Wednesday, 3rd February 1988.

The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chelmsford.

Viscount Weir—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether plans are being made to issue a new £5 note.

2.40 p.m.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what the situation is with regard to compensation for the horrific injuries sustained by Major J. T. D. McCarthy-Morrogh and Lance-Corporal Johnston (J), Royal Irish Rangers, in the accident in Berlin on the night of May 16th 1983, bearing in mind that the French tank crew were found negligent by the judge.

2.45 p.m.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many hole-in-heart operations were carried out in the United Kingdom during the year 1960, and how many were carried out in the last year for which figures are available.

2.52 p.m.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they propose to announce details of the scheme to help people disabled after April 1988 who, in the absence of a scheme, will receive lower rates of benefit than those disabled before April 1988.

Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

2.59 p.m.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, AIDS has penetrated into so many corners of our national life that inevitably in the time allowed for a short debate I shall have to omit some topics which I hope that other noble Lords will take up. Among them are some that are close to my heart, such as basic research; haemophiliacs and whether the Government's grant to them will be enough; and the London Lighthouse. I cannot let this occasion pass without paying my personal tribute to Ian McKellen, who, after a seven-week run of his one-man show "Acting Shakespeare", has contributed single-handed almost £½ million to the completion of that project. That is a fantastic achievement, as I am sure all your Lordships will agree. I am certain too that we are all looking forward with great expectation to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate.

Your Lordships will be aware of the International Conference of Ministers of Health on Aids Prevention which took place recently in London, jointly sponsored by the World Health Organisation and the British Government. The final statement declared that AIDS poses a global threat to humanity and that urgent action is needed by governments and people all over the world to prevent its spread. It warned, significantly, that public health would be undermined if discrimination against and stigmatisation of people with AIDS was not avoided, a point to which I shall return.

During the conference some of us in your Lordships' House, together with some Members of another place, had the opportunity to meet the Health Ministers, or their representatives, of France, Canada, Uganda and the Bahamas, all countries with a higher rate of AIDS cases per head of the population than ourselves. All those countries expressed considerable respect for the British handling of the disease to date. But there were some reservations and those sprang in part from their detection of a certain loss of impetus in our campaign, particularly on television.

This coincides with a slightly uneasy feeling I have had that we have not quite recovered the sense of urgency about AIDS which we had before the general election. This may be something to do with a new Secretary of State getting into his stride. I think Mr. Fowler gave real leadership on dealing with AIDS and I have no doubt that his successor will follow suit in due course. But the message from our foreign friends, which I endorse, is that what we have done we have done well but we have not yet done enough and certainly cannot afford even the briefest flirtation with complacency.

One feature of virtually all other countries' approach to AIDS is that they have a national coordinating committee. I suggested such a body in an article in The Times a little over a year ago but it did not find favour. The French call theirs a Committee of Reflection. Its job is to advise the leading Minister. Its members include scientists, specialists in ethics, education, communication and leisure, and also representatives from industry, insurance companies and the Churches. Perhaps it is not surprising that the French should want to have a national plan. That is the way they do things and by nature we are suspicious of grand national plans. But if one is fighting a war, as we are, it is sensible to have a strategy.

The Select Committee on Social Services of another place has recommended such a body, but this suggestion was rejected by the Government in their response on the grounds that the present arrangements are working adequately. I am not sure that that is wise and I think it smacks a little of complacency. I am not reflecting adversely on the AIDS unit of the DHSS, which does an excellent job with a tiny staff, or on the Chief Medical Officer, who deserves our gratitude for his cool head, wise advice and constant vigilance. What I am saying is that we need a strategic body, which we do not have.

Before the election there was a Cabinet Committee headed by the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, but this was an extremely shadowy body to the general public and its very existence was sometimes denied. I see from the press that it is now to be headed by Mr. Moore, who seems the obvious choice. But would it not be better if we had something that was more out in the open with known and named members and a defined role? I believe that public confidence would be much increased in this way and I shall be interested in the noble Lord's comments on the proposal.

All the countries represented at the international conference were agreed that education and counselling are at present far the most powerful weapons we have against AIDS. But information, however efficiently disseminated, is not enough. Professor Alain Pompidou, the French national coordinator, warned that being informed does not mean knowing, that being aware does not mean taking steps and that deciding does not necessarily mean doing.

