I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important topic. Our debate will be followed with close attention by the people of Hong Kong to whom this matter is of great concern. I pay tribute to the members of the Executive and Legislative Councils of Hong Kong and to the Hong Kong Commissioner and his staff who have been extremely helpful to many right hon. and hon. Members in keeping them informed on this and on other subjects.

We refer to those who are the subject of this debate as boat people because originally in the 1970s they arrived by boat. They came mostly from South Vietnam, many of them were of Chinese race and, since South Vietnam had recently been defeated in war by North Vietnam, it was natural for them to cross the South China sea rather than travel via Vietnam on the land route.

We remember the harrowing scenes on our television screens of small unseaworthy boats, and the stories of attacks by sharks and pirates and the sinking of boats in storms. Such stories naturally and rightly evoked the sympathy of the world for the Vietnamese boat people. Since then, the situation has changed, and those who have been coming to Hong Kong in recent years have tended to come by land, many of them travelling all the way round almost as far as Hong Kong along the south China coast and then picking up a boat at the Pearl river. They arrive in Hong Kong as if they were boat people who had travelled all the way from Vietnam, which in most instances in recent years has not been the case. Nevertheless, because of our memory of the harrowing scenes of the 1970s, the boat people, as we continue to call them, still attract a great deal of sympathy and feeling among many people in many parts of the world.

The numbers of such people have varied from time to time. The largest number to arrive in one year was 66,000, and they came in the first seven months of 1979. In 1988, some 18,500 arrived, and in 1989 the figure was 34,500. I am speaking of those who came to Hong Kong. More than 14,000 have arrived this year. A few weeks ago, as many as 180 a day were arriving in Hong Kong. I am glad to say that that figure has now dropped, although it is still running at 56 a day—a substantial number. Ever since the 1970s, every year, significant numbers have arrived.

All this time, Hong Kong has, to its credit, followed the policy of first asylum. No Vietnamese migrant, whether arriving by boat direct from south Vietnam or from some other place, has been turned away. Partly because of that splendid record, 97 per cent. of the people who leave Vietnam clandestinely come to Hong Kong. We have to remember that Hong Kong is a crowded place. There are 5·8 million people living in an area only twice the size of the Isle of Wight. That is a density of 5,385 people per square kilometre, compared to our density of 230. Therefore, the refugees are even more of a burden for Hong Kong than they would be for a less populated country.

Up to about 1988, all people leaving Vietnam in these circumstances were treated by the world as refugees. However, shortly before 1988, the practice of some of the resettlement countries began to change, and they began to differentiate between those who were genuine refugees—those who came in the 1970s and early 1980s probably were refugees escaping from persecution or the fear of it—and those who were leaving for economic reasons.

As a result, resettlement from Hong Kong dropped off dramatically. In 1980, 37,000 were resettled from Hong Kong to other recipient countries, but in 1987 only just over 2,000. This change obliged Hong Kong also to change. Therefore, in June 1988, it adopted a policy of screening the Vietnamese arrivals. The screening is monitored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and its aim is to differentiate between those who are genuine refugees, who are placed in open camps, and those who are economic migrants, who are put into detention centres. Screening has shown that over 80 per cent. of those who arrive are economic migrants.

All this imposes a heavy burden on Hong Kong. As of 22 July—three days ago—there were 5,736 refugees in Hong Kong. Those who had been screened out as non-refugees numbered 18,194 and those awaiting screening and the results of screening numbered 37,770—a total of 61,700 people. If the same numbers were applied to the United Kingdom, given the difference in our population, 600,000 people would be here either as refugees or as people in detention. That would be regarded by the people of this country with horror. Our whole population would say, "This is intolerable. Something has to be done about it." Not surprisingly, that is the attitude of the people of Hong Kong who, for so many years, have put up with this burden. The cost has been substantial. Most of it has been borne by Hong Kong, although some has been borne by the United Kingdom.

In 1989, as a result of this change of policy and the introduction of screening, a conference of 75 countries was held in Geneva. It evolved a comprehensive programme of action, which has four parts: first, continuation of the policy of first asylum; secondly, the practice of screening; thirdly, resettlement in other countries for those who are genuine refugees; and, fourthly, repatriation to their countries of origin for those who are non-refugees. The first three parts of the programme have been successful; the fourth has not. Since March 1989, only 7,700 Vietnamese have voluntarily returned to Vietnam from Hong Kong. In that time, 53,400 have arrived and 5,100 have been born in the camps, so the situation has been getting worse.

It is universally accepted that people who move from one country to another for economic reasons should be repatriated to their country of origin. It happens everywhere else except in this case. It happens in this country. If somebody arrives from south Asia or the Caribbean without permission, not as a refugee and not seeking asylum but for economic reasons, that person is turned back. Hong Kong turned back 30,000 Chinese illegal immigrants last year. This is one of the sore points for the people in Hong Kong. Their own compatriots—cousins, uncles, perhaps even brothers—are sent back across the border, whereas the Vietnamese are accepted. There is no particular friendship between the Chinese and Vietnamese races.

The position of the United States is wholly illogical. It agreed to the comprehensive programme of action, as did Vietnam, but it is impeding putting that programme into practice. At the same time, it turns back, without any ceremony, boat people from Haiti, and the regime in Haiti is at least as oppressive as that in Vietnam. It turns back people from Mexico if they arrive at the border, and British people arriving at United States airports if they do not have permission to enter. The United States, like other countries, has recently been sending back Kurds from Turkey to Iraq, whether they like it or not. This is the universal practice for illegal immigrants. Therefore it is essential that the same policy should be applied in the case of Vietnamese boat people who are screened out as not being genuine refugees.

About a year ago, when I was in Hong Kong, I went to a detention camp, as many hon. Members have done. The camps are not very pleasant places to visit, because the overcrowding is so intense. Through the interpreter I asked a young, fit Vietnamese who had arrived three weeks before where he had come from and what he expected to happen to him. His reply was, "You in the west are so weak, I expect to end up in California." We must break that assumption, because as long as it applies these people will continue to arrive in Hong Kong. We must make it clear beyond doubt in Vietnam that non-refugees will ultimately be returned to Vietnam.

The fourth point of the policy evolved in Geneva in 1989 is not being put into force largely because of opposition from the United States. Because the United States is opposed to compulsory repatriation, so is Vietnam, because it is seeking favour and aid from the United States now that it has lost aid from Soviet Union. I recently discussed this question with the State Department in Washington, when I went over there with a small all-party group. We had a thorough discussion of the whole subject. We pointed out this illogicality, and the people in the State Department treated us courteously but did not have a satisfactory answer.

It is clear that the United States Administration still feel that it is inconceivable that people should be returned to Vietnam, a country that, in the folk memory of the United States, is a terrible place to be, whatever the changes in recent times, and whatever the improvements in life there. I asked the State Department officials what would be necessary before the United States would formalise its relations with Vietnam, and they said that there were two conditions. The first was that there must be a solution to the problem of prisoners of war and those missing in action. I fully understand the trauma that that still causes to people in the United States, and especially to the relatives of those who are missing.

The second condition was that there should be a solution to the problem of Cambodia. I said to the State Department officials, "Are you really saying that there must be a solution to the problem of Cambodia as a precondition? Surely the solution to the problem in Cambodia lies not with Vietnam alone but principally with the four parties in Cambodia. It lies with the Chinese and with other countries. Why are you saying that there has to be a solution to the problem of Cambodia when it is not within the power of Vietnam to produce such a solution?" We left it at that. I hope that the United States, a country for which I have great admiration and respect, will realise that the time has come to move on towards normalisation of its relations with Vietnam.

A possible way forward—and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will deal with it when he replies—is the new concept of a holding centre in Vietnam to which non-refugees could be returned. The concept has been discussed by the Government with the Vietnamese, and it seems to me to hold great promise. Such a centre would be run by an international and impartial body and monitored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

There is resentment in Hong Kong at the burden that the territory has had to carry for such a long time. Apart from the financial burden, there are pressures on accommodation and manpower and the dangers to which Hong Kong officials are exposed in the camps. There is resentment because of the criticism that Hong Kong receives from the world in spite of its humanitarian approach; for example, criticism that the screening process is not operated especially well, and that there is not sufficiently good accommodation for those who are in detention camps.

I hope that the people of Hong Kong will realise from this debate that there is a great deal of support for Hong Kong in the extremely difficult situation that it faces. The British-Hong Kong parliamentary group is one of the largest of its kind. We share the feelings of the people of Hong Kong, and we support the efforts that Her Majesty's Government are making. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give us some grounds for hope when he replies.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker) has done the House and the people of Hong Kong a great service by raising the issue of immigration before we go into the summer recess. It is a timely moment to discuss it. The problem of the Vietnamese migrants, or boat people, is imposing an intolerable strain and burden upon the people of Hong Kong at a time when they are struggling, with all the support that we can give, to maintain their way of life and to make a success of the 1984 general declaration.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South has set out succinctly and clearly the figures and the scale of the problem. He told the house that there are about 61,000 Vietnamese living in Hong Kong, of whom only about 6,000 are classified as refugees. As he said, 61,000 is a considerable number. When I had ministerial responsibilities for Hong Kong—I left that job in 1985—I think that I am right in saying that there were 13,000 Vietnamese in. Hong Kong. That was regarded then as a considerable strain upon the community and the territory. The strain is now much greater. I went to Hong Kong last February and saw one or two camps. I saw for myself the heavy burden and strain that is imposed upon Hong Kong. More recently, as my right hon. Friend said, a delegation of Legislative Council members visited Britain, led by Mrs. Rita Fan. They expressed their anxieties clearly.

There are other exacerbating problems in Hong. Kong. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South referred to population density and to the fact that illegal Chinese immigrants are returned promptly to China. It is worth noting that since 1975, when the problem of immigrants first began, the Hong Kong Government have spent no less than £220 million of taxpayers' money. It is worth noting also that Hong Kong appears to be the only country in the far east that observes the first-asylum obligation. None of the other countries in the region appears to be doing so. At the same time, the world is less willing to resettle refugees, perhaps partly because of the economic problems.

All the problems being faced by Hong Kong must be set against the background of the major preoccupation of the people of Hong Kong. No territory in the far east could have shown more humanity and practical help in assisting the Vietnamese. Hong Kong's humanity has been demonstrated in other respects: for example, there was its help with the Red Cross during the Gulf war. More striking and more recently, no less than £30 million has been made available to help to alleviate the problems of the Chinese following their recent flood. That information came to me during this week. The money came mainly from the private sector of Hong Kong. Only a small proportion came from the Hong Kong Government. If ever there has been a demonstration of Hong Kong's humanity for its neighbours, that is it.

The Legislative Council elections are coming up soon, the pressures are increasing, and it is vital to focus on making a success of the 1984 joint declaration. This can serve only as an intolerable extra burden for the people of Hong Kong. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South is right to refer to ways in which action can be taken, and whch must be taken urgently. He referred to the comprehensive plan of action and the screening process, which used to cause me great concern. There was much anxiety about the thoroughness of the process. Having watched the process myself—it is now under the supervision and guidance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—I can say that the procedures are very thorough. I do not think that the process could be better implemented. There are appeal procedures. I feel that it is the best that we can do to identify those who are genuine refugees and those who are not.

The problem of refugees throughout the world is a growing and serious one. The only real way of tackling it is through the countries of origin. Those countries must be helped to find solutions and ways of attracting refugees and migrants back to their countries, or to discourage them from leaving in the first place.

In that context, I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South that the concept of an international holding centre offers an ideal way of arriving at a solution. Clearly the centre would have to be under international supervision and extremely carefully devised. If such a centre can work in Vietnam, it might be a concept that could be implemented in other parts of the world. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give an assurance that we are concentrating in a major way on trying to achieve this objective.

Another important factor is regional progress. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South was right to say that Cambodia on its own must not be a precondition for the United States helping to solve the problem that faces Hong Kong. The fact that there is progress in Cambodia should help to create a better atmosphere in that part of the world. The fact that the Vietnamese and Chinese are beginning to establish closer links is a good sign. The western world should be doing everything possible to encourage Vietnam to move towards some form of plural democracy and to generate growth in their economy. That must be done with the encouragement of Vietnam's neighbours in the far east and with western help and assistance.

I agree with everything that has been said so far, but does my right hon. Friend accept that the solutions to the problems of the Vietnamese economy are not furthered by the fact that the Americans have imposed a trade embargo, which means that the economy cannot fulfil its function even if the possible solutions to which he has referred were implemented? If we are to solve the economic problems that are forcing people to leave Vietnam, we should encourage the United States to normalise relations and, possibly, not to stop others, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World bank, from assisting and investing in Vietnam.

My hon. Friend has put his finger on it. It is important to give every encouragement to Vietnam to make progress. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is extremely important that the United States should do what it can to remove trade restrictions and to help with economic development in Vietnam.

The United States has imposed involuntary returns. Of course, it is right to have a hang-up, to put it bluntly, about its experiences in Vietnam in the 1960s, but times have changed and conditions and circumstances are quite different. The United States has an obligation to assist the British Government and the people of Hong Kong to find a solution to the problem. Our Government's first duty is to Hong Kong and its people, and we look to them to take a positive lead, but with the help of the United States. That is the least that we can do for the people of Hong Kong.

I hope that we can persuade the Americans to lift their restrictions on trade with Vietnam, even though the process of liberalisation in Vietnam is proceeding more slowly than we had hoped. Even if that liberalisation comes, many Vietnamese will be in camps in Hong Kong for the foreseeable future, and I am especially concerned about the children. I hope that the open camp system, such as Taia Chau, can be extended so that families with children are not locked behind barbed wire as they are at High island and Whitehead detention centres—where children spend years without seeing a tree or a blade of grass.

The open detention camps, which are run by Hong Kong Refugee Housing Ltd. are far superior. I hope that we can extend the amount of education provided in the camps, and especially the teaching of English. The refugees will be settled in English-speaking countries, and it would help their resettlement if they could learn English while they were in the camps. All that will cost money. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, unlike other United Nations agencies, is short of cash rather than of competence. We are giving £20 million this year, which is not a bad contribution. It is the sixth largest in the world, and twice as much as France is giving. I hope that the sum will be increased. I am glad that we are giving an additional £6 million to UNHCR in Hong Kong, but I hope that we can lead an international drive to extend the amount of money being given to it.

We are all grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Blaker) for raising such an important issue. The debate provides an opportunity for our right hon. and hon. Friends to show the great concern in Parliament about the matter, and it gives me, as Minister, the opportunity to give an update to the people of Hong Kong on the Government's thinking and on our actions to deal with this major problem.

First, I wish to pay tribute to the Hong Kong authorities which, despite preoccupations with their own future and during a time of considerable uncertainty, have continued to provide a safe haven for more than 175,000 Vietnamese who have arrived in the territory since 1975. No Vietnamese has ever been turned away, and Hong Kong's humanitarian record is one of which it can be justly proud.

My right hon. and hon. Friends have referred to the deterioration in the position in Hong Kong, and I do not propose to reiterate the figures. However, I can well understand the frustration in Hong Kong at having to continue to bear that burden, and the desire that immediate steps and measures should be taken to try to stem the flow of Vietnamese migrants to the territory. Finding a durable solution to the problem is a top priority. Since 1989, we have contributed £35 million, £18·5 millon direct to Hong Kong, in support of international efforts to devise a durable solution to the problem. In 1991, we have pledged a further £6 million to UNHCR's appeal for funds, specifically for its work in Hong Kong.

My hon. Friends have said that economic progress is desirable, especially in Vietnam, and we recognise that to tackle the root causes of the exodus it is clearly desirable that Vietnam should become a better and more prosperous place. We have welcomed the Vietnamese Government's acknowledgement of their responsibilities towards their own citizens in Hong Kong and we shall consider aid to Vietnam, including a bilateral aid programme in that context. We also contribute to non-governmental organisation activity in areas of Vietnam from which the asylum seekers in Hong Kong originate.

In February this year, at our instigation, the European Commission inaugurated a six-month, £7 million pilot programme of reintegration assistance in areas of Vietnam from which those people originate. If successful, that will be followed by a two-and-a-half-year, £84 million programme financed by the international donor community. I need hardly add that that programme will be stillborn if non-refugees do not return to Vietnam.

The comprehensive plan of action agreed at the second conference on Indo-Chinese refugees in June 1989, provides for the maintenance of first asylum, the screening of new arrivals to determine refugee status, the return of those found to be refugees, and the repatriation of those found not to be refugees to their country of origin. Screening in Hong Kong has been developed with the co-operation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The criterion used is that contained in the 1951 United Nations convention and the 1967 protocol relating to the status of refugees. That states that a person is a refugee if he has a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion and who, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of his country of nationality.

Improvements in the screening procedure in Hong Kong have been introduced where necessary, and I am confident that it is both fair and achieves the main objectives of ensuring that no one facing repatriation need fear persecution. Since 1975, more than 13,000 Vietnamese refugees have been resettled in the United Kingdom. At the second international conference on Indochinese refugees, we also undertook to resettle a further 2,000 refugees from Hong Kong within three years.

We have been active in efforts to persuade non-refugees now in Hong Kong to volunteer for repatriation to Vietnam. At the fourth meeting of the steering committee of the international conference on Indochinese refugees in April this year, Vietnam reaffirmed its undertaking that no one returned to Vietnam would be persecuted and that UNHCR would have unhindered access to those who returned. More than 9,000 asylum seekers have already taken advantage of the voluntary repatriation programme, 7,800 from Hong Kong. UNHCR reported in April that there was no evidence to suggest any of them have been maltreated.

The British embassy in Hanoi also makes regular visits to areas of Vietnam to which significant numbers of migrants have returned from Hong Kong. Since December 1989, 11 such visits have been made. Many of the 51 sent back on 12 December 1989 have been contacted more than once. Again, no evidence of maltreatment has been discovered.

However, despite our efforts, it is clear that voluntary repatriation alone will not work. We must seek other ways to repatriate those non-refugees who do not opt to return to Vietnam. Those people are no different from other illegal immigrants except that, because of the emotive background, their deportation is a matter of contention. It is not fair on the people of Hong Kong to expect them to continue to provide a temporary place of asylum at great cost without any expectation of an early solution. Nor is it fair to the Vietnamese themselves to hold out false hopes of resettlement, as some misguided people have done. I note the comments that my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South made as a result of an interview that he had with one of those people. There is absolutely no prospect that the international community will change its mind and resettle Vietnamese who are not refugees.

We are also concerned about the plight of unaccompanied minors, some of whom have been sent abroad by their parents in Vietnam in the hope that, if the child secures refugee status, the parents will then be able to follow. We continue to urge UNHCR to expedite its procedures to determine the status of those children so that they may be resettled or returned to their parents as soon as possible.

We are, therefore, taking the lead in international efforts to find ways to repatriate non-refugees. But it is essential that any solution that we propose can be implemented. In particular, we need to take account of Vietnam's sensitivity to international and, particularly, United States reactions to any measures which might be taken.

The fourth meeting of the international conference on Indochinese refugees steering committee in Geneva on 30 April and 1 May reaffirmed the principles of the comprehensive plan of action. It confirmed that there would be no change to the policy of screening asylum seekers, not to cut-off dates, and that all non-refugees must return to their country of origin. The steering committee also agreed to further consultations on alternative and additional measures to bring about a greatly accelerated rate of return of the non-refugees to Vietnam.

My right hon. Friend rightly drew attention to the position of the United States and made several comments on the United States Administration's opinion. Following contacts with the United States Administration at the highest level, we informed the Americans that we intend to pursue actively the proposal to create a centre under international management in Vietnam to which non-refugees who do not volunteer can be returned pending reintegration into their own communities.

That approach has the support of UNHCR and the International Organisation of Migration. We believe that it offers the best chance of reaching a durable and human solution to this complex and difficult problem. We also believe that the Americans now accept the importance of making the idea work. Discussions on the proposal for internationally managed centres are currently taking place in Geneva between ourselves, the Vietnamese, UNHCR, and IOM. All sides are keen to make progress. But much work remains to be done.

Meanwhile, we will continue our unremitting efforts to secure a permanent solution to the problem and to ease the pressures on Hong Kong.

I am particularly pleased to have this opportunity to speak about the 1990 annual report of the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. I should first point out that I once served as a special constable in the RUC and presently act as parliamentary adviser to the RUC Federation.

I have, therefore, the greatest affection and admiration for the police in Northern Ireland and nothing I shall say today is intended to detract from the courageous and selfless way in which that service has borne the brunt of 21 years of terrorism. On the contrary, it is intended to highlight the need for a much more realistic approach to the whole problem of policing in an area where the threat is such that every day is a trial not only for the individual policeman but for his family.

Having stated my personal interest in the RUC, I must make it clear that what I am about to say is not motivated by any narrow or sectional interest, but is exclusively in the interests of all the law-abiding people in the community and of Northern Ireland in general.

Year after year, the Chief Constable's report is presented, and for the eight years that I have been an elected Member here I have analysed it with deep concern, because I have seen everything that I believe in and all that I was sent here to represent and uphold eroded by the men of violence. Perhaps in that situation one falls into the trap of believing what one would like to believe. I have on such occasions always looked to the future in the hope that it would be better than the past.

But on 5 July this year it was different. The Chief Constable on this occasion left the long-suffering people of Northern Ireland totally outraged when, after 21 years of terrorism, all he could promise them was:

"The immediate outlook is grim. We are facing the highest terrorist threat in the last two years."

Some may commend his frankness, but finding a Chief Constable reduced to such pessimism caused me to look even more closely than usual at his report.

