Commons Chamber

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House Of Commons

Wednesday 4th August 1976

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

Prayers

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Private Business

Cromarty Petroleum Order Confirmation Bill (By Order)

Order for consideration read.

To be considered tomorrow.

Oral Answers To Questions

Environment

Houses (Main Services)

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will consider introducing legislation at an early date to assist the easement of the difficul situation facing many people who live in homes not connected to the main services.

17.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he has yet been able to formulate proposals to deal with the problem of increases in cesspool emptying and treatment charges.

The whole question of sewerage services to unconnected properties was raised in the Government's consultative paper on the review of the water industry. We are now considering the representations received in the consultative period—which ended only last week.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who are not connected to main sewers face increased demands in the form of charges that amount to about 2p every time a toilet is flushed? In all logic, the cesspit emptying service should be a rateborne service. Will the Minister make a helpful comment on this matter now? If he cannot, will he do so in the Adjournment debate on Friday?

I am sorry that between now and Friday I cannot complete my analysis of the hundreds of representations I have received. I agree that it costs about 2p every time a toilet is flushed. That is a very sobering sort of figure. I do not agree that the whole cost should be borne by the ratepayers, in view of the fact that the water industry is now independent of local government. Many of the representations that we have received on this matter suggest that some new method should be found of bearing these costs centrally.

This whole problem has arisen principally from the imposition of heavy treatment charges by the water authorities. Does the Minister realise that of the average charge of £18·50 imposed in my area, £10·50 goes to the Southern Water Authority for treatment? The district councils are trying to help a little by virtually waiving the collection charges. Will the Government try to help as well by geeting the water authorities to change their policies?

I do not agree with the hon. Member's analysis of the causes of this problem. The real cause arises out of the Daymond judgment and the difficulties that resulted from that. The local authorities have looked again at the actual cost of carrying out this service to the households concerned—a service that for many years has been subsidised. As soon as we are in a position to analyse the representations that we have received and draw up a new policy, we shall put it before the House.

Has any estimate been reached of how much it would cost to link every house in the United Kingdom with gas, electricity, main water and drainage?

If it has been estimated, such an estimate has not been received in my Department.

Does the Minister agree that "spending a penny" now has a new inflationary meaning? Before legislation is introduced into this House, will we have an opportunity to debate the consultative paper to which he referred? May we be assured that that will happen before the Minister's proposals are introduced?

This is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. We shall be delighted to have a debate on the important issue of principle involved here, and if we cannot find time for it I am sure that the Opposition will.

Housing Finance

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he is now in a position to make a statement about the future of housing finance.

The review is progressing. I expect to have the conclusions later in the year.

I am grateful for that rather partial answer. In view of the fact that council house subsidies have been increased by 400 per cent. in five years, at a time when rents, taking account of rebate, have increased by only 63 per cent., will the Government accept that, regrettably, rents will have to be increased if they are to reach anything like the half way level, as a proportion of total costs, that they were at some years ago or the two-thirds level that they were at five years ago?

There has been a fall in the proportion of the housing revenue account covered by rental incomes, but the hon. Member will know that the main reason for such an escalation in housing subsidies is the historically high interest rates which have been falling on local councils. In any sensible policy addressed to rents we must consider the direct impact on the housing revenue account and the broader social policies, including the counter-inflation policy, which we have had very much in mind.

While not agreeing with all the details, I think that my right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head when he says that the increase in subsidy was a vital factor in stabilising rents in order to ensure the acceptance of the social contract package.

Order. I ask the hon. Member to put his supplementary remarks in the form of a question. Will hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House also recognise that Question Time is not a time for stating a case? It is a time for asking questions.

I understood my hon. Friend's question very well. He was saying—and I wholly agree—that one must take account of the social contract in any decision affecting rents, and that we intend to do.

Does the Secretary of State agree that he has already made one important decision about housing figures, namely, ending the unlimited building of council houses? What reduction in council building does he expect as a result of that?

We shall have before the House a more detailed statement, because only yesterday we had discussions with the local authorities. But in local authority building I am aiming for a rate of completions consistent with the figures in Cmnd. 6393, which was approved a few months ago.

Rural Transport

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what recent consultations he has had on rural transport.

Rural transport problems are discussed in chapter 6 of the Consultation Document on the Transport Policy Review, and I shall be considering the responses on this subject in the course of the review. Meanwhile, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary met various organisations concerned with rural transport on 29th June at the first meeting of the steering committee for the rural transport experiments.

The Government have now been in power for two and a half years, and during that time transport services in rural areas have been severely depleted and fares considerably increased. When will the Government actually do something, as opposed to talking about the matter?

I am well aware of the difficulties that face people living in rural areas who have access neither to a car nor to public bus services. This state of affairs has persisted for many years. The fact that we are doing something about it shows that we are far more seized of the problem that the Conservatives were.

Is my thon. Friend aware that buses in general receive financial assistance estimated to be worth about £9 million through lower taxation? Would it not be better to use that money to help rural and even urban services instead of spending it on contract hire and express coaches?

I take my hon. Friend's point. We assisted rural bus services in the shire counties to the tune of about £33 million in this year's supplementary grant. Of course, it has always been a matter for consideration whether we should do more within the limited resources available to us.

The Government give the impression of being quite oblivious to the crisis facing transport in rural areas as local authorities are pressed to cut expenditure and the costs of running services increase. It is eight months since the Minister announced that there would be experiments in certain parts of Scotland, Wales and England. When will he report on the progress that has been made?

We have had a meeting with the steering committee. We have selected four areas in North Yorkshire, Devon, South Ayrshire and the county of Dyfed for these experiments. It would be unsatisfactory to try to move too quickly until we have considered the decisions with the bus operators and the trade unions involved.

No one would criticise the Government for moving too quickly. Is it not the position that the only action the Government have taken is to scrap the Conservative Government's reform on this matter? Will he seriously tackle the problem? Does not his lack of action show his and the Government's total lack of concern for the problems of the rural areas?

The proposals that came from the Conservatives were for the total scrapping of the bus licensing laws in rural areas. I am simply not prepared to make such a recommendation to the House. That licensing system has served the British public well for many years. It would be thoroughly irresponsible to proceed with the compulsory dismantling of the arrangements. We have increased the transport supplementary grant to rural areas, changed the proportions away from the metropolitan areas in order to assist rural areas—that was done last year—and met about 98 per cent. of the additional bids that we invited. We have also set up a working party and have announced the areas in which the experiments will start shortly.

In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible moment.

Development (Planning Permission)

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will introduce legislation to make it an automatic offence to carry out development without the necessary planning permission.

No Sir, but we have undertaken to seek a legislative opportunity to strengthen the powers of local authorities to enforce planning control.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the protests of councillors, amenity bodies, Young Conservatives and many of my constituents at the building without proper planning permission, and with impunity, of a large unsightly Heron-Beta filling station on the Epping New Road at Buckhurst Hill? I shall consider closely what the right hon. Gentleman said, but something should be done.

I was not aware of the complete list that the hon. Gentleman just gave me, or of the particular case he mentioned. I should be glad to hear from him if he would care to write to me about it. On the general point, up to 1960 it was possible to take criminal action in the case of a contravention or a supposed contravention of development control. It proved quite unsatisfactory. Often people did not know that they were contravening the control and, anyway, the magistrates used to wait until an outstanding application had gone to appeal before deciding.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that planning authorities throughout the country regard the enforcement provision as a complete farce, and that this was made very clear in evidence to Mr. George Dobry, Q.C. when he conducted the inquiry? Will my right hon. Friend accept that a person who carries out an unauthorised development, such as tipping scrap metal on the edge of a residential area, can, if he manipulates the procedure with care, guarantee to get away with it for at least a year, while the residents suffer discomfort and distress and blame the planning authority?

I have a lot of sympathy with that point, but it is a slightly different one. This is a question of enforcement control. Here I agree with my hon. Friend. My right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State in his statement, I think on 12th November 1975, said—and I endorse it—that we were taking every opportunity to find a legislative chance to implement Mr. Dobry's proposal that we should extend the stop notice powers.

Will the right hon. Gentleman consider a financial sanction where the conditions of a planning consent are ignored?

I think that the Dobry proposal is probably about the best one. It would enable a local authority to put a stop notice on a much wider variety of cases. The hon. Gentleman knows that there are occasions when people carry out a contravening development without understanding or realising that they are doing so. We have to give them a chance to remedy that.

Will the right hon. Gentleman try to bring forward legislation next Session to enable stop notices to be imposed where changes of use take place? These cannot be covered by enforcement control. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that one Sunday market operator is making a farce of the planning controls?

In my amiable talks with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House I shall mention that the hon. Gentleman also backed my desire to have more legislative time.

Bracknell Development Corporation

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he intends to make further appointments to the Bracknell Development Corporation.

I shall give urgent consideration as and when the opportunity arises.

Does the right hon. Gentleman not feel that one of the reasons for urgency is that of the four representatives of Bracknell District Council on this body three lost their seats at the last council elections and that there are now only three Labour members on the district council? Does he not agree, therefore, that that representation is grossly unfair and should be put right as a matter of urgency?

I do not think it has ever been the view of any of my predecessors —and certainly not of myself—that the basis for choosing the members of a development corporation depends upon a kind of political ring. If the hon. Gentleman cares to think about the matter he will recall that the chairman and deputy chairman, who were reappointed by myself, are, as it happens, Conservatives. I am not as pessimistic as the hon. Gentleman. When vacancies arise in March 1977, it might be that the sort of person we need—able, intelligent and experienced—could even be a Conservative.

Bus Lanes (Traffic Regulations)

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he will now take to inform the travelling public of the traffic sign regulations concerning bus lanes in city and urban areas.

Bus lane signs and rules are explained in the booklet "Know Your Traffic Signs" and they will be covered in the next revision of the Highway Code. In addition, three short television publicity films are available on the subject.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in many towns and cities bus and hackney carriage drivers are unaware of when bus lanes are operating, particularly when the signs cannot be seen? Does he realise that the private motorist faces even more difficulties because in some towns the bus lanes are in operation for 24 hours while in others they operate only two or four hours, and that in some local authorities, such as Sheffield, bus gates and lanes do not give hackney carriages the priority they are given in, for example, London?

I am aware of the situation to which the hon. Gentleman refers. The bus lane sign was altered several times while we were experimenting with it, but a standard sign has now been adopted and prescribed for use in the 1975 traffic regulations. I hope that this will avoid some of the difficulties raised by the hon. Gentleman.

What is the point of having bus lanes on the main roads out of North and North-West London when they cause even worse traffic congestion?

The purpose of bus lanes is to facilitate the movement of public transport, which will enable costs to be kept down and improve the reliability and frequency of bus services in the interests of that high proportion of the population who do not travel to work by private car.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, although bus lanes can contribute to the better flow of traffic in cities, this will not happen until their use is better understood by the public and there is some attempt to make people respect them? What measures does the Minister have in mind to ensure that the lanes are respected by other road users?

Enforcement is not a matter for me, but if the hon. Gentleman has any cases in mind where difficulties have occurred I shall be happy to look at them.

What is the penalty for travelling in a London bus lane in a private car? Is it as much as a £100 fine, as I have been led to believe?

I should need to take advice on that question. My impression is that the fine is £50, but I shall check and write to the hon. Member.

Council House Sales

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many local authorities have decided to sell council houses to tenants wishing to purchase; and if he will set out the names of these authorities in theOfficial Report.

Local authorities are not required to report to my Department decisions to sell council houses to tenants, but they are requested to notify actual sales. Table 13 of Local Housing Statistics No. 37, published in May 1976, of which a copy is in the Library, gives details of sales by local authorities during 1975.

In view of the great interest in council house building and the fact that enlightened boroughs, such as Harrow, are prepared to sell, will the Minister give a firm undertaking that he will not prevent councils from implementing the pledges on which they were elected, including those of giving a greater discount than 20 per cent?

I do not think I need add anything to the statement I made on behalf of the Government in a recent Supply debate when I repeated the advice given on this question in April 1974. The approved practice on discounts of up to 20 per cent. remains, and we do not intend to allow or encourage discounts beyond that figure.

If my hon. Friend publishes in theOfficial Report the names of local authorities which are prepared to sell council houses, will he also publish the names of the thousands of homeless people in those areas?

I could certainly consider a breakdown of that kind of information, though I am not sure whether we could publish it in theOfficial Report. There are other Questions on the Order Paper about homelessness statistics which I shall deal with when we come to them.

Will the Minister give a more positive response to Harrow Council's official suggestion to him to provide interest-free second mortgages for first-time home buyers, including people buying council houses, and allowing others to move out of the public sector into the private sector, thereby leaving more houses for genuine council tenants?

We have just been through an agonising public expenditure exercise which has involved, among other things, a reduction in housing expenditure for 1977. This was one of the matters discussed with local authority associations in the last day or so. I hope to be making a statement, including reference to municipal home loans, within the next day or two, but I see no prospect of increased provision for this purpose. We must look to the building societies for that.

Does not my hon. Friend agree that there ought to be positive discrimination in council house building, because resources are not going to the areas where they are needed and there is no common problem throughout the country? Would he agree that areas like Liverpool, with 16,500 people waiting for houses, are not the proper places in which to sell council houses?

I have answered my hon. Friend's last point before. I am not in a position to take a detailed view of precise local circumstances and the disposition of different kinds of tenant. Public enterprise has a responsibility to provide for a wide range of tenure; it should not be left simply to private enterprise. I hope that I carry my hon. Friend with me on that. I agree with the main substance of his question, and when we have finalised the arrangements on the disposition of resources and the house-building programme in the light of the recently announced restraints we shall pay particular attention to protecting the stress areas, including Merseyside, as far as we are able.

Waste Paper Collection

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will publish guidance to local authorities on the profitable organisation of waste paper collection.

A report of a working party which was set up to advise local authorities on this subject was circulated to them last week. I am sending the hon. Member a copy.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that waste paper is a neglected and important resource and that action should be taken on whatever is included in the report? Will he consider particularly drawing the attention of local authorities to the advantages of using the numerous experienced private sector contractors?

It is a wide-ranging report and I should prefer the hon. Gentleman to read it before I comment on the details. I agree that this is an important part of the reprocessing of natural resources and I am glad that the waste paper trade, which was so badly depressed until recently, is now picking up. One of the difficulties of contracts with private firms is that they are loth to enter into long-term agreements in case the market moves against them.

Irrespective of the market price, should not waste paper be collected and the organisation not be allowed to deteriorate when prices are low. particularly in view of the advantages to the environment and our balance of payments?

I find nothing in those remarks with which I disagree. Industrial matters are for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry.

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that it would be a good idea if Government Departments got rid of some of the paper before it is sent out, thus preventing its becoming waste and a nuisance?

I know of no Minister in the resent Administration who would disagree with the hon. Gentleman.

Local Government Expenditure (South Yorkshire)

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he intends to visit South Yorkshire in order to discuss with local representatives the proposed reduction in local government expenditure.

My right hon. Friend has at present no plans to do so.

Are my hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State aware of the grave public disquiet in South Yorkshire over Press reports that quote a senior official of British Rail as saying that the local rail services, including even the stations in my constituency and that of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, will be in jeopardy if the South Yorkshire County Council does not provide a sufficiently large subsidy next year? Does my hon. Friend agree that if that unfortunate result occurs because of his pressure on the county council to reduce its spending, especially on transport, the public will undoubtedly lay the blame at the door of the Government? Bearing that in mind, should he not be talking about the matter to the people concerned?

I have no knowledge of the statement to which my hon. Friend refers. I shall be grateful to receive details of it. We have no plans for cutting back on revenue support for the passenger services of British Rail. My right hon. Friend and I have made that clear several times. There are difficulties in South Yorkshire about the size of the deficit arising from the support of the bus services. The ridership is increasing, but so is the deficit. That is increasing astronomically.

Will the hon. Gentleman assure the House that those local authorities, such as the West Derbyshire County Council, that have reduced their expenditure in this current financial year will not be penalised in future, in view of the Chancellor's statement and the Prime Minister's unsatisfactory reply during Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday?

At present my right hon. Friend has no plans to discriminate between local authorities on overspend. We have been having a series of amicable discussions with them as to how we can cut back on the currently indicated overspend for 1976–77 and deal with the implications of the Chancellor's statement about 1977–78.

Have the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues contemplated a reduction in the allocation to local authorities of borrowing permissions for locally-determined schemes?

It is possible that action of that sort will be necessary in the transport sector where there is no other means of meeting overspend on current account.

Is it not a fact that South Yorkshire has been defying the Government's advice on local government spending? Is it not grossly unfair, as my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) has said, that the authorities that try to keep in line with Government action should be penalised?

I have had discussions with the leaders of South Yorkshire and all the metropolitan counties on the way in which we can meet the overspend problem together. South Yorkshire has been left in no doubt as to my views on the seriousness of the situation. I think that its representatives recognise that the degree to which a local authority has kept in line with Government policy will be taken into account in the allocation of next year's transport supplementary grant.

Departmental Staff

11.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he proposes to take any measures to reduce the level of staff in his Department.

My Department's contributions to savings in Civil Service manpower and related expenditure announced last week are £3·9 million in 1977–78 and £13·4 million in 1978–79. This will lead to a saving of up to 1,000 posts in 1977–78 and about another 2,000 posts in 1978–79 over the levels originally planned.

Are they cuts in the recruiting of fresh staff, or is the right hon. Gentleman making an across-the-board assessment of the staffing of individual parts of his Department to ensure that there is no wastage of manpower?

We have carefully considered, as did all my colleagues when faced with this exercise, the whole range of activities of our Departments. We have put forward proposals that in our view would be the least damaging to the public service. The posts that we have identified obviously fall into the category that we consider to be the less essential of the services that we provide.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that some of us are unhappy about what appears to be the increasingly fashionable activity of attacking civil servants, who do as honourable and hard a day's work as the rest of us?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, as I think that needs to be said. I shall not give any encouragement to the general witch-hunt that appears to be developing in the public service in national and local government.

In view of the cuts in staff that the Secretary of State has indicated, will he explain why his Department is planning to buy St. Anne's House, in Lewes, at a price that is £6,000 more than that for which it could have been bought only a few weeks ago?

I think that the hon. Gentleman and the House would be surprised if I had an answer to that question at my fingertips. However, I shall be happy to look into the matter for the hon. Gentleman. I put it to him that he must make some distinction between current expenditure and capital expenditure. The Question was about manpower, which affects current expenditure.

I do not wish to join the beating of civil servants by the Opposition, who would be the first to complain if there were delays in replying to their correspondence, but will my right hon. Friend note the representations that have been made by the railway unions, namely, that in the transport section of the Department there are too many advisers on road transport policies and too few on rail transport policies?

That is almost inevitable in terms of the number of people employed, as it is the fact that British Rail is a hived-off, separate nationalised industry. That means that there will be an imbalance in the number of road advisers compared with the number of rail advisers. However, I understand my hon. Friend's point, and I can assure him that railway matters will be given the most careful consideration by myself and my Department in the course of the transport review.

When will the number of non-industrial civil servants in the Secretary of State's Department be back to the level of 1st April 1974?

If we were to decide to reduce the functions of the Department to the levels that were operating on 1st April 1974, we could bring about that sort of reduction, but the Department, with the approval of the House, has extended its activities into many spheres, including the control of pollution—a control that is most valued by industry—and the many other areas and services that we shall sustain.

Local Authorities (Overspending)

12.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what action he now proposes to take to deal with overspending by local authorities in the current financial year.

15.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what further action he proposes to take to deal with overspending by local authorities.

I discussed with the local authority associations in the consultative council on 27th July what action should be taken on the projected excess in local authority expenditure of £250 million in 1976–77. Although a considerable improvement over the £350 million-£450 million forecast in May has been achieved, this figure still exceeds this year's agreed standstill in expenditure. I had therefore asked local authorities to make a further reduction in planned current and capital expenditure, both in this year and in 1977–78. This year, on capital expenditure we are expecting a further saving of £50 million, and on current expenditure the Government propose to set the 1976–77 increase Order at a level of £50 millioin below what it would otherwise have been.

In 1977–78 I shall aim for a rate support grant settlement, taking account of the remaining excess this year, on the basis that local government expenditure will conform to the agreed Cmnd. 6393 figures.

Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that the calculations he makes about the levels of spending by individual authorities are on a fair and comparable basis between different years and different authorities, since they were not on that basis in the methods proposed hi tile original circular? Will he think again about the suggestion that those authorities that have restrained their spending in response to Government guidelines over the past two years are likely, under the method he has now announced, to be penalised next year? This will be regarded not only as unfair but as something that will not encourage local authorities to restrain spending.

I think that the point is well understood. At previous Question Times in the House we have had a number of exchanges on this very difficult matter. However, I must say that I have discussed this question in the consultative council as well as in exchanges in the House. I must report to the House that certainly the predominant view of the consultative council is that it would be unwise and, indeed, wrong, on the basis of existing information, for the Government to attempt to discriminate on a separate local authority basis rather than to deal with authorities, as the Government have done in the past, and particularly under measures that were encouraged by the previous Administration, on an across-the-board basis.

I accept completely the great difficulty of any discrimination proposal, as suggested from the Opposition side of the House. However, does my right hon. Friend agree that there are great dangers in generally condemning local authorities for overspending when very much depends upon the base line that one takes and the details of the expenditure?

As my hon. Friend quite rightly points out, there is a genuine difficulty in defining overspend with any accuracy, given the powers and duties of local authorities. All that we have been able to do is to agree, as it were, on aggregate figures for local authority expenditure as a whole. If the House wants the Government to go further than that and to identify and assess the needs for expenditure of every local authority in the country, and to set down limits and targets, it raises questions of the most profound kind, which would alter the whole balance of the relationship between Government and local authorities.

Is it not time, however, that the whole grant system was reviewed by the Government, because in many respects the system positively encourages wasteful expenditure? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most necessary things is that this House should cease pouring out legislation that simply lays new burdens on local authorities?

I entirely agree that it is time that we had a review—but that is what we have had. The Layfield Report, which covers most of these questions, is before the House and the public, and we are very anxious to have the views of the House and to debate the report at the earliest moment. I assure right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House that that is my wish.

For how long is the complete freeze on council house building programmes to last? When it ends, is it true that there is to be a cut-back in those programmes, not just next year but this year, starting immediately, in comparison with the February White Paper figures? Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that he will stand firm by continuing to allow local authorities to build as many council houses as they can, as they are desperately needed?

My hon. Friend has raised a question that is slightly outside the terms of the original Question about local authority current financial expenditure. However, I willingly turn to my hon. Friend's supplementary question. The answer is that the complete freeze to which he refers is simply an administrative measure to enable us to get a new system into being. I certainly hope that we shall be able to bring that complete freeze to an end well within this month —in a week or two's time, I hope.

Beyond that, my hon. Friend asked whether there will be control over house building. The answer is "Yes". Of course there is a control over house building; that is the purpose. However, within that control my intention is that areas of priority and of housing need should not suffer a reduction in their house building programmes. We are, as it were, going back to a programme of priority in housing. It is my intention to see that as far as possible the necessary resources are available to those areas where housing need is greatest.

Will the Secretary of State confirm that there was an increase of 30,000 full-time equivalents in local government staffing last year? Does he recall that on 22nd July the Prime Minister urged local authorities to think in terms of staff cuts as well as service cuts? Does he agree with what the Prime Minister said, and will he back those local authorities that carry out that request and run into difficulties?

What local authorities are achieving is a very sharp deceleration in the number and growth of their employees. There is no question about that. In 1972 there was an increase of 80,000. In 1973, the increase was 80,000 and in 1974 it was 58,000, and so on. This year, as has been pointed out, it has come down to 30,000. That is for the year ending March 1976. In my judgment, this year wil see no increase in the number of people employed by local authorities.

Lorry Routes

13.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to announce a decision over the establishment of a national heavy lorry route.

As soon as possible. The issues are complex and I am considering the representations received during the recent consultations between the Department and the various interested organisations.

Does my hon. Friend accept that there is considerable anxiety, not least in my constituency, amongst residents who live alongside trunk roads which are close to and parallel with motorways—in this case the M62? Will he endeavour to assure those residents that their roads will not be included in any designated national lorry route? Will he give an assurance today that he will give details of those roads which will definitely be affected in some way or other, as opposed to those roads which can be totally excluded from any national lorry route, as that would go a long way to allaying the anxiety that I have described?

I am well aware of my hon. Friend's concern, which I think relates particularly to the A.646, which runs very close to the M62. He will appreciate that I am not yet in a position to give a positive assurance about any particular road. The map that was attached to the discussion paper on this subject was meant only to illustrate the density of the network and not the eventual status of any of the roads marked on it.

Is it not extraordinary that the Government should be urging local authorities to establish heavy vehicle commercial routes when it is very unlikely that funds will be available to local authorities to improve the routes that they designate to carry heavy traffic? Is this not a great disadvantage to the environment in many rural areas?

I entirely agree. This is one of the many difficulties with which we are faced on this question. It is one of the most complicated questions with which one has to wrestle at present in the Department of the Environment. Another difficulty is that there has been no consensus whatever in the consultations that have taken place, including those with many of the organisations close to the hon. Gentleman.

Is my hon. Friend aware that he could achieve excellent cuts in public expenditure, which would be widely applauded, if he scrapped any proposals for heavy lorry routes through the Peak District National Park or other national parks?

I know of no proposal for putting a lorry route through the Peak District National Park. One of the objectives of establishing a national lorry route would be to get heavy goods vehicles away from environmentally sensitive areas. However, costs are attached to this matter, and in the early stages I doubt whether it will be possible to achieve this objective, which I share with my hon. Friend.

Is the Minister also satisfied that the area controls now being drawn up by local authorities will fit in well with and be consistent and harmonious with the national lorry routes?

By the time we come to take decisions about what roads would be in a national lorry network, we shall have the benefit of all the proposals from local authorities, and as far as possible we shall see to it that they are harmonious.

Scottish And Welsh Assemblies

14.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what increase he plans in Class XIV, Vote 1, Subhead 21 and cash block DOE 6 in the current financial year and the coming financial years to meet the cost of providing Assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff.

The Estimate and cash block will be increased by £1·4 million to cover expenditure in 1976–77. Provision for remaining works expenditure of about £2·6 million will be made within the public expenditure totals for later years.

As we Scots do not speak noticeably less long than the English, and may be expected to have equalHansard requirements, and asHansard last year cost £816,000, has this sort of estimate been included, and are contracts to be awarded on a cost-plus or a fixed-price basis?

I should require notice of that last point. I shall write to my hon. Friend. The first point is not for me, and the figures that I have quoted have no relation to the provision of aHansard service following the creation of any Welsh and Scottish Assemblies.

Will the Minister accept that if, after the clash of opinion in the House, a devolution Bill were finally passed, it would be ludicrous to deny the setting up of an Assembly on the grounds of the cost of the administration and a possible bill for printing the ScottishHansard?

The Property Services Agency estimates, to which I referred in my first answer, are being provided in order that the PSA may carry out its usual function of servicing the requirements of the appropriate Government Departments, subject, of course, to the due authority of Parliament when it is given, or if it is given.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that if the arrangement for the construction of the Assembly buildings is on a cost-plus basis he will have some very bad news for the House and, indeed, for the people of Wales, Scotland and England in the next couple of months, because the original estimate of £12 million for the Cardiff Assembly, simply taking into account inflation, must by now be at least £14 million? Can my right hon. Friend confirm or deny my figures?

I can do neither. I can only undertake to write to my hon. Friend when I have checked the point raised earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell).

Has my right hon. Friend taken into consideration the cost of the butchering of local government that must inevitably take place if these Assemblies are set up?

No doubt that will be a consideration that the House will debate and have in mind when it comes to its decision. No doubt any future shape of local government will be considered at much greater length by the Government Departments concerned, and by the House, in due course.

Motorway Inquiries

16.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will now take steps to widen the rights of objectors at motorway inquiries.

The rights of objectors at these inquiries are amongst the matters being considered in the review of public inquiries procedures that I announced earlier this year. I will ensure that any suggestions the hon. Gentleman wishes to make are considered in the review.

I deplore the use of disruptive tactics at these inquiries, and recognise the need for the Minister to have the ultimate say in planning matters, but does he not accept that there is a powerful case for a highways appeal tribunal in those instances where the Minister is inclined to reject the inspector's report, so that the grounds for the proposed rejection can be adequately scrutinised and challenged by the objectors before the ultimate decision is taken?

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman made the point with which he started about disruption at inquiries. However strongly people feel—and they are perfectly entitled to have feelings and to express them—they are not, in my view, and, I am glad to note, in the hon. Gentleman's view, entitled to disrupt the proceedings. With regard to the second point that the hon. Gentleman made, I do not think that the House would wish me to go into details at this moment. The point of announcing a review in January of this year was to see what procedures would be adequate. First, we have had the Lord Chancellor's rules, which came into force in June. We are at the same time, as the hon. Gentleman knows, considering the whole question of the review procedures. It is right that these should all be considered and that the composite statement should be announced in due course.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the irritants to those who object at inquiries is not only that the need cannot be questioned but that the calculation of need is based on cost-benefit criteria, which, among other things, value the time of those travelling in motor cars, whether for leisure or other purposes, according to the salary that they might be expecting? Is that not something that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues should consider in the current review, and does it not explain the exasperation of some of the people at these inquiries?

Yes, in the sense that we shall be looking, and are looking, at the whole question of the review procedure. As to my hon. Friend's first point, it always has been the case, as he will know, that local need can be challenged at an inquiry. The question of general need is clearly not a matter for a local inquiry, though I agree that it might be a matter for this House.

Transport Subsidies

19.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received about transport subsidies, and if he will make a statement.

I have received a number of representations about the size and distribution of transport subsidies, in the context of the transport consultative document and of the recently announced cuts in public expenditure. I cannot anticipate the statement on the transport review that my right hon. Friend will be making later in the year.

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to retain transport subsidies both for buses and railways, particularly in the latter case, in respect of freight services, so that there is a genuine shift from road to rail? Will he comment on the general position where taxation proposals on company cars have been modified in the light of possible reductions in transport subsidies for bus and train services?

As my hon. Friend will be aware, the modification of the proposals on company cars was related to the need not to damage the British car industry at this particularly sensitive time— but I wholly take his point about the necessity of retaining subsidies. He will be aware—I said this in reply to an earlier Question—that we intend to maintain the railway passenger transport subsidy at its current levels and to continue a considerable subsidy to bus services, which at the moment is running at record levels in real terms. As for the switching of freight from road to rail, we are doing all we can to make industry aware of the sidings grants that are available. A particularly significant one was announced recently in respect of Shell.

Does the Minister recall that last year the National Bus Company made a record loss of £19 million and the National Freight Corporation made a record loss of £31 million? Will he now tell the House what proposals he has to relieve the taxpayer of the terrible burden of subsidising nationalised industries?

The hon. Gentleman was given a comprehensive reply yesterday on the National Bus Company, when the House took a view in respect of his proposals that the National Bus Company be denationalised. The National Freight Corporation has indeed been passing through a very difficult period, largely due to the downturn in trade.

Does my hon. Friend accept that we realise that he is trying to perform a Solomon-like task of keeping a balance between road and rail, but that it will not be possible to keep the rail system working efficiently if it is cut down any further? All the subsidies that are used to that end are in the interests of the general public, because there are still some of us who use public transport.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her remarks. The Secretary of State has made it clear that he has no proposals whatever for massive cuts in the railway network.

The hon. Gentleman has not answered the question put to him by the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) in respect of subsidising freight. Does he remember the Government's own consultation document, which says that there is no case for subsidising freight operations? Bearing in mind the tens of millions of pounds that are going in subsidising British Rail freight operations and the National Freight Corporation, will he say whether that is still Government policy?

All these matters are being considered, because, as the hon. Gentleman himself mentioned, they are in the consultation document. He will also be aware that with our present system of taxation, which it is difficult to change quickly, freight travelling on the roads also gets a considerable subsidy from the taxpayer.

Fleet Line

20.

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will now make a statement about the extension of the Fleet Line beyond Charing Cross.

The Greater London Council has recently sent to the Department a paper on the Fleet Line, and my right hon. Friend will make a statement when this latest submission has been fully appraised.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be quite absurd if this important public transport line were to stop at the Strand? Is he aware that South-East London has for a long time been deprived, in terms of public trans- port, and will he say when he will be making a final announcement about it?

I am afraid that it will be some time before my right hon. Friend will be in a position to make a final announcement. I certainly take my hon. Friend's point about the difficulties of public transport in South-East London, but, as he will be aware, the latest estimate from London Transport in respect of the cost of this line is about £200 million at November 1975 prices, and the Greater London Council will have to compete with other areas of the country for such a major investment in public transport.

Does the Minister recognise that people in London have been waiting a very long time for some sort of decision? Conflicting financial estimates have been produced, and the one thing that we really want is an independent considered view as to the cost benefit of extending the Fleet Line.

I was not aware that conflicting estimates had been produced. I think that we are quite satisfied with the present estimate of the GLC of about £200 million at November 1975 prices.

Unemployment Benefit (Reciprocal Agreement With Spain)

(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will make a statement about the payment of unemployment benefit to people on holiday in Spain.