I turn again to Cmnd. 297, Problems Associated With AIDS, which is also mentioned in my Motion. As it is a response to the Third Report of the Social Services Committee of the House of Commons of the last Session of Parliament, it will no doubt be debated in detail in the other place. I just want to refer to one or two of its paragraphs.

In the part devoted to education and prevention, there are a number of references to the Health Education Authority. I have not the time to discuss the authority's remit in any detail, but can the noble Lord say how far it extends into schools? The Government appear to be committed to providing educational material on AIDS and sexual behaviour

for young people through collaboration between the Department of Education and Science and the Health Education Authority. But paragraph 3.35 tells us:

"Under the provisions of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 it is now the responsibility of individual governing bodies in England and Wales to decide whether and, if so, how sex education is provided in schools. The Government trusts that, in determining their policy in this area, governors will take note of the Committee's recommendations".

I seriously doubt whether this very mild exhortation is sufficient. If we also take into account the tight curricular framework proposed in the Education Reform Bill, it seems to me that anything like the French video campaign to all secondary schools might well be impossible under English law. Can the noble Lord offer me any encouragement here? If not, I shall certainly feel obliged to raise the matter again when the Education Reform Bill comes before the House.

It is impossible to speak about education without referring to counselling. You can produce all the material in the world—written, visual or audiovisual—but it is useless if awareness campaigns are not backed up by trained personnel in advice centres, information outlets and so on. In Britain we have only just begun to wake up to the need for trained counsellors. Without the voluntary sector we would virtually have none at all. We are a long way behind comparable countries in this respect.

In paragraph 4.2 of the Government's response to the House of Commons report, we read that the Government:

"has funded regional workshops for senior community nurses and has awarded 13 AIDS fellowships worth £3,000 each".

This is peanuts compared with the French initiative under which more than 20 programmes are in operation with almost 2,000 trainees, consisting of paramedics, other health workers and social workers. Incidentally we learn from M. Pompidou that France has 150,000 social workers, a figure that will, I think, bring envy to the otherwise blameless heart of the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. A sizeable contingent of them is participating in the training programmes I have indicated. Can the noble Lord say anything on the training of British social workers in the field of AIDS?

Apart from lack of funds, I still suspect that a threat to AIDS counselling lurks in the heart of Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill. I raised this point yesterday in the debate on clause stand part. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, gave some rather generalised assurances in his reply which I want to study further. So this is something I shall probably want to pursue at the next stage of that Bill.

I turn to the scale of the threat. Approximately 75,000 people have AIDS at present and that number is expected to double to 150,000 this year world-wide. By the year 2000, it is suggested in a recent book, there could be a cumulative total of 25 million cases world-wide. On another projection the peak will be reached in 1998, with 65,000 sick from AIDS in the United Kingdom and another 48,000 dying. But even if we are chary of catastrophic predictions, current totals, if projected forward only two or three years, are quite sufficiently alarming.

Canada, with less than half our population, had 1,334 cases at the end of September 1987 and expects this to rise to 7,000 by 1991. France, with a population almost equal to ours, had 3,073 recorded cases by the end of last year, a number which will inevitably double this year. Our numbers are lower. At the end of last year, there was a cumulative total in the United Kingdom of 1,227 cases of whom 697 had died. But this was a 2·4-fold increase on the previous year's end.

If this rate of increase were maintained we might, according to the Office of Health Economics, expect about 5,500 deaths in 1990. This in turn would imply that there would be some 5,000 live patients requiring treatment in our hospitals. I am not citing those admittedly imprecise figures simply as a scaremonger. The point of them is that even the projections at the very lowest end of the scale will place vastly increased strains on our already overstrained National Health Service.

This brings me to a very important area in the report of the Select Committee dealing with medical manpower. Time and again in their evidence leading figures in the hospital world, including Mr. Miller, senior clinical psychologist at Middlesex Hospital, Dr. Antony Pinching, senior lecturer in clinical immunology at St. Mary's, and Professor Adler, head of the Department of Genito-Urinary Medicine at the Middlesex, drew attention to manpower constraints, due basically to financial constraints, which are not only pushing existing staff to the point of burn-out but making the recruitment of new staff impossible. Even the present case load could not be handled at all if academic clincial doctors were not devoting a far higher proportion of their time to patient care than is consistent with their research responsibilities.

