I know that the House will wish me to express thanks to all who have served the House this year. We thank the Clerk of the House and those who serve under him, advising Members here and in Committee and at the Table Office every day, who prepare every day an ever-more voluminous Order Paper; and the Serjeant at Arms and the most efficient set of attendants in the world. I want to pay special tribute on your behalf to the Vote Office, who this year have had to face some very special difficulties, but for whose special efforts we should not have been able to carry on.

We are grateful to the HANSARD reporters who set down accurately for history all our words, sometimes wise, sometimes perhaps not quite so wise; and to the Press Gallery, who report us faithfully, who offer us advice from time to time which we are free to reject or accept as we think appropriate, and who maintain the traditions which their great predecessors established—and with them both radio and television.

We are grateful to the Librarians, who are always ready to help us in the Library, which is rapidly developing; those who provide us with food and refreshment at every awkward hour of the day and night that we choose in an irrational way to be here; the police who protect us and the building 24 hours a day; the women who clean the building and the men who maintain it. One special word of thanks to those who sit cooped up in tiny rooms adjusting the loudspeakers and working the annunciators. From all we receive devoted service and courtesy. The House is indeed grateful.

I add my own thanks to the Services Committee, who are my constitutional advisers, and to Sir Barnett Cocks, Clerk of the House, to whom I owe so much. It has been an exacting year. We have made heavy demands on our staff, as we have on ourselves, and the staff have invariably responded magnificently.

May I add to the list of those whom you thanked, Mr. Speaker, your good self for presiding over our proceedings with such wisdom, kindness and the consideration which you showed in your statement.

Mr. Speaker, with your permission and that of the House, I should like to make a statement on the Tripartite Agreement for the production of enriched uranium using the gas centrifuge process.

I apologise to the House for having to make this statement today on the eve of the Christmas Recess, but its timing has had to be co-ordinated with our partners. Final clearance was obtained yesterday when I was unable to make a statement, and I am therefore making it to the House at the earliest possible moment. I thought the House would prefer to have this information before the Adjournment rather than have an announcement made during the Recess.

Her Majesty's Government and the Federal German and Netherlands Governments have approved the terms of an Agreement to collaborate on the gas centrifuge process for enriching uranium, and intend to sign the Agreement after completion of the procedures laid down in Article 103 of the Euratom Treaty. It will then be laid before Parliament in the usual way.

All three countries have been developing the process for a number of years. We are confident that it offers the most economically attractive means of providing the capability which Western Europe needs to meet the rapidly growing demand for enriched uranium for nuclear power stations and believe that our collaboration to this end will not only strengthen technological co-operation but will also contribute to economic integration in Europe. We have already stated our readiness to collaborate with other countries interested in the process, both within Europe and elsewhere, and have had informal talks with two of them. But our first objective has been to get industrial collaboration going on a tripartite basis.

Two joint industrial enterprises will be established—an Enrichment Organisation with its headquarters in this country, to own and operate enrichment plants, and a Prime Contractor, with headquarters in Germany, to design and build them. Both will, as soon as possible, assume responsibility for research and development.

Initially the collaboration will provide separative work capacity of 350 metric tonnes per annum, divided between enrichment plants at Capenhurst and at Almelo in the Netherlands. The joint enterprises will decide in due course about expanding capacity beyond this figure.

An inter-Governmental Joint Committee will supervise the joint industrial enterprises in such matters as safeguards, security and agreements with other countries or international bodies. The collaboration will be entirely consistent with the three Governments' responsibilities for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, to which we all attach great importance. Indeed we see the international exploitation of the process as a major contribution to this cause, and to the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The safeguards applied will include the procedures already established by Euratom as well as any additional obligations which may arise from agreements with the I.A.E.A. The Governments will continue to protect the security of the technology involved.

These are the main features of the collaboration. They are described in more detail in a statement agreed between the three Governments, which is being issued in the three capitals today and which I propose to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

We welcome the statement. It is rather a complex one to digest on the eve of the Christmas Recess, but I am sure that the House will understand the reason why the right hon. Gentleman has made it today. The House will wish to study the statement —and the subsequent Agreement when it is published—in some detail. Therefore, today I restrict myself to asking two short questions. First, in relation to the enrichment organisation, would I be right in assuming that the British participant in the organisation will be the proposed Nuclear Fuel Company? If that is so, when may we expect the Bill that was envisaged in the Queen's Speech for bringing in the new Nuclear Fuel Company?

Secondly, will the right hon. Gentleman say a little more about industrial collaboration? Will the A.E.A. now be free to remove the security ban which has hitherto existed and which has made it very difficult for British firms to ge the knowledge in order to participate and which does not appear to have applied to either the Dutch or German ms?

On the question of further information, the main Agreement, with its Annexes, will be published subsequently, and as the companies are set up the articles of association will become known, and therefore further information will become available.

It is the intention—as I have indicated in the House before—that the new Nuclear Fuel Company would be the British participant, and when the Bill is published—which it will be in the New Year—the House will have the opportunity of considering it, with all its implications, and there will be opportunities for association with industrial companies.

As for security, with a technology as sensitive as this, I must not give any impression that there will be a relaxation of any kind in the security procedures governing this project, but it is the intention of the people now responsible in the A.E.A. that there should be links with and contracts for British firms, although this is a matter which would need to be looked at in greater detail later.

I understand the issue of security, but on the question of costs, can my right hon. Friend confirm or deny the capital expenditure of £625 million, and the suggestion that the balance of payments saving will be about £152 million? Can be also say something about the time scale, and something of his plans for research and development with the prime contractor?

My hon. Friend has quoted capital expenditure figures, which I believe appeared in the newspapers. These relate to a much larger scale operation than we visualised in the first instance. In the first instance the demand for enriched uranium arose in this country, where the market requires it most rapidly and we are thinking initially of a 200 tonne separative operation in Capenhurst, with an associated plant at Almelo, based on the existing technologies of the two proposed partners. The increase in capital investment depends upon the growth in the demand. As for the cost, there is no doubt that—that is why we are entering this industry—it will be cheaper to enrich uranium by the centrifuge method rather than by the gas diffusion method which has hitherto been used.

The balance of payments advantage will flow from the fact that the work will be undertaken here, and we believe that this will be competitive with the American price and therefore this will be a gain in our balance of payments, although I cannot give exact figures.

As for research and development, we are aiming to see this transferred to the industrial enterprises as rapidly as possible, and there will naturally be the fullest co-operation between the partners. We are one of the members of each organisation and therefore we shall be closely associated with the shape of it. But this work has gone on for many years in the three countries and until we are in a position to exchange information more fully than hitherto we shall not know in which direction research and development should most sensibly move.

In welcoming the right hon. Gentleman's statement, I should like to be associated with the remarks he made in paying tribute to yourself, Mr. Speaker. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that my hon. and right hon. Friends welcome his statement? Can be assist us by indicating the likely time scale for the construction of the centrifuge plant, and also say what opportunity there will be for private interests to participate.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for welcoming my statement. Very roughly, the time table is as follows: Article 103 of the Euratom Treaty—and our two partners are mem- bers of Euratom—contains provision for this to go for consideration, and I would expect that the agreement would be signed in the latter part of February, and from then on the establishment of the companies would proceed. The articles of association to which I have referred would be made public in the normal way for those two companies in the course of 1970.

As for the technical time table, the work on the centrifuge has already gone on in the two countries and, in a sense, therefore, this work has already begun. But we have in mind that by the mid-1970s the plant will be operating, and the demand for enriched uranium is likely to rise rapidly throughout the 1970s and even more in the 1980s. It is our intention to meet as much of this demand as we can, both in Europe and elsewhere. In each case private arrangements will be made in this country, and, as the House knows, it is our intention that private firms should be in a position to participate in the Nuclear Fuel Company, but the details must await the publication of the Bill, which I hope will take place shortly.

Does not this very substantial agreement show how easy it is to achieve technical co-operation without forming customs unions?

Without entering into other arguments that may be in my right hon. Friend's mind, I would pay tribute to those who have worked on this, and to the officials of all three countries and the industry concerned, in proving how useful and fruitful European collaboration can be.

Is not this just another example—after the Concorde, the multi-role combat aircraft, and the Jaguar—of a technological job going ahead without our going into the Common Market? What effect would it have had on the whole procedure if we were in the Common Market?

Despite the tributes I have paid to your wisdom, Mr. Speaker, I have a feeling that you would not like me to engage in a more general discussion in answering that question.

Order. It is because of my alleged wisdom that I would not allow the right hon. Gentleman to engage in more general discussion.

For whatever reason, Mr. Speaker, I doubt whether you would welcome a general argument. We regard collaboration on an industrial level as of prime importance, and this arrangement is the very best arrangement. The hon. Member mentioned one or two examples, but the differences lies in the fact that we are setting up an industrial organisation with the necessary minimum of Government supervision, for this is a sensitive technology. It represents a very important development, but it bears not at all, one way or the other, on the argument whether or not this should be reinforced by closer association between this country and art extended Community. In this the view of the Government is well known.

I am very grateful that this subject has been selected. Before I continue, Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up what the Minister of Technology has said and wish you a happy Christmas and a well-earned rest from your very arduous duties.

The subject of this debate is only a small point, and a smallish amount of money is involved, but the principle is on that the House should certainly discuss.

I had better start with the facts, which are that the Government grants £7,500 a year to an organisation called the British Council of the European Movement which was, until it was, as the Foreign Office says, "subsumed", the Britain in Europe Movement. The objects of this subsidy or grant are set out in the OFFICIAL REPORT of 17th December, 1969, when the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said in reply to a Question by me:

"The grant is made to assist Britain in Europe, which has now been subsumed into this organisation"—

the new one—

"in promoting a proper understanding in Europe of the British point of view on European affairs. It was agreed because the Government considered it desirable to assist certain of the activities proposed by Britain in Europe."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th December, 1969; Vol. 793, c. 358.]

I confess that the subsidy was started in 1963–64 under a Conservative Administration, which thought it worth while donating £1,250. Perhaps that kept it in a better perspective under the Conservative side. But since the Labour Party came into power that figure has not just doubled or trebled but multiplied six times.

In columns 359 and 360 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of 17th December, we can see that additional money has also gone to the College of Europe in Bruges, European Schools Day, the Committee of Student European Association and so on. So quite a dollop of money seems to go out on this.

The British Council of the European Movement has an office at 78, Chandos House, Buckingham Gate, London. If we should go along to that office, draw aside the curtains, and peep inside, we would find that that address is also used by the Labour Committee for Europe. This is a party political organisation. I wondered what this Labour Committee for Europe was, and I found out in one of their publications, which says:

"The Labour Committee for Europe operates a speakers' service in Britain and the Common Market for meetings of the Labour Party, of the trades unions and of the cooperative groups."

So I think that we can fairly assume that the Labour Committee for Europe is performing a party political job from the address of the British Council of the European Movement, which receives a Government grant of £7,500.

To get the whole picture clear, one must also remember that an organisation called the Europe Forum, which exists to promote interest among the Conservative Party and Conservative politicians, also uses that address, so that it is concerned with both parties and not just one. It is important to get that into perspective.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention. It reinforces exactly what I am saying, that the Government grant is being used for party political purposes. I was not accusing the Labour Party only. This does not matter; it is still party political purposes. That is the point of the debate that we want to bring home.

I am told by the Foreign Office that none of the £7,500 is used for the rent of the office, so technically perhaps one can say that this is not an improper use of the premises. But, if it is not, it is mighty unwise of any Government to do that sort of thing.

I would like to make it clear that I am not making any suggestion that the British Council of the European Movement itself is misusing public money. What I am saying is that the Government are wrongfully distributing the taxpayers' money to this organisation—£7,500 a year out of its total income in 1967–68 of £26,000. So the Government provided just under one-third of the money it recovered and spent in that year. But it is now estimated that its income has gone shooting up to £50,000 to £65,000 a year, so the proportion of Government support is obviously less.

Is it a fact that the Council and the other organitions are, if we put it bluntly, really nothing more or less than propaganda organisations to get Britain into Europe?

I am most grateful for that intervention. I would say that that is precisely what it is. I shall come straight on to that point, and quote from its Annual Report what the organisation's aims are. It says that

"The first was to ensure that the British viewpoint, and our continued desire for British participation in the building of a United Europe, was effectively published and argued on the Continent.

The second aim was to maintain interest and support within the United Kingdom for British membership of the European Economic Community, and its development into an effective and democratically controlled Political Community as an instrument for the economic and political union of Europe."

I find it curious that the Government can subsidise organisations like that, whose aims are in direct conflict with the official Government policy as enunciated by the Prime Minister on 6th February, 1969, when he said:

"I made it clear that we did not and do not support any federal or supranational structure for our relations with Europe."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th February, 1969; Vol. 777, c. 584.]

Yet here are the Government tipping this money into an organisation which is doing exactly the opposite of that, aiming towards just what the Prime Minister said we would not support under any circumstances.

The Annual Report also says:

"Strong delegations were sent to every suitable European conference to ensure that the British case was put across."

One might ask what British case was put across. Was it the case enunciated by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, was it the case of the British Government, or was it the case of the British people? I suspect that it was not the last.

It also organised tours

"… for prominent British speakers to address public meetings on the Continent, particularly in France. Special conferences were held. … Documents and pamphlets putting the British"—

I wonder which British—

"viewpoint were widely disseminated on the Continent and many articles placed in the European press."

Could the Minister arrange for these widely disseminated articles to be laid in the Library, so that we may study whether they put forward the views of the British Government? If it is the British Government, the money is clearly being misused, because in the answer the Minister gave me he said that it was to put forward the British point of view. There is no word about the British Government's point of view, and the two, as he well knows, are diametrically opposed.

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether any hon. Members are engaged in these tours arranged by the organisation referred to receive expenses and perhaps fees—at any rate expenses? In that event, are they not engaged in propaganda on behalf of the Crown, and does that not violate the constitutional principle that no hon. Member should accept fees or expenses of that kind because he is engaged in an office under the Crown?

I think that the right hon. Gentleman may well be right on that. I shall come back to these visits. I am glad of his intervention.

Continuing with its general point, the Annual Report states:

"Our campaign in Britain has extended to every parliamentary constituency in the Kingdom and numerous party political meetings have been addressed by our speakers throughout the country."

Since when has Government money been used for addressing party political meetings? It goes on:

"We have also sent speakers to universities, schools, rotary clubs, women's organisations and others … substantial publicity has been given in the national and local press for our views and activities."

This money, or part of it—I do not say all or even most of it—seems to be spent on work in Britain when it was given, not for work in Britain, but for work in Europe.

indicated dissent.

It is no good the hon. Gentleman shaking his head. His own answer is in HANSARD. The Annual Report goes on to say that the organisation is starting a political campaign. It states:

"…major new initiative is needed to get European construction going again.…They suggest a British initiative calling for the formation of a European Political Community with the task of evolving common policies for technology, currency, defence and foreign affairs."

Here again we come to the almost inevitable road to supranationality. Then the Report refers to the distinguished personalities who would take part. They include the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. George Brown), the right hon. Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) and others. These are the high priests of the European religion. Among them there is a freemasonry in which they never fail to support each other. They live in the European clouds, so far above this earth that they have lost touch with the mass of the ordinary people of Britain.

As I have said, the organisation was to start this great campaign over the coming months. The Report stated:

"…a major campaign is planned to promote these ideas in Britain and within the Six with the object of creating a favourable climate of opinion…".

The Report was published at the turn of this year, so that the campaign must have got going, let us say, at the beginning of the year. As we here involved in politics know, campaigns take time to generate and get across. So let us say that this one began to be effective in about mid summer—this campaign, subsidised by the Government to the tune of £7,500. I want to examine the effect which this campaign, supported by all these high priests of the European religion, is having.

According to the National Opinion Poll, the percentage of people in favour of British entry into the E.E.C. in July, when the first impact of the campaign started, was 33 per cent.; in September this had fallen to 29 per cent., and in November to 26 per cent. Is it not clear that the campaign is not exactly succeeding? Let us look at it the other way round and examine the effect on those against entry. In July, the percentage against British entry was 47; in September it was 51, and in November, a crescendo of success for the campaign, 59 per cent. were against it.

The hon. Gentleman is making a very strong point and is showing that this is a waste as well as a misuse of public money. Can he say whether the British Council of the European Movement or any other of the front organisations are explaining to our friends in Western Europe that the vast majority of the British people are against the application?

I welcome that intervention because I have searched through all the literature and I have not seen these opinion poll figures referred to once. It is rather dishonest of this organisation not to be frank with our European friends. If the Government would give the money to me, I could go to Europe and spend it in making this point to our European friends if this organisation cannot do so. I do not think, however, that the Government should give the money to anyone.

The fact is that this organisation is shouting against the wind. All its propaganda efforts are having the adverse effect. It all amounts to the fact that the Government are chucking good money away on an organisation whose propaganda is so discredited before it even starts that it is rejected by the people of Britain. That is the only conclusion one can come to.

I come now to the point made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) about the activities. Every year, a list of activities financed out of Foreign Office grant is published. I have the 1967–68 list, but the list for the year ending April, 1969, has not yet been filed in the Library as it should have been. I inquired at 10.45 this morning and it was not there. The organisation ought to be kept up to scratch. The list of activities is agreed with the Foreign Office—it is shown in HANSARD of 17th December, in column 358—and it sets out who visited where and on what date. Most of them concern the high priests of the Common Market I give one example of the folly of this.

Money has been spent to send six unnamed delegates to attend a joint Fabian-S.F.I.O. conference in Paris. That is surely political. I am not complaining about the specific fact that it involved the Labour Party because the next such meeting could well involve the Conservative Party. It is, nevertheless, party political in purpose.

In the year from July, 1967, to July, 1968, a total of 101 people were sent abroad with these moneys. Let us take April, 1969, as a sample month. It is very interesting. For 6th to 9th April, there was a travelling grant to seven continental participants at the C.S.E.A. Conference in Edinburgh. So we are paying to bring foreigners to this country out of the grant. From 7th to 11th April, delegates attended a French conference of U.N.E.S.C.O. clubs at Avallon. How many delegates went, we are not told. Why they should go to visit U.N.E.S.C.O. clubs, whatever they are, I do not know.

On the same day, an undefined number of delegates visited the Institutions of Western Co-operation in Brussels, Strasbourg and Paris. Are they shy about how many went? What was the cost? This is public money. What were the expenses paid to these people for their paté in Strasbourg? On 19th April, delegates attended an A.E.F.-M.F.E. meeting in Paris. What all these initials mean I have no idea, but I would like to know how many delegates went and what was the cost.

On 24th April, delegates attended a convention of the Y.E.M.A. in Geneva. How agreeable to be in Geneva in the springtime. On 24th April, also the organisation entertained M. Pierre Abelin during a visit he paid for a lecture in London. Again, on 25th April, an unknown quantity of delegates attended the European Security Youth Conference in Rome. What youth has to do with security in this context beats me. On 25th April, the Secretary of the Britain in Europe Movement, a Mr. Wistrich, addressed a conference of La Federation in Nice. That must have been very nice. I wish I could go there in springtime. On 26th April, the noble Lord, Lord Walston, addressed the Conference of French Chemical Workers in Grenoble.

A very good day is 27th April. The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Maxwell) addressed the conference of Young German Federalists in Bad Godesberg. That must have been quite something. On the same day, my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk) addressed a meeting of the Maison de l'Europe at Toulon. On the same day, an unspecified number of delegates attended a conference, which must have been fascinating, called "European Realities" in Luxembourg. I hope that did them some good.

Two days later the honorary secretary attended a conference of the French council of the European movement in Paris. That is not bad for one month's travelling and junketing at the expense of the Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "At the expense of the taxpayer."] At the expense of the taxpayer; I stand corrected.

Will the hon. Member give way?

If the hon. Member wishes to put his foot in it, yes.

I do not know about putting my foot in it. I have never been on any of these delegations and I do not belong to the movement. How does the hon. Member assume that because one goes on a lecture tour and works in the process that that is junketing? People go all over the world on various conferences and work very hard, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does, giving lectures to universities and so on against the Common Market.

I am perfectly prepared to withdraw the word "junketing" and to use another word, but I will let the hon. Member know later what I have in mind. It was not quite "junketing", but something half way between that and hard work.

On 17th June, delegates attended a trade union conference at Amsterdam. I do not know how many Tories were members of that delegation. On 9th June, a British Parliamentary delegation, led by the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Moonman) and others, visited industrial centres in Holland, Germany and Italy. How many did they visit and how many of them were there, and for what purpose did they go? We should like to know.

So it goes on. On the 28th of that month delegates attended a conference of young Socialists at Bonn. Why should they attend at the expense of the taxpayer?

Who says it is at the expense of the taxpayer?

The hon. Member is muttering and does not seem prepared to stand up to make his intervention, but I heard him ask who said that it was at the expense of the taxpayer. It is, because the Foreign Office publishes a list and I am reading from the list which shows what trips are paid for out of the grant.

Can my hon. Friend tell me what travel agent arranges this? As I have listened to my hon. Friend, I have been at a loss to understand how all this could be managed on £7,500.

I am glad that my hon. Friend has made that intervention. Hon. Members are being very helpful today. I went down to Messrs. Thomas Cook this morning and I have calculated the cost of all these trips over a period of 12 months, April to April, and it amounted to less than £5,000. I have included a figure of £1,000 for expenses. This is only a very rough estimate. The point to make is that I do not think that the £7,500 is eaten up by travel and expenses. There is a balance, but what happens to the balance? What I am getting at in part is that that balance may be used quite improperly for propaganda.

I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) ask, "Who says it is public money?" and then go on to say, "Anyway, it is only £5,000". Would not the hon. Member agree that if it were only £1 it would still be too much if it were paid out of public funds?

I agree, because the criticism is that this is for party political purposes.

