Last night, Mr. Speaker, I removed the Mace from its position. I deeply regret my action. I was hoping to be able to apologise to you and the House when you returned to the Chair last night. That was not possible, and I now take this first opportunity of apologising unreservedly.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It arises out of the voting last night. I understand from reports that the result of that vote arose as a consequence, it is suggested, of a breach of a "pair". I do not know whether that is the case, and I appreciate that pairing arrangements are not a matter for the House. But it is a substantial convention of the constitution that there should be such pairing arrangements, and in any other context a result achieved as a result of a breach of such an arrangement would not be a valid result. In those circumstances, I feel that it would be appropriate if the Patronage Secretary were to make a statement to the House, either now or after the recess, about the circumstances in which the voting took place. I felt it more appropriate that this matter should be raised from the Government Benches because it is we who carry the responsibility.

I take the voices of the Tellers. I know officially of nothing else. As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann) rightly said, pairing arrangements are nothing to do with the Chair.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I was hoping that you might make some comment this morning about the disgraceful scenes which took place in the House of Commons last night—and I mean disgraceful scenes from right hon. And hon. Members on both sides of the House. It does no good to parliamentary democracy or to the future of parliamentary institutions in this country if scenes such as those which occurred last night are repeated in the future. I trust that a firm decision will be taken to ensure that kind as a result of the behaviour of right hon. and hon. Members on either side of the House.

May I tell the House that I gave careful consideration to whether I should make a statement this morning. I have been in this House 31 years. I have witnessed many occasions when tempers have become frayed and right hon. and hon. Members have said and done things which they regretted afterwards. I hope that the House will remember that any action which undermines the dignity of this House undermines its authority both here and outside.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the point of order of the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann), may I ask, through you, whether the Patronage Secretary will make a statement or, alternatively, whether the Prime Minister will say whether he intends to allow the vote taken last night to stand. That will help us all, because the basis of trust and fair dealing on which the "usual channels" work has been temporarily destroyed.

I have had no request from anyone other than from the Leader of the House to make his Business Statement.

Further to the point of order raised by the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), it is not the normal custom, as I understand it, for questions of pairing to be referred to in the House of Commons. But in view of the fact that the right hon. Lady has raised the flatter, may I say that we repudiate entirely any suggestion that there was any breach of a pairing arrangement by a Government supporter? We repudiate entirely any such suggestion. It is quite wrong that such suggestions should be made.

On a further point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think that we all appreciate that a lot of tempers were lost last night, even if temporarily and that a lot of things were said and done which hon. Members probably regret. However, I wish to raise with you a matter concerning a senior Officer of the House, namely, the Serjeant at Arms. He used the most foul language that I have heard outside a barrack room, and I warned him at the time that I should be raising the matter with you this morning. I ask you to seek from him an explanation for his behaviour and, if possible, to get an unreserved apology from him.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that the House as a whole will join in deploring the episodes of last night, and in respectfully welcoming the words with which you have reprobated such proceedings. Like you, Mr. Speaker, in 31 years in this House I have seen episodes which the House has regretted afterwards. However, I regret to say that I have not seen any episode to rival that of last night or the disorderly nature of the conduct that we saw.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), we all appreciate that, apart from all the other ill consequences of such behaviour, it imposes an unwarranted and unnecessary strain on loyal and devoted servants of the House. They should expect not to be exposed to that sort of conduct. I think we all join with your characteristically wise observation that individual actions taken in the heat of the moment are regretted in the cool light of reflection. We should not dwell on these aspects, save that collectively we should learn from this unhappy experience and in the future do all we can to see that this House keeps the reputation it is essential it should have in the interests of good government.

I appreciate the efforts of the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann) in raising the point about pairing. Pairing is a notoriously difficult matter in the life of the House of Commons because it has a practical effect of great significance which has no actual theoretical or constitutional recognition or regulation in the rules of the House. Traditionally, pairing is a personal contract and it should be observed as such.

We know, however, that often there are changes in circumstances, such as the strengthening of the Whips, and sometimes these matters are varied. There should be a recognisable code of conduct and procedure to regulate these matters. I hope that after the Patronage Secretary has made a statement clearing up the question of last night, consideration will be given to these wider and more general questions.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that the House will applaud what you so wisely said from the Chair. This House depends on normal and proper relations between hon. Members of the House of Commons, and one of the key factors in this relationship is that of pairing. It is appropriate, however, that at this stage, although it is outside the general purview of the Chamber, there should be a statement by the Patronage Secretary, otherwise there is a grave danger that the normal conduct of parliamentary affairs will be disrupted. There will be a breach of faith which will undermine the whole conduct of the House. I hope that the Patronage Secretary will take account of that and make a statement now.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As to the conduct of the Serjeant at Arms, I was fairly near him last night and there were some general swipes in his vicinity. There was a lot of naughty language, and, equally, a lot of unbecoming behaviour. However, I think it is most unfortunate if the Serjeant at Arms is the only one who is called to account.

I hope that we are going to move on quickly from this matter. I have allowed a lot of latitude, and I repeat that pairing is not a subject for which I am responsible.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On the question of last night, I think it would be unwise for the House to continue with this kind of inquest, and what has happened already is an indication that I am right in that view. It is particularly inappropriate that this sort of inquest should occur on points of order when it is impossible for Members to state their arguments or positions properly. I agree with those who say that it is highly regrettable to use points of order to make accusations against any individual, particularly a servant of the House. This is an illustration of just how unwise it is to deal with the matter in this way. If hon. Members wish to deal with the matter, they can do so in another way. They can put down a motion at some stage.

On the subject of pairing——

That is not the right hon. Gentleman's responsibility.

I am raising it on a point of order in response to the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition. I do not believe that it is desirable or advisable for the House to depart from the general tradition that statements about pairing and such matters are not made in the House of Commons. I hope very much that those who have said that the usual channels will not continue to operate will have second thoughts. I believe that the maintenance of the usual channels is essential to the proper functioning of this House and that the usual channels are the proper place to raise such matters.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There is an even more important matter than that. The crucial question is whether the Prime Minister, who is ultimately responsible, wishes last night's vote on a constitutional matter to stand, even though it was obtained on a majority of one and that majority itself is in issue. Is the Leader of the House satisfied with the position, because we are not?

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. If the Opposition are dissatisfied with the situation, the first place in which we might have discussion on how to proceed is through the usual channels. If that is not satisfactory to hon. Members, they can deal with it by another method—by putting down a motion. It is unsatisfactory to try to deal with this matter—particularly involving the kind of issues which the right hon. Lady suggests—by points of order prior to a Business Statement.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, and in response to what the Leader of the House has said, I would point out that the basis of trust has damaged. We shall try to restore it today through the usual channels, and perhaps we could also try to restore the basis of trust between the Prime Minister and myself.

rose——

Order. I think we shall be wise to leave the matter there. I am not taking any more points of order on what happened last night.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker——

Is it related to the events of last night?

It does not relate to the events which occurred after Ten o'clock at all.

rose——

Order. I do not believe that there is anything to be gained by pursuing this mater further now in view of what has been said. Business Statement, Mr. Foot.

I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that my point of order has nothing to do with last night.

Order. I am not taking any further points of order at this stage.

rose——

Order. I am not taking any points of order now. I call the Lord President for the Business Statement.

The business for the first week after the Adjournment will be as follows:

MONDAY 7th June—Completion of the remaining stages of the Police Bill.

Remaining stages of the Education (Scotland) Bill [Lords].

Consideration of Lords amendments to the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Bill and to the Freshwater and Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Bill.

Motion on the Industrial Relations (Northern Ireland) Order.

TUESDAY 8th June and WEDNESDAY 9th June—Progress on the remaining stages of the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill.

THURSDAY 10th June—Remaining stages of the Education Bill.

FRIDAY 11th June—Remaining stages of the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Bill.

Motions on the Northern Ireland Orders on Animals and Births and Deaths Registration.

Is the Leader of the House aware that until the underlying question is resolved, it would be best if I asked him no questions on the Business Statement because clearly some of the business itself will be in issue?

Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the whole question of the pairing system, as there have been a few occasions during the time that I have been a Member of this House when it has been brought into question? That is possibly one of the major reasons why Members of Parliament are regarded outside with some cynicism, especially when hon. Gentlemen opposite comment on the absence from work of industrial workers on occasions and when we have attendances by possibly only a third of Members turning up for work. As there is a desire by some of us to get rid of this cynicism and to remove the disrepute, may we have a debate to ensure that as often as possible Members turn up for work? In view of that, would it be sensible to do what I do and not get involved in the pairing system at all?

I do not believe that the pairing system is best discussed in the House of Commons itself. I think that it has been the general view of the House over many years, if not a few centuries, that it is best discussed through the usual channels and within individual parties. I believe that the pairing system can make a considerable contribution to the proper and convenient functioning of this House and that it would be injurious to our proceedings if it were undermined. Therefore, I cannot respond to my hon. Friend by suggesting that a debate in the House is the best way of dealing with the matter.

Would it not be better on Tuesday or Wednesday after we return to have a debate, which incidentally might help the House to cool itself a bit, on the reorganisation of the water industry, which has been proposed in a Green Paper which recommends even more Government control and ownership?

I dare say that that is a very good subject for discussion at some time, but I cannot suggest that we should abandon the proposals that we have made for discussion the week after next. We want to get the legislation through this House and into another place so that the other place may have proper time to discuss it. I believe that the general view of the House is that we should proceed in that way. I think that the Government have a right to propose that we should continue to discuss that legislation.

Will my right hon. Friend consider referring to the Select Committee on Procedure more modern methods of exercising the vote in this House? Part of the trouble last night was that about 500 or 600 Members tried to get out at the same time. They were pushing and jostling each other, and that led to the unfortunate events which took place. It should be possible—perhaps the Select Committee on Procedure will consider the matter—to have some electronic method of recording votes so that we do not all pile into the House at the same time without knowing before hand exactly how the voting is going.

My recollection is that the Procedure Committee has on a number of occasions looked at the possibility of using other devices for recording the method of voting but it has always, or usually, come down against it because it has found that the system that we operate, curiously enough, has some fundamental advantages. I think that that will still be found to be the case. It is possible, as has been shown on innumerable occasions, to conduct Divisions without any of the difficulties that we had last night.

Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Patronage Secretary, who is a Treasury Minister, to make a statement to the House on the affair of the pairing or non-pairing last night on the precedent of the discussions in the House that followed the occasion when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was recorded as having voted when in fact he had not done so? At the conclusion of that exchange, Mr. Speaker ordered that the Journal of the House be corrected. Therefore, there is a precedent for proper discussion on the Floor of the House of the events that led to the actual vote. It is a matter of great public concern—and the reputation of this House will be permanently damaged unless that concern is allayed—to know what events preceded the second vote last night. I put it to the Leader of the House that Mr. Speaker's predecessor thought it right that the matter should be ventilated then and there on the Floor of the House with a statement by the Ministers who were intimately concerned.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. That precedent should not be followed. Am I not right in my belief that there used to be a convention of the House that Whips never spoke—a convention which, as far as I know, has never been broken by the Opposition? I suggest that it is wiser to revert to that convention.

For the reasons indicated in previous exchanges, I do not believe that the best way to deal with the situation is by a general discussion in the House. I did not say that there had never been discussions on these matters in the House. I said that I thought it preferable that the matter should be discussed through the usual channels. Of course if the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition wishes to raise these matters with the Prime Minister, it is certainly open to her to do so. But I must underline that the Government's view is that the votes last night were valid votes.

In view of recent odious events, will my right hon. Friend provide an early opportunity for a debate on the honours system, particularly with reference to an Early-Day Motion on this matter? That would give my right hon. and hon. Friends an opportunity to repudiate entirely an attempt to associate the Labour Party with that matter.

[That this House is appalled by the manner in which the Honours system has continuouslybeen used by Sir Harold Wilson in a way which has offended the Labour movement in particular; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to abolish the Honours system forthwith.]

I cannot offer any early time to discuss that matter, because we have essential business to get through.

Bearing in mind how important it is that the Leader of the House should enjoy the confidence of the House, will he reconsider his position and make a statement when we come back after the recess?

I do not know on which particular aspect of the matter the hon. Gentleman is asking for a statement from me. If he wishes me to make a statement on any particular matter, I will take it into account. However, he has not indicated anything in his intervention.

Will my right hon. Friend take on board the possibility of improving the medical facilties in this House? Will he confer with the usual channels to ensure that Members who are sick are not brought here at peril to their lives because they are refused pairs? I make the accusation that our procedure and system have been directly responsible for the death of more than one Member.

I fully appreciate what my hon. Friend says. This is a further indication why it is undesirable that we should discuss the pairing system in the House, particularly in this atmosphere. It is much better that we should try to see whether there is not a better way of dealing with those who are ill. There has been a suggestion made in this connection by some of my hon. Friends and some Opposition Members. If there can be fresh discussions on this subject, through the usual channels, we shall be in favour of it.

Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that one of the many subjects on which he spoke this week was that of devolution? Does he realise that there was a great desire in many parts of the House fully to explore what the Government were saying and to look at the more interesting and useful alternatives which my hon. Friends and I put forward? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us that he is arranging time for a debate on the subject?

I cannot give any absolute promise about a debate. It seems, some time ago, that I made a further statement on devolution—one which I am glad to see has been well received in Scotland, as well as elsewhere. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman wishes to join in the acclamation for that statement. Although I am eager to give him the opportunity as soon as possible, I cannot yet fix any date.

Following the question by the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Henderson), may I ask my right hon. Friend to consider the possibility of discussing the question of devolution with the trade union movement in Scotland? Is he aware that yesterday, when the Scottish Trades Union Congress and many trade union organisations sent telegrams to the Scottish National Party, these telegrams were described as bogus and one of them was torn up and scattered across the Floor of the House? In view of that, would it not be useful to express a view on the status of the trade union movement in Scotland and on the contemptuous attitude shown towards it by the SNP?

I witnessed scenes when some telegrams were torn up. Those telegrams came from people who were desperately concerned about their jobs. It is highly deplorable that their representations were not better received in the House of Commons as a whole.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for a Member of the Scottish National Party to shout across the House saying that these telegrams are a Communist plot, when they came from working people in Scotland?

I did not hear any such statement.

May I thank the Leader of the House for honouring the promise given by his predecessor to set up the Sessional Committee on Procedure? Will the right lion. Gentleman consider allowing it to begin work, when we return, on at least three of the subjects which it has been suggested might be referred to it?

I will certainly see what can be done to provide the Committee with the subjects that have been suggested for its consideration at an early stage, if not in the week when we return. I should also say that it is highly regrettable that the terms of reference and the membership of the other Procedure Committee have not yet been placed on the Order Paper. We are eager for that to be done speedily. I hope that we shall be given assistance in enabling that to happen.

When are we to have a debate on the Floor of the House and a Government statement about the Icelandic fisheries dispute? Is my right hon. Friend aware that in Hull there is indignation and disgust about the official leaks coming from Reykjavik and the unofficial leaks from Whitehall about the terms of the settlement, which suggests that there will be 25 vessels fishing in waters designated by the Icelanders? Does my right hon Friend appreciate that under those circumstances the industry would not guarantee a 25,000-ton catch? Is he further aware that for every vessel in Hull that is taken out of commission and put into the scrap yard there are 25 men on deck and 100 men on shore who will be made unemployed? When are we to have a statement? Does my right hon. Friend realise that unless we have one soon my constituents and those in other fishing ports will think that this is a sellout—and I shall be bound to agree?

I fully recognise the great interest which my hon. Friend takes in this subject. He has approached me during the week on the issue. Today is not the only time that lie has raised the matter. I am afraid that I cannot give him any answer beyond saying that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who is in charge of negotiations, will, I am sure, report to the House as soon as he advantageously and possibly can.

May we have an early debate on the question whether we, like most other democratic countries, should have a Bill of Rights so that, among other things, a supreme court might rule whether legislation is constitutional?

I know that there is an argument for such a Bill of Rights and a written constitution. There are, however strong arguments against it because some of these so-called entrenched provisions have often been used in some of the countries to which the hon. and learned Gentleman refers to block all forms of progress—[Laughterl] It is no good hon. Gentlemen laughing. They should read the history of the United States Court. This subject raises very much larger constitutional questions and I certainly cannot promise an early debate on it in the near future.

Does my right hon. Friend recall that a few weeks ago the Department of the Environment produced an important two-volume discussion paper on transport? Is he aware that there is considerable concern throughout the country on this matter? If we cannot have a debate on the subject in the week when we return, will my right hon. Friend guarantee that we shall have a discussion on it before the Summer Recess?

I cannot tell my hon. Friend when we shall have a debate on the subject. Certainly it is a matter of paramount importance and, of course, it will have to be debated fully in the House at some stage.

Will the right hon. Gentleman take into account, when considering business for the week after next, that if the discussions between my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister do not reach an acceptable conclusion there will be a large number of Conservative Members who will be urging that a motion of censure be placed on the Order Paper?

We shall have to see what happens. If other proposals are made by the Opposition for discussion in the House they will have to be taken into account according to the normal process.

May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the Industrial Relations (Northern Ireland) Order which we are to debate on 7th June? Is my right hon. Friend aware that this is of major importance and will have a great impact on the whole industrial relations atmosphere in Northern Ireland? Does he realise that there are 79 articles in the Order and that the debate is to be limited to 90 minutes? Does he appreciate that there are many Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies who will wish to put forward a point of view on such a vital issue? May I ask my right hon. Friend to extend the debate beyond 90 minutes, which is totally inadequate for such an issue?

I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern about the time allowed for this debate. He has been making representations to me constantly on this subject. We wish to provide more time to discuss these important subjects. I promise that I will look in particular at the debate scheduled for Monday week to see whether we can lengthen the time available.

May I draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the Police Bill which is at present scheduled to be discussed on the first day we return after the recess? Is he aware that, in a spirit of mutual trust, certain understandings were entered into as to the speed at which progress might be possible on this measure? Is he further aware that those understandings must be regarded as being in abeyance until that vital spirit of mutual trust has been re-established?

I do not know what the hon. Gentleman intends to mean by that. I hope that any understandings reached about the Police Bill and other Bills will be adhered to.

Since my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is likely to make a statement before the Summer Recess on the sugar industry, which could effect Merseyside, Glasgow and London in particular and which might—I trust not—involve redundancies, may I ask for a clear indication that, following that statement, there will be a debate in the House on the whole question of the sugar industry, both cane and beet?

It is difficult to give an absolute promise of time for a debate because, as I am sure my hon. Friend appreciates, we have a full timetable in the period before the Summer Recess, and there has been some setback to that timetable. As my hon. Friend appreciates, some of that legislation is of the highest importance and we have to get it through, but I take account of his representations. I know that several of my hon. Friends from different parts of the country have been raising this matter, and I realise that following the statement, there may be pressure for a debate. I shall consider that.

Will the right hon. Gentleman consider setting up a Select Committee to consider the publication of a parliamentary song book?

I thank the Leader of the House for having kept his promise by seeing that a statement was made yesterday by the Secretary of State for Social Services on the existing state of knowledge about rabies. May I ask whether we may have a statement or an early debate, if only a short one, on the need to emphasise—which was made clear in the statement—that this illness almost inevitably is fatal and that preventing its coming to our shores is becoming increasingly important?

I do not underrate the importance of what the hon. Gentleman puts to the Government on this subject. I indicated that also on Tuesday when we had an Adjournment debate in the House in response to several hon. Members who raised the matter. I responded to it then, and no doubt when the House returns there will be pressure for a statement on the subject. I cannot say more than that now.

Reverting to the business for the week after next, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, instead of discussing on Tuesday and Wednesday the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill, the House could discuss a matter that is of far greater importance and interest to the vast mass of people in this country, namely, a stricter control of immigration?

There was a discussion on that matter in the House earlier this week, and there was some reference to it during the Adjournment debate. I emphasise again that the proposals that we have announced for debates in the week after next are concerned with what we consider to be urgent Government business which we need to get through to try to ensure that we can do our best to sustain two great British industries. We need this measure to go through this House and the other place according to the procedures available. We need it to go through to be able to do its job. I know that there may be some differences of opinion in the House, but the House of Commons has accepted the full principle of the Bill and I believe that we have every justification for proceeding with it.

rose——

Order.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Surely the most urgent national business is for the Government to go and for there to be an immediate General Election.

The right hon. Gentleman ought to know better than to raise a bogus point of order.

I have to readjust the times for the debates today because we have spent three-quarters of an hour of the Adjournment time on other matters. Before I call the hon. Member for High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant) for the first debate I should inform the House that the debate should finish at 12.35 p.m., and I shall readjust the other times accordingly.

I am grateful for this opportunity to bring to your attention, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House a matter that I consider to be of the greatest urgency. Over many years we have considered the question of our heritage, our National Parks. They have been in existence for nearly 25 years, but I shall try to show that we have not managed to legislate sufficiently to allow these parks, which are our heritage and that of our children and grandchildren, to work efficiently.

The urgency exists because relationships between people are deteriorating. The Minister appears to be dissenting from what I have said. I informed you, Mr. Speaker, and your office informed the Department, that as Kinder Scout has been sold to a private person we were widening the scope of the debate, and I received your ruling that that could be done. I also informed the Minister's private office of the points that I would raise today, so as to give the Minister the fullest possible opportunity of answering them.