It has never been the policy of this Government—or, so far as I know, of our predecessors—to allow people to draw unemployment benefit while on holiday abroad. It is an absolute rule that to qualify for unemployment benefit a claimant must always be available for work. Naturally, being abroad makes this condition extremely difficult to satisfy, to say the least. Furthermore, legislation imposes a general disqualification for receiving benefit where a person is absent from Great Britain.

In April 1975 a reciprocal agreement with Spain came into force. It was designed to enable social security rights acquired in one country to be transferred when the person moved to the other. This enables, for example, a pensioner retiring to Spain to draw his pension at the same rate as though he had remained in this country—a very fair provision, in my view.

A recent decision by the National Insurance Commissioner included an interpretation of our reciprocal agreement with Spain which creates problems. He ruled that absence in Spain would not of itself disqualify a claimant for unemployment benefit. The claimant would, however, still have to be available for work. It is worth noting that the commissioner disallowed the particular claim on the ground that this test was not satisfied. Thus, the claim failed and no benefit was paid.

The National Insurance Commissioner is, of course, completely independent of Ministers, and Ministers have no power to intervene in his decisions. A routine circular had therefore to be issued to local offices of the Department of Employment explaining the implications of the commissioner's decision. This circular did not reflect any new Government decision. It remains the case that benefit cannot be paid unless a claimant is available for work. However, since it has never been the Government's policy to pay unemployment benefit to holiday makers in Spain, the commissioners' decision has created an uncertainty which we intend to resolve. The Government have already taken up the matter with the Spanish authorities with a view to agreeing an amendment to the convention.

Statements this morning to the effect that the Government have decided that unemployed people can go on holiday to Spain for a year on full unemployment benefit are absolutely untrue and irresponsible. I deplore them. Our policy is unchanged. The issue has arisen only because of an interpretation by the independent National Insurance Commissioner, and, as I have said, we are taking steps to amend the agreement so that our policy can be maintained.

I am sure that the whole House will welcome that prompt statement by the Secretary of State. [HON. MEMBERS: "Now apologise."] We shall wait to see about that. The House will welcome the right hon. Gentleman's prompt affirmation that it is not and has not been the Government's policy to pay unemployment benefit to people holidaying abroad, but how can the Government conceivably say that they did not appreciate that this was the effect of the order which they published in March 1975?

Did the right hon. Gentleman appreciate it?

We did not know about it—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—certainly, because the order was never laid before the House of Commons. It was not the subject of any Question or statement. There was no reason why any hon. Member should have known anything about it whatever were it not for the vigilance of the Press, which has exposed this sort of thing.

Is it not abundantly clear from the terms of Article 23(3) of the order that it was the Government's intention that for the purposes of any claim to receive unemployment benefit under the legislation of the United Kingdom a person resident in Britain who was visiting Spain was deemed to be resident in Britain for the whole of the period he was in Spain? How could the National Insurance Commissioner have come to any conclusion other than that which he reached?

Further, when the matter came to light, why did the Government then send a circular round to all employment offices instead of making clear that they would change the rules.

The right hon. Gentleman refers to the vigilance of the Press. I should refer, first, to the irresponsibility of the Press and of the Opposition in rushing into print without first ascertaining the facts. In its story this morning theDaily Mail said:

"The Government have decided that any workers without a job who decide to go on holiday to Spain will get full unemployment pay all the time they are there. The only proviso is that the holiday must not last longer than one year, and that they must promise to come back should the labour exchange find them a suitable job."

That is absolutely untrue, it is disgraceful misrepresentation, and I think it deplorable of right hon. and hon Members opposite to leap into print in the Press this morning with various statements without taking any trouble to find out the facts.

If I may now answer the right hon. Gentleman directly on the matter of interpretation, the question of the interpretation of the agreement arose only when the National Insurance Commissioner dealt with a case in which, as I said, he ruled out an application to have unemployment benefit by someone who was in Spain.

When was that?

The decision of the commissioner was taken on 4th May.

rose—

Sit down.

The circular was issued to the Department of Employment's offices in absolute follow-up of the decision taken by the commissioner, which I cannot challenge. In fact, I have to block a loophole as a result of the ruling perfectly properly given by the National Insurance Commissioner. As for the vigilance of the Press, the decision had already been taken by the Department that this had to be dealt with, and it would have been proper if right hon. and hon. Members opposite had found out the facts before rushing into public statements.

Before the right hon. Gentleman hastens to renegotiate the matter with Spain, will he reflect upon his own plans for his enforced idleness after the next General Election?

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is now a concerted campaign by the Tory Press and the Tory Party to undermine the whole basis of the Welfare State and that this is part of the activities of the prostituted Press to that end? Second, can my right hon. Friend tell the House whether the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat), who has been making the running in this matter, has sent the Department any shred of evidence? He says that he has received thousands of letters. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that he has not sent even one letter on the matter to him?

I agree with my hon. Friend that this is part of an attack upon the Welfare State. Noticeably today more publicity has been given to this squalid piece of misrepresentation than to the whole of the important programme announced yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment for dealing with the real problems of unemployment. What sort of sense of values do they have? Who do they think they are? The policy seems to be to tell the big lie before anyone has time to reply to it.

As for the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat), nearly a month ago I challenged him to let me have the evidence on which he is basing what he calls his campaign. Since then, not a shred of evidence has been sent. I am not saying that no such evidence exists. I say that an honest Member of Parliament, if he has an intention to do his job, would submit the evidence in order that it can be properly inquired into by my Department.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he will get all the evidence when I have amassed it? [HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] Is he further aware that, on the day after he told me that I was speaking rubbish, Mr. Derek Deevy was convicted of swindling £36,000 out of the social security services? Is he aware that, however much he may wriggle today, the attitude that he and his out-of-touch advisers are displaying has allowed the social security system to become one of the biggest rackets in this country today—cheating the honest taxpayer and cheating the truly deserving cases? Will he set up a public inquiry now into the whole social benefits system?

I and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, and all my right hon. and hon. Friends, are as concerned about any evidence of abuse or fraud as any hon. Member opposite. There is no point in trying to make party politics out of this. In his statement, the hon. Gentleman made the allegation

"…that at least 20 per cent. of claims for social security benefit were fraudulent and that 50 per cent."

—50 per cent., he says—

"of people claiming unemployment benefit were not unemployed at all."

I might feel it necessary to set up an inquiry into that sort of allegation.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that one heard the misrepresented news this morning with mixed feelings? I thought that it might be the dawn of a time when the facility that the rich have always enjoyed might be extended to the poorer people in our society—namely, the ability to collect sickness benefit when workers injured in work go abroad for holidays and continue to enjoy the benefits which are paid for by this Welfare State. Will he take every opportunity to defend the rights of workers who are impoverished and unemployed against the outrageous misrepresentations and onslaughts of hon. Members opposite? If those hon. Members want to know whether they can abuse the dole, they should try to collect it themselves and subject themselves to the same means test.

I believe that my principal responsibility is to ensure that those who are entitled to benefit, for whatever reason it may be, receive that benefit. But in so doing I believe that I have to protect those who are entitled to benefit against action which might be taken by those who are not entitled to benefit. Therefore, there is a dual responsibility, which I accept. I wish that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite accepted both responsibilities. They accept only one.

To return to the specific Private Notice Question which you allowed, Mr. Speaker, may I put to the Secretary of State three short questions, which arose—

One.

Order. The only difference in this case is that the hon. Member asks whether he may do it. Most hon. Members just do it—and I have tried to stop it.

I am obliged. I am sure that the Minister will wish to deal with the specific questions which arise on this matter.

First, Article 23 of the Agreement uses precisely these words:

"For the purpose of any claim to receive unemployment benefit, a worker shall be treated as if he had been resident in the territory of the United Kingdom during any period during which he was resident in the territory of Spain."

How could the National Insurance Commissioner have placed any other interpretation than he did upon that? How can the Government suggest that they were unaware of it, when this statutory instrument was made known last year? Secondly, why have the Government kept this matter secret and not made available to the House and the public the secret advice which they have given to their servants in the employment exchanges?

First, on Article 23, it must be pointed out that anyone, whether he may be in Spain or any other part of the world—

The Cayman Islands, for instance.

has to satisfy those to whom he is submitting the claim that he is available for employment. It can hardly be said that someone who is on holiday on the Costa Brava can satisfy any independent authority—that is what he has to do—that he is available for work. It was precisely such a case when a woman who had been on holiday for two weeks in Spain—she had booked it some months before and she was starting a job immediately afterwards—claimed unemployment benefit for those two weeks. It was the Commissioner who said that she was not entitled to it because she was not available for work.

As to secret communications, if it is thought by right hon. Gentlemen opposite that every communication which is sent by my Department or any other Department to every office in the country must always be published in the House, I can only say that that is something which certainly the previous Government never sought to carry out. But there was nothing secret about this. If Conservative Members had been worried about this, the proper thing to do was to raise the matter with the responsible Minister. I would then have told them of the decision which had already been taken, that this was a matter that we needed to put right.

Would my right hon. Friend agree that it does not serve the House of Commons or the country if any hon. Member misuses or misrepresents our welfare and social services? He has therefore been of signal service this afternoon in coming here quickly after the irresponsible report in the Press this morning and clearing the matter up? [HON. MEMBERS: "He had no choice."] He has therefore shown quite well that the Press had really and truly misrepresented the position. Is not the corollary that it is right that the Secretary of State should be able to expect any hon. Member who has any evidence of the misuse of the social services to produce that evidence so that it may be examined? That would surely be the will of the House.

I am grateful. Of course, it is true—to answer the intervention from a seated position—that I had no alternative once a PNQ had been tabled. Hon. Members who raised this issue and made statements, such as the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Brothcrton), who said:

"I am appalled that layabouts can have a holiday in Spain at the taxpayers' expense"

—that was cheap and it was not true—had an alternative. That was, to find out what the truth was.

Coming back to the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South and anyone else else concerned, long before the Deevy case I had already asked the Minister of State to make a detailed inquiry into what measures this Government should take in order to deal expeditiously with any allegations which were made either of fraud or of abuse. He has already started work and several proposals are being carefully considered. Any hon. Gentleman who wants to deal with the issue rather than to get cheap publicity for himself would be wise to put through, first, his evidence and, secondly, his advice so that matters can be dealt with responsibly by the House instead of by this disgraceful outburst.

At the risk of lowering the temperature, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he referred at the beginning of his statement to two conditions which had to be fulfilled before unemployment benefit was payable—that the person concerned had, first, to be available for work and, secondly, had to be in the United Kingdom?

What I said in relation to the second condition was that legislation imposed a general disqualification on the receipt of benefit by a person absent from Great Britain. The exception to that general legislation is where there are reciprocal arrangements with other countries. Spain is one such country, and there are 28 others with which, quite properly, we have reciprocal arrangements to ensure that our citizens when abroad are able to get their rights. I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman wishes to bring down the temperature. There is no point in Opposition Members pretending that this storm in a teacup is a tornado in Torremolinos.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the charges made by the Opposition which imply that taxjayers' money is being abused should be refuted? Does he accept that Conservative Members might be called scroungers if, having lost their seats in an election in May, three months later they take a holiday on the three months' severance pay which is given to them by the taxpayers?

I shall not comment on the way in which Conservative Members take their holidays. Presumably, the hon. Member for Louth, who has been so loud in his condemnation without facts, is one of those layabouts who have already gone on holiday.

Have not the right hon. Gentleman and the Government shown themselves to be very sensitive on this issue? Would the right hon. Gentleman care to comment on his circular of 16th July which states in paragraph 3 that persons holidaying in Spain shall be treated in the same way as persons holidaying in Great Britain? Why was that circular put out on 16th July if, as the right hon. Gentleman told the House this afternoon, the Government have no intention of allowing anyone holidaying in Spain to claim unemployment benefit?

When the right hon. Gentleman rose, I though at first that he was rising to apologise because even he, who once held a great office, immediately joined the irresponsible pack who got their names in the Press today on an issue that is no issue. Let the right hon. Gentleman not be so selective in his quotation. The circular from which he quoted makes clear in paragraph 2 that when a claim is made it will be necessary to consider whether the claimant satisfies the remaining conditions for receipt of unemployment benefit and, in particular, whether the availability conditions will be satisfied. If anyone thinks that he can satisfy me that when he is on holiday in Spain he is available for employment, he has another think coming.

Does the Minister agree that the best way to end this controversy would be for him to advise those who can afford to go on holiday on unemployment benefit to go to the Western Isles? Will he point out to them that the transport arrangements in the Western Isles are so bad that it will take them longer to get back from there than it will to get back from Spain if a job becomes available?

rose—

Order. We must bring this to an end.

European Community (Meetings Of Council Of Ministers)

With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a statement about forthcoming business in the Council of Ministers of the European Community. The Council will not meet during August. The monthly forecast for September was deposited yesterday.

At present, four meetings of the Council of Ministers are proposed for September. Foreign Ministers will meet on 20th; Agriculture Ministers on 20th; Finance Ministers on 20th and Development Ministers on 22nd September.

At the Foreign Affairs Council, Ministers will continue their discussions of the Tindemans Reports on European Union and of fisheries matters, probably including mandates for fisheries agreements with Iceland and Norway. They will have further discussions on direct elections and attempt to secure agreement on the remaining outstanding problems. They are also likely to discuss passport union; relations with Iran and the CMEA; the signing of the additional Protocol to the Portuguese Free Trade Agreement and of the Financial Protocol; a draft mandate for the resumption of negotiations with Spain; the accession negotiations with Greece and recent developments in the CIEC; and, possibly, draft directives on public supply contracts and on the right of establishment and mutual recognition of qualifications of nurses.

Agriculture Ministers are likely to consider Commission proposals to restore market equilibrium in the milk sector; the Community import régime for beef; interim measures in the sheepmeat sector; revisions to the hop market régime; and possibly measures to alleviate the effects of the drought on agriculture.

At the Development Council, Ministers will consider the implementation of the resolution on the harmonisation and coordination of development co-operation policies within the Community; financial and technical aid by the Community to non-associated developing countries; relations between the European Communities and non-governmental organisations specialising in development cooperation and the follow-up to UNCTAD IV.

The agenda for the meeting of Finance Ministers has not yet been fixed.

May I, with particular emphasis, thank the right hon. Gentleman for that statement? We had no statement on EEC business last month and we protested. I hope that that was a temporary lapse in fulfilling a clear undertaking given by the former Leader of the House which we believe is of great importance.

May I ask the Minister of State to clear up what looks at first sight like a right old muddle about the meeting on direct elections which he is to attend on 20th September? According to the Written Answer which he gave to the House on Friday, the Government and the Community have abandoned the idea—which we always thought was most damaging to our strength in the Community—that Britain might send 81 nominated Members to serve as second-class Members in a Parliament which was otherwise directly elected. In his Written Answer the right hon. Gentleman told us that that possibility had now been excluded by the Government and the Community. This week there are Press reports from Bonn and Brussels that that is not the sense of what was agreed by the Council of Ministers last week. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us exactly what is the position?

On the regular nature of the business statement, the hon. Gentleman will have received a letter from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House which I am sure will more than satisfy his wish that a regular statement shall be made as often as suits the convenience of the House.

On direct elections, the position is clear. No decision was taken in July. What was then proposed, although the British Government could not subscribe to it, was that the document implementing direct elections should contain no date but a clause by which it was agreed that the eventual date for Community-wide elections would be decided by a unanimous resolution of the Council of Ministers. That can only mean that all elections are held when every Community member is ready to hold those elections and no elections are held until that date.

The hon. Member for Mid-Oxon (Mr. Hurd) referred to the Written Question I put down last Friday and the answer given by my right hon. Friend. Will my right hon. Friend make clear that he sees no difficulties whatsoever in signing the document relating to direct elections on 20th September?

The Government will be ready to approve the document on 20th September and if the presidency thinks that is the most appropriate occasion for signing it, we shall be ready. I cannot speak for the other countries in the Community, but I hope and believe that they will all sign on that day. I can speak only for ourselves, and we are prepared to sign on 20th September.

Will there be any discussion about the desirability of approximating, at least, the basis on which these elections will take place at the first round? Can the Minister also say something about the state of play on passport union?

I believe that it is the will of the House and the judgment of the Government—and of the Select Committee to which the hon. Gentleman has given evidence—that as much of the European election procedure as possible should be left for national decisions. Clearly some matters must be co-ordinated but where that is not essential, national decisions seem to be right. Clearly, one of those areas where national decisions should be taken is the method and form of direct elections.

We are considering a possible form of passport which would be common to all members of the Community but ours will remain a British passport, issued by the British passport authority, although common passports will look alike.

Will there be a discussion at the Foreign Ministers meeting on the common fisheries policy? Will the Government take into account the extreme disquiet felt in the industry about limits and quotas and will he put forward a definite proposal that our fisheries officers should be entitled to be posted at EEC ports to check the quotas of fish landed? Is he aware that our fishermen have no faith in the present policing system?

No one can fail to be aware of the industry's anxiety about the wholly unsatisfactory state of the common fisheries policy. That anxiety is shared by the Government and I hope that it is reflected by what we do and say in Brussels. We shall continue to make strong representations about the new fishing regime which must be coordinated. I cannot promise that the matter will be discussed at the Council of Ministers, but much of the lobbying and preparatory work will go on in that month. We are conscious of the need to ensure that figures are properly policed and supervised. We are conscious that an agreement on paper that is not realised in the catches at the ports will be of little use to the industry. We understand that.

Is the Commission still proposing to impose a tax on margarines and other oils and fats as a contribution towards restoring the equilibrium in the milk market? What is the Government's attitude?

The Prime Minister made the Government's attitude clear last week. If the Commission continues to propose that, it will not become part of the agriculture policy of the Community.

From reports of the last Foreign Ministers' meeting it seems that the Community has been given a common position to adopt at the next round of the Law of the Sea Conference on exclusive economic zones. Flowing from the European Council a unilateral decision on a 200-mile fishing zone has been decided. Will the Council proceed in September to the important matter of defining the internal Community considerations involved in the economic zone, because it relates not only to fishing but to many other serious matters which need to be regulated? How is it possible to reach a Community position regarding the Law of the Sea Conference without any understanding of the internal questions?

The right hon. Gentleman must be referring to seabed resources. In a statement after the last Council I made clear that there had been some discussions on the legal implications of the declaration to take up a common position at the Law of the Sea Conference. The Government are convinced that the form of the document which stipulated the Community's position safeguards our seabed resources.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that most Labour hon. Members and others will be relieved to know that the Government are free to follow Labour Party policy in opposing direct elections? Long may that remain Government policy—

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware—

Order. Two hon. Members are trying to address the House at the same time. I think that the Minister's hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Jenkins) had not concluded.

I was not sure that my hon. Friend had finished, but since he has, I can tell him that I am conscious of the decision taken by the national executive of the party. But I am also conscious that when the Government signed the Treaty of Accession they made a commitment on direct elections. I know that direct elections will be discussed at my own party's conference in October and it would be unwise to predict what the outcome of that will be.

Does the Minister not think that leaving the date open for direct elections is asking for difficulties in the future? Is it the Government's intention that direct elections should take place in May 1978 if that is possible? Is there any possibility of the Government producing a White Paper on their stand on the milk package to cover not only the levy but the other five items in the package proposed by the Commission, so that we can debate the issues when we return after the recess?

There is no doubt about the Government's intentions on direct elections. In the preamble to the instrument that we are prepared to endorse in September, all member countries are committed to use their best endeavours to hold direct elections in the spring of 1978, and that we shall do. But there may be limitations placed on our ability to fulfil that promise. We must not talk as if the Government have decided that they will be held then, because we have to present legislation to the House, which could accept or reject such a proposal.

On the hon. Gentleman's second question, it is a matter that the House should debate, and the Scrutiny Committee has recommended that there should be further debate after it has received more information on the market for milk in the Community. I am not sure that it is an appropriate subject for a White Paper but I am sure that there will be a debate. The Leader of the House is in the Chamber and he will take note of what the hon. Gentleman said.

My right hon. Friend did not mention anything about the meeting of the Finance Ministers. Is he aware that the explanatory memorandum to the document on stamp duty on capital transfer tax shows that this country would stand to lose £100 million of revenue? Since it is unlikely that the Government will accept the proposal that comes from the Committee which met today, is it not appropriate to table a motion disapproving the directive rather than one which takes note of it?

That matter is not on the agenda for the Finance Ministers' meeting for the period to which I am referring.

Is it expected that the Joint European Torus will be the subject of discussion at a meeting of the Council of Ministers in September and if so, which aspect of the Council will it be? Will it be the meeting of scientific Ministers?

I fear that that will not be discussed in September, although I think that it should be. The Council of Foreign Ministers has decided that, in one form or another, JET must go ahead, thereby giving a degree of security to those who are working on that and related projects at Culham. We need to come to a speedy conclusion about the best site for JET so that the team working at Culham has the security of knowing that the present site is to remain. We have no doubt that the best site is Culham.

rose—

In order that there should be no sense of frustration, I intend to call every hon. Member who is standing, because I have a very serious view of the rights of the House as the guardian of our national interests in connection with the EEC. I consider that I have a special responsibility in this regard. I should be very grateful if hon. Members would feel that they had a special responsibility to ask brief questions.

As the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Johnston) prefaced his question with a reference to passport union, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that what is under immediate consideration for possible implementation is merely a uniform passport on a national basis and that this is a very different and much more modest concept than the wider concept normally called passport union, in respect of which there are still unresolved problems of travel, entry and residence within the Community?

I am glad to offer that piece of clarification of a less than precise earlier answer. Certainly, the concept of passport union, in that it may mean rights of entry between one country and another in the Community, is a long way away. What is on the agenda, and what we shall continue to discuss, is the simple point that I made earlier about having a passport the cover of which is similar, although not indentical, throughout the Community.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that as it is quite clear that the House wishes to discuss the whole restructuring of the milk sector, it would be wrong if any decision were taken by the Council of Agriculture Ministers dealing with one part of that subject? Will he please make sure that no decision is taken to give open-ended subsidies to the drought-stricken areas, which, much as we sympathise with their problems, would make the whole milk problem worse?

I note my hon. Friend's last point, although I do not pretend that I understand it. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who reads theOfficial Report of these discussions, will no doubt take that point on board in preparation for his meeting.

I understand the need for a general debate in the House and for a general attitude to be struck about the milk situation, but there is an overwhelming need to do all we can as quickly as we can to prevent the constant production of surplus milk supply throughout the Community, and consequent nonsenses arising from that. If my right hon. Friend found an opportunity to strike a great blow against one of the surpluses next month, I think that the House would expect him to take that opportunity.

May I press the right hon. Gentleman a little further on the question of passports? Did I understand him to say that there would be a design on the cover which might or might not be the same for all Community countries but which implied that it was a Europassport of some sort? Will he make it absolutely plain that it will be purely optional for those who want it, and that any British person can continue to have a British passport—as I have now, and always hope to have—and will not have to have one of these cosmetic lobs of which the right hon. Gentleman is talking?

Hear, hear.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman strikes a patriotic chord with my hon. Friends below the Gangway. I can give him an even stronger assurance than that for which he asks. These matters are very much in the experimental and examination stage. I do not think that they are believed to be so important that we must make the decision with undue haste.

What problems are surfacing over Greek accession?

The problems that were always expected, that the discussions in preparation for Greek membership would have to be long and tough. The will to see Greece a member of the Community was clearly expressed at the meeting between Greece and the EEC a fortnight ago, but we are at the begining of a long and tough discussion. The Greeks and the EEC member nations are very conscious of that.

Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify his earlier answers about direct elections? Is it the Government's intention that there shall be no commitment to a uniform electoral system either for the first elections, if they take place, or for subsequent elections?

It is very clear, in all we have said and published on the subject, that the Community believes that where national decisions are possible they should be left to the national Parliaments and Governments. That is our view on these matters, including the form of election. Therefore, the Government have no proposals for harmonising the form of the elections in the Community.

In the discussions as a follow-up to UNCTAD IV will the Government make a serious attempt to arrive at an agreed position on the issue of common fund debt repayments and the transfer of technology?

Common fund debt repayment and commodities are the issues which caused the real problems in Nairobi. If we are to make progress in this area there must be a shift in position on both sides of the argument. I very much hope that a common EEC position can be maintained, because there can be no progress without it. The British Government must weigh the advantages of moving towards a common position against the disadvantages of moving from a position that we believe to be right. We try to balance those factors.

When the Finance Ministers meet in September, will the British Minister make clear that recent proposals for extending the snake currency system are unlikely to be fruitful? Bearing in mind that it is possible to run a multi-national currency system in a much more civilised way, will Britain make recommendations for a positive European currency peg?

I cannot pretend that we shall take the initiative that the hon. Gentleman suggests in September, but I can assure him that the snake will not even be considered then. The British Government made their views on the snake very clear even when that animal was fashionable. Now that it is almost extinct, I think that the Finance Ministers will choose not to discuss it.

My right hon. Friend says that the Government are ready to sign a document on 20th September about direct elections. As the referendum contained no explicit or implicit approval for direct elections, as the NEC of the Labour Party voted 18–3 against direct elections, and as the annual democratically-organised conference of the Labour Party is to be held at the beginning of October, will he assure the House that the Government will not sign that document until the Labour Party has had a chance to express its view on the matter?

I clearly cannot give my hon. Friend that assurance. I can assure him that the Government must fulfil their obligations to the electorate and to the position they adopted during the referendum campaign. [Interruption.] I remember very well the slogan over the platform at my party's conference, that the Labour Party would recommend and the people would decide. The people did decide. [An HON. MEMBER: "Not direct elections."] The decision they took and the many answers I gave in the House made it absolutely clear that direct elections were part of the package. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] I shall send my hon. Friend references to the answers I normally give to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) describing the necessity for direct elections.

What must also be borne in mind is a point on which I think he and I will agree, that the document we sign in September does not contain dates for direct elections. The dates will have to be determined at some future time, and it will be possible for us to take many factors into consideration when we eventually go to a meeting to decide when the first direct election will be held.

Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that the best way to achieve a market equilibrium in milk is to persuade his European colleagues to put more of their milk into the liquid sector—in other words, to persuade people to drink more? Does he realise that the milk producer in Britain will not be prepared to accept a levy on his production until his European counterparts accept a levy for publicity and advertising, which the British milk producer has had to do for the past 45 years?

I freely confess that I do not have the same information about milk production in this or any other country as the hon. Gentleman does, but I am sure that neither the milk producer nor the consumer throughout the Community will long continue to tolerate a system under which more milk is produced than is necessary and a great deal of it is destroyed in a wanton fashion. That is what we must end at the first opportunity.

What is the Government's attitude to the fact that thousands of tons of home-produced food are being held back from the market in this country under EEC regulations, including beef, and that beef is being accumulated faster than it is being sold?

I have had the privilege of answering questions of attitude on that subject, very often from my hon. Friend. It is very clear that the Community's agricultural policy has to be reformed in such a way that the constant drive to overproduction and what some regard as the waste or surpluses has to be ended.

Does my right hon. Friend recall that when he announced the last talks with the Council of Ministers I raised a question then about the conflicting claims of France, Germany, Italy and this country and our view that the siting of the JET project in connection with the research and development work in nuclear fusion should be at Culham? In view of the special interest of this country and my right hon. Friend's indication of his responsibility, would he tell the House whether this matter will be considered in the next round of discussions? If not, what progress has been made to bring some relief to this deadlock?

A month ago we agreed that the project must go on in some form, and that more funds should be provided. My hon. Friend and I are united in the belief that the project should be at Culham in the United Kingdom. It is unlikely to succeed anywhere else. I promise that the Government will go on pressing for that location as hard as we can.

Questions To Ministers

Before I take points of order and the Standing Order No. 9 application I shall make a statement. I checked up today following points of order yesterday, and I see that I called questions on the devolution issue from six English constituency Members, nine Scottish constituency Members, three Welsh constituency Members and one Ulster Unionist Member. I only tell the House that because I want to enjoy the recess myself.

Statutory Instruments

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I make no apology for raising this point of order particularly in view of your earlier remarks on EEC questions. Items 4, 5, 6 and 7 on today's Order Paper relate to Statutory Instruments which have been taken under Standing Order 73A(5). These are Statutory Instruments which have been debated in Committee under that Standing Order. The Order Paper would not give a clue to that, but for the mention of the Standing Order. The Committee may consider the Statutory Instruments but it can decide nothing. When the instruments are put to the House under the Standing Order there can be no debate but a decision must be taken forthwith. There is a division between debate and decision. We cannot object because it is a decision of the House, although there was disagreement when the Standing Order was introduced.

A further implication is that the Statutory Instruments are exempted business and therefore cannot be delayed by an hon. Member who objects to their being taken after 10 o'clock. As tonight they will come after the Consolidated Fund Bill debate, the time for a Division is unknown and clearly inconvenient.

I would not raise this point but for the fact that these Statutory Instruments were debated yesterday morning in Committee. However, I inquired in the Vote Office and in the Clerk's Office and I understand that theOfficial Report which would give us some clue as to their merits is not available. I make no complaint about that. It is not unreasonable that the Committee report of proceedings should not be available at midday the next day. But the House should have some knowledge of the objective of the Statutory Instruments and because the report of the proceedings is not available hon. Members will have no knowledge of the merits or the case put by the Minister in Committee.

Therefore, will the Lord President reconsider moving them today? I am grateful that he has stayed to hear this point of order. I have already written to him on this matter because it happened last Thursday and I know that he has not had time to consider it. I hope that when the situation arises the Government will not only lay the order after theOfficial Report has been received but after hon. Members have had one or two days to peruse it, so that they can come to a decision having information on the merits of the matter.

It was an excess of good will on my part which allowed the hon. Gentleman fully to develop his argument. He is very well versed in the rules of the House and I think that he will appreciate that that was not a point of order for me. It is a dispute which he has with the Front Bench.

Under Standing Order 73A(5), I have to put the Question. WhetherHansard is available, and whether the Question is moved are matters for the Government. When we reach the end of the Consolidated Fund debate, who knows, they may have changed their mind. It is not a matter for me.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I had hoped that the Lord President might comment on this matter. Surely it is a matter of order concerning documents before the House. There is an understanding that a Question is not put or a debate does not take place unless the proper papers are before the House. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that while it is not in your power to determine whether matters are put, you have to abide by the Standing Order. It is not appropriate for the House to proceed if the proper documents are not before us.

I do not think that it would be proper for me to try to reply to a point of order. It has been put to you, Mr. Speaker, and you have ruled on it. If I were to seek to reply, as on a business question, I would be out of order. However, I shall take into account the representations that my hon. Friend has made today and in his letter. Perhaps he will put a question to me tomorrow at business questions at which this matter can be raised. It cannot be raised now.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker—

Order. I am quite willing to hear the hon. Gentleman but he will have heard me rule that it was not strictly a point of order although I allowed the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) to get his view on record.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it your interpretation of the Standing Order that under this procedure the House should have the comments of the Committee available before proceeding to vote, or are you prepared to rule that the House does not need proceedings of the Committee before coming to a decision on a substantive matter?

The hon. Gentleman was on a genuine point of order. I congratulate him.

The Standing Order is quite clear. I have to put the Question forthwith. That is the matter that concerns the hon. Gentleman. The other points which he raised are not for me.

Cromarty Firth (Oil Refinery)

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,

"Government policy towards an oil refinery on the shore of the Cromarty Firth".

The matter is urgent in that my hon Friends the Members for Keighley (Mr Crycr) and Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) and I raised an objection at 2.35 this afternoon to a Private Bill. If our blocking motion stands, the proposed development could not be set in train for at least another six months.

The matter is important in that at least £30 million to £40 million of Government money is involved in the project, to say nothing of housing, schools and infrastructure in rural Easter Ross at a time when local authority expenditure throughout Britain is being cut back.

Furthermore, the matter is important because the oil industry has told us that it is operating at 60 per cent. of refining capacity and is likely to do so on its projects well into the 1980s. This is a critical and urgent issue of whether it is sensible to allow the construction of a new refinery on a green field site.

Again, the matter is important to those concerned with the scrutiny rôle of the House. The circumstances of the company are unusual. Companies concerned with cancer research in Switzerland are not normally associated with the construction of oil refineries. We should like to ask directly what is the position in relation to Treasury approval of this project. I understand why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland had to stick to the planning procedure aspect of the matter in Monday night's debate.

Since this is a matter which might be thought to affect 1,500 potential jobs during construction and 400 refinery jobs and has already raised hopes in the public mind, may we ask for a statement of clarification, perhaps tomorrow, from the Minister of State, Scottish Office, who with his usual great courtesy is here today, so that my hon. Friends the Members for Keighley and Perry Barr and I can decide whether to withdraw our objection? That objection was not made lightly, because we know that the issues are important to a great many people.

The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely,

"Government policy towards an oil refinery on the shore of the Cromarty Firth".

As the House knows, under Standing Order No. 9 I am directed to take into account the several factors set out in the Order, but to give no reason for my decision.