I think that I have revealed or exposed enough to throw considerable doubt on the activities of this organisation and on the unwisdom of the Government in subscribing £7,500 to them. The right hon. Member for Easington suggested that hon. Members who benefited might be temporarily holding office of profit under the Crown. I do not know whether that is so. However, if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), who is a lawyer of eminence, will probably be able to comment on that. He is also concerned with the Report from the Select Committee on Members' Interests (Declarations). A similar problem arises, because hon. Members were criticised for travelling abroad at the public expense of other governments. If that is turned into reverse, it is precisely what is happening with this organisation.

The main purpose of this grant, as told to me by the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, is to promote a proper understanding in Europe of the British point of view on European affairs. I query that very much and I would be grateful if the Foreign Office would conduct a rigorous inquiry into whether in fact the British point of view has been put, or whether it has been the British Government's point of view.

I have with me the speaker's guide from the European Movement, Chandos House, which tells its speakers how to make their speeches and how to answer questions put to them. It is a highly suspicious document in that it does not say what the British people feel or think. It quotes the usual worn-out clichés of any Government trying to get into the Common Market. This is where the Government are making a grave mistake. It is very unwise to do this sort of thing and I hope that the Foreign Office will one day wake up out of its dream and start thinking about where this country ought to be going.

I remind the House that we have 44 minutes left for this subject and that there are 12 would-be speakers, including two Privy Councillors.

The first business of the House, even at Christmas time, is to see that taxpayers' money is not spent for improper purposes. In answer to Questions on 3rd November, this year, Foreign Office Ministers had to admit, as the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) has just pointed out, that they were still using public money to finance private propaganda organisations, including that called "Britain in Europe". These are admittedly bodies which take a partisan view which is repudiated by a large number of hon. Members and a very large section of the electorate, whichever view one may personally take, which is not at issue today.

Whatever the view we individually take, it is nothing short of a public scandal and a fraud on the taxpayer that the Foreign Office should use public money for purposes of this kind. Indeed, if Foreign Office Ministers do not understand, it is time that they learnt the principles of how public life in this country should be conducted and always has been up to now. If they would do that, they would at once abandon, as they ought, this improper practice.

It has always been accepted by all parties in war time and peace time that the taxpayers' money may be used for information purposes which are broadly agreed by all but extreme sections of opinion, for instance, in support of National Savings, safety on the roads, public health, recruitment to the public services and so on. But no Government has the right to use the taxpayers' money to finance private propaganda organisations on either side of issues which are in acute controversy between large sections of opinion, whether political parties or not, for instance, for or against nationalisation, for or against comprehensive schools, for or against joining the Common Market, for or against capital punishment.

Those who hold strong views on either side of any of these issues have a perfect right to put them forward and to finance them at their own expense, but not at the expense of the taxpayer. This was the whole principle on which Mr. Herbert Morrison always insisted, as I well remember, in all information work for which he was responsible in the Government of those days. To depart from that means that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers have money extracted from them and then used to finance propaganda in directions with which they profoundly disagree.

It is perfectly proper for political parties and all sorts of private propaganda organisations to propagate their own views at their own expense. That is the fair, free-for-all method which accords with democratic principles as understood in this country. What is wrong is for any individual to use public money for this purpose, and it is a deplorable decline from the high standards set by Mr. Herbert Morrison in his day, which some hon. Members here will remember. It also shows rather deplorable ignorance of proper constitutional practice. Foreign Office Ministers floundering around to find an excuse for this performance have told us that these grants were given to assist these private bodies in promoting a proper understanding in Europe of the British point of view on European affairs.

All recent public opinion polls, which I will not repeat, show that the British point of view is, by a heavy majority, opposed to British entry of the Common Market. Do Foreign Office Ministers pretend that they are financing organisations which convey that truth to opinion on the Continent? If they do not then they are wilfully financing a direct perversion of the truth. They are concealing the fact of what they are doing from the House of Commons to obtain a Vote of money for which they have really no justification. To raise money by perverting facts in this way would in industry or business be regarded as a form of fraud.

Week by week at present as many of us know, meetings and debates are being held up and down the country on this highly important issue of joining or not joining the E.E.C. On one side Members of this House and other individuals, speak according to their convictions and at their own expense. On the other side, speakers appear, partly financed by the Foreign Office, which means by the taxpayer, expressing views contrary to those of a very large number, if not the majority of the taxpayers concerned. This is really a fraud on the taxpayer and incidentally it is highly discreditable to the Foreign Office. The point has now been reached when this organisation at Chandos House of which the hon. Member for Banbury spoke actually issues pamphlets making scurrilous attacks on hon. Members with whom they happen to disagree.

Is it not true that they have made an attack upon the right hon. Gentleman himself?

Yes, among others. I would not quote the one dealing with myself because, whoever it is and whatever is the issue, if private organisations want to mount personal attacks on hon. Members of this House, they should do so at their own expense and not at the expense of the taxpayer. In my view it is high time that the Foreign Office abandoned this unsavoury practice and brought its moral and financial standards at least up to the level of other Departments of the Government. The amounts of money are small, I know, but the principle is fundamentally bad. Therefore I hope that, for their reputations and for the reputation of their Department, Foreign Office Ministers will announce to us today that they have decided to terminate this murky business forthwith.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) that although the amount is small the principle is great. After all, hon. Members will have in mind what Burke said in regard to ship money. I quote from memory:

"The payment of 20s. would not have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune, but the payment of half that amount on the principle it was demanded would have made him a slave."

This House is traditionally concerned with the principle of this matter and it is a very important principle indeed. We should be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) for raising this. I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will make a better reply than the answer which he gave to my hon. Friend on Wednesday:

"The grant is made to assist Britain in Europe, which has now been subsumed into this organisation …".

It is exhumation I would say we need—

"in promoting a proper understanding in Europe of the British point of view …".

I like the word "proper". What does it mean in this context? It is not an accurate understanding of the British point of view.

"It was agreed because the Government considered it desirable to assist certain of the activities proposed …".

Which did they think were desirable, and which did they think were undesirable? References to the right hon. Member for Battersea, North? Were they desirable? The campaigning in this country? Is that desirable?

indicated dissent.

I am glad to see that the hon. Gentleman shakes his head. He will have to look into this a little more closely, because it goes on:

"A list of activities to be financed from the grant is agreed with us".

Who is "us"? It is a strange form of words. It is the Secretary of State, who is responsible constitutionally to this House. I do not like the word "us". It conjures up a cosy coterie, sitting somewhere in the Foreign Office, in cahoots with these distinguished gentlemen in this movement outside. Then the reply goes on:

"A similar procedure is followed in relation to similar grants to other bodies."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th December, 1969; Vol. 793, c. 358.]

In the language of the law, I shall want further and better particulars of that and if the hon. Gentleman does not give them today I shall table a Question when we resume.

On this point about conveying a proper understanding to people abroad about the position of this country and entry into the Common Market, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that it is possible to obtain a proper understanding of the Government's point of view, since the Prime Minister is opposed to a federal system, while the Foreign Secretary on the other hand has gone abroad through the medium of this organisation, on one occasion on behalf of the Foreign Office and on another on behalf of the Labour Party—to convey the impression that this country is in favour of a federal system?

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. My hon. Friend also mentioned this point. The Prime Minister is quite clearly on the record about this matter. If this body is spending money on putting any other view with regard to British participation in a federal Europe, it is in direct contradiction to the Prime Minister's authoritative statement of Government policy.

There are two principles, both of great importance in the context of parliamentary democracy and constitutional propriety. The first is that public money may properly be spent only for Government purposes and not for private purposes, private propaganda or party political purposes. The House knows that every Government in this country has been properly very assiduous to avoid doing what is done, I fear, in some other countries, that is confusing the identity of government and party. Every Government has been very careful not to spend Government money for party purposes.

This Government is composed exclusively of members of the Labour Party but they would not dream of spending Government money for Labour Party purposes. It is just as wrong to spend money on private propaganda. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, it could erode the principle and blur the distinction which we value so much between Government and party. That is one of the dangers that I see.

This movement is none the less a private propaganda body because it is buttressed with the honorific names of highly-placed persons. It is a private organisation composed of private persons putting forward private views, inevitably—and I do not say this by way of reproach—to some extent animated by private interest, and operating in the teeth of public opinion. What conceivable justification could there be for spending public money for such a purpose?

The second principle is that public money must not be used for purposes of Government patronage. The right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shin-well) asked whether it constituted an office of profit under the Crown. Technically I would think not, but it falls within the closely allied concept of patronage. The non-use of public money for Government patronage is basic to parliamentary democracy and ever since the eighteenth century Parliament has been vigilant in safeguarding this position. The House will remember the Dunning Resolution of 1760 the abuse in this matter by Lord North and the "King's Friends" in the use of public money for Government patronage, resulting in one of the worst Governments in the history of this country. Therefore, let the Government take example from that.

Through this private organisation the Government are giving payments, to Members of Parliament, apparently, among others, or travel expenses, which are conditional on their putting forward one point of view, and one alone, which is that favoured by the Government. The amounts are small and any hon. Members concerned are of the highest integrity, but, again, it is the principle that is wrong. If the practice is uncorrected, it is likely to grow until it becomes an abuse.

I therefore ask the Joint Under-Secretary to go back to his right hon. Friend, to tell him what has been said here today and ask him to revert to the constitutional proprieties, to resign from the Monnet Committee, as we have already requested him to do, and to withdraw public funds from these private propaganda purposes and restore the old and respected practice, which is vital to the proper working of our parliamentary system.

I find it impossible to follow the arguments that have been put forward so far in this debate by right hon. and hon. Members opposite. It seems to me wholly legitimate that the Government should make grants of this type. One sees this when one looks at the purposes to which the grant is put.

The hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) read out lists of objectives. I should like to read to the House some of the purposes to which this grant is put—for example, to cover travel and subsistence costs for British delegates to international conferences at which the British viewpoint should be expressed and represented.

What is the British viewpoint?

The British viewpoint is the viewpoint of the Government of this country at any particular time, and it is highly desirable—[Interruption.]

Order. We have heard today about Hampden and Burke. They believed in free speech for both sides.

It is highly desirable that contacts of that kind between us in this country and between other countries on the Continent should not simply be between Ministers and professional diplomats, but should be between other people as well—between business people, people in the universities and people in the trade unions. [Interruption.] If hon. Members will allow me to get a little further into my argument, it will become clearer. It is very important that there should be these contacts outside official Government and diplomatic circles.

Can the hon. Member answer this point? He is saying that these Members of Parliament are invited to go abroad at Government expense, but my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) complained that only one type of Member of Parliament went—those who were pro-Common Market. I am known as somebody who is deeply interested in the Common Market and I have never been asked. Can the hon. Member explain this?

That is not so. I should like to give an example which disproves what the hon. Member is saying and what his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith said). For example, this month there were two visits by some of my hon. Friends—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—to Brussels. On the first of those visits, about three or four of my hon. Friends went to discuss with people at the E.E.C. Commission in Brussels the policy of the E.E.C. countries towards the developing world. That is an important subject. If hon. Members would care to look at the lists of the Members who went, although I am sure that I do not need to tell them—

Who were they?

My hon. Friends in question were the Members for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley), York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) and Rushcliffe (Mr. Gardner). Certainly, some of these Members are very hostile to the whole concept of the Common Market and do not want this country to join, yet they went on the visit.

The second visit was one on which I went with some of my other hon. Friends. We went similarly to discuss with officials at the E.E.C. Commission the situation which now existed as a result of Britain's application to join following the outcome of The Hague summit. It is important that as many Members of Parliament as possible should be properly informed on this question.

The hon. Member for Banbury seems to me to be using this flimsy argument as a hook on which to hang his well-known views about the Common Market, views which are not shared by the vast majority of Members of the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "How do you know?"]

My hon. Friend has made the astonishing statement that the British Government is able to finance with public money propaganda in accordance with any view that the British Government hold. Would my hon. Friendly really argue that a British Gov- ernment would finance propaganda for or against nationalisation, for example, because that happened to be the view of the Government concerned?

Not at all. The hon. Member for Banbury and the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East have tried to argue that the Government are allocating taxpayers' money for party political purposes.

No.

That is what is being said—for party propaganda purposes.

On the contrary, it will be within the recollection of the House that I made it clear that the Government had pursued the honourable tradition of all Governments in keeping quite distinct party and government expenditure. What I said was that it was just as wrong to use it for private propaganda and that that might lead to further abuse.

I am sorry if I have misrepresented the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I still do not accept the argument, because the money is not being spent on private propaganda. It is being spent on promoting relations with other countries which the Government feel to be desirable relations.

If I may say a little more, for example, about those two visits and their financing, the basis of the one on which hon. Members went who are very hostile to the whole idea of the Common Market is that they were invited by the European Communities themselves. They paid—

rose—

I am not giving way.

Order. If the hon. Member who has the floor does not give way, the hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris) must sit down.

Disgraceful, Give way.

The European Communities paid for—[Interruption.]

rose—

Order. We have heard the case deployed for one side in complete silence. The whole of this argument is about two points of view. This is the place where two points of view can be expressed.

I have given way on a number of occasions, but I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris) before I sit down.

The basis on which they went was that the European Communities paid the costs incurred on the Continent and the travel costs were paid by the British Council for the European Movement.

The policy that Britain should apply for entry to the E.E.C. is Government policy. It was decided and backed by a huge vote of the House two and a half years ago, and, in my view, when the issue has become alive again as a result of The Hague summit, when there is a real prospect that this country will go into the Common Market, it is highly desirable that as many people in the country—not just politicians—should be as well informed as possible.

I hope that these grants will continue to be made and I hope that those responsible for arranging the visits with this money will make sure that hon. Members and people outside who take all points of view, whether they are in favour of going into the Common Market or not, will be selected to go on these visits. This would be an extremely good thing. It is the right way to spend the money and it is entirely legitimate that the Government should do so.

The recent visits to Brussels to which my hon. Friend referred earlier followed very strong criticism from hon. Members in August and September. I recall, for example, the criticism voiced by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Exchange (Mr. Will Griffiths). They made the point strongly that, as far as they knew, there was no one representing the majority of the British people going on any of these visits. Thus the recent visits to Brussels may be explained by that strong criticism. But I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that it is wrong to spend public money—mine as well as his—on propaganda organisations.

It is not clear what the majority of people feel about the Common Market at present. We have a different situation now, following The Hague summit, where Britain's application to join has become a live issue. It is by no means clear.

I reiterate my belief that this is the right way for the Government to proceed, seeking to promote as many contacts outside the official ones between Ministers and professional diplomats as possible. This is the way to get better understanding between nations and a more stable and lasting situation in Western Europe.

rose—

Order. I remind the House that this debate ends at half past twelve. The Minister has yet to speak.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) are in no way speaking with the support of the majority of the Conservative Party in this House. That should be placed on record lest there be any misunderstanding in Press or B.B.C. reports. They are having an anti-Common Market field day, largely because the majority of hon. Members have departed for their constituencies.

rose—

No, I will not give way. The case has been deployed at great length, and I propose to see that the other side of it is deployed in the few minutes available to me.

In his beguiling speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury did a great deal of nit picking and "menu peeping" about hon. Members and others who have gone to Europe to expose the British point of view. However, he is wrong in his analysis of these visits. They are useful for the country and for this House.

I want to deal with only two questions. The first is whether this is a proper use of public money. The second is whether it is an efficient use of it.

I think that it is a proper use because it is money spent to demonstrate overseas the view of the British Parliament as it has been expressed overwhelmingly in vote after vote. It is the view of the British Government, made plain by Ministers. It is the view of the loyal Opposition, made plain at its party conference, when my right hon. and learned Friend and my hon. Friend had their opportunity to deploy their case and were voted down overwhelmingly. It is also the view of the Liberal Party. I conclude from this that it is national policy and, therefore, it is a proper use of public funds to educate Europeans about British national policy agreed by all parties and voted on in this House.

The second question is whether it is an efficient use. I believe that it is. It is wrong that the education of foreign opinion should be left exclusively to embassies and officials of the British Government. I am not in favour of any Government monopolising the media of political education abroad. On the contrary, I am certain that private organisations and the sector approach of lawyer to lawyer, businessman to businessman and youth to youth, is an efficient way of achieving the national purposes upon which we in this House have agreed. The House operates through its majorities. My right hon. and learned Friend has had his opportunity: why does he not accept the majority? That is the way in which Parliament works and the way in which the constitution of the country works.

There are in any case a large number of agencies which are in receipt of public funds and are doing a useful job for the nation. Among them there are the Royal United Services Institution, the British Eastern European Group and the British Atlantic Group, which promotes N.A.T.O. The granting of moneys to them cannot be regarded as a misuse of public funds. For there is a variety of ways in which the Government and the Opposition parties promote the British cause overseas. One example is the Council of Europe. I am a delegate to that body. When I go to its meetings, I deploy as effectively as I can the state of opinion in this country. Invariably I say that people in Europe should understand that large numbers of our constituents in Britain are opposed to the Common Market. It is important that Europeans should understand that any British Government seeking membership has a difficult political problem at home. Hon. Members can only make this clear, that there is a great deal of opposition to the policy in this country, if they go to Europe and say so. How else can Europeans be made aware of this than by Members of Parliament and other citizens going to Europe to explain it?

I know that the Minister is anxious to intervene in the debate. I sum up by saying that in this case it is a national policy which the Government are pursuing and therefore it is right that public funds should be used to promote it. It is an efficient use of public money, because it will be a sad day if the education of non-British people into the views of this nation becomes exclusively managed by the Government. There is room for voluntary organisations, and this is a first-class way of spending the money

The subject of this debate is expressed in very broad terms:

"The use of public money for the propaganda purposes of private organisations."

The hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) will not be altogether surprised to hear that it was not very difficult to guess the exact organisation which he had in mind and the exact issue that he was likely to raise. It is worth pointing out that the subject for the debate is expressed in extremely tendentious terms and does not express the purpose of this grant or the principles on which grants of this kind are given. It is not a new subject. It has been discussed many times before. Contrary to what some hon. Members suggested, there is nothing sinister about grants of this kind and the way in which organisations are chosen for them.

The points which have been made can be answered quite simply, and there are four main ones with which I propose to deal. It is important to do so, because it is clear that there are serious misapprehensions about the way in which money of this kind is given and the kinds of organisations to which it is given.

The first point is an essential one. Hon. Members have spoken as if this was almost the only organisation of this kind to which public funds were given. That is very wide of the mark. Her Majesty's Government provide funds for a large number of organisations of many kinds, mainly for the purposes of exchanges of views, visits, and so on. I mention two which are vaguely comparable. There is an organisation called the Great Britain/East Europe Centre to which Her Majesty's Government provide funds to promote exchanges of views with East Europe. We also provide funds to the British Atlantic Committee, another organisation designed to promote understanding, in this case within the Atlantic Community. The grants about which the hon. Member for Banbury spoke are exactly comparable to these. In other words, we provide funds to an organisation to assist exchanges with East Europe, and other funds to another organisation to promote exchanges within the Atlantic Community. It is scarcely surprising that we also provide funds to promote exchanges of views with our closest neighbours in Western Europe, a group of countries with which our relations are likely, whatever happens about the Common Market itself, to be increasingly close over the coming years.

Can my hon. Friend say whether the Foreign Office is considering the provision of public money to allow those right hon. and hon. Members who represent the majority point of view of the British people on this matter to put that view to our friends in Western Europe, so that they will know, in Brussels and elsewhere, what the British people really think?

As is so often the case on these occasions, my hon. Friend has raised a point I was about to come to myself in a moment and I ask him to wait.

That is the first point, that there is a large number of grants which are given to a large number of organisations to promote exchanges of different kinds, and it would be nothing short of extraordinary if the Government were not to provide public money for visits and exchanges of this kind in Western Europe. [Interruption.] I know the hon. Member may say that this is a particular kind of organisation for particular purposes—

rose—

I am not giving way.

Order. The Minister must be allowed to get a word in.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. It is my own view entirely. I have given way already and I shall perhaps be prepared to give way on a future occasion—[Interruption.]—but I do not think the hon. Member encourages a Minister to give way by making remarks of that kind.

I now come to the second point of real importance. There is nothing whatever new about grants of this kind, nor about this particular grant, which has been raised as though it were some sudden sinister move by the Government to promote particular organisations. The hon. Member himself mentioned the fact that this grant went back over five years to the time when the party opposite was in power. In fact this particular grant was approved by his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition when he was in charge of this kind of thing at that time. I know that it may very well be that the hon. Member strongly disapproves of this action by his right hon. Friend, but it is not for me to intervene in the domestic squabbles of the party opposite. It is, however, important for the sake of the record to point out that this is not something suddenly introduced by this Government, but that not only the principle of grants in general but this particular grant to this organisation was authorised a considerable time ago by the party opposite when it was in power.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in giving way. I have a very brief question. Can the hon. Gentleman afford any example of another organisation which is actively engaged in putting forward propaganda on a controversial issue and is making that propaganda in this country?

I would ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to be patient. I have listened to the debate and it is my intention to reply to the debate and that was a point I was going to reply to. But the brief answer to the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that the grant is not given for the purposes which he has just described, and if he will wait a moment he will see that this is the case.

That is the second point. The first point is that a large number of grants are given to a large number of organisations. The second point is that this grant is not new, but has been going on for a long time and was authorised in the first place by the party opposite when it was in power.

The third point—and this is in reply to the point which has just been raised, and I accept that it is an essential pont in this context—is that the hon. Gentleman's notice of debate uses the words,

"The use of public money for the propaganda purposes of private organisations."

