Commons Chamber

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House Of Commons

Tuesday, 27th July, 1971

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

Prayers

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Private Business

Eton Rural District Council Bill

Haringey Corporation Bill

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to.

Isle Of Wight County Council Bill

Lords Amendments to be considered upon Thursday next.

Stockport Corporation Bill

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to, two with Amendments.

BRITISH RAILWAYS (NO. 2) BILL

EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL (NEWHAVEN BRIDGE) BILL

HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL

MERSEY DOCKS AND HARBOUR BILL

TRENT RIVER AUTHORITY (GENERAL POWERS) BILL

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to.

BRISTOL CORPORATION (WEST DOCK) BILL [ Lords] [ Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.]

CORNWALL COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [ Lords]

EAST SUFFOLK COUNTY COUNCIL (No. 2) BILL [ Lords]

Bills read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

EXETER CORPORATION BILL [ Lords]

BOURNEMOUTH CORPORATION BILL [ Lords]

FLINTSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [ Lords]

MANCHESTER CORPORATION (GENERAL POWERS) BILL [ Lords]

SCUNTHORPE CORPORATION BILL [ Lords]

Bills, as amended, considered; to be read the Third time.

Oral Answers To Questions

National Finance

European Economic Community

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will give as much information as is available to him relating to changes in the distribution of income in Great Britain and in each of the European Economic Community countries over the period 1957–70.

Changes in the distribution of personal income in the United Kingdom are shown in Table 57 of "Inland Revenue Statistics 1971", which gives figures for 1959–60 and 1968–69, together with a number of intervening years. I regret, however, I have no comparable information for any of the countries of the European Economic Community.

I find that a disappointing answer. Will not the Minister acknowledge that the most likely effect of our entry into a wider capitalist bloc free of tariff barriers is a rise in the profits share of the G.N.P. at the expense of the wages share, that this is all the more likely to happen in view of the relatively higher proportion of remuneration in British G.N.P. at present than in the Common Market, and that it is likely to be the lowest paid workers in the declining industries who will suffer most in the absence of remedial measures of the kind which the Government seem either unwilling to take or incapable of taking?

No, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman in anything he has said. Such evidence as there is shows that since the Common Market has been in existence the share of wages and salaries has risen considerably. From 1960 to 1969 the figure altered from 57·4 per cent. to 62·7 per cent. of the G.N.P.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will ensure that, whether Great Britain enters the European Economic Community or not, it will be possible to remit capital for investment in Australia and New Zealand.

The obligations of the United Kingdom after entry into the E.E.C. relate to capital movements between the United Kingdom and other member States of the Community and not to investment in third countries.

Despite the recent experience of unfortunate British investors in some almost non-existent Australian mines, does my right hon. Friend agree that investment by British companies in subsidiaries or in partnership with local capital has been beneficial both to Australia and New Zealand and to this country, and will he see that it continues?

I touched on this matter in the debate on the Budget and explained why we considered it necessary to retain the voluntary programme for the time being. The important thing in relation to the Question is that no undertaking has been given to the E.E.C. on this matter of the voluntary programme.

25.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the cost to the Exchequer of raising annually the income tax age relief, age exemption and small income relief by sufficient to compensate those living on small fixed incomes for the additional cost of living resulting from Great Britain joining the Common Market as set out in paragraph 43 of Command Paper No. 4715.

It is not possible to provide such an estimate, but I would refer my hon. Friend to Paragraph 90 of Cmnd. 4715.

Will my hon. Friend ask his right hon. Friend to make such an undertaking, as it would go a long way to allay the fears of people on small fixed incomes about entry into the Common Market, which is so desirable?

I am afraid that I could not do that. My hon. Friend will, no doubt, have noticed that one consequence of the new system of personal taxation is that small income relief and age relief will be unnecessary as they will be abolished from 1973 onwards. The income tax limit for age exemption is being increased both this year and next.

Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that part of the Government's pledges regarding entry to the Common Market is that people in receipt of social service benefits will be protected? Why does he make this unfair discrimination? There are masses of people on small fixed incomes with whom it is difficult to deal, and those who are in favour of going into the Common Market, as I am, are as entitled to have their ideas put into operation and assurances given to them as are others. It is a question not only of wanting to convert the anti-Marketeers, but of wanting to reassure the pro-Marketeers.

Naturally, I appreciate the point which my hon. Friend has made. It was for that reason that I referred my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby) to paragraph 90 of the Cmnd. Paper.

Economic Assessment

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he has completed his mid-year economic assessment; and if he will make a statement on the economic correctives he has in mind.

13.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he has completed his review of the state of the economy; and if he will make a statement.

I would refer hon. Members to the statement I made on 19th July.

Does not the Chancellor agree that his statement holds out little prospect of any reduction of unemployment in the United Kingdom and no possibility of reduction in the excessively high unemployment levels we are experiencing in Scotland?

No, Sir, I disagree entirely, for the reasons which I gave last Tuesday.

My right hon. Friend told us in his Budget Statement that he was not in favour of attempting to fine tune the economy. Will he, therefore, confirm that if it should transpire that the repercussions of the measures taken last week are reflected more slowly than expected in the economy, he would not be inclined to add to the measures that he applied last week in advance of seeing them achieve their purpose?

As I have said on many occasions, the principle I have applied throughout is that I believe the only sensible way for any Chancellor is to take whatever action is required when it is required.

Does not the Chancellor admit that his mini-Budget represents a complete reversal of his previous policy? If not, will he confirm that he does not intend to go for 4 to 4½ per cent. growth for more than a year and that at the end of that time he intends to apply the brakes again and go back to 3 per cent.?

No, Sir. I believe that the action which I took and which I announced last week is very sensible in the circumstances.

Is it not a fact that, including the latest measures, the Government have now reduced taxation by well over £1,000 million in just over a year, and that this is greatly welcomed by the country as a refreshing change from the policy of their predecessors?

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right.

Money Supply

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what he estimates to be the increase in the money supply in the third quarter of 1971.

I would again refer my hon. Friend to the answer my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary gave on 18th May to my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant).—[Vol. 817, c. 1064–5.]

Will my hon. Friend say whether the Government's policy on money supply is now passive or neutral and, if it is neutral, what rate of inflation and what rate of real expansion the increase in the money supply is intended to accommodate?

The objective of the money policy is to find a middle course between excessive monetary tightness, which would impede the growth of industrial output which we want, and excessive monetary ease, which would give an additional boost to demand above what is appropriate.

Investment Incentives

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will undertake an urgent review of investment incentives, in view of the latest figures of industrial production.

I would refer the hon. Member to the statement which my right hon. Friend made on Monday, 19th July.

But is not the hon. Gentleman aware that that statement represents the second major change in investment incentives in nine months, and does not this smack of tinkering? How does the hon. Gentleman expect the business community, including nationalised industry, to undertake long-term planning on such shifting bases? Finally, how does he expect the nationalised industries, especially the steel industry, in view of the announced policy of price restraint, to secure its long-term investment policy without being thrown eventually on to State funding?

The steel industry is, of course, the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. On the more general point which the hon. Gentleman makes in the first part of his supplementary question, it is our view that the additional incentives which have been announced recently are complementary to those which were given earlier and do not, therefore, reflect a discontinuity of policy which would have disadvantages of the kind suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

World Bank (Consultations)

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he last had consultations with representatives of the World Bank; and if he will make a statement.

I met Mr. McNamara, the President, when he came to London in April, and we discussed some of the problems facing the World Bank.

Does not the job of being President of the World Bank involve the exercise of moral authority without vindictiveness in as adult a manner as possible? In the light of the Pentagon papers, will the British Government, with other countries, raise the question whether Mr. McNamara is the best person to continue in this job?

No, Sir. If the hon. Gentleman had had the advantage which I had of discussing the affairs of the World Bank with the developing countries, and if he had been present at the meeting of the World Bank which Mr. McNamara addressed, he would take a very different view. Mr. McNamara has a very distinguished and successful record as President of the World Bank. Loan commitments have approximately doubled since he took over and the resources of the International Development Association have trebled. Taking all these matters into account, I think that most developing countries would agree with me when I say that Mr. McNamara is proving to be an excellent President of the World Bank.

Building Societies (Interest Rates)

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what recent communication he has received from the Building Societies Association on the subject of interest rates; and if he will make a statement.

None, Sir.

Is the Minister aware that there is growing public indignation about the building societies still charging 8½ per cent. interest to mortgage borrowers when Bank Rate has been reduced to 6 per cent? In addition, the building societies have benefited from a 50 per cent. reduction in S.E.T. and a reduction in corporation tax and income tax. When will the general public get some benefit from this reduction, and will the Chancellor make immediate representations to the building societies' organisation to get the interest rates down?

As was made clear in my exchange with the hon. Gentleman at a recent Question Time, building society mortgage rates are essentially a matter for the societies concerned and not for the Government.

Does my hon. Friend remember that in our recent exchange on this matter, when I asked him whether he would consider referring this ring relating to interest rates to the Monopolies Commission, he said he was considering the matter under the whole question of credit control? Has he anything further to say on that subject?

With respect to my hon. and learned Friend, I think I pointed out that this was a matter for the Department of Trade and Industry. It is, of course, relevant to the question of control. The consultative document which was issued by the Bank of England makes reference to this and indicates that the authorities are aware of the overall question of monetary control and will bear in mind building society interest rates.

£ Sterling (Purchasing Power)

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the purchasing power of the £ sterling now, taking it as 100p on 18th June, 1970.

On the basis of the movement in the General Index of Retail Prices, the purchasing power of the £ fell by 9·3 per cent. between mid-June, 1970, and mid-June, 1971, the latest date for which information is available. In money terms this is equivalent to a fall from 100p to about 90½p.

Is the Minister aware that, with Tory inflation at its present ruinous rate, the effect of the cut in purchase tax which the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced with such a vainglorious flourish last week will be completely wiped out three weeks from now?

I have pointed out to the hon. Gentleman on earlier occasions that the previous Administration must carry a great deal of responsibility for the situation. In regard to the reference to the cut in purchase tax, the hon. Gentleman is taking the rather narrow view of the measures we have recently announced. In addition to the cut in purchase tax, there were the cut in S.E.T., the limitation which my hon. Friend announced on nationalised industry prices and also the C.B.I. initiative, which was generally welcomed.

On the matter of purchase tax, would my hon. Friend bear in mind that the reduction from 36⅔ per cent. to 30 per cent. on motor cars, coupled with the freeing of all hire-purchase restrictions, has led to an enormous demand for motor cars? As this will cause manufacturers to be able to work their plant to the extent of 100 per cent. instead of 80 per cent., will my hon. Friend appeal to manufacturers to reduce the prices of all their motor cars on the home market?

I always listen very carefully to what my hon. Friend says——

I am sure you do.

—with regard both to purchase tax and to the car industry. I do not doubt that his views will also be noted by that industry.

Is it not a fact that inflation at the moment under the present Government is still accelerating, that the policies which were pursued until last week have totally failed and that the heavy increase in unemployment has been produced by a policy which is now discredited and largely abandoned?

I believe that our policies are effective and, as my right hon. Friend pointed out on Monday, we have now reached a further stage in the battle against inflation, which we are determined to win. I believe that we have the support of the country in the measures we have taken throughout.

Social Security Benefits (Taxation)

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his latest estimate of the tax revenue to be derived from the taxation of sickness, unemployment and supplementary benefits at present exempt from tax; and what adjustments in the standard rate of income tax will be required to offset the extension of taxation to such benefits.

For sickness and unemployment benefit about £175 million, equivalent to about 1p off the standard rate. I cannot make an estimate for supplementary benefits but the yield is unlikely to be large.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the present P.A. Y. E. system is grossly unfair and that the way in which it operates causes great resentment among regular workers and old-age pensioners because all their pay ranks for taxation while others are exempt?

I think that my hon. Friend's arguments make a case in principle for taxing short-term National Insurance benefits. There is great difficulty in finding a method of doing so which does not involve a disproportionately high administrative cost.

Capital Gains Tax

10.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will seek to abolish capital gains tax.

No, Sir.

Irrespective of whether or not the tax is equitable, is not the primary effect to inhibit anybody selling anything and to prevent investment switching? In the long term does not this have disastrous effects on investment and the economy?

I remind my hon. Friend that we have never rejected capital gains tax in principle, but we have always thought it had a number of defects. This year's Finance Bill includes methods of removing three of them. My right hon. Friend has made clear that we are continuing to study capital gains tax. We shall take note of the point made by my hon. Friend.

Will my hon. Friend look at the cost of the collection/ yield ratio when considering capital gains tax on tangible moveable property? Will he also bear in mind the anomaly that under this part of the tax system one can be taxed even if one gives an asset to the nation?

And even if one is burgled.

My hon. Friend has made that point in different circumstances, but I will bear it in mind.

Will my hon. Friend also consider that aspect of tax under which liability arises where there has been an increase in money value but no increase in the real value of the asset?

Yes. I think that the point made by my right hon. Friend about taxation versus inflation should be carefully considered.

Prices And Incomes Policy

11.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will now make a statement on his recent discussions with the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry on the subject of a prices and incomes policy.

The measures I announced on 19th July and the C.B.I. initiative on price restraint go a long way to meet the hopes which have been expressed by the T.U.C. I look forward to the further discussions which are to take place at the N.E.D.C. meeting on 4th August.

Is the Chancellor of the Exchequer aware that his conversion to a prices and incomes policy is belated though welcome? In view of the fact that the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. are now showing fresh interest in this matter, subject to certain conditions, does he not agree that a few hours' discussion at the N.E.D.C. is grossly inadequate? Would he consider establishing regular machinery so that the debate about a prices and incomes policy can be hammered out during the next few months?

The Government's relations with both the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. are good. If any meetings additional to those which take place under the auspices of N.E.D.C. are necessary, further meetings will be held.

What steps does the Chancellor intend to take on the new White Paper in regard to rents, which for many local authority tenants will result in a rent increase of over 5 per cent? How does he expect the T.U.C. to stand still and not make wage applications when rent increases will exceed the 5 per cent. put forward by the C.B.I.?

We have gone a long way on prices, and we have done what the T.U.C. has asked us to do and what the previous Government never did: we have taken action directly to affect prices. By reducing S.E.T. by half and by the cuts in purchase tax which I announced last week, there is no doubt that we have taken action. I hope that the T.U.C. will now consider what helpful action it can take to ensure that future pay settlements do not undermine the better outlook we now have on prices.

In view of the new situation following the measures the Chancellor has taken in relation to his claims concerning S.E.T. and purchase tax, can he give us his estimate of the likely rate of price increase over the next 12 months?

No, Sir. Furthermore, the right hon. Gentleman never did so, and I am sure he was very wise.

Prices

14.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer having regard to continuing inflation, what new steps he now proposes to restrain price rises.

My hon. Friend has always been a critic of purchase tax, and he will have noted that the reduction in the rates of purchase tax which I recently announced to the House has led to price cuts over a wide range of goods. In addition, I welcome the initiative of the C.B.I. and the response of the nationalised industries over price restraint.

I warmly embrace my right hon. Friend as a front-runner in purchase tax matters and congratulate him on his important arrangements with the nationalised industries to confine their price advances to 5 per cent. in the coming 12 months. What steps is he taking on deficit financing by nationalised industry industries where, for example, on the railways in the commuter belt in the South-East——

Order. The other day the hon. Gentleman said to a Minister, "Hurry, hurry". I now say, "Hurry, hurry" to the hon. Gentleman.

Though I do not wish to hurry my right hon. Friend unduly, may I ask him to say what he proposes to do about deficit financing, as, for example, with the railways in the South-East, which are advancing by only 5 per cent. as against the 30 per cent. asked for?

It is true that there will be additional demands on the National Loans Fund as a result of the policy I announced and to which the nationalised industries have agreed. My hon. Friend will bear in mind, however, that the nationalised industries will benefit from increased output and increased turnover as a result of the measures I announced and also from pay increases which will be at a lower rate than they otherwise would have been.

Is not the situation that the Government are now backing price moderation by nationalised industries, whereas their policy will have no control over private industry? Is this not only unfair but also unwise?

Whatever the hon. Gentleman my think, the country at large welcomes the C.B.I.'s initiative and also the response of the nationalised industries.

Will my right hon. Friend say whether the non-response of the American-dominated private sector in this country is due to fears of anti-trust action in America? If not, what is the reason for their very strange out-of-step behaviour?

There was a very misleading report in certain newspapers. I saw it in one newspaper on Saturday. It may be that my hon. and learned Friend has been misled. I have been informed that the Ford Company has announced that it intends to sign. I have also been informed that Chrysler and Vauxhall have not decided yet. I am told that the report which appeared in some newspapers on Saturday that Chrysler and Vauxhall had decided not to sign is quite untrue. Generally, the information coming to the C.B.I. is that the responses to its initiative so far are very favourable.

Will the right hon. Gentleman now answer the question put to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon)? Is not the purpose of these measures to take it out on the Government's own employees, for example, by giving senior scientists in five grades a zero pay award?

No, Sir. There is a system of pay research, and we have abided by it.

17.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the current position concerning the reduction of prices due to the cutting of the selective employment tax.

A large number of price cuts have been made, and I am satisfied that the halving of S.E.T. has brought a real benefit to the consumer.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his gross complacency is not appreciated by housewives who have received no tangible benefit at all from these cuts? Would not it have been infinitely preferable if, the Government having decided to give away this money, they had decided not to impose their niggardly policies with regard to school meals and school milk?

I must first correct the hon. Gentleman's impression about giving away this money. He means not taking it in tax from those who have earned it. That is not the same thing. I am satisfied that my right hon. Friend's recent measures will have and are having the effect intended. Prices are beginning to come down, including food prices.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that a substantial number of retail shops—the Co-op, Tesco, Sainsbury and the like—have been cutting prices as a result of the halving of S.E.T.? Perhaps my right hon. Friend will arrange to supply extra spectacles to hon. Gentlemen opposite who do not want to see the facts.

I am happy to have confirmation from my hon. Friend of some information that I obtained from Woman's Own London Extra that even beef prices have come down.

Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that his right hon. Friend's recent measures are totally different in kind from the cut in S.E.T.? If the S.E.T. cut has had such a dramatic effect on prices, why did not the Chancellor of the Exchequer cut the second half this time instead of reducing purchase tax?

I am aware that the S.E.T. cut was different in kind. It is the tax which to a great extent comes into food prices. On the whole, purchase tax does not. I am equally confident that, taken together, my right hon. Friend's measures will provide the answer that he seeks.

Harps (Taxation)

15.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will reclassify the harp from being a movable to an immovable instrument for tax purposes.

While I cannot accede to my hon. Friend's request to classify the harp as he suggests, I did last week reduce the tax on harps from 36⅔ per cent. to 30 per cent., and I hope that this has been duly noted in high places.

Are not organs exempt altogether from purchase tax? What possible reason can there be for distinguishing between organists and harpists, especially as the harp is a higher instrument in every sense of the word? Cannot we therefore have exemptions for harps and justice for members of the harp-playing classes?

My hon. Friend is known as a very versatile man. If he were to extend his musical prowess to organs or, I am informed, to bells of the kind available for installation in a belfry, he would obtain these instruments free of purchase tax.

Scottish Bank Notes

16.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will take steps to publicise the circulation of Scottish bank notes as acceptable currency; and if he will make a statement.

No, Sir. It is for the public to decide whether to accept Scottish bank notes; I understand they are accepted by banks and many commercial concerns in England.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the recent case of a London hotelier refusing to accept Scottish bank notes from a Scots family who came into his hotel for dinner, and that the members of that family found themselves in a London police station on a Sunday evening trying to solve the difficulty? Is the hon. Gentleman further aware that during the last four weeks a London taxi driver has refused to accept a Scottish bank note from me? Is not it about time that the Treasury took action and told these reluctant business people unequivocally that a Scots bank note is legal tender and is a perfectly acceptable means of exchange in London as elsewhere?

On previous occasions, the hon. Gentleman has suggested that Scottish bank notes should be made legal tender. As I understand it, that is essentially what he argues now. However, in view of the numbers of different Scottish notes, I do not think that it is a move which would be welcomed by the public.

Can the hon. Gentleman say what discussions the Treasury has had with the Scottish banks on the Government's consultative document on credit policy? Is he aware that there is a fear that, as a result of the document, there will be a reduction of the liquidity ratio of Scottish banks and a reduction of credit financing in Scotland?

The proposals to which the hon. Gentleman has referred seek to put all banks on an equal competitive footing. Within this framework, the problems arising from the banks' note issue will receive sympathetic consideration with the aim of finding a solution which will enable the banks to continue their note issue.

To avoid any misunderstanding, alarm and despondency, would not the simple solution be to abolish Scottish bank notes altogether? Are not Treasury notes in sufficient supply to meet all demands, even at the present deflated value of the £?

I get the impression that that is not a proposal which would commend itself in all parts of the House.

Value-Added Tax

18.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has for increasing employment on value-added tax in Scotland.

I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary gave him on 6th July.—[Vol. 820, c. 314–16.]

Since V.A.T. is administratively a good deal more complicated than the taxes that it will replace, will not many thousands of additional jobs be created by its introduction? In those circumstances, is not it absurd and scandalous that the headquarters for this new tax should be located in Southend and not in a development area?

I do not accept that. We took into account all regional considerations. The hon. Gentleman will know from answers which my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has given him that a great many of the offices will be located throughout the country. But clearly one has also to take into consideration factors such as efficiency and the need to reduce the total numbers employed on the administration of the tax. The decision that we have taken with regard to the location at Southend for that part which necessarily has to be centralised is, we believe, the right one.

19.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has for the use of computers in the administration of value-added tax.

An ICL System 4/72 computer will be used to issue tax return forms, account for tax payments, and provide information for management and control purposes.

Surely the hon. Gentleman knows that this will not completely serve the administrative functions to which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) has just referred. Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that to administer V.A.T. without a thorough-going computerised system will involve the country in a weight of paper work from which we shall never emerge? Will not the hon. Gentleman reconsider the possibility that the system could be more fully computerised and that the computer centre should be situated somewhere else than Southend?

I have indicated already the reasons for the choice of Southend. Clearly, this is a matter of hitting a balance on the degree of computerisation. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's strictures about the amount of paper work involved. We believe that the solution is the optimum in terms of economic efficiency.

Cost Of Living Index

20.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the reduction in the Cost of Living Index resulting from a 10 per cent. downward adjustment in purchase tax, fuel tax and excise duty.

A reduction of 10 per cent. in the duties on tobacco, alcoholic drink and hydrocarbon oil and in the purchase tax would now have an effect of about 1¼ per cent. on the Cost of Living Index.

While adding my congratulations to those being expressed throughout the country for the Chancellor's reductions in purchase tax—the first since the previous Conservative Government in 1963—and the massive reductions in prices which are already in evidence in every High Street, may I ask whether my hon. Friend agrees that the next stage in reducing the burden of taxes imposed by the Labour Government ought to be on fuel tax, which would reduce distribution and transportation costs?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his initial remarks. My right hon. Friend considered all the various possibilities, and I think that it was right to do so in the circumstances. In our view, however, the priorities which we have set ourselves at this stage are the right ones.

Public Expenditure

21.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his latest estimate of the percentage increase in public spending, and of the share of public expenditure in gross domestic product at factor cost in the current financial year.

Allowing for the additions to public expenditure in 1971–72 announced since the Budget estimates, the increase is 2·5 per cent. at constant prices, including the relative price effect, over the provisional outturn for 1970–71. This total is equivalent in size to about 51 per cent. of estimated gross domestic product at factor cost.

What additions will result from the public sector spending programmes announced before 19th July and from the measures announced on 19th July? Will my hon. Friend tell the House whether it remains Government policy to ensure that the proportion of the nation's resources preempted by the public sector shall be reduced?

My hon. Friend will be aware that some of the announced increases in public expenditure have been for limited purposes and, to some extent, limited periods. The Government's purpose remains to reduce the proportion which is pre-empted by the public sector.

Capital Expenditure (Free Depreciation)

22.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the cost to the Exchequer of granting free depreciation of capital expenditure for the 18 months from October, 1971, to April, 1973.

The cost to the Exchequer of increasing the rate of the first-year allowance to 100 per cent. for expenditure during a period of 18 months from 1st October, 1971, on those classes of plant and machinery which, following the announcement of 19th July, will qualify for the 80 per cent. rate is broadly estimated to be some £15 million in 1972–73, £65 million in 1973–74 and £45 million in 1974–75.

I thank the Chancellor of the Exchequer for having anticipated this Question in his Budget Statement last week. It is welcome to the House to be taken fully into the confidence of the Treasury before the Summer Recess. Could this be made an annual practice?

As usual, I am grateful for the originality as well as the point of my hon. Friend's comments.

2½P Coins

26.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will direct the Bank of England to request the joint stock banks to issue 2½p coins freely and not just on demand.

It is for the banks' customers to draw the coins that they require.

I am grateful for that reply. Is my hon. Friend aware that the joint stock banks are deliberately refusing to issue sixpences? They have no space in their tills. If one asks for sixpences, one grudgingly gets them from dirty paper bags. This is one reason why London Transport and other transport undertakings are having to increase their fares. Will my hon. Friend use his influence in this matter?

I note what my hon. Friend has said. If he will send me the details, I will certainly look into the matter.

Social And Economic Policies

Q1.

asked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the Government's implementation of their social and economic policies; and if he will make a statement.

Yes, Sir.

Is the Prime Minister therefore saying that he is satisfied with the standard of living of old-age pensioners, which has consistently declined under this Government, and whose pension increase this autumn has already been wiped out by inflation?

We have carried out our undertaking to review pensions, and pensioners will receive the largest increase ever in September.

Will my right hon. Friend make it clear to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, as well as to the country as a whole, that the Government have already implemented a very large number of the social and economic policies which they pledged themselves to implement at the General Election?

All those who study the matter will know that there are many formerly deprived groups in this country being helped today who were never helped before.

Beyond the charge and counter-charge, does the Prime Minister accept that because of the extraordinary increase in the cost of living, particularly in those areas where most of the expenditure of old-age pensioners goes, as anybody who has been in touch with groups of pensioners knows, there is now a need for the figures to be taken up and for a further review to be instituted at once?

No, Sir; I do not accept that.

European Economic Community

Q2.

asked the Prime Minister if the public statement made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department in a television broadcast on 9th July in relation to the proposed entry of the United Kingdom into the European Economic Community represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

Yes, Sir.

Is the Prime Minister aware that the Home Secretary is on record as condeming the protectionist policies of the Six and Britain's possible entry into a Federal Europe? Why do the pro-Marketeers, such as the Prime Minister, proclaim the Home Secretary's stand and not condemn his apostasy and infidelity to principle? Why are they so quick to condemn those who challenge Britain's entry into Europe and, indeed, thus sell out Britain's interests?

The Home Secretary, in winding up the debate last night, made an admirable speech which I hope the hon. Gentleman heard.

So that the country may have as much factual and unbiased information as possible on the issues of the great debate will my right hon. Friend try to persuade the Leader of the Opposition to rewrite a shortened popular version of that section of his memoirs which deals with his enthusiastic attempt to enter the Common Market, and, in order that the public may decide whether he was being politically honest in 1967 or is being politically honest now, will my right hon. Friend give permission for that popular version of the story to be released free through the Post Office?

I doubt whether I could persaude the Leader of the Opposition to do that, unless I invited him round for a drink.

Will the Prime Minister tell us what the Home Secretary did not tell us last night: whether the heavy consequential legislation to be presented to the House, if we decide to go into the Common Market, will be amendable or not?

The hon. Gentleman had better await the legislation.

Accepting the Prime Minister's kind invitation, and in view of the Daily Mail account of what happens on these occasions, if only one glass is brought in will he undertake not to hog the whole lot himself?

The right hon Gentleman has already accepted my hospitality on official occasions; so he knows the answer to that.

Q4.

asked the Prime Minister what discussions he has had with Heads of Government of the European Economic Community about the advantages to third countries, particularly to developing countries, of enlargement of the Community.

In my discussions with Heads of Government of the Six I have found widespread recognition of the major contribution which an enlarged Community would be able to make to the relief of world poverty and the promotion of world trade and development.

Has not the Community so far a much better record than ourselves in providing aid to the Third World? Will my right hon. Friend hope that when we join the Community many hon. Members opposite who feel that this is a retrograde step as regards the Third World will see that our contribution will increase to the same level as that of the members of the Six?

I think it is agreed amongst many in the House that the record of the Community in aid to the developing world is a good one. Associated status under Part IV of the Treaty of Rome corresponds roughly to our Commonwealth preferences in the developing world. As for official development aid in 1970, which is the latest year for which a figure is available——

Reading.

If the hon. Gentleman wants the figures he will get them. The total from the Community was 2,017 million dollars, which represents 0·42 per cent. of G.N.P., compared to our 0·37 per cent. of G.N.P. Its financial aid from official Government sources was a greater proportion of G.N.P. than was our own. The Community has also taken the lead on the generalised preference arrangements, which will now be extended to the Commonwealth countries in the developing world as well as to Hong Kong.

Is not the only reason why the member States of the Community have been able to devote a greater percentage of their G.N.P. to helping the under-developed countries that they have not spent in the post-war years, and are still not today spending, as much of their G.N.P. on defence as we are?

The average expenditure of members of the Six in N.A.T.O. is not as high as ours, but I do not believe that this is the reason why they have been able to help the developing world more. Even if we were to take the view that their defence expenditure had an impact on the amount they give to the developing world, it would surely destroy the argument that they do not care for the developing world and that the Community is a selfish capitalist club.

Q5.

asked the Prime Minister what plans he has for official visits to development areas in the next three months, in order to explain officially the effect on them of British entry into the European Economic Community.

I intend to make a number of speeches over the next few months in various parts of the country on Britain and the European Communi- ties, which will cover the implications of entry for the United Kingdom as a whole, including the development areas.

Will the Prime Minister give an assurance that he will not come to West Fife? Will he consider publishing a separate White Paper outlining the effects of development area policy and its relationship to our prospective membership of the E.E.C? Why did the Government see fit to produce three cursory paragraphs in the White Paper on development area policy when they knew full well that there are many people in Britain who are vitally interested in the matter?

I do not think I can give the hon. Gentleman the undertaking that he has asked for, because I happen to like going to Fife and I admire a great deal what they have done there in the way of clearing dereliction, which ought to be emulated by many other areas. The reason why regional policy was dealt with in this way in the White Paper is that it has not been the subject matter of negotiations, for the simple reason that there is no Community regional policy.

Before the Prime Minister goes round the country or elsewhere making speeches, should he not make available much more information for hon. Members and for the country at large so that a proper judgment can be made? Is he aware that, because of the obvious contempt that he apparently has for the people as shown by the paucity of information in the White Paper, many people would not trust him or his Government to go into Shepherd's Bush Market let alone the Common Market?

The White Paper gave the full details of our negotiations. It has now been discussed for four days in the House in a very full debate in which Ministers have answered the questions which have been raised. The White Paper has been circulated in a popular edition. I am glad that I have the hon. Gentleman's support for that. If there is any further information which he wants, we shall be glad to supply it.

Inflation

Q3.

asked the Prime Minister how many letters he received in his first 12 months of office on inflation; and what replies he has sent.

About 1,600. The replies set out the various measures which the Government have taken over this period to combat the rapidly rising inflation we inherited.

When the Prime Minister replied did he speak, as he did last Saturday, about the great success of the Government and say that it was due to the culmination of a year's hard work? As there has been a net price inflation of 10·3 per cent., will the Prime Minister not work so hard next year? Will he confirm that his policy has not changed and that he has nothing else in mind than leaving prices to find their own level?

I quite understand that the hon. Gentleman does not know the nature of hard work, because the Administration which he supported never resisted wage increases.

Is it not inflationary to perambulate from bookshop to bookshop signing copies of one's memoirs in the hope that when they are remaindered this will keep the price up?

I shall obviously have to consider that carefully. I do not think it is necessarily inflationary, certainly not if it helps to keep down the level of bank advances.

Oldham

Q8.

asked the Prime Minister whether he will pay an official visit to Oldham.

I have at present no plans to do so.

I regret that, because the Prime Minister would be able to explain to the people of Oldham why South-East Lancashire—[HON. MEMBERS: "Question."]—which has the highest proportion of unfit housing in the country is rigidly excluded from any assistance with extra improvement grant under the present Housing Bill—[HON. MEMBERS: "Question."]—just because it is outside any development or intermediate area, even though unemployment in the Oldham area has more than doubled in the last month. Will the Prime Minister explain to the people of Oldham—[HON. MEMBERS: "Question."]—this is a question—in what sense he regards housing need as greater or more deserving in the Conservative pocket boroughs of Bridlington, Filey, Oswestry and Tavistock?

If the hon. Gentleman wants to deal with specific questions about housing, he can table a Question to the Minister who is responsible.

Population

Q12.

asked the Prime Minister whether he will now make a statement as to when Her Majesty's Government propose to accept the recommendations of the Select Committee on Science and Technology with regard to the population of the United Kingdom.

The Government's reply to the recommendations of the Select Committee will be published tomorrow as a White Paper.

Yes, but can my right hon. Friend now give us any indication whether the Government are accepting the recommendations of the Select Committee, which were unanimous and which were published 2½ months ago?

The Government's have given very serious consideration to the Select Committee's Report. I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to await the publication tomorrow so that he can study it in detail.

Instead of all the gloomy talk that is going around about the over-population of the United Kingdom——

The population explosion is not the Prime Minister's fault.

would it not be well to encourage large healthy families and organise migration to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Southern Africa and other parts of the world where it is desirable to maintain the European population?

This is a matter which must be left to the individual concerned.

National Economic Development Council

Q13.

asked the Prime Minister how many meetings of the National Economic Development Council have taken place under his chairmanship since 18th June, 1970.

Three.

At the next meeting of the Council at which the Prime Minister is in the Chair, will he take up the question of the increase in unemployment in the West Midlands in particular? Does he now realise that such a state of affairs has been reached under his Administration that what was originally the heartland of British industry is having just as serious unemployment problems as the formerly depressed regions?

The House knows that these matters were discussed at the last meeting of the N.E.D.C.

Defence Procurement Organisation

Q14.

asked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the coordination between the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Trade and Industry in the setting up of the Defence Procurement Organisation.

Yes, Sir.

Is there not a major row between the civilian department and the military as to who is to have the key jobs, such as the job of Controller, as defined under the Rayner Committee Report?

I had seen that the hon. Gentleman had expressed this view, so I looked into the matter, I find no evidence for his allegations, but if he likes to give me specific evidence of this, of course I will gladly look into it.

Orders Of The Day

Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) (No 2) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed.

That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Before I call the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John), I want to remind the House of what I said at the end of the debate in February on the Consolidated Fund Bill:

"Out of 28 topics originally on my list, only eight were discussed in nearly 17 hours. According to my calculations … apart from Ministerial speeches, there were four speeches of over 40 minutes each, six of over 30 minutes each, and nine of over 20 minutes each."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th February, 1971; Vol. 811, c. 1541.]

I said then that the House should draw its own conclusions from those figures.

Before we tackle this hard day's night, I would point out that there are 29 topics which have been ballotted for. I would ask right hon. and hon. Members to be considerate of other hon. Members who wish to make speeches and to confine their speeches to a reasonably short length.

Environmental Pollution

3.32 p.m.

After so forbidding a warning, I wonder whether I ought to begin and end simultaneously.

This is an apt time to discuss the First Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution since six months have elapsed since it was laid. This may be a commentary on the priority which we accord to this most important subject.

If I have to be critical of the Report, because it does not in many ways measure up to our high hopes, it is right to pay tribute to the Commission's work and to its performance of a vital rôle in modern Britain, without which we would be absolutely lost. Our chief intention in this debate should be to review the Commission's work critically during the year.

It is necessary to be critical for two main reasons—first, that many of the decisions, as the Commission says, are political, to be taken in the available circumstances of the time, and on the sense of priorities which only hon. Members can give. Thus, this debate is an opportunity not only for private Members to express their anxieties or to raise questions of constituency interest, but also, in the absence of governmental time to discuss this Report, to make clear their views on it. The second reason is that it would be a great disservice to the country and the Commission if, because of the existence of the Commission, we were to suspend our critical faculty on this important subject.

That being so, how should we view this Report? The most vital question is finance. I am sorry that the Commission has not dealt with this in the necessary detail. After all, there is a number of different formulae by which we could finance the correction of pollution. The most superficially attractive is to make the polluters pay for the pollution they cause. But hon. Members must appreciate, as must the public, that that means in the end that the public must pay.

That can be done where the polluting agent is a minority interest by imposing a charge upon the users of the service, but in many of the pollution-making industries, such as the large national corporations, which are themselves in a financial plight and which will not readily bear heavy additional burdens, that will mean that the public will have to pay through taxation. So the doctrine of making the polluter pay comes down to this—that the public must be ready to shoulder the burdens to rectify the pollution of industry.

I have assumed that the pollution is either continuing or of recent cessation. Thus, with the National Coal Board, one of the causes of pollution, either the pollution is still in existence or it has ceased so recently that it is identifiable. But, with historical pollution, which in my view is the weakest element in this Report, one is dealing with entities which went out of existence a long time ago. Therefore, where the pollution is long-standing and the cause no longer exists, people are reluctant to do anything.

Page 34 of the Royal Commission Report contains a cursory reference to derelict land and the fact that local authorities can rectify this with rate support grant. But in the areas of historic pollution, the local authorities are at their weakest. They are the areas of the lowest rateable value, and the regressive tax which is our present rate system does not enable them easily to rectify the situation. Therefore, so that the Royal Commission may make a proper choice and realistic recommendations, I should be grateful if the Government would give some indication of their thinking about financing the rectification of pollution, and the principles that they will bear in mind.

I am afraid that this Report has not started with the right sense of priorities. Much time and effort has been expended on Chapter 5 dealing with the global effects of atmospheric pollution. The subject has called for a great deal of work, as we can see, but it is an altogether "trendy" preoccupation. The reality of the situation, which the Report ignores, is that Britain alone cannot effect an improvement in this field without the cooperation of the rest of the world.

Therefore, as it is necessary to discuss the global effects of atmospheric pollution, our efforts should have been devoted to setting up an international body which could study this situation. As it is, the conclusions reached by the Royal Commission on this subject are meagre in the extreme.

On page 46, we read:

"We see no cause for alarm or for crash programmes of research."

Then why, unless it is to follow fashion, should this have been the first subject referred to the Royal Commission. By all means, let it be considered, but to suggest that it has primacy among all the aspects of environmental pollution which afflict us today is ludicrous.

I fear that this "gimmicky" approach is one to which the Royal Commission has succumbed. I fear that the priorities in its Report reflect basically middle-class attitudes towards pollution. For example, on page 31, referring to the debate on this subject which took place on the Consolidated Fund Bill almost exactly a year ago, and which the Minister now present answered, the Royal Commission referred to the number of speakers who had expressed concern about noise, but it made no mention of the large number of speeches, from these benches in particular, which spoke of our older industrial areas and the dereliction which afflicts them.

Let there be no mistake about it: the older industrial areas have experienced pollution and dereliction for a long time. I reject any thought on the part of the Royal Commission or anyone else that the older industrial areas can be expected to bear this state of affairs indefinitely.

At one point in its Report, the Royal Commission appeals for greater individual responsibility, for example, in not leaving derelict cars and bedsteads littering the countryside. But we shall have no chance of creating that sense of responsibility unless the fight against pollution is seen to be part of people's general fight and not just a fight by the suburban "Top-cats" to maintain their suburban privilege in this matter. Too much of a gap has already grown up in Britain between those who say that in order to preserve amenity we must restrict national growth and those who recognise the wider social interest in this respect. Put simply, the former argument is considerably less attractive to the unemployed man who is trying to bring up young children and give them a decent material existence than it is, say, to a doctor or a college lecturer. Unless we close the gap between these two divergent philosophies, we shall never win the wider battle against pollution, and we shall not close that gap unless we tackle the pollution which is most relevant to the experience of the mass of industrial urban Britain.

On page 11, the Commission speaks of "measures to repair past damage". But, in my belief, it does not fully understand the implications of what it says. I do not know whether the Commission considers land dereliction to be within its remit. On page 44, in the summary of conclusions, the Commission seems to speak of the spread of dereliction as being outside its terms of reference. On page 1, on the other hand, it says:

"We have no specific or restricted task".

If the summary is right and the question of derelict land and the spread of derelict land is outside the Royal Commission's remit, I can only regard this as a great gap in its terms of reference.

The Royal Commission must set about two tasks. Certainly, it must tackle the most pressing new problems of pollution, but it must at the same time make a start on relieving the older areas of the pollution which they have known for many generations. A sense of equity, apart from anything else, demands this, for the older areas, as I have said, want to share in "the better tomorrow" tomorrow, not in a hundred years or more. Therefore, unless the Royal Commission deals with this as one of its most urgent priorities, the older industrial areas will, in this respect as in others, be pushed to the back of the queue with every passing whim of fashion.

There are two major requirements. First, the monitoring system for pollution, now one of the great weaknesses, must be taken up by the Royal Commission as one of its earliest priorities. There is precious little, alarmingly little, known about the continuing pollution of our environment which is going on day by day, and there is no readily accessible means of checking it. For example, the dereliction of land is estimated by many reputable authorities to be continuing at the rate of hundreds of acres per year. Yet when I asked the Welsh Office what was its estimate of continuing land dereliction in Wales, it was unable to supply the figures. It has now commissioned a study, but it frankly says that it will take a considerable time to collect the facts. Such knowledge ought to be at the disposal of any Government who hope realistically to tackle the problem, and it should be at the disposal, also, of any Royal Commission.

Although I agree with the Royal Commission about the value of the work done by voluntary associations in combating pollution, I emphasise that these voluntary associations do not work, and cannot hope to work, with the authority and the expertise which a Royal Commission can command. Indeed, I know of at least one society which takes its decisions on whether to classify a particular piece of land as being polluted on the basis of subjective complaints, and often uncorroborated complaints, from its members. It does this for the simple reason that the funds available to the association to check the veracity of complaints of pollution are not available. One appreciates the genuineness of the concern which such people feel for the environment, but one can none the less envisage the inconsistencies and injustice which arise when land is classed as being polluted upon the basis of subjective complaint.

I have already made the point that the Royal Commission must adopt a fair division of approach as between the newer and the older types of pollution. Such is the menace of living in an environment of derelict land that, in my view, the Royal Commission does itself and its case less than justice when it says—this is paragraph 92—

"There are many other more limited topics of importance. Derelict land, for instance, can be cleaned up by local authorities with the aid of grants from central Government, supplemented in certain instances by voluntary efforts, but much derelict land remains."

That is to understate and underplay the danger and very real hardship which arise from the existence of derelict land today. As I have said, this is a topic to which the Royal Commission must pay greater attention if it is to command universal support in its fight against pollution.

Now, Mr. Speaker, in response to your injunction and request for brevity, I add just two or three random points. The Royal Commission rightly says that it cannot be concerned with individual causes of complaint, that is, it cannot act as a sort of environmental ombudsman. But, if that be so, it had better institute some way of monitoring Press reports, local, provincial and national, of such individual cases, for it is often in the individual case that one sees the application of a more general principle to which the Royal Commission could profitably apply itself.

Next—I make this point with my usual lack of contentiousness—we have seen in recent developments the wise way in which the Government can put Government expenditure to a propaganda purpose. If they believe in the seriousness of the fight against pollution, the Government ought to devote to publicising the work of the Royal Commission against environmental pollution a fraction of the concern and the expenditure which they devote to some other topics. In that way, they will reap a harvest in terms of indivi- dual concern and community dedication to the eradication of this problem which will pay them and the nation handsomely.

This has not been a laudatory speech about the First Report of the Royal Commission. Its tone is dictated by the sense of urgency which I feel. There is a great need to transform our inheritance into one which will please our successors. Great idealists tend to forget that the objects of their great thoughts are the individual lives of the men and women who live in Britain today and who will live here in the future. We must translate lofty sentiments into a practical application which will benefit the nation. We all need reminding of that, so that we may chart our course successfully and rightly, so that our fight against pollution and the course which we choose will be the surest and the most beneficial for Britain now and in the years to come.

3.50 p.m.

I shall intervene only briefly to support what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) about derelict areas. Although I understand the Royal Commission's belief that it was not its job to interfere in areas in which other bodies were already working, I am sure that my hon. Friend is right in saying that in all this problem of pollution and of the quality of our environment it is of the utmost importance that this is understood to be a matter of supreme concern to all our people, and not to any one selected group. For that reason, alone, my hon. Friend is right to emphasise this issue, which is of such tremendous concern to so high a proportion of people living in our older industrial areas.

I accept that the Royal Commission has given a special list of the kind of priorities on which it feels other bodies are not at present carrying out any work. I do not quarrel particularly with the emphasis placed by the Commission on the problems of pollution in our estuaries and in our seas, because there is no doubt that these problems, too, affect a large number of people. It is by no means an exclusive interest of a relative minority. It is a matter of real concern, and now that we are making a little hesitant progress—and that is all we can say it is—in our rivers themselves, it is a tragedy that much of that work is being destroyed by the lack of attention, in the past at any rate, to our estuaries; at the point at which they enter the sea.

It has been assumed that the sea can take care of anything that is dumped in it, and that has gone for the estuarial areas, too. I am glad that in my river area of Tyneside the Department has agreed that we should go ahead with the project which has been under review for a long time. There was some check for further examination of it, but I am glad that the scheme for treatment before disposal has been approved, and I take this opportunity of welcoming that.

I hope that in considering the recommendations of the Royal Commission the Minister will take into account certain other very important recommendations that are coming from a number of conferences that axe being held not only in this country but abroad. I recently returned from a conference in Stockholm on the subject of environmental health, which relates very closely, indeed, to all these recommendations, and one in which the public health inspectors in this country have played a large part.

A striking contribution on the wider global side of the problem, was made at the conference by Professor Barry Commoner of the United States, who was trying to concentrate our attention on the supreme importance of the forms of technology that we are using in all our industrial societies, and on the threat which some of these forms of technology may hold for the whole of our environment.

He was arguing that it was not so much a question of population, size and development, nor even so much a question of the standard of wealth, affluence and demand, as one of the particular technical measures that are being adopted to try to provide the mass production that people are demanding. His view is that we need to look very closely, indeed, at many of the processes to which we have become accustomed to see whether the products of those processes, valuable and useful as they are, such as that for the production of synthetic fibres, are not also dangerous, both to our agriculture and, perhaps, in the long-term, to marine life throughout the world.

I think that the Professor was right to direct our attention to this area of the problem so that we can encourage more research into alternative forms of technology and, indeed, into the implications of reverting to the use of more natural fibres, as opposed to artificial ones, on our standard of living and, indeed, on the standards of living of other countries.

I hope that the Minister will pay attention to the matters to which I have referred. I am delighted that at last this country and ordinary people in it are beginning to get woken up to the environmental problems with which they have lived all their lives, but which, for far too long, they have accepted as inevitable. They are not inevitable if we are prepared to pay the price of cleaning them up, and I am therefore delighted that this subject has been raised in the manner that it has by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd.

3.56 p.m.

I apologise for missing the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John). I think that we owe him a debt of gratitude for raising this subject. It seems that we need a Consolidated Fund Bill every year in order to be able to debate environmental pollution and I am sorry that the Government do not provide more time for this subject to be debated.

I begin by paying a special tribute to the Secretary of State for the Environment. My right hon. Friend has shown tremendous enthusiasm and a great deal of imagination in the way that he has taken up his task. I think it is the right concept to regard environment not only as something one discusses in terms of pollution, but also in terms of housing, road transport as well as cleaning up the countryside. Clearly we need what we have in our Minister, a man of exceptional vigour and ability; and I think we are all conscious of how seriously he is taking his job and how much he has already put into it.

What has been done is, of course, a beginning, and I must pay tribute to the previous Government for having a Minister with special responsibility for this problem. That Minister got round to producing a White Paper so near to the General Election that we shall never know how he might have carried out his task. However, I pay tribute to the fact that the previous Government felt that this was a subject which required special Ministerial attention.

I was struck by one remark of the hon. Member for Pontypridd, when he talked about people participating. This is one of the aspects of environmental pollution that has not come through. Ordinary people do not see themselves as environmental polluters. They look to the central Government, or to local government, to clean up the mess. What they will not do is to ask themselves who created the mess in the first place.

I notice that the "Keep Britain Tidy" campaign has come out with the slogan: "For Pete's sake clean up the litter." I assume that "Pete" may be the Secretary of State for the Environment, and I hope that for his sake, and for the sake of any other "Petes" that we may know, we shall take that slogan to heart, because the amount of litter that is left in some of the most beautiful parts of the country every weekend is appalling. I am sure that people who throw away ice-cream paper or leave a bottle on the heather do not think to themselves that they are spoiling their countryside. They just do not connect themselves with the environment in which they live. But they must and then see themselves as one of the great polluters who could do so much, by so little effort, to make so many parts of this country pleasant for themselves and for others.

I want to concentrate my remarks on two items in the Report, one relating to noise and the other to air pollution. I shall confine my remarks to the question of noise from vehicles, aircraft and in industry. We are all aware of aircraft noise. Nobody who lives in central London can escape it. Question Time after Question Time hon. Members with constituencies close to airports ask all sorts of Questions about bringing some form of relief to their hapless constituents. While I know there are grants for the soundproofing of houses, I suggest that to have to live in a house with the windows continuously shut cannot be the sort of environment that most of us would wish upon people.

Is there nothing else that we can do before the quieter-engined aircraft come into service in the middle or towards the end of this decade? I want to offer one suggestion. It may not have much mileage in it, but in my opinion it should be explored. At the moment night flights have to operate out of ariports at a quieter noise level than do daylight flights, by as much as six decibels—and six decibels, because noise is measured on a logarithmic scale, represents a considerable reduction in noise.

I understand that one way in which this is achieved is by aircraft taking off lighter loaded than it would be in daylight and thus requires less power to get into the air. An aircraft that is going to fly across the Atlantic must take its full load of fuel if it is to reach the end of the flight, but I ask my hon. Friend why it is necessary for aircraft on short-haul daylight flights to be so fully loaded with fuel to complete their flights. Can we not insist that aircraft on short-haul flights should not be required to fill their tanks to capacity? After all, any alleviation in noise levels from aircraft during daylight hours would be a great boon.

I also suggest that we should get away from the idea of having a standard noise level for all aircraft operating during the day and another standard for all aircraft operating at night.

Does not the hon. Gentleman concede that the Civil Aviation Bill, which I believe is in the Lords at the moment, by means of a new Clause introduced by the Government in Committee, has laid down a procedure which, if adopted by airport authorities, could bring about the sort of beneficial results of which he speaks?

I agree. I hope that the hon. Member is right. But at the moment there is no clear sign that we shall vary the noise level, according to the length of flight and, therefore, according to how much fuel must be carried.

I turn now to the question of vehicle and motor-cycle noise. These are two old chestnuts. We probably all agree that it is not the new car or the new motor cycle that we have to worry about, but the old banger and the motor cycle that has been modified by its owner. The people who drive those cars or ride those motor cycles fit into my category of people who do not think of themselves as polluters of the environment but who cause a tremendous amount of nuisance and discomfort to many other people. To catch them we are forced into the position of creating better enforcement measures than we possess at the moment.

Ever since the police disappeared into their panda cars and we lost the man on the beat, they have forfeited the ability to stop the banger that goes by or the loud motor cycle simply because they do not hear them. If we are not to have the man on the beat we must try to find some one else whose job is to do with traffic who can enforce the law as a result of what he hears. Better than that, he could carry a hand-held noise meter, since the meters laid down in the motor vehicle regulations are almost useless in city centres because there is no space to;set them up according to the provisions in the regulations.

There seems to be one man—I use the word generically—who can fulfil this task, namely, the traffic warden. He is continuously on the beat. He is continuously in touch with vehicles. He surely could be equipped with a handheld noise meter and could be responsible for instituting prosecutions against offending motorists who do not keep their vehicles in order.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Transport vehicle tests could be made much more stringent in terms of checking for faulty silencers, squealing brakes, and so on. The combination of stricter tests for vehicles and men on the beat with noise meters to catch those who break the noise regulations would do much to dissuade people from being so careless about the noise emitted by their vehicles.

My next point relates particularly to heavy vehicles, although it could apply to cars. I believe that in America they have tried out the idea of setting up noise metering stations on the main roads into cities. We all know about the radar traps, which are quite effective. I suggest that we should have something similar using noise monitoring equipment.

In this case the noise requirements in the vehicle regulations could come into play because there is space to set up such stations by the roadside. These, equipped with some form of television camera taking photographs of the number plates of vehicles going through, could give us a record of the law-breakers as they come into our cities. That information, fed into the Scotland Yard computer, would allow us to apprehend the drivers and insist that their vehicles are tested. Their owners would then be fined if their vehicles were clearly shown to have been making far too much noise.

So much for vehicles, motor cycles and aircraft. We must also remember the drivers who drive without regard for other people—the young men in their sports cars who at midnight must rev up their engines before beginning their journeys. They do not think for a moment of the people who are trying to sleep and will be given a rough night. They, too, should be made aware of the fact that they are environmental polluters. I repeat; people must see themselves in terms of environmental pollution, and the Government must insist on laws which can be enforced and which will restrict these polluters from making the noise for which they are at present responsible.

The solution to lorry noise is in the end a network of lorry routes, which I have continually advocated. They would take heavy lorries making their way to the ports out of all urban areas and away from small towns and villages where, quite apart from noise, their vibration does considerable damage.

We must also bear in mind the suggestion of the Association of Public Health Inspectors for noise-free zones in the cities. A noise-free zone with vehicles may be difficult to achieve, but having seen at least one electric car demonstrated in the London area I feel that such vehicles might do a great deal to make life more bearable.

Lastly, on the question of noise, I want to speak about deafness. Many of us were amazed that a charity entertainment arranged this year by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf did not receive sufficient support to enable it to take place in the centre of London. Commenting on it the Institute's journal makes the point that deafness is a handicap to which most of us are insufficiently sympathetic. A deaf person often causes irritation. To have to raise one's voice continually in conversation is something that one seldoms wants to do. I believe deafness to be one of the most serious and unfortunate social disabilities that any human being can suffer. If one thinks of all the things which are denied to a deaf person, one will perhaps have a great deal more sympathy for those suffering from this affliction. I suggest that if we are considering any sort of revision of the Factory Acts we should consider adding a provision which will allow compensation to be paid to those who are made deaf by the noise within which they have to work.

My final point on the question of motor vehicles relates to fumes and smoke. I am convinced that better checks on lorries in particular would root out many of the offenders whom we see so frequently in our streets. Indeed, one does not have to drive in London for long before coming across this nuisance. Lorries pouring out unburned diesel smoke on all and sundry can easily be made less offensive if the engines are properly adjusted.

I was very impressed by a visit that I paid to the London Transport garage at Chiswick, where I saw the enormous amount of trouble which is taken there to make sure that the vaporisers in the engines are continually adjusted. As they say themselves, any sign of a large emission of smoke from a bus will very quickly be got at by the mechanics. Indeed, the driver is specially requested to observe in one of his mirrors whether his bus is making any smoke. At the moment a very good job is being done with London buses, but the same does not apply to other vehicles in London, particularly lorries. Very often the lorries are under-powered, which causes the drivers to race their engines and use their engines at a higher power. This in turn creates more diesel smoke. Very often the amount of maintenance done on the engines seems to allow them to become smoky.

There are not enough prosecutions, and so these smoky vehicles go through the centres of our cities making life unbearable for people. I suggested a handheld noise meter. If we cannot have a hand-held smoke meter, can we have smoke meters installed in the cabs of these vehicles so that the drivers would get some warning when their vehicles become inefficient? They could then be taken into a garage where the engines could be adjusted. I believe that prosecutions are necessary. Until people start paying for polluting the atmosphere they will not take any of our exhortations very seriously. I ask the Minister to give special thought to the possibility of enforcement of the smoke limits and the prosecution of those who exceed them.

Lastly I wish to refer to the possibilities of electricity and liquified petroleum gas for driving particularly in cities. I was very sorry indeed that in the Finance Bill there was a Clause imposing a tax on L.P.G. This, in my opinion, is one of the few pollution-free fuels in this country. At the moment there are only about 1,000 vehicles running on it, but it is an ideal fuel for vehicles such as buses, taxis and indeed any heavy vehicles running in an urban area. I know that we have not yet decided the rate of duty to be imposed, and I very much hope that the duty will not be so high as to dissuade people from converting those sorts of vehicles to use it. It costs about £150 to convert a vehicle, so that the idea that it will become attractive to ordinary motorists is not a strong argument. But until we have a pollution-free fuel or a better made diesel engine which will burn fuel more thoroughly, we shall have to live with the problem of smoke and carbon monoxide. Therefore, we must not discourage the use of any fuel or mechanical device which may reduce that amount of pollution.

I ask my hon. Friend to give as much thought as he can to encouraging the use of fuels like L.P.G. within our cities, and in particular to give us some idea of how much progress is being made in terms of getting a suitable heavy duty battery which will make electrical vehicles a reality.

I have concentrated almost exclusively on two problems arising from motor vehicles. Both of them cause a great deal of nuisance, loss of amenity and sometimes ill health to many thousands, if not millions, of people every day. I welcome the opportunity of raising these subjects and I look forward to my hon. Friend's reply.

4.16 p.m.

I hope that the hon. Member for New Forest (Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson), who spoke in last year's debate, will forgive me if I do not follow him. We are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) for initiating this debate on environmental pollution. It is only right, I think, that the hon. Member for Pontefract should support him, since I too on 21st July last year took part in a similar debate on pollution.

We in the West Riding know what pollution is. We seem to have more pollution than anybody—pollution of the air, water and soil, as well as all the other kinds of pollution. It is not only an extremely important subject. It is real. It is with us. In fact, it is too real. Nobody seems to be able to tackle it adequately.

The debate is based on the First Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. I hope I shall be forgiven if I appear to be a little sceptical because the Report—I am basing my speech on Chapter III, page 24, paragraph 58—gives the impression that the Committee has not really got down to this part of the problem. I am referring to the pollution caused by hard detergents flowing into our rivers. We in Pontefract have a special interest in this because in one of the towns in my constituency the river runs right through the centre, and we get the worst of everything. In fact, we bear the brunt of all the river pollution in the shape of foam which is worse there than in any other city or town in the United Kingdom.

The Report says:

"Pollution by hard detergents is far less of a problem now than it was a decade ago, because modern household detergents are broken down by bacteria (that is, they are 'biodegradable')."

The Report should have said that the bacteria in the water eats them up. The Report goes on to say:

"However, detergents used in textile factories are less easy to make biodegradable, and effluents containing these detergents are liable to cause foaming in rivers."

Liable! It does cause foaming in rivers, as the photographs which I handed to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths) show. In fact, they had to be seen to be believed. Paragraph 58 goes on to say:

"But here, too, progress toward biodegradable detergents is being made, so that the end of this problem should soon be in sight, even though total detergent consumption in Britain continues to rise."

In an affluent society, the consumption of detergents will continue to rise. Women will want their husband's shirts to be brighter than those of their neighbours. I do not want to give a "commercial" by mentioning names, but women use certain brands of detergents to get the clothes whiter. But the harder the detergent, the whiter it makes the clothes, the dirtier our rivers become.

Back to soap.

No. That would be like going back to the old days when black lead was used on grates.

I was not a Member of the House when the previous Conservative Government set up the Standing Committee on Technical Detergents. That was over 13 years ago. Perhaps I shall be forgiven for, so to speak, transporting myself back 13 years and quoting from the First Report of the Standing Committee on Technical Detergents. I hoped that it would be the forerunner of better things but, although it did a good job, it did not find a solution.

I do not wish to bore the House by referring to the speech I made last year, notwithstanding the fact that it was a good one. This problem has been with us since the late 1950s. The present Under-Secretary of State gave a comprehensive reply to the debate last year, but he did not answer the points I raised, not because he wished to evade them, but because there was no answer to them. Following the debate, I asked the Minister whether he would meet myself and a deputation on this problem. He accepted with alacrity and met us. He said at the meeting "Let us get down to some real work. We will divide the problem into three parts—the causes, the palliatives and the solutions". The question of the causes did not take two minutes; we knew what they were. The palliatives were not really palliatives, as we discovered with the benefit of hindsight. We have not yet found the solutions. This prompted my town clerk to say that industry was allowed to get away with what private individuals could not get away with.

The Under-Secretary of State was genuine and sincere in his desire to deal with the problem and, in particular, with the problem of pollution of the environment, whether of the air, the water or the soil. But in view of the nation's economics problems, which we had when we were in Government, we come unstuck when we try to solve the problem with the money available. A moment or two ago my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) said "Back to soap". It is easy for him to say that, but others of us do not wish to adopt old methods.

Soft soap.

Anyone who does not have to live with this problem can view it with a little hilarity. I shall not quote again the verse from Sir Walter Scott which I quoted last year. This problem reminds me of the dance tune which was popular in the 1930s, "June in January". In Castleford it is the other way about; it is January in June. When it is in a certain direction, the wind whips up the foam and blows it all over the place and it drops like snow flakes over a radius of about three miles.

The Minister said that if the economic situation improved more would be done about trying to find a solution to this problem. He said at the meeting we had with him that he would meet the C.B.I. which, he understood, was very sympathetic about the problem and he would ask it to give him an undertaking about what it intended to do. He referred to the nature of the product. He said that the representatives agreed that the long-term solution was to get industry to move over to using biodegradable materials—in other words, softer materials.

I want the Minister to tell us whether anything has been done about this matter. He said that we must get in touch with the woollen industry concerning the area around Bradford because that is where the material is tipped in the river. We are downstream and therefore we get it. Then we were advised to get in touch with the river authority. I never knew how many authorities there were in charge of rivers until we started dealing with this problem. The Minister expected that the river authority were aware and that they had some difficulty in imposing on industry things that they could not impose on local authorities, but he would take the matter up particularly with the river authority and get a report from them.

The Under-Secretary of State said that the question of rivers was under review by the Wilson Committee, which was dealing with the problem of sewage and water as a whole, and that before any decision was taken on local government reform some policy had to be formulated on water and sewage undertakings.

The Minister made a point about spraying. He said that spraying a river will break up the material and the river will flow and take it along with it. That just does not happen. The spray breaks it up, but the wind gets under it and whips it up. The same volume of soap suds flies about, but it is dispersed over a larger area—a good Socialist philosophy, but we take a dim view of it in this instance. The material is shared more evenly among more people. Perhaps the Minister will also deal with this point.

One of the Department's officials said that this was primarily a matter for the Minister of Transport. So the Ministry of Transport comes into the spraying problem. The Railways Board apparently made an objection to the effect that if bridges were sprayed they would in time become affected. This reminds me of the old Chinese proverb about constant dripping wearing away stone. Therefore, the Railways Board also took a dim view of the matter.

Later we sent a letter to the British Waterways Board asking it to look into the question of the design of the weir. We contend that the drop of the weir causes the material to churn up. It has the same effect as a washing machine. It agitates the detergent and causes foam. Letters have also been sent by the Assistant Secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government to the British Waterways Board and the Mini-try of Transport about modifications to the weir.

This year, in May, the 12th Report was published, and Castleford figures very prominently in it. Following publication of the Report, there was a report in the Press saying that the C.B.I. had banned the use of hard detergents. On hearing this, Castleford nearly had a bank holiday. There was great rejoicing. We thought that this was the end of our problems. But apparently the Press, as usual, had got it all wrong. The town clerk, feeling a little uneasy, later got in touch with the authorities and found that it was a false alarm. In retrospect, one realises that the C.B.I. does not have the authority to ban people from using hard detergents or even from selling them. The present position is that the first spray has been in use for 12 months, and just spreads the stuff around. We have put in a second spray, and reports so far indicate that it has not made things better. A full report is due shortly.

In Chapter 2, paragraph 15, the Royal Commission Report states:

"The economic reason why society may not strike the right balance between economic output and the quality of the environment is that the costs of many kinds of pollution are borne not by the polluters but by someone else."

In this instance Castleford is the "someone else":

"As a result these 'external' costs will not, in general, be taken fully into account by firms, individuals or other bodies who cause pollution. The other side of the coin is that those who spend money on reducing pollution may not always be the people who gain from the resulting improvement in the environment. This applies to both 'tangible' pollution, such as the poisoning of fish in polluted waters, and to 'intangible" pollution, such as unpleasant smells or ugly landscapes."

We have plenty of those, but I am not talking about fish that may be poisoned, although that does happen, nor am I talking about ugly landscapes, although we have plenty of those. Nor am I referring to unpleasant smells—the less I say about those the better. What I emphasise is that even with the second spray the foam still blows around all over the place, and causes great distress.

Again, in paragraph 16(a) the Report states:

"Output of goods and services which give rise to pollution tends to be pushed beyond the socially optimum point. Also, expenditure to reduce pollution will often be inadequate."

We must have cleaner rivers, but if no one is prepared to make a sufficient financial appropriation towards a solution we shall not make much progress. It will be seen that, by and large, those who cause the pollution are not paying: it is those who are most affected who have to pay. I have already made the point that we in Castelford cannot afford any more finance for seeking a solution, and we have asked the Minister to help us. The Reports of the Standing Committee do not help much—we get loads of sympathy, which we do not need. What we need is financial aid in finding a solution, and seeing what can be done at least to reduce the problem or keep it in check. Those who cause the pollution should pay for it.

4.35 p.m.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) on raising this very important subject and on adopting a very constructive approach to it. I am tempted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper) in many directions, but I will content myself by saying that I regret he did not use that quotation from Sir Walter Scott which he has used before; and that I am happy that he has not handed over disgusting photographs to the Parliamentary Secretary.

The Royal Commission has commenced its task of identifying the various problems and priorities involved in environmental pollution and there will be a general welcome for its first Report. The Commission is clearly taking great care to avoid any suggestion that its deliberations are hasty or ill-considered, and one cannot criticise such a thorough approach, but if, as the first Report shows, the Commission is acting with unhurried prudence one is entitled to hope that the Government will not risk excessive delay by exhibiting a most protected caution on their own part. That is dangerous. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd was rather worried about the perhaps somewhat bourgeois approach of the members of the Royal Commission, but I am worried more about the niggardly fists of the Treasury when it comes to providing the financial resources required if we are to improve our environment.

The first Report seems to do very little to encourage those who believe that our environmental doom is imminent, but it suggests that there is much to be done, and to be done swiftly, if the various problems are to be tackled.

My hon. Friend mentioned the need for urgent addition in regard to historic pollution, in dealing with the dereliction of the past, and there is a great deal to be done there. I have many strong views on that subject.

My own particular concern is with water supply. Whilst the Commission says that current proposals and investigations will make a very real contribution to the improvement of our rivers, I suggest that urgent and large scale action is needed. The Report states that progressive policies to improve our rivers have already produced dramatic results which are both desirable and generally welcome.

I believe that sooner or later the barrage scheme will be the solution of the problem of water supply, but until this can be established there are dangers that more and more of the quiet places will be destroyed, disfigured or interfered with if we are to have sufficient water. Places like these should be retained, and in order to assist their retention more vigorous action is needed in, perhaps, the busier industrial areas, where there is already serious pollution of the various water courses, to assist in the necessary improvement of those industrial areas so as to make the river waters there usable, and perhaps we need a more unified structure of water supply administration.