I have given careful consideration to the representations that the hon. Gentleman has made, because I was aware of them this morning, but I have to rule that his submission does not fall within the provisions of the Standing Order and, therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

Business Of The House

Ordered,

That, notwithstanding the practice of the House relating to the interval between the various stages of Bills of aids and supplies, more than one stage of the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill may be proceeded with at this day's sitting.—[Mr. Graham.]

Films

4.32 p.m.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to apply certain provisions of the Theatres Act 1968 to films; and for related purposes.

As a result of court decisions this year, an extremely serious situation has arisen in the film industry. The system of voluntary censorship which has prevailed throughout screen history has been undermined by decisions in cases brought by Mr. Raymond Blackburn who is, I am sorry to say, a former Labour MP. These have shown that the whole basis on which film censorship has been conducted is unsound in law and that even where a film has been passed by the British Board of Film Censors or a local authorty its exhibitors are still liable to private prosecution brought at common law. This situation is in urgent need of remedy and ought not to continue for a moment longer than necessary.

The purpose of my Bill is to provide remedies in accord with the legislation governing obscenity in other areas such as books and theatres and in accord with the views of the Law Commission. Before describing the provisions of the Bill, I should like to explain the recent cases that have made it necessary.

In Reginav. the Greater London Council, the Court of Appeal rules on the conviction of the exhibitors of the film "More About the Language of Love" for the common law offence of showing an indecent exhibition in public. The Court of Appeal rejected the standard criterion of obscenity in both the Obscene Publications Act and the Theatres Act that for a film to be obscene it is necessary for it to tend to deprave and corrupt. In the judgment, Lord Justice Bridge said that the law was so full of anomalies and was operated so unfairly and unevenly that some rationalisation was urgently needed.

The second recent case, also brought by Mr. Raymond Blackburn, was Reginav. Classic Cinemas. That concerned a different film, "The Language of Love". It was another common law prosecution, but this time it failed and Judge McKinnon made some trenchant comments on the expense in public money involved and the situation in which private individuals could inflict heavy costs on film exhibitors to defend criminal proceedings which were ultimately unsuccessful.

Under Acts passed between 1959 and 1968 about books and theatres, the general tests of whether publication or performance of any matter is obscene is governed by whether it is likely to deprave and corrupt, with the defence that even where this is likely, it is still permissible if publication is for the public good. The sole exception is the exhibition of cinematograph films.

It is urgent and imperative that films are brought into line and the anomaly ended. My Bill would extend various aspects of the Theatres Act 1968 to the exhibition of films in public cinemas and private cinema clubs. Apart from putting right the general anomaly, the Bill would have more detailed consequences. Films, like books and plays, will have to be judged as a whole rather than in little snippets.

Secondly, no prosecution could be brought against a film for an offence at common law and it would no longer be possible for individuals such as Mr. Raymond Blackburn to go behind the law in order to frustrate the aim of Parliament to deal with the problem of obscenity in an orderly manner. Thirdly, the test of the public good could be applied to films as to theatres and other publications and expert evidence would be admissible in court cases. Fourthly, and particularly important in view of Mr. Raymond Blackburn's cases, the consent of the Attorney-General would be required before any prosecution could be brought. Local authorities would keep their essential powers to regulate the showing of such films to young people under the age of 18, but they would no longer have the invidious and inappropriate task of censoring films for adults.

It was by an accident at the beginning of this century that local authorities ever got involved in the censoring of films. It was only fire regulations and the possibility of celluloid catching fire that brought films into an area where they ought not to be.

Anyone who has served on a local authority and who knows the kind of councillors who immediately volunteer for the job of censoring films will know that removing this task from local authorities would act as a useful inhibition on some of our prurient and voyeuristic local representatives in pursuing a task that should not be theirs. Under the Bill, the British Board of Film Censors would continue its job as a voluntary authority, but we should finally move towards nationally agreed tests of obscenity applied across the board and prevent films from being singled out as they have been in recent court cases.

The Bill has the support of a number of national organisations and I have taken great care to ensure that it has balanced all-party support in the House. The present law on obscenity is an appalling muddle. The Bill would play a small and modest part—we have not finished yet—in disentangling it.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Christopher Price, Dr. Colin Phipps, Mr. Hugh Jenkins, Mr. Clement Freud, Mr. Jonathan Aitken and Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn.

Films

Mr. Christopher Price accordingly presented a Bill to apply certain provisions of the Theatres Act 1968 to films and for related purposes; and the same was read a First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 15th October and to be printed. [Bill 224.]

Orders Of The Day

Drought Bill Lords

Order for Second Reading read.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I, through you, make a request to Mr. Speaker that in selecting amendments for the Committee stage and the Report stage, both of which are to be taken tomorrow, he will not exclude from favourable consideration for selection amendments tabled today?

I realise that in the early hours of this morning a motion was passed by the House in effect suspending Standing Orders in this connection. But, in the very nature of the circumstances, which I need not detail and which are familiar to the House, it would be fair to allow starred amendments to be selected tomorrow if Mr. Speaker thinks that they are worthy of selection.

What amendments will be taken in Committee is, of course, for the Chairman, to whom I will convey the right hon. and learned Gentleman's comments. The other matters will be considered by Mr. Speaker and his attention will be drawn to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's observations.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for that assurance, and for the correction.

4.42 p.m.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

When my noble Friend moved the Second Reading of the Bill in another place two weeks ago, her opening remarks were greeted with a flash of lightning, a loud clap of thunder and a torrential downpour which lasted through the whole of her speech. I had hoped that I might be able to give a repeat performance. Alas, control of the weather does not seem to be among my own ministerial responsibilities.

I think it might be helpful, before I come to the provisions of the Bill, if I set out briefly the background against which we are holding today's discussion In early May, when I described the special machinery that I had established with the water industry to provide up-to-date assessments of the developing situation, I explained that we were making our forecasts on two separate assumptions—first, of average rainfall and, second, of an abnormally dry summer such as that of 1975. A summer of average rainfall would give us relatively little trouble. An abnormally dry one could present us with serious problems.

When I announced a month ago our decision to take emergency powers before the Summer Recess, I had to tell the House that the second of these two assumptions has proved the right one—that we had experienced, in common with much of Northern Europe, a quite abnormally dry summer, combined with extremely hot weather, and these two factors taken together now meant that we were almost certainly facing a series of localised water emergencies in some parts of the country.

Nothing has happened over the last four weeks to alter that situation—indeed, the likelihood of local water crises has become a virtual certainty. In the areas most at risk—parts of Yorkshire, East Anglia, the East Midlands, the South-West and South Wales—we are facing potentially acute water shortages in the late summer and early autumn.

Their severity and their duration will depend on a number of factors—the kind of weather we have over the next two months, the success of the water authorities in obtaining alternative sources of supply, and the co-operation of all concerned, domestic users, industry and agriculture, in saving water.

But I must, I am afraid, make it clear that I am talking about an alleviation, and not a cure. The kind of local shortages we are now experiencing will not be put right by a day's rain or a week's rain, or even a month's rain. The need for strict economy in the use of water will extend well into the winter, until the authorities can be satisfied that they have an adequate margin of supplies to relax restrictions.

This is the background against which the present Bill has to be judged. Basically, it does two things. It gives powers to help with water conservation. Clause 1, which gives water conservation powers, will be invoked in the precautionary stage—in the run-up to a water crisis. Clause 2, which contains the rationing powers, will be invoked when an imposed quota system for water use is essential to keep a local community going. Several of the water authorities have told me that they are likely to need both kinds of power this year.

Clause 1, as I said, deals with the precautionary stage. I do not need to rehearse, I think, the defects in the existing powers under the Water Act 1958 It was, understandably, not designed for a drought of the severity that we have experienced this year—the dryest period since records began in 1727, and a hot spell in late June and early July unprecedented for length and intensity. With this, the existing provisions have built into them a curious inflexibility—a dramatic jump, so to speak, from banning hose-pipes in the garden to erecting standpipes in the streets.

Clause 1 re-enacts the existing provisions of the 1958 Act dealing with abstractions and river flows—the traditional drought Order. It builds on these provisions in a number of ways, notably, in terms of extra powers for water authorities to deal quickly in a time of drought with discharges of sewage or trade effluent. But the significant feature of the new powers, and the one to which the water authorities are looking particularly at this time, is the power that it gives to limit non-essential uses of water.

I think that this power has been generally misunderstood, possibly because it has not been practicable to spell out in the Bill precisely what these uses will be. The procedure is that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will make a general direction to the water authorities and to the water companies under Clause 1(3)(b) as soon as the Bill becomes law.

The use of the word "direction" is perhaps misleading—a more accurate phrase might be to call it a designation. What he will in fact do is to set out the range of non-essential uses that can be covered under this clause.

This designation does not of itself ban or limit anything. What it does is to indicate to the water authorities and to the various interests likely to be affected the range of water uses that can from time to time be subject to control. It is then up to the individual water authorities to come to us with applications for Orders relating to their own areas. They can apply for powers to control all the non-essential uses that we have designated, or a limited number of them, just to suit their particular circumstances. But what they cannot do is to seek powers going outside the framework that we have laid down. Once an Order has been granted to a water authority, it will then be able, within its discretion, to control or limit the water uses prescribed in the Order.

Perhaps it might be for the convenience of the House if I announced as background for the debate the list of nonessential uses that I propose to designate when the Bill becomes law: first, watering by hosepipe, sprinkler or tanker, of parks, ornamental gardens, lawns, recreation grounds, sports grounds, playing fields, golf courses and race courses, whether publicly or privately owned; second, the filling or toppng-up of private swimming pools and ornamental ponds other than fish ponds; third, the use of mechanical or automatic car washers; fourth, the washing of road vehicles, other than for reasons of safety or hygiene; fifth, the cleaning of the exterior of buildings; sixth, the use of ornamental fountains or cascades, whether or not recycled; seventhly, continued operation of automatic flushing cisterns during periods when the buildings concerned are unoccupied or largely unoccupied. These are my present proposals.

But in reaching a final decision I shall, of course, take very careful account of everything that is said here today and of the various representations that I have been receiving from a number of the interests concerned.

The right hon. Gentleman said that the first category would be watering by hosepipe. Many golf courses do not water by hosepipe, but have underground systems. Will he make provision for that? That question has been asked by a constituent of mine.

Yes. When the Order is finally designated—this is subject to the views of the House—it will be fairly comprehensive.

I heard my right hon. Friend mention playing fields, golf courses, and so on. I do not think that he mentioned bowling greens. Are they to be included?

I think that the best way will be for my right hon. Friend in winding up the debate to deal with those matters comprehensively. We have not got much time. I might find myself answering many points of detail that could be better answered later.

Before the Minister asks the House to accept the Bill, will he be careful that we do not make fools of ourselves in that every Saturday morning a large quantity of water is used for washing down New Palace Yard, a practice which for some time I have regarded as quite unnecessary?

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The debate seems to be degenerating into a Committee stage. I should like to hear the discussion on Second Reading first.

It is a matter for the Minister whether he is prepared to give way.

I think that the Minister had better not give way henceforth, or this will become a Committee stage.

I hope that I am not being too cynical when I say that, while everyone supports the concept of limiting non-essential uses of water. he does so on the basis that his own interest has a claim to special treatment. This is perfectly understandable. But I believe that in practice he has not a great deal to fear, provided—and this is essential—that he thinks hard and realistically about the amounts of water that he uses and makes his own plans now for achieving really significant economies.

I have made it clear to the water authorities that I do not expect them to use their powers under Clause 1 in a way that would involve, for example, a total ban on all watering of sports grounds. I do not intend that if these powers had to be sought in London they would be used to ruin the wicket at Lords or the Centre Court at Wimbledon.

Wait till the Australians get here!

That is another practice that counts as an emergency.

What the water authorities will want to do is to make sure that all the interests concerned really cut down on water use, as I am sure they will be able to do, in a way that makes a substantial contribution to the economy campaign and, at the same time, encourages householders to intensify their own economies. There is nothing more irritating than seeing one's own garden go to ruin while the cricket field over the fence uses sprinklers consistently on the whole of the turf, not just the pitch. I shall encourage the water authorities to use the powers firmly but at the same time flexibly.

An Order under Clause 2 would of course be a very different matter. Under Clause 2 a water authority is given what are, for all practical purposes, blanket rationing powers within the area affected. In a crisis there can be no question, I think, of special exemptions. The job of the water authorities would be to make the best use of the water resources available to them to keep the essential life of the community going. Their job would be to ensure basic supplies for domestic use, to keep the essential services such as the hospitals going, and to do everything possible to meet the basic requirements of industry and of agriculture. Apart from these basic priorities, other demands on water would have to take their chance. I can give no other assurance, and I do not believe the House would want me to do so. I hope that the need for powers of this kind would be limited and that their imposition would be for a relatively short period.

The Government would, of course, be closely involved. Once an Order was granted, the basic powers would rest with the water authorities. But they would operate against the background of national priorities laid down by the Government and would have the benefit of local advisory committees established in the areas affected, bringing in industry, the trade unions, agriculture, the local authorities and the essential services, together with regional representatives of my own Department, of the Department of Industry, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Finally, we have thought it right to provide for a power of ministerial direction when a water authority is exercising powers under Clause 2. We do not intend this as a day-to-day control system that would take responsibility from the water authority, but we see it as the ultimate means of ensuring that the basic priorities are complied with, and that, if a water authority's handling of any particular issue was misconceived, the Government would have the means of putting it right.

There are two other important points about this package of powers which I think I should mention specifically. The first is the question of an appeal system. It has been put to me that there should be some formal appeal system for people aggrieved by the way in which a water authority exercises its rationing powers. I can, of course, understand this, but I do not think it is realistic. In practice, it would cause delay by transferring responsibility for day-to-day management from the water authority to central Government at a time when every moment counts.

As I have made clear, there is formal machinery for ministerial intervention if things are going badly wrong, and there is informal machinery for bringing up points of day-to-day difficulty through the advisory committee that the authority will be establishing. But I think we shall have to face the fact that any rationing system of this kind in an emergency contains an element of rough justice and that it is not feasible to smooth away all the edges.

The other point relates to the inquiry procedure. Schedule I provides that when a water authority applies for an Order, there will be a short period for objections, and then, normally, a public local inquiry. But paragraph 3(2) provides that in cases of real urgency the public inquiry may be dispensed with. I should like to make it clear—indeed, we shall be tabling an amendment to put this beyond doubt—that, where an inquiry is dispensed with under this procedure, the Secretary of State is nevertheless obliged to consider and to take account of any objections that have been made before reaching his decision.

I do not think that I need review in detail the remaining provisions of this short Bill, which are largely self-explanatory. My right hon. Friend will of course be happy to deal with any particular points in his winding-up speech. The one last point that I should like to make is the responsibility that this difficult situation places on each and every one of us. We are not used to drought in this country. As I have said before, we are all too inclined to assume that a single shower of rain will put things right. This is a dangerous illusion. The success of the water authorities' efforts to keep supplies going depends crucially on public co-operation, and I seriously ask everybody in the areas affected to do all he humanly can to save water, not only in his own interest, but for the sake of the community as a whole. I commend the Bill to the House.

5.0 p.m.

I begin by endorsing immediately the Minister's final words. Everyone—industry, agriculture and individual householders—has a responsibility for saving water, particularly at this difficult time. As the Minister said, there are some serious problems that have resulted from this hot dry summer. We have all read about the particular difficulties in South Wales, in Plymouth and in other parts of the country.

On this side of the House we welcome the Bill, although we regret the necessity for it. The present situation is unprecedented in 250 years, and the existing procedures are not adequate to deal with it. We regret the need to hurry the Bill through the House, but we recognise that there is an emergency.

All this Bill can do is regulate and ration water supplies. We must all remember that it cannot create water. The Bill also has certain consequences—I think the Minister called it "rough justice"—and these consequences could be harsh for firms, organisations, farmers, horticulturists and individuals. But that must be accepted for the common good.

The House would be failing in its duty if it did not examine the Bill in some detail. There were no amendments in another place, but I am glad that we shall have the opportunity to table amendments between now and tomorrow afternoon so that we can ensure that the Bill is as we should want it to be.

The Bill controls the freedom of people to a major extent. It is based on the fact that we have had a hot dry summer, a relatively dry and warm winter and another dry summer last year. It is also based on the fact that this country has had its warmest weather and its longest drought for 250 years, as have some of our European partners who are now suffering the same problems. As we are in such an exceptional situation, it would be a sensible approach if the whole aspect of climatology—that is looking into the weather and climate trends for this country and Northern Europe as a whole—was considered in depth, and there was some research along the lines of that done by Professor Lamb at the University of East Anglia. Germany to some extent and France more so have very real problems also. Is some form of co-ordinated research being conducted? We should be looking ahead at future climate trends to see whether it is probable that Clause 2 will be needed in the future. If there is a long-term trend towards hot, dry summers in this country this sort of research would be most helpful, and should be done not just on a United Kingdom basis, but on an EEC basis.

The present situation also highlights the problems of democracy in relation to objections to reservoir schemes. While one understands the democratic rights of objectors, they mean that many parts of the country, such as the South-West, are in a worse situation than they would have been if some reservoir schemes had been able to go ahead. The answer to this difficulty may well be underground reservoirs, which are environmentally better, although they do not provide the same recreational possibilities. The Bill is concerned very much with conservation and better and proper use of resources. Therefore, all those who are upset about major reservoir schemes should think very hard indeed when voicing their objections.

The situation, bad though it is, would have been very much worse if we had not had the water reorganisation a couple of years ago on the lines of hydrological basins. As a result of the reorganisation, water authorities have been able to harness very considerable resources and this has made a difficult situation very much better than it would have been had there been the multiplicity of authorities that existed a few years ago.

I am not in any way criticising either of the right hon. Gentlemen who are speaking for the Government in this debate, or the Minister at the Department of Energy, but we seem to be getting into a muddle over the whole subject, of conservation and popular public appeal. The Minister made an appeal to save water and pointed out that we are all involved in conservation. As someone who is involved in marketing, I see the advantage in the simple, easily understood slogan which will get through to people.

Before the drought the South-West Water Authority linked itself with the "Save It" campaign pursued very effectively by the Department of Energy. The slogan "Save It" is appropriate for water use in the hot weather, because not many people will rush around switching on electric fires, gas central heating, or even cookers so much in the summer. "Save It" is a slogan easily understood and ideal in marketing terms. The South-West Water Authority even had all sorts of T-shirts made before the present crisis began, and as a result of its efforts there have been savings of up to 17 per cent. on water consumption.

I understand from my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) that the Central Office of Information wrote to the National Water Council warning it off using the "Save It" slogan, which was to be used only for energy saving. If that is so, it is extremely unfortunate. I hope that there will not be interdepartmental bickering about this important subject. Surely what we want to do is to get the message across that saving should be made, whether it be with electricity, gas, or water. For national reasons there is a need to save all of these resources.

My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest received a letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Energy on 27th July about the warning which the COI gave to the National Water Council. His letter said:

"I am afraid that the Central Office of Information wrote to the National Water Council without consulting my officials. They were, however, acting within our general objective—to preserve the well-established link of "Save It" with energy saving. Part of the success of the campaign has been our general ability to persuade people to respect our wish to restrict the use of the slogan to energy conservation."

I do not accept that, the general public do not accept it, and I hope that Ministers do not accept it. "Save It" is a first-class slogan that should apply to water as well as to energy. It will be a pity if there is an interdepartmental squabble over this matter.

On this subject of trying to impress on the public the need to conserve water, I would point out that it applies not only in the South-West and the South but in Kent, which my hon. Friend and I both represent. Would my hon. Friend bear in mind that a number of domestic consumers are dismayed by the fact that while they are required to save water, they see it being used freely in other areas? They cannot understand why there should be exceptions, such as the free watering of sports grounds and the free use of water in mechanical car washing plants. They are dismayed that they must tighten their belts when over the other side of the road water is being used freely on a golf course. This state of affairs will not encourage them and we must do all we can to make people realise that this is for real.

That is one of the main justifications for the Bill. The present situation is that we have the 1945 Act, which is far too weak, and the 1958 Act. which is pretty Draconian, and there is nothing in between. My hon. Friend is quite right. People are dismayed when they watch someone pouring water over the whole of a cricket ground—not just the pitch—and at the same time see their roses dying and their broad beans shrivelling up. That sort of thing tempts one to sneak out in the middle of the night and hose one's garden, and that is a highly undesirable and anti-social thing to do.

I certainly accept that in the crisis situation that we are facing it would be entirely unreasonable to use tens of thousands of gallons of water on race courses and other such things when people may he literally in danger of losing their jobs, their businesses, or their livelihoods through lack of water. I think that up to a few years ago most race courses were not watered anyway.

But there are a number of sports interests that are perhaps part of our national heritage. The Minister mentioned the Square at Lords, and there is the Wimbledon Centre Court, Wembley and one or two others that we can think of. We want there to be consultations before there is a risk of the Wembley turf or the Wimbledon Centre Court shrivelling up and being destroyed. There are a number of areas where proper consultation with the sports interests could establish a priority list, and the Minister has indicated that such consultation will take place.

While we are on the special pleadings, may I enter a word for the golf greens, because permanent damage might be done if they are neglected?

I accept the point about the golf greens. No doubt my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Whitelaw) would remind me of it if I forgot it. But surely the hon. Member would not expect watering the entire golf course—

No, only the greens.

I think that the hon. Member is a director of a golf club very near where I live, and I appreciate therefore that he does not envisage watering the entire course.

I am asking for consultation on a sensible basis in the same way that there is to be consultation locally on matters such as those the Minister has mentioned.

May I put my hon. Friend right on one small point? Racecourses have been watered artificially for about 200 years—by horse and cart.

I am grateful for that technical advice, but it does not contradict my basic contention, which is that the substantial watering these days, using tens of thousands of gallons of water, did not happen more than 10 or 15 years ago.

There are aspects of the Bill with which we shall be dealing in Committee tomorrow. We are concerned about notice and publicity, because people's convenience and livelihoods and often their living standards are affected. There is the question of compensation and the time for claiming. There is the question, which the Minister has already raised, of whether he can accept objections to a scheme even if a public inquiry has to be dispensed with because of the emergency.

I thank Ministers and their advisers for their great courtesy to myself and my hon. Friends, who, because of the rush to get the Bill through, discussed ways of improving it. These discussions have worked very well, but I do not prejudge what might happen tomorrow. I think that the Bill will emerge from Committee rather better than it went in.

My understanding is that there will be a number of authorities that will want in the near future to use these provisions. I understand that the Bill will be enacted at the end of the week by special arrangements made in another place, and I hope therefore that the House will in no way delay it.

Will the Minister confirm that within the Department arrangements are well advanced on the directions, if that is the right term, so that once the Bill has been enacted those areas of the country that are facing difficulties will be able to take appropriate measures, because certain areas of the country are facing a crisis. We welcome the Bill and we shall do what we can to get it on the statute book as quickly as possible.

5.15 p.m.

I shall be brief, and I apologise to hon. Members for the state of my voice. There is considerable interest in Wales about the effect of the drought, particularly in South-East Wales. I understand that at present rates of consumption water supplies would be virtually exhausted at the beginning of October, and that is three to four weeks before the normal heavy early winter rains. I stress the word "normal", because nothing has been normal during the last abnormal two years. This is the driest period we have ever recorded in Wales, and there has been nothing like normal rainfall in the Welsh Water Authority's upland gathering areas.

It is against that background, therefore, that the water authority must plan, and if there is no heavy and substantial rainfall coupled with substantial savings by water consumers generally the present restrictions are likely to last for at least three months, and possibly even longer.

Concern has been expressed about home kidney machine users and hospitals. I understand that the authority's water divisions have identified all the dialysis users within their areas, and I have placed my Department's records at their disposal, while dialysis users have been encouraged to operate their units during the daytime. I understand that wherever possible a 24-hour supply is being maintained. Arrangements have been made to ensure adequate supplies to hospitals, and they are one class of essential consumer that will be given priority above others.

It is impossible to give any precise answer on production and employment. Let me deal with restrictions in the Blaenau Gwent and Islwyn areas, where industry consists mainly of small industrial units. These have not so far been greatly affected by restrictions. At a meeting of the Welsh Water Authority's South-East Wales Drought Liaison Committee, on 2nd August, attended by representatives of all the local authorities in South-East Wales as well as of the CBI, the NFU, the FUW, the Federal Chambers of Commerce and Government Departments, the water authority announced that unless there is early and substantial saving by all consumers, together with substantial rainfall in August, industry throughout South-East Wales will have to cut its demands by 50 per cent. from September. The Welsh Water Authority has already appealed to industry to implement economies.

Individual companies are in the best position to decide what measures they can take to reduce their demand. Recycling would have to be decided on the normal criteria adopted by business men, but I know of some industries that have significantly reduced their water demands by such measures. In the present situation I would expect very substantial savings from industry, anyway. I understand that the managing director of a very large pharmaceutical firm in the Pontypool constituency said on the radio on Tuesday that his firm could cut back perhaps up to 20 per cent. by eliminating waste, and that the same went for other firms. If that is so, I would look to industry to take such action straight away, because if it does not production and jobs are at stake.

5.19 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Wales has made an important intervention. I am sure that everyone concerned will pay great heed to what he said, and I am sure that the House will not take exception to the fact that we have had three Front Bench speeches in succession, which is most unusual.

It was a very good thing that the hon. Gentleman made his short intervention at this stage. The only comment that I would dare to make, since I am not a member for Wales, although I know Wales very well, is that what the Minister said about industrial users needs underlining. In the generations of plentiful rainfall in this country industrial users have too often decided to avoid the expenditure that should have been made now upon recycling equipment; so they could make a much greater contribution to our water problems. We have reached the stage in the industrial growth of our country and in the growth of our population when this has to be done.

I welcome the Bill, even with its rather stringent powers, which, in my opinion, are fully justified. The Anglian Water Authority will need to start using Clause I powers at once, I understand. My constituency is beginning to look like the Sahara without the oases, if by oases one means the reservoirs which are simply drying up.

In East Anglia we have been greatly dependent upon the River Great Ouse and other rivers. It is becoming difficult to keep the Ouse at its statutory minimum flow. I do not see anything in the Bill dealing with statutory minimum flow. I hope that in replying to the debate the Minister of State will say what is to be done about statutory minimum flow in the event of the dry weather continuing, as it may well do. Abstraction from the River Great Ouse has been reduced a little, but it must be reduced drastically if the statutory minimum flow is to be retained. This is an important matter, and we should be told about it. My constituency and other neighbouring constituencies, including that of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris), depend very much upon Grafham Water. That is now less than half full, with 150 days' supply left, I am told. That sounds hopeful, but if we have another dry winter we shall be in an even worse state next summer. It is not an over-insurance to take steps now to conserve water.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed) was right to say that this Bill is concerned with the immediate need for water conservation. It is not an over-insurance to do all we can. It is better to be safe than sorry. The Minister struck just the right note in his speech, but there is one point upon which my advice differs from his. He stressed the lack of rainfall this summer. That has been a contributory factor in this crisis. However, the basic climatic requirement, so I am told, is that next winter we must have a higher than average rainfall to prevent another bad situation at the beginning of next summer. The winter rainfall is the crux of the matter. Snow would do as well, if it were heavy enough.

There is one provision in the Bill that ought to be omitted. I refer to the words "or minimum charge", at the top of page 3. We shall be entering upon an absurdity here if we are not careful. The position is that where water consumption is metered by local authorities a minimum charge is made. That is all right when water is plentiful, but when we want consumers to save as much water as possible it is crazy to make them pay for water which they are asked not to use. Clause 1 retains the power to make them do so.

I have discussed this subject with my own water authority. I have the highest regard for the senior officials in the Anglian Water Authority. As a Government, we placed a difficult task upon them. The authority has the biggest area in the country. We asked it to take on all kinds of efficient and inefficient local authority undertakings. The authority had a devil of a job. It is getting on with it, and I have been impressed with the way in which it is doing the work. However, I disagree with the view that I heard expressed by one official, which was to the effect that even in a drought the minimum charge was justified because the authority must raise money for improving its various systems.

What is the object of the exercise in this drought? Is it to save water, or to obtain money? The Government must make up their mind. Surely on this occasion the vital thing is to save water. The water authorities should do without the right to levy the minimum charge.

There are two points that I want to raise arising from the Minister's speech. He rightly listed the non-essential uses of water that should now be stopped. This may seem a small point, but he did not make it clear whether, when those nonessential uses included such things as fountains, the water used in them is recycled. Was the right hon. Gentleman referring to those who have a little pond in their back garden and who have careful arrangements for recycling the water? Such a use would not dip into water supplies. Are we really to stop the use of private sources of a minor kind? I agree that such things as car washes must be stopped, although I use them. Work on cleaning buildings must be held up. That is an environmental luxury, which we all enjoy, but it must halt. It should be made abundantly plain whether these non-essential uses to which I have referred are to be stopped, even when the water comes not from the public supply but from a reservoir created by a company or by individuals out of their own funds.

Talking of private reservoirs, I am bound to draw attention to the fact that those farmers who had the wisdom, foresight and financial prudence to create their own reservoirs, sometimes with the aid of Government grants, are the people who have benefited in this dry summer. Their reservoirs are pretty well dry by now, but the fact that they had them was a great advantage. I hope that in future thoughts on this matter the Government will consider encouraging more farmers to create their own supplies.

Since I expect that the right hon. Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) will be speaking—I see him in his place, and we know his views—I must anticipate a point that he will probably make about a national water grid. That will not get us anywhere, certainly not in the short term, and I do not believe that it is the best solution in the long term. Estuarial barrages are the answer. If the right hon. Member would care to visit my constituency and see the Director of Operations of the Anglian Water Authority, which also covers his constituency, I am sure that he would have a valuable exchange of views. Of course, from the point of view of improving inland waterways, by all means: that means, however, that we spend enormous sums of money. But that will not improve water supplies in sufficient time.

In the early hours of one morning in July 1967, I initiated a debate, supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) and other hon. Members. In that debate we argued in favour of a recommendation of the Water Resources Board that there should be a feasibility study of a Wash barrage. That recommendation was turned down by the then Labour Government. Three years later the Tory Government gave it the go-ahead, and it was established that without building the barrage it would be feasible to build freshwater impounding reservoirs.

I understand that the Government have stopped further work on that project, which is regrettable. Why has the work been stopped? I must ask the Government, as a matter of urgency, to change their mind. The urgency arises because East Anglia has the driest climate in the United Kingdom and the fastest growing population.

We have been told by the Government that the population of the East Anglian region will increase by 25 per cent. over the next 15 years. That has never happened before in any region in the history of this country. We must have an adequate water supply, not only for the increased population but for the increased consumption. We must go ahead with the Wash scheme. It would be irresponsible not to do so. Having said all that, I welcome the Bill.

5.31 p.m.

I agree with a great deal of what was said by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton). It is not only East Anglia that is the problem; it concerns the largest growing area in the country, that of the Anglian Water Authority. There are 40,000 new houses being built each year in the region. It is by far the fastest growing area. It is for the Anglian Water Authority, which is responsible for constituency, to face this most important and difficult problem. I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that industry must bear in mind in its present operations, and in planning for the future, that the good Lord did not promise that these islands would be blessed with a generous rainfall for ever and ever.

Our climate has changed from time to time. I do not know whether there is anything in the idea that it may be changing rapidly now. The fact remains that it is impossible for industry and others to plan on the basis that we shall have all the water that we need or want in the years to come.

I have been very much concerned with these matters for many years, and especially in the recent past. Last night in my local newspaper there was a headline which stated:

"Water: All Set for Standpipes".

I refer to an article in theNorthamptonshire Evening Telegraph. The article reads:

"A crisis meeting will be held next week to discuss emergency plans for water rationing in Northamptonshire. The chances are that those who attend the meeting will give the go ahead to the use of standpipes in the streets of the county…Mr. Alan Simkins, Divisional Manager for the Anglian Water Authority said "—

as we all know—

"'We have had no significant rainfall and people have continued to consume more water than they should'."

Of course, I support the Bill. Until recently the water authorities seemed to be wanting to hide the drought. I do not understand why. Photographs of the empty Pitsford reservoir, which lies on the edge of my constituency, appeared in continental newspapers more than four weeks ago. Some readers of theNew York Herald Tribune, Paris edition, who know roughly where my constituency lies, commiserated with me over four weeks ago. Yet the chairman of the National Water Council, a respected former member of the House, was able to say on 20th July, referring to the drought, that

"most of the Midlands are not too bad."

That may be correct, literally; I do not know. However, I do know that the part of the Midlands that I represent is like a desert. The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to the Sahara Desert. I must not copy him or follow him all the way, but the Midlands area that I represent is like the Gobi Desert. In 20 years' time, if our daily consumption of water doubles, as is forecast, I do not want the chairman's successor's successor to say that that most of England is not too bad.

We have to recognise that there is and has been an appalling drought. Like other hon. Members, I have asked the Leader of the House to provide time for a debate. I believe that both Front Benches owe that to those of us who represent the East Midlands and East Anglia. I say "both", because this responsibility has been shared over the years. Last Thursday I made a point of asking my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House a question about the drought. I asked:

"Will my right hon. Friend remember that the fact that we are debating the Drought Bill next week in no way absolves the Government and the Opposition from providing time to debate the regular water shortage in eastern England and proposals for a national water grid and the storage of river water in the Wash?"—[Official Report, 29th July 1976; Vol. 916, c. 886.]