In view of these eloquent appeals, which your Lordships will find in paragraphs 117 to 123 of the Select Committee's report, the committee said in its recommendation 52:

"We believe that, with large numbers of people developing an illness which requires intensive levels of care and a high level of expertise for its proper management and which affects a sector of the population who would not otherwise have placed any demands on the health services, additional manpower provision is urgently needed in both training and consultant grades in traditional specialties and in the specifically relevant specialties of clinical immunology and infectious diseases".

The Government's reply to this is one of the weakest in their whole response. In paragraph 4.28 they say that they take the point about the additional workload, but at consultant level the responsibility for this lies with regional health authorities and with the Royal colleges. The joint planning advisory committee will then ensure that there are enough training posts to balance consultant vacancies. No indication is given whatsoever of how any of this expansion is to be paid for. This is a totally inadequate response to the telling points made by Dr. Pinching and his colleagues. I must ask the Government to look at this again.

Thus, I come to the central question of the funding of hospital services. One of the most important of the

Select Committee's recommendations is paragraph 94, which reads:

"If the current estimates of the likely spread of the disease are in any way accurate, then the demand on resources will increase substantially and rapidly. In our view the rising demand must be met from new resources and not by diverting resources from other parts of the health and social services".

The Government's reply at paragraph 4.35 is again inadequate in my view. After coming out against separate resource allocations for AIDS, they say:

"Nor is it realistic to assume that AIDS-related services or research can, or should be given absolute priority over all other health and Government spending; nor protected from the pressures and constraints that other health and personal social services experience. In short, there can be no blank cheque".

But it is not a question of a blank cheque. The Social Services Committee specifically said so. It is a question of meeting particular pressures at particular points in the service.

Perhaps I can best illustrate the problem if I refer to a debate before London University students in which I participated with Mr. Tony Newton. I was arguing that there should be a centrally earmarked AIDS fund to which health authorities should be able to make bids to meet additional costs imposed by AIDS, by-passing the normal lengthy process from central government to region then to district. Mr. Newton argued that it was wrong to treat AIDS in a different category from other diseases. We did not after all have separate AIDS hospitals and frequently AIDS patients are treated in the same wards as patients with other diseases. He argued that AIDS should be handled within the mainstream of the NHS; therefore funding should flow through the normal channels with occasional top-ups for emergencies.

I have great respect for Mr. Newton. I regard him as an able and committed Minister. I have sympathy with his argument that AIDS should not be marginalised and relegated to a ghetto-type service. That is morally correct. The difficulty is that this tends to mask the underfunding that leads to the terrific pressure on medical manpower that Dr. Pinching and others have referred to. Also it adds to the genuine fears of trade-off and backlash as other areas become threatened by the necessity of funding clinical research and care of AIDS out of the same general budget.

I now believe that the best course is for the normal channels to be used, as Mr. Newton suggests, but for the Government to recognise more readily the additional pressures. They will point to the £58·6 million that they have pledged for 1988–89, over which the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, and I got into a tangle on Wednesday, 16th December, and which he will no doubt unravel today. But this is well short of the £80 million or so which the Office of Health Economics has calculated as being the likely real additional cost. The Social Services Committee recommends that injections of money should be made at specific points, each request being judged on its own merits and if justified given the funding it requires. Therefore I hope that there will be some flexibility. I frankly think that the only way ahead is fully to fund additional AIDS costs where they can reasonably be substantiated by health authorities. I hope that the Government will come round to this view.

I come finally to the ethical questions which underlie our attitude to AIDS and will ultimately dictate our response. I believe that the Government deserve to be commended on the way in which they have so far avoided scapegoating. They have treated the disease first and foremost as a huge public health hazard requiring the collaboration of all sectors of the community. They have funded and do fund homosexual organisations as frontline troops in the battle, and I hope they will continue to do so. There is obviously a moral dimension. But immorality attaches less to one group or another than to those of any group who continue to behave in ways that threaten others. After all, the virus pre-existed any particular act of sexual intercourse. Sex is a principal means of transmission; it is not the cause.

