeking which resulted in Mrs. Price being referred from one agency to another. When Tanya's mother finally located the clinic's notes, she was told that they were "not available". What was meant by this was that it is not the practice to make them available to patients or their relatives. This was the correct advice to give, for the reasons which I have already stated, namely, that disclosure to patients or others of medical records is always a matter for the clinical judgment of the responsible doctor.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Dorset Area Health Authority is now urgently pursuing the possibility of disclosing the records concerned to a medical adviser nominated by Tanya's parents. What is more, as I informed the hon. Gentleman in my letter to him of 26th November, the area health authority is also prepared to meet the costs of that adviser. All this flowed from my meeting with the hon. Gentleman on 11th November, when I undertook to use my best endeavours to secure the agreement of all the doctors concerned to this course of action.

The Minister is reading a brief which tends to repeat half the letters I have read to him earlier. Does he understand the point I am trying to make, that there is a difference between, say, a man of 43 whom a doctor thinks may or may not have cancer and a child of six months, as Tanya then was—she is now 20 months—who is virtually unable to move or to speak and whose circumstances physically are beyond dispute? We are trying to get at the truth of what happened. That is a different situation altogether from trying to discover whether one doctor or another may be making a misjudgment on the question of a person having a particular disease or something else.

Throughout my speech I have sought to refer not only to the patient but also to the patient's representative. The hon. Gentleman was accusing me of reading a brief, perhaps on the assumption that I was endeavouring to follow someone else's handwriting. If the hon. Gentleman would like to come beside me, he would see that I am very much endeavouring to follow my own handwriting at this very early hour in the morning. If I have hesitated, it is because I might perhaps have written my note with rather more care than I was able to do towards the end of last night.

The hon. Gentleman can be assured that it is the wish of everyone in the area health authority who has been involved in any way in this case that it should be resolved as speedily as possible and in the best interests of Tanya herself. In the six letters which have gone to the hon. Gentleman from me or from my office, arising from or associated with this case, and in the eight parliamentary Questions which I have answered from the hon. Gentleman, I have tried to make clear that my Department and the Dorset Area Health Authority are anxious to assist in every way possible.

As I have said, at the meeting with the lion. Gentleman on 11th November I promised to use my best endeavours to ensure that Tanya's medical records would be made available to a medical adviser nominated by her parents. I am glad that since then there has been some progress towards this end. The achievement of our objective is, however, subject to the agreement of all the clinicians, and I understand that the authority has not yet received the agreement of all the doctors concerned. Until all the consents are received, the authority cannot proceed further in the matter of releasing the records. Nevertheless, it is doing all it can to obtain them and is acting as quickly as possible.

The hon. Member mentioned France. It is understood that a French doctor was unable to diagnose the cause of Tanya's condition. Nor was he able to offer any alternative treatment. Tanya's father thanked the area health authority and the consultant for their help in providing the French consultant with a report of Tanya's medical history.

The hon. Member referred to the article in the Daily Mail. I cannot enter into the controversy about that, but I understand from Sir David Trench that he refutes the impression given by the report of his interview in that newspaper.

The chairman and the appropriate officers of the area health authority have taken, and are still taking, a personal interest in this case. The hon. Member has now received the chairman's further letter which was sent to him last Friday giving details of the current situation. What has struck me again and again in looking into this case is that the consultants and all the other staff concerned have both sympathy and understanding for Tanya and her parents. I am sure that all concerned will continue to do their best for the family.

As I have said on other occasions, action is being held up not by bureaucratic procedures but by the fact that the doctors concerned are mindful of the prospect of litigation and are seeking advice from their defence associations. I really must underline the importance of this point.

Having a handicapped child, from whatever cause, can impose severe strains on a family. I refer briefly to what is being attempted to help families with handicapped children. There has been a considerable working together on both sides of this House. We can all take some pride in the work and achievements of the all-party Disablement Group. There has been very little party element in this field, and I pay the warmest possible tribute to the officers of that group, who have done very great work for handicapped children.

Special cash provision for handicapped children is comparatively new but increasingly important. The attendance allowance was the first cash benefit to become payable. Today this allowance is paid to the families of about 40,000 severely handicapped children. Our new mobility allowance is already payable to handicapped children between 11 and 15. Children aged from five to 10 will be the next to benefit and will receive the mobility allowance from April. Claims on behalf of them will be accepted from 12th January. We estimate that about 30,000 handicapped children under 16 will receive the mobility allowance when it is fully phased in. All these children will be receiving outdoor mobility help for the first time. This is an important breakthrough in helping handicapped children, not only in this country but internationally.

To some extent, beneficiaries of the mobility allowance and the attendance allowance will overlap. Many handicapped children are eligible to receive both. At the maximum, the families concerned will therefore now receive £17·20 a week. This compares with nothing at all six years ago. From the age of 16, the handicapped child can now also receive our new non-contributory invalidity pension, which provides an additional £9·20 without any means test. Money is not the answer to all the problems faced by disabled children and their families. It is clearly right, however, that we should seek to relieve the additional handicap of poverty which so often hits families with a severely handicapped child.

The Family Fund, which is administered for my Department by the Rowntree Trust, continues to provide another important source of help for families with severely disabled children. In its first three years the fund has helped over 23,000 such families, and already some of the needs highlighted by the Family Fund are beginning to be provided for by new cash benefits and statute-based services.

I cannot see the relevance of the Minister's remarks to the problem of the Price family obtaining access to the records. Has the Minister said that the area health authority is prepared to release the records to an independent medical opinion since the individuals and doctors concerned have given their consent? That is the point at issue.

On the hon. Member's first point, I am seeking to relate the particular case to help for the handicapped child generally. Tonight we heard that Tanya Price's parents are hard pressed. I am often told that people are unaware of the benefits that are available to the families of handicapped children. I was taking the opportunity to debate the problem of families with handicapped children and to explain what has been done by successive Governments in recent years.

On the hon. Gentleman's second point, I have made the position clear. Bureaucratic procedures do not cause the delay, but doctors, mindful of the prspect of litigation, seek advice from their defence associations. I underlined the importance of that earlier in my speech.

The hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington recalled our meeting on 11th November at which I promised to use by best endeavours to make the medical records available to a medical adviser nominated by the parents. I have sought in the debate to explain what has happened since then. There has been some progress towards the end which the hon. Gentleman and I agreed to seek on 11th November.

The Minister has tried, Sir David Trench has tried, I have tried and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) has tried, but someone somewhere is preventing these medical records from being presented to independent medical advisers. What other recourse than to the courts have my constituents if, somewhere along the line, some faceless person is preventing the records from being seen by an independent medical adviser?

I think that I have sought to explain the position. When what I said earlier is read carefully, I believe that it will be accepted that I have answered the point that has been put. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should change the ground rules that have applied for a very long time, that is a very novel suggestion. What I have been saying tonight reflects the practice of a considerable time. I am emphasising the point that some of the doctors concerned, mindful of the prospect of litigation, are seeking advice from the defence associations. The hon. Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) has some experience in these matters. I ask him whether they are within their rights to do so.

I am certainly not trying to change the ground rules. I was merely asking whether the health authority had agreed to release the records as soon as the various medical people had cleared their own position.

What the area health authority has been seeking to do is to help on the basis of the suggestion that I made to the hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington on 11th November—namely, that we should seek to make the medical records in this case available to a medical adviser to be nominated by Tanya's parents. At our meeting on 11th November I could not state—nor did I make any attempt to state—the probable timing of progress. I am glad to have been able to say tonight that there has been some progress. I hope that there will be more progress.

I was seeking to emphasise the very considerable work done by the Family Fund in the service of severely handicapped children. I was saying that the fund has helped over 23,000 families. Even so, the fund has so far assisted only half of the total number of families whom it believes to be eligible for and to need help. It has recently given fresh publicity to its rôle. It was publicity aimed at families who are eligible for help but slow to apply. If right hon. and hon. Members can publicise the availability of help from the fund, especially in areas of low take-up, I know that its administrators will be deeply appreciative of their assistance.

The Family Fund is, of course, careful not to duplicate provision that can be made available to handicapped children and their families under the provisions of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 and other legislation. Anyone who goes among the families of handicapped children, as I and the hon. Gentlemen very often do, knows how highly they value not only the new cash benefits but also the aid that is given by local authorities under Section 2 of the 1970 Act.

Order. I do not want to intervene in the Minister's speech, but what he is now telling us is not really relevant to the position because the hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley) did not raise the question of where he could get help in order to aid the family concerned. The Minister has made his reference to the availability of the fund in all general cases of disability.

Naturally I have the deepest respect for your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You were the Chairman of the Standing Committee that considered the Bill, as it then was.

I hope that the Minister will forgive me for intervening in the debate, but I have listened most attentively and with considerable alarm to the whole story. Will he clarify a point that is still worrying me? He has implied that, if certain doctors do not agree to the disclosure of these medical records to an independent doctor, that is the end of the matter. Is he really suggesting that these parents must take the matter to a court and take the risk of a court forcing disclosure of the records? Does he have no other powers to make the records available?

If I were to go into the legal implications of this case, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I think that that again would not be within the terms of the debate.

It may be that I should not have intervened earlier, but the Minister made his point when he read two or three times the statement that the consultants were consulting the defence associations because of the possibility of legal action. I think that that covers the situation. It seems to me that one has to await the outcome of that.

That really was an important statement that I made, and I repeated it to underline its importance.

I spoke on this wider matter because I was moved by what the hon. Gentleman said about the kind of family that we are considering in this debate. He was saying that Tanya's parents are not people who rush about the town in posh cars. I got the impression that he was very concerned about the plight of the family and not just about the anxiety that is being caused to it. That is why I was seeking, to the best of my ability as the Minister with special responsibility for the disabled, through the House to help the family if I possibly could more immediately than I can in the matter of dictating the timing of further progress for which I am looking into the matter of making the records available to a medical adviser to be nominated by Tanya's parents.