As I was saying, relationships are deteriorating between people who live in the areas of National Parks and the boards, and between National Parks authorities and local authorities. Indeed, I would say that it is extremely difficult for Members of Parliament who have a park in their area to explain to the Department of the Environment the real problems that exist there.

In 1974 there was an excellent report by Lord Sandford, whose name will go down, as will Lord Silkin's, as one of the great benefactors of the National Parks. Although that report was issued in 1974, it was not until 1976, I think on 12th January, that the Government introduced their circular on it. I say that we have had enough. I say that the time has now come to legislate. It is no longer any good talking about giving detailed guidance as soon as possible, as is mentioned in the circular. It is no use referring to the preparation of the necessary legislation as soon as the parliamentary timetable permits. I say that the time has now come to take action—in fact, it is overdue.

The board with which I am particularly concerned is looking after all those who visit its area, but the question is whether, for different reasons, it is able to look after those who live there—a matter that should be the board's prime consideration. Boards should look after those who live in these areas of great natural beauty. I am not saying that the boards are not trying to look after the people who live in their areas but I should like to know whether what is happening is the result of our fault in not legislating, or is the fault of the boards. I hold that it is our fault, because if we were to see that the necessary legislation went through the boards would know exactly where they stood. It is that matter to which I am asking the Minister to put his mind and ensure that the necessary legislation is passed as soon as possible.

The debate that we were originally to have was on the acquisition of land in National Parks. I know that in the guidelines issued by the Government they say, on page 5 at paragraph 22 that the boards should pursue a far more active purchasing policy, but I believe that to be entirely wrong at a time of great national strin- gency. Let me give one example. One village in my constituency, Hayfield, desperately needs a bypass and a new school, yet these projects have been put back for the past five years. How can the people who live in Hayfield understand that they cannot have a bypass and a school when a public authority is prepared to offer £237,000 of public money for a bit of moorland which will not ensure access to even one more member of the public than is provided for under private ownership?

It is no good suggesting that it is not right to acquire land if we do not have an alternative. I believe the alternative to be access management agreements. I know that another hon. Member will join in this debate in a few moments to point out how difficult and expensive they can be. However, management agreements and access orders can conserve our national money for more useful purposes and yet achieve the same result for the public. I refer the Minister to the financial expenditure shown in paragraph 7 of page 2 of the Report of the National Park Policies Review Committee, where it is clearly laid down that boards must use the maximum amount of caution in spending their public money. This is why we should legislate in respect of management agreements and access orders.

I would refer briefly to mineral rights, and the extracting of minerals from National Parks. In a debate in 1948 the late Lord Silkin said we ought to take minerals out of National Parks. Lord Molson, who was the Member for my constituency at the time, said "Do not do it". We in this Chamber have a responsibility to give guidelines to the boards and to the local authorities. We now have the Stevens Report, but every week, for the past year, we have been promised the Verney Report. Will the Minister tell us when that report is coming? We want it, and we need the Government to legislate on this matter.

I believe that this question relates to how much we are paying for a sack of cement. We shall have to take limestone out of certain areas. I do not believe that the boundaries of the parks should be so clearly laid down as not to allow this because the limestone is a few yards on the wrong side. If the extraction of limestone from just within the boundary is not allowed it will have to be extracted from somewhere just as beautiful a few yards outside.

We should also legislate to help farmers and other people to conserve the beauty of our National Parks. At the moment they have to build to a far higher standard to conform with park regulations. This is causing a great deal of ill will between people who are trying to make their living in the park as farmers, and others farming a few yards outside who do not have to conform. At this time of high unemployment, we must also think of supporting light engineering projects in the parks.

Finally, I refer to housing, which is a real problem. People not just driven out of National Parks because they are beautiful. The problem is that when a house comes up for sale in a place of great beauty people will go into that area to live, to the disadvantage of the local people, who cannot afford to buy the house. We should make more facilities available to housing associations, and use other such methods, to help the local community. I do not like to see local workers leaving National Parks to work in big cities while workers come in from outside to live there.

We must keep the community alive within our National Parks.

We must also try to help the boards as much as we can. For instance, the Institute of Geological Science is working hard at the moment, but how much of what it is doing is passed back to the boards and the local authorities so that those bodies can study the problem themselves? I would like to see Government legislation brought in quickly. I regard management agreements as urgent, particularly in respect of agriculture. We have a wonderful example in Derbyshire, at Monsal Dale. These things are quite possible, but they must be done through this Chamber. There is no other way of dealing with them.

I also want to see the boards acting with far less secrecy. I want them to co-operate with local authorities, which they are not doing at the moment. They are too secretive and are not communicating. That brings me to the question whether we are using the right method of appointing people to the boards. I am not certain that we are. I do not think many of the people appointed to the boards are close enough to the grass roots. I do not think they are sufficiently experienced in respect of local affairs. This must be looked at by the Secretary of State.

I want to see my local authority, the park board and myself working in harmony. It does not help when one authority is fighting against the other. I ask the Minister to do everything in his power to solve this problem. It could be solved by legislation, and by means of the Sandford Report and Circular 4/76 which the Department issued on 12th January.

I welcome the opportunity of intervening in this brief debate. I am glad that it has proved possible to have it in spite of other pressures on the House. Although not living in the area of the Peak, I have been there a great deal at one time or another. I welcome any pressure that the hon. Member for High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant) and others can bring to bear in order to bring forward legislation as rapidly as possible to assist in respect of the matters raised in the Sandford Report. There is nothing between us on that matter.

I am speaking after a recent review of the National Parks which a Select Committee of this House has just undertaken. Its report is not yet available, and I cannot comment on what it said. The Committee had the opportunity of a brief look at the Peak National Park, as well as other National Parks, and I think that its experience, as a result of that visit and many other visits in the past, is that the Peak authority is probably one of the most effective of all the National Park authorities.

It has been the common view of the people who have looked into this matter, both in this country and abroad, that it is the broad structure that has enabled this lively body to do work of such enormous benefit both to those who live in the park and to those outside. We have to remember that it is a National Park, and is for the benefit of others besides the local residents.

Enormous pressures are put upon the Peak by the huge population living immediately outside. The work undertaken by the board to control and restrict movement in the park is just as much for the benefit of the people who live there as of those outside. Without such restriction, life for the people who live in the park would be intolerable.

I do not discount the possibility of more management agreements. The improvement of facilities for management agreements would be a valuable contribution, but management agreements cannot wholly replace the land purchase policy. The two methods have to be held in balance. For example, one of the great successes in the Peak National Park is the planting of trees in small areas and the maintenance of small copses. The board has been able to buy these small areas which no one wants, maintain them, and improve the amenity. That is a remarkable and oustanding achievement. There is a small woodland unit for this purpose, and its work is enormously to the benefit of local residents.

From my experience of the board, and as a member of the executive of the National Trust, I find that the expenses of controlling and managing management agreements can be very high. I put in that warning note. The compensation awarded may run to a substantial figure. Sometimes it may be more economical to buy a relatively small area of land rather than undertake the continual expenditure and control involved in a management agreement.

I was talking about the £237,000 of public money that is being spent without producing any extra rights of access for people who visit the area.

That project has not gone forward. I regret that it has not. It depends on who becomes the owner. None of us knows the owner of the Kinder. None of us can be sure that access will be as fully guaranteed as we would like, but that is another matter. I dare say that on that matter there is a division of opinion in the Peak National Park Board.

I am talking about the wider policy of access. I think it will be agreed that the Peak board has done excellent work in bringing its policies to the knowledge of all who live in the area as well as to the people who live outside. It has been responsible for the distribution of popu- lar editions of the grass structure plan and for stimulating discussion in local schools. I wish that other authorities did as much as the Peak board has done.

The Select Committee's Report will have some useful comments to make on this area. I hope that we can go forward with early legislation and that it will be recognised that the Peak board is doing an excellent job.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant) for introducing the subject of National Parks. I am the only Member of the House who has a constituency within which are parts of two National Parks—the North Yorkshire Moors and the Yorkshire Dales—although mine is the largest constituency in England and a large part of it is outside the National Parks.

Few people realise that there is great and growing anxiety amongst those who live within the National Parks because of the pressures that are put upon them. Their interests inevitably conflict with the interests of those who think of National Parks only as areas of recreation. National Parks tend to be found in parts of the country that are comparatively poor by national standards, and the local people fear that enthusiastic visitors will, as a recent leader in The Times stated,

"condemn them to picturesque stagnation."

It is essential to reconcile these conflicts. One of the expressions of deep concern from those who live within National Parks areas is a call for better representation on National Park bodies and a reduction in the number of ministerial appointees to the committees. Often those who are appointed by the Minister, though they are fewer in number, make the running on decisions within the committees. Regularly at meetings in my constituency there is a call for local views to be heard more loudly and clearly at National Park meetings.

In January this year a motion from the North Riding and South Durham National Farmers' Union, at its annual meeting in London—a motion moved by Mr. Brown, one of my constituents—called for a revision of the constitution of National Parks committees and for more local representation of the people who work and live in the parks.

That frustration is felt by farmers and by those who work in the parks areas—shopkeepers and garage owners—who all contribute to the amenities provided for those who visit the parks. There is a strong feeling among many who live in National Parks that they are penalised by having to spend their own money to conform to the standards laid down by National Park committees. It is essential to retain all the beauty of the National Parks areas but, with the additional cost of house building and farm improvements, because of the standards rightly laid down by the committees, the additional financial burden placed on the shoulders of those living within the parks areas is unfair.

The time has come when it is necessary for a new approach to be made to assist the community living within the National Parks areas to expand and develop their businesses. Surely, a much greater effort should be made, and additional funds provided, so that when the beauty and amenity value of the area is to be retained a fund should be there to help to meet some of those additional costs.

For instance, if a man wishes to improve his farm buildings or his garage, provided that the proposals he puts forward are acceptable within areas outside the National Parks, if he is requested to use a special design, special building materials, special roofing and so on, the difference in cost between what would normally be accepted and what is demanded by the National Parks planning committee should be met out of a central fund. If that happened the term "National Park" would make a good deal more sense, and instead of falling on the shoulders of someone living within the National Park the extra burden would be borne by national funds. I do not believe that it would be difficult for the Government to draw up a criterion so that this course could be followed.

In recent years my attention has been drawn to a number of cases in which a farmer, wishing to retire and make way for his family, has found that because of the cost of the building materials, special stone or roofing, the cost of building a small house or bungalow to retire into has escalated, so that the operation for him and his family is put out of their price range. He then has to decide whether to retire and leave the district in which he was born and bred, in which he has lived and worked, and where all his friends live, and move into another area, or whether it is better to struggle on.

If he decides to stay, the younger members of the family may say "We do not see our opportunity coming" and move out of the district to look for other employment. Often they set up in another part of the country. Then, when the farmer dies his farm becomes vacant. Often in those circumstances the farm is amalgamated, and the homestead may well become somebody's second home.

This sort of thing, which happens all too often, is one of the reasons for depopulation within the National Parks areas. People quite rightly ask "Why should we be penalised?" Unless we can find some way of helping them to conform to the expensive standards laid down by the National Parks Committee, I believe that many of them will leave and the population will be substantially reduced. Thus the whole object of the National Parks being a viable and well-populated area in the years ahead will be defeated. Rather than the National Parks boards and committees buying large tracts of land, I would prefer them to help those people who live in the area. In this way I believe that we could preserve these areas of national beauty and arrest the depopulation within them. The drift from these areas has many disadvantages, which we shall regret in the future.

I hope that the Minister will consider these points and that the Government will find time to introduce the necessary legislation to ensure that those living within the National Parks areas have the same rights and advantages as those who visit them.

I congratulate the hon. Member for High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant) on having secured this debate. I have listened to his remarks with interest.

May I make a declaration of personal interest, as one of the millions of people who live in the great conurbations of Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and the Midlands. We have long regarded the High Peak as a lung. I am old enough to remember the battles in 1932 and at other times in connection with these areas, and I can say that one did not need to go to school to learn how to spell long words such as "trespassers" and "prosecuted" in my area. Nevertheless the idea of National Parks, which was welcomed on both sides of the House in 1949, is that there has to be some balance of the various interests. People in the cities need the benefit of the fresh air which is so freely available in these areas. Indeed, if I were not replying to this debate and to another debate later this afternoon, I would have been in the Peak District National Park this afternoon. There are the claims of the residents and of industry as well. A predecessor of the hon. Member for High Peak replied to the debate in 1949, and he mentioned that 3,000 industrial workers were greatly concerned. It is significant that no mention has been made in this debate of the sporting interests which played such a great part in past debates.

The Peak District National Park was the first National Park designated under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. The designation confirmed that the landscape was of national importance and that it should be protected by a National Park Authority for the purposes laid down in Section 5 of the Act—the preservation and enhancement of "the natural beauty" and the promotion of "enjoyment by the public".

The hon. Gentleman has demanded early legislation. He must know of the very severe demands on legislative time, especially in the present situation in the House. In my own Department there are many urgent Bills of importance to the public to which we would like to give greater priority. I believe that legislation which the hon. Gentleman has in mind would be controversial. I do not think it would go through its various stages without opposition. For example, the matter of land acquisition would require a debate of considerable length.

This magnificent area is hemmed in by some of the most heavily populated parts of the country. People from the towns and cities have for years sought the peace and tranquility of the Pennine moorlands which are fortunately so close to the towns. Increasing car ownership in those areas has created special difficulties for residents. Kinder Scout, at the highest point, is notable as the scene in the 1930s of a historic encounter for the future of the National Park movement. The question then was whether ordinary people wanting to roam over the moorland could hope for a right to do so. At last, in the 1949 Act, machinery for creating access rights formally as well as informally was provided. The Peak Park Joint Planning Board has since made a great deal of use of such arrangements. What was so much desired but seemed so difficult to obtain in the 1930s is now widely available and appreciated by the people who go there.

I must deal with the point of the possible purchase of the land, which was the original reason for this debate. An area of land, mainly upland grazing country, on Kinder Scout itself came on to the market recently. According to my information, the Peak Park Board has not purchased it, but we do not know who has. It is a matter of worry to those of us concerned with the park as to who has bought it. One would like to think that it has been purchased for £300,000 so that some great benefactor can hand it over to the nation, but there is doubt about that. There is concern lest the farms and uplands may be parcelled out, which would make access agreements more difficult than they were before. There has been no question of buying under compulsory powers. Nor has there been any question of buying the land for any purpose other than the functions of the Peak Board laid down in the Act of 1949—to protect and care for the beauty and to help people enjoy it.

Nor, I understand, has there been any question of any great alteration in the present agricultural use of the land should it have been purchased by the board. The Peak Park Board saw some advantage, where the opportunity arose, in making an offer to purchase. It is always a delicate decision for a park authority, whether it is better to pay each year under an access agreement or to embark on a capital purchase, if the land happens to be on offer, and I believe that in this case the board had hopes of a comprehensive management system for the whole area in conjunction with the Nature time, but what we are asking is that the Conservancy Council. Much of the land Department shall recognise the true is n an area designated as a site of special scientific interest.

The Government's position is well known. The progress and future development of the National Parks in the face of the mounting recreational and other pressures were reviewed two years ago for the first time in their 25 years of existence, by the Sandford Committee. The Conclusions of my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Secretary of State for Wales on that report were announced in the circular to which the hon. Gentleman referred. The Secretaries of State have paid tribute to the great value of the committee's work. In their conclusions they have set out what they think should be the broad lines of long-term policy for the National Parks authorities to follow in their administration of one of the country's most important national assets.

Among these conclusions the Secretaries of State have made certain points which are particularly relevant to this debate. They have said that they share the committee's view about the importance of access to open country. The Secretaries of State also say that a number of steps will be taken to facilitate the acquisition of land for National Park purpose where acquisition is the desirable course. On one aspect of this, they have agreed in principle that limited special arrangements for "opportunity purchases" should be available if evidence from the National Park authorities demonstrates the need. We are now looking into that, though we have not been able to provide any extra money and I very much doubt whether we shall be able to do so for some time to come.

Hon Members asked for additional funds for instance, to assist people living within the park with improvements and so on, but I have to say that the likielihood of any increase in expenditure of that kind—or, indeed, any other in the parks—is inevitable remote. We have to consider very carefully the demands which are made for cuts in public expenditure, on the one hand, and demands for assistance to resident, for new bypasses and so forth, on the other.

Naturally, one recongnises what must be the inevitable response to request for more public funds at this time, but what we are asking is that the Department shall recognise the true nature of the problem for those who live within these areas and give and assurance that, at such time as it is possible to make additional funds available, consideration will be given to channeling those funds in this direction rather than other possible directions. We feel strongly about that.

I can certainly give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that it will be considered. I am aware of the problem generally, and especially in t he Peak area. But it would need legislation, as hon. Members have already recognised.

Our broad conclusions on this matter are not designed in any may to usurp or undermine the responsibility laid on local government under the 1949 Act and the Local Government Act 1972 to administer the park areas in accordance with the purpose of the National parks. The administration of the Parks through local government is subject at present, like all other local government activities, to the restraints on expenditure generally. As the circular explained,

"the overriding duty of National Park Authorities over the next few years will necessarily be to ensure that limited resources are deployed with discrimination and in the most cost-effective way possible. This will call for difficult—and often unpalatable—decisions."

for those authorities which have areas within the parks. But there can be no question of our trying to tell the park authorities in detail how they should lay out the resources which they have available. It is for them to choose. There is representation of local authorities within the parks and of local authorities outside, apart from the appointed members, to go into that.

The expenditure of local government on the National Parks is supported within the rate support grant system by the National Park supplementary block grant. This is cast at 75 per cent. of so much of the parks' estimates as my right hon. Friend sees fit to take into account. The amount of grant each year implies that a certain level of expenditure on the National Parks would, in the Government's view, seem satisfactory. The inference is usually drawn that a total expenditure of £100 by a park authority means £75 of grant from the Government. The position varies from park to park. After the overall grant has been decided for the 10 National Parks, the grant has to be divided up, with the needs which each park has itself estimated borne in mind.

In the current year 1976–77, however, taking the 10 parks together, the overall grant of £3·1 million in terms of 1975 prices represents approximately a standstill on National Park expenditure on the 75 per cent. convention, if implied expenditure continues at the same level as the estimated out-turn of expenditure for the year before. This is well in line with the general restraints which we have put on local government, on which we issued a further circular only this week.

In the case of the Peak Park itself, the grant for this year at £802,000—the Government recognise that the Peak Park has, perhaps, far more problems than most of the other National Parks—implies a standstill on that park's expenditure, too. It cannot be said, therefore, that we have encouraged the parks in undue expenditure.

Naturally, the course of expenditure during a year may vary in practice from what was estimated by any park. Most of the expenditure going towards the ordinary continuing functions of the park will probably turn out much as planned, but there has to be allowance for less predictable items. Some kinds of project will go more slowly than expected, and some anticipated opportunities to enhance beauty or provide facilities may not materialise at all. One cannot be sure at the time the estimates are produced before the year starts.

Thus, it may be that a park—and the Peak Park, in particular, since its scale of operations is rather greater and its annual budget of about £1 million is larger than the smaller budgets of other parks—will find itself with some resources in hand available towards an unexpected opportunity in place of some other things for which it has budgeted in the past. I think that this has been the case with the Kinder Scout situation. Such a situation is not common among the parks, and I do not think that it gives rise to any general issue of National Park policy.

As our conclusions on the Sandford Report showed, we are very conscious that the parks, with their very limited budgets, may face a dilemma when oppor- tunities to purchase occur. Their objectives are long-term, and when a rare chance does appear to take some step which will help to enhance the beauty of the place or provide recreational opportunities, they can only seize it or pass it by. In this case, the authority did not have the opportunity to seize it.

In view of the park authorities' statutory responsibilities on behalf of the nation, this is a difficult choice to have to make. The disproportion which can arise between a budget—usually of only £200,000 or £300,000 a year for park purposes, apart from commitments already entered into—and the environmental responsibility to this and future generations was made quite clear in the Sandford Report. That is why we have said that we shall look at the evidence of the need for some kind of special arrangement.

I see no ground for criticism, however, if a National Park, within its resources, finds itself able even at present to undertake a new project or make an offer for the purchase of a property. The park authorities do this fairly often on a small scale, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) pointed out, although occasionally something bigger and far more important crops up.

There is no question of the authorities trying to "buy the parks". Our National Parks are not parks bought by the nation, with a fence put round and all the rest. As I have said, we regard them as a joint enterprise between the nation as a whole, the visitors, industry and so on. Most of the land is and will continue to be in normal agricultural use, and very sizeable areas are owned by authorities or bodies such as the Forestry Commission or the National Trust.

Will the Minister agree that secrecy is highly undesirable and that we must have maximum consultation to build up a good relationship? If it is decided that it is desirable to buy something, let us have consultation between the local authorities and the park boards. Let us have done with all the secrecy. That is what causes the ill feeling.

My experience of the Peak Park authority in particular has been that it maintains good relations with the public and a great openness in its work. Moreover, it has done fine educational work. As a former teacher, I know of the valuable effort it has undertaken in publicising what the park is, what is spent on it, and so on. But in the purchase of land, as hon. Members opposite may well know better than I do, there can be special problems, and it is often not wise for the Government, a local authority or even the park board —in this case, the Peak Park Board—to say exactly what it is doing on those lines.

Very little land is owned by the National Park authorities. They have other means, as hon. Members know, through management agreements for conservation and access agreements, which are all valuable tools. But we believe that on occasion even a considerably larger area may present the possibility of purchase.