The Commission also suggests that we could improve our water supply by improved sewage treatment. A great deal has been done and is being done in this respect, but much remains to be done. As the demand for water grows, as the need for pure water rises, so in our increasingly affluent society the amount of effluent deposited in our rivers increases, but since rivers remain of constant size it follows that if within a generation there is twice the amount of effluent entering the rivers that effluent will have to be twice as clean if we are to maintain pollution at even its present level. If we are to obtain any advance in the improvement of our rivers, it clearly means that within the next decade or two effluent entering those rivers will have to be much more than twice as clean as it is at present.

The improvement of our rivers would be very popular and very desirable. In every constituency there is a large number of anglers. There are a large number of people in my constituency who are extremely fond of fishing. But the rivers which are accessible in my area—the Don, the Dearne and the Rother—are not rivers which offer very much opportunity for people to indulge in angling. Hundreds of thousands of fishermen, most of whom are taxpayers, would welcome the expenditure of public funds in promoting the improvement of rivers in industrial areas, not merely so that they could indulge their hobby, but so that we could take water from those rivers for domestic and industrial use and thus prevent the despoliation of the pretty and remote areas which are now under threat. Many hundreds of thousands of people do not have the patience to fish, but they, too, would welcome an improvement in our rivers.

The First Report suggests that a very useful way to make our water cleaner would be to take steps to restrict the pollution from the manure produced by the factory farm, which is increasingly a problem. I understand, and the Report confirms, that the manure, a valuable fertiliser, is frequently not used on the fields but is perhaps turned into a wet slurry which finds its way into the rivers and streams. I am not a scientist, but I think that I can understand the view that that sort of pollution allows organisms to breed in our rivers, organisms which use oxygen and thus compete with fish and other river life, and render the river or stream dead so that it turns into a stinking sewer. We have enough stinking sewers. It is time for action to remove them.

It is probably fair to say that most of our farmers conduct their business with a responsible attitude. It may well be only a minority of fanners who engaged in such pollution. By offering grants or other encouragement, the Government should quickly induce those involved in agriculture to refrain from using manure in that way and make sure that it is used where it can be valuable, on the fields.

Perhaps the same comment about the majority of farmers acting responsibly can be made about the use of pesticides. It may be only a minority who use them in harmful ways. The Report has many valuable comments and much good, sound advice on the question of pesticides. It makes one very important point in presenting the view of the Advisory Committee on Pesticides and Other Toxic Chemicals, which says that, whilst voluntary restrictions in the use of organochlorines has brought about a very real improvement and reduction in their use, this is not universal, that the risks are still great and that therefore the Government should not be hesitant or reluctant about acquiring responsibility for exercising necessary control over those substances. In recent years there has been a sizeable reduction in the residual levels of such poisons in human and animal tissue, but the levels are still very serious, and there are no grounds for satisfaction yet. Therefore central control sooner or later will have to be exercised, and I hope that there will be no excessive hesitation.

I recently read a report about the control of red mites on dahlias at the Royal Horticultural Society Centre at Wisley which contained a very important message for us. It was found that the most effective and persistent control of the pest was exercised not so much by pesticides, which led to the development of resistance, but by the use of predatory insects acting as a form of biological control, which seems to be more and more the right way to control the pests which affect our agriculture. But biological control is inhibited by the use of pesticides. They cannot be particularly discriminating, but destroy pests and predator as well. I hope that the Royal Commission and the Government will be prepared to encourage the use of biological control, and that the Government will be prepared to give sufficient public funds to allow research into this activity on the largest possible scale.

Such developments could lead to not merely a reduction in pollution but an increase in the profitability of various activities connected with the problem. It perhaps is not generally felt that we should look at the removal of pollution from the point of view of economics but that we should look for social rather than economic advantages. Improvement in the environment can be not merely socially desirable but economically useful, since it can enhance and create wealth.

In so far as the First Report points the way, we welcome it, but the onus of action must lie on the Government. I hope that the necessary decisions will not be delayed very much longer.

4.45 p.m.

I am very glad that the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) has chosen the Royal Commission's First Report as one of the first topics of debate today. He has a shrewd eye for important occasions. I remember with some pleasure his lucid maiden speech in another debate on the work of the Royal Commission just a year ago. It had then only just started its work and we were all concerned to give Sir Eric Ashby and his colleagues a good deal of advice, solicited or otherwise, on how to go about their job. I am not sure whether they heeded all the advice offered by the House in detail, but I know that in a remarkably short time they have produced the admirable document which we are discussing.

I say, "admirable" for several reasons. It is a clear statement of some of the most complex problems with which we are dealing; it is the first adequate and authoritative description of the state of our environment; it manages to avoid the hysteria which any reference to pollution can bring on among some commentators; and it gives clear advice to Governments on those issues which the members of the Commission regard as the most important.

The hon. Gentleman in opening the debate was critical of the Commission for saying comparatively little about derelict land. But it is open to the members of the Commission to decide what priority they shall give to the various objects within their remit, and I do not think that they can reasonably be criticised for judging that that subject is not one that they wanted to put at the top of their agenda at this stage. However, I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point and will draw it to the attention of the Royal Commission. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has announced a 10-year programme to encourage the rescue of derelict land, and we shall continue to push that forward with the generous assistance available to local authorities.

The hon. Gentleman was also somewhat critical—I do not complain of his being critical, of course—that the Royal Commission had devoted a good deal of attention to the problem of global atmospheric pollution. But the previous Government, in my judgment rightly, asked the Royal Commission specifically to consider that matter, and I believe that they were right to do so, because it is a very complex scientific problem with very serious possible effects on climate.

The Government's attitude to the Royal Commission's Report is one of a very warm welcome to its work. Of the many statements in the Report, there are four with which I know my right hon. Friend completely agrees. The first is the statement in paragraph 3 that:

"… a great deal has been done, and is being done, to safeguard the natural environment of Britain."

The right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland), who has worked hard in this vineyard, will agree that our agencies, our legislation, have done a great deal to safeguard the natural environment.

Secondly, in paragraph 4, the Commission goes on to say:

"This record of action nevertheless is no ground for complacency."

We agree with that statement, too. Thirdly, in paragraph 29 it says:

"What we have to achieve is a combined operation between public opinion, economic incentive and legislation".

I am sure that hon. Gentlemen would agree with that.

The fourth statement, with which we agree, is in paragraph 11 where the Commission says:

"Nothing less than a comprehensive policy for the environment will suffice."

It is in the spirit of these four statements that I should like to comment on the wide range of subjects which we have discussed. The first thing is to get the machinery of Government right with regard to the environment. It is a matter of no difference between the two sides of the House that the Department of the Environment has been set up. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman would agree that if his party had remained in office they would very likely have set up such a department as we have created. It gives my right hon. Friend comprehensive and executive responsibility over a wide range of Government agencies. It has enabled us to get rid of some of the wasteful competition between agencies and bureaucracies and, above all, enabled us to try to think and act environmentally right across the board.

Perhaps I can most conveniently respond to the points made under three or four main heads, and mention first the matter of clean air. Our country, under all governments, has a good record here. We have seen low-level smoke concentra- tions fall in urban areas by 60 per cent. since 1956. We have seen low-level concentrations of sulphur dioxide fall by one-third since 1956. Last winter there was a setback to our smoke control programme because of a shortage of solid smokeless fuel and, as a result, over one-quarter of all smoke control orders had to be suspended. I am glad to say that this problem has been overcome. With the help of a mild winter, and by dint of keeping open obsolete gas works, importing smokeless fuel wherever we could find it, and through the excellent cooperation of local authorities we have been able to increase the supply and to hold down consumption to a point at which the shortage is now officially over. We have, therefore, issued a circular urging all concerned once again to go full ahead with smoke control.

I turn from domestic smoke to industrial processes that contaminate the air. The House will be familiar with the excellent work of the Alkali Inspectorate, an organisation which has the great merit of working with, and not against, industry and local authorities. We have recently been able to bring under control a number of new processes concerning mineral and petrochemical industries, aluminium smelters and a whole range of plastic and acrylate manufactures. My right hon. Friend also laid fairly recently a number of new Orders controlling dust and grit emissions.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) rightly referred to air pollution from motor vehicles. Here I must say that I regard the internal combustion engine—one of the greatest boons brought to man—as being equally a potential threat to the quality of our lives, especially in urban areas. In some ways now that we are within sight of overcoming the main problem of domestic smoke from the old-fashioned coal fireplace, the motorcar and the lorry between them may be the main source of air contamination in our major cities. It is right to keep this in perspective. Because we do not suffer from the special climatic conditions which make vehicle exhausts such a noxious threat in Los Angeles, we do not need to rush into the sometimes, perhaps, excessive antipollution controls as have been set up in California. We cannot, however, be indifferent to this danger.

The policy of the Secretary of State is to adopt a much less complacent, though still severely practical, approach to pollution from internal combustion. I quote two specific examples. We have already made regulations, following upon the groundwork laid by the right hon. Gentleman, requiring all new cars sold after 1st January, 1972 to be fitted with a crank-case breather. That means a recycling of the crank-case gases which will reduce hydrocarbon emissions by about 30 per cent. We have also introduced a new British Standard, A.U.141, which will govern emissions from diesel engines. Recently I went to the Motor Industry Research Association at Nuneaton to see this new standard being launched and, having watched heavy lorries being put through their paces, some governed down to the new British Standard and others to the current American and European levels, I can assure the House that in this area at least our new regulations, which I expect will come into effect next year, will reduce the smoke levels from heavy lorries to well below those now accepted by most of our industrial competitors.

All this is useful progress, but I agree that we cannot afford to let up. One reason for this is the health aspect. We do not know enough about the long-term effects of the more complex contaminants present in car exhausts—for example, lead, nitrogen and various types of oxides to be sure of the long-term effects and therefore all Governments have a duty to be, if anything, excessively cautious.

The other reason why we cannot be indifferent is that it would be commercially foolish to allow our competitors to steal a march on us in low-pollution vehicles. The main selling point for motor cars of the future may well be not their colour, shape or performance but their safety, reliability, and their low levels of noise and pollution. A prudent regard for public health chimes in with economic good sense. Sensible, practical progress towards lower pollution from the internal combustion engine is therefore, on all scores, a sound aim of Government policy.

We can all agree that this is a marvellous development, but lorries and cars do not remain new. There are already 2,000 regulations. What will happen if, in the future as now, motorists and lorry drivers refuse to observe these regulations? We can see what happens now when no one troubles to enforce the law.

Not for the first time the hon. Gentleman is on a perfectly good point, also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East. We can make all the regulations we like but in the end they must be enforced. The hon. Gentleman should not be too pessimistic, because there are about 12,000 prosecutions for noise alone annually. This is a small but significant number. It is up to any citizen to lay information to bring a prosecution. This point of enforcement is one of which the Government are well aware.

What we are doing here has to be based on the exact state of information. Hon. Members will be interested to know that, on the medical side of air contamination from vehicles, we have initiated a great deal of practical research. For example, the Road Research Laboratory and the Warren Springs Laboratory have joined in a one-month survey of the total emission of pollutants from all vehicles at a roadside site in one particular town. This will measure, precisely and for the first time, the exact relationship between traffic density, traffic composition, and the breakdown in the air of carbon oxides, hydrocarbons, nitrogen, lead and other trace elements, so that we shall know precisely what we are talking about.

Simultaneously, the Medical Research Council is monitoring the amount of airborne lead, nitrogen and hydrocarbons in two places in London—in Fleet Street and outside St. Bartholomew's Hospital; the Atomic Energy Research Establishment is working on the photochemical effect of sunlight on air containing hydrocarbons and sulphur dioxide; the MacCauley Institute is monitoring the uptake of lead by soil and crops in the vicinity of busy roads; and a whole series of other investigations are constantly going on into the effects of exhaust fumes on people, for example, of the lead content in the blood of certain people who drive a great deal, and so on. I think that we can therefore claim to be keeping on our toes as far as the collection of scientific evidence is concerned. We are fortunate in having the Central Unit on Environmental Pollution to advise us, in addition to the Royal Commission.

On the other side of the coin—the commercial side—our aim is to work out suitable and practical standards for reducing vehicle pollution in company with our European neighbours who also make motorcars, mainly France, Germany, Sweden and Italy. Broadly speaking, it is our policy to move towards, first, adopting the ECE standards on limiting carbon-monoxide and hydrocarbons; secondly, to join in an examination of the problem of lead in exhausts; and, thirdly, to promote longer-term research so as to keep this difficult problem under review.

I turn now to the question of water, a subject on which a number of hon. Members spoke. The first thing to say is that we have to stop taking our water for granted, as something which just happens when we turn on the tap. Water in this country is too expensive to collect, transport and distribute to be wantonly wasted or polluted—or, indeed, flushed away at the rate of two gallons every time a school child goes to the bathroom. Increasingly, we must recognise that water supply and sewerage—I am including industrial effluents as well as domestic sewage—are two sides of the same coin.

Already, one-third of the water we drink in our major cities is taken out of rivers that previously have received sewage and industrial discharges. The odds are that this glass of water before me on the Table has been drunk by at least one person, and possibly several other people before it has reached hon. Members. That the water we drink tonight will be tomorrow morning's sewage is something we have known and regarded as normal for centuries. But what we now have got to get used to is that tomorrow morning's sewage will end up, suitably purified, as the water in hon. Members' whisky next weekend. That is the reality of water management in this country today.

We must therefore regard water management and sewage management as two stages of the same process. That, of course, was the conclusion of the Central Advisory Water Committee and its view has been accepted by the Secretary of State. It follows that we must regard our rivers not simply as drains and sewers but as water pipes.

There are already controls on the amount of new effluents discharged into the rivers or sewers, and these include farm effluents as well. But we may well have to tighten these controls, to improve our methods of sewage treatment, to extend our effluent controls to the estuaries, as recommended in the Jeger Working Party's Report, to ask industry to pay a larger share of the cost of dealing with the more complex effluents which it seeks to get rid of nowadays into waterways and sewers, and to guard against the pollution of ground water by the run off from toxic refuse tips.

Again and again one kind of pollution spills over into another. Keeping our water supplies clean depends to an increasing extent on how we dispose of our rubbish. I am sure that the House will be familiar with the recent report on waste disposal and the report of the working party on the disposal of solid toxic wastes. These show that, out of 14 million tons of waste of which we dispose each year, not less than 200,000 tons is toxic and this, of course, is a serious problem inasmuch as it may affect the head streams of some of our rivers.

These reports, and the speeches of hon. Members, underline the need for a total approach to pollution. Just as the disposal of rubbish by incineration involves clean air policy, so the seepage of toxic solid waste into water courses requires river boards to work with local sanitation departments, and, through them, with the planners, in order to have a comprehensive view of pollution as a whole. All this has a bearing on local government reform, because one must look at these things in total.

I want now to mention some of the points concerning rivers which were raised by the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop), who is an expert on this matter. The hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper) also raised, as he has before, the problem of foaming on the Aire. I will deal first with Castle-ford. I well remember—how could I forget?—the photographs he presented to me which displayed the possibility of losing a motorcar in the foam at Castleford on certain days of the year.

The information I have to give to him today is that the first of two pumps which are being provided by the river authority has been installed. The river authority tells me that this has caused some improvement but I gather that there is a difference of opinion between the river authority and the local council about how substantial that improvement has been. Whether the second pump will help, I cannot say. I do not know whether it has yet been installed. But I can say that, following the deputation he was good enough to bring to my Department, we have looked into this matter with the C.B.I. and with our departmental working party, and progress is being made in the development of detergents which will satisfy the special needs of the rather greasy industrial processes in the Bradford area.

This is not an easy problem but I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Royal Commission is quite right in saying that the general situation is improving dramatically. The problem here is not the sort of detergents used by housewives. It is the special hard detergents which are used exclusively in the wool industry in Bradford. We are not unmindful of his anxiety and I will pursue the points he has made with the Department and with the C.B.I.

Turning to other rivers, I recently visited the River Trent, when I had the pleasure of opening a £4 million sewerage works at Burton-on-Trent. Although, as we must recognise, an extraordinary amount of filth is still being brought down stream in the River Tame from the Black Country, there has nevertheless been a remarkable improvement in both the quality and quantity of fishing in the Trent both above and below Nottingham.

I have also taken the opportunity to visit the Tyne, and the House will be glad to know that we have agreed to an expenditure of £30 million for its comprehensive improvement. The Tees is still a problem, but I have had the opportunity of meeting both industrialists—there is a heavy concentration of industrial power of all kinds, chemical, steels and so on—and local authorities in the area. Once the county borough has its new sewerage schemes under way and the industrialists have improved their discharges into the estuary—and I believe that we are well on the way to seeing those things done—there can be a substantial improvement in the Tees estuary, too.

I ought to mention the Mersey where, two weeks, ago, I had the opportunity to meet all the largest industrialists in the area and the local authorities in the estuary area. Arising out of that, a new steering committee has been formed, and a phased and costed programme for the improvement of the Mersey by the early 1980s is under consideration by all authorities on Merseyside under the leadership of the river authority, and we can look forward, now that the resources, technology, and above all, good will and cooperation are available, to the Mersey estuary being cleaned up, first by getting rid of the gross pollution on the beaches at New Brighton, and, secondly, by reintroducing oxygen into the river so that it does not become anerobic and smell.

We are concerned not merely with discharges into rivers, but with discharges into the sea. My right hon. Friend and I have recently had some useful discussions with the French and German Ministers concerned and I believe that by the time the United Nations Conference on the Environment is held in Stockholm, we shall be able to report some useful progress in cleaning up the North Sea.

I turn now to noise. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East, not for the first time, displayed his considerable knowledge and interest in the subject of noise. If there is one proposition to which both sides of the House would agree, it is that noise is a nuisance, that it is a nuisance which is increasing, that it is a nuisance which in a civilised society should be diminished.

One may approach the problem in many ways. One way is to separate people from noise, by having, for example, noise-free areas in factories, by insulation, for example, around airports, by having minimum noise take-off and landing techniques. We are making progress in all these. In particular, the Noise Advisory Council has recently provided us with an excellent report on minimising noise at airports through the sensible management of landing and take-off techniques and it has similarly provided an excellent report on possible amendments to our present legislation on noise.

But in the end the best answer to noise is to reduce it at source. Here, too, there is progress to report. For instance, the International Civil Aviation Organisation has already agreed to a noise certification scheme for all new types of subsonic airliners and Britain has been first to implement this scheme. The Aircraft Noise Certification Order, 1970, will therefore prevent the operation of future subsonic jet aircraft types in this country unless in general they are only about half as noisy as current types. So we are making progress in reducing noise at source.

I end with some general comments to put the matter into perspective. The first, about environmental pollution, is addressed to those who argue that somehow economic growth and pollution go hand in hand. I well understand the argument, but those who advance it should clearly understand what they are saying. It is suggested that if only our industrial development had stopped at an earlier stage, say, at the point where hand craftsmanship was highly developed, but before the steam engine was invented, man could be prosperous and happy, living in harmony with nature. This thesis, which is widely advanced, takes it for granted that somehow we could return to that bucolic state if only we had the will.

In fact, the sort of life which is envisaged by those idealists was possible only for a tiny minority, and even that minority depended on the existence of a much larger population living on the brink of starvation. The hard fact is—and surely it is nothing for us to be ashamed of—that it is only modern industry and modern technology and modern fertilisers, the very economic growth which so many affect to despise, which have made it possible for the mass of ordinary people to have anything like a decent standard of living. Therefore, I say that the only alternative to modern pesticides and complex industrial processes is not happy country-dwellers living in pleasant cottages, as Breughel painted them, but the sort of mass misery which we associate with the Bengal famines.

The second point of perspective, on which I end, is that, contrary to rumour and to popular headlines, we are not, at least not in Britain, losing the battle to protect our environment. I do not say that we are winning it, but we are more than holding our own. Some pronouncements insist that it is already too late, that we are blindly heading into the environmental apocalypse. We do not dismiss these projections—we want to find out more about them—nor are we complacent. There are dangers and anxieties, and none of us has any excuse to sit back.

But the facts are that in Britain our air is generally cleaner and our rivers, in spite of last year's sewage workers' strike, are a good deal less polluted and our industrial effluent and toxic wastes, though very much greater in volume and vastly more complex in character, on the whole are less dangerous and causing less offence to our people than were any of those things 100 years ago, 50, or even 20 years ago. So we have by no means lost this battle. I think that we are more than holding our own.

Police Road Safety Teams

5.18 p.m.

I wish to raise a matter affecting the Vote for the Metropolitan Police. I do not pretend that it is a matter of world-shaking importance, or that it affects all mankind, but it is a matter of great concern to parents, children and teachers in the Greater London area.

It has always been one of the glories of the House that it could turn at a moment's notice from a matter of major world concern to all mankind to a matter of limited but pressing importance to a limited number of people. The House will be much the loser if we ever lose that reputation of being able to turn quickly to something which, even if it is of limited scope, is something with which at least the House can deal promptly and quickly.

May I describe what used to happen and what until very recently has been happening in Greater London schools? It was a regular practice that teams of police officers, a sergeant or constable, or both, visited London schools and talked to the children about the problems of road safety, about what it was sensible to do if one wanted to keep alive in the rather alarming situation of the roads of Greater London.

The police officers gave sound practical advice on the immediate problem of road safety. But there was more to it than that. The fact that they were there, that they talked sense and that they gave good advice created a useful and friendly relationship between the young people and the police officers, the value of which went beyond the immediate problem of road safety.

In addition, there is a rather complex point which I, as someone who used to be a teacher, will do my best to explain. Those of us who have been teachers know very well that young people have an enormous respect for someone who they believe is doing a real job. When they are quite young, they are not sure whether teacher is doing a real job. When they are older and wiser, they understand that he is. Meanwhile, they have an enormous respect for someone who can arrest a criminal, drive a bus, repair a motor car, put the electric light in order or do any of the things which someone with a lack, not of wisdom but perhaps of sophistication which comes with age, believes is important.

The wise teacher does not resent this. He understands it. He understands that some of the young people under his control will have an enormous respect for the police officer. He will want to see the police officer acting in the school in cooperation with the teacher, helping the young people to understand how they should deal with the ugly problem of London's traffic, in particular, because if young people behave unwisely in some respects the penalty may be no more than that for a time they are unhappy and realise that they have done wrong, whereas if they behave unwisely in a traffic situation the penalty may be the irrevocable penalty of death. For this reason, the wise teacher was always glad to welcome the Metropolitan policeman if his presence would help young people to understand how they should handle traffic problems.

As I have said, this practice has operated for some time with good will and understanding between teacher, pupil and policeman. What is now proposed, as a result of the recent White Paper on road safety, is that after the end of this year's summer term the problem shall be, as it is put, left to the local authority. This has a very attractive sound. It has the sound of local democracy. As far as I know, it may make sense outside Greater London. I do not want to pontificate from only limited emperience about what happens there, but there is a problem.

Outside Greater London the local authority has some control over the police service in greater or less degree. In Greater London we have had to accept, for a variety of reasons, that local authorities do not control the police service. It is run by the Metropolitan Police, responsible to the Home Office. We Londoners pay for it by a precept to somebody called the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police. He is a receiver in the real sense in that he receives and we just have to pay, and that is that. If we say for Greater London, "This is a matter for the local authority", it will be cut off completely from any help which the Metropolitan Police might give or might wish to give.

What used this to mean in a school in Greater London? Every school in Greater London—and there are quite a lot of schools—was visited at least once a year by a team from the Metropolitan Police to help children to understand how they must behave in the jungle of Greater London, not only if they wanted to keep alive, but in a proper way and with consideration for their fellow citizens.

I have taken opinions from many sources. I believe that the unquestionable view of teachers in London as a whole is that if police teams do not visit the schools, while they do not question the local authorities will do their best—and I am not advancing any criticism of the local authorities—there will be a reduction of reality, of sympathy and of understanding, that the advice to children about how to behave in traffic problems will fall in value and that the good will and understanding on other matters between young people and the police will suffer.

However grim the economic situation of the nation after a year of the present Government, I cannot believe that it is necessary to make this miserable, little economy. Cannot the Government think again about it?

5.27 p.m.

I express my appreciation to my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Michael Stewart) for drawing the Minister's attention to this problem in Greater London. It is causing much concern to literally hundreds of thousands of parents in the Greater London area.

The Minister of State will be aware of the correspondence which has passed between us, and I am grateful to him for the concern which he has expressed. He will also be aware of the petitions from worried parents in my constituency, particularly in Northolt, which I have handed to him. I should like to explain how this situation is causing upset among people on the Northholt housing estates.

People are aided when applying for council houses if they have many children. Sometimes, because of a lack of foresight and not particularly good planning, we do silly things like building large housing estates on one side of the main road and all the schools on the other.

Parents are emotionally concerned in this—and I measure my words carefully—in that children have been slain and maimed on their way to school because they could not negotiate the roads properly. I ask the House to consider what that statement means. I ask everyone within range of my voice to ask how they would feel if one of their children had been killed or maimed in this way.

I come to the magnificent contribution which the police have made towards reducing accidents of this sort. The teams which have been visiting the schools in the London Borough of Ealing are well known. Since 1965 they have taught thousands of children. Their method is to talk to primary school children about how to cross the road and to teach them kerb drill. It may be said that parents or teachers could do this, but the effect on the children of being taught by a uniformed police officer is tremendous. The same teams of police officers teach older children how to control their bicycles and put them through certain tests. Just before the children leave school, they are given lectures on road safety codes and the essentials of driving a motor car. We must recognise that because this instruction is given by the police much more cognisance is taken of it. If teachers or parents try to do it, the effect will not be the same.

From what I gather from the irate "mums" in my constituency, the police officers have done this job with great expertise and remarkable humour. They have immediately captured the confidence of the young people to whom they have been talking. Many people will say to a child, "If you don't behave yourself I'll send for a policeman." This is a wrong and distasteful attitude which the police have reversed. They have shown to young children in the Greater London area that the police officer is their friend, someone who is good to them and concerned about them, and not someone to fear. If only for this reason it would be a bad thing to dispense with these police teams.

The Minister of State will, no doubt, argue that the local authorities were given 12 months' warning of this impending disaster—that is what it is. I understand that 35 officers, sergeants and constables are involved. Will the Minister of State say this afternoon that during that 12 months another 35 policemen cannot be recruited to take on some of the jobs which the 35 officers in the teams have been doing?

The argument has been advanced that the 35 officers who have been doing this work are required to man certain accident black spots in Greater London. That is a commendable objective, but are we to understand that the black spots can be manned only by the police teams, and that during the intervening 12 months another 35 policemen cannot be recruited? I hope that the Minister will not accept that argument.

The Minister will enjoy the appreciation and praise of hundreds of thousands of parents throughout Greater London if he takes cognisance of what my right hon. Friend and I have said on behalf of our constituents. We have both been speaking on behalf of ordinary parents who are concerned that something which their children judge to be very valuable should be discontinued. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that that ignominious decision will be reversed, so that the police teams can continue with the worth-while work they have been doing.

5.36 p.m.

The right hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Michael Stewart) has no need to apologise to the House for raising this subject. In view of the letters which I have received from right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, I am under no illusion as to the importance which is attached to this subject, particularly by hon. Members representing Greater London constituencies. The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) knows that I have received the petition which he presented, and I think I also owe him another letter in reply which I will send to him very shortly.

This subject was raised on an Adjournment debate on 5th February by the right hon. Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice), but there is no reason why this subject should not be discussed again, and I hope during the debate to be able to give some reassurance to the right hon. Gentleman and to the hon. Member for Ealing, North. I will not cover again all the ground which I covered in the debate on 5th February.

There is general recognition of the valuable work which has been done by the road safety teams, and I join in the tributes which have been paid to them. I emphasise, as I did on 5th February, first, that there is no question of the police either in London or elsewhere being advised to cease to take an interest in road safety in schools and, secondly, that there is no question of any force refusing to assist with road safety instruction in schools so far as its resources allow it to do so.

The decision to disband the road safety teams as from July, 1971, was, as the hon. Member for Ealing, North said, announced by New Scotland Yard in August, 1970. This was a decision of the Commissioner of Police in which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has no authority to interfere. The Assistant Commissioner (Traffic)——

Is that so? I know that the Commissioner of Police has to decide many matters but, in the very last resort, if the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary thinks that a decision is wrong is there nothing he can do about it?

He can discuss matters of this kind with the Commissioner of Police, but the way in which the Commissioner deploys his manpower is entirely within his operational discretion.

The Assistant Commissioner (Traffic) wrote to local authorities within the Metropolitan Police District informing them of that decision and giving the reasons for it. The letter explained that the teams had been set up in the first place because there were no local organisations capable of doing the job properly. The letter drew attention to the then Ministry of Transport's policy of local authorities appointing road safety officers to organise and co-ordinate all road safety activities in their areas. It went on to explain the manpower difficulties in the Metropolitan Police.

Finally, the letter promised co-operation in training successors to the teams and in providing local police support for road safety officers' plans. I should like to quote one sentence from that letter:

"The Commissioner hopes that by giving this notice so long in advance of the withdrawal date, your council will have plenty of time in which to plan and put into effect such alternative arrangements as they may consider desirable."

There is no doubt that one of the main reasons for the Commissioner's decision was the shortage of police manpower, and particularly of specialist officers trained on this kind of work. In fact, about 40 specialist officers were employed full-time in connection with the road safety teams. Whether this was the most effective contribution to road safety was a matter for decision by the Commissioner of Police. The Commissioner believes that there are other and more effective means of using this specialised manpower consisting of 40 police officers with great experience. He hopes to be able to achieve a significant reduction in the number of accidents in the streets by appointing specialist groups of officers to undertake activities designed to prevent high-risk situations developing.

The Commissioner's plan for this is to set up a tactical reserve of specialist officers who can then be deployed on carefully worked out projects based on accident intelligence. The manpower for this reserve will be found by using the men at present manning the road safety teams, and I am certain that the House will accept that this is entirely an operational decision, which is within the discretion of the Commissioner of Police.

I should mention one other development which has occurred since the February debate. On 6th July this year my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries announced a number of measures which he proposed to take to reduce road casualties. One proposal was to place on the new county authorities a statutory road safety duty. This duty will include accident investigation and the taking of remedial measures.

I told the House in the debate on 5th February:

"Police personnel will remain available to train their successors—that is, the local police—and local police will be available to cooperate in future with local road safety officers in all local road safety activities including school visits. The best ways of doing this and of making the change as easy as possible are now under study."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th February, 1971; Vol. 810, c. 2170.]

I should like to give the House the results of that study by the Commissioner of Police. He has decided that the police presence in schools on road safety matters can best be maintained by officers of the divisional juvenile bureaux assisted by local police officers working under the general direction of the community liaison officers. The bureaux are already in frequent contact with schools on other matters. From the beginning of the new school term in September it will become their responsibility, as part of their continuing involvement with children, to assist in road safety instructions in schools. The job will be carried out by specially trained members of the local juvenile bureaux assisted by local police officers, who will have received special training in this work. The juvenile bureaux scheme was introduced 2½ years ago. I think the House will agree that its success has proved the value of closer police involvement with young people. The effect of this latest decision is to extend the influence of the juvenile bureaux into road safety matters.

I believe that the right hon. Gentleman on reflection might well see positive advantages in this approach to the problem. It will create a special relationship between police and children in schools, and it may bring this out in a more effective way than has been the case in the past, particularly since the local police are being brought into the picture. Each of the 24 juvenile bureaux in London will run a road safety group. Each group will probably consist of one sergeant, one police constable, and one woman police constable from the bureaux. They will be supplemented by local police officers who will liaise direct with schools as part of their ordinary duties. Training courses for the selected personnel are due to begin at the end of this month. Given good will, I can see no reason why the effectiveness of the Commissioner's plans for police participation in road safety instruction should not equal or even surpass that of the previous arrangements.

There is no dispute between us about the objectives we have in mind. We are all concerned about road safety, and particularly about the safety of school children, who are, as the right hon. Gentleman said, a most vulnerable group in this respect.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman one question? What sort of a gap will there be between the termination of the present teams' activities and the new organisation? I am a little heartened by what the hon. Gentleman has said, but I am suspicious that we might not have had the proposals which the hon. Gentleman has announced if a considerable row had not been made by hon. Members in this House and the general public about these police teams.

I do not know about the latter part of the hon. Gentleman's question, except that these proposals were put out by New Scotland Yard before I knew this debate was taking place. There will be no gap in the arrangements. This scheme will come into operation at the beginning of the new term in September.

The present Government, like their predecessors in office, have adopted a policy of local authority road safety officers co-ordinating local road safety activities. The police will continue to help as far as they can; and there is no question of police efforts being reduced as a result of Government policy.

It must remain the job of chief officers of police, in London and elsewhere, to make the best use they can of their man- power and resources in the matter of road safety, as in all other matters for which they are responsible. I hope that when hon. Members have given the Commissioner's plans full consideration, as they are now in a position to do, they will agree that the Commissioner's endeavours deserve our full support.

Anglo-Maltese Defence Agreement

5.48 p.m.

Both sides of the House are united in their affection for Malta and the people of Malta. Malta has had a great place in European history and has twice saved western civilisation, first from the Turks and then from Adolf Hitler's hordes. When one thinks of Malta one thinks particularly of two things—first Malta's devotion to Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church; and secondly, the patriotism of the people of Malta to their island and also I believe to their Queen. I do not think there are many other places in the Commonwealth where one can ride in a bus and see as fixtures a crucifix and a picture of Her Majesty. This exemplifies the relationship between Malta and the Church on one side and this country on the other.

Therefore, when raising this topic, I appreciate that it goes wider than merely the defence agreement between Malta and Britain or Malta and N.A.T.O. It may affect the whole relationship between the Maltese people and the British people, the questions of the Sovereign, of our forces, and of civilian relations between the two peoples.

I appreciate that this is not the best time to raise this matter. My noble Friend the Minister of State has been to Malta with my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State, where they have been engaged in long discussions. I understand that negotiations are still proceeding. Normally, one would not wish to raise a matter like this when negotiations are still under way. However, I am sure that all concerned will appreciate that this is probably the last chance of raising the matter in the House until October. It is important for Malta and Britain to reach a clear-cut decision on this issue as soon as possible, and certainly well before October.

Having said that, as I pointed out in the House during Question time recently, I believe that Malta is still of considerable strategic importance to the West. Let us look at the cold war, such as it is, and compare it with the situation in the last war. In the last war the north coast of Africa was potentially friendly to the West. At present, most of the north coast of Africa is potentially hostile to the West. That means that this small island in the middle of the Mediterranean still occupies an important strategic place in the defence of Europe.

I agree, however, that the rôle of Malta has changed. In the last war, it was a major British base. The Mediterranean Fleet, with which I had the honour to serve before and during the war, was based on Malta. Now, it is different. Malta is of importance to the defence of Europe and, therefore, of importance to N.A.T.O. rather than to Britain, even though, as Britain is a member of N.A.T.O., it is our responsibility as well. So it is of importance to N.A.T.O. rather than to the Royal Navy and the defence of Europe rather than of Britain.

In both contexts, Malta is of value, but we must not close our eyes to the fact that there are alternatives. One of the important units based on Malta is our maritime reconnaissance air squadrons, one of the main objectives being the surveillance of Soviet submarines which proliferate in the Mediterranean today. However, those squadrons could be based elsewhere. A possibility is Sicily, bearing in mind that Italy is a member of N.A.T.O.

The dockyard is no longer used to repair naval ships, though it is of use to merchant ships. However, with the Suez Canal closed, the dockyard has been run down because Malta is no longer on the main trade route.

Communications is another vitally important matter, but again to N.A.T.O. rather than to Britain. However, the communications facilities could be duplicated in, say, Naples.

Then, of course, we use Malta for submarine exercises. However, from the point of view of training, these activities could be better carried on from Gibraltar, where there is deeper water adjacent to the port.

Clearly, from the British and N.A.T.O. viewpoint, redeployment of our forces from Malta is possible. I do not want that to happen. I am sure that Her Majesty's Government do not. Equally, I am sure that N.A.T.O. does not. But it could happen.

I turn to a matter which has caused me some concern. I refer to the recent attacks upon the Conservative Government which have been made in the island. There has been a great deal of talk of a master and servant relationship. I do not want to introduce party politics into this debate, since both sides of the House are united in their affection for the Maltese people. However, I want to remind the House of certain facts. It was a Conservative Government who gave Malta her independence. Admittedly we started the rundown which, unfortunately, was inevitable. But we had our defence and financial agreements to reduce the impact of the rundown on Malta. It was the financial agreement which gave Malta about £5 million a year to help her change her economy from a defence basis to a civilian basis.

That grant or loan was continued by the next Government, though there was a hiatus of about 18 months while right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite argued whether it should be a grant or a loan. When we returned to power, the aid was restored on the original basis of a 75 per cent. grant and a 25 per cent. loan.

Even by agreeing to renegotiate the present agreement, Her Majesty's Government are making concessions. I remind the House that on 19th February, 1969, I asked the then Minister of Defence:

"Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the defence treaty with Malta signed on independence, has been abrogated? Are the British Government, going to have talks with the Maltese to see what the defence position is?"

The reply of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) was clear. He said:

"No, Sir. The defence agreement is in force until September, 1974."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 19th February, 1969; Vol. 778, c. 442.]

Clearly the Government of the day realised that there was no question of the Maltese Government abrogating the agreement. I suggest, therefore, that the argument which has been put forward by certain people in Malta is not valid.

As one who has known Malta since the age of 15, and who has visited the island frequently, perhaps I might be allowed to try to look at the problem from the point of view of the Maltese people. They have a new Government. Any new Government must prove themselves. The new Prime Minister, Dom Mintoff, is a dynamic figure. Quite rightly from his point of view he has set out to gain the maximum assistance for his country that he can obtain. Clearly, he has a good case when he says that the £5 million agreed some years ago should be more today in view of the fall in the value of money. It has been said in some newspapers that £5 million then is equivalent to about £7 million today.

Perhaps I might remind the House or one of two important historic precedents. I carry the House back to our talks between 1955 and 1957, when last Dom Mintoff was Prime Minister of the George Cross island. There was a round-table conference in 1955. In 1956, this House agreed to the integration proposals put forward by Mr. Mintoff. The financial proposals which accompanied the integration proposals were discussed in 1957. Perhaps I might remind the House what those proposals were, since they provide a precedent for the argument taking place today.

The then British Government said that they would give a capital development grant of £25 million spread over five years and that they would subsidise recurrent expenditure to the tune of over £1 million a year for social services, that is to say, one-third to one-half of expenditure on education, one-third on health, and one-quarter on other social services. The Maltese Prime Minister then demanded more, much more. He asked for a £22½ million industrial fund and for £4½ million spread over five years to support a national assistance fund. Her Majesty's Government did not agree. Thereupon, the Maltese Prime Minister refused to recommend integration to the Maltese people.

In the following year, 1958, the Maltese Government, still under Mr. Mintoff, demanded £6 million for their budgetary support. Her Majesty's Government agreed to £5 million. The Maltese Government then budgeted for £7 million and demanded that Her Majesty's Government should pay the deficit, the Maltese Prime Minister saying that he would resign when the money ran out in April, 1958. Her Majesty's Government did not agree to this proposal, and Mr. Mintoff carried out his threat by resigning in April, 1958. The Opposition refused to form a Government, and Mr. Mintoff was asked to stay on. Riots followed. Certain orders were given to the police by the Prime Minister. The Commissioner of Police appealed to the Governor. He was dismissed by the Prime Minister. The Governor upheld the Police Commissioner, the Prime Minister resigned, and the Governor took over the administration of the island.

I do not want to weary the House with the succeeding historical picture. There were a number of discussions and conferences, the Constitution was then suspended, and eventually Malta was given independence.

During this time Dom Mintoff made a fundamental change in policy. He dropped integration and said that his policy would be independence for Malta outside the Commonwealth. I am bringing these matters, which happened some years ago, to the attention of the House because I believe that history can repeat itself. There were ever-increasing financial demands. I believe that this could happen and perhaps is happening today. The Government of Malta put the Opposition in a difficult position. They were asking for more money from Britain, and the Opposition obviously could not say that they did not want it, because it was for the good of the Maltese people to have the money. I believe that the Opposition in Malta are in a similar difficulty today.

Then Dom Mintoff made a radical change of policy from integration to independence outside the Commonwealth. I believe that there may be a radical change of policy contemplated from being a Commonwealth country sharing the same Sovereign to quite different links, if any links are planned at all.

All who know Malta must be worried about the future. I believe that the Maltese themselves must be worried about the island's future, whatever political party they support.

As I see it, there are three possibilities. The first is brought out in today's The Guardian which suggests that Dom Mintoff is asking for £20 million or more and that this should not be paid wholly by Britain but should be shared with N.A.T.O. Certainly there seems to be some good sense in any such arrangement, if it can be reached. But we want to know how much the cost will be. Obviously there must be a limit. It seems that going in one jump from £5 million to £20 million is a major step.

The more important issue in this respect is whether Mr. Mintoff will allow N.A.T.O. the use of the island that it has so far enjoyed. I believe that the important thing here is not so much the financial question as the use of Malta not only by Britain but by N.A.T.O. without interference by the Government of Malta. In other words, will N.A.T.O. be allowed to use the facilities that the British and their N.A.T.O. allies now enjoy and have enjoyed in the past? Is such an agreement possible? If so, how long will it last? Agreements with Malta have been terminated rapidly from time to time. What guarantees have we that any such agreement will be continued?

The second possibility put forward in certain newspapers, which I believe unlikely, is that, if agreement is not reached with Britain and N.A.T.O., Mr. Mintoff will change course and move directly towards the East and give the use of the dockyard or the facilities of the island to the Soviet Union and their growing Navy in the Mediterranean. I do not believe that this is likely, because Malta is a devoutly Catholic country and would not tolerate the use of the island by the Soviet Union. Nor could the Soviet Union provide the work which the West can provide for the dockyard or for the tourist industry and so on.

There is a third possibility, a halfway house. This was suggested in an article in the Daily Telegraph on 27th July. It is some form of alliance with Arab Socialism. I should like to quote one paragraph from that article, which says:

"Western observers cannot see the Libyan Revolutionary Council making a hard and fast agreement pledging large-scale aid over a 10 to 15-year period, while Maltese long-term economic planning could hardly depend on such a factor as Col. Gaddafi."

In other words, the Maltese delegation in Libya at the moment may be asking for financial aid. Can any financial aid from Libya be given in the long term? I believe that pinning the future of Malta to such aid would be very dangerous indeed. Nor do I believe that an alliance between Arab Socialism and a neutral Malta in the world we know today fits in with Malta's historic past.

I hope that the Maltese people appreciate that, with the best will in the world, there is a price in cash and in strategic realities beyond which neither Britain nor N.A.T.O. can go. We want Malta to rettain her rightful place. I should like to see Malta as a member of N.A.T.O. She has a right to be a member of N.A.T.O. and I am sorry that she was not given that right in recent years. As I said, I hope that the Maltese realise that there is a limit beyond which no Government or alliance such as N.A.T.O. can go. I hope very much that Malta's links with Britain will not be cut, because I believe that such a cut would go much further than the defence agreement and would mean a final cut involving the Crown, the Services, and the people of Britain and of Malta. I believe that such a cut would not only be disastrous for Malta, European Christian Malta, but would not be desired either by Her Majesty's Government or by the British people.

I realise that my noble Friend will not be able to say very much today, but I hope that he will be able to give some explanation of what is going on and hold out some hope that we can reach an amicable agreement with the new Government of Malta which would not only maintain the defence agreement but the links between our two peoples, which I am sure everybody believes to be so important.

6.6 p.m.

I am sure that the House is grateful to the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) for raising this issue. I appreciate, as he does, that the Minister will have some difficulty in giving an adequate reply because of the negotiations which are going on.

My whole family and I have a tremendous regard for the Maltese. They are devoted to family life. I am sure that their standards would be a good example to Britian's permissive society. We always admire close-knit family ties. Certainly the standard of their life and their friendliness is greatly appreciated.

I was on holiday with my wife in Malta during the General Election there. I hasten to add that I was minding my own business whilst there on holiday, although I was aware of the election because fly-posting is not illegal in Malta. I shall never know how they manage to attach posters to buildings of between 30 and 40 feet in height.

One of the background problems in Malta—this is where the immigration problem has raised a certain difficulty, and it was certainly the main feature behind the scenes in the election—was the need for housing for its own people. The previous Government, just before the election, rushed in a show house. I am sure that the House will understand that, at a period when magnificent new homes are being built for British people out there, the Maltese are to some extent denied the opportunity of good housing. There is a certain feeling about this matter, but fortunately it does not undermine the pro-British feeling.

The hon. Member for Haltemprice mentioned the Daily Telegraph. It may be bringing out some constructive ideas now, but during the election campaign its series of attacks on Dom Mintoff did not do much to help British understanding in Malta and may be a slight factor in the difficulties which we are now facing.

The House will know that the new Government of Malta has a majority of only one. It may be unique for a Government to have a majority of one, but the Prime Minister is carrying out his election promises. I had the manifesto of the Malta Labour Party. Unfortunately, it is in Maltese and I do not understand it. However, I have an English translation, thanks to the Malta News. The Prime Minister, in his election manifesto, said:

"(1) The people of Malta and Gozo must put aside corruption and live honestly.

(2) Every citizen must do his part so that productivity increases. When the burden is fairly distributed, nobody will suffer."

Then the manifesto deals with the defence problem in this way:

"It is the duty of the Government to make every effort so that funds Malta gets from foreign nations for serving them in the military field increase and that they will suffice for the needs of the nation. The aim has to be that within a short time we can stand on our feet economically without the need of exploiting our strategic position in the Mediterranean. In this way only can Malta attain the independence which all other countries have. Otherwise Malta will once again become a servant and an instrument of war in the hands of other countries."

Point 7 in the manifesto deals with the Defence Treaty:

"The Defence Treaty will be reviewed and it must be made clear that the funds coming from the British Government are not charity but as payment for the facilities Malta is according to Britain. Payment has to be adequate for the needs of our country and Britain cannot automatically pass on these facilities to other Powers."

That is obviously a reference to N.A.T.O.

"It will also be ascertained that the Defence Treaty will protect better jobs of Service Department employees, and that those sacked will have to be adequately compensated and alternative employment found for them."

That was the manifesto during the General Election. The Prime Minister of Malta is now carrying it out. The British Government must have been aware that if Dom Mintoff became Prime Minister, as he was such a dynamic character, he would go in a headstrong manner—majority of one or not—to carry out what he had said during the election. The talking point in Malta has been the difference between one Prime Minister and the other—one a very nice gentleman who was a little slow in reaching decisions, the other a gentleman who rushes in and makes decisions.

Some people still think back to the old days. However, Malta is independent. I repeat that there is still a tremendous pro-British feeling. The target of the present Prime Minister can be summarised as being to raise the dignity of life of the Maltese people. We must recognise this in our negotiations. I know that he is not exactly easy to get on with. In 1965 I went to Malta with a C.P.A. delegation. I believe that that was the first British delegation to Malta. At that time the present Prime Minister had a terrific chip on his shoulder in connection with the Church.

We tried to establish contact with him. In the end the message reached us, "If you want to see me come to see me at my house. I will not come to you". We went. We sat down to discuss various things. We wanted to be helpful and friendly. All that Dom Mintoff kept saying was, "You have taken your Army and your Navy out. This is your problem. You give us the solution". He was suffering then because he felt that by withdrawing our Navy we had undermined the standard of life of his people.

The only way in which I was fortunate enough to be able to make contact with him and to get some constructive proposal when I referred to what I called Malta's human exports—the migrants. They were trained at a wonderful polytechnic, at a new university, and at an old university which I believe is even more ancient than Oxford. The end product is an aircraft to Australia.

That got him going, because at that time British aid in the main took the form of setting up textile factories to employ cheap women labour. There is still cheap women labour in Malta. My wife and I visited a shoe factory where girls were producing hand-made shoes for £2–£3 a week for a six-day week.

There seems to be some confusion about the start of the present negotiations. I have had some explanations from the Malta Office of Information. It seems as if we rushed out there before arrangements were made for a proper set of negotiations.

I agree to a great extent with the hon. Gentleman on the question of N.A.T.O. Today the Press carries a report of the effect that the British Government are to approach N.A.T.O with a view to N.A.T.O. sharing some of the cost of the presence of the island. Anyone who goes to Floriana and looks across from the hotel there can see N.A.T.O.'s building flaunting flags, and so on: the building is visible from many parts of the island. If only Britain is making a contribution and N.A.T.O. is not, it is common sense for us to try to persuade N.A.T.O. to make a contribution.

It is just for the Maltese to say that the money we have paid and are paying has changed in value and that there is a case for stepping it up. I do not know what the Navy can do. There is little change in the set up of the dockyard. I hope that it will work. It is a shame that so many people are being kept idle and are being paid for being idle when this tremendous project and all the skilled people could be used. Could not we get work, particularly from the Navy, into the dockyard?

I repeat that I have a tremendous regard for the Maltese. They are so kind, so gentle, so downright honest as to the great majority of them, and they have such a good moral standard of life, that we should do better for them. We should go out with good feeling and good will seeking to solve this difficult problem. Very shortly the Maltese Parliament will meet. If our negotiators can swallow a little of Dom Mintoffs acid approach I believe that we can get places.

It is not our business as back bench Members to get involved. As I said, it was a tremendous temptation during the General Election out there, but I kept clear of it. I came back with a souvenir key chain carrying a picture of Dom Mintoff. The people said to me with pride—I am sure that the Government will not apreciate this— "Mr. Wallace, here is our leader doing a Harold Wilson". He was smoking a pipe. I do not think that Dom Mintoff will have time to write his memoirs for some time to come.

He will not get as much money, either.

I agree with what my hon. Friend said, but the Maltese system of taxation is a little different. During the General Election the Government party pledged themselves to abolish income tax. Dom Mintoff got elected because he promised to introduce P.A.Y.E.

There is a strong pro-Malta Lobby on both sides of the House. I appeal to the Government to do their best, to ignore one or two little kicks, and to tell the Daily Telegraph to behave itself, which is what it should have done during the General Election out there. The Daily Telegraph did not help. However, I hope that it will not blacklist me tomorrow.

Royal Assent

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

1. Investment and Building Grants Act 1971.

2. Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1971.

3. Recognition of Divorces and Legal Separations Act 1971.

4. Land Registration and Land Charges Act 1971.

5. Law Reform (Jurisdiction in Delict) (Scotland) Act 1971.

6. Pensions (Increase) Act 1971.

7. Pool Competitions Act 1971.

8. Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1971.

9. Merchant Shipping (Oil Pollution) Act 1971.

10. Prevention of Oil Pollution Act 1971.

11. Mineral Workings (Offshore Installations) Act 1971.

12. Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1971.

13. Anguilla Act 1971.

14. Diplomatic and other Privileges Act 1971.

15. Licensing (Abolition of State Management) Act 1971.

16. Friendly Societies Act 1971.

17. Edinburgh Corporation Order Confirmation Act 1971.

18. Lanarkshire County Council Order Confirmation Act 1971.

19. Lerwick Harbour Order Confirmation Act 1971.

20. London Transport Act 1971.

21. Kesteven County Council Act 1971.

22. Bradford Corporation Act 1971.

23. Bristol Corporation Act 1971.

24. Teesside Corporation (General Powers) (No. 2) Act 1971.

25. British Railways Act 1971.

26. Hertfordshire County Council Act 1971.

27. Humber Bridge Act 1971.

28. Greater London Council (Money) Act 1971.

29. D. & J. Fowler Limited and Associated Company Act 1971.

30. Stockport Corporation Act 1971.

31. Haringey Corporation Act 1971.

32. East Sussex County Council (Newhaven Bridge) Act 1971.

33. Eton Rural District Council Act 1971.

34. Cornwall County Council Act 1971.

35. Bristol Corporation (West Dock) Act 1971.

36. East Suffolk County Council Act 1971.

37. Mersey Docks and Harbour Act 1971.

38. Trent River Authority (General Powers) Act 1971.

Anglo-Maltese Defence Agreement

6.21 p.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) always speaks with considerable authority on defence matters, and I know that the House and people outside attach considerable weight to his arguments. On this occasion, though, he also speaks from a longstanding knowledge of the area concerned and a longstanding affection for Malta and her people. I believe that both his speech and that of the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Wallace) showed the deep regard and warm affection that we have both for the country and for the people of Malta. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for this opportunity to bring the House up to date on the progress of our discussions with the Prime Minister of Malta on the subject of the Anglo-Maltese Defence Agreement.

It may also help the House if I begin by reminding hon. Members of our position in Malta. Under the 1964 Defence Agreement, we were given the right to station armed forces and associated British personnel in Malta in peace and in war, and to use facilities there not only for United Kingdom defence purposes but also in support of our international and Commonwealth obligations.

Except under arrangements between the two Governments, no forces other than the forces of Malta and the United Kingdom could be stationed in Malta or permitted to use harbour, dockyard, airfield, staging or communication facilities in Malta. The Agreement also made it clear that the Government of Malta could accord rights and facilities to the forces of any party to the North Atlantic Treaty.

In this way, we have been able in the past to ensure firstly that we can make full use of the facilities we retain in Malta for our own and for N.A.T.O. purposes—and at the same time ensure that unfriendly forces are not able to make any use of the Island.

The strategic value of Malta rests largely on its geographic situation in the centre of the Mediterranean, in the Sicilian Narrows. However, as a simple statement of fact, the military tasks which we carry out on the island could be carried out, as my hon. Friend indicated, from other places.

The main facilities which we have kept in Malta under the 1964 Agreement are the airfield at Luqa, harbour facilities and a land presence. The airfield is run on a joint user basis, with the R.A.F. providing much of the essential air traffic control and airfield service for civil aviation purposes. In addition the R.A.F. stations two squadrons of reconnaissance aircraft at Luqa and makes use of the airfield for training and trooping purposes. It also has the use of a subsidiary airfield at Hal Far.

We also maintain sufficient harbour facilities in Malta to be able to support visits by a small number of ships and to carry out dockyard-assisted maintenance as necessary. We also station an infantry battalion in Malta. At present, it is the 1st Battalion, the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, together with supporting units and services. As this House is already aware, the unit was due to be replaced by 41 Commando Group but, at Mr. Mintoff's request, we have agreed to hold up this replacement for the time being.

Under the terms of the 1964 Financial Agreement, Her Majesty's Government made available to the Government of Malta the sum of £50 million

"for the diversification and development of the economy of Malta"

and a further £1 million for the restoration of historic buildings and works in Malta. These aid payments are, as my hon. Friend made clear, being made on the basis of 75 per cent. grant and 25 per cent. loan and there now remains to be paid out the sum of £9·4 million in the remaining 2½ years of the 1964 Financial Agreement. These moneys can be used to meet the social needs which were so eloquently expressed by the hon. Member for Norwich, North and which certainly exist in the island of Malta.

The direct payment of aid, however, represents only a small part of the United Kingdom contribution to the economy of Malta. The stationing of some 3,500 Servicemen, together with their families, on the island provides direct employment for about 5,000 Maltese civilians and, indirectly, provides work for a further 1,400. We also employ some 1,100 Maltese uniformed personel. Over and above the direct payment of aid, our local defence expenditure, including personal spending, in Malta for 1971–72 will, if present arrangements continue, be £12·5 million. The United Kingdom also contributes to the Malta economy through tourism and from the personal expenditure and capital investment of many United Kingdom settlers on the island.

This then, in summary form, is the situation as it has been till recently in Malta.

As the House is already aware, one of the first actions of the new Prime Minister was to issue a public statement to the effect that the 1964 Defence Agreement with Britain was no longer in being; he also made it clear that he wished to have consultations with Her Majesty's Government about a new agreement to replace the Defence and Financial Agreements.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence was due to travel to Valletta on 14th July to discuss with Mr. Mintoff his ideas for modification of the existing Agreements and to find out whether it was possible to negotiate fresh arrangements of a kind which we could recommend to the British Government for approval. The House knows that this visit was cancelled at the last minute, in the light of a message from Mr. Mintoff but, after a further message from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, Mr. Mintoff agreed that discussions should be held in Malta in an honest and genuine attempt to reach agreement.

My right hon. Friend and I went to Valletta last week to listen to Mr. Mintoff's proposals and to discuss them with him. On our side, we made it quite clear to him that the 1964 Defence and Financial Agreements are, in our view, still valid. As was made clear by my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice, Members of both the previous Government and the present Government are clear in their view that those Agreements have not been abrogated.

We also made it clear that the facilities which we currently enjoy in Malta under the 1964 Defence Agreement and the terms on which we can make use of them are basically satisfactory to us.

But, while we consider that the Defence and Financial Agreements are still valid, we said that we were, of course, prepared to consider any proposals which the Malta Government wished to put to us.

Mr. Mintoff, for his part, proposed a radical revision of the 1964 Agreements under which Britain would have to pay a higher price for defence facilities, with more restricted conditions of use, for example, with regard to the availability of facilities in Malta for the N.A.T.O. Alliance.

The House will understand that it would be wrong for me to go into greater detail while these proposals are being considered. I can, however, say that the difference between our two approaches is very wide indeed. As things stand, it will prove very difficult to reach a settlement.

We have made clear to the Malta Government that we would not wish to maintain troops in Malta against their wishes. As the hon. Member for Norwich, North said, they are a sovereign nation, and we have made quite clear that we would not wish to maintain troops in Malta against the wishes of the Malta Government. Equally, we felt bound to explain, lest there should be any misunderstanding, that the strategic value of Malta is not so great that we could not reprovide these facilities elsewhere.

Nevertheless, we would rather remain in Malta than break the links which have united our countries for so long. A tour of duty in that lovely island is greatly appreciated by our Forces, and for a long time there has been a most happy and friendly relationship between our two peoples and between all those Service men who have served in Malta and the friendly and hospitable people of Malta themselves. We have no wish to see these links broken because we already have good defence facilities on the island. We would much like to have an agreement with the Malta Government, but, clearly, there is a balance which has to be struck between the terms and conditions for our use of defence facilities on the island and the value which we can put on the facilities.

I cannot at this stage forecast the outcome of our consideration of Mr. Mintoff's proposals. Clearly, it will be necessary to consider them in detail, not only at home but also with our N.A.T.O. allies who share our interest in this matter. The House should be aware that we are keeping N.A.T.O. full informed of developments in Malta.

At the time when we decided to hold up for the time being the replacement of the 1st Devon and Dorsets by 41 Commando, there was an advance party of the Commando in Malta. We have now instructed the advance party to return to the United Kingdom, where it will rejoin its parent unit at a camp near Tavistock. The whole unit will deploy to the Mediterranean on an exercise in September. We have decided, also, to allow the families of the 1st Devon and Dorsets to return to the United Kingdom in advance of the units if they wish to do so.

I am sure that the House will not expect me to be drawn into further detail on Mr. Mintoff's proposals, and I certainly should not wish to comment on the detailed conditions which he is seeking to impose, or on the amount of money which he has requested, except to say that it is a very high figure indeed.

Could my noble Friend give some idea of when he thinks the negotiations will reach finality? Is it likely to be before the date of the first sitting of the Malta Parliament?

It is extraordinarily difficult for me, more particularly in view of the wide difference of opinion and differ- ence of approach which exists, to give any indication of when these negotiations can reach finality. However, we have very much in mind the point made by my hon. Friend, that the Malta Parliament will reassemble towards the end of August, and we are anxious to study the proposals as quickly as we can.

The House understands the Minister's difficulty in giving any great detail, but could he give some indication of the Government's attitude to the question of principle whether N.A.T.O. or the members of N.A.T.O. should make a financial contribution in any of the pending negotiations, or does he feel that this must remain a purely bilateral agreement between Malta and the United Kingdom?

The hon. Gentleman asks a question of great importance. We feel that the strategic value is primarily to N.A.T.O. itself, and, therefore, it seems to us reasonable that we should consult our N.A.T.O. allies, keeping them closely informed of the proposals which have been put to us. We are in the process of such consultations with our N.A.T.O. allies.

I do not want to press the Minister, but the question of principle is one of financial contribution. I think that the whole House will accept that N.A.T.O. is seriously involved in this issue, but there has been some speculation in the Press—for example, in The Guardian today—about the Government's attitude towards an actual financial contribution coming from N.A.T.O. countries.

We should certainly not object to a financial contribution coming from N.A.T.O. There is no difficulty of principle so far as we are concerned in such a proposal.

To sum up briefly, the future of the Anglo-Maltese Defence and Financial Agreements raises issues of importance not only to the United Kingdom but to her allies, to the new Government of Malta and to the Maltese people. I think that it is generally agreed by the House that we should study these problems carefully. However, I must regretfully underline the fact that, at present, the two sides to the discussion are very far apart and that there is a long way to go before we shall be able to see whether a new agreement is a possibility. I am sure that the House will understand that I would not wish to elaborate further while the negotiations are proceeding.

Further Education

6.38 p.m.

I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State is here with us to engage with me in what I hope will be a non-partisan semi-professional argument or discussion about further education. As he and the House know, I come to this subject from a professional standpoint.

It is a long time since the House had an opportunity of having the Minister with us to give an indication of the Government's policy in regard to further education. By "further education" I do not in this context mean university education, and I hope that the Minister has had some indication of the limits within which my remarks will be kept on this occasion. I regard university education as a rather special field, and I wish to discuss that form of further education which is sometimes loosely called technical education. I say "loosely" because the students who go to these colleges are not all technical students.

A great many of the colleges in this branch of education have to do with the sort of education which one associates with those people who left school early and who are, as it were, trying in later years to gain the sort of general education which they missed in their ordinary school lives. The term "further education" covers a multitude of courses at evening institutes. It covers a great variety of subjects and activities. A great many of the students are full-time, some doing advanced work, some doing work to a university standard, and some doing work which can only be described as rather informal from an education point of view, some doing work, perhaps, not to a very high academic standard but none the less very useful from the point of view of the students and of the country as a whole.

Much of what I have to say will be couched in the form of questions in an attempt to get the Minister to say what the Government's policy is in relation to certain matters. One thing I must ask at once is whether the Government intend to give priority to the polytechnics, which I regard as having a very specialised function in further education, perhaps to the detriment or to the exclusion or to the neglect of some other very important aspects.

For a long time a great many people have felt that further education was a sort of poor relation to the universities, particularly in regard to advanced work, and some of them feel that as the polytechnics are, as it were, separated from the rest of further education they may become another priority section like the universities, and that other spheres of activity in further education will be left out in the cold.

For example, how far does the Department think that other colleges outside the polytechnics will be able to do advanced work of a high academic standard? I think of many colleges where some of the students are doing very advanced work leading to professional diplomas or qualifications of one sort or another. Is it envisaged that advanced work of this sort in colleges outside polytechnics will not be encouraged?

Another very important question is how much further education there will be, and how much the Government think we as a nation can afford. In the White Paper on Public Expenditure some projections have been made of expenditure in this direction. This is the reference I want to make to universities, but it is only a comparative and passing reference. For universities, the projected current expenditure based on the provisional outturn was £251·7 million in 1969–70 and in 1974–75 it was £355 million—an increase of over £100 million. In 1969–70, capital expenditure based on provisional outturn was £75 million odd, and the estimated expenditure in 1974–75 is £92 million.

In further education, however, current expenditure for 1969–70 was £249·7 million, and the estimated figure for 1974–75 is £286 million—an increase of only £36 million. Is this a realistic estimate and a realistic projection? In capital expenditure, so far from their being an increase, there is a decrease. The figure for 1969–70 based on provisional outturn was £54·3 million, and the estimate for 1974–75 is £52 million.

I do not know what estimate the Treasury made of costs in this sphere—movement of prices and movement of wages in industries concerned in capital expenditure—but it seems to me that this is a gross under-estimation of the capital expenditure which will be needed, especially bearing in mind that the White Paper says that further education student numbers, full-time equivalent, will rise by 10 per cent. by 1972–73, and then ease off for two years, when the 15-year-olds stay at school after the leaving age is raised instead of moving to further education. In the light of the considerable extension that has taken place in the last 10 years, this forecasting of numbers is not very realistic.

I want to give the House some idea of the tremendous expansion there has been in further educations since 1959–60. In 1959–60, full-time students numbered 98,000, by 1964–65 the number had risen to 167,000, and by 1968–69 it had gone up to 214,000. The figures more than doubled in eleven years—very roughly, I suppose, one can say that they have doubled in ten years. This is a considerable expansion in full-time further education, and anyone with any connection with this form of education knows that more and more students are becoming full-time instead of part-time students, with the demands that this makes on staffing, accommodation, laboratory work, and other things. That being so, to talk of only a limited expansion in the next five years is an underestimate.

There has been quite a dramatic expansion in sandwich courses—perhaps to the detriment of day release, but it is none the worse for that. Anyone connected with technical colleges or further education and day release will welcome such expansion. In 1959–60 there were 10,000 students taking these courses, and the figure for 1968–69 was 29,600—an expansion of nearly 200 per cent. The expansion in part-time day release is shown by the fact that in 1959–60 there were 452,000 such students, and about 749,000 in 1968–69. Such expansion is quite dramatic, and indicates the thirst for education amongst a group of young people in our society whom the universities have not taken care of. Bearing in mind the figures I have quoted, one can only envisage even further expansion in the next few years.

In 1964–65, 138,000 students took advanced courses, and that figure rose by 50,000 during the following four years. These are all dramatic increases, and illustrates the fact that if we are to take further education seriously the Government estimates of projected expenditure ought to be re-examined.

Another aspect of further education is day release. In 1964, the Henniker-Heaton Report talked about the need for doubling the number of students on day release: in fact, the numbers have not doubled but have diminished. This is partly due to the expansion of full time courses, partly due to the expansion of sandwich courses, block release, and the like, but it seems that the numbers of students on day release have not kept up with our expectations of five years ago. What is the Minister's view of the next couple of years, particularly bearing in mind unemployment today and reports that employers are reducing the numbers of apprentices they are taking on? It appears that in many colleges next September the intake of students for day release will be down by upwards of 25 per cent., and in some cases by much more.

On top of that we have the impact of the raising of the school-leaving age. We may well ask where in four or five years' time we are to get the skilled apprentices normally associated with day release.

Another aspect of the figures that I want to ask the Minister about is the discrimination against women and girls. Perhaps "discrimination" is the wrong word, but certainly there are disparities. For example, in 1969, 198,000 boys under 18 were on day release and only 54,000 girls. That is a very sad contrast. But the contrast is even sadder in some other figures. In national colleges there were 1,177 men students and only nine women students. In polytechnic full-time courses there were 7,195 men students and only 3,196 women students. In regional colleges, there were 10,342 full-time men students compared with only 3,444 women students. Those figures are far worse than the figure for universities, and we know that even in universities for every woman student there are probably two men students. Here it would appear that the disparity is even worse. What is in the Minister's mind for trying to persuade parents, or teachers, themselves to persuade girls to take advantage of the opportunities in colleges of further education and technical colleges? In advance courses the figures are not quite so bad—36,900 men students compared with 17,800 women. That includes art colleges, where the comparisons are by no means as startling.