I could not help but recall the promises which were made in the House in November 1985 by the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he told us that the Anglo-Irish Agreement would bring about peace, stability and reconciliation, an end to megaphone diplomacy and better cross-frontier co-operation and extradition. Not one of those promises has been kept. I looked anew at the report and found that it confirmed everything about which I have continued to warn the Government. No one has listened. Will the Minister today listen to the facts produced by the Chief Constable and to other information which I intend to provide?

One must look at what the report says and at what it fails to say. It has many fine words and phrases. It says:

"United unequivocal condemnation is a powerful weapon in defence of decency and all those values which we, the police and the people, share, cherish and seek to uphold."

It also says:

"The task of bringing terrorists to justice requires determined people of goodwill to come forward and assist the police. Only in this way, together, will we be able to bring an end to the misery which affects our whole community."

Those are fine words but we all know that in the prevailing security situation there is no way in which such people of good will can be given any degree of protection if they choose to assist the security forces.

Such is the freedom with which terrorists can operate that contractors supplying the security forces are regularly attacked or killed or forced to withdraw their services. Policemen and women are so vulnerable that for their own protection they are having to move in increasing numbers to live in carefully selected estates. There are more and more large areas where they are being advised not to live since they cannot count on reasonable security there.

Yet the Chief Constable fails to tell us how many members of the service have, because of threat, been forced to move home, and he neglects to even acknowledge the contribution and sacrifices which are being made by those who supply goods and services to the security forces.

Those of us who live in Northern Ireland know that during the past six years in particular, there has been a systematic withdrawal of effective policing in many areas. The Chief Constable of Northern Ireland may deny that there are strictly no-go areas, but everyone knows for certain that there are slow-go areas. Because of the threat, people who live in them cannot expect any immediate police or Army reaction when they are in trouble.

The ordinary police officer is often willing to respond to calls for help, but is forbidden from doing so because of inadequate resources in terms of manpower, military back up, or helicopter availability. The use of helicopters is a key element in the movement of security forces to areas in which the IRA may have placed land mines.

I quote from a letter that I received from a police superintendent to whom I had complained about a lack of response to an incident in a town—not in some remote rural area:

"I am pleased to note that you have identified that scarce resources was the contributory factor on the occasion under investigation. Any representations you can make to assist in this aspect will be much appreciated."

That is the kind of reply that I receive again and again from middle-ranking police officers who are doing their best to give a service to the community, but who must choose between putting at risk of life and limb the men under their command and making an immediate response to members of the public who are in trouble.

How did that tragic and frightening state of affairs come about? It has arisen because Minister after Minister has come to the Dispatch Box to tell the House what he likes to believe, and which he has been told by senior police and military officers and by advisers, who know what the Minister would like to believe. It has been one great con game, and in no respect has it been more deceitful than in the way in which co-operation with the Irish Republic has been portrayed. It is to the shame of every right hon. and hon. Member that he or she has fallen for that sham.

I draw the attention of the House to a few incidents that I have monitored, but they do not reflect the totality of such incidents in my constituency, where there is an interface between Fermanagh and South Tyrone, and between the counties of Donegal, Cavan, Leitrim and Monaghan. They give some idea of what is hidden from the House.

On 27 January 1990, a van stolen in Dublin was used two days later in a bomb attack on a police station at Lisbellaw. On 21 February, a mortar attack was made on Kinawley RUC station, and the three vehicles used were abandoned by the terrorists, who then escaped at the frontier crossing. On 6 June, a gun attack on one of our manned frontier checkpoints was launched from the Republic, from behind the Garda and Irish army cordon. On 25 June, a van stolen in County Monaghan was used in a 400 lb bomb attack on an Army checkpoint.

On 3 September last year, security forces at a cross-frontier position were fired on from the Republic, and on 27 October, a heavy machine gun attack on helicopters was made from the Republic, again from behind a Garda and Irish army cordon. On 23 November, a young man was abducted from Northern Ireland, taken across to the Republic, and there forced to drive a 3,000 lb proxy bomb to an Army checkpoint.

At the beginning of December, another machine gun attack on an Army checkpoint was made from the Republic, and on 27 December, another cross-frontier machine gun attack was launched. On 21 January this year, a constituent of mine, Colin Stephenson—a 63-year-old ex-policeman—was murdered in Brookborough. The car used by the terrorists had been stolen in County Monaghan on 11 December.

On 22 March, there was another cross-frontier shooting, and on 24 March, a sustained machine gun attack was made from the Republic on an Army patrol. On 8 April, a woman was abducted in the Republic and was forced to carry a bomb to Balleek RUC station. On 24 May, a motorcycle stolen in County Monaghan was used later that day in a murder attempt on an RUC inspector. On 3 June, there was an attack on St. Angelo security base. The lorry used and the mortars attached to it had been brought from. County Donegal. On 23 June, a mortar attack was launched from the Republic on one of our Army positions.

Other incidents come to mind, such as the cross-border attack on the home of Lord Caledon, and several attacks on the Moy bridge permanent vehicle checkpoint. All those attacks originated in the Irish Republic, but no one has been made amenable by the Republic's authorities to answer for any of them.

The Chief Constable's report suggests that relationships with the Republic are good. Hooray for relationships. Perhaps one should listen to the words of Deputy Brendan McGahan, a Fine Gael member of the Irish Parliament, following the murder a few days ago of Thomas Oliver, who was abducted in the Republic and shot by the IRA for allegedly passing information to the Garda. Mr. McGahan referred to the IRA killers as "the border untouchables" and said:

"There are nests of IRA men who are clearly identifiable. The Garda know who they are, but they need evidence. I believe that the whole area"—

that is, the Cooley peninsula and the Dundalk area—

"should become the centre of tremendous attention from the Garda and the Minister for Justice."

Deputy McGahan went on to call for internment. I think that he and I are the realists—not the two Governments. We have much in common here.

It is not just at Cooley that the IRA has the upper hand. I draw attention to the absolute freedom with which an IRA unit more than 30 strong is able to wreak havoc and murder in the west of my constituency from County Donegal.

The leader of Fine Gael, Deputy John Bruton, realises the full implications from the point of view of the Irish Republic. He has said:

"They are attempting to take on the institutions of the state and are offering a direct challenge to the Garda Siochana. This has very severe implications for the security of the state and for the people living in the state."

That was the reaction to an isolated IRA killing in the Republic—thankfully not so many killings emanate from within the Republic against citizens of that country. Yet we have had to endure that without remission for 22 years and our Government treat the situation as though it had been happening only for the past two weeks and will be resolved within the next two.

The Chief Constable talks about his satisfaction with the state of co-operation, but I can only believe that he does so to please his political masters and at their instigation. Co-operation is not about two neighbouring police chiefs who get on well together, about the freedom of a few senior officers to meet each other, or about the frequency with which RUC commanders are summoned to the Maryfield establishment to exchange platitudes. Co-operation is about the extent to which the war against terrorism is conducted and that is as ineffective now as it was before the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed—perhaps more so because there are more constraints, more bureaucracy and less real communication between policemen who have to face terrorists at the coal face.

That is not sour grapes—it is the truth. I challenge the Minister to produce a solitary fact that will contradict what I have said. I challenge him to say that one fact that I have placed in front of him, through my own resources of from the Chief Constable's report, is an error.

As regards the killings, the Chief Constable shows in his report that, from 1981 until 1985, there had been a steady but slow decline in the annual rate. As a result, terrorist deaths fell from 101 in 1981 to 54 in 1985. That figure of 54 refers to deaths connected with the security situation. There were 47 terrorist murders in that year, but let me stick to the chief constable's figures. Since the agreement was signed, the average annual death rate has increased by almost 43 per cent. and the number of shooting incidents has risen from 237 in 1985, by a massive 135 per cent., to 559. I wish that the Secretary of State would stop asking me if that was not attributable to successful gun-running from Libya through the Irish Republic. I should have hoped that co-operation would by now have meant the discovery of more than 10 per cent. of the estimated 150 tonnes imported through the Republic at that time. Why has the Chief Constable failed to tackle that in his report?

If the number of killings has risen, surely one must at least expect a similar increase in successes against terrorists, but that is not so. Despite the massive increase in arms and explosives available to the terrorists there are roughly about the same finds as in 1985. What has changed drastically is the number of people charged with terrorist offences. While an average of around 600 were charged each year from 1981 to 1985, only 380 were charged in 1990. Why has the Chief Constable nothing to say about that figure?

Is it not a fact that such are the political pressures on the Chief Constable that law-abiding citizens are getting a thoroughly bad deal and that he has failed to withstand the unprecedented political interferences from both the Northern Ireland Office and the Republic's Government? Let the Minister tell me the respective numbers and ranks of those who work in complaints and discipline and those who struggle at the coal face in special branch. Do those numbers bear any relevance to the respective size of the problem?

Is it not true that complaints and discipline are largely abused for political and terrorist advantage and that of 4,132 complaints lodged, 55·4 per cent. were withdrawn, 38·5 per cent. were not substantiated, 4·6 per cent. were of such a minor nature that they were informally resolved and only 1·5 per cent. were substantiated? Why has the Chief Constable not commented on the abuse of the system and the resultant waste of police time, not merely affecting those who are investigating but those who too often have to be suspended from duty for long periods while they are investigated? Should he not be asking for some form of redress against those who waste police time in that way?

Why have we not heard from the Chief Constable about the number of security bases which have been made inoperable or ineffective by terrorist activity? How many of his own police stations have been wholly or partially knocked out of action, and the issue of replacement put on the long finger? What is his approach to the systematic destruction of the Birches, Tynan, Loughgall and Benburb and the virtual closure of Moy—all within a 10-mile radius? Why are the public, to whom he appeals for more help, not being told what is to happen? He heads up their police force, not that of any Secretary of State for Northern Ireland of any Foreign Minister of the Republic.

On the question of welfare, let me ask why the health and welfare of the officers merits but a single statistical paragraph plus another which alludes to the computerisation of medical records, when we know that a 13,000-strong police force has a total of 226,652 days lost through sickness? What is the level of nervous disorders, and heart disease, for instance? Where is the concern for officers and their families who suffer similar illnesses, which of course cannot be recorded? The public should know about that.

Why is there no mention of the hundreds of members of the full-time police reserve—some of whom have now served for almost 20 years—who do exactly the same job as regular officers but are still without any pension rights? Should the Chief Constable not be making the public aware that the Government are bad employers in that respect? Is it not important that he should highlight how it is virtually impossible, for security reasons, for a full-time reserve officer to find alternative employment if he leaves the force and how he is obliged to live on social security between the time he retires and the time he qualifies for the ordinary state pension?

The Chief Constable refers to his request for 441 additional regular officers, and welcomes the Police Authority's support for that. He tells us he awaits a response from the Northern Ireland Office. But are those the facts?

As long ago as the spring of 1987, the then Chief Constable, Sir John Hermon, made a detailed case to the authority for a huge increase in the establishment of the RUC, which had been static from 1984. The response from the authority, with the approval of the Secretary of State, was an interim increase of 250 in the establishment of the full-time reserve, pending further consideration of the main bid by Her Majesty's inspectorate, the Police Authority and the Secretary of State.

The main bid was the subject of detailed analysis and discussion with the then Chief Constable by Her Majesty's inspectorate but the matter did not come back to the Police Authority within Sir John's period of command, which ended in May 1989. Shortly after his appointment in the summer of 1989, the new Chief Constable initiated a new manpower review. That resulted in a request to the authority for an increase in establishment of approximately 450 officers. The case had been prepared in accordance with Home Office guidelines and scrutinised by Her Majesty's inspectorate. It was the subject of several intensive discussions between the RUC, HMI and the authority in the autumn of 1990.

Ultimately, the authority was satisfied with the case and forwarded it to the Secretary of State in October or November last year, with its full support. Since then the case seems to have become absolutely bogged down in the bureaucracy of the Northern Ireland Office with the result that, incredibly, the Secretary of State told the House:

"In the first instance, the Chief Constable made a submission to the Police Authority, which in due course, will come to me."

In fairness to him, however, he said almost a moment later:

"I am considering that request with all the seriousness that it demands."—[Official Report, 11 July 1991; Vol. 194, c. 1071.]

But it is highly probable that his first remark was right and that his second was a typical gentlemanly attempt to cover up for the torpidity of the bureaucracy that services him and his Department.

In the context of the abysmal security situation that now prevails, the way in which the matter has been handled is an absolute disgrace. The blame lies fairly and squarely with the Northern Ireland Office and, I am sorry to have to say, with the leadership of the Police Authority which is unfortunately subservient to the patronage of the Northern Ireland Office.

The Chief Constable's report is superficial and fails properly to reflect the true position. Perhaps that has been the norm, but it must change. If we are to have a Government information document, so be it; but let it not be the Chief Constable's report. Let us have something which is no longer hedged about with political considerations. The public do not require a pep talk or a whitewash. They know that they are being daily let down by the Government and what the level of effective security really is.

It is not up to the Chief Constable to act as an apologist for the Northern Ireland Office. He must be accountable to the public through the Police Authority. Of course, one must sympathise with the Chief Constable in this because the Police Authority has not managed to escape the manipulation of the Government. The relationship between the Police Authority and the Chief Constable is unsatisfactory.

The Police Authority was set up in 1970 in order to remove the RUC from political influence. Is it not then anomalous for the Chief Constable of the RUC to be obliged on a regular basis to interface with the Anglo-Irish Conference on matters which are never disclosed to the Police Authority or discussed with it and are cloaked from the public, the majority of whom are opposed to the process, but from whom the Chief Constable expects trust and support?

A series of questions arises from areas of policing in Northern Ireland, not all of which I shall have time to put. They deal with the relationship with the Police Authority and the attitude to it. One wonders about the morale of the RUC at the level of chief superintendent and above, following such a disappointment and calculated slight as was caused by the exclusion of internal candidates from the shortlist when the present Chief Constable was appointed.

There are persistent rumours of difficulties between the Chief Constable and the chairman of the authority. The latter, by the nature of his appointment, is dependent on the support and patronage of the Secretary of State and, as a result, he must be considerably restricted in his independence.

Another matter which causes me great anxiety is that it is alleged that the Chief Constable intends to abolish the three senior assistant chief constable ranks and replace them with a deputy chief constable. I hope that that is not so, because the people who at present occupy those ranks are three of the most experienced, principled and independent police officers—men who are concerned first and foremost with the welfare of those under their command and with the needs of the community.

There are many other questions that I should have liked to ask, such as why the Northern Ireland Office found it important to remove at one fell swoop 11 of 18 members of the Police Authority when in so doing it removed those who presently occupy the positions of chairman and vice-chairman within the four main committees. The new appointees are completely green about Police Authority work and will be immediately pressed into the positions of chairman and vice-chairman in those committees. I cannot believe—I declare myself as an Ulster Unionist in saving so—that there was not some malice behind the way in which those men, two of whom served in the security services and one of whom experienced horrific injuries in giving that service, were removed from the service.

I challenge the Minister today. I have dealt with the facts. Let him deny the facts that I have put before him. I have posed questions on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland, which deserve an answer. I finish as I started by saying that we have 13,000 dedicated police officers in Northern Ireland. With their families, they sacrifice a great deal on behalf of the community. They deserve more and the community deserves more. Let us all hope that we obtain more than we have been given until now.

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) on initiating this debate on an important subject. It is important not only to hon. Members, as he made clear, and to the Government, as I shall make clear, but, as he was right to say, to all people who live in Northern Ireland.

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman started his speech by paying tribute to the Chief Constable. I echo that tribute. Given the job that all chief constables have to do in the United Kingdom—it is not an easy job in any circumstances, as the House is well aware—there are special difficulties in being Chief Constable of the RUC. I am happy to associate the Government with the tribute that the hon. Gentleman paid to the Chief Constable. I am glad that he paid it because in the rest of his speech there was a degree of robustness about some of his comments which will be studied with care by those to whom they were directed.

I do not dispute the hon. Gentleman's right to express his views or those of his constituents, or to reflect the views of the federation to which he quite properly referred. However, he and I both understand the importance of reflecting those views within a balanced framework, so that we do not create an impression that would be unhelpful to those whom we oppose. We must not create the impression that matters in Northern Ireland are worse than they are, or that we are not encouraged by and proud of what the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the reserve achieve on behalf of the community. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees with those sentiments.

The hon. Gentleman will understand that he took a significant proportion of the time available and there is no way in which I can answer all the points that he raised, but the Government and, I am sure, the Chief Constable will want to read and reflect on his remarks. A number of questions that he raised about the Chief Constable's report are matters for the Chief Constable. Given the strictures in his speech and his remarks about the relationship between the Northern Ireland Office and the Chief Constable, I shall leave the Chief Constable to answer; otherwise, I shall expose myself to even more strictures the next time that the hon. Gentleman makes a speech on that subject.

To suggest that Ministers believe that the security problems of Northern Ireland started two weeks ago and will finish two weeks hence is not a reflection on Ministers but an untypical reflection on the hon. Gentleman, who knows better. He knows the record of the Government's commitment and he also knows, better than most hon. Members, that the security forces and the RUC are not divorced from Government. It is the Secretary of State's responsibility to set security policies. No one argues that the RUC is not operationally independent, but if the hon. Gentleman reads what he has said in Hansard he will see that he has given the impression that he would like the RUC to be almost divorced from Government. The relationship is entirely proper and Ministers are not involved in making operational decisions. Given the tone of the hon. Gentleman's speech, he may take some comfort from that.

The Chief Constable has a responsibility to convey to the people of Northern Ireland how he sees the circumstances at any particular time. As the hon. Gentleman rightly stated, the Chief Constable said that the threat is higher than it has been for the past two years. To extrapolate from that statement, as the hon. Gentleman sought to do, that there had been no improvement over the years and that we could not look forward to a bright future does not do justice to the Chief Constable. The hon. Gentleman knows better than almost any hon. Member that the level of terrorist violence is cyclical—that is not technically the best word, but it ebbs and flows. It is therefore right to recognise the advantages and successes, just as it is appropriate to recognise the difficult times. To chastise the Chief Constable for drawing attention to his honest assessment, which the hon. Gentleman would surely want the people of Northern Ireland to have, is unfortunate.

Although I cannot, off the top of my head, verify that every incident to which the hon. Gentleman referred emanated from the Republic, no one could deny that there have been incidents emanating from across the border. That cannot be denied because it is on public record, so the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that Ministers were trying to protect hon. Members from that knowledge does not stand up. People have committed crimes in Northern Ireland and then gone across the border. It is also a matter of public record that crimes have emanated from inside Northern Ireland and people have gone to ground there having committed those crimes.

The hon. Gentleman's arguments would have been more balanced had he also referred to the Garda's activities in terms of what they positively achieve, as well as expressing legitimate concerns. To the year ending 31 May this year, the Garda recovered 59 weapons, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 58·2 kg of explosives. That did not just happen. It reflects police work and co-operation across the border between the RUC and the Garda. The hon. Gentleman is asked not only by Ministers but by the Chief Constable to accept that, although security relations across the border can and need to be improved, the relations between the RUC and the Garda are, I am told, very good. They are improving not at a social or professional level but at an operational level, which is the point that the hon. Gentleman sought to make. That is important to us both.

Will the Minister give way?

No, I shall not give way, because the hon. Gentleman spoke for 33 minutes and I have only about 13 minutes in which to respond.

He will also want to join me in thanking the Garda for detecting the largest bomb—I believe that it was found at Raphoe—that has ever been seen in the island of Ireland. Had that bomb made it across the border, the damage that it would have done and the number of lives that it would have taken would have been enormous. It is therefore important that we keep that balance in mind.

A further point that was emphasised by the hon. Gentleman and which deserves a reply was about resources. The hon. Gentleman will have welcomed the fact that the Police Authority budget for this year is £43 million higher than it was last year, which represents a 9 per cent. increase. Any requests from the Police Authority during the year are given careful consideration, but a 9 per cent. increase is not bad. As the hon. Gentleman made play of the past five years, he may be encouraged to know that during that period the Police Authority grant has risen from £380 million to £514 million—a rise of £134 million. Alongside that, as the hon. Gentleman rightly remarks, there is a manpower bid for 239 regular officers and 202 full-time RUC reserves to be appointed and trained over two years. That is considerable additional funding.

The hon. Gentleman also recognised that the Northern Ireland Office has a legitimate responsibility to look at those requests for public expenditure. Naturally, they must be set against other requests for public expenditure, bearing in mind that the defeat of terrorism is our first priority. That process is nearing completion and the Secretary of State hopes soon to be in a position to respond to that request. The resources argument is helped by the fact that civilianisation of the force is proceeding, and that will provide extra police on the ground. It is also helped by the fact that the Chief Constable is pursuing a policy of centralising and looking for economies of scale. Centralising support services will, in turn, free resources to be deployed on the ground. The hon. Gentleman and I agree that that is where manpower resources need to be deployed.

I do not have time to answer all the hon. Gentleman's questions but I want to respond to one point that he made. The security forces and the police are at the heart of the fight against terrorism in Northern Ireland, but they cannot fight by themselves. It must be a community effort. Everyone must feel part of the fight against terrorism and the support for the RUC and the security forces. The hon. Gentleman and I will agree, I hope, that that support is increasing. Intelligence is improving and becoming more frequent. As that continues, the security forces and the RUC, together with the people, will drive back the terrorist threat——

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise for interrupting the Minister, but I understand that 11 o'clock is the time when statement are usually made. I therefore ask whether you have had a request from the Government this morning to make a statement about the pollution of water supplies. As you know, there was a statement earlier this week about an incident that was deemed to be serious and there was criticism of the delay in notifying the public.