I should have liked to speak on several other matters, but I see that my time is running out. I assure hon. Members that the points raised in the debate will be considered by my right hon. Friend and the Secretary of State for Wales. National Park plans which will be the subject of wide consultation and participation will indicate the lines for the development of the parks in future, and we hope that these will have regard to what is possible in the shorter term, while expenditure must be under restraint, as well as to the satisfactory development of the parks in the longer term.

It seems hard to disagree with the opinion expressed by Lord Sandford that the National Parks wil ultimately deserve more than the very small resources which it has been possible to devote to them so far. Our National Parks are a truly irreplaceable asset for ourselves and coming generations. I know that they—and especially the Peak Park—face rapidly mounting pressures.

I am aware of the tensions, to which both hon. Members referred, which are almost inevitably involved in the administration of the parks. I do not propose now to add to the conclusion which the Secretaries of State have already reached, that the new system of strengthend administration which we have had now for two years should be allowed to show its paces and get on with the job, although it may be right in, say five years from now to use the experience we thus gain to review these matters and see whether any alterations would be beneficial.

I am aware that there have in the past been some feelings about the amount of the Peak Park's precept on its constituent county councils. We are encouraged by Press reports that the board this year have had the standstill objective in mind. But the precept by the Peak, and the Lake District Board which is also in the same position, is a matter for settlement at local government, not central Government, level. It is not one on which I have any intention of commenting further.

As the House will realise, whatever arrangements we have for administering those special areas of our more dramatic countryside—that description applies particularly to the Peak which is not pretty in that sense—which we call National Parks, because the landscape and enjoyment of it is of importance on a national as well as local scale—it is important to people from far and wide—there is little chance of getting anywhere except by the good sense and good will of all branches of local government involved in the task. The guidance which central Government exercise should be constructive but strategic and should not be involved too much in the small disputes that take place.

If we value the National Parks, as successive Governments have made it clear that they do, our attention should be directed to the strategic management plans for the future which they are now preparing for the first time in their history. We sincerely hope that in this challenging task they will have the co-operation of all concerned. I know that the park administrations will be doing all they can to seek this by consultation and through the public participation programmes which they are arranging. If some disagree with any of their intentions, that will be the time for telling them so.

Never before has there been this opportunity for everyone who cares about the park area, or has responsibility for some aspect of it, to put forward constructive ideas about its future as a National Park. Such people include residents or visitors. Many residents are people who have moved there because it is a lovely place and not because they are natives of the area.

To sum up this part of the debate, I would put the Government position very simply. The Government make a certain sum of money available for National Park purposes. The National Parks have a range of choices as to how they spend the money. How they decide to make their choices is a matter for them. As far as I can see, the purchase of Kinder Scout would have been a perfectly legitimate choice for the Peak Board to make, provided that it could find the money within its existing resources. It would have meant inevitably that other choices would have had to be forgone. But that was their decision and one they were perfectly entitled to make. The last thing I want to do is to encourage, or even to be thought to encourage, extravagance by local authorities. We are determined that they must exercise the utmost restraint. But equally I do not want to interfere in anything which is essentially their business.

The infrequency with which the Peak Park Board uses its powers to buy land is shown by the fact that it owns only about 2,000 acres of land in the park—about three square miles or half of 1 per cent. of the 542 square miles which comprise the park. I understand that the purchase of the Hayfield estate is about the only sizeable "opportunity purchase" which it has seriously gone for in its history.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the publication of the Verney Report. It will be published next Thursday and I understand that copies will be available to the House.

In opening today's second Adjournment debate, I chose the title "The enforcement process of the Wages Inspectorate" with care. The debate is not about wages councils or the insultingly low wages paid to 3·5 million workers covered by the wages councils and spread around 458,000 different firms and establishments.

The fat cats of the City and show business are celebrating their knighthoods and peerages this weekend, but the debate is about the will of Parliament being frustrated by the apparent indifference of the Department of Employment and the Government, through the Wages Inspectorate which is supposed to see that the statutory minimum wages laid down by Parliament are paid to workers covered by the wages councils. The 40 wages councils cover many industries, including toy making, corset making, laundry, the retail trade, and licensed premises and hotels. The number of employees varies from 500 in over 40 different firms making coffin furniture, to 440,000 in 55,000 firms in retail, drapery and footwear.

The average unit is small, involving between three and five people, unlike large factories and offices, and effective trade union organisation is almost impossible. According to the latest figures, which I was given yesterday, the statutory minimum laid down by Parliament for adult males over 21 in the coffin furniture industry is £19·60 for a 40-hour week, rising to the princely sum of £25·60 for those employed in the retail drapery, outfitting and footwear wages council industries. Those were the minimum rates in 1975, but even those measly rates are not being paid by many thousands of firms.

There is clearly a problem, because there are only 127 wages inspectors to cover 458,000 firms, employing 3½ million workers. In 1975, less than 10 per cent. of those firms were visited by wages inspectors. Expressed another way, over 419,000 firms did not receive a visit. The really terrifying situation starts to come to light when one considers that of the 39,000 firms visited, about 12,000 were found to be illegally underpaying 15,000 workers. In 1975 those 15,000 workers were illegally underpaid to the tune of over £580,000. That sum was recovered by the Wages Inspectorate and paid back to the workers.

In 1974 I asked the Minister whether he was satisfied with the effectiveness of the Wages Inspectorate, and I received a standard reply. He said:

"Yes. The Inspectorate meets its obligations to investigate all complaints alleging breaches of the Wages Council Regulations and inspects each year a proportion of establishments in each of the wages council trades."—[Official Report. 26th May 1974; Vol. 874, c. 76.]

Taking the second of those points first —the proportion of firms that are randomly inspected is 7½per cent. each year, a target set by the Tory Government in the mid-1950s. Since 1963, the percentage of random checks has always been above 8 per cent., and in 1970 it was nearly 10 per cent. But it has fallen every year since 1970. Inspections due to complaints by workers total 1·4 per cent. of the 460,000 firms. That percentage varies from less than 0·25 per cent. in some industries to 6 per cent. in the hotel and restaurant industry. Therein lies a story, which I have no doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) will tell later.

Any examination of the results of these types of inspection—complaints from the workers and the policy of random inspections—shows an apparent indifference towards the plight of workers in the low-paid sector. The policy of investigating all complaints sounds all very well. The implication is that we are not visiting too many firms and therefore we do not need to worry, but a prerequisite of such a policy is that the workers should know that they have something to complain about, and where to complain.

The results of the 7½ –8 per cent. random inspections show that that is not so. If the self-enforcement of the workers complaining was working, I should not be standing here today. How do we know that it is not working? We know from answers to Questions and the recent report of the Low Pay Unit. Questions to try to identify areas of weakness have been asked by many hon. Members on both sides of the House, over many years.

The unit expressed many of the problems succinctly in a small document that was compiled with the co-operation of the inspectorate. It highlights the problem arising from the fact that the present system is not working satisfactorily. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South has horrifying practical examples to give.

We must concentrate on the failure of the enforcement processes of the inspectorate shown in the results in the 39,000 firms inspected. It was found that more than one in five were failing to post the notices required by law, which tell the workers in the back-street factory or shop what their minimum rates of pay should be. This week we have heard a great deal about the rule of law. Under Section 17(2) of the Wages Councils Act 1959 it is illegal not to post such a notice, yet how many prosecutions for that offence were there in 1975? The answer is "Nil". The self-enforcement system of workers making a complaint cannot work in such firms because they do not know the basic minimum rate laid down by Parliament. Extrapolating on a national basis, we come to the conclusion that if 90 per cent. of firms are not inspected, and if the situation in those is as bad, 750,000 low-paid workers are not even in the position of knowing what their statutory rights are in respect of their low wages.

Not only the workers but the inspectors are kept in the dark. Under Section 17(1) employers are required to keep proper wage and time records for an inspector to see when he visits a firm. The percentage found to be failing to keep satisfactory wage records in 1975 was over 11 per cent. That means a national total of more than 56,000 companies, shops and small premises.

Even more worrying is the proportion of firms failing to keep time records. In 1974, according to answers to Questions and the report of the Low Pay Unit, these totalled 41 per cent. Nationally, that is 220,000 firms. It may appear that a firm does not need to keep proper time records. However, the wages inspector may think from the wages records alone that the firm is paying more than the statutory minimum rate, but that rate is laid down for 40 hours for nearly all companies, and if the inspector does not know how many hours were worked, how can he carry out a competent inspection?

I was told yesterday, in answers to Questions, that the Department of Employment has no knowledge of the numbers of workers in wages council industries earning the minimum rates or thereabouts. A well-documented piece of research by Mr. J. A. Greenwood, of the University of Sussex, published in the Winter 1972 edition of the Industrial Relations Journal made the point that the discrepancies between minimum rates and gross earnings arose not so much because the basic rates at plant level were above the minimum but, by implication, because of other elements in the wage packet, such as bonuses and payment by results. If proper time records are not kept, it is not possible to know how the earnings are arrived at. We know that 41 per cent. of the firms concerned were breaking the law in 1974 alone, but since 1959, prosecutions for failing to keep proper wage and time records came to a grand total of 11.

The Low Pay Unit believes that the £580,000 recovered by the inspectors in 1974 was part of a larger illegal underpayment of £2·6 million to workers in the wages councils industries in that year. Its assessment of the total of wages that were not paid or not recovered in the past five years comes to £8·6 million. In addition, the unit highlighted the fact that the illegal underpayment extends to holiday pay, and that 10 per cent. of all the firms inspected in 1975 were paying less than the proper minimum rate for holiday pay. Needless to say, the position of home workers is even worse than that of workers at proper factories or premises—but we cannot go into that matter today.

In its reports the unit has claimed more than once that the inspectors have a policy of co-operation with wayward employers who are illegally underpaying. That may or may not be refuted by my hon. Friend the Minister, but he will have to come up with more concrete evidence than has been available so far in answers to Questions that such a policy is not being followed. Over the years there has been only a slight impact on infringements by employers. The piddling number of prosecutions makes it obvious that the policy has not been driven home by either Labour or Tory Governments.

The great wages robbery referred to by the unit is concentrated in a very few of the trades covered by the 40-plus wages councils. The worst were in the retail food industry where £66,000 was recovered for workers in 1974; the licensed non-residential trade, £48,000; and the retail furnishing trade, £36,000, as far as we were able to discover. The evidence of the lack of enforcement suggests that the national figures are between five and six times those amounts.

The Daily Telegraph had a very good article on the Low Pay Unit's recent report. I must exclude its industrial correspondent, Mr. Gerald Bartlett, from the comments that I am about to make, because on 26th April the Telegraph published one of the best articles in Fleet Street on that report. But the next day the real hacks were at work in the Telegraph's leader column, arguing that many low-paid workers did not deserve the wages that they were not even getting. It said:

"Many' low-paid' workers are without much skill or ability; the real value of their labour is low. And many employers, particularly those in these trades, live on very narrow profit margins, relying on relatively cheap labour and large turnovers."

The article went on to advocate getting rid of the wages inspectors, who ensure that the wages laid down by Parliament are paid and also getting rid of the system under which a floor is placed under those workers who cannot effectively organise themselves into trade unions.

That sort of comment comes from the well-heeled fat cats of Fleet Street and the hacks working for the Berry family newsletter, who know nothing whatsoever about ordinary working people and those on very low wages.

We are talking here of sums such as £30 a week for an adult male worker—a sum of money on which he has to try to survive and cope with family responsibilities. Many of these wage rates, paid for 40 hours, where there is no chance of overtime, are lower than the supplementary rates for families with two child-rent. These are the wages of people working 40 hours a week, yet the hacks on the Daily Telegraph have the nerve to say that the labour of these workers is not worthy even of the minimum rate laid down by Parliament.

What is disturbing is that the Government seem unable to answer questions asking how many workers are actually earning wages at or near the statutory minimum rate. According to national statistics, one in five adult male workers in this country over 21 earns less than £40 a week. That is his actual earnings, not his basic rate. Many of these workers are covered by wages councils, but there is a good chance that many more are not. If the Government are not in a position to answer questions put by hon. Members how can they positively enforce the will of Parliament and ensure that these wage rates are paid?

The picture that I have sought to paint is a sorry one. I am ashamed to be standing here in 1976, having to say these things, particularly when we have a Labour Government of two years' standing. In the past few years we have done far more than the previous Government did to lift the levels of the low-paid worker, but we still have to make sure that the proper rates are actually paid.

What is to be done? I submit that we first have to get the Wages Inspectorate up to the full strength. Even with its present low numbers, it is 10 short. There are 1·2 million workers unemployed in this country, so there ought not to be any difficulty in recruiting another 10 wages inspectors.

Secondly, we need more female wages inspectors. At present there are only 19 out of the existing staff of 127. This suggestion has nothing whatsoever to do with sex equality; it is based on my experience of manufacturing industry and of factory inspectors. In my experience, females make better factory inspectors, because they are more vigilant in making sure that the minutiae of the laws laid down by Parliament are enforced. Most production and engineering managers are terrified of moving into an area in which there is a female factory inspector. The female inspectors keep people on their toes. Certainly this has been the feeling in the factories in which I have worked in the Midlands, the South-East and East Anglia. I feel that the same principle would apply in the case of female wages inspectors.

Next, there should be compulsory registration of firms. It is ludicrous that before a firm can open up it needs a certificate from the factory inspector, whereas if it is in an industry covered by a wages council, it does not need to register itself with that wages council.

The forms for wage and time records need to be looked at. Official forms laid down by the Department should be used, so that we do not have a position in which 41 per cent. of firms are not keeping records.

The 7½ per cent. inspection level needs to be raised. I know that the situation is difficult in the Midlands, where 19 inspectors have to cover 66,000 establishments, but with better back-up facilities more inspections could be made.

Certainly the policy concerning prosecution or non-prosecution needs to be examined. We have seen what has happened since we reorganised the health and safety situation. The new executive has increased the number of prosecutions for flagrant breaches of the safety laws. We should ensure that existing laws designed to protect the low-paid workers are carried out to the full, and that people offending against those laws are procuted. That is the cheapest form of education process, without having to use a great army of inspectors.

Finally, my plea to my right hon. and hon. Friends is that we should operate the laws that we already have.

Bearing in mind the fracas last night, had I known that there would be no Opposition Members here for the debate, I would not have come in early for a training session. The fact that there are no Conservative Members present for the debate is an indication that interest in wages councils and the problems of the low paid does not extend to the other side of the House.

I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker). A year ago, in an Adjournment debate, I dealt with low pay in the catering industry, and I have had very close contact with the Low Pay Unit, as has my hon. Friend. I am glad of the opportunity to thank Steve Winyard for letting me look at his report and at his dissertation on the Wages Council Inspectorate.

We are very concerned at the low rates of pay in the industries covered by the wages councils. That is not to say that the councils are responsible for the conditions in the industries concerned. Without the inspectors, the wages and conditions would be infinitely worse than they are. I do not criticise them personally. They are very hard pressed and they have an onerous job to do. They have to be part-time accountants, part-time policemen and part-time lawyers. But I feel that there has been some neglect, in that the size of the inspectorate has been kept much too low for the enormous job the inspectors have to do.

The wages councils were set up in 1909 to protect low-paid workers in certain sweated trades. A Council was created when the Government were satisfied that the wage rate in a trade was exceptionally low compared with other employment.

Sixty-seven years afterwards, how can we assess the effectiveness of the wages councils and the inspectorate? The new earnings survey shows that workers in industries covered by wages councils are still among the lowest paid in the country. It is appalling that within the area covered by the wages councils, despite their 67 years existence, there is little sign of improvement. The condition and salaries of workers within these industries continues to be generally unacceptable. Therefore, we must call for improvements.

One recognises the constraints on the Government in terms of public expenditure, and in consequence on staffing. Nevertheless, even within the existing staffing requirements of the Wages Council Inspectorate, much more could be done, in my view, to improve the situation. There should be more staff employed—inspectors and back-up personnel—but as I shall point out later, much more could be done even with the existing staff structure.

Even before the First World War. doubts were expressed as to the effectiveness of the wages councils. There were criticisms by people such as R. H. Tawney. His criticisms are as valid today as they were over half a century ago. This indicates that we have not progressed as far as we should.

Many of the rates paid are abysmally low. The wages council rates dealing with licensed places of refreshment is to come into effect next month. A waiter or waitress over 21 years of age, working between 7.0 a.m. and 7.0 p.m., gets the princely sum of 53·9p an hour.

I had a group of women come to see me last week in my weekly surgery who told me that they are paid 44p an hour and that they had just had an increase! They pleaded with me not to publicise it or to contact their employer because they were terrified that they would lose their jobs. It is important to note that still, in 1976, workers employed in many small companies express a degree of fright about reporting their position to wages councils for fear of what they perceive to be the consequences of their action.

When we talk about low pay, I would comment on the case brought to my attention of a man who formerly worked as a waiter—he has now got "the boot" for a large firm of steak houses in London. He receive no wages at all. He had to pay £3 a week for the privilege of working for the company. When he got the sack, obligingly the company provided him with his P.45. It says against the entry "Total pay to date: Nil". It goes on to say "Tax to date: Nil" This gentleman tells me that if he wrote down all the illegalities committeed by the company, he would not have sufficient money to buy the necessary paper and ink. This is a matter for considerable concern. I shall pass the information to the Minister shortly.

I want to reiterate some of the statistical points made by the Low Pay Unit and quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr. They show the extent of underpayment in industries covered by wages councils. I am pleased to see that, in 1975, more than 11,000 firms were obliged to pay arrears totalling some £600,000. But, bearing in mind the small inspection rate, the real total must be very much higher. In other words, the phrase used by the Low Pay Unit about "the great pay robbery" is true. Far more money has been lost by the work force, as a result often of deliberate underpayment by employers, than ever was lost to society as a result of the Great Train Robbery more than a decade ago.

Enforcement is demonstrably quite inadequate. It is clear that in the past the inspectorate has decided to use the carrot rather than the stick. I appreciate some of the advantages of education and persuasion, but I suspect that we have gone too far in the wrong direction. We have gone too far from prosecution and the stick and too much towards the idea of gentle persuasion.

As far back as 1926, a writer named Burns pointed out:

"…the success of enforcement by legal proceedings, either civil or criminal, depends upon the actual extent to which non-complying employers will be prosecuted."

In the 1930s, there were more than 100 annual prosecutions. Now there are hardly any. As my hon. Friend said, of those who fail to keep adequate wage records, 11 per cent. of those visited did not keep records at all and 22 per cent. of the establishments inspected in 1975 failed to post the prescribed notices. How many of those were fined? The answer is None." In 1973, some 10,000 employers were found on inspection to be liable to successful prosecution under criminal legislation. Not one was taken to court.

I can see the virtues of education of employers and persuasion. Nevertheless we must stress the incidence of crime amongst the so-called "lower orders" compared with that amongst the middle classes. I refer to the work carried out by Sutherland into white collar crime. He observed that

The behaviour of respectable middle and upper class people frequently displays all the essential attributes of crime but it is often not dealt with as such.

One should contrast the punishment meted out to those at the lower end of the social scale who do not comply with, say supplementary benefit regulations. They are quickly brought to book. Unfortunately many employers often deliberately underpay their staff, and wages inspectors bend over backwards to encourage them to pay the resulting arrears. Very few of them—men who are committing criminal acts—are punished by the courts, even after second offences. If we are not to prosecute after the first offence, I urge that we should prosecute automatically for second and subsequent offences.

The inspectors are doing a difficult job, but there are far too few of them. If they cannot perform their function adequately, the result is that 91 per cent. of establishments known to be affected by wages orders are not inspected. What is more, they are the establishments about which we know. I suspect that there are some companies that the wages inspectors do not even know exist. There is a very rapid turnover of companies in some industries.

The inspection rate can be as high as12 per cent., but it can be as low as 2 per cent. As a result, it follows that in some cases 13 years might elapse before an investigation. I suspect that, if an employer knows of the possibility of a 13 year gap, it will have some effect on the way in which he goes about his business.

It means that workers must be made aware of their rights. I understand that Mr. Speaker gave a ruling yesterday to the effect that hon. Members can show photographs as evidence to support their arguments. I now produce a poster which is supposed to be displayed on notice boards. It concerns the Corset Wages Council, and I promise not to make any puns about the squeeze in that industry. The notice should be posted on every notice board. However, we see from the researches that more than one in five companies do not display such notices. If the notices were displayed, assuming that people could understand them, which is by no means automatic, it would mean that workers could remonstrate with their employers without having to resort to the Wages Inspectorate. There would be a degree of self-regulation, which would be to their advantage. The wages council also produces booklets and, usefully, put a hole in the corner of each copy so that it can be stuck on a notice board. Unfortunately it is not done by sufficient establishments.

I move on to one industry in which I have a special interest—not, I hasten to add, a financial interest. I refer to the hotel and catering industry. There are 1,300,000 workers covered by four wages councils. The wage level set is low, and there are many companies which do not pay even the minimum rate. People work hard, long, unsocial hours, and their pay is very low.

Recently, I was taken to task by the Catering Times after I had made what it considered to be "an emotional outburst". The criticism appears under the headline,

"Slaves? Not so, Mr. George."