This is a subject about which I feel very strongly. We know very well that the maintained grammar schools provide as many places for girls as for boys, yet it seems that the girl products of the maintained grammar schools do not go to universities in anything like the number that boys do, and that they do not go to further education, perhaps, in quite the same way for advanced courses. Far fewer girls leave with comparable A levels. There must be in our society a pool of ability amongst girls in particular which is not being tapped in further education, and still less in universities.

I now turn to the circular on capital programmes from the Department of the Environment, Circular 2/70, with which I am sure the Minister will be familiar. It is very important from the point of view of further education in particular. What consultations take place between the Treasury, the Department of the Environment and the hon. Gentleman's Department on such matters? One large college in the North has made this statement:

"The Management Committee have decided that in view of the restriction on capital spending imposed upon authorities by the Department of the Environment Circular 2/70, it will not be possible to include within the local capital allocation the professional fees associated with the C.F.E. stage 2 building proposals. The Authority will therefore not be able to begin building during the financial year 1970–71, and it will be necessary to ask the D.E.S. to delete the programme from the 1970–71 building programme."

The annexe to the circular says that projects in major building programmes for schools, further education establishments and so on are subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, but that professional fees, salaries, dwellings for teachers or caretakers, for example, purchases of land for existing buildings, vehicles, furniture and equipment, are exculded from those considerations. They are very relevant to further education. Those excluded sectors must be met out of the total sum for locally determined schemes.

I am a member of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions, which was not provided with a copy and was not consulted by the Department of the Environment. Perhaps the A.T.T.I. is not so important, but was the Association of Education Committees consulted? If so, what was its reaction? These are most important matters. The Government will at some stage be looking at the whole field of expenditure of local authorities.

I am anxious to follow the hon. Gentleman carefully, though I think that some of what he is saying will be outside my Ministerial responsibility, and he will know, with his experience, that I must be careful. I thought that the hon. Gentleman said that a result of Circular 2/70 from the Department of the Environment would be that an education project which he did not identify—I make no complaint of that, and do not ask him to identify it—could not start building in the financial year 1970–71. Is that right?

I shall give this document to the Minister later. I am not anxious to make any partisan points, and I want to be helpful. The hon. Gentleman will find the statement in Technical Education for March 1971. When I make the document available to him he can check it. But I think that it is quite firm. I understand that the authority concerned is Newcastle.

The other relevant question is the impact of the reorganisation of local government. This was something over which we had battles in London some time ago, but happily, from our point of view, we kept London education intact and united.

There was a debate on the matter at the annual conference of the A.T.T.I. Strong words have been used, particularly in the West Riding of Yorkshire, because we may have black areas in education, particularly further education. One of the things that have struck me and other people is that in a small area with a population of perhaps 150,000 or 200,000, a county area or sub-division of a county area, there may be one large technical college.

Such a college can constitute a heavy burden on the local rates. There may well be a temptation for short-sighted councillors, when considering the rate burden annually, to look at the massive expenditure of the college and say, "We must hold down the rates this year. We have so many calls upon our finances—let us take half a million off the college because it happens to be the biggest single spender in the whole area." I know that this is not the direct concern of the hon. Gentleman, but it is a matter on which we in education—and I mean both of us, speaking, as it were, across the Floor—should make representations to the Minister concerned, because this is one of the most powerful considerations to bear in mind when discussing the reorganisation of local government.

It is not as though we were dealing simply with primary schools or secondary schools. Further education covers a vast range. The college where I taught before coming here drew students from as far afield as Reading in the west—indeed, from as far west as Basingstoke—from Luton and even further north, from Brighton on the south coast, and from Southend in the east. We drew our students from a very wide area. To try and disentangle the finances and fees for students from such a widely scattered area is extremely difficult.

Then there is the question of administration. Should we expect a college of this sort to be governed by one small local area when so many of the students are drawn from other areas? Is there a local identity here? These are important considerations.

There is also the problem of paternalism by the governing bodies. Happily, the Guildford situation has been resolved, and I am glad of it. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his good offices there. It has been very successfully dealt with. It was an unhappy experience and we are glad to see the back of it. But there may be other Guildfords. There may be other cases where the independence of the teachers may be threatened. A technical college with a vast number of students—in my college we had some 6,000 or 7,000—drawn from a very wide area, and a large staff also drawn from an equally wide area, with members holding very high academic qualifications—indeed, many of them supreme in their subjects nationally let alone locally—may be subject perhaps to the administration of local councillors. I intend no disrespect to local councillors, but can one really expect them to be competent to judge the professional standards of such a college or its academic standards? I think it is asking too much of some of these local authorities to expect them to administer satisfactorily colleges of this sort.

Then there is the question of modern attitudes towards staff and students. Happily, in my college we got over the question of representation without fuss or bother. We did it at local level. We did not call in the authority. We settled it between ourselves. I was one of the union representatives, and together the chairman and I sorted the matter out with the principal with no fuss. That is the sort of situation we have had in London. In London, there has been no friction on these things. In some places there may be friction, however, and I often think that where one gets what I would describe as "parish pump politics" one may get such friction.

Then there is the attitude to the students. But here, Mr. Deputy Speaker, perhaps I am trespassing on your good nature, so I will not go into detail. I can well understand, however, that student attitudes are a very important factor in the future administration of these colleges.

Finally, there is the question of salaries and conditions of service. I know that a salary claim is in and I shall say nothing about that, because this is neither the time nor the place. I will only say that it has been in a long time and that, like all things, the mills of Burham grind slowly——

And too small.

—and they do grind too small sometimes. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, West (Mr. Alec Jones), who is from another branch of the profession, speaks truly. I hope that an answer on the claim will be forthcoming soon and that is all I shall say about it.

I want to refer to local variations. Unlike other sectors of Burham, with which I have had experience going back over 30 years, technical education provides all sorts of local variations because of the policies of different authorities on conditions of service, on which there is as yet no national agreement. In my last college, I was a lecturer Grade B. I have always regarded London as the best education authority in the country and that means probably in the world. I say that not as a Londoner but as an immigrant to London. It has one of the happiest of staff relationships. The Authority has always been generous to its teachers, both in ordinary schools and in further education. It has been understanding and tolerant. Not all authorities are as good as that. London has always been very generous in its allocation of lecturers, Grade B, senior lecturers, and so on. Other authorities have not always been as generous. Certainly, when it comes to things like class contact hours, London has been much more generous than other authorities. I ask the Minister to have a look at this and see what can be done to try and get some uniformity. By that I do not mean scaling things down, as it were, in London, but bringing the rest of the country up to the high standards enjoyed in London.

In London, 19 or 20 class contact hours is the norm. I wonder what it is in other parts of the country. In so many authorities, lecturers and teachers are expected to be in attendance at college throughout the college day, whether they are taking a class or not. Some of the authorities seem to exercise a quite disproportionate authoritarian attitude in this respect towards lecturers who, after all, are people with very high professional standards. In addition, holiday entitlement and leave of absence are all matters about which staff members also feel very strongly, and I would like to know how much consultation the Department encourages with local teacher associations. We have been very fortunate in London, but other parts of the country have not been so fortunate. There are one or two dangerous signs that conditions may worsen. The college year is normally 36 to 38 weeks, but, with the impact of industrial training there may be inroads into holidays and so on, so that in a few years the college year may look quite different. I wonder what the Department thinks about this and what it has in mind in this respect for the future

I have put my questions to the Under-Secretary in an entirely non-partisan fashion. I approach this subject with a professional and educational point of view. Throughout, there has been no sort of party attitude on this issue. The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to come to our annual conference this year, and that was much appreciated. What struck us was that he was not only interested in making a speech, but was eager to stay and listen to the speeches of delegates. I thank him for that and for his interest in our work in this respect.

7.11 p.m.

The hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Hamling) started his elegant little speech by saying that he hoped that this would be a semi-professional discussion. I am grateful to him for saying that, but I think that it will so turn out that he will be the professional and I shall be the semi. But I shall do my best to answer.

I have a large sheaf of notes about what he has been saying and I will do my best to answer as fully as I may as many of his comments as possible, but I know that he will acquit me of discourtesy if there are one or two matters which I openly skirt round. With his considerable experience, he knows the limitations of answerability in certain of these matters, and I must carefully observe the proprieties in that regard.

He was good enough to start with a kindly reference to my attendance at the conference in Nottingham of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions of which he is a distinguished member. No Minister could have had a more kindly welcome. I learnt a great deal from the occasion, which is why I went. I have something of a horror of Ministerial visits which are an Olympian descent from on high, the delivery of a splendid message, followed by a swift departure. I wanted to stay longer, and I was grateful that that was made possible for me. Sometimes on these occasions one learns a tremendous amount from the off-duty as well as the on-duty moments.

I was already aware, but it was brought home to me even more at the conference and it has been forcefully underlined by the hon. Gentleman tonight, of the anxiety in some professional circles that the future pattern of further education might be such as to make for an overwhelming concentration on the polytechnics at the expense of other institutions: I noted down the hon. Gentleman's phrase—the fear that priority would be given to the polytechnics to the exclusion or neglect of the other institutions.

I want to make it clear that the present Government, following the decisions of their predecessors, which in turn were a logical extension of the policies of the 'fifties, attach the greatest importance to the polytechnics and the increasing concentration of advanced work in those remarkable institutions. I yield to nobody in my regard for them and my admiration for their work. Many young people now contemplating doing degree work at a university or polytechnic would be well advised to consider the polytechnic as the place where they might well have the most rewarding course. But, that said, I make it perfectly clear that this is not to be, in the hon. Gentleman's phrase, to the exclusion or neglect of other institutions.

I believe that I can reassure the hon. Gentleman by reference to the figures. He will know that the list of further education major and minor projects authorised to start in 1971–72 notified to the L.E.A's last autumn totalled £27·8 million, which allows for the recently announced 20 per cent. increase in cost limits. A substantial but still minority proportion was for the polytechnics. For the following year, there is an admittedly substantial programme for the polytechnics, £8·8 million, but this is still only a proportion of the whole. It is important to say that, because it would be unfortunate if the whole weight of the Government effort, as exemplified by the F.E. major projects, were thought to be put into the polytechnic programme. The figures speak for themselves in the current year and for the year beginning 1972–73. We have yet to announce the preliminary list from which the 1973–74 starts will be drawn.

I am therefore happy to give the assurance in the terms for which the hon. Gentleman asked for it, and I make it clear that the concentration process, which in any case is gradual, following precisely from the 1966 White Paper and all that, about which the hon. Gentleman knows more than I, is not to the exclusion of other projects; and that the Government attach great importance, as is shown by their building programmes, to the remainder of further education.

The subject of projected expenditure was raised at Nottingham. The hon. Gentleman may not have had the opportunity of appreciating that the figures in the White Paper, to which he properly referred, have to be read against the background of the raising of the school-leaving age, which is relevant, as he and I would agree. If he studies the figures—and I am grateful to him for the way in which he put them—he will see that further education pro rata gets a fair share of the growth forecast. In any event, it is a total figure that the hon. Member fairly quoted. This covers some of the further education sectors which are expanding at a greater rate.

I also hope we may establish, as I am sure we can, that the figures mentioned are at constant prices. I make that clear because I noticed at Nottingham some understandable anxiety at the effect on the programme of increased costs. It is only fair to make it clear that the White Paper figures were at constant prices.

I share the hon. Member's interest in the sandwich courses and the improvement in the figures, but I am certainly not satisfied. I do not want him to think that I am. He will know that taking the whole further education sector, advanced and non-advanced—but more particularly, I think, in the former—there are, unfortunately, signs of difficulty in obtaining industrial places for some of our students on sandwich courses. I am glad to have the opportunity of mentioning that and to take up what the hon. Member has said. He will, I think, know that the C.B.I. has made a helpful intervention and has given cogent advice to its members about the making available of industrial places for students of this kind.

I believe that something like 60 per cent. of C.N.A.A. courses are of the sandwich type. As the hon. Member said, the number of students enrolled has been increasing steadily since the C.N.A.A. Council was established. The figures, which I happen to have with me, show that over 14,000 C.N.A.A. degree students are now following sandwich courses in polytechnics and other further education colleges in England and Wales. About 12,500 are on sandwich courses leading to Higher National diplomas, about 4,000 are seeking other higher education qualifications and about 6,000 are taking lower level sandwich courses. In other words, including the university sector, in which there is also some sandwich course work a fact which is not always appreciated outside—something like 50,000 students in all are affected. It is an important part of the work of further education and I am glad to underpin the hon. Member's expression of its importance.

I am also happy to join with the hon. Member on the whole subject of day release. It is possible—I always try to be watchful of this—to make play with figures in almost any direction. The hon. Member fairly said that he was approaching this matter in an entirely non-controversial way and I hope that I respond in the same manner. We can, however, take pleasure from the fact, since this is a matter which spans both Governments, that the proportion of employees in the 15–17 age range who are receiving day release has increased from 19 per cent. in 1964–65 to 24·7 per cent. in 1969–70. This latest figure is the highest ever. In case, having said that, I appear to be complacent, I also join the hon. Member in saying that I am not satisfied that that is a sufficiently fast growth rate.

The hon. Member mentioned one area for concern and I would mention another. That is that the rate of release for those in clerical and commercial jobs is particularly low. This is something which I hope very much we can improve upon. I also join the hon. Member, however, in deploring that day release for girls is generally at a markedly lower rate. In 1969–70, 40 per cent. of young men in the 15–17 age range were being released, while the corresponding figure for girls was only 10 per cent.

The hon. Member has done a service by drawing attention to this. He fairly asked what I would propose to do about it. I must give him the equally clear answer that in terms of directive—which I know he would not expect, but others outside might—the Government clearly do not wish to have powers of direction in this sense. I very much hope, however, that we can between us take every opportunity of exhortation and example.

I should simply like to say that in spite of the year being 1971, my view in a number of education sectors is that we still have a remarkably Victorian view towards women. The hon. Member is absolutely right in saying that there is a pool of ability available to the country which is being untapped. It is in part debates of this kind which draw attention to the deficiency.

I do not look for direction. I certainly hope that as a result of this sort of debate, we shall get encouragement to teachers and parents to help to put us right and, as the hon. Gentleman says, to get away from the Victorian attitude.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. We obviously think alike on this. He would, I know, agree that the place where the most effective propaganda can be made available is at the school level. It is important for us to get this across in the schools, and with parents, too, who rightly have a great influence on their children. This debate has once again drawn attention to the deficiency and in so far as I have any modest influence in this, I lose no opportunity on appropriate occasions of drawing attention to it.

To sum up this section of my reply, I do not think that in the non-advanced sectors of further education we can surely expect to have the same exact type of forecasting as we rightly expect in advanced education and in the university sector. In part, the reason for that is part of the strength of the further education sector in that it is constructed to be, and is, very receptive to both local need and short-term demand. It can respond very much more quickly than the other sectors to requirements locally and also to requirements which show themselves at comparatively short notice. I simply say that I do not think we shall ever be able to have the exact type of forecasting in this sector that we would expect in, for example, the university sector.

I was asked about the Department of the Environment's circular 2/70. Although, as the hon. Member will appreciate, I am slightly trespassing—I do it because he has been skilful in drawing me out—I am advised that there was consultation with the local authority associations. For my part, I am aware that there have been certain difficulties, one of which the hon. Member fairly drew to my attention. I merely wanted to be quite sure that I had heard him aright because until he courteously said that he would give me the appropriate paper, I wanted to follow up the particular case. But he has told me that he believes it to be Newcastle. I think that he would like to know that there have been within my Department consultations with those concerned with the case. There is another case in a different part of the country which also calls for consultation. If I find that there are some residuary problems, perhaps I can write to the hon. Gentleman or to those with whom I know he is in close touch.

The hon. Gentleman raised the pertinent question of the reorganisation of local government in relation to this subject. I wonder whether he would feel that one, although only one, of the reasons for proceeding with a reform of local government is that which he has given, namely, that in our unreformed local government some local authorities are perhaps not sufficiently large to be able effectively to look after what have become wide-drawing further education colleges and that the act of reform in the larger areas goes at least some way to meeting his point.

The logic of what the hon. Gentleman was saying might appear to be that the Government should take the administration of further education colleges from the local education authorities as reformed. I would regret that—and it is not in the Government's mind to do it—in part for the reason that I have outlined, namely, that I genuinely believe that the ability of such colleges—and I am thinking of non-advanced work now—to respond to local needs and local short-term demands is valuable and this asset might be lost if the administration were to be centralised. The hon. Gentle- will know—I do not need to say this, but I put it on the record for the benefit of those who read our debates—that in the advanced sector, such as the polytechnics, where financial arrangements are being pooled, the constraints of which he spoke do not apply.

The hon. Gentleman raised the question of what he described as paternalism in some governing bodies. Here there is very considerable progress to report. I can recall, when in opposition, taking part in the debates on the Bill, as it then was, which did a lot to bring up to date the governing bodies and government of colleges of education. This was followed by action being taken in the sector which we are now discussing. Circular 7/70, which gave advice to local education authorities about college government, is being worked on. I have been spending quite a considerable time on this matter because it is the articles, not the instruments of government, which we approve. We are in process of doing this throughout the sector we are discussing. I am at one with the hon. Gentleman in believing that this is a very important matter.

We should keep the matter in perspective. It is true that there are some who are not successful in their dealings with staff and students. There are some, not only in further education colleges, who deal in a high-handed way with staff or students. But it must be said that they are very much in the minority. One of the agreeable features of this sector is that the conditions which as the hon. Gentleman outlined so persuasively are to be found in London are also to be found elsewhere. I would think that that is so in the great majority of instances. However, one or two authorities feel uneasy about the move in the direction proposed in Circular 7/70. The representatives of one or two of them wish to see me about it. But the Government take on the commitment from the previous Government. There will not be a move away from that. When in opposition, we supported the previous Government and, I hope, helped them to pass the legislation in question.

Turning to the question of salaries and conditions of service, here I have to duck. The hon. Gentleman referred to the Inner London Education Authority as being overwhelmingly the finest in the country. I do not wish to enter into any controversy about the league table, but the hon. Gentleman and I are surrounded, not because of his eloquence or mine, by a number of Welsh colleagues. Recently I was the guest of the Glamorgan Local Education Authority, which would reckon to put its boxing gloves on pretty sharply if it heard the Inner London Education Authority described as the finest education authority in the country. One would have to go a long way to find anything to better Glamorgan's warmth of welcome and hospitality. But, mercifully, there is a large number of local education authorities which are run in the most efficient and humane way.

I have considerable understanding of and sympathy for the sense of irritation felt by members of the A.T.T.I. and their colleagues at the delay in dealing with their salary claim. This is essentially a matter for the Burnham Further Education Committee and I must be careful not to enter into a discussion about it. I have no authority whatever to speak for the Committee. The management panel took the view that the outcome of the arbitration on school teachers' pay was a very relevant factor and that is why it did not make an offer. However, that arbitration is, to our pleasure, behind us. I understand that the Burham Further Education Committee is to meet on 2nd August and that the management panel intends to make an offer at that meeting. Any settlement will be back-dated to 1st April. I say that because I do not wish people to feel that they may be out of pocket.

I must be careful what I say about the question of local conditions of employment. I doubt whether many lecturers or those employed in the colleges we are discussing would want the Department to have a centralised authority. I may be wrong, but I do not think that that would be all that popular. I am sure that it would not be popular in school teaching. Therefore, I must give no impression of wishing the matter to be centralised. I genuinely believe that this is a case for professional representation through the appropriate body. The A.T.T.I. is well able to deal with this matter, and, in fact, deals with it very effectively. It would not be appropriate for me to indicate a personal preference in case I inadvertently appeared to want to concentrate the matter in the centre.

I am conscious that my reply has been slightly ragged—I had no time to put my notes in order—but I hope that I have dealt in a courteous way with all the points raised by the hon. Gentleman. I trust that this necessarily short debate has directed the searchlight of attention on an extremely important sector of our education effort.

It is a wonderful thing that there should be interest and concern in the universities. I am behind it all the way. I do much to try to assist the development of the polytechnics, which I believe are one of the British people's great contributions in further education. But sometimes the non-advanced further education colleges are left out of this interest and concern. They play a vital part in our educational efforts, as the hon. Gentleman has shown effectively by his figures. It is right that from time to time the House should pause to consider them and to consider them profoundly.

South-East Wales (Unemployment)

7.40 p.m.

I will begin this debate on unemployment in South-East Wales on a personal note. I am the first member of my family to have been to university, let alone to have graduated, by some accident. When I was thinking of my future during my time in the fifth form in the grammar school, the advice I received from members of my family was that I should become a fitter, an electrician or a draughtsman. The reason advanced for this advice was that these jobs simultaneously provided a reasonable level of income and, more important, a level of security not enjoyed by the unskilled, the semi-skilled and the miners—the kind of occupation that my family had always followed.

That relationship with an older generation illustrates a whole chapter of social history, not only in South Wales but in working-class areas throughout Britain. The previous generation put an absolute premium on security, and thought that boredom and hard work could be suffered so long as there was job security, so long as a man could say that for the next 20 or 30 years he could be guaranteed a job. The reason for this was the previous generation's continual fear of gross insecurity during the inter-war years, and their determination that that insecurity should never be experienced by my generation.

We now have a new generation of workers in South Wales who since the war have become accustomed to a level of relatively high employment and to secure jobs and fairly advanced affluence—people who expect to take holidays every year and to have comfortable homes equipped with all the modern conveniences and motor cars. But this generation is now experiencing something it has never known before. These people who undertook new skills and have secure occupations, at the age of 30 to 35 are now knowing the sickening worry their parents' generation knew. Whereas 30 years ago the workers in South Wales were almost wholly engaged in the mines and the steel works, they are now employed as textile workers, engineers, chemical workers, glass workers and in all the other diversified trades that have developed since the war, and they are coming to know the worry, insecurity and desperation that was a permanent feature of the life of the prewar generations.

When one talks of unemployment in South-East Wales, one is talking not of the traditional mass unemployment of the coal-mining valleys, nor of the popular image of the depressed and depressing environment and of a depressed and malnourished generation. One is talking about ordinary workers, people who are indistinguishable from their comrades anywhere in the affluent areas of Britain. These are the people who are now facing unemployment on a scale unknown since before the war. There have been redundancies and layoffs in the industries which were intended to provide us with a secure, lasting, economic base. It is just like having cramp in the best developed muscle, and the people of South Wales are not equipped to deal with it.

Unless new initiatives are taken to provide the people with security and jobs and to guarantee the future of the children who are now leaving school, this sense of disappointment and frustration will manifest itself in a way which has not been seen in South Wales since before the war. That feeling is still there, it is latent. There is a high level of expectation, and people want better things. It was bad enough when they never had anything and were not allowed to get anything because of mass unemployment, but when something which they have had is snatched away, the reaction in South Wales will be all the more bitter and destructive. I do not say that as a warning but to illustrate the feeling that the new unemployment is causing in South Wales.

In the last two years in South Wales Switchgear at Pontllanfraith, which is the village across the valley from where I live, there has been a rundown of 1,000 jobs. South Wales Switchgear, which once acted as a springboard for engineering training in our part of the country, now has a reduced apprentice force and announced its latest redundancy last week with the layoff of just over 70 workers—the last in a long train of redundancies stretching over a couple of years.

Alcan-Booth of Rogerstone, developed during the war and extended since, is right at the frontiers of technological development, not a backwoods firm, not a throwback from the last industrial revolution, not a rundown pit or iron mill, but a modern industry. That firm had over a period of 12 months a humanely conducted but nevertheless very large redundancy of 500 workers.

Another firm on the frontiers of technology, Hy-Mac Rhymney, which could have occupied a position in an expanding world market producing large earth-moving equipment, has had a sorry story over the last few years of continual rundown in an area and in an industry where the most sophisticated skills of boilermaking, engineering and instrument-making were being developed. That is a severe setback for our part of Wales.

Looking further down the valley there are the more recent redundancies of British Aluminium in Newport. According to an announcement made last week. 400 workers will become redundant in the next few months. That means that another 400 workers from the city and from the lower parts of the valley will know unemployment for the first time.

Possibly the most tragic of all is the redundancy announced last week by I.C.I. Fibres, Pontypool, of 500 workers. That firm is concerned with man-made fibres, one of the mainsprings of Britain's technological growth in the last 20 years. It is an industry that held out probably the greatest hopes for the future. As the Minister of State will know, textile development is becoming a new industry in South Wales and increasing numbers of people are employed in it. This is a body-blow to a dramatically contrasted area of South Wales—to the south—the new town of Cwmbran and to the north the villages of Blaenavon and Abersychan, villages from which the Chartists marched a hundred years ago.

In this area there was one unifying factor, the apparent security of the industrial complex in the southern part of the area. However, Guest Keen Nettlefold and I.C.I. Fibres are now centres of redundancy. We liked to think of these industries as the new, muscular industries providing opportunities and transforming the nature of industrial South Wales. We thought these would be civilised, high-paying, full-employment industries which would help to remove the scars of the past. The amount of disappointment that has hit South Wales and the coastal plain of Monmouthshire and Glamorgan in the last 12 months has been heartbreaking to behold.

People who thought that they were secure are now having their jobs whipped out from under them and some of them at 40 years of age, after ten or 12 years of gradual development, accumulating all the material possessions and comforts, face the future with a couple of hundred pounds redundancy pay and no promise of employment in the near future. Skilled draftsmen, technicians, mechanics have been hit by 12, 15 or 20 weeks of unemployment and are eking out what remains of their redundancy pay.

There is no more humiliating experience than that of unemployment, but to take a generation which has known something entirely different is to rub its face in ignominy. These people do not feel it is somebody else's fault. In the old days it was always the capitalists who were to blame. There were always working-class leaders to articulate the feelings of the working class. They could always explain that once society was transformed, with new industry being brought in, and with a Government and Parliament which represented workers, these kind of things would not happen.

Well, we have now got all those things, and people are still becoming unemployed in South Wales. They look at this place and at the Government and say, "What is the point of our having any kind of democratic representation because all they do is to consider debate and talk? What we want is hope, security and jobs."

It does not appear to those people that an effort is being made by people with the power—and they know they have the power—to transform that situation. I hope it will not be long before this Government, with which I am in the most profound disagreement, realise the social as well as the economic consequences of this kind of unemployment and decide to deal strenuously with it.

On top of the big redundancies, we have the residue of pit closures over a decade; we also have the fall-out from smaller redundancies and the closure of smaller factories. This kind of bleak, gloomy, grim picture shatters the confidence even of the people in work. I am not just talking about Wales' 40,000 unemployed, on Monmouthshire's 8,000 or 9,000 unemployed, but about the people who are still in work by the skin of their teeth. Behind every redundant worker there are another two worrying themselves into distraction about who will be next—sweating that every weekend the management will put a slip into their pay packet, or a notice on the board, or will call in the trade union representative to decide who will go on the redundancy list.

Lack of confidence of this kind debilitates people's will to work. There is a theory of management—not widely held today, but widely held not so many years ago—that workers in fear are better workers, more responsible, more careful in their work. But the opposite is true. Workers who fear for their future could not care less about what is produced or how it is produced. They are absorbed with the question of their own future and cannot be worried about the national interest, or the company's interest or anybody else's interest. This is counterproductive in more ways than one. Many workers—even those in work—are looking for other jobs. They want to get out of the firm. It emphasises their insecurity when, after redundancy, they try to move to another firm and are told that there is no vacancy. It simply makes them feel trapped, enclosed in a network of insecurity, knowing that there is nothing between them and the dole queue. This is no overstatement.

Any one of the unemployed, skilled or unskilled, could tell the Minister this story in far more erudite terms than I can by taking him to their own homes, showing him the cancelled holiday plans, taking him to the garage to show him the car which has been turned in, showing him the table where the television set used to be. This is the situation in South Wales where the people are liquidating their assets to try to keep their heads above water for a little longer.

I am not talking about dire poverty. I am talking about savage cuts in people's standards of living because of unemployment. That is as bad in its way as mass unemployment in the inter-war years. The answers we receive as representatives of the people when we are seeking to improve the economic situation in South Wales—and we have had this sort of answer from the Minister of State and from his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—is "Others are worse off than we are in Wales." I feel sorry for the Geordies, and I cannot feel happy that the people in Merseyside or Glasgow are worse off than we are, but we in Wales cannot be described as being all that better off.

In the 12 months between June, 1970, and June, 1971, in the travel-to-work areas which serve my constituency there was an increase of male unemployment of 535 and of female unemployment of 19, making a total loss of 554 jobs, or an increase in unemployment of 21 per cent. over the 12 months. I know that others are suffering, but no one can expect me, as a representative of these people, to put up with the situation because people elsewhere are worse off than we are.

We are also told that the measures taken by the Chancellor last week—his reflationary move, the slice off purchase tax—will assist the situation. I had this answer from the Secretary of State for Wales through the post this morning, but what we have done with these measures is to clamber back on to the stop-go treadmill. If it causes a balance of payments strain, as it always has done when we have had a slight boost to the economy, the people will have to pay for the eventual balance of payments deficit. It is the people who are now unemployed who will have to take the restraints regardless of what Government are in power. Those people will be hit both ways.

We were told in another Parliamentary answer that the new public works programme announced for Wales, value £14 million, will be of assistance in the problem. This might be so. Nobody has said how many jobs are to be created, but the fact remains that, however extensive the public works, even if they are worth double or three times that amount, it does not offer much future to the unemployed or the youth of my constituency since very few permanent jobs will be created. I do not want to see our society turned into a nation of navvies. That is not the solution to the job problem we face. Therefore, welcome as the public works programme is, it is only a temporary stop-gap measure and will not compensate for the loss of 500 jobs in I.C.I., 400 in British Aluminium and 1,000 in the South Wales Switchgear or any of the other major redundancies.

We have debated these matters in the Welsh Grand Committee. It does not matter what moves the Government make towards a system of free depreciation or a tax allowance system of incentives to regional industry unless the cash exists, unless the liquidity is there and unless industrialists can get money with which to buy machinery and to engage in capital investment. There is little point in offering them depreciation on assets that they cannot afford to buy or raise the money to buy.

All the answers so far advanced by the Government either are left wanting or are no answers at all. Some, like the measures announced last week, welcome though they are, may ease the unemployment problem. But they hold the seeds of their own destruction and that of the future of the people whom they are intended to assist.

I have even been told in a Parliamentary Answer from the Department of Employment that Bedwellty was all right because it was a special development area. There are four local authorities in my constituency. The Bedwellty Urban District is one, and that is in a special development area. Another, Mynyddislwyn, is also in a special development area. The other two are not. When I have made application to the Welsh office for assistance towards getting special development area status for Risca, which has an unemployment rate of 3·9 per cent., I have been told that matters are not sufficiently difficult in Risca to qualify it for special development area status.

Much as we should like it, the fact remains that, even if S.D.A. status came, it is only a title. It is only another pin in the map. It is no guarantee of additional employment. No great industry will be attracted to an area because of the advantages that accompany special development area status. It is intended to attract the minnows, and they are extremely welcome. But the granting of special development area status in itself is no guarantee of jobs. Certainly it is no guarantee of the right kinds of jobs, although we should be grateful for any kinds of jobs.

We face the progressive devitalisation and impoverishment of our community. Once it has started, it is almost impossible to stop. At best, it will be very expensive to haul our way back up the slope away from depression now that we have started to go downwards at full speed into a slump. Again, that is not expressing the situation in over-dramatic terms.

One aspect of the problem which is causing great distress is youth unemployment. I have spoken of the generation after the war, of which I am a member, which never knew unemployment. We are moving now to a further generation. I mean the young people, the school leavers of 15, 16, 17 and 18, and others in their twenties, some of them married, who are still described as youth unemployed. It is a national problem. The Times has talked of the 400,000 school leavers who face a bleak winter.

The senior careers officer for Monmouthshire, Miss C. A. Morris, was interviewed recently by the South Wales Argus, a newspaper which deserves praise for the way in which it has followed the problems of youth unemployment in Monmouthshire. In the course of that interview, Miss Morris spoke of a situation in which there might easily be 1,250 unemployed youngsters in Monmouthshire by the end of August. She said that there would be 4,000 school leavers in the county this year, and she expects that, even by September, 1,250 of them may still be out of work. She said that if the numbers of children unemployed had not dropped significantly during September and October, the careers service in Monmouthshire would become really worried.

Miss Morris went on:

"The largest population of young people in the county is in the Eastern Valley and ten years ago it was by far the most prosperous area. But new industries haven't kept pace with the increase in population in the area … A barometer of unemployment in the county is that more boys are taking jobs in coal mining—work which recent generations have avoided if possible."

There is an explicit description of the situation by a woman who is involved professionally. She says:

"We must see that the young unemployed retain their enthusiasm and prevent them feeling they are not wanted."

That is the situation that we face in Monmouthshire, where between 20 and 25 per cent. of our young school leavers face unemployment when they leave school. It is a disastrous situation. It is impossible to think of it as anything else, when 1,250 youngsters have no prospect of a job when they leave school.

Miss Morris is not given to exaggeration. She is a temperate and moderate women. In a telephone conversation I had difficulty in getting her to use even mild language to describe the situation. However, the figure of 1,250 is sufficient description in itself.

Mr. James Kegie, the county planning officer, in his quarterly report published last May told us that in the 12 months between May, 1970, and May, 1971, youth unemployment went up by 34 per cent. in Monmouthshire. The other side of the picture is that youth vacancies went down by 68 per cent. in the same period.

There are parts of Monmouthshire in which there are 50 men to every vacancy registered at employment exchanges. The average in the county is that there are 11 unemployed persons for every vacancy. As I have said already, this is the situation in an area which has become used to affluence and which has established a new kind of community where people are accustomed to security and comfort. We find ourselves with dramatically increasing unemployment figures and with no future for our young people. A whole generation bred on security now experiences the threat of the axe over their jobs. This kind of situation is nothing short of disaster. It is disappointing in human terms, and it must cause everyone in this House the greatest frustration. But frustration, compassion, sorrow and regard for the position of these people are not enough. We want positive action. The Government must change their regional jobs policy. There is no alternative.

If it is the case that we face a situation of continual run-down in our regions, the Government must show their interest in the regions by giving a massive injection of incentive capital and by forcing industries to go there. There must be expansion into the regions before the gate of Europe's regional policy sanctions closes upon us. It is no small wonder that the greatest fear exists in the regions about their future should we join the E.E.C. If we decide to go in, in the years before we become fully committed members, we must get as much as possible established in our regions to provide security for many years to come.

So dangerous and difficult is the youth employment position, I suggest that the Government would be justified in introducing a special youth employment premium which would give employers a bigger incentive to employ young people. To young people, who have no roots, who have no family commitments and who are mobile workers, the alternative is to leave the valley communities not just for five or six years but for ever. We shall then enter a vicious circle where industry does not come because we have become run-down communities, and where young people leave because industry is not coming. We have begun on that vicious circle already, and only rapid Government action can solve the problem. My suggestion is for a special premium to attract jobs for youngsters.

I should also like to see more use made of factories which are now standing empty in the valleys following closures in recent months. Some of them are fully equipped with engineering machinery. Let us put the unemployed youth into those factories and give them 12-month apprenticeships so that they will at least have a qualification to face the world. The alternative is a completely disenchanted unemployed youth labour force which will vent its spleen on society, at best by being apathetic and, at worst, by being positively destructive. It is not only an economic case, but a social and humanitarian case which we put forward in asking the Government to take more urgent measures to deal with unemployment in South-East Wales.

8.10 p.m.

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Kinnock) and to echo many of the words which he has uttered, particularly his concern at the genuine sense of bitterness felt by many people in South Wales at the loss of the security which they thought was theirs, security for which they have fought and built up since 1945.

I share my hon. Friend's compassionate concern for young people. As long as the young people of Wales have a voice in this House, such as that raised so eloquently tonight by my hon. Friend, I am sure that we shall be able to solve many problems to their satisfaction.

The people of Wales have a long memory. It is possibly unfortunate for the Government, because that long memory guarantees that they will never have a majority of Members representing Welsh constituencies. Not only is that memory long, but certainly the oldest among us—in some cases, the not-so-old—have bitter memories of the high and lasting unemployment which was inflicted upon us by pre-war Tory Governments. That past experience taught us that unemployment was one of the greatest misfortunes which could be visited upon any community. It is because we remember those matters that we are debating this issue tonight.

It is because Welsh Labour Members share these long and bitter memories that, at the first meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee in this Parliament when we discussed the effect of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's October policy statement on the Welsh economy, we constantly emphasised unemployment throughout our contributions. We asked questions and criticised the Government. We criticised them then over their decision to abandon investment grants. How right we were. As events have shown, the abandonment of investment grants has proved catastrophic for Wales.

Despite the fears which we expressed on that occasion—indeed, almost because of those fears—we were admonished by the Secretary of State for Wales. On 9th December, at column 17 of the Welsh Grand Committee Report, the right hon. Gentleman said: "In particular, we"—that is the Government—

"reject the shameful waste which has occurred in the last six years in terms of unemployment and migration—a waste of the talent and skills of Welsh workers … we are determined to follow new policies, policies which will be more effective in securing the development of the Welsh economy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Welsh Grand Committee, 9th December, 1970; c. 17.]

The Secretary of State for Wales, in his first address to the Welsh Grand Committee since the new Government took office 12 months ago, said that the Government were determined to follow new policies. We do not expect the leopard to change its spots, but I am sure that we will be forgiven our cynicism as many of the things which we said on that occasion have proved to be right.

What have the Government's new policies brought to Wales? Certainly they have brought new records of unemployment—wonderful new records. Month by month, almost without exception, there have been new records of unemployment in Wales. On 12th July this year there were 44,062 unemployed persons in Wales. The number of unemployed in Wales has shot up by 9 per cent. in just one month. We have unemployment such as we have not seen since the last war. We now have unemployment figures which most people in South Wales certainly thought had gone for ever.

July, 1967—some hon. Members will recall that I have a personal reason for remembering 1967, since July was but three months after I fought a complicated and difficult by-election in the Rhondda—was not a popular month for the Labour Government. We had the worst July figure for unemployment under Labour—36,851. I criticised that unemployment figure then. Indeed, many of my hon. Friends criticised our own Government when we thought that they were hesitant or reluctant to go far enough or fast enough towards the solution of that problem. If we were right to criticise our own Government about a level of unemployment of 36,000, as I believe we were, then we are more right—nay, it is our duty—to criticise the present Government with an unemployment figure of 44,000. The July, 1971, unemployment figure is 20 per cent. higher than it was in July, 1967.

These new policies, which were so proudly fanfared to us in Committee by the Secretary of State for Wales, have achieved what many of us had hoped was impossible, even for a Conservative Government. The Welsh unemployment figure has gone up by 26 per cent. in the first year of the new Conservative Administration. The sum of their achievement for Wales is a 26 per cent. increase in unemployment.

It is not merely the present figure of unemployment which worries us. The figure of 44,000 was compiled on 12th July, well before most of the Welsh school summer leavers joined the ranks of the unemployed. My hon. Friend gave details of youth unemployment in Monmouthshire. I have spoken to several youth employment officers in the county of Glamorgan. They have told me that this is the worst year they have experienced for trying to place school leavers in employment. If the figure was 44,000 before the school leavers were added and if this is to be the worst year for placing school leavers in employment, we have every reason for fearing that the figures for August and September will be infinitely worse.

It is a dreadfully demoralising experience for young people to be forced to sign on at the Labour Exchange as their first job in life. There are already about 2,000 young boys under the age of 18 unemployed in Wales, and nearly 1,500 girls. Those numbers must soon be inflated by our summer school leavers. Not for these young people the dignity and independence which comes from good and valuable employment, but the indignity, at the earliest possible age, of joining an ever-increasing dole queue.

It is not only these young people who are likely to be added to the dole queues in the coming months. We know that there are normal seasonal trends in unemployment. Looking at the records of unemployment in Wales over the past few years, we see that between July and January there is likely to be an increase in the number unemployed, under normal circumstances, of between 6,000 and 8,000. It has sometimes reached between 10,000 and 12,000, but in most years, under normal conditions, the increase in unemployment between July and January has been between 6,000 and 8,000. If the trend continues this year, Wales will have at least 50,000 unemployed by the end of the winter. This is a heavy price to ask the people of Wales to pay for the confidence trick played upon them last June.

On 28th June, the Chancellor said that our fears were unfounded. He said that there were

"some distinct signs of an improvement … in a variety of fields."

He said that there had been improvement in industrial production, in the volume of retail sales, in new car registrations, and in the volume of exports. For good measure the Chancellor went on to say this in an attempt to reassure those of us on this side who had misgivings:

"On the basic problem of unemployment. I have repeatedly said that, taking account of the Budget measures"—

I am not sure which Budget he meant—

"I expected that the rate of increase in unemployment would, after a time, slow down and then stop. That is what I said, and certainly that has been happening, as is apparent from the figures that have been published in recent months."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th June, 1971; Vol. 820, c. 57–8.]

Unfortunately, when the unemployment figures came out on 12th July they gave the complete lie to the picture which the Chancellor had painted on 28th June. All those glorious signs of improvement had disappeared like water off a duck's back. When they disappeared, we had the third Budget in less than a year. On 28th June everything in the garden was lovely. Twenty-one days later there were the extra measures because the good signs had disappeared and it was necessary for even this Government to take action.

It is reasonable to be fair to all Governments. This Government's third Budget at least showed that the Government had become frightened by the level of unemployment—by the monster of their own creation.

I welcome many parts of the Chancellor's third Budget. I believe that much of it is belated and should have been done months earlier. If it had been done months earlier many of those who are now unemployed in Wales would have been saved the indignity of having to join the dole queue.

I sincerely hope that the Chancellor's measures will have some success in reducing the level of unemployment. If I am proved wrong in my estimate of 50,000 unemployed in Wales this winter, no one will be more pleased than me. I look forward to being proved wrong.

I issue this warning to the Government. It will not be sufficient merely to slow down the rate of increase in unemployment. What Wales wants, what my Scottish colleagues will want later, and what all the unemployed throughout the United Kingdom want, is a dramatic drop in the real numbers of unemployed and a movement towards the time when all men and women who are able and Willing to work are in employment. That is the goal. Unless we see some positive steps taken to reach it, we shall expect even this Chancellor to give us the fourth Budget, if necessary.

Few of us in Wales are anything but depressed by the news we have read in the Press in the past year. Almost every local paper in South Wales, and even the national paper—the Western Mail—has given us detail after detail of closures of one factory after another, of cutbacks in production, and of redundancies, until these words have become as well known in the Wales of 1971 as they were in the Wales of 1931.

I will state some of the facts which lead me to say that the whole economic climate in Wales has worsened in the last 12 months. We expect the Government to take action to solve the problem created by these facts. First, unemployment has increased by 26 per cent. from July, 1970, to July this year. Second, between January and April, 1971, 8,100 workers were declared redundant in manufacturing industries. I take that figure from a Parliamentary Answer. Trade union officials to whom I have spoken both in my constituency and throughout South Wales tell me that this is the worst period they can remember since the war for having to deal with redundancies. One trade union official said that practically the only thing he does nowadays is deal with redundancies in factories.

Third, in June, 1970, there were 30,000 jobs in prospect—the hope for the future, as it were; in June, 1971, there were less than 25,000.

The fourth fact concerns industrial development certificates. When hon. Members opposite were in opposition they used the question of the granting of I.D.C.s as a rod with which to beat the back of the Labour Government because we were not doing enough in this regard. In the first quarter of 1971 I.D.C.s were granted for a total of 0·7 million square feet. That sounds a lot, but in the first quarter of 1970 under the Labour Government the figure was 1·9 million sq. ft. So there has been a reduction of 63 per cent.

The Government must direct their attention to those facts. The people of Wales want to know what concrete proposals the Government have for dealing with the redundancies, the loss of job opportunities, and the unemployment which has been created.

I am sure that the Minister of State will inform the Secretary of State of the points which have been raised during the debate. The Secretary of State is responsible to the people of Wales. If the unemployment figures show further increases in August and September, we shall expect action by the Secretary of State. Up to now the Government have been able to claim—with a certain amount of justification—that they have not been long in office and that part of the blame can be laid on the Labour Government. That excuse is wearing thin. Wales will expect to see some action from this Government if the July and August unemployment figures are excessively high.

The Minister of State will have seen Motion No. 653. In it, hon. Members on this side say that if the figures are high we expect the Secretary of State to recall the Welsh Grand Committee, even during the recess, so that the Government can be asked to give some account of their stewardship.

My speech has been almost entirely concerned with Wales, although I know that my hon. Friends for Scottish constituencies are raring to go. All that I have said on Wales is equally true of Scotland and the other development areas. It will go down to the everlasting discredit of this Government if they continue to tolerate the ever-increasing unemployment figures of the United Kingdom in 1971.

8.29 p.m.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Kinnock) on initiating this debate. He spoke finely and made a useful though depressing contribution. He is not, perhaps fortunately, old enough to remember South Wales as it was before the war, but I was brought up there before the war and I have very vivid memories of it. It would be a disaster not only for South Wales but for the nation if we saw those times again.

I should like to warn against deliberately creating a climate of depression. Loss of confidence will be the biggest obstacle that we shall eventually have to overcome again if we are to bring blooming prosperity to South-East Wales.

This is not the occasion to discuss the wider implications of the Government's strategy—namely, the attempt to join the Common Market and its effects on South Wales. I think that hon. Members would agree that that subject has been discussed enough for the time being. Nor would it be especially fruitful to discuss the Government's tax reforms, the object of which is to strengthen and make more realistic the developments in areas like South-East Wales, because that subject too has been considerably worked over.

But it may be useful to consider the strategy which is being followed and to say something about the preliminary reactions that I personally have had to the Severnside feasibility study. It contains ideas which have not been given sufficient publicity. For instance, the summary of conclusions on page 13 contains the words:

"Our main conclusions are:

1. Severnside is an area where we believe there will be continuing tendencies for growth sufficient to attract a net inward flow of about 7,000 people a year, unless positive measures to restrict growth there, for which we can see no economic justification, are taken."

Throughout this detailed and highly interesting report are ideas which suggest openings for much deeper and further consideration. I have the feeling that a strategic error is being made in our placing too much emphasis on the responsibility here of the Welsh Office. It seems to me that the problems of South-East Wales are national problems and should be tackled on the basis of a national strategy. I should like to be sure that the Government have absorbed the long-term problems of the economic development of this island and can see the problems of South-East Wales in the national context.

Many people have complained that, since the war, there has been an overheating in the South-East, that the growth which we have had since the war has been concentrated too much in the London area and the Home Counties. There is a great deal of truth in this. I should like to see the Government as not a short-term but a long-term strategy, devising means for shifting the whole basis of growth, not away from the South-East, because one wants the South-East to continue to grow, but more widely over the whole island, including particularly the Severnside area.

It is unfortunate, possibly, that, in this report, for reasons that I do not know, the Cardiff area and Glamorgan were regarded as a fringe area of Severnside. I should have thought that the Glamorgan area, with its great concentration on population and industry, could have been taken as one of the major objects of the study. It is possibly because of this decision that the study has concentrated on the development potential of Newport, rather than the north bank of the Severn, including Barry, Cardiff and Newport, all together.

Among the important developments in the area during recent years the ultimate effects of which have not yet been fully felt is the building of the Severn bridge. There are many people in South Wales who complain that, although the Severn bridge is an enormously valuable facility for business, trade and production, it is nevertheless tending to suck business away to Bristol and is making Bristol into the capital of the Severnside region. From my limited observation, I think that there is an element of truth in that. I hope, therefore, that we may see a greater emphasis on the balanced development of Severnside, without Bristol being allowed to emerge as the capital, with Newport, Cardiff and the other towns on the north bank simply being satellites.

I owe to Lord Brecon, who speaks so wisely and with such knowledge of Welsh affairs, the vision of Cardiff and Newport gradually growing into one major population and industrial centre able, as it were, to look Bristol in the eye, or, perhaps—not to use a platform phrase—able to ensure that there is a balanced growth on both sides of the Severn, with as much growth in, so to speak, the Welsh part of the area as on the English side.

I was one of those Members who felt, when public opinion rose up and decided that it would not wear a new national airport at Cublington, that we ought to consider the possibility of building the new airport on the Severn. I still regard this as an idea worth consideration. I feel that, if we had the tens of millions—or is it hundreds of millions?—to spend on the creation of a new national airport, we could well have thought of putting it into an area of high population and declining industry rather than in an area where there are at present relatively few people and only a large number of Brent geese.

If the decision has been firmly taken in favour of Foulness, it is probably too late to go back now, but that still leaves us with the possibility of creating a national airport in due course on the Severn. I have seen the study and been impressed by the work done by the Cardiff firm of engineers which has examined in considerable detail the possibility of building a new airport on the Severn, and I think that the Government should look much more closely into the possibility if not of building a national airport there, at least of building a new airport which would serve Severnside and the Birmingham area.

I am afraid that one of the projects which the Government have in hand, namely, the concept of the Llantrisant new town, may prove to be contrary to the ideal strategy for Severnside. I think that hon. Members know my interest in this matter, and I do not hesitate to declare it, although I am not exactly sure what it is. Whether it is in my personal interest or the interest of my family that there should be a new town in Llantrisant, that there should not be a new town there, or that Llantrisant should be allowed to develop in some other way, I am not perfectly certain, but I am extremely interested personally in this matter none the less.

My view from the start has been that it would be a mistake to concentrate growth in Llantrisant to the exclusion of the opportunities available in the neighbouring areas. I regard Llantrisant as a highly promising centre for industrial growth, and it is an attractive area where I should be glad to see the development of population as well, but it ought not to be overdone by Government attention being concentrated upon it to the exclusion of the other openings for growth. We cannot afford to stifle growth anywhere in South-East Wales, even if it be done with the idea of making a great success of the Llantrisant new town project.

I should like to see the development of Llantrisant allowed to proceed in a much more natural way. I do not like population forecasts of 140,000 by the end of the century. That seems to me to be more hectic even than the development of the Klondyke. Population growth on that scale cannot be well carried through. Nor am I very happy with the idea of a population of 70,000 to 90,000 in Llantrisant in the lifetime, probably, of all hon. Members now in the House. That also seems too hectic and unbalanced.

A population target by the end of the century of, perhaps, 40,000 or 50,000 seems to me to be much more realistic, and it would be attainable, in my opinion, if the Glamorgan County Council, or whatever be the appropriate authority, were to publish a town map for the Llantrisant area and say, "This is the type of development which we should approve in Llantrisant. Now go ahead and do it yourselves". Fortuitously, the local authority is already the owner of a large part of the area which would be likely to be included in a town map for Llantrisant, so one would, therefore, have balanced public and private development which could make the old town of Llantrisant live again as something really fine. But I doubt what may come if the idea is persisted in of establishing in due course a corporation, with all the pomposity and red tape which goes with this idea of a formal new town.

I say no more about the concept of Llantrisant new town, but will the Government put their minds to the attractions of developing the areas lying between Cardiff and Newport, and particularly the area lying south of the railway and of the main road; that is, south of the motorway that is to be? There we have a very large flat area, relatively without existing population and relatively without history, which can be easily drained, which has immediate access to the sea and could easily have access to an airport as well, which would present, if it were done with vision and as a national project and not something merely loaded on to the Welsh Office as a Welsh project, an opportunity of producing a new trading estate for the 21st century which would be as fine as anything in Europe.

I do not want the opportunity to be lost because responsibility for development on the north bank of the Severn is divided between too many small centres, none really powerful enough to be a magnet for professional, business and, indeed, recreational developments. Already we are too much fragmented on the north bank. We have Barry—a fine place, but not large enough to attract a business community of real size on its own. We have Caerphilly, another historic centre; Llantrisant, Cwmbran, Newport, Pontypool. All these centres are attractive in themselves, with great potential, but none is able to look at Bristol as the headquarters as it might be for a great new industry, for a sales force, or as a place where professional people will come together to provide the centre of excellence which I would like to see in this part of the country.

I believe that it was I who first used the phrase "Britain Garden City, the world capital". I am quite serious in using that phrase again. We must look forward to the continuing growth of population, to a total reconstruction of the old eighteenth and nineteenth century housing in which our people are still living, and to the creation of completely new industries for a new age; and must see Britain not just as an offshore island of Europe, but as one of the world's major trading and business centres.

In this development, as I envisage it, south-east Wales must play a prominent part. So may we hear from my hon. Friend that his eyes are set on the distant scene; that he is not too much preoccupied with pinpointing developments here and solving a particular immediate problem there, but is determined that south-east Wales should be integrated with the economy of the whole island, of Europe and of the world?

The other day I read the sketch for a transport programme for Europe in the 1980's, and the phrase in that sketch which stuck with me is: "Birmingham, Severnside, Bordeaux, Turin"—just an example of the sort of way in which we should be thinking of new trade routes and new areas for development and intercommunication. We must not see ourselves as being a region away from the main centre, as we have tended to do, thinking of South Wales as simply a fringe area of the South-East. Instead, we must have a much larger vision of the way in which people will earn their livings and contribute to society in the 21st century.

8.45 p.m.

I will try to be brief, as there are so many more topics to be discussed. I have been tempted to speak by what my hon. Friend the Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Kinnock) said in his admirable opening speech and by certain remarks of the hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams). I agree wholeheartedly with what he said about Llantrisant. But I disagree with his suggestion about the development between Newport and Cardiff. He should have learnt the lessons of the South-East and the massive growth of conurbations. If we develop that area between Newport and Cardiff we shall fall into the same trap as the South-East, creating a massive conurbation which could result from the development of Severnside to Cardiff and Barry. As far as South Wales is concerned, heaven forbid!

My hon. Friend referred to his personal experience. He is of the post-war generation. I was born just before the First World War, and I remember the 1930s. I believe that my experience exemplifies the basis of the thinking amongst the older generation in South Wales today. Perhaps the hon. Member for Kensington, South will understand when we are perhaps accused of painting too gloomy a picture.

I was accepted for two universities, having taken what was then known as the Higher Certificate. For domestic reasons, I could not accept either. The older generation will recall that there were only two safe jobs in the valleys—the town hall and the local co-op. There was a vacancy in the town hall, and 150 of us tried for that one job, boys who had done well, passing their Higher Certificates with dislinction and so on. I was the lucky one. I do not know whether I was fortunate to stay in the valleys of South Wales, but I think so, because of the great communities which exist there.

The pay for my job rose from £1 to £2 a week. Although that was a long time ago, those were very low wages even then. I was fortunate in that I gained tremendous experience in various departments of local council work. I have found that very useful to me, particularly here.

I know that the Minister knows the areas of which we are speaking as well as any hon. Member does. It is because of my own experience there that I think that the ghost of the 1930s still stalks the valleys of South Wales. It is no good accusing us of painting too gloomy a picture when we know that the situation at present is gloomy indeed.

My hon. Friends the Members for Bedwellty and Rhondda, West (Mr. Alec Jones) have referred to the various means the Government are adopting to provide incentives for industry in the development areas. They have been discussed in the Welsh Grand Committee, but for certain reasons I could not say a word there. I will not develop what my hon. Friends said, except to say that I think that the incentives will be insufficient to attract the industry which we need when the hoped-for expansion in the economy comes. I would refer to only one aspect, for which I do not blame the present Government; my own Government were equally responsible. In 1973 the regional employment premium will disappear. I implore the Minister of State to press on the Secretary of State the urgent necessity of introducing something that will replace the regional employment premium, which has been a tremendous inducement to industrialists in development areas, particularly in South Wales.

The hon. Member for Kensington, South referred to Severnside and Llantrisant. I would be out of order were I to discuss the new towns. I shall simply refer to the Llantrisant development in so far as it affects the employment prospects and the prospects of the communities in the valleys of South Wales in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire.

I was very pleased to read that the Minister of State had said that as far as the Severnside development was concerned he had priorities for solving the problems of the valleys. I am paraphrasing what I read in the Press. I welcome that because it is a correct priority. I would like the Welsh Office to use this priority in relation to Llantrisant. It has been stated by the Government that the new town will cost ultimately about £3 million. An authoritative study of the problems of the valleys by a civil engineer has suggested that we could solve them, and this would involve a population of about 700,000, for less than £130 million. It is my contention that we could solve the problems for far less than that.

There are one or two serious fallacies in the thinking about new towns. We all know that at the moment studies are being made into the effects of new towns—what they are or are not achieving. What they are not achieving is the community spirit. They are soulless places, apart from their other problems. If we depopulate the valleys, as Llantrisant will certainly do, we shall find—and the Secretary of State admitted this in answer to my supplementary question—that we have destroyed the existing, lively communities. Others will ultimately evolve, but not within the next 50 or 100 years. That is one of the things which the studies of the new towns is revealing.

If the new town of Llantrisant is to go ahead, and I understand the preliminary planning steps are being taken, we shall find that more and more of the existing social capital in the valley towns in Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire will be under-used. The social capital is not poverty stricken. In my valley there are many new schools, including a comprehensive school, which admittedly consists of a number of schools. There is existing social capital which if brought up-to-date will ultmately be of great benefit.

I am convinced that the various Secretaries of State—and I am talking about Secretaries of State in previous governments—with one exception to which I will refer, have been persuaded, whether by the officials in the Welsh Office or elsewhere, into taking unnecessary actions. What the hon. Gentleman for Kensington, South said was quite right. Llantrisant can develop quite naturally. Industry will be welcomed there. I know all about the arguments that money could be available through the New Towns Act. This is not necessary in Llantrisant. I refer to the destruction of the existing communities.

No one who has lived in the valleys of South Wales, which I know as well as anyone, can deny that the communities which exist there, not only educational but cultural, are equal to any others in the United Kingdom—certainly surpassing anything existing in a metropolis like London or in those vast conurbations around Manchester and Birmingham—and I say that with all respect to my colleagues from those areas. These are lively communities. I feel horror-stricken by certain developments which far-seeing Ministers should not be persuaded by officials and so-called planning experts to undertake. From my experience in local government, I know a lot about planning experts. When I first came to this House, one of my jobs was to do with planning.

I welcome the reference to the Severn-side development by the Minister, but it must be one of his priorities to see that, before the development of Llantrisant to a new town of 70,000 or 80,000 by the early 1990s, capital is diverted into the valleys to retain the communities there as they exist now.

There is an excellent precedent. I am pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) here because I think he has an idea of what I am about to say. I commend this precedent to the Minister of State because he knows the area as well as anyone. Jim Griffiths—I was going to say, my right hon. Friend—when Secretary of State for Wales, suggested a new town for mid-Wales. I was horrified by the idea, and when my right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey succeeded Mr. Griffiths, he had the force of character to sweep it aside. Where was the population for that new town to come from? From existing communities, which the Minister knows so well, in Mid-Wales and other valley communities, and from the Birmingham area. I felt that we would be destroying existing communities. We would not be bringing employment to the sorely distressed areas which needed it. We would be sucking them dry of their population for the new town.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey, however, decided to develop the existing communities, and what a wise decision that was. Those of us studying the effects of new towns—and a study is long overdue—should have regard to what happened in Mid-Wales when my right hon. Friend set up the Mid-Wales Development Corporation. By that action alone, he and my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. George Thomas), who succeeded him, set a first-class example to the rest of the United Kingdom in considering new town development. One of the reasons for a new town is to house overspill from existing conurbations. But there are no conurbations in South Wales. Nor are there conurbations in Mid-Wales.

Indeed, people are moving away from Mid-Wales. They are migrating en masse. Therefore, the excuse for a new town in Mid-Wales was to house overspill from Birmingham. I am not a nationalist and I welcome English people to Wales. My father was, in any case, an Englishman. Llantrisant New Town is not designed to satisfy an overspill but ostensibly to satisfy the industrial development taking place there. Where, however, is the overspill to come from? The Secretary of State himself answered this when he said that thousands would have to come from existing communities in the valleys. I therefore ask the Minister of State to look seriously at the Llantrisant project.

I am pleased that the Secretary of State has agreed to meet my colleagues and a number of local authorities about the problems of the heads of the valleys. I ask him to look at this more seriously and to think of what is happening in an area, the Newtown area, which he knows as well as anyone.

My colleagues and I, when we meet the Secretary of State with members of the local authorities, will ask him to think about a feasibility study for the Heads of the Valleys with the ultimate object of establishing a development corporation for them. All the evidence—and I have it and I defy any official of the Welsh Office or anywhere else to counter it—shows that in all respects this is a strategic area. I know that there is difficulty about inducing industrialists to come, but, once there, they will remain, dependent on the economic climate.

I have not referred to my own constituency and I have three brief questions about it. We have one advance factory which is idle and we have the old Lastex Yard factory in the Hirwaun trading estate which is idle. Thirdly, we have the promise of a Remploy factory, one of the achievements of which I am proud and for which I have been agitating for many years. J hope that the Minister of Stale will consider these three and will let me know about them in due course.

9.6 p.m.

J shall not follow the comments of those hon. Members who have discoursed on Llantrisant and the area between Cardiff and Newport, interesting though that would be. The problem which we are facing is more closely related to next year, the next 18 months, the next two years.

The problems of Wales cannot be solved while there is high unemployment. Those are not my words: they are the words of that euphemistic document, "A Better Tomorrow", the Tory manifesto for Wales of last year. In case the Minister of State did not mean what he said then, we had better get the Minister of Agriculture here to define the meaning. I will quote the sentence again:

"The problems of Wales cannot be solved while there is high unemployment."

Then 34,000 people in Wales were out of work; now, 44,000. If there were high unemployment in June, last year, what is the figure now? Is it high, very high, or absolutely disgraceful?

The Tory manifesto went on to say that the aim of the Government was an effective regional development policy. It said:

"We regard an effective regional policy as a vital element in our economic and social strategy."

It went on to promise

"a thorough-going study of development area policy."

We are still awaiting that thorough-going study. Measures have been taken in the last nine or ten months which have been completely divorced from any study and which have gravely damaged the employment situation in Wales.

Nobody can doubt that with the change of Government there was a considerable loss of confidence in Wales about the economic situation, not just by the opponents of the Government, but by economic experts and by industrialists, a loss of confidence which was at variance with what had previously occurred. At the end of 1969, The Times said that

"A decade of growth lies ahead for Wales."

as a result of Labour Government policy. It did not use those final words, but that was the implication. It said:

"A decade of growth lies ahead for Wales."

In July, last year, Peter Jay said:

"The fundamental weaknesses in the South Wales industrial base are being repaired."

In other words, a structural reform was taking place as the old industries were in decline and the efforts made from 1965 were beginning to pay dividends.

Although there was a considerable loss of jobs in five years, 50,000 to 60,000, to counter that more than 30,000 jobs were provided in new manufacturing industries. While employment in manufacturing industries in Britain was declining by 88,000 in 1967 and 1968, 1 per cent. in the two years, there was an increase in employment in manufacturing industries in Wales of more than 2·3 per cent.

Before I come to what has happened since June of last year, I should like to refer again to "A Better Tomorrow". In it, the Tory Party claimed that

"We shall concentrate on building up the advantages and amenities of those areas best suited for growth"—

I would like the Minister of State to decide which areas are best suited for growth—

"rather than on giving indiscriminate and wasteful help."

Are the Government now saying that wasteful help was given to almost 200 new firms which came to Wales under the investment grant policy?

From 1965 to 1970, more than 190 new firms came to Wales. Was that wasteful help? If the Government claim that it was wasteful, it is a further reflection on their so-called friends in private industry that they were prepared to throw that money away. Indeed, the contrary is the truth. This money was spent in a very good way. During those five years, over 190 firms came to the Principality.

The manifesto of the Conservative Party said nothing about the abandonment of investment grants. This is the key to the whole situation. The abandonment of this policy——

indicated dissent.

The Minister shakes his head, but I will endeavour later to quote what industrialists have said about the effect which the abandonment of investment grants has had on unemployment in Wales.

Lord Robens said that the National Coal Board could not go on any further with the Abernant plant. I have often quoted the words of Lord Robens and the Minister of State is aware of them. Lord Robens said that the multi-heat plant for Abernant was cancelled as a direct result of the abandonment of investment grants. As a comparison Sir Val Duncan, Chairman of R.T.Z., claimed that it was only a Labour Government investment grant that brought the aluminium smelter to Anglesey—a £50 million investment.

The C.B.I. survey of 194 industrialists in Wales gave rise to the claim that the significant drop in expansion proposals for the Principality was directly the result of the abandonment of investment grants. It is no use the Minister and his Government saying that this change of policy did not affect the situation. The fact is that it affected it to a great extent.

One of the ways in which we can measure the situation is by industrial inquiries. In the second half of last year, we had the lowest number of industrial inquiries in the Principality since 1967—that is, since the development area policy was in full flow. In the first half of 1971, however, the figures were far worse. Comparing the second half of 1970, for which the present Government are responsible, with the second half of 1969, there was a drop of 20 per cent. in industrial inquiries for sites in Wales. In the first half of 1971, compared with the corresponding period in 1970, the drop was not 20 per cent. but was even greater at 35 per cent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, West (Mr. Alec Jones) spoke of 7,000 or 8,000 redundancies during the first three months of 1971. If he quoted the figure for the full year for which the Government are responsible, it would be far more condemnatory of them. During the time of this Government, 16,490 people have been made redundant in Wales. This is what this debate is all about.

I endeavoured to analyse this problem in the economic affairs debate last week. The differential between the development areas and the non-development areas has closed. With the abandonment of investment grants, it is not now as great an incentive or much of an advantage for industrialists to go to Wales, Scotland, the North-East or North-West of England. If the Minister questions my assertion, I draw his attention to the reply given to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry which showed that the investment allowance system had resulted in a cut of 60 per cent. in the incentive. Not content with that, the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week lowered the incentive still further by increasing the first year allowance in non-development areas from 60 to 80 per cent. That further closed the differential between the development areas such as Wales and non-development areas.

It is for reasons such as these that the situation in the Principality is gradually getting worse. The number of firms going to Wales has considerably decreased. In the first five months of 1971, 12 new firms went to the Principality. In the first five months of 1969, the figure was 24. The situation is reaching the point at which the Government must believe that what we are saying is true. It is one thing to play party politics, but the facts as presented in Wales show clearly that what has been done has been damaging and that what the Government are endeavouring to do will have no beneficial effect.

Carmarthenshire, in West Wales, has been involved in this gradual rundown. Unemployment in Carmarthenshire on average has doubled. Hon. Members have spoken of increases of unemployment in their area of 20 to 30 per cent. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. Denzil Davies) could quote statistics for the Llanelly employment exchange area, which includes Kidwelly, showing that unemployment there has doubled in the last year. A recent report said that unemployment in West Wales had increased by 2,000. The redundancies in Carmarthenshire in the last few months have totalled 600. This may not sound a large figure, but it is large in an area like Carmarthenshire where industries are few and far between.

They were much more few and far between when we had a Government before 1964 which carried out policies which in some respects were similar to those being adopted now. The present policies are not new. The thoroughgoing study to which "A Better Tomorrow" refers is not a thorough-going study. It is a reversion to policies adopted before 1964. Free depreciation and investment allowances were in vogue then. The Conservative Party believed in them. What are the facts? From 1960 to 1964, 63 new firms went to Wales. The figure for 1965 to 1970 was 196. From 1960 to 1964 we had investment allowances and free depreciation. From 1965 to 1970 we had investment grants.