The fact is that this money is not given for propaganda purposes. That is a point which was raised by the right hon. and learned Gentleman and by others in the debate, and it is a very elementary point on which hon. Members ought to be clear. The point is that no money whatever is given for activities of these organisations in this country; that is to say, public money in this country is not used for this purpose. It is true that on one or two occasions money has been given for meetings which have taken place in this country, but they have always been meetings taking place with representatives of European organisations to discuss European matters in general.

rose—

I cannot give way again.

The purposes for which money is given were stated in the reply which I gave, and although that particular form of words was not my invention, because it is a form of words which is used in the Estimates for describing the grant, it is used for promoting better understanding of the British point of view on European affairs.

A number of hon. Members have raised the question, what is meant by "the British point of view". My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Barnes) interpreted this as meaning the point of view of the British Government. I must dissociate myself from that point of view. It is certainly not the intention of this grant to allow this organisation to promote the views of the British Government. I think one can reasonably interpret the phrase "the British point of view" to mean the point of view accepted and adopted by the British Parliament. I would not, as I will show in a moment, even go as far as to say that. But it would be a reasonable point of view to hold that, if a clear statement of opinion has been reached by the overwhelming majority of this House—and this could reasonably be taken as representing the British point of view—then it would not be an extreme point of view to hold that public money should be given for promoting such a point of view which has been adopted by the large majority of both parties in this House. However, as I shall show in a moment, we do not even take this line, because I shall be showing that some of the activities of these organisations have encouraged opportunities for Members of this House and other people in this country to express on European affairs a point of view which is very far from that of the Government or of a majority of Members of this House, and a point of view which is, indeed, hostile to the British application for membership of the European Economic Community.

The main purposes and activities for which this money is used are, as has been said in the debate, clearly and specifically agreed with us—as was said in the Answer to which I have referred—with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, before the money is given. It is for a number of activities, primarily conferences and seminars, visits of all kinds, to enable representative people in this country to meet their opposite numbers on the continent to discuss matters of common concern and common interest. They are drawn from a very wide range of professions and activities—members of Parliament, journalists, farmers, trade unionists, students, and others, who have all taken part in conferences of this kind devoted to many aspects of European affairs. For example, a young European leaders' conference was held in London this July, and there was a civil servants' seminar held in Reading this September: hardly sinister activities, nor, I think, particularly devoted to putting a particular point of view about our application for membership of the European Economic Community.

So it must be very clearly borne in mind that this grant to this organisation is not for the kind of activities which have been described in this debate—general propaganda purposes; certainly not in this country; and abroad, it is used primarily for organising contacts and visits in Europe with European representatives from the countries of the European Communities.

Fourthly—and this is an essential point, especially in reply to some of the things said in this debate—the use of this money is not confined to people adopting a particular point of view on the central issue which we have been discussing today, the British application for membership of the European Economic Community. In fact it must be said that this debate shows what a great misapprehension must still exist among many hon. Members about this grant and the purposes for which it is used. A number of hon. Members of this House who are opposed to the British application to join the Common Market have taken part in these conferences and debates—for instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt), who was here just now but who has now left, who has his own personal view of this particular matter; my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon. South (Mr. Winnick), who at meetings—[HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] During this year, I believe. I will look into that. Furthermore, a number of members of the Conservative Party's back bench committees, I understand, have been invited to take part in activities organised by this group in Europe.

As one of the vice-chairmen of the Conservative Party's Foreign and Commonwealth Committee, I have received no such invitation.

I cannot say whether the hon. Member himself has been invited—though I think it would be a very wise policy to invite him to take part in one of these particular groups. Members of all the principal Committees of the Conservative Party have been invited to take part.

Finally, may I reply to one or two specific points. It cannot be said that the activities of this group are for party political purposes in any normal sense of the word. As is well known, the leaders of all political parties are united in their view about application for membership of E.E.C., so it would not be particularly sinister or undesirable if we were subsidising an organisation which was putting forward views similar to those of the leadership of the parties. As I have tried to make clear, the purpose of the grant is merely to promote exchanges of view, visits and understanding in Europe, not in this country, of the view of many representative people in this country about Europe.

I hope I have shown that the Motion and many of the speeches which have been made are based on misapprehension about the nature of the grant, the number of widely varying organisations which benefit from similar grants and the activities, which are clearly laid down and specified, for which funds of this kind qualify. I hope I have cleared the mind of hon. Members and relieved them of some of their misapprehensions about the grant.

Before I call the next hon. Member, may I remind the House that we must keep absolutely to the time-table; I must protect the last of the Adjournment debates. The next debate will last until 1.15. Already I have the names of eight hon. Members who wish to speak. Hon. Members will realise that speeches must be brief if we are to get them all in.

I am most grateful for the opportunity of initiating this debate on the inter-union dispute at London Transport's Acton works. The debate was prompted by the strike of mechanical craftsmen at that works and I am delighted, as I am sure is the whole House, to have read reports in the Press that the men will be back at work on Monday. If the knowledge that this debate was to take place has done anything to encourage a sense of urgency amongst those who were trying to obtain a return to work, the debate will have achieved its main purpose before it has even started.

I hope, as I am sure the whole House hopes, that a satisfactory solution will come from the talks which are now to take place. I assure the Minister that, as the talks have yet to take place, I shall not be discussing details of the inter-union dispute. I do not wish to say anything today which might in any way prejudice a satisfactory outcome of the talks and an agreement. However, I wish to say something about the effect of the strike and the handling of it by those responsible—the hon. Gentleman's Department, the T.U.C. and London Transport.

Although the dispute was running for more than a year, London Transport took that length of time to refer the matter to the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, and I question whether the dispute should have been allowed to run for so long before this was done. It was referred to the Department on 15th August, and that was more than a month before the strike took place. I understand that the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity passed the problem to the Trades Union Congress. Following that, there started in September three months of mounting chaos on the Underground, particularly on the Northern Line, a line used by many of my constituents who come into St. Pancras to get to the City.

I had received complaints from constituents about this, but only when they had been driven to distraction by four weeks of mounting chaos. The normal interval of two and a half minutes between trains during peak hours had lengthened on occasions to 10 minutes, and later even to 20 minutes. One constituent told me that it took him longer on one occasion to get from St. Pancras to Old Street, two stations down the Northern Line, than to get from St. Albans to St. Pancras on a diesel train. London Transport failed to ensure an adequate spread of trains during the peak hours, with the result that chaotic conditions were produced as mounting numbers of rolling stock units were going out of service. I think finally that a quarter of the trains were out of use, 10 lifts and 40 escalators, and some stations had no escalators at all in use.

Overcrowding on platforms is extremely dangerous. I do not know whether any Ministers have ever been down to see what happens when a strike takes place. It must be a horrifying experience for anybody to find himself on the front edge of the platform when the platform is jammed with people and more people are pushing from behind to try to get into a train. The state inside the trains is extremely dangerous when they are packed to more than capacity. When I spent two hours on the line, I saw people who were left behind pushing the behinds of those who were aboard the train to enable the doors to be closed behind them. It would be exceedingly dangerous if a crash were to occur in a train that was so crowded.

The behaviour of those who were landed with the sticky end was admirable. I saw an inspector, a Commonwealth immigrant, at London Bridge who, after a 25-minute interval between trains, behaved with great dignity and calm in face of the angry protests of passengers, who had every right to be irate. I pay tribute to that man for his exemplary conduct, but there was nothing which he could do about it.

There have been three months of misery on this line. It has been dubbed the "Misery Line" by the Evening Standard, which has done a good job in fixing public attention on the conditions on the line. After three months a decision has been taken which could have been taken at the beginning. The parties have agreed to talk, and I cannot see why this could not have been done at the outset.

My main point in continuing to have the debate is to point out to the Minister that it is this sort of occurrence which the Government were supposed to protect us from—indeed they had promised that such a thing would not happen. It will be remembered that when the Government decided to abandon the provisions in the White Paper "In Place of Strife", which suggested penal provisions in certain circumstances, the Prime Minister exactly six months ago said:

"… while the Government accepted the proposals adopted by the T.U.C. Special Congress on 5th June as satisfactory in relation to inter-union disputes, they had doubts about certain aspects of the proposals for dealing with unconstitutional strikes.

In the course of yesterday's discussions the General Council unanimously agreed to a solemn and binding undertaking which set out the lines on which the General Council will intervene in serious unconstitutional stoppages. In the light of this undertaking, the Government now regard the T.U.C.'s proposals as satisfactory … In these circumstances, the Government have decided not to proceed with proposals for legislation involving financial penalties for those involved in inter-union and unconstitutional disputes."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th June, 1969; Vol. 798, c. 700.]

I will not go into whether this dispute comes within the category of an inter-union or an unconstitutional dispute, but it certainly comes into one of those categories. It has been allowed to run on for three months, to the great discomfort and misery of hundreds of thousands of passengers who have to travel on the Northern Line. Does the Prime Minister still regard the T.U.C.'s proposals as satisfactory, as he did on 19th June? Does the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity still regard them as satisfactory? I think it is absolutely monstrous that the public should have to endure such misery after those undertakings have been given by the Government and the T.U.C.

I should like to know who was really responsible. I know the Minister cannot reply to this today, but I hope that the Government will hold an inquiry to see exactly why the buck was passed round and round between London Transport, the Department of Employment and Productivity and the T.U.C. while, in the meantime, there was mounting chaos, and passengers had to endure conditions which I described at Question Time as unsuitable for cattle, let alone human beings. Having spent two hours travelling on the line after I put that Question, I can only say that I consider I was fully justified, as were my constituents who complained about it. It is vital for the Government to satisfy the public that this type of thing will never be allowed to happen again. If they cannot give that undertaking, the public will say that the undertakings given in the past about the Government's intentions in these matters were worthless, and that they have thoroughly misled the nation.

It is essential to put the record right. The first thing that needs to be said is that A.E.F. members are very conscious of the problems that have been created for passengers using the Northern Line in particular and certain stations on the south side of the river. They are conscious of the many elderly people who have had to struggle up many staircases for enormous distances. It has been a tremendous hardship, of which the A.E.F. members are conscious. They recognise all the problems that have been involved, and have a great deal of sympathy for the suffering that has been created.

But the dispute was not of A.E.F. making. I want to put the record right with regard to the points raised by the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew). He said that the dispute is either unconstitutional or unofficial, but it is neither. It is an official dispute recognised by the A.E.F. Executive, and strike pay has been paid to those involved. There is also a levy on all the members in the district to make strike benefit payments to those in the dispute.

Second, the dispute did not arise from an inter-union quarrel, though I have listened to hon. Member after hon. Member opposite saying that it is. It is not a dispute between trade unions.

I went out of my way to avoid becoming involved in the argument as to whether it was an inter-union dispute. I merely said that that came under the Prime Minister's undertaking. Since the hon. Gentleman has raised the matter, he should know that on 4th December his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for employment and Productivity said in answer to a Question

"There are inter-union difficulties here which it is important the T.U.C. should take action about, and this it is doing."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th December, 1969; Vol. 792, c. 1679.]

So the Secretary certainly took the view that there were inter-union difficulties. I would say that that is another way of saying that there is a dispute.

Order. Long interventions cut into a very short debate.

The point is that, despite what has been said, it is not an inter-union dispute. Craftsmen are organised by both the N.U.R. and A.E.F. There are N.U.R. craftsmen employed by the L.T.B. This is not an inter-union dispute in that sense. The dispute was created because when the L.T.B. took unilateral action, without prior consultation with the men concerned, it broke agreements that it had had with the A.E.F. for 11 years.

The L.T.B. is now arguing that it is an inter-union dispute because it is trying to excuse itself for its lethargy and the mischief-making it has pursued over the past 13 months. It says that it is an inter-union dispute as though that would absolve it from any responsibility in the matter. Responsibility for the dispute is the L.T.B.'s. It took the unilateral action and broke the agreement, and therefore the union has no alternative.

The dispute is about changed working conditions. The change was made without any consultation. It is the L.T.B. that is trying to change the conditions, and it tried to accelerate the whole process before it becomes a G.L.C.'s responsibility from 1st January. The board—particularly the mechanical inspectors concerned—was anxious to have a change in working practice before the L.T.B. came under the G.L.C.

Therefore, I hope that hon. Members will account that it is not an inter-union dispute. The L.T.B. has never been under pressure by the N.U.R. to change working conditions, although the N.U.R. would support certain changed practices. But the same position exists in London as in any other railway workshop through the country where we have joint working agreements between the two unions. It is important to recognise that the same conditions exist in Swindon, Doncaster, Crewe or wherever else railway workshops exist. So I hope that we shall not continue to think that it is an inter-union dispute. It has arisen from unilateral action taken by the L.T.B., and it has gone on for so long because the L.T.B. has refused over the whole period since 24th September to accept its own agreements that it has had for 11 years with the A.E.F.

No doubt what the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) has said will be fascinating to connoisseurs of trade union dialectics, but it will not be of the smallest interest to my constituents. All they know is that they have been thoroughly and outrageously inconvenienced for 13 weeks.

Blame the L.T.B.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to intervene briefly in the debate. I entirely support what my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) has said, and intervene only to emphasise that the dispute has caused trouble not only on the Northern Line, which has received most of the publicity, but also on the Bakerloo Line, which is used most by my constituents. The vast majority of them travel on the Bakerloo Line from Kenton, or join it from the Metropolitan Line. Most of them are commuters and have to travel to work to earn their living. They do not do this for fun; it is not like a charabanc outing, but is the only means effectively to get to their place of work.

The dispute has caused them great hardship and I believe injury to their health. I use the line frequently, and at peak hours cutting trains on the Bakerloo Line from seven cars to six makes a dramatic difference. The conditions are intolerable. I have noticed on my travels to and from the constituency a number of elderly people who still have to go to work in London and the City who have been overcome and become faint because of the crowded and intolerable conditions.

We are all very glad that the strike is coming to an end after these 13 weeks and we hope that the services on the Bakerloo and Northern Line will return to normal. But I do not want the Minister to be under any illusion that only the Northern Line was affected. The Bakerloo Line was also affected, and vast numbers of my constituents have to use this method of transport to get to work. They are thoroughly sick and fed up with the dispute. They are glad it is over. They are not interested in subtle distinctions as to who is right and who is wrong.

They would like to hear from the Minister more than anything else what will be done, in the new climate of industrial relations that we hear so much about, to ensure that this does not happen again.

In introducing this subject, the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) had about him all the disappointment of the hunter who finds that someone has shot his fox. My right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity is to be congratulated on having brought to a conclusion this rather distressing industrial dispute.

The hon. Member for St. Albans and his hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Grant) sought to give the impression that it is only recently that there have been these difficulties on the Northern Line and the Bakerloo Line.

That is not so. I well recall in my maiden speech in May 1966 drawing attention to the deplorable industrial relations in London Transport. I then said that the management of London Transport must clearly bear a considerable responsibility for that situation, which I think I described as civil war.

Unfortunately, the management has not done a great deal to make the wheels run smoothly, to oil the machinery of industrial relations, as was cogently pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson), who also made it absolutely clear that it was not a question of an inter-union dispute disrupting the passenger services of London. Even if that were not so, and even if it had been a question of an inter-union dispute—for example, a demarcation problem—it hardly lies in the mouth of the hon. Member for Harrow, Central and the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi), who are members of the solicitors' profession, to throw that at the trade unionists who work for London Transport. The hon. Members belong to an organisation which has far too many restrictive practices and, indeed, would take great umbrage if anybody tried to take any of their work from them.

Could the hon. Member tell us of any occasion on which as part of a collective responsibility the legal profession or any similar profession has curtailed services in this way.

If a solicitor's clerk sought to take on work allocated to a solicitor, not only would there be a great deal of disturbance in the solicitor's office, but criminal proceedings could follow.

As I was saying, as long ago as May 1966, I drew attention to the deplorable state of affairs, which goes back much further than that. The hon. Member for St. Albans referred to recent newspaper articles which spoke of a "Misery Line". I remember in 1959 a London evening newspaper sending a reporter not only to the Northern Line but to other lines who wrote vivid despatches about the great inconvenience suffered by London Transport passengers.

I am left with the impression that hon. Gentlemen opposite are trying to use this deplorable dispute as another stick with which to beat the Government and are trying to batten on to the legitimate complaints of Londoners in order to bring the Government into disrepute. I think the Government ought to be praised, because it is as a result of the agreement which was reached between my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the First Secretary and the T.U.C. that this business has at last been settled.

The Government, over the last few years, have done a great deal to ease the problems of those who use London Transport. The troubles which have afflicted Londoners are, one hopes, about to be ended by the Act the Government recently piloted through the House, which ought to ensure a greater sensitivity to passengers' feelings. No Government have given more money to London Transport to secure a better running of the passenger services. The Government have given more than £1 million.

The criticism of hon. Gentlemen opposite is unwarranted and not genuine. That is not to say that one does not deplore this dispute, but blame should not be laid at the door of the servants of London Transport, who work hard, often for inadequate remuneration, but on a rather irresponsible and an insensitive management.

It would have been a sad commentary if this House had entered into the season of goodwill with a debate on a sordid story of men of badwill causing trouble and hardship to thousands of their fellow citizens in pursuing their own selfish aims. Happily, goodwill has prevailed and we do not have to approach the matter in that way, although some hon. Gentlemen opposite have chosen to do so.

If more time were available I could have gone into the detail of this lamentable dispute between the unions. The Northern Line runs through my constituency and I have used it frequently for 30 years. Two of my children use it daily to go to and from school, and hundreds of my constituents have had to struggle to and from work in the most appalling and disgraceful conditions. There is no need for me to develop this aspect in detail. There have been enough details published. I am sure hon. Members and the public are grateful to the Evening Standard for highlighting these conditions over the past weeks.

In fairness, it must be said that the rolling stock of the Northern Line is more than 30 years old and that capital which should have gone into its replacement has gone on the building of the Victoria Line. Staff have also been taken off the Northern Line to service the Victoria Line. If breakdowns are not to take place, there must be a continual and efficient maintenance service.

It is this which has been sabotaged at Acton by some 250 men. The dispute there is simply about who will be promoted to mechanical craftsmen. In the past these promotions have gone to A.E.F. men. But the N.U.R. men said that they had been working side by side with the craftsmen, were equally competent to do the work and asked why they should not be so promoted.

The L.T.B. would have been faced with a strike by the N.U.R. which could have caused greater chaos than an A.E.F. strike. The L.T.B.'s attitude was that it did not matter who did the work as long as the men were efficient. It suggested that there should be a proficiency test and whoever passed it could do the mechanical work. One would have thought that that was sensible. But the A.E.F. would not meet the N.U.R. and the N.U.R. would not meet the A.E.F. The T.U.C. was impotent in this and the Minister and his hon. Friend had not been able to deal with it up to the present time.

This is a clear illustration of the situation into which this Government have precipitated us by running away, as they did last summer, from trade union legislation.

rose—

There could not have been a more classic case than this for compulsory arbitration when two unions are in dispute about promotion. One would welcome legislation which would refer such matters to arbitration.

Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot ask for legislation on the Adjournment debate.

Like many hon. Members, I have constituents who have suffered as a result of this dispute. I will speak for only one minute because the final speech has yet to be made from the Front Bench.

Order. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman speaks for two minutes because both Front Benches wish to address the House.

I feel that this is symptomatic of the spread of what one could almost call anarchy. In 1964 strikes were occurring at the rate of 10 a week, and now the rate is 55 a week. This is occurring not just in industry but in the public service as well. What we want to hear from the Minister is whether this business has been settled. Our constituents are having to travel like cattle and the R.S.P.C.A. would have conducted a campaign if animals had been treated like my constituents.

Since 15th August, when the matter was referred to the Department, there has been only very slow progress. What will be done to prevent this from happening again, with the travelling public suffering so greatly as a result?

Whether or not this strike was official—and some doubt has been cast by the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson)—

There is no doubt.

It is absolutely fantastic that it has taken 13 weeks to bring about a solution and to end the bitterness, misery and frustration which has been suffered by the public. If it was an official strike, it is deplorable that nothing could be done in 13 weeks to end it.

I know and understand the Department's reductance to intervene, but this was not a strike affecting the production of luxury goods or even motor cars. Whatever its merits or demerits—it would not be right to go into that now, or to decide who was to blame—this dispute made life hell for thousands of Londoners as they struggled to go to and from their work in conditions which it would be an understatement to describe as intolerable.

Travel on London's underground is expensive and unpleasant, particularly at rush hour times. The various Government Departments involved should make sure that it does not become so intolerable for people who work in the centre of the capital to make their way to and from their work.

We learn that now that a solution to the dispute has been found it will be at least a month before there is a significant improvement in the situation. This delay is of course one of the legacies of allowing a dispute of this kind to deteriorate for so long. I hope that the chaos which has existed will not be allowed to occur on New Year's Day in London Transport services generally.

It is worth recalling that paragraph 31 of the Government's White Paper "In Place of Strife" said:

"It is essential to provide rules and procedures for the rapid and effective settlement of grievances and other issues. When procedures are agreed which meet these criteria, and thus avoid the danger of lengthy delays, provision should be made for previous conditions to be maintained while any matter is being considered in accordance with the procedure. … Consideration should be given to the inclusion of provision for a quick recourse to arbitration in grievance procedures if agreement is not reached at the early stages of the procedure. There should be provision for important matters to be raised with the highest levels of management."

I want to say just this to the Parliamentary Secretary. We are entering a period of considerable industrial unrest and I am, alas, afraid that there will be far too many stoppages both official and unofficial. The Government have a duty to do something about this, but their policies—or rather their lack of them—have been a direct contributory cause of what has occurred, and my hon. Friends have made this clear.

It is time for the Government to go into this whole question carefully and to see that in future, where the public interest is directly and seriously affected, as it has been in this case, that they take positive action at the earliest possible stage to get the parties together. Surely that is the common sense thing to do. It seems that common sense has been peculiarly lacking in this most unfortunate affair.