All that I have been saying in the latter part of my speech relates to our concern for handicapped children generally. We must recognise that the most important handicapped child to any parents will be their own, but Tanya's case is of deep concern not only to her family but to everyone who has been and still is involved in it. I accept that this is a matter of deep concern to the hon. Gentleman, just as I know he will accept my concern about making progress towards a settlement that will be satisfactory from every point of view. I shall follow developments in this case with a close personal interest.

I should like to raise the subject of the incomes policy implications of the rise in the salary of the Chairman of the British Transport Docks Board. Although I apologise to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport for asking him to reply to this debate at this hour, I must also express a little disappointment that it has to be him—I do not mean this personally—rather than a Minister from the Department of Employment, because it is a matter of incomes policy that I want to raise.

I am no lover of incomes policy, and I wish it every conceivable but, none the less, as a malevolent bystander. I must point out the problems that have arisen for those who believe in the credibility of the Government incomes policy from the events surrounding the raising of the salary of the chairman. In no sense do I wish to criticise the chairman or his conduct of the Board or in any sense the operations of that Board, or to doubt the worth of the chairman and the undoubted fact that this is about the only nationalised industry that is making some sort of a profit, and to that I pay a tribute. It is in no sense about the chairman himself that I wish to speak. I want to speak about the Government's incomes policy.

The matter arises from a mistaken report in The Times of 25th November, when we were told that the chairman had a new salary about 24 per cent. higher than his old one—an increase from £10,748 to £14,145. The report said that this had been arranged by terminating his existing contract and substituting a new one. These allegations were corrected next day in The Times, when we were told that such was not the case, but that in fact he had undertaken to work for four days a week as opposed to three and to take on the responsibilities of managing director as well as that of chairman.

Of course, in any normal world one would feel that he was grossly underpaid both before and after these new responsibilities were put upon him. At present, I would have thought that he was richly worth his salary, and probably a great deal more. But that aspect does not arise at present. I merely question how it can be that someone earning over £8,500 is to begiven ar ise of 24 per cent., whether he is doing more work, and more responsible work, or not. That, as far as I can make out, is in contradiction to the Government's incomes policy, which has laid down in uncertain and unequivocal terms that those earning over £8,500 a year are not to have an increase in any circumstances. I hope that the Minister will spell out what the rules are.

My concern is not just for this case, which is obviously important, but with others in similar ciircumstances, perhaps in the private sector, who do not quite know what is right and what is wrong and should clearly know what they can and cannot do. Admittedly, this case arises out of the previous incomes policy—the £6 a week limit—leading to another incomes policy. But, as I understand it, the same rules apply in relation to higher earnings, and the case I am raising really alters the situation. The document "The Attack on Inflation" introduced this phase of the policy. The title is a little hollow when we read that inflation is gathering pace again. The £8,500 limit is contained in paragraph 7:

"The Government consider that the upper limit for the £6 increase should be £8,500 a year rather than £7,000",

which had been proposed by the TUC. The Government firmly applied the limit to the nationalised industries in paragraph 18, which said:

"The Government intend that the policy should he strictly applied by the nationalized industries…"

Paragraph 10 of the paper by the TUC spealt it all out much more clearly:

"The more prosperous can more easily bear the burden of helping the economy and should be prepared to take a cut in their current standards of consumption. Those with incomes over £7,000 a year should forgo any increase in their incomes in the present period of difficulties. The Government should apply this principle to the public sector."

These vague statements, which appear to mean that people earning over £8,500 a year should not have any more, were amplified in the debate on Members' pay on 23rd July. The Lord President maintained that Members earning over this amount should not take the £6 a week increase. He said:

"hon. Members who have earnings from other sources which together with their parliamentary emoluments take their total earnings to £8,500 or more would be asked to forgo the £6 increase in full. That statement was based on the understanding upon which the House accepted the Remuneration, Charges and Grants Bill. In that debate I said that no one earning £8,500 a year or more should take an increase of any kind in the coming year. Guidance to that effect has been issued by the Department of Employment and the Department has advised that the obligation to comply with the pay limits where earnings are derived from more than one source rests with the individual concerned. This is the general way in which the Department have given advice and I am sure that hon. Members would not expect to be treated any differently."

I would in fact expect to be treated differently, but hon. Members might have accepted that if everyone in the public sector had been treated similarly.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Privy Council Office said in that debate:

"The hon. Member for Chingford asked about aggregation and the £8,500 limit. I understand that anyone receiving more than £8,500, whether from one job, two jobs or three, has been expected to comply with the limit"—[Official Report, 23rd July 1976; Vol.915, cc.2245, 2310.]

What is the difference between someone with one job, two jobs or three, and someone working three days a week or four? This is a nice point of semantics, but I am certain that if an hon. Member told him that he had taken on another job which would take him over the limit, the Lord President would say ferociously that he could not have an increase.

In the case of the Chairman of the British Transport Docks Board an increase was clearly acknowledged by the Government to be in order. This requires explaining. The ground rules have never been spelled out. I know of no document which gives precise guidance. Perhaps that is because the Government want it to be fudged; they want to be able to allow people to use their discretion. Perhaps this particular case has such approbation from the Government—this nationalised industry is actually profitable—that they thought they would give a little reward in this case, and they bent the rules to permit it.

But this is the essence of the evils of Socialist planning of incomes—that some people can have the rules bent for them but others cannot. If this is what incomes policy means to the Government, they had better think again: it is not good enough. If an ordinary worker on the shop floor can take other work or do more work and breach the pay limits, he is surely entitled to the same treatment as the Chairman of the BTDB. But under the £8,500 limit different rules apply. What we do not know is what rules apply over that limit.

I do not believe in any of this. I did not accept the £8,500 limit. I made it clear that I would take the increase of £6 a week and give the money after tax to charity. So I do not suggest that hon. Members should be treated differently or better than they are. I merely say with some feeling that if we are to have this nonsense, if we are to suppress differentials and hold down the incomes of those with responsibility and skill and those who earn more than others—which I am not in favour of doing—it must be seen to be patently fair.

One of my motives for raising this subject is to get the Government to put the particular circumstances of this case on the record. I have no doubt that that will be of assistance to the Chairman of the BTDB, since he will not then be subject to any misunderstanding. But, equally, the Minister must convince the rest of the higher earners that the rules which apply are applied equally throughout the whole public sector. That is why I should like him to spell out the rules closely and carefully, so that we may be certain that there is equal dealing on all sides.

As the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) has said, I am not departmentally responsible for the operation of the Government's incomes policy, so I cannot go into details about how it works. But he asked me a straight question and I should like to give him a straight answer in relation to the position of Sir Humphrey Browne, the Chairman of the British Transport Docks Board.

The hon. Gentleman asked how a person earning more than £8,500 a year could apparently receive more money when this was specifically not allowed under the previous phase of the incomes policy. The answer is that Sir Humphrey Browne has not been earning more money at any stage. He became Chairman of the BTDB in May 1971. Mr. Stanley Johnson was then the managing director, and Sir Humphrey was called upon to devote three days a week to his Docks Board duties. In effect. it was a part-time job.

On 1st January 1976, following the retirement of Mr. Johnson, Sir Humphrey Browne became Executive Chairman as opposed to Chairman and took on some of the functions—not all the functions, as the hon. Gentleman said—previously falling to the managing director. The additional functions involved him in four instead of three days' work a week, and his salary was modified accordingly.

The rules for the determination of salaries in this case are that part-time nationalised industry chairmen's salaries are calculated pro rata to the relevant full-time rate, which in this case is £17,600 a year plus thresholds. That rate has remained unchanged since 1974. That is why the salary appeared to increase from just over £10,000 to just over £14,000. He was simply being paid pro rata for an extra day's work consequent on his taking up part of the job of being managing director.

It is misleading, therefore, to describe Sir Humphrey, as The Times erroneously did on 25th November, as

"beating the freeze on top salaries."

His salary has not changed in any way.

The analogy that the hon. Gentleman drew with Members' salaries does not hold. Members of Parliament, certainly those here tonight, would not consider themselves in any way part-timers. The job cannot be divided in the same way as that of a part-time chairman or a part-time member of a board, whether in the private or the public sector, can be divided. Therefore, the analogy that the hon. Member put forward does not hold in this case. The situation with regard to Sir Humphrey Browne is plain. In no sense can he be said to have beaten the pay freeze on top salaries.

That is not a good enough answer. The Minister must be aware that few workers have had increases of £3,300, whether or not they have done increased work or taken on extra responsibilities. I do not want the hon. Gentleman to go over the history—I went over it in my speech—but will he tell us what are the guidelines that will enable us to determine whether people earning over £8,500 a year may have an increase? That is the one thing that the Minister has not dealt with, by the device which I warned the House he would use, saying that he was not responsible for that part of the case that I wished to raise, but which is stated on the Order Paper for today:

"The implications for incomes policy of the rise in the salary of the Chairman of the British Transport Docks Board."

That is the point that has been raised, and the Minister has not dealt with it. He has said that Sir Humphrey has had a rise, and good luck to him. I agree—good luck to him; but may we be told what are the rules in relation to rises in this incomes bracket?

The hon. Member accurately stated the rules. I did not answer the question by attempting some subterfuge in relation to their technicality. I replied in a straightforward manner by saying that there had been no increase in the case of Sir Humphrey Browne. He has not had an increase in salary. His salary has remained the same since 1974. Therefore, on those very simple terms, the hon. Member's case does not hold.

I rise to speak on the economic cost to the nation of industrial diseases and injuries. One problem that we have in discussing this subject is that in a true sense these costs are incalculable. There are certain figures which are known and can be quoted. For example, the last available figures show that in one year £211 million was paid out directly in benefits received on account of industrial diseases and injuries. The force with which families have been struck is shown by the fact that £23 million of that sum went in death benefit. That is a measure of the seriousness of the matter. All Members of Parliament in their own surgeries see many instances of lives broken as a result of industrial injuries, even where the sufferer has survived.

The latest figures also show that 15·3 million working days were lost. The consequential lost production must be enormous. As I say, it is not possible to give an exact figure, because this is something at which one can only hazard a guess. Lost production is not costed—the extra work which has to be undertaken and the loss of efficiency—because the lost working days do not represent the entire picture. People may be at work but considerably less efficient because they have suffered an accident and returned to work. Even an accident that is regarded as too trivial to merit time off may result in a great loss of efficiency.