In other words, I was asking for a debate on the major problem. I am pleased to see that two of my colleagues from Northamptonshire are in the Chamber, presumably with the intention of speaking in this debate. My right hon. Friend could not promise a debate this week, but he thought that some references to the major problem would be in order in this debate.

Those who have squirmed at some of the fatuous television commentaries about the Olympic Games will know that there is nothing as awful as sitting and watching one's garden or farm turn into a dust bowl while hearing radio weathermen talking about the "threat" of some "nasty" showers. The whole of our approach to rain is completely distorted. No one could foresee that last winter and this year would be so dry, but there has been talk for 20 years or more about the chronic water shortage in East Anglia and the East Midlands. It has been recognised that there is a real problem. The right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire has referred to the problem of the Anglian Water Authority.

The right hon. Gentleman will recognise, as did my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton), that East Anglia is the driest part of the country. Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that it makes sense for us to go ahead with the proposed rate of expansion of towns and industries in an area in which we cannot be certain that we shall be able to meet the demand for water in future?

No, I am not. I am worried that the provision of water supplies is not keeping up with the provision, for example, of the 40,000 new houses that are being built each year in the area to which I have referred.

This is not only an East Anglian problem, although I know that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) is an East Anglian Member and an East Anglian. The Anglian Water Authority also includes Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, which is a much wider area than East Anglia, and it is that area which must be given greater facilities for water provision.

In the 1950s there were many of us who were interested in this subject. There were meetings upstairs to discuss the problem. I remember two of the subjects that came up for discussion, namely, the national water grid and the idea of having pens or dams inside the Wash. Unfortunately, the project for the national water grid became confused with a scheme for contour canals to bring water from the western part of these islands to the eastern part. The Government of the day confused the two, and the result was that we did not get much done.

I submit that it is time for the Government to study the grid system and distribution not only by canals but also by pipelines and pumping.

The right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire referred to my interest in canals and inland waterways. I accept that if we have water brought by pumps and pipes there will be little amenity value. For example, it would be terribly uncomfortable for anyone to use the pipelines for canoeing or angling. However, if the water is brought by contour canals we shall have amenity advantages as well. I want both these matters to be studied and considered one with another.

Another matter that the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned, which we discussed many times, is the idea of having darns inside the Wash to take the water from the Witham, the Welland, the Nene and the Ouse. It is absurd that this water should go straight out to the fish in the North Sea. Of course, an ecologist would say that the fish must have this fresh water and that there is some particularly good fishing around that area. However, that must be considered in the light of the problem in the East Midlands and in the light of the feasibility of these dams. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Sport and Recreation will say something about this now, and certainly in the autumn.

We have to recognise that in other parts of the world where people are accustomed to thinking about conditions of drought, such as Australia, people do not let their rivers just pour out into the sea; they bring the water back again and then, in times of flood, they let it go out to the sea. We must consider this. The Government must give it great attention.

I have asked questions over the years, as have other hon. Members, about this problem. My feeling is that Governments of both major parties are to blame for not giving enough attention to it. It is perfectly true that Eastern England and the East Midlands are only one part of the country. However, as successive Governments have decided that these areas should be allowed to expand and become the fastest growing areas, it is up to them to provide the water.

I hope that my right hon. Friend will deal with some of the Committee points that have been made, such as watering golf greens. They are important. As the Minister of State for Sport and Recreation, he should encourage quality and excellence, but I believe that he should compromise and not allow the greens to be watered, but merely the hole, so that when there is a hole-in-one there would be a splash and everyone would be happy. That is an essential compromise.

Perhaps I may help my right hon. Friend. I agree with what he is asking for. We water the greens. We do not water the fairways.

I wanted the watering to be done only for the hole, at the particular point. However, I shall not dwell on that matter.

The Minister must not only concentrate on these Committee points, important as they are; he must also give us some idea of what attention the Government will give to the feasibility study on the Wash.

5.42 p.m.

The right hon. Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) started his speech by calling attention to the fact that there has been evidence of this drought for some considerable time. Therefore, I join him in expressing some astonishment that there has been this evidence without this Bill being brought before us at a much earlier stage. The Bill is brought before us at this stage, rushed through at the end of a Session, with only two days in which to consider it. It is coming to us after five seasons of exceptionally low water supply. I appreciate that the Bill is not a great legislative exercise. It is merely a tidying-up of the 1958 Act, which the Minister pointed out was not sufficiently flexible for the present situation. It is a tidying-up of that Act, with some additional powers for the Secretary of State.

One might have expected that the additional powers would not be quite so necessary now as in 1958, now that we have the regional water authorities with their wide geographical powers and resources. Perhaps one would not expect to find in a Bill, at this stage, directions from the Secretary of State such as appear in Clause 1(4). However, as I read the Bill, at least the Secretary of State, through the Minister, will act only on the application of the water authorities for an order.

The Minister has explained to the House that he will set out a list of items which can be forbidden by the order. I am not clear about how identical the Secretary of State's order will be to an application from the water authorities. First, may I ask if there is this list of items which are to be forbidden and if the Minister has them in his mind already, why not set them out in the Bill and let us know exactly what they are? I know the right hon. Gentleman's desire for flexibility in legislation. He always tries to reserve to himself some flexibility in the administration of the legislation of which he has conduct, and I think that he is doing the same here. However, we really want to know what those items will be. Secondly, when the water authority makes application for an order of this sort, will the Secretary of State's order be identical with the application?

In short, will the Secretary of State be taking the advice of the water authorities or the advice of his civil servants in Marsham Street? I have the greatest admiration for those who advise the Secretary of State on these matters in the Department. However, we now have powerful water authorities doing the work on the spot with responsibility for it there. I hope that we shall have the assurance that when they make applications for these orders, it will be their advice on which the Secretary of State will act. It is the water authorities that will have the responsibility of carrying out the orders. I hope that there will not be any sort of nit-picking by the civil servants in Marsham Street, saying "No. we do not think that this ought to be done, but we think that that ought to be done." I have great admiration for the work that they do, but we must rely on the bodies that we have set up as being responsible bodies for looking after the water supply.

I know that the water authorities are not popular with the present Government and that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of State for Sport and Recreation has on several occasions criticised them. I have never quite understood what he would put in their place. Would he go back to the hundreds of small authorities? I am sure that that is not really his wish. Would he hand over the job to the counties, with complete disregard of the water catchment areas? Would he hand them over to regional bodies, again with complete disregard for the areas in which water has to be collected?

I raise these points because we now have the water authorities, and, however unpopular they may be with the present Government, they have kept the supply going in these extremely difficult circumstances, which I am told have not occurred in this country in the past 270 years. We have reached this stage without any severe shortage—although, of course, there are matters which must be taken in hand now.

However, these water authorities are not nationalised industries or nationalised boards. They have a very substantial element of democracy, in that 50 per cent. of their membership are local authority representatives. At any rate, they now have the responsibility of looking after these matters and for providing the water supplies. Therefore, I hope that they will be allowed to advise the Secretary of State on what is necessary in these circumstances.

As has been said, to a great extent this is a disappointing Bill in that it is merely dealing with the short-term, narrow problem. Indeed, almost the very first line of the Bill shows how narrowly it is dealing with the matter when it says that the Secretary of State can make this order only if he is satisfied

"by reason of an exceptional shortage of rain."

That is not, however, the only reason for shortage in the water supply. There is the underground water supply. There may be disasters to reservoirs. There may be all sorts of occasions on which perhaps the Secretary of State should take similar powers to those he is giving to himself under the Bill—just on the occasion of exceptional shortage of rain.

The Bill is dealing with only the short-term proposals and not the long-term problem, which is, of course, conservation of our water resources. The whole reason for setting up the water authorities was that we should in future think big, and think big in solving what is a very big problem. The reason why we are now in difficulties in the present drought is that the planning of conservation of our water resources in the past has been lacking in urgency and petty in result. I am not blaming any particular Government. This matter goes back for very many years. We are all to blame for the pedestrian planning of our reservoirs and water supplies. That procedure has landed us in the present position. When an application is made for a reservoir it goes to an inquiry in respect of that one reservoir alone. The conservationists, and the people in the locality, come to object and perhaps it is turned down at that inquiry. We are then back to square one, and another site has to be found for the reservoir. What should be done is that all the sites should go before the one inquiry and the decision should be made there and then. We would never have had any trouble with Kielder if that had been done—if we had had an iniquiry for a number of alternative sites for the reservoir at the same time.

In the past we really have lacked courage in proceeding with our conservation of water. We have lacked courage in respect of going ahead with estuarial barrages. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) mentioned the Wash. I would add the Dee, and Morecambe. We could have gained immense water supplies if we had gone ahead with those projects. I am not blaming the present Government, although I do blame them for stopping the process in the Wash. Under my Government we would have gone ahead with that process. However, we are all to blame for timidity in the development of reservoirs and estuarial barrages in the past.

Perhaps we have been too much concerned not so much with the conservationists as with the retentionists. I have every sympathy with the-protection of the environment but, for example, we refrained from building a reservoir at Swincombe, the bleakest and ugliest spot on Dartmoor, yet forgot the beauty which could have come out of a reservoir, as can be seen only a few miles away, at Barrator. In the past we have not gone ahead to prepare for situations such as that with which we are faced at present. I hope that the lesson we have learned from this drought is that in future we really must proceed in a quicker way in planning for the conservation of our water. That is the warning that I would give. We must not rest on this Bill as though it will solve all our problems; we must proceed with the longer-term solution as quickly as possible.

5.53 p.m.

I warmly welcome the Bill, and although there are very few occasions when I agree wholeheartedly with the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) I agreed with most of what he said in his speech.

I feel that this should have been done a long time ago. It is apparently a characteristic of our nation that we seem to wait too long before we close the stable door. We have to have an emergency before we do anything about it. I would echo what the right hon Member for Crosby said about conservation measures, when we have the water to conserve. We have not got it at the moment, but when we do we should encourage conservation measures. Other countries do it, and there are many ways of doing it. For example, one can get water from the roofs through pipes to reservoirs. But we do not do that at all. I strongly recommend these conservation measures to the Minister.

Altough we have not got the water to conserve at the moment, I would make a suggestion based on my experience when I lived in New York in 1949–50. We had a drought there which reached serious proportions. In fact, it was so serious, and there was such a shortage of water, that we were asked not even to rinse our milk bottles when we put them out. Everyone got very apprehensive.

The Government adopted two expedients. One was that prayers were said and the second was that they sent up aeroplanes into the clouds and seeded them with dry ice. It worked, and the rains came. I do not know whether it was the prayer that did it, or the seeding of the clouds—possibly it was a combination of both—but I suggest to my right hon. Friend that he should at least adopt the process of seeding the clouds with dry ice. I am not excluding prayer. My right hon. Friend might adopt that. In fact, he might adopt both expedients.

5.56 p.m.

The right hon. Gentleman introduced the Bill with the thoughtfulness and seriousness that this subject warrants. I welcome the Bill wholeheartedly, but I have several questions to raise.

First, on the timing of the Bill, although the Government can do nothing about the lack of rain, they could certainly have done something about the timing of bringing in the restrictions. It is my contention that they have lost precious weeks this summer and that, by losing those precious weeks, we have lost millions upon millions of gallons of water. It is the role of the Government, and their role alone, to anticipate the problems of the nation, to anticipate when natural resources are beginning to run down and to take remedial action.

The background to this Second Reading debate begins to read a little bit like an excerpt from "The Survivors". We know that there are now 1 million consumers in South Wales on restricted water supplies. We know that Clause 1 will be implemented on the first day that the Bill receives its Royal Assent—certainly by the Anglian Water Authority and probably by other water authorities as well.

Yet as far back as the summer of 1975 people in the water industry were beginning to suggest that conservation measures should be taken during the winter of 1975–76. Specific warnings were given at that time, and even if the Government were not prepared to move in the summer of 1975, they should have seen from the rainfall figures in the winter months of October to December that the reservoirs were not being topped up. In fact, the figures that were available showed that in 1974 there was a rainfall of 296 millimetres but that in 1975 it was only 159 millimetres—about half the normal rainfall. It was clear to anyone in the industry that reservoirs and underground supplies were not being filled up.

One has to ask why the Meteorological Office was not banging on the door of the Department of the Environment, pointing out that there would be a crisis this summer. Why was the Ministry of Agriculture quite so complacent when it knew not only that we were to have a potato famine last year, resulting in excessive prices last winter, but that we were likely to have another one this winter, as well?

Why did not the hon. Gentleman raise the matter?

In fact, I did, on 3rd May, by a Private Notice Question on the first day back after the recess. I asked the Government what they intended to do, but they said that it was only a localised problem and, given normal rain during the summer, we could relax and all would be well.

The truth is that Ministers should have known, as anyone knows who has now studied the matter, that however great the summer rains might have been, they would have made hardly one iota of difference to the general situation. It is no good the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head. He knows jolly well that it would have made no difference even if we had had monsoon-type rain.

On 23rd June, I tried to raise an emergency debate under Standing Order No. 9. My effort failed, and again the Government contended that the problem even then was no more than local, and that there was no need for immediate action on a national basis. We shall have to wait until Friday of this week, after Royal Assent, for some action from the Government. I can only say that if the Minister could not have foreseen the problem last winter he had more than enough notice to see it in the early part of this summer.

I turn now to the Bill itself. Other hon. Members have commented on its complexity, and it is, indeed, a complex measure for what should be a relatively simple procedure to meet an emergency. Clause 1 is concerned with non-essential users. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for spelling out his provisional list when he opened the debate, but what I and others want to know is whether there are safeguards to prevent individuals or companies from being unfairly discriminated against.

For example, I imagine that none of us would suggest that in a crisis such as this automatic car washers should have priority. On the other hand, we must be careful to ensure that, just because they happen to to conspicuous water users, there is not an automatic blanket stopping of all automatic car washers throughout the country.

There are many industries whose use of water is seasonal, whose viability depends on the use of water for a few weeks. I hope that the Minister will assure us that, in any instructions which they send out, water authorities will show some understanding of the complexities of different businesses and the seasonal nature of their work.

Second, may we have confirmed for the record that although the Government dislike the private water companies the powers of those companies remain every bit as great as those of the regional water authorities under the provisions of Clauses 1 and 2?

Clause 2 is the vital clause, and I assume that it will be put into force straight away in South Wales. May we have an assurance that although the powers will be implemented for a period of three months, with an extension, if required, to five months, the extension of powers will be closely monitored? It is all too easy to implement restrictions and have them left in force for quite a time.

I regret to say that I do not share the appreciation of the top management of the Anglian Water Authority expressed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton). I exclude from that criticism the manager for the Northampton area, from whom I have had the utmost cooperation. Moreover, not only do I have some scepticism about the senior management; the Northampton Borough Council and the Northampton Chamber of Commerce. together with many of my constituents, feel the same scepticism.

I mention that because there is a danger that these sweeping powers may be used in a cavalier fashion, and I earnestly hope that the Government will keep an open door so that, if a regional water authority oversteps the mark, they will be available to receive representations from the hon. Members during the recess, when we shall be unable to put Questions to them.

I turn now to the implications for the future. I believe that the future rainfall prospects are not good. The long-range weather forecast for August is that it will be dry, with next to no rain, and the soothsayers tell us that September also will be dry. The Minister knows that over two years ago Professor Lamb made his forecast that our climate was changing. The Meteorological Office pooh-poohed the idea at the time, saying that it came from some quack working in East Anglia. I do not know who is right. All I know is that somebody ought to be studying climatic changes, and there should be at least some Government money put into studying this important matter. What support do the Government propose to give Professor Lamb, and how many people are working on climatic studies in the Meteorological Office?

There are resources throughout the country which are not part of the public water supply at present. In almost every village in Northamptonshire—indeed, probably in the whole of East Anglia—there is a village pump. All of these are now closed off. Do the Government propose to suggest to the regional water authorities—which blithely say that none of them are needed—that they ought to consider opening up those pumps and wells? Moreover, there are many farms and estates which have underground reservoirs which have not been used in recent times. This water may be unfit for human consumption, but it is certainly good enough for irrigation, and probably good enough for cattle and other animals. If it is good enough for human consumption, we ought to know that it is, but I have to say—again, this may be a reflecttion on the Anglian Water Authority—that there is nowhere in Northampton where one can go to test water taken from the ground to ascertain whether it is in fact fit for human consumption.

There is evidence already that industry can make considerable savings. In my own constituency, for example, the Carlsberg brewery has saved between 35 per cent. and 40 per cent. of the water that it would normally consume, and that at a time of record sales. On the other hand, the electricity industry is probably the biggest single user of water in this country, and I urge the Minister to ask the Department of Energy to consider the possibility of reducing the amount of water used in the production of electricity in the hard hit areas, and of increasing the effort in areas which are not so hard hit.

I come now to the matter of publicity, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed) referred. It is extraordinary that each regional water authority should do its own thing, each making a separate television film for an appeal to save water, each producing a different slogan, and each going to all the expense involved. With the best will in the world, as one who came to the House from the communications business, I say to the Minister "For heaven's sake, cannot someone get a grip on all these different campaigns, which are costing more money than they need and are less effective than they ought to be?".

The Government should now stop pretending that there is no major problem. They should spell out to the country the implications for our home-grown food supplies, especially vegetables. They should explain the likely impact on food supplies generally. They should spell out to industry in no uncertain terms the implications for employment unless there is a dramatic cutback in the consumption of water.

As someone who, since April, has tried to look at this problem in some depth, I should like to know whether the Government have any priority plans to transfer water if it does not rain. What are their plans in areas like East Anglia, the South-West and South Wales? Is it to be left to the regional water authorities or are there contingency plans? Unlike gas, electricity or oil, water is too important, and it cannot just be left to chance.

The Government have been too complacent about this problem this summer. I am not asking for panic measures, but I am urging Ministers to respect the fact that this is a grave problem and to take action now during the recess on contingency plans, in case it does not rain this autumn—so that they are not caught with their pants down next summer as they were this summer.

6.11 p.m.

The hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) has taken the Government to task for acting too late. I do not know whether he has sought the view of the National Water Council about whether the Government are too late. I suspect that he has not. But in the view of this side of the House it is that body which should have been a national water authority, had we had our way two years ago. Then the hon. Member would have seen the coordinated film appeal and the other things that he was asking for.

When the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) took us to task, he forgot that it was this party which not only agreed to the concept of a hydrological authority but asked for the local democracy of which he boasted. The differences between us were on questions of size and democracy. If there is any blame it falls on both sides of the House, but not on this side when it comes to the record of the Water Act.

In another place, Lords Ritchie-Calder and Wigg drew attention to long-term climatic change and the degree to which we have taken that into account. I was disappointed that in replying to the debate Baroness Birk said that the Government were taking the advice of the Meteorological Office but would take account of climatological studies which were taking place in Norwich and elsewhere.

The sciences of meteorology and climatology are related—I will not spend time spelling out the connection—but they are to some extent distinct. I hope that the Minister will be able not only to tell me that the Government are taking account of the climatological studies which are taking place, in other parts of the world as well as in this country, but to make a statement about their conclusions.

From what I have heard of the National Water Council's view on this matter, it does not now know whether this is a temporary or longer-term matter. It may be that only a few months will show which it is. I am afraid that what the Baroness said is not entirely satisfactory, therefore, to some of us here. I hope that the Government will take more effective steps along the climatological road as well as the shorter-term meteorological road which is perhaps not so well fitted for this matter.

The balance of water supply in this country is critical. Although we have notionally a lot of water, two-thirds or three-quarters of it disappears into the air straight away by evaporation or transpiration. In South-East England, including the whole of the area of the Anglian Water Authority, the average water availability is only about six inches of rain per year or less for run-off purposes or for use for water supplies.

If the dry spell continues, the requirements of agriculture for irrigation will be greater at the very time when fluid water supplies are decreasing. Combining that with the fact that the soil itself is its own best reservoir and can absorb up to five or seven inches of rain, one sees that the critical balance at the moment in water supply is perhaps of greater criticality than many hon. Members realise.

Will the hon. Gentleman explain the term "fluid water supplies"? What other water supplies can there be?

I must apologise to the hon. Member for having gone too quickly. I meant supplies which are available to man, which are stored in either pipes or resrvoirs and are, therefore available in fluid form. Curiously enough, my point was that a large amount of water in the soil is not strictly in fluid form. There can be five to seven inches of water in the soil which is not in liquid form, and for agricultural purposes that is the important thing. At the moment, we do not have that. Even if it rained for a long time, much of the water would go into the soil and not be available in what I have incorrectly called fluid form for our public water supply.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) referred particularly to the concept of a water grid. One or two hon. Members were less than fair to the work which was done by the Water Resources Board under two Governments. In 1970 it produced a two-volume report, which may be slightly out of date now but which went a long way towards looking at the question of a national water grid. Map 5 of that excellent study is well worth attention. I am not saying that the preferred strategy in that map is the one that we should now go for.

I understand from the National Water Council that aspects of this matter have been studied by it and by the Central Water Planning Unit at the Department of the Environment, which have probably modified these proposals. But it is unfair to suggest that work has not been done. It has been. It may have been held back by the weakness of the central structure which is now in the Water Act of 1973. It is the lack of a strong national body, which I think everyone would now favour, which is central to the Minister's consultation document on the review of the water industry in England and Wales. Whether it goes as far as the visionary grand contour canal scheme, I do not know.

I should like to see a series of waterways and associated lakes and reservoirs at contour level around the country. Certainly those who do not like motorways would probably welcome waterways. They are built probably by much the same machines. If there are spare machines and men available, this may be a future possibility. Certainly it would be better than pipes. It has been said that the storage capacity of the proposed canals would not be great, but their ability to transfer water from one place to another would be.

I should like my right hon. Friend the Minister to answer three specific questions. The first is related to the minimum flow of rivers. Of course we want all the water we can get, hut rivers renew themselves and maintain their oxygen supply largely through their fall over weirs or natural rocks. If one reduces the amount of flow in a natural river too much o'er the artificial weir, the oxygen content and the water level will go down. This is well understood by water authorities but I hope that it can be borne in mind.

Secondly, can the Minister say anything about saline penetration of the water table in coastal areas? That is particularly important hi parts of eastern England where drawing upon the low level of water underground may have induced saline penetration. This could be a long-term problem, and we wish to avoid that.

Finally, does my right hon. Friend agree that, whatever rainfall we get this winter, it will be necessary to maintain strict water-saving measures, though perhaps not as Draconian as those provided in the Bill, because even with an average or more-than-average rainfall in the next two or three years we shall not be able to recharge our underground water supplies which are the main supplies on which we rely in South-East England and many other parts of the country? The Bill will help, but I agree with all those who have said that unless we are very lucky we may have longer-term problems of great complexity which will engage the attention of the House in the future.

6.20 p.m.

I read on the front page of yesterday's issue of theWestern Mail:

"Nearly one million people in south Wales will have their water supplies cut off overnight from next Monday in a bid to fight the drought."

"Overnight" means from 7 p.m. to 8 a.m., 13 hours.

"And industry will have to cut its water consumption by half from the end of this month if there is not substantial rainfall or hig water savings in the next few weeks."

It is of Wales that the report speaks. Wales is so well-endowed with water that it supplies the people and industry of a great part of the West Midlands, Cheshire and Merseyside, and yet there is this critical shortage. The people who get water from Wales pay about half or one-third of what is paid by the people in Wales. This is happening at a time when Wales should be able to attract industry by the development of Welsh water for its own needs.

Wales is unique. Water is important in every country, but it is particularly important in industrial countries. The importance of water as a national resource cannot be exaggerated. It has been described as "white gold". Plaid Cymru has always contended that this resource, like all other Welsh natural resources, should be developed in the first place for Wales in the interests of the people of Wales. The present critical shortage in Wales has arisen because that has not been done.

Water in Wales has been exploited in the interests of huge, wealthy and powerful industrial conurbations not far from the Welsh border which have been empowered to exploit Welsh water resources by Parliament, Government and the State. We see in this issue of water a classic illustration of the domination and exploitation of Wales and her resources by the State.

Would it not be fair to say that there are hundreds of thousands of Welshmen in England enjoying the water and all the other resources of England?

I agree that there are in England many hundreds of thousands of Welshmen who should have had work in Wales and who are in England because there was not work in Wales for them. As individual people they are able to enjoy the Welsh water, but I am illustrating the domination of Wales by the State, which in Parliament and in Whitehall is called the nation. There is confusion between "State" and "nation".

I took an active part in the defence of Cwm Tryweryn in Merioneth, one of the valleys of Wales which has been drowned. The first the people heard of Liverpool's intention to drown the valley was what they read in the Press. The whole people of Wales united against the villainy which included the destruction of the local community. The fight was carried on in the House of Lords at great cost and in the House of Commons. Only one Welsh Member of Parliament voted for the measure, yet it went through the House with a huge majority. So much for democracy in Wales.

When in 1973 the Conservative Government nationalised Welsh water—and in doing so expropriated £300 million worth of property belonging to Welsh local authorities without one penny compensation—the interests of England were carefully safeguarded. The main Welsh consequence of that measure in the next year was rocketing water rates.

The current critical water shortage in Wales will cause great domestic distress among nearly half the population of our country for more than half the day, but it will also possibly cause increased unemployment in a country where unemployment is already higher than it is in any other region or country of this island.

The hon. Gentleman is exaggerating slightly. It is simply not possible for the water supplied in bulk to water authorities in England to be redeployed to the critical drought area of South-East Wales. I would have expected from the hon. Gentleman a more charitable and more informed approach. I cannot see how matters could be improved overall if what is now an emergency situation in Wales were to become a transferred emergency situation in England.

My contention is not the contention of the Under-Secretary of State in what he read from a prepared intervention. It is rather that in the past Welsh resources have not been developed in the first instance in the interests of the Welsh people. The shortage will probably mean increased unemployment.

I read, again from yesterday'sWestern Mail, what Mr. Ian Kelsall, Secretary of the Confederation of British Industry, said:

"there will be a very wide range of industry which would be very badly affected. These are the food industries, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the paper industry, some branches of textiles and some engineering companies which use a lot of water for cooling purposes. It is possible that some firms might have to close down altogether and rather more might have to go on to a three-day week. In a minority of firms processes are such that they could not possibly work a shortened week."

I am reminded of Aneurin Bevan's quip at a time of coal shortage, when he said that it took the genius of the Government to produce a coal shortage in a country which was bursting at the seams with coal. We have this water shortage in Wales, a country that is almost flooded with rainfall for a great part of the year.

The water shortage is not due to a low annual rainfall or to a lack of impounded water, any more than Wales's poverty and unemployment have been due to a natural poverty of resources. The causes are political. They are a consequence of misgovernment and they result from the exploitation of Wales as an internal colony. The exploitation of Welsh water and other natural and human resources is inherent in the present political system, which not only permits but encourages that kind of exploitation.

If Wales had been self-governing, her natural resources would have been developed in the best interests of the people of Wales and the flow of Welsh water to Welsh homes and Welsh industry would have taken precedence over the flow of Welsh water to the great industrial English conurbations. The water shortage is as much the result of the Welsh people's lack of political power as was the transfer of 500,000 people from Wales to England in the inter-war years to get work in England. The Government should be warned that the water issue in Wales—

I represent a city which gets a large measure of its water from Mid-Wales. That was done entirely on a local authority basis, and the city put up a lot of capital and increased the rateable value of Wales in the process of doing it. That was not an exploitation of Welsh resources on behalf of the industrial Midlands, because Wales was governed by local authorities and was self-governing for this purpose just as was Birmingham. There is no reason why Welsh local authorities in the past should not have taken a leaf out of Birmingham's book and made a similar capital investment for its own purposes. Wherever the blame may be put, that has nothing to do with the ludicrous nationalistic argument that the hon. Gentleman is advancing.

The situation is due to the political system. If we had had control of these resources in Wales in the past, if we had had control of our own life in the past, we would have developed this and all the other great mineral resources that we have in our own interests.

Water in Wales is an issue which can be a political catalyst, just as oil is in Scotland. The Government should take note of this fact. Widespread support has been given to our demand for a truly national Welsh water authority covering the whole of our national territory and empowered not only to charge a fair price for the water that goes to England from Welsh reservoirs but also to develop Welsh water resources in the interests of Wales in a way which will prevent the kind of situation which has now arisen.

If the Government insist on imposing on us another English national water authority with power over Welsh water, as they are likely to do, greater support will be enlisted for the one party which fights for Welsh interests and the one party which wants to get control in the hands of the Welsh people over all our resources.

6.32 p.m.

It is a trifle regrettable that the Minister for Planning and Local Government has been away from the Chamber for nearly an hour during this very brief but important debate.

Having registered that point, perhaps I may recall the day a month ago when the right hon. Gentleman announced in the Chamber his intention to introduce the Bill. At that point I registered my modest disappointment that the right hon. Gentleman had nothing to say about the metering of water supplies. His response was that he was concerned with the immediate crisis and not with long-term issues.

The very next morning I was absolutely delighted to read in the national Press that in Holland, whose people are just as clean and just as thirsty as we are, and where their domestic water supplies are metered, consumption per head is fully one-third lower than it is in this country.

The Bill is a business-like measure, even if it has been introduced rather late. It confers some sensible additional powers where they are needed. It is a good Bill as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. I have an uneasy feeling that many of us will be in the Chamber one afternoon in August 1977 again debating a water shortage. I have an uneasy feeling that this problem will not go away. It will not solve itself.

It is time that the Government looked beyond the next few very difficult weeks. It is time that they recognised the ever-increasing demand for water and the ever-decreasing supply of water. It is time they set up a Royal Commission to consider the costs and benefits of metering water supplies and to make recommendations. So far, research on this subject has been haphazard and not coordinated. Information has been scanty and evidence has been inconclusive.

I know that the National Water Council has produced a report. The message coming from that report is that further investigation is needed. The House already knows that for the last 100 years Malvern has been metered and is unique in that sense. Householders there pay for their water according to the quantity they use. In all, there are some 10,000 meters in Malvern and the population is about 30,000. The meters there are read by an electronic device called a meter interrogator which is plugged into a socket outside the house. The interrogator reads the meter inside the house and records it. It not only does that, but it cleans the slate so that the meter is set back to zero ready for the next check. What can be said with certainty about Malvern is that the citizens there consume less water than the average.

There is also, as the Minister of State will know, a modest experiment going on at Fylde in Lancashire, where 500 families agreed to take water meters into their houses. It was stipulated that at the end of the year they should not have to pay more for their water than they were already paying under the ordinary system. The message coming through from Fylde is that water is being saved.

May I say how delighted I am that the Minister for Planning and Local Government has arrived in the Chamber?

I have seen some really remarkable figures from across the Channel. In a little country like Belgium, recent checks have been made of average consumption of water per head of population per day. In Brussels, where supplies are metered, the figure is 125 litres per day, whereas just down the road in Antwerp, where supplies are not metered, the consumption is 167 litres per day—some 34 per cent. higher.

The day is certain to come when gas and electricity meters in the home are joined by water meters as well. Water, just like food, clothing, shelter and other essentials of life, must sooner or later be regarded as a commercial commodity, a commodity paid for according to the quantity used.

I am following my hon. Friend's speech with interest. I agree with him entirely about the principle of metering. From his great experience, will he help me on two difficulties? First, how does one put metering into the old multi-occupation places in the great cities? Secondly, how does one meter the dirty water as well as the clean water in each home?

I do not claim to be an expert in this subject, but I think that it is exceedingly important that a full, high-powered investigation should take place immediately. I am certain—I believe my hon. Friend will agree with me—that there must come a point where the fixed cost of metering is less than the value of water which metering saves.

Therefore, I do not relish the thought of spending another August afternoon here in 1977 discussing a water shortage. I hope that the Government will approach this problem rather more fundamentally. I hope to see a major investigation set in train. I hope to see a programme of conversion initiated. It may well need to be spread over 10 or 20 years, because I appreciate the economic implications. I believe that only thus can we control the supply of a limited commodity. I greatly hope that tonight the Minister of State will say something about the important question of metering.

6.40 p.m.

Like everyone else, I recognise the need for the Bill and welcome the way in which the Minister introduced it. My hon. Friends were correct to ask why it was not introduced two or three months ago. Throughout the winter we could see that the rainfall was less than average and that crops were not getting the water they needed, and after consultation with the water authorities, we realised that they were becoming worried.

I live in a part of the country where for hundreds of years our main concern has been to get rid of water. A friend of mine who was chairman of a number of water drainage boards used to tell me that he did not want rain from the time he finished getting in his potatoes until Christmas Day. Today, however, things have changed. Near where I live is a great scheme which was begun in about 1956 as a result of the East Coast surge. Today we are using the channels created by that scheme to take water to Essex by a long underground pipe from Hock-wold. We should try out more of such schemes.