I urge the hon. Gentleman to accept that this dispute was created by the unilateral action of the employers—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Hon. Gentlemen opposite may say "No" but what I say is evident from all that has been said.

As for the Evening Standard's peace plan, its basis has been the declared policy of the A.E.F. from the beginning of the dispute. It is the employers who have refused to accept it.

Even if the hon. Gentleman were partially right, that is a further indication of the need for prompt action on the part of the Department of Employment and Productivity.

The Government very much regret the inconvenience that the strike by maintenance staff has been causing, whether through the withdrawal of rolling stock on certain underground lines or through the taking of some lifts and escalators out of service owing to lack of maintenance. This is deeply regretted.

We are all very conscious that these conditions have been adding considerable discomfort and strain to the daily lot of many people who use the underground service. The London Transport Board is now anxious to press ahead with getting the service back to normal, but this cannot, of course, be achieved overnight.

In this situation a return to normalcy and what we hope will be a continuous improvement will not be helped by the sort of recriminations that we have had this morning—[Interruption.]—because recriminations of this kind are the last helpful contribution that can be made in this situation. Condemnations which are, perhaps, understandable from the travelling public who have suffered are not so understandable from hon. Members who, one would expect, would at least try to understand the facts and certainly wait until all the facts are known to them. Such condemnations do nothing to sweeten what has obviously been a very sour industrial relations atmosphere.

A basis for a resumption of work in this unfortunate dispute was reached yesterday. The maintenance staff at Acton will be resuming work on Monday and the men who service the lifts and escalators will be resuming work tomorrow, Saturday, evening. In these circumstances I do not think that hon. Members will expect me to comment in detail on the issues in dispute or on the views of the parties involved.

There are, however, three points to which I must refer because they have emerged in the debate. The first is about how quickly conditions can be restored to normal; the second is a matter to which I must inevitably refer, if only briefly, and that is the issues involved; and the third is the question of the rôle of the D.E.P. and the T.U.C. in this situation. I must comment on the latter, particularly in view of the severe strictures which have been levelled against both.

The issue in dispute has been about the method of recruitment of mechanical craftsmen who overhaul the rolling stock at London Transport's railway workshops at Acton. I do not think it would be helpful for me to rake over the full details of the course of the dispute, but perhaps I should point out that the strike by members of the A.E.F. has been mainly in protest against the London Transport Board's departure from what were the traditional methods of recruiting mechanical craftsmen which have been operating for a considerable time; a departure which the Board says it resorted to only after abortive attempts on its part to have the issues discussed jointly with the two unions concerned.

The basis for a resumption of work agreed yesterday between the Board and the A.E.F. provides that the recruitment practices which operated prior to September, 1968, will be re-established on the understanding that, on a resumption of normal working, immediate and meaningful discussions will take place between the A.E.F. and the Board of all problems giving rise to, and resulting from, the present dispute.

The Board and the A.E.F. have further agreed that the discussions cannot proceed indefinitely and that they shall he brought to an acceptable conclusion within a reasonable period. The other union concerned with the issues in dispute, the National Union of Railwaymen, has been kept fully informed of the course of the discussions, and has noted the terms of the basis for a resumption of work.

While the question of the services themselves and a return to normalcy is clearly not within the responsibility of my Department—this is the direct responsibility of the L.T.B.—I have, in anticipation of the anxieties of hon. Members, sought some information from my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport about the current position on the Northern Line; and it may be helpful if I give an indication of how soon the services can be restored to normal, and improved.

We must, in discussing this aspect, consider the question of staff shortages and shortages of maintenence staff generally. Staff shortages on the Northern Line earlier in the year led to some services having to be cut. There has, however, been an improvement and the position is now no worse than on the other underground lines. The rolling stock on the Northern and Bakerloo lines is some of the oldest on the underground system and is scheduled for replacement or renovation by the mid-1970s.

This does mean, that it is more susceptible to breakdown than the new equipment on other lines, and under normal conditions the maintenance programme is geared to reflect this state of affairs. Almost the whole of the Northern Line has now been covered by a centralised system of signalling control, and this should improve the reliability and regularity of services.

After the return to work, priority will be given, as far as is practicable, to repair work which will enable trains now out of service to be brought back into operation. I understand that it should be possible to repair a reasonable number of the lifts and escalators now out of operation within a week of a return to work, and priority will be given to those stations which are at present hardest hit. As I said, this is the direct responsibility of the London Transport Board. However, I thought that I should seek the information so that hon. Members might have a clearer idea about how quickly we can expect a return to normal operations.

The most severe strictures have been directed to the point concerning the rôle of my Department in this dispute. Hon. Members have referred to the length of the strike and to the fact that, apparently, little effort has been made to resolve it. It began on 25th September. My Department was notified on 15th August. It is important to make it clear that the issue was not referred to the Department. It was notified. The Department has been involved almost continuously since then.

The Chairman of the London Transport Board says that he requested the assistance of the hon. Gentleman's Department on that date.

I understand that the Department was notified for the first time of the apprehended dispute on 15th August. The strike began on 25th September. Officers of my Department had discussions with the parties in September and October but were unable to resolve the issue or to persuade the parties to discuss the matter together. As the interests of two unions were involved, my Department asked the T.U.C. whether it could help. The General Secretary of the T.U.C. held a number of discussions with the unions separately in October and November. Representatives of the Board met the A.E.F. again in late November and early this month, putting forward various formulae for the resumption of work. My officers had discussions with the three parties during the last ten days before the formula for a resumption of work was agreed yesterday. Discussions of one kind or another have been going on almost continuously since the strike began.

The Chairman of the Board says that London Transport requested the help of the Department on 15th August and that it referred the matter to Mr. Feather. Can we be told when it was referred to Mr. Feather and why it was necessary to wait until October before discussions started?

I cannot give the precise date.

Surely the hon. Gentleman knows the answer to that.

I cannot give the precise date on which the Department referred the matter to the T.U.C. I have said that the Department asked the T.U.C. when it was notified of the apprehended dispute, and the T.U.C.'s General Secretary held a number of discussions with the unions in October and November. I think that it would be absurd to expect the T.U.C. to succeed every time that it takes action in a dispute.

Any time.

We would be pleased if it succeeded any time.

Those two comments are indicative of the approach of hon. Gentlemen opposite. It is contrary to what one would expect of this House in such a situation. Hon. Gentlemen opposite repeatedly—

Get on with it.

Now I am told to get on with it by hon. Members who devoted 45 minutes to carping criticisms.

It would be absurd to expect the T.U.C. to succeed in every issue where it has responsibility under its solemn and binding pledge. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no grasp of the complexities of this sort of situation. In this, as in many other disputes, the General Secretary of the T.U.C. has spared no effort to try and resolve the difficulties, and every credit is due to him for his efforts. On many occasions they have met with a considerable degree of success.

A number of hon. Gentlemen opposite, though I exclude the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew), show an increasing proneness, irrespective of the consequences of their intervention, to try to take advantage of industrial disputes to grind an ounce of political capital out of them. I find that more regrettable than almost anything else, and it should be condemned. I refer especially to the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) who, according to the FinancialTimes, has said that the Minister responsible for labour relations—I presume he means my right hon. Friend the First Secretary—stands condemned for having failed to do anything and that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour stands condemned for having taken no interest in the comfort of thousands of Londoners. I make no apology for not having notified the hon. Gentleman of my intention to refer to him. Obviously he did not hesitate to make his criticisms without notifying either of my right hon. Friends.

I must make this point because it is crucial to the whole debate. Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that it is the employers who are trying to change the working conditions, and not the trade unions? It is important to establish that.

I implied at the outset that I thought that it was incumbent upon us all to do nothing which might prejudice the peace which we hope will now be established. I cannot believe that an answer to my hon. Friend's question will contribute to the kind of solution that we want.

My officers have toiled unceasingly. On Monday of this week, my Chief Conciliation Officer and his colleagues worked from ten in the morning to seven at night on this issue without a break, trying to bring about a peaceful solution to what has been a most injurious dispute. Far from levelling carping criticisms at my officers, hon. Gentlemen opposite should pay tribute to them.

I hope that an atmosphere has been created by the talks led by officers of my Department—though it has not been by this debate—in which fruitful and constructive discussions can take place. Let us hope that they take place. We look forward not only to a return to normalcy but an improvement of conditions facing the travelling public on the Bakerloo, Northern and other lines.

Order. This debate has overrun its allotted time. The next debate should terminate at 2 p.m., if not before.

Adult education is discussed far too seldom in this House. Normally, when it is, the House is practically empty, as it is today. However, I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for selecting this subject, no doubt partly to redress the balance. I am sure that I shall receive a sympathetic answer to my points. I think that we need a new formula, that, owing to the sympathetic nature of my hon. Friend's answer, I beg to raise the matter on the Adjournment, so that we can discuss it more fully and get more precision on it. That is the reason for my raising it today.

I am glad to see that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) is present. I want to pay tribute to him for what he has done for adult colleges. I supported his action when he was at the Ministry of Education in calling for the development plans of the residential colleges and making the first capital grants to them. I know that the colleges are grateful, as I am. I hope that he will forgive me if I say that I think that I assisted by pushing from behind. However, he was very ready to be pushed.

As a result of the development plans the residential adult colleges received a 50 per cent. grant for their capital development and they have to find the other 50 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman knows that I always wanted them to have a higher percentage of grant, but the main achievement was to obtain a grant and to introduce a new principle of Government grant-aid for capital development. Practically all the developments except in the case of Plater College are now completed. About £500,000 of public money and another £500,000 of voluntary money has gone into these colleges. The loan services on the voluntary money has caused a great strain on the resources of the adult residential colleges. In no other field of higher education is there such a low capital grant from the Government. Universities obtain a grant of 90 per cent. and voluntary colleges of education obtain a grant of 75 per cent. It is absurd—I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman for this—that the really voluntary colleges, struggling in a very difficult field, receive the lowest capital grant.

My hon. Friend may say that she is waiting for the report of the Russell Committee but she should have in mind that when the proposals for the development of residential colleges are put forward—and I shall put forward some today—her Department should seriously consider an increase in the proportion and and not wait for Russell before getting the preliminaries done. I find it inconceivable that the Russell Committee will report that the residential adult colleges should be done away with and not expanded. For many years I served with Sir Lionel Russell on the Fircroft Board of Governors, and I know that it would not be in his nature to be on any committee which made that recommendation. I therefore ask my right lion Friend to do some preliminary planning so that when the Russell Committee reports, recommending an expansion of adult residential colleges—as I am sure it will—her Department will be ready.

There will be two stages of development. The colleges still need to be modernised. The moderate building plans that have gone forward were to increase their capacity to a modest extent, in order to give them the bare necessities to cope with their job. What is required now is a modernisation, with study-bedrooms, better common rooms, better equipment, better furniture, better sports facilities and all the other things that people demand in these days. It is only right that adult students should have them.

I look forward during my time in this House to a considerable expansion of adult colleges. Some of the existing colleges can expand. When I was a governor, Fircroft was not particularly anxious to become too big, and I appreciate that there is an argument that the size of colleges should not become so big as to destroy the intimacy and effectiveness of their work. Nevertheless, some can expand and there is a need for other colleges. I have indicated the need for a college in the north on many occasions, and I believe that the right hon. Member supported my argument in his day. This matter needs looking into with a great deal of energy. People make the quite false argument that there is not a demand from adults these days. Looking at the past years one sees that there is still a great reservoir of people to come forward. The system of educational selection is still inadequate, so that many thousands fall through the net. Apart from that, on their own merits there is a clear case for more residential college places.

The situation today is almost one of chaos. There is a real possibility that Hillcroft will have to close. In 1969 it began the session wth 10 vacant places. I have a dossier here which I can send to my hon. Friend concerning 43 local education authorities which have not made grants to students accepted by the colleges. Therefore, presumably, if this situation is not remedied there is a danger that there will be 43 vacancies caused by this failure. This is quite absurd.

My hon. Friend should beware the Public Accounts Committee. It is wrong that Government money should be expended in an effort to expand residential colleges while places have been left vacant and may continue to be vacant in the next year if action is not taken. If I cannot frighten my hon. Friend perhaps I can frighten her Permanent Secretary, because this is just the sort of thing that the Public Accounts Committee would probe very deeply.

The same position applies, to a lesser degree at Ruskin College and Fircroft College. Ruskin College overcame the difficulty in 1969 by using its private resources and waiving fees for some students, but I remind my hon. Friend that adult colleges are in a far worse position than any other institutions of higher education. The Robbins Committee recommended that the percentage of fees going into the revenue of a university or other higher education institution, such as an adult college, should be 20 per cent. In the case of Ruskin College it is nearly 35 per cent. so that it is quite absurd that the college should "carry" students for whom local education authorities ought to be responsible.

In the five years from 1957 to 1962 the universities raised only 9 per cent. of their income from fees. Here again is another burden on residential adult colleges which I hope my hon. Friend will do something about. She might consider increasing the percentage of the annual grant for the current year or for next year, until the Russell Committee makes firm recommendations, in order to help the colleges over these difficulties.

I made a certain amount of political capital here. There is undoubtedly a Tory L.E.A. squeeze. The same Tory authorities are putting adult grants at the bottom of the list in quite arbitrary ways. I have already mentioned in the House that one local authority is not giving grants to anybody unless he is over 30 years of age, while the authority next door is not giving grants to anybody unless he is under 25 years of age. Some local authorities are demanding professional social qualifications, saying that the residential colleges exist to train professional social workers. Others say that if the student has done this and obtained a qualification then the L.E.A. will not give another grant. Coming to Ruskin or Hillcroft, perhaps the worst local education authorities have been those demanding G.E.C. qualifications, because it is quite ridiculous for a local authority to demand G.E.C. qualifications for an adult education college. Any chief education officer who permits his office to send out a letter to an adult student demanding a G.C.E. qualification ought to be deprived of office on the grounds that he has not the minimum knowledge of the education system.

I ask the Minister to do five things. First, she should send a circular to local education authorities spelling out in simple terms what the colleges are and pointing out that her Department fully support them and explaining how the grants should be made. She may recall the days of what I call the "Anderson" Standing Committee which decided this area of grant.

Secondly, she should increase the number of mature State scholarships. She does not need powers to do this; she needs only the money. In this year or perhaps next year State mature scholarships could be used as a stop-gap until a permanent solution is found to this problem. I can send her particulars of the defaulting local education authorities concerned. Perhaps she will then write to them. There are 43 in respect of adult colleges and four in respect of universities. This means that there are 47 defaulting local authorities, and I ask here to see whether she can use her charm to persuade these authorities to see the error of their ways.

Fourthly, this is a crisis and I am not a person to cry wolf in this House when there is not a wolf around. But on this occasion there is a crisis, and I ask her, while waiting for the Russell Report, to ask the Russell Committee to consider this situation as a matter of urgency and to report back on it. I will accept a confidential report from the Russell Committee to my hon. Friend, without any publicity, so long as I am not put off on the ground that this Committee is looking to the long term and that therefore nothing can be done about the short term. The matter is very urgent.

I know that it is out of order to refer to legislation, but I should like to do so in one sentence. Consideration should be given in the Education Act which is to come before the House to making these grants to students mandatory on local authorities, or alternatively to take them completely from the local authorities and deal with them in the Department of Education and Science. There are arguments on either side but a decision on the matter is urgent.

I suggest that the hon. Lady should visit the residential colleges, starting with Hillcroft. I know that she knows Ruskin. She will find that the situation is as I have described it and will get considerable pleasure out of making the visits.

There is an undoubted permanent and considerable need for residential colleges. I do not argue the case on its intrinsic merits because this is difficult to get over. I am talking in simple crisis terms. But to take the results judged as an academic chief education officer would look at the matter in terms of the contribution to the nation and the success of students, I will give one set of facts from an investigation which was carried out at Ruskin between 1945 and 1954.

One hundred and eighty student careers were studied. Eighty-seven of those had had no secondary education at all, 17 had been only to secondary modern schools. By 1957 a quarter of these, some 49, had successfully completed honours degrees, two-thirds taking seconds or above. There was only one failure. This is a great tribute to the selection methods of the colleges and also to the persistence of the students. One-fifth had taken teachers' qualifications. Therefore, about half this representative sample had gained higher educational qualifications, having started in the position that they had left school at about the minimum standard. In other words, in one or two years they had made up fully for the three or four years which they ought to have spent at grammar school. This is remarkable educational progress.

My own personal experience is that I never had a failure. The students were characteristic genuinely working-class students who had missed the educational boat and were making it up in such a way as to deserve the plaudits of everybody. The characteristic student at the residential college these days is a working man either semi-skilled, unskilled or skilled from a secondary modern school or the victim of economic circumstances at the grammar school who takes further education through the W.E.A. or extramural departments or through the trade union. His age is under 30. The only difference between him and the pre-war type is that these days he is often married. This should be taken full recognition of in any new development, but I will wait for Russell on this matter.

One of the keys for success at the college is the partner of the person concerned. The wife, or husband if we are talking about Hillcroft, has as much to put up with as has the student. The college pattern of development is very rapid. Progress is faster than in almost any other sector of the educational system. For this subsequent career the ex-student will have more demanding work, with a more satisfying and more effective rôle to be played in the nation's affairs and, either in paid or voluntary work, will make a better contribution to the country. This matter needs considerable attention immediately to get over the present crisis and set the future pattern right.

I should like to thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) for his reference to me in the early part of his speech. As he said, the one thing I was able to do in 1964 was to get a building programme in the long term for residential adult colleges. It will probably be found when the history of the Department comes to be written that it was the last administrative decision ever to be taken under the old Ministry, a matter of days before I was succeeded by the First Secretary of State.

One cannot deny that the long-term adult residential colleges are a high-cost part of our adult educational system. This needs to be said and is true. At the same time I am clear in my mind as to the importance of these colleges. I have visited a number of them.

First of all, they provide a second chance for members of the community who have been allowed to write themselves off below their true potential. At these colleges one meets considerable numbers of students from wage-earning families who have never previously thought of higher education in terms of themselves. They perhaps have left school at an early age, many have been to secondary modern school, and I have no doubt that for such people the longterm adult residential college meets a special need.

When one visits these colleges one finds a high standard of work and discussion. I have on several occasions visited Fir-croft in Birmingham and as recently as last Whitsun Recess I visited the college at Coleg Harlech in Wales. In case it should be thought that my own views are in the minority, I know that, were my noble Friend, Lord Harlech, in this House and not in the other place, he would strongly support all I am saying. He shares my enthusiasm about Coleg Harlech. I am always impressed with the quality of discussion and questioning, and the evidence of wide, thoughtful and critical reading by many students at these colleges.

One particular reason why I regret the critical situation at Hillcroft is that it is a college for women. In my view there is still a very long way to go in our society before we can say that women are keeping up with their potential abilities and taking advantage of opportunities to the same extent as are the men. If John Stuart Mill were to come back to life today with a new edition of his book on the subjection of women it would not be the same book, but it would not be anything like 100 per cent. different even a hundred years afterwards.

Let us remember that it was in this decade when I was Minister that five of the best-known girls' grammar schools had proper chemistry and physics provision for the first time in their building programmes. This is what I have in mind when I consider the adult colleges like Hillcroft and the rôle they can play. These colleges are in considerable difficulty at the present time. It is not too much to talk of a critical situation, and part of the difficulty is caused by the heavy burden of capital costs. Difficulty undoubtedly is caused by the policy of local education authorities on the question of grants and awards.

I would add one discordant note. I feel that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland was a little rough in talking about the Tory squeeze on the local education authorities without reminding the House of the squeeze by the Government on L.E.As. Do not let us be under any illusion at present over the great financial problems faced by many education authorities, particularly in their dealings with their finance committees when there is rigid system of the rate support grant at a time of rapidly rising costs. One must riot forget the very real problems which race any authority today, whatever its political colour. The county authorities cannot be accused by the Government of being reactionary over such matters as secondary school reorganisation, and it is often these authorities which have the greatest difficulties over finance

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the suggestion that the students should all have G.C.E. qualifications seems to show ignorance of the whole purpose of these colleges. I am distressed when I hear a local authority say, "We dare not give this man or that woman a grant, because there is a terrible possibility that he or she might subsequently get a university place and then we will have to support them for a number of years later on." Those fears, which sometimes are in the minds of local authorities, are quite unworthy of them. I hope that the hon. Lady will consider what has been suggested about mature State scholarships. What I hope even more is that she will say that she recognises that these are discretionary awards but that, none the less, the gap in the handling of awards by local authorities has got dangerously wide and that she will give encouragement to all authorities to come up to the standard of the best.

These are, of course, discretionary and not mandatory awards, and I recognise that the boundary line in 1962 was dictated very much more by the interests of the Treasury, where I was then a junior Minister, than by intrinsic educational arguments in some cases. But let us remember that, however much we talk about the difference between mandatory and discretionary awards, the whole of our educational system as far as schools are concerned is largely based on discretion and discretionary powers. That is to say, over the whole range of our system, the basis of which is a partnership between Government and the local authorities, a great many of the powers and duties are to some extent discretionary.

Always one has to recognise the role of the Department in giving encouragement, in urging on and attaching greater importance to one thing as opposed to another from time to time. I hope that the hon. Lady will be able to make a sufficiently encouraging speech as to make it easier for those people in local authorities who, whatever their party, wish to be more generous to adult education, to press the case for this important category of student to be treated in a fairer way over the whole country.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) raised this subject and I agree to a great extent with what he has said. I also agree with the broad general statement made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle), particularly in relation to women. I think that we are still in a state in which women who are successful, particularly in a man's world, are told that they have the mind of a man, and this, of course, is an admission that women have not yet been given the same opportunities as men.