Within the past hour, it has come to my attention that an even more serious incident occurred on 26 December last year. It affected my constituents and those of many other hon. Members. Nobody, but nobody, was told anything. The incident has only now come to light through the media.

Since this incident was more serious than the one discussed earlier, should not there be a statement, and should not the Government conduct an inquiry into the incident and into why there has been silence for so long?

I am not aware of any requests for a statement on this matter, but I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman's point will have been noted.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to raise the subject of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, and in particular the need for the United Kingdom to return to its membership without delay. I hope that my hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) and for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) will be allowed to join our brief debate. Both are members of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and both have taken a close interest in UNESCO for many years.

The House will know of Britain's dominant influence in establishing UNESCO at a preparatory conference held at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London in November 1945. Its secretariat was initially based in London. Its first director general was British and its constitution was deposited in London. Its accounts were audited by the United Kingdom Comptroller and Auditor General.

I have no doubt that, while it was a member, Britain was especially favourably treated. A number of consultancies and contracts were placed by UNESCO with United Kingdom individuals and companies. The Library Association told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that the United States and the United Kingdom

"have together provided the overwhelming majority of librarians, archivists and other information scientists sent by UNESCO as consultants and advisors."

The United Nations Association told the same Committee:

"leaving aside unquantified yields to eg the British publishing industry … the United Kingdom reaps a measurable harvest from its membership."

In short, the United Kingdom receipts from the UNESCO budget were substantially in excess of its direct budgetary contribution—our balance of payments benefited.

I spoke in the debate in November 1985 after the Foreign Affairs Committee had unanimously recommended continued United Kingdom membership of UNESCO, as had the officers of the Conservative foreign affairs committee. Thirteen of the 14 members from all parties who spoke after the Minister for Overseas Development supported our continued membership. The one who did not was given a brief by a Whip and invited to call for our withdrawal. He got his reward on earth and is now a Minister. I suspect that he is ashamed of that little episode, so I will not name him this morning.

Alas, the Government spurned the advice of Parliament and, I believe, the advice of the Foreign Office, and Britain withdrew from membership at the end of 1985. The Government spurned the advice of scientific, educational and cultural institutions. They also spurned the unanimous opinion of our European Community and Commonwealth partners that we should not take the easy option and back out. I suspect that the decision to withdraw was taken by the Prime Minister of the day at a time when British foreign policy was far too closely allied with that of the Reagan Administration.

For much the same reason, we also abandoned all the fine work that we had put into the law of the sea, which had also clearly been in our national interest. The United States-based Heritage Foundation was allowed to play a large part in moulding British official and public opinion. At that time, as Mr. Gough Whitlam pointed out, the foundation was running campaigns attacking the United Nations and its agencies. Many foreign policy decisions taken during that period were regarded on both sides of the House as going against our international traditions and our worldwide roles and responsibilities.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will be aware that there is still a certain amount of tidying up to be done.

I should like to make it clear that I am by no means starry-eyed about UNESCO. On the contrary, I am well aware of just how badly managed it has been and of how far it strayed from its original course. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, who has kindly come along to reply to this debate, had not yet entered the House when I initiated an Adjournment debate on some of the wilder aspects of the new world information order, as it was then called.

I strongly support the principle of universality while much disliking the word itself. There has been bipartisan support for it in the House for many years. We make a great mistake if we go on picking and choosing which United Nations body or agency we desire to belong to. The hostile Commonwealth reaction to our withdrawal—Commonwealth countries rightly felt badly let down after giving us so much support within UNESCO—partly reflected the high premium placed by Commonwealth and third-world countries on the principle of universality in the membership of the United Nations and its agencies. Every breach of that principle is seen by many as devaluing the entire United Nations system.

The Foreign Affairs Committee concluded in its 1985 report:

"a breach by the United Kingdom of the principle of universality in the UN and its Agencies could have long-term, and damaging, consequences for those organisations, and not merely for UNESCO alone."

I suggest that in the long run we shall put at risk our seat on the Security Council. It is already a matter of comment at the United Nations, where other countries such as Germany and Japan are seen to have a good case for Security Council membership.

Looking back on the foolish withdrawal in 1985, it becomes obvious that the United Kingdom's contribution to UNESCO was more fully appreciated in UNESCO than in the United Kingdom. There was genuine regret at our departure. Our contribution was seen as having been at a much higher level than that of the United States. Looking back, it is also obvious that much of the row was about the influence of the Soviet Union and its allies in eastern Europe. Thank heavens that in 1991 we live in a very different world.

My hon. Friend the Minister will want to tell us—no doubt he has been briefed to do so—that, although UNESCO has made considerable changes, they are still insufficient for our return. I fear that he will be in danger of sounding like Mr. Shamir, who, in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, is always in favour of talks, while always putting obstacles in the way of them—as we heard on the radio this morning. Some Conservative Members will want to argue that UNESCO has now reformed itself sufficiently to allow us to go back, but my case is different. I believe that the Government let Britain down by quitting. It is in the national interest to rejoin—the sooner the better.

All pro-European Conservative Members have used the argument that we needed to be in UNESCO so that we could influence decisions and those who make them. We have said that it was not good enough to react to those decisions. Precisely the same arguments apply in this debate. We walked off the pitch in a huff, leaving our team to continue the struggle for reform in which, up to then, we had played an honourable part. Now, we wail and whinge from the sidelines instead of returning to the vacant place in the team.

My hon. Friend the Minister told me in a letter dated 3 July:

"We believe that we can exert real influence on the process from where we now stand."

I do not accept that. This is a crucial year in the charting of UNESCO's future. The place that we left is being filled with other national interests, to the detriment of British language users and British interests in general. My hon. Friend will no doubt say that we are monitoring, reviewing, surveying and checking. We have put up £50,000 to fund a management review by independent consultants of UNESCO's office of public information. My hon. Friend the Minister is smiling; he no doubt has a section of his speech devoted to that issue.

We must stop being a spectator and start being a player. We would be a strong player on the managerial and administrative side. The United Kingdom is badly needed, not just for financial reasons. Both the United Kingdom and America are needed if effective reforms are to be carried through. I regret the loss of the United Kingdom's input into the academic, scientific and educational programmes, of which Japan and France are rightly taking full advantage. The truth is that, while we monitor, the United Kingdom and its influence is marginalised.

I hope that my hon. Friend will refer to early-day motion 122, which shows how much support there is in the House for our return. I hope that my hon. Friends will also refer to the recent Select Committee report as I do not have time to do so. I believe that, on a free vote, the House would come out overwhelmingly in favour of our return. I also believe that the non-governmental organisations are overwhelmingly in favour of our return. We shall return one day, and we lose every day that we fail to do so.

How can the United Kingdom influence UNESCO's policies on science education if it has no part in their formulation? There must be a danger that our absence will be accepted as the norm, and a vital sector of academic and scientific activity will be closed to the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future. It is astonishing that we are failing to use UNESCO to promote English as the major means of communication in the modern world. We are setting a bad example to the world. We should announce our return and pledge our determination to help UNESCO clean up its act and return to the high standards that we helped it to achieve after world war two.

Fundamentalism is rampant today, not only in the middle east. Our country has a fine record as a practitioner of the tolerant approach. We should be demonstrating that approach in 1991 in UNESCO. The way forward for Britain is not to sulk and opt out, rather to participate, co-operate and use our special talents in Rolls-Royce diplomacy to help UNESCO to get over its undoubted problems and carry out the vital task that it has been given by the peoples of the United Nations.

It is a pleasure to support my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) in this debate. I was pleased that he gained a place in the ballot.

On a day when, because of a little local difficulty, people are talking about the value of Select Committees, this debate shows their true value. We have taken a consistent view and considered evidence from the widest possible range of participants. We did so in 1985, when the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs decided that we should not have left UNESCO. That decision was taken in liaison with some members of the United States Congress who also opposed America's peremptory withdrawal. We were to follow a year later.

In 1990, we had another review and talked to a wide range of people. We absorbed the sort of evidence that Select Committees should consider, and came to a balanced and dispassionate view, which was that much progress had been made by Professor Mayor since the original criticisms were levelled in 1985 which caused us to leave.

Although we were opposed to our leaving, believing that we would be best able to reorganise the organisation from inside, not outside, we charted the reforms which had been introduced by Professor Mayor with considerable energy, and which had then been carried out. We thought that, as wise men, we should give the Government the benefit of the doubt and said that we thought that the reform process was moving extremely well. We said that, although there was a little to do, if the process continued at the pace it had until then, the Government should consider returning within a year. We did not recommend an immediate return because we felt that our suggestion of one year was appropriate to the pace of reform. Now that year is up—this is 1991—which is why we are having today's debate.

There has been some movement in the Government, and we have said that we are moving in the same direction as the Government but at a different pace. For the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath has described, the Select Committee feels that we should return now. The Government have said that they will give £50,000 to review the work of UNESCO and then have another period of consideration.

Our original fundamental concerns remain. First and foremost, we believe that the longer we stay out, the less integrated much of what Britain has to offer in the critical spheres of education, science and culture will become. We have been out of UNESCO for six years; if we push that period to a decade, the integration achieved through our excellence in those three critical spheres, which included a better balance of payments figure, will be lost. Therefore, we are on the sidelines during the most critical decade.

Many of us recognise that the decade of the 1990s is a critical period in which we are seeking to narrow the gap between the developed world and the developing world. The process of education is critical in the developing world. In an earlier debate today we talked about mass emigration from Vietnam to Hong Kong for economic reasons. I also gather that, today, there are problems in Italy, where there are 24,000 Albanians whom Italy wants to send back. That is just the tip of a massive potential emigration to the developed world of peoples from countries where they believe themselves to be less fortunate and more deprived. That is one of the most important spheres in which UNESCO can help, together with other United Nations organisations.

Education is critical; we must ensure that people throughout the world are as well educated as possible. Only on that basis can people start to bring their own countries up to a high standard, revive the economy, and consistently provide the sort of environment in which people want to live. If countries are not able to do that, the consequences for future generations will be beyond anything that we have ever faced before.

It is for those reasons, plus the fact that we should attempt to achieve successful reform from within, that we are today arguing that my hon. Friend the Minister should shorten the pace of his interest. I am delighted that he is interested and has announced that the Government are to fund a review. However, he should shorten the pace and work to a sensible time scale that enables Britain to play a full part in UNESCO. As soon as possible in London, we should work with the people who first established UNESCO and who hold the relevant documents.

At the end of his statement at the recent 136th session of the executive board, Professor Mayor said:

"It has been said that a pessimist is a well-informed optimist. As a scientist I respect the results. On occasions, these have made me a hopeful director general. I think that a hopeful person may either be pessimistic or optimistic, but hopefulness implies more than being well-informed. It means being committed and involved."

I commend those words to my hon. Friend the Minister.

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) on obtaining this debate. It gives us an opportunity to review with my hon. Friend the Minister the progress that is being made with UNESCO.

It is worth reminding the House that UNESCO was founded in 1945 on the proposition that, if war is born of the ideas of man and out of their culture, peace could be born of the same. UNESCO was established in order to influence world thinking on how to keep the peace and prevent war. It is those fundamental ideas that UNESCO seeks to foster through education, science and culture. Science makes war much worse and makes it more likely to destroy mankind.

This nation is rich in culture and education. The English language dominates science and education throughout the world. However, we would be mistaken if we thought that the English language could be taken for granted. It is by no means the dominant human language—Chinese is spoken by many more people throughout the world. Therefore, our education, culture and language are at risk if we do not foster and support them and if we are not confident that they have a contribution to make to the world.

My plea to my hon. Friend the Minister arid the Government is on those philosophical grounds. If we begin to lose our pre-eminence and great fortune in dominating education and science, we will also lose out in philosophy and ideas. In doing so, we will deprive the world of what I believe is a developed form of government that permits progress and change without war. I believe that the ideas and issues of war and peace lie at the heart of this debate. Without our contribution, the world will be a much less safe place.

On the issue of universality, it is un-British to take one's ball away and refuse to play. That is what the Government did when they withdrew from UNESCO. It is British to stay in an organisation and to push for reform from within, to meet all the debates head on and put our arguments in a straightforward manner. That is in our democratic tradition. It is the tradition of the House and it is the way in which we seek to persuade and change. For Britain to withdraw is just a failure of courage. It is a failure of confidence in our own ideas and a failure to put them across and have them debated.

There were good reasons for withdrawal. UNESCO was going badly and sadly wrong and anybody who had to endure the endless executive board meetings of the annual conferences in remote parts of eastern Europe will attest to the extreme frustration that was engendered in anyone who was truly interested in promoting education, science and culture throughout the world. However, many of the reforms that we wished to see are now in place and the reductions of the programmes to which we objected, particularly the new world information order, have taken place by common consent. They have been removed from the agenda and have been replaced, in the case of the new world information order, by a commitment to the freedom and pluralism of the press and the spreading of ideas. Freedom of the press is essential for democratic forms of government and for government by consent. Against my better judgment, the shock of the withdrawal of Britain and the United States may have brought about that reform more quickly than any other method.

We have also achieved a great deal towards decentralisation of the programmes from 80 per cent. of them being carried out in Paris to a large number of offices being established overseas. More needs to be done. UNESCO has also reformed its administration and management, which was seriously in need of repair. Many of the reforms have been put in place by the current director-general who appointed the Hammarskjold and Wilenski committees to deal with the personnel administration. It is promised that all those reforms will be implemented by next October. The director-general also ensured that a concentration of programmes took place, thus eliminating many of the serious objections that we had when we withdrew.

The director-general has also appointed an administrator of great and proven worth, Mr. Sharma, who was previously with Air India. He has implemented many additional reforms in the management of the organisation. Nobody would pretend that those reforms are complete or perfect, but they are moving strongly in the right direction.

The Japanese Government have made a constructive proposal on how the board should be reformed. Over the years it has become far too large and is not capable of acting as an executive committee to control the director-general and his staff and move them in the directions in which the international community would wish. The sub-committee on executive and financial advice to the board is welcome and I hope that it will he supported.

Britain needs to be there to support Japan and the European Economic Community partners, all of whom have recently expressed to a visitor from the United Nations Association, Mr. Rashid Kareh, that they wish the United Kingdom to return to UNESCO. I should like to pay tribute to Mr. Kareh for helping to persuade the Government to return to UNESCO. He recently visited all our European partners, including France, Spain and Germany, and they said that they wanted Britain to return to UNESCO to make the reforms work. The same has been said by Japan, Switzerland and Sweden and the Commonwealth. African Commonwealth countries feel let down by Britain's absence because they see overtaking them in UNESCO councils the francophile culture and language promoted by the French and by French-speaking African countries. The English language countries of Africa feel that they do not have the support and friendship that they could expect when Britain was present.

If this is a universal call for a return from our principal allies, and if it is essentially in our own interests and the interests of world order and culture, we should return. There is one overriding reason for return which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe. If there is to be development in much of the third world—over two thirds of the world's population—education must take place. That education would be best based on the British culture and English language, carrying with it the ideas which we have sedulously matured and which we guard, not just in the form of political ideas but ideas of how one person or one culture relates to another.

If we do not do that, other cultures will take over. Much evidence shows that the Islamic culture is expanding in northern China, often with the support of UNESCO and the French; but where is the British culture, education and language? It is nowhere to be seen. That is a dangerous position for us. Without education, without the elimination of illiteracy, to which UNESCO is devoted, and without our help, we shall not bring about the development of those countries.

Britain has achieved its objectives by leaving UNESCO. It should return immediately to foster the things that we believe in, which UNESCO is pursuing. It should do so now.

May I publicly express my warm congratulations to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on the honour of the award of Privy Councillorship, which has given much pleasure to the entire House?

As the House knows, I served in the United Nations for several years. It may seem strange, therefore, that in 1985 I most strongly supported our withdrawal from UNESCO, which had become a scandal and a disgrace to the United Nations Organisation. Although in principle I most strongly agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend), for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) and for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), none the less I find the reforms disappointing because the objectives of UNESCO are not being met. In the circumstances, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give a cautious response to my hon. Friends.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) for raising this subject because it gives me the opportunity to explain the Government's thinking on it. I am sad that I shall be constrained to disagree with him and with my hon. Friends the Members for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) and for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester). I do not believe that Britain should rejoin UNESCO at present. I am sorry to disagree with them because, as they know, I have personal regard for all three of them. I am most grateful for the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Sir R. Rhodes James).

The United Kingdom was one of the founding members of UNESCO. In London, in 1945, UNESCO's constitution was adopted. The constitution is sound and I commend it to hon. Members. It refers, among other things, to the

"great and terrible war which has now ended",

and attributes the reasons for the conflict to the denial of the democratic principles, of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men, and by the propagation in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races. Those are high words.

Britain's attachment to those democratic principles, and to respect for human rights and fundamental reforms, was expressed not only in our support for UNESCO but was apparent in our commitment to building the United Nations system, and through that greater respect for the rule of law in international affairs.

Any debate on UNESCO should be careful to place the organisation in that wider context. The world and the United Nations have changed much since 1945. For all the difficulties that have been faced by the UN, much has been achieved in that time, and much remains to be done. Last week, the Heads of State and Government of the Group of Seven, meeting in London, stated their faith in the future of the United Nations. They committed themselves to working for a stronger United Nations and made clear their belief that a revitalised organisation would play a central role in strengthening the international order.

We are profoundly committed to those objectives. The ideals that prompted us and others to establish UNESCO 46 years ago are still respected by the United Kingdom. It was a matter of regret that we were compelled to withdraw from it at the end of 1985, but there is general recognition, even among many of the most vocal supporters of our renewed membership, that we were right to do so. I realise that my hon. Friends the Members for Bexleyheath, for Broxtowe and for Hertford and Stortford do not hold that view. Some of the reasons that prompted our withdrawal, especially the politicisation of UNESCO, are, I am glad to note, no longer applicable, but I am afraid that others remain.

At the beginning of last year, four years after our departure, two reviews of UNESCO were conducted—an internal review by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and a review by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Both arrived at broadly similar conclusions. They agreed that some improvements had been made since 1985 but that the United Kingdom should not return to membership.

In its report, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee decided that

"some more time is necessary before it will be possible to be certain of the Director-General's ability to deliver the reforms which UNESCO badly needs."

Those are significant words, because the delivery of reforms is what is necessary. In his reply to the Chairman of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury), agreed with that view but made it clear that we should not rejoin UNESCO until we were certain.

That shows the fundamental difference between my opinion and that of my three hon. Friends. They opposed our withdrawal in 1985. It follows that they believe that the logic of our position is that we should rejoin as soon as possible. But they lost that argument.

It was not an argument.

In a debating sense, they lost the argument. They failed to persuade colleagues in Government of the strength of their opinions. I was outside government at the time, but I strongly supported the Government's decision. My hon. Friends want us to rejoin because they never wanted us to leave. Those who felt that we had to leave do not believe that we should return. We must use our departure to effect the best reforms. I hope to explain how that will take place.

Since last year's reviews, there have been some welcome signs from UNESCO. No one would claim that progress has been fast, but it has begun. I am particularly pleased by the clear recognition of UNESCO member states that there is a need not only to talk about but to achieve reforms. As I said, so far, the achievements have been in short supply.

The last two sessions of UNESCO's executive board discussed fundamental improvements, but so far little has been done to meet expectations. We are not, therefore, certain about the delivery of reforms. Our doubts are shared by reform-minded members of UNESCO. In that context, I was interested to hear the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, because everyone knows that his commitment to the ideals of the United Nations is second to none.

At the executive board's last session, its 136th, in May and June, we continued to hear criticisms from members about administrative and financial matters, despite undertakings from the director-general to achieve improvements. In March, the director-general received a report—the Hammarskjold and Wilenski report—on the progress that had been achieved in implementing management proposals that were made in December 1989 and February 1990. It is clear from the report that many important proposals remain unimplemented and that little has been done to improve matters. The secretariat staff remains top-heavy. The promotion system is still unsatisfactory, and recruitment needs to be improved. Senior posts need to be pared and the status of women in the secretariat needs to be enhanced. I am glad to say that in the presence of my Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Hicks).

As well as the need to improve UNESCO's management and administration, we are convinced that greater decentralisation must take place. It is encouraging that member states have recognised and are addressing that problem. A study on decentralisation was presented to the last executive board. It concluded that UNESCO field offices often feel remote from headquarters, that they are inadequately supported and consulted, and generally underfunded. It was decided that further work should be done to indentify the patterns of decentralisation which would best serve the needs of the various regions. Of course I hope to see progress by the time of the next executive board in October, but I am concerned that it may yet prove difficult for UNESCO to translate useful, sensible recommendations into action.

What other improvements do we and others regard as important? We continue to believe that UNESCO must achieve real programme concentration. It has been difficult to gauge from the draft programme and budget for 1992–93 just how much concentration has been achieved, but there is almost certainly scope for more. I recognise that that may not always be easy. UNESCO has to establish real programme priorities, and stick to them. This inevitably means that low priority programmes, but ones that are often dear to individual member states, will not be carried out, yet this is necessary if UNESCO is to make the best use of its resources.

We were pleased that the next biennium's budget shows negative growth in real terms. This was very largely achieved by member states demanding that expenditure not absolutely necessary for the functioning of the organisation should be cut. It remains the case, however, that, as shown at the last executive board, it is not always easy to get satisfactory answers on budgetary matters.

The budget is difficult to interpret and detailed information is often difficult to obtain. The budget should be much more transparent. Member states would be able more easily to monitor budgetary and administrative issues if the functions of the executive board were improved.