I would contend that these figures alone, showing the direct effects of industrial injury and disease, indicate the depth of the problem facing the nation. Nobody can attempt to sayy that all these accidents and all these diseases are inevitable and unavoidable. Most of us would agree about the importance of proper working conditions, proper safety precautions and different attitudes to safety that are concerned with protecting workers by such means as protective clothing and, more importantly, by building safety into industrial processes.

No one can deny that these would greatly reduce the number of working days lost and the amount of money that is paid out in benefits, and the pain and distress suffered by everyone concerned. Parliament itself has clearly recognised this. When Parliament passed the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, introduced by this Labour Government, it included a section that empowered the Secretary of State to take a new initiative in this field by enabling workers to have safety representatives with legal standing.

Until now the main preventive agency and the main enforcement agency of safety laws have been the Factory Inspectorate. The problems facing factory inspectors can be understood by referring to figures that have been given by the Department of Employment stating the number of factory inspectors and the number of premises with which they have to deal. At the last count there were 663 general factory inspectors and 167 specialist inspectors, making a total of 830 factory inspectors.

Those inspectors have to deal with 209,573 premises under the Factories Act, 179,451 premises under the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act, plus all the construction sites in the country, of which the precise number is not known, plus all the new working places that had never before been covered by safety legislation, such as hospitals and educational establishments. In fact, the number of work places with which the Factory Inspectorate could be involved must number not far short of 1 million. Yet only 830 people carry this burden.

It is quite obvious that this is a superhuman task and that the full-time professional factory inspector can do no more than look at the worst excesses and the major hazards. To back them up with vast armies of experts in the form of worker safety representatives—people who are experts because they actually work at the job concerned—is a means of ensuring safety in the most economical and efficient manner possible.

When Parliament passed the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, we thought that that would be the case. The Factory Inspectorate itself thought so, too. I quote now from the report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for 1974, the latest report available. Discussing the new Act, the Chief Inspector said:

"The Act imposes a new and more extensive duty on employees to take care for their own safety and to co-operate with the employer. At the same time, it confers on them new and important rights in the matter of disclosure of information, the appointment of safety representatives and the establishment of safety committees."

Unfortunately, the Chief Inspector was not quite right there. He was taking an optimistic view of the legislation, because the Act does not directly give employees the right to appoint safety representatives. It empowers the Secretary of State to lay regulations to give employees that right. But I can well undersetand why the Chief Inspector made that confident assertion in his report, since everyone, including Member of Parliament—certainly, all of us on the Government side—assumed that the regulations would be laid at the earliest practical moment.

The Chief Inspector continued:

"Whilst it is vital that employers clearly understand the practical consequences of their new duties, it is equally important that employees and their trade unions understand the importance of playing their part. They must accept the responsibility of the provisions of the new Act to make a much more positive contribution to occupational health and safety."

Trade unionists throughout the country have taken those words to heart, and they have been making detailed and extensive preparations ready for the coming into force of regulations about safety representatives precisely so that they can play their full part and accept their new duties. The representations which are coming to me from constituents in Coventry, which is very much a manufacturing city, are that there is deep disappointment now among trade unionists because they are being deprived of the right to take a full share of respon- sibility. They want to do everything they can to achieve a safer working environment, and they want to have legal support and legal standing in so doing.

The Factory Inspectorate has been looking at and revising its own methods. Realising the colossal nature of the task before it and being aware of the increasing complexity of technology and growing daily use of dangerous substances, the Factory Inspectorate has appreciated that it will have to change some of its methods. In his paragraph on inspection policy, the Chief Inspector said:

"In the last few years inspectors have been encouraged to spend as much time as necessary in selected factories in order to carry out a more precise diagnosis of problem areas and to prescribe solutions".

I ask the House to note those words "in selected factories". He said further:

"This flexible and selective approach to inspection is not without problems. Whereas previously the high-risk factory and those with low standards could be identified from personal know ledge, the new policy calls for more time to be spent in fewer factories, and, in consequence, it is more difficult for an inspector to select companies for in-depth investigation, due to the diminution of his knowledge of many companies in his area."

That being so—I do not at this stage quarrel with that policy—it is even more important that those who have the in-depth knowledge because they are there every day carrying on the processes and working in the factories concerned should have the full backing of the law through the safety representative regulations, which would be the greatest preventive measure that we could possibly take.

The Chief Inspector also said, making it crystal clear that the factory inspectors now had to take that very selective view:

"Unless there is a serious hazard or the employer has already ignored previous approaches, the best and obvious first step and certainly that envisaged by the spirit of the new Act, is for the employee, where appropriate, through the trade union representative to put his concern initially direct to his employer."

That is exactly what the safety representative system is supposed to be about. It is clear that when the report was ordered to be printed, in September 1975, the Chief Factory Inspector fully expected safety representative regulations to be in force quite soon.

What has happened? It is now more than two years since the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act went through the House. We were recently informed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that the proposed regulations were to be deferred indefinitely on cost grounds—not on the ground that no agreement had been reached. The Health and Safety Commission was able to lay draft regulations before my right hon. Friend with the agreement of all sides of industry.

I tabled an Early-Day Motion in which I accused the Government of capitulating to the CBI and so causing the delay. That drew from the CBI a rather plaintive letter in which it made it clear that it, representing employers, was in agreement with the regulations. I am pleased to be able to place that on record. But it is also an unfortunate fact that what is true in theory at the heights of the CBI is not necessarily what happens on the factory floor.

Shop stewards in my area tell me that at factory level the story is not so rosy. If it were, the matter of the regulations would not be so urgent. But my shop stewards have been told by their employers that the whole question is in doubt. It is being said that it is a matter not of when the regulations come in. but if they come in. Although the CBI states that it is in favour of the regulations, in practice employers are not willing to operate the draft regulations until they have the force of law. That is a great pity. There is no law preventing them from operating the draft regulations, which have been published and which are known to everyone.

The shop stewards have taken great pains to prepare themselves. In my area they have gone to spectacular lengths to study the issues, holding regular meetings in their own time and bringing together workers from all the factories there, through the Coventry Health and Safety Movement. They are taking a serious attitude and they feel thwarted and frustrated by the fact that the Government, having gone so far, have now put the whole matter into limbo.

In some ways this gives us the worst of all worlds. We cannot tell trade unionists "Go ahead; just negotiate this with your employers", because we have made it a parliamentary matter. We have made it half way to being a law, and half way is a worse result than if we had never dabbled in it.

If we did not intend to go ahead with the regulations, it would have been far better to make that clear from the beginning. But we intended to go along with the regulations, and a further instance of that fact can be found by examining the First Report of the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards, which was produced during the summer. The committee is dealing with the hazards that are the most frightening, the most dramatic and, in some ways, the most difficult with which to deal. In making its report it stated:

"Safety representatives will have a special role to play in major hazard installations because in addition to their normal functions as outlined in the consultative document containing draft safety representative and safety committee regulations, they will be expected to take part actively in the formulation and application of additional controls which we suggest—for example, safety audits and emergency procedures."

It is no use setting up the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards, having the committee study the problem and issue documents in which it clearly expects safety representative to be functioning in the near future, and then leaving it high and dry. Who will help now with the safety audits and the emergency procedure studies? The Government are preventing the proper operation of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act in many ways through delaying unduly the full operation of the enabling clause.

What does the Health and Safety Commission feel about it? It has stated loud and clear:

"We believe that the proposals we have made are essential to the full and effective implementation of the Act."

It says:

"the credibility of the Commission will be undermined"

if the regulations are not laid.

The Government set up the Commission. Surely they cannot want to undermine the credibility of their own creation.

The Commission stated that during the discussion on the proposals the question of the cost of implementation was raised. It

"considered the comments very carefully and came to the conclusion that the initial cost would, in the longer term, be outweighed by the benefits ensuing from the improvements in health and safety which would flow from the proposals."

In other words, these are cost-saving proposals. They are not merely expenditure. There is no extravagance involved. As my hon. Friend well knows because he gave the appropriate answer, the costs involved are minimal. They consist in giving paid time for training, for carrying out inspections and discussing what to do following the inspections. We shall not be creating full-time safety representatives with fancy wages. The whole objective is that they will continue to do their jobs. It is from that background that their main expertise will flow. The costs are minimal.

I understand that the sector that has expressed anxiety about cost is the public sector, especially local government. Most of the work places involved will not have been covered before by safety legislation. If a local council is asked how much it will cost, it will have to embark on sheer guess work. I think that "estimate" is too dignified a word. It is not possible to say how much the regulations will cost to implement. For example, no one knows how many safety representatives would need time off, because the matter is subject to negotiation. A great deal depends on exactly what is formulated in negotiations. I guess that everyone will be reasonable in work places where there is not a great hazard. I cannot envisage people queuing up thinking that this is an easy way to get some paid time to do something that it not necessary. Nobody knows, because the matter is subject to negotiation.

In answer to a Question my hon. Friend told me that the direct cost to local government and the public sector would be £55 million. That is no more than a guess. Even if it is an accurate guess, it is not too much to spend on better health and safety precautions. Many people working in the public sector—for instance, in universities—are worried. I have received strong representations, not only from shop stewards in factories, but from people working in universities. A serious accident occurred recently at the university in my constituency.

We should not delay promulgating the regulations because local authorities do not want to have a further statutory duty imposed upon them without extra resources to enable them to fulfil that extra duty. If more resources are needed to ensure health and safety at work, more resources must be found. I have some sympathy with local authorities, but it is monstrous if public expenditure constraints lead to elementary, far-reaching and sensible precautions being thwarted. We have waited for two years. How many more years do we have to wait? When shall we be able to afford proper provision to ensure health and safety?

Our purpose in raising the matter tonight is to argue that we cannot afford not to take all possible action to enhance health and safety at work. The losses resulting from unnecessary accidents and ill-health far outweigh the cost of enabling workers to play a full part in improving their work environment. No one but workers can do this satisfactorily.