I can tell my hon. Friend that, before any pressure had been put upon me, I had already arranged to visit Hillcroft, and while I will take it upon myself to discuss what he has referred to as a very urgent situation there, I must add that I have not been informed and have no reason to believe that the college is likely to shut. I would be glad to have the information my hon. Friend promised me. I have also had discussion with officials in my Department on the possibility of visiting other colleges during the next few months. I hope to make these visits and to be able to discuss with those concerned during them the problems they are facing.

Like most right hon. and hon. Members concerned with education, I admire the way in which these colleges, starting with Ruskin College in 1899, have provided facilities in which people who have lacked the advantage of extensive formal academic education have been able to undertake serious studies in a community specially designed to help them, and if it is true that, by the action of local authorities, people for whom these places were specially designed are not being catered for, then we should certainly look at the situation.

Local education authority grants were the subject of a Question by my hon. Friend on 11th December, and it was explained then that, in a circular of April, 1966, the local education authorities were advised on the use of their discretionary powers to make awards, and the Secretary of State expressed the hope that all authorities would be prepared to make awards at uniform rates to suitable students, undertaking courses of a year or more at the adult residential colleges.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State cannot override the exercise of this discretion. Many local education authorities are prepared to assist students at adult residential colleges in spite of their real financial difficulties. I hope that all local authorities will note what has been said in the debate by my hon. Friend and the right hon. Gentleman and what I am going to say, and will look at their policies in that light. May I remind my hon. Friend also that, on 11th December, he asked that a revised circular should go out if possible. I am pleased to tell him that this is to be prepared and special attention will be given to the question of qualifications and the way in which students are picked and given awards. I am given to understand that, although one authority puts an age limit for its grants, it is prepared to make exceptions in particular circumstances. The question of the G.C.E. is for the local education authorities.

I hope that we can enlarge on all this in the circular and that the local authorities will take note of what has been said in the debate and bear in mind that the colleges were designed for a certain purpose and that we do not want to raise standards too high or otherwise make it too difficult for those who ought to benefit from them. We do not want to see anyone who has not had advantages in other ways being crowded out or unable to take advantage of this facility because of difficulties placed in their way.

The recurrent grants paid by the Department have increased in total from £34,000 in 1959–60, representing 35 per cent. of the colleges' total expenditure to £161,000 in 1968–69, amounting to 53 per cent. of that expenditure. This is a generous increase in these difficult times. I accept, however, that, in a sense, these colleges have been one of the poor relations of adult education as a whole.

I cannot promise any immediate action but I can say that I am personally very interested and concerned about this subject. I am bound, however, as we all know, by the financial difficulties we are facing. As my hon. Friend said, the Department pays 50 per cent. grant towards the capital cost of extending accommodation by colleges, and to this extent, therefore, we are providing new places in which local education authorities are able to support students. I promise that we shall watch the position. My hon. Friend knows that the possibility of raising the percentage of the D.E.S. capital grant to the residential colleges has been carefully considered. The colleges have never been led to expect grants of more than 50 per cent. of the cost of their capital investment and have all planned on that basis, At the moment, I am afraid that that situation must stand, although I am aware of and have taken the point about the pressure being put on us to look at this matter again.

On the question of the Russell Committee, I fear that my hon. Friend and I may be parting company. The Russell Committee is looking at the whole question and we must get the rôle of the colleges reassessed. This cannot be done, in my view, without looking at the whole question of adult education. We cannot isolate one particular aspect of it. The Russell Committee is an independent body. It would be premature to make any changes in arrangements for courses at adult residential colleges in advance of the Committee's recommendations.

I accept that these are early days yet in the discussions of the Committee and that it may be some considerable time before we get its detailed report and recommendations. Regretfully, I must say that it would be unwise to promise that any preliminary planning can be done until the report is available. I stress that I will take the opportunity to visit the colleges and discuss at first hand some of the problems which will face them and us when the Russell recommendations are made.

Is my hon. Friend rejecting out of hand my request that she should ask the Russell Committee to make a confidential interim report to her Department on the subject of residential colleges so that her Department could act with the full backing of the Russell Committee in any action necessary? I well understand the administrative position—that the Department has set up a committee and does not want to interfere with it—but if the Russell Committee is willing, and I have no evidence whether it is or is not, would she at least follow my suggestion?

It is a difficult matter. If one applies pressure about one aspect of the subject which the Russell Committee is studying, one is clearly open to pressure on all sorts of other aspects and I must therefore regretfully reject my hon. Friend's suggestion. I am trying to meet him by saying that I will discuss as far as I can the problems of the colleges so that at least in the Department we are informed of the difficulties when the Russell Committee makes its report. I know that it is early days yet and that it will be some time before we get the report, but it would be wrong for me to hold out any hope of acceding to my hon. Friend's request.

I welcome the fact that this matter has been raised in the House, because the subject of adult education and these colleges in particular is one to which we may not give sufficient time and perhaps not sufficient attention because we are involved so much with other aspects of education. Special arrangements are being made and have been made and improved over the years to assist people who lack certain academic qualifications, or who have missed opportunities in the past. This is a matter to which we should direct our attention and about which we should do what we can to make sure that people do not lose opportunities.

I am well aware that good work is being done by the colleges and I know that some face enormous difficulties, some which are not so enormous but which are certainly irritants, and that lack of money is at the bottom of all this. I can only reassert that the circular for which my hon Friend asked will go out and we shall draw attention to these problems in it. I hope that local education authorities will take note of what has been said today, of the concern and interest which hon. Members feel, and their anxiety that advantage should be taken of these courses, and I hope that they will review and make their awards in the light of what has been said.

The Street inner relief road in the town of Street in Somerset was started in December 1967 and was completed early in 1969. It was originally entitled the Street inner relief road and it has always been a relief road and never a bypass, although a large number of people have now come to call it that, including, I regret to say, such authorities as the Chief Constable of Somerset and the county surveyor in their correspondence about it with me.

A bypass is essentially a road circumventing an area, an area which is usually built up and densely populated. A bypass sets out to separate urban traffic from through traffic and to facilitate the rapid passage of through traffic. A relief road is quite distinct. It circumvents a town centre, has ready access to different parts of that centre and it sets out to relieve the town centre's congestion and to facilitate passage from of the town to another. Lastly and least, it is to provide easier passage for through traffic. The main difference between the two is that a bypass benefits predominantly through traffic, while the relief road benefits predominantly urban traffic, with a long-term view to future pedestrian areas.

If these two differing purposes are considered, it can immediately be seen that a bypass must be a high speed road, usually dual carriageway, with curves where they occur designed to high speed standards, while a relief road is not so designed. It must have a number of junctions to facilitate access to the town centre and to outlying residential and industrial areas. It must facilitate good traffic flow—that is essential—but not at high speeds, because with many junctions on a relief road, high speed would be essentially dangerous.

In the spring of this year, the Street Urban District Council and other responsible bodies, such as the local committee for accident prevention and a large number of members of the public resident in and around the town, expressed alarm because the relief road was opened and there was no speed limit upon it. In March, 1968, the urban district council asked the county council that traffic on the relief road currently under construction plus a length of the A39, which is the road on to which it joins, where there is a blind bend and a nasty junction at factory gates, should be restricted to 40 m.p.h.

In their negotiations with the county council over the line and the nature of the relief road, the urban council had always been led to believe that the road was constructed to 40 m.p.h. standards and that a limit would be imposed. Reluctantly, during 1968 the urban council had to accept the understanding that a 40 m.p.h. restriction would be imposed for the whole of the new relief road excepting 330 yards at the northern end and, of course, excepting that portion of the A39 which I have mentioned.

In March, 1969, when the road was opened, the urban council learned that almost the whole of the relief road was derestricted. It was stated by the county council that the Ministry of Transport had refused to confirm the 40 m.p.h. speed limit agreed between the urban council and the county council.

Before this, at two public meetings held in Street, public meetings concerned with the nature of the road and the safety measures for pedestrians who had to cross it, it had been stated by county council representatives that the relief road would have a speed restriction and that it had been designed with that in mind. The road was opened and without a speed limit.

By 1st April, this year, the first accident had occurred. It involved a vehicle trying to cross the relief road with another speeding along it and unable to stop in time. By 9th May, the junction at the north-eastern end of the relief road was the scene of three further accidents in seven days, one serious. On 12th May, I wrote to the Ministry of Transport asking for urgent attention to this problem before a fatal accident occurred.

Later in May, 1969 the Street Accident Prevention Committee wrote to me endorsing the concern felt by the Urban District Council. It was not until 10th July, 1969, that the Ministry of Transport finally replied, admititng that the county council and the urban district council had previously agreed to support the request for a 40 m.p.h. limit, but saying that it had been refused on the grounds that the road

"… did not have the frontage development normally associated with the 40 miles per hour restriction."

It was prepared to consider, however, a 100-yard extension of the present 40 mile an hour limit at its western end. This has now been implemented.

By 22nd October, 1969, seven accidents had been reported to the Somerset police since the road was opened. Two involved no injury, two involved slight injury, but three involved serious injury. On Monday, 10th November, 1969, the first fatal accident, which we had all been fearing, occurred at the eastern end. The jury had at the inquest criticised the layout of the junction at the eastern end of the relief road, but the fact remains that one driver saw a clear straight stretch of unrestricted road ahead and so proceeded at speed, not unreasonable speed.

He was unfortunately involved in a collision with a vehicle, quite wrongly emerging from the junction. This latter vehicle should have given way. It can be argued that speed was not the cause of this accident, but had there been a limit, had the first driver conformed to it, it is probable that his speed would have been much less and so he would have been able to stop or swerve to avoid the accident.

Following this first fatal accident, the Public Works Committee of the Street Urban District Council met representatives of the Ministry of Transport and the County Council on the site and subsequently held discussions. A number of measures which I do not think are adequate were agreed and consent was given to the consideration of further measures. My complaint is that from the beginning people who live in the area, knew the locality, knew the sort of traffic involved, have all along said that 40 miles per hour was a proper speed for this relief road with its junctions and the fact that it divided the town—residential and industrial areas are on both sides of it and frequent crossing has to take place.

Admittedly under pressure we got two tunnel pedestrian crossings instead of one, which was at least a concession. The real need is for a speed limit, a tolerably low one. Negotiations are going on concerning a 50 m.p.h. speed limit but, knowing well the nature of this road, and the use to which it is put and the amount of traffic crossing it, I believe that is too high a speed. I am asking the Parliamentary Secretary to give serious consideration to these facts and to institute the 40 m.p.h. speed limit.

I should just make it clear that the Somerset County Council is the highway authority responsible for the principal road A39 which runs from Bath via Glastonbury, Bridgwater and Porlock into North Devon and passes through the shopping and business centre of Street.

The hon. and gallant Member for Wells (Lt.-Cmdr. Maydon) will recall the correspondence he has had with previous Ministers of Transport about the need for a relief road to ease the congestion which occurred in the High Street at peak hours and during the summer months. He will also remember that a place was found in the 1967–68 programme for this improvement scheme and that the county council was able to start work on the construction of the relief road in December, 1967.

Sizeable contributions towards the cost of the scheme were made by the principal industrialists in the town who ought to have credit for that and the Street Urban District Council. My Ministry made a grant of £105,000 to the county council towards the remainder of the cost of the scheme.

The relief road runs on the northwestern side of the town leaving the existing A39 north of the town and re-joining it on the south-western outskirts. It is about 1⅓ miles in length with about half of a mile of dual two-lane carriageways on the north-eastern length, the remainder being single 24 feet wide carriageway. The number of points at which pedestrians and vehicles have access to the new road has been kept to a minimum in the interests of road safety. Subways have been provided in order to reduce the pedestrian-vehicle conflict and thereby lessen the risk of accidents from this source.

I know it can be argued that there are not sufficient subways. This is argued with any scheme.

That is not my argument at all. I think pedestrians have been very adequately catered for by the addition of the second subway. It is the traffic that causes the real danger not pedestrians.

I have misunderstood the hon. and gallant Gentleman. The improvement scheme was carried out by the county council's direct labour force and the relief road was opened to traffic in April of this year when the carriage-way works were completed. Certain works such as fencing and street lighting have still to be completed.

In the eight months between the opening of the new road and the end of November there have been eight accidents resulting in personal injury on the relief road. However there has been only one accident involving personal injury on the superseded length of road through the town centre in the same eight months period. This compares with a total of 46 personal injury accidents on this section during the three year period 1963–65, the latest period for which figures were readily available. This is a considerable improvement.

Six of the eight personal injury accidents on the new road took place at the junction with Glastonbury Road, near the north-eastern end of the new road. One of the remainder was north of this junction and the other at the junction with Hound Wood Drive. None of the eight occurred in darkness so it would appear that the temporary absence of street lighting does not seem to have been a contributory factor. A total of seven accidents involved vehicles turning right on to or off the relief road, and in five cases prosecutions have either resulted in convictions of one of the parties involved or prosecutions are in progress or have been notified by the police as intended.

In spite of the concentration of accidents at the Glastonbury Road junction, the incidence of prosecutions and convictions seems to indicate that the fault may well lie more with driver-behaviour than with design of the junction, which I must stress conforms to known principles and is of a type generally accepted as suitable for the volume of traffic using this junction.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman has referred to the opinions of local people who know the area. I would refer to the Western Daily Press of Friday, 9th May, when Councillor Tom Brooks, Chairman of Street Urban District Council Public Works Committee, was reported as planning:

"… to lead a sit-down demonstration on the town's inner relief road to get a 40 m.p.h. speed limit introduced."

He is quoted as saying:

"I think in the summer there is going to be wholesale slaughter."

I am delighted, as I am sure Councillor Brooks will be, that his forecast has been proved to be completely erroneous.

It is understandable, however, that a good deal of concern should have been expressed locally about these accidents, and the situation at the Glastonbury Road junction was discussed on 24th November at a meeting between the Street Urban District Council and officials of the Somerset County Council at which the Ministry's divisional road engineer was represented. The urban district council pressed for a change in the layout of the junction at Glastonbury Road from a T-junction to a roundabout design and urged that in the interim period certain amendments should be made to the signs and road markings at the junction. I understand that most of these minor measures have been rejected by the traffic signs and safety subcommittee of the county council but the request for a roundabout will be considered by the highways committee on 22nd December.

Turning now to the question of a speed limit, in October, 1968, the county council applied for the Minister's consent to a 40 m.p.h. speed limit over the major length of the relief road. This proposal was examined in detail by our divisional road engineer but rejected because the new road, despite the fact that it passes through an area of some residential and industrial development, does not have the frontage development normally associated with a 40 m.p.h. speed limit.

Perhaps I may briefly describe our policy on the use of speed limits to help illustrate this particular case. The previous Minister announced in April of this year a new policy for speed limits; this followed up the outline suggested in the Green Paper "How Fast?", published the previous July, which invited public discussion on the question of speed limits. We received over 200 contributions from organisations and members of the public. The whole theme of this discussion paper and the keystone of our new policy is realism. We recognise that the success of speed limits largely depends on the co-operation of the majority—I stress, the majority—of drivers. When we consider the difficulties of the police in enforcing limits which are not observed by the majority of, I think fair to say, reasonable drivers, and the severe penalties for breaking speed limits—which can deprive a driver of his licence and livelihood—we have an obligation to see that these limits are imposed only where they are justified.

The aims must be to strike a balance between traffic movement and the need to avoid accidents. A limit can only help to the extent that it alters speeds and it can only alter speeds to the extent that most drivers choose to observe it. Similarly, we do not want speed limits on roads that have a better accident record than the average for the same types of road, otherwise the entire country would soon be littered with speed limit signs. To impose a speed limit knowing that it would make no real contribution to the safety of the road certainly is not helpful. Indeed, it can be positively harmful, since an increase of unnecessary and unrealistic speed limits would only bring a valuable safety weapon into disrespect. That is the last thing that the House would wish.

To ensure uniformity and consistency in applying speed limits throughout the country, we have to lay down established criteria and it was on these criteria that we judged this application. As I have already explained in previous correspondence with the hon. and gallant Member, our view was—and still is—that the situation here does not satisfy the criteria for a 40 m.p.h. speed limit. This is not to say that we have not taken account of local views. We were well aware of the strong local desire for a 40 m.p.h. speed limit, but we could not agree to adopt a measure which would, in our view, make no contribution to road safety and might, indeed, have had the contrary effect.

We therefore wrote to the Somerset County Council in March of this year, turning down its proposal for a 40 m.ph. limit on the length of just under a mile. After further representations from the county council, we later agreed to consider a 100 yard extension along the relief road of the present 40 m.p.h. speed limit on the A39 through Walton, but this has not to date been taken up by the county council.

I understand that at the recent meeting betwen the county and urban district councils, the question was raised as to whether a 50 m.p.h. speed limit might be more acceptable, but the county council has not asked the Minister to agree to such a limit. On the evidence at present available on speeds and accidents on this road, I think I am bound to say that a speed limit does not appear to be justified. However, I am asking the Divisional road engineer to co-operate fully with the councils concerned and to continue to study conditions on this road to see whether any additional safety measures can be put into effect. I need hardly say that we, and, I am sure, the county council, are ready to adopt any solution to the problems of this road that we consider provides the right answer. We will keep the situation under constant review and see whether there is anything that we can do to improve it. In terms of other roads in the county of Somerset and nationally, the record of this road is not bad.

The origin of this debate is a public meeting just four years ago in Bathgate when, following publication of the Hunter Committee's Report on Fishing, I advertised in the local Press in my constituency for a public meeting to hear the views of any of my constituents who wished to discuss these matters.

Somewhat to my surprise, 200 anglers turned up. Politicians will realise that any subject that can attract a meeting of 200 people is quite a subject. It is only the likes of the national superannuation scheme that attract these numbers to political meetings. Therefore, there could be no doubt of the interest of the people of Scotland in this subject. I hasten to say that it seemed at the meeting as if there were 199 different opinions, because the angling community will forgive me if I suggest that we are a somewhat fractious lot of people who have no unanimity of view on how our sport should be conducted.

I undertook to them that I would report back in two years as to what the findings and thinking of the Government would be. It is really to honour that promise that I applied for this Adjournment debate. If I talk about 199 different opinions, it is really because I understand the complexities that have led to the delay' in coming to conclusions on this issue. I should like my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State to know that I am receptive to the real difficulties that he faces because of the real differences of opinion, although he should explain to the angling community, and take the opportunity to do so during this debate, the honourable reasons why it has taken quite so long—four years.

I would say to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. Gordon Campbell), who, I hope, will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that on the subject of delay I do not think that it lies in his mouth to criticise the Government, because in the Scottish Committee and elsewhere he is forever rebuking us for bulldozing measures through and there is in this matter a real balance between, on the one hand, bulldozing or, as I would call it, working to a timetable—I like working to a timetable in Whitehall and seeing Whitehall work to a timetable—and, on the other hand, the difficulties of consultation. I should, therefore, like to give credit—not out of loyalty—to my hon. Friends for the amount of consultation that they have carried out.

A lot of people in Scotland are interested, and that is the purpose of this Adjournment debate. But, in the last four years, there has appeared a new factor which in my view transcends all the recommendations of the Hunter Committee's Report. In three or four years' time, there may be no purpose in discussing Hunter. With the situation that is developing over Atlantic salmon, there may be a good deal of Hunter which will be sadly irrelevant.

While the ink was still wet on Hunter's Report, in the very year of its publication, large quantities of frozen Atlantic salmon began reaching European markets for the first time. It would be superfluous to go into the reasons for it. It was partly the discovery or re-discovery by the Greenlanders of the sea areas of salmon off Gotlab and Sukkatoppen, and partly the development of modern freezing techniques which became available to the Greenlanders. It is estimated that Greenland fishermen, even by 1965, were beginning to earn per head sums of the order of £5,000 between September and November when the salmon were being caught. In 1964, 1,593 metric tons of salmon were taken by nets off Greenland. To put it in perspective, that compares with 127 tons in 1961.

Nineteen sixty-five enter the Faroese, and 1967 enter the Danes. They brought with them these greatly perfected drift techniques developed on the island of Bornholm and elsewhere in the Baltic. So the Faroese and the Danes jumped on the bandwagon.

What was happening was the harvesting of immature fish with unprecedented efficiency. No one will object to the Eskimos taking a few fish from the sea, but it is a different matter when the Danes and the Swedes come with their efficient 20th century techniques to harvest immature fish. It is inconceivable that the fish could be taken simply dependent on Greenland rivers. There is only one small river in Greenland. There is hardly any doubt that these fish come from North America, Canada, New England, and the eastern side of the Atlantic.

The issue is now one for the Danes. I say with some sadness that it is a matter for regret that the country of Niels Bohr and many other eminent men of science should do this. It has been written in the British Press that not since the Vikings sacked and looted has the reputation of Denmark sunk so low in the international community. Many of the enlightened rulers of Denmark buried at Roskilde and elsewhere would turn in their graves if they saw the callousness with which the Danish Government is treating the situation. Something is rotten in the State of Denmark. Yes, something is rotten in the State of Denmark. It is not for the want of action by more enlightened Governments. The Danes even declined to attend an informal conference in London last spring.

There was a remarkable gathering together of the facts by Mr. Nicholas Evans in the Sunday Times. He observed facts known to me as a council member of the Fauna and Flora Reservation Society, that Denmark is milking a cow that she neither owns nor feeds.

Following representations by the British Government, the situation is not getting better. Indeed, it is getting worse. Although I do not claim verification for it, it has been estimated that something like twice the number of salmon have been taken off the coast of Greenland this year compared with last year. This is an example of unenlightened greed by the fishermen who are doing it and of total negligence by their Governments who allow them to do it. It is perhaps a matter of killing the goose which laid the golden eggs or, more appropriately, killing the salmon which laid the silver eggs.