We are generally sympathetic to the interest shown by the Japanese and other member states in trying to achieve a more efficient executive board. The Japanese proposals to amend the constitution are broadly acceptable to us and they have attracted widespread interest. In the middle of July the director-general had received various amendments to the Japanese proposals. It is now up to the general conference to decide the success of this important attempt at reform.

I think that our policy on UNESCO is well understood by its member states and I acknowledge that some members would like to see us rejoin. Equally, others appreciate that our close interest in the organisation may well have proved a catalyst for reform. We shall continue to pay close interest to developments in UNESCO. My hon. Friends have recognised that the recent fund of £50,000 that we have made available shows that we are not blind to the situation in UNESCO and wish to see honest and genuine progress so that one day we shall be able to rejoin a reformed organisation.

As I have said, we recently agreed to make up to £50,000 available to meet a request for help from UNESCO to carry out an independent management review study of its office of public information. This is an area where there is a clear need for cost cutting and reform. This decision clearly demonstrates our desire to see a suitably reformed body. It will be most interesting to see if UNESCO will find it possible to implement the recommendations of the consultants when they are available.

As I have made clear, we continue to support the ideals on which UNESCO—assisted by us—was founded. We shall continue to monitor developments closely and look forward to the day when we are able to rejoin a suitably reformed organisation. Before we can consider that, we must see concrete progress in several important areas. I hope that the next executive board, in September and October, and UNESCO's general conference in October and November, will lead to such progress.

I am pleased to have this opportunity immediately before the recess for a debate on the important matter of the Greater Glasgow health board and in particular on the financial constraints and the morale of patients and staff. That is a great worry for most people who are aware of what is happening in Greater Glasgow and in a sizeable part of my constituency.

I welcome the presence of the Minister. I think that he will confirm that the board has been underfunded this year by about £13 million and that it has been instructed to make further cuts of between £20 million and £40 million over the next two years. It is not surprising that rumours abound. In The Scotsman of 10 May there was an article headed:

"One-third of Glasgow's senior hospital doctors asked to quit."

I do not know whether that is true, but I know that the constraints are causing enormous problems. I hope that the Minister will seize this opportunity to enlighten us on Scottish Office thinking.

Much of what is happening affects Strathkelvin in Monklands, West. A few days ago in the House, my hon. Friend for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) expressed his worries about the long-term future of Stobhill. We are concerned about the immediate impact of decisions on the maternity and other units. Much of my speech will be devoted to the great problems of Stoneyetts hospital in Moodiesburn in the heart of my constituency which the board is determined to close.

What have such closures to do with community care? It is a serious decision and will have profound effects on the mortality rate, an issue which has not been given due consideration by the board. Few of my constituents understand why the board is so determined to close Stoneyetts after the minimum of consultation.

We are looking at the land and land values and some of us have reached an inescapable conclusion. I asked an independent valuer to assess the value of the land, and he said that it was worth between £6 million and £7·5 million. It may be worth even more if the board decides to sell the land to individual developers because it is a beautiful location and has the Campsies as a backdrop. I can find no other logical explanation for the stubborn way in which the board is proceeding with the proposals in spite of the damage that they are bound to cause to health care in my constituency.

Stoneyetts is the cheapest hospital to run in terms of mental health in Greater Glasgow or indeed in the whole of Scotland. The Scottish average weekly cost of a patient is £340 but in Stoneyetts the cost is £235. As the Minister may know, the hospital has 180 patients, whose ages range from 40 to 98, and they all suffer from mental or degenerative illness. I must pose the question that those patients, their friends and families, the staff of the hospital and the community ask. Where are those patients to be sent? We are told that some will go to Woodilee and some to Ruchill in Glasgow and some to Gartnavel on the other side of Glasgow. We have no means of knowing where the rest will go.

The board says that many of the patients have not come from the Moodiesburn area. That is true, but only 46 out of 180 come from the Ruchill and Gartnavel areas to which, we are told, many of them will be transferred. In any case, many of those people, after long years in that hospital, regard it as their home, their community.

I cannot understand why Ruchill is being considered as an appropriate location. As the board knows, I was there the other week, and I can see that there are security problems even with the new units. I can also see that the environment will cause difficulties if we want real community care. I take grave exception to the account of my visit that was apparently given to the board by a nursing officer when it was considering closure. I make it plain that, although I was impressed by the units, and take the view that they could serve very well purposes other than use in the mental illness sector, at no time did I express the view that that was a reasonable alternative to Stoneyetts or anywhere else. Nobody had the right to give the board that impression.

Over the years, the Greater Glasgow health board has had a strong view about Ruchill. For example, in a report, it said:

"The hospital, as becomes its name, is set on a hill. It is one of its defects in modern conditions … It is a serious disadvantage for elderly visitors."

It said that in 1975. Here we are in 1991 and the board is taking the view that Ruchill is a reasonable place for such patients to be sent. It is not, and we are entitled to a better explanation than we have so far received.

The new units at Gartnavel are set a mile and a half from the main hospital entrance and four miles from local amenities. Staff are very important, although I get the impression that the board is dismissing their views on any of these matters. They would have great difficulties in travelling from Moodiesburn and, in fairness, I should say that the board has conceded that single point. As with Ruchill, links between units for patients and the community will be virtually non-existent. If we are genuinely concerned about supporting patients, particularly with psychogeriatric and elderly patients in the mentally ill sector, the fact that buses do not run to Ruchill on Sundays from the Moodiesburn area is extremely important and should not be lightly dismissed.

I have often visited Stoneyetts, particularly in recent weeks. I know that many patients who know Ruchill and Gartnavel do not like the prospect of moving there. It may be acceptable for those who live in the area, and I do not contest the fact that there are modern facilities in the hospital. However, it is not all right to move people there from Lanarkshire and other distant parts and expect them to feel happy.

I am greatly worried about the consultation exercise that the board claims it undertook. I thought that it was a sham. I tried to make my contribution to getting the views of the communities when I arranged a well publicised public meeting in my constituency, in Moodiesburn. I invited the Minister, and I was sorry that he was not able to come. I invited the chairman of the Greater Glasgow health board, but he was not able to come either. Nevertheless, it was the biggest meeting that had ever been held in my constituency, and was widely representative of the churches, the community council, patients, families of patients and people in the community who are simply concerned about the future of the hospital.

In a secret ballot, those attending reached a unanimous view. Although I gave this information in writing to the board the following day, it is not recorded anywhere in its minutes. There was unanimous opposition to the closure of Stoneyetts and Birdston hospital in my constituency.

Despite the evidence that was given, the board dismissed the important issue of mortality rates after disruption. It said that the evidence on the matter was dubious or non-existent. That is an astonishing comment from a board that knows the story of Woodilee, which is next door to Stoneyetts. There was an evacuation in March 1987, and prior to that, 14 patients died every month. In 1987, 22 patients died in March and 27 in April. There is no doubt that there is evidence that disruption increases mortality rates. It has been found by several studies, including the Wandsworth district health authority's report of 1982, that the benefits of relocation cannot be offered without some increase in risk. A similar conclusion was reached by T. L. Coffman in 1981 in Gerontologist.

We have heard a great deal in recent days about citizens charters. I should like to know why the board did not take it upon itself to consult the most important group of people, the patients. Many of these people can vote in elections, but they were not consulted about their own future. Even the board had to record that there were 42 unsolicited letters from patients opposing the closure. These are people who are entitled to speak about their quality of life. Had advocacy existed—I understand that it is mentioned in passing in the citizens charter, and it was much in evidence in the Disabled Persons Act 1986—a great deal more would have been said.

The board has said that Stoneyetts is eccentrically located. It is not. As a result of new transport links, because of the Stepps and Cardowan railway station, because of improved local bus services, and above all because of the Stepps bypass, it is clear that there will be improvements.

I emphasise the importance of the community facilities that exist at Stoneyetts. I walked around them on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day. Some of the patients were taking part in a barbecue. They were happy and relaxed in a beautiful setting. Given the alternative arrangements that might be made I do not know anywhere else in Greater Glasgow where that could be done. People were walking at leisure in the grounds beside the hospital. None of that is available in Ruchill or elsewhere. People in the Stoneyetts community and in the wider community—Stoneyetts is recognised as being part of our locality—see real friendship. In the mining community, the Auchewleogh miners club welcomes the patients and offers them facilities. The same is true of the Knights of St. Columbo club. There is peace and tranquility which is fitting for this sort of community care. Unfortunately, it is not always to be found elsewhere.

I know that the Minister will recall that, sadly—none of this reflects on him—even in his constituency there were some difficulties when it was suggested that people with learning difficulties might live in a particular place. I know that such placings raise difficult issues. I emphasise that the Stoneyetts patients are extremely welcome in the community and that the community would be saddened if things changed.

Willie Copeland, who is involved in nursing, said:

"They are not allowing us to be progressive. We do not want to stay in the 50s and 60s. The health board is starving us of funds."

There is support for community care. Ricky MacManus, also someone working in nursing, said:

"Stoneyetts is basically well located. It is therapeutically inviting."

Jim Anderson, who is also involved in nursing, said: "This is their community." The fact is that community care is being taken from us.

The board argues that the hospital is in such a state that it must respond in the way that they have outlined. I am sure that the Minister will have the honesty to confirm that time after time I have drawn his attention, and that of the board, to the conditions that exist in Stoneyetts. I have asked for investment for refurbishment. During a previous debate on Woodilee and Stoneyetts, I said:

"I hope that the Minister will be convinced, and in due course will persuade the board, that there is still a need for both hospitals, a need to invest in those hospitals and a need to improve capital and revenue expenditure."—[Official Report, 29 January 1988; Vol. 145, c. 676.]

I am not too keen to listen to lectures on the rundown of the hospital. That was clearly a deliberate decision by the health board, so the responsibility lies with the health board. It is certainly not an excuse for closing the hospital, especially in the light of the overwhelming arguments for its retention.

I want to refer to the involvement of Strathclyde regional council. Is there any joint planning? Even the evidence offered by Professor Edwards was taken to be the view of the council, which had not discussed the matter. My regional councillor, Charles Grey, is opposed to the proposals, and he believes that there should be joint planning.

In view of the importance of these matters to my constituents, I ask the Minister to invite the Secretary of State to meet a delegation led by myself, and including people who work in the hospital and people from the wider community, so that he can listen to the views of those who know what they are talking about. Although the Minister could not attend the meeting that I held, I ask him to visit the hospital. I am sure that he would find it interesting. Before the Secretary of State makes a final decision—and the matter rests with him—in the interests of democracy the very least that we should expect is that he meets the delegation.

I want to refer to the health board's strategies for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped in Greater Glasgow. The present strategy was decided in 1987, and it was envisaged that it would be completed by 1993–94. Why is there to be a complete revision of the strategy in 1991? If the reason is not financial, what is it? If it is financial, we must be told the facts. We do not pretend that there are not constraints on the board, because there clearly are. I think that sometimes the board is too apologetic in representing views which are, presumably, those of the Government. It would be helpful if patients and the wider community in Greater Glasgow were told about the real problems with finance. They could then assess how fair the Government were being.

What is now happening has nothing to do with improved patient care, as I and many others envisage it. The Government say that they believe in voluntarism and that they depend upon the voluntary organisations in Scotland, but they seldom listen to their views. The Care in the Community group, the Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped, and many other organisations have to deal with the problems of the rundown in hospital provision, and in particular the closure of hospital beds.

My hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) said recently:

"The board has described these changes as readjustments, whereas they are wholesale and sweeping reforms."

A study of the proposals shows us why we should not be surprised by my hon. Friend's conclusions. Currently, there are 2,886 beds for the mentally ill, but the board says that it needs only 1,300. That is a reduction of about 1,600 beds in Greater Glasgow—more than half the beds in use. Again, we must ask, and ask assertively, where those patients will go. On the assumption that other patients might have been admitted in the coming months and years, what will happen to them? The Greater Glasgow health board has been extremely vague on that, as on other issues, but today the Minister has a splendid opportunity to tell us a great deal more than we have already heard.

The changes are massive in their application and implementation and, as a result, we are entitled to ask what consultation has taken place. Strathclyde regional council, again with an immense social work concern, met the Greater Glasgow health board after the decision on the strategies was taken. What about the National Health Service (Amendment) Act 1986? Was not there something there about joint planning? Why, five years later, have the Government declined to introduce an important section of that Act, agreed without a Division in either House, which deals with the kind of joint planning which is absolutely essential if we are to deal with those important matters and to put patient care first?

We are told by the Greater Glasgow health board that hospitals or units within hospitals are to close or to be rundown. In Woodilee, again in my constituency next door to Stoneyetts, we are told that there is to be a reduction in beds from 576 to 180. In Gartloch, there is to be a reduction from 414 to 150. We shall see the complete closure of mental health units at the Southern General and Stobhill. In the mentally handicapped sector, there will be closures in Waverley Park, David Elder infirmary and the upper half of Lennox Castle, among other proposals. Those are pretty drastic reductions, certainly for the patients and their families.

In the absence of reasonable assessments for individual patients and in the absence of preparations to deal with the needs of patients before they leave hospital so that we know precisely where they are going, we must ask where the board thinks that they will go. There is nothing specific in the details that the board has given about arrangements for those patients or about the consultations with local authorities, the voluntary organisations, the advocates where they exist, or the patients themselves.

Such an exercise is gravely damaging to the whole concept of community care. The Minister will know that I must be one of the strongest supporters of community care. I want to see genuine care in the community. I would, of course, much prefer the Victorian hospitals to be part of our history, although there will always be a need for hospitals. Yes, I want to see people living in the community, properly supported by home help services, occupational therapy, meals on wheels and so on, and with that feeling of independence which is so important. Therefore, I know that the Minister will accept that my commitment to genuine community care is real and is something that I want to see. But I do not believe that what the Greater Glasgow health board is now doing represents that type of community care.

The Greater Glasgow health board says that there are three alternatives to existing arrangements when the beds have gone and the hospitals have closed. We are told that one is community care, as it sees it.

We are told that there are partnership agreements, such as that with Birdston hospital in Milton of Campsie in my constituency. We are entitled to know more about such agreements, because for the most part they have been untried, and our limited experience of them does not fill many of us with great confidence in terms of the provision of the best in patient care. Agreements between the board and the private sector seem to be reducing the role of Greater Glasgow health board, which does not seem unhappy at the prospect of changing its role from an enabler to a provider. I would like to hear the Minister's defence of that policy change, because it is not one endorsed by the majority of the people of Scotland—and never has been.

The fear is that, although people will be given an opportunity to provide, initially with low profit margins, fees will then mysteriously increase. I can predict a scenario in which the board will be held to ransom because it will be so difficult to make alternative arrangements. What is a local authority supposed to do once it finds that its role will be reduced from that of an enabler to a provider, in terms of dealing with the elderly?

With the move towards privatisation, competitive tendering and commercialism, with profit-making as the main incentive, local authorities will be asked to deal with the most difficult elderly patients. I cannot imagine that private entrepreneurs will go rushing in to care for people who are doubly incontinent or who suffer from other difficult conditions. I do not have much confidence in the board's proposals, and we should hear much more from the Minister today on that aspect.

My hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden wrote to the chairman of Greater Glasgow health board on 24 July in respect of the board's three alternatives to current policy. He dealt with the third alternative by quoting from the board's own document, "Mental Health Strategy 4.4":

"A rationalisation of short-stay beds by realigning catchment populations (to among other things take account of available capacity at the new Parkhead hospital) and gaining consistent performance in the use of the retained beds."

My hon. Friend rightly asked the board's chairman:

"What does this mean in ordinary language?"

I put the same question to the Minister now. People are entitled to the answer, because such decisions are extremely important to patients and the health service in Greater Glasgow. It is not enough for the Minister and his colleagues simply to impose conditions on the people of Greater Glasgow in the absence of consultation, and in the knowledge that in any reasonable consultation or secret ballot, the people of Greater Glasgow would not accept the board's proposals in a million years.

I ask the Minister to be more candid today than hitherto. He should display more candour than the health board and the Secretary of State, and this debate provides him with a splendid opportunity. My constituents are entitled to candour from the Minister, given that, for example, heart disease is a third higher among them than the national average. If we are told that is a reflection of the quality of life in my constituency, it seems unlikely that the health board's proposals will add to that quality of life. I do not believe that our history of unemployment, closures and the rest is helpful to that quality of life. Constituents, from every age group and in every part of my constituency, have suffered a great deal in the past 12 years. They have suffered closure after closure—a once proud mining and steel community does not have a job left in those industries and many other jobs have gone too. If, on top of that, it is now proposed that the national health service as we recognise it should be dismantled, I assure the Minister of State that, although I look forward to his reply, he can expect a long hot summer on health issues in Greater Glasgow because some of us will attack again and again, as we believe in preserving the very best of the national health service in our constituencies.

I am surprised at the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) and at some of his less than favourable comments about the Greater Glasgow health board. I can only assume that he has not yet had an opportunity to read the health board's annual report and has not seen the lists of major developments and innovations in health care for which that board is responsible. I shall mention only a few: the newly refurbished accident and emergency department at the Glasgow Royal infirmary, costing just over £1·5 million; the 180-bed development for elderly patients at Rutherglen; the refurbishment at Drumchapel costing £1·1 million; the installation of a new total body scanner at Yorkhill; the investment at the Western infirmary on the first of two linear accelerators at a cost of £1·8 million; and the announcement of a new heart transplant centre at the Glasgow Royal infirmary. There are many other examples of Greater Glasgow health board working for patients.

The health board is to be congratulated, not least for its innovative and progressive attitude towards identifying new ways to provide a better quality of health care, and its ideas—some of them quite new to the health service—such as the provision of a patients' hotel on the Western infirmary campus, which is an exciting concept and will release acute beds and provide a better environment for convalescent patients and those who do not require constant nursing or medical care.

For the hon. Member for Monklands, West to describe the best-funded health board in Scotland as underfunded takes one's breath away. He knows very well that resources are being transferred from the Greater Glasgow health board to other boards but that is because people have moved out of Glasgow into Ayrshire and the surrounding communities and the Government have built new hospitals, such as those in Paisley and Ayr, so that services are where the people are. Only a socialist would argue that services should be provided to meet the convenience of the NHS, which may be resistant to change, rather than to meet the needs of patients for whom the service is provided in the first place.

It is certainly true that Greater Glasgow health board is rationalising services and that that will affect a number of hospitals. I am clear, and I know that the hospital board is clear, that such changes are designed to consolidate and improve services provided to the community. The board's acute services strategy involves substantial investment—about £13 million—spread over several years.

The hon. Member referred to the fact that Greater Glasgow health board is studying the future organisation of its maternity units. The five units vary in quality and, given their age and the condition of some of them, a review was essential. Extensive consultations were held and they led the board to conclude that the change is needed sooner rather than later. The board has taken account of the needs of modern obstetric practice and of the standards that expectant mothers desire when they visit a maternity unit. I hope that it will soon be possible to announce a decision on the board's proposals.

The hon. Gentleman will have received a copy of the board's consultation document on proposals for the future organisation of community care in its area. The board makes some interesting points and suggestions. I am especially encouraged by the emphasis placed on health promotion. I know that the board is keen to have reaction and constructive comments, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will play his part in that consultation process.

The health board does not have a blinkered approach to health provision. It puts patients first. I welcome its initiative in taking advantage of spare capacity in the private sector. The hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith), the Opposition spokesman, attacked the health board because it chose to make a contract with a private hospital to ensure that more than 100 patients were given cardiac surgery who would otherwise have been put on the waiting list. It is an example of dogma being put before patient care when the Labour party attacks health boards which are doing everything within their resources to ensure that waiting lists are reduced.

As the hon. Gentleman said, the board's involvement with the private sector also extends to its arrangements for care of the elderly. Again its approach puts patients first. The board has decided on plans for four partnership developments with the private sector for provision of continuing care of the frail elderly and the elderly mentally ill. Two of the plans have already been identified at Rutherglen and Darnley, and patients will transfer towards the year end. As a result, elderly patients will be accommodated in state-of-the-art accommodation, and resources which are taken up in the acute sector at present will be released for further patient care. I regret to say that the board's progressive approach has met with condemnation by Opposition Members.

Further benefits to patients arise from the investment in patient care of all savings effected under the board's rigorous competitive tendering exercise—for which, again, the board has been criticised by Opposition Members. But that competitive tendering exercise has released some £11·5 million this year. Greater Glasgow health board has achieved savings which are about 40 per cent. of the total saved in Scotland as a result of that process.

The hon. Member for Monklands, West mentioned that the health board is conducting a review of mental handicap strategy. The board consulted on its strategy in 1987 and published a document in June 1988. It is that strategy which is under review. I look forward to seeing the board's further proposals in due course. There are many strands to the board's review of mental handicap and mental illness strategies, some of which will require separate and careful consideration.

The board has already consulted on the proposals that it has prepared for the closure of Stoneyetts hospital, which provides psychogeriatric care. Following its consultative exercise, the health board announced proposals on 16 July for the closure of the hospital. The board proposes that the psychogeriatric service be transferred to the two new purpose-built units at Ruchill hospital and Gartnavel Royal hospital. If approved, the proposal will represent a £4·5 million investment in the area by the board.

The new accommodation proposed for Ruchill and Gartnavel Royal will match the level of provision at Stoneyetts. There will be no reduction in the number of psychogeriatric beds as a result of the proposal. As I said earlier, the closure is subject to ministerial approval and as yet no formal submission has been made to me.

I have been made aware of the campaign in support of Stoneyetts hospital. The health board has taken account of all views lodged with it during the consultation exercise on the proposal affecting the hospital. Of course, comments were made in support of the board's view that Stoneyetts should close which the hon. Gentleman did not mention, most notably by the local health council and the board's professional advisory committees. The views of the hon. Gentleman were also taken into account, as was the 8,000-signature petition lodged in support of retention.