Even an enlightened employer tends to see the issue in terms of muffling a worker against hazards or providing him with ear plugs. The worker will see the issue much more clearly and have a great incentive to persuade the employer that it is not the mask on the worker but the extractor on the machine that is the best method of preventing damage to health, that it is not ear muffs but the reduction of noise levels.

Unless the Government bring the regulations into force quickly, they will incur much acrimony, their reputation will be damaged, and they will throw away a great measure of good will and the chance to harness the expertise of trade unionists and their willingness to perform useful and constructive work in this regard.

I urge my hon. Friend, and through him the Government, to go ahead and lay these regulations before Parliament without further delay in order to cut the costs of industrial diseases and injuries.

When, on 13th March 1974, I made my maiden speech in this House on the subject of industrial safety, honestly did not think that nearly three years later we should be engaged in this debate tonight. It is, quite frankly, to the shame and discredit of the Government that we are forced into this position.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mrs. Wise) has illuminated the inadequacy of the present inspection system and the enforcement process of the Factory Inspectorate in terms of its numbers. I do not intend to repeat what my hon. Friend said. I wish to look at the examples of some of the workers who suffer from the accidents and industrial diseases and, at some of the resource cost to the nation, and to offer a couple of solutions.

It has first to be made abundantly clear that the working-class way of death in this country is to be a manual worker. When we look at the statistics contained in research reports, at the Registrar General's figures for deaths, at the various occupations and the reasons for death, it is apparent that what people do for a living largely determines the age at which they die. This is a great tragedy and a disgrace, bearing in mind that the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act has been on the statute book for more than two years.

I shall use what I admit are selective quotations from one or two reports to shame my hon. Friend the Minister, although I know that he does not bear personal responsibility, because the members of the Cabinet are the people really responsible for holding up the measure.

The first report to which I refer was published in 1971 by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. It is a report on 2,000 accidents on the shop floor, together with a massive study of their causes by independent investigators. They came to four basic conclusions, which are extremely disturbing. They said that

"the risks of accident were so much an integral part of work systems as at present arranged, that the more work was done, the more accidents occurred".

They said that

"people who changed tasks frequently had more accidents than those who did not change frequently".

They also said that the highest accident rate on quickly repetitive tasks occurred towards the beginning of the period of the task and that people had to learn or re-learn in order to avoid the risks inherent in the job. Lastly, they said that

"serious accidents were often the result of an unusual situation".

In essence the authors of the report, after examination of the numerous factors that might affect accidents, said that

"it is the work situation that is accident-prone, not the individual."

This was a crucial conclusion to reach, bearing in mind that the report was published in 1971 and that a year later the Robens Committee in its report basically blamed apathy among the workers in industry as the reason for many industrial accidents, in flat contradiction of the 1971 report. The Robens Committee was not exactly loaded with people who had worked in manufacturing industry in the sense that I and my constituents would define the term. The Robens Committee clearly did not take account of the report of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, otherwise it would not have come to the conclusion that it reached.

The facts concerning the way of death of British workers are starkly reported. The figures from the Registrar General are quoted in a book published early in 1974 by Patrick Kinnersly called "The Hazards of Work: How to Fight Them". I shall refer to this publication later, but it makes the point that furnace men face twice as many chances of dying from tuberculosis as Members of Parliament. Fishermen have three times as many chances of death from lung cancer as Members of Parliament, and their chances of dying from bronchitis are four or five times as great. I could go on and on, but these stark figures show that the working-class way of death is far more likely to strike the manual worker than someone who can lord it around on these Benches. These figures, which come from the Registrar General, show what people are doing when they die, and, quite frankly, it does not look too good for manual workers. They actually die at an earlier age as well.

A lot of work was done on this aspect by Frank Field, who is well known for his work among the low-paid and the poverty-stricken in this country. He published a pamphlet called "Unequal Britain" and did research into accidents at work. He made the point that accidents are a very important aspect of inequality at work—the unequal impact of accidents across the social classes, and the processes responsible for these accidents. Practically all fatal accidents occurred in occupations dominated by manual workers. One does not need to look too far to substantiate that. In the September issue of the Department of Employment Gazette, details of the accidents occuring at work in factories in the second quarter of 1976 are published. Ninety-one people died at work in factories in the second quarter, and there were 61,000 accidents.

This publication makes the point that those engaged in oil conversion, iron founding, vehicle repairing, heavy chemicals, the construction industry, bookmaking and stationery, and food processing were most at risk. Food processing seems a safe enough job, but the figures show that two people died in that safe industry in the second quarter of this year. All these are manual occupations; there is no section for white-collar workers or professional occupations. There is no section for Members of Parliament or managers. These figures tell a sorry tale.

Nevertheless, the people I have mentioned are not the only ones who suffer death and cause cost to families and a criminal loss in terms of family tragedy—maybe the loss of a breadwinner leading to a family needing to live on supplementary benefits, or the creation of yet another one-parent family. Manual workers have it bad both ways, because predominantly they are the only ones who work shifts. I know this from my own experience. On the night shift only a skeleton staff was kept on to see that the administrative side was running satisfactorily. It was on the shop floor that most of the night work was done.

Some work on accidents to shift workers is being done by the National Economic Development Organisation, which produced a report in 1973 on shift working in the motor industry. It is a very interesting report which makes many suggestions about the reasons for the quality of some vehicles not being good. NEDO examined three of the largest motor manufacturing plants in the country and found that there was a statistically significant increase in the rate of accidents per man hour on the night shift over the corresponding day shift. For obvious reasons the three plants were not named in the report, but I assume that they included the plant at Dagenham and the British Leyland plant at Long-bridge. One can only guess at the identity of the third plant.

Over the 11-year period from 1958 to 1969, 43 per cent. more accidents per man hour shift occurred at night than during the day. In plant No. 2, 61 per cent. more accidents took place on the night shift than on the day shift. In plant No. 3, 21 per cent. more reportable accidents took place on the night shift during the five years 1965 to 1971.

Workers need protection from criminal negligence by their employers. We must ensure that regulations provide that shift workers receive more than their fair share of cover, because they are more at risk than other manual workers. A fair amount of time in the motor industry is taken up by people running round dealing with accidents, providing first aid and so on. The position is no different now from what it was in 1973.

The terrifying thing is that no one actually knows how much industrial accidents, and diseases cost. The Department of Employment published a paper which analysed the resource costs to the country of the various industrial diseases and accidents, taking account of the cost of such expenses as doctors and ambulances. The analysis included Factory Inspectorate and Department of Health and Social Security data. The figures I shall quote are those for 1969, and hon. Members should remember that inflation will have doubled the cost then given.

In the appendix to the Robens Report, the DHSS said that the national resource cost was £335 million a year. The Factory Inspectorate's estimate was £133 million. The report stated that the figures were conservative. The DHSS said that the number of deaths attracting awards for industrial death benefit amounted to 1,918. The Factory Inspectorate said that 649 fatalities were reported under the Factories Act. It is commonly believed that between 500 and 600 workers die each year as a result of their work. The Factory Inspectorate is only one part of the reporting machinery since deaths must also be reported to bodies which are responsible, for example, for quarries, mines, shops, offices and construction sites. The figure of 649 does not compare with that of nearly 2,000 given by the DHSS. That means that people are dying as a result of industrial diseases many years after they have contracted them. They are dying as a result of industrial accidents but many years after receiving their injuries. They are dying at the rate of 40 a week.

Therefore, it is no good taking figures based on those of the Factory Inspectorate. We must go to the national insurance figures, because the national insurance administrators are the sticklers and they have all the information.

Furthermore, the Department of Employment, in the paper that used these figures, then looked at the non-reportable minor accidents. It said that the DHSS figures showed 841,000 per year reported accidents and spells of sickness and absence due to disease and injury, but it wanted to calculate the non-reportable minor accidents. It used a ratio of 1:30. On a figure of 841,000, it was estimated that there were 25 million accidents of an occupational nature in industry per year. The ratio of 1:30 was used, whereas the National Institute for Industrial Psychology, in the report to which I referred earlier, in its summary of 2,000 shop floor accidents, reckoned that we needed to use a ratio of 1:50 to obtain an accurate estimate of non-reported accidents. Nevertheless I shall settle for 1:30, which gives a figure of 25 million industrial accidents, injuries or diseases of some sort, reported or non-reported. That is a massive number.

We are at the beginning of a week. Based on the Factory Inspectorate figures for the second quarter of this year, accidents in factories are running at 1,000 per working day, or 5,000 a week. There will be 5,000 factory accidents before Christmas Eve. In Britain 5,000 families will have to cope with someone injured in an industrial accident in a factory before Christmas. That figure does not include all the other cases, but merely those in factories.

Deaths in factories were 91 in the second quarter of this year. That is seven a week. There will be seven more deaths in factories this week. Taking the DHSS figures of the number of people who are dying this week as a result of catching an industrial disease perhaps years ago or as a result of industrial injuries last week, last month or last year, one realises that such people are dying at the rate of 40 a week. Therefore, 33 more people will die this week, at home or in hospi- tal, as a result of industrial accidents or diseases. That is a total of 40 this week who will die by Christmas Day as a result of criminal negligence in industry, and at least 5,000 people will be injured in factories.

Apparently nothing can be done to stop that. Things could have been done some months ago to prevent it from happening if certain courses of action had been taken, as has been suggested. There are several solutions. One that comes to mind appeared in the Industrial Law Journal of September this year, in an article entitled

"Economic Deterrence and the Prevention of Industrial Accidents"

by Jenny Phillips of Wolfson College. shall quote one paragraph of her conclusions which rings a little bell in my mind. When I read the article, I thought "That is funny. I have heard the words before in a different context." The heading of the paragraph was

"Introducing economic incentives."

It said:

"The evidence suggests that an approach to the improvement of safety based on the following two objectives would be effective. First, firms should pay the full costs of all work-related accidents"—

I thought that I had heard that before;

"secondly, firms should be made aware of these costs."

That rang another bell in another context. It is what the Chancellor wheeled out in the 22nd July measures in relation to road accidents, to make sure that the cost of road accidents to the National Health Service is recovered from motorists.