It says:

"Mr. George is not speaking with much evident personal experience of the industry and his suggestion that hotel workers are 'one short step removed from slave labour' will be greeted with some surprise by those who know the industry a little better than this new-found champion of its employees."

I disagree with its analysis. There are, of course, many good employers. A number of companies pay above the minimum and many pay the minimum rates, but too many pay below the minimum and that I deplore.

I wish to reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr said. There must be far more inspectors appointed and more punishment to fit the crime. In other words, we must have sanctions against deliberate law breakers. There must be better advertising in the Press to inform workers of their rights. We must advise everyone working in the wages council sector to join a trade union. Only by joining trade unions can they surmount many of their obstacles, financial and other.

This Government have done a great deal to help the low paid. I hope that a more coherent strategy can be devised to increase the powers of wages councils, to increase the size of the Wages Inspectorate and to give more hope to all those who suffer intolerably low wages.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) criticised the Department of Employment for what he described as its "apparent indifference". I hope that he will note the presence on the Treasury Bench of all the Ministers from the Department, because that may in some way allay his fears. I assure him that we are not indifferent to the problem.

Although my hon. Friend will not expect me to agree with him in all that he said, I am grateful to him for raising this subject. I know of his long-standing interest in it and of that of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George). I should say straight away that I share my hon. Friend's view about the importance of the issues he has raised —the position of low-paid workers covered by wages councils and the need to ensure that they are not paid less than the appropriate statutory minimum rate.

Before turning to the points made about enforcement I will spend a few moments on the Government's general policy towards wages councils because this provides the context for the questions of enforcement policy which have been raised.

The Government's general industrial relations policy is to encourage the development of collective bargaining machinery wherever possible, which we believe to be the best way of fixing pay and conditions of employment. In the wages council sphere our policy, therefore, is to abolish councils where it can be shown that statutory protection is no longer necessary. Rapid progress has been made over the last two years. In 1975 four wages councils, covering about 120,000 workers, were abolished, and so far this year we have issued proposals for the abolition of the Milk Distributive (Scotland) Wages Council and we are abolishing the Industrial Staff Canteens Council. A proposal for the abolition of the Road Haulage Wages Council is now under consideration by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, and so are proposals made by the Secretary of State to abolish the nine retail trade councils and to replace them by two councils for the food and non-food trades.

We shall continue to take every opportunity to abolish wages councils where we are satisfied that this can be done without detriment to the low-paid workers concerned. But, because of the nature of some trades—especially the retail and catering trades—it is likely that wages council machinery will be needed for the forseeable future. And where wages councils continue to exist, it is our duty to ensure that the councils are best equipped to protect the workers they cover and that at least the statutory minimum rates they lay down are paid.

As my hon. Friend will know, we made a number of major reforms in the Employment Protection Act designed to make wages councils more efficient, more independent of Government, and closer in their methods of working to normal collective bargaining arrangements. The major changes, which came into effect on 1st January this year, are that wages councils now make their own orders and decide the operative dates thus being no longer dependent on the Secretary of State for implementation of their proposals, and wages councils are empowered for the first time to fix other terms and conditions of employment, as well as minimum pay, holidays and holiday pay.

Also, as a result of the changes, trade unions and employers organisations, and not the Secretary of State, appoint representative members direct to the councils, and wages councils may be converted into statutory joint industrial councils to ease the transition to normal collective bargaining.

I make no apology for dealing first with these more general issues when criticisms are made that we are neglecting wages councils. In fact, in terms of replacing councils with normal collective bargaining arrangements and of reforming the powers and procedures of wages councils we have probably seen more developments over the past two years than in any similar period in the history of statutory minimum legislation. This is something which is not generally appreciated, either inside or outside the House.

I turn to my hon. Friend's comments about the present levels of statutory minimum pay. I accept that the pay levels are relatively low. My hon. Friend said "measly"—I think we could agree with that.

But of course the real test of the effectiveness of councils is what would the pay levels of the workers concerned be in the absence of the wages council machinery. This is a difficult question to answer, but over the last two years or so there has been an unprecedented increase in statutory minimum rates, of about 50 per cent. in many cases, and over the last year the relative position of workers in the wages council sector has significantly improved as a result of the flat-rate £6 pay limit which was specially designed to help the low paid. The great majority of wages council settlements made under the present policy have been at the full £6 limit, and the few exceptions have been within £1 of the limit.

As the majority of statutory minimum rates were between £24 and £30 before the increase, the £6 supplement involved a 20 to 25 per cent. increase—far higher than that which most workers have received under the pay policy. The TUC's proposals for the next round again involve a flat-rate element to afford protection to low-paid workers such as those in the wages council sector, and, of course, no workers stand to gain more from the success of our attack on inflation than low-paid workers, who are hardest hit by rising prices.

In addition, the Equal Pay Act, introduced by the Labour Government in 1970, has made a considerable impact in the wages councils trades where large numbers of women workers are employed. Looking to the future, the £30 TUC target and the reference on low incomes made by the Government last week to the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth will be bound to cover the wages councils sector where many low-paid workers are concentrated. While we must never be complacent about low pay levels, significant progress is being made within, and indeed because of, the present pay policy.

As my hon. Friend has said, however, once the rates have been established by the councils, it becomes important to ensure that all the workers concerned receive their statutory entitlement. This brings me to the role of the Wages Inspectorate. I shall have one or two critical comments to make about some of the analysis in the Low Pay Unit's report, which was reflected in my hon. Friend's speech, but let me first say that we welcome the publicity and contribution to debate which the report has produced. Naturally, we share the concern about the increase in the number of breaches of the minimum rates and conditions. We are certainly not blinkered in our approach to solving these problems. I accept that it is the task of the Department, and the Wages Inspectorate in particular, to ensure that, within the resources available to us, we make the maximum impact to bring down the deplorably high level of infringements.

I will not repeat the depressing statistics quoted by my hon. Friend about the infringement and inspection rates. Figures published by the Department yesterday showed that in 1975, for the establishments visited by the inspectorate, 28·9 per cent, of employers were required to pay arrears, and 11·4 per cent. of the workers concerned were found to be receiving less than the appropriate pay or holiday requirements. Last year the inspectorate required employers to pay over £500,000 in arrears for the workers concerned. Over the last four years, the number of workers found by the inspectorate to have been underpaid has increased by approximately 50 per cent. The amount of arrears collected obviously varies between individuals, but in 1975 the average amount of arrears collected per underpaid worker was £25·74. It is an unhappy story.

It is misleading, however, to gross up the figures arising from the visits made by inspectors, as the Low Pay Unit attempt in their report, to arrive at a national figure. The fact is that the Wages Inspectorate, as well as following up all complaints, concentrates its routine visits on establishments where it is most likely to find infringements. The Low Pay Unit report itself states:

"The sample of establishments will tend to contain a higher proportion of non-complying firms than would a random sample."

For example, large firms with agreements that grant workers substantially better terms and conditions than those laid down by the wages councils are rarely selected for routine inspection. For this reason we regard the Low Pay Unit's estimate of total underpayment in 1974 of £2·5 million as exaggerating the scale of the problems.

I am not, however, seeking in any way to play down the real problem. I entirely accept that the present infringement rate found on visits is deplorable. Of course, what has happened is tantamount to robbery. Not that we are talking about the robber barons, but rather, about the pickpockets of industry—the sneak thieves and the back-street brigade who are pinching from the pay packets of those who can least afford to be done down in this way. Of course these people must be condemned. I have already made our attitude clear to employers in the hotel and catering industry—one of the industries with high infringement rates—whom I addressed recently.

We shall do all we can to improve the position, but there is obviously a limit to what the Department can do. It must be for employers to put their house in order in the first place and to recognise that they are law-breakers. The Wages Inspectorate tries to make the best use of its resources to enforce statutory minimum pay levels. Because of the increase in the infringement rate in recent years, the percentage of establishments visited fell to the target of 7·5 per cent. in 1974 and below the target in 1975. Naturally, the more infringements that are found on visits the longer the time that has to be spent on each visit. That follows inevitably.

The obvious answer is an increase in the number of inspectors to reach a higher target figure, as the Low Pay Unit recommends and as my hon. Friend has urged. I cannot give any undertaking about this. My hon. Friend knows of the exercise in which the Government are engaged, in dealing with Civil Service manpower. Against this background we cannot meet the problem simply by large increases in staff. My hon. Friend knows well enough the public spending constraints that exist. This is not just Treasury parsimony but economic necessity. I would be misleading the House if I suggested that we could significantly increase the size of the inspectorate, despite the heavy work load which I know it has to shoulder and which is undoubtedly appreciated.

This is not to say, however, that there is nothing we can do to tackle the problem. I will do my best to focus attention and publicity upon it. Within the inspectorate, suggestions for improving present procedures will continue to be considered and acted on wherever appropriate. A review is now being completed on the use of resources within the inspectorate. New powers were taken in the Employment Protection Act to obtain information in writing from employers so that more effective use can be made of the time of inspectors. Other suggestions, such as those made by the Low Pay Unit, are under consideration. We shall be having talks with the unit on its recommendations.

In advance of those talks I will say a few words about the Low Pay Unit's recommendations. dealing first with prosecutions. The unit calls for a more vigorous prosecution policy and so, again, did both my hon. Friends. It is the case that on the first inspection, provided that the employer is not obstructive, the inspector assesses and claims the arrears due and issues a warning about future compliance. There is no prosecution. At a second inspection, if similar faults are found, the case is regarded as a potential prosecution. This policy over the years has led the inspectorate to gain the confidence of workers and employers and has produced results.

There is no question, as the unit alleges, of

"co-operating with employers who fail to comply with the Act".

It is not a question of co-operation in that sense. The main object is to put the situation right for the worker concerned as quickly as possible so that he immediately receives the appropriate pay and conditions and any arrears due to him. In this way the inspectorate claimed over £500,000 in 1975 on behalf of workers. We are looking carefully at prosecution procedures within the inspectorate to ensure that prosecutions do take place where justified.

Related to prosecutions is the question of sanctions. The unit calls for increased penalties. Under the provisions of the Employment Protection Act, which came into effect only at the beginning of the year, the maximum fine for under-payment was increased five times, from £20 to £100 for each offence. If maximum fines were imposed—and I hope that is noted outside the House—they could be a severe deterrent. There has not yet been time to see the effect of the change which came about in January. Employers would be foolish not to take note of this, bearing in mind that courts, in addition to fines, can order arrears to be paid for the past two years. In those circumstances employers can face a tidy bill on any specific occasion.

My hon. Friend also urged that we should take steps to increase knowledge among workers of the wages council system. The increasing number of complaints from workers now being received and investigated by the inspectorate suggests that workers may not be as ignorant of their statutory rights as some surveys have suggested. I am not complacent. I believe that we should consider the case for making available more publicity about the wages council system, remembering once again the high cost of advertising and our spending constraints. I agree that the simplication of wages orders would assist self-enforcement. There is a limit to what can be done in legal documents and the content of the orders is largely a matter for the councils.

The Low Pay Unit also commented on the problems of home-workers. The inspectorate finds that the infringements relating to home-workers are no worse than for comparable factory workers. I recognise, however, that there is concern about the low earnings of home-workers. We intend to include, in our programme of references of wages councils to ACAS, two councils covering industries in which significant numbers of home-workers are employed so as to provide more information the problem.

Let me summarise briefly our position on the points that have been raised by my hon. Friend. We have already made much progress in abolishing wages councils and reforming the wages council machinery and procedures. We share my hon. Friend's concern that in the wages council sector so many employers are found to be paying below the statutory minimum level. We cannot commit ourselves to a large increase in the inspectorate, as we are told is necessary, but we are, none the less, as concerned as is my hon. Friend to tackle the problem. We shall continue to seek the best use of the resources we have in the inspectorate and we shall be discussing with the Low Pay Unit the suggestions it has made, together with the points raised by my hon. Friends, one or two of which I have not had the time to deal with. I hope there will be no doubt after the debate that we deplore the present degree of under-payment in the wages council sector and that we shall do all we can to improve the position.

I am grateful for the opportunity of raising on the Adjournment the subject of the transport problems of North-East Essex. My main object is to try to persuade the Minister that the way in which concessionary fares operate under the 1968 Transport Act is unfair, especially in the Tendring district, in my constituency, where there are 30,000 retired people out of a total of 107,000, where 15,000 householders draw rate rebate, and where the product of a penny rate totals £180,000. Under these conditions the local council has found it impossible to bring forward proposals for concessionary fares.

Alas, this is not the only problem facing transport users in North-East Essex. There is a grave problem facing railway commuters. I am sure there is a strong case for making travel to work a tax-allowable expense.

Before I go further into detail I wish to ask the Minister about the progress being made into the continuing story of the proposed development of Bathside Bay—a proposal vital to the proper development of the Haven ports and particularly to the railway port of Parkeston and the privately-owned port at Harwich Navy Yard.

We have recently heard a great deal about Felixstowe. The increase in trade on the Harwich side of the river has been equal to that of Felixstowe, and the amount of tonnage handled by Parkeston and Harwich has exceeded that of Felixstowe. Like all successful enterprises, the ports of Parkeston and Harwich Navy Yard both need room for expansion. This is especially so since, with Felixstowe, these ports have become the second largest port complex involved in the movement of goods and passengers.

Twice in the past two years application has been made to proceed with this vital development at Bathside, to cater for further expansion, particularly when we get through the present depression. Unfortunately, the scheme has twice been turned down, on the ground that the developers have not been able to get firm guarantees of user commitment. To many of us closely connected with trying to get permission for this scheme from the Government it seems that we have reached a situation of "Which came first—the chicken or the egg?" in these uncertain times it is difficult for any shipping company to give firm guarantees two or three years before development has taken place.

Surely, faith in the future must be shown, not only by these shipping companies but by the Government. In my view, even in the last application the shipping companies intending to use the facility went as far as they possibly could, given present conditions. It was a great disappointment to me and to many others that the Government did not show more faith and leadership in this investment project, especially as we are concerned with the second largest port complex in the country.

When I raised this matter during the debate on the British Transport Docks (Felixstowe) Bill the Minister referred to an element of user commitment. I was encouraged by his words. I hope that that means that when the next application comes in the new Minister will look upon it favourably. From the intelligence that I have, the developers may be able to get firmer guarantees on user commitment than they did on the last application. The trouble is that all this delay and procrastination costs money, especially in these inflationary times. A speedy decision for development is urgently required not only for the proper development of the port but because work on the Dovercourt bypass is being held up. I am sure that when the Minister visits Harwich he will realise at once how urgently the bypass is needed. Heavy lorries trundle through the town and other traffic through the main street of Dovercourt. That has gone on for a long time. Something must be done soon.

Apart from the Dovercourt bypass, the communications on our side of the Haven port complex have been improved considerably compared with 10 years ago. I should be grateful if, in his reply, the Minister could give some information about the progress being made in joining the A12 and the A604 and any other intended improvement to help communications with the Midlands.

I turn now to some of the other problems, particularly the grave situation facing the users of public transport in North-East Essex. It simply boils down to the fact that a great number of people cannot afford to use public transport. They are being priced out of travelling. There has been a disturbing fall-off in season ticket holders using the railways. Between 1970 and 1975 there has been a drop of 13 per cent. in revenue, totalling £9½ million, on buses controlled by the Eastern National Bus Company. That fall-off directly reflects on the employment figures in the area, as the cost of commuting to business and industrial areas is becoming prohibitive.

I am also concerned for school leavers who want to serve apprenticeships. They are finding it more expensive to use the railways. Indeed, there has been an 80 per cent. increase in rail fares since 1974. My constituents strongly resented the remarks recently made by a Minister, to the effect that commuters are rich. Certaintly the majority of commuters from North-East Essex are in the lower income group. They are having to find over £500 a year for second-class annual tickets from the coast to London. That means that they must earn over £1,000 a year gross to pay their travel bills alone. In 1964 the fare was one-fifth of what it is today. Indeed, many people moved to the coast from London tempted by the promise of cheap rail fares.

During the period of the Conservative Government, rail fares rose by 2 per cent. less than retail prices and by 12 per cent. less than average earnings. Now we have had an 80 per cent. increase in the last two years. How can the Government appeal to the country for restraint in wage claims and price increases when they control the industries, especially public transport, which are putting up charges?

After such increases, and bearing in mind the desperate situation now facing commuters, I am sure that travel to work must be made a tax allowable expense. I look forward to pressing the Government for action in that respect on the Report stage of the Finance Bill. Something must be done to help commuters.

Finally, I turn to the question of concessionary fares. With this all-time high in bus fares, we in Tendring get no concessionary fares at all. Maldon, which has the lowest product per penny rate in Essex, is the only other district in the county that is in the same position. The product of a penny rate in Maldon is £74,500, compared with £181,000 in Tend-ring. Unlike Maldon, Tendring has 30,000 retired people out of a total population of 107,000. If the local council were to grant such fares, the bill would be very high and would fall upon those who could least bear it, especially as the average wage in North-East Essex is so much below that for the rest of the country. Indeed, 15,000 people are drawing rate rebates. A considerable part of the bill would therefore fall on those least able to bear it—those most hit by inflation. That is why I suggest that the Government must stop hiding behind the 1968 Act and face reality, especially at this time of severe inflation.

Help should go to those who need it. But we are discovering that words and action mean two very different things. Help for concessionary fares is being given by the rich Socialist councils—for example, London, Manchester, Bradford and Leeds. London has a rateable value, per penny rate, of £19 million; the figure for Bradford is £856,000; for Manchester £763,000; and for Leeds £1,250,000. Poor Conservative areas like Maldon and Tendring, with the real problems of having to cater for the elderly—I have not mentioned the disabled, the blind and others—get no help from the Government. Indeed, the Government, through their policy on concessionary fares, are making second-class citizens of my constitutents.

I should point out that concessionary fares are entirely a matter for local authorities. Manchester and the other places mentioned by the hon. Gentleman do not get any help from the Government.

If the hon. Gentleman will follow my argument, he will appreciate that I am asking the Government to stop hiding behind the iniquitous 1968 Act, which prevents help going to those who need it. If the Government follow my suggestion, they will be able to save a considerable amount of public money.

At present, holidaymakers from concessionary fares areas can use their concessions in North-East Essex, but my constituents have to pay the full fares. That is why they feel that they are second-class citizens. The Minister may frown. I wish that he would travel on some of the buses in my constituency. If he did, he would see the real anger that is being created by the unfair operation of the 1968 Act. I am sure that the Minister understands the resentment that it has brought, even to richer parts of Essex which are able to operate concessionary fares because they do not have the same problems as Tendring and Maldon. Other areas, not nearly as large as ours, are not as hard hit as we are by fare increases. For example, since 1970 the fare between Brightlingsea and Colchester has risen by 166 per cent. In 1970 the fare was 18p; in 1974 it was 29p; now it is 48p. Similar fare increases have taken place throughout the rest of North-East Essex.

In Essex the large increase—for example, in rail fares—has taken place since 1974. That is due not so much to the increase in oil prices as to the increase in wages. Since 1970 fares have risen by 166 per cent. and wages by 140 per cent. I hope that those who are responsible for pressing inflationary wage

demands will take note that such action has caused unemployment and real hardship to pensioners.

Unlike those in Socialist areas operating concessionary fares. many of my constituents have to pinch and save to travel even once weekly. Worse still, they cannot afford the bus fare to collect their pensions, and the Government do not have the money to move sub-post offices so that pensioners do not have to travel on the buses.

I am nevertheless sure that a solution can be found to this problem. In my view, the Government have to stop hiding behind the 1968 Act. They should deal with the problem nationally and take account of areas such as mine, with 30,000 retired people out of a population of 107,000. If the Government were to do that and give help to those who really need it, there would be a saving in Government expenditure. Concessionary fares, which cost the Exchequer £9·5 million in 1970–71, are now costing nearly £50 million, and that is a direct contribution towards the rate support grant.

The Government make no contribution towards concessionary fares. The expenditure mentioned by the hon. Gentleman is the direct expenditure of local authorities, through their rates.

If it is direct expenditure through local authority rates, according to the public expenditure White Paper, which I am sure the Minister has read, it is costing £50 million. I still feel that if help were given to those who need it, rather than the matter being dealt with by the rich Socialist boroughs handing out largesse, economies could be made.

If, at the same time as looking at concessionary fares in the way that I have suggested, the bus companies and other commercial users were to do what the railways are doing and offer half-price travel at non-peak periods for senior citizens and the disabled, it might help those who most need it in the crisis situation in which we find ourselves. Nobody can dispute that the elderly, the disabled and people in similar categories are being hit extremely hard by the present situation.

Something new has to be done. I hope that the Minister will not complacently hide behind the 1968 Act but will assure us that he will consider carefully the proposals that I have made. I hope he will not say that councils such as Maldon and Tendring can afford to pay these fares, bearing in mind that in my area there are 30,000 retired people and 15,000 who receive rate rebates.

I shall be interested to hear what solutions the Minister has to offer for some of these poor areas, because of the metropolitan district councils there are now 63 in a similar situation to Tendring and Maldon. The Government and those who think about this problem must do their best to find a correct solution to it.

I am told that the Minister feels that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) has packed so much meat into his speech that he will require 25 minutes in which to reply. I shall therefore endeavour to be correspondingly brief.

First, it is a great pleasure to have this opportunity to support what was said by my hon. Friend, because I was born and brought up in his constituency and my parents still live there. They are retired and I frequently visit them, and I therefore know something of the problems of the area. I know how much my hon. Friend has done over many years to help and support the interests of retired people. He has supported me on many occasions in proposing amendments to the Finance Bill to that end.