One of the bogies raised by hon. Members opposite—and it is frequently raised by the Secretary of State for Employment—is that unemployment in the regions and development areas will not decrease unless wage-cost escalation is controlled and that high wages are the cause of unemployment.

Not being content merely to make my own remarks, on which the Minister of State might not put great weight, for fear they might be too partisan, I will quote from the Western Mail, which has this to say about the C.B.I. survey of March, 1971, in Wales:

"Somewhat surprisingly the survey fails to confirm the view expressed by the C.B.I. itself and others that rising wages and labour disputes are major factor affecting industry's willingness to invest. These two factors are at the bottom of the list of reasons singled out by firms in their replies as reasons for not going ahead with projects."

There were many other reasons of far greater importance than the bogus arguments of the Government about wages being too high. If high wages are the sole reason for high unemployment, why is unemployment higher in South Wales, where wages are on average much lower, than it is in the South-East and the Midlands where wages are higher?

Under the present Government the future for Wales is bleak. The Government's efforts in the last few weeks, the measures of last week and the public works programme which has been announced will do nothing to ameliorate the situation in the Principality. Will the Minister say what percentage of the 11,000 people who have lost their jobs in the last year will be able to get work as a result of the public works programme? The giving, on the one hand, of £14 million and the taking away, on the other hand, of £38 million in investment grants does not strike me as a fair deal for the Principality. The reduction of purchase tax, welcome though it might be, does nothing to tackle the basic structural problems of the Principality.

The Government will have to rethink on a major scale their policies towards the regions. They will have to be less doctrinaire on investment grants. It is surprising that, according to the Prime Minister, if the European Commission comes out in favour of investment grants then even this Conservative Government, with all their love for the Common Market, would be prepared to accept the advantages of investment grants. If that will be good enough then, why cannot it be good enough now for the development areas? If the Government are not prepared to do this, will they consider giving a choice to the industrialist? Let the industrialist to speak for himself let him have a choice between investment grant and investment allowance. The Conservative Party is the party of freedom. Let the industrialists have the freedom of choice.

What is happening is completely contrary to what right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite have said about the value of investment allowances. All we know in the Principality is that we were hav- ing on a pretty significant scale small but albeit important industries, and these industries have been hit by the taking away of investment grants. They have lost cash in the first few years of their existence.

I return to a document which we shall have to quote to keep the minds of the people of Wales constantly alert to the dangers of being hoodwinked into another election catastrophe. "A Better Tomorrow" talked of fiddling by the Labour Government, about muddling and the chaotic position. If that was muddle, the last year has been an absolute disaster.

"A Better Tomorrow" spoke about "Record prices." At the end of Labour's period of office the average increase was 6 per cent. a year. The figure in the last year has been 10 per cent. That document also mentioned "Record post-war unemployment." Unemployment in the Principality has increased by 20 to 25 per cent. in the last year. A better tomorrow will only come under a future Labour Government.

9.20 p.m.

It might be convenient for the House if I were to say something in answer to this debate, which has been a helpful and serious discussion of the employment problems we face in Wales today. The fact that my hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Department of Employment is also sitting on the Government Front Bench at the moment underlines the importance which the Government attach to employment problems in Wales.

This debate has been full of reasoned and courteous speeches and I shall do my best to answer as many as possible of the points which have been raised. I shall not be able to answer in detail the three points raised by the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert), but I shall be pleased to answer him in correspondence. Nor shall I answer the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) [HON. MEMBERS: "Where is he?"]—who raised the matter of Severn-side and also the question of Llantrisant.

Perhaps I will at least deal with what my hon. Friend said about Llantrisant. I do not accept that the development of Llantrisant as a new town poses a threat to the valley communities. I know that this is a matter of disagreement between the hon. Gentleman and others and myself. Some of the jobs created there would be taken by people travelling from the valleys, but there is a danger that if many of those people are not found work at more attractive locations, such as Llantrisant, they might well leave Wales and we shall lose them altogether. We must do all we can to get industries to the valleys, to Llantrisant and to other places in the mouth of the valley.

I do not believe that Llantrisant is a threat to the valleys. It is an essential part of the process of stabilising the population of the area as a whole. I repeat what I have said on television that it is not the Government's intention to go ahead with the planned developed of Severnside until the economic problems of South Wales have been satisfactorily dealt with.

Nobody would deny that the number of people unemployed in Wales is too high. This is accepted in all parts of the House and by anybody who has at heart the well being of the Welsh people.

Many figures have been quoted in this debate. If those figures told the whole story, the prospect would be an unhappy one. Fortunately they do not do so. In the time available I want first to put these figures into a better perspective; and, secondly, to explain yet again to the House and the people of Wales what the Government are doing to create more employment in Wales.

I begin by recalling that the present deterioration in the employment situation in Wales dates from July, 1966. Not a winter has passed since that year without unemployment in Wales topping the 40,000 mark. Wales is not alone in this and, although it gives no great comfort to us, some other parts of the country have experienced a more marked deterioration than we have.

The rate of unemployment in Wales in July was 1·35 times the rate in the country as a whole. A year ago, the ratio was 1·44. In mid-1969, it was 1·7. In mid-1965, it was 1·85. It is of considerable significance that unemployment among men has, in proportionate terms, risen less in Wales over the past year than in any other region of the country— even less than in the South-East and the Midlands.

Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite will say that the new developments brought to the Principality during their term of office are one reason why Wales can withstand the pressure of events rather better these days. However, successive Governments since the war have done much to restructure the industries of Wales. This is a continuing process. Perhaps I might draw attention to the decision announced last week to complete the removal of the Royal Mint to Llantrisant. All the productive processes carried out at present at Tower Hill will be transferred to Llantrisant, and it is hoped that the new Mint will be in full operation in 1974.

The introduction of new industry to Wales, although on a smaller scale than last year and certainly much less than we would wish, has not ceased entirely. In the first half of this year, companies located outside Wales have continued to inquire about sites and premises in the Principality. It is even more encouraging that a substantial number of firms have pursued their interest by visits to sites and factories in Wales. In the first half of the current year, there has also been a not inconsiderable number of new industrial buildings authorised by the issue of I.D.Cs. in respect of projects in Wales.

It is not enough to say that, though the situation is worrying, it is not as bad as it might be. Hon. Members opposite have asked what the Government are doing about it. The answer is that we are doing a great deal. It is no good pretending that Wales can prosper independently of an increase in prosperity throughout Britain as a whole. Therefore, the starting point is the measures covering the nation as a whole announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, both in his Budget and more recently, to stimulate investment and to encourage economic expansion.

Reverting to the hon. Gentleman's point about I.D.C. figures and industrial inquiries, does the hon. Gentleman believe that a drop of 35 per cent. in inquiries and a drop of 60 per cent. in I.D.C.s mean that the Government are doing a good job?

I was not saying that the numbers had not dropped. However, there is a considerable volume in both these directions which the House would be unwise to ignore in any general future look at how employment can come to Wales.

To the cuts in Corporation Tax and S.E.T. which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced has now been added the stimulus to investment over the next two years given by the raising of the first-year allowance in respect of all capital expenditure on plant and machinery outside development areas from 60 per cent. to 80 per cent. This will apply to the substantial intermediate areas of South Wales and the non-assisted areas of North-East Wales.

More than that, major steps have been taken to stimulate the economy. These cannot fail to benefit Wales. All existing term controls of hire purchase, credit sale and rental agreements have been removed, and the four rates of purchase tax have been cut. Together with the cuts in taxation announced last autumn and in the Budget, the total reductions in taxation amount to about £1,100 million this year and £1,400 million in 1972–73. National output is expected to grow between the first half of 1971 and the first half of 1972 by between 4 and 4½ per cent. This surely is the most fundamental way of tackling unemployment, wherever it may be.

It will be said—indeed, it has been said tonight—that the increase in the first year's allowance on plant and machinery outside development areas reduces the differential advantage of those development areas. If nothing else had been done, this would be true; but the stimulus announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be seen in conjunction with two others. The first, also announced by the Chancellor last week, is the decision to make free depreciation available on plant and machinery in use in service industries in the development areas. The second—this is a significant concession-is the provision allowing firms in development areas——

Order. I am inclined to think that the hon. Gentleman is not, strictly speaking, in order in discussing matters of allowances, and so on, which are considered part of taxation. That is not in order in this debate. I do not want to put too fine a point on it, but I think that we must have regard to that. I was on the point of pulling up an hon. Member about it before, but he left the point so I did not go on with it. I leave it to the hon. Gentleman to use his discretion.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall certainly use my discretion. I am trying to illustrate the particular problems of the development areas, but I shall shape my speech accordingly.

This is the provision allowing firms in development areas to set off free depreciation against profits of the preceding three years, if need be. This will enable such firms, even when current profit levels may be low, to take full advantage of the free depreciation concession.

Important as they are, the backward free depreciation concession and the extension of free depreciation to service industries are by no means all that has been done specifically to help the development areas, about which hon. Gentlemen opposite are particularly concerned.

Allowances for Government training centre trainees are to be raised in September so that, for example, a single man will receive £5 a week more than he would get by way of unemployment benefit compared with the £3.25 which he get now.

The hon. Gentleman knows that the Government training centres, one of which is situated in my constituency, are over-subscribed in any case. While the extra allowance is welcome, it surely will not make much difference to the reduction of unemployment in the area.

I cannot agree that these training centres are over-subscribed.

Some training centres are highly over-subscribed.

I hope that what I have just announced will raise the occupancy rate in Government training centres to a higher level in Wales than at present. In addition, employers are being approached to increase the retraining of unemployed workers, at Government expense, in spare capacity in employers' establishments. The educational interests concerned are also to be consulted about the promotion of more extensive training for the unemployed, including, for the first time, those under 18—a point raised by the hon. Gentleman—in colleges of further education.

The House and the country at large will have noted the announcements of accelerated infrastructure expenditure referred to in the debate. Projects with a value of perhaps £14 million are likely to be undertaken in Wales between now and March 1973. Officials at the Welsh Office are in urgent consultation with county and county district councils——

Welcome as is the announcement of the £14 million on public works, is it not a palliative? Is not the real need in Wales for modern, self-generating industries bringing with them greater employment opportunities for men?

The hon. Gentleman should not look a gift horse in the mouth. If we in Wales can get £14 million for such a job we should not be slow in accepting it. I share the hon. Gentleman's view that we would all like to see more science-based industries coming to Wales. Indeed, that is our objective.

The work which is to be done by local councils will include school works, hospital works, and road projects. The criteria are that the works in question should be labour-intensive, they should represent a permanent improvement of the infrastructure, and they should be substantially completed by March, 1973. A major objective of this acceleration of the infrastructural expenditure is the immediate provision of additional employment. Works of this sort are part of the continuing effort to make Wales a more attractive place—more attractive to industrialists from elsewhere and more attractive, too, for those of us who live in the Principality.

Is the Minister of State satisfied that the £14 million will be taken up entirely between now and March 1973? If it is not, will the Government allow a spillover so that the total is spent in Wales by local authorities?

The object of this exercise and the reason for having a reasonably short time is to inject a sense of urgency. That is why I said that the Welsh Office officials were having urgent consultations with the councils concerned. I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman a definite answer to his question about spill-over, but I will raise it with my right hon. Friend.

Over the years since 1945 various Governments have played their part in modernising and varying the pattern of industry in Wales, particularly in South Wales. Both Conservative and Labour Governments have been in Office when the coal industry has cut out pits. Today coal is in great demand and, indeed, the National Coal Board is advertising for more men in these areas.

Certainly the picture in these major industries is one of change and the importance of retraining cannot be over-estimated, but we must all admit that for the older middle-aged worker it is not so easy to readjust to another job, particularly when industry is becoming so highly automated.

If I have concentrated on the employment position in South-East Wales, it is because the greatest concentration of population lives there. It is also because the two hon. Members who put their names against this subject represent constituencies in Monmouth and Glamorgan in South-East Wales. Other parts of Wales have different problems which are sometimes difficult to measure exactly because of the seasonal aspect of the tourist industry. The halving of the selective employment tax should help.

Wherever one lives in Wales it must be the firm intention of government to aim for as high a level of good employment as possible. It is true that the situation cannot be judged on a month's figures or on a quarter's figures, but for far too long the British economy has been stagnant. The steps taken by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will certainly help the economy to grow. They will increase industrial activity and Wales will benefit alike with other parts of the country and her people as a result will get better employment.

Scotland (Unemployment)

9.37 p.m.

I want to talk principally about Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, but I shall first set the situation there against the general background of the unemployment situation in Scotland. We have just listened to a very interesting debate about the Welsh position. The unemployment situation in Scotland is much more serious than is that in Wales. There are more than 134,000 people unemployed in Scotland. The male unemployment rate is 8·2 per cent. Apart from a particular month in 1963 when weather conditions contributed to the situation, it is necessary to go back to the 1930s before we can get figures which compare with the present disastrous figures in Scotland.

One of the S.T.U.C. representatives who interviewed the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry yesterday told the Press afterwards that he felt that the Government had no grip on the situation. It has also been our feeling over the last year that nothing that they have done—the special development area policy, the increased public works programme for the winter and the third Budget of three days ago—is a real response to a situation which is characterised in Scotland by high unemployment and—just as serious—by a tremendous falling away of confidence among business, industry and work people about the Government's ability to tackle the present situation successfully.

The second thing that I hope that the Government have in mind is the situation of Rolls-Royce There is sometimes a tendency to think that the future of the RB211 and of Rolls-Royce as a whole is principally a matter for Derby. Derby would be badly affected if the contract did not go ahead, but Rolls-Royce is also a major employer in the West of Scotland. We have suffered serious redundancy already this year and there is still great uncertainty, which we hope will be cleared up before the recess, about Rolls-Royce.

We were promised a statement of Government policy towards the shipbuilding industry a few months ago. In a Written Answer yesterday to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), the Government's commitment to a statement has been considerably qualified. Now, it is only a statement dealing with shipbuilding credit that is to be made before the House rises. But we have had this unfortunate period of uncertainty, when it has not been clear to the House and the industry what the Government's policy is and will be over the next few years.

I have no intention of going over the whole history of this unfortunate company, U.C.S., in what must be a short speech in a short debate, but I want to go back at least to February of this year, when the Government guarantees for shipbuilding credits, suspended during the winter, were resumed. It is now accepted that had they not been resumed the company would have gone bankrupt then. A large element in the serious financial position of the company was precisely the withdrawal of credit between November and February. This meant that 80 per cent. of the money going into the company was cut off. So the Government, in that and other respects, bear a very heavy responsibility for the crisis which overtook U.C.S. in February and which continued until the liquidation of 14th June.

It is also clear that Government credits would not have been resumed in February if there had not been at the same time the Rolls-Royce collapse. The Government could not have afforded two major simultaneous collapses affecting the West of Scotland.

It is significant that the date on which the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry informed the U.C.S. management that the credits were being resumed was 3rd February, precisely the date on which Rolls-Royce collapsed, the announcement of that collapse being made on 4th February. It is clear, therefore, that if if it had not been for the Rolls-Royce situation U.C.S. would have been allowed to go into liquidation in February instead of in June.

I shall not go over the whole history of the company, but one must observe, having in mind this sort of situation, the Rolls-Royce affair, and, for that matter, the inadequacy of the Government's White Paper on the Common Market, that the conclusion becomes more and more clear that we need a considerable extension of the work of Select Committees so that we may look into the whole history of affairs of this kind.

The point which I make about the situation as it was in February is that, whatever one may think about the management of the company over the past few months or over the years, it is ludicrous and indefensible for the Government to say, as they have been saying, that they had such assurances in February about the viability of the company that they felt at that time that they need take no further action, that the company had a long-term future, and that it would no longer need Government assistance. In the light of the whole history of the matter, the suspension of the credits, and the circumstances in which the credits were resumed in February, it is scandalous that the Government took that attitude of disengagement in February. In the event, of course, it was not long before the situation had become even worse, and we had the diquidation on 14th June.

One of the ironic features is that, although the Government at the end of the day refused to give the money for which U.C.S. was asking to maintain the company in being, they had already spent about half the sum immediately involved, namely, £3 million, in commitments to keep U.C.S. going up to the end of the first week in August, and it is likely, of course, that the eventual reconstruction of the company will cost many millions more. Thus, one of the reasons for the Government's attitude in June, that they could not afford the money, or that the money was not worth spending, has already been falsified by events and will increasingly be seen to be falsified in the months to come.

The Government have appointed four expert advisers. Along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. William Hannan), I had the opportunity to meet the four advisers on Friday, 16th July. I am willing to accept right away that not only do they understand the financial aspects of the U.C.S. affair but they have an understanding of the human and social consequences for Clydeside. One looks forward to seeing what their recommendations are. But I must emphasise that the appointment of the four expert advisers and the receipt from them of advice about what should happen in the reconstruction of U.C.S. in no way diminishes the major responsibility for the future of the company, which rests firmly on the Government.

I hope that there will be no attempt tonight, or when we have a statement of the Government's position on the company, to hide behind any advice which may have been given by the advisers and to use that as a means of avoiding the Government's major responsibility for the situation. The Government must have wider considerations in mind in relation to the human and social consequences than any advisers can have, however eminent or expert and however wide their remit may be.

We see in the Press today that the advisers have made their report to the Government. I should be glad if the Minister were able to confirm that and, if so, if he could give some indication of what the report contains. I appreciate that if there is to be a statement later this week the Minister may not be willing to give us that information tonight.

Further, I hope that the report will be published. I express that hope having no idea what it contains. It may include criticisms of the former Government—so be it—but we are entitled to have a full report published so that we may know the advisers' views of the present situation, and may know how they think the company has been handled up to now. Most particularly, we want to know when the Government will state their conclusions on the report, and their proposals for the reconstruction of U.C.S.

Incidentally, the hon. Gentleman may care to comment on a report in the Scottish Daily Express this morning that the Government have already made up their minds before receipt of the advisers' report. If that were accurate, it would be scandalous. If it is not, I hope that we shall have a categorical denial from the Minister, because I hope that the Government will take account not only of what the advisers tell them but of the speeches in this debate.

My own main interest, and what I shall look for more than anything else in the Government's proposals for the reconstruction of U.C.S., is the maintenance of the jobs of the men at present employed by the company. I say quite firmly and without qualification that the unemployment situation in Glasgow and Clydeside is so serious, and comprises such an appalling proportion of the working population in the summer months, that we cannot afford to lose a single additional job there at the moment. That is my main consideration, and that is the main test we shall make of the Government's announcement.

There have been a number of statements in the Press recently about initiatives taken by individual industrialists to buy up bits and pieces of U.C.S. at Clydebank or elsewhere. I hope that the Minister would give us an unqualified pledge tonight that such initiatives will not be accepted; that what we shall have for U.C.S. will be an overall solution. It would be absolutely disastrous to have a reconstruction of U.C.S. which was based on the acceptance of proposals which in isolation might seem plausible and attractive but which would militate against an overall solution for the U.C.S. consortium as a whole. I warn the Minister that if the Government do accept this kind of piecemeal approach they will call on their heads very considerable anger and bitterness from the workers, and from this side of the House as well. In this connection, again, I hope that we shall have no solution which involves the closing down of shipbuilding in Clydebank. There has been a good deal of loose and facile talk about Clydebank being dispensable. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. McCartney) will no doubt expand on this point, if he gets the opportunity, very much more eloquently than I can, but anything that involves the closure of shipbuilding there would be a disaster, and would be felt very bitterly on Clydeside as a whole. I hope that we shall have no such solution.

If the solution which the Government propose this week—and I hope that it will not be the case—involves large-scale redundancies, there will be an explosion of anger on Clydeside. There is already considerable anger and resentment there, but it has been contained so far. The men concerned have behaved very responsibly, whether in their trips to London, their demonstrations in Glasgow, or in any other way. The Minister should not be misled by that. If we have an announcement this week involving large-scale redundancies in Upper Clyde Shipbuilders there will be a considerable outburst of anger and resentment in Clydeside, and the consequences can be very serious.

I hope that despite the mistakes they have made over U.C.S. over the past few months, and their negligence in allowing the situation to deteriorate between February and June, the Government will have appreciated by now the strength of feeling in Scotland as a whole about the situation and will produce a solution which will allow the men now employed by U.C.S. to get on with the job in a responsible way, and restore some of the image of U.C.S., which has been so seriously damaged in the past few weeks.

9.56 p.m.

Scotland has the highest unemployment of all the regions in Great Britain. The present figure is 6·2 per cent. One of the highest areas of unemployment is Tayside.

I in no way begrudge the development area status given to the West of Scotland, whose problem is equally serious, but that status has not been given to the Tayside region, which has every bit as great a need, in relation not only to its present unemployment figure but to what is likely to happen in the near future. The prospects are pretty gloomy on the Clyde, but they are equally gloomy in the Tayside area. For example, we recently had over 800 applicants for one lorry driver's job in Dundee. We have on our unemployment register draughtsmen, analysts, industrial chemists, electronic engineers and toolmakers—all sorts of highly skilled people, as well as unskilled.

We have an additional hazard. The main industry of the region for a long time has been the jute industry, which has been suffering a more rapid contraction than was ever bargained for. A further problem is that because of the trouble in East Pakistan there is a serious threat to the continuing supply of raw jute to the area. If those supplies are cut off or seriously curtailed the effect on Tayside will be catastrophic, and we shall be back to the 1930s, when at one point half the working population of Dundee were unemployed. In four different years we had over 30,000 unemployed in the area. So we know what high unemployment is, and its effects. I know, because I was one of those who was unemployed then.

We also worry about what will happen if the Government have their way and take us into the Common Market. The position will undoubtedly get worse in our area, because the pull to the South East, which is considerable, will be greatly increased.

Would the hon. Gentleman care to consider that just as American industry came into Scotland, not least to Dundee, in order to gain entry through Britain into the Commonwealth and the sterling area, and later the European Free Trade Area, so European industry will come into Scotland in order to build in Scotland the new Europe?

If the hon. Gentleman will consider for a moment he will realise that, according to his argument, we shall lose the advantage we now have of preferential treatment in the Commonwealth and in E.F.T.A. and get in its place hypothetical trade with Europe. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the majority of international companies now have factories in Europe?

I have raised on many occasions in this House the worsening unemployment situation in my area. I did so as recently as 18th February of this year and pointed out that the prospects were bad. Since then we have sent a deputation to St. Andrew's House from our area. That deputation comprised representatives of the town council, including the Lord Provost, members of the Trades Council, of the Chamber of Commerce, local M.Ps and, in a separate delegation, the Provost of Arbroath.

The House can take it from me that when the Dundee Chamber of Commerce starts to get worried about unemployment the situation is really bad. If there is one body of people which has continually played down the prospects and the high unemployment it has been the Chamber of Commerce. We had high unemployment in the 1930s, when the Labour Government passed a Distribution of Industry Act which brought vast new industries to our area. Fortunately they are still there otherwise we should be in a bad way. It was in that situation, when Government policy was proving so successful, that the Chamber of Commerce went to the Board of Trade and requested that no further industry be brought to Dundee.

Recently, together with the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, I took part in a programme on Grampian Television about unemployment in our area. The Secretary tried to persuade me to play down the bleak prospects. When we find that Chamber of Commerce is worried things are really bad.

I ask the Government to treat Dundee as they have treated other areas with comparable unemployment and with prospects not as bad as ours. They have given those other areas special development status but have refused to accord the same status to us. [Interruption.] One of my hon. Friends says that it means nothing. I shall explain that it means quite a lot. During that visit to St. Andrew's House I made two points to the Under-Secretary of State. I requested first that we should be given special development area status. Like my hon. Friend, the Under-Secretary said that this did not make much difference. My reply to that was, "Well if it does not make much difference why not give it to us?" He did not give it to us because he knew there was a considerable difference. I also asked the Under-Secretary to persuade the Government to change their policy in favour of a more expansionist course.

We have had a reduction of purchase tax, probably because almost every other area has been making the same demands. Eventually this will help, but it will take a long time to work its way through. Hire-purchase controls have been relaxed but this was not done willingly by the Government. It was forced upon them because the finance companies were giving better terms than the Government would allow on ordinary credit. The regional employment premium is to end in 1974. The gross profits of a number of firms in Dundee are less then the regional employment premium they are getting, so some of them will go out of existence in 1974 or before then.

Dundee Council is enterprising. It has proved its success when given the same incentives as other areas. Indeed, it has probably been the most successful in Britain in attracting new industries. Now we do not have such incentives and are failing to attract industry but, in its tradition of enterprise, as it has done before, the Council is sending a delegation to the United States, headed by the Lord Provost. It hopes to attract the interest of American firms in establishing factories in Dundee.

Why is the delegation going to the United States? It is because of our experience with English and American companies. The last time we got a number of English companies and a number of American companies to Dundee, in the end, practically all the English companies disappeared while nearly all the American companies are still there and growing. Secondly, the American firms have given better wages and conditions and have raised the standard of living of the workers in the area. We have thus good reason to go to America.

But it is terribly important that the delegation, which is going there at the expense of its members and of the Council, should be able to tell American manufacturers that Dundee is one of the areas which can give the top inducements. If the delegation cannot say that, the ground will be cut from beneath it. This is why it is important for Dundee to get special development area status as soon as possible. Under these inducements, a factory would be free for five years and would get 30 per cent. of the wage bill for three years. These are not small concessions. We have a right to this status because of our high unemployment figure, which has been growing for a considerable time and is still growing, and because our future prospects are worse than those of most other areas.

I want to turn now to considering how the two Governments have treated the unemployed. The Labour Government started the redundancy payments scheme to cushion the effect of redundancy. They gave earnings-related benefit for a year in order to help people to adjust to a lower standard of living if they lost their jobs, very often through no fault of their own. They gave rate rebates to the badly off. What have the Conservative Government done? They have stopped the payment of unemployment and sickness benefit for the first three days. They have put up rents, and are to increase them further. They have put prices up. They have done everything to make the position worse and not better for the unemployed—and they are creating more unemployment.

Then there is the serious problem of the young people leaving school. Soon, another group will be coming out of school in Dundee—highly trained, qualified and well-educated children. But the last group who left school have not yet found jobs. What are the chances, therefore, of the latest school leavers finding jobs? How many of them will stay in Dundee when there is no prospect for them?

One group has usually found work by the time the next group of school-leavers leaves school, but this time those who left on the last occasion are still looking for jobs with the fresh lot due to arrive shortly. One can appreciate the effect on these young people, who have studied to equip themselves for a career and who will find no jobs to do. Is it any wonder that crime increases when these intelligent young people find that this is how the world treats them?

The unemployment rate in Dundee is almost 9 per cent., but in Arbroath it is 14 per cent., a shocking figure. The Provost of Arbroath has agreed to support our application for the whole of Tayside to have special development area status, because he recognises that the prospects for Arbroath depend on those for the whole area, which consists largely of Dundee and the area round about. Dundee is the big centre which must attract people before the places round about can benefit. The Provost of Arbroath recognises that, and supports the application for special development area status for the Tayside region.

10.12 p.m.

I do not propose to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) and comment on his area. I know the problems of Dundee, because, before I was translated to membership of this House, I lectured in the College of Technology in Dundee. The whole House will appreciate the strength of feeling in my hon. Friend's constituency about the problem of unemployment in the city. But the topic of the debate is unemployment in Scotland generally, with particular regard to the relationship of that unemployment to the future of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders.

One of my most poignant memories is of the early days of the Second World War when I saw a film called "The Shipbuilders" which was based on George Blake's novel of the same name. The film struck a clear note, because I remembered in my own family the feeling of uplift on the Clyde, perhaps mistaken, when in certain areas in Govan and Clydebank and the north bank of the river, the yards had orders, albeit for naval craft, the feeling, perhaps mistaken, that at last some of the horrors of the deep depression years had been removed.

I do not want in any way to exaggerate the position and I do not want to paint it blacker than it is, but in the West of Scotland the feeling of hopelessness is again arising. That is a bad thing, because we have moved a long way in economic management from the dark dismal days of the '20s and the '30s. Clydebank and the U.C.S., I warn the Government, have become a symbol. If, on the basis of economic management and industrial logic, the Government choose to disregard that symbol, they will do so at their peril.

There is no point in the Minister lecturing Scotland about changes in industrial structure. I would like to indicate briefly some of the changes in the industrial structure of Scotland which have taken place over a very short period. In 1959 mining and quarrying in Scotland employed 100,000 people. In 1970 the number had been reduced to 40,000. In 1970 the approximate numbers in employment in shipbuilding were 34,000. This was a reduction by one-third of the 1960 level. The fall in employment in key industries and services, excluding agriculture, during the 1960s was well over 100,000.

Before hon. Members opposite—I refer particularly to the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Mac-Arthur), who likes to quote the reductions—rise on this issue, I want to make it clear that one of the things the Labour Government did during their term of office was to produce a rather unusual consequence in the later years of the 1960s. It was the first period since the war when Scottish employment moved in tune with, or slightly more favourably than, employment in Great Britain as a whole.

We have seen changes in the employment potentialities in Scotland, particularly over the past year. There has been a loss in male employment in Scotland and we are seeing evidence again of the earnings gap widening. That gap, which was closing particularly during the last few years of the Labour Government, is beginning to widen. It is all very well for the Government to quote their new hasty measures—they are not well planned as the Prime Minister would have us believe—to produce an acceleration in economic growth, ostensibly to the extent of 4·5 per cent.

The hon. Member said that the earnings gap was beginning to widen. Where does he get those figures from? The last figures which I saw in a Parliamentary Answer showed that the earnings gap was contracting.

The hon. Member is quite right in what he says. I take what I have said from an article in today's Financial Times by Andrew Hargrave, who draws attention to the Scottish Digest of Statistics figures, published today. I have tried to get the most recent information but I quote from that article in good faith. If I am wrong, I will take an early opportunity to correct it, but I take it that Mr. Hargrave, in quoting from an official publication, is right on the ball, as he usually is.

The situation in Scotland is different from that in other areas of Great Britain. Our problem has been to maintain a high enough level of investment to employ all our labour resources. We see the danger that skilled manpower in the Scottish economy will not be employed.

In addition to the problem of U.C.S., my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) has instanced the problem of Rolls-Royce. We cannot afford to have an erosion of skill in Scotland. We certainly cannot afford to have that erosion of skill in West Central Scotland. The Chancellor's policy must be to increase the level of investment, not only in the economy as a whole, but particularly in the regions. That is why we regret in some ways a further reduction of the differential. The increase in the first-year write-off allowance from 60 per cent. to 80 per cent. albeit for a short time, reduces the differential in the incentive for industrialists to go to regions like Scotland.

Let me turn briefly to the catalogue of events which has led to the present position concerning U.C.S. My hon. Friend the Member for Craigton has rightly asked for a full submission of the views of the four advisers appointed by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. We want full publication in this House of the report and the advice given to the Government on this issue.

The triggering off of the present position goes back to 14th October last. It was all very well for the S.I.B. Director to present evidence—and I am not sure how it was done—directly to the Department for Trade and Industry on that date about the position of the company and casting doubt whether it would in the long run be profitable. I do not doubt Mr. Mackenzie's commercial competence, but I am willing to say that his pessimistic view fell on very receptive ears in the Department. I want publication for the House not only of the views of the industrial advisers but of the report on the shipbuilding industry which the Minister prepared for his party. There was a significant gap from 14th to 27th October before the Under-Secretary of State told the Chairman of U.C.S. that until the Government were satisfied about the future viability of the company new credit guarantees could not be issued to shipowners. Mr. Mackenzie cast doubts on 14th October. It took the Government 13 days to give the company their views about the credit guarantees.

I think that Mr. Mackenzie, because of his position at that time, was saying, "Yarrow (Shipbuilders) Ltd. is in difficulties and if Yarrow (Shipbuilders) fails Yarrow and Company and U.C.S. come down as well; the whole lot crumbles. Therefore, you must take steps, not by the use of the Department of Trade and Industry, but by the use of Ministry of Defence money to shore up Yarrow (Shipbuilders) and, indirectly, Yarrow and Company. You have to extricate Yarrow (Shipbuilders) from U.C.S."

Perhaps there were reasons for that, but the time scale must be examined by the House. I am not doubting the industrial logic, but it does not look very will when we realise that the only part of U.C.S. for which a purposeful existence can be guaranteed is Yarrow (Shipbuilders). I have no objection to companies trying to save themselves, but let us consider what Yarrow (Shipbuilders) has obtained.

Yarrow and Company was paid money, from the public purse indirectly, against profits on orders which were building in Yarrow (Shipbuilders) when the consortium was formed. The ships in question were not profit-makers but loss-makers. Also, Yarrow (Shipbuilders) received a substantial loan from the S.I.B. to build a covered berth. It received a £4·5 million loan from the Ministry of Defence. Perhaps the Minister, in reply, will indicate the total subvention to Yarrow and Company and Yarrow (Shipbuilders) from the public purse. It would be very interesting to know that, because I doubt the credibility of some of the answers I have been given in the House to the effect that there was no possibility of incompatibility in having the S.I.B. director on the board of Yarrow and Company when the negotiations were going on. At the time Yarrow and Company had two directors on the board of U.C.S. This is not a happy situation. Sufficient information could come to the Department from the board of the U.C.S. from one director rather than two.

To return to the Scottish economy as a whole, we have seen in the second half of 1970 a level of redundancies which equalled the whole of the redundancies in 1969, and 60 per cent. of the redundancies recorded were in West Central Scotland.

We know the level of unemployment in Scotland of 134,572, but let us contrast that with the number of unfilled vacancies. There are 13 persons looking for every job available in Scotland. In terms of males it is much worse than that. In terms of the number of young people coming out of school and university who are being deprived of a job, it is a scandal.

I return in my closing remarks to what I tried to emphasise at the beginning of my speech. Clydebank and U.C.S. have become symbols. We cannot discard on narrow pragmatic, economic grounds; we do so at our peril. I have never looked for unconstitutional ways of solving problems. I have come to the House to plead the case for the people of Scotland, the people of the United Kingdom and the under-privileged sections of the community in general. If the House has an unreceptive ear to the pleadings of the people in West Central Scotland, and in particular of those who might be deprived of a livelihood by the failure of U.C.S. or by some narrow piece of industrial logic that will dismember U.C.S., we shall have gone back a great distance in terms of time and of economic thinking. We have to be responsive to these demands. These men are asking for their right to work, their right to be employed in purposeful employment for the nation's good, and I hope the House will be responsive to these pleas.

10.28 p.m.

The problems of U.C.S. are in the minds of most people in my constituency. My constituency is adjacent to East Dunbartonshire, which includes Clydebank about which we are all worrying tonight. Unemployment is already high in my area. There are people working with U.C.S. and for firms which supply the shipyards. The seriousness of the situation has not been exaggerated by my hon. Friends.

I will deal first with the help that can be given by the granting of special development area status. I was interested in the views expressed by my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) on the added incentives to industry which he feels development area status might bring. Unfortunately, it has not so far provided any great impetus locally. In my constituency a holding firm took over a factory and, having seen the availability of labour, the type of labour employed and the adaptability of the labour, the firm decided to bring another project into the area from the south. However, the firm was unable to claim special development area grant because it was already operating in the area with its other small factory. The Government should look at this matter closely, particularly at this time when unemployment is so high that rules might be bent a little.

I appreciate that care must be taken when using taxpayers' money to subsidise firms, but this matter must be looked at carefully in order to maintain the balance.

Local authorities can build factories for rental. They have to apply for Government finance to do so, but they are not allowed to give special development area terms to industrialists in the way of rental. The Government should seek to tie up this matter as between local authorities and central government.

There are other things Government and local authorities can do to help to ease the tragic situation in Central Scotland and Clydeside. Some have already been mentioned, such as the roads programme: but this does not go far enough. More money should be spent on the infrastructure by increasing housing and school-building programmes, and at the same time we should seek to help the construction industry.

In the debate in the Scottish Grand Committee this morning on housing finance, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland called on planning authorities to do their utmost to assist new private housing developments by giving consents and where possible making grants available. In an area of high unemployment new houses are necessary to attract new industry to the area. Industry requires houses for its managers and key workers. Housing is a matter to which industry pays great attention.

It is not always the planning authorities who are slow to move in these projects. Too often the Scottish Development Department Roads Division worries too much about access and egress in regard to trunk roads. A "trunk road" in my constituency can mean a two-lane road.

There is another hazard in my area. We live in a scenic area and therefore many of our schemes must be passed to the Countryside Commission. Although this is possibly correct as a concept, it does not help schemes to get off the ground quickly, and sometimes interests clash.

One long term answer to combat high unemployment in West Dunbartonshire is to improve the tourist trade. One needs only to walk in the area just outside this House to see what tourism means to London. We have Loch Lomond which is famous the world over, and that area is under-developed. People are seeking to develop in that area at the moment, and for some months there has been a project to provide an immediate number of jobs. There is an application to provide a bear park. This may be a strange thing to bring up in the middle of an industrial debate, but if that project could be got off the ground this winter 200 jobs could be provided for unskilled men in the area. Many of these unskilled men have been signing on at the employment exchange for a number of months. That project would involve many of those unskilled people and this must be of advantage to the area. This would provide an impetus, so that we could carry on from there.

I want now to turn to the blackest spot in the constituency, to what might be termed "the Plessey affair". Twice already in this House I have called for a public inquiry into the closure of the Alexandria factory, which was once the Royal Naval Torpedo Factory. Two years ago, the factory had built in it a clean area, probably not equalled anywhere in the country, to prepare for the manufacture of the Mark 24 torpedo, which was to be one of the most advanced weapons of its type in the world. The factory had new machines installed, and it had a work force of 1,500.

The project ran into trouble 18 months ago and was abandoned. Then Plessey was given the job of getting rid of the "bugs" in the design. Plessey took over the factory to use it for other purposes, and the Government handed it over to the company in January of this year. In July, six short months later, its closure was announced. In the Glasgow Herald yesterday there was an article by a naval correspondent which said that the new wire-guided torpedo's trials had been a success. The bugs have been ironed out, and the weapon has been proved. Where is the manufacture to go?

One of the unfortunate aspects of the situation is that it is clear that Plessey must have known for some time that the design problems were on the point of solution. Yet the company decided to close the factory which was tooled, equipped and had the manpower to carry out the manufacture of the torpedo. I believe that the company is to be the sole manufacturer of this defence project.

If Plessey was a dirty name before, it has become a lot muddier this week. One wonders whether the take-over of the factory was a sop to get the torpedo contract.

On 5th July, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in order to find out some of the facts about the takeover of the factory. We had been assured that the firm had been given incentives to take over the factory and to try to make it a going concern. However, I received a reply to my letter yesterday, from which I am surprised to learn that:

"The factory and machinery were acquired by the firm from Ministry of Defence as a normal commercial transaction and the terms of sale are therefore confidential. No invest- ment grants were paid and in the circumstances there can be no question of imposing any restriction on the company's right to dispose of the property as it sees fit. Nor, as they have not received assistance under the Local Employment Acts in respect of the Alexandria project, are they under any obligation to provide continuing employment there."

Today, two telegrams were sent to the Secretary of State for Defence by the Provost of Dumbarton and the County Convenor of Dunbartonshire, urging that

"… all steps possible be taken for manufacture of this torpedo to be carried out at Plessey's factory at Alexandria to prevent closure of factory and alleviate unemployment in West Dunbartonshire."

In The Times yesterday there was a full-page advertisement, saying:

"We, the undersigned, are convinced that British membership of the enlarged E.E.C. will provide unequalled opportunities for expansion of investment and production in Britain. … The opportunity for growth will mean more jobs and greater prosperity for all in Britain."

One of the signatories was Sir John Clark, the managing director of Plessey. What happy reading this makes in West Dunbartonshire.

If the Plessey board has any social conscience, it should employ the people of the Vale of Leven to do the work, instead of closing the doors of this large factory. If the Government mean what they say about unemployment in Scotland, they should insist that Plessey carries out this advanced project in the factory where it was born.

10.40 p.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) and other hon. Members have rightly and properly concentrated primarily on the future of U.C.S. I hope that every Scottish Member is concerned about it. We are not by any means convinced that the Government are telling us the whole truth. My hon. Friend was right to impress on the House and on the country the importance of a Select Committee of Inquiry of this House. Clearly the Government have no intention of giving us the truth voluntarily. That being so, this House must use its own machinery to do the job which the Government, for one reason or another, do not want done.

I refer not only to U.C.S. but to the squalid plan for dismemberment which the Under-Secretary put to the Tory Party before the election. We do not know where that originated or what happened to it. We do not know whether it was the declared intention of the Tory Party to dismantle U.C.S., irrespective of what else might happen. We do not know what took place concerning Rolls-Royce. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Ian Campbell) has referred to the torpedo factory and Plessey. These are three prime cases about which the House and the country ought to know all the facts, but we are not getting them.

The Government were elected to give honest and open government. We are getting more secrecy than the Ku Klux Klan. They are not telling us anything. We have to drag things out of them. We do not know what the report of the advisers will produce tomorrow or the next day. But, whatever it produces, whatever condemnation it might contain of the previous Government, this House and the country have a right to know where the trouble started, who started it, and the people who caused it ought to be brought to account in this House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]

The Ministers say "Hear, hear". All right. Is that tantamount to saying that they will publish the advisers' report? Is that tantamount to saying that they will publish the full Ridley Report on the dismantling and dismemberment of U.C.S.? Is that tantamount to saying that they will appoint a Select Committee to get to the root of all these troubles and closures? Or are they content merely to appoint a receiver? Is this the key man in the development of Scotland of the future?

I want to spread my wings a little. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) mentioned the problems of Dundee. I want to come a little further south, but keep on the east side of Scotland. Before doing so, I want to put the problem of Scottish unemployment as a whole in perspective.

The average monthly unemployment figure for the first six months of 1971 is more than 122,000 in Scotland. In only one post-war year in the whole of Scotland's unemployment history has the monthly average exceeded 100,000. That was 1963, the twelfth year of that Tory Government. It was then 104,800. My guess is that by the end of 1971 the monthly average will have gone up to 130,000.

The monthly average of male unemployment in the first few months of 1971 has been running at 95,000. But more startling and stark than that figure is the comparison between the number out of work and the number of unfilled vacancies.

Going back to May, 1954, there were 38,700 on the dole and a total of 10,300 vacancies. In other words, there were three to four unemployed seeking every job available. In May, 1964–10 years on, all under the Tory Government—there were 56,200 on the dole and 5,000 vacancies or 11 unemployed seeking every job available. In May, 1969, under the Labour Government, when unemployment certainly rose, there were 60,600 male unemployed and 9,000 vacancies, or I vacancy for every 6 or 7 unemployed. In April, 1971, there were 99,300 male unemployed and 4,400 vacancies, or I vacancy for every 23 or 24 unemployed. That is the measure of the failure of the Tory Government to tackle the problem.

That was one reason for the panic measures announced last week by the Chancellor. They received a cool reception in Scotland, because they will do nothing during the next 12 months to solve Scotland's problem. The Prime Minister opened a Tory garden fete at the weekend. That is where the Prime Minister makes his controversial speeches. He has full protection at a Tory Party garden fete. There is no question of his getting lynched at a Tory Party garden fête. Only there dare he utter the kind of nonsense that he uttered at the weekend—that this was a carefully planned operation and that this was the third Budget which had been planned as long ago as June, 1970. Three Budgets in 12 months! If the Prime Minister had said that in Glasgow we could not have been answerable for his fate.

The Prime Minister was saying that Scotland's 134,000 unemployed were all part of the long-term Tory plan, because it was that unemployment that enabled the Chancellor to tell the House, "We are jolly good chaps. We have now created the unemployment which enables me to get rid of hire purchase controls and reduce purchase tax". That will earn three cheers from every one of the 134,000 unemployed and from everyone in U.C.S. who does not know when the axe will fall or where it will fall.

I turn from the question of U.C.S. and from the national problem to a specific case which has been worrying me in Glenrothes. Here we have second-generation industries. They are the industries of the future. We prided ourselves on the fact that in Fife we had the largest electronics industry in Europe. This was a very welcome big investment to take over from the declining coal industry. Elliott Automation came there in the 1960s. It was taken over by English Electric in 1968 and became known as Marconi-Elliott. Subsequently some manufacturing was transferred to Witham in England but not so much as to cause undue concern. Then there was a merger with G.E.C., which planned to expand at Glenrothes in 1970. The plans did not materialise. There was a sudden deterioration in the semiconductors business. United Kingdom factories were faced with a flood of cheap imported circuits of the standard type which arrived in very large quantities from low-cost assembly plants in areas such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

I received a letter only today in reply to one I sent him a week or so ago giving the facts as they saw them. On 8th July, 1971, G.E.C. notified the unions of the intention to close the Glenrothes factory—these are the new industries of the future. G.E.C. pointed out that the total value of orders received for the Glenrothes and Witham factories between March and May, 1971, had fallen by 55 per cent. from the previous low levels of orders between December, 1970, and February, 1971. As well as the fall in orders there was a big fall in the average selling price for United Kingdom manufactured devices, in some cases by almost 50 per cent.

G.E.C. therefore decided to phase out the Glenrothes factory in the course of the next few months and concentrate their production at Wembley and Lincoln. The 80 or so hourly-paid employees will be offered jobs in Kirkcaldy in their other telecommunications factories. But there is no hope of employing the staff of 60 skilled technicians and these valuable teams of trained technical people may well disperse, to the great disadvantage of them and the nation.

I put a question to the Government yesterday about the dumping of units manufactured in Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere. The Minister replied in rather quaint language. He said there was no dumping in the legal sense. I do not know in what other sense there can be dumping. Will he tell us the "illegal" way of dumping? It is difficult to prove dumping.

Did the Government know about these developments at G.E.C. a month or two ago, that G.E.C. were intending to concentrate their manufacturing facilities at Wembley and Lincoln? If so, what pressure did they bring on the company to concentrate in Glenrothes? What has happened is counter to the policy the previous Government were committed to—preventing that kind of concentration in the South-East and the Midlands.

Can the hon. Member not see that the very policy of the previous Government in encouraging mergers of firms like G.E.C. created the situation such as he is faced with today? It is precisely because of the policy of encouraging industrial mergers conducted by the right hon. Member for Bristol South-East (Mr. Benn) that so many of these cases have happened.

The hon. Gentleman knows nothing about it. The merger had nothing whatever to do with this case. The American space programme was running down and the major cutback led to diminished demand for these products which affected production in this country. The Americans then flooded our market with low-priced units from Singapore and Hong Kong and this created the present situation. This would have happened whether or not there had been a merger. The Minister knows that very well. It is supply and demand rather than any question of whether or not there was a merger. But if there is a reduced demand, the Government should ensure that that demand is concentrated in development areas, instead of allowing it to go to Wembley. The Government have a commitment to interfere to stop that kind of thing.

The Electronics Weekly, a non-political trade publication, said in the editorial in its issue of a fortnight ago, headed "G.E.C. Go Out of the Game":

"G.E.C.'s withdrawal from the standard, high-volume integrated circuit business is the first major British casualty of the semiconductor price war, and the electronics industry's first victim of the ground rules introduced by the Conservative Government.

On the semiconductor industry's growing roll of the fallen, G.E.C.—despite retaining some specialised activities—must now be counted among the honoured names of those who failed to make it. For despite all the effort that was exerted, the downward spiral of both prices and demand proved too costly an experience to be borne."

The comment continues:

"But is seems to have been a Government decision not to support the British microelectronics companies with tariff protection that finally decided G.E.C. to cut their losses. Market forces have been allowed to have free play.

Case For Support

The implications of this for the future will be considerable. If British electronics companies wish to establish themselves in any new area of technology, it appears they must do it alone. 'Go ahead,' the message seems to run, 'nobody's stopping you.' But nobody's helping you either."

The "stand on your own feet" philosophy—and if you are a lame duck, it is just too bad for Scotland.

The comment went on:

"We do not believe that industry should be permanently proposed up by artificial means but during the formative stages of a new technology there can be strong arguments for some form of official support. Similarly, the years while a market is being created often call for carefully chosen protection, just as young plants need to be sheltered from the frost.

There need be nothing enfeebling about such support and such protection. They can be seen operating very effectively in both of the world's leading electronics nations—the U.S.A. and Japan.

But somehow, for all the talk and heart-searching, this country has failed to find the key to prosperity in semiconductors. When the marks for this particular game come to be added up, we fear that everyone will receive a low score. Government, manufacturers, customers—there have been no really sparkling performers, and it can only be hoped that something has been learned for when the next game comes to be played."

That rather lengthy quote from a trade publication shows something of the challenge which this Government must meet. They cannot sit on the sidelines and watch these young new industries being destroyed. In areas like Fife, where we have lost our old industry—coal—we depend

on these new industries more than most areas. Therefore, the psychological blow of their being destroyed is all the greater.

I beg the Government to have some sense of their responsibility and not to be deceived and blinded by their own dogma. They should recognise that they cannot allow the blind forces of the market free rein, that they must intervene—for humane and social reasons as well as for good sound economic reasons.

11.0 p.m.

I had not intended to take part in the debate because I was under the impression that we were at this stage to discuss the position of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and the situation on Clydeside. But the area of debate has been somewhat widened, and the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig), for example, has referred to some of the problems of my constituency. I shall come to his comments in a few minutes. I have been somewhat provoked, also, by some of the comments made by hon. Members opposite. Listening to them, one might gain the impression that an unemployment problem suddenly arose overnight in Scotland on 18th June last year. In fact, as they and everyone else in Scotland know, that is far from the truth.

On the question of U.C.S., the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) made one observation which seemed to me to have an element of attraction when he urged the case for the setting up of a Select Committee. I hope that if we were to do that it would manage to unveil for us precisely what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) meant when he went to Clydeside in the summer of 1969 and delivered that famous speech, which was, I think, fairly characterised by the Scottish Daily Express as giving the message, "Not a penny more".

That was the right hon. Gentleman's message at that time, and it makes a pretty odd contrast with the antics in which he has been indulging in recent weeks. I hazard the guess—I have hazarded it outside the House, so I see no reason for not repeating it here—that, had it not been for the occurrence of a by-election in the Gorbals constituency, the right hon. Gentleman would have stuck by what he said in the summer of 1969 and would have ensured that the bankruptcy of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders occurred in the autumn of 1969 and not when it did.

Hon. Members opposite have emphasised the seriousness of the employment situation on Clydeside now. I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State could tell us whether it is a fact that the other yards on the Clyde, Yarrow's and Lower Clyde, are crying out to recruit labour, and, further, whether it is a fact that there are elements among the trade unions on the Upper Clyde who have indicated to any present employees of U.C.S. that if they should consider applying for jobs with Yarrow's or with Lower Clyde they would do so at risk to their families. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] These reports are circulating. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where?"] They are circulating in Scotland. I shall be very interested to hear whether right hon. and hon. Members opposite can produce evidence to refute——

It is your smear.

—the reports that other shipyards on the Clyde are crying out for labour at the present time and explain why they are unable to recruit such labour.

The hon. Gentleman is repeating filthy tittle tattle for which there is not a jot of evidence and then asking hon. Gentlemen on this side to refute it. guarantees that the stories recirculate. by making the point in his speech he guarantees that the stories re-circulate. The truth is, and the hon. Gentleman knows this very well, that the only meaning of his argument is that there are employers in Lower Clyde who would like to see higher unemployment on the Clyde so that they could get some people recruited from there. That is the only merit of his argument. Beyond that he is simply engaging in the spreading of a rumour designed in some way to weaken those who are fighting for their right to work in Upper Clyde shipyards.

What I asked hon. and right hon. Gentlemen to refute was——

rose——

I am dealing with the right hon. Gentleman. What I asked hon. and right hon. Gentlemen to refute was that Yarrow's and Lower Clyde were seeking to recruit employees and were unable to do so. I asked how they explained this situation in a condition of serious unemployment.

Withdraw.

I do not intend to withdraw.

rose——

I do not want to delay the House much longer. I do want to deal with——

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves that point——

The hon. Gentleman must allow me to make my own speech.

The hon. Gentleman should stop making assertions——

Order. If the hon. Gentleman does not give way the hon. Member must not seek to intervene.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Assertions have been made which refer to the workers and management in an area which I and other of my hon. Friends represent. If we cannot answer these now I hope that we will be given an opportunity later of dealing with them.

Certainly.

I want to turn briefly to the situation on Tayside. The hon. Member for Dundee, West referred to this. Listening to the hon. Gentleman, I would not have thought that he was a supporter of a Government which introduced the quota system for imports of jute goods, which as he well knows has been one of the factors—I do not say the only one—which has resulted in the difficulties facing the jute industry.

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that the jute industry asked for the quota system? He made no objection to this.

I am well aware of what happened at the time. The Government of the day decided to make the change and, broadly speaking, the largest firms in the industry saw certain advantages for them in the new scheme. It was made quite clear at the time by a number of people, including me, that it would create problems in some of the smaller firms and this is what has happened.

That was in 1964.

It was not, it was in 1969.

I do not want to delay the House much longer, but I do want to refer to what was said about the extension of S.D.A. privileges, if that is the right word, in the Tayside region. The hon. Gentleman quoted the Lord Provost of Arbroath as supporting this proposition. I have made it clear to the Lord Provost that I would not support him in his approach, basically for two reasons. The first is because the hon. Gentleman overlooks the differential disadvantage which is applied through the S.D.A. scheme to existing employers in an area which receives S.D.A. rights. A payroll subsidy can obviously present considerable competitive disadvantages to established firms in an area which are not able to enjoy that subsidy themselves. I believe that we should consider not only the desirability of bringing new industry into an area but also the desirability of furthering the position of industry already there.

I am prepared to concede that the existence of special development area privileges in West Central Scotland puts Tayside at a competitive disadvantage in attracting new industry. The corollary of that is that if Tayside were made a special development area there would be demands from other parts of Scotland which would find themselves disadvantaged not only against Clydeside but also against Tayside. So it would go on and one would get a more and more unwieldy system of incompatible incentives.

The hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) referred to the argument that a reduction in the differential in favour of development areas results from the increase in the first-year allowances. We accept that there is a limited reduction in differential is implied, but he overlooks the fact that first-year allowances do not apply to plant and investment in the qualifying factory, but that the machinery may well come from a development area. I can well see, for example, that machine tool manufacturers in my constituency could benefit from the increase in first-year allowances.

It is a mistake to assume that any limited erosion—and it is very limited—of the differential in favour of first-year allowances for the development areas is entirely negative for them. In so far as they are producing capital goods which go to investment in non-development areas, it may be a positive advantage to them in encouraging additional manufacturing investment. That is the other side of the situation. The problem of unemployment in Scotland is to a large extent a reflection of the success of the last Government's policies in destroying the profitability of British industry through their taxation system and thereby destroying the ability to invest and adding to the erosion of profit margins through the tax system the destruction of profit margins through the inflationary stampede they set going in their last 18 months of office. It is not good enough for hon. Members opposite now to turn round and complain about the consequences of those policies.

11.15 p.m.

I thank you for calling me after the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne), Mr. Speaker. This is the first time I have taken part in a debate on unemployment and the industrial situation in Scotland, for I have been dealing with other sectors of the Scottish scene and have left these matters to my comrades and colleagues.

I am impelled to intervene after some of the remarks of the hon. Member for South Angus. Despite the position which he regards himself as holding in the Conservative Party, he must learn that that kind of unsubstantiated smear is condemned by most decent people inside and outside the House. I had thought that what was wrong with the hon. Member was lack of heart; after listening to the last few minutes of his views on economics, I think that he is suffering from lack of head as well. If he does not understand the damage that remarks of that kind do, it is time that he did. We are dealing with a serious situation and we do not have time for frivolity, or callousness, or smears, and that is what we have had.

As it happens, I represent the area to which the hon. Member referred, the Lower Clyde, the shipbuilders of the Lower Clyde, and very proud they are too, of Glasgow and Greenock. I remember speaking at the factory gate at the time both my right hon. Friends were having discussions two or three years ago about the future of the Upper Clyde. What the lads were asking me was quite simply, "Are you giving them the money so that Upper Clyde can continue?" They were not saying, as some others did, "Do not bother about giving them the money, so that we may be in a better competitive position".

I hesitate to advise my hon. Friend, but the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) said that the employers on the Lower Clyde made certain allegations about the trade unions. Would my hon. Friend care to pursue that?

I shall come to that. I wished first to relate the attitude of the people with whom I am inevitably most concerned, the workers. I can tell the hon. Member that the kind of solidarity that the Upper Clyde requires will be forthcoming from the workers of the Lower Clyde.

I have a good deal of consultation with the workers and I have never heard anything which would substantiate the hon. Members' unwarranted and unnecessary smear. I hope that he will withdraw it because he has no basis for it, although it was not untypical of the kind of thing we are getting from the Government. We now have the most reactionary Government for the last century and a half and the most callous. They were elected on a fraud, the fraud that they would cut unemployment at a stroke. They have perpetuated themselves on the myth that all the problems were being caused by the workers' demands, and now they are trying to sustain themselves on the illusion that their problems will be solved by entering the Common Market. I want to deal with all of those.

The Under-Secretary will recall the unemployment figures in the London evening newspapers on the day of the election. The promise to cut unemployment at a stroke was clearly one of the most telling factors which secured the election victory on 18th June, last year, and the hon. Member for South Angus should recall 18th June, for it is a very important date. Since then we have had the kind of unemployment figures which Scotland has not seen since the 1930s. Now it is July and we have to take on board the young people who have left school and never worked.

I know what I am talking about, for I represent an area where there has been a long history of unemployment. I remember becoming a candidate in the winter of 1962–63 and finding to my horror 11 per cent. unemployment in Port Glasgow. But that figure is repeated in area after area in Scotland today. A breakdown of the figures shows that not only are more people unemployed, but more people are unemployed for longer periods. The number of those unemployed for more than six months is increasing drastically and the number of unemployed for more than 12 months is increasing drastically. This is the tragedy, not the tragedy of unemployment for three, four, or five weeks as people shift from job to job, but the creation of long-term hard-core unemployment, and I wish that the Under-Secretary who has a certain responsibility in the matter would pay a little attention.

Many of us on this side believe that what we are discussing tonight has its origins not in the problem involved in the exchange of letters in October and November last year, but the year before in the document starting from the hon. Gentleman himself. That document outlined the butchery of the Upper Clyde. Almost all the changes have been brought about by events. This is one way in which we can judge attitudes. We know the document, and when we know that the changes which it is said to contain have in each and every case been carried out, this is the difference between allegation based upon experience and facts and the kind of smear that we got from the hon. Gentleman.

One of the reasons why we would like to have a public inquiry into the whole question of U.C.S. is that we want to know what kind of rôle the hon. Gentleman's document played in this. I want to know, for example, to whom it was sent. The Secretary of State for Scotland says that he never saw it. If he did not get it, this shows with what contempt the Conservative Party treated regional Ministers. Either the right hon. Gentleman saw it or he did not. If he did not see it, this shows how the party opposite played down its importance. Even that is indicative of the Government, because they have no concern for the regions, since the tasks and the problems concerning the regions cut across their ideology.

The measures announced a week ago were not measures of a Government concerned. They were the measures of a Government in panic. This has been the problem of the Government. The fraud was that they would cut unemployment. The myth was that high prices and inflation were due to the demands of the workers. Absolutely no evidence has been brought forward by the Government Front Bench. Hon. Friends of mine have been asking for it for a year. What is the evidence that wage demands have caused unemployment?

Speculation we have had from the Prime Minister until we are sick of hearing it. There has been not an ounce of evidence that the demands of the workers have caused unemployment. When we look from situation to situation, it is in precisely those areas, regions and industries where there is no problem that we face the higher unemployment.

I know what is causing unemployment. Unemployment breeds on unemployment, because as soon as a pool of unemployment is created there is no longer need for an employer to hold on to his labour force, since he knows that if expansion comes, there will be a pool from which he can get his labour. Therefore, the moment that unemployment begins to rise—and it has risen dramatically, by 20 or 25 per cent. over the last 12 months—employers add to it by shedding their labour. This is the problem, and the Government have not faced it.

A week ago we got the panic measures of reflation. We all know—because it was predicted that it would happen—that the Government were worried that they were not carrying public opinion with them to take us into the Common Market. Because of this, the panic measures were brought forward. But whom will they assist? They may do something in the areas which satisfy consumer needs—they may or they may not. A lot will depend upon how much industrialists believe that the Government can go in for sustained expansion.

Much will depend upon how many industrialists are not investing because they intend to wait and invest in Europe instead. I have never heard such nonsense as the reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) tonight that investors in Europe will come to invest in Dundee to make things here so that they can send them back to Europe. What economic nonsense this is. That is another reason why we may not get the right results from reflation.

What we are clear about is that there is nothing here to assist the regions. The hon. Member for South Angus advances the spurious argument that demand in these areas will be assisted by the improved depreciation, pushed up to 80 per cent.; that that will cause a river of demand for capital goods in the regions. The truth is that investment in the regions has been given a disincentive because there is now only a 20 per cent. difference in the free depreciation in the regions and that elsewhere.

So we come to the problem of the Upper Clyde. In a day or two we shall get an announcement from the Government, and we are all waiting for it. If the Government do not announce that the entire yards on the Clyde will be maintained on the basis of the existing labour force, there will not be disappointment or hopelessness, but the kind of bitter anger which this class-ridden Government cannot conceive. The Government have made the class struggle respectable.

That is what the Government will face. The shop stewards are already saying that if that is not the case they are prepared to occupy the yards. There will be very few people in Scotland who will be prepared to condemn such action, because many of them will say that those yards belong to the workers every bit as much as they belong to the management. We hear of pre-emptive claims to possession, and it is to this kind of thing that we need an answer.

First, I ask the Government to recognise the bitterness and anger there is in Scotland and give this pledge to maintain the U.C.S. They may not like doing so, I know it goes against their dogmas, but let them look at the cost—that will appeal. They are always concerned with cash. Let them set the cost of redundancy payments, unemployment payments, and the rest, against the injection of the measly sum needed here to keep U.C.S. going. I think that the Government have even got their cash account wrong. In addition to saving money, they will be building ships and helping the balance of payments and, above all, giving some kind of sustained hope.

Second, we demand an inquiry. The hon. Member for South Angus has said he would welcome an inquiry because it would expose the statement of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). If that is the case, let the hon. Gentleman use his position of political power to press the Government to hold such an inquiry. We would welcome it.

Third, I hope that if the Government are not prepared to have a public inquiry, the people of the Clyde will themselves hold a public inquiry—and put the Government in the dock.

11.28 p.m.

Most of my hon. Friends have a far greater knowledge of Upper Clyde than I have and can speak with far greater authority, but I want to ask one question not only for the West of Scotland but for Scotland.

When the news of the Upper Clyde difficulties broke, the Government, with a degree of self-pity that some of us found less than attractive, said: "We did not know. We were only given 48 or 72 hours warning." What is being done within the Government machine to see that such a situation never occurs again and that the Government are never again confronted with the same kind of sudden crisis? This has not been explained. We would like to know what is being done to improve the Government machine in this respect.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) and I both wanted to speak on unemployment, and my subject was originally unemployment among youth, but eloquently from this side the case has been made. It is appalling to see young people between 15 and 17 years of age starting on their working lives without the prospect of a job—nothing is more appalling.

I want to put forward a constructive idea. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. McCartney) and I have been having a long correspondence with the Ministry of Defence on the subject of the very vast trading facilities at Caledonia and Rosyth. I confess to a constituency interest, since a West Lothian county councillor who is a civilian instructor in Dunfermline was paid off last week. His job, like the jobs of a number of other instructors, is coming to an end. It seems crazy when there is the present degree of youth unemployment, to run down an establishment that is military in name but which we all know in fact has trained a large number of boys for skilled civilian work throughout Scotland. Can the Scottish Office and the Department of Employment talk seriously to the Navy Ministers and ask them whether it is sensible to do this, at this stage in our history, to the considerable training facilities that exist there?

My speech can be cut short, because much of what I had to say was so well put by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) on the electronics industry. As one who represents Plesseys, I know only too well that what he said was in no way exaggerated. We look forward to hearing what is said in a later debate by the Under-Secretary for Trade and Industry on the dumping of microcircuits. But it is not just the question of microcircuits that will be raised by the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Brian Harrison). It goes much deeper than that. There is a crisis in the electronics industry as a whole, and not only the British electronics industry. I am not looking for miracle solutions, but I too ask for an inquiry about Alexandria.

We in the east of Scotland also have an interest in this, because we had hoped during the early 1960s to be a European centre for the techniques of numerical control. There were very high hopes built up at Dalkeith, where many of my constituents work. That is known to the Government and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), because he was intimately involved in what looked like a very hopeful operation. I did not quarrel with the transfer of that technology for Mid Lothian and West Lothian to the West Coast, because I thought it was rational and it had our good will. What does not have our good will is the fact that numerical control techniques seem to have been run down in Scotland to zero. When we consider the potential power for good of those techniques, and the tremendous burgeoning that could take place, particularly in the context of European industry, we feel that it is tragic that this should have happened.

Moreover, we know very well that considerable sums of Government money are involved. This alone justifies the request for a public inquiry, apart from the assurances that the numerical control techniques would be kept up. I do not want to do any harm to the British electronics industry. Journalists writing in serious Press have made the case very powerfully. This is a case that the Government must answer.

On and on, we have continued the tragic saga of Rolls-Royce. Sometimes it looks hopeful and sometimes it does not. I have a specific question that Government must now answer. They were asked to submit evidence to the Senate Banking Committee. For good or bad reason, apparently they refused to do so. There is an obligation to explain to the country why that request was refused, because it seems to some of us that the refusal could be very harmful to our interests. Those who represent Rolls-Royce subcontractors are now acutely worried about what will happen. Whatever happens on 6th August or 8th August, there is no indication of any contingency planning if things do not turn out in the way we all hope they will. Therefore, if things go wrong—and I hope that they will not—in mid-August or early September, it will be a dereliction of duty for the Government not to produce some kind of contingency plan. I hope that they are having discussions with other people who might use the products of the Rolls-Royce subcontractors. This is neither the time nor the place to go into detail as to who those people are; the Minister knows perfectly well who they are. I beg the Government to have some clear contingency plan in case things do not turn out as they hope.

11.35 p.m.

I shall not go over the many excellent points made by my hon. Friends and I will try to be as brief as possible in view of the time, but I must refer to the long history of industrial decline in Clydebank, Cumbernauld and other parts of East Dunbartonshire since the General Election last year. It is no accident that it has occurred in view of the declared economic and industrial policies of the Tory Party prior to the election and the evident desire by Ministers to introduce such policies sine; they were elected. It is clear that unless these policies are changed, and unless the Government accept the error of their ways, there is no hope of restoring the position in Scotland in general and in the areas which have been mentioned in particular, including Clydebank and Dunbarton, where there are very high levels of unemployment. The position in these areas is becoming alarming.