In what Professor Clayton of Canada called a plague mentality, there is an obvious but regrettable tendency to seek scapegoats among certain social or ethnic groups. The danger of focusing disapproval on particular groups is that it distracts attention from the real risk of spread among the "normal" population. There is quite a volume of evidence to suggest that the heterosexual community is not putting its house in order as fast as the homosexuals.

In the United Kingdom only 322 out of 7,557 antibody positive persons reported to the end of September last year could be attributed exclusively to heterosexual contact. But this was an 80 per cent. increase on the count taken only six months earlier, so the composition of future AIDS case loads is likely to reflect a slow but nonetheless steady expansion into the heterosexual population. Professor Clayton told us that in his view those who had least progressed from awareness to action were multiple sexually active heterosexual males and females. This goes to show that one cannot simply put a ring fence or a cordon sanitaire round a supposedly "normal" morally and physically healthy population. In this sense we are all willy-nilly very much members one of another.

In her speech to the international conference the Princess Royal was perfectly right to draw attention to the dreadful scourge unleashed on haemophiliacs and to the awful tragedy of children born to AIDS-infected mothers. But with respect to Her Royal Highness, there is virtually no evidence in this country of "revenge sex", and the Social Services Committee's report refers specifically to that in paragraph 172. It would indeed be an "own goal" if we drove AIDS sufferers or sero-positive people into such desperate action against their fellow creatures.

Dr. Okware, the eloquent and expert delegate to the conference from Uganda, said something memorable that I noted down:

"If you mishandle AIDS patients they can be more dangerous than the virus itself."

We are fortunate in having far greater preventive, clinical and financial resources than Uganda. With a much larger population we have only half the number of cases. But I am convinced that we shall waste these advantages if we allow the current climate of intolerance to spread into the field of AIDS. Our Government have so far resisted any such tendency. I hope they will stand firm. I beg to move for Papers.

3.17 p.m.

3.30 p.m.

3.41 p.m.

3.52 p.m.

4.1 p.m.

4.14 p.m.

4.25 p.m.

4.32 p.m.

4.46 p.m.

5.3 p.m.

5.26 p.m.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

5.28 p.m.

5.45 p.m.

5.50 p.m.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving the Motion standing in my name in the Order Paper, I should like to say how delighted I am to see that the noble Lord, Lord Rees, has chosen this as the occasion on which to make his maiden speech. I dealt with him on many occasions in the past during his activities as a Member in another place and as a Minister. I have unfailingly pleasant memories of those occasions.

I have tabled the Motion because I believe it to be timely that we in this House should be considering what potentially could be one of the most important developments in Europe in the years ahead. The completion of the internal market in 1992 could offer this country and other members of the European Community an unrivalled opportunity to expand their economies, improve the social well-being of their inhabitants and compete effectively with the other strong industrial groups throughout the world. At the same time there have been reports of delays in the procedures for approving the various measures needed to bring this integrated market into operation by the due date. I think that it would be helpful if we looked at that and in particular heard the views of the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, about that aspect when he replies for the Government.

It might be asked, as members of the European Community why are we now having to concern ourselves with the completion of the internal market. After all, that was one of the main objectives of the Community when it was first set up by the original six signatories to the Treaty of Rome in 1957. It was a factor which motivated us as a country to join in 1973. I believe that that happened for the simple reason that, although the tariff barriers were removed expeditiously in the movement of goods within the Community, very soon a complex of non-tariff barriers was erected. They were barriers which related to differing standards, health and safety regulations, frontier delays and so on. There was a whole plethora of impediments against achieving the objectives of the Community. So it is that we are now taking the necessary steps to deal with that.

The other day I was reminded by Mr. John Drew, the Head of the UK office of the Commission, of a wise saying by Jean Monnet, the architect of the European Community. He said, if I may quote the French:

"L'Europe se fait par des petits pas".

The English translation reads, Europe is created in small steps. Indeed he was right and we cannot be rushed into these matters. The fact that it has taken us three decades to face up to the realities of the integrated market may not be a subject for concern so long as we now get on with it.

I should like to remind the House that this year is the centenary of the birth of Jean Monnet. I had an opportunity to meet him when I was a member of the UK Delegation to the High Authority of the Coal and Steel Community in Luxembourg, during the early 1950s. As far as Britain was concerned, he always took the view that we should take some time to make up our minds about membership but that once we had made up our minds we should take it seriously. We now have an opportunity so to do.