I propose to follow some of the points raised by my hon. Friend, and I shall deal first with the matter of concessionary fares. My hon. Friend emphasised the financial aspects of the problem and the difficulty that arises for councils that have a relatively low yield from the rates and a relatively high—in my hon. Friend's case exceptionally high—number of retired people. That is one important factor.

A second and increasingly powerful argument for a national approach to concessionary fares is the sheer nonsense of what often arises because of the differences in schemes in adjoining areas. Maldon, which does not come into my constituency but borders on it, does not have a concessionary fares scheme, but Braintree District Council does have such a scheme—though it has been through some difficulties—and Chelmsford district, part of which is covered by my constituency, has yet another scheme. The boundaries between those areas mean little to many retired people, in terms of where they shop. It produces an irritating and even anger-creating situation amongst retired people when they find that the treatment meted out to them differs so much over relatively short geographical distances.

Thirdly, there is the difficulty that often arises because of the many variations in individual schemes. In Braintree, until just over a year ago the council was operating its own scheme, based on paper vouchers. The scheme was working satisfactorily for retired people but it gave rise to many administrative difficulties for people in the bus company, and in the end they refused to accept the vouchers.

A confused situation arose, in which vouchers were usable on vehicles operated by private bus companies in some parts of the area but not on vehicles operated by the Eastern National Omnibus Company Limited—part of the National Bus Company. In part of the area the vouchers were usable on taxis, but not on the buses, and a ridiculous situation resulted. This year, within a matter of a week or two, the matter will be sorted out, after great efforts by myself and people on the district council and the bus company, with the introduction of tokens. They will be acceptable on Eastern National buses, and I hope that that will solve that aspect of the problem.

That is a good illustration of the difficulties that arise when there is a great variety of schemes and the matter is left to be dealt with by the district councils. I am increasingly persuaded to the view that some kind of national standard ought to be laid down, if necessary with financial equalisation help, as my hon. Friend suggested, so that we have a situation that is more acceptable to retired people than is the present one.

I accept that present financial constraints rule out what I should like to see, which is a national half-fare pass scheme, possibly to operate outside peak hours. I do not say that we can do that this year or next, because I appreciate the financial problems, but the Government ought to be thinking about a national scheme properly and fairly financed along those lines.

I also support what was said by my hon. Friend about commuters. There are fewer retired people in my constituency than there are in my hon. Friend's, but I have a larger number of commuters than he has, because my constituency is considerably closer to London. Many of these commuters are young married people, who have been encouraged by Government policy and by general planning policy over many years to move out of London and buy their homes. They have done that as part of the policy to reduce congestion in London, but they have continued to work in London, and now they are finding themselves clobbered out of sight by what is happening to them on both parts of the equation. They moved out to buy new houses, on mortgages, with official encouragement, but their mortgage repayments are infinitely higher than they expected them to be, and at the same time they are having to cope with the most fantastic increases in commuter fares.

I do not think that the problem that arises should be underestimated. It cannot be dismissed as a problem relating only to those who are relatively well off. Only last week I received a letter from a constituent who had earlier complained to me about the fare increases, saying that he had been forced into a decision to move to another part of the country. He has asked for a transfer in his job because he cannot stand the costs with which he now finds himself burdened.

I do not believe that my constituents, much though they object to the fare increases imposed upon them, want to be permanently subsidised. They want to be convinced that they are being treated fairly. At the moment they are not.

There are two reasons for this. First, as the Government's transport survey indicates, the level of efficiency on our railway system is still far lower than in most other railway systems in Europe. My constituents want to be convinced that everything is being done to reduce the cost of the railways before fares are put up. Many feel that the recent announcement that fares are to be frozen for the rest of this year should have been made a long time ago and, if anything, before the latest round of fare increases.

The second point on fairness is that it is clear from the Government's consultation document that rail freight is paying only its avoidable track costs, which means that it is being subsidised. This could easily lead me into the whole argument about freight transport both by road and rail, but I shall refrain, because time is short. What is certain is that the question of rail freight charges needs to be looked at carefully if I am to be able to persuade my constituents that as commuters they are being fairly treated. Rail freight ought to be paying its full and proper share of rail costs.

I am grateful for this brief opportunity to raise these points, and I look forward to the Minister's reply.

I should like to thank the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) for bringing transport matters to our attention once more and for giving me another opportunity to debate transport policy. I came into office at the beginning of December last year and I have taken part in 18 debates of this kind.

The hon. Member raised a number of points. I would have liked more time to calculate just what they mean in terms of public expenditure. One of the problems in this House is that hon. Members opposite make demands for immediate cuts in public expenditure and then send me many letters asking that the Government give more support to concessionary fares and to commuters. We just cannot do that. It has been suggested that we are hiding behind the 1968 Act, but we are doing nothing of the kind. Because we are not satisfied with the 1968 Act, we have brought forward our consultation document on transport policy review, which deals with many of the points raised in the debate.

Among the points raised was that areas with low rateable values and a great number of old people are worse off. But they receive larger Government grants because of that. The hon. Gentleman compares his area with cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, which help their old people much more than do rural authorities. He will find, despite the recent large increases, that the rates in his area are still much less than those in the great cities.

I am convinced that the Government are right to move towards a properly integrated transport system and to do it through a policy of consultation. Nevertheless, I welcome every opportunity to talk on this subject in the House. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting me know in advance some of the points he intended to raise.

As well as raising these points, however, he tried to take a broad view. What he has said about his own area of Essex applies to many other parts of the country. I hope that hon. Members, as well as all the organisations involved in transport—the various local authority associations, transport undertakings and individuals—will be more specific when calling for more spending in their own local areas.

As to concessionary fares, I have written to the hon. Gentleman, and to about 550 other hon. Members recently, but this was about his district council in Tendring where the local council offers no concessionary travel arrangements for elderly and disabled people. These are entirely at the discretion of the local authorities. I can see the difficulty which Tendring faces in common with a number of other seaside areas which have a large number of elderly and retired people. The figure I have is 35 per cent. of residents. Any concessionary fare scheme would, therefore, be extremely expensive for the council to finance.

I understand that the council has this under active consideration. Perhaps it will bear in mind that there is a tremendous level of support given by local authorities, particularly in the West Mid-lands and Tyne and Wear, which have very fine systems of concessionary fares, whereas others do nothing.

All councils are faced with the difficult decision over expenditure and only yesterday we issued a circular to local authorities asking them to restrict their spending to the figure we agreed on last December. We regard this as a highly important matter because there is a danger of overspending beyond what we estimated when the rate support grant negotiations were held.

The consultation document acknowledges that this form of subsidy to well defined groups is a justified use of public resources. But there are very wide differences in the schemes available, and the danger is that not all the schemes are giving value for money. Within the constraints on public expenditure there is an urgent need to get the maximum social benefit from resources expended.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether the money will go to those most in need. We have to consider the subsidies given to commuters whether they are poor or rich. A question of this matter is specifically included in the consultation document and we shall carefully study reactions to it. I would point out that at the end of every chapter in the document we have put a series of questions asking people how they would tackle this problem. I hope that people will be detailed in their replies.

There are important implications which the House will have to consider seriously. The first is the freedom of local authorities to take their own decisions in these matters. Some of the authorities which have been mentioned do far more than we can reasonably expect to help their old people. We have to examine how far the rights of local authorities, and their freedom, should be made subservient to a national policy. It is a difficult matter.

Is it not for the reason that some of them are rather extravagant that the rates in the cities are higher than in other areas?

That is a matter for the judgment of the local authorities. They believe that disabled, old and blind people should have free travel. They have the backing of the ratepayers and the ratepayers pay the money. That is precisely where the concessionary fare situation stands at the moment. Almost inevitably, in moving towards standardisation, it will be difficult to persuade those authorities with good schemes to reduce them at this stage.

The hon. Member spoke of the Colchester Eastern bypass. As he is aware, proposals for the Colchester Eastern and Elmstead Market bypasses were published in draft in July 1975 and considered before an independent inspector at a public inquiry in January.

The new road would act as a bypass of both Ardleigh and Great Bromley and would remove from these villages a great deal of traffic which goes through them at present to the East coast. The bypass, a proposed dual two-lane road, would pass about 800 to 1,000 metres south of the centre of Great Bromley but between Great Bromley and Hare Green. The latter is a small community, which objectors argued strongly formed part of the village of Great Bromley. Near Hare Green the bypass would be in deep cutting. Hare Green is also the site of a two-level interchange enabling traffic to and from Clacton to leave and join the new bypass.

Objectors at the public inquiry put forward alternative routes, two of which concerned this immediate locality. One of these would move the bypass south of Hare Green and obviate the alleged severance of the two communities. The other would move the interchange further eastward away from Hare Green.

We still await the inspector's report. The hon. Member will, I hope, appreciate that all I can say at this stage is that my right hon. Friend will announce his decision in due course, after considering all objections, the report and the alternative recommendations of the inspector.

I should like to turn to the port of Harwich, to which the hon. Member referred in a recent debate on Felixstowe docks. As the House knows, Harwich is one of several ports throughout the country owned and operated by the British Railways Board. Parliament has given the Railways Board the job of running its ports on a commercial basis, and it must be left to the Railways Board in the first instance to identify ways in which its business should properly develop.

It is, of course, firm Government policy to transfer freight from road to rail where-ever this makes economic, social or environmental sense. Within this requirement, it is the aim of the Railways Board to secure additional traffic whenever this can be justified on commercial grounds. This obviously imposes some constraints, but I know that the Board is anxious to lose no opportunity of increasing its share of the traffic going to and from the port.

So far as new investment is concerned, the Railways Board has recently carried out some minor work at Parkeston Quay, in order to cope with the welcome extra traffic. Further investment will depend not only on the board's own plans for developing its shipping services but also on the development of trade at the port in general.

I turn to proposals by the Earlpar Development Company to reclaim and develop port facilities at Bathside Bay. I am aware of the hon. Member's continuing interest in this project—he keeps on making me aware of it—and that he has raised this matter on a number of occasions in the House.

I do not propose to dwell on the earlier history of these proposals. It is common ground that Bathside Bay is physically well suited for port development. As the hon. Member knows, however, the promoters need to obtain my right hon. Friend's authorisation under Section 9 of the Harbours Act 1964. The difficulty hitherto has been the inability of Earlpar to demonstrate firm evidence of demand for the project, and I know how difficult that is.

Where there is a problem of surplus capacity in the ports industry as a whole, my Department and the National Ports Council, whose advice has to be obtained under the Act, must be fully satisfied that the project meets the normal criteria in regard to evidence of need for additional port facilities and viability of the project.

I understand that Earlpar has been having informal discussions with the National Ports Council over recent months on the basis of a scheme which would involve reclamation and the provision of a roll-on/roll-off berth for a prospective customer. I am informed that Earlpar is currently negotiating with the customer and the British Railways Board for a lease of the land in question which is owned by the board. If these negotiations are successful and if the terms of any agreement reached with Earlpar involve the necessary degree of commitment by the customer, it will then be up to Earlpar to decide whether to submit a further formal application for authorisation. I must emphasise that at this moment there is no such application before my right hon. Friend, but I repeat the assurance which has been given on several occasions that the Department and the National Ports Council are prepared to give careful consideration to any application when it is submitted.

The hon. Member spoke also of the Dovercourt bypass. This is a scheme the history of which is linked with the Bath-side scheme, so that decisions made about the one inevitably affect decisions on the other.

The Department has long recognised the need to improve the important route carrying international traffic to and from Parkeston and Harwich. Substantial improvement has already been achieved. The length from Elmstead Market to west of Ramsey has been brought up to a standard appropriate to the nature and volume of the traffic it has to carry, and, in anticipation of the route's eventual trunk road status, the scheme was financed wholly from central government funds.

Stage 1 of the Dovercourt bypass will be similarly financed, quite separately from the grant aid available to Essex County Council in the form of transport supplementary grant. The associated complusory purchase order was recently the subject of a public local inquiry and further progress must depend on the out-come. If it is favourable, I believe that the county council plan to start work next January and to have the new road open two years later.

Stage 2 of the bypass is a scheme for the county council to promote within the framework of its transport policies and programmes, with central government aid provided through the transport supplementary grant system. Had the Bathside development project gone ahead, it would no doubt have incorporated a road layout of which part could have formed a section of this stage 2 bypass.

Without the Bathside project, however, stage 2 must compete equally with other schemes for a place in the county council's highways programme, and so far it does not appear to have qualified for inclusion. In that respect it must be borne in mind that the Department has advised local authorities, in a circular on transport supplementary grant submissions for 1977–78, that the reduced amounts available for investment in road building will inevitably bear on the scope for injecting new schemes into their programmes.

They were, therefore, asked to ensure that in starting new projects they would not be creating future commitments which would be difficult for them to honour in the coming years. It was suggested that, among schemes commanding strong support on grounds of need and urgency, councils might wish to increase the emphasis on smaller projects with speedier returns and lesser implications for expenditure in the years ahead. Clearly, Essex County Council has to consider the priority of stage 2 of the bypass in relation to the other pressing calls on their resources.

I come to rail fares and support. The question of establishing priorities between different calls on resources is just as difficult with regard to current expenditure and in particular concerning subsidies to bus and rail services.

The subject of rail passenger services and rail fares in London and the South-East has been thoroughly aired in previous debates. We had an Adjournment debate on the subject of railway fares on 2nd March and a Supply Day debate on British Rail's commuter services on 17th March. The problems of rail travellers were also raised on 13th April when the Secretary of State made his statement on transport policy, and the topic was discussed very fully in another place as recently as last week. My colleagues and I have, moreover, frequently answered questions on this subject during Question Time. I do not, therefore, intend to take up valuable time by repeating what has been said on these occasions.

There are, however, two general points that I must make. The first is on the misconception which has gained currency that the Government believe that all rail travellers are rich. Of course, we know that this is not so. The better-off half of the social spectrum makes more use of the railways than the poorer half, and so stand to gain most from rail subsidies. But we fully recognise this still leaves many travellers from the lower income groups who depend upon public transport, especially if they do not own cars. We recognise also that many commuters feel that where they work and where they live leaves them no alternative but to travel by rail, and they feel themselves trapped.

One of the arguments put forward in the demand for increased London allowances by civil servants and teachers—this also applies to a great extent in private industry—is that if they do not live in London but have to work in London they spend a lot of money in travelling. In many cases, London allowances exceed the amount that is spent on travel into London, but I appreciate that the cost of commuting is a major expense for many families. Never the less, it must be remembered that the railways are already receiving a very substantial public subsidy.

Central and local government support for the railway system last year was in excess of £500 million. The Government paid about £300 million of this to support passenger services. This year we expect to pay about £312 million. When I say "the Government", I mean the tax-payers, both those who ride on the railways and those who never ride on the railways from one year to another. If the hon. Member for Harwich is suggesting that we increase our support for rail fares, perhaps he would also like to suggest which other programmes of expenditure we should cut, or where the additional burden of taxation should fall—because the fact remains that it would be impossible to provide more money for the railways unless we provided less for other vital programmes or increased public expenditure and increased taxation.

The second misconception is that the proposals in the recently published transport consultation document will inevitably mean massive increases in rail fares. As hon. Members know, British Rail have announced that they intend to freeze rail fares for the rest of the year. The board is now reviewing its prospects before deciding upon the level of future adjustments. Fares certainly cannot be frozen indefinitely. The size of future increases will depend, however, upon the savings which can be made through greater efficiency and productivity, and the matching of the services to the demand. The greater the contribution of those factors, the less need there will be for fares increases.

Despite recent fares increases, the cost of rail travel still compares favourably, mile for mile, with the cost of motoring or even, for many journeys, the cost of bus travel. The commuter travelling from Clacton to London every day with a monthly season ticket pays substantially less than 2p per mile. The housewife travelling into Colchester or Harwich with an off-peak return pays only about 2½p per mile. The subsidy for this is about 2p per mile from the taxpayer. British Rail are, moreover, constantly improving and modernising services wherever this is justified by the demand for rail travel. This year, for example, the line between Witham and Braintree is being electrified, making services faster and more reliable.

The hon. Member has also mentioned bus fares. The stage carriage bus service is the most basic form of widely applicable public transport in many areas, and still has a very important part to play. The decline of the bus over recent years is, therefore, cause for real concern. In the 20 years following 1950, when car ownership was increasing six-fold, the number of passenger journeys by bus almost halved.

The effect of this trend on the economics of bus operation has been very serious, particularly in rural areas, where long distances and sparse populations create problems enough. In recent times, of course, rapid inflation has added yet another difficulty. Bus costs have increased more rapidly than the general level of inflation.

With costs spiralling upwards, and more and more travellers choosing the convenience of their cars, operators have only three alternatives. They can either put the cost on the passenger by putting up fares; or they can attract support from the local authorities—some local authorities give substantial support and others do not; or they can reduce services where cost increases have wiped out whatever possibility of covering costs there once was. No other alternatives are open to the operator. He must get extra income from somewhere or he must cut his costs on services.

Decisions on these matters must be essentially local decisions, based on local circumstances and transport needs. This is why the Local Government Act 1972 gave a new rôle to county councils—that of ensuring the provision of a co-ordinated and efficient public transport system in their local area. In effect, this means making decisions about the right combination of fares, subsidies and service economies, in close collaboration with the operators themselves, who not only have to implement the counties' policies, but are in the best position to provide counties with the detailed information they need to formulate these policies.

The Government's view is that we should allocate the limited resources available for bus subsidies to maintaining basic levels of bus service for those without cars, or without access to cars. By that I mean the wives and children of the owners of cars. We believe that general subsidies towards keeping fares down is a less efficient way of using the funds available. We have, therefore, aimed to direct these subsidies towards services, mainly in rural and semi-rural areas, which even then cannot be self-supporting.

With this objective my hon. Friend accepted for grant purposes for 1976–77 virtually the whole of the non-metropolitan counties' estimates for bus support. Indeed, we went even further and said that we would give even more support, and we did so in many cases. Essex County Council's estimate was accepted in full and it received grant in full. That estimate was, no doubt, based on the county's own judgment of the right balance between fares, service cuts, and subsidy from the rates, and it is for the the county council to consider how best to allocate the money available.

Clearly, realism dictates that fares increases will need to follow increases in costs. We are all very concerned about the difficulty that this will inevitably cause for some. This is only one of the areas in which we are having to take very difficult decisions about priorities. If more resources were to be allocated to bus support, expenditure on other important national programmes would have to be reduced. Our consultation document sets out the position quite clearly when it says that any increase in the sums provided for bus subsidy could be achieved only by making unwelcome reductions in road expenditure, for instance, and in other areas of transport expenditure.

It is in relating together all the various aspects of transport which we have discussed today that we shall move towards the integrated transport policy which we all seek. I look forward to further debates in this House—and I have no doubt that I shall get them—which will help to inform the public of the issues which have to be taken into account in working towards this policy—because, of course, something of which we often lose sight is that transport is not essentially about cars and lorries, trains and buses, but about moving people and goods efficiently and cost-effectively.

I am grateful for the opportunity to draw attention to the problem of social security benefits and maintenance grants for students. In considering the income of students generally, these subjects overlap.

I begin by discussing the social security position of students in higher and further education. I should like to set out the general problem. It is my opinion that students ought to be no concern of the social security system. I think most students would agree that they ought not to be dependent upon supplementary benefits for their income. A feature that the students usually have in common is that they are young, usually fit, and not seeking permanent employment in industry or commerce but delaying it while they complete full-time education. Their income during that period of education ought to be looked after by the system of maintenance grants, and ought to be an obligation on the education budget alone.

In recent years, however, partly as a result of the successful National Union of Students campaign, which pointed out to students the benefits to which they might be entitled, a growing number of students have been claiming supplementary benefit as an addition to their maintenance grants during vacations. In August 1973, 12,000 received benefit. By August 1974 the number had become 21,000, and by August 1975, 64,000.

From the point of view of the social security system, in which I take a regular interest in this House, the students are a quite anomalous category of claimants. They are a considerable nuisance to the Supplementary Benefits Commission and its officers. They clog up the works, and they add extra work to the Department, which has a great deal to do for an extremely needy section of our com- munity. One would prefer that they were not drawing this benefit. But it is also a sad reflection of the inadequacy of grant levels and the financial difficulties of students that they have been able to qualify for supplementary benefit in such numbers in recent years.

The way in which they have qualified is as follows: their grant was regarded as a grant for the entire year; the vacation maintenance element in the grant came out at £3·18 each week, that was deducted from their supplementary benefit scale entitlement. So, by and large, students received about £7 a week by way of supplementary benefit.

The Government recently announced some changes in this system. This was an opportunity to sort out the position and make sure that students were put back properly on the education budget, and that social security system was relieved of this problem. Unfortunately, in making their announcements the Government did not sort out the problem. On the Floor of the House the only announcement that was made was made by the Secretary of State for Employment, who spoke mainly to illustrate how the students would be removed from the unemployment figures, which would relieve the Government of the additional embarrassment of having the figures inflated by students registering for work in the vacations.

Aside from that piece of cosmetics, the serious change came in the announcement by the Secretary of State for Education and Science, made in a Written Answer. I regard it as most unfortunate that we have not had proper opportunity to discuss the matter in the Chamber before this short debate today.