The last public statement of the British Government came in the debate on 12th December. It really arose from an aside following the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak (Mr. Peter M. Jackson). On that occasion, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary at the Home Office said:

The Government are well aware of the damage that could be caused if high seas fishing for salmon off the coast of Greenland and elsewhere is allowed to develop. At the instigation of the United Kingdom Government, the international organisation resposible for the conservation of fisheries passed a resolution recommending to member countries that high seas fishing for salmon should be banned. Unfortunately, the Governments of Denmark, Sweden and the Federal Republic of West Germany have not been able to accept these recommendations far a total ban, and their cooperation is essential. The Government are examining the situation to see what other aproaches would be sensible.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th December, 1969; Vol. 793, c. 850.]

I do not believe in gunboat diplomacy, but I think that there is a case for confrontation in this instance. It would be a matter of my hon. Friends discussing with their advisers who are international lawyers whether fisheries protection vessels could not become involved. I do not suggest the sending of a cruiser, yet. But there is an issue here for the Fisheries Protection Fleet, and I would ask my hon. Friends to consult their advisers and other international academic lawyers such as Professor Lauterpacht.

It would be easy for this country, Canada and the United States, to consider the matter of sanctions. It may seem a bit unrealistic to apply sanctions, but the Danes would be pecularily sensitive on bacon, for reasons which I need not go into now.

There is certainly a case for considering the mutual withdrawal of ambassadors. In the summer, the Danish Ambassador, Herr Erling Kristiansen, issued a weak and long defensive statement of which an ambassador from a progressive people like Denmark should be ashamed. He tried to argue that there was no scientific proof. It was a very weak argument.

If I plead for making a maximum of fuss, it is because I believe that in Denmark, as in Britain, there is a sophisticated public opinion which will do something about the fact that the attitude of the Danish Government is bringing shame on their country.

So much for the Danes. To a lesser extent, the Swedes are also involved. For reasons totally unconnected with this subject, I am a great admirer of the new Prime Minister of Sweden. It is a country which has done extremely well in its attitudes towards chemical and biological warfare and many other aspects to do with conservation and all that is creditable. In this matter of Atlantic salmon, the attitude of the Swedish Government is totally discreditable. I would ask that in our relations, which are close between our Prime Minister and the Socialist Prime Minister of Sweden, some mention is made of this subject, if progress is not made through the normal channels. Indeed, I shall be putting down Questions to the Prime Minister in the new year precisely related to this subject, and there are various artful parliamentary ways in which one can do it.

Time is not on our side. Sir Hugh Mackenzie, the Director of the Atlantic Salmon Research Trust, another reputable scientist, has said:

"We have three years at most in which to end high seas fishing—otherwise Salmo Salar will have passed the point of no return to extinction."

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Moray and Nairn will also be aware of the seriousness of the position, because on 16th October he asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

"if he will make a statement on the latest progress towards conclusion of an international agreement to prohibit or restrict fishing for salmon in the North Atlantic."

My right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy) replied:

"At their meetings this summer, the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission and the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, accepted, by substantial majorities, recommendations for a ban on the fishery for Atlantic salmon outside national fisheries limits. Two countries have submitted memoranda setting out their objections to the recommendations, but it is not made clear what the final outcome will be. In the meantime, the position is being kept under review."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th October, 1969; Vol. 788, c. 130.]

Well, often the phrase "the position is being kept under review" in Whitehall terminology means "not very much in particular is being done." I say to my hon. Friend that I hope that he will bring it to the notice of the Foreign Secretary that time is not on our side.

All right, I recognise that the Danes may have problems, but those of us who have flown over Greenland, as I have, know what kind of country it is. It may be quite true that the Danes are paying something like £1,000 per year in subsidies to the Greenlanders, but that is no reason why, for any short-term commercial proposition, the Danes should try in this way to make the country viable. This is a matter which ought to be raised at the United Nations, because there are people in the scientific community who really feel that by its actions the progressive and civilised country of Denmark is in danger of becoming something of an international leper in the scientific community.

The second part of what I have to say simply concerns the Hunter Report itself. It would be most helpful to hon. Members and, indeed, to those anglers up and down Scotland who will be studying the OFFICIAL REPORT of this debate, as many Scottish anglers will, if my hon. Friend would number his replies which he gives to the specific questions of which he has been given notice and which I now will ask.

The first question is, what is the Government's thinking on a practical system of management under which the right numbers of fish are caught in the ways which bring the greatest advantage? I should like to know the Government's thinking on this. I do not necessarily go along with Hunter on it.

Secondly, I should like to know what order of resources is available from the Treasury. My personal view, shared by some, though by no means all, anglers, is that the priority use of resources is the stocking and improvement of poor waters on some kind of agreed financial basis involving the Government and owners and angling interests. I think there is scope for agreement here—for an agreed and not an expensive solution.

Thirdly, I should like to know what has been done since the publication of Hunter—because I realise that something has been done—to encourage trout farming in specially constructed rearing stations, and, in particular, what has been done to develop the rainbow trout.

I should like to know what is the Government's reaction to area boards—

Order. The hon. Member appears to be asking a number of questions which can be dealt with only by legislative action, so the Minister would be out of order if he were to reply to them.

I had a letter, a very courteous one, from the Table Office, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and subsequently discussed it there, and I may say that there are two precedents in Adjournment debates in which the man who initiated an Adjournment debate did not ask for legislative action but, indeed, asked for the status quo. I realise that the borderline between legislative and administrative action is a fairly blurred one. I would put it to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that in considering, for instance, the Scottish Anglers' Trust I am on the blurred right side of administrative action as opposed to demanding legislation.

Order. I apprecite the difficulty of the hon. Member, and also the difficulty of the Chair, but it seems to me that some of the questions which the hon. Member has already asked could be dealt with not by administrative but only by legislative action. I hope that his future questions will be in accordance with that Ruling.

That rules out what I would have liked to have asked about area boards and the Anglers' Trust, but I hope to be in order when I ask about administrative action to create a system of fishery wardens, and what the Government are going to do on the at the moment exaggerated but nevertheless increasing problems of the poisoning of fish.

I should like to know about the Government's reflections on rod licences and, indeed, a rod licensing system.

My ninth question is simply to ask about pollution and what steps the Secretary of State is actually taking as a result of recommendation No. 97 of Hunter and the Prime Minister's statements on 13th October and 11th December on pollution as it affects fishing.

Finally, will my hon. Friend explain to the angling community the doubtless understandable reasons to the anglers of Scotland why it has taken the Government so long to react.

That is my case.

Let me first congratulate the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) upon having applied for a debate on this subject, and also upon his persistence in pursuing the recommendations of the Hunter Report and inquiring about what is being done.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about the Atlantic fishery, which, of course, has caused concern to many in Scotland, including myself, because of its threat to the future existence of our salmon stocks. I shall not follow him on that subject. I very much hope, as he knows, that agreement will be reached amongst the fishing countries concerned, in order to control fishing in the North Atlantic and to conserve the stocks of salmon for the countries concerned.

The Hunter Report was presented to the Government over four years ago. Of course, I shall not discuss any proposals for legislation that there are in it because that would be out of order in this debate, but I do take the opportunity of asking the Government about administrative action which they have been taking and are taking in their Departments to deal with this Report.

What has been surprising, I think to both sides of the House, has been the Government's silence so far, and what I ask the Government to do today is, to tell us about the Government's intentions. I think the Minister knows that the attitude I have consistently taken since the Report was published has been that it can be divided into two parts. There are parts of the Report which deal with angling, and other parts which deal with the commercial fishing for migratory fish. I accept straightaway that the second subject is one on which very far reaching decisions may have to be taken, and I will say straightaway that I agree with the hon. Member that there is no question of using a bulldozer here. I have never complained about the silence of the Government over their final decision on that point. My inquiries have been about whether the pilot schemes which have been recom- mended have started or not. I believe, as the Hunter Report, in its first paragraph to its conclusions, paragraph 343, points out, that the subject can be divided into two, and that administrative decisions can be taken soon—and should be taken by now, in my opinion, on the angling side, while the other, more far reaching questions, are still being considered.

The fish which are discussed in the Hunter Report fall into two categories, the migratory and the non-migratory. The migratory fish, salmon and sea trout, are those which have part of their life cycle in the high seas but have to return to our rivers to breed. This is why the conservation element is so vital. Salmon and sea trout are important resources to Scotland. It is not always understood that the fishings for them are rated, and local authorities gain considerable revenue from this resource, which makes quite a large contribution to local government finance. If, as the hon. Member feared, the stocks of salmon were to be vastly reduced or to disappear because of stupidity in the North Atlantic fisheries, this would mean a financial loss to Scotland. Rating is often overlooked, but the benefits from the ordinary commercial and tourist sides also add up to a considerable amount.

The Hunter Report recommendations for migratory fish are far-reaching and would lead virtually to the abolition of netting in sea waters along the coasts and at river mouths. This would mean, according to the present estimate, that the jobs of about 900 men in Scotland would be affected. If this decision were taken, presumably that would happen gradually, but no hasty decision should be taken upon it.

The Hunter Committee recommended also that pilot schemes should be introduced. This is a purely administrative matter on which I ask the Government to give us information. Paragraph 88 suggested that there should he a commercial scheme, and paragraph 89 that there should be a research scheme. It may be that these have been started, but I hope the Government will tell us whether they have embarked on this administrative action which must be carried out before a final decision is taken.

I come to the non-migratory fish which are, in the main, brown trout. The report proposes that there should be an organisation to make the best use of this resource, which is a matter not only of great concern to angling clubs and associations in Scotland but an important element in the tourist industry. Paragraph 113 of the Report sums this up by pointing out that if fishing for brown trout is unorganised and unrestricted there is no worthwhile fishing. I am not myself an angler, but I am aware of the sport which it provides and the interest which so many people have in coming to Scotland, including hon. Members on both sides of the House from England and Wales. They, as visitors to Scotland like to have a trout rod with them in the car and hope that they may get a few days fishing as part of their holiday. They are ready to pay a modest sum of money in return for a reasonable assurance of catching some worthwhile fish. This is important for the Scottish Tourist Board. More and more visitors to Scotland are coming in the summer hoping to get some fishing, without having to organise it a long time beforehand, and without wanting to go in for the expensive salmon and sea trout fishing. This is what the angling side of the Hunter Report is about.

I have consistenly suggested to the Government that this part could be separated and that they could be taking administrative action now. This view is fully supported by paragraph 343, the first paragraph of the Hunter Committee's recommendations, in which it is said that better organisation of angling could be achieved in a relatively short time, but that the questions to be decided concerning the commercial fishings for migratory fish would probably take longer.

It is written in the Hunter Report that the one subject could be separated and dealt with earlier and should not be held up because of the far-reaching and complicated decisions that have to be taken on the second subject, that is to say, the commercial fishing for migratory fish. I ask the Government to take their administrative decisions and to make their announcements soon on the angling side of the Hunter recommendations. I agree that commercial fishing for migratory fish is a very difficult subject which requires careful decisions, but here I would like to know from the Government whether they are doing anything about the pilot schemes suggested and any other administrative action that they are now taking or intend to take in the near future.

I intend to take no more than two minutes of the Minister's time, in view of the many points which have been put to him by my hon. Friend and by the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. Gordon Campbell). The debate has been a useful one, highlighting the three major problems associated with salmon and trout fishing in Scotland—access, conservation and development.

I want to say a word about access, to which less attention has been paid by the two hon. Members who have spoken. It is because of the relative difficulty that tourists and people living in the Highlands of Scotland experience in gaining access to fishings throughout Scotland that the question of deciding fairly soon on ownership is imperative. While there are angling clubs in certain parts of the country which make fishings readily available, proprietors in other areas operate an extremely exclusive right. That is why enormous concern is felt in my constituency about the proposal of the North of Scotland Hydroelectric Board to return the fishings on the River Shin to private ownership.

The North of Scotland Hydro-electric Board was set up, with Tom Johnston as its first chairman, for the purpose of providing not only power but an important social service. Tom Johnston conceived the fishings as being one of the services which the Board should offer. I regard the decision of the Board as utterly disgraceful, and I sincerely hope that my hon. Friend and his hon. Friends, will prevail upon the Board to withdraw this property from the market.

I assure my hon. Friend that this matter goes way beyond narrow party political considerations. Such a decision would be universally condemned throughout the Highlands, and the unanimous reaction in the Highlands to the proposals underlines the urgent need for the Government to come to a decision on the question of ownership.

Would my hon. Friend not agree that this goes against the whole trend by which some of us hope the Hydro-Electric Board and the Forestry Commission will be enabled to take administrative action to further the interests of the angling community?

I entirely accept that.

The debate has ranged rather more widely than I had anticipated. Most of the points did not emerge on aspects of the Hunter Report itself, although I recognise that the important question which was raised on the Greenland Fisheries was in the background arising out of the problem of drift netting in Scotland.

It is equally true, as my hon. Friend was told by the Chair, that I cannot deal with a great number of the specific matters raised or attempted to be raised because of the need for legislation. I will be as helpful as I can to hon. Members, but they must accept that limitation.

First of all, I should like to deal with the question of time. This is not the first time that I have had to deal in the House with the question of delay on the Hunter Report. Indeed, it seems to be a familiar question in Scottish Question time. My hon. Friend for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) has put down something like 39 Questions at one time or another on this matter.

My hon. Friend recognises the complexity of the situation. He said that 200 anglers turned up at a meeting he held. I recognise the importance of this problem to the anglers in Scotland and the increasing interest in this matter—and that 199 different views were expressed at that meeting. We have to consult with various bodies and have gone ahead in this matter. I was glad that my hon. Friend gave us some credit for the amount of consultation. We have not found an altogether dissimilar situation. We have had written evidence and have had consultation, sometimes on more than one occasion, with 120 bodies. It is right that if we are to do a major job we should do it properly.

The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) said that we should pick out one or two points on which we could proceed now and leave the major points until later. We have always regarded this problem as a unity. We do not think that it should be dealt with in a piecemeal way. Once we have ended our consultations and considerations and announced our view we can then proceed stage by stage with a plan.

Both of the points suggested by the hon. Gentleman require legislation. On the matter of pilot schemes for commercial trapping, since no one in the fishing industry has come forward as a volunteer it would be necessary to take powers before we could do anything about the matter. It would be wrong in handling a basic problem to clutter up the situation with legislation. This would neither make for good legislation, nor would it be in the interests of Scotland when we have so much other important legislation to introduce.

This is an important point and two questions arise. First, does it mean that the Government do not agree with Recommendation 343 of the Hunter Committee which suggested that the legislation should be in two parts? Secondly, the question of a trap is not connected with the brown trout fishing which is the part upon which I recommend early action.

I recognise that. The matter can be separated in this way. It has been my view from the beginning that we would want to have the concept, as a unity, then to announce it, and from that point to proceed to legislation. I do not exclude the possibility that in that way it may be carried out in a piecemeal fashion, but I am saying that there should be a single concept. The complexity is great and there are a number of problems involved, but there is an inter-relationship between them. Therefore I do not feel that the matter can be undertaken in the way suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

Coming to a point which does not require legislation but on which I was asked to give an answer, there was the question of a trout farm for rainbow trout. There are some 10 or 11 freshwater farms in Scotland which produce fish for restocking. There has been one case of natural spawning of rainbow trout. The normal experience is that regular restocking is necessary.

On the matter of pollution, the existing bailiffs have adequate powers under the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Protection) Scotland Act, 1951. That Act contains special provisions in the way of penalties and powers of search of suspects which can be invoked on the more serious offences such as the use of poison for illegal fishing or poaching. Similarly the existing bodies, among them the River Purification Boards, also possess powers and we are keeping in close contact with scientific opinion on the matter of pollution.

I turn to some specific points. One was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). He suggested that we should take a total view about access, ownership and so on. The difficulty in giving him an answer now is that this would be fundamental in any proposals brought forward for legislation. What is clear is that the most important single issue is how to improve the fishing in Scotland and to make more fishing available for the ordinary angler. In other words, the access to fishing waters by anglers of all kinds must be increased. We need more waters whether public or private, at reasonable cost, whether for local or tourist interests. Private rights must not be allowed to stand in the way of the fullest possible exploitation of Scottish angling facilities in the interests of the Scottish people.

Secondly, this increased access must be secured in a properly controlled and regulated manner so that the quality of fishing is not harmed by increased exploitation. There must be a proper development of resources so that the potential asset which they represent can be fully realised. I put these in no particular order of priority but they are the kernel of my thinking on this matter.

I should like to deal with two specific points which were raised. I know how strongly my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland feels on the matter of the possible sale of fishings by the Scottish Hydro Electric Board on the River Shin. The Board's view, as I understand it, is that its first duty is to its consumers and that it must realise some of its assets such as fishings that are not producing an economic return. We for our part must face up to the implications of the general policy which we have laid down for the nationalised industries. On the one hand, we expect them to reach certain financial targets and yet on the other hand to keep their charges to those using the services as low as they possibly can.

The House may have noted that in paragraph 121 of the final report the Hunter Committee recommended that certain fisheries owned by public bodies including electricity boards should be leased to a scottish anglers' trust at nominal rents. But they went on to say that this should not apply to salmon fishings which had been purchased by a revenue producing organisation at a considerable cost, with the clear implication that these should secure an economic return. That is precisely the position in this case.

This is a difficult matter, and I sympathise with what my hon. Friend said and his strength of feeling. But I must make it crystal clear that the question of whether or not to dispose of fishings is for the commercial judgment of the board. It is not an appropriate matter for my hon. Friend the Secretary of State to give a direction on. It is true that the Board agreed some time ago at my right hon. Friend's suggestion, to defer the sale of fishings on the Conon and Blackwater and we appreciate their co-operation over this matter. I must however repeat that decisions of this nature are for the board alone to take. I turn to the important question raised by my hon. Friend in connection with what we call the Greenland fisheries,—high sea drift net fishing for salmon. I must say that I deplore the strength of metaphor used in his analysis of the situation, interesting as some of them were. It is an important matter and one of considerable concern to us. My hon. Friend asked what the Government were doing about the threat to Atlantic salmon which is posed by the development of Greenland fishing, and referred to an article in last weekend's Sunday Times which has aroused a great deal of interest.

As I said earlier, the Greenland fisheries were mentioned in passing in the Hunter Report in which the reference was mainly to the fixed net coastal fisheries rather than the high sea fishery which has subsequently developed. But it was part of the same problem—that of salmon stocks.

Since my hon. Friend has raised the matter, I must comment on it. It has been causing the Government a great deal of concern in recent years. But I am glad to tell hon. Members today that it was largely at the instigation and the initiative of this country that the two international commissions responsible for considering fishery conservation matters, namely the North East Atlantic and the North West Atlantic Fisheries Commissions after detailed discussions both passed recommendations earlier this year for a complete ban on fishing for Atlantic salmon outside national fishery limits.

This is an indication that many other countries share our views and this is heartening. We regret the fact that for a variety of reasons Denmark, Sweden and West Germany found themselves unable to accept these recommendations. The House will know that in this international sphere nations cannot be forced to act against their will. Both conventions, the North-East and the North-West, result from international agreement and dissenting nations can opt out. Under the procedure of the North-East Commission's arrangements it is open to any country to object formally to a recommendation. If three nations object the recommendation is not binding on any one country.

Under the North-West Commission's arrangements a recommendation has no effect unless and until it is formally accepted by all the member Governments. The result of an objection under that arrangement is to deprive the recommendation of any force. It is a very difficult situation. It involves a considerable number of nations and is an international matter which can only be solved by international agreement. We must consult with like-minded countries about the steps which should be taken now.

It is noteworthy and pleasant that Denmark, when it lodged its objection, said it was prepared to discuss other con servation measures short of a complete ban.

We shall give careful thought to this and to various measures that can be invoked, and we shall be undertaking consultations as soon as we can. I can only add that it might be difficult on the evidence available to us, to accept all that has been said in the Press about the danger to Atlantic salmon as a species. I do not doubt the potential danger from an unrestricted growth of these High Seas fisheries and the harmful consequences for us and other salmon-producing countries that could result.

I appreciate that I am asking this question at short notice, but can the hon. Gentleman say to what extent Denmark and West Germany have salmon rivers themselves.

I would not like to give an absolute answer offhand, but I think that they do not have such rivers to such a great extent. I will look into the matter and write to the hon. Gentleman.

Does my hon. Friend dispute the opinion of Sir Hugh Mackenzie, Director of the Atlantic Salmon Research Trust, who reports that, in his view, we have three years at the most before we shall reach the point of extinction, if we do not alter our fishing methods? Do my hon. Friend's advisers give him a different view?

I am well aware of the Mackenzie statement. I said that there had been talk in the Press about the danger of over-fishing in the Atlantic for salmon. We have the task of solving the problem. It may be helpful if hon. Members and others who are interested in the subject draw our attention to these factors in the starkest possible way.

As I must deal with this problem, I assure my hon. Friend that I have no intention of expanding on any alarmist statements, from whichever quarter they may come. I accept expert scientific judgments, but I am not in a position to say what is the precise answer to this problem. We must try to reach the sort of agreement that will ensure that this problem is solved.

For all these reasons I have spoken as carefully and as seriously as I possibly could about this issue. I am pleased to say that the Scottish salmon interests are taking a balanced and sensible view of the matter. They recognise the difficulties involved and the Scottish Salmon Net Fishing Association has been quoted as having confidence in our handling of the negotiations. I am pleased to have the Association's backing. Indeed, it was confirmed in the recent discussions that we had with representatives of many salmon organisations. I appreciate this confidence and, in turn, I assure those concerned that we will continue with our efforts to secure a sensible solution to this extremely difficult problem.

As we come to the next subject and as I call the hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick), I remind the hon. Gentleman that he has a little extra time for this debate. However, I also remind him that this Adjournment must conclude at 4 o'clock.

It is appropriate, before we adjourn for the Christmas Recess, that we should bear in mind the large number of families who are in desperate housing need and the fact that the housing problems faced by many people will be resolved only if those people are rehoused by their local councils.