One of the first Bills that I considered as an hon. Member was an opposed Private Bill dealing with Cow Green Reservoir. We were never allowed to see that reservoir. I wanted to visit it by helicopter but I was told that the rainfall was so great there that a helicopter would not be able to land. I was the only one of the four members of that Private Bill Committee—which studied maps and plans and heard about the Teesdale violet and much of the wild life in the area which was being damaged by the reservoir—who was against the scheme. There were 11 reservoirs in one river valley, and I knew that if we did not look out much agricultural land would be covered by water.

We must be careful, and I urge my hon. Friends not to be too enthusiastic about other reservoir schemes. We lost 5,000 acres in Rutland, which is a small county that cannot afford to lose good agricultural land. There are many places where the land is not good and where we could increase the facilities to provide water, but to put reservoirs on scarce agricultural land creates more problems than it solves.

The effect of the drought on the light lands in my area has been disastrous. Crop yields that would have averaged 30 to 35 cwt. of cereals have been reduced to 10 or 12 cwt. I warn that next year there will be a severe shortage of potatoes. Whether we achieve a good sugar beet crop is still in the lap of the gods and depends upon the rainfall. Consumers will be short of potatoes and other vegetables.

I am pleased that the Anglian Water Authority, which covers a large area, was formed. It went through many teething troubles, but our difficulties would have been greater if there had been a large number of minor drainage and water authorities covering the same area. My party was courageous in pushing through the Bill in the teeth of great opposition.

Although I welcome the Bill, it will not solve the problem of a dry winter and summer next year. We must look to the future. Professor Lamb, from East Anglia, has made some alarming forecasts. I attended a meeting in Paris at which a report was presented from the OECD in which it was predicted that the weather would change in the next 10 to 15 years to give us much drier summers than in the past.

Emphasis must be put on saving. I hope that industrial consumers will be hammered hard to save everything they can, because industry wastes an enormous amount of water. New ways of transferring water from one part of England to another must be examined. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Hamilton) that unless we charge for water at its full cost it will not be saved. I am convinced that that must be done before long.

6.47 p.m.

The Bill is a serious, even Draconian, step, but it is necessary and it has my support. This country happens to have possibly the best water supply industry in the world, and as a result we have come to take water for granted. We suppose that it is something that simply happens whenever we turn on the tap, and I suspect that the Bill will be a signal to our people that they must stop taking water for granted. It is a scarce natural resource which is too expensive to collect, transfer, clean and distribute to be wantonly wasted, polluted or flushed away at a rate of two gallons every time a child goes to the bathroom.

When I was at the Department of the Environment I learned that there were two sides to the question: first, the dynamic rate of increase in demand and, second, the comparatively static rate of increase in supply. The difference between those two aspects causes the problem.

Today we are concentrating on the temporarily diminished supply due to the drought, and that is a serious matter. I have seen my lawn perish and seen the trees I planted for the third year running die. My constituents and others are desperately worried. It is, however, possible to get the matter out of proportion. The situation is serious but it is not hopeless, and I am sure that that is the Minister's judgment.

I shall concentrate on one particular aspect of the problem—the dramatic increase in demand. Today we use about 50 gallons of water per person per day, of which half goes to industry and the other to domestic use. It is anticipated that by the end of the century the consumption of water will increase to 90 gallons per person per day. The reason for that increase is our rising standard of living which generates more use of water in the home, in the garden and for washing our cars. In addition, the industries that are growing the fastest tend to be those which have the largest requirement for water—paper, steel, electricity and chemicals. Any Government have a duty to meet the demand, because water is an absolute. Without it we do not live.

There are three solutions, easy to state but difficult to achieve. The first is to make more water available. God Almighty will not send us more. Therefore, we must use what we get much more intelligently. This will require more reservoirs, but I take the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) that reservoirs are not the best way to make more water available. It could be that from time to time charging the aquifers, moving water from one area into the aquifers of another, is more effective, because if we spread water out in a reservoir all that we are guaranteeing is more evaporation. It is far more intelligent to keep it below the ground in the aquifers.

There must he much more ambitious transfer schemes. I look forward to the day, which I believe will come before long, when water from the Severn is lifted into the chalk pits of the upper areas of the Thames and allowed to flow down into the water-hungry areas of South-East England. That is the national grid that we shall have by using our rivers and aquifers as an intelligent way of transferring resources from the western and northern parts of the country to the southern and eastern parts.

The second solution is to make better use of the water that we already have. Above all, this requires that there should be less waste. People can do a great deal to reduce their consumption. It would be otiose for me to list all the various ways in which that could be done, but information available to me in the Department of the Environment was that 10 to 12 per cent. of our water was wasted because of leaking pipes. Many of the old joints in pipes put in the ground in the nineteenth century leak. It is very difficult to detect the leaks, but the water authorities try to do so. I hope that the Minister can say something about a concentrated effort by the authorities to reduce the leakage of water in the supply system.

The second way to make better use of the water we have is to recycle the dirty water into the clean. I do not know whether the Minister drank any water during his speech, but if he did it had almost certainly gone through two or three other people before reaching the right hon. Gentleman, and after it leaves him it will go through two or three other citizens of London before it finally reaches the sea. That is quite proper. We are now perhaps recycling water more than any other country.

However, there is a problem, and we have a committee on water quality. If water is recycled several times through the alimentary systems, problems can arise. At one period during the sewerage workers' strike it came to my attention that the increasing use of the pill by the female population of certain parts of the Thames Valley was showing up in the recycled water. Photo-spectroscopic techniques show the impact of the pill on certain water supplies. I hasten to add that I do not believe that there is any danger of the male population of London losing its virility as a result of drinking recycled water, but I ask the Minister to tell the House that the Government have in mind the whole question of the quality of water and the effect upon it of recycling. We must recycle more water if we are to make best use of it.

It was precisely because of the need for water transfer, the need to recycle and the need to use our rivers and aquifers that we introduced the 1973 measure, based on the whole concept of the hydrological cycle and the idea of river basins working as a whole.

My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Hamilton) spoke about meters. I have no doubt that economic charging would bring about a reduction of waste. My hon. Friend's analogy with electricity and gas supplies is reasonable, but I understand that there are practical problems. One is the difficulty of retro-fitting multi-occupation dwellings in the big cities at high capital cost. I should not be surprised if that cost ran into several hundreds of million of pounds. But is there, perhaps, a case for requiring all new houses to be equipped with meters, so that at least from now on people will know the position? If it is objected that that would mean some people had meters and others did not, the answer is that the market mechanism could take care of the problem, because people would be able to choose whether to live in a house with a meter or without.

The 1973 Act is being tested perhaps more than any other piece of major legislation. First, it had to face a new Government who, at least in Committee, had committed themselves to replacing the Act. They certainly wanted to introduce some reforms, particularly of the powers of the centre. The basic structure and concept of the Act has stood that test. I sincerely congratulate the Minister on having concluded that some changes might have been made at the centre but that the basic structure should remain.

However many criticisms my hon. Friends and I may make from time to time about the activities of individual regional water authorities, we owe the men and women at all levels in our great water industry a vote of thanks and appreciation for the job they are do in providing water better in this country than in any other I know.

6.58 p.m.

Without wishing to underestimate the seriousness of the situation, I do not like the title of the Bill. It should be the Water Bill 1976, particularly because of its long-term implications. Although parts of it deal with the present emergency, there are others with serious long-term implications, on which I seek three assurances from the Minister. The right hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill has a certain track record for producing titles of Bills to expedite their parliamentary passage. Some of us remember the Community Land Bill. One cannot help feeling that the emergency title of "Drought Bill" adds to the necessity for speed and reduces the opportunity to debate this important subject fully.

I am very conscious that I have been a persistent opponent of reservoirs, whether they involved covering the gentians up in the North-East or flooding much of the consistency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Lewis). Representing a Lincolnshire constituency, now suffering in the Anglian Water Authority area the worst drought in its history, I must say how wrong we were to oppose those reservoirs.

In Lincolnshire, we are already benefiting from the Empingham Reservoir. An emergency scheme has been put in hand by the Anglian Water Authority to pump water from the Empingham Reservoir into the brook at Colsterworth to top up the water supply in South Lincolnshire to enable the food-processing industries to continue dealing with crops. Rutland water is already being let down the Gwash River to provide water for Peterborough via the Maxey Cut. Licences have already been issued in Lincolnshire, and were not opposed, for the pumping down of the artesian wells to a lower level. This has had a serious effect on private farm supplies.

What happens where the general water table falls is that the farm wells do not fill up as quickly as they do normally. It takes nearly a whole day for the water level to be restored. I should like an assurance that if there is to be this pumping of artesian wells, as there will have to be, there will be some method of speeding up the process by which farmers can get licences for other extraction without the farm supplies running dry. There has been great co-operation from the Anglian Water Authority in the areas where farm supplies have failed. Standpipes have been made available at the roadside. There are alternative non-portable water supplies for which licences are needed, and there is a need to speed up the issue of those licences.

I would also like the Minister to recognise that there are people who already have metered supplies and have paid for their water and have put in a great deal of capital expenditure, and who are depending on using the water for which they have already paid. It is very easy to criticise the car wash. A car wash can be worked once, not twice, thus saving water without putting the capital equipment out of use. I shall not further develop the need for all new property to be metered.

The Anglian Water Authority estimates that in the area of Lincolnshire and East Anglia the capital involved in connecting one new house to the water supply is more than £1,000. The cost of adding a meter to that would not be very great.

I next wish to raise the position of sport as a whole and the racing industry in particular. It is easy to talk about golf courses, tennis courts, cricket pitches and race courses as non-essential. The right hon. Gentleman knows that new turf must have water whether it is in the goalmouth or on the landing side of a fence. If new turf is deprived of water, this will do a year's damage to a cricket pitch or a racecourse.

There are people who would say that recreation and amenity are just as important to keep going for people as are some of the household purposes, where I am convinced that many more economies can be made. No one would say that racing is a priority user of water. When it comes to grading the non-essential use of water—I know that the Minister of Sate is sympathetically inclined—surely the racing industry must come into a special category. We know of the £100 million that it provides through betting and betting duties. There are about 62 courses in this country, 36 of which are watered by non-potable water pumped out and sprayed on the ground—surface water that is readily available. Some eight or nine courses obtain water from the metered public supply and 18 have no facilities whatsoever.

We are just at the start of the jumping season. A horse going over a fence hits the ground with a pressure of about 8 tons on his front feet. It is important that the turf on the landing side of the fence should be good. We can get away with hard going provided that we have a good covering of turf. This is what the show jumpers are saying at the moment. When it comes to the consultation which the Minister promised after the Orders have been made, I hope that consideration will be given to the fact that the watering of certain parts of race courses is essential to the racing industry as is water in certain other processes in many other industries. It is the need for consultation which is worrying people at the moment.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) has already paid tribute to the sympathetic way in which the Anglian Water Authority has behaved. On the other hand, some of us are disappointed about the way that recreation is treated by that water authority. The recreation representatives are non-voting members of that authority. As the Bill contains long-term measures, I seek an assurance from the Minister that racing authorities will be satisfied with the process of consultation that he is to set up once he has laid down the guidelines under which a water authority will make its order.

In conclusion, I should like to pay a special tribute to the way in which the Anglian Water Authority has handled the situation in Lincolnshire and the trouble it has taken over the food-processing industries, which are so important in my constituency and which use such a lot of water. I should like also to draw the Minister's attention to the helpful attitude of the local fire brigade, which has carted non-potable water long distances to fill up farm reservoirs and to help with the spraying programme over the last few months.

I am sorry that we cannot debate this matter in greater depth. Water is the limiting factor in all development. As I drive up to Lincolnshire at the weekend, I cannot help noticing how nearly all the villages in North Lincolnshire are clustered along the spring lines on the wolds where the water falling on the chalk hit the clay and came out in the spring. This limited and dictated the early development of the county just as the present water shortage may well limit and dictate further development of the county.

7.8 p.m.

:This has been a very strange debate because, with the exception of the speech made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball), we have had a great deal of blame thrown from one end of the House to the other. If water had fallen as lavishly as insults were sprinkled across the House, we would hardly have had any shortage at all.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I have only just started —but for the right hon. and learned Gentleman, yes.

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has heard all the opening speeches in the debate. If he had, he would not have made that unjustified comment.

I was referring only to those speeches which I had heard. If there were speeches by people who shed no insults, I apologise unreservedly.

It seems to me that the situation is quite simply that there is a grave shortage of water. We will not get any more water by blaming someone for not having done something sooner. It is quite pointless to spend long hours of a debate saying that this should have been done two or three years or one year ago. The situation is that somewhere between the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Almighty, not necessarily in that order, we now have less water than we need. It is important to remember that the domestic sector is much better able to cope with water economy than is industry, agriculture or horticulture.

I also believe that the sense of responsibility of the average person in this country is vastly underrated. There has hardly ever been a time when an appeal was made to the people of Britain to which they did not respond magnificently. A vast amount of water is wasted in the domestic sector. If people were told the truth responsibly and fully they would, I am convinced, make the requisite economies and take the size of bath we used to take during the war when we realised that saving water mattered.

It takes around 11½ gallons of water to produce one pint of beer. Obviously, one thinks what a great solution it would be if everyone who drank beer drank two pints a day less. That would mean a saving not only of 23 gallons but also of six gallons used in twice flushing the lavatory.

However, I wonder whether a very much better solution would not be to look at the different industrial users of water and learn lessons from those who are able to make savings and use less water than their competitors.

The hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) said he has in his constituency a brewery that is able to use 40 per cent. less water than do other breweries. I suggest that the Minister might think about the appointment of water officers whose job it would be to go around industrial premises and advise on saving water. I do not think that there is any industry which is currently anything but lavish with water. It is so easy to use water, and there is no realistic incentive to save it.

I turn briefly to the subject of racing, which I raised when the Minister made his statement some days ago. I said at the time that I thought there was a great wastage of water in racing. Judging by the cries of anguish that followed what I said I can only assume that I got it roughly right. My point was simply that one can frequently achieve the same sort of going on a racecourse by good land husbandry as can be achieved by using a great deal of water. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough, especially during the National Hunt season currently in evidence at Newton Abbot and Market Rasen. It is essential that when a racehorse jumps fences or even hurdles, the landing on the far side of the obstacle should not jar the animal and thereby harm it. This can be achieved not only by watering but by good covering.

The solution should be somewhere between a limited amount of water and an excellent covering of grass. This is what I meant when I said that in many cases water can be saved and land husbandry used in the best possible way.

This is a good Bill. Anyone who opposes it will, on the whole, be foolish We must have reservations, however, despite the words of the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page), who spoke about the democratic nature of the water authorities, when there has never been a man elected to serve on a regional water authority. I do not know what the right hon. Member meant by speaking of them as democratic. My great fear is that these undemocratic regional water authorities will be given even more power than they now have with no one to tell them what not to do or save them from their autocratic selves. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I will support this Bill wholeheartedly, while we admit, as do most Members, that it would have been better if it had come earlier. It has now come. Let us try to speed it through the House as quickly as we can.

7.17 p.m.

This Bill is a serious measure. Although during the debate, we have heard something about conditions and how they will affect sporting events, there are also human problems involved. We have also heard something of the Anglian Water Authority, but there are other water authorities which cover some of the most affected parts of England, such as the Severn-Trent Authority, which has equally difficult problems to surmount. In my constituency in Leicestershire, there are small villages such as Stockerston where water has had to be boiled and carted for many weeks. Families in these communities are undergoing severe privation and hardship.

I would not say that I welcome the Bill. No one can welcome a Bill of this nature. Like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I recognise that it is a necessary measure, which the House should pass as soon as possible. Like most of my hon. Friends, I accept that the Bill should have been introduced some months ago. I am also anxious to bring about a situation whereby, instead of dealing with this Bill as a panic measure, we use this short debate to look into the future a little and see how we can try to prevent—given the same natural circumstances—the impact of a water shortage hitting us so hard.

I well remember the Minister of State, two or three years ago, advocating a national water grid. In the relevant Committee debates at that time the Conservative Front Bench opposed the idea. The advantages of a national water grid perhaps allied with the use of a canal system, have been stressed once again in today's debate. I hope that one of the results that will follow this debate will be that a new look will be taken at the possibility of establishing a national water grid. It is nonsense, when the Midlands, East Anglia and South-East England are desperately short of water, that in South-West Scotland only six weeks ago it was too wet for farmers to make silage. If only we could establish a working system whereby this water could be speedily transported, it would be a step in the right direction.

In this debate we ought also to ask who is performing the role formerly undertaken so ably by the Water Resources Board. I was a great admirer of the board. It was continually providing us with useful material, new schemes, various ideas and some excellent documentation, which is still available in the Library. Unfortunately, the board passed into oblivion a couple of years ago. Some of us were told that many of the duties of the board had been taken over by the National Water Council. That may be the case, but since the National Water Council and the regional water authorities came into being the flow of new ideas has literally dried up. The same information and the same apparent forethought have not been given to new schemes or to new long-term projects for producing and conserving water.

The Wash Barrage has already been mentioned. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) told the House that the scheme was later modified to include a number of freshwater compounds. If only that had been put into effect three or four years ago! We must learn something from the position today and take energetic steps to get these compounds under way. Another scheme on which the Water Resources Board produced a first-class report—which we all accepted at the time—concerned desalination. I knew some of the staff of the board involved and was aware of how dedicated they were. The board came to the conclusion that desalination was not economically worth while in Britain. We all remember the desalination projects that we had, supported by Government funds.

Desalination came to a halt in Britain. Perhaps the Minister, as a result of the debate, will ask one of his economists to inquire whether the economics of desalination are beginning to make sense again. Although desalinated water may be expensive, it is better to have desalinated fresh water than no fresh water at all.

Reference has been made to reservoirs. I have played my part in this House in ensuring that those who objected to reservoirs being placed in a certain area had a fair say and a fair hearing. I do not apologise for doing that, and would do the same again, but I ask the Minister to look again at the long-term position, so that we shall not have a succession of these Bills in the future.

Schemes should be encouraged to enable land owners and small farmers to provide their own reservoirs. I hope that the Minister, to stimulate this thinking, will ask his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture whether an increased grant can be provided for the construction of relatively simple reservoirs in a small area which nevertheless holds a significant amount of water.

In April I visted the waterworks and reservoirs of the city of Brussels. All the city's water is stored underground. The saving in evaporation losses, I was told, was so great that, provided the reservoir was deep enough and close enough to a city, and could be covered over and used for cattle grazing and so on, the additional cost involved in covering it was worth while. The water is perfectly pure; it is not foul or dirty in any way. In looking at the long-term reservoir position, in addition to helping small landowners and farmers to provide reservoirs, by way of an increased grant in aid, perhaps the Minister will consider the idea of roofing the new smaller city reservoirs which no doubt will be provided.

When the Minister for Planning and Local Government opened the debate, he told the House of the powers he was seeking, and he gave the House an indication of the items that he would seek later on to obtain powers to prohibit. I am sorry that they are not laid down in the Bill. We all agree that watering by hose-pipe for sporting purposes—except for the rather sophisticated exceptions mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball)—should be prohibited. We all agree that car washing and the washing of buildings should be prohibited. But is it really necessary to ban the circulation of water which goes round a little fountain? Is it necessary to put a goldfish into the fountain so that it can fall within the bounds of law and order? If that were done, presumably it would be regarded as some type of fishpond.

Knowing the Minister's great interest in sport I ask him whether it is necessary to ban the continuance of all swimming pools, both indoors and outdoors—for that is what will happen if they are not allowed to circulate their water. Vast numbers of children attach a great deal of importance to being able to obtain access to a swimming pool. If the saving were significant, I am sure that the House would support it fully, but we need to look carefully at the circulatory fountains which add such lustre to Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park Corner, as well as the swimming pools that are a necessity for many growing children today.

I welcome the Bill, and hope that the House will give it a speedy passage.

7.25 p.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gains-borough (Mr. Kimball) suggested that the Bill was given the wrong title, and that "drought" was an emotive phrase, de. signed to ensure that the process of getting the Bill through the House would be accomplished speedily. I did not think that it was a complete enough Bill to be called a Water Bill, but the more I think about it the more I feel that there is reason behind my hon. Friend's argument.

The Bill supersedes the Water Act 1958, and in Committee tomorrow we could well consider, in relation to Clause 6, whether the measure should not be properly called a Water Bill. In some ways there is more strength in a Bill about water than in a Bill about drought, because we need water 24 hours a day and we may have a drought only once in every 24 years.

The proposition has an even greater impact when we consider our social pattern in the country, the planning that is so much the concern of local government, and the requirements of industrial planning. Perhaps it would be better if my hon. Friend's suggestions were taken very seriously indeed and if the title of the Bill were reconsidered. This is perhaps a small matter at this stage.

It is very valuable that we have a Minister who virtually carries the title of Minister for Water. We know that he is also the Minister concerned with sport and recreation. We cannot blame him for the lack of water in this country, any more than we can blame him for our lack of medals in Montreal. Nevertheless, we are lucky that we have a Minister whose primary responsibility in the Department of the Environment is for water. This pattern was established by the last Conservative Administration, when my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) had the same responsibility.

We are losing water in this country, whether we are in a drought condition or not. In my part of the world, in the south-east corner of England, the average rainfall is 30in. a year, of which we save 1in. This is rather worrying. We are very casual about this essential resource. We have been concerned with it at various times, as in the Water Act 1973. Now we are suddenly forced to think again about the fact that water falls in plentiful quantity on our island but that we allow it to run out to sea again far too readily.

I agree with everything that has been said in this very interesting, thoughtful and well-considered debate. There have been observations from hon. Members on both sides who have obviously thought a great deal about the technical aspects of the problem.

I am particularly interested in the suggestion put to me in the past by water engineers concerning the need for a much greater study of the question of putting water back into our resources. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) mentioned what is done in Brussels. We recognise that that is a very good way of preventing evaporation and maintaining water in good condition. Nevertheless, although we are rushing this measure through the House, and need to do so, I hope that the Minister will also remember that the Bill—which should perhaps properly be called a Water Bill—is really concerned with conserving water for the future, because of the particular problems that we shall face as we need more water.

Our consumption of water will rise considerably by the end of the century. I do not think that people in this country realise how vital water is, how much we need and how much we are using. Various statistics are bandied about, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds. We hear, for example, that the average consumption of water per person in this country is 50 gallons a day. That does not seem very much. It is not a very revealing figure.

Last week I visited a new chemical works in the South-West of Scotland where there is a plentiful supply of water. That plant—an ICI plant, and one of the biggest of its kind in the country—uses 15 million gallons of water per day, and that consumption cannot be reduced. There is, of course, some recycling. Let that figure sink in. One plant employing 600 people uses 15 million gallons of water a day. The withdrawal of that water would mean the plant having to close down. It could not close down for one day. A continuous plant must close down for several weeks or months.

If we were to run out of water in certain areas—for example, in the chemical, steel, paper and electrical power generating industries, which use a great deal of water—many plants would have to close down. The resulting unemployment would be enormous, because such plants are usually at the beginning of the line and there would be a downstream effect throughout industry. That would be the effect of a sudden cut-off of a basic raw material in modern industry.

The Bill and what is revealed by a study of what could happen in a real drought condition must be taken into account in central Government planning, in terms of the disposition of industry as we begin to regenerate it over the next 30 years. The Government have a central policy to regenerate industry. We may dispute how they go about it, because of their economic and political plans, but we are not against its regeneration. No one is against the enlargement of our industrial capacity and the production of wealth.

The plant that I visited in South-West Scotland was correctly sited to help to create employment in the Strathclyde Region, where, because of the rundown of the coal industry, there is a lack of employment. Industry has been put into that area to create employment. I am in favour of that. I am also in favour of industry being put into areas in which there are plentiful supplies of water.

I am concerned that any Government, faced with the need to create jobs, may site industries in areas in which the labour force needs jobs and neglect to ensure that sufficient water is available to sustain those industries and make them viable.

The Bill vividly reminds us that we live on water and that industry and jobs depend on water. That fact must be taken into account in the total concept of the way in which we organise our industrial future.

May I take it that if the Government embarked on such a scheme the hon. Gentleman would support and not criticise them for public spending?

The hon. Gentleman would not find me criticising the Government for public spending if it was within our capacity to cope with the problem. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) said, there is always the question of priorities.

I turn now to the question of reservoirs. Many hon. Members have bared their hearts and souls and confessed that they have opposed the building of reservoirs. In my constituency at Broad Oak, which is three or four miles from Canterbury, a reservoir has been proposed. I have not opposed the building of that reservoir. I have, as it were, stood on the site where the reservoir is to be built and waited to hear the complaints of those who have talked about the lack or loss of amenities, farmland, houses, and so on. I think that is my proper duty, because, as I said at the outset, I am concerned, and always have been, about the lack of water in the South-East. That is one of the overriding priorities that we must take into account. I shall go away at the end of the week, when Parliament goes into the Summer Recess, more than ever convinced that the Broad Oak reservoir, near Canterbury, is necessary. It will cost £10 million, but it will be money well spent, because we desperately need water in that area.

I should like to clear up something that I said in an intervention during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed). We have all talked about weighing up the relative uses of water for domestic as against sporting purposes. I am not completely against the use of water for maintaining essential sporting facilities, whether they be golf courses, racecourses, cricket pitches or tennis courts. But constituents have approached me about this matter.

As the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) said, people respond to appeals to help their country. People are prepared to restrict their use of water, but they are sometimes dismayed and react in a psychological way when they see what appears to be the apparent waste, misuse or over-free use of water on sporting pitches, and so on. The Minister and others down the line in local government must make clear what is being done and why it is being done, and perhaps give some facts and figures. They should point out that to water cricket pitches or the greens on municipal or other golf courses requires only X thousand gallons a week compared with the enormous amount of water used in the Kent paper industry. People will then realise that a sensible approach is being made to the restrictions that are being imposed upon and demanded of them.

I welcome the Bill, and wish it a speedy passage, but I think we may have to consider giving it a more meaningful title.

7.38 p.m.

I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to Ministers on the Treasury Bench for not having been in attendance throughout the debate. Unfortunately, other parliamentary commitments meant that I had to be elsewhere. For that reason I intend to be brief. I shall direct my remarks basically to one particular industry which is of considerable importance in my constituency. Before referring to that industry, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch)—namely, the paper and board industry—I should indicate that in my area the water situation is serious, but it has not yet reached crisis proportions.

A number of hill farmers in the Macclesfield area have found themselves in a serious situation, their wells and boreholes having dried up. Therefore, a certain amount of water transportation is taking place to ensure that they can continue to run their farms and homes.

As I indicated, I intend to direct my remarks to the paper and board industry. Hon. Members may have received information from that industry. I have the pleasure of being a member of the all-party group in this House which deals with matters relating to the paper and board industry. It is important that the industry's representations should be put before the Minister in this debate.

I welcome the Bill. I commend the Government for having brought it in with such speed. A number of speakers have criticised the Government for not bringing it in sooner, but I do not join with them. It is impossible to predict the weather, and it is very wrong to take such Draconian powers as are contained in this Bill without reason. Powers of that sort must be brought in only when there is an emergency, and the Government have acted properly and responsibly in this matter.

Ministers will be aware that before publication of the Bill the British Paper and Board Industry Federation contacted the Department of the Environment to express concern at possible severe water shortages in England and Wales. The federation asked for full consultation before any restrictions which might affect it and its operation were contemplated on a national basis. The industry could be seriously affected by the non-availability of water for two reasons. The first is that it is a large user of water to carry and form the fibres in the basic process. In 1974 it used 280 million gallons a day. I have not got a later figure than this, but it indicates the substantial use of water in this industry. The second reason is the fact that it is a continuous process industry and its main sources of supply are licensed extraction from rivers, streams and underground resources.

The industry welcomes the Bill and recognises its need in the national interest. Of course, the federation has sent a submission to the Department of the Environment, which resulted in a meeting with a Permanent Under-Secretary, when a number of points were discussed. Those points included the fact that a reduction in compensation water from reservoirs by regional water authorities could seriously affect mills in the northern half of the country; that increased pumping by regional water authorities for public supply or an imposed restriction on southern mills abstraction could affect economic viability of mills in the South; what constitutes "damage sustained" for the purposes of compensation under Schedule 2 of the Bill, in particular the possibility of claiming compensation to cover the cost of extending boreholes; and the effect of Clause 1(3)(f) relating to effluent, which could pose considerable problems for the industry.

The Permanent Under-Secretary assured the federation that the highest priority would be given to maintaining water supplies to important industries and that full consultation would take place between the water authorities and the industries located in an affected area before any action was taken under the substantial powers in the Bill. Ministers are aware that the federation is a very responsible body which had already urged its members to close up their systems wherever possible to include recycling of water, and a special working party has completed water-saving checkpoints which the federation will shortly distribute to its members. The industry has reduced the number of gallons it uses per ton of paper produced. In 1968 it used 18,000 gallons, and in 1974 it used only 13,000, of which 38 per cent. was cooling water returned to source. Therefore, only 8,000 gallons per ton were disposed of as effluent.

The Minister knows that when emergencies have arisen in the past—and perhaps when they arise in the future—the mills have shown themselves adaptable and flexible to changing conditions. All that is required is adequate consultation with the industry by the various water authorities in the areas in which the mills are located before any of the measures proposed in the Bill are implemented. It is important that industry must apply itself to saving water just as any ordinary domestic consumer has to apply himself or herself. But it is also important that the economy of the country must continue to go ahead. Industry is a vital cog in the economy. Therefore, it is most important that regional water authorities should discuss with vital industries, such as the paper and board industry, the implications before any of the provisions of this Bill are brought into effect in individual areas.

I welcome the Bill. I believe that the Government have acted correctly and responsibly. I am convinced that it will work and that it will form the basis for any future emergencies.

7.46 p.m.

I share the view that this has been a well-informed debate on this new piece of legislation. There has been rising interest in the water cycle generally in recent years, since the establishment of the regional water authorities. This interest arose from the high level of water charges and the problems associated with that, but circumstances are changing people's sense of values and they are being faced with reality. They realise that the generous water provision we have had in the past involves a cost. There is nothing like a problem to concentrate the mind, and that is what is happening here. The Minister for Planning and Local Government must be well pleased with the welcome which has been given to this measure. I join in welcoming the Bill. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed) that it is an unfortunate necessity, but we must be realistic and see it in the context of the situation as a whole.

I welcome the tributes which have been paid to the water industry—the private water companies and the public undertakings. It is a rare experience for there to be any restriction on water supply in this country arising from drought. That fact is a tribute to the long-sighted and far-seeing developments we have enjoyed from the water undertakings generally. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) is well able to judge from his experience at the Department the calibre of the water supply in this country, and he says that it is the best in the world. Many of us will hope that is true. The very rare restrictions we have had certainly indicate a soundness in our supply system.

The formation of the regional water authorities is recognised generally as a sound basis for water supply, and for the whole hydrological cycle. I was a little surprised to hear the comments of the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), who said there were severe shortcomings in the regional water situation. We have more than 50 per cent. of elected representatives on those authorities. In addition, men informed and experienced in the water industry are nominated to serve on them.

I see little criticism of any substance of the National Water Council. I know that the Government propose a national water authority, but I have yet to see substantive reasons for that which cannot be fulfilled by the existing National Water Council which is looking at the broad picture of the water supply throughout England and Wales.

This measure is of varying use in England and Wales; its usefulness depends on the circumstances of a particular area. We have heard about the serious situation in South Wales. It is ironical that the vast storage capacity in North Wales is not available to the southern part of the Principality. That arises directly from the demands for water from the Midlands of England and the lack of demand mainly elsewhere in Wales. I was not the least impressed by the line taken by the hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Evans) in that respect.

I welcome the repentance expressed by some hon. Members over the interest in some reservoirs. We know of the widespread objections and the lead that hon. Members have taken in them, and now we are faced with the necessity for very substantial storage facilities. The present situation arises directly from the lack of rainfall over some 18 months, but in normal circumstances there would have been less demand for revision of our water supply system. Had we been able to cope with the existing circumstances there would clearly have been significant over-provision in the past. A fine judgment is required here about cost effectiveness.

There has been reference to the national water grid. That must be seen in conjunction with the very effective system of an area grid and a transfer system that we enjoy today. Against that must be set the cost of a national water grid. I question the validity of its advocacy. The matter is subject to fine judgment when one bears in mind that our water supply is highly capital-intensive.

Hon. Members have said that Clause 1 of the Bill will be used immediately mainly by way of reduced pressure in the mains, by void periods for domestic use and similar such measures. It is not proposed to bring Clause 2 immediately into effect. The clause is concerned with the economic and social well-being of the country as a whole, and I have no doubt that the regional water authorities which have problems to face, will use the months immediately ahead for consultations in preparing orders which may become necessary depending upon the level of rainfall in the coming winter months.