The plans that have been made for the completion of the internal market are extensive and meticulous. As your Lordships will recall, it began in 1985 when the Commission was asked to draw up a plan for its completion. The plan was presented in what was known as the White Paper, which was pepared in a most comprehensive way. The noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, as Vice-President of the Commission, played a large part in that. The objective is to make sure that in all the necessary details actions are taken to introduce the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital within the European Community. The subsequent passing of the Single European Act, which was ratified in 1986 and 1987 by the various member countries, should facilitate this process.

Turning to the present position, the Commission has tabled two-thirds (which is approximately 200) of the various actions which need to be taken to make this integrated market a reality. It considers that by the end of this year it will have introduced virtually the totality of the actions that need to be taken. On the other hand, the approval of these actions by the Council of Ministers has been somewhat slower, as one might reasonably expect. I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, whether he considers that the speed at which the Council of Ministers is now approving the various actions is in line with the objective of completing this whole endeavour by 1992. The impression I have received is that during the British Presidency in 1986 a good deal of progress was made but that subsequently progress has not been quite so fast.

I think that it is desirable to turn next to the broad objectives which the Commission has set itself for achievement during the course of this year. As I understand it from an important speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, at a gathering of ELEC, of which the noble Lord, Lord Rippon, is chairman, he was not so much concerned at the number of measures which were agreed at any one time as with broad groupings of objectives. He set out four objectives which it was hoped would be achieved by the end of 1988. The first was in connection with standards.

Standards have been a real problem within the Community. The differing standards have acted as an obstacle to the free movement of goods. The attempt to bring about a total harmonisation of standards has been extremely difficult. The Commission has introduced what I believe to be a big move forward: it is the concept of mutual recognition of standards. That is that when a standard is agreed in a member country it should be accepted throughout the Community, it being agreed that the basis on which it is done will be a reasonable basis.

At the same time, one naturally hopes that some of the standards that we have established here will be accepted generally. I speak with some knowledge of this subject because I was president of the British Standards Institution. For example, there is a BS5750, which is the national standard laid down for quality management systems, and that has been a big breakthrough in Britain achieving a much improved approach to quality. We may be able to have that accepted generally. We must hope that this question of mutual standards will be adopted by the end of this year.

Secondly, the Commission is aiming for the opening up of public procurement. Obviously that cuts both ways. We would hope that our capital goods manufacturers in particular will win many more markets abroad but obviously it opens up the markets here. I have sufficient knowledge from my experience in one sector of industry in Britain to feel that we can stand up to that competition successfully and we ought to press for this opening up. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, was kind enough to write to me the other day as a result of a supplementary question I put recently and he assured me that the Government are keen to secure this opening up of public procurement.

Thirdly, there is the question of professional qualifications. So far there has been a real impediment to people possessing professional qualifications in the UK, for example, accountants, doctors or whoever it might be, practising in the other countries. Again the Commission's proposal is that there should be mutual recognition and I believe that that would be a very big step forward.

The fourth point that the Commission wants to see introduced in this period is common directives on banking, on which details have recently been published, and the liberalisation of financial services, which of course is a matter of great interest to this country because of our expertise in that sector. Those are the four broad objectives which, as I understand it, the Commission would like to see introduced during the course of this year, and no doubt we shall hear later whether that is possible.

Next I should like to turn to the problems which we understand from reports in the press have been encountered by the British Government in their negotiations. These seem to cover two issues. First, there are certain aspects of the freedom of movement of individuals which appear to have raised difficulties, and it would be useful for us to hear about those. Secondly (and this has achieved much more public notice), there is the question of what is known as fiscal approximation. There are new phrases which emerge from time to time and this is one of them: fiscal approximation. It deals with the vexed question of VAT and, as I understand it, this could be a negotiable proposition. The lines are not drawn hard and fast but it would be useful to know where Her Majesty's Government stand in this matter.

Finally, I should like to turn to the awareness of British industry regarding this big opportunity. For the moment I regret to say that, as far as I can tell, it is fairly low. A comparison was made with French industry by the President of the CBI recently and he put the awareness of British enterprise at something like 5 per cent. compared with about 80 per cent. in France. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, is leading a vigorous campaign to increase awareness. There is to be a meeting in London in April followed by regional meetings to bring this about. That perhaps is the most important issue of all.