I wish to make it clear at the outset that I am in no way opposed to owner-occupation. I welcome every move that will allow people who wish to do so to buy their own homes. I welcome the Government's Option Mortgage Scheme. However, the people with whom I am mainly concerned today are those on council waiting lists who will get decent accommodation only by being offered a council home.

In the last few years there has been, under the present Government, a substantial increase in the number of council dwellings built. The decline in council building which occurred under the Conservatives has been reversed during recent years of the present Administration. This, in practise, has meant that many more families have been able to be rehoused by their local authorities.

A matter of particulaly serious concern is the way in which a number of local councils—I regret to say mainly Conservative controlled ones—have deliberately cut down on their house-building programmes; and it is mainly for this reason that I have sought this debate.

I am sure that the Minister is as anxious as are my hon. Friends and I to chase up local authorities which have gone slow in their housing programmes. The Times ran a story last week stating that the Greater London Council intends to cut down on its house-building programmes, too. It appears that 20,00 fewer council dwellings may be built under the G.L.C.'s new development plan.

This is not a subject for just intellectual or political debate in the House of Commons. A large number of people who are desperately in need of council accommodation and who, in many instances, have been on local authority waiting lists for literally years could lose any chance of being rehoused.

I could appreciate the G.L.C.'s move if, in London, there was not a serious housing shortage. Nobody would blame the London boroughs or the G.L.C. for any action that they might take in this sphere if it could be shown that the housing problem was not acute. But what-every differences there may be between the political parties, nobody can challenge the fact that there is an acute housing problem in the London area.

I want to quote the waiting lists in some of the inner London boroughs. I know that the total includes families in desperate need and other families perhaps in less need, but it gives some indication of the housing need in Greater London. In Camden there are 8,500 families on the waiting list; in Lambeth 12,582; in Tower Hamlets, 7,150; in Islington 9,327; and in Hackney, 12,398. We also know that there are many people who desire council dwellings but who for one reason or another cannot even get on the waiting lists in the areas which I have mentioned. No one, therefore, can deny that there is great need for council accommodation. I therefore find it all the more difficult to understand the decision of the Greater London Council and of some of the London boroughs who have been cutting down their house-building programmes.

Next, I turn to the question of the selling of land. It is amazing that a local authority with land in its possession should try to sell that land—and in some cases local authorities have sold their land—to private developers. It could be argued that once the land is sold to private developers, accommodation is built on it—so why worry? But the people on the waiting lists, in the main, are not in a position to buy the newly-completed private accommodation. Even if the mortgage position were easier, most of the people on the waiting lists in the boroughs which I have mentioned would still find it virtually impossible to get a mortgage because of their low pay. I hope that in his reply the Minister will give some attention to the sale of land by local authorities. For any council to attempt to sell its land to a private developer when it has an acute housing problem shows a cynical disregard and a contempt for people desperately eager to be re-housed by the local authority.

The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker), who leads for the Conservative Party on housing and land matters, said recently—and he was quoted in the House—that under a Conservative Administration there would be a cutting down of council dwelling programmes. Following the usual custom in the House, I have indicated to the hon. Member that I intended to mention him in my speech. But it is not merely a question of a Conservative Administration, which may be a remote possibility, adopting that policy. It is a question of Conservative-controlled councils already putting Tory philosophy into practice on this issue. The cutting down of council house programmes, therefore, seems to be politically motivated. I do not know what connection there is between Tory Central Office and some of the Tory-controlled local councils, but it seems to be the case, certainly in the London area, that in the last year or 18 months a number of Tory-controlled councils, some of them only recently Tory-controlled, have deliberately undermined their council house-building programme.

I should like to mention the situation in my own borough of Croydon. I have been in correspondence with the Minister about it and have had a reply from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry, my hon. Friend the Mem- ber for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson). Referring to council houses in Croydon, he said that there had been a run-down in numbers from 507 in 1966 to 226 in 1967 and to 78 in 1968. If the Croydon Council says, "It is all very well criticising us, but where have we the land, the sites, on which to build?", I would point out that a huge development is taking place within my constituency, within the London Borough of Croydon, and that it is exclusively privately developed. It is a huge development, for which planning permission has been granted but in respect of which a large number of houses and flats have yet to be built.

I welcome a good deal of private development in my constituency and I am glad that people have the opportunity, usually by mortgage, of buying the accommodation which is being built by private development. But I am also concerned that the nature of the development is exclusively private, so that the people who write to me as their Member of Parliament, and who tell me in their letters what they tell me when they come to my surgery about their housing problems, will not have their housing needs satisfied by the private development to which I have referred.

My hon. Friend the other Joint Parliamentary Secretary, who is to reply to the debate, has stated that there will shortly be a meeting between his Ministry and the Croydon Council. When the meeting takes place I hope that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will put great emphasis on the way in which a large part of Croydon has been developed, leaving out entirely any form of council accommodation. This is a serious matter for many people of Croydon.

We all admire the way in which Shelter has recently carried out its job of spotlighting the situation of people in need. It has been critical of my party and of the party opposite, but it has done two good things. By collecting money from the people it has been able to rehouse many people in need of accommodation, and it has spotlighted housing needs in Britain. It has done a first-class job in showing the community that there are many people in housing distress.

Some local authorities are apparently trying to use Shelter as an excuse for not carrying out their own council housing responsibilities. I therefore welcome the statement of Shelter off 17th November, in which it said:

"Shelter would be forced to withdraw its assistance for that housing association and for that district where the local council are not willing to carry on house building."

In other words, it is a warning to local authorities not to use Shelter as an excuse for not carrying out their proper responsibilities. I hope that local authorities will heed what Shelter has said.

I want the Minister to chase up those local authorities which are not carrying out their responsibilities. No fewer than 20 have been written to, but I hope that many more will be in the next few months. If some local authorities, despite warnings from the Minister, continue to default on their responsibility, I hope that the Ministry will be willing to use the powers which I believe it has to build in those areas and to make the local authorities take over the accommodation once the buildings have been erected.

I know that there is a housing agency in Scotland which does a good job of work. It may be that a special type of housing agency is required for the rest of Great Britain, but if local authorities with acute housing problems are not willing to carry out their housing responsibilities I hope that the Ministry will find ways of making them. Housing can never be a matter about which the House of Commons is not concerned. If the greatest curse that can befall people is unemployment, the second greatest is not being able to solve their housing problems. We can never be complacent so long as so many families are unable to find proper housing and have to live in wretched accommodation. I hope that the Minister has listened to what I have said, and that the Ministry will take strong action against councils who default.

There are 42 minutes left. There are four back benchers and two hon. Members from the Front Benches who wish to speak. They can all get in if they adopt the Christmas spirit of sharing.

I feel full of the Christmas spirit and I shall do my best to keep my remarks short. The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) has just said that the Minister should chase local authorities. The man whom the hon. Member should chase is the Prime Minister, because he has made solemn pledges in the House of Commons which have not been fulfilled. That is obvious from the latest figures. It is no good the hon. Member trying to blame this failure on Tory councils; it is the failure of the Government's housing policy. We were told that this policy would provide 500,000 houses a year by 1970, and would be carried through whatever might be the economic state of the country. That was said specifically by the Prime Minister. That policy has not been fulfilled, largely due to the financial situation of the country.

The hon. Member is quite right to be worried about the fall in the housing figures. The Times of 11th December, reporting Ministry of Public Building and Works statistics in the third quarter of this year, indicated that the rate of house building was 13 per cent. below the quarterly average of the previous year. On a seasonally adjusted basis the housing output was lower in the last quarter than at any time since 1960.

It is not good blaming this on Tory councils. If the Minister it to write to Tory councils about their programmes he ought also to write to those local councils who have cut back their council housing programmes far more than the Tory councils. I yield to no one on the opposite side of the House or to anyone in this Chamber in my concern for housing the people. It is a tragedy that such a gulf divides the two sides.

This has meant that great sums of money which could have been brought in to provide housing have been denied. As long as this political battle continues to be fought between us, so long will these vast sums of money which are available be kept out. I do not think that it would be impossible to reach a balance between us. We can take it that the housing situation in different areas of the country requires different solutions. What is right for Liverpool or Manchester or London are probably different things, and the same point certainly applies to my constituency.

The hon. Gentleman talks about council housing lists. I can tell him that the reason I am getting an increase in those lists in the town of Fleetwood, which I represent, is because people are now no longer able to get mortgages because the amount that local authorities can lend is cut back, or because they no longer can provide the status they need to get mortgages. These are people who were normally being kept off council housing lists through buying modest homes of their own. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heifer) knows the sort of houses in the North, £1,500 to £2,000, perfectly adequate good houses.

People cannot now afford to buy these. This is the dilemma. We have the dilemma of high interest rates, and I cannot believe that any Government can really solve this problem in isolation from all the other economic problems they have to solve. That is one reason for the slowing down in both the public and private sectors.

At the end of the day even if the hon. Gentleman has his way, if we complete the sort of programme he wants it would mean increasing either direct or indirect taxation or the rates. I do not believe that, even if he wanted to, the Chancellor could help the hon. Gentleman and provide the public money or lower the interest rates sufficiently to affect the situation. I should like to see if we can get together. The fair rent system, which we did not believe in, has worked well. We acknowledge that. If we can get a guaranteed return for people putting their money into developing houses and free this from political interference we can get money to solve the problem. With those remarks Mr. Speaker, I wish you a merry Christmas and I hope that you have a lovely Recess.

The hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) says, "Do not blame the Tory councils", but I must do so, and in particular my own Tory council. This Christmas, in my area, 236 families will be apart. They will be in hostels because they are on the waiting list and cannot get accommodation. Parents will be in one hostel, children in another. One of the greatest tragedies I experience and have to face in my weekly surgery is when "Cathy Come Home" comes to see me. Young and attractive and with two small children she says:

"I am being evicted. I have no place, I am on a waiting list and I am going to be separated from my two small children. I would sooner go on the streets to earn enough money to get a place than be separated from my children."

With 6,943 people on the waiting list in my area she has very little option between these stark alternatives. In my area, on the waiting lists, there are 988 families living in dwellings classified as statutorily overcrowded. Within these 6,943 on the waiting list, there are 1,604 with special points because of medical disability. I have had the situation where a woman has pleaded with me for council accommodation because her husband had a coronary thrombosis. They were living upstairs and she pointed out that, if only they could move downstairs, she would be able to preserve her marriage. Three months later, she came to me in widow's weeds, with her husband dead, because there was no way in which she could get accommodation through the local council.

So, if the hon. Gentleman says that we should not condemn Tory councils, I reply that I must condemn my own local Tory council. Tory councillors have a basic philosophic idea that there is something degrading and wrong in people having council tenancies. Originally, we were to have had 1,978 housing starts in Brent in 1969. The programme was for 1,978 dwellings to put out to tender this year. In a Parliamentary answer to my question my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Housing has told me that he understands that there will, however only be 24. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South says that there has been a cutback. In Brent, it is a phenomenal cutback. I cannot accuse the Council of being criminal, because it is not a crime, but it is nevertheless callous, heartless and barbaric and has reached the depths of degradation in any local administration.

I remind the House that, in the Milner-Holland Report, my area, Willesden, was top of the list for acute problems in housing. Yet we get this tremendous cut from 1,978 to 24 only, by my local Tory council. That means we shall be facing a bad situation for the next 10 years on top of the inherent problems that have faced the area in the last 10 years.

The only way out is by council housing. The hon. Member for North Fylde talked about local building in order to provide houses on mortgage. But if one lives within seven miles of London the high price of land, and its shortage, mean that private enterprise can only provide housing at rents beyond the means of most workers in my constituency. The result is, of course, that we are getting luxury flats being built which, while they enable commuters in good office or professional jobs to travel back and forth to London, mean that the 7,000 workers on the waiting list locally are still waiting and seem doomed so to do for years ahead.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South on introducing this subject and thank him for the opportunity to record the fact that, in London, where there is shortage of land, where it is so expensive, and where there is tremendous pressure on housing, unless there is a change of heart among these Tory councillors who are so anti-council tenants, then the prospects for 1970, 1971 and 1972 at least will be bleak indeed for those who's work in factories and in transport and other services keep this country prosperous.

We are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick). I followed his argument closely. We in the North-West are perhaps not dealing with the massive figures to which he and my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) referred, but nevertheless the degree of human experience and feeling is obviously the same. The hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) defended Tory local authorities, although he made what was otherwise a fair speech, the latter part of which was extremely interesting. In my case, we are not dealing with a cut-back in council building. On current Tory policy we are, on the contrary, dealing with a dead stop in council house building. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not attempt to minimise that factor when defending the policy of his party.

Why has this happened? Stockport is one of the authorities to which the Minister sent his letter of 23rd October. There are about 6,000 unfit dwellings there according to his figures and he naturally pointed out that something should be done in tackling this enormous problem because, combined with it, is a relatively massive problem in terms of people waiting for houses. We are not here dealing only with a range of alternative dwellings. If people are on a council waiting list, their reason is specific—they are applying for a council dwelling. We are naturally interested in knowing what local authority policy is and if it is a Tory council and policy has changed, precisely how it is proposed to deal with these human problems.

Of course our figures are relatively small, but for us the problem is as gigantic as that in London and my constituents are equally worried, when councils appear to do little to reduce the size of the list, about how long the list will grow and how long those on it will have to wait.

A certain smugness is revealing itself among Tory councils about what has happened in areas such as my own, for instance, since they took control. In Stockport in particular, the Labour council had a first-class record. It reduced slums and tackled the problem of unfit houses and for about a decade had been dealing with the problem of substandard houses. We were reaching a position in which, even though the council is now Tory controlled, it has relatively little to do to deal with the overlap of slums, but there is still this smugness.

When the Joint Parliamentary Secretary visits Stockport as he is shortly to visit other towns in the North-West, I hope that he will ask those in control whether they intend to launch further large-scale building projects. In the absence of policy or the indication of a policy in this respect, we are grinding to a halt in the provision of essential houses.

Secondly, he will have to ask whether they intend to put forward policies of land sales and housing associations as an alternative. Tory councils have so far given little indication of what they intend to do about housing associations, but there is disturbing news that they intend to sell land at prices lower than those they paid for it. That will weaken the financial position of the rating fund and we know that we are already running into a deficit with the housing revenue account.

Unless some measure is taken to fill the gap in the financing of municipal housing, the position will become extremely weak. My hon. Friend must ask the Stockport authority whether it is satisfied with a suggested rate of 430 houses per annum for a borough with 150,000 residents, whether it is satisfied with a rate of re-lettings available of 550 per annum and with the present level of 750 houses under construction.

The town has a problem with high tower blocks which are a crippling burden on the authority. Having spoken in criticism of Tory policy, I must say that the council must be given help by the Government if it is to deal with the problem of high tower blocks. Blocks of flats have not been occupied and yet people are waiting to go into them. The local authority faces a burden of about £250,000. Is my hon. Friend suggesting that £6,000 at the declared 40 per cent. rate to be given in aid will begin to meet that kind of deficit. I hope that in his negotiations my hon. Friend will be able to eliminate this problem of costs for high tower blocks. If it is not eliminated, we shall have still greater housing and financial problems in the Borough.

Housing is the greatest human problem we have to face. As a city councillor of the great City of Liverpool, over the years I have seen more examples of unhappiness, nervous breakdowns and children not getting proper educational advantages because of bad housing conditions or overcrowding than for any other single reason. There now seems to be developing in Liverpool the myth that we are getting near the stage when the problem is likely to disappear. That is the point I should briefly like to make in this debate.

I pay tribute to both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party in Liverpool, because to a large extent they have kept this question out of the political arena. Both parties when they have been in control of the Liverpool City Council have tackled the problem vigorously within the limits of the overall economic situation. Naturally, we have all urged that more council houses should be built, but we have felt that within the limits both parties have done reasonably well.

But now a new philosophy seems to have developed within the Conservative Party in the City of Liverpool. We introduced the excellent Housing Act, 1969, based on our White Paper, "New Homes for Old". As a result we are to tackle the problem of the twilight areas; instead of including them in the slum areas we intend to rehabilitate the houses in them. This is right, because too often we have knocked down areas and pushed people out into cultural deserts. We have broken up communities and in giving people new houses have created other problems. There should be rehabilitation of vast areas which are not slum property but would become slums within a few years unless dealt with.

The Government need the fullest support for the Act, but unfortunately the philosophy seems to be developing in my city that because this is to be done and the Government will give financial aid there should be a slowing down or cutting back on the building of council houses. I had a fairly heated telephone argument with a leading official in the city who said that I did not understand the problem, because by 1972 there could be a surplus of tenancies. I looked into the figures, and I cannot see where there could possibly be such a surplus. We should continue to build at the same rate, and if we end up with a surplus of tenancies the whole city of Liverpool will be delighted. But we know that this is not likely to happen.

When I have interviews people give me chapter and verse on the overcrowded conditions in which they live. Every Member from Liverpool and every city councillor in Liverpool must find this when holding interviews, and they have them every fortnight. The people concerned are sometimes in private accommodation and sometimes owner-occupied accommodation, where the youngsters are still living with the families. Sometimes they are even in council accommodation. This problem will not be solved by 1972. It is a pipe dream to think that it will be. It is ridiculous, and we know that it is. The maximum pressure must be applied to the Liverpool City Council to see that there is no slowing down on the housing programme.

I accept the point of the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) that there are young people nowadays who would buy the type of accommodation priced at £2,000 to £3,000 but cannot obtain mortgages. Despite the assistance given by the Government, this is a very real problem. Even in my city, there are too many houses which have the "For Sale" notices up and which should have young people and others in them.

But the real need is still for council houses. There are thousands of families in Liverpool whose only hope is a council house, particularly if they are casual workers. We know that no building society, or even a local authority, is keen to advance a mortgage to such people because of the casual nature of their jobs—and in Liverpool we have a great number of casual workers. Those from port areas know that this is one of our great problems. So the need is still for council houses.

There is need in my city to get rid of those vast areas in the centre which have been demolished and are like great deserts in the city yet to be rebuilt. For too long they have been left like that. There is need to rebuid and repopulate the centre of the city and make it once again a thriving area with real life and a real community.

I welcome the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) in raising this vital matter. I have not made a political speech, although I am not renowned for not doing so. I usually go out of my way to attack the party opposite. In certain areas, I think that they have cut down far more than they should have done. They have used the Government's policy as an excuse and a reason for cutting back because of their philosophy against council houses. The need is there, however, and it is vital that we should continue to build council houses, and on a bigger scale than ever.

If local authorities are not prepared to go ahead with the building of council houses, we as a Government have a responsibility to intervene. I have argued this many time before. My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary knows this, because he was chairman of a committee which went into the question many years ago. The time has come to have a public building corporation to tackle the problem in the areas of greatest need. If the local authorities fail, we as a Government should step in and build the houses that the people need. This will be our greatest victory for the people.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Helfer) said that the housing problem is the greatest human problem which we have to face, and I agree wholeheartedly. It is no good talking about welfare or social services if we do not have decent housing. The hon. Gentleman was quite wrong, however, in assuming that Conservative policy is moving away from that fundamental political philosophy towards the social services: That decent housing comes first and must be the basis of all our efforts.

The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) made great play of blaming the Conservative-controlled councils for deliberately cutting council house building. That completely disregards the phenomenal drop in housing production over the whole field. Council house production has fallen. Private sector production of housing has dropped. It is not one set of councils which is causing this, but Government policy, which has resulted in this drop in house production.

I do not want to go over all the figures that were given by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) in his speech in the House on 4th November. I notice, however, that taking the London boroughs, for example, in the period from June, 1967, to June, 1968, the four Socialist boroughs were building three times as much as in the period from June, 1968, to June, 1969. That is to say, they have dropped by two-thirds, when one compares those two periods. They—the Socialist boroughs—are, therefore, finding difficulty in keeping up their housing programme.

Incidentally, for the period from June, 1968, to June, 1969, the 28 Conservative councils have shown an increase over the period from June, 1967, to June, 1968. Even on the facts, therefore, the hon. Member for Croydon, South was wrong. Certainly, he did not take into account the difficulties that house building is experiencing in all sectors.

The hon. Member complained at the sale of land to private developers. He said that people on the waiting list are not in a position to buy houses. Four or five years ago they were in a position to do so. The average manual worker was earning sufficient to pay the mortgage instalments on the average house.

No.

He was. I cannot stop to give the figure today, but in fact it about balanced and it certainly does not balance today. The average manual worker cannot today find the building society instalments because of the substantial increases in interest rates.

The hon. Member for Croydon, South referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester. I apologise for the fact that my hon. Friend is unable to be here today. He asked me to thank the hon. Member for Croydon, South for his courtesy in notifying him that he wished to refer to him. In fact, the hon. Member took my hon. Friend's words out of context. At that time my hon. Friend was expressing the hope that we could get back to an average wage and average mortgage instalments which would enable a considerable increase in owner-occupation and in the purchase of council houses by the tenants of those houses. The hon. Member took that sentence considerably out of context.

One point of great interest in the hon. Member's speech was his reference to some other agency to carry out work for defaulting local authorities. He mentioned a housing agency. He knows, I am sure that in the recent report of the Public Accounts Committee on housing subsidies, reference was made to the Scottish Housing Association and the Government were asked to consider whether it was advisable to set up such an association for England. I wonder whether the Joint Parliamentary Secretary would care to comment on that. It is obviously a matter which should be further investigated.

We are all desperately worried about the formidable length of housing waiting lists. Over the period I have been a Member of Parliament, during which I have held "surgeries" almost every Saturday morning. I had hoped that the number coming to that "surgery" wanting housing accommodation would drop over the years. In fact, it has increased. There seem to be more now. Whether it is because the standard they demand has risen, I do not know—but I do not think so. It seems to me that we are not keeping pace with homelessness. I do not agree entirely with Shelter that we need to re-define homelessness. It has always been the same—the overcrowding and the terrible conditions in which many people live.