Alternative means of supply should be carefully considered in the meantime. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) referred to the use of private facilities by people who have extraction licences. I think that before an application can be dealt with an applicant has to advertise in a local newspaper for two successive weeks, and a month is allowed to enable objections to be made. Is the Minister prepared to consider speeding up that process where alternative means of supply can be justified and used without detriment to the public supply? If a licence is to be granted, it could be granted for only a limited period. It is not proposed that the use of private wells should cease. There are physical limitations upon them, but non-essential users are bound to have reduced or terminated supplies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) emphasised the industrial considerations. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough referred to food preparation and the washing of agricultural produce before storage, canning and so on. There is the great problem of the use of vast quantities of water for cooling, and we may be drawn into a situation in which differing rates are required for differing uses of water. For example, in food preparation there could be one water supply for washing and another, of greater purity, for canning. We may need to consider a dual rate for water with a higher level of charges for protected supply and a lower charge for restricted use.

I was interested that the Under-Secretary of State for Wales should say that industries were saving up to 20 per cent. That is a vast saving, which could lead to a significant reduction of consumption if applied on a widespread scale. I agree that the problem for industry is that water is not a major cost item, so there is no great incentive to reduce consumption as there would be if it were more expensive.

No doubt we shall all be thinking before long of buying a water butt and of installing rain storage facilities at the bottom of our down pipes. I wonder about the future of those who possess the quality of water divining. Until recently I was a non-believer in water divining, but some weeks ago I was attending a constituency engagement at which someone was giving a demonstration. I had a go, and, sceptical though I was, I walked over water and the two rods swung in quite strongly. I was quite surprised—

The hon. Member is wasting his talents in this place!

Perhaps that is another role I might find for myself.

I hope that the hon. Member will not use his powers and flood the Chamber.

I presume you mean flood the Chamber with water, Mr. Deputy Speaker? Perhaps a flood of amusement at seeing me divining water might be permitted. I am told by a senior officer in one water authority that he is sitting on the fence over water divining, but some of us may come into our own in this respect.

I was interested in the reference to the metering of water. That may need to be introduced as substantial developments take place. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Hamilton) said that a new development at Fylde was being metered, and I think that the system could have a wider application over the years. Of course, there are large areas of impounded water in, for example, the claypits in Bedfordshire and near Peterborough. This may be taken up and pumped into the river courses. In addition, a substantial number of mineral workings currently used for water storage may have to be used for filling our river courses and undertaking the task of water transfer.

It is up to all to make what savings they can and to utilise their own resources. I am sure that in the future farming will want to develop its own private storage facilities. Industry will as well. Where there is a fire risk people will think of having their own supply when the public system is below the required pressure.

We shall all be watching for the winter rains this year as people in other parts of the world watch for the monsoons. Let us hope that our winter rain will make the problem far less acute than it is at present.

8.0 p.m.

I am most grateful to hon. Members for their warm welcome for the measures that we have produced and the co-operative spirit they have shown to help to get the Bill on to the statute book. Criticism of the Government has been with hindsight at our lack of foresight, and that is a difficult criticism to make of anyone.

I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch), who said that although I was the Minister responsible for water and sport he did not hold me personally responsible for the lack of rain or the lack of medals at Montreal. I should point out, however, that we produced our best Olympic medal tally on or in the water, in rowing, yachting and swimming. That is the only reference that I shall make to Montreal.

I agree with hon. Members who said that we might need rationing and restrictions but that we should not rest on our laurels once we were out of this situation and should rather regard the measures we are currently debating as part of our long-term thinking on the provisions for the water industry.

I can tell the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) that we are grateful for the co-operation received from the paper and board industry. We have had full consultations with the industry, and we have reason to believe that it is also grateful for this co-operative attitude.

The demand for water is increasing. I am told that the average person now uses 130 litres a day and that the public supply for all purposes averages 304 litres a day. These figures will enable the House and the country to appreciate the long-term difficulties of the industry.

The right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) made an untypically ungracious speech and castigated us for the difficulties we now face. But he produced a Water Bill in 1973 and if the regional water authorities do not have the powers, as he complains, it is because he failed to give them the powers in that Bill.

The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) was right to ask what had happened to the Water Resources Board. In Committee on the Water Bill we raised considerable objections to the proposed demise of the Water Resources Board. We pointed out that this would leave a void in the national plan for water resources. It is a little hard for anyone to blame us when we predicted the result.

Hon. Members have asked what having a national grid will mean. It means the development of a national strategy for water and giving a national authority, such as that proposed in the consultative document, power to transfer water from an area of plenty to an area of scarcity.

Some hon. Members have pointed out that in the midst of all our problems there are still regions with plenty of water. It is nonsense that we have not been able to organise ourselves to transfer water from these areas to the areas of scarcity. In one sentence, that is what the consultative document is all about. At the same time, we accept the concept of the organisation of water on the hydrological base principle.

The right hon. Gentleman will not have a national water grid regardless of the financial consequences. Has he considered the likely cost and compared it with the cost of running the present system?

We are charging the National Water Authority, which will be the revamped National Water Council, with the responsibility for providing a national plan and advising us where water should be transferred. For the first time, I agreed with every word of a speech made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths). We are looking at the question of barrages, reservoirs and transferring water by putting it into river courses, letting it flow down the rivers and taking it out again and deciding which is the most economical way. We do not approach this problem in a doctrinaire way. We wish to see which system is the best. A strategy is needed.

Would not my right hon. Friend agree that the difference between the two sides on this matter is that when the Conservative Party opposite was in power it wanted to make each regional authority self-sufficient, whatever the cost, and did not put in machinery for the transferring to which my right hon. Friend has referred?

Hon. Members opposite created 10 nationalised industries, but they did not nationalise very well. We shall have to show them how to do it properly.

Hon. Members have mentioned sport and recreation. Naturally we want common sense to apply here, and we shall be telling regional authorities to exercise the maximum flexibility and discretion. But even in the regions where there is plenty of water now we shall have to take care. We do not know how long this drought will last. We have had two dry summers and one-very dry winter. It we have another, even those areas that are well off could be in difficulty. We would expect water to be available if new turf has to be laid at Lord's or Wimbledon for next season and priority to be given, for example, to watering the greens rather than the fairways on golf courses.

But if we have to make a judgment between terminating or severely rationing the supply of water to households and the continuance of sport, we shall have to get our priorities right. We should be open to great criticism if we did not err on the side of caution. However, we shall do out best. Although there will be no blanket exceptions for sport, we are not trying to put it out of business.

I was interested to hear the reference to racing at Newton Abbot, especially since I shall be going there to enjoy the racing as soon as I can escape from this House. If any hon. Member has a runner at the meeting, perhaps he will let me know later. That is a typical example of how we can have flexibility.

When I was asked about the going at Newton Abbot, it was suggested that in a scarcity area such as Devon there should not be watering of racecourses. I pointed out that the river, after it passes the course, goes straight into the sea. In those circumstances I can see no objection to watering the course. On the other hand, a totally different view might be taken at Chepstow. I mention these courses as illustrations of the flexibility that we shall employ.

If it is necessary, we might have to say to our racing friends that they must switch fixtures. I agree that racing is important. Indeed, there is much Treasury interest in it as well as public interest. Therefore, we want to keep racing going. I am sure we can enjoy the co-operation of those who are involved in it. I am glad to tell the House that the Jockey Club and the Racehorse Owners Association are co-operating with my Department to the full. I gather that there will be further meetings later this week. We are doing what we can for sport.

I have received many hundreds of representations, but I was astonished by one in which I was asked whether I wanted to put someone out of business. The letter was written by a high-diver who jumps from a 50-ft. tower into 6 ft. of water which has been set alight with petrol. I resisted the temptation of replying to the effect that I was not putting him out of business but urging him to economise by jumping into 3 ft. of water. That seemed to be the appropriate answer.

I listened with interest to what was said about metering. It is a large issue that should not be undertaken by the Bill. There are social implications. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds suggested that we might put meters in all new houses so that people are presented with a choice. That would mean that if a person did not want a metered water supply he would never be able to buy a new house. That seemed to be odd logic.

Metering means that poorer families, which are often larger families and tend to use more water than most other families, would pay more than others. It would be totally wrong to impose a social cost of that sort because someone has a large family. I can see the advantages of a metering system, but I am bound to say that at present it is out of the question. It would be totally impracticable to install meters into all houses. I am one of those old-fashioned people who thinks that we have enough meter-readers entering houses at the moment without having more.

Despite his comments, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that an adequate investigation has not yet been carried out?

I agree with that. That is why we agreed to the Fylde experiment. Although we are prejudiced against it—I wish to be frank with the House—we thought it right to carry out the experiment so that information would be available to the House and to the industry. The information will be made known as it becomes available.

The right hon. Gentleman said, inadvertently, that metering had nothing to do with the Bill. He has overlooked the fact that a minimum charge is referred to at the top of page 3. It would be helpful to know the Government's view.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about industrial metering charges while I was talking about domestic metering charges.

The hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed) raised a number of matters, including two questions which require an answer. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his co-operative endeavours. He raised the problems of democracy. I have dealt with that by talking about the national grid system and the relevancy of the consultation document. I think we shall have another chance to return to that.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the "Save It" campaign. He said that the Central Office of Information was warning the South-West Water Authority against using the idea of the "Save It" campaign. It was doing so because the electricity boards are already using that method. We have been in touch with the COI so as to be able to present an answer to the House. It says that it does not want to stop people from using a "Save It" campaign if that is what they want to do. We made it clear that we should not allow it to stop anyone from doing so.

Apparently the COI took the view that it would be better, as the slogan is already used by others, to think of an equally good slogan that is identifiable with water. That is how the difficulty arose. I can assure the House that there will be no further problems in that regard.

Drown it.

The hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) who is always helpful, is trying to give me a slogan in the middle of my speech. When he said "Drown it", I thought at first he was telling me to keep quiet. I was a bit nonplussed, but I gather that he is being helpful.

The Bill enables a water authority to override the requirements for minimum river flows if that proves to be necessary. The right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) talked about waters that are not used. If we are to have the rationing of water, with all the difficulties that would arise, that would not reduce the costs of regional water authorities but would increase them. It would make the cost of water even more expensive. If we tell industrial users that they will be restricted but that they will pay less in future, the corollary must be that we ask domestic users to pay more. We do not think that we should impose further charges on domestic water users at the moment.

The right hon. Member for Crosby and the right hon. and learned Gentleman asked me about the Wash Barrage. Work on the barrage scheme was not stopped. In fact, it has been completed. The trial work has been completed on the freshwater installations. The consultants are now assessing the full results and the report will be published, I hope, in late October. I am sure that the House and others will rejoice that the work is going on.

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to withdraw what I said initially. I was under the impression that the work had stopped. I am glad that that is not so, and I withdraw what I said.

The right hon. Member for Crosby is the first right hon. Member in my experience who has been able to transfer an ungracious speech into a gracious speech in the course of a moment. I am grateful to him for what he has said.

The hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) raised several matters, especially publicity and films. We agree that there should be a concerted national endeavour and that the 10 authorities should not all be doing their own thing. That is exactly what the National Water Authority that we now propose will be designed to undertake. The hon. Gentleman asked about contingency plans. They are the responsibility of the National Water Council.

We have been in touch with the council over a long period. We were in touch with it about the timing of the introduction of the Bill. The hon. Member for Macclesfield was right to say that these are such Draconian measures, giving such wide powers to authorities, that we would have been subjected to considerable criticism if we had introduced them before it was absolutely necessary to do so. Rightly or wrongly, that is the path we have followed. In fact, we introduced the Bill the moment that we were asked to do so by the council. We are in constant touch with the CEGB on electricity matters.

My ministerial colleagues and I will be delighted to see any hon. Member at any time about any of the resulting actions that flow from the Bill. I give the House the assurance that the Ministers who are responsible will always be available to those who wish to discuss the consequences arising from any Orders made under the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) raised a number of detailed matters. I hope he will not object if, in the interests of time, I write to him about some of them. Broadly speaking, I very much agree with what he said, particularly on the meteorlogical points that were raised elsewhere. We are doing our best to work in total co-operation constantly with the Meteorological Office. I do not think that that office can be much more helpful at present than the water divining approach that has been mentioned. However, if it is necessary to have further research into that question, and if that would be helpful, we shall be very happy to do it.

I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) and others who have spoken in the debate and confessed their sins about previously opposing plans for new reservoirs. When I was previously a Minister, from time to time I had to speak at the Dispatch Box and try to defend proposals in relation to reservoirs. I remember particularly one rather violent debate we had about providing a reservoir on Dartmoor, and the comments of all the Dartmoor preservation societies. As I go on holiday to Torbay at the end of this week knowing before I arrive that I shall be restricted in the use of water—indeed, I am told that I shall not get lager either because there is a restriction in the supply of that—that makes the point.

As regards artesian wells, the Bill, if it continues, will be able quickly, we hope, to provide the necessary action for alternative supplies.

I hope I have dealt with all the points which have arisen. I have done so as rapidly as I can and have tried my best. I shall not bother with the Welsh National Member, the hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Evans), because having made his very irrelevant nationalistic point he has left the Chamber. I do not think I should answer points made by hon. Members who do not wait to hear the answer.

I repeat that Birmingham, Liverpool and other places manage to get water out of Wales by putting local government investment into it. That has brought great benefit to Wales in terms of investment, rateable value and so on. It has not exploited anyone. There is no reason why other authorities could not have taken similar action. However, the Welsh National Water Development Authority will assist the Welsh people to have plentiful supplies of water and, as our proposals for equalising charges will show, enable them to get their water at probably more reasonable prices in future than those they have been paying in the past. That is what we are proposing in our consultation document.

I conclude by making one last appeal to everyone in the country, whether in areas of plenty or of scarcity or in areas which are moderately well off for water supplies. As so many hon. Members have said, water is now almost a luxury. There is so much that can and must be done. We started off a month or two ago by achieving considerable savings in the very hot weather. Since the temperature has dropped, those savings have fallen away, yet we have had almost no rain. As has been said, if it rains for a month that will not make much difference to the problem. Therefore, we must all do what we can to save every bit of water.

We are particularly asking agriculture and industry to review their uses and procedures. As regards domestic users, I hope that the House will not mind if I give one or two tips which we in the Department consider very important.

People ought not to wash up under running taps. That still goes on in many parts of the country. People should put the plug in. I am told that what is happening in some parts of the country where water is not being provided overnight is that people fill up baths and then early next morning pull out the plug and lose all the water which has been stored overnight. That is a self-defeating business.

We ask people not to use half-empty dishwasters and washing machines but to save up the wash until they have a full load. We ask people to cut down on bath water. I was about to say that they should cut it down to six inches, but I have discovered that one water authority is asking people to use only three inches, which seems even more difficult than what we were asked to do during the war. However, if people can have a shower instead of a bath and use their common sense about the amount of bath water they use, this will be very helpful. Leaky taps are another source of wastage which ought to be dealt with immediately.

I think that the one thing that has come out of the House today is a resolve by hon. Members on both sides and of all parties to get the Bill through because it represents an appreciation of the very serious and continuing difficulties facing the country as a whole. Everyone should take note of the urgent tone struck in the debate. If that is done, I am sure that we can get through until rains come to our help.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[ Mr. Bates.]

Committee tomorrow.

Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Lotteries Act 1975

8.26 p.m.

On Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill I wish to raise the subject of the Government's failure to bring into operation the Lotteries Act 1975.

This Act received the Royal Assent no fewer than 363 days ago and the Government have not yet brought its main parts into operation. Therefore, just under a year has passed during which local authorities could have been financing works beneficial to their citizens out of the proceeds of lotteries, charitable societies could have been devoting money to the good causes for which they are established, and sports clubs, both amateur and professional, could have been meeting their difficult days of financing by some funds out of lotteries. Indeed, a considerable amount of money could have been prevented from going overseas into lotteries abroad, in Eire, Malta and other places, which is really a drain on the funds that could go into good causes in this country.

The end of the Government's delaying tactics is not in sight. I deliberately and advisedly use the phrase "delaying tactics". I am well aware that the Home Office never liked this Act. The Government Bill which became the Lotteries Act in 1975 was a Bill that took over a Private Member's Bill that I had introduced, and I think that the Government felt that they were forced into it by the popularity of the subject. They never really had their hearts in it themselves.

However, at any rate, the Lotteries Act 1975 contains a provision in Section 18 that the Secretary of State shall not make an order appointing a day for bringing the Act into force

"until he has made regulations under Section 10…which provide for their coming into operation on that day.

Regulations so providing shall not be made unless a draft of them has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament."

Section 10(2) states that

"The Secretary of State may by regulations make such provision with respect to the promotion of society's lotteries or local lotteries as he may consider necessary or expedient."

Then, according to subsection (5),

"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State before making any regulations under this section to consult—

(a) the Board;"

—that is, the Gaming Board—

"and

(b) such associations of local authorities as appear to him to be concerned."

The Secretary of State has seen fit—I do not complain about this—to take wider consultations than merely consulting either the Gaming Board or the local authority associations. What I do complain about is the time it has taken the Government to produce the consultative document upon which these consultations can take place. As I said, the Act received the Royal Assent nearly a year ago, at the beginning of August 1975, yet it was not until May 1976–10 months later—that the Government sent out the consultative document to start the consultations.

The consultative document says that its purpose is

"to set out the thinking of the Government on the content of regulations to be made under section 10 of the Act…".

Until those regulations are made, the Act cannot come into effect, yet the Government's process of thought was in motion for 10 months before they issued the document, and, of course, we do not know how long the consultations will continue.

I think it utterly disgraceful that there should be the delay in bringing into operation an Act that has received the approval of both Houses and Royal Assent. There was no need to wait all this time before starting the consultations that are to lead up to the regulations. I presume from all this that the regulations will not come before the House for another six months or so. How much longer are we to wait? I should have thought it could all be done in the remainder of 1975, after the Act receives Royal Assent.

Let us consider the three groups concerned—the local authorities, the charities and the sports clubs. If the Act had been brought into operation within a reasonable time—I think that a reasonable time would have been by the end of 1975—the local authorities would have known what moneys they could raise during the year 1976–77 and could have made adjustments to their expenditure and the amount that they had to call for from the ratepayers or expect from the rate support grant. This applies particularly to seaside resorts and to historic towns, where it would have been of great benefit to run lotteries while visitors were in the towns. They have been deprived of this for the whole of this summer. On a monthly lottery any town could have raised £120,000, and on a weekly lottery the figure could have been £250,000.

The local authorities could have started improvements to their sports grounds, as well as environmental works such as we used to see in Operation Eyesore. All these things could have been of benefit to their citizens during this period if the Act had been brought into operation. I know that many authorities think that the amount they are allowed to raise by way of lotteries is so paltry that it is not worth running these lotteries and setting up the administration for them, but other local authorities, particularly the smaller ones, are anxious to operate the Act. They would have done so right away, at the beginning of this year, if the Act had been in operation.

Next, there are the charities. Many of them would have wished to run substantial sweepstakes on the Classic races during the spring and summer, but, instead, as I have said, much of the money spent on this sort of fun, which people enjoy, has gone overseas, to Eire and Malta and other countries which sell their tickets here. However illegal it may be to send the money out of the country, we have to recognise that it happens and that the money does go out of the country.

It is a great pity that these charities have been unable to raise the money by lotteries under the Act for the worthy causes for which they stand. So far as I can see they are likely to be unable to do so for the rest of this year and, possibly, for the whole of the winter. As for the churches, in particular, if any of their administrators have read the consultative document they will have been astonished by the threatened abolition of what is known as the bingo sealed card. I shall come back to that in a moment when dealing with the consultative document.

I take next the position of sports clubs, both amateur and professional. I have been given the calculation that the Football League clubs alone have been deprived of £5 million which they could have raised had the Act been in operation during last season, and the same applies this year, too, because it now appears that clubs will not be able to use the Act during the coming season. Apart from the Football League clubs, there are the thousands of lesser clubs which like to rely on the lager lotteries that they could operate under the Act, as opposed to the small lotteries that they run at present.

This is a time when sports clubs, and especially professional clubs, are confronted with legislation that will impose on them considerable expenditure in making their grounds and stadiums safe and in arranging more policing of the crowds—in particular, the rough crowds—at their matches. If we require the profession clubs to make their grounds safe and to prevent hooliganism at their matches, they will have to raise money in other ways, apart from tickets at the gate. They rely on lotteries. We must face that. Indeed, I imagine that there are many professional football clubs which would not be in the League were it not for the lotteries that they can run at present, and, with inflation as it is today, the limits on the present lotteries are insufficient to keep them going much longer. The letters that I have received show that they have been horrified by the consultative document. I share their horror. It seemed to me that the document was calculated to kill the provisions of the Act.

Before turning to the consultative document in detail, I shall put two questions to the Under-Secretary of State. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Grist) has passed to me a letter concerning taxation received from the Glamorgan County Cricket Club. I understood from the Lotteries Act 1975 that the proceeds of lotteries conducted under the Act were not subject to betting tax, yet somebody has frightened the Glamorgan County Cricket Club in writing in these terms:

"It is monstrous that competitions promoted for sport and other good causes should pay pool betting duty at 33½ per cent., in line with commercial operations. A sliding scale has been suggested, and the betting duty would become operable where the gross take exceeded £10,000. We are not directly affected by this at present, but others are, and since they help us in many ways we should at least voice a single opinion."

I do not know what is referred to there, but I was under the impression that, according to a schedule to the 1975 Act, the proceeds of lotteries conducted in accordance with the Act would be free from taxation. Plainly, this anxiety is frightening clubs off making their arrangements to run lotteries under the Act when it comes into operation.

The consultative document forecasts the regulations, or at least outlines what the Government have in mind regarding the proposed regulations, and I want to know whether the regulations will apply to small lotteries as well as to what I call the larger lotteries to be allowed under the Act. No distinction is made in the consultative document, and this has had a serious effect on those clubs which have been endeavouring to arrange to take advantage of the Act when it comes into force. They already run the smaller lotteries, which are subject to elaborate provisions under the 1963 Act.

It is true that the 1975 Act increases the figure of allowable proceeds from any one lottery from £750 to £5,000, but are all the lotteries to be subject to these regulations? For example, if they are weekly lotteries, must the total be kept down to 52 a year, whether the lotteries are large or small? If the regulations are to apply to small lotteries, so that the small lotteries have not only the restrictions imposed on them by the 1963 Act but also the restrictions which will be imposed by regulations under the 1975 Act, the result will be a reduction in income for many of these clubs.

I turn now to the consultative document, which I have acquired from the Library. The House is never consulted about consultative documents. They are sent out to all and sundry. Unless I had been fortunate in a debate of this sort, I suppose that the document would never have come before the House. We should eventually have been presented with thefait accompli of the regulations.

Does my right hon. Friend not also agree that as he, in particular, was a very illuminating member of the Standing Committee that considered the Lotteries Act 1975—I served on the same Committee, in a rather more humble capacity—it would have been an obvious thing to send us and all the other members of the Committee a copy of the document?

It is always embarrassing to receive, from one's own local authority, from churches and charities in the vicinity and from football clubs that one may visit every Saturday, letters saying that a consultative document is a terrible thing when one does not have a clue what they are talking about. They imagine that their Member of Parliament knows all about it.

We might have been consulted on this. Had we not had a debate of this sort, I suppose that we should never have had an opportunity to comment on it. I propose to comment on it now, because the document has frightened certainly the football clubs, the charities and the local authorities into whose hands it has fallen. They say that, although it is only a consultative document, if it represents the Government's thinking, what is the use of their preparing to run lotteries when the restrictions will be so severe?

I appreciate that the Government's policy is not to stimulate gambling. The consultative document says that there should be

"no undue stimulation of gambling."

The document makes it dead certain that there will be no stimulation of gambling, whether due or undue. It goes on to say that

"The public must be safeguarded against harassment."

I agree, but the document goes much further than that.

On page 4 is set out a list of places in which tickets in a lottery may not be sold. They may not be sold by street sellers. I have no objection to that—nor, I think, do any of those who run lotteries, whether football clubs or churches. They may not be sold by vending machines. I cannot see how a vending machine would either stimulate gambling or harass the public; certainly not the latter. It is perhaps the most pleasant way of selling lottery tickets. After all, the tickets cannot cost more than 25p. The tickets must not be sold in casinos, licensed betting offices, bingo halls, amusement arcades and pleasure fairs. Where gambling already takes place, will the sale of lottery tickets at 25p a time stimulate gambling? Tickets may not be sold by post, except in response to an application. I agree with that. People do not like getting unsolicited lottery tickets through the post.

Paragraph 11 provides that the sale of tickets in certain circumstances would be subject to certain specified conditions. The first of these is that in shops and public houses the sale of tickets by the proprietor or his employees to customers would be prohibited. I suppose that whoever wrote the consultative document has never taken part in the lotteries that are so common among professional and amateur football clubs. Many clubs are based on the local public house or on shops. Many sports grounds are set up particularly for the employees of shops. Who will be harassed by the sight of a book of tickets on the counter of the shop or the pub? That is normal practice, and no trouble has ever occurred from the sale of lottery tickets in that way.

Strangely enough, according to the next paragraph, door-to-door selling is to be allowed. Door-to-door selling is much more of a harassment than is the sale of tickets across the counter of a shop or pub. Charities are able to carry out door-to-door selling without causing offence, and if the selling is subject to the House Collection Act I do not see why it should not be done. It is strange that door-to-door selling is not thought by whoever drew up the document to be harassing, whereas the sale of tickets in shops and public houses is regarded as harassing. I am advised by professional football clubs that if the provision goes into the regulations in that form, it will kill their finances. They cannot run lotteries without having that degree of freedom in the sale of tickets.

The next paragraph says that the sale of lottery tickets will not be prohibited on the premises of the lottery-promoting society. That is not of much help. The local authority is to be allowed to sell tickets in any of its local offices. In our debates on the Lotteries Bill the Under-Secretary of State stressed that there should be absolute fairness between local authorities and societies. There is no fairness here. The society is permitted to sell tickets only at its own premises, whereas the local authority can sell them at all its offices and at public libraries in its area.

We are told that kiosks can be set up especially for the sale of tickets. That will not help the charity, because of the cost involved in setting up kiosks and paying rates, although it may help the local authority. Again, there will be unfairness between the local authority and the society—an unfairness which, according to what she said previously, I am sure that hon. Lady does not want.

The clubs rely heavily on advertising. They are to be permitted to use newspaper advertising but not to distribute advertising material to anyone other than members of the society. What is the use of that? It is unreasonable to impose that restriction on clubs and still expect them to make any finance out of running their lotteries.

Although clubs are to be allowed to engage in newspaper advertising, they are not to be permitted to advertise on radio or television. I do not suppose that many clubs would want to advertise on national radio or television, but advertising of this sort would be useful and valuable on local radio and television.

I have said already that there seems to be unfairness in the respective treatment of societies and local authorities. The rules that are to apply to local authorities are extremely farcical. Tickets must not be sold in a local authority lottery to any elected members of the council. Tickets must not be sold to a chief executive. Tickets must not be sold to chief officers of the authority and heads of main services. They must not be sold in the department of the chief officer. They must not be sold to other employees of the authority who sell or distribute tickets for the lottery. They must not be sold to other employees engaged in the management of the lottery fund. I think that we could trust local authority servants not to cheat if they are buying tickets for their own local lottery.

I come to the really difficult point that many clubs find about the consultative document. It is one to which it is not easy to find a solution. I refer to the bingo sealed card, and particularly to unsold tickets. In these regulations the Government wish to insert a provision to the effect that there should be a check on the fact that all tickets are sold, and that no unsold tickets go into the draw. That is all right if one is envisaging the tombola-type draw, if all the tickets are going into a hat or drum. However, the public have become used to the instant ticket—the sealed ticket, which they open on the spot and see whether they have won something. If we are to say that that type of lottery can be operated no longer, the present clubs—particularly football clubs—will have great difficulty in organising any lottery that will bring them a reasonable return.

I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree—I believe that the clubs have put this to her—that the clubs have provided a solution to this problem. Many of them are running such a scheme at present. When the ticket is opened by the purchaser, if he finds that he has a winning line or that the whole card is "house", he sends the card in. He must claim within 14 days or within whatever the stipulated period is. The cards are then checked. If all the offered money is not taken up by the cards that are sent in by way of claim, the remainder of the money is redistributed among those who have sent them in, or it goes on bonus cards in some form. At any rate, it can be ensured that all the money offered in the lottery goes out to all those who have bought tickets, and that none of it returns to the promoters.

There is no reason why a provision to that effect should not be included in the regulations, in place of the regulation set out in the consultative document. This is what has frightened the professional clubs. I ask the hon. Lady to accept the solutions that are offered by the football clubs and other organisations that use the bingo club. Many churches use the bingo clubs.

They have the solution and I am sure that legislation on that basis could be reasonably applied. I ask the Minister to announce quickly that it will be accepted, and I hope that she will give an assurance that she will meet the objectives that I have described. I hope that she will say that the problem will be met by regulations, in accordance with the practice that is already well-known to the public and is operated well in small lotteries. The hon. Lady must put the regulations before the House without delay so that the Act may come into operation.

The delay has caused the loss of millions of pounds—I am not exaggerating—to charities, sports clubs and local authorities—money that might have been put to good purpose during the 12 months since the Act received Royal Assent. I hope that the Government will now retrieve the position by putting regulations before the House as soon as possible.

8.57 p.m.

Since the Bill is of a non-partisan character, I almost entirely support the views of my colleague the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page). Perhaps he was unkind to some extent, not in stating that there has been a delay but in emphasising it to such a degree. I have met my hon. Friend the Minister on a number of occasions and discussed the Bill, particularly its application to soccer. I must interrupt myself to say that, since the right hon. Member for Crosby covered the subject in such detail and with great expertise, I shall not repeat those features of the argument except in their relation to soccer.

Soccer clubs provide an almost therapeutic form of entertainment which is good in comparison with that which is frequently provided by television, and the clubs should be treated with more consideration. About 86 per cent. of the 92 clubs in the four divisions of the English League are in debit to the banks. In other words, if the banks were to foreclose they would be in serious trouble and in danger of bankruptcy. That is serious.

In my early days I was a player of some kind, with a damned sight more energy than ability, and I have watched the game for over 50 years. Despite the small percentage of hooliganism, the game provides the nation with something which is substantial and important.

The right hon. Gentleman carefully analysed the consultative document. I think that it will be amended. In my presence, my hon. Friend the Minister has told a number of commercial managers of professional clubs that the document was meant only for consultative purposes, that there was never any intention that it should be put into statute form and that she was anxious to receive suggested amendments.

The commercial managers are responsible for providing the money without which their clubs would become bankrupt. That must be borne in mind at all times when we consider the soccer clubs. They should be given parity with local authorities otherwise the local authorities will have advantages and the clubs will find it difficult to collect the money that is needed to keep going.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman's observations about newsagents and public houses. I do not think that there can be any form of harassment of people who go into those places. After the game, the lads, and sometimes the lasses, go into the pubs to discuss the game. They often go there for discussions when the list of players chosen is published. It is right that they should make their contribution to the economics of the club in this harmless way, and I see no harassment of any kind.

I have been subjected to door-to-door collecting in Burnley for a number of years. No one has ever complained to me about it. If there had been any harassment, people certainly would have complained. I receive many varied complaints, including complaints about matters far less difficult than harassment. I must support the right hon. Gentleman when he says that there is hardly any harassment.

Advertising is a powerful factor. The soccer clubs should not be denied the opportunity enjoyed by other people who provide possibly less of a service to the community. They should be given equal rights in that direction. I appeal to my hon. Friend to be as generous as she can be in her ultimate recommendation to the House.

My own club of Burnley has probably the best coaching side in the country. Professional soccer managers send their sons there to be trained. The club has managed for year on what are, on average the lowest gates in the country for a club of that status. During the time I have been there, the team has been to Wembley once and has won the League championship. This is an achievement in sport, yet it has done this on an average gate of about 24,000. It is impossible to maintain a club of that standard on such support.

There are other clubs in the county of Lancashire—Blackburn, Bolton, Bury, Oldham and Preston—which are all in the same position. These are the clubs which gave birth to the Football League many years ago. Are we prepared to see clubs of this character go out of the game simply because of the lack of money? Let us not imagine that this is not impossible. A few years ago one of the founder members—Accrington—went out on that basis. Naturally, the other clubs think that they might suffer the same fate. I do not think that there is another club in the country which protects its spectators in the way that the Burnley club does. The police shepherd the spectators from the bus or railway station to the football ground and back. There are sections in the ground for both sets of supporters. This has cost a considerable amount of money, but there is less trouble at Burnley than at any other club in the country. We never have any trouble. It cannot be simply because it is Burnley, because clubs from all over the country play there. It cannot be a coincidence. It must be because of the preparations we make.

Yet all this costs money, and those regulations have been imposed on the club, quite fairly, by Home Office direction. The Government are under an obligation to the clubs. The clubs are not asking for one penny from the Government. They are simply asking that facilities be provided so that they can earn their living in a lottery or gambling market. The right hon. Member for Crosby pointed out that much lottery money has left the country.

I ask the Minister to support a sport which is making a reasonable and civilised contribution to entertainment. I know that it is thought that, because a limited number of youthful thugs have created havoc in certain main shopping centres on the way to or from the grounds, the game has changed in character. It has not. Certain elements of youth have changed. I have already given an example of how we deal with that situation in Burnley. If we can do it, surely other clubs in the main centres of the country can do the same. They need more finance.