It is not wrong to keep emphasising the "lame ducks" statement of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry because it crystallises the feelings of the hierarchy of the Tory Central Office and of Ministers. I met the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in London last year in the late autumn or early winter—I cannot remember which it was; the climatic conditions were mild at that time if nothing else was—to discuss the redundancies at the Singer Manufacturing Co. Ltd. Also present were representatives of the Scottish T.U.C. and of the Clydebank town council, shop stewards of the company and officials from the trade unions involved in the problem. It was clear that the Under-Secretary had little or no sympathy for the workers who were losing their jobs, for their families or for the social consequences of the redundancies and others which would follow.

The only crumb of comfort from that meeting and the several other meetings which took place in connection with the Singer and U.C.S. troubles and other troubles which have flowed from the Government's policy was the decision to demolish the Babcock and Wilcox factory and to build three advance factories on the site with a gross area of 100,000 square feet.

I visited that site on Saturday morning. Although the demolition has taken place, very little has been done in building the advance factories. I urge the Minister to encourage the people who have been given the contract to get on with the work as rapidly as possible. Advance factories are very welcome. Successive Labour Governments urged the building of advance factories to attract industry to Scotland. They were one of the main things which brought new industries and the new technological industries to Scotland. Unless the Government introduce policies which will encourage manufacturers to take up the advance factories, there is little or no point in building them. I hope that the Government will not use that as an argument for not spending money in this way, as they have done in the past.

One argument that is being used is that because advance factories are being built, there is no need to worry about employment of workers in U.C.S. However, I do not believe that we should look at the advance factories there or elsewhere in the development area as an alternative. The U.C.S. should be regarded as a comprehensive complex. These advance factories and any industry that is introduced must be regarded as supplementary to the existing industry. Every effort must be made to ensure the well-being of those existing industries.

Yesterday in the Scotsman it was reported that for Scotland the unemployment figures were 134,500—some 6·2 per cent. of the employable population. The hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) said that these unemployment figures did not suddenly arise. I ask him to cast back his mind to February, 1963, when under a Tory Government similar disastrous unemployment figures were recorded. At that time they blamed a bad winter. We now have even worse figures than were recorded in February, 1963, and we have not suffered a bad winter, spring or summer. What we are suffering is a bad Government. The sooner we realise this the better. Certainly the electors, if given the opportunity, will tell the Government so.

I received a reply from the Department of Employment on 1st July this year which showed that in the Clydebank employment exchange area there were 2,376 unemployed males registered at June, 1971 compared with 1,522 in June, 1970. The percentage rates of male unemployment in the Glasgow travel-to-work area, which includes Clydebank, were 9·5 and 6·8 respectively for these periods.

I should like to refer to what was said on this matter of redundancies by Jack McGill of the Scottish Daily Express. We may disagree with McGill's interpretation of events, but I am sure we will agree that this respected reporter has his ear to the ground and generally speaking enjoys all the leaks going. If Jack McGill is correct on this occasion in referring to some 2,000 redundancies in U.C.S., then evidently the unemployment figure on Clydebank will rise alarmingly. Since some of the people employed in this area are from the contiguous area of Dunbartonshire, from Scotstoun, Govan and other places, the figures in those areas will be seriously affected.

The delegation of the Scottish T.U.C. which met the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry were disappointed and dismayed. And they are not the only people who will be disappointed. The Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Secretary of State for Scotland and various other Government Ministers have received letters and deputations on this subject. Round robins and all kinds of pressures have come from the whole community in this area—from people who normally do not involve themselves in political or social issues. But the whole community in this area is rising in anger at what is to happen to U.C.S. and Clydebank. The Government said in the past that they did not wish to intervene in industry, but they have now intervened in such a way as to force U.C.S. into liquidation. We believe that where necessary Governments should intervene in the interests of the community, but in this instance Government intervention has faced a large part of the shipbuilding industry with liquidation.

In view of the change which has occurred since the U.C.S. difficulties first came to light, I believe that the Government should swallow their political pride and alter their attitude to U.C.S. with a view to helping it to continue as a viable unit. If they are prepared to do that, I am certain that no hon. Member on this side of the House nor any shop steward or trade union involved will make it embarrassing for them.

I think that it was the Scotsman yesterday which reported that certain Scottish Labour Members intended carrying out their own inquiry and investigation. I do not know whether that is true. If it is, I do not know where the reporter got his information.

However, when the Government reach a decision, it is to be hoped very soon, my view is that any inquiry should be instituted by the trade union movement in co-operation with the local authorities in the areas affected by any redundancies or closures. It is ironic that the Government who are opposed to industrial democracy may have started down a road which will result in the first real experiment in democracy in industry.

It has been suggested that, if the Government decide to dismember U.C.S., to hive off any part of it, or to close any part of it, the trade unions will take over the yard and operate it until such time as the Government see sense. This is a clear indication that the point may soon be reached about which I have warned the Government on two previous occasions. I referred to this possibility first when the House was considering the Industrial Relations Bill, and I mentioned it again when we last debated U.C.S. The road that the Government are travelling with their social and economic policies may force workers to show that they can do a better job in co-operation with management than the Government have managed to do.

In view of the new situation, with large-scale unemployment in Scotland, especially on Clydeside, I ask right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite to swallow their political pride. They must ensure that U.C.S. is retained as a first-class shipbuilding unit, recognising the traditional skills which exist there. Specula- tors are already poking their noses here and there, trying to smell out what profits are in it for them. They should be chased from the doorstep. The Clydebank Division especially should be maintained as an integral part of any new organisation which may be created following the report of the Government's four experts. Unless the Government accent the need to throw aside their doctrinaire ideas, all hell will be let loose on Clydeside, and they will have even greater trouble than they anticipate.

Before I sit down, I want to compliment the hon. and gallant Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Lt.-Col. Colin Mitchell) for his intervention in the course of these difficulties. He has visited the Clydebank Division. I welcomed his visit, and I know that the trade union movement as a whole, especially the shop stewards in the area, did the same. It was good to see a Conservative Member entering a shipyard sincerely trying to discover its problems. I know that the hon. and gallant Gentleman cannot fight our political battles in his own party, especially in this House, but I hope that his conversations with Ministers following his visit will have some effect on the decisions that the Government have to make.

I also heard that the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Education, Scottish Office, paid a visit to the Clydeside division of U.C.S. I do not know what his attitude was or what his suggestions were to the Government. However, I am sure that unless he declares himself on the side of the U.C.S. workers for the retention of U.C.S. as a complete unit, and the Government accept that position, he and many other Tory Members will be looking for other jobs after the next General Election.

11.50 p.m.

I want to follow the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. McCartney) about the article in the Scottish Daily Express. A similar article also appeared in the Glasgow Evening Citizen, which is part of the same combine. I am prepared to state categorically that this seems to be the way that the Government work. They have allowed this matter to leak, and events may prove that the 2,000 workers mentioned in the Scottish Daily Express and the Glasgow Evening Citizen will become a reality.

This Government seem to make all their statements either at garden fetes or at the opening of new roads which were constructed under the direction of the Labour Government. They do not seem to be capable of making these statements in the House.

The Lanarkshire Development Council has tried hard to arrange a meeting with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, but so far he has not indicated that he is prepared to meet this responsible body.

I do not subscribe to the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East who has congratulated some hon. Gentlemen opposite because they met the workers of U.C.S. If they have constituents working in the yards or in factories where there are redundancies, they have a moral obligation to meet them and to explain what the Government's policy is. In a similar situation, I should be prepared to meet the employer and workers who sent me to do a job for them in the House of Commons. On that basis, we are only carrying out to the full the views and the realisations of the people who placed a great deal of trust in us when they elected us at the General Election.

We talk about unemployment on the basis of percentages and of records being broken by all Governments. One of the sad features of this situation is that Scotland has over 16,000 unemployed in the construction industry. That is an indictment against any Government, especially as a tremendous number of houses are required to be built to house people in great need of decent accommodation. Power stations are also urgently required. In this situation, with construction workers signing on at the labour exchanges, obviously the effect on our economy must be extremely serious. It is not only that we have 16,000 craftsmen signing on; we have to take into consideration the ancillary grades which do not get employment because the craftsmen are unemployed.

I find it nauseating that in Lanarkshire 8·3 per cent. of the insurable population are unemployed. Of 8,000 youngsters who left school at the summer holiday period, to the best of my knowledge, 6,000 will be on the dole, on the scrap heap. It is possible that at least 2,000 of them will take advantage of further education. Unfortunately, the facilities are not available for them to take full advantage of further training. The Government should apply their minds to the question of technical training. A training centre is being run down in Lanarkshire. This does not benefit the country. I have written to ask Lord Melchett of the British Steel Corporation to give me a full report on the situation as regards this training centre. Its closure will mean not only that the instructors will be seeking other employment but also that the reservoir of trained personnel will not be coming forward. I hope that they will not be needed in the foreseeable future to add to the impetus to all industries which the Government claim are coming to Scotland.

In the Common Market debate the Secretary of State for Employment stated that the Government were opening new training centres throughout the country. In reply to a question from me he was unable to say how many training centres would be opened in Scotland. I understand that no new training centres are envisaged for Scotland.

Every hon. Member on this side must be deeply concerned on the question of U.C.S. Many of my constituents work at U.C.S. I hope that U.C.S. will not be sold down the river. The Government have a representative on the board of U.C.S. and it is unbelievable that he could not have given the information to the Minister responsible so that the Minister could have informed the House. We received only three days notice of the situation in U.C.S.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) is asking for a special inquiry into the question of U.C.S. This question should be thoroughly investigated and at the end of the day the House should be informed of what the Government are playing at.

Rolls-Royce concerns everyone in my part of the country. If Rolls-Royce is not redeemed, and if a solution to the Rolls-Royce situation is not found, unemployment in Lanarkshire, which is now 8·3 per cent., could easily become 11 per cent. I do not seek to spread despondency. I merely state a fact of life. The Government have a moral obligation to take action. The 136,000 unemployed that we had in 1963 under the Tory Government is a record of which they cannot be proud. We do not doubt that this record will be beaten before 1971 is out.

It is safe to say that we will reach 150,000. If anyone thinks the measures introduced by the Chancellor on Monday will be a short-term answer, they are living in cloud-cuckoo-land. In view of the high unemployment in my constituency and the rest of Scotland, there was no joy in Bellshill when the Chancellor told us that a £20 suit would cost 30p less. There was no rush to the tailor's to get new suits because most of my constituents, even those who are working, are not making the sort of money to be able to rush and buy a £20 suit just because the Chancellor has reduced the purchase tax on it by 30p.

None of my people are deeply concerned about buying refrigerators, and they are not intending to buy Jaguar cars. Will the Government tell the people of Scotland what they intend to do for a change? Have they written Scotland off? Have they decided that because Scotland renounced them at the last General Election they are not going to give them any consideration? If they do not tell the people what they intend to do, then obviously we in Scotland are entitled to do something sensational. If we do something sensational, hon. Members should bear in mind that the people are far better educated now than their forebears were in the 1930's. We will know how to adapt ourselves to this situation. I hope when the Minister replies he will answer many of the questions we have put to him this evening.

12.1 a.m.

I intervene very briefly because my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) will be winding up for the Opposition. I wanted to deal with one or two points made by the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne), who totally misrepresented the position. The attitude of the previous Government, in which I had responsibility for shipbuilding, was dictated by the economic and social considerations, and the suggestion that the Gorbals by-election had played any part is totally false. He knows it to be false. Were there to be any evidence of truth in it, it would be the most massive act of political corruption ever performed in British political history. I would not have referred to it except that some people listening to the hon. Gentleman might have believed there was something in it. When he went on to say there were threats by the men concerned against the families, it simply proved that he has no contact with the people living in Clydeside.

Quite without regard to the outcome of the Government's consideration of this matter, it has been motivated, in the opinion of myself and hon. Gentlemen who watch this, broadly by hostility to the Government's relations not only with industry but specifically with U.C.S. We have a Minister tonight whose document was the key to the whole Government policy. He has an opportunity to deny authorship of that document. But, in the absence of a clear denial, we know the sense of betrayal which the men working in U.C.S. have. It is derived from what he is believed to have said to his political colleagues in 1969.

It is this more than anything else which has created the political crisis which lies behind the economic problems facing U.C.S. I wanted briefly in this context to refer to the Bill presented by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock, myself and others. In it we made it clear not only that public ownership was right for U.C.S. but also that the management and workers should jointly have been asked to prepare a development plan under public ownership, and that the details of the management pattern and structure of the company should have been accepted by the management and workers as a whole.

The hon. Gentleman who is to wind up the debate is famous for seeing all economic and industrial problems in profit and loss terms. I must warn him that, in advocating this view, he is totally out of touch with modern thinking—not only of trade unionists and shop stewards but of the modern school of management. We have put forward a serious policy alternative to his view and it is from this that future thinking on industrial policy will derive. If the Minister will not give an inquiry, I hope that the trade unions will take upon themselves the responsibility for examining the betrayal that the Government have perpetrated on this yard.

12.5 a.m.

I make no apology for detaining the House, because we have been very patient in listening to speeches from hon. Members who have found it inconvenient to wait for the end of the debate. I refer particularly to the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne). I am surprised that my colleagues have let him off the hook, because he is not just the Member for South Angus: he is a P.P.S. at the Scottish Office and an office bearer in the Scottish Conservative Party in this House——

An office boy.

He just seems like that: in fact he is an office bearer. People outside will assume that at least he is privy to some of the gossip and rumours—some perhaps with substance—that circulate in the Scottish Office.

He has alleged that there have been threats to the families of those employed by Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. May I refresh the memory of the hon. Member for Howden (Mr. Bryan), who may not have been here all through this debate, but who was certainly present during the debate on the Industrial Relations Bill? That Bill contains a specific change in the law relating to picketing. The Government maintained that there had been attempts to endanger people in their own homes during industrial disputes. Many hon. Members on this side took exception to that, because some of the allegations were not substantiated.

But now, the hon. Member for South Angus makes categoric allegations—I am glad to see that he has returned to the Chamber—that trade unionists or the shop stewards in Upper Clyde were threatening the families of their own members if they dared to take jobs in Yarrows or in Lower Clyde. Is that a fair statement of what he said?

Get on your feet, man.

If so, it is scandalous. Any of us with even a slight knowledge of the difficult situation of the trade unionists in Upper Clyde Shipbuilders recognises that they are obviously anxious, at least until the Government indicate their views, to preserve the labour force in Upper Clyde. That is not unreasonable.

Second, there is the problem of the different wage rates between Upper Clyde and Lower Clyde. We all recognise that the trade unions have problems in this regard, but that is vastly different from saying, as this hon. Member has said, that there have been physical threats, presumably of intimidation, against the families of those employed in Upper Clyde. Is he saying that, or did he lack his usual sophisticated command of language? Was he being too blunt? Does he speak for the Scottish Office?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) rightly said recently that no one ever knew what he said in Cabinet. We would give him credit for this. Some of us think that sometimes he did not communicate enough about some of the broad considerations. I say this, as I think he knows, as a personal admirer of his. But if his P.P.S. had made statements like those of the hon. Member for South Angus, I reckon that my right hon. Friend would have had something to say about them—either to justify them or to refute them. So I am asking that someone—if there is anyone on the Government Front Bench at the moment with authority to speak on this matter—should either confirm or deny these allegations.

There seems to have been a breakdown in the lines of communication between the four wise men and the shop stewards. There may be nothing in it, but it seems amazing and, to say the least, most regrettable, that in this delicate situation, when the shop stewards, I believe, had a clear understanding that they would at least be consulted before the four wise men gave their report to the Minister, all that has been overlooked, in spite of all the talk about taking people into confidence and maintaining communications. As I say, there may be no significance in it, and I do not suggest that there is, but the fact of that failure of communication leads on to the comments I have to make about the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry who is to reply to the debate.

There is no suspicion which trade unionists in Upper Clyde Shipbuilders might have which would not be justified by a reading of some of his speeches in, for example, the Committee on the Post Office Bill in 1968 and 1969. I have been around in politics quite a bit, and I confess that I thought he was a joke. I did not think that he commanded any support in the Conservative Party. I honestly could not see the Tories being so crazy in 1970, in the unlikely event of their winning the election—admittedly, I did not expect them to win it, and I was wrong about that—as to appoint to office someone who was treated as a joke because his ideas were so "way out". Yet here he is.

Whatever else may be said about the trade unionists of Clydeside, they can read. They can read some of the hon. Gentleman's speeches in the Committee on the Post Office Bill. The hon. Member for Howden was there as the Front Bench spokesman, and he knows what I am talking about. The reactionary views we heard from someone who is now a Minister were positively frightening, and in that setting one can understand the reaction of some of the people now concerned about the situation on the Clyde.

There will not be a bloody revolution on Clydeside if there is depressing or disastrous news from the Government, but the Government must for their part recognise that there are people in the trade union movement and on this side of the House who see some advantage in drawing the attention of the country and, indeed, of the world to this glaring situation, a situation in which men want to work, there is a demand for the product of their work, and yet, for some reason or other of finance or because of the outdated monetary system which we have, we cannot organise affairs in such a way as to enable those people to work and create the wealth which they are able to create.

We have taken a fairly long time in this debate, but we need not apologise for detaining the House. We are probably a day or two away from a Government statement, and this is a highly desirable time to impress upon them that they are playing with dynamite here. They have already shown that they are no longer a non-interventionist Govern- ment and they cannot afford to pursue the doctrinaire ideologies of the Under-Secretary of State. Either he must go, or someone in the Government must make clear to the people of Clydeside that some of the serious social considerations will be taken into account when they make their decision.

12.14 a.m.

We have had an interesting debate, interesting because we have once again had only one contribution from the Tory back benches. The hon. Gentleman concerned, the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne), began by saying that he had not intended to intervene, but, after he had intervened, I think that most Members wondered why he had. It was no great help.

A certain constitutional point arises out of what the hon. Gentleman said. He is the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Scotland, and it is a pretty well known convention that the P.P.S. to the Secretary of State does not intervene in matters which touch the responsibilities of the Secretary of State. If there are two things concerning Scotland at the moment they are (a) unemployment and (b) U.C.S. To have the hon. Member for South Angus, who certainly does not know the area or very much about the people other than those he meets on his fleeting visits to television studios in and around Glasgow, telling us what is happening among the men and failing to give us one single piece of evidence to justify his statements is a serious matter for the Secretary of State.

He is speaking as the man who knows the Secretary of State, how he thinks and acts, and what he says must reflect upon the right hon. Gentleman. We have had this smear about coercion and threats to families and the hon. Gentleman should have the guts and courage to get up and justify it. All we got is the hon. Member running away from the onus of proof. I do not call that courage, I have another name for it and it is something which I would associate with the rather supercilious and unreal presence in this House of the hon. Gentleman.

He talked about my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East, but the hon. Gentleman was not here to answer him. He has a happy knack of running away at the right time. Then he talked about special development areas and why he could not support the provost of his main town. I hope the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary read that speech. It was fairly critical of the special development areas, and especially about the effect they have on industries already in an area. Most new jobs do not come from industries entering an area but from those already there, those who are equipped, modernised and ready to take the chance. I do not see why we should pay very much attention to the hon. Gentleman. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said when he was Prime Minister, the hon. Gentleman is an expert on certain kinds of fish and he should stick to that. Tonight he specialised in red herrings.

My hon. Friends have painted the real picture of employment in Scotland. My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) spoke of the electronics industry as it affected Glenrothes and elsewhere. The fact is that G.E.C. is moving factories from the area, concentrating in the South. There is the position over Plessey's raised by my hon. Friend. If we read the letter he received from the Under-Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry it says that:

"… the factory and machinery were acquired by the firm from the Ministry as a normal commercial transaction and the terms of sale are therefore confidential."

Are they? What they received has to appear in "Appropriations for Aid" in the Estimates and it can be quoted by the P.A.C. Whatever it was I can assure the hon. Gentleman it was not a normal commercial transaction. I can tell him that Plessey's was not the only interested firm. It may well be that Plessey's was interested in keeping a particular firm out. I do not think that the people of Dumbarton and Alexandria generally would be greatly taken by the chairman of that company who brought such devastating news to this area about the redundancies which are to take effect in August. I do not think that they would give him a knighthood. But this is quite common. Saxone, the well-known shoe firm, came to Kilmarnock. Its main factory there closed in April and over 200 people have been made redundant. The chairman has been rewarded with a knighthood. So the redundancy makers who have come to Scotland—Clore and Clark—can revel in their knighthoods, but those knighthoods are not supported by the people they have made unemployed. It was the old argument—works have to be concentrated. Plessey and the rest all said exactly the same thing.

What it all comes down to is that the Government are not prepared to intervene. That is the implication of this letter. It reminds us of the kind of letters we used to get in the early 1960s from the same Department—the commercial judgment of firms must not be challenged. The logical conclusion of this situation is that the Government's regional policy is virtually at an end. They are doing nothing about it. Here is a case in which they should have intervened because Plessey lives by Government contracts. The Mark 24 torpedo ran into snags at the Alexandria factory and the work was continued by Plessey. The torpedo is now to be developed. Where will it be manufactured? We have been through this before with the Ministry of Defence.

One of the things we did in Government, apart from the money we spent in development areas, was to allow contracts by nationalised industries, the Post Office and so on to be placed in development areas. But this Government are not concerned with regional policy. It is obvious that when they make the former head of the C.B.I. the Minister in charge, he will naturally listen to the pleas of the C.B.I.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) referred to the difficulties of the electronics industry. I hope we get an answer on the question of dumping which he raised. There are other cases of dumping in Scotland—in the paper trade, for example. It is time we had an answer in view of today's reports about Inveresk and elsewhere and the competition to which they have been subjected.

The Government now say that reflation is taking place and all will be well. We have reports from the stores about increased demand. But Scotland has 134,000 unemployed and the people of Scotland are not going out of their way to buy fridges and cars and the rest. Many of them are not even having holidays this year. When is the situation going to improve? The only person in the Government who has had the mischance to reply to that question is the Secretary of State for Scotland, but then he does not always know what he is talking about. He is probably advised by his Parliamentary Private Secretary. He said, in an inadevertent Parliamentary Answer earlier this year, that there will be an improvement later this year. The position has got worse. We have 134,000 unemployed this month and in August the figure will show a further rise. The simple reason is that most of the youngsters who have left school have not yet registered. Some did not leave school until after the registration date; some went on holiday at once. But they will register in August when the schools go back. The Government will then see the figures go up, as they did last year and the year before.

But some of the redundancies already notified will also be taking effect. The Plessey figures will be included in the next count. The figures should start going down in September and October, stabilise in November and start rising in December, January and February. Last year, there was an increase of 30,000 between July and February. If that happens this year, it means that in February and March, after the winter, and provided that it is a mild winter, and last winter could not have been milder, there will be between 30,000 and 40,000 more unemployed than now, and that would be a total approaching 170,000 to 180,000 in Scotland.

Yet Ministers will stand making the same speech—"Please Sir, it wasna me". They have been in office since June of last year and they have revelled in being the Government. They gave us a "great new impetus" on 26th October, the mini-Budget. Instead of an impetus, it drove Scotland further into unemployment. So they made us a special development area in March, and that was followed by the Budget, and now we have the latest effort.

There is no confidence in Scotland that they will be able to pull out. The situation is pretty well out of control. What do the Government have within their control? It is the future of the U.C.S. Men will sit in Downing Street and solemnly decide what is to be the future employment in those yards. The only thing standing between the maximum use of the existing force with the possibility of building it up—because the orders are there to be obtained by an efficient yard—between the men and their continued work and the continued well being of their families is a Government unprepared to give financial support.

Whether the Under-Secretary likes it or not, his name has been coupled with a report which has been called the Ridley Report. It was first mentioned in the House in the debate on the Queen's Speech in July, 1970. It was then mentioned in the Guardian at the time of the announcement of the liquidation, and its existence has never been denied. May I tell the hon. Member that I have seen it? May I further tell the hon. Member that I have seen the circulation, those other people to whom it was sent? The Secretary of State for Scotland has never said that he has never had it; but he has said that he has never read it.

What we want from the hon. Member, and I think that we are entitled to ask—because there were certain plans A and B in the report and one of those plans has been followed to the letter, the sequence has been perfect—is his confirmation or denial that that is what took place. The importance of this is that the man who as a back bench Member drew up this report and submitted it to somebody is now the man in charge of shipping, the man who advises the expert on lame ducks. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro), our silent senator, would like to intervene.

It is private.

I did not wish to accuse the hon. Member of having bad manners, but he was talking. I do not know whether he is bursting to make a speech or just talking privately about Northern Ireland.

If my hon. Friend was talking, it was because at that moment I wished to ask him a question which required an answer. He was very kind and polite to answer.

Do it outside.

I heard the voice of the hon. Gentleman. I would never accuse him of discourtesy, but his conversation could have been conducted a little more quietly and preferably elsewhere.

I want to come on to the question of what is happening now. I do not want to go into the past; that is murky enough. I am concerned very much about a decision that will take place. We understand that the four "wise men" gave their report or their advice to the Government on Monday. We understand that it is being considered by the Department. That Department, for which the Under-Secretary is partly responsible, will submit its report, or advice on that report, to the Cabinet on Thursday—tomorrow—and the Cabinet will make its decision.

On that rests the fate of about 8,000 people employed in U.C.S. and also the livelihood of probably another 16,000 to 20,000 people whose livelihood depends on the continued existence in full force of U.C.S. I hope that the Government are seized of the importance of this, set within the sombre background of the Scottish unemployment situation. Let us have no more smears about the quality of the men. I was surprised that the hon. and gallant Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Lieut.-Colonel Colin Mitchell) did not get up and attack his hon. Friend, but perhaps he no longer calls him an hon. Friend.

Let us understand the importance of this to the background and to the people themselves. With my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. William Hannan) and Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan), I had the advantage of seeing Sir Alexander Glen, Lord Robens and the two McDonalds. I was impressed by the quality of the people. I was anxious to find what was their remit. If a hatchet job is to be done, it will not be done by them. It will be done here. All that they will do, I presume, is offer certain suggestions or possibilities to the Government and tell them what the cost of these things will be. We ought to see that report and what advice is offered to the Government and balance against that the decision that the Government eventually take.

If any ceiling is to be placed on the support to U.C.S. in its reconstruction, the people who impose the ceiling will be the Government. We in Scotland recall a decision announced by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry that the Government were not having an airport at Cublington but would put it at Foulness and would spend £150 million more to do it. Money, therefore, does not matter to them. Evidently they have plenty of it. They have already spent nearly £3 million, and probably more, in keeping U.C.S. ticking over.

Whatever proposals are put forward for the reconstructed U.C.S.—and I am sure that there will be some form of reconstruction—this will demand further money.

We would get more and more into the Rolls-Royce situation, but the Government have had second thoughts as they have gone along. They do not have the courage to see the "Butcher Ridley" plan through. The reaction of the people of Scotland, not just of the workers of U.C.S., made them stop short. But we are concerned to ensure that they turn their back altogether on that plan; that they maximise production; that they make the fullest use of resources of manpower and machinery, and that they do not flinch from the need for capital development perhaps in one or other particular yard, because the potential in the long run might be the best bet because of the short-term economic advantage.

That is why I strongly applaud what has been said by more than one of my hon. Friends tonight about Clydebank. It is too easy to say that we can write off Clydebank. We cannot. We cannot write off John Brown without writing off Clydebank, and nobody in their senses in such a situation would write off Clydebank. I hope that the hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office will appreciate that.

I do not know of any town that suffered more during the war or whose people did more to build that town up again, and for a Government to devastate it again in a way more damaging than anything done during the war would be an absolute and utter disgrace.

It is time some of the Scottish Ministers realised one power they have, and that is the power to resign. I know they cannot use it all the time, but I hope that the Secretary of State is using it now. If we get the dissolution of U.C.S., the people who will be blamed in Scotland will not be the little men but those in the Scottish Office, and the Secretary of State for Scotland has special responsibility.

So that is our demand in respect of U.C.S. We want to ensure that the Government will accept their responsibility; that they will publish the report; that they will make their decision soon; that that decision will be to maintain the existing labour force at these Clydeside yards; that there will be no fragmentation; that the solution will not be the kind of solution advised by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) that they should sell off even at a pittance, as he said.

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that unless this is done, that unless hope is brought of a continuation of employment in these yards, with greater assurance of stability of employment, and unless the reconstructed company is given the right to seek orders, or to deal with orders that were pretty well the company's before these events started in train, there will be a very considerable outburst of anger and resentment, not just in Clydeside but throughout Scotland, such as we have not seen for a long time.

The decision is entirely the Government's. It is not that of the four wise men but that of the Government. And it is a Government that are not held in very high regard in Scotland—I think because the people of Scotland did not want them, and are suspicious of everything they do. They had better make a good job of it here, because with 134,000 unemployed now, rising for the month of August to nearly 140,000, and with the effects of the Plessey rundown still to be felt, anything they do that worsens the position in U.C.S.—well, they can have all the S.D.A.s they like, and all the summer fetes they like, but the people of Scotland will not tolerate or look with equanimity on a Government that look at the black reality of the situation and decide to make it worse.

This has been a serious debate. I am glad that my hon. Friends from Scottish constituencies have emphasised that what we are concerned about is unemployment, and whether the decision the Government will make within the next 48 hours will make it better or worse. The quality of the people on Clydeside demands that they make the right decision. The quality of the workmanship of which they are capable, given the right leadership and management, is an asset to the nation, which should be built up and not destroyed.

12.40 a.m.

We have had a serious, interesting and wide-ranging debate. I shall answer as many points as possible, though I hope that the House will accept that some of them are beyond the immediate responsibilities of my Department. I am sure that they will be picked up by other Ministers where they are concerned. I shall draw their attention to them where necessary.

I have the deepest sympathy for all those affected by the alarmingly high level of unemployment in Scotland. Like the whole Government and, I am sure, all hon. Members, I understand what it means in human terms for the people affected, their families and all concerned. I hope that no hon. Member will accuse me of not having those feelings in any aspect of what I say.

The right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) said that his first question was about what would happen in the future. I cannot answer him, and I do not think that anyone would expect me to speculate on the number of jobs and the number of unemployed in the up-turn or down-turn of economic forces in the period ahead, either short-term or long-term. Economic forecasting is one of the most dangerous sciences in which we can indulge.

I can give the right hon. Gentleman a few figures, however. The number of unemployed in Scotland has risen from 93,000 at the last General Election to 134,500. This follows a steady loss of jobs during the years 1966–70, when over 80,000 jobs were lost to Scotland.

That is not true.

In the period immediately before that, from 1960 to 1964, there was a gain of over 30,000 jobs, so it ill behoves the right hon. Gentleman to wag his finger at me across the Box. His record was not one to be all that proud of. Although I have stated that I am worried about the present position and sympathise with those affected, the right hon. Gentleman is in no position to talk as he did.

It is a little too simple just to lay the blame for the present admittedly worrying situation on this Government alone. There have been extraneous factors operating for the worse, such as the microelectronics problem, which is in no sense anything to do with the Government, the problem of the replacement of jute by man-made fibres, and the troubles in Pakistan, which have held up supplies.

Much more important, there have been major economic factors at work not only in this country but in the world. The origins of our trouble go back to 1969, the American recession and the recession which followed in this country, largely induced by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) in his 1969 Budget, which caused the drastic contraction of the money supply and of demand and economic activity, the effects of which are still working through the economy. I can give instances. Some American firms which have set up in Scotland have found that when ill winds blew they had to close their Scottish subsidiaries and that the market for the products which they were making in America was contracting due to the American recession and therefore they could not produce so much or employ so many. In which respect was this due to the activities of the British Government?

When were these deep-seated factors known to the Government? On 16th June, 1970, two days before the General Election, we were promised that unemployment would come down at a stroke. Has it?

I do not remember any such promise as that. I remember words relating to other matters. But unemployment was rising in the period before the Labour Party left office. To believe that the existence of a different Government since June has in some curious way created the increase in unemployment is begging the question.

There have been three Budgets since the last election—one in October last, one in April this year and the mini-Budget last week—all of them increasing the resources in the community's hands, all of them increasing demand and all of them working to cure recessions and not to create them. All the Government's economic activities have been designed to improve the situation left by the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and his guilty colleagues.

Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that the change from investment grants to investment allowances, which has been deplored in the shipbuilding industry and by more and more people in industry generally, has been of advantage, and what effect has it had upon development? The hon. Gentleman has referred to the three Budgets we have had since the General Election. The first one did not work, and the second one has not worked. Heaven help us if the third one does not work.

I am coming to the question of investment grants. It is obvious—and I am sure that the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock will agree——

Do not be too sure.

—that the change from investment grants to investment allowances would have the effect of reducing or increasing the amount of investment starting or being planned in Scotland. That would be how one would measure it. One would not measure it by the increase in unemployment. One would measure it by the increase in projects or in new investment. I have the figures. From January to June, 1970, there were 117 industrial development certificates, expected to produce 4,800 jobs. From July to December, 1970, there were 124 certificates, expected to produce 7,100 jobs. From January to June, 1971, there were 89 certificates, expected to produce 7,200 jobs. Therefore, the rate for the first half of this year has shown an improvement of nearly 50 per cent.

What is the figure for private investment?

The hon. Gentleman must take his medicine. He and his hon. Friends have had their say. When the Government tell them the truth about what has happened, they must listen and not interrupt.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the I.D.C.s which had been granted and the number of jobs which they will bring. Will he concede that many of these certificates have been granted and not used? I can prove this in my own constituency.

I cannot at present give the details behind these global figures. It is the figures themselves which the hon. Gentleman should bear in mind in considering this question in the future.

I also have the figures for West Central Scotland—the Glasgow area. From January to June 1970, I.D.C.s led, it is estimated, to the creation of 1,990 jobs; July to December 1970, 2,830 jobs; January to June 1971, 3,730 jobs. There is no evidence there to support what right hon. and hon. Gentlemen are saying.

The hon. Gentleman for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) asked about Rolls-Royce. Of the 4,400 made redundant in this respect, some 1,405 are still unemployed. This shows a considerable absorption of those unfortunate people.

There is no news I can give the hon. Gentleman about the RB 211. He must await a statement in due course, which in its turn depends on the Americans.

He also asked about a statement on shipbuilding credit. I confirm that a statement will be made before the Recess. It was never suggested or intended it should go wider than to deal with the future of the credit scheme. We have never suggested this would deal with the whole policy, but only with the future of the credit scheme.

The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) drew attention to the serious situation in Dundee where unemployment has risen from 4·9 per cent. a year ago to its present level of 7·8 per cent. He asked whether the Government would consider giving special development area status to Tayside. My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) put forward contrary views to those of the hon. Member for Dundee, West, but I thought they carried some cogency.

The point is that there is only a limited amount of mobile industry which can be expected to settle in new areas, and the more widely one spreads the incentives the less there will be for any particular region.

I am sure Opposition Members will agree that the gravity, scale and size of the problem is far worse in West Central Scotland than it is on the east coast. Therefore, although I shall convey to my right hon. Friend what has been said tonight, in view of the scale of the problem about which the hon. Gentleman spoke with emotion and real feeling, it is right that the benefits should be concentrated where they are needed rather than that they should be spread thinly over the whole country.

The hon. Gentleman suggested that Dundee was totally failing to attract industries. But he might like to know that again the figures of estimated new employment created by I.D.C.'s show a fairly steady improvement in Dundee from some 140 to 1,590. Therefore, we are not as depressed as the hon. Gentleman about the prospects. I agree that it is not easy for Dundee so long as it has to compete with the incentives available in special development areas.

I want at this point to say a word about the jute industry, where there has been a considerable run-down. This has been due to the substitution of polypropylene for jute. There have also been serious difficulties in Pakistan following the troubles in that unfortunate country. We are very conscious of the difficulties which the jute industry has been facing, and the decision not to increase jute import quotas during the year beginning May, 1971, was a clear recognition of the difficulties.

Concern has been expressed about supplies following the recent disturbances in East Pakistan. Latest reports suggest that there is sufficient raw jute in stock in the Dundee district, in transit, or stacked at ports in Pakistan to keep the Scottish industry going at its present level for the present. The longer-term availability of raw material depends on the possibility of getting to ports in Pakistan the new crop now ready for harvesting. We are well aware of the need to maintain supplies in Dundee, and we have been in touch with the Pakistan authorities, who have assured us that they are giving the matter close and urgent attention. We shall continue to do all that we can to help.

Have the Government received any specific assurances about transporting the jute crop to ports in Pakistan?

The authorities in Pakistan have undertaken to do their utmost to achieve it. It is impossible at present to say how that will work out.

The hon. Member for Bothwell asked about Government training centres. There are now 10 centres in Scotland, and there is no proposal either to run one down or to close any of them. We have some space capacity in most of the training centres, and we shall do all that we can to encourage as many people as possible to take advantage of the vacancies.

The hon. Members for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. McCartney) and Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Ian Campbell) both made important contributions to the debate. They were concerned about the Plessey factory. I should tell the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East that work on two advance factories has started at Dalmuir and that a third one is to start building in August. We know of no interruption to their progress, and it is hoped that they will be available and let very soon.

The whole House regrets the announcement by Plessey that it has had to cease both the machine shop activities at Alexandria and the numerical-control work (here which only a short time ago seemed to offer the prospect of a substantial growth in new employment. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office, were especially disappointed, since my hon. Friend attended the hand-over ceremony when the ex-torpedo factory passed officially to the company. I cannot comment on the future of the torpedo, but I shall draw the remarks of the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West to the attention of the Ministry of Defence. I hope that that Department will be able to let the hon. Gentleman know what the future is to be.

It is a blow that the Plessey factory has been closed. Numerical control for machine tools would be a very important growth industry. However, the difficulty is world-wide. It is not confined to Scotland. It is not in any sense due to local conditions. I have recently visited two major machine tool exhibitions at which I heard machine tool builders of all countries and of all types complaining about the extreme difficulties through which the industry is going at present.

I should like to mention microcircuits, a matter raised by the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton). I will not say very much about this matter, because I do not want to take up too much of the time of the House and my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Brian Harrison) will be specifically raising the matter with my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mr. David Price) later today. It would be wrong for me to cover the ground when there is to be a debate solely upon this matter. I am sure that the hon. Member for Fife, West will want to listen to that debate, because my hon. Friend will go into the matter in great depth.

The factory at Glenrothes is not the only factory which G.E.C. has closed. It has also closed one at Witham in Essex. Therefore, Scotland has not been discriminated against in this matter. The balance has been equal between the two countries. We must leave it to the company to decide at which place it must make economies. Otherwise, we shall laden our companies with extra costs which will make it harder still for them to compete.

The problem here is competition. It is simply that the cheap producers in the Far East, and some in Europe, are exporting to world markets at prices far below what used to rule a short time ago. I have heard about prices as low as one-tenth of prices a year or two back for certain components. The average is probably not more than a fifth. It is probably most beneficial work to under-developed countries, which the Opposition are always keen we should help. Whatever the reason may be——

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Europe.

Portugal is one of the countries, but the bulk is coming from the Far East where the standard of living is very low indeed.

Competition here is through E.F.T.A. and the Commonwealth. I do not think that any hon. Gentleman opposite, let alone the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock, was proposing that we should erect tariffs or other bars to trade either in E.F.T.A. or in the Commonwealth merely for the purpose of protecting the microcircuit industry against perfectly normal exports from these countries.

The hon. Member for Fife, West and, I think, the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock seemed to be alleging that there was dumping. I was asked what legal as opposed to illegal dumping meant. The answer, on which my hon. Friend will enlarge later in the day, is that legal dumping is dumping which is proved to be dumping under the terms of the Customs Duties (Dumping and Subsidies) Acts. It must be proved that the prices at which goods are being sold or exported are lower than the domestic prices ruling in the country where the goods are manufactured. If that is not the case, then it is not dumping. It is up to the competitors who are complaining to prove their case on a matter of that kind.

The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) raised the matter of Rolls-Royce and why the Government did not give evidence to the Congressional Committee in America. The answer is that it is not the function of the Government to become involved in another Government's affairs. We provided written evidence to put before the Committee, so that there were no misconceptions about the exact position of the British Government in the matter. We thought that it was likely to be counter-productive, because it would arouse adverse response, if the Government were to give oral evidence as well. There is no evidence that our position has been weakened by what we did. There is no danger to the project arising from this incident

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the future of H.M.S. "Caledonia" at Rosyth. In the Statement on the Defence Estimates 1970, the hon. Gentleman's own Government said this:

"H.M.S. 'Caledonia' will cease to be a training school for engineering purposes in 1977–78, and its task will be centralised in H.M.S. 'Sultan'. A number of possibilities for the continued use of the establishment after the present task moves are being considered …"

I will ask my hon. Friends at the Department of Defence to supplement that for the hon. Gentleman if they can.

It is the rundown of the civilian instructors engaged primarily in training for civilian purposes about which we are concerned.

I take the point, but we cannot say anything about the future until we know about the future of the station itself.

I was asked by the hon. Members for Glasgow, Craigton and for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) to go over again some of the points in the history of the Department's relationships with U.C.S. I believe that it will be helpful if I do so, so that I can clear the record and so that there will be no misapprehensions about what happened. There are extraordinary suggestions by hon. Members that there should be some inquiry into this matter. I think that I can clear the matter without much difficulty.

I slightly resent the suggestions that the things that have been said by Ministers in the House in debate and in answer to Questions are not true. In matters of fact of this sort it behoves hon. Gentlemen to accept what they are told as being true.

The Government has been telling us lies all along about everything.

After the way that the hon. Gentleman has been saying things like that, I must seek your protection, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

The House would do best to hear the Minister. If hon. Gentlemen wish to intervene, I am sure that the Minister will be ready to give way.

In October of last year the Shipbuilding Industry Board director warned the Government that in his opinion as a director of the company and with the information which he had available to him the company was in serious danger of trading illegally and that it would be wrong for the Government to guarantee credits to the company. When I asked the company to give us a complete balance sheet and profit and loss account, in the hopes that it would enable us to continue granting guarantees, the company undertook to do this and to come back as soon as it had its balance sheet properly organised.

It was not a question of cash flow. The problem was one of asset deficiency, in that the suspicion of the S.I.B. director was that the company was trading illegally because the value of its assets was less than the value it owed on the balance sheet.

When the balance sheet was produced in November it proved that the S.I.B. director was right and that the company was not in a position to trade legally. From that point the Government suspended guarantees and did all they could to facilitate the company to get itself into a position where it ceased to have an asset deficiency.

The results of three months of negotiations, mainly over the Yarrow problem, were that an extra £10 million of Government loans was agreed to be written off or written down which relieved the balance sheet of that amount of debit. There was also £2·8 million or thereabouts received or promised from shipowners which was allowed to be shown in the accounts as credit. The result of the separation of Yarrows plus these two things was to turn the balance sheet out of deficit into credit and it allowed the company to continue trading without any question.

This was announced to the House on 11th February. The company's accounts were inspected by the accountants in the Department and in the Treasury. All concerned, including the company's accountants, believed that the company was perfectly viable and in a condition to continue trading. I am not in any way traducing that when I say that the company itself felt it could now continue and would soon enter another profitable phase.

It was not because of Rolls-Royce. What the hon. Gentleman said is untrue. We did not suspect that anything was wrong on 4th February and everybody concerned——

rose——

Let me finish my point. Everyone concerned believed the company was in a position to prosper. The suggestions that there was knowledge that trouble was imminent or that it was something to do with Rolls-Royce or the political situation or anything of that sort are entirely untrue.

The announcement about Rolls-Royce was made by the Minister in the House on 4th February and the information about it was certainly available on 3rd February. Is it not an extraordinary coincidence that the day on which the U.C.S. situation should miraculously appear to be all right again should be the day on which Rolls-Royce was collapsing? This is far more than coincidence and the hon. Gentleman knows it.

There may be a slight element of coincidence, as the dates were so close together. But for the hon. Gentleman to engage in tittle-tattle and smear without the slightest ability to produce evidence—these are the words he used about my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus—is something he should personally withdraw when I have given him my word that what he is saying is untrue.

rose——

Order.

When he challenges my hon. Friend, the Minister should give way.

rose——

Does the hon. Gentleman want to withdraw what he was saying?

Certainly not.

I would make one point in answer to the reasonable point by the hon. Member for West Lothian, that we certainly did not know in February that the company was in any sort of difficulty.

That is not true.

In June we had three days' notice that the company had an assets deficiency, which was later assessed by the liquidator at many millions of pounds. What went wrong is a good question, one which we are still inquiring into and which we hope to settle in due course.

Would the Minister give way on his previous remarks?

Order.

No, I will not give way——

Will the Minister give way to me on this?

I have refused to give way to his hon. Friend.

But this is a serious point. We remember that evening very well because we had a debate on Scottish employment. At midnight I went to see the Secretary of State for Scotland. I never publicised it, because it concerned U.C.S. and because of the messages we had received directly from the company. The Minister will equally know, or he ought to, that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) was on the telephone to the Secretary of State. There was no doubt about the position and the troubles of U.C.S. that night—2nd February.

The Secretary of State told us.

And a few days later than that my right hon. Friend made his statement in the House—I do not remember the exact date—in which he announced the reconstruction of U.C.S., the separation of Yarrow and the grants from the shipowners which together were putting the company in a position in which it claimed and appeared to be totally able to continue trading. So I think that that disposes of that problem——

No, it does not.

——and I hope that, in future, hon. Gentlemen will accept what they have been told and not go around trying to create mischief without a shred of evidence.

This is shocking.

My right hon. Friend has referred to two conversations that he had with the Secretary of State for Scotland and that I had with his right hon. Friend. It would not be right for me to reveal in the House what was exchanged between the Minister and myself, but I can only tell the hon. Gentlemen and the House that the account which he gave of the Government's attitude to U.C.S. and to the viability of that company at that time runs absolutely counter to what the hon. Gentleman has just told the House.

I am not aware of the contents of either of the two meetings because I was not present at them. Nor would it be my intention to reveal the contents of private meetings in the way that the right hon. Gentleman came dangerously near doing——

Tell us what U.C.S. told you.

One hon. Member asked how much would be spent on paying wages in the period up to 6th August. The total is about £3 million, of which probably half, or slightly more, will be regained from the shipowners who have had their ships completed through the work being done on them. So that is in the nature of a loan and the net cost will not be so great.

The report of the advisers has been received by my right hon. Friend, although there may be a revised copy still to come before it is finalised. We have been in touch with them from time to time and we know roughly the ideas they have in mind, but now the Government have to make up their mind on what to do about the report. I would say categorically that their minds have not been made up, that the report in the Scottish Daily Express is not true, and that what has been said in this debate will be carefully conveyed to my right hon. Friends, who will certainly not make up their minds without knowledge of these views.

There is a question on the review which is taking place, which the Minister half answered, although I think he had more to say. What improvements will be made in the Government machine to ensure that this does not happen again?

We are studying this problem, to some extent as a result of this. The information available to the board of directors of U.C.S., which was available also to us, did not convey a full picture of what was happening. I do not know how it is possible to get around that.

My right hon. Friend will be making a statement very soon. I cannot say anything now about what the statement will contain or what the Government's conclusions will be, partly because the Government have not made up their mind and partly because they will wish to announce this in a statement at a later date.

In the House?

Yes.

Before he jumps on the band wagon and suggests nationalisation and all that he has been putting forward, and cries shame on us for what has happened to U.C.S., the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East, should remember his evidence to the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs on 24th June, 1969. Like the hon. Member for Fife, West, I will end my speech with a quotation. It is not very long, but if the House will bear with me I am sure 'that hon. Members will find it interesting:

"First of all, we have never taken the view—it would be quite wrong to take the view—that at whatever price U.C.S. or any other company in the shipbuilding industry would be kept alive. That would be accepting an open-ended commitment and would undermine entirely the shipbuilding policy generally. Because were we to take such a view that U.C.S. could under no circumstances go into liquidation, we would be creating a situation in which they would be free to undercut other shipbuilders on the lower Clyde, in the northeast, in Belfast, and know that their losses would be carried by a Government that was prepared under no circumstances to contemplate withdrawing support."

Local Government And Development

1.21 a.m.

The gravity of the situation in Scotland, which the Government have created by their economic policies and their failure to act to deal with the consequences of them, may appear somewhat to dampen interest in the debate upon which we are now entering, under Class VI, Vole 16, but, although the matters which I wish to raise are of small significance compared with the serious situation in Scotland, they are of considerable importance to my constituents and to many council and private tenants throughout the country.

There is serious need for investigation and research into the problem of under-occupation of both council houses and private property, whether rented or owner-occupied. A great contribution could be made towards solving our housing problem if we could encourage the full use of existing property. This could be done if the facts were ascertained. To this end, I suggest, the Government should consider making available to local authorities grants of funds so that they could conduct research in their local areas. When the size of the problem was ascertained, finance should then be forthcoming from the Government to enable the local authorities to deal with the problem.

There are many council properties under-occupied because of changes in family size. Children have moved on, have married perhaps and bought their own houses, and the fathers and mothers remain in three-bedroom or sometimes four-bedroom houses. The same state of affairs prevails in private property, both rented and owner-occupied.

I should be the last to suggest that anything should be done other than to try to encourage, with proper financial assistance, a voluntary transfer to more suitable accommodation by those who wish to avail themselves of smaller and more easily managed homes. But I urge the Minister to consider instituting some research into the problem, for out of it could come a considerable easing of the housing shortage.

The other matter which needs investigating relates to the White Paper "Fair Deal for Housing.". On page 5, in paragraph 18, the Government state that selective employment tax added £120 or more to the cost of building an ordinary family house. Now that S.E.T. has been halved there should be a reduction in the cost of construction. The Under-Secretary ought to do some detailed research by the end of the year and find out what has been the result of the halving of the tax. This is £80 or more which ought to have been taken off the cost of the average three-bedroom house. The Government should be able to tell us whether the industry has used this reduction to bring down prices or whether it has used it to increase its profits. This can only be done on the basis of properly evaluated research into the industry. The Minister has a duty to find out the facts rather than stamp round the country making political speeches about the benefits springing from the reduction in S.E.T. Many of us suspect that the reduction will lead to an increase in profitability for the speculative builders.

Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that when the Government were in opposition it was a favourite cry of theirs that because of S.E.T. the price of housing had rocketed? He is quite right to put this argument and ask for a categoric assurance that prices will fall.

I am sure the Minister will be prepared to give that categoric assurance. We would not be prepared to accept it unless it was backed by proper research. We have long since learned that we can put whatever weight we wish upon statements made by this Government.

One of the charges falling upon local authorities is the cost of advertising for staff. It has been estimated that this costs local authorities in England and Wales over £5 million a year. This is an unnecessary burden on the ratepayer. There should be a study to determine whether the Department of the Environment could set up a computer to deal with this so that names of those wishing to change their jobs in local government could be fed into the computer and matched with vacancies. This would save a considerable part of the £5 million. In local government papers week after week I see bigger and better advertisements, paid for out of the rates, for staff poaching from one authority to another. We may not be able to stop staff poaching but we should study whether we could find a more economic way of dealing with local government recruitment and advertising. I hope the hon. Gentleman will consider that proposal.

The House will not be surprised that I speak now of the urgent and vital need for an inquiry into the Thamesmead development in my constituency. This development is to provide homes for 60,000 Londoners. A large number of homes have already been built and are occupied. When the scheme was conceived in 1966, the total cost was estimated to be about £30 million. It has been revised upwards and is now more than £43 million, a dramatic increase. The difficulty in dealing with this serious situation is that one is unable to obtain reliable information. One cannot get it from the G.L.C. and the Department is reluctant to give information in reply to questions in this House. My questions to the hon. Gentleman have been of no avail in getting the essential information that the public are entitled to have in respect of what many fear is a growing financial scandal at Thamesmead.

In the inner London boroughs, many of us—I am particularly concerned with my constituency in this respect—have been trying to get people transferred to Thamesmead from bad housing conditions but now our councils are not allowed to nominate people to Thamesmead unless they are in receipt of gross earnings of more than £40 a week and are, therefore, prepared to pay economic rents.

I am aware of the difficulty that the G.L.C. is experiencing in finding tenants able to afford the excessive rents at Thamesmead. These high rents are based upon the scandalously high cost of the development. Stage one of the development was constructed outside the requirements of the Government's cost yardsticks; stage two, as far as I can ascertain, was not entirely outside them but there was some arrangement between the G.L.C. and the Government; now I am informed that stage three will be within the cost yardsticks but will have tacked on certain extras in respect of difficulties in construction on the site which have been experienced.

The most reliable estimate of costs for stages one and two, expressed as an average cost per unit of accommodation, is in excess of £12,000. This is why my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown) has found that his constituents are unable to be allocated such properties unless they have an income of more than £40 a week, because with a lower income they are not able to afford rents which are based on such high costs of construction.

If that figure of £12,000 is not correct, the G.L.C. or the Government must state the true financial position in documented form so that people may study it and make their own estimate, for no one will rely on a figure just given by the authorities and not substantiated by documents, because for stage three, after all the teething troubles of the site have been overcome, the cost will still be in excess of £9,000 per unit of accommodation and garage. These are very high costs for this type of accommodation, and they are resulting in very high rents, which in turn are creating social problems among the people sent to live at Thamesmead.

I am given to understand that the Government subsidy per unit of accommodation averages in excess of £300. These are extraordinarily high figures, and on this sort of evidence it is clear that there should be a full inquiry into the costs and financing of Thamesmead. Most of the land on which the development has taken place has been acquired from the Ministry of Defence by the G.L.C. for less than £7,000 per acre. While substantial sums have had to be spent, because of the nature of the site, to bring it up to a standard suitable for construction, even in the earlier stages the total figure was only about £21,000 per acre. Even with that figure, even if it has increased by 100 per cent., the total cost, including bringing the site to a suitable standard, would still be only £42,000 per acre—and I doubt whether costs have increased so much—and that would still be cheap land compared with many other sites in the G.L.C. area.

Another problem concerns the industrialised building factory which has been constructed on the site and which is producing slabs for the high rise buildings. I frequently get reports from people who have worked in the factory about some of the things going on there. Some of the slabs found during construction to be faulty are broken up at the weekend when there are not many people about to see what is going on. The industialised building factory itself could do with a little research into and study of its activities.

Rain penetration of brand new buildings in Thamesmead is another matter crying out for an urgent inquiry. Even with this extremely expensive construction and these almost impossibly high rents, tenants are finding within a few weeks of moving into brand new properties that they have the problem of rain penetration. This is a scandalous situation, and the Minister should be prepared to spend some of the money allocated in the Vote for research and inquiry on conducting an urgent inquiry into the construction and any design faults which may be responsible for this rain penetration.

Before my hon. Friend concludes his remarks on that aspect, will be indicate what success the tenants have in communicating to the authority concerned their complaints concerning that and other deficiencies in these properties? There is a widespread belief, which I am sure is well founded in London, that the way in which that communication can be made is riddled with defects.

That is so. The Greater London Council suffers, of course, from the disability of being very remote. This, again, is a matter on which the Under-Secretary might consider it worth spending money to undertake a study in depth.

I can tell my hon. Friend that for the residents of Thamesmead the only effective method of communication with the local authority concerning rain penetration was to display in their windows notices calling attention to it. As this is a scheme which many people from all over the world are invited to view, the G.L.C. has rightly had to start paying attention, at long last, to a study of the matter.

I have indicated a number of matters on which research and inquiry would be worth while. I hope that the Under-Secretary will consider them. He may not be able to answer all the points tonight, but I hope that he will be able to tell the House a great deal about the Thamesmead development, its financing and its cost and what he intends to do about this scandalous situation. I hope he will announce that he will hold an inquiry into the scheme.

1.42 a.m.

I, too, wish to speak to Class VI, Vote 16, Subhead J, with its expenditure of £1,415,000 for 1971–72. I want to look at the need for surveys, research, studies and inquiries on the basis of office building in particular. I do this because we have tried hard for some time to elicit from the Government answers to questions.

I can understand my right hon. and hon. Friends from Scotland, with their petulance, feeling gravely upset at the rather unseemly exchanges which occurred in the preceding debate when they argued that they were not getting truthful answers from the Government. When one puts down Questions on office building to the Government, one gets similar short shrift from them.

One of our biggest problems in London is the difficulty of siting office buildings, primarily because so many empty office buildings are already available. It does not matter how one puts down Questions to Ministers. I put down a Question on 31st March to ascertain the superficial area of office building remaining empty up to and including 31st December, 1970. I illustrated the Inner London area so that the Minister would be in a position to discuss in detail with me the reasons why such a vast amount of empty office space was available.

One can go through my constituency any day of the week and hire 20,000 ft. super office space without even dropping a hat. At the same time, a vast amount of new building is going up on the Barbican site. Hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space are being made available in an area which already has a surfeit of that type of accommodation. An intelligent Government would want to know the present availability of empty office space so as to be able to programme what additional space was needed.

In a debate on homeless families on 15th July, the Minister said that he would seek from the boroughs information about land not zoned for housing purposes but able to be adequately used for that purpose. It all sounded very good; but I had received a reply on 31st March that the Minister just did not have a clue about office space, it suggested that the Department did not have the information, but that if I searched around on my own I might get it from the local authorities. Such a silly answer does not bring the best out of hon. Members who are trying to get information on behalf of their constituents. Two months later he said that he had asked local authorities if they had land which, though not zoned for housing could be used for housing. I took him to mean land zoned for office and commercial development. My hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Lena Jeger) got a similar reply to a similar question—"We in the Department do not know, but you can get it for yourself if you look for it."

I therefore hope that some of this £1,400,000 will be spent by the Department on finding out something about office building in London. The Greater London Council is now being recommended to scrap any control on office building, and to encourage even more building of that type. I cannot believe that the Department is so insensitive to our problems in inner London that it will not act to get information about present availability of office space.

There has been a deplorable failure on the part of the Department, first, in not having the information; secondly, in not desiring to know; and, third, in being discourteous in its answers to hon. Members seeking to know about how areas in their constituencies can be improved.

The Department could also use some of that £1,400,000 on finding out something about housing starts. Housing starts make an interesting story. One has a lot of trouble getting information, because the Department acts on the basis that the Minister has already told my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) that he will not give that information.

I tried very hard to put down a Question, but the Minister's reply was that he did not keep such figures; if I wanted them I must find out for myself. On 31st March I asked for the total number of housing schemes for which he had given loan sanction, the number of dwellings involved in each, and the dates on which building was to begin. Under the Table Office rules I was not permitted to ask for starts. I had to phrase my Question in such a way as to encourage the Minister to be a little more helpful to me, so that I could tell my constituents a bit more about the Government's ideas. All that he said was that the figures were not available. I was very angry. I do not have to be told by the Minister that I can look at housing statistics. As one of those who gave information at one time for such statistics, I know how fraudulent they are in the sense that they can never be up to date or give the information that is really wanted. They are out of date by the time they are published. They are an assessment of what the local authority thinks it will be able to do at some time in the future. My Questions were questions of fact as to how many starts the hon. Gentleman had authorised and how many had been made.

We could have accepted the hon. Gentleman's answer to some extent if he had not been willing and able to give figures of starts in the debate on 15th July, when he said:

"Housing starts in London for the first five months of this year rose from under 12,000 to nearly 16,000."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th July, 1971; Vol. 821, c. 799.]

The figures do not concern me particularly at present. What concerns me is the wilful refusal to give answers and the imputation that the Department does not have statistics, and then the discovery on 15th July that it not only had them but was prepared to publish them when it suited it just three months later. That is a deplorable way of running a country. When the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said just now that when Ministers give us an answer we should accept it, I thought of this debate. In view of what has happened, I feel that the doubts of my hon. Friends about the wisdom and veracity of the information given by the Government were only too well founded. Unless the Department changes its ways I shall have to joint the growing army of doubters. I hope that some of the money under consideration will be spent on ensuring that the Department can find out the number of starts.

On the question of research and statistics, is my hon. Friend aware that I and other hon. Members recently asked questions about the estimate the Department could make of the number and proportion of tenants in Outer London, Inner London and the London Borough of Hackney who were not paying controlled rents and who would have to pay fair rents pursuant to the White Paper? Is my hon. Friend aware that the Minister indicated in his reply that there were about 300,000 uncontrolled tenancies in the Greater London Council area but that it was not possible to provide separate estimates for Inner and Outer London or for individual London boroughs? Is not this a travesty when one has regard to the effect that the proposed legislation will have on constituencies such as mine and my hon. Friend's?

That is absolutely true. I can only hope that we can persuade the Minister to look seriously at this matter.

I have spoken about starts about which, it is said, there is no information in the Department or information which it will give only when it suits the Department to give it. I tried to get some information about housing waiting lists. As chairman of a very large housing authority for many years, I had to struggle at a time when the Conservative Government reduced subsidies to zero. I met every possible obstacle from the Conservative Government of that time. One of the basic elements which I had to know about was the housing waiting lists. I recall the discussions and arguments about its realism. Members of the Conservative opposition on my local authority asked me month after month whether I was satisfied that I knew enough about the waiting list and whether I was aware that they knew that Mrs. Jones was on the Greater London Council's waiting list and our waiting list and was probably on some other authority's list and therefore the number on the list could be divided by three because every applicant on our list was probably on two other lists? I always tried to be courteous to the Conservative Party members and so I searched in order to satisfy myself that I understood the position concerning the housing waiting list.

I put a Question to the Minister asking him whether he would tabulate the waiting lists of families registered in the inner London area, but again the Table Office refused me the right to table my Question on the basis that on 25th November the Minister had answered my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East to the effect that the information was not available. Now we are blocked from putting down Questions about the waiting list because the Minister chose to say in an answer that he had no figures and, apparently, was not interested in them.

The point about "Fair Deal for Housing" was that those in most need would get all that was going. But the Department apparently is not interested in knowing anything about the waiting list. It does not know the size of the problem or where it is. It does not know the migration of families seeking an authority which was building its property so that they would have a much better chance of being rehoused, which might indicate the drifting of families from one area to another; of people being pushed out of furnished accommodation in one London borough and arriving in another to go on the waiting list but having to wait during the two-year moratorium placed on them whereby if they move from the Finsbury part of my constituency, having been on the waiting list of Islington borough council for six years, into the Shoreditch part, a couple of yards across the road, they have to wait two years because in Shoreditch they come under the London Borough of Hackney. They have already come off the Borough of Islington's housing list because technically they have moved out of Islington.

This absurdity goes on, yet the Minister says "I do not want to know of the problem and I have no intention of finding out." It is extraordinary that in endeavouring to play his part in solving the problem, he wilfully refuses, as part of his departmental work, to understand the total housing needs in regard to the waiting list in the London boroughs.

I suggest that the Minister uses some of the £1,400,000 earmarked under this heading to commission a study to find out how many families are on the London waiting lists. This will show him the size of the problem; it will bring home to him the misery and hopelessness of many families in this situation. If he would like to know the figure in Islington, I can tell him that there are 9,000 to 10,000 such families; there is a similar figure for Hackney. I suggest he finds out more accurately than that the situation in all the inner London boroughs which are desperately trying to find a solution to their problems.

I also offer the Minister the figures in respect of homeless families. I have done my best to elicit this information, but I have not, of course, the information of the hon. Gentleman's Department, which I understand is the largest Department in the whole governmental structure. However, that Department does not know the number of homeless families in London. I can tell the Government that in Lambeth some 1,159 people are homeless, in Islington there are 1,135 homeless families, and in Hackney 920.

I have many other such figures I could give the Minister. But this sort of job should not be the responsibility of a Member of Parliament. It should be the job of the Department. The hon. Gentleman should use some of the £1,400,000 in this Vote to inform himself on these vast problems facing the inner London areas so that he may take remedial action.

I should like to deal with the rent rebate scheme which was set out in the recent White Paper. This envisages a mandatory rent rebate scheme for all authorities in England and Wales. During the debate on the fair rent principle one hon. Gentleman opposite let the cat out of the bag by suggesting that the period in which rent rebate is paid in arrear should be similar to the period in respect of rate rebate. It was suggested that it would be unreasonable for employers to be asked to provide information on rent rebate on a five-weekly basis as against a six-monthly basis for rate rebate. Nowhere in the White Paper is it envisaged that the local authority would have to obtain from employers verification of a tenant's gross earnings. I have run a rebate scheme over many years, and I am proud of the fact we have never had recourse to employers. It is offensive. I cannot see any reason for it.

Let us consider the case of a young man, possibly a junior executive, who is not earning sufficient at the moment for a building society to give him a loan. As a result, for a short period he is obliged to live in a council house until he establishes himself or can find premises more to his taste. It may be that he cannot even afford the economic rent which the council will be forced by the Government to charge him. If he applies for a rebate, he will have to ask his employer to fill in a form on his behalf. That is quite outrageous. There is no mention of this in the White Paper, but, as I say, an hon. Gentleman opposite let the cat out of the bag.

I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us whether it is the intention under the Government's mandatory scheme that local authorities will have to go to employers of council tenants in order to get verification every five weeks. If that is the idea, we should be told, so that we can inform council tenants in our constituencies what to expect when the terms of the White Paper are translated into legislation.

Before the Minister was in a position to introduce this mandatory scheme, I should have expected him to tell us the cost of running such a scheme. Those of us who have run schemes could tell him. But I am getting a little tired of supplying his Department with information that I should be getting from him.

Such a survey would tell the hon. Gentleman that, the greater the number who are entitled to rent rebate, the greater is the number of staff required to keep the necessary records. The bigger the records, the more one changes, the more frequently one ensures that a person receiving rebate is not receiving too much or too little, the more staff one requires to do it and the greater the cost on the scheme and, therefore, the less one saves.

With a modest scheme in the old days, on the basis of a fair rent and not the economic rent which now purports to be a fair rent, roughly one-seventh of an authority's tenants would have received rebate. One knows what the cost of doing that was. The Minister has chosen to argue the contrary case. He says that he will set economic rents. But they cannot be called "fair" rents. That must be nailed once and for all. If it were a fair rent under the 1965 Rent Act, every tenant would have the same rights as a tenant under that Act.

Recently, I tabled five Questions to the Minister asking for an assurance that council tenants will be treated in exactly the same way as any private tenant under the 1965 Act, to ensure that the fair rent is seen to be fair. I raised a series of issues. I argued that a tenant should be consulted about his rent. I argued that he should be entitled to have a friend at court, his surveyor, his lawyer, or his architect, as he is under the 1965 Act. I asked whether there would be an opportunity for a council tenant to have this paid for out of public funds. I went through all these arguments, which are an integral part of the 1965 Rent Act. All that I got was an answer, lumping all those Questions together, saying that it was anticipated that there would be an administrative procedure. I take it from that reply that the answer was "No" to each of those Questions.

The Government are putting forward a fraudulent issue. They do not mean a fair rent as prescribed in the 1965 Act; they are talking about a rent which will be set by the local authority with no reference to the tenant. This will then be audited by some peculiar body, known as the chairman of assessment committees, or some such group, again with no reference to the tenant. Then the figure is fixed for three years, and the only change to be made will be in an upward direction for the following three years. Therefore, the tenant will at no stage be in a position, as he would be under the 1965 Act, of getting a rent which is seen to be fair between himself and his landlord.

I urge the Minister to drop this nonsense. Whenever the Government are pushed into a corner on this kind of issue, they turn round and say that it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) who introduced the fair rent scheme and that if it is good enough for the private sector it should be good enough for the public sector. I remind the Minister that they are not equal issues. Therefore, let us stop trying to equate the new system which he suggests is the same as that which was brought about by the 1965 Rent Act. Clearly they are not the same.