We shall be passing a Bill later in the Session to raise motor insurance premiums by about £3 per head to pay for the full cost of road accidents that falls on the NHS. Perhaps we could start by making sure that the total cost of what I consider to be criminal negligence by employers and which falls on the NHS is recoverable. If we had a similar Bill, I think that it would receive all-party support. It would certainly get the support of Labour Members. That is a suggestion that I shall pursue in line with the Government's present policy vis-à-vis the road accident situation, because it is a positive proposal and one that would bring home to industry the real costs of not taking industrial accident prevention seriously.

The other matter is the vast improvement in the number of safety representatives, whether they be statutory safety inspectors or factory inspectors in the conventional sense, which we shall not get although we were promised that their number would be doubled to 1,600. We want 200,000, which is what we shall get as a minimum of trade union-appointed safety representatives as laid down in legislation passed by this House during the past two years. That is an absolute "must".

My hon. Friend told the House that the CBI had said it was not to blame for the delays. It may be that it is not to blame, and perhaps local authorities are responsible for the delays, but it is fair to point out what the CBI said in its evidence to the Robens Committee. Volume 2 of the Robens Report, Selected Written Evidence, said at paragraph 1.40:

"The CBI has remained firmly opposed to the introduction of a legal requirement in this field and the exhaustive examinations which have occurred over the past decade has confirmed it in the rightness of its view."

That was the CBI's evidence to the Robens Committee on the matter of statutory safety committees and statutory safety representatives on which the Health and Safety at Work etc Act was largely based; but it may be that the CBI has had a change of heart.

All this has taken a long time, because early in 1970 a Bill entitled Employed Persons Health and Safety Bill was introduced into this House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) when she was Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity. The Bill was introduced a little late, and in February it got bogged down in Committee. In May there was a General Election and the Bill fell, but that measure included the setting up of statutory trade union-appointed safety representatives. There were certain restrictions which were different from those that we have now, but the principle was there.

There was no vote on Second Reading. That does not mean that there was no opposition to the measure from Conservative Members. I have the Hansard quotations if they are required, but it is easier to quote from an article in TheGuardian of Tuesday 15th January 1974 reviewing Patrick Kinnersly's book to which I have referred. The article made great play of one of the speeches that I read in Hansard in March 1974, that of the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) on Second Reading.

The article said:

"Resistance to joint safety committees has been ably led by Mr. Albert Costain, Conservative MP for Folkestone and Hythe. In a debate on the Employed Persons (Health and Safety) Bill which would have given workers' safety representatives certain rights of inspection after an accident, he voiced the employers' old fear that committees would interfere with production.

He said that the Bill would be 'a sea lawyer's paradise, giving wonderful opportunity to those who want to make trouble and disrupt our industries, where all strikes have failed'.

He did not mention the wonderful opportunity to reduce the disruption to life caused by accidents, such as the bridge collapse on a Costain construction site near Dartford, Kent in March 1971 which killed a man."

That was followed up in Professor Wedderburn's book "The Worker and the Law", which is still the standard textbook for most shop stewards who have to fight employers who will not tell them anything about their legal position. He made the point about the Employed Persons (Health and Safety) Bill that the

"CBI insisted that voluntary methods were best, recalling that the Minister of Labour in 1966 pledged that the voluntary system would be given a chance to work before compulsion was introduced. The President of the National Federation of Building Trades Employers said the Bill would 'provide increased opportunities for disruptive elements to exploit new areas of industrial life'. The Bill lapsed with the General Election."

Clearly, the CBI has apparently changed its spots. But it has had a long way to go. It has opposed the measures for statutory trade union-appointed or worker-appointed safety representatives. It was opposed to statutory committees.

The Robens Report concluded:

"We are in no doubt that the concept of employee safety representatives is more important than the concept of joint safety committees."

That is a most important message to take on board. The Robens Report dismissed the CBI's evidence and submissions.

I want to give examples from Birmingham which demonstrate starkly why we need safety representative legislation as soon as possible. There are some firms with very good safety records compared with the average. One is Joseph Lucas. It has a first-class record in industrial safety compared with the rest of the engineering industry. When one sees the things that can go wrong in a firm with such a good record, it shows how bad things are in other firms.

In the Joseph Lucas annual report for 1976, the chairman said:

"Health and Safety Committees have been established with both staff and manual union representatives and environmental health and safety engineers have been appointed at all our major plants. It is regretted that despite all efforts the annual analysis of reportable accidents showed a small increase in the number per 1,000 employees, but the overall record continues to be twice as good as the national average for the engineering industry."

I accept that. But let me give the figures at Joseph Lucas for accidents involving amputations. In 1971 there were 21, in 1972 there were 13, and in 1975 there were 11. The figures are falling. These accidents, however, occurred in a firm which has a better record than the average, and it is to its credit that it publishes such information to its employees.

The firm's report to its employees in 1975 said that its performance that year had not been as good as the previous year's. When, however, on 13th February, the shop stewards asked for the establishment of a health and safety library because, they said, they would need reference works and documents on important diseases and accidents so that they could study the remedies, they were told that the firm was waiting for the statute to be enacted and for the regulations to come into operation. Yet Joseph Lucas is a firm with a good safety record.

The shop stewards asked for 22 books; they have got four. One of the books asked for was Kinnersly's. They have not got it yet. The firm told them that it would not stock the library with political works. It is a very good book. It stands out as being written in simple language about industrial hazards and how to combat them before they start.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House referred to the book in 1974 when moving the Second Reading of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Bill. He said:

"I believe that … the Robens Report and Patrick Kinnersly's book should be taken together since they make an excellent intro- duction to the Bill."—[Official Report, 3rd April 1974; Vol. 871, c. 1289.]

Yet Lucas tells its stewards that they cannot have the book because it is a political work. I hope that the firm gets its finger out and arranges for the library to be stocked instead of waiting for the regulations. Let the stewards continue to build on Lucas's very good safety record so that people such as myself will not be able to quote the bad attitude which goes with the good record. Attitudes are wrong. Employers who speak about "if" the regulations are introduced rather than when they are put into effect cast doubt on whether the Government intend to bring them into force.

British Leyland has the remarkable record of appearing in court in Birmingham twice in one day last week. One of the cases was not reported, but stewards on courses at the Aston University Department of Hygiene saw the firm get fined £250 for not providing safe methods of work after a man had fingers amputated in a power press.

Setters were allowed to work a press without guards because the flywheel could not be "barred over" as the bar would not fit into the hole in the flywheel, which was worn. The men used the "on/off" button to inch the arm down. One man worked the button and the other had his fingers and his head under the arm. One day the press stuck in the "on" position, down came the arm and off came the man's fingers. There were also accidents on two other adjoining presses.

Such accidents could have been avoided if someone had checked the presses, the holes in the flywheel and so on. I admit that the setters were crazy to work in that way, but insufficient care and attention was paid to the matter. Four hundred notices have now been put around the Castle Bromwich works, and the holes have been repaired so that the bars will fit without slipping, but this is long after a man's fingers have been amputated. British Leyland was fined only £250, but even this was an improvement on the average a few years ago when, if a man lost a hand, the firm was fined only £50.

In another court last Friday, British Leyland was fined £200 by the stipendiary magistrate after an accident at its Hay Hall Road factory at Tyseley when a lathe operator got his hand stuck round a chuck while it was working. He lost a finger and part of his thumb. He had been clearing a swarf with a bar which got caught in the chuck. His gloved hand caught in the hook at the end of the bar and his hand was dragged round the chuck. The firm said that it did not know that the job was being done that way and that instructions had been given that a new system should be used. The thumb is an important part of the anatomy. It is as important as the big toe and is worth a great deal of cash in national insurance terms.

As the largest motor company in the country, British Leyland should be littered with safety representative officers. A shop steward who has left to spend six months at the Aston University Hygiene Department has been given leave of absence, but it is unpaid. The man has a TOPS award from the Department of Employment. He is highly motivated, and I hope that the firm takes him back when he has finished his course.

Our largest factories have a better safety record than the smaller backstreet plants, but this shows how bad the average is and how urgent it is to get statutory representatives who can raise issues without fear of victimisation, losing their job or promotion prospects or missing out on overtime because they are acting on behalf of their fellow workers to ensure that the maiming and killing stops. There is a cheap way of doing this; we should make sure that workers are allowed to police the places where they work.

My hon. Friends have already referred to the costs of industrial injuries and accidents. The figures for recent years have been alarming. Benefits paid between April 1975 and March 1976 totalled £211 million and working days lost through industrial accidents and injuries between June 1974 and June 1975 totalled 15·3 million.

But these figures do not begin to touch the real cost of industrial accidents, injuries and diseases to this country. I wish to illustrate this by looking at a case which has involved a number of my constituents—the dispute at the Isle of Grain power station.

The dispute began in June over a small issue when a number of laggers involved in construction work demanded protective clothing because they were working with asbestos. Their employers, Babcock and Wilcox, refused to supply the clothing. The men pressed for it and later the Factory Inspectorate upheld their claim and the company was obliged to provide free protective clothing.

Because of that refusal, the men went on strike and were later dismissed. For the past six months, neither the employees of Babcock and Wilcox nor anyone else has been working on the site. Construction has been held up for more than six months.

The cost of that to the Central Electricity Generating Board has been extremely high, as has been the cost to the employees. Since they were described as being involved in an industrial dispute, they received neither unemployment pay nor social security for the whole period. Yet their complaint was perfectly justified and was upheld by the Factory Inspectorate.

What is extremely bothering about this dispute is that it means that work on the power station site has been stopped for many months. Work on constructing that site will probably not begin fully until the new year, when the site has eventually been made safe.

It is difficult to estimate the cost of a dispute like that, but the dispute arose simply out of a desire of the men to be properly and rightfully protected in the course of their work. Had there been safety representatives and a safety committee the matter would have been discussed and no doubt peacefully and easily resolved.

That is just one example. Obviously, many more cases must occur day by day, week by week, throughout the country. The time lost in discussion, strikes, bitterness and the souring of industrial relations all adds immensely to the cost of industrial production, and is perhaps one of the causes of our low rate of industrial productivity.