For the benefit of those who may wish to take an interest in what we say today, I shall read the Secretary of State's Written Answer in full:

"My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I propose to change the student support arrangements for the 1976–77 academic year, so that the student's personal maintenance award will apply solely to term time attendance and the winter and spring vacations. It will no longer provide for the summer vacation when there are normally opportunities for students to support themselves. A further review will be needed for the arrangements to apply in subsequent years. "I am advised by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services that, as the grant will on average provide the

equivalent of at least the supplementary benefit entitlement of the single non-householder for the short vacations, it will no longer be necessary or appropriate for the majority of students to claim supplementary benefit in those vacations. Students who are unable to find vacation employment in the summer will continue to be able to claim supplementary benefit if they do not have enough income to support themselves."—[Official Report, 23rd February 1976; Vol. 906, c. 41.]

That was the announcement, and I turn now to what flows from it and the changes that the Government have now introduced. It seems to me that the first change is that from now on student non-householders will not be able to claim any supplementary benefit in the winter and spring vacations. The vacation maintenance element will disentitle them to supplementary benefit. On the other hand, in the summer vacation, if such students are not able to find work or do not get work they will be able to claim an increased amount of supplementary benefit compared with previous summer vacations. There will be no vacation maintenance grant element for them, and they will therefore be entitled, as they were not in the past, to the full rate of supplementary benefit if they are not able to obtain or do not obtain work in the summer.

That seems to be the change: for most students, no benefit in the winter and spring, and more benefit in the summer if not in work. My first comment is that it falls far short of what I believe should be the aim, which is to take the fit and able-bodied out of the social security system and put responsibility for students firmly back on the education budget.

In addition, however, it seems to throw up some fresh anomalies, and I wish to have the Minister's response to them. First, it seems that there are certain categories of student for whom the new arrangements may cause hardship in the winter and spring vacations, when, as I have said, the non-householder will no longer qualify for supplementary benefit.

The students about whom I am most concerned are those whose parents' incomes are such that a parental contribution is assessed by local authorities towards their maintenance grant. We all know that student grants are means-tested on parents' income, and parents are called upon to make a contribution, which the State does not pay, towards the grant.

The difficulty comes when parents are assessed to make a contribution but do not pay it. That, in itself, is a difficulty anyway, but it could create added difficulty in vacations, when a student presents himself for supplementary benefit only to be told that his maintenance grant covers the vacation. The truth is that it may not. There may be a high parental contribution in his case and. although he is regarded as having the vacation maintenance grant, if his parents do not pay it he will be told that he has an income provided under the student maintenance arrangements although in fact his parents are providing no such income at all.

This has always been the practice, and on 24th March the late Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security confirmed that the arrangement was to continue. He said:

"I understand from the Supplementary Benefit, Commission that where a student claims supplementary benefit during vacations, account is taken of the parental contribution as assessed by local education authorities. There are no proposals for change."—[Official Report, 24th March 1976; Vol. 908, c. 193.]

So far as I can ascertain, this particular category of claimant will be almost unique among claimants for supplementary benefit in that they can be turned away and be told that they have income—which, indeed, they ought to have—through the parental contribution when they are not in fact receiving that income.

I realise that the problem arises out of the system that we have retained for having parental contributions assessed for grant. This is not the first time that I have said that, as an aim of policy, I wish to see the parental contribution abolished as a feature of our student maintenance arrangements. It is becoming increasingly absurd and out of line with modern social attitudes that contributions should be assessed on the basis that parents will regard themselves as responsible for students, that is, for adult children up to the age of 25.

I realise that it would be exceedingly costly to end the parental contribution system, even though the cost would be reduced through the abolition of child tax allowances, which parents receive at present. However, it is plain that we are as yet making no progress towards removing the parental contribution.

Yesterday, in the decision regarding grants for the next year announced by the Minister, the starting point for parental contribution was raised from a residual income of £2,200 each year to a residual income of £2,700 each year. That is a welcome movement, in line with the movement of earnings, but my understanding is that, as it is in line with the movement of earnings, the net effect will be that for one year no extra parents with modest incomes will be called upon to pay parental contribution. We are simply not getting any worse; we are not, however, making progress.

I was alarmed also to see that the £50 minimum grant remains at £50, although it has been at that level for many years. This means that those students who are most dependent on parental contribution, because their parents' income goes above the upper limit, will still receive only £50, and will be made more dependent on parental contributions than they were in the past.

Although one is naturally rather disappointed by yesterday's announcement, one realises that the present constraints on public expenditure make it impossible for any responsible Member on either side to berate the Minister of State for not being able to go much further at present. However, he will be aware, as I am, that there is a growing problem of students who are not receiving the parental contribution that they are supposed to receive, partly because an increasing number of parents refuse to pay and will not accept an obligation in respect of their adult children, and partly because the contribution levels are fairly fierce, and a large number of parents, I believe, have real difficulty in coping with their circumstances and paying the contribution assessed.

Given that there is this problem of parental contributions not being paid, and given that the Minister, under the present constraints, cannot do much to improve the situation regarding parental contributions, will he or his ministerial colleagues ask the Supplementary Benefits Commission to review its arrangements and make quite clear that if there is a genuine case of a student who is not receiving the parental contribution that he is supposed to receive, he will be accepted as being someone without means during the vacation and thus possibly eligible for benefit?

Another question arising out of the benefit arrangements under the new system relates to what supplementary benefit can be obtained, and in what circumstances, during the winter and spring vacations. As I have said, the non-householder student will get nothing; but there remains the situation of the house-holder student who can still get some assistance through supplementary benefit for his rent payments.

Again, my understanding is that students are being advised that if they are householders they will still be able during the winter and spring vacations, to go along to their social security offices and claim some payment towards rent. What is thoroughly unclear, however, is precisely who will be regarded as a householder in these circumstances. What kind of accommodation will be covered? Is it only accommodation outside university? Are there circumstances in which hostel accommodation could be included, or accommodation within a college or university?

Is it not somewhat anomalous, also, that there will still be some students in full-time residence in some household of their own in their university town who, apparently, will be able to claim supplementary benefit although all other students will cease to get it during the winter and spring vacations?

I turn now to the question of the summer vacation, during which, at least from the point of view of students, matters can be expected to improve, since many students will try to get work but if they cannot or do not find work they will receive the full rate of supplementary benefit, which they were not able to do until the recent new arrangements. Even in these difficult times there are many possibilities for work in the summer. Without being pompous, I feel that it is a good thing, in principle, for students to work in a totally different situation during the summer, not only to maintain themselves but to broden their experience. But it is not always so simple, because of the present level of unemployment in some areas, and students then get the full rate of supplementary benefit.

Students who are not terribly inclined to go out and look for work create a problem. They may find the supplementary benefit which is available to them a disincentive to bothering to find a job. That disincentive has become greater, particularly to students living at home with prosperous parents. If they work, even if they earn only a modest sum, their parents will lose out in tax. But if they do not work even if their parents have means and they come from a prosperous home, the students are still paid the full rate of supplementary benefit, because their parents' means are not taken into account for that purpose. They are paid supplementary benefit almost for the asking. I realise that it is not quite for the asking, because they have to register as unemployed and they are not eligible for benefit unless they are believed to be looking for suitable work.

The Supplementary Benefits Commission finds it difficult enough to deal with their ordinary clients and to distinguish between those who are genuinely looking for work and those who are not; I doubt whether officials have the time to chase up the little army of students who arrive on the books each summer vacation. The Government's new arrangements have slightly increased the encouragement to students who decide that they are not going to get a vacation job.

These are further anomalies, which arise in part because the Government have missed the opportunity of removing students from the social security system and dealing with them through maintenance grants. The Government were more concerned with dressing un the unemployment figures than getting down to the basic problem of students claiming the dole or supplementary benefit. The problem should be dealt with through maintenance grants.

The Minister has just completed discussions on grants, and yesterday he announced the new rate for next year. When the new maintenance grants were fixed, was any account taken of the changes in the supplementary benefits arrangements? Was the total amount available for grants increased or decreased because of the changes in public expenditure following the supplementary benefit changes? I have to put it that way because the Government have not said whether, in terms of public funds, money is about to be saved or more is to be spent by the changes in social security benefits for students.

I tried to get the figures, and received this reply from the Chief Secretary:

"It is not possible to estimate the numbers of students who would have claimed benefit if the present system of student support had remained unaltered, compared with the numbers who may claim under the new arrangements."—[Official Report, 23rd March; Vol. 908, c. 132.]

That reply was absurd. I accept that it is difficult, because one would have to speculate, but I do not believe that the Government made a policy change of the sort announced by the Secretary of State for Education in his Written Answer without some Treasury estimate of the likely impact on public funds. Whilst making every allowance, and agreeing that it must be a rough-and-ready estimate in difficult circumstances, I believe that the Government must say what was their estimate of the net gain or net loss to public funds. Was there a saving to public funds by taking students off supplementary benefit during the winter and spring vacations, and was that taken into account when the Secretary of State made the changes in maintenance grants?

In answer to a Question I was told by the Minister of State:

"Grant rates for the 1976–77 academic year are now under consideration."—[Official Report, 8th March; Vol. 907, c. 59.]

I did not ask the question to which he gave an answer. I had asked him the question that I am now asking—was the change in social security arrangements taken into account in any change in maintenance grants?

Yesterday's announcement represents broadly an 18 per cent. increase in maintenance grants across the board, with little change in priorities. There is a welcome small improvement in the rules, whereby married students can be regarded as independent of their parents. That is a small improvement, because it will mean that where a married student lived away and cared for children before going into a course of higher education that time will count towards the necessary time for the student to be regarded as independent of her parents.

I do not criticise the Minister too much for not deciding to make any changes in policies or priorities this year. I regret that the National Union of Students refused to accept the Minister's invitation to discuss priorities and decide how best to divide up the cake. It was entirely predictable and in line with all that we know of the character of the NUS that, faced with an actual share in the responsibility and involvement in details over grant negotiations, it would duck away from being saddled with any part of it. A sum of £30 million has been divided up. What account was taken of any social security savings in arriving at that figure?

The increase of 18 per cent. will be regarded as disappointing. It has already been so regarded by responsible and irresponsible elements in the student movement. I realise that we must have public expenditure constraints, and I accept that education must take its fair share of cuts. Without straying outside the debate, however, I find it astonishing that the Department of Education should carry such a major share of the economic burden, and should head the league table of departmental cuts.

Students must bear a share of restraint when there is restraint in the economy. I condemn the suggestion that there should be sit-ins in universities and colleges following this award. The public are becoming bored with that kind of militant campaign, which can do nothing to help solve the problems that will arise next year.

There are difficulties over student incomes, which are revealed when one discusses the position of those below the poverty line or on supplementary benefit. Will the Minister explain and sort out the new anomalies that have arisen from the Government's changes? For the longer term, may we have an assurance that when they next have the opportunity of looking at this problem of the social security system and the relationship between that and maintenance grants for students, the Government will not miss that opportunity but will see that students are dealt with through the education budget alone?

I begin by picking up the hon. Gentleman's words when he spoke of the possible abolition of the parental con- tributions in the grant system. I agree in large measure with what he said and applaud that as a long-term aim, but it is of necessity a very long-term aim unless economic circumstances improve drastically. The hon. Gentleman said that he knew that it was unrealistic to ask for that now, and he was right.

The same argument applies when the hon. Gentleman suggests that the maintenance award should cover the whole of the year, with an adequate amount in it to rule out claims for supplementary benefit during the year. I am sure that he realises that it would mean a substantial net increase in public expenditure—I cannot be precise about the figures—if we were to deal in that way with the problem of students claiming supplementary benefit. That is inevitable because, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, some students find employment, not least in the long vacation in the summer, others who might be entitled to supplementary benefit do not claim it, and so on. Therefore, there would need to be quite a sharp increase in public expenditure. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will accept that it would be inapposite for us on these benches to urge increases in public expenditure now, and that it would be even less apposite for any Conservative Member to do so.

I should like to say something about the principle on which we settle the student grant. The hon. Gentleman said that while he accepted that there would not be many major changes in the structure of the award this year he had hoped that a more radical review might take place. I do not know whether he is aware of this, but the general principle remains that the major review of student awards shall take place triennally, and the annual reviews in the two "off" years are designed essentially for uprating the award to take account of inflation and perhaps for minor adjustments in structure. They are not designed to accommodate major changes in structure. We still look for that to happen in general once every three years.

This gives me an opportunity to say a few words about the student grant package which my right hon. Friend announced yesterday. The new rates of student grant for the next academic year show an increase of 18 per cent. over current rates. This preserves in real terms, and improves a little, the level of the student grant. I believe that in the present economic situation that is a fair and reasonable settlement, and I entirely endorse the hon. Gentleman's statement that it would be futile, if not much worse, for students to sit-in in protest against what they might regard as the inadequacy of the award. They will find that they will have a little more in their pockets in real terms at the beginning of the next academic year than they had at the beginning of the last. Students, no more than any other group in the community, cannot opt out of the country's economic difficulties.

We have also improved the parental income scale throughout, and substantially at the lower levels. The hon. Gentleman pointed out that the residual income at which parental contributions begin has been raised from £2,200 to £2,700. We must remember that residual income is the gross income less a series of allowances for other children, mortgage interest, superannuation payments and the like. Therefore, one would expect that for a normal family contributions will not now start until gross income is about £3,300 or a little more. Thereafter, we shall find that contributions will be reduced significantly, especially at the lower levels of income. For example, the contribution required from parents with a residual income of £3,400—perhaps a gross income of nearly £4,000 or more—will be reduced by £100, which is a substantial change. I hope that this will be at least a modest improvement in the system this year.

However, the improvement to which the hon. Gentleman referred, and about which I should also say a little, is that which enables married students to count periods of time spent at home before their course in looking after young children, as well as time spent working, in accumulating the three years of self-sufficiency needed for a student under 25 to become independent of the parental contribution. I am rather pleased by that change, because it will largely compensate for the removal last year of the concession that married women could be regarded as independent for awards purposes if they were 21 before they started their course. That concession was removed and the age became 25, as with everyone else. It is proper that it should be the same, because we do not believe in discrimination between the sexes. Nevertheless, I am rather pleased that this year's concession takes many of those students back to the position they would have been in, but by a rather different route.

The new rule avoids any discrimination, because it applies equally to men and women. I do not know how many male students spend a substantial period looking after young children before beginning their courses, but I am sure that there are one or two. We can now safely say that the award regulations are exactly the same for men and women throughout, which I think is a very good thing.

I turn to the main subject raised by the hon. Gentleman——

rose——

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman would like me to say something about the £50 minimum award. I had planned to speak about it a little later, but if he wishes I shall do so now.

The £50 minimum award seems to me to be an odd anomaly in the system. Two possible philosophies could underlie an award system of the sort that we have. One is that which seems to be embodied in the system in general; the philosophy that the award is a means of topping up the family income to a point, and not specifically just the student's. Otherwise, we should be in difficulty with the parental contribution argument, to a point where the student could always undertake a course of higher education without hardship. The alternative philosophy is that the award is a prize that should be given to anyone who gains admission to a degree course, an HND course, a DipHE course, and so on.

Those are two distinct philosophies. It is the former that, in general, is embodied in the awards regulations, yet we still have the £50 minimum award, which really belongs to the latter philosophy, that something must be given, whatever the family income, as a reward or prize for gaining admission to a particular course.

What we are talking about is not whether that minimum award should be increased or decreased but whether there should be a minimum in a system that basically embodies a different philosophy, or—let me not prejudge the issue—whether we should embody the second philosophy rather than the first in the award system, which would involve getting rid of the parental contribution. I have already agreed with the hon. Gentleman that I should have that as a long-term aim. It would not be right now simply to fiddle with the £50 award. It is an anomaly, and we must think through more radical changes, of which that would be a part.

I turn now to the question of supplementary benefit. The grant has always been designed to enable students to meet necessary costs in term time and also to make a contribution towards their maintenance in the vacations—but only a contribution. Students always have been expected to look elsewhere for the main part of their support in vacations—generally to their parents, or to their own vacation earnings, or to a combination of the two.

Some students, for one reason or another, are not available for work in their vacations. When I was a university student I worked in one or two vacations, but more commonly I did not. This was not because I was lazy, but because I was working exceedingly hard for my examinations, hoping to get the best possible degree. It is possible that some students who are devoting the vacation to private study will suffer financial hardship. In such cases the local education authorities can, at their discretion, provide a limited amount of assistance.

Students, like other members of the community, are nevertheless entitled to a whole range of social security benefits, provided they satisfy the criteria of eligibility for them. Two important ones from our point of view are supplementary benefit and employment benefit. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, in order to claim them a student must register for employment and be available to take any suitable job offered to him, just like anybody else. In practice, this means that students can claim those benefits only during their vacations. The hon. Gentleman did not deal with the question why students could not claim in term time, but they could not conceivably, I hope, be looking for employment then.

Most students do not have an adequate contributions record to entitle them to unemployment benefit. Some do. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that it would be a very drastic step indeed to say that students who qualify for unemployment benefit by virtue of their own contributions record should not be allowed to draw benefit just because they are students. I am not saying that that is an impossible step, but it would clearly be a drastic step and would require very hard thought indeed.

As I have suggested, most students are restricted to supplementary benefit, although they have to register as unemployed in order to draw it. The Supplementary Benefits Commission takes account of the contributions made towards vacation maintenance by the student grant.

Perhaps I may briefly deal with the hon. Gentleman's point about the account taken by the Supplementary Benefits Commission, in assessing supplementary benefits entitlement, of the notional parental contribution. I use the word notional "to cover cases where it is paid and others where it is not. The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that a significant proportion of parents do not pay the parental contribution. For the third or fourth time in my own career I plead with parents who read Press reports of this debate to pay the parental contribution where they possibly can. It is not always a question of not being able to pay; in some cases it is almost a matter of principle—or lack of principle—that the parental contribution should not be paid.

I shall not comment at any length on what the hon. Gentleman said about taking account of parental contribution in the assessment of entitlement to supplementary benefit. As he will know, there has been a case on this very matter. It went against the student, but I understand that he has appealed. Therefore the particular case—though not the matter of principle—is sub judice, and I should prefer to wait for the result of the appeal before discussing the matter in any detail in the House. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that I am in a somewhat difficult position on that issue.

I suspect that one reason why the number of students claiming supplementary benefits has risen so much in recent years has been the very successful campaign of the National Union of Students, which has managed to get across to its members their entitlements and rights. Another has been the employment situation generally, which has resulted in a quite dramatic fall in the number of jobs available to students in vacations.

There has therefore been a very sharp increase in the numbers claiming, especially at Christmas and Easter. This is part of the explanation for the recent change. At Easter 1972 about 16,000 students registered as unemployed. At Easter 1975 that figure had grown to 95,000. By Easter 1976 it was 172,000. It is rising very rapidly indeed. At Christmas last year the total was 127,000.

The majority of these people quite clearly qualified for and were claiming supplementary benefit. Perhaps only about 10 per cent. would be entitled to unemployment benefit. Claims on this scale, especially in the short vacations, present a serious threat to the normal operations of the unemployment benefit and supplementary benefit local offices, and there has been some resentment by the staff in certain areas, and some resentment, of course, by the public at large.

The problem does not arise in the same way in the long vacation, when students find it easier to get a job either because they are available for employment for a longer period or because there is a longer period for which they are registered. They do not all come down at the same time, so there is not quite the same rush as in the shorter Christmas and Easter vacations.

It was in recognition of those difficulties that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science made his announcement in the Written parliamentary Answer on 23rd February, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. In the short vacation, especially at Easter, there is considerable pressure on students to continue with their studies at university or college. I hope that a high proportion of students do so. It would seem to be imperative, with the examinations coming in the following term.

At the same time, it is very hard for them to obtain jobs. But in the summer vacation, by contrast, not only do most students return home, and not only is it easier in general for them to find work; they are at the end of one academic year and there is less pressure on them to continue their studies throughout the vacation, though I would not want to deter students from devoting part of the long vacation to their studies. We therefore feel it important to concentrate on the short vacations, thus relieving students of financial worries throughout the period when they need to devote their full energies to their studies. That is why, in the next academic year, the students' personal maintenance grant will apply solely to term time and the two short vacations, and no part of the grant will apply to the summer vacation.

It will be necessary for local education authorities to pay the whole of the vacation element in the grant to students as part of the autumn and spring term grant payments, and we are advising them accordingly. Such advice is given in the circular letter to LEAs on the basis of the grant settlement announced yesterday. Instead of paying in equal instalments, in future we are advising authorities to pay in tranches of 35 per cent., 35 per cent. and 30 per cent. on a three-term basis.

The effect of the change in the grant arrangements will remove the need for the majority of students to claim supplementary benefit in short vacations if they cannot find jobs. On average, the amount provided in the grant will be as much as the supplementary benefit scale provides for single non-householders.

The hon. Gentleman asked what happened with the rest. Those students with a supplementary benefit entitlement, assessed on the normal supplementary benefit principles, at the single non-householder rate—for example, because of rent commitments—will still be able to claim the difference. It may be that a student is married. It may be that he has a home in the normal sense. It may be that he has a flat in his university town where he has to continue to pay rent throughout the vacation. Arrangements vary very much. I do not want to comment on these various arrangements because, as always with supplementary benefit, each case must be examined on its merits by comparison with the normal rules. In the summer vacation, students unable to find jobs will be able to claim benefit in the normal way, and there will be no deduction on account of their grant, so the entitlement of most students will accordingly be higher in the summer than it has been hitherto.