I have asked the Minister to chase up those local authorities which are defaulting on their council house building programme. Will the hon. Member give a pledge that the Conservative Party, that the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker), will chase up those Conservative-controlled councils which are not building the number of council houses they should build?

It is no good chasing them up when it is the Government who have given them this difficult task. It is Government policy which has created this situation. I will give the hon. Member an assurance that Conservative policy would provide better opportunities both for public sector building and for private sector building and to that extent would increase house building production throughout both sectors.

I am afraid that as it stands I see no chance of council house building increasing. When one looks at the White Paper on Public Expenditure one sees that there is to be only a 3·7 per cent. increase in local authority expenditure over the next years. In those circumstances, how can local authorities get out of their difficulties in house building? How can they get out of those difficulties unless the Government settle the problems about cost yardsticks, which are holding back many local councils, and the problems about the Ronan Point type of high flats? There is also the insistence in the programme laid out by the Housing Act, 1969, that the £40 million a year on improvements should come out of the general housing expenditure and not be an addition to it. Of course it ought to be an addition. The expenditure on council house building should be maintained and these improvements should be an addition. No one would be happier than I if the Joint Parliamentary Secretary could rise now and repeat the sort of promises which the Prime Minister gave at the last two General Elections, promises which have been so callously abandoned since then.

Let me begin by saying that all of us realise that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) has a very wide range of specialist interests, particularly in foreign affairs, but that he has never neglected or forgotten the interests of his constituents, particularly when they are faced with such very urgent human problems as housing and matters of that kind. We are all grateful to him that on this the last day on which the House will be sitting this year he has reminded the House about the housing programme and about human needs. It is appropriate that at Christmas time we should think about these things, because although everyone at Christmas makes the best of his affairs the fact is that we should not forget that, despite the massive achievements which have been secured, there are still some people, though, I hope, not too many, who will be seeing Christmas in a halfway house and some whose families will be separated in homes. That being the position we must never, never, for a moment, relax our efforts.

I say all that despite the fact that we have very massive achievements to our credit. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South has in his own borough a waiting list of some 5,000 people who require accommodation, about half of whom are on the A list according to the Council, which means they have a degree of urgency and priority. That list indicates, as waiting lists elsewhere indicate, that in many parts of the country, certainly in the great conurbations, there are still desperate housing problems for far too many people. I say that despite the fact that we have, I think, a massive achievement.

It is worth while perhaps at this time of the year remembering that it was because of the efforts made by my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for Social Services when he was Minister of Housing, and my right hon. Friend the present Minister of Housing—whatever figures were talked about at the General Election—that 40 per cent. more, or 400,000 houses in the last five years were built than in the five previous years. And they are better houses, because whereas in 1964 only about 14 per cent. of houses were up to the full Parker Morris standard, in 1969 not one house has been approved which is not up to standard and last year 70 per cent. were.

Furthermore, our policy has been to guide wherever we can resources into the areas of maximum difficulty, the priority areas. We know that last year, for example, over half the houses built were built in the areas of greatest need, something like 83,000 of them in the local authority sector. We have now provided a subsidy per house of £120 for 60 years —in some cases it goes to considerably more than that—as against a subsidy of £24. Let us have the figures; let us have the record put straight when we talk about housing and which party has done what. It is a proud record, as it is even in private enterprise, whose achievement last year was an all-time record of over 220,000 houses built.

It is perfectly true that, consequent upon devaluation and associated factors, the figures this year will not be so high, but taking the last five years they are 40 per cent. better. Add to that the fact that we have been able quite recently to make an addition to the sum to local authorities for mortgages for 1969–70, and have almost doubled the amount, to £55 million, and by next year we shall be adding another £45 million, making £100 million available.

In addition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller) said, we have this year introduced the new Housing Act, which will help to make conditions much more tolerable for many people who have been living in old houses without proper amenities. These arrangements are not intended to be a substitute for new buildings but to make life more comfortable for the hundreds of thousands of people who live in basically good houses which need modernisation.

My right hon. Friend is deeply concerned, as he shows by always taking part in housing debates, about policy decisions which are taken not to build new council houses where it is possible to do so. As has been said, for many people a council house is still the only way in which they will ever solve their problems. I have no time to go into the building society figures mentioned by the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), but I have been a Member of Parliament for nearly 20 years and there have always been people who could never qualify for a mortgage because they earned insufficient money. It is quite untrue to say that five years ago anyone could go and get a mortgage.

Reference has been made to the sale by councils of building land. Wherever there is a housing need, this policy is reprehensible. The level of house building will be endangered if such land is sold off, and this must be deplored. Unless the land was compulsorily acquired, or is being sold at less than the district valuer's valuation, my right hon. Friend cannot intervene, but in other cases we have made our attitude known, and I hope that this will not happen on a large scale. One reason why my joint colleague is not here this afternoon to answer this debate is that he is personally visiting one of a large number of councils whose building programmes appear to be lower than they need be. He would like to have had the opportunity of replying to the debate, but perhaps what he is doing this afternoon is even more valuable.

I was asked about the position where a council either would not, could not or did not build, and whether my right hon. Friend would consider using default powers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton knows, I had a great deal to do with this concept a few years ago, and I am glad to tell both him and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South that the Minister is examining the possibility of exercising default powers. He has set up an inquiry on this matter. It may also be that in this inquiry we shall be able to consider whether a building agency can be set up to help councils in general, not only those which are falling behind.

I am happy to give my hon. Friend the good piece of Christmas news that the matter is being seriously considered. On the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Gregory) I have not the details of that case, but will write to him.

In conclusion, I wish to thank all hon. Members for taking part in this debate.

I am fortunate that this subject has been selected for debate this afternoon. Since my speech will be reduced to a length of 10 or 12 minutes, the House will understand if certain points are compressed.

This is the first opportunity which has occurred for a debate on environmental pollution since the statement by the Prime Minister on 11th December. He then made two new announcements. The first was that the Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning was setting up a central unit to study environmental pollution, which he is to keep under his own hand at the Ministry. It is to consist mainly of scientists and coordinators.

The Prime Minister also announced a new standing Royal Commission to advise on national and international matters concerned with pollution. Through them the best possible advice will be made available to Government Departments.

Co-ordination of research and filtering and initiation of advice is all very fine, but what seems to be missing is the opportunity for action. I hope, therefore, that the Parliamentary Secretary in his reply will address himself to the following question: how can the Secretary of State translate the research and advice into action?

In this country in my opinion we concentrate far too much on research and development in the matter of industrial endeavour and devote far too little to their application. We seem to be falling into the same trap in the Government Department concerned.

The Secretary of State is an extremely busy man, but has no Parliamentary Secretary or Under-Secretary of State to assist him. How much time can he alone devote to passing on the advice given him? How much priority will be given to his recommendations for action by other Departments? I hope that the Prime Minister will give every assistance to the Secretary of State to see that he gets full backing.

I will give the Parliamentary Secretary some good red meat about vehicles to get his teeth into, or perhaps a better analogy would be a gas chamber for him to get out of. This matter involves the effect of motor vehicles on the environment and the incidence of noise, fumes and rubbish. Who was it who said that one's own car is one's own priceless possession and everybody else's is an invention of the devil? Until the advent of television, the motor car undoubtedly caused the greatest social changes of the century. We must find a way of living with the motor vehicle rather than being dominated by it.

I wish to take three features of pollution by vehicles which impinge on environment. First, noise; secondly, air pollution by exhausts; and thirdly the intentional or unintentional disposal of rubbish around the roadside and countryside by vehicles on the move.

I appreciate that a good deal of research into noise and the effect of vehicles is being undertaken by Government research departments and by the motoring industry itself. This is admirable and I come to a very important point. Concerning the standards of noise and fumes required of manufacturers, it is extremely important that there should be international agreement. If we in this country are more alert to the dangers of pollution than certain other countries, with the possible exception of the United States, we could damage this industry, in which I have an indirect interest, if we enforced higher standards than are needed, particularly in the international markets, for our heavy and light motor vehicles.

I was pleased that there was an international aspect to the Royal Commission and I hope that the Secretary of State and the Royal Commission will concentrate on trying to achieve international standards to deal with vehicle pollution. That is the high-level side of the matter. But it does not need a high-level committee to tell hon. Members—or any of my constituents in Harrow—about the effect of noise from heavy vehicles.

There must be many towns and villages which, because they are now on a by-pass between trunk routes, are subject in the early hours of the morning to the passing of a large number of heavy vehicles going, for example, from the South of England up the M1.

Many of those heavy vehicles go through my constituency. For example, there is a charming residential road called Headstone Lane at the bottom of which are some traffic lights, and then a slope. From 4 a.m. onwards the sound of heavily, accelerating motor vehicles disturbs the sleep and the happiness of the residents. The vibration can also damage houses. A new bridge has recently been opened, and this might take away some of the heavy through traffic.

What are the main causes of noise? One is insufficient silencing, and in this connection the Government must continue to press manufacturers to improve their standards. Another is the overloading of vehicles so that, for example, a heavy goods vehicle works at higher revs and makes a greater noise than it need do. Bad maintenance also causes noise.

Another noise factor is the use of private property for testing motor bicycles and sports cars. In Alexandra Avenue, in my constituency, peaceful rest in the garden or inside the house is almost impossible on a Sunday afternoon because of the din caused by motor bicycles being tuned. The effects of noise were explained in a report by the Hounslow Medical Officer of Health. Noise also causes damage to property. There was an interesting article in the Sunday Times recently on the dangers to Beverley Minster cause by vehicles driving near the Minster.

The Home Secretary has told me that in 1968 there were 13,300 prosecutions for vehicle noise annoyance, other than through the sounding of a horn. This figure seems substantial. I shall ask the Home Secretary to see if that figure can be split up. It will be interesting to see if it can.

Then there is the problem of fumes from diesel and petrol engines caused by imperfect combustion. The conventional engine has not changed in basic design from that invented by Otto Benz 99 years ago. The diesel engine produces disgusting black fumes which dirty people's cloths and disintegrate nylon stockings. These black fumes are caused mainly by the overtaxing of the engine or bad maintenance.

The petrol engine, however, which produces carbon monoxide fumes, is a greater danger mainly because it is an invisible danger. I do not know if you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, are addicted to the "Rowan and Martin Laugh In" on television on Sunday nights, but on that programme there are constant reference to conditions in Los Angeles due to fumes from vehicles. Leaving the Palace of Westminster in the rush hour on a summer's evening one is faced with the heavy smell of carbon monoxide coming from vehicles. This causes a considerable health hazard.

I have been informed by the Home Secretary that in 1966, 1967 and 1968 there were between 2,000 and 3,000 convictions in connection with the excessive emission of fumes from vehicles. That is a surprisingly small number and I reckon that one day spent on the M4 could produce 2,000.

Grit and other substances fall from lorries and the Minister will be aware of the trials that the users of the M4 had to undergo when about a hundred windscreens were disintegrated in two days partly because of the road surface —a subject which is no part of this debate—and partly because gravel had dropped from a gravel lorry. We also see paper, wood and board blowing about over the road.

Then there is the problem of the dumping by the roadside of old cars, mattresses and other rubbish. The Home Secretary informed me that since 1959 there had never been more than 2,800 convictions under the Litter Act, which is not a large enough number.

My conclusions are that certain residential roads should be closed to lorries at night. Commercial vehicles should always, when on the move, have a cover over their loads to prevent whatever they are carrying from being blown off. There should be an experimental environmental police patrol for an experimental period with the job—for, say, a period of two weeks in an area—of checking on the effects of pollution, noise and the discarding of rubbish. If convictions are made, both companies and drivers should be hurt by the fines or other penalties that are imposed.

I hope that the Secretary of State will have power to co-ordinate the activities of the Home Office, Board of Trade, Ministry of Technology, Ministry of Housing and Local Government and any other Departments that are concerned with these matters and that next year we will be able to enjoy a happier Christmas because it will be a quieter, more sweet smelling and cleaner one.

The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. John Page) has raised a large subject of great importance, and the House should be indebted to him for having raised it. It is a pity that we reach it at this late hour. Everyone agrees that the motor vehicle, with all its advantages to modern society, has had a major impact for the worse on our physical environment.

At present most of our urban areas consist of complex networks of streets, flanked with residential and commercial buildings, and carrying progressively larger volumes of mixed traffic. This is an inevitable consequence of the way our cities have grown, the way in which they work, and the speed with which they can be rebuilt. Within this relatively static urban framework, improvement of the environment must mean improvement of vehicles the elimination of excessively noisy vehicles, smoky vehicles and derelict vehicles. The hon. Member has given vivid examples based on his own and his constituents' experience of vehicles causing offence in these ways. I shall try to identify precisely who the culprits are and to say what the Government are doing to bring them to book.

First, noise. Noise deserves to be dealt with first because it is the most inescapable of the offensive by-products of motor transport. Traffic noise is the all-pervasive background to life in a modern city. But we must not think of traffic noise as a sudden new problem. The need to control noise from vehicles was recognised in the early days of the motor vehicle and a number of regulations were made in the first decade of this century. These regulations are still on the Statute Book. They require that vehicles should be fitted with an efficient exhaust silencer. The require road users to refrain from making an excessive noise. In particular, motorists must maintain the silencers on their vehicles in good order and they must not sound their horns in built-up areas at night or when the vehicle is stationary.

These early regulations recognise what is an important distinction. Most noise from road vehicles results from the inherent design of the vehicle, but over and above this there is the extra noise that results when a vehicle is badly maintained or irresponsibly used. The first type of noise can only be reduced at the manufacturing stage—the early regulations simply require an exhaust silencer to be fitted. The second type of noise is the responsibility of the road user. A goods vehicle may clatter because it is badly loaded; a "banger" may live up to its name because the exhaust system is full of holes; the driver of a high performance car or motor cycle can make a quite unnecessary noise by revving through the gears; there are those who sound horns and slam their car doors unnecessarily in the small hours; and there are other examples of socially irresponsible types with which it is difficult to deal. Thus two types of measure are needed—measures to improve the design of new vehicles so that they are less noisy when manufactured, and here the problem is one of economics and engineering feasibility. Beyond this we need measures to improve standards of maintenance and driver behaviour—here the main problem is one of enforcement. I shall say a few words about each of these problems.

First, the design of new vehicles. Right up till 1968 there was no control on the design of new vehicles from the point of view of noise reduction except for the requirement to fit an efficient exhaust silencer. This lack of control had its worst effects on the development of heavy vehicles. During the 1960's larger diesel engines were developed and the noise output of individual heavy vehicles increased. This coupled with the general growth in the numbers of vehicles of all kinds is largely responsible for the worsening of the noise environment over this period.

The effect of the regulations brought in last year by the then Minister the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) has been to halt this trend and start manufacturers on the path of designing quieter vehicles. The regulations achieved this objective not by specifying particular methods of construction but by laying down noise limits for various classes of road vehicle, the limits being set in decibels and measured by an internationally agreed test procedure. In respect of the heaviest vehicles we have decided on a lower limit than is for example permitted in Belgium, Holland and Germany, Furthermore, we are now proposing to the motor industry a programme of substantial reductions of these limits over the next 5 years.

The 1968 regulations and the prospect of lower limits in future years has stimulated a major research and development effort to quieten especially the heavy diesel engines.

I turn now to the problem of enforcement and the road user. I must say straight away that the 1968 regulations are not, and were never intended to be, the main means of control. The older regulations to which I have already referred are, and always have been, the main regulatory means of setting a standard of reasonable behaviour for road users. Police enforcement of these older regulations results in about 1,000 prosecutions a month. In the 1968 regulations we provided an additional method of enforcement which we hoped the police would find useful as a supplement to the existing methods.

This new method, which involves the use of a noise meter at a roadside check point, has proved difficult to use and a lot of publicity has been given to the fact that it has so far yielded only a handful of convictions. But when newspapers and others draw the conclusion that the 1968 regulations have not worked they forget that the main purpose of the regulations was to influence the design of vehicles, and in this they have most certainly worked. They have been entirely successful.

I turn now to the other main effect on the environment about which the hon. Member has spoken, namely, pollution from motor vehicles. As with noise, this is not a new problem. Smoke and grit were a major nuisance from the steamengined vehicles which were common on our roads at the beginning of this century. The regulations prohibiting smoke which is avoidable or likely to be a danger to other road users are still on the statute book, and it is under these regulations that in recent years the police and the Ministry's vehicle examiners have acted against badly maintained diesel-engined lorries giving off obnoxious black smoke. In recent years police prosecutions alone have numbered about 2,700 per year for offences of this kind. I think that the hon. Member will agree that this is a good record of enforcement, but I am sure my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will note his further suggestions in this respect.

Although some smoke from the diesel engine is inevitable, things are improving. There are two main reasons for this. First, there is now in existence a British Standard for diesel engines which includes a maximum permitted intensity of smoke from the fully loaded diesel engine.

Secondly, the standard of maintenance of heavy goods vehicles is improving as the result of the introduction of the plating and testing scheme. The annual inspection of heavy goods vehicles includes a smoke check, and plating will enable easier enforcement of loading restrictions on goods vehicles, and reduce the cases of overloaded engines producing the excessive smoke, that is fairly evident on the stretch of road, the traffic lights and the slope to which the hon. Member has referred.

Improvements in design and maintenance will together diminish the nuisance of the visible pollutants from larger vehicles, but the invisible gases given off by motor vehicles are quite another matter. Methods of reducing some of them are known, but very large reductions are technically most difficult and expensive, and complete elimination is impossible. This is such a technically complicated subject that I cannot hope here and now to do more than make a few simple points on some of the issues publicised recently and to which the hon. Member has drawn attention.

The most notorious of the invisible gases given off by motor vehicles is carbon monoxide. This gas is well known as a poison in the concentrations that accumulate, for example, if a car engine is left running in a closed garage. We know the unfortunate results of this.

There is, however, absolutely no need for any alarm about adverse medical effects from carbon monoxide in city streets. The amounts of carbon monoxide in the street atmosphere have been thoroughly investigated, as have the effects of various concentrations of carbon monoxide on people. The research conducted here by the Medical Research Council and by the Warren Springs Laboratory shows conclusively that concentrations in streets saturated with traffic are well below the levels that result in dangerous accumulations of carbon monoxide in the blood. In fact one absorbs much less carbon monoxide from breathing street air than one does from smoking a cigarette and inhaling the smoke.

Why then are the invisible gases from motor vehicle exhausts a cause for concern? Why are the Americans requiring reductions in exhaust emissions on vehicles used in their country?

The Americans and some other countries having areas with a sunny climate are troubled with a form of smog caused by the effect of strong sunlight in still air on exhaust gases. This is why the Americans, for example, have established an anti-pollution standard for 1970. But even if this standard could be achieved at small cost we would have no reason to imitate them, and indeed British manufacturers are having to add equipment to their export vehicles which will add £30 to £40 to a price of a car in the American market.

But although this type of smog is unknown in this country, there are other possible sources of concern about hydrocarbons and other exhaust products. Unburnt or partly burnt fuel has a characteristic smell which is generally unpleasant in certain conditions, such as a traffic jam on a still day. But we must put this nuisance in perspective. It is mainly associated with the older and therefore more worn engines; compared with other forms of pollution—smoke and factory wastes which obscure the sunlight and foul our rivers—the smell of this traffic is surely a minor nuisance. We must not ignore it, and we must take reasonable steps to reduce it where the cause can be clearly identified, for example, leaks in the fuel system. But we must not be frightened into precipitate and ill-considered action. The fact is nobody knows how to control exhaust emissions so as to reduce unpleasantness such as smell. This is a subject which requires, and is receiving, considerable research.

The hon. Member referred to the problem of vibration caused by traffic. Both the Ministry of Public Building and Works and my Ministry are looking into this aspect of the effect of traffic on the environment. Broadly, we have found that if a building is liable to be damaged by vibration from rubber-tyred vehicles on adjoining roads, then it is much more liable to be damaged by other stresses such as movement of large pieces of furniture, large gatherings of people, gusts of wind or even slamming doors. Nevertheless, I would assure the hon. Member that we are very aware that in certain circumstances heavy traffic may have ill-effects both on buildings and on the people occupying them, and this is a factor taken into account with the many others when we come to plan highway and traffic schemes.

I have tried to briefly indicate to the hon. Member the efforts which the Ministry of Transport is making to combat the particular dangers he has brought to the attention of the House today. Other Departments are also using their special knowledge and powers to wage the fight against other forms of pollution. With regard to the overall problem, the hon. Member has referred to the statement of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 11th December with regard to the setting up of the Standing Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. There is also to be an Advisory Council to deal with the problem of noise, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning is also to have the assistance of a co-ordinating unit within his own staff and consisting mainly of scientists. I think these measures demonstrate very clearly that the Government are dealing most actively and urgently with the problem of environmental pollution.

I know that Mr. Speaker will have referred in the House today to Christmas, but since I think that I shall be the last person to speak from this Box this year, may I take this opportunity, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to express my thanks to the officers and servants of the House, the police, the cleaners, the catering staff, the Press Lobby and Gallery, the HANSARD staff and all who serve us so well, and not least Mr. Speaker, yourself, Sir, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Sydney Irving), the Chairman, for the help and guidance they have given during the year. May I wish each and every one a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

May I, in the half minute left, join with the Minister in giving good wishes to all those whom he mentioned?

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. John Page) has done a great service in reminding the House that while we have rightly been concerned with the accident aspect of the motor traffic, the motor vehicle menace to health and amenity has been creeping up on us and has become a terrible Frankenstein monster. Now we want action. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary has indicated that he knows that there has not been sufficient enforcement in the past, and we hope that this debate will produce some really coordinated action from the Ministries.