The board has emphasised that it is its principal intention to establish the individual needs and wishes of the patients and, wherever possible, those will be taken into account when decisions are made on placements. I am sure that, if the decision is taken to transfer Stoneyetts patients, the board will honour its commitment to deal with the transfer of patients with sensitivity, care and consideration. All staff at Stoneyetts will be offered alternative employment with the board. It is hoped that the majority will transfer with the patients to the new units at Gartnavel and Ruchill. I assure the hon. Gentleman that, once I receive the board's formal application, I shall consider it very carefully.

The hon. Member for Monklands, West disappoints me and doubtless disappoints the relatives of the patients at Stoneyetts hospital. I am aware, for example, that the board, having quite properly sought the views of relatives, was encouraged that 70 per cent. of those who responded were fully in favour of the move to Gartnavel and Ruchill.

Clearly, the hon. Gentleman is not speaking on behalf of the local health council, the professional advisory committees, the patients or their relatives. It is absurd that he is arguing that elderly people should be placed in old-fashioned, sub-standard accommodation, rather than encouraging the board in its efforts to provide modern, purpose-built, easily accessible facilities which will give patients the benefit of more pleasant surroundings and a better quality of life.

The hon. Gentleman's argument in favour of Stoneyetts hospital was that it was the cheapest hospital to run. The Government are interested not in cheapness but in quality of care and value for money.

I have heard and read the hon. Gentleman's empty allegations that the board's proposals are financially motivated. He would do well to accept that the board is reacting to patients' needs and to the fact that Stoneyetts accommodation is now proving sub-standard compared with what can and should be provided for those patients. If approved, this proposal will represent a commitment of some £4·5 million—hardly the action of a board starved of resources, more an investment in patient care.

Greater Glasgow health board recognises the need to look beyond its geographical boundary where appropriate for specialist treatment of patients from Glasgow. We have seen that in their commitments to brain injury rehabilitation at Wishaw.

Greater Glasgow health board, as with all 15 health boards in Scotland, is for the first time setting targets for waiting time within which patients will be expected to obtain treatment. This initiative is designed to cut hospital waiting times and follows up proposals in the Government's citizens charter programme. The Initiative will make a comprehensive improvement in waiting times. I am sure that patients will welcome that move. They have every right to know how long they can expect to wait for treatment. The Government intend to give them that right, no matter where in Scotland they live.

Waiting times at present are affected in no small part by the fact that, since 1979, the number of referrals has increased by over 21 per cent.; the number of in-patients treated has increased by over 22 per cent. and day cases by a staggering 147 per cent. Indeed, for Greater Glasgow health board, the increase in day cases is an incredible 205 per cent. Waiting lists have fallen by 14 per cent. over the same period, and we continue to look for improvements.

The Citizens Charter will have a direct bearing on the patients served by the Greater Glasgow health board. Patients and relatives will know exactly what they can expect of the national health service and what the board must do to meet those expectations. Patients will know exactly what they are entitled to and the service standards to be met. Patients charters will be in all hospitals and other units, and Greater Glasgow health board has led the United Kingdom in taking that idea forward. Targets are being set on waiting times for admission for treatments. The Greater Glasgow health board, like all other health boards, will have to give guarantees on maximum waiting times.

In the teeth of opposition, Greater Glasgow health board has proved to be innovative. I regret to say that Opposition Members, including the hon. Member for Monklands, West, sometimes appear to be spokesmen for COHSE and NUPE rather than representatives of patients' interests. The proposals in respect of Stoneyetts are an example of a board innovatively tackling difficult problems and providing a quality of care which previous Labour Governments could only dream of.

It is fitting that, before we go into the recess, we should discuss airports and airlines and I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the chance to talk about the British Airports Authority.

When the Government privatised BAA, they were breaking fresh ground. No one had any idea of the impact that the privatisation would have on aviation. Five years on, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission has taken a look at the way in which the BAA has operated and has made recommendations to the Civil Aviation Authority, the regulatory body.

Hon. Members who were in the House in 1985—I cannot see too many of them here today—will remember that at the time of the privatisation of the BAA I warned that privatising all the London airports in one unit was fraught with danger and likely to prove anti-competitive. I am afraid that that has happened. The MMC report recognises the advantages that have accrued to BAA shareholders—the pension funds and others—but it has also drawn attention to the fact that BAA is being run somewhat anti-competitively. Airport charges, landing fees, passenger fees and parking fees have been grossed up and the charges have been passed on to the airlines. These charges have been set at the whim of the management, so discriminatory practices have crept in.

The smaller domestic, regional and British airlines have suffered from discrimination. The landing fee at Heathrow has risen by 107 per cent. in the past five years and has been applied regardless of the size of the plane. A 50-seater plane—shall we say, a Brymon plane to Plymouth—will be charged the same as a 400-seater jumbo landing from New York. A 146 plane belonging to Manx Airlines with 85 seats will also pay the same as a 400-seater jumbo.

It might be appropriate to declare an interest. I fly Brymon Airways most weekends down to my constituency and I help Manx Airlines, which is part of the Airlines of Britain group, to which I am an adviser.

I have complained not only about landing fees but about parking fees. Landing fees have risen for smaller airlines and declined for jumbos; parking charges have fallen for jumbos and increased for smaller airlines. So small regional airlines flying short-haul planes to and from Europe or around Britain pay far more each time they land and park at Heathrow than would a jumbo that sits on the tarmac for 12 to 24 hours having deposited 400 people at a terminal. That is discrimination against people and airlines wanting to fly around Britain or Europe; and it is positive discrimination in favour of those who want to fly long-haul to and from the United States, India or the far east.

It seems as though BAA welcomes the maximum use of each slot, and I understand that, but we cannot have the whole of Heathrow full of jumbos. That would not be possible even if it were desirable.

At present, 70 per cent. of traffic at Heathrow is short-haul and only 30 per cent. is long-haul. The reason is simple: every jumbo that takes off must be fed by the small, short-haul airlines. That is recognised by Schiphol airport in Holland, which is making considerable strides in attracting regional airlines from all over Europe to deposit passengers, not at Heathrow but at Schiphol, attract the long-haul carriers into Schiphol and send them out across the Atlantic and elsewhere. In order to have a prosperous long-haul industry, one needs feeder aircraft. I am concerned that BAA's policy of trying to get more and more long-haul aircraft and fewer short-haul aircraft through a discriminatory pricing policy means that, in the long term, Heathrow could cease to be the No. 1 airport in the world.

A privatised public utility with a total monopoly hold is starting to price out smaller aeroplanes from Heathrow. How much longer can Brymon Airways or Manx Airlines continue to offer a service? How long can Brymon fly from Heathrow to Plymouth for £195 return—more than the apex fare to Gibraltar, Barcelona or Milan?

The Monopolies and Mergers Commission report must be welcomed, as it recognises that the formula that the Government adopted in 1985, called RPI minus one—the retail prices index minus 1 per cent.—was not strenuous enough and worked largely against the British-owned airline industry. The Monopolies and Mergers Commission said that BAA has been an amazingly successful money machine, which had been good for shareholders, pension funds, big institutions and large airlines with large aeroplanes. Clearly, regional and short-haul airlines are the losers and, even more so, the travelling public—the consumer. As charges go up for the short-haul lines, so the price of tickets reflects that, and increases.

The MMC suggested that the formula of RPI minus one should be changed to RPI minus four. The retail prices index minus 4 per cent. would be the maximum that BAA could charge over the next five years for landing, parking and so on. I believe that the MMC got it right, but the CAA—to which it reports—has an ever better suggestion. It suggested that the profits were still too great when based on the RPI minus four formula, which should be changed to RPI minus eight.

I pay tribute to the new chairman of the CAA—Christopher Chataway. I am delighted—as I am sure the whole House will be—that he has come back to public life; it was an enlightened decision to suggest that he should be chairman of that regulatory organisation.

The CAA's public decision to recommend that an RPI minus eight formula be applied to the running costs at BAA's airports is an enlighted and courageous move.

Before my hon. Friend's enthusiasm for the CAA report runs away with him, will he comment on some inconsistencies in it? The report states that BAA should raise its charges by less than inflation, but the CAA increased charges by 45 per cent. The report says that BAA is a low-risk business and needs only a 7 per cent. return, while the CAA wants an 8 per cent. return. The report says that the MMC is wrong and the people who brought out the report are not financial experts. The report claims to be a CAA report, yet I am told that just two CAA employees will make the final decision. Instead of enthusing about the report, will my hon. Friend accept that it is flawed and written by people whose philosophy is, "Do as we say, not as we do."

I always enjoy commenting on my hon. Friend's remarks, but on this occasion I shall pass because he has made his points and I do not wish to be drawn on them.

Whatever the formula—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) will wish to listen to this carefully—what is crucial is not how much the landing fees, passenger fees or parking fees may be, but how BAA applies them to individual airlines. The question is whether it is able to discriminate, as it has in the past five years, in favour of larger airlines and larger planes to the detriment of our smaller airlines which use smaller planes. There is nothing to stop BAA continuing to discount the total landing, passenger and parking fees by the percentage prescribed in the formula and applying it to the individual carrier as it pleases. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister realises that that is the critical issue. It does not matter whether the restrictions are greater or fewer. The application of the formula by BAA should be the same for all airlines and should not discriminate against our smaller British airlines.

The trouble with the privatisation is not that it has been too successful, but that its success has allowed restrictive practices that discriminate against those who want to fly in Britain or around Europe. It is an anti-competitive practice to try to drive airlines away from Heathrow and towards Gatwick or Stansted where they may not want to go and where the consumer definitely does not yet want to go. It is not fair competition.

There are two points. First, there is the formula about which my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne spoke with great gusto, as is his norm since he feels that an injustice has been done and the CAA has got it wrong. Secondly, there is the way in which the formula is applied.

Oddly enough, the MMC report and the Civil Aviation Authority report—whether it was prepared by two men or 200—have ducked the key issue. Paragraph 18 of the CAA report says:

"The CAA agrees with the MMC that this highly important issue of aviation policy can only be dealt with properly in a wider context, and that they are not able to comment on whether a limit should be placed on the airport's scope to rebalance charges."

That is a total cop-out and it can be dealt with only by the Government. That is why I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Minister in his place. I am sure that he will wish to get to the root of the problem. It strikes at the basis of Government aviation policy as to charging, discrimination and the power of the airports authority, though a pricing mechanism, to direct where airlines should fly. The argument is not about numbers and percentages—RPI minus six, eight or 10—but about fair competition and achieving a marketplace where smaller carriers operating smaller short-haul planes do not find themselves priced out and disadvantaged by a private monopoly that used to be in the public sector. It is about the Government halting the discriminatory practices of the BAA which favour large carriers and wide-bodied planes.

Will the Minister make it clear that BAA will not be allowed to cock a snook at the Government's approach to the aviation industry, that it will not be allowed to prejudice short-haul aircraft, and that they will be put on a level footing with long-haul aircraft?

As the Minister knows, we are all consumers. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made that clear on Monday, when he announced the citizens charter which recognised the right of citizens to be protected against the sort of practices that I have described. When I asked my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister whether his charter would extend to the aviation industry he said that it probably would not. However, he said nothing about airports.

I invite my hon. Friend the Minister to realise that I am talking about the pricing mechanism of the airports authority and citizens' right of protection from that practice rather than the operation of individual airlines, where there is opportunity for competition. Why should not the consumer have a cheap and efficient service to regional and European destinations? Why should he have to pay extra if he flies to an EC country rather than to the United States or to the far east?

It is clear that, whatever formula BAA has to accept, it will lose some income. It must not be allowed to try to recoup its losses from the travelling public or from airline operators. The trouble is that it believes that it will be given a licence to print money indefinitely. It is now horror-stricken that that may not be true. It has threatened that the projected loss of income will lead to all sorts of disasters and has hinted that it may no longer be able to build the fifth London terminal and that the Paddington to Heathrow rail link will be seriously delayed.

That is scaremongering. It is a bit thick for the authority to whinge when it has spent £300 million on an improvement programme at Stanstead. That was its commercial judgment. Despite the fact that passenger traffic hardly justified it, that was its decision; it had nothing to do with the Government. Such expenditure was a question for the management, who decided to spend that money when they could have spent it on Heathrow, which desperately needs it. It was as though the authority were building a monument to itself, just as Brunel built the great western railway. It took a commercial decision and should not expect too much sympathy when it finds itself short of a few bob.

BAA is not the first private company to find itself in need of some extra finance. Unlike other private companies, its monopoly position enables it to make good its losses by clobbering the travelling public. I do not think that that should be allowed. I am sure that it will not be allowed, because we are extremely fortunate to have not only a new chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority but a new management team under the direction of Sir John Egan, whose track record is well known. I am sure that if the enthusiasm that he showed at Jaguar is converted to airport strategy, it will be an exciting time for us all. I wish him well.

I venture to make a few suggestions which I hope will help Sir John Egan when he is considering how to raise sufficient finance. As a private company, there is nothing to stop BAA going to the stock market for extra funds through a rights issue. There is no reason why its manpower should not be reduced; a leaner authority would surely be cost-effective. Could not the number of landing slots be increased so that more traffic could use Heathrow? In 1985, it said that 275,000 movements was the maximum, but today the figure has risen to 385,000. There is additional space, and if the air traffic controllers could be freed of some of the restrictive trade union practices, more planes could land, which would generate more income for the BAA.

Why does not the BAA consider selling an airport or two? It has enough airports. Surely it could do without, say, Prestwick. The fact that three London airports are under the same management has militated against competition. Why not sell off Gatwick and Stansted? Bringing a new player into the market would stop restrictive practices, and the market would drive down overheads. Consumers and airlines would benefit, but possibly not the shareholders of the authority, although with the cash realised it could build the Paddington to Heathrow link and begin the fifth London terminal.

When BAA was privatised in 1986, the Government were moving in uncharted waters. The fact that the authority has been such a success clearly shows that the Government were right, but several lessons have been learnt in the five years since it was privatised.

The most important point is that private monopolies can be as anti-competitive as public ones. The regulatory authority, in this case the CAA, can and should ensure that the regulations and formulae prevent that from happening. It is not a question of the Opposition saying, "I told you so," but of the Government recognising the new problems that have arisen as a result of our imaginative privatisation proposals and introducing the necessary safeguards so that our short-haul airlines in Europe and our regional airlines throughout the country are not driven out of Heathrow by the pricing mechanism.

Freed of any pricing regulations, BAA would without doubt feel obliged to obtain the maximum revenue for its institutional shareholders. The job of the House is to ensure fair play— to ensure that this privatised company is subject to the rules of fair competition that regulate the rest of the private sector.

Our airline industry is far more frail than it was five years ago. Airlines are going bust, but airports are not. We must make sure that our airport authority helps our airline industry and assists the British companies that fly round our shores and into Europe. That is where our future lies, and the Government's job is to ensure that a healthy airline industry is not destroyed through predatory pricing and discriminatory practices.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) on his success in raising this issue. It is some time since the House debated aviation and, as usual, when it is debated we hear different views from my hon. Friends about the right way to go forward. My hon. Friends the Member for South Hams and for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) and I are convinced of the need for a good, healthy aviation industry. It is important that that industry should not deteriorate in some of the ways suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for South Hams.

First, I shall outline the arrangements for the regulation of BAA's airports and the involvement of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The mechanics of the system are rather different from those which apply in other regulated industries. Because of that, and because the present review of BAA's London airports is only the second time that these arrangements have come into play, the system is perhaps not widely or well understood.

I recognise that the provisions in this part of the Airports Act 1986 appear somewhat complex and certainly do not make for easy reading. For that reason, too, I take this chance to explain briefly the nature of the regulatory process before returning to the specific points that my hon. Friend made.

A system of economic regulation of all sizeable airports was established by the Airports Act, before the privatisation of the former British Airports Authority. Privatisation has allowed BAA's managers to get on with the job of managing, has ensured a large and continuing programme of investment and has brought many benefits to the air traveller. Heathrow remains the world's leading international airport and, as my hon. Friend said, we want it to retain that position. Gatwick airport is not far behind.

When the Government privatised BAA, they were conscious of the need to guard against the risk of exploitation of the natural strength of airports which found themselves in a largely monopolistic position. The present regulatory regime is the result.

The first tier of regulation, which applies to all airports above the certain maximum turnover, is exercised primarily by the Civil Aviation Authority and has to do with preventing trading or pricing policies which discriminate unreasonably against particular airport users, or against the holders of rights or concessions at an airport. It also enables the CAA to act against the fixing of airport charges at artificially low levels, which would be harmful to another airport's business.

A second and still more stringent tier of regulation, and the one with which we are concerned today, is applied at the more powerful airports: specifically at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, and also at Manchester. It provides for the CAA to set a limit on increases in airport charges. Since 1987, when the system was introduced, that limit has been expressed in terms of a formula which relates permitted increases in

"average annual revenue per passenger",

to movements in the retail prices index. The present price-cap formula covering the three BAA London airports limits increases to RPI minus 1 per cent.

The 1986 Act provides for the price cap formula to be reviewed every five years and for the CAA then to establish a new formula for the coming five-year period, having first taken the advice of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. That extensive report was presented to the CAA not long ago. The present formula for the BAA airports expires at the end of March 1992.

Last December, therefore, the CAA referred the three BAA airports to the MMC, with a request for advice in two areas. First, the MMC was asked for advice on the price cap that should apply for the coming five years. Secondly, the MMC was asked to report whether the airports have pursued, through their airport charges or through their operational activities, any course of conduct adverse to the public interests and, if so, to advise how this might be remedied.

Over the past six months, the MMC has reviewed substantially the entire business of the three airports, and in doing so has taken evidence from a wide range of bodies and organisations, including, of course, BAA itself. My Department was among those which put views to the Commission, as those who have read the report will know.

The main findings of the report were that from April, increases in airport charges at Heathrow and Gatwick, and at the three BAA airports taken together, should be limited by the formula RPI minus 4 per cent.; but that in the event that BAA started building a fifth terminal at Heathrow in 1995–96, the formula in respect of Heathrow should be amended to RPI plus 1 per cent., and that for the three airports together amended to RPI minus 1 per cent. The commission also identified a weakness in BAA's arrangements for consulting users about charges for certain of its facilities and it has recommended measures to remedy this.

The commission's third main recommendation was that the regulatory formula should be amended as and when necessary, to compensate BAA for the effects of the abolition, of duty-free and tax-free sales, and for any changes that might be required in connection with frontier controls post-1992. Finally, the commission recommended an increase in the proportion of costs arising from new security measures which may be recovered through the charging formula, and a reduction in the recovery period.

Let me say a word now about what happens next. The determination of the price formula which will apply from April is a matter for the CAA, which must have regard to the commission's advice but is not bound to follow it. The authority has published its proposals for a new regulatory regime and these are the subject of consultation. The authority has included in its proposals a draft condition to tackle the shortcoming in BAA's consultative arrangements—a shortcoming that BAA itself has acknowledged. My hon. Friend went over the points relating to the fact that the CAA was recommending RPI minus 8 per cent.

In a short debate such as this, the arithmetic may be a little complex, so I shall move on to some of the other points made by my hon. Friend. He asked whether it was possible for BAA to sell a London airport to raise funds. Under the special share arrangements, BAA could not dispose of any of its three London aiports without the permission of the Secretary of State. The special share in BAA was taken by the Government for reasons of national interest. I have no reason to believe that BAA is considering the course that my hon. Friend suggested. If it were to propose to sell one of its London airports, the Government would need to take a view on the matter at the time such a proposal was made.

The merits of separate ownership of the London airports were, of course, discussed at the time of privatisation, when some argued for splitting them up. The Government took the view then that this would not in practice be beneficial, because it would be unlikely either to bring real competition—given Heathrow's natural dominance—or to remove the need for new airport regulation.

What about the charging of smaller airlines, which discriminates against them landing and parking as compared with long-haul flights?

I realise that both my hon. Friend the Member for South Hams and my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris), who is also here, take this point seriously. It is in the interests of both BAA and the country to have a multi-airline industry. The important point that my hon. Friend made about the need for regional services to and from our major international airports is not lost on me or my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State. We know that there is concern that charges make access difficult for carriers on the domestic routes.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has said that he would consider it unacceptable if airports, through their charging policies, abused their position or exploited their users. He has referred to legislative safeguards against unreasonably discriminatory pricing. There is a mechanism that enables airlines to appeal to the CAA. The CAA has produced recommendations following the MMC's report. They will have to be considered before any decision can be made on the next step.

I have tried to answer as many question as possible in the time available to me. We could talk for much longer within the framework of a proper aviation debate, because I am fully aware of the great interest that my hon. Friends, at least, take in these matters.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. A decision has been taken today by the Luxembourg court that affects the sovereignty of the House and the manner in which the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 should be implemented. We respect the rulings of the court but its findings recently have suggested that Acts of this Parliament are significantly at risk. There is no doubt that in the treaty that is about to be proposed there arises serious doubt about whether the competence of the House will continue in the way that it has in the past. It is of grave importance that we ensure that the competences and privileges of the House are maintained and that, by one means or another, we ensure that we maintain our sovereignty in the House on behalf of the entire electorate.

The hon. Member will recognise that, notwithstanding the seriousness of the matter that he has raised, it is not one for me.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Given the importance——

Order. I hope that the hon. Member will be brief. Points of order will eat into private Members' time.