We do not have much time. If the Regulations are not approved in the period from mid-October to mid-November, there will be great danger for all who are interested in this subject. It will be some time into 1977 before we can get matters going again. I hope that in the three weeks or so that will be left to us when we return after the recess my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House can arrange matters so that we can finalise things before the next Session begins. The people who are interested in soccer expect and deserve this. It will do the country much good.

9.11 p.m.

Like a number of hon. Members, I have grave reservations about the way in which the Lotteries Act 1975 is being implemented by the Government. I also have reservations about the contents of the consultative document. I have received a number of letters on the subject, which have been sufficient to prompt me to write to the Home Office. Further, I have an interest in the subject, in that my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) and I were both members of the Committee that considered this Act. We had diametrically opposed views, as I recollect it, but we have both maintained a fairly keen interest in the subject.

The three points that have come to me through my constituents who are affected by the Act can be put as follows: they have seen the consultative document issued by the Home Office, upon which consultations concluded at the end of June, and they are universally incensed at the suggestion that the proprietor or employees of public houses, in particular, and of shops, should be prohibited from selling lottery tickets. The proposed Regulation 11(1), with which my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby dealt effectively, deals with this. As my right hon. Friend said, and as the Minister can find out by going into the first pub she finds in Victoria Street, lottery tickets are offered for sale at public houses. They are left on the counter and the proprietor or the publican sells the tickets on behalf of the deserving cause.

This practice has been in operation for many years. If it is suggested that this form of sale should be prohibited, not only will it cause the greatest distress; I can say with absolute assurance that it is something that never crossed the minds of any of us who were members of the Standing Committee that considered the Act.

I wish to refer to the powers of local authorities who promote lotteries to advertise their competitions by the distribution of advertisements to all residents within their areas. City football clubs and county cricket clubs have pointed out to me that it is unfair to them and to the small lotteries which they are seeking to promote, and on which so many of them depend for survival today, that their clubs' advertising of lotteries is restricted to members only whereas local authorities can promote lotteries by advertisement to all residents within their areas. This is weighting the balance very heavily in favour of the local authority, in a way that members of the Standing Committee did not envisage at the time. I do not, therefore, believe that the proposed regulation is a fair interpretation of the intentions behind the Lotteries Act 1975.

My next point, although not the most serious one, is causing very grave concern to the promoters of small lotteries. It is a point for which I cannot find an explanation. On my first two points, relating to the sale of tickets to shops and public houses, and the advertising of lotteries, there may be room for a certain amount of debate, but I do not think that there is any room for debate on this third point. The consultative document, containing the proposed regulations, has obviously accidentally misinterpreted the Lotteries Act in regard to the percentage of the proceeds allowable as expenses.

The Under-Secretary of State will recall that Section 9(13) of the Lotteries Act 1975 provided that where the whole proceeds of the lottery do not exceed £5,000, 25 per cent. of the proceeds—and, where the whole proceeds exceed £5,000, 15 per cent. of the proceeds—may be deducted in respect of expenses. But in the consultative document no mention whatsoever is made of the 25 per cent. figure at which Parliament arrived in the Lotteries Act 1975.

The relevant part of the consultative document is paragraph 9, which states quite clearly that

"Where the amount of the proceeds of lotteries held under the scheme to be appropriated on account of expenses exceeds 15 per cent. of those proceeds, the promoter shall furnish the Board with any information they require relating to expenses incurred in respect of that lottery."

That, in my view, is not an interpretation of the 1975 Act. As I said, the 1975 Act allowed for 25 per cent. of the proceeds in a lottery not exceeding £5,000, yet the proposed regulations recommend 15 per cent., and if this figure is exceeded the promoter of the lottery may have to send details to the lottery for examination by a gaming board.

Those are the three points which most concern me and a number of my constituents. Probably the third of them is the most important. I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby said. There has already been a grievous delay, which has cost many millions of pounds.

Will the hon. Lady, in reply—page 2, paragraph 8, of the consultative document—tell us whether she has yet entered into consultations with the Gaming Board and the local authority associations, into which, in the document, she said she must enter before the relevant regulations are completed and prepared ready to place before the House?

9.20 p.m.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) for raising the matter of the implementation of the Lotteries Act 1975, and I welcome his continued interest in lottery legislation.

The Lotteries Act received the Royal Assent on 7th August 1975. On 25th August a commencement order was made bringing into operation on 5th September several sections of the Act—in particular, Section 13, which increased the permitted financial limits on certain lotteries promoted by societies for charitable, sporting or other purposes. Our intention in making the commencement order was to enable these bodies to avail themselves, at the earliest possible date, of the increased financial limits permitted under the Act.

The limit on total turnover of a lottery was raised from £750 to £5,000. The maximum value of a single prize was raised from £100 to £1,000. The maximum price of a ticket or a chance was raised from 5p to 25p. The maximum percentage of the proceeds that may be appropriated on account of expenses was raised from 10 per cent, to 25 per cent. I think that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that these changes, which have been in operation for the past 11 months, have provided a valuable opportunity for the charities and sporting clubs to augment their finances from lotteries.

The remaining provisions of the Act, which will permit the promotion of lotteries on a still larger scale and, for the first time, the promotion of lotteries by local authorities, cannot be brought into operation until parliamentary approval has been given to the regulations to be made under Section 10. As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, the Act requires the Secretary of State to consult the Gaming Board for Great Britain and local authority associations before making regulations under that section.

However, during discussion in Standing Committee on the Lotteries Bill it became clear that hon. Members were particularly concerned about two matters: first, that the existing society lotteries should not be swamped by local authority lotteries and, secondly, that the public should not be harassed by aggressive selling of lottery tickets. The use of kiosks, door-to-door selling of tickets and the use of shops for selling tickets were among matters touched upon, but which required fuller discussion, and it was clearly right to give those who would be closely affected by the content of the regulations an opportunity to convey their views to the Government.

At the end of the discussion in Committee, on 20th March, I said:

"The regulations would be drawn up after consulation. It is important that all these matters should be aired and that the feelings of the public, local authorities, the societies and the Committee should be made known. When the regulations are drawn up, the Committee's views…will be taken into account."—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 20th March 1975; c. 173.]

Consequently, the consultative document was issued on 18th May and comments were invited by the end of June. I greatly regret the delay in issuing the consultative document, but reject the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that that was a delaying tactic. I wished to make quicker progress.

Apart from the many details that had to be considered for inclusion in the document, I should explain that the small group of officials in the Home Office who are concerned with this work are also responsible for all the other matters that come under the heading of gambling, for example, the arrangements for the establishment of the Royal Commission on Gambling, the preparation of material for debates on horseracing in both Houses, and matters relating to the Tote and the Horserace Betting Levy Board, including a disagreement between the board and the bookmakers on the amount of the levy, which had to be determined by the Home Secretary.

These and other matters placed an exceptionally heavy load on the staff concerned in the winter of 1975–76. While it may not excuse the delay, it provides an explanation for it. This is a detailed document and attention to detail in it is vital.

Where lottery legislation is involved—in this case, an extension of the number of lotteries—the regulations are as important as the Act itself. There were interdepartmental discussions before the document, which was prepared with the greatest possible care, was finalised.

Before my hon. Friend leaves the time-scale aspect—will she agree to have consultations with the Leader of the House with a view to ensuring that this move is made in the short three-week recess before the new Session in October or November?

I was going to refer to the time scale at the end of my speech, when I made a final summing-up of the situation. The consultative document covered a considerable range of issues, including proposals for the distribution of lottery tickets, advertising material, and the allocation of sales outlets.

It was evident from the debates in Standing Committee that hon. Members wanted the public to be protected from harassment in the promotion of lotteries, and the consultative document reflected that wish. In response to the document the Home Office received representations from more than 200 hon. Members and more than 250 organisations. That was a massive response, and it revealed clearly the desirability of publishing a consultative document that was distributed to major sporting and charity organizations and licensed victuallers. All these opinions are being carefully considered before the regulations are drafted and submitted to Parliament for approval. I have received deputations, and I have listened extremely carefully to the most valuable opinions made in this debate, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Jones) has reminded the House, this is, by definition, a document of consultation.

I intend that the regulations will be drawn in a less restrictive manner than that proposed in the document. As a result of the evidence that I have received, I am aware of the strong feeling that the sale of tickets in public houses and shops does not amount to harassment. Furthermore, these sales are essential for the success of lotteries, on which sporting interests very much rely.

I was asked three specific questions. First, on the issue of small lotteries, the regulations will apply to all lotteries promoted under the 1975 Act. When the Act is fully in operation, Section 45 of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963 will be repealed, so that lotteries will not be subject to two sets of restrictions; they will all be subject to regulations under the 1975 Act.

Secondly, lotteries conducted under the 1975 Act will be free of taxation. There is no foundation for the fears of the Glamorgan County Cricket Club that a sliding scale of taxation will be applied to it.

The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) asked about the limits on expenses. These are laid down in the Act and will remain unaffected by regulations. The paragraph that he was referring to dealt with furnishing the board with any information that it might require relating to expenses.

I fully appreciate the great importance, for the societies that are fundamentally dependent on the proceeds of lotteries, of getting the regulations right. Local authority lotteries will be a new feature of our society and the detailed conditions under which they should operate require careful consideration. As I made clear during the Bill's passage through the House, we intend that neither societies nor local authorities should have any discriminatory advantage in the conduct of lotteries, and I have noted the remarks of the right hon. Member for Crosby in this connection.

It is important that these matters should be fully discussed. As I have said in the House before, it is better to get the right regulations than to hurry and get bad or inadequate ones. However, I share the wish of the House to see lotteries come fully into operation as soon as possible.

I note my hon. Friend's plea that I should consult the Leader of the House, and I shall certainly do that during the recess. I intend to see that regulations to be made under Section 10 are drafted and submitted to Parliament for approval early next Session.

Before the Minister sits down, may I say that I accept her expression of regret about the delay, and in those circumstances I withdraw any implication in my speech that the delay was deliberate. We thank her for the answer to the debate.

Hydrographic Service

9.32

Though it is always a pleasure to discuss hydrography, I cannot honestly say, sincerely grateful though I am for the opportunity to do so, that it is pleasant again to have to record my real anxiety about the capability of the Hydrographic Service adequately to fulfil what many believe to be its vital contemporary tasks. I use the word "many" advisedly, for, as the Minister will know, a substantial number of hon. Members have shown their interest in this subject—the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) and my hon. Friends the Members for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), Fareham (Dr. Bennett), Wells (Mr. Boscawen) and Louth (Mr. Brotherton).

I suppose it is inevitable that as the years go by one acquires certain disillusions about public life. One of mine, which I regret, is the view I now firmly hold that good things do not happen automatically. Too often they have to be shouted for or insisted upon. If they are not, they tend not to occur. This, I believe, is just such a case.

I should record my several interests in in this subject. The first is as a user which began as a young man in the Navy during the war when in 1944 I became the navigator of a motor torpedo boat. My interest then shifted to being a sailor of a more amateur sort, and as Admiral of the House of Commons Yacht Club perhaps I may recall in particular my pride at the competence of the service which the Hydrographer and his highly qualified and most capable staff render to both the commercial world and to the growing number of those who seek recreation on the sea.

I then have a constituency interest in that the Hydrographic Department was moved in part to Taunton many years ago. When Lord Orr-Ewing was Civil Lord of the Admiralty, after he had kindly consulted me, it was decided to close what remained of the London end of that branch of the service. Apart from ships at sea and other establishments—for example, at Hertmonceaux—the whole hydrographic service is happily established in the county town of Taunton in my constituency.

We are a maritime nation, and every citizen must have an interest in ensuring that navigation on the high seas is accurate in the interests of our commerce, bearing in mind the huge number of ships arriving at and leaving our ports daily, and must have an interest in the identification of local hazards for the avoidance of difficulty and danger and thus in nautical safety.

As a citizen, I am also naturally interested in the remarkable foreign exchange earnings of nearly £3 million last year derived from the work of the service in the sale of charts and other publications.

One is also bound to have a substantial interest in seeing that United Kingdom waters are properly charted. It is obvious that the prospects for offshore oil exploration are likely to transform the economy of this country. If we are to be successful in that enterprise, it is a condition precedent that there should be proper and accurate charting of our waters.

The Hydrographic Service might appear to be a parochial matter, but I argue the case for an enhanced hydrographic capability in the widest national sense and interest.

If it is disappointing to have to call in question the competence of Governments—I make no party point, because all Governments have shown a dereliction of duty in this regard—in developing the service to match the modern needs of the United Kingdom. However, there is at least one important compensation: the appointment of the Minister who is to reply to this debate.

I apologise for not being able to give the Minister notice of the questions I wish to ask but I was required to be in my constituency today, necessitating a round trip of over 300 miles. However, perhaps I may take this first public opportunity to congratulate him on being appointed to his great office and say that I am one of a number of hon. Members who have every faith and confidence in his ability and good sense. I hope he will be able to give the subject which I am raising his closest attention and that in his time in this post we shall be able to clear away the log jam of past indecision and prevarication.

The increasing difficulty of the Hydrographer in meeting his commitments has been strongly emphasised in the reports of successive Hydrographers for several years. I had the pleasure of knowing them all well. They were all brilliant servants of this country.

There has been mounting criticism. It has taken many forms. At one time there was a distinguished correspondence inThe Times. There was also a report by the Select Committee on Science and Technology, and particularly by its Sea-Bed Engineering Sub-Committee.

There was an outcry at the apparent indifference of officialdom and its political command, and this led to the establishment of a Hydrographic Study Group on an interdepartmental basis in July 1974. I should say that it did its work tolerably rapidly. Its report was completed in March 1975, and after some pressure it was published in August 1975. It is timely that I should be raising the matter tonight because publication was precisely 12 months ago. Yet still, apparently, there is no decision by the Government on the recommendations of the report. I may be wrong, and if I am no doubt the Minister will be good enough to tell me. Perhaps I am being polite in saying that there has been a mere 12 months' delay. If we go back to the time when the report was first available, the delay is a longer period—namely, 17 months.

It was one of the Minister's hon. Friends who suggested that there was a squalid row between Departments in regard to major matters. I do not know whether that is so, I merely say that that is one opinion that has been voiced. It is an opinion that is fairly widely held.

I understand that the work of the Hydrographic Study Group is being kept under review at working level by a Hydrographic Strategic Review Body, comprising representatives of interested Departments and bodies. If that is so, on the face of it, it is satisfactory in some ways, although I must admit to being somewhat cynical about the work of committees. I remember with great pleasure a remark by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson), with which I profoundly agreed. The right hon. Gentleman commented that the trouble with committees was that on the whole they wrote minutes and took years. One wonders—I hope that this is not the case—whether the establishment of the review body is a device for further postponing a decision. I hope that the Minister will have the opportunity to reassure the House on that ground.

No information has so far been published about the work of that body. Therefore, there are certain questions that automatically follow. For instance, I should like the Minister to tell us when decisions will be made about the Hydrographic Study Group's report. I should like it very much if he could give us up-to-date information about the Hydrographic Strategic Review Body.

I apologise to the Minister for not giving him notice of these questions. If he is not able to answer them now, perhaps he will find other ways of doing so—for example, by correspondence.

Time goes by while essential work apparently waits to be done. Certain practical questions arise. Decisions are one thing, but people have to do the work thereafter.

I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about the staff at Taunton. Have extra staff been recruited to deal with the extra work that is involved, or will they be? Have extra staff been recruited as yet for the survey fleet? Have the additional ships that were recommended been ordered? What has happened? What has been done? What practical steps have been taken?

Anxiety at the apparent lack of progress is the more real as it appears from such published material as is available—for example, the debate on the Royal Navy in the House on 12th May 1956, as reported in theOfficial Report at column 550 and following, and the report of the Hydrographer for 1975, which was published as recently as June 1976—that the hydrographic service is managing to do more with less money. I think I am right in saying that the figure will be £11·9 million this year in comparison with £14·6 million in 1973–74. However, it has managed to do more only by adopting what seem to be remarkably extreme measures—for instance, as is evidenced in the report of the Hydrographer, by keeping all his ships at sea and working his crews about 100 hours a week. That may well be meritorious. It may well be in accordance with the tradition of the Navy, which is well accustomed to hard work and which sets a fine example of devotion to duty. Obviously, however, it is not a situation that can continue indefinitely.

One realises that the Minister has indeed a most difficult task. The climate of opinion is one in which economic stringency is regarded as being a healthy norm. That is not a view to which I personally subscribe, but there it is; it has to be at present. Obviously the Minister, has, for what it is worth, my complete understanding and sympathy at a time of this sort. I am sure that he has the understanding and sympathy of the whole House. One understands, too—to be plain about it—that there is a strong emotional argument in this country, and more particularly in the House perhaps, over what our defence needs should or should not be. These matters make very great difficulty for the Minister at this time.

However, I believe that the Minister is entitled to say to his senior colleagues and to the Cabinet two things. The first is this There is work for the hydrographic service to do in the national interest which is crucial to the whole economic future of the United Kingdom. Therefore, it must be right that this work should be given the highest priority, and so important is it and so urgent that, if new funds cannot be allocated, economies must be made elsewhere to allow it to be accomplished. The second thing that the Minister is entitled to say is that this would be, if the matter were put quite plainly to them, the view of the majority of hon. Members.

I propose to attempt to justify those statements, as I believe I easily can. I have said something about offshore oil already. I do not need to stress to a sophisticated audience such as this the significance of offshore oil to the United Kingdom economy. The Continental Shelf programme in particular, like other parts of the offshore remit of the Natural Environment Research Council and the Institute of Geological Sciences, requires close collaboration with the Hydrographer. It seems to me—I thought I ought to say it plainly as a view—that the two together should be aiming at producing offshore charts and geological maps comparable with what we have on land, developed, after all, since William Smith published his epoch-making Geological Map of England in 1815. Though it is 161 years old, one might almost say that that is still light years ahead of anything we have at sea.

It is true that detailed geographical data are now available for the oldfield areas that are currently being exploited, but all the same, as I am sure the Minister knows, there is little general geophysical or hydrographic data available for most of our Continental Shelf of about 180,000 square miles—it is no trivial task, but this is our back yard—let alone our forthcoming exclusive economic zone, the EEZ, or the EE-Zee for those who prefer to speak in an American rather than an English idiom. That, without Rockall, is about 254,000 square miles. This means, therefore, in that particular matter, to which I shall return shortly, that our negotiators are largely in the dark when bargaining with the French and Irish about the Western Approaches.

I should like to give two specific examples of the sort of thing I have in mind. I never know, Mr. Speaker, quite what is in order and what is not in terms of demonstrations. However, the Minister will be familiar with the chart in the Hydrographer's report which I have in my hand. I dare say that you, Mr. Speaker, can see the darker blue zones around the United Kingdom on the chart. These are the few zones in our home waters—our back yard—which have been surveyed to modern standards. The white and light blue disclose a discreditable state of affairs. These are the areas which have not been surveyed to modern standards. We do not know what the situation is—to repeat the phrase—in our own back yard.

To be more particular, I refer to Admiralty Chart No. 294. Here is a scene which shows the demarcation line between the British and Norwegian zones, the Norwegian on the right to the east and the British to the left on the west. What does one see? There is a mass of soundings and other information marked in the Norwegian area and very little in our own. In other words, where we are right up against the boundaries between our own limits and those of our friendly neighbouring nations, they have better information than we have.

I would quote a third example. I have a small representation of the approaches to the significant port of Milford Haven. One-twelfth of the area round about was surveyed as recently as 1947, and eleven-twelfths was surveyed at times beginning as long ago as 1838. The majority of that area was surveyed in those times. I find it extraordinary that we simply do not know the reality about our own back yard. These three examples show, if further proof is needed, how behind we are.

All the time, there are extraordinary incidents when suddenly one comes across some new feature below the waters which had not been noticed before. In the old days, when ships had a small draught it might not have mattered too much. But today, with bulk carriers and VLCC's—very large cargo carriers—and crude oil carriers, the draft of ships is immense and it matters greatly. The recently-found pinnacles off Holyhead, for example, go to indicate the dearth of important, if not crucial, detailed knowledge.

Paper No. 8, called "The Strategy for Research and Development", was published in July 1976 by the Offshore Energy Technology Board. I know that the Minister will be familiar with it. It shows that the funding of the Continental Shelf programme is now largely in the hands of the Department of Energy through its Offshore Energy Technology Board. It is responsible for 68 per cent., and other bodies, including the Department of Industry, are responsible for the remainder. But there is uncertainty about whether the funds are sufficient to give this programme the required level of priority. Everywhere one looks there is uncertainty.

One may well think that it is an appalling indictment of authority in the United Kingdom that large areas of the sea, in the immediate vicinity of this island, are under-surveyed or not surveyed at all by modern methods. But the situation is even worse than I have described. As a nation we are now involved in the UNCLOS. I shall explain what that is in just a moment. Its latest session started last Monday, and it is, in effect, the Law of the Sea conference. It is likely to give us responsibility for a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, which means that we shall need to know all about this area of the sea and the sea bed which stretches out beyond Rockall.

If the Hydrographer is to discharge those responsibilities, he needs to get his part of the work under way now. If he does not get his work under way now, we shall not have the necessary knowledge to safeguard our interests properly. It is remarkable that at least three-quarters of our Continental Shelf has never been properly charted, and I suspect that a lot of the rest was done only with lead and line a long time ago.

Perhaps that is enough about home waters. The situation throughout the world is even more astonishing. Only 2 per cent. of the ocean has been charted at all, and we shall very soon want to know far more about the deep ocean, again as an outcome of the Law of the Sea conference, and probably within two or three years.

I should emphasise that this is not a matter of mere altruism or eccentric enthusiasm on the part of people such as myself. It is important to recognise that surveys overseas are essential for our own merchant fleet if our ships are to carry cargoes safely into and out of foreign ports, and it is essential also not only for our own trade but for the major world carriers. The work done by our British Hydrographic Department is of immense importance to world shipping, which, after all, is largely controlled from London. It is in our vital national interest to ensure that charts are kept up to date and that hazards are found and plotted promptly for all the world's ships. Accidents and losses, after all, affect our balance of payments, and can affect it very severely.

I shall not bore the House with figures, but one has only to contemplate what could happen to a 250,000-ton or 350,000-ton cargo carrier or bulk oil carrier to see at once the dimensions of the matter under discussion. The nationality of ships is not the prime consideration, since marine insurance and cargo insurance as well as shipbroking are largely London-based, and, I am happy to say, earn us much by way of foreign exchange—or invisible earnings, as the phrase goes.

There is another aspect of the matter in which, I hope, the Minister will find an opportunity to interest himself. It seems to me that we should encourage overseas countries to undertake much more of the essential survey work themselves or, alternatively, to contribute funds for that purpose. I should have suggested that there was an important contribution to be made here through aid funds, and it has been somewhat disquieting—I do not know whether the Minister has had opportunity to note this—that the Ministry of Overseas Development says that there is no demand from developing countries.

I do not believe that. There certainly is a demand for ordnance surveys on land, and there should be for coastal and offshore surveys in many areas. Some countries—the West Indies is one obvious example—are too small to undertake the work themselves, except perhaps on a communal basis or through a regional grouping, but in two cases—that is, Nigeria and Malaysia, old friends of this country—we persuaded them to build their own ships, and those ships have been built in this country.

The ships have not yet come into service, and, presumably, our Hydrographer will be expected to help with the training of those who will man them and the setting up of their own hydrographic offices. I very much hope that he will do that, and I hope also that the House will consider that it would be of benefit to this country if he did.

I do not understand why the Ministry of Overseas Development appears to be dragging its feet on anything to do with overseas hydrographic surveys. Bodies such as the International Chamber of Shipping have stated that the most urgent and important need at present is for the Red Sea first to allow VLCCs to reach the Suez terminal of the Mediterranean pipeline, and later to use the canal, which is to be deepened from 38 ft. to 53 ft. by January 1979, and later to 67 ft., which is really only a short time ahead.

Egypt does not have the capability and it wants the work done, but the Ministry of Overseas Development is reluctant to fund it. I should have thought that we could assist and encourage work there and work in many other countries, and I am sure that it would be profitable and valuable to us.

What worries me as one paints the picture of the immense amount of work to be done both at home and overseas in areas where we are trading and areas which are crucial to the world's shipping and to our own great interest is that it seems that there will now be no possibility of the ships which the Hydrographic Study Group recommended should be built to get the work done being built in time to meet the projected programme.

That is not all. It is not only a matter of new ships. The five inshore survey ships are getting old, as I had the occasion to see for myself the other day, and will need replacement shortly even on the reduced programme. I hope that the Minister may be able to say, either tonight or at some other convenient time, something on that subject. After all, it would be a great help to the shipbuilding industry if those orders could be placed.

In the short time since you, Mr. Speaker, announced the order for debates on this Bill, I have received a letter from the Executive Chairman of Brooke Marine which would interest the Minister and which I will send to him. He says:

"We at Brooke Marine have had another successful year, working almost throughout the world to bring in further work by negotiations or tender, but as we stand, unless we obtain further orders in the near future, there will be heavy redundancies at Lowestoft. As Chairman and Chief Executive my final endeavours are concentrated on ensuring as far as possible that Brookes join 'British Shipbuilders' still as one of the most efficient and profitable yards in the industry, both for the sake of all the loyal and hardworking personnel who have made the Company what it is today and also to minimise and if possible prevent any adverse effect on Lowestoft and district relating in the first place to the many local outside business and sub-contractors who have to a varying extent been dependent on Brookes."

He goes on about what Brookes does and how it built survey ships for the Navy and for Nigeria.

He says that the company has tried to get information as to whether or not it will get further orders but has not been successful, and he writes:

"The response was negative, principally because of the cut in the Defence Estimates (why survey ships should be lumped with fighting ships, I do not know). The question might be asked: When are the Government going to place orders for the four additional coastal survey vessels recommended in paragraph 163(5) of the 1975 Report of the Hydrographic Study Group?"

I will send the Minister that letter.

I quote that letter because I want the Minister to understand what this uncertainty, which is not his fault or responsibility, means in practical terms to good people who are trying to do their duty in the national interest and with no thought of politics, whatever their feelings may be.

The Ministry of Defence alone cannot meet the cost of modern hydrography, Hydrography is now a commercial as well as a defence matter, as I hope everything I have said has illustrated. It should be as much the concern of every other Department of Government as it is of the Navy. So I am not arguing for empire-building in the Civil Service. Indeed, any extra staff recruited at Taunton at a time when the Army is pressing to leave that town, will be productive staff and their cost will be recovered out of earnings on chart sales and the like. The embargo on Civil Service recruitment should not apply to them.

I feel, and have argued in the past, that what we want to try to establish is a different method of financing for the future which would insulate the Hydrographer from defence cuts. If we do not do that, the first cuts will affect him as things get tighter on more vital defence interests and major defence capabilities, especially ships and aircraft. Of course this is ludicrous.

Therefore, perhaps an alternative might be something on the lines of the way in which the RAF approaches the Meteorological Office—that is to say, a separate parliamentary Vote for hydrography, administered, of course, by the Ministry of Defence. If we do not have something like that, it seems that any further defence cuts will make the Hydrographer extremely vulnerable, even if he might find some funds, as presumably he is doing at the moment, from within the overall MOD funds to keep the existing ships going until the Departments which should make up their minds are bludgeoned by parliamentary and other pressures into doing so. I ask the Government to say whether extra funds have been released so far. I hope that it will be possible to get from the Minister, without delay, a clear statement of future policy.

In my experience, morale both at sea and on land in the hydrographic service is high, but indecision and vacillation must inevitably have a debilitating effect. Departments should face up to their individual responsibilities.

I give a final example of how ludicrous the situation currently is in practical terms. About a fortnight ago two aeroplanes were lost on the Humber. Six ships are currently searching an area about five miles square trying to find them. But there is so much clutter on the sea bed—unknown wrecks of 100 years ago or more—that it is possible, some would say likely, that the planes will never be found. If we had a proper background survey of the area, all existing wrecks or obstructions could be eliminated since they would appear on the chart, and the search ships could concentrate on new anomalies and save an enormous amount of time in checking with divers and grabs. It is not comfortable to dive at these depths.

The ships have been searching for about one and a half weeks, and they are to stay for another three weeks, at a very high cost to the Ministry of Defence, whereas a detailed background survey done at a normal rate of working would have greatly reduced the cost of finding the planes, assuming that they are found.

That is one small example. I could give many others. Not only do we have a highly experienced capability in terms of men but, as I have said, we are fortunate to have an outstanding Hydrographer and an outstanding naval and civilian contingent. We also have a tradition of excellence.

We are on the fringe of further most exciting technical achievements, such as the hydrosearch, with which I am sure the Minister is familiar. That is a sector-spanning narrow beam sonar produced by Marconi under a quasi-Government contract. I mention it because it is worth while to bear in mind that there is a significant commercial spin-off from an efficient and developing naval hydrographic service.

I summarise my views thus. The hydrographic task in and around the waters of this country and in the world where we have responsibility and opportunity is substantial and immediate. There is, alas, total uncertainty as to the Government's intentions. It is surely deplorable at a time when we wish our country to be commercially successful that there appears to be inadequate support for commercial activities of various kinds—technological, shipping interests, the potential offshore exploration. I have referred to oil, but the sea is a treasure house which in our lifetime will be exploited to the prodigious benefit of this country and others, if we take the opportunity.

It is deplorable, too, that there should be real dangers of shipwreck and pollution—the "Torrey Canyon" is well within recent memory—because of the lack of proper charting of our waters. It is deplorable, too, that we are in a weaker position than we should be as a nation to negotiate internationally.

We need a new national commitment and determination, and I wish the Minister every success in achieving it. As the Government's duty to undertake this major task is so obvious and so certain, I am sure that I can offer him the unqualified support of both sides of the House and a majority of hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. The Minister will certainly deserve the gratitude of our nation if he is able to assume that task and to discharge it successfully.

10.10 p.m.

It is always a pleasure to listen to the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann), who commands the respect of the House on many subjects, not least that of the hydrographic service. I was greatly delighted by the latter part of his speech and by the felicitations that he extended to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary.

I do not object to the right hon. Gentleman's criticism of the Government; I think that the Government deserve some criticism, though I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman sufficiently recognised that other Governments have been very lackadaisical in the matter of hydro-graphic services. This is a matter for great regret. The hydrographic service is one of the most important in the Defence Department, but for a number of years it has been neglected. For a number of years we have not been fair to the personnel involved, in that we have not allowed the service to grow as it should to meet modern requirements.

Many parts of the sea have not been charted. It will probably be a couple of centuries before all parts of the sea will be charted. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the difficulty of finding two aircraft lost in the Humber. This underlines the difficulty of finding a plane or a ship that is lost in an uncharted area of the sea.

I did not realise the importance of this subject until I read about it. I am now firmly of the opinion that all Governments must give it much greater priority. I do not think that Defence Ministers are aware of the need for more funds to be placed at the disposal of the hydro-graphic service. On the other hand, it is not fair to expect the Defence Department to make an increased allocation of funds at a time of defence cuts.

As the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, other Departments are involved. The sea routes that have been charted are of great help to the development of trade, industry and energy, the latter two more directly than the former. It is difficult to understand why fewer ships are required for this important task. The Hydro-graphic Study Group, which reported in 1975, recommended that the survey fleet should be increased by four or seven. What has been done about that? The Study Group considered that that increase was needed if the hydrographic department was to carry out with efficency and speed required maritime surveys.

There are dangers to ships on the seas, and even our Continental Shelf has been surveyed to the extent of only 24 per cent. or 26 per cent. Last year two enormous pieces of rock were discovered in the Celtic Sea. The tips of those rocks were about 30 feet below the surface. They could have caused great damage to large ships with a deep draught. I wonder how long they had been there. As there are earthquakes on land, I expect there is turmoil on the sea bed. I believe that those rocks had been there for a long time, but they were discovered only last year. They could have caused grave damage if they had been close to sea routes on which large tankers travel. The charting of too many of our routes is obsolete. As ships become larger, routes that were safe become no longer safe. Something must be done about those routes. The danger to our large ships must be impressed upon the Government. We must not take risks.

Some of our large tankers cost huge sums of money. The right hon. Member for Taunton must have read my notes, because he has covered the same ground that I intended to cover. A 10,000-ton ship costs about £1 million; therefore, a 250,000-ton vessel would cost £25 million. If two tankers worth £50 million or £60 million each were lost, the additional money for which we are asking over the next seven years would be saved.

One also has to take into account the cost of spilled oil, which can amount to enormous sums if the spillage occurs in inland waters. There is also always the danger of loss of life. I cannot understand why any Government should be so parsimonious about such an important service. On many occasions tributes have been paid to the personnel for the excellent work that they do in charting sea routes so that ships can go on their way in safety. We praise them, but are not generous enough to make sure that they have the means to carry out their duties responsibly.

The hydrographic service has also earned our commendation for the amount of work it has done in the North Sea. In that difficult area it has charted routes so that oil platforms can be towed safely, thus making an important contribution to the success of the North Sea oil projects. In spite of that useful work, carried out day by day under great difficulties, there is some doubt in the minds of the crew about their future. Everyone in the service is fully aware of the great amount of surveying that must still be done. One cannot foresee a time when it will be on top of its work.