It is important to bear in mind costs of this kind when we are faced with the estimates that we have been given by local authorities and some public sector employers for introducing this type of legislation. The figure of £55 million per annum has been quoted. That figure might well have been plucked out of the air, because those who make the estimates have nothing on which to base them. There is, in fact, only one cost of health and safety at work which local authorities are in a position to assess, and that is simply the cost of accidents and diseases in terms of days lost through such accidents and diseases and the compensation that those authorities may have to pay out for them.

It would be valuable to have an estimate of these costs to local authorities and public sector employers, but none hase been provided so far. Perhaps my hon. Friend will be able to provide such figures now or in the future.

In an argument like this it is not enough just to weigh the most of accidents and diseases in monetary terms. We cannot estimate losses in human terms—in terms of bereavement, disablement, suffering and pain caused by some of the really vicious industrial diseases. We can no longer afford to regard the health and safety of workers as a kind of optional extra which, if employers in the private sector have sufficient profits or those in the public sector can find some money, can be provided by those employers if they choose. After all, it is not the employers' health and safety which are at risk; it is the health and safety of their employees.

What we have to do is to insist that this legislation is properly implemented as soon as possible—that safety representatives and safety committees are set up—because there is another important aspect to this matter. It is not just a matter of protecting the worker; it is also a matter of involving the worker in the very process of production and work at his place of work. It is an important extension of the responsibility of workers at this time. It would provide a way of involving workers in the planning and production of their work—and after all, they, more than anyone else, would have an incentive to ensure that this work was safely and therefore efficiently carried out, because it would be their own lives and health that were at risk.

When we consider what employers get away with—when the average fine for neglecting their employees' health and safety is £95—we begin to wonder what the Government and society really value. How can we consider the case of a man whose life hase been wrecked by some kind of industrial disease, or who has lost a limb at work? How can we consider the case of the woman who has lost her husband or the man who has lost his wife, and say that negligence is worth only £95? That is to make a mockery of the value of human life. It is not just a question of imposing very low fines for this kind of negligence. It is also a question of ignoring the fact that no employers have been gaoled for this kind of negligence.

If we find a man who is drunk when driving and who causes death or injury through that drunkenness, he is arrested and, if found guilty, he is imprisoned. Yet when an employer is negligent in a similar way he is not gaoled, even though this is possible under the Act. Instead, when it comes to the health and safety of so many workers throughout the country we tell employers that we shall only try to persuade them to consider the health and safety of workers properly, that we shall not impose this duty as an obligation with serious sanctions attached to it.

Too much has been lost for too long in terms of life and limb. The time has come to put a stop to this sort of carnage at work and to make sure that the legislation on safety representatives and safety committees is introduced immediately. There can be no further excuses.

My three hon. Friends the Members for Coventry, South-West (Mrs. Wise), for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) and for Thurrock (Dr. McDonald) have spoken this morning of their concern about the level of industrial accidents and diseases and the cost to the nation in terms of human suffering and the long-term social and economic damage of what is effectively an unnecessary by-product of industrial activity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr in particular catalogued some graphic and damning situations, to which I know he does not expect me to reply in detail this morning, but I shall make two brief points. He mentioned the position of Members of Parliament and their health. One ought to say that those of us on the night shift at the moment do not think we are "lording it", although our conditions are rather better than those of most of the people that my hon. Friend was talking about.

My hon. Friend mentioned the question of fines for industrial safety offences. The Criminal Law Bill will raise the maximum fines substantially, from £400 to £1,000, with some possibility of inflation-proofing. Of course, it is really up to the magistrates to use these fines appropriately. The evidence suggests that they have not always done so in the past.

On that point, no doubt my hon. Friend is aware that conviction on indictment at present carries an unlimited fine, yet the maximum fine so far imposed is still £400.

I can only hope that, now that the maximum level is to be raised substantially, magistrates will impose what I frequently feel, and what I am sure my hon. Friends feel, would be more appropriate fines in these very grave situations.

All three of my hon. Friends referred to the inadequacy of statistical information on accidents and occupational diseases and the difficulty of making reliable estimates of the true costs. Their general concern about the whole situation has been coupled with expressions of deep distaste at the Government's decision not to bring into force for the time being the Health and Safety Commission's proposed regulations, on safety representatives and safety committees.

It has been suggested that we have allowed exaggerated estimates of the cost of introducing the regulations in the public sector to influence us unduly, that we have overlooked that the initial cost would in the longer term be outweighed by the benefits and economies from improvements in health and safety that would flow from the proposals, and that by our decision we have, in effect, undermined the intent and purpose of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and so impeded progress towards the development of a healthier and safer working environment. I think that that sums up the main criticisms made by my hon. Friends, and I shall do my best to answer them and explain the Government's attitude.

First, I assure my hon. Friends and the House that the Government share their concern about the incidence and cost of industrial accidents and diseases. No one can rest content with a situation in which about 350,000 accidents, including 600 to 700 fatalities, are being reported annually to the various authorities responsible for enforcing our health and safety legislation, in which we are spending about £210 million a year on industrial injury benefit under our social security system, and in which we are losing over 15 million working days annually through incapacity.

The true costs of industrial accidents and their consequent toll of death, injury and disablement are, as my hon. Friends have said, incalculable. One has only to think of the full costs of lost production. Here I take the point made my my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock about the Isle of Grain and the effect on industrial relations. One has to weigh the costs of lost production and of replenishing the work force and replacing damaged plant and equipment, as well as the burden on the National Health Service.

All these factors cannot be accurately calculated from the data we have available of the number of accidents and the incidence of occupational disease or from the volume of claims met annually through the Industrial Injuries Scheme or through compensation payments by the private insurance sector. My hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr underlined that point, and he had obviously done some great homework in producing some formidable figures and evidence of his own.

The Robens Committee on Health and Safety at Work had in evidence a good many estimates of total costs, ranging between £200 million and £900 million annually, and it drew attention to many of the problems involved in making any reliable estimate of the cost to the nation of occupational accidents and diseases.

There are no easy solutions, but I should point out that action is being taken by the Health and Safety Commission with a view to improving our sources of information about the number of accidents and our ability to measure and assess safety performance. Proposals for new regulations which will rationalise the existing arrangements for the reporting of accidents and extend the system to all sectors of employment are now under consideration in the light of the many comments received on the consultative document issued earlier this year.

I turn now to the main issue and the nub of the argument advanced by my hon. Friends—that is, the desire of the trade unions to play a full part in developing and improving the standards of health and safety at work, and the importance which they attach to the Commission's proposed regulations on safety representatives and safety committees. I fully understand that desire. I share the trade unions' view, and I am well aware of the acute disappointment which has been caused by our decision not to bring the regulations into force for the time being.

I understand the strong feelings on this subject, especially within the trade unions, and I recognise their concern for the social contract, of which they believe this to be an integral part. Also, I well know of the preparations which the trade unions have in many cases made for the introduction of the regulations.

I assure my hon. Friends that the Government's decision was not taken lightly or without considering the longer-term benefits which should accrue from implementation of the regulations. If they had been implemented immediately, however, there would have been an increasing cost to employers at a time when the Government are reluctant to impose additional burdens on them. We have to be concerned also about the immediate cost to the local authorities, and the Government consider that it would be unreasonable to expect them to implement the regulations at a time when we are pressing them to cut expenditure in other sectors.

My hon. Friend has mentioned the Government's anxiety not to place further cost burdens on employers, yet two weeks ago we passed the National Insurance Surcharge Bill, which did precisely that.

I take my hon. Friend's point, but it does not invalidate the case for not putting still further burdens on employers at present.

There have been suggestions that the cost estimates have been unrealistic. Some of the figures bandied about at the beginning of the whole debate on the matter—I do not mean this morning's debate—were hard to swallow. It is difficult to produce precise estimates. A good deal depends on the view of how active safety representatives and committees would be. We think, however, that the cost would be considerable, and, regretfully, we are having to restrict public expenditure in the interests of our short-term economic needs.

Despite that, we are giving urgent further consideration to the whole issue in the light of the many representations. Since my right hon. Friend's announcement we have had discussions with the TUC and the Health and Safety Commission. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West was very graceful in her reference to the CBI. In fairness, I should say that, whatever the CBI said about the matter in the past, it has made clear that it is in favour of full implementation of the regulations. The TUC and CBI representatives on the Commission have presented the Government with a united view on the issue. It is a Commission view, and it is to their mutual credit that they have been able to reach this agreement.

There has been some suggestion that the regulations are too vague and open-ended in that they give representatives the power to inspect premises more often than the degree of danger might justify. It has also been suggested that we might initially confine the application of the regulations to those areas, such as factories, which are generally accepted to be the most dangerous. The Commission has told us that such regulations, which are intended to cover a great variety of situations, cannot be too precise and that it is preferable to provide a framework in which employers and workers can work out in joint consultation what arrangements are best for their circumstances.

The Commission has pointed out, too, that dangerous processes are not confined to areas of employment which could be readily defined in regulations and that difficulties could arise for employers and unions if the regulations covered some people in a particular workplace and not others. We have considered these aspects in our further consideration of the proposals. We must be mindful of the Commission's views.

Do the Government accept those views, which seem to be reasonable and correct?

We are very mindful of the Commission's views. This is yet another matter that is very much under consideration within the context of our overall consideration of how we might move further on the issue.

It has not been said too strongly this morning, but there have been suggestions that by the decision we are undermining the whole purpose of the Act, which extended the protection of health and safety legislation to about 8 million employees who were not previously covered and constituted a great step forward. I must refute those suggestions. The Government retain their determination to support the Commission in implementing and enforcing the provisions of the Act and the promotion of positive health and safety attitudes.

I hate to make a cheap party point, but the Act is a Tory Act. The only change we made after the February 1974 General Election was to put in the trade union and worker safety representatives and the statutory committees. We had the problem over the Liberal amendment, a matter which we did not win when we were not a majority Government but which we corrected in the Employment Protection Act. The present Act is basically the same as that published in January 1974. The Government cannot claim great credit for it because it was presented, without any disagreement, by the previous Conservative Government. We are asking for the injection of the Labour bit into the Act.