Given the importance of the European Court's decision, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is there any chance, even at this late stage, of a Minister making a brief statement?

The hon. Member's remarks will have been heard——

rose——

Order. The hon. Member's remarks will have been heard by the occupants of the Treasury Bench.

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts and measures:—

• Finance Act 1991
• Appropriation Act 1991
• Agriculture and Forestry (Financial Provisions) Act 1991
• Planning and Compensation Act 1991
• Badgers (Further Protection) Act 1991
• Badgers Act 1991
• Smoke Detectors Act 1991
• Medical Qualifications (Amendment) Act 1991
• Wildlife and Countryside (Amendment) Act 1991
• Road Traffic Act 1991
• Arms Control and Disarmament (Inspections) Act 1991—[Interruption.]

Order. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is interrupting my reading of the list.

My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) asked me what my "ministerial" statement was all about, and I told him.

I think that I got as far as the Arms Control and Disarmament (Inspections) Act 1991. I shall continue:

• Social Security (Contributions) Act 1991
• Forestry Act 1991
• Foreign Corporations Act 1991
• Coal Mining Subsidence Act 1991
• Atomic Weapons Establishment Act 1991
• Mental Health (Detention) (Scotland) Act 1991
• Child Support Act 1991
• School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1991
• Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991
• Local Government Finance and Valuation Act 1991
• Ports Act 1991
• Criminal Justice Act 1991
• Deer Act 1991
• Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1991
• Water Industry Act 1991
• Water Resources Act 1991
• Statutory Water Companies Act 1991
• Land Drainage Act 1991
• Water Consolidation (Consequential Provisions) Act 1991
• Statute Law Revision (Isle of Man) Act 1991
• Armed Forces Act 1991
• British Railways Board (Finance) Act 1991
• Breeding of Dogs Act 1991
• Dangerous Dogs Act 1991
• Highland Regional Council (Harbours) Order Confirmation Act 1991
• London Local Authorities Act 1991
• North Yorkshire County Council Act 1991
• Brighton Marine Palace and Pier Act 1991
• Care of Churches and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1991
• Diocesan Boards of Education Measure 1991

I commend you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on your stamina and energy.

I begin by welcoming the Minister of State, Welsh Office, back to the House after his short illness. I am sure that we are all pleased to see him.

West Glamorgan's net revenue budget for the current year is £242 million. Education accounts for £138 million, social services £28 million, and environment and highways £15 million. The county is renowned for providing nursery education for 90 per cent. of three-year-olds. It is also famed for its provision of music and drama in schools.

Although it has a reputation for financial prudence, the county is running into a brick wall with the Government's restrictions and cuts in spending. Next year it needs to spend an additional £11·1 million—6 per cent. real growth—just to meet the additional statutory obligations that the Government have placed upon it. They are not optional spending measures; they are requirements under the Government's legislation and directives.

The demographic changes resulting from school rolls beginning to rise again, together with a continuing increase in student participation in higher education, will account for an additional £1·5 million spending. National curriculum support measures will require an additional £500,000. Local management of schools and colleges, the provision of computer systems, extra administrative support, and training for staff and governors will require an additional £400,000. Special educational needs provision under the Education Act 1981—it is not discretionary—will require an additional £500,000. Maintenance of school buildings will require an additional £1·5 million, for which the authority has budgeted, against a £20 million backlog. In social services, the Children Act 1989 requires additional support for families, principally through increased preventative and assessment responsibilities for children at risk, and that will require an additional £500,000.

The community care that the Government have unceremoniously dumped on local authorities such as West Glamorgan, social care planning, assessment and case management will require an additional £700,000. Mental handicap and mental illness provision will require an additional £300,000, again under pressure from the Welsh Office. Training and staff development, the introduction of professional qualifications and management development for community care responsibilities will require an additional £200,000. On top of all that, the authority must spend an additional £5 million on upgrading highways and improving the environment to meet basic safety and maintenance obligations. Those are obligations that the authority must meet—it has no discretion—on top of the extra 6 per cent. that it needs to spend next year.

If there is no relative change in the standard spending assessments between Welsh counties, Tuesday's statement by the Secretary of State will mean that there will be an increased provision for West Glamorgan of only 6 per cent. on its current budget. Of that 6 per cent., 1 per cent. has already been committed by the full-year effects of this year's staff pay, principally teaching staff, working its way through. Some 4·5 per cent. has been assumed by the Secretary of State to cover pay and price rises. Therefore, 5·5 per cent. of that 6 per cent. has already been swallowed up, leaving only 0·5 per cent. to cover any additional award above 4·5 per cent. by the teachers' pay review body.

The increase will be eaten up without any scope for essential and additional expansion of the sort which I have described and which is required by the Government. To meet that additional £11 million expansion in provision, most of it statutorily required, there will have to be a cut in spending on other services of about 6 per cent., which will mean cuts in teaching staff, larger class sizes and reductions in social services. That is already happening. Indeed, primary schools in the Neath area have suffered cuts in teaching staff and classes have had to be merged, resulting in larger class numbers.

Welsh Office Ministers, sitting in their ivory tower, seem oblivious to the savage impact of their policies on local communities such as those in West Glamorgan. One group who are affected are the elderly. There are 74,000 pensioners in West Glamorgan, many of whom depend on income support. Some of them suffered disgraceful cuts in the benefits that they received in April this year when retirement pensions for the over-75s and disabled pensioners were increased by 10·8 per cent. whereas income support was increased by just 8 per cent. That meant that those receiving income support lost access to benefits and rebates. Some of the most vulnerable sections of our elderly population suffered an additional cut in that way.

Many of the 74,000 West Glamorgan pensioners have small additional private or widows' pensions to supplement their retirement pensions and that group is often hit the hardest by the present situation. What the Government give with one hand they take away with the other in tax increases and loss of benefits.

Many pensioners in the Neath constituency and throughout West Glamorgan are without cars. Many live in valley villages and rely on bus transport which, even with the West Glamorgan concessionary fares scheme, they find costly. For example, a pensioner making a return trip from Ystalyfera to Swansea has to pay £2·20 and from Seven Sisters to Neath, £1·65. Such sums may seem small to the Minister on his salary, but, repeated day after day, they eat into the income of our elderly citizens, especially as they face exorbitant water charges, a colour television licence fee of £77, standing charges on all the main services of telecommunications, electricity, gas and so on, on top of high heating charges for electricity, gas and coal, and, in addition, the continuously rising cost of living.

That is why I believe that pensioners would be enormously boosted by a new free fares system in West Glamorgan. That would be an imaginative targeted measure which would directly assist some of the most vulnerable members of our community. It could transform the lives of elderly people living in West Glamorgan and have a liberating effect on them. It would not just give relief to our elderly citizens, some of whom are living on the poverty line; it would also enhance their quality of life and so ensure that they would be less of a burden on the state as they grew into old age.

In fact, the Government would save money by such a measure. If they did their accounting in terms of social costs and benefits, rather then with the tunnel vision of their profit and loss balance sheets in which people do not figure, they would find that even injecting the additional funding needed to provide a free fares scheme they would end up spending less money by having healthier citizens who were more at one with themselves, enjoying a better quality of life.

The existing West Glamorgan concessionary fares scheme commenced on 26 October 1986 and provides for a one third cut in bus fares. Under the Transport Act 1985, bus operators working the scheme may not make a profit from the concessionary fares available to them and reimbursement must come wholly out of local authority budgets. The problem is that, under current Welsh Office guidelines and spending targets, no flexibility is offered to local authorities. They do not have the flexibility to provide that additional service either in terms of free fares for pensioners on the buses or in their spending commitments.

The cost of the present concessionary fares scheme is just £0·8 million, so a free fares scheme would cost an additional £1·6 million—not very much. if West Glamorgan county council, Neath borough council, Swansea city council, Lliw borough council and Port Talbot borough council came to the Welsh Office with a specific request for funding for that additional £1·6 million, would the Minister agree to it? That is the question that I wish to put to him today.

Why should Neath pensioners, and pensioners throughout West Glamorgan, be deprived of a basic right enjoyed by many other pensioners in our society? According to a report published in 1988 by the transport and road research laboratory, 22 per cent. of the concessionary transport schemes available in Great Britain are free-fare schemes. Most are in metropolitan areas such as London, South Yorkshire and the west midlands. Many operate outside the rush hours, after 9.30 am or during the weekend. Millions of senior citizens throughout Britain can travel on the bus or the underground free of charge, but none of them is in Wales.

The Welsh Office should hang its head in shame. Why cannot the Government show some compassion and generosity for once and provide the funding necessary for Welsh local authorities which wish to do so to transform their present concessionary fare schemes into free-fare schemes? That will also have the benefit of improving revenues for the bus operators who at present, after deregulation, at times offer, particularly to residents in the valley villages, a shoddy service which runs out late at night and is very weak during the weekend. The additional revenue generated by carrying those extra passengers, although all the finance would be returned to the county, would make for a more effective service.

It is no use the Minister saying that it is up to local authority discretion whether West Glamorgan or any other Welsh authority spends part of its budget on a free-fare scheme. The fact is that their hands are tied by highly restrictive and in some cases punitive Welsh Office spending guidelines. Virtually all local authority spending in Wales, as elsewhere in the country, is centrally controlled—and tightly at that. Authorities do not have the discretion to operate such a scheme.

My simple and specific proposal could greatly enhance the quality of life for some of our poorest citizens, who have given their working lives to their communities but are now forgotten or ignored by the consumerist, materialistic, me-first culture in which the Government glory. I urge the Minister to respond positively to my proposal, and to provide the funding necessary to West Glamorgan and the boroughs within it, so that they may establish a free-fare scheme as soon as possible. In that way, our senior citizens could enjoy transport in reasonable comfort at a pace that suits them so that they might take advantage of the opportunities otherwise denied to them.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) on his success in raising the question of Welsh Office funding for West Glamorgan. His speech focused on local authority spending. On Tuesday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales announced a provisional local government finance settlement for 1992–93 that proposed a level of total standard spending in Wales of £2,639 million. That is an increase of £206 million, or 8·5 per cent. on 1991–92, and is the appropriate level of spending for the coming year, taking account of all relevant considerations. My right hon. Friend also proposed a level of aggregate external finance of about £2,383 million—an increase of 6·7 per cent. on the current year.

The settlement must be seen in the context of the Government's success in bringing down inflation. It is a realistic settlement, and one that provides local authorities in Wales with a firm foundation on which to budget prudently for the coming year. It builds on the settlement for the current year, which increased total standard spending by 8 per cent. on budgets, and increased aggregate external finance by 11·2 per cent.

The level of expenditure per Welsh charge payer for which the settlement allows is £1,207. If local authorities budget in line with our plans for 1992–93, charge payers should, on average, contribute just £118 per head of that through the community charge, before taking into account various benefits and relief. The settlement for the current year, 1991–92, provided for an increase of more than £31 million in West Glamorgan county council's standard spending assessment to £263·5 million; a rise of 15·1 per cent. on the level for 1990–91. That was the highest percentage increase in Wales, bar one county—Gwent—and represents an increase of almost 7 per cent. on the unnecessarily high budget set by the authority for 1990–91, which was £14 million over SSA. That decision resulted in a community charge for standard spending of £28 more than would have been necessary if the authority had spent in line with the Government's plans, and that placed an unnecessary burden on its charge payers.

This year, the authority is receiving an increase in grant support towards its expenditure of £18·5 million. Again, that is the second highest percentage increase in Wales. Charge payers in the county have also benefited directly from the £140 reduction in community charge liability which was announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in his Budget. The aggregate increase in standard spending assessments for 1991–92 over 1990–91 for the four district councils within West Glamorgan is £8·9 million, a rise of 20·7 per cent. The aggregate increase in grant for those authorities in support of that spending is £5·9 million, which represents a rise of 16·7 per cent. over 1990–91. The increase in SSA for the hon. Gentleman's constituency is 16·6 per cent. over 1990–91, despite a slight decrease in population.

While Port Talbot, Lliw Valley and Neath set community charges in line with the settlement, it is unfortunate that Swansea city council chose to budget for a charge of £57, no less than 52 per cent. above the settlement level of £38. That placed a quite unnecessary burden on its charge payers.

The levels of expenditure and support that I have just described were sufficient to enable the authorities concerned to meet both inflationary and service pressures in providing an appropriate level of service. The provisional settlement announced by my right hon. Friend on Tuesday will build on the foundation that has been laid.

It would not be appropriate or possible to consider how the proposed settlement for 1992–93 will affect individual local authorities. My Department and the local authority associations in Wales are considering the grant distribution arrangements for the coming year and will make recommendations to the Welsh Consultative Council on Local Government Finance in due course. With the exception of certain specific and supplementary grants towards current expenditure, Government support towards local government spending in Wales under the settlement is unhypothecated. That means that, while the Government provide the appropriate level of resources, it is for individual authorities to make their own expenditure decisions in the light of their assessment of local expenditure requirements and priorities. That is entirely appropriate and accords with the wishes of the local authorities. It is against that background that the funding of specific services such as those mentioned by the hon. Gentleman must be considered.

The hon. Member for Neath talked at some length about the position of the elderly and, in particular, about their travel arrangements. I share the hon. Gentleman's concern about the mobility of our senior citizens and I note his view that they should be allowed to travel free of charge on local buses. Of course, the Transport Act 1985 gives local authorities powers to fund travel concession schemes for various groups of people, including persons of pensionable age. The local authority may determine the nature of the concession and its level.

It is right that this is a matter for local authorities as they are in the best position to determine the type of concession which best suits the needs of their areas. Costs are an important factor in this. In West Glamorgan, for example, senior citizens may apply for a pass which entitles them to a third off normal single or return fares. The cost of this concession to the charge payer in the current financial year is estimated to be some £810,000, of which £402,000 will be met by the district councils.

However, the provision of free travel would not merely increase those costs by a factor of three to £2·4 million. I understand that that is the correct figure, but it would generate much higher usage, as more people would take advantage of the concession. This would result in higher claims from the bus companies and extra costs to the council.

But there are points other than costs to bear in mind. The scheme run in West Glamorgan imposes no time restrictions on senior citizens who use it. This means that pass holders may travel at any time, including at peak hours. This is helpful to the pass holders and makes for economic and easy administration of the scheme. A penalty of free travel which the hon. Gentleman advocates would be the need to restrict the times at which concession holders could travel in order to ensure that adequate capacity is available on the buses for those who need to travel. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that restriction.

Does the Minister agree that millions of pensioners elsewhere in the United Kingdom enjoy this benefit? Why do not pensioners in Wales enjoy it?

As I said, it is entirely a matter for the local authority to decide what best suits its locality. I imagine that, as the hon. Gentleman said, many free-travel schemes are to be found in heavily urbanised areas where fewer disadvantages may occur. Indeed, it is for each and every local authority to decide what type of concessionary scheme it can operate successfully and afford. In looking at concessionary fares schemes, local authorities have to consider what is affordable and the effect on other persons who, for whatever reason, need or choose to use the buses.

The hon. Gentleman concentrated very much on the needs of the elderly. He will be aware that, in our "Caring for People" White Paper and subsequent guidance, we have set out a comprehensive policy to ensure care in the community for elderly people. Each social services department is leading the production of a joint county social care plan for service development with health authorities and other bodies, including the voluntary sector, and in close consultation with service users and carers. The first plans will be published by next April.

We are supporting the implementation of those reforms with a unique programme of concerted action in Wales. The Welsh Office initiative began in 1987, and 56 demonstration projects testing innovative ways to care for elderly people in their own homes have been approved for grants. Four of those projects are in West Glamorgan, and the Welsh Office has allocated approximately £2·5 million for them. One of the projects, the staying-at-home initiative which started in January 1988, explores ways to improve community services and, in particular, enable dependent elderly people who would otherwise require residential care to remain in their homes.

I wish to discuss the case for a review of the law on squatting and its effect on privately owned second homes. Many people associate second homes simply with the wealthy who have a weekend cottage or a country home that they visit on Friday nights, returning to London or wherever on Sundays. In recent years, however, that has not been the only definition of a second home. More and more people own second homes because they must travel elsewhere for work and be away from their families from Monday until Friday, returning to the main family home at weekends. Many people have a second home simply because, as a result of mortgage interest rates, they have been unable to sell their home but have decided to move to their new home so that they do not lose that purchase.

Since I first raised the matter with the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), I have been extremely grateful for the help of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Home Office for the part that he and his officials have played in this thorny, pressing problem. There is no short cut to a solution and no easy answers. Many complex legal attitudes and issues must be looked at before we come up with an answer that will deal with the problem.

The current legal position is that squatting is an act of trespass which, in general, is dealt with by civil rather than criminal law. However, in cases of displaced residential occupiers—people who are displaced from their main residence—the provisions of sections 6 and 7 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 apply. That gives immediate relief to lawful occupiers who are deprived of living accommodation. If squatters' actions result in making occupiers homeless, immediate action can be taken to remove the squatters. The criminal law deals with the more objectionable behaviour associated with squatting. If damage is done to the property during entry into or occupation of the property, an offence is committed under the Criminal Damage Act 1971.

Although the principle of the law may be excellent, in practice it does not work so well for those who own a second home and are caught with the problem of squatters. The law is inadequate for the current circumstances and needs to be reviewed urgently with respect to squatters in individuals' second homes, which are not only holiday homes but second homes simply because they are taking longer to sell their main homes than they had hoped.

I should like to mention two cases to highlight the heartache, misery and expense that squatters can cause. One relates to my constituency of Chelmsford; the other took place elsewhere. For obvious reasons, I cannot mention any names. My constituents' home is still unoccupied and they live in fear of squatters returning to the property.

The first case was that of someone who is not a constituent. I should like to read the episode, which concerns the misery caused to a woman and her home. The local newspaper wrote:

"A woman wept last night in her dream home, now reduced to a stinking shell by squatters.

Mrs. X broke down in tears at the appalling damage to the house in which she had sunk her hopes and her savings.

The vandals even scrawled obscene rhymes on the walls, threatening to sort her out with a crowbar.

She said, 'How can I live here now? I never thought people could be this base. The house even smells of animals.'

The gang wrecked the two-storey house which was being converted to a single home from bedsits.

Mrs. X was only days away from moving in. Now it will take months and more than £15,000 to repair the damage caused in a drunken orgy of destruction.

The vandals ripped bannisters from stairs, smashed seven sinks, two showers and a bath, wrenched off every radiator, hacked out all the plumbing.

Floorboards were pulled up; skirting boards stripped and plaster chiselled off so that they could pull out copper pipes…

Every room was covered in obscene graffiti. 10 hippies and two dogs lived in the house for just over a week. As well as the damage, they left beer bottles and rotting rubbish everywhere.

They started ripping the house apart after Mrs. X obtained a writ for their eviction … Police today said that they were powerless to combat the squatters".

Every reasonable and decent person will have a great deal of sympathy with Mrs. X, given the reprehensible activities of the squatters who destroyed the home into which she hoped shortly to move.

The second case concerns constituents of mine who wanted to sell their house and in the meantime found another house into which they wished to move. So as not to lose the sale on the house they bought it and moved into it, having emptied their original home and ensured that all the windows and doors were securely bolted and locked so that no one could force entry. Imagine their horror when they discovered that squatters had entered the property. I believe that what they had done should be considered forced entry, but under the legislation it was apparently not an offence. They had managed to gain entry by removing the window panes without damaging them and had then unlocked the window. They proceeded to open the front door by unlocking it, brought up a van with their possessions and moved in. Nothing could be done by the police to remove the squatters immediately.

The squatters remained for just over a week, in which they held open house parties every night, inviting total strangers from the local public house to come and enjoy themselves and drink. The wallpaper, the carpets and the remaining beds in the house were damaged, and it was left to my constituents to seek a court order to get the squatters evicted.

My constituents were relatively lucky. It took quite a short time for them to get a court order, but they were determined, and because they could not have their case heard in a court in Chelmsford quickly enough they fortunately managed to find a court in Essex which was able to deal with their problems relatively speedily. They got their court order and the squatters left. But it cost those people a considerable amount of money to gain that quick access to the law. It cost them even more money because they had to repair the damage to their home before they could ask people to visit it with a view to buying it. That is unacceptable.

Fortunately, my constituents had the financial resources to seek redress from the courts, but many people do not have the £800—or, in some cases, more than £1,000—necessary to go to court to seek quick redress. It seems inherently unfair that people have to spend considerable sums of money to obtain possession of their home. One argument is that such people could sue the squatters for the damage caused, but that is not realistic. Most squatters would not have the financial resources, even if they could be identified and taken to court. Suing or claiming damages from squatters is not a viable alternative.

It was for those reasons that, on 19 June 1990, I raised the matter with the then Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley at Prime Minister's questions. I said:

"Is it not time that the balance of the law was redressed to favour the innocent home owner, rather than the reprehensible activities of squatters?"

To her credit, my right hon. Friend replied:

"As my hon. Friend is aware, squatting that directly excludes a householder from his home is already a criminal offence. The police can act, and penalties are severe. However, squatting in a residential property which does not cause the immediate threat of homelessness can be dealt with only through civil action."

My right hon. Friend continued—and this is crucial—

"I agree with my hon. Friend that there appears to be a defect in the law, and I am looking into the matter further."—[Official Report, 19 June 1990; Vol. 174, c. 797.]

I am grateful that my right hon. Friend looked into the matter further and I know that, over the past year, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State and his officials have considered the matter carefully and may possibly order a review of the law, which I welcome.

I accept that there are no easy answers; the law on property ownership is complex and difficult. Obviously, the law must be fair and any solution must be fair to all parties. However, the law at present is grossly unfair. It is balanced away from the innocent victims—home owners—and a review must address that problem urgently.