I want to remove one possible misconception before leaving the question of what happens in the short vacations, and that is to stress that the new arrangements do not mean that in the short vacations students are debarred from claiming supplementary benefit. Their right to claim remains exactly as it was before. The change is a financial one; it is not a change in the Regulations. In no way are students being legislated, by sleight of hand, out of what otherwise would have been their right.

All that I have been saying has been in relation to mandatory awards, but it should apply also to LEA discretionary award holders on advanced courses or aged over 19 and on non-advanced courses, whose awards are normally at the same rate as mandatory awards. So we should get the same effect there, too. It means that if we take all full-value awards together the new arrangement should affect 420,000 students in Great Britain in 1975–76.

Taking the academic year as a whole, students generally will be no worse off under the new arrangements than they are at present. The majority who do not claim supplementary benefit will not be affected, except that they will receive a somewhat higher proportion of their grant than previously in the autumn and spring terms on the 35 per cent., 35 per cent., 30 per cent. principle. Students who make a practice of claiming benefit may be individually slightly better or slightly worse off under the new arrangements, depending on the pattern of their claims throughout the year, but the scheme as a whole is financially neutral.

That allows me to answer another of the hon. Gentleman's points. He wondered whether there was a substantial cost to the new scheme and whether account had been taken of this in the new award structure. He will realise from what I have said that, in essence, the scheme is financially neutral as it affects public expenditure as well as in the way that it affects students. The two go hand in hand. There was nothing to redistribute in that sense.

There has been a very slight change in what otherwise might have been the total value of the award. It is a very small amount monetarily, to ensure that the objective of covering adequately the two short vacations at higher than supplementary benefit levels or at the same as supplementary benefit levels is achieved. But that is part of the whole redistributive package and, overall, the package is financially neutral.

When my right hon. Friend announced the new arrangements for 1976–77, he said that there would be a further review of arrangements to apply in subsequent years. There are many difficult issues, and some of them have become apparent in what both the hon. Gentleman and I have said today, more particularly if we think of extending the arrangement in any way, or to consolidate it, or whatever it may be.

There are very difficult issues involved in this matter, and I can see no prospect of reaching an early conclusion on what future arrangements may be. I imagine that it will take a long time. But the Government fully recognise that there is likely to continue to be a genuine problem for some students in vacations, especially when short-term jobs are hard to come by, and that, whatever arrangements we may wish to propose in the longer term, we shall need to make adequate provision to deal with this and to ensure that students are not treated as an underprivileged class. Certainly that will be my objective while I hold my present office.

The subject of this debate is not immigration, which has been causing heated argument recently, but citizenship for a number of people of Pakistani origin living in this country.

In 1972 Pakistan left the Commonwealth, and Pakistani citizens living in this country were faced with a considerable dilemma, because if the British Government had accepted the situation and made them into aliens they would have had reduced rights, particularly in relation to franchise, and they would have come under a different system of immigration control.

The then Conservative Government very magnanimously passed a Bill which gave to citizens of Pakistan the right to register as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies, in the same way as they could have done had they been Commonwealth citizens. These people were obliged to pass the tests set out in Schedule 2 of the Pakistan Act 1973. The appropriate test for discussion in this debate is the one in Schedule 2, paragraph 2(1)(a)(i), which says that the application shall be granted if the person is

"ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom or a territory which, within the meaning of the 1948 Act, is a colony or protectorate."

The words "ordinarily resident" are used in that connection in relation to citizenship, but they are also used in the immigration rules as well.

In the immigration rules, a person is admitted by the immigration officer if he satisfies the officer that he was settled in the United Kingdom at the time of the Act coming into force and has been settled here at any time in the two years preceding his return. "Settled" according to Immigration Rule HC79 means that a person settled in the United Kingdom was ordinarily resident here without having entered, or remained, in breach of the immigration laws. The same phrase is used in the Act in relation to ciitzenship and in the rules in relation to purposes for admission or entry. Unfortunately in the subsequent administration of the Act, the interpretation has been used in a different sense.

About 110,000 Pakistanis applied for citizenship under the Act. As I understand it—my figures could be out of date and I hope that the Minister will give more recent ones—there are about 14,000 applications still left, and about 5,000 people had their cases refused—or will have them refused because they have not established that they were ordinarily resident for the five years requisite under the Act. The reason they have been unable to establish this is that there was a break in their period of residence while they went abroad, usually back to Pakistan.

Before one considers this problem, one must recognise the cultural pattern of Pakistani immigrants who come to this country. The male of the household comes first and gets a job. He saves for the purpose of bringing his family here, and that can take several years. Initially, it may not have been his intention to bring his family to this country. But since 1968 there has been a marked increase in the numbers who want to come. As everybody now knows, these people have to get entry certificates from the post at Islamabad.

The difficulty that has arisen is that the man has been wont to go back home to live with his wife and family for a little time and then to come back, in order to make living abroad tolerable. Naturally, being relatively poor, the journey back is a considerable investment. Therefore, the man stays as long as he can—often for the two years permitted by the immigration rules. In addition, his wife and family being out there, he naturally wants to stay with them for a substantial period.

Whenever these 110,000 Pakistani residents put in their applications, a substantial number were bound to disclose to the Home Office that, during the preceding five years, they had been out of the country for some time. The question then arose as to what to do about the situation.

"Ordinarily resident" for this purpose has not been properly defined by the courts. In 1972 there was a decision that it must be lawful, as distinct from unlawful, residence. That is about as far as it has got. The Home Office states that the individual concerned must indicate an intention to return and that there must be something in the facts of the situation which gives an open indication of that intention to return. For example, if a man owned a shop before he left and he kept that shop, it would be clear that he intended to come back—and similarly with a house and possibly with furniture. A possible indication that a man intended to return would be the existence of a bank account.

So far the Home Office has applied that kind of test. However, it does not apply that kind of test for the purpose of the immigration rules. The situation is that if the immigration officer at the port is satisfied that the man has been out of the country for less than two years and he can show that he was here before, that is enough. That is a ludicrous situation to pose for a man in this position. He thinks that he is ordinarily resident because the immigration officer has allowed him to come back into the country after his two-year holiday. However, when he applies to become a citizen of this country, the Home Office tells him that he is not ordinarily resident. Yet the Home Office administers the immigration offices.

When this whole business came to light in the middle of last year, when I was the Minister responsible, I gave instructions that, for the purpose of interpretation of the 1973 Act, that rule of convenience which was applied to the Immigration Rules should be applied to the Act—namely, that if a man had been on holiday in Pakistan for less than two years, it should be assumed that he intended to return and that he should be granted citizenship.

The crucial mark of citizenship is two-fold. First, the man can leave the country and come back whenever he likes because he is a citizen and a patrial. Secondly, he has the right to vote. If he is refused citizenship, he will be denied the right to vote because he is an alien, unless he becomes naturalised. He can in due course, if he stays the full five years without going out of the country, become naturalised as an alien. But he then has to pay, under the present dispensation, the sum of, I think, £50, whereas the registration fee is substantially less. Also he has to go through the other test of showing good character and a knowledge of English.

It is a matter of some considerable concern that 5,000 Pakistanis who were promised by the Conservative Government that they would be all right under the Pakistan Act if they put in their application have been denied this right because of the restricted interpretation of the phrase "ordinarily resident" by the Home Office which, when it comes to immigration control, applies a different interpretation to the same phrase.

I found, a little to my surprise but quite consistent with the view I have now formed about the rôle of the Civil Service in political decision-making, that six months after I had given that instruction it had not been carried out. What had happened was that the Department had sat on the matter for that period, preparing a submission, which was ultimately to go to the Home Secretary, taking a different view of the matter. In due course the Home Secretary did take a different view. Therefore those 5,000 people were refused their right to register as citizens. What the civil servants did not tell me or the Home Secretary was that this issue had arisen during the Committee stage of the Pakistan Bill on 3rd July 1973. What is clear is that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser), the then Opposition spokesman, had tabled an amendment which read:

"(3) For the purposes of this Schedule, the words 'ordinarily resident' where they occur shall be deemed to include temporary absence (for reasons of a holiday, business, medical treatment or the like) from the United Kingdom or other territory to which they refer."

A sub-amendment also discussed with that amendment read:

"for a period not exceeding two years."

The self-same point was raised in that amendment which I had raised in my indication to the staff at the Home Office, namely that "ordinarily resident" would include temporary absence for a holiday period not exceeding two years. The then Conservative Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane), replying to the debate, no doubt using a Home Office brief, said on this question of the two-year limit:

"For the same reason, we should not think it right to advise the Committee to accept sub-amendment (a). A time limit might undesirably and unnecessarily restrict our freedom to allow, in certain exceptional circumstances, a longer period of absence abroad than two years—for example, if someone fell ill abroad before the end of his planned holiday of two years and had to stay abroad for prolonged medical treatment."

Earlier the hon. Gentleman had said:

"the difficulty is that if we accepted the amendment it might be thought that short absences from the United Kingdom break ordinary residence for the purpose of enactments which do not expressly provide to the contrary".

The fact was that the Committee was give the impression—it may not have been explicit in the words of the hon. Gentleman—that there was nothing to worry about in the kind of absences which all the Committee knew were common in the Pakistan community, with people going back to Pakistan for a limited period not exceeding two years. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann) in withdrawing the amendment said:

"I am grateful to the Minister for his assurance that there are circumstances in which

an absence of more than two years would be considered appropriate."—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 3rd July 1973; c. 345.]

Had I known that at the time when this argument took place in the Home Office I should have been in a stronger position to make it plain to officials and the Home Secretary that we had a commitment following the assurance that was given by the previous Minister to allow that kind of break not to destroy the entitlement to registration as a citizen. It is because I feel strongly that an injustice has been perpetrated on those Pakistanis who were given that assurance that I hope that the Minister will put the matter right.

If my hon. Friend does not do that, those 5,000 Pakistanis will not have a right to vote. Secondly, they may in due course find it difficult to return to this country if they leave for longer than two years. Thirdly, they may be in considerable difficulty in getting naturalisation because of the present restricted tests and, in addition, they will have to pay a considerably greater sum of money to get it. That could be put right merely by a different interpretation of the words by the Minister.

It was suggested in the course of the argument that a Minister cannot interpret words and that that has to be left to the court, but within this area of control it is right and proper for the Minister to indicate to officials the way in which the words should be interpreted, if that is a reasonable interpretation, subject to any appeal to the court thereafter for the court to give a different interpretation. It is unlikely that anybody would in those circumstances go to court, so that in the final analysis it is for the Home Secretary to decide.

The Minister asked me sotto voce why it is unlikely that anybody will go to court. The answer is that people do not in the circumstances in which they are granted citizenship go to court to talk about the reasons why they were granted it. I accept the point, if that is the point my hon. Friend is about to put, that if this dispute exists and the decision goes the wrong way these Pakistanis can go to court and show that it is wrong—indeed, that is true and I am advising them to do just that—but why should they have to go to the trouble of going through the courts, at some expense, to put right an injustice that can be put right by a stroke of the ministerial pen, and that would be in accordance with an assurance given by a previous Minister? I emphasise to my hon. Friend that it was a Conservative Minister who gave that assurance.

Why is it that a Labour Government are much less compassionate in those circumstances than a Conservative Government? We are, after all, supposed to be more interested in the welfare of these subjects than were the Conservative Government, and I should have thought it proper—it is certainly legal—for us to take this rather less rigid view than the officials ultimately succeeded in persuading the Home Secretary to take. I hope that the matter will now be put right. the Home Secretary having had it brought to his attention that we were both misled by not having that initial assurance brought to our notice.

It is regrettable that it is necessary to have to say at the beginning of one's speech, as indeed my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Lyon) said, that this debate has nothing whatever to do with immigration. It concerns the right of people who are already here, who were here prior to the passing of the Pakistan Act—people who were here originally as Commonwealth citizens.

The debate concerns what is meant by the phrase "ordinarily resident", and to that extent, I suppose, this is a lawyers' debate. There is, however, a history to which my hon. Friend referred, and that is the story of the debate in the Committee which considered the Bill. I was a member of that Committee, and basically what we had there was a Labour amendment to interpret the provisions or to define the meaning of "ordinarily resident" fairly liberally. The assurance from the then Minister was that it was completely unnecessary and that it could be construed so broadly that it might work against the interests of applicants for United Kingdom citizenship.

Unlike my hon. Friend, I do not believe that it has anything to do with Conservative or Labour. What it has to do with is the quality of the legal advice which the Home Secretary receives and also, perhaps, the possible fact that the Minister's attention was not drawn to this point in Committee. In future when I listen to assurances given by the Front Bench in Committee, that policy will follow a certain course provided that an amendment is withdrawn, I shall have to remember the civil servants of years to come. It is quite clear, in this instance, that the spirit of that debate is not being fulfilled.

The whole thing is so petty. What the Home Office, so overburdened with work, is saying is "We do not feel that your recent absence in Pakistan keeps you within the provisions on the meaning of the words 'ordinary residence', so come back in two or three years' time and apply for naturalisation". This will give the Home Office a great deal more new work although it is already overworked. What is more, it will cost the applicant about £80 or £100 in solicitors' fees, which is implicit in applying for naturalisation.

That may appear to be a victory to some but it is a curiously futile victory unless those who are making the naturalisation decision are hoping that the more restrictive tests in applying will have the effect of preventing some of those people from becoming United Kingdom citizens.

What we were worried about, during the Committee stage of the Pakistan Bill, was that there had been a precedent for a country leaving the Commonwealth, and that was South Africa. We said there should be some parity of treatment between South Africa and Pakistan. It was said by our present Ambassador to the United Nations, who was then one of the Members who led for the Labour Opposition, that South Africans were given up to eight years in order to apply to become United Kingdom citizens. There was a five years' residence provision for Pakistanis, but they had to take it up within a year.

I have had a number of constituency cases of Pakistanis who were in Pakistan during the time that the Pakistan Act was passed. Accordingly, the argument arose in respect of whether their absence took them out of the definition of five years' ordinary residence. The Home Office said it would see what sort of contact had been maintained with the United Kingdom over the entire period and, in particular, when the person was abroad. It wanted to know whether the person had a house here. When it was pointed out that the person did have a house, but, having been in Pakistan for a few months, he had sold it although immediately on return he bought another one, that apparently ruled him out. Why one should keep the house when no one was using it, I do not know.

When he returned he might wish to bring his family, or he may already have his family here. The Home Office said it must not look at what happened subsequently, which is a very narrow and ungenerous view.

It is often possible to tell something about a person's intentions at a particular time by looking at what he did subsequently. But the Home Office said that we must not look at that. It is obvious to me that someone has come up with a narrow, uncharitable, unpleasant, legalistic interpretation. When I consider some actions of the Home Office, for instance over television licences, I am not surprised at interpretations of that description. It is an interpretation which the Home Secretary, I am sure in good faith, has accepted.

We are not here talking about immigration. We are saying that a number of people have been picked out to receive treatment different from that which their competitors have received in similar circumstances. The Home Office is being too restrictive in saying that Pakistanis who have been away from the country for 15 months within the relevant period have lost ordinary residence. It would not be so bad if the Home Office took the period before and added to it the period after—in other words, if the Home Office drew no inference from the period when the Pakistani was abroad—but the Home Office does not do that, with the result that a number of people feel very hurt and do not see the reason for that action. Nor do I.

I have listened most carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Lyon) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Lyons), and I welcome the opportunity to explain Home Office practice in this matter and how it is applied in the consideration of applications by Pakistanis for citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies.

When Pakistan seceded from the Commonwealth on 30th January 1972, it became necessary to make provision in United Kingdom law for Pakistan to be regarded henceforth as a foreign country, and to determine the status of its citizens in our law. Under the Pakistan Act 1973, citizens of Pakistan ceased to be Commonwealth citizens, or British subjects—the terms have the same meaning—from 1st September 1973.

Plainly, it would not have been right for citizens of a country which had left the Commonwealth to be allowed to enjoy indefinitely those privileges which derive solely from Commonwealth membership.

On the other hand, it was necessary to be fair to those Pakistanis who had come to Britain before Pakistan left the Commonwealth in the belief that they would be entitled to certain benefits and conditions of life. Accordingly, transitional provisions were written into the Act to allow Pakistanis to continue, for a time, to be treated as if they were still Commonwealth citizens in certain respects, including the nationality issue. Commonwealth citizens, including citizens of Pakistan, had certain entitlements under the British Nationality Act 1948 to be registered as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies by virtue of ordinary residence here.

The Pakistan Act provides that any citizen of Pakistan who was ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom immediately before 14th May 1973, the date on which the Pakistan Bill was introduced, is able, for a limited time, to enjoy the privilege of continuing to apply for registration as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies as though he were still a Commonwealth citizen. This means that he is entitled to registration if he can establish that he has been ordinarily resident here during the five years immediately preceding the date of his application—which must be made within the prescribed time limit—without his stay being subject to any restriction.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bradford, West called this a lawyers' debate, but I hope that he will allow me to intervene because the term "ordinary residence", as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for York, has not been defined by the courts in a case concerning registration. I am not entirely clear about the reason for that, although my hon. Friend suggested why such a case has never been taken to the courts. Home Office practice in considering applications has been applied over the years in the light of legal advice as to the view the courts might be expected to take in individual cases.

Both my hon. Friends are lawyers and they obviously have their view on this matter, but the practice in broad terms is to regard a person as being ordinarily resident where he has his headquarters and private base for the time being, or, to put it another way, his current place of residence, for whatever purpose he may be there, is his home at the time.

My hon. Friend the Member for York mentioned the debate on the Pakistan Bill in Committee. I have looked at it in Hansard, and no assurance was given that any absence of two years would be regarded as ordinary residence if it were for a holiday or on business. What the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane), who was then the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, indicated was that in "certain exceptional circumstances" a period of over two years might be accepted, and on occasions this, in fact, has been done in practice. The practice has been followed for many years since the British Nationality Act 1948 came into operation.

The normal expection is that the applicant would have been physically present in the United Kingdom for most of the qualifying period. If he goes abroad for a reasonably short period on holiday or for business purposes, this, of course, is not regarded as having broken the continuity of his ordinary residence for registration purposes. It is sometimes possible to accept that a comparatively long absence did not break ordinary residence if the person maintained close connections with this country while he was away.

Many thousands of Pakistanis have applied for registration as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies since Pakistan left the Commonwealth, and some applications have had to be rejected because the applicants have been unable to satisfy us that they fulfil the statutory residence requirements. My hon. Friend mentioned some figures. Since just before the Pakistan Bill was introduced in May 1973, we have dealt with about 97,000 applications. Of these, over 90,000 have been granted and 6,800 refused.

Statistics are not kept according to reasons for refusal, but a survey done last year indicated that about two-thirds of the refusals were because of some difficulty in the period of residence. This includes many people who mistakenly apply after being here less than five years, as well as those whose period of ordinary residence is thought to have been broken when the applicant was abroad in Pakistan.

As has been pointed out, it is the practice of many Pakistanis, once they have established themselves here, to spend long periods abroad. They usually take their savings and rejoin their families in Pakistan. Many of them buy land, or increase their former holdings and work them during their stay. They then return to the United Kingdom, after just within the maximum period of two years allowed under the immigration rules to returning residents. This cycle may be repeated every few years and it not infrequently happens that an applicant has been away for more than one of these long absences during the qualifying period for registration.

There is, of course, no reason why these men should not visit their families, but the question, so far as the Home Office is concerned, is simply whether their absence has broken the continuous ordinary residence required by law during the qualifying period. If it has, the applicant is not entitled to registration and the application has to be refused.

Surely the fact that the man takes the trouble to get back to this country within the two years allowed within the immigration rules is itself an indication of his intention to resume living in this country and of his view, therefore, that this is his base. Was it not as a result of the discussion in the Home Office that a ruling was made that such a return would be taken into consideration in any future application? In fact, is it not the case that that ruling was never applied to many of the 5,000 cases which were turned down?

My hon. Friend refers to the criterion of intention to return. The fact that an applicant may have intended to return, or says that he intended to return, does not mean that he remained ordinarily resident here. For example, many people born in this country spend their working lives overseas though with the fixed intention of returning here on retirement. This does not mean that they are ordinarily resident here during the time they are abroad.

The task of assessing whether a person's absence has or has not broken the continuity of his ordinary residence is often not easy, but, as my hon. Friends know, each case is carefully considered on its merits, having regard to all the circumstances, including the nature and extent of any relevant connections the applicant has maintained with this country while abroad. He is asked to fill in a questionnaire. It is not enough for an applicant merely to maintain some material links with this country during an absence. We have to look at whether he can demonstrate that he maintained his home and headquarters here throughout the time he was away.

I recognise that many Pakistanis—especially those who first arrived in this country many years ago—regard themselves as settled here even though they return to their families in Pakistan for long periods from time to time, and I accept that they may well intend to return here, and do, after these prolonged visits. But if an applicant has spent say, a year, or perhaps 18 months or more, of the five-year qualifying period at home in Pakistan with his wife and children, it is difficult to regard him as having been ordinarily resident here during that time unless he retained strong links with this country while he was away. So often, the only connections he has maintained, as my hon. Friend said, are a bank account containing a nominal balance and perhaps a few belongings left with a friend. This may certainly indicate that he intended to return, but such an intention, is not of itself, sufficient to establish that he remained ordinarily resident here during his absence. A stronger indication of his intention could be the holding of a mortgage for his own home or a job being held open until his return.