What is the point in removing all these barriers if we are unable to take advantage of the resultant situation? Therefore, we have no time to lose and we must make it clear to industry that it must recognise that 1992 is something that exists on the calendar and there are only a limited number of years before we can prepare ourselves for taking advantage of this great open market—320 million people and £1,600 billion of combined GNP—which is opening up on our doorstep.

If we can combine pressing forward with the removal of the barriers and the awareness of British industry of the opportunities which this would present, this could be very much to our' ultimate advantage and to the ultimate advantage of Western Europe as a whole. The fact is that in spite of the existence of the EC for many years, a great deal of the technological advance in the world has occurred in other countries. It has occurred in other countries because they have combined their efforts, as in the United States, Japan and the various countries in the Pacific Basin. We now have an opportunity to combine our efforts effectively with our European partners. It is an opportunity we must seize. I hope that it is an opportunity in which Britain will lead the way. I beg to move for Papers.

6.5 p.m.

6.14 p.m.

6.23 p.m.

6.32 p.m.

6.42 p.m.

6.50 p.m.

6.59 p.m.

7.6 p.m.

7.15 p.m.

7.23 p.m.

7.34 p.m.

7.42 p.m.

7.56 p.m.

8.15 p.m

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

8.16 p.m.

The noble Duke said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I should like to declare an interest in regard to this debate as follows: first, as president of the Ulster Timbergrowers Association in Northern Ireland; secondly as non-executive director and shareholder of a softwood mill near Enniskillen in County Fermanagh; and, finally, as a wood owner in County Tyrone.

I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Brookeborough is making his maiden speech on this occasion and I know that the House looks forward to hearing from him. His father will long be remembered in this House as a man of great charm, personality and courage and always deeply concerned with the interests of the people of County Fermanagh. Indeed, the word courage is synonymous with Fermanagh because in recent months and in tragic circumstances the world has had a vivid insight into the courage, dignity and resilience with which those remarkable Fermanagh people have, like other Border areas, sustained almost two decades of violence.

In asking the Government to make a statement on their policies and objectives for the encouragement of further afforestation in Northern Ireland, perhaps a brief overview of the situation prevailing in the Community and, indeed, on a global basis might be appropriate. Within the Community, agricultural products such as cereals, dairy goods and meat remain over-supplied and therefore future expectations for price increases for these commodities must be limited, while throughout the Community there is an under-production of timber. Currently, the Community is approximately 50 per cent. self-sufficient in wood. Surely, in the context of the community, this situation indicates a misallocation of land and also demonstrates that there is no danger whatever of a timber mountain appearing even on the horizon.

On a global basis the situation is again interesting. World forestry is also out of balance due to an increasing world demand and contracting stock as more and more natural forests throughout the world become worked out and thus more reliance is placed on established plantations. Surely the time must now be opportune for the Government to examine both in depth and with urgency whether Northern Ireland, particularly in the hill areas west of the Bann, can take advantage of the situation which I have just outlined and also alleviate to an extent some of the inevitable future hardships which will arise in agriculture due to community overproduction problems by encouraging further afforestation.

At this stage I should like to emphasise my belief and trust that the farming industry, which is indeed the very backbone of the entire community in Northern Ireland, employing as it does some 43,000 people with another 18,000 employed in ancillary industries, will remain our most important industry. Again, clearly, the preservation of the life and character of the rural community is of the utmost importance. I believe that further afforestation in Northern Ireland will prove a positive, not negative, factor in maintaining this objective in rural areas.

Forestry is a national renewable resource and where forestry has expanded in other parts of the United Kingdom it is an increasingly important contributor to rural employment. Furthermore, Ireland, whether North or South, is the most suitable location for forestry in the entire temperate northern hemisphere, yet the country remains one of the least afforested in Western Europe. Depending on location, sitka spruce takes between 35 and 50 years to grow in Northern Ireland. The average growth period for similar species is about 50 years in Scotland, 80 years in Germany and 90 years in most parts of Scandinavia.