I accept, as I know my right hon. Friend the Minister would, that there is a problem of homelessness in this country. Fortunately, actions taken by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is dealing realistically with those problems. I am sure that everyone welcomes the fact that, in the past six months, the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of London has been halved due to my right hon. Friend's precipitate action and his imaginative policies of seeking to open up buildings such as the one in Soho square to provide night stay.

However, the fact that we have homelessness does not give squatters a divine right to take the law into their own hands and move into the properties of innocent bystanders who have taken all the care that they thought necessary properly to secure their homes against people breaking and entering, and squatting. It seems ironic and unfair that people lock their houses and ensure that they are secure but, because of the definition of what constitutes damage to a property when gaining entry, there is a legal way in which people can gain entry to those properties causing mayhem, misery and expense for homeowners, who find it can take some time to sort out the problem.

I should like to thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for what he has done and for the fact that at 1.45 pm on the day in which we go into recess he is prepared to listen to the problems that are close to the heart of people who, sadly, have become caught up with the activities of squatters. I urge him to ensure that his Department's review is concluded swiftly so that we can discuss in detail any suggestions that his Department is prepared to make for changing the law and putting an end to these reprehensible and anti-social activities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) has expressed his case with characteristic lucidity, and I congratulate him. The problem that he has highlighted over the past year, since he asked the question of our right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), has got worse. The problem of squatting has been deteriorating over the past three or four years and I applaud the action that my hon. Friend has taken. He has highlighted the issue and caused us in the Home Office as well as my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General to look at this fiendishly complex problem. It involves both criminal and civil law, landlord and tenant law and an individual's right to occupy property. It is exactly where criminal and civil law intermesh and where, over several hundred years, a complex set of statute laws has grown up.

Following my hon. Friend's question last year, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I have been engaged in a wide-ranging review of the law on squatting. I am afraid that I cannot make any announcements today, but I can assure my hon. Friend that it will not be long before I am able to make an announcement about the next step in what we intend to do.

Squatting is not trivial. It causes enormous inconvenience and, on occasions, great expense for those involved. The two examples that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford gave, one from his constituency and one from elsewhere in the country, clearly showed the personal tragedy as well as the expense and inconvenience that can be caused to innocent people who own property in which they are not currently living.

I am sure that people who have had squatters in their property feel the same as those who have been burgled. They may never feel comfortable in the house or flat again. Someone has entered the property by force and done the sort of thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford described. Although I have never been in that position, I am sure that I would not feel comfortable in my home for a considerable time afterwards. The emotional distress can be considerable.

I join my hon. Friend in rejecting absolutely any suggestion that squatting can ever be defensible or that it is normally—there may be exceptions—related to homelessness. The majority of those who squat, as in the cases described by my hon. Friend, have chosen to invade the property of others in a measured and calculated way as they move from place to place. I have seen that in my own part of the country. Squatting is the unlawful occupation of someone else's property and it cannot be justified.

Squatting involves not only residential property. We have received alarming reports from different parts of the country about an increase in the amount of squatting in commercial and shop property. My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) has made a strong plea for further action in that regard. I know that the Confederation of British Industry, on behalf of its members, feels that more needs to be done about squatting by those who look as if they are professional gangs of shop squatters. They manipulate the law and sometimes set up shops for a few days and sell sub-standard goods. Of course, the use of any electricity or gas that may be connected to the property renders them liable to criminal prosecution, and the people who have purchased goods from such places will find themselves in an unfortunate position. My hon. Friend's campaign has flushed out that additional dimension. We are trying to deal with the problem, but squatting in domestic properties is rather easier to deal with than the complex problem of shop squatting.

It is difficult to gauge the extent of squatting: it is like drug addiction, it is a hidden problem or a passing problem as people move in and out. It is difficult to obtain accurate statistics. Recent newspaper reports estimated the number at 50,000. Sometimes newspaper estimates are as useful as ministerial estimates, and I would not dispute that number. However, statistics are available for local authority properties. My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning reports that, at 1 April 1990, approximately 5,200 local authority homes were being unlawfully occupied. Ninety per cent. of those were in London and 65 per cent. in just three boroughs—Southwark, Lambeth and Hackney. Those boroughs are a byword for hopeless housing administration.

The 1986 London housing survey suggested that a quarter of an estimated 7,500 residential properties that were being squatted in were privately owned, the remainder being owned by local authorities and housing associations. The survey estimated that there were 12,500 squatters in London, about half of whom were under 25; only 8 per cent. were over 40. It is essentially a young person's problem. The survey revealed that mass squatting was rare and that, mercifully, cases involving young children were negligible.

Hard figures may be difficult to obtain, but the Government do not doubt that squatting represents a problem that merits serious attention. Squatting is one form of the civil tort of trespass and has traditionally been dealt with in the civil courts. This approach was justified in the past by the fact that squatting was seen as the simple occupation of property, which may be subject to genuine civil disputes. Where squatting is accompanied by criminal activity such as theft, criminal damage—undoubtedly some of the matters to which my hon. Friend referred fell into the category of criminal damage—the abstraction of electricity and the use of gas, the general criminal law is available for use against squatters, as it is against anybody else. The problem is that it is difficult to obtain evidence when people swoop into houses or shops and move on.

The traditional approach, which has dominated our approach to the occupation of property as far back as records reveal—that is a long way—has always been to leave it to the civil law. That approach was modified for the first time by the Criminal Law Act 1977, which made it an offence for a trespasser to remain on premises after being required to leave by a displaced residential occupier or a protected intended occupier—someone who has several defined legal interests in the property.

Given the seriousness of the predicament facing those who were made homeless by squatters, that approach was justified. Someone could come home, find people squatting in their home and have nowhere to go. That was put right, and Parliament decided that a civil remedy alone was insufficient.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford and other hon. Members would like to extend that protection to those who are not made homeless by squatters but who nevertheless may suffer considerable hardship at their hands. I think particularly of my hon. Friend's constituents, who had moved to a new house but were unable to sell their former house because squatters had moved in while it was on the market. After those squatters had been evicted, my hon. Friend's constituents were still faced with the difficulty and expense of returning their old house to a fit state for sale. That is a serious issue. There is no denying the feeling of injustice that my hon. Friend's constituents and others rightly feel at having been put in such a situation, often with little prospect of compensation from the squatters. They must feel helpless and in need of the law's protection. That is the point which my hon. Friend has been pressing on the Government.

My hon. Friend will agree that a distinction can be drawn between this sort of case, serious as it is, and cases which the law recognises in which lawful occupiers of property are made homeless. My hon. Friend draws attention to the case for a review of the effectiveness of the present law in dealing with the sort of case that I have just outlined. I assure him that, in reviewing the law, the Home Secretary and I have such cases very much in mind.

As I have explained, squatting is not generally a matter for the criminal law, except in cases where squatters commit criminal offences. The civil remedy is to seek an order from the High Court or the county court to get possession of the property. The courts are aware that it is often important to move quickly against squatters, and expeditious procedures are now available. I have recently discussed these matters with the Lord Chancellor, who said that all that it is possible to do under present procedures to expedite matters is being done. In the most urgent cases, where there is a danger to life or limb or to property, it is possible to obtain an immediate ex parte injunction, although that involves much cost by those who are threatened.

The Minister has given two examples of the definition of emergency. An emergency is often more pressing to those who own a property than it is to the law, and they probably interpret it differently from the courts. For example, I suspect that in many cases there would not be loss of life or limb. The emergency for the people involved is that of no longer having their property under their control but invaded by others.

That is a good point, characteristically made by my hon. Friend, and we shall have to take it into account as we finalise the review of the law in this area.

It must be stressed that there are dangers in widening the scope of the criminal law in this field. In the past, some hon. Members have suggested changes which in practice would mean that anyone who could not satisfy a policeman or even a local authority official—and such officials are not necessarily as benign as local authorities officials in Chelmsford, now happily back under Conservative control since May—that he or she was in lawful occupation of the house could therefore be thrown on to the streets without further ado. In that context, I am sure that my hon. Friend appreciates the difficulties.

Even with less radical extensions of the law, we must be apprehensive about the prospect of involving the police in what may be genuine disputes over property rights or disputes between landlords and tenants and not disputes over squatting. There are considerable difficulties, and we would not wish to see chief constables or hard-pressed policemen and policewomen turned into a free eviction agency for landlords. We must also be sensitive to the possible public order consequences of police involvement in squatting cases.

I acknowledge that, in the great majority of cases, the squatter is in the wrong, and knows it. A further point which my hon. Friend did not raise but which underlines much of the complexity of the consideration that the Home Office is giving to this issue is the matter of third party rights. For example, in his constituency or mine, an absentee landlord may sell a property in which there are squatters and not care very much for immediate repossession. On either side of the property, or above and below if it is a flat, people may be grossly inconvenienced by the noise, smell and attendant nuisance.

That is a live question. In the spirit of the times, I know that my hon. Friend will spend almost the entire recess at his desk in the Palace of Westminster attending to the problems of his constituents. Over that time, perhaps he will give some attention to the problem and let me have his views. It may be that third parties should have the right. I do not know. It is a complex issue and such a right might give other people a gratuitous opportunity to cause trouble.

The criminal law already intervenes in the worst cases of squatting. Before we go any further, we have to know precisely what it is that we are aiming to catch, and ensure that we do not aim too wide. It would be a good idea, particularly as matters concerning property are always sensitive, if there were wide agreement on both sides of the Chamber. If we make changes to the law, we want them to stick, in the interests of citizens, not in the interests of a personal or political point of view. Therefore, a fair measure of agreement would be a good thing.

I hope to be in a position to make an announcement about this issue soon, and I will ensure that my hon. Friend, who has spoken so forcefully about this important issue, gets a copy of the announcement on the day that it is made.

The matter that I wish to raise might best be seen as a constituency case with several important implications. These may emerge as I present the case and suggest the need for consistency of standards and their relationship to general decision making. Although the debate is concerned primarily with the closure of a local sub-post office, it touches on the future of the whole postal and Post Office service. I shall suggest that there is a need for the role of the sub-post office to be adequately perceived and more fully appreciated.

Sub-post offices provide an important social service. They are a point of contact, and the best of our sub-post offices, and their staff, can be providers of information, advice and assistance to those who are most often in need of that support. That fact needs to be fully recognised and that service needs to be adequately valued and maintained. This point is a timely one to make shortly after the Prime Minister sought public favour through his citizens charter. Apparently, this charter is not to be accompanied by any adequate allocation of public resources. Without an acceptance that improved services and helpful approaches may require that the operation involved is a little more costly, and that profit motives may need to be a little less dominant, the concept of the charter will not be adequately fulfilled. Words may be fine, but actions are something else.

If the Post Office determines that there shall be fewer sub-post offices, individual citizens, perhaps many of them, will face extra cost and greater inconvenience and maybe comparatively severe extra costs or significantly increased personal inconvenience. The Post Office may benefit financially, but the individual and the affected community will gain nothing. If the individual counts, then, when such a decision is made, it should be seen as serious and the approach to such a decision should require greater consideration and care. That has not been our experience in regard to the loss of the Newhill sub-post office.

As I hope to explain, I have been unable to reach the conclusion that the closure of Newhill sub-post office received the care that one would have thought necessary. On 23 February, I received a letter from a Mr. D. Skipworth, one of the management staff of Post Office Counters Ltd. in Sheffield. It informed me that the Newhill sub-post office was to close. The letter read:

"The closure has been brought about by the decision of the Co-operative Retail Society, in whose store the Post Office is situated, to close down their operation in Cemetery Road with effect from this date"—

that is, 23 March.

"There are no other suitable retail outlets in the Newhill area to which we could consider relocating."

Therefore, the service is to end.

I think that I replied by return to inform Mr. Skipworth that I much regretted the loss of the facility, not least because it would be unhelpful to my constituents residing in the Newhill area. I added that the additional use of the Wath upon Dearne post office that would follow would mean greater inconvenience for my constituents. That is already a busy post office. I wrote that, if an alternative opportunity arose that would allow Post Office facilities to be re-established in the locality, it should be considered as a matter of emergency.

Local concern became acute. I was kept informed by a Mr. J. Robinson, who was acting as the ad hoc secretary of an action group that had been formed to contest the closure. I met some constituents with Mr. Robinson and ward councillors at the Crown inn at Newhill on 17 March. There I met another shopkeeper whose premises, in my view, are adaptable for the purpose of establishing a sub-post office service, and whose personal record was certainly such as to qualify him for the position.

On 18 March I wrote again to Mr. Skipworth at Sheffield. I referred to the meeting that had taken place on 17 March and to the strong support that had been expressed within the community for the retention of the service. I referred also to the commendation of the representatives of the community who were present at the meeting for the transfer of the business to 189, Cemetery road, which is virtually adjacent to the location of the former sub-post office. I referred to the deep local anxiety, not least because many pensioners live in close proximity to the sub-post office. They had told me most firmly that the closure of the Newhill sub-post office meant additional 40p bus fares to use the alternative service. That may not matter to the Post Office, but it matters to my constituents.

The local action group had a meeting with the district general manager, Mr. Marsden. Its members were advised—I was not—that Wath upon Dearne was over-provided with sub-post offices. At that meeting Mr. Marsden and his colleagues were left in no doubt that there was deep and bitter resentment about the closure.

I wrote again to Mr. Skipworth on 18 April, and did not receive a reply. I wrote again and asked whether those involved with the matter would concern themselves with my correspondence and favour me with a reply to my letters. I did not receive a reply. I tabled four parliamentary questions on 8 May. I hoped that the fact that questions had been tabled would stimulate Post Office Counters Ltd. to respond. I wrote to Sir Bryan Nicholson, the chairman of the Post Office, on 4 May. I received a swift acknowledgement from Sir Bryan's office, which told me that inquiries would be made. That led to a little flurry of action. I received a call to say that my letters had not been received by Post Office Counters Ltd. in Sheffield, although they were clearly addressed.

I asked my secretary to send copies of my letters to Mr. Marsden at the district office and then I telephoned Mr. Marsden, to be told that a careful check had been made and that none of my letters had been received. I was rather angry about that. The implication was that my secretary had not posted the letters. I made it extremely clear to Mr. Marsden that my secretary, who has worked with me for a long time, is of irreproachable character and that when she assured me that the letters had been posted, I knew that they had been.

There was further evidence to justify the claim. When my secretary sent the letters to Post Office Counters Ltd. in Sheffield, she sent copies to Mr. Robinson, to the ward councillors and to the local press. All of them received the copies without delay. The ones that apparently went astray were those sent to Post Office Counters Ltd.

I sent copies of the letters that were said to be missing and received a further reply. I should have said that I was told by Post Office Counters Ltd. that it would ask Royal Mail to investigate. I could not see Royal Mail being able to identify the location of the letters that Post Office Counters Ltd. said had gone astray. I am not critical of Royal Mail for not being able to find that correspondence. I received a letter, dated 20 May, from Mr. A. J. Roberts, the managing director of Post Office Counters Ltd. He said that he was replying to my letter to the chairman. I would have thought it only courteous had the chairman replied himself. Mr. Roberts made it clear that the original notification to me of the proposed closure was not entirely accurate. He said:

"I am told that it was the initial decision by the Co-operative Retail Society to cease operations, allied with the over-provision of counter services in Wath, which led to the decision to close the Newhill office."

In February, I was told that the reason for the closure was entirely due to the Co-operative Retail Society, but by April Post Office Counters Ltd. has widened the cause.

The letter contained another interesting development. Mr. Roberts confirmed that

"the petition you mention was presented to Mr. Marsden at the Public Meeting held on 23 April."

My initial letter to the chairman of the Post Office asked him to receive a petition. I still have that petition. I was assured by the chairman of Post Office Counters Ltd. that it had already been received. That suggests a degree of carelessness—something to which I referred earlier. I was not happy about the letter from Mr. Roberts, especially as he suggested that I saw the regional manager and the district manager—the people responsible for the muddle and confusion in the first place.

I decided that the best thing to do would be to write once again to the chairman of the Post Office saying that I was not happy about the muddle and confusion and that I still wanted to present the petition. The Minister will understand that petitions of that sort are rarely in the legal condition that would allow me to present them in this Chamber. I wanted to present that petition to the man who bears responsibility for the Post Office. I thought that, at least, he would receive me briefly and graciously, and allow me to express the deep concern of my constituents and my irritation at the way that the matter had been handled. Instead, I received another letter from Sir Bryan—which was extremely courteous—saying that Post Office business was so divided or parcelled out between the Royal Mail, Parcelforce and Post Office Counters Ltd. that such matters would be better dealt with within those departments, and not by himself.

Sir Bryan was courteous, and so he should be. However, he would not see me. I shall be blunt, and say that Sir Bryan receives emoluments of £149,195 a year to lead his industry. When a Member of this House—it does not matter from which side—needs to see the leader of an industry because of gross incompetence and confused actions within it, he should surely receive him. If what Sir Bryan says is correct, and his industry is now so well organised that he has no responsibilities, why does he retain his job? Many of our constituents have been made redundant for far less marked a change. If Sir Bryan does not have a role that allows him to meet Members of Parliament with a justified cause, is not that role superfluous? Either the man has a job to do and does it, or he does not have a job, in which case he should not be paid.

The Post Office may not be particularly concerned because old-age pensioners have to find an extra 40p to meet the additional cost of going to an alternative post office——

It does not care.

This morning I received a delightful communication from the Post Office, as all hon. Members will have done, telling me how much it supports and welcomes the Prime Minister's initiative on the citizens charter. I hope that the Minister will look at the delightful comments in that. It welcomes the proposals for improved service. Those proposals would add impetus to improving the quality of service. It is proud of its achievements. That pride is not shared in Newhill. It is putting its customers first. It has not put my constituents in the Newhill area first. It will test the service at selected sub-post offices. It will not be able to test it at the Newhill sub-post office because it has gone, and that is not satisfactory. The experience is distressing.

I deeply regret that my letters should have been lost; that my request that the petition should be received should be so lightly dismissed; that when I requested the chairman of the Post Office to receive the petition I was advised to hand it to the person who said that he received the original one and who must have inadequately advised Mr. Roberts, the managing director, in the first place when Mr. Roberts assured me that he had already received the petition. I do not believe that there has been the care that is required, and I illustrate that with one further example.

One of the letters that I received from Post Office Counters Ltd. referred to the meeting in Newhill, and the senior official of the post office responsible wrote to me to say that it had been suggested that the London road sub-post office should close rather than the Newhill one. But I do not have a London road sub-post office in my constituency. There is no London road in my constituency. If the Post Office cannot get the names of the roads right when Members of Parliament write to it, it is little wonder that this Member of Parliament is so concerned.

The matter is serious. I hope that the Minister will confirm that I am entirely justified in expressing anxiety on behalf of my constituents and that I was entirely justified in seeking to pass the petition, and to express the concern of my constituents, to Sir Bryan Nicholson, the chairman of the Post Office. I hope that he will share my concern that the conduct that I have experienced is not satisfactory in a parliamentary democracy. If those standards are to continue, the Prime Minister will be a disappointed man, and many of my constituents further afield than Newhill will have cause for irritation and anger, as well as the prospect of inconvenience and additional cost, as my constituents have had.

I take up straight away the comments that the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) made at the end of his speech. I confirm my view that he is entirely justified in raising the matter on this Adjournment debate. From what he has said this afternoon and in discussions with those who advise me, he is entirely justified in everything that he has done in the matter during the past few months.

The debate is particularly timely because in it the hon. Gentleman has referred to two areas to which the Government attach considerable importance. First, the future of Newhill post office raises the question of the adequate provision of post office services—an important subject that needs to be debated in the House. Secondly, there is the question of the quality of service provided by public sector organisations such as the Post Office—and the Government have, with the publication of the citizens charter this week, expressed in concrete terms their determination to raise those standards. During the speech of the hon. Member for Wentworth, I referred to that part of the citizens charter that deals with the Post Office. It states:

"The objective of our reforms is to improve the range, choice, reliability and value for money of postal services. We also plan to increase the power of the customer to take action when the service provided falls below a reasonable standard."

There follows, rightly, the statement that the Post Office has already raised its standards and can certainly lay claim to be the most efficient organisation of its kind in Europe.

However, the charter adds:

"There is, however, further scope for increasing efficiency, reducing costs and improving standards of service."

That is why this debate is so timely. As the hon. Member for Wentworth said, a citizens charter must embrace not just words but actions, and we should ensure that public utilities such as the Post Office show—in the words of the hon. Gentleman—consideration and care to all members of the public and to those who represent them.

I know that the hon. Gentleman would not have drawn attention to the issue if he did not feel considerable concern, and I hope that he will not mind me saying that he has gained an enviable reputation in the House, during his long service of more than 20 years, as an exemplary constituency Member of Parliament. Today's debate is another example of his determination, which we have all noted over the years, to stand up for his constituents, and to speak up for them. The Adjournment debate procedure provides an ideal format in which to do that.

The Post Office provides a service on which we all rely at some time.

In what way will the citizens charter assist the customers of Newhill post office?

I have another nine minutes in which to finish my contribution to this debate, and, having given considerable thought to the matter, I hope that I will be able to respond positively. If the hon. Member for Barnsley, East (Mr. Patchett) will be a little patient, I will outline what we consider to be the advantages accruing to the citizen from the charter and what can be done in the particular case of Newhill.

Although we can usually rely on Post Office services with confidence, it is unfortunately inevitable, given the size of the organisation, that, from time to time, difficulties of the kind that were described earlier would arise. I accept absolutely the genuine concern expressed by the hon. Member for Wentworth about the need for proper provision of Post Office services for his constituents, and for efficient and helpful handling of representations to the Post Office. I shall return to those specific aspects.