It is true that applications by wives who wish to join their husbands in this country are delayed by our necessary imigration procedures in Pakistan. This may sometimes be the reason why some husbands return there, both to visit their families and to assist their wives in making application for entry facilities. But if application for entry facilities has been made either before or during the husband's stay, this is taken into account, with other factors, in considering whether his absence has broken his ordinary residence here. It is not every wife who wishes to come to this country to be with her husband. Many prefer to remain in Pakistan with their families while their husbands work here, and in this kind of situation it is not easy to be satisfied that the husband has remained ordinarily resident here while living for a long period with his wife and family in Pakistan.

Is it not right that, when one refuses an application for citizenship by registration on the ground of lack of five years' ordinary residence and suggests in the letter that the immigrant should apply a little later for naturalisation, one is telling the immigrant that he should bring his wife and children here in order to strengthen his application for naturalisation, so that, ironically, these refusals encourage immigration?

I mentioned the wives who prefer not to come over here, but in the majority of cases, I believe, the wives do wish to come. But I agree that, so long as the husband is here and the wife is in Pakistan, that is a bar to naturalisation. I shall come to the question of naturalisation in a moment.

It has been suggested that our refusal to grant our citizenship to this comparatively small number of Pakistanis reflects antipathy towards the Pakistani community here, but—as my hon. Friend well knows—that is not so. The qualifications for registration are laid down by law and it is our duty to follow the law. There are bound to be cases where the application has to be rejected because, even on a liberal interpretation of the statute, we have to conclude that ordinary residence here has not been maintained during the qualifying period.

Some people whose applications have been unsuccessful have contested our refusal to register them—and this was the view put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for York—on the grounds that after a long visit to Pakistan they were re-admitted to this country under Rule 51 of the Immigration Rules (Control on Entry), and that accordingly they must be deemed to have continued to be ordinarily resident for registration purposes during their absence.

But readmission under Rule 51 appears to establish no such thing. The rule reads as follows:

"A passenger who satisfies the Immigration Officer that he was settled in the United Kingdom at the coming into force of the Act—"

That is, the Immigration Act 1971, which came fully into operation on 1st January 1973.

"—and that he has been settled here at any time during the 2 years preceding his return, is to be admitted for settlement. Any other passenger returning to the United Kingdom from overseas (except one who received assistance from public funds towards the cost of leaving this country) is to be admitted for settlement on satisfying the Immigration Officer that he was settled in the United Kingdom when he left and that he has not been away for longer than 2 years."

In Rule 1 of the same Rules, a person is defined as

"settled in the United Kingdom"

when he is ordinarily resident here without having entered or remained in breach of the immigration laws, and is free from any restriction on the period for which he may remain.

So readmission under Rule 51 implies no more than that the immigrant has satisfied us that he was ordinarily resident here within the last two years. It does not establish that he has remained ordinarily resident while he was away. I agree that, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, ordinary residence has the same meaning for nationality and for immigration purposes, but that is not the point. The crucial question is whether "ordinary residence", given its common meaning in the two contexts, has continued during the absence from this country.

It is accepted that Rule 51 has some presumptive effect when we are considering this question, and that when a man has returned under the immigration rule and applied for registration we should look for a rather clearer indication than otherwise before regarding a period of ordinary residence as broken. His return is recognised as providing a starting point for considering whether, despite a long absence, he can nevertheless be regarded as not having broken his ordinary residence. Such a man's case is stronger than that of someone who has been absent for longer than two years and had been readmitted otherwise than as a returning resident.

I emphasise that the power to grant citizenship is not one in which we are free agents. We are limited by the terms of the statute, and in dealing with applications for registration we must have strict regard to the requirements about ordinary residence and the meaning that we are advised these have in law. In this connection the case of Regina v. Hussain (1971) is of interest—although it was not concerned with an application for registration—in that the Court of Appeal decided that a person who had been absent for 20 months but had retained his statutory right of re-entry under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 had, nevertheless, broken his ordinary residence. Although this was a decision given with respect to another statute it has a directly persuasive authority.

There is no appeals machinery for people who have been refused registration, except their right to contest our view of the matter in the courts if they desire. But a comprehensive review of the whole of our nationality law has been going on for some time, and the question of providing some form of machinery for appeals in such matters is one of the important issues which is being considered. I know that the issues raised in this debate will also be considered.

When an application has to be refused, that does not necessarily mean that the person may not acquire citizenship. In some instances he may still qualify for registration under the Pakistan Act on completion of a satisfactory period of five years, provided that he has been ordinarily resident here since immediately before 14th May 1973. There is the possibility that some may qualify to apply for a certificate of naturalisation. The fee for naturalisation is £40 and for registration it is £10.

It is inevitable, however, that whatever qualifications Parliament decides that an applicant for our citizenship must fulfil there will always be some who cannot qualify. We are always ready to reconsider a decision to refuse if fresh facts are brought to our notice. But if at the end of the day the refusal has to be maintained, these people are not Stateless. They are citizens of Pakistan who have been allowed to settle in this country, and there is no reason why they should not continue to live here.

It is appropriate that at the last breath of the House before we go into recess we should turn to a subject of intimate concern to hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. Perhaps it will indicate to our electors, to the people who are concerned that this Parliament should reflect the feelings of the British people, that the disgraceful events of last night can be passed over. They are events from which neither side of the House can take any credit. Both sides of the House should feel a sense of shame at events that we can only be grateful were not televised.

We are now to turn, in these last few minutes, to a problem that afflicts about 1½ million people aged between 60 and 65 who are unable to retire from their work even if they wish to.

I should like to begin by making absolutely clear the position of my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins) and myself. I know that he will confirm that we are not seeking to force anyone into retirement or to produce any scheme that is anything other than totally voluntary. We consider that the hardship suffered by men aged between 60 and 65 at work is vast, should be diminished, and can be removed altogether, with great benefit not only to them but to those who would be able to take up the jobs that they vacate.

We approach the problem from two angles. The first is that of compassion for the elderly people who are forced to remain at work and cannot go en to a pension, even though they have passed 60, and even though that is the age at which women are, rightly, at present able to retire. We also approach it from the angle of the young unemployed. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has frequently said that he is concerned about that problem, as are all the members of the Cabinet and the rest of the Government.

If we are to be concerned with the young unemployed, there can be no better expression of that concern than to make jobs available for them. This can be achieved in only two ways, one of which is a proper subject for an Adjournment debate and the other of which is not. That which is not is the subject of my Private Member's Bill, which I fully appreciate is unlikely to reach the statute book in this Session but which is an indication of very powerful feeling on all sides of the House and throughout the country. It is a Bill seeking a change in the law to enable men to retire at 60 if they wish.

The Bill is now backed by a petition, which my hon. Friend and I are preparing and which will be presented to the House in due course. It is also a matter to be taken into account by my hon. Friend the Minister when he replies.

The petition has produced a flood of mail. I have brought to the House—I hope properly—a sample of a day or two's mail with which my hon. Friend and I have to deal, and with which we are delighted to deal. It is from people all over the country who are complaining about the hardship suffered, sometimes by themselves, sometimes by their fathers, and sometimes by their grandfathers. These are people who condemn the injustice of the requirement that men should stay at work until they are 65 if they wish to be pensioned. They are mainly ordinary working folk, but they are also people from every conceivable walk of life. They are accountants, lawyers, teachers and doctors, as well as farmers, shopfloor workers, shipbuilders, craftsmen and drivers.

The latest letter, which arrived this afternoon, came from the General Secretary of the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff, in which he says that he is delighted to see the petition that my hon. Friend and I are organising in conjuction with my Private Member's Bill. He says that this is entirely in line with APEX policy. He says that the union will be happy to put its full resources behind the petition, and, indeed, asks for 1,800 copies.

Copies will be available for anyone who wishes them, but what we have to do is induce the Government now to take such action as is available, short of changing the law, in order to achieve the ends which I know the Government want to achieve, and which we are seeking to produce.

When we have sought to have the law changed, the answer we have been given has always been the same. We are told "We wish to do it. We agree with it. It is just. It is in accordance with social justice. It is in accordance with Labour Party policy and in accordance with the decisions of Conference. It is in accordance with the decisions of unions. It is certainly in accordance with the wish of our electorate. But we just have not the money."

Even that premise I challenge, because I have an answer today from the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, stating that if 750,000 people were to be taken off the unemployment register it would be likely to save about £650 million a year. It follows that if we were able to remove more, the amount that would be saved would be still greater.

I challenge even that figure. I think it should be a higher one, for so often the men who are working and who are seeking to retire are supporting only themselves, or possibly one dependant, whereas those who are unemployed are supporting their wives and their children, and are in receipt not merely of unemployment benefit but, in many cases, of social security benefit, rent rebate, free school meals, and the other rights of a citizen who, through no fault of his own, is unable to find work.

If we cannot immediately change the law, what possibility is there? I make a suggestion to the Minister, which I ask him to consider even though it may sound a little revolutionary at first blush. I suggest to him that we revert, to an extent——

I suggest that we revert to the days when we had labour exchanges, and that a labour exchange should become just that for people over the age of 60 who wish to retire because they are unable to continue working, because they are tired, because they are unwell, and because they wish to enjoy their few remaining years of life in peace and dignity in the way that women are now permitted to do.

I suggest that they be enabled to put their names on a register at the labour exchange indicating that they wish to give up work, and that they invite a younger person who is unemployed and looking for a job in that category and of that sort to apply for that job. In that way, the younger person would be able to come to the registry, and he could be put in touch with the work by those excellent officers who are already doing such a tremendous job at the various offices of the Department of Employment.

Then, if the job is available and the employer is prepared—as normally he would be—to accept the younger person, the able-bodied young man who is ready, willing and able to take over the job would do so and the elderly man would be able to go on unemployment benefit. He would very rarely need social security, and the young man who wished to work would no longer have the indignity of remaining unemployed.

We then get a social benefit of the highest order, in that elderly people do not have the indignity of being forced to work years after they should have retired, and young people do not suffer from the moral, intellectual and personal misery of having to be unemployed.

This "swap a job" scheme could cut down unemployment and hardship and increase the lively, active and productive work force of the country. It would not force a single elderly person out of work who did not wish to go. It would not create any burden for the DHSS, which, so far, has been so unwilling to reduce the pension age for men, even by stages.

I suggest to my hon. Friend that in the long run the cost to the Department would not be high, because the keeping of the register and the placing of people in work would, as more and more unemployed people ceased to be hunting for work, reduce other aspects of their labours. I appreciate that initially the cost would be there, and that it would take care and thought. I ask the Minister to consider this "swap a job" scheme as a possible method of beginning to help those who have so often sought that help, who are writing to us at the moment, who are seeking petition forms, who are attempting to bring their pressure behind this campaign and who are hard at work when they are too old or are seeing their fathers, brothers, relatives and friends staggering and soldiering on to the age of 65 when they should have been allowed to retire at the age of 60.

I know that my hon. Friend has often shown his deep understanding and compassion for people who are in need. Among this section of our community—men at work aged between 60 and 65—probably two-thirds would wish to retire. I ask that this idea and any others which may be put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North or by the Minister himself should be considered now as a matter of urgency.

I am deeply grateful to my hon. and learned Friend, and to the Minister, who is always helpful to Back Benchers, for giving me the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate.

I feel that the Government are sympathetic to the principle of equal pension rights for men and women at 60, but the argument which is always directed against it is that we cannot afford it. This sort of argument has always been used about any social advance. It was used against the five-shillinig old-age pension at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was used against the dole, national assistance, widows' pensions, the National Health Service, and decent schools and hospitals. Even more recently, it was used against equal pay for women.

The men who are now asking for justice are the very men who fought for these benefits for others. They are the men who suffered in the depression, who had to face the malnutrition and disease which accompanied unemployment, and the demoralisation of unemployment itself. When they say, as they do in their thousands in the letters we receive, that youngsters should be allowed to take on their jobs, they do so not from self-interest alone but from the knowledge and experience of the way in which unemployment destroys self-respect, and spoils a man. It is spoiling many young men today.

Voluntary retirement at 60 would provide perhaps 750,000 jobs for younger men, thus relieving the Exchequer of money needed for social security benefits for whole families, not just single people or couples. These savings would largely cancel out the cost of the extra pensions. We should consider also the national wealth—I am not concerned here with narrow accountancy reckoning, but the gross national product—when we are considering retirement at 60.

It is well to remember that in some professions, such as teaching, of which I have experience, not to mention politics, wisdom is acquired from experience, and it is highest between the ages of 60 and 65 or perhaps even 70.

Or even 83.

Yes, even 83. Because the work is more interesting and less physically arduous and in many cases the standard of living is higher, the men concerned are often not only able, but willing to carry on after the age of 60. But they can retire at 60 if they wish or they can opt for later retirement. Carrying on after pension age should be encouraged, especially in times of full employment, but we do not envisage full employment for several years.

In some professions—the police and the fire fighting services—retirement is earlier still. The reason for that is that older men are not at their peak physically and that their continued employment would endanger the service if they stayed on. This principle should be applied also to hundreds of thousands of manual workers in heavy industry who are worn out by hard conditions and, in many cases, a low standard of living. These men have suffered the most in the past, and we should remember them now. Very often they are a burden not only to themselves but to their employers as well who, in many cases, keep them on out of compassion. In other cases, where no compassion exists, these men are sacked without any hope of re-employment and left with the indignity of scraping along unem- ployed without the pension which they truly deserve.

Would it not be reasonable to employ younger, fitter men to replace the old and the infirm? Would not this proposal increase production, productivity and the gross national product? The fact is that those men who need pensionable rights at 60 most of all, because they are employed in heavy and dangerous work, are least able to retire. The comparison with women is similar. They are generally employed in physically lighter work. Moreover, their expectancy of life is several years longer.

Men—many in the 60 to 65 age group—fought hard for equality for women. They fought hard for social services to preserve the self-respect of both men and women. Why are these doughty fighters, who suffered so much in the bad old days, the people to be left out, especially when equality for women has been established by law?

In 1974, with some of my hon. Friends, I pressurised my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle), who was then Secretary of State for Social Services, for equal pension rights for men and women. She said that the retirement pension advantages that women had to some extent compensated them for inferior conditions elsewhere. But equality has now been established, and equality is also needed in pensions.

My hon. and learned Friend and I have received thousands of letters, and many of them are most pitiful. But the heartening fact about them is that many come from women, both single and married. The wives beg for a provision which will enable their men to live a couple of years longer in relative ease and peace. Many of these ladies point out that their husbands will not live to 65 years of age and that their men are killing themselves trying to reach pensionable age.

When I was a small boy I heard my namesake, Rev. Leon Atkins, make a speech on silicosis. At that time miners who got silicosis had to work on until they got a certain percentage of dust in their lungs, knowing full well that they would die by so doing. As a boy I was moved to tears because I realised that my uncles and cousins were killing themselves. That was a long time ago. We do not want that sort of thing today.

Nevertheless, this is similar to the time when miners who were suffering silicosis had to work until the amount of dust in their lungs proved fatal, because men in the 60 to 65 age group know that they are killing themselves by continuing to work.

Society as long abandoned this cruel attitude and established social justice. The lack of pensionable rights at 60 for men is an anachronism in society. It is time that justice was at last granted to many men aged 60 to 65 who have little time left to enjoy the more equitable society that they, more than anybody else, did so much to establish.

Over a period of years I have had occasional letters from men asking for a reduction in the retirement age to 60. In the last few months there has been a switch of emphasis, because the people who write about this matter to Members of Parliament are not so much the elderly as active trade unionists. Indeed, I have had two letters this week from trade union branches in Bradford demanding the reduction of the retirement age to 60 for males. The motive behind that demand is unemployment. They see the reduction in the age of retirement as a means of reducing the unemployment figures, enabling younger persons to take over those jobs.

One is bound to have sympathy with these fears and anxieties which promote that kind of demand, just as one is bound to have sympathy with men who have been in heavy industrial occupations and feel, by the time they reach 60, that they are played out in terms of carrying on with that type of job.

None the less, this is a difficult problem. In Denmark the retiring age for men is 67 and for women 62. Already the present situation in Britain is an advance on that. Another factor which the Government will have to consider is the effect on foreign confidence in the sudden reduction of the retirement age to 60 for men. It will be seen abroad as an acceptance by British people that they will not recover economically and that there will be a permanent, large pool of unemployment. A better way of looking at the problem, in the sense of being more realistic, is to proceed by gradual steps to retirement at age 60.

We have to accept that in a world of increasing automation there is likely to be, and ought to be, a reduction in retirement ages and a shorter working week. That is what is being worked towards all over Europe. It is something which I welcome. At the moment a sudden reduction in the retirement age to 60 for men is likely to cost the Exchequer net, having deducted the amount saved in unemployment pay and supplementary benefit, over £1,000 million. This is a figure which will increase the more that unemployment falls. If we were now in a time of full employment the cost would be even greater. The Minister will have the figures.

There is the inspiration of the swap-a-job scheme which is worthy of examination. I hope that my hon. Friend will undertake to examine it. The other method is to come down not by five years but by a couple of years and to see how the thing goes. The country may not always have this present high level of unemployment. I am rather more optimistic than some. Unemployment in this country is still substantially in pockets. What worries me is that if we suddenly made the retirement age reduction a compulsory five years there would be certain areas and certain skills in which there would be no people available to take up the jobs. I would go for transitional reductions coming down gradually to 60.

Whatever the way in which the Government approach the matter, they may also consider the question of optional retirement as opposed to compulsory retirement, so that those who wish to continue to work can do so. That seems to be essential. We should look at retirement in that way.

You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the officials of the House will welcome the fact that this will be the shortest speech I have ever made on a Friday afternoon. I very much welcome this debate and thank my hon. and learned Friends the Members for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) and Bradford. West (Mr. Lyons) and my hon Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins) for making such significant contributions.

As we believe that it is wrong for Government to spend more money on maintaining the unemployed than would be involved in providing socially useful work for them—provided that the work can be created in a way which is consistent with attainiing our ultimate objective of sustained full employment—so we have grave doubts about the wisdom of having young men unemployed and older men working.

Indeed, a system that keeps older men who want to take life easier at work while we have young, fitter men unemployed and drawing State benefits is one which I personally find difficult to defend and one which we will have to examine most carefully.

I say immediately that the Government are doing this. We are conscious of possibilities—not only by the efforts of my hon. and learned Friend but by the example of other countries, such as Belgium.

We are concerned to find a way in which we can ensure that we do not have existing side by side frustration among the young and fit because they cannot find work, and the desire of older workers, who perhaps are tired, to pack up work. But we have to find a solution that meets two requirements: first, that it is not costly, that is, that it will not lead to increases in public spending and consequent higher taxation and borrowing; and, secondly, that it fits in with the economic and industrial strategy that is well expressed in the words of the TUC Economic Review:

"The aim of the strategy is to put Britain on the path to a high wage, high output, full employment economy, by improving productive potential and the performance of manufacturing industry in particular, with a priority for industrial development over other objectives."

Regretfully, I have to say that the reduction of the retirement age for all men to 60 would not meet those conditions.

There would be some savings in unemployment and supplementary benefits, but even so—and taking them into account—it is estimated that the cost of reducing the age of retirement to 60 at the present time would be about £1,000 million. That is a sum that we could not afford at the present time. Additionally, there are many at work at the present time between the ages of 60 and 64 whom industry can ill afford to lose—men on whose skill, experience and judgment firms place every reliance.

That is not to say that we should not be considering the cost of schemes of selective retirement, particularly for those whose jobs are heavy and arduous, and we are doing just that. The idea of the job-swap scheme put forward by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, West would be particularly attractive if it did not add to costs, and we shall examine it urgently.

I thank my hon. Friend for that positive and helpful approach to my suggestion. Will he, in the inquiries that are being made, bear in mind the possibility that while in the short term there may be a cost in the introduction of the scheme, in the longer term there may be considerable savings?

We shall give the idea the most thorough examination, bearing my hon. and learned Friend's remarks in mind.

Nor should we not hope that the day will come—I certainly hope that it does—when, because we have become much richer as a country than we are today, we can afford voluntary retirement on good pensions at a lower age than at present. I emphasise the word "voluntary". Earlier retirement should come because men and women want it for its own sake, not because it has been forced on them as a work-sharing device.

Some men and women, because of failing health and strength, or boredom, will want to leave arduous or monotonous jobs, and if we can afford it we must help them to do so, but others will not necessarily want to pack up work. For others, the answer may well be a phasing out of employment. Our job is to create enough useful jobs in this country so that there will be no pressure on the older members of our society to retire when they do not wish to do so; but enough wealth so that we can afford to keep them in reasonable comfort if they wish to do so.

One last word, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If there was one disappointment in the speeches of my hon. Friends it was that they made no mention of pre-retirement schemes. Retirement is not always easy. It produces problems as well as relief. The contributions that industry can make to the age group we are discussing is to lay on courses during working hours on preparation for retirement. I hope that those that do not do so already will consider this point carefully. Indeed, I was bitterly disappointed to learn that the Vickers Company had turned down proposals for such a scheme.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, I thank my hon. and learned Friend who initiated this debate, and those who have taken part in it. They have earned the gratitude of those for whom they have spoken. I shall certainly consider their arguments very carefully indeed.