There is an unfortunate tendency in Northern Ireland to dwell on our economic problems and thus neglect our economic opportunities. Surely, therefore, these most favourable temperate conditions should be further developed—in fact, exploited—particularly on land classified as severely disadvantaged, in the Counties Tyrone, Fermanagh and Londonderry. However, the percentage of land area under afforestation in Northern Ireland is only 5·2 per cent., compared with 12 per cent. in Scotland and a Community average of 22 per cent.

Furthermore, in order to reduce public expenditure, the department has been slowing down its forestry programme in Northern Ireland, resulting in approximately 1,000 hectares per annum currently being either planted or re-established. The annual planting rate in 1970 was 1,893 hectares, while by 1985 it had been gradually reduced to 1,285 hectares. Again, the level of forestry employees has been drastically reduced, particularly in remote rural areas.

That is in direct contrast to the rest of the United Kingdom, where new planting is currently running at 24,000 hectares per annum. Here in Great Britain there is a significantly different and more realistic attitude by government towards forestry. As a result, both employment and investment in the developing, integrated British forestry industry will continue to grow in the period to the year 2000 as forest output expands and labour input rises.

Sadly, and wrongly, in Northern Ireland there will be a substantial decline in forest output around the year 2020, due to the present low level of planting. This situation is not only unacceptable but it is also ironic, since, according to the Department of Economic Development in its November 1987 Summary of the Review of the Timber Industry in Northern Ireland, paragraph 10:

"In the long term, world timber supply is expected to be severely constrained by the year 2000, and consideration needs to be given now to action to maximise planting either by the Forest Service or by encouraging private sector participation, e.g. by way of present trends towards afforestation as an alternative land use."

The afforestation situation in the Irish Republic is indeed vibrant, with the state planting approximately 9,000 hectares in 1987 while the private sector planted 2,700 hectares. That is a dramatic increase by the private sector from a virtual standard start of 498 hectares in 1982. Clearly a different and radical attitude towards Northern Ireland forestry is therefore urgently required by government.

In spite of its dedicated and professional work over many decades, particularly with the establishment of the most successful and innovative leisure parks providing all types of recreational pursuits for the community, the Forest Service has been inadequately directed and led by the Department of Agriculture, since in the context of agriculture it has always been regarded as a poor relation. Again, according to the Department of Economic Development review, there is a serious imbalance between the timber supply position and the wood processing capacity in Northern Ireland. The report states that production from Northern Ireland forests at the beginning of the group's work stood at around 115,000 cubic metres per annum against an estimated industry processing capacity of 260,000 cubic metres per annum, including capacity then in the process of installation. Perhaps my noble friend can inform the House exactly how and why that situation has occurred.

If the Government are determined to establish an integrated Northern Ireland forestry industry similar to that in Great Britain, but obviously on a much smaller and more modest scale, clarity of objective is essential. First, I believe it is essential that one government agency alone should be responsible for financial assistance to the Northern Ireland timber processing industry, thus avoiding further encouragement of over-processing capacity. Secondly, I suggest that the headquarters of the Forest Service, comprising approximately 60 personnel, should be located west of the Bann, either in Omagh or Enniskillen, since 75 per cent. of the Forest Service woodlands is located in Western Counties. Doubtless this House will recall that the Forestry Commission was relocated from Hampshire to Edinburgh for similar reasons.

I believe that if the Forest Service is removed from Dundonald House and given a free-standing status that will provide a new impetus and recognition of its importance, particularly to the severely disadvantaged areas of the Province. Again, the location of the Forest Service headquarters in the West would considerably increase consumer spending in that area, where there is no alternative form of employment. I trust that the facts and figures already provided in this debate demonstrate that the commercial arguments for further afforestation in Northern Ireland are both significant and compelling.

I should now like to discuss the practical argument, particularly the acquisition of further land for afforestation. Any afforestation programme is dependent on the availability of suitable land and consistent levels of investment. Again, I am only too aware that additional forestry should in no way conflict with our outstanding environment in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I put forward for the Government's consideration that the target for Northen Ireland afforestation should be double the present overall afforestation by the year 2010. The percentage of total land under afforestation would then be approximately 10 per cent. That would involve a modest planting rate of 3,000 hectares per annum overall.