Under the scheme, it is likely, hazarding a guess, that 65 to 75 per cent. of tenants on any council estate will be in receipt of rent rebate. I may be wrong. I ask the Minister to tell me, from the statistics in his Department, how many tenants he anticipates will be in receipt of rent rebate when the rents are up to the economic rent, or the rent which will be assesed by this peculiar committee. I cannot believe that the hon. Gentleman is in a position to say. "We have not done that exercise". Speaking as one with experience of local government and responsibility for introducing a rent rebate scheme, I point out that one of the first things I had to do was to try to discover the financial implications and to know, in equity, what was to happen between one tenant and another. Therefore, I refuse to believe that the Department has not got the information.

Is my hon. Friend aware that, in reply to a number of Questions which I put down for written answer today, the Minister for Housing and Construction said that he was unable to make the kind of estimates for which my hon. Friend is asking "since"—he says this somewhat synthetically, I think—

"they depend on so many variables such as the character of the dwellings for which fair rents are to be determined, the rate of progression of those rents and the incomes and family circumstances of the tenants."

Yet, was he not able to put forward some demonstrably bogus figures in the White Paper suggesting that many people would be better off?

Precisely. My hon. Friend has, as usual, put his finger on the nub of the issue. I hope that the Minister will take this matter seriously. I have said before that I do not think that he is serious about it.

It is impossible to embark upon a mandatory rent rebate scheme without having the information for which I have asked. No local government officer, no treasurer, will believe the hon. Gentleman if he says that he has not got it. Are we to understand that he has undertaken to contribute in the transitional subsidy 90 per cent. of the cost of rent allowances without knowing how much it will cost the Exchequer? Are we to understand that he will deprive local authorities of the freedom to act as they wish and force them to operate a predetermined scheme which he has not tested or the viability of which he has not proved? As the scheme has not ben tested, it is little short of scandalous that if the hon. Gentleman has issued propaganda to the effect that vast numbers of people will be better off and that nobody will be in need.

A computer is able to cope with an enormous amount of variables. Problems created by the varying time taken to go from the present rent levels to the new rent level which cause difficulty for a human brain are easy for a computer. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should ask his hon. Friend who deals with technology to assist him. The local authorities will lend him time on a computer to work out what it will cost. He is burdening the local authorities with the cost of rent rebates. Local authorities are entitled to ask him how much it will cost, because it is the ratepayer who will pay.

The facts should be explained to a council tenant, who is a ratepayer whose rents are deliberately being raised to an economic level, whose rates will be increased to pay for a scheme about which the Minister knows nothing, and who is a taxpayer who will have to pay the 90 per cent. which the Minister says the Government will pay. The council tenant is the only person who will come in for a complete financial hiding. His rents will rise to the maximum. His rates will rise to pay for the rebate scheme. His taxes will rise to pay for transitional subsidies. The Minister's hon. Friend who is buying his £25,000 house will not have his rent increased; he may have his rates and taxes increased like the council house tenant, but not his rent.

It is outrageous that the Minister appears to have no information about what the rent rebate scheme will involve. I hope that I am wrong and that the hon. Gentleman will be able to tell me what studies have been carried out and what assessments have been made of the number of tenants who are likely to be on rebate and of the cost in terms of the rate fund and of the transitional subsidy. Further, if there is too great a time lag between the date of recompense and the initial assessment' the amount of money overpaid will be so great that many tenants will be in debt and the total indebtedness of authorities will be very high. What is this figure likely to be, even working on a five-weekly basis? Perhaps the Minister will tell us how much of the £1,400,000 put down for research and services will be covered by this work on rent rebate schemes in his new deal for council tenants.

I come to the issue of open spaces. I have raised this before and I do not apologise for raising it again because in London it is one of the most disgraceful stories we have ever had. Class VI, 16 A.5. provides £400,000 in grants for public open spaces. I do not know what the Minister has in mind for that £400,000. He will recall my drawing his attention to the only three open spaces planned for my constituency. There is Shepherdess Walk, Shoreditch Park and Haggerston Park. But we have no open spaces at present in my constituency—no trees, no grass, nothing. We have a society of people who are warehoused at a density of 200 persons to the acre, as distinct from the desirable areas outside London where the figure is 50 persons or fewer to the acre, where the streets are all tree-lined and grassed and are very desirable to live in.

That warehousing density was agreed to by the planning authority on the clear understanding that open spaces would be provided. But they have never been provided by the authority responsible for doing so. The authority has made some rather lethargic steps to try to establish them. I have been pressing them hard for seven years but they have been loth to do it for a variety of reasons, and I understand that. The Conservatives on the Greater London Council are not seized of the argument for providing open spaces. They cannot get money out of them, so why should they bother to spend the ratepayers' money, as they delicately put it, on providing open spaces in Shoreditch and Finsbury?

On 1st April, the Minister knew that the scheme proposed was fraudulent. The figures given by the G.L.C. to the London Boroughs Association were, I think, fraudulent. It was not given any figures to begin with. I submitted figures that I knew were not correct, and the G.L.C. was finally persuaded to produce figures.

The figures it produced were the same as the ones I had offered it. The Minister has accepted them as being the sort of financial parameters associated with the transfer of open spaces on 1st April. He knew that he was bound to correct the situation in my constituency over the delay in the provision of these spaces. I have been in constant contact with the Greater London Council and the London Borough of Hackney.

I put down a question to the Department. I received a silly answer which said that the Minister of State was not aware of any delay. When I wrote to the G.L.C. and the London Borough of Hackney they were both aware of the delay and apologised. But he can only have got the information from one or the other. Yet he answers me in the House in a way which can only be called absolutely untrue. It was improper of him to say that he did not know of any delay when any inquiry of the G.L.C. or Hackney would have brought the same answer as I got.

One of the excuses which were given was that responsibility had been transferred from the G.L.C. to Hackney. Hackney did not want it, but the Minister said, "When we give freedom to local authorities, you do as you are told." When Hackney said that the cost would be enormous, the Minister said, "That does not matter: you will have it and we will not even let the House of Commons debate it."

The Shepherdess Walk site for an open space in my constituency has been under a compulsory purchase order since 1965 but it has still not been provided. Now Hackney must find new homes for the people living there, demolish the old homes and then meet the initial cost and the annual maintenance. Perhaps the Minister can say how much that will cost. When I was part of the team negotiating with the G.L.C., I argued that it was a very expensive job. The G.L.C. never told us what it would cost. It would only give an average maintenance cost per acre, and I did not believe the figure anyway.

The cost is so high that Hackney cannot do the work, yet the Minister has deliberately transferred this responsibility, and tells me that he is not aware of any delay. I hope that part of the Vote will be spent on finding out the cost of providing, for example, the Shepherdess Walk open space. I believe that I am entitled to that information from the Minister, since neither the G.L.C. nor Hackney can give me this information.

The stupid result of it all is that my constituents have to live in deplorable housing conditions, in homes which are being designated as unfit by the medical officer of health, yet the Minister sits in placid happiness, thinking that he can forget about it and leave my constituents to sweat it out.

I hope that we shall have some frank answers from the hon. Gentleman tonight. I have a great deal more to say, but I realise that the hour is late and I do not wish to detain the House. I want the Minister to take a little time to answer what I have put to him. We have waited a long time to question him, and we look forward to having an indication of his view on these matters and the setting up of research and survey groups in such areas as the ones to which I have drawn attention.

There is a pressing need for something to be done. My constituents have a right to expect the Government to show some sense of urgency.

2.31 a.m.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Well-beloved) on initiating this debate and showing how essential it is that the Government should re-examine the research services which are available to deal with the matters which he raised—Thames-mead and the rest—and, likewise, the matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown), who put many searching questions to the Minister about problems affecting his constituency and, since we are neighbours, my constituency, too. I hope that his plea for a degree of frankness on the part of the Minister when he replies will be accepted.

The Minister has entirely failed to provide satisfactory answers to questions which we are entitled to put about the implementation of the proposals in the White Paper regarding fair rents and rent rebates. I have already alluded to the unsatisfactory answer which I have received. It is a facile answer, and, if the figures in the White Paper bear any credence at all, it is irreconcilable with the Government's ability to produce those figures. The real reason is that the provision of this information is disagreeable to them, because they want to produce bogus figures in order to hoodwink council tenants into believing that they will be better off, though we know that the vast majority will have swingeing rent increases. So they take refuge in the argument that they cannot make the estimates which my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury has rightly demanded because they depend on so many variables such as the character of the dwellings for which fair rents can be determined, the rate of progression of those rents, and the incomes and family circumstances of the tenants.

That argument has been totally exploded by my hon. Friend's searching analysis of the matter. As he said, the Government should have access to computers to enable them to overcome such problems.

Will my hon. Friend examine a little more closely the answer which he has received? The Minister said that it is impossible for his Department to give the facts because of the variations between individual properties. What does that imply for the Borough of Hackney, with 25,000 properties to examine? Are we to understand that every flat will be separately examined so as to enable the tenant to have his say about its condition?

These are mysteries which I do not have the sagacity to solve. The Under-Secretary ought to be frank and deal positively with this point.

There is a need for much clearer analysis and study to be undertaken by the Department of the Environment into some of the problems in the private rented sector, particularly in London, which give rise to real distress. I am not satisfied that the Francis Committee, which was supposed to have investigated in depth some of the scandals affecting the private rented sector, accomplished very much. Its approach, with respect, was somewhat synthetic over some of the problems I shall raise.

It is not altogether fair to blame the Francis Committee because the job of ferreting out these difficulties and scandals is primarily the responsibility of the Department. Given greater facilities for research and analysis, the Government would be alerted to some of these problems much earlier. They would therefore be in a position to introduce early legislation. They would not have to wait for inquiries such as Milner Holland to highlight matters which every councillor in inner London could have told them about.

And did.

And did. It took a Labour Government, two or three years later, to introduce some legislation which relieved a great deal of distress and anxiety occasioned to many tenants as a result of the operation of the 1957 Rent Act. This facility for research would enable local authorities to take action and alert local people to dubious practices undertaken in the locality. That would avert some of the consequences falling on to the shoulders of the local authorities.

I illustrate this argument by reference to one device employed by certain unscrupulous property owners to avoid the 1968 Rent Act, a device which unhappily started in my borough and which has occurred with great frequency there and apparently elsewhere. I refer to the scandal of deferred purchase. It is remarkable that the productivity of these unscrupulous property owners and dealers in circumventing the Act can only be matched by accountants and financial consultants in mitigating, as they call it, tax burdens. This device was worked out by a gentleman who started his operations in Hackney—at least he claims the authorship of this device. He has moved elsewhere. He may have moved his operations into wider spheres. That gentleman is a Mr. William Bach, whose offices are in Tottenham, although he is primarily concerned with developments in the Hackney area. He has a web of companies and firms: Horace Smith and Co. Ltd., Radcross Investment Co. Ltd., Symod Investment Co. Ltd., and Distinctive Builders Merchants Ltd. It is through these companies that the scandal of deferred purchase has been operated.

Unfortunately, it was not the local authority which highlighted what was happening. I do not think that it could be argued that it was unaware of what was happening, and I think that it was its bounden duty to inform the Department at the time of the practice. I am not sure that it fulfilled that duty adequately. It was the Sunday Times of 26th July, 1970, which drew attention to the practice in an article entitled,

"Exposed: a new Rent Act loophole".

It was one of the "Insight" articles. It referred to the property empire of Mr. William Bach. I want to pay tribute to the Sunday Times for exposing that gentleman, although it is not enough simply to expose him. It is vitally im- portant that the Government take legislative action.

Last July, following that article and the calls which were made at my advice bureau by a number of my constituents, I raised the matter in a letter to the Secretary of State. His reply indicated that the matter was under study by the Francis Committee, which was considering the Sunday Times article. It said:

"There can be no question of amending the Act until the Committee's report has been received and studied."

At that time, the Government took refuge in the Francis Committee by suggesting that anything related to the Rent Act would have to await the outcome of the inquiry. But we have now had the Francis Committee Report and we still have no indication from the Government as to when they propose to introduce legislation to deal with this and other dubious devices. I do not regard the Francis Report as a panacea for all our problems and I am far from satisfied that the Government have any intention of dealing with these devices.

What is deferred purchase as understood and practised by Mr. Bach? It is an ingenious and possible legal circumvention of the Rent Act. Instead of renting flats he—and others like him—purports to sell them on 99-year leases. Then he permits the prospective purchasers to delay completion for anything up to two years. Sometimes, indeed, that period is exceeded. The purchasers are allowed into possession before completion. In the interim, the occupiers—the "purchasers"—pay interest on the purchase price. He uses the National Conditions of Sale, 17th edition, in order to negotiate the deal, but these recommend an interest rate of 5 per cent., and that is one place where he varies the situation, because he charges between 17 and 23 per cent. The interest rates are, generally speaking, approximately double the amount that would be the fair rent in respect of the properties concerned if they came to be dealt with by the rent officer or the rent assessment committee under the Act.

Mr. Bach is on to a very substantial profit at the expense of a number of unwary people who suffer a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety as a result of these activities. From the inquiries I have made, from the calls made at my advice bureau, and from the inquiries which have been made by the Sunday Times, it is clear that Mr. Bach selects his victims very prudently indeed from his own point of view. In the main they are simple, gullible people in desperate need of housing accommodation, and more often than not they are immigrants. He persuades them to enter into a contract, but the purchaser cannot pay. He has no mortgage and, therefore, he occupies as a licensee or tenant at will, and he has no rights whatever under the Rent Act.

Yet the curious thing is that many of the people to whom I have spoken and many of those seen by the Sunday Times reporters were under the belief that they were not purchasers but tenants. They had no understanding of what they had agreed to, according to Mr. Bach's documentation, such as it was. It is my view, on looking at the facts, that he has deliberately nourished and cultivated these mistaken beliefs on the part of the "tenants". There is frequently a reluctance on his part to require completion, even after the two-year delay has expired. Still the occupier goes on paying interest.

The deception was nicely highlighted in the article in the Sunday Times. I propose to read only one paragraph which is very relevant indeed:

"On 5th June this year, a West Indian woman went with a friend to Bach's offices in St. Ann's Road. She wanted to rent a flat. Bach said he had one. When she was presented with papers to sign, however, she protested that there appeared to be an agreement to purchase. Bach reassured her. 'Never mind about that.' he said, 'it is simply for my protection, so you can't take me to the Rent Officer.' It also meant, he said, that he could not evict her."

That, of course, was untrue.

"She signed the agreement; and is now the bewildered 'contractual purchaser' of a 99-year lease."

Some of these people, not many, have gone to court, but because, in a sense, the burden of proof was upon them as plaintiffs, Mr. Bach was able to get away with it.

I am not convinced that the practices in which he has indulged have been free from deception; that is not the evidence as it has been presented to me. The extent of this gentleman's operations is difficult to gauge. He says that he owns 200 houses. If that is right, it would be interesting to know in how many he has developed these operations.

I know that a number of families have been evicted, and I suspect that many more have been caused untold unhappiness. I believe that there are many who find it inordinately difficult to pay these substantial payments by way of interest to Mr. Bach or his companies. How many there are so affected is a matter of some speculation. What I thought very interesting was that when I wrote to Mr. Bach in September, 1970, he replied fairly promptly to say, among other things:

"I must say that the article has had the reverse effect on my business to that intended by the Sunday Times as I have now many old regulated tenants requesting to be allowed to purchase on delayed completions so that they could obtain the benefit of the 1969 Finance Act and get tax relief on their interest payments as against no relief on rent payments, and have also had new applicants seeking the same arrangement."

That indicates his grotesque indifference to fact and reality. To argue that the sort of people he is dealing with are affected by those considerations is making his whole position utterly nonsensical. It is an affront to us that he suggests that he is performing a sort of social service by these activities. The point I am making in this regard is that the extent of these operations is not known, as it should be, and I believe that a great deal more research should be undertaken by the Department of the Environment into this and other matters to which I shall presently refer.

This abuse was dealt with by the Francis Committee at page 113 of its Report. It is interesting that the Francis Committee had to seek information from the Department about the extent of the practice. I do not think that it got the sort of reply upon which a positive report could be based, because I do not think that the Department really knew.

What was the remedy to be employed? The Francis Committee believed that local action might be taken in the sense that the people affected by these arrangements should become involved in litigation if at all possible. It said, secondly, that local authorities might consider bringing prosecutions to test the position on the ground that people of this sort, Mr. Bach and others, were failing to comply with the statutory obligation under the Rent Act of a landlord towards the tenant of providing, for instance, a rent book. Although that might to some extent test the situation, certainly the penalty would not be serious and it would not deter Mr. Bach. The argument here, however, is concerned primarily not with penalties but with testing the situation in law. As far as I am aware, local authorities have refrained from taking action of that kind. Presumably they believe that there would be a great difficulty in establishing to the satisfaction of a criminal court that a criminal offence was involved.

The Francis Committee by and large thought that legislation should not be invoked because the existing law was satisfactory and that purchasers or tenants, whatever one might call them, could take a civil remedy themselves. I am not satisfied that that is right, because a large number of people who are entitled to certain remedies under the Rent Act are unaware of those remedies and the redress that they could obtain. That was why the Government spent a good deal of money on advertising the basic provisions of the Rent Act during the past year, but I do not think that it has made a great impact. It has not really improved the knowledge of many people—the unwary, the gullible—of what the Rent Act is all about and what their entitlements are.

But I can also say in this regard that when we had the scandal of the 22-year lease—and, incidentally, Mr. Bach claims the authorship of that idea, too—which was a device that got round the Rent Act, the only way in which it could be cured was by legislation, and this was done by a Labour Government. It is my belief that it is only by legislation that an effective cure of this abuse can be achieved, but it would be helpful if, in the interim, the Department made quite sure that local authorities alerted people to the very real hazards of getting engaged in the dubious operations of people like Bach, who are only out to deceive and swindle these very poor people who are in such great housing need.

Another abuse with which it is important to deal was raised not long ago in a debate by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Tugendhat)—the bogus schedule of dilapidations. Attention was drawn to this abuse initially by the Evening News. We have no knowledge of how widespread this abuse is. The case raised, to his credit, by the hon. Member occurred in Westminster, but is the abuse very much more widespread than that? Where else is it occurring? What is its incidence?

The Minister, replying to that debate, thought that effective action could be taken under the Theft Act. He will correct me if I am wrong in my recollection. He suggested that some criminal remedy was available. I have looked at the Theft Act, and if he was, as I assume, referring to Section 21, that Section deals with blackmail. It provides:

"A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief—

(a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand;

and

(b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand."

I am a lawyer, and I believe that in these particular instances it would be very difficult to sustain a prosecution under Section 21 of the Theft Act. The defence inevitably would be that the property owner had been advised by his surveyors to present the particular schedule of dilapidations; that they might have been wrong or in error, but he would have acted, so he would allege, in good faith on the basis set out by his own advisers. I do not think that a prosecution could get off the ground. I regret to say that, because I think that this is an abuse which ought to be remedied and for which there should be prosecution, but there is not much point in prosecuting unless the prosecution has a real prospect of success.

So I ask the Minister to deal with the matter, though perhaps not tonight, because although I have discussed it with him it might not be possible or convenient for him to deal with legal argument now. Perhaps, therefore, he will write to me or find some way of investigating the position.

There is another abuse which to my own personal knowledge causes a great deal of anxiety amongst tenants. That is the abuse of the pseudo-furnished tenancy, which was also dealt with in the Francis Report. I am not sure of its extent, but, both professionally and in my capacity as a Member of Parliament, I have been approached by many people who have not known whether their premises were furnished or unfurnished when a few sticks and bits are in their flat. It is sometimes very difficult even for a court to determine. That abuse can be cured only if furnished and unfurnished tenancies are dealt with on a similar basis.

The Minister for Housing and Construction has conceded that a tenant at present may not know whether to go to the rent officer or the rent tribunal. If he goes to the rent officer and it turns out, in an action for a declaration before the county court, that the tenancy in question was furnished, he may well have lost his rights, because the notice to quit has expired, and he will be without defence to a claim for possession. But if he goes to the rent tribunal he may well have chosen the wrong course. It is the view not only of lawyers but of most London magistrates who have studied the problem that it cannot be cured unless furnished and unfurnished tenancies are put on a comparable basis.

I turn to the question of harassment. It is remarkable that the figures for prosecutions and successful prosecutions in the London area are as low as they are. These are the figures given in answer to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham): in the Metropolitan Police District in 1967 there were 96 prosecutions and 55 convictions: in 1968 there were 88 prosecutions and 42 convictions; in 1969 there were 96 prosecutions and 67 convictions; and in 1970 there were 54 prosecutions and 39 convictions. At no time in the whole of the metropolitan district have the local authorities concerned been able to reach the figure of 100. It is remarkable. I can hardly believe that those figures represent the totality of the problem. There are reticent local authorities who are disinclined to prosecute. I know that in many instances witnesses are intimidated—we find it extremely difficult to provide proof of that—and will not come forward because of their fears.

Other local authorities, although willing to institute proceedings, find that there is grave doubt about whether the prosecutions will succeed. The reason is that harassment is not always overt action by an unscrupulous landlord to make life intolerable for a tenant. It is not simply a question of the use of bully boys. Such cases can perhaps be proved, leaving aside the element of intimidation. There is the subtle and systematic process of harassment that goes on day in and day out. My hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury and I, representing parts of the Borough of Hackney, know that this goes on. The landlord makes a great deal of noise, for example. It is not easy to prove, because the tenant does not bring in independent witnesses to establish that that is happening. If he does, the landlord soon gets to know of it and does not make the noise at that time; or if he gets part of the property vacant, and his real design is to get vacant possession of the whole, he will, quite deliberately, bring in some undesirable tenants who he knows will, and perhaps he even encourages them to do so, make life impossible for tenants who have lived in the house and whom he wants to get out. This goes on in every Inner London borough, and I am sure that it is known to the Department. But there is a real problem in adducing the evidence. We want to know how widespread is the incidence of these scandals, and this calls for much more detailed research.

What has happened to all the advertisements pursuant to the Rent Act which we had from the Ministry in the last 12 months? What has been the success of that campaign? What is to be the future campaign, how much is to be spent, and how? Are local authorities to be consulted—they were not consulted last time—in order to determine the best method of promoting advertising campaigns? These are matters of vital concern. If they are not dealt with, and if the Government are not frank and honest in their answers to the questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury, there will be a tidal wave of discontent among not only council tenants but private tenants. If the Government are genuine in their anxiety to present the facts, they will not hesitate to present them.

There is no greater affront to a civilised society than the squalor, abuse and unscrupulous activity which goes on in the private housing sector. We have no real conception of the social cost of the enterprises of unscrupulous landlords or property owners. We have no way of measuring the anxiety and misery which their clever devices cause. What each one of us who represents an inner London constituency does know is that our "surgeries" are crowded week in and week out with people who are having to live in squalor, and some of whom are having to face the results of these activities. I hope that this debate will have caused some advertisement of what is happening in London and, much more important, will encourage the Government to be less complacent and to decide in the very near future to take firm action against these unscrupulous people, because it is only firm action that they understand and respect.

3.8 a.m.

The peg for this debate has been the alleged need for further research into the various matters raised by the three hon. Members who have spoken in it. I have come prepared to tell the House, at some length if necessary, some of the details of the research programmes of the Department. However, it would probably help the House more if I were to concentrate on answering some of the questions raised in the debate. I hope that I shall be forgiven if I leave out some questions or if I am not in a position to answer others now. If I omit to deal with points about which I can give further information, I shall endeavour to get in touch with hon. Members or perhaps they will get in touch with me, because I have no wish to shirk the questions put in the debate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) on initiating this debate and on the ingenious way in which he managed to deal with so many issues in his interesting remarks. However, I wish first to answer the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis). I reject the suggestion that the Government are complacent about any of the abuses that the hon. Gentleman has alleged take place in regard to the Rent Acts. My right hon. Friend has made clear time and again that we are determined to do what we can to stamp out any abuses in the working of the Rent Acts.

I am not sure that I accept the suggestion of the need for further research. The hon. Gentleman may not have a very high view of the Francis Committee Report, which I regard as an extremely valuable work, but nobody will deny that it represents a most massive volume of research. The Committee has reported only in the last few months, and the Government are engaged in reviewing all its recommendations. My right hon. Friend has already announced a number of the Government's conclusions on some of the recommendations. We are now engaged in a detailed study of all the recommendations and suggestions in the report, and I shall make sure that the hon. Gentleman's remarks are further studied by my right hon. Friend.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the bogus schedule of dilapidations. The House may recall that in the debate on London housing last week I made the situation clear:

"This is already an offence under the criminal law."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th July, 1971; Vol. 821, c. 795.]

The hon. Member for Hackney, Central, who has much greater legal experience than I, said that it was done under the Theft Act. I can find no reference to the Theft Act.

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. That was my impression of what he said. I withdraw the remark if that was not the Act to which he was alluding.

In case the hon. Gentleman's remarks on this subject are given publicity, I shall be sorry if the impression gets abroad that this is not an offence under the criminal law if it clearly is. It would be in everybody's interest to set out the provisions under which it is an offence, or is believed by us to be an offence. It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman would put down a Question for Written Answer so that we may attempt to make the matter clear.

If there are any difficulties of law, it might be better that the matter should be publicly known. My advice—and I am not a lawyer—is that this is already an offence under criminal law. I do not have any evidence that it is very widespread. Allegations have been made that this is happening in Pimlico, but I do not think that is a matter on which I should comment.

I am sure all hon. Members would wish to congratulate the Evening News on its series of articles and also my hon. Friend the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Tugendhat) on his action in raising this matter. There are also a number of civil remedies open to people who are in this situation, but it is clear that the matter is also a criminal offence.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of harassment. The best evidence on this matter is to be found in the Francis Committee's Report, which went into the matter with great care. I think the best statement on this matter is to be found on page 109: speaking of harassment and unlawful eviction, the report says:

"We think there is little evidence of either outside the stress areas. In the stress areas, they are to be found mainly in multi-occupied houses where the landlord lives on the premises, and usually in furnished houses. The actual extent of harassment and unlawful eviction is difficult to assess but it is probably of significant proportions in the stress areas among furnished tenants …".

On the other hand, it goes on to say that the complaints made to provincial police forces in the last couple of years have been few, whereas in London the complaints made to the Metropolitan Police numbered 1,104 in 1969 and 1,279 in 1970, though it is true that many more complaints have been made direct to local authorities. Where there is evidence of harassment, it is right for local authorities to prosecute, and they do in many cases.

One of the conclusions in the Francis Report on which the Government have made policy statements has been that we intend to increase the penalties for harassment and illegal eviction. The penalties are very low at present. The Francis Committee recommends that they be increased, and the Government consider that it is well worth doing.

The problem of deferred purchase is an important one. We have all read the article in the Sunday Times. Again, I make no comment on the validity of the argument; nor is it appropriate for me to comment on its accuracy or on the remarks which the hon. Gentleman made about people in this House.

The hon. Gentleman said on 15th July that the scandal of deferred purchase had affected a large number of people in his constituency. If that is the case, it is his duty to bring any instances which come to his notice either to the attention of the local authority or to that of my right hon. Friend, though preferably that of the local authority. I understand that, despite his having said what he did, the hon. Gentleman has brought no cases to the attention of his local council. If he has brought some, I hope that he will continue to do so.

The short answer is that the local authority is aware of all the cases that have come to my attention.

I am glad to hear that, and I am sure that it is extremely helpful.

There are two methods of tackling the problem of deferred purchase, and the hon. Gentleman fairly quoted from that section of the Francis Committee's Report dealing with evasions. The Committee itself recommended two alternative courses. As it stands, the law is capable of dealing with such a transaction, if it is an offence. The Francis Committee pointed out that in cases where an abuse of the Rent Act takes place, a single successful court case very often can dispose of an abuse very quickly.

The Francis Committee said:

"The quickest way of disposing of any abuse … would be a court decision that the 'contracts to purchase' … are mere devices to evade the Rent Act, and are not genuine contracts but are intended only to effect a transfer of possession in return for a payment which is really rent."

No local authority has brought a criminal case on these grounds, but I am advised that a criminal case on the grounds of deferred purchase would be very likely to succeed.

If there is a loophole in the Rent Acts and it is not a criminal offence, my right hon. Friend will have to consider the matter in his review of the Rent Acts, in the light of the Francis Committee Report. At the moment, I am advised that it is a criminal offence.

There is also a civil remedy. I must be careful what I say——

With respect, the point that the Francis Committee made was that the deferred purchase itself was necessarily a criminal offence, but that the validity of the contract could be tested only by determining whether a rent book should be provided. It was a device to ascertain the law.

The best thing that I can do is to refer hon. Members interested in the problem to the last paragraph on page 114 and the opening paragraph on page 115. There are a number of possible courses which might be preferable: for example, failing to provide a rent book or charging a premium for the grant of a protected tenancy.

Civil litigation can also be initiated by a party to one of the agreements. There is a civil case pending in the courts—I will not go into the details—in which I understand that this point is likely to be tested. It would be unwise for me to deal with that matter now, but it is important and we shall have to watch it very carefully.

The hon. Members for Hackney, Central, Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown), and Erith and Crayford, asked about the proposals for rent rebates. I cannot give them a great deal more information tonight. There is a section in "Fair Deal For Housing" devoted to rent rebates. Hon. Members will see from that that the rent rebate scheme is, by most people's standards, more generous than any similar schemes which have been operated in the past in most parts of the country. I think that the scheme will be widely welcomed.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury in a long speech—I am not sure that his hon. Friends will appreciate the fact that he spoke for nearly an hour and probably made it more difficult for them to get into debates later tonight; that is a matter for the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends to sort out—was so polemical about the matter, as if rent rebate schemes had never been heard of before. The hon. Gentleman knows that all but one of the local authorities in London have operated such schemes. This is not a wide, strange, brave new world into which the Government are asking local authorities to move. Many authorities have operated rent rebate schemes. Our evidence is that about 60 per cent. of local authorities throughout the country operate rent rebate schemes. Therefore, about 40 per cent. of local authorities have no rent rebate schemes at all.

That is not a situation which hon. Members on both sides of the House could possibly think is satisfactory. Indeed, the Labour Government thought it proper to advise local authorities that there should be reasonable rent rebate schemes. I think it comes ill from the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury to say that this is a reprehensible and terrible new area to enter.

rose——

I may be slightly misrepresenting the hon. Gentleman. I do not mean to infer that he is against the idea of rent rebate schemes. However, he made heavy weather about it. I have other comments to make to the hon. Gentleman, but if he wishes to interrupt I will give way to him.

I was asking whether any researches had been undertaken to find out whether the proportion of tenants who will be expected to take up the rebate will be higher than the figure which would have been expected under normal circumstances. Now that the rent level will be so much higher——

Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will remember the length of the speech which he has already made and will appreciate that a number of hon. Members are still waiting to raise subjects which are important to them.

I take the hon. Gentleman's point. The hon. Member for Hackney, Central has already pointed out the virtual impossibility of giving the varying formulae and conditions which are applied. It is impossible to estimate how many people will qualify for rent rebate. The important point, which hon. Gentlemen have failed to dent in recent debates, is that for the first time in our history we shall have a scheme under which any tenant of unfurnished premises, whether in the private or the public sector, will be able to get a rent rebate or allowance to enable him to meet the cost of his rent if he cannot afford it. It is a step forward of tremendous consequence in housing and in the social sphere and one which is widely welcomed outside the House, even if there are carping critics inside the House who, I am sure, bitterly regret that they did not do it themselves.

I will consider all the points that the hon. Gentleman raised and see whether I can give him further information. It is a little hard for him to speak for about 10 minutes in criticism of our not having a full list of every local authority's housing list in the Department. It has been the practice of all Governments not to collect such information, because it is considered to be meaningless. I do not recall when the Labour Party was in government the hon. Gentleman criticising his right hon. Friends for not assembling that information. What was so acceptable when the hon. Gentleman's right hon. Friends were in power suddenly becomes reprehensible now that we are in power.

I ask the House to consider whether it should take these arguments seriously or whether they are not almost wasting the time of the House, particularly when there are so many other subjects to deal with.

No doubt it is the hon. Gentleman's policy to pretend that these will not be fair rents. No doubt he and his colleagues are bitterly ashamed of introducing a fair rent in the private sector but providing no rebate or allowance for those who could not pay it. No doubt the hon. Gentleman is bitterly jealous of a Government which have introduced fair rents in the public and private sectors and rebates and allowances for those who cannot pay.

These are fair rents. There will be details to be worked out in the application because of different circumstances. The principle of the fair rent will apply in the public and the private sectors. That, too, in spite of the hon. Gentleman's strictures, has been widely welcomed outside the House.

I do not think that the arguments that the hon. Gentleman has advanced cut any ice whatsoever outside the House.

They cut no ice in London, which will benefit so particularly from the proposals announced by my right hon. Friend last week. Any hon. Member representing an Inner London constituency should examine his conscience before criticising the Government's proposals, which are designed so much to help the Inner London boroughs, as my right hon. Friend was able to prove during the recent debate.

The hon. Member for Erith and Crayford has raised the question of Thames-mead over many years. He probably knows more about Thamesmead than any man alive. I do not agree with all his conclusions about it and I am not sure that I can answer all the questions he asked. I will study what he has said. The hon. Gentleman said that the costs will be too high and the conditions are not good enough. One reason why the hon. Gentleman is frightened about the costs is that he thinks that rents will be too high because of the costs. That assumption is completely out of date because, with the introduction of the fair rent scheme, the cost of the rents that will be paid at Thamesmead, as indeed for any other local authority dwelling, will be fair rents. They will not be based upon the cost, whether high or low, of any building scheme. It will no longer be any good for the hon. Gentleman to say that it has cost so much money to put up Thamesmead that the rents will have to be so high that it is ghastly for his constituents. These people will be assessed to fair rents in the same way as all other local authority tenants.

That is not my main argument. My main argument is that, because of the circumstances surrounding this development, the public expenditure is not realistically related to the number of units being constructed. I fear for the number of people who will ultimately be re-housed if the average unit cost is £12,000. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman can defend such an average cost.

Fortunately, I am not in a position where I shall have to defend that proposition. I will dispose of the rents point, as I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not wish to return to it, as it has no validity in the future. Of course Thamesmead is a very difficult, low-lying, marshy site. It was the hon. Gentleman's colleagues on the G.L.C. who decided to build on the site. They did so in the full knowledge of the difficulties of the site. Anyone who has visited the site, as the hon. Gentleman has and as I have had the pleasure of doing, will know that it is a very difficult one. The hon. Gentleman, who is deeply concerned about the problem of London housing, as all hon. Members are, must face the fact that Thamesmead will make an invaluable contribution to meeting London's desperate housing shortage. Not many of his hon. Friends would agree with him if he is arguing that we should not go ahead with Thamesmead.

I am not arguing.

I am glad to hear that because for years the hon. Member has been arguing that it is too expensive and a great waste of public money. The logical conclusion of his arguments is that we should stop the scheme. It is making a valuable contribution to meeting the problem of London's housing shortage, and I believe we should go ahead with it. I challenge the hon. Member to say we should not.

I respond to the challenge. That is precisely the point I am not making. I do not say we should abandon it. I challenged the Government to hold an inquiry into the scheme in order that it could proceed on a sounder financial basis, and this is the question the Minister is avoiding.

I have not come to it yet. I am glad to have it from the hon. Member that he wishes the scheme to go ahead, because that is not the impression which leaps to mind when reading his speeches.

It is impossible to give the overall cost of Thamesmead at this stage. But preliminary application by the G.L.C. for subsidy purposes on the erection costs of stage one has been considered. The application suggests a tentative figure, which I cannot be held to in the future, £6,000 per dwelling, as eligible for housing subsidy. That is a far cry from the hon. Member's £12,000. I will look at the other detailed points he raised and if there is further information that I can give him I will attempt to do so.

I am not sure I can tell the hon. Member a great deal more tonight except on the point of condensation. He will have read the new bulletin on research by my Department in the past few months which will be of benefit to a tenant who is unfortunate enough to meet this ghastly problem. I know the main point he raised was rain penetration, and that is largely a matter for the G.L.C., which is well aware of his views. It would not be fair to other hon. Members to take up any more time on this debate. We shall have other housing debates with the Housing Bill, and we can discuss detailed points then.

We are introducing for the first time in this country an original reform of housing which should have been done long ago. It will divert the subsidy to the areas and the people most in need. Those who oppose it will be saying in effect that they do not like a subsidy system concentrated on the people and the areas most in need. If they wish to take that stance, they may do so, but I do not think that the country will support them.

Museums And Galleries

3.35 a.m.

I am glad of the opportunity to raise this vitally important subject, but I am sorry that, particularly after his courtesy to me on other occasions, the Minister has had to be kept here until the early hours, although I am glad to see him in his usual ebullient form.

In this matter, which affects the House and the nation immediately, time is not on our side. We are a great collecting nation. Ruskin suggested that this was because we did not have many major artists of our own, but that is not altogether true. What is transparently evident—one has only to bear in mind the Claude Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery last year or the current exhibition of Her Majesty's Dutch pictures, or the Dulwich Gallery or the catholic nature of the collections at the National Gallery—is that for centuries we have been a major example of intelligent connoisseurship.

In any of the great houses of Britain which are on view—whether supported by the State, in the shape of Apsley House and Audley End, or by the National Trust or in private hands—one can see enough to realise just how rich this heritage still is. Above all it is a heritage which has been freely available to the public for many years. It has been built up over the years by those who have loved the fine arts for their own sake. As the current report of the National Gallery Trustees points out:

"Out of a total of some two thousand pictures owned by the Gallery, nearly two-thirds have been given, bequeathed or purchased wholly from funds given or bequeathed. Only one-third of the pictures in the collection has been bought wholly out of Gallery funds; excluding the sums paid out of the land fund for a handful of great pictures ceded in lieu of estate duty under the Finance Act of 1956, the whole collection in Trafalgar Square has cost the nation less than £4½ million."

This is not to say that mistakes have not been made. One has only to point to three events to show how bitter some errors of judgment have been—the dispersal of a major part of the collection of Charles I under the Commonwealth, the loss of the Walpole pictures from Houghton Hall, which now form so important a part of the Hermitage Collection of Leningrad, and the break-up of the great collection of Old Master drawings formed by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the middle of the last century. These are all occasions which I believe we would now do anything to reverse.

It was that last episode which led Sir Charles Eastlake, then the Keeper of the National Gallery, to wait upon Lord Chancellor Brougham with regard to the possibility of saving the works of the Lawrence Collection for the country in 1831. The French Ambassador of the day, Talleyrand, was present at that meeting. When told the purpose of the visit, his comment—which, knowing my hon. Friend's erudition, I am sure I will not have to translate—was:

"Si vous n'âchetez pas ces choses-là, vous êtes des barbares."

Nevertheless, the then Prime Minister, Lord Grey, did not make the purchase—a decision which proved calamitous for collecting in this country in that field.

I hope that this is not the sort of criticism which can be levelled against this present enlightened Administration by a future age. It is not one which could always be levelled against British Governments—to their great credit. The foundation of the National Gallery itself in 1824, when this House voted the not inconsiderable sum in those days of £60,000 for the purchase of the Angerstien collection, was an act of faith on the part of Lord Liverpool's Administration at a time when the nation was struggling with the effects of a long and exhausting war, the temporary collapse of British trade, and a situation of serious unemployment throughout the country.

To take another example, in 1918, when the Lloyd George Government were faced with the gravest crisis of the whole First World War, a special grant was made for the purchase of major works by Ingres, Delacroix and Manet from the sale in Paris of the collection of the great painter Degas, who had died in the previous year.

I quote one further instance. In 1906 the National Gallery acquired—not by any means in the most propitious circumstances for our affairs—a painting which is now one of its major assets, the Rokeby Venus of Velasquez. The National Gallery purchase grant at that time—and these facts are worth noting—was £5,000, and the price of the picture was £50,000. The efforts of the National Art-Collections Fund made its acquisition possible. Incidentally, I am glad that my noble Friend the Paymaster-General has been able to make a season ticket concession for gallery admissions to members of that fund as a token of its extreme importance. Through the efforts of the National Art-Collections Fund, the whole of the balance of £45,000 was raised in order to stop that masterpiece then leaving the country.

The present Government are spending more money on the arts than any previous Administration has done, and I pay tribute to them for that. We have a Minister with special responsibility for the arts who has been an enlightened collector for years, with a great love for both pictures and objects. In this House we have as his representative a most sympathetic and intelligent spokesman.

Nevertheless, we are in real danger of falling into a serious dichotomy on the question of acquisitions for the nation. At the risk of trespassing on the time of the House at this hour, I shall briefly outline one or two aspects of this situation.

It seems to me that there exists a quite unnecessary contradiction in the Government's policy on capital works and their policy on preserving major works of art. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Cormack) pointed out in the Chamber only the other day, the proper criterion was made abundantly clear only a few weeks ago by no less an authority than my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who, when opening the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair, said:

"On the question of keeping works of art in this country, there are some who say that whatever is here ought to remain here. This is not a philosophy with which I find myself entirely in agreement. We have benefited much in the past with treasures from other lands. It seems a narrow view that they should never leave our shores. Nevertheless"—

these are the significant words—

"there are some things which we would wish to keep here, and it behoves the Government to look to the future to see what we want to keep in our own land, and we should make the utmost efforts to retain those here".

I am sure that no sane person who is concerned with this matter will disagree with that philosophy. No one among those who are involved with this subject has ever suggested a policy of universal retention, even in the case of major works of art. Of course, we have suffered grievous losses. The Oscott lectern and the Radnor Velasquez are examples. But the case really turns on what my right hon. Friend, than whom there was never a first Minister who cared more for these matters, meant in the passage which I have quoted—here I paraphrase a little—

"Nevertheless there are some things which we would wish to keep, and it behoves the Government to look to the future and see what we should make the utmost efforts to retain".

We are meeting tonight under the shadow of the position regarding the Titian. It is not for me to pass judgment about this picture. I remind the House what has been said by the Chairman of the Standing Committee, Lord Rosse, that this is indeed a very great work of art. I do not think that anyone, least of all my hon. Friend, with his public utterances would deny that the loss of this painting would be incalcul- able. If we accept that a gallery can be a work of art, in the sense that I believe the Frick Gallery is, or the Rijksmuseum, or the Louvre, or the exquisite Musée Unter Den Linden at Colmar, which I visited the other day with the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds), are, then the presence of this picture at Trafalgar Square has a real significance of its own.

To see in the Venetian Gallery there the work of this major master, ranging from the Ariadne and Bacchus of his early manhood to the Diana and Actaeon of his consummate age, must be one of the richest experiences of the human spirit.

How, then, is this great picture to be saved for us? I am well aware that only this morning the Review Committee will meet to consider this question. To that extent my hon. Friend may feel, as he has said earlier, that his hands are tied. It would be idle to suggest that the decision made by that distinguished body can be other than a recommendation that we should attempt to secure this painting for our successors and if this recommendation is made, as I believe it must be, how are we to put this into effect on behalf of the nation?

First and foremost, it is right that we should go on record at this stage as saying that the price involved is, despite what has been said about speculative prices, a containable one. Of the sum of £1·68 million the National Gallery has already gone on record as saying that from its existing endowments and grants it could put forward £400,000 and the National Art Collections Fund has said it would give the bulk of its assets, in the form of £100,000. The Gallery has gone further and put forward to the Government the suggestion that it should mortgage, if that is the word, £100,000 a year from its purchases grant over the next six years. The feasibility of this idea must be borne out by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary on 23rd July when he said:

"We must recall that the present rate of £2 million per year from 1970–71 allows for forward planning up to 1974–75."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd July 1971; Vol. 821. c. 1839.]

If this is so it would leave a residue, allowing for a commission estimated at £50,000, of only £630,000 to be dealt with. It is right to consider at this point that the Treasury gained no less than £344,000 from the residue bequeathed to the Gallery of Sir Robert Hart in the form of money or moneys worth. It is right to consider that if this bequest had been left in the form of works of art no such sum would have gone to the Treasury. One hopes that the Government will look sympathetically at that sum as being morally something which they can advance, certainly in the light of their previous generosity towards the Gallery over the Leonardo Cartoon.

If this attitude were taken, it would leave a comparatively small sum only to be raised by public subscription and by organisations which have been generous in the past to these appeals, such as the Pilgrim Trust and the Gulbenkian Foundation, which no doubt would be happy to approach this on the basis which has been taken by previous Administrations—on a £ for £ subscription with regard to the assistance that could be given by the Government.

I want to deal with two falacies which have been of considerable concern to those involved with these affairs. The first is the suggestion, which has been made more than once, that it is the policy or intention of the National Gallery to try to keep every major work of art in this country. I recall what was said by my hon. Friend in reply to me on 26th March last. Not specifically in relation to the National Gallery but in a rather broader conclusion on the subject he said:

"… I recognise that there will always be those who cannot bear to see any treasure ever leave this country for any reason at all."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th March, 1971; Vol. 814, c. 1080.]

He was more specific to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock on 23rd July, when he said:

"The problem therefore relates to particular works of art and to particular institutions. For my own part, I much admire the trustees of the National Gallery in their determination to acquire or to keep here virtually every masterpiece which past good fortune has enabled us to enjoy, and so doing, I say it respectively, nothing less than their duty. But the Government have a wider responsibility. They have to ask themselves, the brutal question of what could be done even in the field of the arts with the sums of money which would have to be found for massive purchases of this kind. So I look at certain other possible ways forward."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd July, 1971; Vol. 821, c. 1840.]

It is right to stress that that has never been the policy of the National Gallery, nor has it ever tried to achieve it. What it has sought to do is to meet the criterion considered by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when he says that there are some works which are so important that it behoves the Government, acting on behalf of the nation, to keep them here for future generations to enjoy.

The second matter is a suggestion which has also been made more than once and had even been given certain credence by some remarks of my hon. Friend the Paymaster-General—that there are a large number of masterpieces in the possession of the National Gallery which are not on show to the public. In reply to this, I quote the report of the trustees for the current year:

"All too many people are still under the delusion that there are unexhibited treasures in what are sometimes described as 'the cellars of the National Gallery'. Nothing could be further from the truth. Except for over a hundred pictures which are on long term loan to provincial galleries, and a few pictures on loan for Government purposes"—

which includes pictures on loan to Lancaster House or to No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street——

"or for temporary exhibition or withdrawn for conservation, the whole collection is on view to the public at Trafalgar Square. Some pictures in the Reserve Collection, which is open to the public, are too closely hung. This will be remedied when our new building to which we refer later is completed. But we have long held it to be our duty to exhibit virtually everything that we possess."

It is right to stress that although it is a matter of great public concern that the public should be given the best possible opportunity of seeing not only these pictures but pictures in museums generally, the circumstances in which this major national collection was built up were those in which the first importance went to the collection rather than to its exhibition. When one considers the pictures in the National Gallery in the mid or late 19th century, one sees that the emphasis then is on the pictures rather than on the conditions in which they are being shown. I have dealt with the immediate problem and I should like now to repeat some of the suggestions for long-term answers which I have put to my hon. Friend before and to add one or two more. On 26th March my hon. Friend was good enough to say that he would consider with his noble Friend the Paymaster-General the questions of what we referred to on that occasion as the hire-purchase scheme and that of a public lottery, and he may have some news tonight about those matters. However, I should like to refer to another suggestion in the form of a quotation which may have been forgotten over the years. I quote from a report of the Committee of the Trustees of the National Gallery in 1915:

"The suggestion has been made that the proceeds of the existing death duties on works of art should be earmarked for the purchase of pictures. There does not seem to be, either in principle or in practice, any valid objection to such an appropriation of the proceeds of taxation. The difficulty is that owing to the way in which death duties are levied and collected, the revenue rising from works of art has not hitherto been kept separate from that provided by other objects. We are advised, however, that it would be quite feasible for the Treasury to direct that the account should be kept in such a form in future as to show separate amounts. Indeed, it may be contended that as the State is thus already in possession of an annual revenue from works of art, it ought to know, and the country ought to know, the extent to which art is thereby penalised, and the preparation of a separate account should be accepted as a duty of the Government."

It is right to stress for the record that that was not merely a report put forward by a committee of do-gooders or well-wishers; it was a report prepared by the Trustees of the National Gallery under the chairmanship of no less a figure than that of Marquess Curzon, and it would be hard to find a more practical approach to the arts than is connected with that notable statesman.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock sought to raise, but was not able to raise in an Adjournment debate, although, happily, I hope I am in a position to do so, the whole question of a tourist tax, and I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to look carefully at that, particularly the interesting figure——

I may have misheard the hon. Member, but if I did not, it would be out of order to refer to taxation in this debate.

I thought I was within the terms of the debate by mentioning fiscal means of assisting the arts, but I will leave that.

Another means immediately open to the Minister for assisting the arts is the use of the Land Fund. I should be grateful for his comments on that and on the extent to which that fund has been used to subsidise estate duty transactions of this sort and whether it could be used effectively to subsidise acquisitions of the sort for which a special contingency fund is necessary.

I stress that this is not a matter of a basic contradiction between faith and works. It is not an instance when the Government can say that they are doing the works in the shape of developments to gallery extensions and gallery improvements and when all acquisitions may be shrugged off on to the galleries under their current purchase grants.

At this hour, I certainly do not trespass on the House to go into the subject in detail, but I ask my hon. Friend to consider carefully particularly the saddening story of the Domenichino, which led to a position where a work which had been enjoyed in a particular atmosphere in a certain gallery for well over 150 years was transferred to another gallery in a different part of the country. All that happened in those circumstances was that almost the entire purchase grant of a major national collection was taken up for a year. A Government subsidy of £30,000 only was produced for that purpose, and the total loss of that transaction was a break in the tradition of the Dulwich Gallery. I hope that this will lead my hon. Friend to make long-term plans concerning the future of Dulwich and that he can give us further news beyond the earlier Adjournment debate on that matter. There are many other public or semi-private galleries, like the Coram Foundation or Kenwood, which could possibly some day be in the same circumstances.

It is no use having the elaborate safeguards which exist under the Waverley criteria and the Waverley procedure with regard to the control of export of works of art if no teeth can be brought in to give effect to them.

I hope also that my hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend will be able to give the House assurance concerning the position and powers of trustees, a matter which has given great concern to those involved in this matter during the last few months, and that encouragement will be given to prospective donors to feel that here is an opportunity for them to present works to the nation in circumstances in which their wishes with regard to these will be permanently complied with.

This is not the moment to consider the whole question of regional museums, but I ask my hon. Friend to stress to his right hon. Friend that when the time comes to consider the report which is now being prepared by a distinguished committee in this matter, one aspect that simply cannot be put back too long is the matter of the Victoria and Albert grant for helping purchases by provincial museums, because clearly a figure of £150,000 will not now assist much effective purchase by local museums. I ask my hon. Friend to stress to his right hon. Friend the urgency of having a body—I respectfully suggest the Area Museums Service as being suitable, in comparison with the University Grants Committee—to act as a source through which to channel capital works.

One other pressing major matter with regard to the position of museums and galleries is the vitally urgent position concerning staffing. There is a real risk, both on the conservation side and on the curator side, that if the present situation continues we shall lose many of the better people who are working in our museums, particularly our provincial museums, because of both the situation which arises with regard to their remuneration and the wide differences which exist between the civil servant position of the staffs of the national collections and the local government position of most provincial curators.

It is most unfortunate that there is not ease of transfer between these two sides of the profession. It is doubly unfortunate in the circumstances that the privileges which are so important for people who do this work and which exist in the national museums regarding adequate sabbatical leave, and with regard to at least one day a week for cataloguing and scholarship purposes, are not available in the case of most regional museums.

In the long run, how we shall be judged on the matter depends above all, I believe, not just on the way in which we can present the existing collections to the public but on the balance that can be struck between that and the equally important matter of safeguarding the remainder of the nation's treasures for succeeding generations.

This is the Government which will go down in history as having taken great steps forward in many fields of education and welfare; in help to the mentally handicapped and the disabled; in producing for those who need it most assistance in making their lives more acceptable. I hope at the same time that a Government which are doing so much and have such a wide basis of talent on this subject will not go down to future generations as the Government which have lost some of the things that they would have wished most to see kept in this country. I hope, above all, that they will not go down to history as the Government which let the Titian go and so put us on the same level as the Government which lost the collection of Charles the First.

4.7 a.m.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money) has raised this subject. He has been frustrated on a number of occasions owing to the vagaries of our procedure, and I feel a little guilty myself because in another debate I took some time—nearly as much time as he has now taken—and other hon. Members who might have spoken did not get into that debate. I should like to support one or two things that he has said, and perhaps explore one or two other aspects which would come under this particular part of the Estimates.

We must recognise that particularly in this field of the arts passions run high, and I know that my hon. Friend feels passionately about many of the things of which he has spoken. We must also recognise that there are those who will never be shaken in their view that the members of the Conservative Party are a pack of hard-fisted philistines, insensitive to the arts. Whatever the Government do, they will not be shifted in that view. The fact is quite the opposite. My noble Friend will take his place in history as the Minister who first put the arts on a firm footing, in sharp contrast to the financial irresponsibility of the previous Government, whose errors were exposed recently by the all-party Select Committee.

I was very glad that my hon. Friend referred to the great national treasures distributed about the country which he described as being so freely available in the great houses, palaces and other historic buildings of which we are so proud. He said "freely available", but I make it clear that most of them are available at a modest charge. Therefore, some of the fuss about museum charges is a little unrealistic.

My hon. Friend complained, and rightly, about the inadequacies of the museums and galleries whose financies we are now discussing. Museums as we now know them are, in the view of many distinguished people, quite out of date, and it is a matter of choice whether one tries to bring them up to date or looks at the problem in a different way. I put it to the House that much that is torn from its original home should be returned to the great houses and churches which have been despoiled by taxation or its effects. The treasures which are now gathered inexorably into galleries which cannot contain them might be more happily displayed in the places for which those treasures were made or the works of art created or, in some cases, the buildings which were created to house the treasures when they had been acquired. We cannot go on and on until everything is in institutions. Just as with buildings, the National Trust cannot do it all, nor can the other institutions which are the subject of these discussions. I am backed up in that contention by a learned article in the journal of the Museums Association.

Acquisitions must be looked at in the context of the vastly improved capital programme to which my hon. Friend referred. If there is not the ability to house acquisitions, many people will question the propriety of making further acquisitions, though my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the need to make sure that those things which the nation really should retain here are retained. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has spoken about this, too. It means providing the necessary resources.

The idea of a list of key pictures or objects which should be retained at all costs has been canvassed. If such a list were to be produced, presumably by those who have the charge of the collections we are discussing, it should be kept private. It would greatly assist the Govern- ment in planning the future resources which the institutions might need in order to acquire the objects, but it would be wrong to make the list public, because the Government would be at the mercy of those who would seek to drive up the prices. Conversely, if the Government made clear that those objects were never to leave the country, and were to be acquired by a gallery and not to be allowed to be sold at auction, it might have a very unfair effect on the prospects of the owners. We must reflect that the reason why many people have been selling recently is the penal taxation. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will have at the back of his mind the possibility that if taxation were not so fierce we might not find ourselves having to rescue quite so many objects of importance.

The key-list policy should be fairly fluid, because what is key in one respect might not be in another. The Titian which has been referred to, The Death of Actæon, would be a key picture if we had to face the situation that all the other Titians in the country in private hands were to go and nothing could be done to stop them. Obviously, in those circumstances, The Death of Actæon should be retained at all costs, but there are other Titians in private hands on public view in this country. It is well known where they are. If we take the view that these pictures, perhaps even more important than the one that has been discussed, are likely——

There can be no doubt that my hon. Friend is referring to Sutherland Titians on view in Edinburgh. Has he borne in mind the comparison between the condition of those pictures and the extremely fine condition of the former Harewood Diana and Actæon?

I am sure that I should be out of order if I were to comment on that. However, I am glad that my hon. Friend has put the point, and I am sure it will be noted. The essence of what I am saying about the key list is not altered by what my hon. Friend said—that something could be key if one thought it was the only example available in the field in question, but if it transpired that it was not obviously the key list would have to be altered.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Nicholas Edwards) the other day referred to the necessity to provide funds for the rounding off of collections. There might be a contrary view about this matter. I should like to see much more interchange and exchange between museums and galleries. Exchanges are made and they should continue, but it might be better to discontinue collecting in a particular field by a national or local institution as part of an exchange with another institution when the present result is that two people have half a collection. Each should perhaps specialise in another field and so have a more complete picture to present to those who come to see the museum or gallery. Therefore, although the key list is available, it has its limitations.

My hon. Friend deplored the prospect of works of art going abroad. So do I. But works of art come back to our shores, and we should do nothing to interfere with the freedom of the art world, which in recent years has centred on London. Some of those who seek to conserve the nation's treasures do not go far enough in considering the possible effects on our international position of some of their suggestions. There has been considerable movement in works of art in times gone by. My hon. Friend's distinguished speech began with references to some of the losses. But there have been enormous gains. Art is international, and, although we have our views about what we should like to retain here, we are unlikely to get anything major back from abroad if we are too close with what we possess.

The National Gallery has been mentioned. The suggestion has been made about mortgaging its future in order to acquire the Titian which has been discussed in this debate, The Death of Actæon. This would be a very dangerous road to go along if the Government were to allow it. How are we to know that the National Galley will not come to us in any one of the following six years and say, "We spent £600,000 in advance on the Titian, but something else has turned up and what we have in our resources is nothing like adequate."? This would be a very dangerous course, and I hope that the Government will find other ways to meet the current problems.

Various tax reliefs have been suggested, and it would be out of order to pursue this matter in detail. I do not believe that the American system by which works of art are purchased by means of tax concessions and presented to galleries is an ideal solution. It can result in the most fearful junk being collected in galleries, and I have seen some of it in the United States. I cannot in this debate suggest the imposition of new taxes, but I can leave my hon. Friend with this thought. The solution lies in arousing the interest of hundreds of thousands of people in the arts and in obtaining their financial interest.

If in the next Budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer allowed the top £25 of a person's income to be dedicated to charitable purposes before tax was levied on the remainder, that would not only help the arts but would help sport, social services, education and the quality of life in general. It would revive the voluntary spirit. I hope this suggestion will not fall on deaf ears. This is where all of us together can achieve what we seek to do. It is a simple and intelligible way of going about the problem. It would involve the widest possible number of people and would not be just the preserve of the rich.

We must seek to avoid putting the arts in a privileged position, because when privilege is granted it can be taken away in times of stress or disrepute. There might be a reaction if any special concessions were granted to the arts through the years. The arts must stand or fall against competition from all the other things of interest to be found in this country.

I hope that, even if we do not agree on points of detail, we shall collaborate in many other ways. Those who wish to do lasting good for the arts should sink their prejudices, whether political, personal or purely pedantic. I notice little interest in this matter on the Opposition benches, which are empty, but some personal comments have come from that side of the House about my noble Friend the Paymaster-General. I hope that all who are interested in the future of the arts will pull their weight behind the noble Lord, because the cause of art needs more friends. Those who already dedicate themselves to the cause will do a greater service if they speak with an intelligible and more united voice.

4.22 a.m.

The House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money) for raising this subject and will agree that this has been a valuable debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) had a fair point to make when he drew attention to the empty Opposition benches. Since my two hon. Friends have sat up until this hour to take part in this debate, I am surprised that the Opposition Front Bench is not manned, as it normally would have been for an important matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich began with an erudite and apposite reference to Talleyrand and assumed that none of us needed a translation. It happens that I have a particular interest in Talleyrand because I was born in the house in which he spent his first exile in this country. It is a curious reflection that, so far as I know, so great a man has no known place of burial in Paris. I put that point to my right hon. Friend for reflection at a later stage.

The first theme in my hon. Friend's speech was a specific plan in regard to the Titian which is in our minds at the moment. I cannot give my hon. Friend an answer which he will think satisfactory. The reason is a perfectly proper one. The Reviewing Committee has not yet met. It would be improper—indeed, discourteous—for the Government to give a view before the committee had met and tendered advice. I notice that the Trustees of the National Gallery have expressed the hope that there will be an appropriate period of time for everyone to consider the advice which is tendered.

A number of related matters will have to be gone into carefully. There is, for example, the pertinent point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West concerning the position of other works in this country by that great artist. In that connection, I am afraid that I cannot accept the more than implied criticism of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich of the state of the Sutherland Titians at Edinburgh. On a private occa- sion my hon. Friend made the same point to me. So great was my concern that I caused inquiries to be made. I understand that in former years there were grounds for criticising the state of and the method of display of those works. Whatever may have been the case in the past, however, there is no room for criticism on those grounds now—either about their present habitat or about their state.

That is one matter which would have to be considered carefully. Another is the wisdom or otherwise of what is loosely called "the Getty offer". I am aware of the trustees' comments on that. These are the sorts of matters which would have to be considered.

I do not altogether accept my hon. Friend's fairly light reference to the cost involved as "containable". By anyone's standards, it is a very large sum. The problem is well illustrated when one considers the conflicting demands. My hon. Friend himself was pressing certain additional expenditures upon me. He said that the present disproportionate grants to the regional museums and to the national institutions are not supportable, and he hopes that more will come from the committee which my noble Friend has appointed. But my hon. Friend is pressing for increased expenditures, and this illustrates the sort of problem confronting the Government when we have to consider the matter of resources.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend thought any reference that I made to the price of the Titian being "containable" was meant to be light. I hope that my hon. Friend will consider the figures that I put to him as the basis of a practicable scheme for costing this operation, should it become feasible.

I have my reservations, and they are largely the reservations which were brought out by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West. It is, after all, within the recollection of the House that a representative of the gallery was questioned in a radio interview very recently. He was asked the same pertinent question that my hon. Friend asked; namely, what would happen if, in the six-year mortgage period, another great work came on the market? The reply, as nearly as I can recall it—I hope that I do it no injustice—was, "In that case, we shall clearly have to come to the Government for more." It was an honest and fair answer. Therefore, I am not sure whether juggling with figures in this way is the most direct and appropriate way of going about a problem of this kind.

I assure my hon. Friend that when we have the advice of the Reviewing Committee—I realise that its distinguished chairman has already expressed a personal view—the most careful consideration will be given to it.

That was the first theme of my hon. Friend's speech which related particularly to this great picture. No one questions that it is a great picture.

The second wider theme was that something more by way of a policy to cover this matter was necessary. My hon. Friend made a courteous reference to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. He made the same quotation as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Cormack) on 22nd July, but significantly left out the last sentence. It may be that he has not got the last sentence. In order to keep the record straight, I must put it in. The Prime Minister was talking about our having benefited

"very much in the past with treasures from other lands. It seems a narrow view that they should never leave our shores."

My hon. Friend accurately quoted the Prime Minister when he said:

"it behoves the Government to look to the future to see what we want to keep in our own land".

He was there referring to great works which had particular relevance to our history, and so on. But in the same sequence of that speech the Prime Minister added:

"The Government, and the taxpayers represented by the Government, cannot afford to keep everything. It becomes a question of priorities."

This is the key to the matter. It is a question of priorities. I felt that my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock in his Adjournment debate on 22nd July had slightly begged the question. He said, at column 1835, that there were three things which he wanted the Government to do:

"Third and most important, they must see how means can be found to meet the need without creating enormous or unreasonable demands on the public purse."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd July, 1971; Vol. 821, c. 1835.]

I was present when the Prime Minister made his speech at Grosvenor House. I accept the accuracy of the quotation which my hon. Friend has made and the basis on which my right hon. Friend was speaking. My point in this regard is that, concerning priorities, there are some works which are so important that every effort must be made to save them.

Order. I must intervene. It seems strange to me how selfish hon. Members get in the middle of the night. The last three back-bench speeches before I came back to the Chair have taken, respectively, 49, 37 and 32 minutes, the hon. Member's own speech. The hon. Member has also intervened three times since I have been back. Many hon. Members have been waiting a long time to raise other topics.

I will do my best to be short, in view of what you have understandably said, Mr. Speaker.

I repeat that this is a matter of priorities. Frankly, there is a genuine, and honest difference of view about priority relating to any one picture.

I remind my hon. Friend that the combined effect of the forecast of public expenditure in Command 4578—he will know that the relevant section on the Arts is to be found on page 35—and the policy outlined in Command 4676, "Future Policy for Museums and Galleries", indicates a growth of 10 per cent. anually when allowances has been made for receipts for entrance charges for museums and galleries. Therefore, I am able to show that they are receiving public funds at an unprecendented rate. I am glad that it should be so. My hon. Friend made a courteous reference to this. The growth rate of 10 per cent. annually is much higher than is possible for any major sector of public expenditure. I am entitled to defend the Government's record by reference to the figures, which can easily be extracted from the two documents to which I have referred. It becomes a matter of priority.

The cellars at the National Gallery have been referred to. I accept that all the pictures can be displayed. I doubt that the trustees would say that they were displayed as well as they would wish them to be displayed. Indeed, there was the very reasonable reference to the additional building. In that respect they are extraordinarly fortunate, much more fortunate than most of the other museums and galleries with which we are concerned.

The background to that statement is that the number of visitors in 1970 was 10 per cent. above the 1969 figure. This is the sort of growth rate with which we are dealing. This is the justification for saying that one must have in mind when talking about these figures the uses to which such expenditure could otherwise be directed. This is not a philistine point of view.

There are at least three factors which will increase this pressure. There is, first, the immense growth of secondary education and all that that has meant and will increasingly mean with a greater section of younger people being interested in museums and galleries. There is, second, the greater growth of tourism. There is, third, the increasing use of leisure and the ability to enjoy leisure with increasing living standards.

I do not think that anybody has understood properly, though my noble Friend has—not for the first time—blazed a trail here, the pressures which will be placed upon the museums and galleries, particularly if increasingly we use them to everybody's greater benefit.

I end by a reference to what was implied in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich and was was specifically referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West. It is suggested that there should be something in the way of a list of the most important treasures which in no circumstances should be permitted to leave the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock developed this theme with great skill in the short time available to him in his Adjournment debate.

In this respect I accept entirely the advice of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West. If there were to be such a list, it would be essential that it remained an absolutely private one. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which my hon. Friend gave very persuasively. First, the very existence of such a list, publicly known, would at once expose a number of owners who might not otherwise be in the least disposed to sell their treasures to considerable pressure from those in whose interests it lay to achieve the sales. I am not being critical of these people but we all know the silver-tongued gentlemen who would descend upon the owners. This would be particularly true in the case of pictures which were not in the most obvious top-bracket list of those we were anxious to retain. It might turn out to be a positive cue to exploitation.

It could easily be that such a list, made public, would produce such a mammoth demand for public funds that no Government, however well-intentioned towards the arts, could, at least in public, do anything but reject such a commitment when resources are scarce. This could actually be self-defeating.

I can now tell my hon. Friend what I implied only a few days ago to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock. My noble Friend Viscount Eccles is in consultation with the galleries to see whether such a list could be compiled and what it would imply in terms of financial commitment to the nation. I am not in a position to go further because consultation is at this moment taking place. But I think it unlikely that my noble Friend would ever want to make the result of these consultations public for the reasons I have stated.