I am conscious of that for which my hon. Friends are asking. Indeed, it is that with which I am endeavouring to deal. Even though we are determined to support the Commission in implementing the provisions of the Act, this does not mean that every set of legislative proposals that the Com- mission puts forward has to be accepted in its entirety and implemented immediately. It has to be for the Government to decide in the whole of their legislative programme and commitments how and when such proposals should be implemented.

We have to take a realistic if sometimes unpalatable view. In the present circumstances, in which we have an immediate need to restrict public expenditure to try to cut the rate of inflation and improve our general economic position, it is worth recognising, despite what my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr has just said, how much has been achieved by the Commission and the Executive. I shall spend a few brief moments analysing what has been done.

First, I must mention the high priority that has been given to the establishment of a network of advisory committees to provide a focus for continuous discussion between the major interests involved and to make expert advice available to the Commission as well as securing the effective participation of employer organisations and the trade unions in the creation of safe systems of work. Already a number of committees have been established to advise on particular hazards across the whole spectrum of employment. Among them is the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards, the Advisory Committee on Asbestos and a new medical advisory committee.

The Advisory Committee on Major Hazards has recently produced its first report, which deals with the control and siting of installations that could present a major threat to the safety of employees and the general public from explosion, a sudden release of toxic substances, or fire. The report's recommendations are now being considered by the Commission and comments on the proposals are being sought from a number of interested organisations. In addition, in a major effort towards developing positive attitudes from shop floor to senior management, the Commission is looking to the development of industry advisory committees, which have already been set up in agriculture and in the nuclear sector. It is intended to extend the committees to a further 20 major industries.

Perhaps I should mention some other advancements. There are proposals for regulations and codes of practice on a variety of subjects, including the packaging and labelling of dangerous substances, measures to reduce the exposure of employed persons to noise, controls over projects including, for example, research into the measurement and control of respirable dust, the prevention of explosions and the protection of workpeople against injury from moving machinery. All these matters are under way and various pilot studies are in progress to identify new and different problems to be faced in various sectors of employment not previously covered by legislation, such as hospitals, education, health services, water supply, local authority and leisure activities.

There is plenty going on at the moment, including the planned increase of the Factory Inspectorate, which is going ahead according to schedule. There is a great deal to do apart from the establishment of safety representatives and safety committees.

We accept unequivocally the desirability of making the regulations so soon as possible. As I have said, we are already examining further possibilities and further ways of doing so. Despite the inescapable public spending constraints, that remains a live issue on which final decisions have yet to be made. We shall take careful note of what my hon. Friends have said today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West said that some shop stewards have been saying to her that it is a question no longer of "when" but "if", but it is still the case that the question is not "if" but "when". I hope that the further consideration which we are urgently giving will find a reasonable and sensible way of resolving the problem.

I rise at this rather early hour to discuss Class IV, Vote 6, of the Civil Vote on Account, which makes provision for £122 million to be spent on nuclear energy in 1976–77 and for £55 million required on account for 1977–78.

As there are in themselves considerable sums of money but are in fact small beer compared with the huge sums already spent and projected to be spent on nuclear energy in the United Kingdom, I believe it is right for the House to pause at this stage and ask itself a few key questions about the future of nuclear power in the United Kingdom. I believe that we should try to formulate sensible answers to some of these questions before proceeding further.

The key questions on which I should like to focus are these. First, is the further development of nuclear power in the United Kingdom inevitable? Secondly, if so what size and shape should that programme be? Thirdly, what would be the likely consequences of such a programme in all the various aspects that that involves? Fourthly, what would be the impact upon the environment of such a programme? I know that some of my hon. Friends, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for East Grinstead (Mr. Johnson Smith) and for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost), wish to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and therefore I shall not be dealing with that aspect in any great detail.

Fifthly, what are the wider implications of such a nuclear programme? I am thinking here particularly of the implications as regards nuclear proliferation which I regard as a key issue. Finally, what are some of the ethical considerations involved? We should not overlook the fact that there is a strong ethical dimension to this whole debate.

The United Kingdom is in the fortunate position of being what is known as a four-fuel economy. By that I refer to coal, oil, gas and nuclear power. However, as our recoverable stocks of oil and gas are definitely finite, a consensus has emerged to the effect that this country will be faced with an energy gap towards the end of this century which, it is said, can be bridged only by the extensive further development of nuclear power.

Everyone from the Secretary of State for Energy downwards, including the Under-Secretary—the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie)—who has kindly turned out at this hour to reply to this debate, foresees that the energy equation by the year 2000 or so will rest upon the tripod of coal, nuclear energy and conservation. The debate so far has been concerned largely with trying to strike the correct balance between those three.

Whichever way we look at the equation, the nuclear industry has been able to argue that the further development of nuclear power in Britain is both necessary and inevitable. I would not dispute that. Nor, I believe, would the British Gas Corporation, which was the only notable witness at the National Energy Conference last July to cast doubt on the now conventional wisdom that an energy gap will materialise at some stage in the future.

Hon. Members will recall that the Corporation, in a paper it submitted to the National Energy Conference, made the following statement, which was notable for its disagreement with virtually everybody else at the conference:

"Discussions of energy supplies over the next 25 years are tending to take as axiomatic an energy shortage in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. Statements in the discussion at the Church House meeting of February 26th, 1976 by several speakers appeared to accept, almost without question, an 'energy gap' at that period.

In the view of British Gas, such an assumption is very much open to question; certainly we would all be most unwise to allow energy policy decisions which have to be taken over the next few years to be determined by such an uncertain premise."

The more interesting question to attempt to answer is my second one, namely, on the assumption that the further development of nuclear power in the United Kingdom is inevitable, what size and shape should our programme take?

In one of its documents for the National Energy Conference in July, the Department of Energy forecast that the contribution from nuclear and hydro, which it lumped together, would increase from its present level of some 13 million tons of coal equivalent in 1975 to 25 million tons of coal equivalent in 1980, 30 million tons of coal equivalent in 1985 and a bracket of 40 million to 55 million tons of coal equivalent in 1990. Beyond that, things were thought to be too murky to predict.

The Department's forecasters also had the good sense and the good grace to enter, in paragraph 26 of their submission, the following caveat, that

"The foregoing figuring and analysis covers a period of only about 15 years from the present day. It is thus heavily conditioned by existing patterns of production and consumption and by fairly well established past relationships between energy and other econo- mic and technological considerations. Analysis related to the projection of past trends can provide a reliable framework for the consideration of energy policy for only a limited period ahead, and in the longer term the patterns of the past become less of an influence, their relationships weaken and the wedge of uncertainty widens."

That is an appropriate choice of words, I think—

"the wedge of uncertainty widens".

Indeed, in my view even the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has become somewhat more realistic as the passage of time, the criticism of its previous forecasts and the light of common sense all begin to break through.

In his most recent public pronouncement on this aspect of the subject, Sir John Hill, Chairman of the UKAEA, wrote in The Times on 26th November 1976:

"The probable nuclear programme, particularly in view of the high energy prices now ruling and the sustained depression which this country is experiencing, is likely to be much smaller"—

that is to say, smaller than the previous reference programme submitted to the Flowers Commission in 1974–75.

"No 'massive increases' in our nuclear programme are contemplated at the present time."

Well might he have said that, and I regard it as at least an improvement on the wild negotiating bid put in by the UKAEA at the time when it submitted its reference programme to the Flowers Commission, when it was apparently advocating 104 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by the year 2000 and no less than 426 gigawatts by the year 2030, of which no less than 370 gigawatts would have been fast reactor capacity.

My first conclusion is that the total nuclear programme for which we plan ahead need not and should not be anything like as large as that for which the UKAEA originally bid in the immediate panic atmosphere engendered by the oil crisis more than two years ago. But that still leaves a legitimate and important debate about the shape of the planned nuclear programme. The UKAEA would like to see an early decision taken by the Government to build the first demonstration commercial size fast reactor—the so-called CFRI—since it sees this as a vital stepping-stone to an eventual pattern of nuclear power generation based increasingly on fast reactors.

That is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the Authority is so keen to press ahead with its plans to extend its reprocessing facilities at Windscale, particularly the mixed oxide plant, which is projected to be able to handle some 1,000 tons of throughput—far in excess of the total foreign business which British Nuclear Fuels Limited is likely to be able to secure in this sensitive and dubious field.

We also gather that, following the so-called Marshall Report on the safety of PWR pressure vessels, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is keen to reopen the Government's 1974 decision to proceed with 4,000 megawatts of SGHWR capacity and is veering back to its earlier position of favouring the building of PWRs under licence, or is veering towards a new readiness to consider a modest programme of AGRs. These have proved their advantage in terms of cost of operation and are beginning to look more hopeful.

Our future thermal reactor programme is shrouded in such uncertainty that the AEA is inclined to adopt a "double or quits" attitude by focusing all its pressure on the need for the CFR1 decision and the associated question of reprocessing mixed oxide at Windscale. This suggests that we could be approaching a turning point in the development of Britain's nuclear power programme.

It is doubly important at a time of scarce resources and growing doubts about the AEA's previous advice to the Government, and the virtually stagnant electricity demand, that the Government should take their time and give themselves the maximum chance of taking the best available decision in the circumstances. The Government have the unenviable task of balancing a number of important factors to establish their decision as the best one available.

The first interest which must be taken into account, but not necessarily the most important, is the power plant manufacturing industry, on which the Central Policy Review Staff published an interesting report. Paragraph 29 of the summary and conclusions at the beginning of that document states:

"It is undeniable that the measure which will help in the longer term is a contractual commitment to a firm and steady ordering programme in the years ahead."

It is precisely that firm prospect of a contractual commitment which is not currently available to the four large firms which are principally involved in this sector in the United Kingdom. It makes no economic or social sense to order generating plant far in excess of likely future requirements, because this country's requirements for electricity, from any source, have been consistently overestimated since 1965—long before the oil crisis.

I do not believe that we should make nuclear ordering policy in any way dependent on the need, however pressing, to keep our over-large and under-rationalised power plant manufacturing industry in exactly the same shape as that to which it has become accustomed.