In 1970 the then Stormont Government published a White Paper suggesting a target of 30,000 hectares of private forestry by the year 2000. There are only approximately 13,000 hectares of private forestry to date, so clearly the Government should provide the required stimulus to encourage further private investment in the remote rural areas of Northern Ireland, since I believe that the main thrust and drive for further afforestation should come from the private sector, as is the case in Great Britain. Moreover, I believe that the Government can and should provide this stimulus in two significant ways.

First, there should be privatisation of certain Forest Service woodlands. That will immediately alert the attention of pension funds and individuals to the opportunity of purchasing a forestry investment in Northern Ireland, since economic logic surely dictates that forestry investment should take place in areas where the returns are highest. Northern Ireland pension funds are indeed potential investors—the biggest pension fund, the Northern Ireland Local Government Officers' Superannuation Committee, has recently purchased 5,300 acres of afforestation in Great Britain. I understand that this pension fund is looking for further investment in afforestation.

This House is aware of the remarkable success of the Government's programme of privatisation. Likewise the privatisation of certain Forestry Commission woodlands in Great Britain has taken place successfully. The Department of Energy in the Irish Republic has also adopted this policy and thus generated a real awareness of forestry as an investment in that country. During 1988 it is proposed to sell off IR £3 million of state forestry in the Irish Republic. Therefore I remain amazed that the Minister, who supports the policies of this Government and their ideology, should be so reticent and reluctant to implement a similar scheme in Northern Ireland.

Moreover, why should this situation be accepted, since surely every avenue of attracting new inward investment to Northern Ireland should be actively encouraged and explored? Having served for five years on the Industrial Development Board of Northern Ireland, I am only too aware of the difficulties in attracting new investment to Northern Ireland. Again, in remote rural areas of Northern Ireland it is not feasible to attract alternative inward investment. Therefore I trust that the Minister will announce this evening that it is the intention of his department to embark upon a policy of limited privatisation of certain Forest Service woodlands and that the valuation will be based on the same methodology as that adopted by the Forestry Commission. In other words, the valuation must be realistic and must reflect market conditions.

In 1985 the Department of Agriculture commissioned a respected and well-known forestry consultancy firm to make a report on the possibilities of expanding forestry in Northern Ireland through additional private capital. This report resides in Dundonald House and matures slowly, but to date has not been published. Doubtless some innovative proposals were contained in it, and I trust that my noble friend will enlighten the House this evening on some of those proposals. I need hardly remind the Minister that Ulster people are also highly innovative and will respond rapidly to an investment opportunity like forestry which is indeed a credible and a secure venture.

Clearly an investment of such a long-term nature needs more incentive from government. To prove this viewpoint, the private sector in the Irish Republic responded with alacrity to the forestry grants available under EC Directive 1820, known generally as "the western package". I have no doubt therefore that the private sector in Northern Ireland would respond in a similar positive way if a similar package of incentives were to be introduced in Northern Ireland.

I understand that the current thinking of the Community remains sympathetic; namely, that forestry should be developed on a regional basis and regions need not necessarily be divided by national boundaries. I believe the Government would receive a sympathetic hearing in Brussels if they were to apply to the Community for financial assistance to encourage further afforestation in the western counties of Northern Ireland similar to that already available to the Irish Republic under Directive 1820. I should also mention that Northern Ireland has a very similar landowning pattern to the Irish Republic. Therefore I do not foresee a great problem of procuring further land for afforestation in the upland areas of Northern Ireland.

Economists from the University of Ulster confirm that the forestry uptake in the Irish Republic is not only dependent upon but also results from grant aid. Their estimation is that in the Irish Republic 10 per cent. in grant levels in real terms would generate an increase of about 11 per cent. in private afforestation over a five-year period. The farm woodland scheme is a welcome step in the right direction. However it is certainly modest in scale and will be of only marginal beneficial effect to the upland areas of Northern Ireland.

In conclusion I trust that my noble friend, in replying to this Question, will explain why in this industry Northern Ireland is lagging behind both the rest of the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic.

I trust that the Minister will also confirm the Government's awareness of Northern Ireland's climate advantages for further afforestation. I hope that my noble friend will announce a private sector initiative to pre-empt inevitable future pressure from the Community to diversify from farming into forestry, since afforestation offers the only large-scale land use alternative to agriculture.

8.38 p.m.

8.52 p.m.

9.2 p.m.

9.16 p.m.

9.30 p.m.

House adjourned at one minute past ten o'clock.