I hope that this, taken in conjunction with the encouraging figures that I was able to give at the beginning of the debate, may make my hon. Friend feel that he does not support a philistine Government, though he did not say they were. But they must be deeply concerned with priorities, each of which must argue a case effectively against other claims for competing expenditure.

Rural Transport (Leicestershire)

4.44 a.m.

I felt I had to seize this opportunity of raising the subject of rural transport in Leicestershire because of a recent heading in one of the local newspapers to the effect that the Midland Red Bus Co., which has a virtual monopoly in the county, is to axe another eight rural services at the end of this month.

This decision represents all the anxieties and worries we have had in the county for many years on this subject. I want to express the dissatisfaction of many people in the county with public transport, outline one or two of the causes of this dissatisfaction, and have the temerity to suggest where the solution lies.

Public rural transport in Leicestershire has been doing a vanishing act in the last 10 to 15 years. Ten years ago we had 28 railway stations where real live trains stopped frequently. Today we have two in operation in the constituency. The only alternative, bus transport, is operated mainly by the National Bus Company-owned Midland Red. Its activity has steadily diminished and its prices have steadily increased over the years. One of the results was shown in a recent survey by the county council—no fewer than 50 communities, up to a size of 1,000 souls, had no public transport.

One tends to accept this situation as inevitable. People seem to think that as we get more and more affluent—in or out of the Common Market—and get more motor cars, so the need for rural transport decreases. They tend to forget the hardship of sections of the community who are completely cut off from public transport. I could give many examples, but I will confine myself to describing the general tenor of the hardship.

Particularly numerous are the expressions of concern to me by pensioners who cannot get their pensions. Some of these small villages have no post office and so they might have to go to the next village or even further—yet there is no public transport. They have to become supplicants or scroungers of lifts from friends, or they have to arrange for someone else to collect their pensions. Large numbers of them cannot drive or afford to buy a car. This section of the community rely particularly on public transport.

Another hard hit section are the very young and housewives with young families in isolated communities. If the husband takes the car to work, the wife has to shop from a mobile grocery. That is an inadequate way to live and causes a great deal of inconvenience. People cannot afford to take a taxi to shop, pick up pensions or visit doctors, who are increasingly concentrated in towns or very populous areas.

Over the last few years, I have noticed the effect which this form of isolation is having on village life. The character is changing, whether we like it or not. The village now is tending gradually to become the place where only people with motor cars can live in comfort, acting as a sort of commuter centre to the neighbouring towns, and people without motor cars are tending to be forced away. Because of their isolation, and for other causes which curtail village life and activities, such as the closing of village schools, they have to abandon their village and go, perhaps, to live near relatives in the town.

In the several debates on rural transport which we have had over the years, there has been a general expression of view from both sides, including the Front Benches, that a good public rural transport system is essential to the countryside. Yet, despite recognition by both parties of the need to provide a decent public rural transport system, I can only record that during the same time the situation has deteriorated, with public transport either not being available at all or being beyond the purse of people of fragile means who would wish to use it.

I come now to a few suggestions of help to remedy the situation. The Government have an interest in all the methods which I shall propose, though some lie more directly within the power of authorities other than the Government. In the forefront of my mind in this connection at present is the Post Office. I pay tribute to the helpful attitude of the managing director of the Post Office towards the possibility of providing a postal bus service in Leicestershire and elsewhere in the country. Such a service operates in certain parts of the United Kingdom already.

The Post Office has been most helpful in looking carefully into suggestions which we have put to it from Leicestershire, and we have a letter from the Post Office now saying that it will consider any recommendations which the County of Leicester might make for the provision of postal buses on specific routes. These detailed recommendations have not yet gone from the county, but they will go, and I am sure that they will receive sympathetic consideration by the Post Office.

The postal bus is a familiar part of the scene in the countryside in parts of the Continent, and, as I say, it is operating in several places in the United Kingdom. Its extended use should be carefully considered, for it could offer alleviation of the problem, if not a complete solution, where the interests of the Post Office and of the villagers who would wish to use it can be brought to coincide.

Next, I suggest that more effective use should be made of the powers under the Transport Act, 1968, which authorised local authorities to make a grant to local bus companies to subsidise a service or services. It provided that any subsidy made by a local authority to an uneconomic route may be half repaid by the Government through grants. In this respect I must pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, whom I am glad to see here at this early hour, for the helpful way in which he has dealt with the correspondence I have had with him in connection with the operation of the Act. This particular Section is a useful one because it places the responsibility for providing financial assistance to local bus companies upon those to whom it belongs, namely, the local authority which knows the background to the case.

Many people are still under the misapprehension that a 50 per cent. grant is all they will receive. I would particularly like to thank my hon. Friend for his letter of 21st July. I can condense it by saying that the purpose of the letter, which I regard as most valuable, was to point out to me, and perhaps others, that some local authorities, by virtue of the rate support grant which they attract from central government, instead of having their support of an economic bus service subsidised to the extent of 50 per cent., would have such subsidy to the extent of over 60 per cent. As far as I understand it, it could be well over two-thirds.

indicated assent.

I am glad to have my hon. Friend's confirmation of this important point. If the local authorities were more aware of that we might have a better response from them in implementing this part of the Act. How can the Government help directly? I will not raise matters of taxation, which would be out of order, but there is one anomaly which I could not let pass and that is the extraordinary situation whereby a bus undertaking owned and operated by a local authority is corporation tax free and yet a bus undertaking operating in any other way, owned by say, the Midland Red, by the National Bus Company or by a private company, attracts and must pay the tax.

I am in order in calling attention to this anomaly. What it means in my constituency is that hundreds of thousands of people living in Leicester, are served by a bus company owned by the city which pays no corporation tax. Yet my constituents in the adjoining county are served by the National Bus Company, the Midland Red, which has to pay corporation tax to the extent of thousands of pounds annually. It means that every one of my constituents who travels by Midland Red in Leicestershire is directly paying a proportion of the very large sum which Midland Red has to pay in corporation tax and yet the city brethren, just over the border in Leicester, escape corporation tax altogether and are carried at a cheaper rate.

This is an extraordinary anomaly. One would be safe in asuming that it is easier and more efficient to convey people within a city boundary, where routes are shorter and population is denser, than in the country, where routes are longer and population more sparse, and that therefore financial assistance in the way of some form of tax relief was needed for the country services. Yet the emphasis is the other way round. I tabled a new Clause to the Finance Bill which was not selected, so I hope that if my hon. Friend grasps the purport of my argument he will have a word with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this anomaly.

Another direct action by the Government which could assist us in arresting the decline of public transport in rural areas is in connection with a review of the powers of the traffic commissioners. I have been in correspondence with my hon. Friend also on this matter, when I drew his attention to the case of Thistle Coaches and its application to run a new bus service from Lutterworth to Bar-well. The commissioners, strange to relate, granted the company's request despite opposition by the Midland Red, which, although it did not run a similar route, felt it its duty to oppose the application. However, the commissioners hedged their consent with almost impossible conditions relating to the picking up and setting down of passengers, and after a week or so of running the service Thistle Coaches had to abandon it because the conditions were so difficult to comply with.

In the past 10 years, the countryside has been stripped of many forms of rural transport; yet it is still more difficult for an independent bus operator to break a monopoly company's stranglehold than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. In the Thistle case, the extraordinary thing is that the Midland Red felt that it must oppose the application even though it was not running a comparable route. The time has come for the activities of the traffic commissioners to be investigated.

My hon. Friend wrote to me on 21st June in reply to representations I had made to him about what I might call the "dead hand" of the traffic commissioners. He said that he was considering reducing unnecessary controls, that investigations had taken place and that in due course a decision on the lifting of controls on private bus operators would be announced. We in Leicestershire and many other rural areas are looking forward to an early and encouraging announcement from the Department.

I shall not read out a host of letters tonight—this is not the time for that—but I can honestly say that I have had dozens of letters from local councillors in my constituency all asking for the small man, the mini bus operator, the small private coach operator, to be allowed to provide a service in competition with the nationalised giants. I can speak with some authority only about the Midland Red Company, which is a wholy-owned subsidiary of the National Bus Company. It has a dog-in-the-manger attitude to any application by a private bus company for routes in Leicestershire, but that attitude is out of date and not in the public interest. With private enterprise allowed to renew its interest in the provision of fare-paying services on rural routes, the situation could be transformed.

I hope my hon. Friend appreciates that the independents are very anxious to help. The small operators and small coach owners coming from the locality are generally far more efficient. It always disappoints me to see on tiny country roads in Leicestershire a vast 48-seater coach, owned by the National Bus Company, trundling along and practically empty. Why not allow the mini coach operator to do the job in his own area using his own people? He knows the roads and he does not block them to every passer by, and he knows the times when local people want to travel.

I should like to thank my hon. Friend for listening to my few comments. One final aspect of interest is the use of the, railways which have been closed down, and in Leicestershire we have a number. In several instances the lines have been removed and we are left with a strip running for miles through the countryside. Sometimes it is sold off to farmers or local authorities for development. One suggestion for dealing with part of the old Great Central line between Lutterworth and Leicester is that it should be turned into a car-testing track, and there have been other suggestions.

There is a good suggestion for another railway line which has been completely closed for about ten years. This is between Rugby, Peterborough and Market Harborough. This would make a very pleasant walk for many people from the town who would like to walk out into the country and enjoy everything that the countryside can give.

The writer of a letter in which that suggestion was made said that people should be able to walk along these routes without interfering with agriculture and he added that townspeople would like the opportunity of using disused railway lines for the purpose. He asked me to put the matter to my hon. Friend and the local authority concerned, because he felt that it would be a useful and healthy walk for townspeople without interfering with detailed agricultural activities and without being run over by motor cars on our speedy motorways. At the same time as being rural walks for townspeople, they would be useful regions for preserving flora and areas where wild life could continue to exist to some extent. He hoped that we should be able to make some arrangement for these lines to pass on the heritage for future generations. This is a good idea. It is probably not strictly within the ambit of my original subject, but I thought that while pleading for Leicestershire rural transport, I would add a plea for the future use of derelict railway lines with which my constituency is now littered.

5.10 a.m.

I am happy that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) has been able to raise this important subject on a day and in a week when the Government are able to announce further important steps towards helping rural people who do not own motor cars in their public transport problems. My hon. Friend has fairly and effectively painted a picture of the difficulties faced by some of his constituents, especially those in small villages, as a result largely of the deterioration—he described it as the vanishing—of rural bus services. My right hon. Friend and I am sympathetic not only to the problems that my hon. Friend has outlined but also to many of the solutions which he has proposed.

But we are not only sympathetic. We are doing something about it, and to a great extent on the lines proposed by my hon. Friend. For one thing, as my hon. Friend knows, the Government provide a fuel grant for the bus industry and help on the capital side for the purchase of new buses, too. Where appropriate we also willingly pay not only half the cost of rural bus grants under Section 34 of the 1968 Act, but in addition, we pay rate support in respect of a local authority's contribution.

I remind my hon. Friend—he might well pass this on to some of his constituents—that grants need not be restricted to revenue support. They can equally be used for capital purposes, such as the purchase of a new bus. Moreover, they are not confined to "regular" bus services. They can extend to any service, regular or irregular, by bus, mini-bus or hired car, which is, in the opinion of the local authority, for the benefit of people living in the rural areas and which is covered by a road service licence. These grants are very flexible and I assure my hon. Friend that when the applications come to my Department, they are dealt with at once. There is no extensive red tape in this matter.

Beyond that, we have recently made available to the National Bus Company very substantial loans, running to many millions, to meet some of its deficits. I recently had the satisfaction of asking the House to amend the drivers' hours regulations, and I am sure that this has been a help to rural bus services also.

Today, however—as it is now 5.15 a.m., perhaps I should say yesterday—we have taken another quite important step with the publication of the pilot studies on rural transport in two counties, Devon and West Suffolk. Without giving away any secrets, I can tell my hon. Friend that all being well, later this week my right hon. Friend hopes to make known further major proposals based in part on those studies, which are published today, and on the Government's general consideration of how best to help the rural bus to stay in business.

I say "stay in business" because the bus industry, and not only in rural areas, is literally fighting for its life. The transport climate is changing and a great deal of the business of the bus is being taken away by the more flexible and convenient motor car. The whole bus industry is buffeted by inflation and the result in many areas, especially rural districts, of which my hon. Friend has spoken, is that bus companies find it increasingly difficult to keep their conventional buses on our rural roads. Country people, as he rightly said, are being hard hit.

It is a measure of the decline in the bus industry that in the early 'fifties its passengers made about 16,000 million journeys each year; today they make no more than 10,000 million journeys, and that is a decline of just over two-fifths. Over the same period there has been a fivefold increase in the number of private cars. The car's competition is accelerating, so that while car ownership has more than doubled since 1960, passenger demand on the buses has gone down to close to one-third. So the bus industry, I am afraid, is operating in quite different and very much more difficult conditions than 10 or even five years ago. It is having to drive up a hill which is getting steeper in front of it all the time.

The main factors operating against the bus can be set out quite simply. The first is that because the number of bus passengers is declining, bus services have had to be scaled down or, in some cases, withdrawn. As a result, the overhead costs are spread over a much smaller number of journeys, so that for those who still travel on the buses fares have gone up steeply.

The second factor is rising costs, and I remind my hon. Friend that of the costs of bus operation more than two-thirds is wages. This makes the bus industry particularly vulnerable to the ravages of wage inflation. The National Bus Company, for example, had to face wage increases of 5 per cent. in September, 1969; 9 per cent. in March, 1970, and a further 10 per cent. this year. The result inevitably is still higher fares, and these higher fares in turn mean still more passenger loss.

The third problem is operational difficulties. More cars on the road mean more traffic congestion, and the buses, in particular, suffer from traffic delays. So bus services become more irregular and less reliable for their customers, and these difficulties are aggravated by staff shortages—shortages which were made worse by the drivers hours Regulations introduced by the previous Government, though assisted, I believe, by the amendments we made so recently.

All these various factors—operational difficulties, competition from the motor car and pressures of wage inflation—interact on each other, and Midland Red, which runs the bulk of rural services in my hon. Friend's constituency and throughout Leicestershire, illustrates the problem. Its revenues fell by £502,000 in 1970, while its expenditure rose by £738,000. So an estimated operating surplus of about £570,000 for 1970 became an actual operating loss of £669,000. No company, private or public, can possibly go on at that rate, so Midland Red, like other bus companies elsewhere, has not only raised its fares but has cut its services.

I perfectly understand that this produces both hardship and, I think, anger, among bus passengers, but it is simply no good ignoring the situation of the bus operator. We cannot have five times more cars and still keep the same number of buses.

It was against this background that we recognised the hardship of the particular groups which my hon. Friend has identified in rural areas. I think here particularly of the isolated rural elderly, often cut off, as my hon. Friend rightly says. I think, too, of the young who do not have motor cars themselves, and who are often cut off from entertainment or social activities in the evenings. And I think of the housewife, including the wife in the family where the husband may use the car to go to work but who is not able herself to move by public transport during the balance of the day.

It is because the Government were genuinely concerned about the situation of these particular categories of people—and, indeed, country folk generally—that we set up last year the two pilot studies in West Suffolk and Devon, so that we could find out what the position really was for those who do not have private cars, and are dependent for mobility on some form of public transport. The studies have been published, and copies are now available in the Vote Office. Despite the geographical differences between West Suffolk and Devon, there is a remarkable similarity in their conclusions. I quote just one short paragraph from the West Suffolk Report, which says that the elderly:

". . need to get to a Post Office regularly to draw their pension and have reasonable regular access to shops for their weekly needs. They need to be able to visit a doctor when necessary and to get to a chemist to have prescriptions made up. It is probably amongst elderly people too that difficulties of visiting a partner or relative in hospital are most prevalent …"

My hon. Friend will agree that those who have reached those conclusions are genuinely aware of the human need that is created.

The studies bring out four or five main points. First, there is still a rôle for the bus in rural areas, though it is more limited than in the past. Second, unprofitable bus services will need to be supported by local authorities under the rural bus grant scheme. Third, where demand is too small to justify the conventional bus, the large bus trundling empty around the lanes, it should be possible to devise ways and means of putting the available motor cars to better use to meet the individual fragmented and often irregular needs of people without cars. Fourth, there is scope for the greater use of mini-buses, whether on regular runs or to meet a specific requirement. The studies also bring out that postal bus services might well be explored locally where circumstances are favourable, though the surveys do not support the notion that there is unlimited scope for them. I was glad to hear what my hon. Friend said about the co-operation of the postmaster in Leicestershire. I shall be very interested to' hear the conclusions his county council reaches on the matter. Though there is some scope for postal buses, there may not be so much as my hon. Friend suggested.

Above all, the surveys bring out the vital rôle local authorities have to play in the matter. The main decisions on rural bus grant are theirs, and they have a powerful leverage through their control of such ancillary transport activities as school buses and other welfare bus services. There is a need to take a grip on the total transport system and try to organise these things better to suit the local needs. What strikes me about the surveys is that there is in total more transport than ever before in the rural areas, but most of it is motor cars, and the question is how to make better use of that transport.

The Steering Groups make a number of suggestions, and I hope that my hon. Friend will consider them carefully. I am sure that he will find them interesting. They make some useful suggestions which I hope local authorities will take up. For example, can we organise and regularise the giving of lifts in cars? Can the idea of a social car service which has been developed in Lincolnshire be used elsewhere? Can local people—I think here particularly of the voluntary organisations—devise some form of clearing house for providing information both to those willing to give lifts and those seeking to obtain them? Cannot the idea of tokens, to be provided, for example, to the elderly, be developed at a local level?

None of this is to say that the rural bus is finished. On the contrary, the surveys make it clear that there is still an important rôle for the bus, but its use increasingly will depend on local authority assistance through the rural bus grant. The local authorities are by far the best placed to take an overall look at the transport facilities available because of their interest in school and welfare services, and so on, as well as in the Section 34 grant. But the crucial point which is brought out so clearly by the surveys is that the time has come when we must reduce the restrictions on the availability of transport which local authorities and others in future may choose to support, and that is why the Government have been reviewing the licensing system which originated at a time of rapid expansion in the bus industry and has contributed largely to the route system as we know it but which is no longer as relevant as it was to the new circumstances of today.

Therefore, we have concluded that in the present position of the bus industry there is no longer a clear case for such rigid controls as have existed in the rural areas. The emphasis must now be placed on much more informal arrangements involving a multiplicity of small operators perhaps and a great deal more private enterprise. My right hon. Friend will therefore be announcing shortly further important proposals for revising the licensing system and these will be particularly aimed at helping the rural areas. If I may appropriate my hon. Friend's phrase, we shall be seeking to remove what he described as the dead hand. I ask him to await my right hon. Friend's statement rather than ask me to comment on the problem of Thistle Coaches in respect of which an appeal has been made to the Secretary of State.

I wish to say a few words about the problems in Leicestershire which my hon. Friend mentioned. He will know that the Leicestershire authorities have set up a rural bus committee, coordinated by the county council. The Midland Red Company has co-operated with this committee in reviewing those services which are losing money to see whether they can be modified so as to reduce or even to eliminate the need for grant. I understand that the list of routes requiring assistance has been reduced to eight—my hon. Friend referred to eight proposed to be closed—and of these the local authority has decided not to support five. I fear it is probable that those five will be withdrawn.

However, the remaining three will receive temporary grant while the long term needs are investigated. It may well be that against the background of today's and further announcements by the Government the county council will wish to look very carefully at those remaining routes—the Leicester-Hungarton, Leicester-Hallaton-Market Harborough and Leicester-Medbourne routes. Midland Red has indicated to the county council that generally it will not oppose small operator's who wish to take over routes which it has abandoned, but obviously each case has to be considered independently.

I understand that the Leicester County Council is appointing a rural transport co-ordinating officer—and I welcome its decision—whose job it will be to look into the long-term travel needs of the county. This is the sort of development which the Government hope to see, and I believe that it will assist in dealing with the problem my hon. Friend has mentioned.

Would my hon. Friend, tomorrow or the next day, look at my remarks about corporation tax, which I think were interesting?

I had not forgotten them and I will look at them. But I think that my hon. Friend will find that the proposals which my right hon. Friend has in mind, although they do not cover that point, will be helpful in general.

My hon. Friend's suggestion about the disused railway lines is very close to my heart. It is open to local authorities to approach British Railways about its disposal policy and to get a first option on land and to give the appropriate planning permission for the kinds of use which my hon. Friend has in mind. The Countryside Commission and most certainly the new Sports Council will be anxious to see these potential linear parks or bridleways or areas of ecological value brought into the maximum possible use.

My hon. Friend has done his constituents, Leicestershire in general and the whole cause of rural transport a great service in raising this matter so eloquently.

Microcircuit Industry

5.30 a.m.

Last week The Times published an article which began:

"What is it that sold for £3 in 1967, sells for 3p today and caused Sir Arnold Weinstock to decide to close down two factories earlier this month? Answer: a microcircuit."

I wish to draw the attention of the House to the problem that is facing this industry and to persuade the Government to act to ensure that the factories and the expertise associated with microcircuit production is not lost to Britain.

This industry which has developed the manufacture of microcircuits here in the United Kingdom is not an old-fashioned industry asking to be propped up because it has traditional methods and has not modernised itself. It is an up-to-the-moment business and probably is only just beginning its effective and important life.

The factory which I know, which is in my constituency at Witham, is run by G.E.C. Semiconductors Limited and is one of the most modern, custom-built factories I have ever seen. Most of the assembly work is carried out either automatically or under a microscope in conditions of complete sterility and pure air. When one considers that a microcircuit is so small that a fully processed silicon wafer, the size of a new 10p piece, could contain several hundred integrated circuits of the E.C.G/S.L. type used in high speed computers, one gets some idea of the importance of working where no speck of dust falls. It seems to me that this is the type of industry, with high technology and easy transportation, that we require to develop in the United Kingdom.

This factory, built at a cost of between £2½ and £3 million, with investment grants to the tune of about £200,000, was opened only in 1968. It is now threatened with closure. The factory was planned and developed to supply the demands of the G.E.C. company, but when the expansion in the market seemed to be very large, it was decided that G.E.C. Semiconductors Limited should develop not only for the local markets but on an international scale. Contracts were tendered for—and successfully—from organisations in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy and a wide variety of companies in the United Kingdom.

It was not until the second half of 1970, when, one assumes, there was a recession in the American aerospace and defence orientated industries, that the financial state of the company suffered along with all others. The major reason for this was the flooding of the market with cheap products which could not be economically produced in the United Kingdom, or in fact economically produced anywhere else.

What happened can be illustrated by tracing the history of a typical standard microcircuit known as a "quad gate". It was introduced by Texas Instruments in the mid-1960s. This circuit carries the equivalent of three transistors, nine diodes and 13 resistors and is connected to the outside world via 14 leads. It is a tiny thing, smaller than the full-stop in typescript. In 1967 the price of this circuit was £3. But by 1968–69 the price had come down to about 15 shillings, mainly through improved production technology. In August 1969 the price was still about 15 shillings. But by December it had dropped to 5s. 6d. as output zoomed far ahead of demand and companies slashed prices to keep their stocks moving.

Throughout 1970, the price of the quad gate continued to fall. At the end of the year, it stood at a shilling in Britain and, incredibly, at 7½d. in the United States. I say "incredibly", because British industry estimates that the raw materials cost not less than 8d.

The importance of a semiconductor industry in the United Kingdom is twofold. Semiconductors and micro-electronics are the bricks on which computers and other highly sophisticated electric and electronic instruments are made. If we do not have a micro-electronic industry in the United Kingdom we shall be dependent entirely on designs made by other countries. Furthermore, our own design teams will have to modify their ideas to fit in with the components which they can get from the supplying countries. I am sure that hon. Members will realise that this would be a most undesirable situation for a manufacturing country like the United Kingdom.

What is more, at any time the components could be altered, and those that had been manufactured and used in a British piece of equipment could go out of production. This would mean that spare parts were not available, and that a competitor using slightly modified equipment, no doubt supplied by the same country as that which was building the circuits, could take over our markets. It could result also in only sub-systems being sold, and not the small components, thus doing away with the possibility of manufacturing an earlier stage here in the United Kingdom.

One action that it was thought possible for the Department of Trade and Industry to take was to apply the antidumping and countervailing legislation which we have already on the Statute Book. However, it is just possible that this is a non-starter, since the components may be being sold at the same price in the United States or in the home markets of other foreign producers, despite the fact that they are being sold below the cost of production, in which case we should not be able to apply this legislation. But I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of the Department of Trade and Industry to find some way in which support can be given to this lynch-pin industry over what I believe to be a transitory period.

We must face the fact that we are not facing fair competition here. The price has been brought down because overseas suppliers in Europe and North America have been able to use cheap labour in places like Taiwan, Korea and Singapore and bring small components over here.

However, this is not the whole story. Some people are of the opinion that even the raw materials here are more expensive than the present piece of equipment which we get. Such sale prices can be designed only for one purpose, and it is to put our industry into such a financial state that it collapses, with the result that, at a later date, the people manufacturing these components can move in and hold us to ransom for whatever price they require. If our manufacturers go out of business, that is exactly what will happen.

In addition, if that happened and we became wholly dependent on overseas suppliers, they could dictate to us the markets in which we could operate. For instance, some United States legislation could prevent us from supplying computers and other equipment to markets behind the Iron Curtain.

Another factor which I should like my hon. Friend to consider is that, over the last few years, G.E.C. has succeeded in getting together in various parts of the country teams of highly skilled and integrated people living round factories such as the one at Witham, in my constituency. Such teams and such highly skilled labour are not easy to come by. But they are there, and established, and able to contribute considerably to the wellbeing of our industrial society. It would be a national tragedy were we to lose these groups of people and were they to move out of this industry, as well as being personal tragedies for many of them.

I hope that my hon. Friend will look at this particular problem to see whether there is some way that such an important and vital industry to the future of this country can be preserved and developed.

5.41 a.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Brian Harrison) has raised a very important subject this morning. Although he gave notice that he would raise the subject of "support programme for the microcircuit industry", his main argument, as I expected, has been directed towards integrated circuits, because this is where the major problem lies. The House will, therefore, forgive me if at this hour I concentrate on integrated circuits. In any case, as my hon. Friend will realise, integrated circuits are the major part of the microcircuit industry, the other being the micro-assemblies.

This subject of integrated circuits is clearly important. It is important to all those who have been engaged in the development and production of integrated circuits in the United Kingdom, important to the companies in this business, important to all the companies in the electronics industry which use integrated circuits in the equipment which they make, and important to all those other industries which are the ultimate customers for such equipment.

I wish to say straight away that, like my hon. Friend, I have sincere sympathy for those who have recently been made redundant. The fact that the problem is immensely difficult, as I shall endeavour to demonstrate to the House, in no way detracts from my concern for the personal difficulties of the men and women affected.

The current difficulties facing our own manufacturers of integrated circuits are not peculiar to companies in the United Kingdom. Indeed, manufacturers of integrated circuits in all parts of the world are facing these same difficulties. This includes the United States of America. In the U.S.A. a number of big companies have even withdrawn from this business because of the fierceness of the competition. These include two such famous companies as Philco-Ford and Sylvania.

Although I agree with many of the points put forward by my hon. Friend, in face of the evidence of what is happening in the United States, I cannot agree with his suggestion about an American bid to try to undermine the commercial viability of our companies in order that they can take over, because, as he indicated, some of the prices prevailing in America are even lower than they are here.

In my judgment, these difficulties stem from over-production in the world, brought about by increased efficiency in methods of production coinciding with cutbacks in the aerospace programmes of the United States and with the temporary flattening off of demand in other countries, including the United Kingdom.

The large output of certain types of integrated circuits now flowing from the assembly plants set up by United States companies in low labour cost areas, such as Singapore and Portugal, has forced prices down sharply throughout the world.

I will add to the information which my hon. Friend gave to the House by giving some examples of the extent of this price-cutting. In December, 1969, a dual lead flip flop, made on a 50,000 production run, sold at 96p a unit; today the price for the same unit is 12.5 new pence. A. simple quad gate, to which my hon. Friend referred, on a similar production run was 40 new pence a unit in December, 1969; today it is 5 new pence. To give the House an idea of the scale of activities which we are discussing, let me say that the domestic market in 1970 for integrated circuits from all sources was of the order of £17 million and about half of this was supplied by indigenous manufacture. In the United Kingdom the manufacturers of integrated circuits fall into 3 groups, first, the three U.K.-owned companies—Plessey, G.E.C. and Ferranti; second, a number of subsidiaries of American companies, a few of which merely import assembled circuits; and, third, two subsidiaries of European-owned companies, S.G.S. and Mullard.

The entry of the United Kingdom into the E.E.C. will provide opportunities for closer links between U.K.-owned and European-owned companies. I am confident that our companies have this in mind, but they all are faced with strong import competition now. Despite extensive investment by the companies operating in the United Kingdom, about half of the market here for integrated circuits is supplied from overseas sources. The bulk of these imports comes from American companies, although by no means all the imports arrive from the United States. Large quantities arrive from assembly plants in low labour cost areas. I should also point out that last year 43 per cent. of total imports came into the U.K. duty-free, from Singapore and E.F.T.A., where the manufacturing units were almost entirely American-owned companies.

All this indicates the dominant position of the United States companies. This is not surprising, as the market in the U.S.A. has been so large. As my hon. Friend knows, U.S. military and space requirements have been the original pacesetter and remain the major factor in the main advances in this technology and in production techniques. The foreign-owned subsidiary companies have been welcomed to this country. They play a useful part. They have provided employment and assist in providing a spur to the U.K.-owned companies in technology, marketing and management. They are especially welcomed when they set up plants here to perform the important processes and, more so, if they undertake R. and D.

It is disappointing to the Government, and serious for the workers, when, in times of reduced demand, these companies have to reduce the volume of their activities in the United Kingdom. The effects of this can be particularly acute in areas such as Scotland where several of the companies established their U.K. bases.

We expect that these foreign-owned companies will continue to form an important part of the micro-electronics industry in this country, but we must pay close attention to the interests of U.K.-owned companies. The U.K.-owned companies have been in this business from the start. As my hon. Friend pointed out they are not behind on technology. They are well able to provide the important service for the equipment makers' requirements for special circuits custom-designed to meet particular needs. But neither they nor any of the other indigenous manufacturers in the United Kingdom or on the Continent of Europe have been able to match the low prices of the imported standard circuits without incurring losses which, I understand, have been substantial.

This is the position despite the injection of public funds. In addition to some support by the Ministry of Defence and through the Advanced Computer Technology Project, the previous Administration arranged for an investment by the National Research Development Corporation of £5 million in the three U.K.-owned companies. That investment is recoverable by levy on the sales of integrated circuits. The Government are committed to meet the shortfall between the receipts from those levies and the minimum recovery which the Corporation could accept in each year until 1980.

Negotiations will take place with G.E.C. on the arrangements to be made to safeguard the Corporation's investment in the light of the decision now reached by G.E.C. to rationalise its micro-electronics activities and to close the factories at Glenrothes and Witham. This recent decision has been reached against the background of the ferocious competition on standard circuits. I understand that the rationalisation announced by the company is a result of G.E.C.'s conclusion that it can see no prospect of competing in the low-priced circuits. The company will, therefore, concentrate its efforts on special circuits, mainly, but not entirely, for its own equipment requirements. My hon. Friend's suggestion was that the basic cause has been the dumping of standard circuits. The prices of circuits of that type offered in the United Kingdom from overseas sources have been very low. I understand that prices for the same devices have fallen steeply in other parts of the world, including the United States. When the allegation of dumping was made in the debate on the Adjournment on 27th May, the Lord President replied that no evidence had been produced to us that the circuits were being dumped into the U.K. market and this still remains the position as my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aerospace made clear in questions on Monday.

But we remain ready to consider a formal application by this sector of the industry in the U.K. for anti-dumping action. But we shall need prime facie evidence from the industry that the circumstances appear to satisfy the requirements of U.K. legislation. I am glad my hon. Friend recognises the criteria necessary to constitute dumping. It has also been suggested that imports of circuits should be controlled through quotas or a higher tariff. This is one of a number of suggestions also put to us by the trade association for the electronic components industry. We are considering these suggestions, but there are several aspects that need to be taken into account.

Integrated circuits are of no value on their own. Their value is realised when they are incorporated in equipment, making that equipment more reliable, smaller, lighter and cheaper than it would be with discrete components. Some equipments embody large numbers of integrated circuits, and therefore the interests of competitiveness of the equipment manufacturers must not be overlooked in considering action which would tend to increase the price of circuits they need.

The tariff of 20 per cent. ad valorem is a high rate and is significant in relation to special circuits. The bulk of the low-priced standard circuits are imported duty free from Singapore and E.F.T.A. We must also take into account our policy towards under-developed Commonwealth countries and our obligations under trade agreements, especially to G.A.T.T. and the E.F.T.A. Convention. There is also the U.N.C.T.A.D. generalised preference scheme.

It is not possible for me to say anything further tonight. The matter is still being given careful consideration and I have simply given my hon. Friend an indication of some of the difficulties involved. He has also raised the possibility of further direct financial support and we shall consider this. We could not aspire, however, to provide support approaching the scale of the massive support enjoyed by the United States companies. The market sizes are so different, with the United States market of the order of £180 millions in 1970—ten times greater than our own, and the scale of public procurement here, although important, is nowhere near that of the United States.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the points he has.

In our continuing examination we shall take into account everything that my hon. Friend has said tonight on this important subject and I can assure him we have not got closed minds.

Royal Dockyards

5.57 a.m.

The Mallabar Report is a long, complicated and detailed document. It is unfortunate that the Chairman of this Committee was Chairman of Harland and Wolff during 1966 to 1970, during which years the firm lost £8 millions, so he seems hardly the person to whom one would go to for advice.

The report is also out of date, and it worried me that when it was presented the Government appeared to be willing to accept its recommendations without debate. This is why I asked for one tonight. The Royal Dockyards are in a different category to all other establishments. They are like fire stations, with personnel on hand for an emergency. After all, 5 per cent. of their work is qualified as unplanned programmes. With fewer ships, the turn-round must be much quicker, so there needs to be a stand-by labour force.

What surprised me in the report was that the C.E.D. has a headquarters staff of 294 in three new departments. I should have thought that the Director of Dockyard Manpower and Productivity was not necessary, and that the work was much better done locally in the dockyards themselves. What is forgotten is that each yard has a different personality. Having visited all of them, I know that their ways of working are quite different.

At present, the General Manager has no direct authority over recruiting. In paragraph 51, the report says:

"At present, the General Manager has no direct authority over recruiting, promotion or dismissal of non-industrial staff, except in respect of temporary clerical staff."

At present, the general manager has no possibility either for recruiting industrial staff. The manager is consulted apparently on individuals posted in by the civilian management and also in regard to naval officers, although he has no influence over the selection of naval officers. It must be very difficult for him, as only he knows the day-to-day needs. It is ridiculous that the general managers' department operates in a headquarters located at Bath, in the Dockyard Department. How many staff are there now at Bath? This would appear to be the type of department that should be cut down.

Devonport is the only yard that does construction work. The last survey ship was designed and built in the yard, and this could be done again with great saving of money. For example, if the dockyard says it will build a frigate at an estimated cost of £6½ million, it must be built for that amount. It cannot ask for extra money later, as commercial firms do if costs rise. One of the main problems is that the Admiralty is never wrong, which makes local conditions very difficult. Dockyards have also to contend with the Department of the Environment—the old Ministry of Public Building and Works—which adds to their burdens and delays.

I hope that the general managers will not be forced to retire at 60, unless the C.E.D., who I gather will be 60 next year, will also have to retire. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind that many of the general managers have only been doing their jobs for five years when they reach the age of 60.

The work of naval officers is not properly understood in the report. In the United States the naval dockyards are entirely run by naval officers. They are none the worse for that and turn out twice the rate per civilian as United Kingdom dockyards. The report assumes that naval officers have less experience in yards than their R.C.N.C. and R.N.E.S. counterparts. In practice, this is not so. The latter tend to spend more time away on tours in other areas. Also, naval officers have man-management training, besides being technicians and fully qualified for their own departments.

If we want more efficiency we should get rid of the cloud-cuckoo-land atmosphere of Bath. This will help to eliminate the cynicism at yard level because of the continual petty interference, which I find is extremely aggravating, and the inability of Bath to deal with the root troubles quickly. Any normal private industry would be driven mad by the present régime which the dockyards have to put up with, and that is why I am so disappointed with this report, since there is no real suggestion for improvements.

One wants agreement to build rather than to repair. The Admiralty is continually trying to put new wine into old bottles. I suggest that it is cheaper and easier to go for a few modern ships. The "Ark Royal" has proved what can be done, if necessary, to refit a ship, and it was done excellently but I do not advocate that. I regard it as an expensive way of working the yards, and anyhow I would much sooner see that that is not done to the smaller ships in future.

Further, on the question of the use of the yards, one should remember the excellent work done at the time of the "Torrey Canyon" disaster, which would have been much worse if the dockyard had not taken action.

Besides the ordinary work, one has to think of the accident and emergency repair work done not only for the Fleet but for N.A.T.O. This is an obligation we have to undertake, and it comes under the heading of what I call unprogrammed work.

Unfortunately, at the present time there is a tendency to use private contractors for building or repairing R.F.As, and I hope that my hon. Friend will see that this stops. Also, too much contract work it put out, often with consequent delays, and this at a time when all the work possible is needed in the dockyard to help to counterbalance high unemployment, particularly in the South-West.

As regards organisation, I am not discussing the R.O.F.s though I could under this heading. I am dealing only with the dockyards. Unfortunately, they do not have their own Vote as do the R.O.F.s. Dockyard expenditure is approximately £100 million a year, but the figure is clouded by the fact that it has to be split between 18 sub-heads, four Ministry of Defence Votes and 15 Vote holders to P.U.S., P.U.S.(e) or P.U.S.(a), and also now the Department of the Environment. All this causes considerable complication. Why was it not suggested in the report that the dockyards should have their own Vote, as do the Royal Ordnance Factories?

On the question of administration, it is said in paragraph 55 of the report:

"In many instances their terms of reference do not make the project manager accountable for the resources he is allocated nor is he held responsible for any aspects of the work other than the completion of the task by the required date. In other words, the line management responsibilities for the various dockyard functions remain undisturbed and the project managers' functions are superimposed upon the basic organisation."

Then we read that there is one exception; that is,

"where the project manager is a deputy manager and retains line management responsibilities."

That is an extremely complicated way of running things, and I hope that my hon. Friend will look into it.

It should be remembered—it does not seem to be recognised in the report—that the dockyards are building for the Royal Navy, not pleasure cruise ships. Men have to use these ships as their homes. If I wanted to know whether a ship was seaworthy or whether a submarine would behave as it should, I would much sooner have a naval officer do the tests, because he will go to sea in the ship, he will see that it is safe, and he will see also that the conditions are right for his crew.

So let the dockyards get on with the work which they have been doing for 300 years with great efficiency, let them have modern equipment and better working conditions, for in that way we shall get better results.

Paragraph 117(1) says:

"the Area Industrial and Non-Industrial Whitley Committee over which the Admiral Superintendent presides should have no locus in relation to those staff that are employed in the General Manager's department or whose pay is negotiated by the General Manager."

The whole of the Whitley Committee procedure needs revising, particularly with regard to the yards. These should have a greater responsibility for decisions. I worked in the Royal Ordnance Factories during the war and found that the Whitley Committees got bogged down with tiny details of administration, whereas they should take a much greater interest in planning.

Since Devonport is undergoing a £43 million face-lift, I presume—and perhaps my hon. Friend will confirm this—that the yard is in no danger of being closed. I would like this assurance, because it would make a tremendous difference to the whole neighbourhood and employment in the area. I do not take the criticism about there being a high level of overtime at Devonport. The Committee visited Devonport for one morning and did not meet the trade unions. Admittedly, it offered to, but the trade unions, naturally, felt that half an hour was not enough. In my opinion to state "symptoms of unhealthy situations" in the yards is not accurate. We have loyal, hardworking and highly skilled men working in the yards, and the strike record must be the envy of all commercial yards.

We believe that the Navy should act as the customer, and we have always been told that the customer is always right. The R.N. officers play a helpful rôle and they are highly skilled. I am grateful to the Minister who is to call a meeting to talk with dockyard M.P.s. I want an assurance that there will be consultations with each of the yards before decisions are taken. Many changes have taken place recently and it would be unwise and unsettling to make too many alterations and so destroy the pattern of work. There are five study groups working in the Admiralty, and a Departmental feasibility study of the validity of these recommendations is being held. There are also two management consultant exercises. I wonder why it is necessary to have this fantastic number of committees when so little seems to be coming out of them. No wonder people are anxious about their daily work.

My next topic is something not mentioned in the report. It has to do with inventions. The dockyards have a good record for inventions among their employees. This encourages them to help in the working of the yard. They receive only £20 reward. I understand that the judgment methods are cumbersome. They should be quicker. I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been very helpful about one case. I had a letter from him yesterday. I would like to see these people being allowed to patent their inventions and get 5 per cent. of any of the royalties. This would be a great incentive for improving the efficiency of the yard.

I thank my hon. Friend for coming here to reply. He may not be able to do so in detail, but I know that we shall have a further opportunity for a meeting next week.

6.10 a.m.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) for giving me an early opportunity to comment briefly on the report on the Government's civil industrial establishments, which was laid before the House earlier this month. She suggested that the Government wished the report to be accepted without debate. That was a little unfair. We were, indeed, under no obligation to publish the report at all. We did so, however, and, as my hon. Friend has said, I have invited, in relation to the second part of the report, which concerns me, all those hon. Members with interests in the dockyards to meet me next week to discuss the best way to implement those sections of the report which can be implemented and which parts should be implemented.

The first part of the report concerns the Royal Ordnance Factories, which are not strictly within my competence. It is being considered by the new Defence Procurement Agency, and when Mr. Rayner has completed the study he will report to my hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence.

Some of the points my hon. Friend raised spring from the report and some are peripheral to its main theme. I am grateful to Sir John Mallabar and his colleagues for their work. It is true that the work has been overtaken by events to some extent. Nevertheless, the principles behind it are acceptable to the Government, and over the last two years we have taken a number of steps to inject a greater sense of purpose into the dockyard organisation, which was what the report had in mind.

I know that my hon. Friend is not fond of boards and inquiries but we have streamlined the organisation, both under my predecessor's direction and mine, into three new boards. The first is the Royal Dockyard Management Board under the chairmanship of the Chief Executive, with the membership of the three headquarters directors and four home general managers. It meets at frequent intervals to discuss general policy issues affecting the home dockyards. A point overlooked by my hon. Friend perhaps in her criticism of Bath is that quite a few problems are common to the four home dockyards and, indeed, to Gibraltar, and need to be considered centrally. Many of them concern vital matters of manpower and productivity. This is why the Director of Manpower and Productivity has a key post and the Board has the task of reviewing management throughout the four home dockyards and trying to ensure as great a degree of commonality as possible.

Secondly, there is the Headquarters Board, which is again under the chairmanship of the Chief Executive. The three headquarters directors are also members. This goes round the Navy yards to monitor the state of affairs in each and the progress being made with individual programmes.

Finally, there is the Royal Dockyard Policy Board, which is under my chairmanship. The terms of reference are to consider and advise on management policy for achieving the best use of the material and human resources available to the Royal Dockyards. It consists of all those members of the Admiralty Board concerned with the dockyards, plus the Chief Executive and two outside members chosen for their expertise in finance and management—Sir Henry Benson, of Cooper Brothers, and Mr. Richard O'Brien, of the Delta Metal Company.

Following this central reorganisation, which coincided with the appointment of the Chief Executive, we are progressively introducing, as the report recommended and as my hon. Friend mentioned, project managers into all the yards to handle large individual projects, particularly modernisations and conversions, Good examples are H.M.S. "Ark Royal" and the conversion of H.M.S. "Hermes" to commando carrier and of H.M.S. "Matapan" to experimental trials vessel. The most dramatic example of all is the recently completed refit of H.M.S. "Resolution" at Rosyth. This was an extremely sophisticated and difficult job and it was finished on time—a fact which was much admired by the United States Navy, as I discovered when I visited the United States last month.

Paragraph 9 of the report contains certain strictures about the dockyards, referring particularly to the high levels of overtime, waiting time and low productivity. I think that these strictures are now out of date. There has, clearly, been a marked improvement in these matters, and all the indications are that the productivity agreements now operating in each dockyard have done much to remove these specific complaints.

My hon. Friend referred specifically to the authority of the general manager, particularly his authority to hire and fire non-industrials and his authority over naval officers. We have gone some way over the last few years to strengthen the authority of the general manager and to give him a clear chain of command through the chief executive and ultimately to the Chief of Fleet Support, who is the responsible Board member. I think that every general manager now knows precisely where he stands in the hierarchy, and the line of responsibility is clear and direct.

Nevertheless, we have to realise that we are not dealing with a normal commercial operation. We are dealing with something which, whether rightly or not, is part of the Civil Service, and the normal Civil Service rules apply. Therefore, it is not possible to give the general manager the same authority over non-industrials which would be enjoyed by the general manager of a totally independent company.

My hon. Friend referred also to the retirement of the general manager at the age of 60. Here, too, we are bound by the Civil Service rules. In the Civil Service the clear rule is that people retire when they reach 60, and there seems to be no good reason why we should attempt to make an exception in respect of general managers. That is not to say that I do not acknowledge the contribution which they have given to the dockyards, but they themselves would recognise that if we are to attract the right calibre of person that we want in the management of the dockyards, we cannot afford to retain senior staff in excess of the normal time and so deny promotion opportunities to those below. In this we are no different from any industrial or commercial undertaking which seeks to bring its young men along.

My hon. Friend referred to the employment of naval officers in the dockyards. She specifically mentioned the United States experience. While in the United States, I managed to visit the naval yards at Longbeach and Boston and there saw the major part that naval officers play in the management of the dockyards. Indeed, the whole of the higher management of the dockyard is in the hands of naval officers, although I would not go so far as my hon. Friend did and say that nearly all management is. Further down the line individual plants are managed by civilians.

There is a suggestion in the report that the quota system for naval officers in some way prevented flexibility. I do not think that that is true. There is certainly no prejudice against the employment of naval officers in dockyards, and the quota system is for planning purposes only. The chief executive is fully consulted about every naval appointment before it takes place in the same way as he is about all civilian appointments.

The report suggests making certain posts open to naval officers and civilians to which appointment should be made on merit. This would give rise to a number of practical difficulties in career planning, and the way in which we handle the matter at the moment is probably better.

Another matter has been worrying my hon. Friend and a number of other hon. Members who are connected with the dockyards. It is the suggestion in the report that, where possible, there should be greater competition with outside yards and, secondly, that we should consider whether there is likely to be scope for closing a dockyard. My hon. Friend herself mentioned the work put out to contract and particularly the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships. We avoid putting work out to contract as much as we can. Experience has shown that the scope for placing warship work with commercial shipyards is subject to serious limitations. In particular, commercial yards do not have the facilities necessary to handle a modern sophisticated weapons system. The dockyards, on the other hand, are equipped to handle, with certain major exceptions, all work arising from refits. Since it would be uneconomic to duplicate expensive facilities, Ministry of Defence policy is to resort to contract refits only in those cases where the work cannot be physically handled in the Royal Dockyards either because of a temporary overload in certain trades or because specialist plant and equipment does not exist. The recent decision—the first for a long time—to place the refit of H.M.S. "Otter" to contract is an example of the former. It is the first warship to be refitted by contract for many years, and we have no plans to put any other warship out to contract.

As to the second point concerning the possible closure of a dockyard, while no one can be expected to forecast the future for decades ahead, I assure my hon. Friend that we have no plans to close any of the home dockyards. If it were the case that the dockyards were not fully loaded, no one could quarrel with the general proposition in the report that it would be more cost-effective to close down one yard and utilise the remaining three to the full rather than retain four under-used yards; but that is not the case. This situation is purely hypothetical.

As far as we can foresee, the dockyards will have a more than adequate workload in the future. In addition to their normal task of repairing warships, there is scope for the refitting of Royal Fleet auxiliaries when capacity is available. When the capacity is not available, they must be refitted by commercial yards. We also intend to continue to build certain small craft in the dockyards. As my hon. Friend knows very well, we retain the option to build larger vessels at Devonport.

Whatever scale of dockyard operations might be dictated by current needs of the Fleet, we are determined that the dockyards shall continue to improve their efficiency as industrial units. There is evidence that the local productivity agreements, which exist, I am happy to say, in each dockyard, are leading to improvements in date-keeping and containment of costs, and we are anxious to continue this trend in an atmosphere of good industrial relations.

As part of this process, a special meeting of the Shipbuilding Trades Joint Council is to be held on 18th August to consider with the trade unions ways and means of tackling present difficulties, particularly at Devonport, in the balance of manpower, capacity and workload in a manner that will continue to reap the benefits of both management and men of the productivity agreements. The discussion will include such matters as the size of the apprentice entry, retirement policy and the need for an element of retraining if redundancy is to be avoided. I attach great importance to the meeting and hope that it will be a considerable success.

My hon. Friend mentioned also the reference in the report to the Whitley Council. I think that the Committee took a rather oversimplified view of the present Whitley structure. So far as the general manager's organisation is concerned, the present Whitley consultative facilities are satisfactory. In matters of local negotiation, the general manager has independent and full control through the separate joint productivity negotiating committees whose existence is authorised by the Shipbuilding Trades Joint Council. I do not consider, therefore, that it is quite as simple as the Committee appeared to think to set up a Whitley Council for the general manager's organisation at the moment. The way we are doing it, although it may appear to be clumsy, works a good deal better.

My hon. Friend referred to awards and asked whether I thought that £20 was adequate. Probably in many cases it is not adequate, but these matters are dictated as general policy over the whole Government field. I certainly take the point made by my hon. Friend and I will look into it. As she will recognise, I could not this morning promise her any improvement in this regard.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this matter. I think that the report has been worth while, even if we are unable to endorse all its recommendations, and I believe that we are now moving towards a sensible system within the Royal Dockyards which will be of great service to the fleet and to the country as a whole.

Computers (Control Of Personal Information)

6.25 a.m.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to raise what I consider to be a very important subject, though I must show some sympathy for the hon. and learned Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department who is to reply, as I think that I can speak with the advantage of having had some 3½ hours sleep, a shower and two cups of tea. If he can somehow summon up the lucidity which I know he normally shows in this Chamber, I shall be very grateful.

I want to stress from the very outset of my remarks that I am not anti-computer. I recognise that the computer is here to stay, and that it would be foolish to talk of banning a whole generation of computer technology. As with the wheel, the steam turbine and the jet engine it would be impossible to get rid of a generation of technology. My aim in everything I have tried to do in the House relevant to the computer has been to try to adapt it to society and to avoid society having to adapt to it. In essence, I want the computer to be our servant, not our master.

As the Minister knows, I have been responsible for the introduction of the Control of Personal Information Bill, which deals with many of the points I want to raise now. It is a Bill which essentially sets up a tribunal to control the operation of data banks, license their operation and establishes an independent inspectorate. I should like to deal with some of the main features later.

As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows, there are many manual filing systems already existing, and most of them have some of the dangers to which I want to refer. It is because of that that my Bill deals with those also. But the main contribution that the computer makes is that all the old human inertial factors, all the old human errors, and all the old difficulties of getting together complex manual filing systems can be obviated by the computer——

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but he has just let fall something that might put him outside the rules of order if he is not careful. He must not discuss a Bill which he proposes to bring in.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for that reminder. I do not want here to re-introduce the Bill, but I am sure that you will understand that it is very germane to my arguments, although I do not intend to advance those arguments in the context of that Bill now.

The main contribution of the computer to all of us is that it makes the storage, the retrieval and the collection of its information much easier. Its unique contribution to the technological revolution is that it facilitates the collection centrally of large masses of data which previously might have been stored all over the country in filing cabinets or in manual filing systems. The Minister knows of many of his own Government's Departments where such centralised collection is facilitated. He also knows that the development of peripherals and computer software with multi-access systems, and time sharing, and the transmission of data developments which have taken place, have certainly increased the number of access points to the centralised collection. So it is not just by centralised collection that the computer can make a significant contribution, but also in the dissemination of that information, particularly through remote access terminals.

As I am sure the Minister knows, we have at the moment no legal framework for the development of all these networks. I am aware that we have a certain minimal number of examples of case law, but as yet there is no overall, comprehensive legal framework into which the computer should fit. In essence, the problems are with us now, but we do not have the legal tools to deal with them.

Perhaps I may make some reference to the report of the Civil Service Department entitled "Computers in Central Government 10 Years Ahead." It states that on 30th June, 1969, there were already 182 computers in use, and 34 more on order. The Defence Department, the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Trade and Industry are particularly heavy computer users, and especially in some of the Civil Service pay, adminisstration and maintenance systems there are also now quite extensive computer facilities. These figures have already been outdated and up-dated in evidence given to the Select Committee on Science and Technology, Sub-Committee A.

It is interesting to note in that Report, particularly at page 23 onwards, the kind of developments envisaged. We already have the Department of Health and Social Security networks at Newcastle and Reading, and the one at Reading will even deal with individual case work. We have the computer of the Department of Employment at Runcorn, and we shall have the Home Office systems, with the national police computer linked with the central vehicle licensing computer at Swansea. The Lord Chancellor's Department will have a system centred on Kidbrooke, and the Inland Revenue has one P.A.Y.E. centre operating and will have others shortly. The Chancellor of the Exchequer told me in reply to a Question yesterday that we shall have computers in the administration of value added tax. In many modern tax applications the collection of taxes and the administration of our taxation system is possible only if computers are used.

One of my main concerns about the use of computers in the centralised collection of data is that once we start to integrate the data from various sources certain safeguards must apply. The hon. and learned Gentleman will tell me that there are inter-departmental working parties, and that it is only the public sector that will have the information. But on page 44 of the Report to which I have just referred, in paragraph 182(b) and (c), we find references to links with the private sector as well. What is meant by the statement in paragraph 182(b) that

"… the development of links between DHSS, the London Clearing Banks and PGO will be made easier because, fortuitously, all three will be operating with ICL System 4 computers"?

Does that meant that there will be some kind of inter-locking between the D.H.S.S., private bank accounts and the Giro? This kind of thing should be explained in more detail.

Following the recommendations of the Seebohm Committee, and the formation of directorates of social services on the local level, the way is opened up, with the administration of larger Government and local authority social networks, for integration of local and central government social services. We already have proposals of the London Boroughs Association, centred at Haringey, for doing this, very much along the lines of the centralised systems already operated in Alameda County, San Francisco. We have large examples of payment and personal details, not only at local but national level, already kept in the Government's own Departments, for the administration of pay and personnel.

There are many references in the Report to integration. If one keynote emerges it is that of the facilities which now exist for integration, and the desirability of integrating the computer systems, particularly for economies of scale. It is very definitely stated that much of the planning, programming and budgeting work of the Government will need integration.

We have in the current developments all the hallmarks of the kind of haphazard development in the United States, again without any comprehensive legal framework. It is because we have a system developing haphazardly, without any legal framework, a system which I believe does not have the necessary safeguards, that I am particularly worried. I hope, for instance, that the national police computer never acquires some of the overtones of the F.B.I. and Defence Department computers under J. Edgar Hoover, and that many of the safeguards the Americans are now discussing, far too late, will be discussed before the national police computer, with its 700 or 800 terminals, becomes fully operational. The integration of this computer system with the central vehicle licensing computer, which will store not only names and addresses but the ages and sex of vehicle owners, represents a very comprehensive collection of information.

I am aware that many of these systems are still under discussion. The Minister for Transport Industries would not lay claim to the successful working yet of the central vehicle licensing computer at Swansea. The Minister will no doubt tell me that his Department is still studying what can be done with the national police computer, but it is because many of these systems are only now being discussed that we must work now towards legal frameworks.

Another example of a local authority computer project in which two or three Government Departments will have some kind of sponsoring responsibility is the system now being discussed by seven local authorities under the local authorities' computer committee—LAMSAC—under the auspices of the National Computing Centre for the computerised filing of educational and performance data on 600,000 school children. I have raised this subject before in the House, and I was gratified that the Under-Secretary for Trade and Industry shared my concern about some of the problems which could arise.

The power and possibilities of all these computer systems and the potential of computer developments are increasing, not in arithmetical, but in geometrical progression. We are at about the end of a long period of expansion of the computer industry, and the industry must sort itself out and regroup and rationalise to take stock of the rapid developments. Because the state of the computer art is fast developing, we must have a legislative framework now.

I suppose one of the difficulties to which the Minister will refer is that there is a very high personnel mobility in the industry. There is no appropriately recognised career structure in the industry. It is a very young industry in which data processing managers, programmers and even punch key operators change their jobs with amazing frequency. Because of all these fast developments, I was most concerned to see in the Report only one paragraph on page 60, tucked away in an appendix, on file security. This is a lengthy Report and the presence in it of one meagre paragraph on file security highlights the importance of the matter, and the lack of attention given to it.

As Professor Alan Westin has categorised these developments in information, we are moving from the functional data bank procedures to the jurisdictional data bank procedures. Because data banks are being built up which will be capable of making value judgments and decisions on the agglomeration of information processed, we must treat these developments with great care and have safeguards built into them. A mere collection of names and addresses, a mere collection of names and ages or a mere collection of names and examination performance may not enable us to make accurate value judgments on individuals, but once we start to accumulate masses of information from various sources we start to move towards Alan Westin's jurisdictional category of data banks.

All this is highlighted because there have been developments pari passu in the private sector and there have been some alarming examples in the United States, particularly in the credit bureau sector. Worrying links have been developing in the United States between Government systems and private systems. We have credit registers being operated by the United Association for the Protection of Trade, British Data Services and Tracing Services Limited.

I pay tribute to the Daily Mirror which this morning carries a fine article on some of the risks in the private sector in the collection and dissemination of information by private sources. I realise that I am supposed to be talking about computers in Government Departments, but one of the dangers is the temptation to integrate certain parts of the private and public sectors for the benefit of economies of scale. The Daily Mirror has set a fine example in highlighting some of the problems which already exist in the private sector where, in the main, computers are not yet being used.

We have also seen in The Guardian newspaper some horrifying examples of what is happening. There have been accusations about leaks of information from Government Departments—information which in most cases had to be given on a compulsory basis. All this proves conclusively that this information is not as confidential as one may have thought.

Only yesterday The Guardian contained another story about the lengths to which private snoopers and information-gatherers go. I am glad that the Daily Mirror, The Guardian and other newspapers have now latched on to and published the risks involved in the collection and dissemination of this information. We all remember the big exposé in the Birmingham Post at the beginning of last year about the practices to which data systems in the Department of Health and Social Security and even the police lend themselves. I am aware that these services are not yet fully computerised, but they already involve some of the same kind of risks.

On top of all this, we have the peripheral risks involved in telephone tapping, eavesdropping and all the kind of prying which can occur in computer systems. Once people learn how a computer works, there are many ways in which they can get their hands on information to which they have no right of access.

In the United States as a result of the faults thrown up in the systems there people have already reached the stage of tending not to trust the Government as much as they did. I would hate this country to reach that stage in relation to our Government in the matter of private and individual information.

There is a well known saying that an Englishman's home is his castle. Data bank information must have a moat and portcullis as well. In view of the increasing amounts of information which Government departments are able to store on computers, it is essential that people who surrender information feel that it is being treated confidentially.

Until the Government have proved that they can handle this information on a qualified and confidential basis, individuals should perhaps be more suspicious about who is collecting the information and who is to disseminate it.

There was a very good example of this in the recent Census where information was collected for dissemination. Such information was demanded on pain of a £50 fine for non-compliance. The Census contained some very personal information which had to be surrendered. This matter was never adequately explained by the Registrar General's Department. We were told that the work was to be put under supervision or was to be discussed with representatives of the British Computer Society, a body for which I have a great regard. But when I learnt that the B.C.S. was being drawn into the picture only half way through, which probably meant that many of the risks had already been run, I was disappointed. Instead of the B.C.S. acting as some kind of census watchdog, it seems that we were "sold a pup" without teeth or gums.

Furthermore, there are all the dangers of the reaction which society can develop to the collection and dissemination of this information. Instead of personal anonymity and "personality" behaviour, everything begins to become "behaviour for the record". We begin to move towards the veritable "goldfish bowl society", to the state where technical developments mean that previously personal behaviour and private anonymity become public events, recorded, with information collected and stored. It is then that some of the essential ingredients of the quality of life in this country begin to be put at risk.

I do not want to anticipate what the hon. and learned Gentleman will say, but I venture to suggest that he will refer to the Younger Committee. I have testified before that Committee. I am grateful for the courteous way in which I was treated, and I was impressed by the Committee's understanding of the problems.

The Younger Committee's terms of reference include only the private sector. However, it will have to make reference to the public sector, and I suspect that the hon. and learned Gentleman will tell us that there are already interdepartmental working parties on the subject. The trouble is that, by the time that these reports are published, they will be out of date. The state of the computer art is developing too rapidly for them not to be.

It is difficult to understand why the terms of reference of the Committee cannot be widened so as to include the Government sector. Associations ranging from the National Council for Civil Liberties, which has performed a very useful service in drawing public attention to the abuses contained in the systems, to the National Union of Teachers have drawn attention to these abuses.

It would be a fine gesture to extend the terms of reference of the Younger Committee. As the Minister knows, the Conservative lawyers' association is about to issue some kind of report detailing its concern about data banks and credit control. I have no wish to demean the hon. and learned Gentleman's party in this respect, because there have been one or two notable contributions in pamphlet form from it. Great concern was expressed by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite when they were in opposition. Much concern has focussed on the fact that the Younger Committee is considering only the private sector.

I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will indicate to us the Government's thinking on these matters, especialy about possible legislation. I know that I cannot make specific reference to my Control of Personal Information Bill. But when I testified in Washington before the United States Senate Sub-Committee on Constitutional Rights, I was encouraged to find that some of their legislative proposals were similar to my own.

Again without discussing the main proposals of my Bill, it is most important not only that the systems have some kind of independent control, but that individuals have the right to see the information on them that these computer systems already have stored. Every individual should have the right to see a print-out and to challenge the information. The right of verification is very important. I appreciate that there are certain difficulties with police and medical data. But I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me something about the proposals for seeing the print-outs and about verification and challenging of information which ought to be an essential feature of the many systems which the Government have in mind.

I hope, too, that he will be able to tell me about the need for access control and audit trails. I know that various Government departments have large numbers of computer programmers on their staff. A feature of both the last Government and this Government is that they have been reluctant to hand out some of the software development contracts to private industry. They have preferred to keep it in their own hands. There may be a reason for it, but I doubt whether this is the best way of protecting the British computer industry. Because both the Labour and Conservative Governments chose to keep a lot of this software development in their own hands, large numbers of computer personnel on the staff of various Government Departments ought to be subjected to the access control and audit trail procedures.

The hon. Gentleman will tell me I hope about the procedures which the Government may introduce for up-dating the information and setting time limits on its collection. Are we to have any scrambler systems? Are we to have call-back procedures? What kind of visual checks are we to have? I hope that the Minister will tell me that at last Government Departments are coming round to some kind of code of personnel computer practice.

At this juncture I should like to pay tribute to the fine example set by the British Computer Society, under its current president, Alex d'Agapeyell, in creating a code of personnel practice for the industry. It is a fine example of something which is long overdue. I hope that the kind of example set by the B.C.S. will be taken up and promulgated by the various Departments. It is essential in the transfer of personnel from one department to another, and, indeed, from the public to the private sector, that we have some kind of code of practice. This applies particularly to Government departments where this information has to be surrendered on a highly compulsory basis.

What studies has the Department made on the collection of information as some kind of property right? This is one of the theories which has been advanced by some eminent lawyers who have suggested that it might be better if the situation were dealt with legally by considering information to have some kind of property right.

Does the Minister consider that there should be some kind of categorisation of the sensitivity of the information by this House or by another place? After all, some kind of judgment has to be made by this House and by the country as a whole on the sensitivity of this information.

I am aware that I have ranged over a wide topic at a highly unusual hour. I apologise to the Minister for raising so many subjects. I am sure that he will not be able to reply to all of them, but I hope that he will.

We have now reached an important point on the frontiers of the data bank society. I want to return to my original point. I am not afraid of the computer, because, by itself, it is just an idiot calculating machine. It has to be told what to do, it has to be told to forget, and it has to be told to remember. It is the people who work and handle the computer, the industry and the computer's users about whom I am worried.

We are already getting a reaction against the computer. Many industries and individuals who have now had their first bite at the computer are pretty sore about it. They have spent a lot of money on it and is has not lived up to the claims made for it.

I hope that we shall not get an overall public reaction against the computer. People already know that the computer can give them gas bills for £1 million when they have in fact only one gas cooker. I do not want people to get into the habit of knowing, recognising, and having to accept that the computer has all their individual personal details stored away on it.

The situation is particularly acute in Britain, because many of the processes of integration which have happened in the United States will not have to happen here, because we start with nationally integrated systems. It is precisely because in so many Government Departments the systems will be initially centralised and integrated that my concern is so much the greater.

I pay tribute to the work the newspapers have done in drawing attention to this very important subject. There is an article in the Daily Mirror this morning. There have been the Guardian articles. "Action Line" of the Daily Express has drawn attention to problems. There is a great awareness in the Press and increasingly amongst the public at large of some of the risks which exist in the private sector. Those risks are just as endemic and just as large in the public sector. It is in the public sector that I believe that the Government should be setting an example.

I realise that I have set the hon. and learned Gentleman a mammoth task. I regard this as no reflection on him, because I know that he, too, is very interested in this subject. If he could provide me with a small crumb of comfort that at least his Department, and he himself, is aware of some of these problems, and if he could give me some encouragement and some grain of hope that many of these proposals are not merely being considered by interdepartmental working parties but will be actively put into practice this year or next year, I shall feel that my rising at such an unearthly hour has not been in vain.

6.57 a.m.

The hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield) and I have two things certainly in common—we have both had three and a half hours sleep and we have both had two cups of coffee before entering the Chamber. The hon. Gentleman has the complete advantage over me in that it appears that he has already read this morning's Daily Mirror.

I am aware, of course, of the hon. Gentleman's continuing intereset in this subject, of the fact that he has, as he said, introduced during the last Session a Bill to deal with the question of privacy and computers, and of the fact that he has built up a great deal of expertise and knowledge in this subject. I listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman's speech. To a degree, I am bound to disappoint him, because there is little that I can say in reply which he does not know already.

The hon. Gentleman ended by asking me a series of rather detailed questions as to what we foresaw as the future with regard to safeguarding the information on computers. As recently as 11th March of this year, the hon. Gentleman put a similar Question to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. My right hon Friend replied in these terms:

"The Government are making a comprehensive survey of the categories of personnel information held or likely to be held in the computer systems of Departments, and of the rules governing its use … I cannot anticipate the findings of this survey."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th March, 1971; Vol. 812, c. 148.]