The next clearly identifiable interest is that of the UKAEA itself—the institution which is now in the driving seat. Even if its latest recommendations led the Government to steer an erratic and non-profitcise direction the nuclear industry should established and powerful institution, backed by a mystique of professional expertise which is not readily available to poor lay politicians, like myself, who have to make value judgments and assist in taking decisions which establish how far down the nuclear road and in which pre-able course in recent years, it is a well-be allowed to take us.

In essence, the current argument of the UKAEA is that we have a successful thermal reactor programme which could now be judiciously expanded by further limited ordering of AGRs or PWRs, but that if we are to safeguard "civilisation as we know it", once the energy gap sets in towards the turn of the century, the Government must make a firm commitment to the fast reactor programme in the shape of the CFR 1 and the reprocessing technology which goes with it. My response to that is to say that the need for nuclear-generated electricty on the scale envisaged by the UKAEA is not proven, that the cost of such electricity as provided by fast breeders is more than the country can afford—on its own at least—and that the environmental and social risks raise doubts about whether the game is worth the candle.

I shall deal first with the question of need. Since 1965 the rate of growth of United Kingdom electricity demand has been consistently below the forecast and there is a substantial over-capacity of about 40 per cent., if one includes the usual spinning reserve of 20 per cent. Because the stations ordered in the late 1960s and early 1970s are still under construction, it is estimated on the same basis that there will be about 55 per cent. surplus capacity by 1980. If that comes about, it will produce the kind of situation which I more usually associate with the Soviet Union where some production targets have been so far out that the authorities might as well have done their planning with a roulette wheel. The nuclear industry and the miners must realise that there is such a thing as electricity saturation which may well arise sooner than anyone thought possible.

If further evidence were needed, I can do no better than quote from paragraph 7 of Chapter I of the recent CPRS Report which states:

"The United Kingdom generating boards consider that no additional generating capacity will be required in this country until 1985 or 1986, assuming a 3 per cent. growth in GDP and the associated growth in electricity demand."

The significant point is not so much the forecast itself as the heroic assumptions on which it is based. Are we likely to achieve a 3 per cent. annual growth rate over the years to 1985? If we do, what incontrovertible evidence is there that the relationship between economic growth and electricity demand will remain as it was? It is always possible that we shall see a higher ratio of electricity demand to economic growth than in the past. Anything is possible, but since past assumptions are based on a period in our history when "we never had it so good" and the domestic consumer market appeared to thrive, I assume that the ratio is more likely to be adjusted downwards, which means less demand for electricity.

As Harford Thomas said in a recent article in The Guardian:

"Translated into human terms it is fundamentally simple: enough is enough."

I turn to the cost issue. Britain is now a comparatively impoverished country and there is little evidence that North Sea oil will or should much change our basic situation. We already have too much overseas debt to pay off and such extra wealth as the oil does generate will need to be put into the balance of payments and industrial investment. In such a situation I contend that even if it could be demonstrated that we need more and more nuclear electricity, we can no longer afford it unless we allow it to eat up all our scarce resources like a fearful institutional tape worm.

The total cost of our ill-fated AGR technology is estimated at £2,000 million so far, with more to come. No one knows what the development of commercial fast breeders would eventually cost. We know that the development of the prototype fast breeder is already costing some £50 million a year in research and development alone. That is in the Government's recent little document "Report on Research and development—1975–76." We also know that the best estimates of the cost of CFR1 have a margin of error of some 100 per cent. for the future, ranging from £1,000 million to £2,000 million, depending on the accounting assumptions made. We know that the capital costs of the fast breeder are about 77 per cent. of the total, whereas fuel cycle costs are only 18 per cent., so that the acknowledged high uranium efficiency of fast breeder reactors does not necessarily mean that they would be economic as compared with thermal reactors.

Furthermore, the costs of introducing new reactor systems have invariably turned out to be substantially higher than originally forecast, and the real capital costs of nuclear power have risen steeply. For example, according to a recent study by the West German Government, the cost per kilowatt of the German 300 MW fast breeder prototype will be several times greater than that of a standard light water reactor. Other studies have indicated that fast breeders would be economic only if their capital costs were no more than 15 per cent. to 20 per cent. higher than those of light water reactors. That seems unlikely to me, if not totally improbable.

I am afraid that the suspicion must remain that since it would probably be the biggest civilian technology project ever undertaken in the United Kingdom, CFR1 is something that this nation cannot and ought not to afford. If we must go down the fast reactor road, it would be much better to stretch the existing design of the protoype reactor to, say, 350 MW, assuming that subsequent events prove that there is no possible alternative, and then to instal a cluster of such reactors on one or two remote sites, together with their own reprocessing complexes.

However, my broad conclusion remains—namely, that we ought not to allow this particular cuckoo to claim such a disproportionate share of the food that is brought into the nest.

Finally, I turn to the environmental and social side. At this point I should like to put down a marker and ask the Minister whether he can give any indications as to what progress has been made with the questions, to which I personally attach quite a lot of importance, which I and some others put to the Nuclear Inspectorate some months ago, and to which I am still confidently expecting answers in the near future. The environmental and social risks are aspects that have been graphically portrayed, as hon. Members will know, in both the Flowers Report, with which we are all familiar, and the First Report of the Fox Commission in Australia, on the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry, which is perhaps less well known to my colleagues but which, none the less, I commend to the House.

In many ways, for responsible politicians these environmental and social risks ought to be deemed the most crucial considerations of all. The attitude of the nuclear industry, on the one hand, was typified by Sir John Hill in his famous, or even notorious, recent article in The Times, when he wrote,

"We could not run today's programme on 1950 technology. I am convinced that the technology of the year 2000 will be satisfactory for the programme of the year 2000."

In other words, no matter what the problems, technology will find a way. That, I believe, is a statement of faith, not a statement of fact, and I should like to draw attention to it for what it is worth.

On the other hand, Sir Brian Flowers, in his recent memorable lecture at the British Nuclear Energy Society, said,

"The crucial long-term issues are on the one hand the competition between nuclear energy and coal, and on the other hand between both and renewable resources; and also between high electricity and therefore high heat- waste, on the one hand, and vigorous conservation measures on the other."

These are the real environmental and social issues on which we can make choices and on which we politicians are uniquely placed to deliberate and to decide. Whereas the nuclear priesthood would have us leave everything to the specially equipped initiates behind the altar screen, I say that Sir Brian Flowers and the Fox Commission have got it right in their quiet but insistent demands that these issues be aired, and once aired be decided, after full public debate, by the duly elected repesentatives of the people.

I shall not at this late—or early—hour rehearse all the many important environmental and social issues which are raised by the further development of nuclear power. Suffice it to say that ordinary people in my constituency and elsewhere—I know this from my post bag—are worried by the problems of nuclear waste, and I know that my hon. Friends will say more about that. Ordinary people are worried by the threat of nuclear terrorism and, if they stop to consider the question at all, they must be worried by the prospect of further nuclear proliferation.

It would be irresponsible to take irreversible decisions about the next stage of nuclear development unless and until we have a fool-proof and publicly acceptable way of dealing with the problems of nuclear waste, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Grinstead will no doubt point out if he catches the eye of the Chair. It would be shortsighted in the extreme to embark upon a programme of nuclear development which required much of the paraphernalia of a police State to guard society adequately against the threat of nuclear terrorism. And it would be the very reverse of statesmanlike or responsible conduct for this Government, or any of their successors, to embark consciously on a nuclear policy which tried to maintain the pretence that there is a natural fire-break between the so-called peaceful and so-called military uses of nuclear energy, when every responsible nuclear scientist knows that there can be no such divide.

Today there are at least 19 countries operating nuclear power stations, including such countries as India and Pakistan. There are at least another seven countries with reactors under construction, including such as Brazil and Taiwan. There are at least six more countries with power stations on order, including such as Iran and Yugoslavia. I ask the House to ponder some of the countries that I have chosen and the reasons why I shall not embarrass any country by saying why I pick it out. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and the only important question is the extent to which the major nuclear suppliers can delay or control its fearful progress.

More dangerous than reactor development, there are now at least five countries with nuclear enrichment capacity—the USA, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union and China—and there is a real likelihood that Iran, Brazil and South Africa will join this select band before too long. Further, there are at least five developed countries with the capability, or the ambition to have a capability, to operate reprocessing plants—the USA, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany and Japan—and there is the distinct danger that this lethal technology will spread to Brazil and Pakistan, unless steps can be taken at the highest international level to undo the damage already done by cut-throat commercial competition with its ruthless disregard for the lone-term survival chances of mankind—and I put it no lower than that.

All this adds up to a disturbing picture of a world drunk on the prospect of nuclear power and desperate for a slice of the Faustian bargain so thoughtlessly entered into by the Americans, the British and the Canadians more than 30 years ago. As I wrote in a letter to The Times, I believe that this country could get by with a more modest nuclear effort, consisting of an extended life for our existing Magnox reactors, incremented with a limited programme of one of the more modern thermal reactors, depending on the outcome of the current review. Of course, in the longer term our energy options in a sane society could be much more varied and benign than those suggested by the nuclear industry's alarming and unsatisfactory dichotomy between their preferred course of action and "the end of civilisation as we know it".

We could begin to implement a really serious programme of energy conservation—and on this I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South-East for his work—based upon significant further price rises coupled with wide- spread design changes in buildings, factories and modes of transport. This would probably save at least as much delivered energy each year as our current nuclear programme now produces.

We could and should rapidly scale up our investment in the more promising alternative energy sources, such as solar, wind, wave and tidal power. There should not still be a differential of some 100 times between the amount of money spent on nuclear research and development and what is spent on alternative sources. We must get the balance right. Equally, we should press ahead boldly with nuclear fusion, which may not have nearly as many environmental disadvantages as fission. One of our laments on this side of the House, judging by what we have learnt from Press reports, is with regard to nuclear fusion. Can the Minister throw light on the situation, which is causing considerable concern on both sides of the House and to the skilled scientists whose future depends so much on the viability of th