Let me make it clear at once that I agree with the hon. Member for Wentworth that aspects of the case that he raised should and could have been handled with greater sensitivity by the Post Office. It has a statutory duty to have regard to the social—I lay special emphasis on the word "social", and in that respect I hope that my response will be helpful to the hon. Member for Barnsley, East—industrial, and commercial needs of the United Kingdom in exercising its powers. It is important to set the difficulties that the hon. Member for Wentworth described against the background of the corporation's statutory duties and the many positive steps that it has taken to reorganise its business, and to improve its accountability and quality of service.

Since the Post Office ceased to be a public department and became a public corporation 20 years ago, it has transformed itself into a profitable organisation run on commercial lines, with a clear priority given to serving the customer. In the past, the Post Office operated as a monolithic single business but in practice it often covered a number of distinct activities—letters, parcels, counters and Girobank. The last few years have seen increasing separation of the different businesses, leaving them to deal at arm's length with other parts of the Post Office. That has given each not only more commercial incentive to make the best use of its assets and develop its own business, but an opportunity to take a more responsive approach to the needs of its different customers. That is why, in the particular circumstances raised by the hon. Member, there was a wish to resolve the issue within the counters business rather than at the chairman's level, and furthermore on a regional basis rather than centrally, to allow local knowledge of customer requirements to inform the decision-making process.

I will draw the attention of the Post Office chairman to the issues raised in this afternoon's debate, and I will personally ask him to reconsider his decision not to meet the hon. Gentleman. Despite the heavy responsibilities laid upon the chairman of the Post Office, if requested courteously to meet a Member of Parliament to discuss a matter of some importance, he should do so, and I shall write him a letter. Of course, this is entirely a matter for the chairman of the Post Office as he has operational independence from the Government, but I shall write to him in those terms and perhaps that will offer a suitable opportunity for the hon. Gentleman to present his petition in person to Sir Bryan.

Post Office Counters Ltd. was incorporated in 1987 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Post Office. Since then, it has consistently made a small operating profit on its turnover, which was last year about £950 million. We all have an interest in seeing that it continues to operate efficiently, effectively and profitably. It will not be in anyone's long-term interests if the Post Office is not able to generate the funds to maintain and improve its service.

The task is not an easy one. Traditional Post Office services are increasingly subject to competition. Stamps are now sold in some 40,000 other retail outlets. Automated funds transfer directly into bank and building society accounts already provides an alternative means of delivering pension and benefit payments and for the payment of bills. The option for doing that is to be extended under the provisions of the citizens charter to provide greater customer choice. The Post Office therefore needs to look to costs and efficiency if it is to remain competitive and retain business, but it clearly recognises that economic considerations are only one part of a wider equation; it must earn and retain a reputation among its customers for meeting their requirements if it is to keep their loyalty.

It is worth pointing out that it currently has the largest retail network in the country consisting of more than 20,000 post offices throughout the United Kingdom. Indeed, it is considerably larger than that of any bank or building society, and it is worth pointing out that it has more outlets per head of population than the post office networks in France, Germany, Japan or the USA. In the United Kingdom, post offices are therefore generally easily accessible to all but those in the very remotest areas. So post offices are very much local institutions, a point made by the hon. Gentleman, and I would be the first to acknowledge that. Particularly—but by no means exclusively—in rural areas, they often serve an important social function in their local communities. Again, the hon. Gentleman referred to that, especially in regard to pensioners. That fact was, as I have said, clearly recognised in the Act establishing the Post Office as a public corporation.

We have repeatedly made clear our commitment—and I am more than happy to do so again today—to the maintenance of a network of post offices adequate to enable the Post Office to fulfil its statutory duties. I know that the Post Office has also made clear its own commitment to the maintenance of its network.

However, I must emphasise that that does not always leave the Post Office with comfortable decisions about individual offices. In the case of the Newhill office, the Post Office was placed in an unusual position, following the decision of the existing retailer to close its store. I understand that immediate initial inquiries suggested that there were no suitable alternative retail sites. I know that the hon. Gentleman has done a lot of work on that, and no doubt it is an operational matter that he could discuss with the chairman when he meets him.

The Post Office must, however, consider a number of criteria when taking decisions on the level of provision of post office services. There is, of course, the important consideration of the extent of local demand and the nature of that demand. We are all conscious of the difficulties faced by the elderly and handicapped in reaching their nearest facilities. That is why Post Office Counters, in deciding that the Newhill office could not be reopened, took account of the high level of provision in the area.

I hope that it is clear from what I have said that the Post Office has put considerable effort into maintaining an appropriate and efficient network. Although specific decisions about the running of post offices must be left to the Post Office, I recognise the anxieties raised by the hon. Gentleman. I share his considerable surprise that three letters could fail to arrive at Post Office Counters, despite the fact that copies were made. But, of course, there are other instances of letters being lost, so we do not know what the real reason was. I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman that I take the matter seriously. I trust that the meeting can be arranged and that the matter will be satisfactorily resolved.

I am glad to have the opportunity to introduce this debate and I am especially pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Mr. Lennox-Boyd), is to reply. I am also glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) is in his place this afternoon, for he is not only a distinguished vice-chairman of the British Pakistan Group in the House but a long-term friend of Pakistan and the south Asian sub-continent.

I was inspired to seek this debate following the speech by the Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan at the 39th annual dinner of the Pakistan Society held on 20 June. The Chairman of the Senate took the opportunity to touch on the progress of parliamentary democracy in Pakistan and to raise the Kashmir question.

In the 44 years since the establishment of Pakistan as an independent country, there have been only 21 years of genuine civilian government. The murder of President Zia in 1988 set in train the return of a civilian Government. President Zia had always made the commitment that democratic elections should take place, but I pay a very warm tribute to the President of Pakistan for his courageous stewardship of his country's affairs since 1988. Without the wise statesmanship of President Ishaq Khan, I doubt whether Pakistan would have made the continuing progress with parliamentary democracy.

I had the pleasure of meeting President Khan in the week before he exercised his constitutional powers to dissolve the National Assembly, when he took the view that circumstances had arisen in which the government of Pakistan could not be carried out in accordance with the provisions of the constitution and that the electorate should be invited to decide which of the competing political parties should form the future Government of the country.

The election that followed the dissolution of the National Assembly was regarded by the majority who observed the process as lively and vigorous. For example, The Guardian of 31 October 1990 reported from Islamabad that three international reports gave Pakistan a clean bill of health. Perhaps more importantly, in view of the relationship that Pakistan has with the United States, the same newspaper reported:

"The Washington-based National Democratic Institute has already declared that the elections were generally free and fair".

The polls saw a landslide victory for the Islamic Democratic Alliance, and Mr. Nawaz Sharif became Prime Minister. We in the House warmly congratulate Pakistan on its continued commitment to democratic parliamentary institutions and wish them every continued success. We also warmly welcome Pakistan back into membership of the Commonwealth.

The new Prime Minister and Government found themselves having to deal with the consequences of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Notwithstanding the fact that popular sentiment at street level was in favour of Saddam Hussein, the Government of Pakistan courageously sided with the United Nations and condemned the invasion of the independent state of Kuwait. Pakistan remained true to that principle throughout what was inevitably a difficult period for a Muslim state. I am sure that I echo the opinion of many in the House when I say that it was an act of very real courage and statesmanship to stay the course and support the United Nations and its coalition.

Pakistan sent troops to Saudi Arabia for defensive purposes and the United Kingdom recognised the impact of the Gulf crisis on the Pakistan economy, which was damaged by price increases, disruptions in the oil supply and the loss of remittances of workers in Iraq and Kuwait. The United Kingdom played its part in helping Pakistan through the International Monetary Fund's enhanced structural adjustment facility, of which the United Kingdom is the largest contributor to the interest subsidy account. I hope that Pakistan was able to take advantage of that facility.

Since coming to office, Nawaz Sharif has moved with remarkable speed and given a high priority to economic growth and productivity. He is putting into place a vast programme to privatise inefficient state-owned businesses and recognises that the wider welfare programmes can be paid for only by a thriving economy. The Government of Pakistan have brought forth fresh initiatives for investment and exports, with an important relaxation of foreign exchange controls to encourage inward investment. We in the House warmly welcome those developments, especially as the United Kingdom is the largest foreign investor in Pakistan and our overseas aid programme is the third largest in Asia.

I am especially glad that Prime Minister Sharif's Government have decided to work for a thriving free-enterprise economy, because that offers the best prospect of improving the well-being of all the people and will provide a real bridge between Pakistan and India. A successful free economy will do more to solve Indo-Pakistani differences than anything else, and therein lies the longer-term solution to the Kashmir question to which I shall refer later. People who have financial success and something to lose in the event of war are more likely to strive for peace and good will. Real and imagined differences begin to fade when people succeed and the quality of life improves for all. Nawaz Sharif has a vision for the economic future of his country; I hope that he succeeds and I wish him well for all the reasons that I have given.

There are three other issues on which I would like to touch briefly. The first relates to the Shariat Bill. It is not generally understood in the United Kingdom that that Bill is not about what the western press beguilingly labels fundamentalism, but is aimed at making Pakistan a modern, progressive, democratic, Islamic state. Pakistan hopes that the Bill will assist in the elimination of corruption as well as providing fairness and justice for all. Importantly, the Bill does not affect the personal lives, religious freedom, traditions, customs and ways of life of non-Muslims. Minorities will continue to enjoy the full freedom to lead their lives in accordance with their own beliefs.

The second issue, which provides a very firm bond between the United Kingdom and Pakistan, concerns the control of drugs. I know from my visits to Pakistan that the issue of drug addiction is very serious, because Pakistan and its people are as much victims of narcotics as people living in the United Kingdom. I am glad that an increasing level of co-operation exists between the United Kingdom and Pakistan over the collection and use of intelligence information and in other ways. Last year, the former chief inspector of constabulary visited Pakistan to assist the special commission set up to review the future of the police.

I know from my own work that a close relationship is developing between our two countries to assist with the control of narcotics and the problem of lawlessness. The level of heroin addiction is of very great concern, and I hope the United Kingdom will do all that it can to assist Pakistan. I particularly hope that the Foreign Office will be able to provide a bursary to enable senior officers from the Pakistan police to attend the overseas course.at the police staff college. These experiences and links are one of the many ways of assisting a democratic police force in its awesome fight against the drug traders.

I now come to my final point, and it inevitably relates to Kashmir. In his speech to the Pakistan Society, the Chairman of the Senate made it clear that the Government of Pakistan wish to have friendly relations with India. He reminded his audience that there is much in common between the two countries in terms of history, and social and economic conditions. I warmly welcome the fact that both countries wish to resolve the problem of Kashmir through peaceful means, but I would like briefly to outline the history of the Kashmir question.

On 23 March 1940, the Muslim League in session at Lahore passed a resolution demanding in plain terms the partition of India and the formation of independent states in the north-western and eastern parts of India in which Muslims were in a majority. The term Pakistan was used to describe those parts of what was then India to be included in an independent state, and the K of Pakistan referred to Kashmir. The British scramble out of India in 1947 unfortunately left Kashmir as an open question. The then ruling Prince was a Hindu and eventually decided on Kashmir forming part of what was the then dominion of India, whereas the majority of the inhabitants who are Muslim clearly thought that they should be part of the new dominion of Pakistan.

Britain voted in favour of all the United Nations resolutions on Kashmir in 1948 and 1949. Those resolutions remain on the table. Sadly, Pakistan and India have been to war twice over the issue of Kashmir. In the Simla peace agreement of 1972, they agreed to

"settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations, or by any other peaceful means agreed on between them",

and the United Kingdom regards the issue as one to be settled by bilateral discussions.

Of course, the House most earnestly wishes that that should be so, yet the fact of the matter is that a substantial part of the Muslim population in Indian-held Kashmir is in rebellion against Indian rule. That has inevitably resulted in Indian police and military forces having to deal with the consequences of determined opposition. I have seen with my own eyes the results of this dispute in the hideous injuries suffered by men, women and children who have been caught up in the conflict, and huge armies stand in readiness on either side of the line of control.

In common with many Members of the House, I believe that we have to do our utmost to encourage our friends in these two democratic Commonwealth countries to find a lasting solution to the Kashmir question. That solution must be to follow the principle that the people of Jammu and Kashmir must decide in some form of agreed test of opinion whether Kashmir should be part of Pakistan or India. That test of opinion will be difficult to arrange. Will it be the opinion of the people in Indian-held Kashmir alone or in Pakistan Kashmir; or will Pakistan Kashmir be exempt from such a test; or will it be the opinion of the people in the whole of what is called Jammu and Kashmir?

Some people irresponsibly suggest that there is a second option of an independent state of Kashmir. Such a proposition is unacceptable to either India or Pakistan and does not accord with the United Nation's resolutions. Nor does it have any credible basis in the recent history of the region. I would not welcome the further fragmentation of the south Asian sub-continent; one need only look at the miserable position of Bangladesh to see the failure that has come from the break-up of former British India. What cannot be allowed to continue is the violation of human rights and the suppression of the right of people to determine their future.

There are many human rights activists in Delhi who share the concern of those of us who worry about events in Kashmir. The incidents which give rise to human rights concerns are a consequence of civil conflict. It has always been so throughout history—even in the days of British rule—that people who seek political change suffer, especially the innocent. I do not want to be suborned into the negative argument as to which alleged atrocity is true. Some incidents will be true, others partially so, and some the concoction of those fighting for their interests. What matters is a lasting solution to the problem and I would rather concentrate on that aspect of the matter and what the leaders of Pakistan and India can do to achieve it.

Those of us who desire to see India and Pakistan develop their economies for the greater benefit of their people firmly believe that every encouragement must be given to the solution of the Kashmir question. As long as the problem remains, the threat of conflict hangs over the sub-continent. I believe that the United Kingdom must shoulder part of the burden of finding a lasting solution. Our unseemly scramble from our responsibilities as the paramount power in 1947 left behind an unwanted legacy. We, too, must show greater concern for this issue and assist our friends in Islamabad and Delhi towards a lasting solution. I hope that United Kingdom policy will be directed towards this effort. We cannot sit on the fence and ignore a growing and serious situation.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler) on raising the important subject of relations with Pakistan and the issue of Kashmir. I have listened with great interest to what he has had to say. I recognise the attention and careful concern that my hon. Friend has long shown in matters relating to Pakistan. Indeed, he has for a long time been a close friend of that country, as well as of India.

I strongly endorse my hon. Friend's remarks about Pakistan's consolidation of parliamentary democracy and his complimentary references to the President and Prime Minister of Pakistan.

In his reply, will my hon. Friend the Minister take into account the enormous burden that Pakistan has had thrust on it as it has had to look after the refugees from Afghanistan? Will he also consider the considerable financial burden that that has created, particularly when the United States, for other reasons, has withdrawn its support?

I endorse my hon. Friend's comments about the great efforts that the Pakistan Government have made in relation to the refugees. It is a subject to which my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North might have referred. We are happy to congratulate the Pakistan Government on that.

We share the pleasure of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North in noting that, once again, Britain and Pakistan are fellow members of the Commonwealth.

We in this country respected the courageous stand taken by the Pakistan Government during the Gulf crisis in support of the multinational coalition, despite the considerable domestic difficulties which the Pakistan Government confronted in doing so. We were associated with our European partners in a message of support from the Twelve which was delivered to the Pakistan Prime Minister in early February. Pakistan's commitment to international order was visible and effective. It is also ongoing: even now, nine Pakistani officers form part of the United Nations' mission to man Kuwait's frontiers.

We also appreciate that Pakistan, like many other countries, suffered considerable economic disadvantage from Saddam Hussein's aggression. I understand that Pakistan has not yet made use of the International Monetary Fund's enhanced structural adjustment facility, but that Pakistan is continuing its discussions with IMF officials about this and other forms of IMF and World bank assistance.

We welcome the Prime Minister of Pakistan's impressive range of economic reforms, covering foreign investment, exports, tariff and foreign exchange controls, taxation and privatisation. We hope that they will make a strong contribution to the country's economic growth and benefit our bilateral trade and economic relations.

I note my hon. Friend's remarks about the Shariat law which has recently been enacted. Many people, both in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, await with interest the reports of the various commissions set up by the Shariat legislation to see what impact they will have on Pakistani society. We hope that the protection of minority interests will be assured and welcome the remarks made by senior figures in Pakistan which show that they recognise the need for this.

I thoroughly endorse my hon. Friend's remarks about the dangers of the drugs trade and the need to control, in particular, the dreadful problem of heroin addiction. That menace threatens both the United Kingdom and Pakistan and we are working closely with the Pakistan Government to combat drug-related problems. While I was in Pakistan in February, I was glad to have the opportunity to discuss these problems at first hand with those involved in trying to control them.

I was delighted to receive the Minister for Narcotics Control, the Honourable Rana Chandar Singh, when he visited London in May. During that useful visit, we were able to exchange views on a wide range of drug enforcement measures. I understand that the Minister is working actively on anti-drugs legislation on the seizure of assets. I hope that that will be enacted soon and will have a particular impact on dealing with drugs-related offences.

I thank my hon. Friend for his suggestion about police training. We agree that that is a worthwhile way in which we can help Pakistan. Every year, we provide funds to train seven Pakistani police officers in the United Kingdom, many of whom attend the overseas course at the police staff college. Further consideration is being given to what more we can do to help their police forces, and we are in touch with the Pakistan authorities about this.

I note carefully what my hon. Friend said about Kashmir. We share his concern, that of the House and many other people in this country about the situation in Kashmir, not least the tension that it has caused between India and Pakistan, both good friends of Britain, and concerns that have been expressed about human rights.

I assure the House that, far from sitting on the fence and ignoring the problems of Kashmir, we have been active in encouraging India and Pakistan to find a peaceful solution to the dispute. Both sides have appreciated our efforts. We welcome, in particular, efforts being made by India and Pakistan to reduce tension and reach agreement on various confidence-building measures through a series of regular talks between their senior foreign affairs officials. That is a process which we earnestly encouraged both sides to pursue in spring 1990. Both bilaterally and with our European Comunity partners, we have reiterated our concerns about tension between India and Pakistan, about the activities of terrorist groups and those who support them and about human rights abuses.

We are aware of Indian claims, and Pakistani denials, that Kashmiri extremists are receiving support from Pakistan with training and supply of weapons. We have indicated to the Pakistan Government the concern that it would cause in Britain if official support were to be given.

My hon. Friend referred to some of the historical background to the Kashmir problem and to the United Nations resolutions on Kashmir in 1948 and 1949. Those resolutions, which were agreed to by India and Pakistan and supported by Britain, envisaged troop withdrawals on both sides and a plebiscite under United Nations auspices of all the inhabitants of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir on whether to accede to India or Pakistan. non-implementation of the resolutions was due, at least partly, to the failure of both sides to implement the provision on troop withdrawals.

Pakistan maintains that the status of Kashmir can be decided only by a plebiscite in line with United Nations resolutions. We believe that it is for India and Pakistan to decide how to resolve their dispute over Kashmir, one element of which involves disagreement over whether Kashmiris have been able to express their wishes fully already, or whether a further test of opinion should be held. It is not for us to attempt to prescribe how the problem should be resolved, but the difficulties of holding the plebiscite envisaged in the United Nations resolutions are obvious. The fact is that the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir is now, in effect, split into several district parts. It has been divided de facto between India and Pakistan by the line of control, and another part has been ceded to China.

India argues that the 1947 accession of the former princely state to India was legal, that ratification of the accession in 1954 by the elected Kashmir constituent assembly fulfilled its commitment to a test of popular opinion and that Pakistan had failed to implement the basic provision of a complete withdrawal of forces.

Our position on the status of Kashmir remains that this should be settled by peaceful agreement between India and Pakistan, in accordance with their agreement in 1972 at Simla, under which both countries

"resolved to settle their differences through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed between them."

This agreement also looked forward to a

"final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir."

I welcome the terms in which my hon. Friend raised the problem of the continuing violence in Kashmir. We share the widespread concern about this. We have consistently condemned those who use violence for political ends, and we support the Indian Government in their efforts to deal with the serious challenge from terrorist violence in Kashmir. At the same time, we continue to encourage the Indian Government to exercise the greatest restraint in dealing with the serious problems facing them. The maintenance of law and order in the face of violent challenge from certain Kashmiri extremist groups is clearly difficult. Abuses have certainly occurred on both sides. I assure the House that, in our contacts with the Indian Government, we have made clear the importance that we attach to human rights being respected.

We have emphasised the importance of allowing independent investigations by human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International, and of being seen to bring to justice members of the security forces who may have misbehaved. The Indian Government have told us that allegations of abuses are thoroughly investigated, that they are concerned to bring to book those responsible for wrongdoing and that action has already been taken against a number of security force personnel.

I assure the House that we will continue to watch the situation in Kashmir closely and to encourage India and Pakistan to find a peaceful solution to this dispute. We remain ready to help, if both sides would like us to do so. We hope that the process of confidence-building between India and Pakistan will continue and that this will help to create the right conditions to bring an end to the violence and lead to a lasting settlement of a dispute which threatens political stability in India and Pakistan and has blighted the lives of many in the sub-continent.

Before I adjourn the House, may I take this opportunity to wish all right hon. and hon. Members a good recess and a restful holiday? May I, on behalf of all hon. Members, express our thanks to the Officers and staff of the House, who serve with such dedication. None of us can foretell the future, but I hope that we shall all assemble here again on 14 October.