Therefore, on the detailed questions, all that I can say is that, without in any way being able to anticipate the findings of that survey, I am sure that everything that the hon. Gentleman has said on this and other occasions will be closely borne in mind and that the Home Department is well aware of the problems the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

The hon. Gentleman is right not to attempt to argue against computers as such. We all accept that computers are here to stay. They are already widely used in industry, in local authorities and in government. The hon. Gentleman referred to his experience in America. I was also in America last year and saw the F.B.I. computer. No one could doubt the advantages of the amazing speed with which details could be produced in helping the police in the fight against crime as clearly something which is going to be used by the police throughout the world. But while one accepts that, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are fully aware of the public concern about their use in storing information about individuals. This concern relates to three matters: concern as to the accuracy of the information which is stored; concern as to the security of that information; and also the feeling that the ability to amass a vast amount of personal details and to have it in such a form which is easily transferrable is in many ways looked upon by some at least as some form of threat to individual liberty.

We are fully aware of these concerns and I would not in any way wish to underestimate the very real problems which could arise in a situation in which aggregated personal details could be passed with ease from one Government Department to another. It is easy to stress the possible mis-use and abuse of computers and the information they store without taking full recognition of the advantages that accrue on the other side. I am referring not only to the advantages, clear as they are, on economic grounds, nor to the advantages which accrue from the efficiency and speed which computers provide. I refer also to the advantage there can be in the security of the information itself. Almost anyone can read a manual record where information is now normally kept in which the individual is easily identifiable. But only those with special skills can read computer language, and even then the information they obtain is meaningless unless they know the code which identifies the individual.

Therefore one can build into the system safeguards which make the security of information held in computers in many ways greater than information now kept by conventional methods if the computers are properly used. I stress the words "properly used" because the Government fully appreciate that if improperly used computer records may facilitate the transfer of records which should not be used for any purpose other than that for which they are first obtained.

It is because the Government recognise this danger that it has put in hand an investigation into the establishment and use of computerised data banks by Government Departments which have been mentioned on previous occasions. On 18th February last year, in reply to a Question from the hon. Lady the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Joyce Butler), the Prime Minister said that:

"An Interdepartmental group under the leadership of the Home Office is making a comprehensive survey of the categories of personal information held or likely to be held in the computer system of Government departments and of the rules governing its storage and use."

The comprehensive survey has been made of the categories of personal information held in the computer systems of Government Departments and the uses to which this information is put are now being examined in detail. The information obtained should enable the Government to consider what action should be taken to safeguard personal details, in the light of recommendations to be made by the Younger Committee on Privacy in the private sector, which is likely to report next year. This is not merely a paper exercise. We propose to put into practice the results of that inquiry.

The hon. Member asked me yet again why the Younger Committee's terms of reference were limited to the private sector. This matter was also raised with the previous Government just before the General Election. Both Governments have thought it right to limit the terms of the Younger Committee, which has an enormous remit. The Home Secretary said that there is the substantial difference between the use of computers in the private sector and those in Government, where there is an existing democratic control.

Until the inter-departmental survey has been completed and the Younger Committee has reported, the Government cannot reach any conclusion about the most effective methods of safeguarding the privacy of information held. But the whole purpose of the inquiry is to find the necessary safeguards and the most effective measures.

The hon. Gentleman rightly stressed that, in the end, the computer is only a device, and that a great deal depends, as in all storage of information, on the integrity of the individuals who are responsible for its use, with the grave and greater danger here of the easy accessibility of a vast amount of information in a short time. But Government Departments have always paid a great deal of attention to the safeguarding of information about individuals. Administrative regulations and statutes like the Official Secrets Acts apply to information held by computers as much as by other means. Of course, in the end, the safety and security of any form of information must come down to the integrity of the individual, to whom the same regulations apply as to other members of the Civil Service.

Computers are purely mechanical devices, which cannot do anything that a human being cannot do, given the time and effort. They just do it much more thoroughly and quickly. The ability to amass such a large amount of information at one point prompts the fear that a wider variety of information becomes subject to the risk of falling into unauthorised hands, because files can be searched so quickly, even at a distance, by the use of remote terminals.

I fully understand and appreciate the concern which the hon. Gentleman expresses, and I have great respect for the tremendous amount of work which he has done in this subject, but I assure him that Government offices are extraordinarily careful about the need to safeguard personal information. This care is reflected not only in the rules to which civil servants are subject but in the security system which must protect such information.

The computer, as a complex mechanical device, lends itself admirably to coding information in a number of ways which would make information stored in it unintelligible to anyone who did not possess the key to the code. The hon. Gentleman knows far more than I do about the security systems which can be applied to information held on computers. I know that he has talked to many people in this field, but I have talked to one or two of the companies involved, and I am sure that he will agree that they always say that, given the money, one can easily build in the necessary safeguards and security system.

I am conscious that I have really said nothing today which the hon. Gentleman was not aware of before, and my answer has largely been to the effect that all these matters are under review at this time. But I understand the concern, and the Government recognise it very well. That is why the review into their own procedure is being conducted. The main safeguard for the present is the discretion of the civil servant involved in handling sensitive information, or information which, if linked with other information, then becomes sensitive.

For the future, we are awaiting the outcome of that review, and we are awaiting the outcome of the Younger Committee on Privacy in the private sector. I am confident that we can deal with the problems raised by the computerisation of personal information well before they grow too large for us to handle. The hon. Gentleman said that it would be no good if the Government's inter-departmental review and the report of the Younger Committee on privacy arrived too late to be of any effect. He suggested that the report of the Younger Committee might be out of date by the time it was published. Incidentally, as I understand it, the clear intention is to publish that report. I say that off my own bat at the moment, but I have always understood that to be so.

Can the hon. and learned Gentleman say whether any kind of results from the inter-Departmental working party will be published?

At this moment I cannot say. But I take note of what the hon. Gentleman says, and, knowing his interest, I shall write to him with any information I have about that.

I do not believe that these reports will come too late to be of use. We are all aware of the advantages of computers. We are all aware of the dangers to which they can give rise. But I believe that the advantages for society as a whole outweigh the dangers.

Medical Laboratory Technicians

7.14 a.m.

Unlike the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department and my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield), I cannot claim to have had the advantage of 3½ hours' refreshing sleep or even a look at today's Daily Mirror. I have been waiting all night and this morning to enter this part of the debate. I sat through the whole of the debate on the situation on Upper Clyde Shipyards and unemployment in Scotland, and I should dearly have liked to take part, but I could not do so because of the rule which lays it down that this is one debate and, if I had entered at that stage, I should not have been able to do so now. I had to make a choice, and, knowing that my hon. Friends were more than adequate to the task of dealing with U.C.S. and unemployment in Scotland, I decided to pursue to the bitter end the task which I had allotted to myself originally.

It is interesting to note that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) and I criticise Whitley Councils on subjects so totally dissimilar. The matter I want to raise deals with medical laboratory technicians. The background is that there are about 10,000 of these in the National Health Service. My union, the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs organises about half of those people. Here I want to declare an interest. The union has said that it intends sponsoring me, but for the duration of this Parliament I do not suppose that this applies. It will in any future Parliament to which I have the good fortune to be elected.

Three other unions, N.A.L.G.O., N.U.P.E. and C.O.H.S.E., organise in total about 1,200 workers. The terms and conditions of these technicians are negotiated by the Whitley Council, specifically by the professional and technical (B) Committee of Committee A on which A.S.T.M.S. has five seats and the other three unions have three seats each. The position at the moment is that on 15th June, 1971, by a majority of 8–5 with A.S.T.M.S. voting against, the unions on the Committee decided to accept an offer to settle a salary and restructuring claim which had been outstanding since April, 1970.

My union informed the secretary of the staff side that it objected to this agreement. On 17th June the staff side secretary replied to the effect that an agreement had been made but that the agreement required confirmation by the Secretary of State for Social Services. At that point A.S.T.M.S. wrote to the right hon. Gentleman asking him to withhold this approval. An acknowledgement was received on 25th June and on 30th June the Department of Health and Social Security issued a circular, No. K/P155/08B, which could be interpreted as the go-ahead, the authority to proceed. The right hon. Gentleman wrote on 5th July saying that he saw no reason for not confirming the agreement. On 13th July I asked the right hon. Gentleman to withhold approval on the ground that the trade union representing half of the employers had voted against the terms of the settlement. I received the reply that the right hon. Gentleman did not intend to withhold approval since:

"The agreement was properly reached in accordance with the constitution of the Whitley Council."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th July, 1971; vol. 821, c. 45.]

I want to deal first with the inadequacy of the proposed salary scale and secondly with the principle involved in union negotiations.

First, I deal with the salary scale. Under the new proposals, there are six main categories of medical laboratory technician. There is, first, the junior technician; the second category is that of technician; the third and fourth are two grades of senior technician; the fifth grade is known as chief technician and the top grade is principal technician.

The salary scale is loaded in favour of the highest grades, with little benefit to the lower. As examples of this, I take the case of the junior technician. A junior technician at the age of 21 will now earn £792 per annum. Under the old scale he received £779. He thus gets a munificent increase of £13 a year. This employee will have an ordinary national certificate, usually four O levels at the age of 16, and a further three years practical training in laboratories plus theoretical instruction at technical college. Although he is not a fully qualified technician, he has a position of considerable responsibility. He takes part in all the technical work of the laboratory and is used in the "on-call" duty system. I could give other examples of the junior technician scale which show proposed increases ranging from £2 per annum to a maximum increase of £18.

The next level is that of technician. This is the first fully qualified level and it requires State registration and higher national certificate in medical laboratory technology, and once that certificate is gained the employee becomes an associate of the Institute of Medical Laboratory Technology. With these qualifications, the first grade of technician shows an increase from the old scale of £1,129 per annum to £1,131—a £2 a year increase. This is for someone who will have spent at least five years from the age of 16 in equipping himself for his career and is generally in his mid-twenties. Unless he is specifically promoted, he will automatically progress up the scale and will reach a maximum, under the new proposals, of £1,830 per annum in twelve years.

The next level is that of senior technician. Here, additional qualifications are necessary. He must have at least four of a staff serving under him or, alternatively, eight years post-registration. From here, further promotion depends upon further qualifications, a fellowship—F.I.M.L.T.—and also numbers of staff under his control. The top grade of principal technician must have 63 of a staff under his control. The top grade in the first category of senior technician will now attract a salary of £1,830 per annum. This level equates with an assistant experimental officer in the scientific Civil Service.

After a series of visits to Civil Service scientific establishments, for example, the Weybridge Veterinary Establishment and the centre at Porton, A.S.T.M.S. maintains that this level should be equated not with an assistant executive officer, but with an executive officer and that the top rank, the principal technician, should be equated with a chief executive officer in the scientific Civil Service, but no chief executive officer is required to have a staff of 63 under him.

Because the only worth-while increases are earmarked for the higher grades, the total extra cost of this settlement is a ludicrous £300,000 per annum for all 10,000 people in this service. The Whitley Council therefore appears to have bought the considerable influence of the top grades. In my opinion and that of the union, there has been a shameless disregard of the needs of the lower levels. A look through the proposed scale will show exactly what I mean, for the increases for people up to the very top of the senior scale are small—£34 per annum is the maximum—but in the chief technician scale there are increases which range from £271 to £427.

So much for the general inadequacy of payment and particularly the poor remuneration of the lower levels. I come to the principle of negotiation. There is certainly something wrong with negotiation machinery which rides roughshod over the wishes of the majority. A.S.T.M.S. represents one half of these employees and we want fresh negotiations to produce a salary structure with realistic levels at all grades, levels which will attract and retain staff at all levels.

This is an urgent matter and we want the Secretary of State to meet us, but in the meantime we ask that he should withhold his approval until a settlement more suitable to all employees is agreed. At a time when doctors in the National Health Service, with very few exceptions, have received substantial increases—I have mentioned this before and I do not object to the relative affluence of the British doctor—and when there is no great complaint, financially at any rate, emanating from the medical profession, it is ludicrous and shameful that the branch of the service which sustains not only the day-to-day investigations which are necessary but those which make possible the much more sophisticated techniques of modern medicine on which health and general well-being of the community so depend should be so shabbily treated.

Pathology, Haematology, biochemistry, histology, bacteriology are all investigations which need the skill of the medical laboratory technician and it is about time that we paid him adequately for this skill.

7.30 a.m.

Perhaps I may start by congratulating the hon. Member for Glasgow, Kelvingrove (Dr. Miller) on exercising his self-denying ordinance in the matter of forgoing the U.C.S. debate and on his successful outcome in persevering, after a protracted night, through to an eloquent morning. I ask him to forgive me if, in speaking to him privately beforehand, I in any sense introduced doubt into his mind about what he should do, but I thought it better to report to him completely the situation, being uncertain how the night would work out. All's well that ends well, at least in this respect.

As the hon. Member has made clear in this short debate, the salaries of the groups of individuals of whom we are talking—the medical laboratory technicians—are negotiated by the Professional and Technical (B) Whitley Council, which is also responsible for the terms and conditions of service of other National Health Service technicians. The management side is representative of hospital management boards and management committees, and the staff side comprises several unions. The hon. Member listed them.

Under the constitution of the Whitley Council, the composition of each side is a matter for them alone. The staff side of the relevant committee of the Whitley Council consists of representatives of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs, the National Association of Local Government Officers, the National Union of Public Employees and the Confederation of Health Service Employees, which the hon. Member described as C.O.H.S.E.

The negotiations which led up to the settlement which is now, unfortunately, under dispute first began, I understand, as early as February, 1970, when the staff side of the Whitley Council put forward a pay claim for a 25 per cent. increase. In June last year, the Council reached agreement on a salary increase of 15 per cent. with effect from 1st April, 1970, subject to any further adjustment which might be justified by the results of a detailed review of comparisons which had been made some years previously of the responsibilities and pay of medical laboratory technicians and com- parable workers in Government scientific establishments.

In June this year, following lengthy negotiations, the two sides of the Council agreed on the adjustments to be made to salaries and grading. These added retrospectively a further 3 per cent. from 1st April, 1970, to the 15 per cent. already agreed, making a total of 18 per cent. overall. I want to make it clear that it was not a 1971 salary settlement which was in question but a modification of a settlement going back to as early as April 1970.

In the National Health Service, students train in service on a good salary whilst studying to obtain the higher national certificate they require to become a medical laboratory technician. They receive £537 at age 16, rising to £660 at the age of 18 if they have the appropriate intermediate qualification, and £1,062 if aged 25 or over. Immediately on qualification, normally at the age of 20 or 21, a technician will automatically receive £1,131 or £21·75 per week rising to a maximum of £1,830 in the basic grade.

The hon. Member has mentioned £1,830 as a salary which might be paid after 12 years. Most technicians, however, will have been promoted from technician and will be earning well into the £2,000-a-year bracket by the time they have completed 12 years' service. After two years, many technicians will be earning £1,359, or £26 a week. Earnings are often higher than this since many technicians often undertake emergency work at night or at weekends. Most technicians can expect to be chief technicians by their early thirties on a salary scale from £2,148 to £2,610. The maximum salary of the class received by a principal medical laboratory technician is £3,465.

After the Whitley Council agreement had been recorded and accepted by the Secretary of State, representations were made by the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs to the effect that they had not voted with the rest of the staff side in favour of the settlement, that in their view the number of seats they had on the staff side did not match the number of their members compared with the other unions, and that therefore the Secretary of State should withdraw his approval of the settlement so that negotiations would continue.

As I have explained, neither I nor the management side of the Whitley Council have any locus in determining or influencing the composition of the staff side. Indeed no records are kept by management of the unions to which individual members of their staff belong. This has been an integral feature of the constitution of the Whitley Councils since they were established. Ever since 1948 representation on the staff sides has been a matter which the unions concerned have resolved for themselves in an orderly and constitutional manner. It is regrettable now that patients should be inconvenienced because a union sees fit to draw public attention to the question of their representation in the Whitley Council.

My Department, although given no formal advance notice of the proposed strike on 22nd July, asked hospital authorities for reports of any incidents of withdrawal of labour and its effect on patient care. The reports we have received so far indicate that the strike action had widely varying effects in different parts of the country.

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Secretary of State has no authority to withhold his agreement? If he has authority to give agreement if it is necessary for his agreement to be given under the terms, surely he has authority also to withhold his agreement? In circumstances in which half of the employees are represented by one union with a smaller number of representatives in the negotiating structure, surely that is one of the occasions on which the Secretary of State could use his discretion, and at least lot us discuss the matter.

As I was trying to explain, this is precisely the field in which, constitutionally and technically, my right hon. Friend cannot take official cognisance of what goes on, because these are strictly matters for the members of the staff side to determine amongst themselves. I cannot on behalf of my right hon. Friend enter in any way into a dispute which might be occurring on the staff side. It would not be proper for my right hon. Friend to exercise discretion in a dispute in which he has no proper part at all.

To return to what I was saying, it seems that in the majority of hospital groups normal or near normal working was maintained, although there were some hospital groups where only emergency services were provided, and normal work had to be postponed. One cannot be certain that postponement of normal work would have no adverse effect but at least the results do not appear to have been serious.

I trust the question of union representation now will be pursued constitutionally. In the meantime, I have authorised hospitals to implement this settlement which has been properly reached in accordance with the constitution of the Whitley Council and which, although high in comparison with settlements being reached elsewhere, represents in my view a reasonable resolution of the outstanding issues of last year's general pay agreement.

Eec White Paper (Short Version)

7.39 a.m.

I ought to do the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs the courtesy of bidding the time of the morning to you, Mr. Speaker, to the hon. Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison) and, last but not least, to the gentleman who guards our proceedings from beyond the Bar of the House, because the Under-Secretary has been away from the Chamber for only a moment, as many of us might have been, and is already, I see, on his way back. Therefore, I assure the Minister that he has missed nothing of the case I hope to put to him.

The matter I wish to raise is of considerable constitutional importance. I shall have to adduce a fair amount of evidence and a number of supporting reasons to buttress my main case. I tried to raise the matter on an earlier occasion, as soon as the large-scale circulation of this Government pamphlet started. I have since had correspondence from people wholly unknown to me, including some whose political leanings I am in no position to judge. One, writing from Birmingham, told me that he has also written to the Leader of the House. I do not represent Birmingham, nor have I any particular influence there. Birmingham is not known to be represented by people opposed to our entry into the Common Market. This gentleman says that it is because he regards it as a matter of considerable constitutional importance that he has written to the Leader of the House, pointing out to him that he completely missed the point when I tried to raise the matter on an earlier occasion. He ends by saying:

"Would you continue on this as soon as you can, because it is of very great importance?"

That is one of the reasons that moved me to seek to raise the matter in this debate.

I very much regret the absence of the Leader of the House. I am not raising a Foreign Office policy matter; there are other occasions for that. I want to put on record my profound disapproval of the absence of the right hon. Gentleman. I have only kindly feelings for the Minister, as I think I showed only a few minutes ago, and as he has known over the years. I always welcome his presence, and I would have been pleased to see him sitting next to the Leader of the House, perhaps holding his hand intellectually and whispering in his ear occasionally. But the right hon. Gentleman's absence is a grave constitutional act of negligence, which I will raise again when the House is rather more fully attended on another suitable occasion. I know that I shall have the support of other hon. Members when I do.

The absence of the Leader of the House, who is responsible for Government propaganda and for co-ordination of arrangements for publications such as we are considering, is regrettable. I told him of my view the other day when the Prime Minister was sitting next to him. Therefore, it is not a new point that I am trying to make. It is clear that he was very much concerned. The matter was raised with him not only by me from the back benches but by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who speaks for at least half the country, and, if Bromsgrove is anything to go by, for well over half the country. It is a serious dereliction of duty, no matter what the hour, for the Leader of the House not to be in his place to reply to this debate.

My second point concerns the Government's generally shifty attitude on the matter. They have evaded every opportunity to engage in debate on the subject. They have made no effort to give a full and detailed explanation on what is re- garded, as I shall seek to prove from independent sources, as a grave departure from our normal constitutional procedure.

I now submit my main case. I believe it is unlawful for the Government to have engaged in the distribution of a political propaganda pamphlet through Her Majesty's Post Office. I believe it is against the decisive precedents, some of which were rehearsed the other day by the Leader of the Opposition. I do not want to weary the House by repeating them, but the Minister will have been briefed on the matter and will know the precedents to which I refer. But beyond that I believe that this pamphlet is quite different in kind from all the pamphlets and Government publications which were debated the other day between the Leader of the Opposition and members of the Treasury Bench. I wish to indicate the difference I have in mind by talking about categories of Government publications.

There is the very large category of publications on our welfare schemes, which includes information about the entitlement of ordinary people. I dare say that, with safety regulations and the implementation of various Home Office Acts, announcements on welfare schemes form the bulk of Government publications. These can never be a matter of dispute because the intention is very simple, namely, to bring home to the citizen something which Parliament has decided, for which the money has been voted by this House which cannot be voted by any other authority. Therefore, naturally, publications to bring to the notice of individuals things to which they are entitled form a large category of Government publications.

Then there are publications on what I call safety and security regulations dealing with poisonous drugs, and so on. They are an absolute necessity and cannot form, except in individual cases when medical opinion may differ, a subject for controversy. All these Government publications are published in ordinary garb and their drafting is left to people in the Departments concerned. I dare say that Departments or Ministers call in a public relations officer or two to change the language to make it more lively, although I have no great taste for the language normally used by public relations specialists. I much prefer the more staid language of the members of the Civil Service. But if the Government want to liven it up a bit and in fact do so, nobody utters any dissent.

The pamphlet which I am talking about, "Britain and Europe: A short version of the Government's White Paper" says under the headline "The Historic Decision" on page 2, "A Message from the Prime Minister". He is the kind of public relations officer not normally called in by a Government Department to write a preface to a Government publication. It is a rather unusual course for a Government Department to take. The message from the Prime Minister is a propaganda statement made in terms he is quite entitled to use both as head of the Government and as leader of the Conservative Party. The only difference is that he should pay for it himself. He must find the financial resources to pay for it.

I say seriously that there will be other major occasions on which senior Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister, who have been responsible for this departure from our traditions, will be held financially responsible for what they have done. I have no doubt that this will be the outcome of what will be a very big case of great constitutional importance.

The Prime Minister, talking of the shortened version of the White Paper, says in that preface:

"Finally, it explains why the Government firmly believes that the terms for British entry into the European Community are fair and reasonable."

That is a highly partisan point of view. Anybody who has listened in this House to the Common Market four-day debate will have heard the opinions of those fortunate enough to be called. And if they know a little about the opinions of those who sat here throughout the debate and were not fortunate enough to be called and who hope to speak in October, they will know that many hon. Members hold diametrically contrary views to that expressed in that preface by the Prime Minister. Nobody can disagree with that statement of fact.

We do not know what will be the figures in any vote in this House. We read reports of arm-twisting, of secret messages and of corridor interviews with Whips—and probably scorpions as well. It is no good the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) shaking his head. I do not expect him to confide in me what he thinks about his own Members. The Party to which I belong was in Government for six years, so I know a little about the kind of work the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends do in Government. He will not persuade me that what I am saying is not true.

A great battle is taking place at the moment for the minds and feet of hon. Members to direct them into the kind of Lobby the hon. Gentleman wants to see them enter. He has no certainty about the number of Conservative Members he will be able to dragoon into the Lobby in support of the Prime Minister's preface. Hon. Members on his own side, to my certain knowledge, have not yet finally made up their minds. He cannot contradict any point I have made.

This political process is being gone through with great seriousness and the entire political career of many hon. Members is at stake. I do not say this lightly because there is news this morning in the Press of the resignation of one Member on this important issue of entry into the Common Market, into which the propagandists are trying to lead us. If I am not right about that resignation, perhaps the Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or his colleague will deny the story.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but I wished to say a word about his earlier point before he left the subject of Whips. Having spent three years in the Conservative Whips' Office, I think that the hon. Gentleman is confusing the way in which his party Whips contact him and his experience of them with the way in which the Whips of the Conservative Party behave.

That is the most barefaced statement that I have heard in the whole of my time in this House. If the hon. Gentleman wants to know, I was not referring to my own experience. My own Whips have always treated me with great politeness. But, of course, not every hon. Member has been here as long as I have, and younger Members sometimes get different treatment.

The decision which has to be taken by hon. Members in all parts of the House is quite unprecedented in the history of this House. Therefore, what the hon. Gentleman says is without foundation. There is a great deal of arm-twisting. People are concerned about their political futures. It is a highly controversial matter.

The other day, over the heads of right hon. and hon. Members opposite, the Prime Minister appealed to the assembled agents, chairmen and vice-chairmen of Conservative Associations. It is well known that the right hon. Gentleman is preparing a vote on a three-line Whip, and using every means to get some constituency chairmen to put pressure on individual Members.

Press publicity has been given to a case in which a Member was told by his constituency chairman that, if he addressed people attending a garden fête organised by the local Conservative Association, he must keep off the Common Market. One might well talk about playing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. How can a Conservative Member of Parliament address a meeting of his political supporters today without saying a word about the Common Market? Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite will be laughed out of court if they carry on like this.

The country will say that the Government are spending large sums of public money on propaganda, when their own Members are muzzled by their party bigwigs and prevented from referring to the subject if they happen to be called upon to address a Conservative fete. The more the hon. Gentleman keeps quiet and the less he provokes me into giving further details, the better it will be for his party.

I return to the main subject, not without some regret, because the matter to which I have just referred is also of some importance. In his preface, under the heading, "The historic decision", the Prime Minister is using public money to try to sell what is now a strictly partisan political case to which no approval has been given by the House of Commons. He is using money which has never been voted by this House for the purpose.

That brings me to my second main point. It is established constitutional doctrine that only this House can grant supply. Down the ages, the House has always been jealous about what is done once supply has been granted. We know that more than one grave constitutional crisis has arisen over the misuse of money granted for one purpose and used for an altogether different purpose. This has always been regarded as exclusively a matter for the concern of those who grant and control supply.

A Government which acts unconstitutionally and unlawfully in this respect acts unconstitutionally and unlawfully on a matter on which the House of Commons has been built up. From a recently published book by an authority on the House of Commons in the eighteenth century, what clearly emerges, if nothing else does, is that it has always been held that, even when the other place had a share in deciding financial matters, the decisive power rested finally with the House of Commons.

When we take constituents round the House of Commons we usually take them to one of the genuinely oldest parts in Westminster Hall where, in 1397, a Parliament sat. We have knowledge of that Parliament, because one of our finest historians in the last 70 years, Professor Helen Cam, of Cambridge University, wrote a paper on it. Fragments of what a Member used to report to his constituents, having come away from that Parliament, have been preserved. The two most important points in that early tradition are supply and grievances. That is how it all started, that is how it has continued, and we are now on supply.

If it were thought for a moment that this was a matter which concerned only Members of Parliament, who, after all, are politically committed to one view or another, I would call in aid an opinion published in the Daily Telegraph of 20th July, 1971, which the Minister, or those who brief him, must have seen. That newspaper is not known as a supporter of many of the causes which I normally support, except that both the editor and I are against sin. Beyond that, I think that there are few causes on which we agree.

The Daily Telegraph has the great journalistic advantage of often publishing in its columns things which contradict what it says in its leading articles. That is a sign of good journalism. However much I disagree with its leading articles, I find that newspaper, as a newspaper, indispensable.

I first tried to raise this matter on Monday, 19th July. On the next day, 20th July, the Daily Telegraph published this article, which I want to read into the record of the House of Commons. Under the headline,

"Government limits on its publicity",

it states:

"Sir Fife Clark, Director-General of the Central Office of Information since 1954 under three Governments, has probably the most authoritative judgment to offer on whether or not the Government are 'off side' in publishing a free popular guide on Europe before Parliament passes the terms.

The subject provoked another storm in the House yesterday. Sir Fife, of course, can hardly be expected to comment as a public servant. But last year, expecting to retire at the end of 1970, he wrote a book in the new Whitehall series about the Central Office of Information."

I come to the most important part of the quotation:

"Accepting, he says, that the Government has a duty to undertake campaigns for public information, a line must be drawn between advocacy and factual presentation. In practice, deliberate informational activities paid for out of public funds cannot be carried out in an atmosphere of prolonged controversy …"

He goes on to state a basic Central Office of Information convention:

"It is that while legislation is in progress no money is spent on publicity material; but as soon as a new scheme has become the law of the land … the Government has a duty to make its details widely known."

That ends the quotation from Sir Fife Clark. The Daily Telegraph puts in this concluding line:

"On that, strictly, C.O.I. find H.M.S.O. out of bounds."

That is a mild sporting way of putting it. It is what I prefer to call unlawful action and unlawful expenditure of public money for party political propaganda purposes by the Government—by the executive. Many battles have been fought on the very question of the rights of the executive without authority to spend such public money.

I come to the third main point of my submission in which I want to put a few precise questions to the Government. Although the Leader of the House, who ought to have been in his place and whose duty it is to reply to this debate, is not in his place, I hope that the Under-Secretary has been given answers to these questions.

I have the utmost admiration for the hon. Member, but I regret his intemperate attacks upon my right hon. Friend the Lord President. My right hon. Friend is, indeed, as the hon. Gentleman said, responsible for the coordination of Government information policy, but he has asked me to reply, as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sponsors the funds involved. Therefore, we are involved and it is perfectly proper that I should be here this morning.

I am making no personal or intemperate attack upon the Lord President. I am making the constitutional point that, although I would have found it perfectly normal for the hon. Gentleman, as a Foreign Office Minister, to sit next to the Lord President, the man responsible for the coordination of Government information policy is the Lord President, and in a case of this importance it was his duty, having been involved in the controversy, to be in his place to answer the debate.

I fully accept that in Adjournment debates matters such as road blocks in constituencies, which are matters of just as great importance to those who live in the street concerned as is this matter, are delegated by the senior departmental Minister to one of his junior Ministers. That is not what we are discussing. We are discussing a decision made by the Lord President with his authority which has not been made by the Under-Secretary, because he has no authority to take such a decision. The matter has been handed down to him; it has been decided somewhere else. It is a matter of Cabinet consideration. I put on record again my profound complaint that the Lord President is not in his place to answer the debate. It is a dereliction of duty of a most serious kind.

I return to the questions that I wish to put to the Minister. I hope that he has the answers. If he has not, it will underline my point that the Lord President should have been here. First, several sums of money have been mentioned in the Press. I want an accurate Government statement today in reply to the debate as to the sums involved. The sum of £800,000 has been mentioned as already having been committed by the Government for this purpose and it has further been suggested in reputable publications that £2 million is about to be spent between now and 28th October. I want the Minister to say what these sums are, how much has already been spent, and how much public money is being committed between now and 28th October.

The Government have said they do not like the state of public opinion over entry into the E.E.C. and therefore they are going to reverse public opinion. Any Government or political party is entitled to do that. It was the Opposition's view that we did not like the trend of public opinion on 18th June, 1970 so we have set to work to reverse that trend. But we are spending our own money on it. We do not have all that much but we spend what we can.

We won the Bromsgrove by-election—a safe Conservative seat. We are eagerly waiting to go into Macclesfield, which is being deprived of parliamentary representation because the Government are afraid they will lose it as they lost Bromsgrove. It will be interpreted as an adverse vote on the Prime Minister's proposal to enter the E.E.C. The Prime Minister does not wish to hold a referendum, and I agree with him. I support a General Election because people have to be heard before the final decision, but the Prime Minister does not agree with that idea. Here is a golden opportunity to consult a section of the electorate who are, if recent years are anything to go by, mostly Conservative inclined.

The Prime Minister has no intention of submitting his views to the electorate at Macclesfield but he is expecting the Post Office employees there to distribute his party political propaganda. It is an unlawful act which should be stopped.

If it were once to be accepted that before the House of Commons had given its approval, in contradiction of the convention outlined by Sir Fife Clark, the Government have a right to proceed to a political propaganda campaign and use public money, then we might be on a most dangerous road. This is twice so because of the grave importance of the issue involved. Members of the executive will be able to claim, on matters equally political but not as important as entry of the Common Market—virtually no matters in the years to come will be as important, so the field is wide—that this Government got away with it, so the door is open to any other Government.

If I were not so much of a constitutionalist or so much concerned that the democratic process should not be interfered with, I might look forward to wonderful days in future. My hon. Friends will be in power and we may wish to proceed—I will urge this upon them—with the public ownership of the insurance companies and the control of a great deal of our national investment. Taking the precedent of the Minister's conduct, that Socialist Government would be able to print ten million pamphlets making the case long before it had been approved by the House of Commons, giving a lurid picture of nefarious restricting influence of privately-owned insurance companies on investment, making a partisan political case—and they could have it distributed freely to everyone by means of civil servants, employees of the Post Office. I await with great interest the views which would then be expressed by hon. Members opposite in Yorkshire, where there are some very eloquent Conservative Members.

We should be perfectly entitled to do it, but I hope that we shall not, because I hope that we shall be able to stop the present Government from pursuing this course. That is far more important. That is why this correspondent, who gives no indication of political party, has written to me that the Lord President did not see the point. This is far more serious and important than any political proposals which either party might produce. What is involved is the belief of the ordinary citizen in the propriety of our political processes. This is all the more so at a time when many people are already gravely doubtful about the procedure that the Government are adopting on the main issue.

In a Gallup Poll the other day, people were asked two questions. To the first— "Are you in favour of Great Britain joining the Common Market?" —57 per cent. said that they were opposed. To the second, "But what do you believe will actually happen?"—87 per cent. said, "We shall go in anyhow," It is a very dangerous state of affairs that 87 per cent. of the people in the foremost Parliamentary democracy in the world should be convinced that, no matter what the views of the majority, the Government, somehow or other, decide for them. Many people already have grave doubts about how this process is being conducted.

This is not simply an argument between pro-and anti-Marketeers. There was a special feature article in The Scotsman yesterday morning. The writer of that article, a feature article, says that there seems to be no possible way of consulting the electorate. I disagree with his conclusions, but there is a newspaper basically in favour of what the Government propose to do yet coming to that conclusion.

What the Government are doing now twice aggravates the offence. While there are already as many as 87 per cent. of the people convinced that, no matter what their views, they will not be able to take part effectively in the decision-making, the Government are using public money in a vast publicity campaign to push their own case. Plainly, those who are concerned beyond this particular decision for our Parliamentary institutions have grave cause for concern. As has been said on both sides—the Prime Minister has said it himself more than once—to take the British people into this new institution without their willing support would in itself be a grave offence against democracy and would endanger the whole enterprise on which the Government are engaged. To use the time between now and 28th October, when a decision has to be made, to spend large sums of Government money on a one-sided argument aggravates the offence twice over.

If the Government persist in their present course, they are in duty bound to offer equal facilities and equal money to those who take a contrary view. This is one reason why I want to know what the sums of money are, and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will give the House and the country accurate figures. In the absence of such facilities afforded to those who take a contrary view, there is only one honourable course for the Government to take. If the hon. Gentleman cannot do it today—this is one of the reasons why I regret the absence of the Lord President of the Council—then this afternoon or tomorrow the Government should announce that they have stopped the operation until further consideration, that they accept the authoritative view of Sir Fife Clark and others who have spoken on the matter with their experience and knowledge, and that they bow to the opinion expressed throughout the country by pro-Marketeers as well as anti-Marketeers that they have been acting wrongly and unlawfully.

If the Government are not prepared to make such an announcement, I promise them that all my right hon. and hon. Friends, together with a great many people in the country, will not leave the matter there. We shall call the Government to account again and again, so that the nation may clearly understand what they are doing, and that they are doing it in the teeth of determined opposition from this side of the House.

8.23 a.m.

In response to the remarks of the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson) about Conservative Whips, I can only say that I have always received courtesy and consideration from the Conservative Whips, just as I have, of course, from the Chair.

There are a number of us on this side who do not feel altogether happy about the precedent which has been set in the matter of the pamphlet because, from now on, the situation will be somewhat different. I can well understand those who are strongly in favour of the Common Market taking one view, and those who are strongly opposed to our entry taking another. But a number of us find ourselves in something of a dilemma. I am full of admiration for those who have strong views on the subject one way or the other.

In being in a dilemma I am in good company. Like a great many people I am in favour of the Common Market economically speaking but am not at all happy about it politically speaking. Those of us in this situation have been subjected to a certain amount of abuse and sarcasm from those who have decided views. It should be remembered that ours is a position representing that of a large number of people. One of the problems in talking about the Common Market is allying it to the daily lives of those whom we represent.

The two situations are often somewhat different. Figures have been quoted by those in favour and those against about the Common Market until I have become statistically drunk. Figures have lost meaning. Good as they may be, the time has come when we should say "No more."

Talking of pamphlets, I am not sure that we should not have a pamphlet on the Treaty of Rome. Having looked at that Treaty in some detail I have to say that I find it difficult to understand. When I put my signature to something I like to know what it is I am signing, and I cannot feel happy about putting my signature to the Treaty of Rome. No doubt a legally trained person would understand it a little better, but it is very difficult for the ordinary layman to follow.

There has been this talk about our being "Europeans". I am not quite sure what a European looks like or feels like. When I go overseas I carry a British passport and I usually get on a great deal better with someone who speaks my own language and with whom I have a common background. Geographically speaking, we are within the European orbit so I presume that we are Europeans. This question is a red herring.

A number of people talk about the long-term advantages and short-term disadvantages of joining the Market. In saying that there are short-term disadvantages, Market supporters are saying to a lot of people, "Sorry, chum, you have had it." The Chancellor talked about pensioners being protected, but this is not enough. We want something much more concrete for these elderly people in the community who have often suffered over the years. It is to them that we owe the fact that we live in a comparatively free, happy and prosperous nation. As to the long-term advantages, it is often said by those in favour of joining that they are so long term that they are difficult to quantify.

Again, this is not good enough for me, I want a little more detail. I want to know what I am in for in the short and long term. There must be some short-term advantages and we should know more about them. It must be borne in mind that something which is large is not automatically the best. Distance does not always lend enchantment to the view. I know that in my part of the West Riding, although communications are today much easier, London appears to be further away and more difficult to reach. The seat of power seems to have less consideration for those in the provinces than ever before. I hope that the question of a Parliament in Europe will not remove it further from us than is the case with Westminster.

When I spoke about being——

Order. The hon. Lady is getting very general. This is a debate on a rather specific issue.

I am sorry. I will try to return to the specific question. The right hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore) mentioned a tariff barrier of 7½ per cent. not being important. I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not here, because I should have liked to tell him that there is a great difference between a tariff barrier of 7½ per cent. and a tariff barrier of 0 per cent., for it is the difference between having a market because one is competitive and having no market at all because one cannot sell competitively, and a tariff barrier of 7½ per cent. is therefore a great disadvantage to this country, as is any tariff barrier anywhere.

The Common Market will plainly have to have a European Parliament. A number of people have expressed better than I can the problems of electing a European Parliament and deciding for what it will be responsible and for what Westminster will be responsible. We have had far too much vagueness about this, and we ought to have much more detail. The pamphlet says very little about the responsibilities of a European Parliament and nothing about the civil servants.

If there is one thing that will be important in the Common Market it is the British civil servants who will be representing the interests of this country. It has been said that our civil servants will be Eurocrats, but we are told that the French are no less French for being in the Common Market, and I hope that the civil servants who represent this country will be more pro-British than anybody else has ever been, because if they are not prepared to look after our interests, we are sunk. I hope that they will be the most fanatically pro-British of any civil servants.

Those of us who are not happy about the political aspects of the Common Market have these doubts. I hope that my hon. Friend will explain why the pamphlet says so little about these matters and that he will be able to set our minds at rest.

8.32 a.m.

I should like to say how glad I am to see the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson) at this early hour of the day. He is one of the more active and more articulate of one's colleagues in the House and it is always interesting to hear his views, even if it is so seldom that I am able to agree with him. He has raised an important issue and I am glad of the opportunity to reply on behalf of the Government. For the second time this morning, I must take issue with the hon. Member about his attacks on my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council. The Votes referred to are the main Supply Estimates, which is why I am replying to the debate.

The hon. Member has quoted at length from a gentleman called Sir Fife Clark. I should like to quote from Fife Clark's book on the C.O.I.:

"For administrative purposes it is responsible to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Treasury Ministers deal in Parliament with any questions about finance, staffing, efficiency. But the Ministers whose departments it serves take responsibility for the work carried out on their behalf and answer for this in Parliament."

That is why I am answering this debate—because of the specific nature of this forum. I know that the hon. Member knows that and I absolutely accept that in what he says he is not throwing darts at me. However, I should like to get that on the record and I am sure that he appreciates that it is right that I should.

I should like to say how much I appreciated the few remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Miss Joan Hall). She cheers us all up in the early morning by being here and we are always glad to hear her. Many of us will remember her very good maiden speech. Although I cannot answer in detail all the issues she raised, many were covered by the debate which we have been having for the last several days in the House, and I am sure that she will therefore forgive me.

Much of what the hon. Member for Penistone said has been covered in question and answer in the House over the last few weeks, but I should like to run over one or two points again and to try to answer some of the questions which he put to me. The hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) was also to have introduced this subject, but he is not in his place this morning, a matter of regret to hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. This subject covered almost the whole spectrum of official publications. It would not be profitable to deal with the matter on so wide a front this morning. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman made it plain that he did not wish to cover the very wide spectrum. On the narrow front exposed in the hon. Gentleman's speech, however, I would like to make the following few remarks.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned specifically the publications issued in connection with Britain's application to join the European Communities. He particularly mentioned the short version of the Government's White Paper. There have been issued not only the short version of the Government's White Paper but also the factsheets. The present Government, like their predecessors in 1962 and 1967, have issued free throughout the country the leaflets known as factsheets. Their purpose is purely informative. The House may also like to recall that booklets on Britain and the European Communities were also issued for sale by previous Governments.

I would like to say a few words about the short version of the White Paper. Before deciding to embark on the production of information publications in connection with the Common Market negotiations, the Government naturally considered previous instances. Some were from the time of previous Administrations when it had been found necessary to make available information on important public issues, and from these cases the Government concluded that there was ample justification from past practice.

The ample justification was, first, for giving the country clearly and simply the information which has been in wide demand. The hon. Member will, I think, admit that there has been a wide demand for information from the general public on the application to enter the E.E.C. The second justification was for reporting the outcome of the negotiations which were initiated by a decision supported by an overwhelming majority of the House of Commons. Just over five million copies have been distributed, mainly to post offices. Their stock has had to be doubled during the past fortnight because of public demand.

Among the many cases considered by the Government as having a bearing on the question of precedents were the following, which I would like to repeat. The first is a free pamphlet in wallchart form called "Upswing". This was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council when answering questions following his statement in the House on 19th July. It was one of a series published by the Department of Economic Affairs and sent to industrial firms, trade unions and other recipients in July, 1967, following publication of the Government's statement on application to the European Economic Communities, Cmnd. 3345. It is an attractive and well-designed document.

A second precedent for a short version is the White Paper on Fuel Policy, Cmnd. 3438, published in November, 1967, of which 240,000 copies were given free to the National Coal Board for distribution within the industry, and a short version of the Geddes Report on the shipbuilding industry, Cmnd. 2937, published in March, 1966. Altogether, 100,000 copies were sent to all those in the shipbuilding industry. The Shipbuilding Industry Act was enacted in June, 1967.

The hon. Gentleman talks about giving information, he has not dealt with the paragraph from the Prime Minister's preface which I have quoted and which is purely political propaganda. It says that the Government firmly believe that the terms of British entry into the E.E.C. are fair and reasonable; but the House has not yet decided that. Being a reasonable man, how can the hon. Gentleman compare 240,000 leaflets on a subject such as he has described with the distribution of 10 million of these propaganda leaflets?

I will come presently to the point about the introduction by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister if the hon. Member will allow me to make my speech in the way I intend. As for comparison, while we would all agree that the shipbuilding industry is vitally important to the country, I think the hon. Gentleman would be the first to agree that the application to join the E.E.C. is of even greater importance.

In addition to those I have mentioned, between 1950 and 1967—and this is very important, and has not been brought out before—Budget posters were issued annually as soon as possible after Budget day and before the passing of the Finance Bill. Copies were made available for display in post offices, and were sent to local authorities, industry, educational institutions and political parties. I underline those dates—between 1950 and 1967. I have some copies of the posters here.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Prime Minister's introductory message for the short version of the White Paper. It seems to me and to Her Majesty's Government that it is perfectly natural that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister should contribute an introductory message to it. His endorsement of the terms simply echoes the conclusions contained in the White Paper itself to which he himself referred in his statement to the House on 7th July introducing the White Paper.

I should like now to make a few observations on the conventions. The hon. Gentleman quite rightly said that I would prefer to call them conventions—there are no rules. First, however, I would like to answer his other main question, which was on costing. The total cost of the present programme, including present plans, would amount to £647,550. This figure includes a sum of £191,000 for the production and distribution of the short version of the White Paper. This is the present situation. There are no plans at present for further initiatives. I think that that statement covers the hon. Gentleman's question. Any detailed breaking down of what we are spending he can get from the various replies, which have been published in HANSARD.

Is the Minister now, on behalf of the Government, giving the House and the country an assurance that no further money, beyond this £647,000 already committed, will be spent between now and 28th October on further pamphlets or any type of Government propaganda in favour of one partisan case?

I think that I made the position quite plain, but I will repeat what I have said, because it is important, and worth repeating. The total cost of the present programme, including present plans, would amount to £647,550, including £191,000 for production and distribution of the short version of the White Paper. There are no plans at present for further initiatives. I do not think I can go further than that at the moment.

We feel that the convention which has generally been observed since the early 'fifties, though it has not invariably been the case, as I have already indicated, was broadly set out in two publications, "The Government Explains", by the Royal Institute of Public Administration, and the Whitehall book on the Central Office of Information. This convention amounts to the following: if legislation is not in progress, or immediately in prospect, a short version of the White Paper may be made available to the public.

It is perhaps worth repeating that there have been only 5½ million copies of the short edition of the White Paper—not the five to ten million implied by the hon. Gentleman. The decision taken by the Government was based on past practice, but it also took account of the exceptional circumstances—wide, longstanding and continuing demand by the public for information on the subject, and the need to report on the outcome of the negotiations which were initiated by the previous Government and were supported by a massive majority of this House.

Does the hon. Gentleman reject the case made by Sir Fife Clark, which I read into the record of the House, or does he accept it?

I cannot make any comment, and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman would expect me to make comment, on a report in a newspaper, which is what the hon. Gentleman read out.

Disabled Persons (Attendance Allowance)

8.45 a.m.

I want to raise briefly a matter of some importance that is entirely different from the last issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson). It concerns the administration of the constant attendance allowance, the introduction of which was seen by hon. Members on both sides as a much-needed measure. At the same time, I think it was realised by many of us that there were difficulties about defining those who were to be helped, and that inevitably many people would be disappointed when they found that the allowance did not come to them because their circumstances, however sympathetically viewed by anyone else, did not qualify under the tests laid down.

But a case has arisen in my constituency which suggests that the allowance provisions are being given an interpretation so narrow as to have become an absurdity. I have written to the Minister giving the facts of the case, which I shall briefly outline to the House now. It concerns a Mrs. Crickmore, the wife of a fireman. She suffers from multiple sclerosis, and her condition has gradually worsened over the years. Her husband has looked after her for over 25 years. She is now quite unable to help herself, and needs constant attendance. I have seen her, and all she can do is move around with difficulty in her wheelchair. For everything else she needs help—to get up in the morning; to get washed and dressed; for cooking, eating, drinking, and medical attention; to clean her house; and to read. Someone else has to open the newspaper for her. The one thing she can do without turning over the page is the Daily Telegraph crossword, which is laid out in front of her. She needs help for the wireless to be turned on or off, and, although she can lift up the telephone, she cannot reach it before it ceases ringing, because of the difficulties of getting there in her wheel chair, and she cannot dial.

She receives assistance from a district nurse and a voluntary help, and, above all, from neighbours, while her husband is at work. She is blessed with very helpful neighbours, to whom I pay tribute. There are lilting machines to help her get into bed, her husband has arranged for a hoist to help her get into their car, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society is helping to provide her with a constant alarm system at night.

This seems to me to be obviously a case of someone needing constant attendance. The only time Mrs. Crickmore does not need it is when she is asleep, and there must be very few people who are never awake. If ever there was someone who would appear to come within the definition of the need, she is such a person.

When I discussed the case with her husband previously I said that at least she would be helped when the constant attendance allowance came into operation. It would not be anything like enough compensation for all the expense which her husband had incurred, but at any rate I thought that there would be some compensation. We then learnt that the allowance had been refused. This was a bombshell not only to her husband and her doctor but to me, because I never envisaged that the provision could be so narrowly drawn that such cases would be excluded. Her doctor says that she is right at the top of the list of disabled and that if she were more disabled she would be a hospital case. So I cannot understand why the allowance has been refused. There is no appeal except on a matter of law. There is provision for a review if there has been a mistake of fact, ignorance of material facts or a change of circumstances.

I thought it important to raise this matter in the House because it puts a question mark over the whole scheme. I ask the Minister how many people have applied for the allowance; how many people are likely to be helped by the allowance; and what are the criteria under which a case like this can be refused assistance?

8.50 a.m.

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taverne) for raising this matter and for his persistence throughout the night in order to be able to do so. I will deal first with the general questions he asked and then say something about the case to which he referred.

This is a new allowance. Incidentally, it is called the attendance allowance as opposed to the constant attendance allowance, which is somewhat different and which exists in the War Pensions and Industrial Injuries Schemes. This is a new venture in dealing with the disabled. It has been supported by both sides of the House, and I think it can be fairly said that the preceding Government and the present Government are joint authors because a great deal of the preparatory work was done by the previous Administration.

We regard this as a very hopeful first step in providing more help for those who are badly disabled, the civilian disabled, than is now available. We have estimated—it can be no more than an estimate—that up to 50,000 of the most severely disabled people will be drawing £4.80 a week from December on top of any other benefits to which they may be entitled. Therefore, for the first time the disabled people outside the War Pensions and Industrial Injuries Schemes will be getting a benefit of their own. I emphasise that this allowance is a start. We hope that, having felt our way and having dealt with the most severely disabled, we shall, in the light of experience gained, be able to extend the allowance.

What are the criteria on which the allowances are based? There are two mainly. The first—and here I quote from the Act—is that a person must be

"so severely disabled physically or mentally that he requires from another person, in connection with his bodily functions, frequent attention throughout the day and prolonged or repeated attention during the night."

However, this requirement, clearly would not cover all severely disabled people, particularly the mentally disabled. As a consequence, an alternative requirement is that a person must be

"so severely disabled physically or mentally that he requires continual supervision from another person in order to avoid substantial danger to himself or others".

The hon. and learned Gentleman asked how many people and what sort of people are likely to qualify. The sort of people expected to qualify correspond approximately with those described in the inquiry carried out on behalf of the Department and others by the Social Survey Division of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys as falling in the two top categories of most disabled people. The results of the inquiry were published in "Handicapped and Impaired in Great Britain." The survey suggested that there were 24,000 such people over the age of 16 living at home. To these have been added children from the age of two and adults living in residential accommodation—possibly up to 50,000 people in all.

There would, however, be severely disabled people needing a lot of help by day who would not qualify. Some would require some help at night, but not enough to satisfy the requirements of the Act. We have been working on the basis that up to twice as many people might claim—100,000 in all. So far—and I emphasise that these are early days and the allowance does not come into payment until December—there have been some 30,000 claims, and the process of assessing them is in its early stages. Therefore, it is not possible for me to give the House any relevant figures of the number of successful claims that we are likely to have by December of this year.

I come to the way in which the procedure is working on the initial work by the patient's general practitioner and the way in which the Attendance Allowance Board itself is proceeding. The Act provides for the medical requirements to be decided by the Attendance Allowance Board set up under the Act. The Act provides for up to 10 members; at present there are eight members, including one lay member. A board of this size could not cope with all the claims expected in the six months which we have allowed to deal with them before the first payments go out in the week commencing 6th December. The Act gives the board power to delegate its functions in individual cases to medical practitioners.

The board has appointed as delegates medical officers of the Department and medical practitioners experienced in war pensions and industrial injuries boarding work. It is not possible for these doctors to see the claimants, and, in general, they rely on a report given on a comprehensive report form by the disabled person's doctor. Where the board or the board's delegates are not satisfied that the requirements of the Act are met the insurance officer has no alternative but to disallow the claim.

I come to what follows from that, and this is directly relevant to the personal case raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman. The claimant's right to apply for a review or to appeal are set out on the notice of disallowance sent to him. Against the insurance officer's decision there is a formal right of appeal to a local tribunal, but the tribunal has no power to award an attendance allowance where the board is not satisfied that the medical requirements of the Act are met. There is no right of appeal on the medical issues themselves.

A board consisting of the best qualified people, medical and lay, having been set up, it would not be possible to appoint a higher tribunal. However—this is the significant point—there is a wide-ranging right of application for a review. The Act provides for review on the grounds, usual with benefits of the National Insurance Act, of relevant change of circumstances, or ignorance of a material fact, or mistake as to a material fact. Additionally, however, the board may review on any ground—for example, mistake as to law or error of judgment—within three months of the original determination.

Mrs. Crickmore was advised of her right to apply for a review and we assume that she wishes to do so. She will be visited as soon as possible by a doctor, not her own, and she and her husband will have the opportunity to make their observations to him. Her case will then be re-submitted to the board. If the board is unable to make a decision in her favour, copies of all the documents will be sent to her and she and her husband and other representatives will have the opportunity to make further observations upon them before the board makes its determination. I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman will appreciate therefore, that it would not be right for me, now that this case is being reviewed by the board, to comment further on it.

In this short debate, I hope that I have been able in the first place to reassure the hon. and learned Gentleman about the working of the new allowance. Equally, I hope that I have been able to assure him that the case of Mrs. Crick-more, for whom and for whose family we all have the utmost sympathy, is being examined with care and sympathy.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We learned from the "tape" last evening that, in the view of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, we are now engaged in "open war" in Belfast. I wonder whether any indication has been given to you that our proceedings should be allowed to continue in order that we might debate the issue which the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) wishes to raise.

Hear, hear.

No such indication has been given me.

rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The House proceeded to a Division—

Mr. JASPER MORE and Mr. HUGH ROSSI were appointed Tellers for the Ayes, but no Member being willing to act as Teller for the Noes, Mr. SPEAKER declared that the Ayes had it.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I now have Tellers——

Order. The Tellers' names must be put in before the Question is put a second time. So the Ayes have it.

Question put accordingly and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

Committee this day.

Traffic, Dorrington

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That this House do now adjourn.—[ Mr. More.]

9.3 a.m.

It is not the most exhilarating of exercises to make the same speech on the same subject in this House, even when it is made two Parliaments later to two different Ministers in two different Governments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More), who I am glad to see present, could probably discuss this subject with much greater authority than I, were he not bound by the Whip's vow of silence.

Perhaps the best way in which I can start the debate is by repeating my opening remarks in the debate on 9th March, 1966, when I last raised this matter. On that occasion, I said:

"The matter that I want to discuss, and about which I have been in correspondence with the Minister, is the events surrounding the traffic problem of a village called Dorrington, about 6½ miles outside Shrewsbury and in the centre of my constituency. It has a population of about 300, and it is on the main Shrewsbury-Hereford route. The village is at present in the process of dying It has been condemned to death by the traffic on the roads today. It is traffic, and nothing else, that is doing this."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th March. 1966; Vol. 725, c. 2353.]

I lived in this village for a period. I left because I had two children and, in my view, it was a miracle that serious accidents had not occurred. The traffic was bad in 1965 and 1966, but it is infinitely worse today.

When I last raised this matter in the House, the late Mr. Stephen Swingler, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, said that the Government intended that the road should be widened to 24 ft. and that the speed limit, which was openly being ignored, should be enforced.

It is worth looking at what has happened. The road has certainly been widened. On the speed limit I have recently been told—I am not altogether sure that I understand what it means—that the 85 percentile speed of cars is now up to 38 miles per hour. I take that to mean that the average speed of 85 per cent. of the cars using this road is 38 miles per hour. I am not talking here about a few Minis passing through the village at 38 miles per hour; I am talking about enormous lorries which pass through the village day and night. I do not want to exaggerate, but "thundering" is the only way I can describe how they go through the village.

As to the road widening, Mr. Swingler said that, in many ways this would be counter-productive to what I was trying to achieve. My information from local people is that the situation now is a great deal worse as a result of the road widening. One resident has told me that what he calls three "bumps" a day take place in the village. There are skid marks all over the road, and there is one on the pavement. Incidents, if one can use that word, are occurring constantly.

I have not visited the village for about two weeks, but my latest information is that on 3rd July there was an incident involving a child. Statistics are often quoted which suggests that the accident rate is so-and-so, but many of these "accidents" are not reported. I doubt whether that particular incident, to which I have a witness, would ever reach my hon. Friend's Department.

Other matters include a bridge on the south side of the village. The walls of that bridge are regularly knocked down and have to be replaced. Hedges in and near the village are frequently mown down.

I now turn to Mr. Swingler's second point, which concerned the 85 percentile speed of 38 miles per hour. This figure was arrived at from inquiries instituted in a recent review. The result of the review was that traffic passing through the village was ignoring the speed limit and travelling at 38 miles per hour.

What do the Government do? They do not enforce the speed limit, which is what Mr. Swingler undertook would be done. They turn over in their minds whether they will raise the speed limit to 40 m.p.h., the implication being that if people ignore the speed limit at 30 m.p.h., by raising it to 40 m.p.h. they will then be two miles per hour within it. It is a strange doctrine and is based on a fallacy, because everybody knows that the only result of raising the limit to 40 miles per hour would be that everybody would go through the village at between 45 and 48 m.p.h.

The village is suffering terribly from this traffic problem. It is cut in two because of the increase in traffic, much worse than was the case in 1966. Most of the children live on the opposite side of the road from the school which they must attend. That is an extraordinary indictment of planners.

I should like my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to promise four things. First, I want him to tell me that any idea of raising the speed limit to 40 m.p.h. will be scrapped. Second, it would help if the word "slow" were to be written on the road at the approaches to the village. Third, I want an undertaking that the speed limit will now be enforced. Fourth, I want him to give me a date for a bypass. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow will support me in saying that there has been talk of a bypass for the best part of a quarter of a century. Nothing has been done, although much money has been spent on alterations. I was about to describe them as "minor" alterations, but they are more than that. All the alterations have achieved exactly the opposite of what is necessary to preserve the life of the village.

In an age in which society is increasingly conscious of the value of preserving amenity and of the dangers of environmental pollution, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has an opportunity to show that he means business. I hope that he will give me the four undertakings for which I have asked.

It has taken me 26 years in the House to get the Adjournment at the end of the Consolidated Fund Bill.

9.12 a.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Sir J. Langford-Holt) has indeed done his duty by his constituents in bringing this matter frequently before the attention of the House and to the attention of successive Governments. He, very properly on behalf of his constituents, wants to see progress.

I have carefully noted the points my hon. Friend has made. I will particularly bear in mind and look carefully into what he has said about skid marks, about the number of bumps which it is alleged occur, and about the incidents, one of them involving a child.

On strictly transport grounds I cannot hold out very much hope for my hon. Friend. Only on environmental grounds can I at best open a slight but still only a very slight, chink of light, and even that on the far horizon. I say this at the beginning so that there shall be no misunderstanding about the main tenor of my remarks.

I have had the opportunity of reading my hon. Friend's previous remarks, some of which he referred to. I have also seen the correspondence he has been having with my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Development.

I will briefly recapitulate the position. The main road through Dorrington village is a trunk road. Therefore, my Department is the responsible highway authority. Both sides of the road are developed for approximately one-third of a mile, and in consequence there is a very wide mixture of traffic—local and through vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. Improvements to the road were undertaken some years ago following the undertaking given to the House, when a 24-ft. carriageway with a 6-ft. wide footpath was put in through almost all of the village. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend knows, at the southern end of Dorrington it proved impossible to widen the footway or the carriageway without knocking down a lot of property. I know he rightly opposed that but it meant that at this point there was a pinch in the road because it was not practicable to extend the 24-ft. carriageway all the way.

Traffic passing through the village is now subject to a 30 m.p.h. limit which it is the statutory duty of the West Mercia police authority to enforce. Following a request by my Department in accordance with our general national policy on these matters, a review has been undertaken of speed limits throughout the county. It is being concentrated where road improvements have been carried out in order to relate the speed limit to the condition of the road. The review stems from the experience that motorists are less inclined to comply with unrealistically low speed limits than they are to comply with limits which seem to them to be reasonable and realistic.

Retention of unrealistically low limits puts the whole system into disrepute. All of us here have a split personality on this. When we are behind the wheel we go at a prudent, realistic speed. We are disinclined to take notice of speed limits which seem unrealistically low. But when we are pedestrians, particularly in our own villages or constituencies, we take a much more restrictive view of speeds and wish to see the motor car slowed down to an extent that, if we were behind the wheel, we would consider unreasonable in the circumstances.

There have to be some national criteria therefore. As a result of the review Salop County Council has recommended that the speed limit in Dorrington should be raised from 30 m.p.h. to 40 m.p.h. It and my Department consider this is in accord with the criteria laid down in spite of the "pinch point" at the southern approach to the village.

The West Mercia police authority supports the county council in this conclusion. It believes that the 40 m.p.h. limit would be much more enforceable than the old limit and that an enforceable limit is of a greater safety factor than one which is unenforceable. It is only fair to say that the proposal is opposed by the Condover Parish Council and the Atcham Rural District Council. In his last letter my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State indicated that he would reach a conclusion on this proposed increase as soon as possible. We have therefore been giving most careful consideration to the proposal and to the opposition to it.

I will explain the criteria that we have applied in order to frame a judgment. We have considered the type of road involved. It does not on any national comparison justify a speed limit lower than 40 m.p.h. Indeed, it might justify a higher limit than that. The pinch point is a special factor, but on the highway considerations there is no case for speed limits below 40 m.p.h.

The second criterion that we applied, again in accordance with our national policy, concerns the speed at which the majority of vehicles now travel along this stretch of road. The standard that we set, on the basis of great experience, is the 85 per centile points rule—the speed below which 85 per cent. of motorists travel. This concept is a rough and ready guide to what is reasonable and realistic and shows the level at which the police will be able to enforce a speed restriction on the 15 per cent. who are travelling dangerously fast.

This concept has been built up by wide experience. Indeed, raising many unrealistic and ill-observed limits from 30 miles an hour to 40, far from resulting in an appreciable increase in speed, often leads to a reduction in accidents. It is supremely important from the point of view of public respect for speed limits that they should be realistic and sensible. Only then will they continue to command, and indeed deserve, respect from the motoring public. All our measurements in Dorrington show that the 85 percentile point speed is well over 30 miles an hour. My hon. Friend himself mentioned 38 miles an hour. These grounds justify the raising of the limit.

We have also examined the other basic criterion, the accident rate. I appreciate that hon. Members may complain that the accident rate is a difficult measure to go by, because in a sense one must wait for something awful to happen before the statistics rise to the level at which it would be justified, but there must be national criteria, which must apply in Dorrington as well as anywhere else.

In Dorrington, I am glad to say, the accident rate is very low. It works out at 1·3 per million vehicle miles, which compares very well with the national criterion that we normally apply for 30 m.p.h. limits—namely, four accidents per million vehicle miles. On these grounds, one could not justify a limit of only 30 miles an hour.

So on all the grounds I have mentioned the evidence seems to us to be conclusive. We have therefore decided that the proposal—I emphasise that it is a proposal—to raise the limit to 40 m.p.h. should be advertised within the next four weeks. This does not mean that the limit will be raised tomorrow or in the next four weeks. It means that the proposal will be advertised and that any objections received will be considered very carefully before a decision is made. My hon. Friend's views this morning will certainly be considered with the greatest care.

I have considered the position of the pinch point at the southern end of the village, because this is something that occurs in different parts of the country. I will ask the divisional road engineer to examine this point and see whether, whatever is done about the speed limit, some indication might be given of a point of potential danger. I do not want to give an absolutely firm undertaking on this, but in view of what my hon. Friend has said, and in view of what I know of that pinch, we will carefully examine this possibility.

This means, I take it, that there is no question of knocking down the house on one side or the shop on the other in order to make the road wider and increase the speed.

This is the dilemma, of course. The answer to my hon. Friend's question is that there is no intention of doing that, but, obviously, if there is a constriction at one point, and if the speed limit were to be raised, it may be that some indication of possible danger at that point ought to be given. But I am giving no undertaking here. I am saying only that we shall look at it.

I come now to the long-term possibilities and the question of a bypass. Following the issue of the 1970 White Paper, "Roads for the Future", a White Paper of the previous Administration, a study was put in hand of the Hereford—Shrewsbury length of the A49 to see what required to be done to bring this route up to ultimate dual two-lane standards, the results have turned out to be rather disappointing from my hon. Friend's point of view. They show that a dual carriageway for this stretch between Hereford and Shrewsbury would yield an extremely low rate of economic return on the investment. This is a national measure, and it works out here at something between 8 and 9 per cent., which is much lower than the economic return which we normally expect when agreeing to go to dual carriageway standards. On this basis, I must tell my hon. Friend that any claim for improvement of this road to dual carriageway standards, when seen in the context of other priorities and the limited funds available, must be regarded as, at best, a very long-term possibility.

I can, however, offer one small chink of light in the gloom, though it is a very small chink. This arises from the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State last month of a major expansion of the roads programme, which, I am glad to say, includes funds for a special study not simply of the Hereford-Shrewsbury route but, quite rightly, I believe, of the whole length of the A49 between Ross-on-Wye and Whit-church, including the smaller stretch in the middle.

This study will for the first time allow consideration to be given not only to the economic return, as was the case before, but to environmental improvements, a point which my right hon. Friend has rightly stressed in his policy. The environmental improvements would be measured by the gain to the quality of life through the diversion of long-distance traffic, and heavy goods vehicles in particular, away from towns and villages. This is a new way of looking at this type of problem.

Another helpful aspect of my right hon. Friend's new arrangements is that improvements need not be put off till the dual-carriageway standard is justified. In the past, it has been necessary to find justification for dual carriageway before any work of this sort was put in hand. Henceforward, it will be enough if relief can be obtained by providing high-standard single carriageways initially, with by-passes and lengths of dual carriageway to come in as and when necessary. So it will be sufficient to meet a somewhat lower criterion if the environmental gain is substantial.

I must not raise my hon. Friend's hopes too high. It is too soon to say precisely what decisions will be taken about the route of the A49 through Dorrington, but I assure him that there will be no undue delay in putting this study announced by my right hon. Friend in hand and acting on any recommendations made in regard to the environment and on the single carriageway question.

I realise that my hon. Friend will find my reply disappointing. He may well think that progress is too slow. But I ask him to bear in mind that, with the many calls on our limited resources, the selection of improvement schemes must be based on priorities which take account of national requirements. It is, therefore, for this study, newly put in hand, to prove Dorrington's case. The case which my hon. Friend put this morning has been powerfully argued. I undertake that we shall consider most carefully the objections to the raising of the speed limit before any final decision is made.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Nine o'clock a.m.

Volume 822: debated on Tuesday 27 July 1971

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