The Government must realise that it takes time to train such personnel. The Government cannot allow them to lose faith in their work, so that they leave the service, and then expect to have the required personnel if at some time we apply common sense and start to increase the amount of money granted to the service. There should be some encouragement to the crews. They should be assured that the service will not be run down.

There is a great deal of evidence that the service must be improved. Around our shores are many uncharted wrecks. Although their number is insignificant compared with the number in the sea as a whole, they are dangerous to our coastal shipping. The Government must accept full responsibility for safety in our coastal waters, which is of prime importance. The same principle must apply to the Continental Shelf.

We are obliged to see that, wherever possible, our hydrographic service is on offer to the poor, undeveloped nations, but the nations belonging to OPEC, which can well afford it, should be made to pay for the work that we do on their behalf.

The rôle of the Royal Navy in hydro-graphy is probably the envy of the world. Its work is very beneficial to several Departments, directly and indirectly, so the defence budget should not have to carry almost all the financial cost. Obviously, the work in the North Sea has proved beneficial to the Department of Energy and other Departmentts, but the Department of Energy pays far too little. The future of the service is much too important to allow Departments to become involved in squabbles over who shall pay for this or that.

What is the amount required by the service? Figures are being thrown about of between £50 million and £90 million as additional payments over the next seven years. The figure of £30 million is given in the study report, but the amount has increased because of inflation. It is a small price for the benefits that can be derived from sea routes being brough up to modern standards. A few wrecks could easily cost a great deal more, withtout taking into account the possible loss of life.

The Government must take reasonable and responsible action in the very near future. A sufficient sum should be allocated to the defence budget for no other purpose than to bring up to date the work of our hydrographic service.

This subject is so serious that we ought to spend at least half a day discussing it at some time when the House is not nearing the end of a Session. I do not believe that any defence cuts should be made which would affect the amount of money spent for hydrographic purposes. If my hon. Friend, or the Secretary of State for Defence, requires any help by way of pressure from the Back Benches to ensure that a separate fund is set up under the control of the Defence Department for hydrographic purposes, I am certain that both sides of the House will provide that pressure. We must make certain that the maritime services in our seas and coastal waters, on the Continental Shelf and throughout the sea routes of the world are brought up to the modern standards necessary to ensure that our ships can sail in safety.

10.27 p.m.

I intervene briefly in this debate tonight wearing a Royal Navy tie. I do not speak as a party politician when I say that I hope the Government will assure the House that they will continue to spend money that is necessary to maintain the hydrographic service so that we remain the most important hydrographic nation in the world.

I say that we are the most important hydrographic nation in the world because for the past 250 years our survey ships have sailed across all the oceans of the world. We have produced the charts which people like myself and my right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) used when we sailed the seas. It is important that we continue to provide that service to the mariners of the world.

At the moment, the way in which money is being taken from the service means that the Russians will become the producers of the world's charts. If that is so, they will be able to dictate what goes on at sea. The Law of the Sea Conference is about to report and may recommend a 200-mile limit. If the Russians provide our charts, they will be in a position to dictate to the mariners of the world.

I ask the Minister, who, like me, is a sailor, to make sure that we spend as much money as is necessary to enable us to continue to provide the hydrographic services that we have provided for the past 200 years. It is as simple as that. If the British Government, irrespective of party, refuse to spend the few million pounds necessary to provide these services, we shall have failed our mariners. That would indeed be a disgraceful thing.

10.29 p.m.

The right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann)—I am grateful to him for his typically generous references to me—has again raised a matter of great national importance. I know that the House will agree with what he, my hon. Friend the Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) and the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Brotherton) have said about the tremendous value of the work of the hydrographic service of the Royal Navy. I know that the House will acknowledge the skill and urgency with which the right hon. Gentleman has highlighted the importance of the hydro-graphic service as a subject for debate. He must feel it an honour that the Hydrographer's organisation is located in his constituency, just as I feel it an honour to be the Minister responsible for the service. It forms an esteemed and integral part of the Royal Navy.

The right hon. Gentleman has reminded the House that the issue he has raised is more than a matter of parochial interest, important though that is in itself. He has raised issues, moreover, which go beyond the interests of the Royal Navy—indeed, beyond the interests of the Ministry of Defence. For the function of the hydrographic service is a national function—indeed, an international function. The House will acknowledge that the contribution which successive Hydrographers of the Navy and their staffs have made over the years to the safety of world shipping is inestimable.

The right lion. Member raised the question of staff. A complementing review of the number of staff needed at Taunton has been completed. A decision on the findings will be taken shortly.

What I hope to do tonight in replying to this debate is to look a little more closely at the work of the hydrographic service in both the defence and civilian fields. In doing so, I shall remind the House of the historical context in which the Hydrographer carries out his traditional tasks. I shall also remind the House of the recommendations relating to hydrography made by the Select Committee on Science and Technology on Offshore Engineering in 1974, and I shall remind hon. Members too of the work of the Hydrographic Study Group which sat between 1974 and 1975. The right hon. Member commented freely on the work of those groups and invited me to respond.

The reports of those bodies drew attention, as the right hon. Gentleman has done, to the value of the contribution of the hydrographic service to the country. But also, like the right hon. Gentleman, they drew attention to the problem that confronts the hydrographic department at a time when public expenditure is under the most severe pressure, when the Navy has already withdrawn from many of its traditional areas of deployment, and when the needs of the civil sector, both merchant shipping and the offshore industry, have never grown at a faster pace.

I shall be quite frank with the House. I shall not attempt to disguise the fact that although an expansion of the hydro-graphic fleet is desirable, in the present economic circumstances it is likely to be as much as the Government can do to maintain a fleet of the present size.

I fully share the views that right hon. and hon. Members have expressed previously and again today on both sides of the House, about the gravity of this problem. It is very serious and is not very tractable. But we are working on it. We are looking for a solution which will ensure that the needs of the Royal Navy and the needs of the civil sector are met equitably, effectively and efficiently within the resources available. It is not merely a matter for the Ministry of Defence.

But lest the House should form the impression that we are neglecting the needs of the hydrographic service at a time when it is more needed than ever, I shall explain how we are making continuing efforts to maintain the traditional high standards that the nation has enjoyed from the Hydrographer and to that end are doing all we can to improve the quality of his material resources. Yet even here we cannot do all that we would wish. Where the hydrographic service is concerned, there can never be room for complacency.

Let us for a moment look back over the century and a half for which the Hydrographer of the Navy has been the national authority responsible for hydro-graphic surveys and nautical chartings. Let us see how the rôle of the Hydrographer has remained unaltered but how outside circumstances have transformed the conditions in which and the purposes for which that rôle has to be fulfilled.

Many right hon. and hon. Members, I know, will already be aware of the historical foundations of the hydro-graphic service and of the changes in trends which have led to this debate today. Some of these have already been aired tonight, but I think it would be helpful to a full understanding of the difficulty of the issues involved if I summarise them now.

The first Hydrographer of the Navy, Alexander Dalrymple, was appointed under George III in 1795. He was charged by the Admiralty Board of the time with the provision of charts for His Majesty's Fleet which was then suffering considerable losses because of inadequate knowledge of our own seas and of the routes to our overseas possessions. In the ensuing years of exploration the need for surveys and charts grew along with our interests in naval power and trade.

Since in those days trade followed the flag, Hydrographers of the day were able to provide, first charts, and then series of charts and finally a world-wide coverage of charts, which matched the needs not only of our men-of-war but of our trading fleets. Because our interests were eventually so widespread, British charts further served the larger international needs of burgeoning sea trade. Hence the Admiralty chart series, with its overall coverage incorporating an unrivalled survey basis and its rigidly high standards, emerged pre-eminent and with a reputation for quality which has happily lasted through the years and is as high as it ever was.

In the last century the acquired knowledge of the seas' depths and limits inspired and encouraged exploration of a new dimension of endeavour in founding oceanography. Hon. Members will be aware of the Royal Navy's contributions in the early days of this science and of the Hydrographer's significant effort since in the fields of oceanography and geophysics. It is a matter for regret, therefore, that the Hydrographer is no longer able to devote resources to this field.

It is important to note that until relatively recently the needs of Navy and trade, and to a lesser extent science itself, were met by the same hydrography. Ships' draughts, whatever their purpose, varied little for many years until the dramatic increases in size and tonnage which we have witnessed since the Second World War in tankers and, more recently, in bulk carriers. So sudden was this change of trend that the Hydrographer had to concentrate his first priorities in shoal water areas of shipping routes—the approaches to our own islands, for example, and the extremely busy Malacca Straits.

We therefore find that over the past 180 years or so the Hydrographer has become not only the Navy's Hydrographer, but, and very properly, the nation's Hydrographer. It is he who is called upon to meet new requirements and priorities in the needs of merchant shipping. To meet these requirements, increasing proportions of the base survey work have been for trade rather than for defence, and this at a time when defence funds have been contracted and the Navy's sphere of activity geographically speaking has been diminishing rather than expanding.

With the sudden increase in sea-bed exploitation over the past decade, the Hydrographer has accepted an important new challenge. He has initiated work by the ships of the hydrographic fleet for the new requirements of the offshore industry. Surveys have been undertaken both for exploration and specifically for towing out the giant concrete structures used for subsequent exploitation of the seabed. But, as we all agree and have heard endorsed here today, much more needs to be done. Good sea maps are just as much a base necessity of organised national activity in present circumstances as are land maps. I do not need to spell out to the House how their importance is likely to be re-emphasised as a result of the Law of the Sea conference. We must look to the time when the topography of an exclusive economic zone is as available to those who want to know as is, for example, the topography of the Quantocks, the Vale of Taunton and South Yorkshire.

It was an awareness of the new responsibilities and the new challenges inherent in them that the Hydrographer of the Navy was having to meet that led to the recent renewal of public and parliamentary interest in the future of the hydrographic fleet. A mismatch between role and resources was suspected. In 1974, in the course of its consideration of offshore engineering, the Select Committee on Science and Technology recommended that the hydrographic survey fleet should be expanded. The Committee recommended that provision should be made for a substantial increase of ships and equipment for the hydro-graphic survey of the Continental Shelf and urged that the customer-contractor principle be utilised to fund the Hydrographer mainly from civil expenditure. The Committee's report was published in November 1974.

On 17th July 1974, my predecessor announced the setting up of a special study group to assess the future civil hydrographic requirement. This group reported in March 1975 and its work embraced the future national needs for hydrography and the identification of resources to meet those needs. The group consisted of representatives of all Government Departments with an interest in hydrography, as well as representatives of shipping and commercial organisations. The recommendations of the group have met with a great deal of support from Parliament, the Press and the public.

The growing need for hydrographic surveying in support of the offshore energy industry and merchant shipping is indeed widely accepted. To meet the growing need, the Hydrographic Study Group estimated that the present fleet would have to be expanded from its strength of 13 survey ships to 20 ships. This was recognised by the firm Brooke Marine to which the right hon. Member for Taunton referred. I was interested in what he said and shall be glad to see any correspondence that he feels able to hand over.

But the identification of these new needs took place at a time when the Government's defence review was pointing towards a reduction in the world-wide deployment of the Royal Navy and with it a reduction in the defence need for hydrographic surveying. The logic of this scenario pointed in the opposite direction to the recommendations of the Select Committee and of the study group. In defence terms, it would have been right to have reduced the size of the hydro-graphic fleet to that which was necessary for purely defence requirements.

We were therefore faced with a contradiction. For defence purposes alone, a need was identified for only 10 of the fleet of 13 ships; for national purposes, as the study group pointed out, we needed a fleet of 20. And all the time the underlying economic constraints were such that the only new public expenditure projects which the Government could afford were those of the highest and most acute and immediate priority.

In that difficult situation the Government's consideration of the recommendations of the Hydrographic Study Group regarding the future size of the hydro-graphic fleet and the source of its funding have been based on the premise that we should concentrate on maintaining the fleet at its present size and finding the money to run it on a new financial basis which was both sound and fair and, in particular, which did not involve a subsidy to civil activities from defence funds.

Let me make it quite clear that we fully recognise and support the aim of an expanded hydrographic fleet, but we have had to put this aim on one side, at least until the national economy has been regenerated to the point where we can afford it.

But let us not even underestimate the difficulties of simply maintaining the hydrographic fleet at its present size. The role and standing of the fleet, as I have said and as the right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members have acknowledged tonight, is renowned throughout the world. It is renowned as a part of the Royal Navy and as a service funded by the defence budget. I must say quite openly that the defence budget has been reduced to the point where it simply cannot be used as a source of subsidy for civilian purposes. There is simply no fat at all. It may be that that was what the right hon. Gentleman had in mind when he suggested that perhaps a new method of funding was now required.

In the past, when the Navy had a world-wide rôle, it made sense for the Hydrographer's work on behalf of merchant shipping to be regarded as a civil bonus. Nowadays his work on behalf of the civilian sector is becoming increasingly extra to defence work, and it is neither fair nor reasonable to demand that the defence budget should meet the cost.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is similar to what the Select Committee on Expenditure said about the policing work that is done by the Royal Navy on oil rig patrols and by the British Army of the Rhine in education and health services? The Select Committee argued that such work should not be a charge on the defence budget because it distorts it. Is that not similar to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) is saying?

Yes. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

Nowadays the Hydrographer's work on behalf of the civilian sector is becoming increasingly extra to defence work. It is neither fair nor reasonable to demand that the defence budget should meet the cost. This is not the only cost that the defence budget is now being asked to bear. Hon. Members are beginning to see and find from their own specialist and highly expert studies that there is what amounts to an imposition. But the Ministry of Defence is not the only Department whose budget is under pressure, and answers which might seem simple in theory are not so simple in practice.

Nobody finds it exactly easy these days to take on new financial commitments. It is, therefore, taking us some while to evolve new arrangements to safeguard the future of the hydrographic fleet, and with it the safe future of merchant shipping and the efficient exploitation of the sea bed. It is economic stringency which has faced us with this problem, and it is economic stringency which makes the answer so difficult. In the longer term, when the economy regains its buoyancy, I hope that it will be a relatively straightforward matter to find an answer. But this is a problem which will not wait.

In my view, it is particulary urgent because the 200 and more officers and men of the hydrographic service who have inherited the proud reputation of their predecessors are understandably concerned about their future. The Government are aware of the aspirations of the service to carry out its demanding and hard job, often involving long and repeated seagoing separations from families, in the service of the Royal Navy and of the nation as a whole. I know that the House holds the service in high esteem. We must not let it down.

At the moment, however, all that I can tell the service and all that I can tell the House—I now take up another question put to me by the right hon. Gentleman—is that we acknowledge the need to maintain the fleet, and we in the Ministry of Defence have agreed to continue to fund it at its present strength until April next year. By that time the longer-term funding arrangements should be resolved.

The Hydrographic Study Group made other recommendations besides those referring to the future size of the fleet and the way in which it should be funded, and I am glad to be able to report that progress has been made on some of these. Most notably, the strategic review body proposed by the study group has been set up to improve co-ordination between all the Government Departments and statutory bodies. This held its first meeting last May to discuss possible future programming requirements. I have to admit to the House, however, that until we have settled the funding issue there is a limit to the contribution that the review body can make in this area. Furthermore, liaison officers have been appointed, as recommended by the study group, to act as focal points in Government Departments and statutory bodies for receiving information and co-ordinating with the Hydrographer.

I hope that that information will go some way towards meeting the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I can give him some information about the two planes that were lost in the North Sea, about which he asked. I am glad to be able to tell him that one of the planes has, in fact, been found by one of our hydrographic ships.

Not surprisingly, the hydrographic service continues to maintain the high quality of its work and is continually striving to improve its performance in response to changing needs in order to ensure that navigation around our shores remains safe. New developments include the introduction of specialised maps and publications, and the development of new sophisticated sonar scanning equipment which will enhance the fleet's surveying capabilities.

In particular, a new series of 11 North Sea offshore charts have been produced covering the area from Flamborough Head to 100 miles north of the Shetlands. Their enhanced scale—about three miles to an inch—enables not only portrayal of the available bathymetric data but also clear indication of offshore installations and their associated pipelines and buoy-age. I hope that this will go some way towards redressing the imbalance that the right hon. Gentleman brought out so impressively in his display during his speech. The new series of charts also shows agreed national Continental Shelf boundaries.

Furthermore, the Hydrographer has only this week published a new handbook which gives the mariner guidance on the new internationally-agreed system of buoy characteristics and placings which will be implemented by Trinity House in the spring of 1977. There is an obvious need for the navigator to be well informed of the scheme before it happens, involving as it does some 500 buoy changes in the Channel area alone. These changes will, incidentally, represent an additional load on the staff at Taunton.

On the equipment side, the prototype of a new sonar device will be fitted into HMS "Bulldog" for sea trials currently scheduled for May 1977. The equipment has been developed and funded by the Department of Industry on behalf of the Department of Trade from an original design of the Ministry of Defence. Its deployment will for the first time enable accurate positioning and safe depth determinations of all sea-bed obstructions out to a range of 300 metres on either side of the survey vessel. This should offer enormous savings of time over existing survey methods, and enable the much more efficient location of the many wrecks and marine obstructions that lie on the seabed around our shores.

On a previous occasion the House has been told there are about 14,000 known wrecks around the United Kingdom, and we need to know as much about them as we can and to pass the information on to our mariners and fishermen—and, indeed, to all other sea users. I know how interested the right hon. Gentleman is in the recreational use of the sea, and I know of the enduring interest of the hon. Member for Louth.

We can never do enough surveying around our shores. The answers that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and I gave to the Questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) on 7th July give some idea of the extent of outstanding work on the Continental Shelf.

I am sorry for having spoken at such length and I am grateful to the House for having listened to me with such attention as I have set out the changing requirements that the nation has placed on the hydrographic service and the problems that the changes bring, not only for the Ministry of Defence but also for the Department of Trade and the Department of Energy. As I promised, I have been quite frank with the House on the difficult situation that confronts us at a time of severe public expenditure restraint.

In doing so, I hope that I have assured the House of the seriousness with which the Government regard the need for a continuing and thriving hydrographic service and of our determination to secure the future of the service in a way which will enable it to fulfil its rôle in the years ahead with the same distinction as it has fulfilled its rôle in the past. I have also tried to show that we are giving the Hydrographer of the Navy all the support we can to enable him to exploit advances in underwater technology so that his standards of service, already so high, can be improved further.

I shall gladly write to the right hon. Gentleman on any matters that I have not been able to cover tonight. I assure him of my intention to pay an early visit to Taunton. I shall also convey his views on the potential of overseas hydrography surveys to the Ministry of Overseas Development.

The message that I must leave with the House tonight, however, is that we have as yet some way to go before our objectives can be met, and there is no room for any complacency on the part of anyone who has a serious concern for the well-being of British shipping, both civil and naval, and for the efficient and expeditious exploitation of our vital offshore resources. We have not got the right answers yet, but we must get them soon. I thank hon. Gentlemen again for giving me this opportunity to put my views on record.

British Airways Travel Division

10.56 p.m.

It is an apt demonstration of the diversity of these debates that, having just plumbed the depths of the sea, we should immediately take to the air.

In addition to my parliamentary activities, I act as a travel consultant. As the activities of the British Airways Travel Division directly affect the interests of anyone engaged in the industry, it is important that I should declare that, but it is not exclusively or even primarily in that capacity that I raise this matter tonight. As a member of the travelling public and an individual taxpayer, no less than as a Member of Parliament, my interests are involved.

As a Member with the unusual qualification of having served his commercial career in the travel industry, I regard it as one of my responsibilities to pay close attention to travel matters and to alert a wider public to travel issues of which they may not be aware. Accordingly, I feel no need to apologise for the asperity of the remarks that I shall make, particularly as the Minister—for whose attendance I am grateful but for whom this is only one of several late night calls —has promised me that he will not mince his words either.

The British Airways Travel Division—or, as it is known from its initials, BATL or 'Battle"—was formed in 1973 by bringing together the passenger services of BEA and BOAC when those two bodies were merged into British Airways. It is responsible for the sale of all British Airways products in the United Kingdom, including airline seats, hotel reservations and package tours. It is also responsible for the sale of British Airways holidays, notably Sovereign and Enterprise.

It is important to understand that that is the subject of this debate, because my quarrel is not with British Airways as such as a national airline operating scheduled services nationally and internationally. Nor is the question of public ownership at issue tonight. It would be improper for me to make it so from this side of the House, since it was a Conservative Government who in 1939 nationalised the two airways which eventually became BOAC and BEA.

My concern is with that grey area between the rôle of British Airways as a national airline operating throughout the world and within the United Kingdom and its allied activities, of which the incursions of British Airways Travel Division into the retail travel trade, and particularly the inclusive holiday trade, are examples. That is the way a political argument always begins, when nationalised industries, with all the advantages they have, begin to develop outside a strictly-confined sphere of operation.

If I may make the point memorable and clear, my quarrel is not with British Airways. My battle is with BATL, and to that I shall direct my remarks.

It is a question of a nationalised industry, which unusually is not a monopoly, because even in its prime rôle as an operator of scheduled air services it is subject to competition from other international airlines and even from British airlines, including a designated scheduled carrier, British Caledonian, which operates international services, and some smaller airlines which offer regional services and some international services too.

It is a question not of whether there should be monopoly or competition but of the terms of that competition that is the subject of tonight's debate. Government control of that competition is primarily by licence. Airlines are licensed to operate on certain routes. That has been most clearly in the public eye in the question recently raised by the review of civil aviation policy guidance on designated spheres of influence for British Airways and British Caledonian. It is necessary to have such control of the activities of British Airways, but in travel and inclusive holidays there are no such sanctions. I hope therefore, that the Minister will be prepared to exercise his guidance under the Civil Aviation Act 1971 to influence policy.

It may, in this week, be an embarassment to the Minister because, as he has already acknowledged, the Skytrain judgment throws doubt on what influence he has at all in these matters. We must, however, assume that he has some influence on policy, and it is to this that I bring his attention in this debate.

Taking first inclusive holidays, it is the declared objective of British Airways Travel Division to be second in that market next year. To come from nothing to second in the market in only a few years would excite feverish attention in private industry. If it were to come about, it would be the constant preoccupation of financial and political commentators. It should be the subject of the closest scrutiny by all of us, because the rapid growth which is taking place within the all-embracing arms of a gigantic corporation clearly deserves public attention. It is in order to alert a wider public to this that I raise the matter tonight.

We can face the fact that British Airways has that objective. My conviction is that the British Airways Travel Division is now embarked on an aggresive expansionist policy on terms of competition which are not fair but are backed by British money, that this cannot be in the longer-term interest of the consumer and that it poses a threat to the independent travel industry meantime. I shall give some illustrations as evidence of this policy.

It is important to realise that the travel industry is historically divided between wholesaler and retailer; between the principal who provides the services, whether shipping or air services, on the one hand, and the retailer on the other hand; between, as it were, the tour operator and the local travel agent in the High Street.

Local travel agents provide services on commission, and that is how the travel agent makes his living. He depends on the principal. The principal needs the agent so that he does not have to be so intensive in publicity and can rely on the agent for local publicity and does not need to set up a shop with staff. The travel agent has a reduced risk, because the major risk is undertaken by the principal in investing in large capital equipment, in ships and aircraft. He can earn a modest living by selling the products provided by the principal. This is the historic background against which these new developments are taking place.

British Airways has a number of advantages as a national airline. I will list four of them. There is, first, the security of public money. Secondly, it has the beneficial side effects of wide-scale advertising. Thirdly, it has also the prestige of being a national airline. Fourthly and in more technical terms, it has access to a highly expensive and very sophisticated computer reservation system. In a business where reservations are of the essence, that is a considerable advantage in itself. These advantages are with British Airways now.

Earlier this year British Airways came forward with a proposal that remote visual display units should be placed with British Airways staff within the larger commercial organisations in the country with a large business use traffic—that is, a considerable turnover of business men travelling abroad and within the United Kingdom. This is very attractive and lucrative business for travel agents who specialise in the work. To a small travel agent in the High Street, one large account can mean the difference between flourishing and collapsing.

This proposal naturally raised an outcry, because it meant that British Airways were cutting across the historic relationship which had existedqua the travel agent. It was not only that they were endeavouring to corner the market. I would not quarrel with the determination of British Airways to corner the market. Let me say for the record that I would seek to encourage and welcome British Airways, since they bring profit and prestige to the United Kingdom in their role as a national carrier. In that regard everybody would have cause for satisfaction. I am concerned only with their related activities, which go beyond the prime purpose for which British Airways were created.

As result of the outcry amongst agents who could see their livelihood being jeopardised by the installation of the remote terminals as against real time computing in large companies, British Airways backed down. One was installed, against the muted protests of the agent who had held the account. No doubt in the fullness of time others will be proposed. It is significant that by this move British Airways Travel Division was prepared to go beyond its local sales agents business.

More seriously and more significantly, in recent months British Airways Travel Division has started opening travel shops in most of the prime site positions in several very attractive shopping centres in the South-East. It already has by tradidition six or seven such travel shops in the centre of London. Nobody would question this. It is only reasonable that a national airline should have in the heart of the capital city a number of its own travel shops selling services, particularly to foreign visitors and tourists.

However, British Airways have already established travel shops in Romford, Watford, Wembley and Bromley. My connection with at least two of those towns will not have escaped the Minister's notice. There are proposals at least for Bromley and Kingston upon Thames.

At Bromley the shop is not established. The House will forgive me for correcting myself in that respect. The Bromley shop is a proposal. There are rumours about Enfield, Guildford and Lewisham. So it goes on—the setting up of travel shops in prime site positions in expensive High Streets in towns which are serviced by half a dozen travel agents already.

What is the purpose of that major expansion? Whatever its purpose, its effect will be to take business which is at present funnelled through local travel agents and from which they earn commission and transfer it to the British Airways travel shops. British Airways claim that wherever they open one of the shops it brings new business and that no agent will suffer. I and the travel agents find that hard to swallow. Clearly, a principal source of revenue will come from the travel agents.

I take one example, the Bromley proposal. Although there is little informed information available, it is clear that British Airways cannot possibly make such a shop pay. They will have to pay an annual rent of about £15,000 a year. Staff costs—if they employ six or seven qualified staff—will amount to £20,000 to £30,000 a year. If one adds to that high rates, the cost of publicity, insurance and services, the total cost could be as much as £1,000 a week. The revenue earned will be that which would have come to them from the travel agents, and the only extra revenue will be a saving of what they would otherwise pay in commission to agents. That commission amounts to 4½ per cent. for domestic business, 8 per cent. for international business and perhaps 11 per cent. for special group arrangements.

The shops cannot pay. British Airways are opening up loss-making travel shops and in the process undermining local travel agents. That is bad enough in itself, but the local travel agents are the historic sales agents for British Airways and in many cases they are also IATA sales agents.

The rub is—and it is more sinister—that IATA confers licences on travel agents which enable them to earn their commission. British Airways are the principal sponsors of British travel agents and they can, therefore, exert pressure in two ways. They can cream off the profitable business from the agents, and if, as a result, the agent's turnover slumps below a certain level his licence is threatened. Lest anyone should regard that as an idle threat, the House should remember that 26 agents have recently lost their IATA licences.

In the travel Press last week, a thumbnail report said that British Airways had purchased an undisclosed number of shares in the Martin Rooks firm which successfully operates charter air holidays by means of direct selling. The company deals directly with the public, employs no agents and therefore, since it pays no commission, receives 100 per cent. of its sales price. My information is that British Airways have acquired 49 per cent. of that company with a commitment to acquire 100 per cent. within two years and that for this they have paid £750,000. One is entitled to ask on behalf of the public where this development capital is coming from.

The acquisition of lucrative High Street sites with travel shops is one aspect of the expansion. This is another. It is a particularly lucrative business because it does not pay commission. The carryings of that tour operator, which are spread between four airlines—British Caledonian, DanAir, Britannia Airways and British Airways—will presumably now be cornered by British Airways alone. It has extended its share of the market by these aggressive tactics and with the provision of public money in large measure.

It is also significant that there is apparently to be no change in policy of direct selling. Once again British Airways are going against the interests of their local sales agents, because they propose to continue selling direct to the public, paying no commission. Incidentally, on their holidays—Sovereign and Enterprise—they pay the flat 10 per cent. which is standard.

The expansion in the retail travel trade has understandably caused great alarm among agents. There is also concern on the wholesaling side among the tour operators. Sovereign and Enterprise have quickly become a remarkable force in the market. This may be some tribute to the excellence and efficiency of the arrangements. It may also be some recognition of the powerful commercial forces which British Airways Travel Division, as part of this nationalised industry, has at its command.

There is a particular loss-making venture to which I wish to draw attention, because it is unfair competition which cannot be withstood by any commercial company. If we are concerned to strike a proper balance between public and private industry, this should concern us most. Last September the Travel Division offered a no-surcharge guarantee to those who booked their Sovereign-Enterprise holidays by 16th January. Since then the value of the pound against the dollar has declined by 30 cents. That currency has great relevance to air operations, because it is the currency in which air fuel is purchased, sales are negotiated and fares are calculated.

After a year in which British Airways lost £9·4 million—I do not blame them for that; it was very creditable when many other airlines lost much more—they were able to make a declaration of inflation-proof holiday prices until September this year, in a way that could not be construed as fair competition. I said earlier in the year that in acting like that they were emulating Clarksons, which in recent memory adopted the same aggressive tactics, using unprofitable loss-leader ventures to expand its share of the market, but which eventually crashed in ruins.

At least Clarksons was funded by private money. British Airways are using public money. As with Clarksons, the rest of the industry was forced to follow suit, against its better judgment and often beyond its resources. Only today it is revealed in theFinancial Times that British and Commonwealth Shipping has abandoned Castle Holidays. That is particularly relevant to what I have said, because it was Castle Holidays which, after the British Airways Travel Division announcement, was forced to make a similar announcement, even though it had gone to press with its prices and presumably had not allowed for that in its budgeting.

To guarantee prices in a year in which inflation has been raging at only an abated rate after a year in which it ran at 26 per cent. is surely to indulge in irresponsibility in commercial terms of a kind of which a normal company would not be capable. In these ways, British Airways are expanding their share of the market and making no bones about it.

My purpose tonight is to call on the Minister to constrain the airline in these spheres of its activities. That is not to challenge its proper rôle as a national airline. It is simply to limit it in its expansionist policy on which it has embarked and for which, presumably, public money is being made available, even though public expansion in so many other ways is being cut back. My right hon. and hon. Friends should also pay the closest attention, together with the Civil Aviation Authority, to Section 38 of the Civil Aviation Act of 1971. It cannot have been the intention of the last Conservative Administration, having denationalised Thomas Cook, which was a threat to no one—it was known in the trade as the "sleeping giant"—to allow a much more formidable threat to develop so rapidly within the ambit of British Airways. If a balance is not struck between public industry on the one hand and private industry on the other, the livelihoods of a great many people engaged in the free enterprise industry will be at stake and may be lost.

My prediction is that, if British Airways Travel Division is not curbed in its present policy, before long many retail travel shops will go out of business. Already they earn only a moderate livelihood. Their profitability is precarious and they cannot compete on these terms if they are not backed by one of their principal sponsors to which they look for so much of their business. They would be followed, perhaps at less frequent intervals, by the collapse of several tour operators who, again, could not complete and who are already under pressure as a result of stringent levels of bonding and advance payments of insurance levy. They would not be able to compete. We have seen one going out of business and merging with another tour operator only today.

The danger is real. If that happens and if British Airways Travel Division secures a dominant position in the market —and who can imagine that, having come second in the travel olympics, it will hesitaet to go for gold—with a monopoly or near-monopoly holding, there will be the same dreary nationalised pattern of public ownership emerging, as was confirmed by the National Consumer Council's report published yesterday. Reduced choice, uncontrolled costs, raising prices and general apathy and poor service will be the lot of the consumer. If that comes about, it will surely not be in the interests of the travelling public or the taxpayer.

11.24 p.m.

The hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) said at the begininng of his speech that he would have some rather tough things to say. At least we are able to agree about one thing, which he said in parenthesis during his remarks, namely, that he thought—and I share his belief—that the Government should be able to have an influence over major matters of aviation policy. I was delighted to hear him say that. I hope that in that respect at least he was speaking for the Opposition.

The hon. Member considers that it is a heinous offence for British Airways travel shops to be in competition with other travel agents. He enlarged upon that belief at some considerable length. It is my contention that British Airways travel shops are an integral part of the success story of British Airways. The mere fact that British Airways are a nationalised concern does not mean—the hon. Gentleman conceded this—that they should not be competitive. Indeed, they live in a competitive world. Their main business is to provide scheduled air services. In this they have to work to maintain or increase their share against competition provided by over 70 scheduled airlines operating in and from the United Kingdom, quite apart from the competition which they face in other spheres such as coach and rail travel and cross-Channel ferries.

Because of the growth of charter traffic and package holidays, British Airways are also in business as a tour operator, and in that respect they are in competition with other tour operators. They have a number of travel shops as one method of selling their wares.

British Airways are by no means a monopoly. They are, as I have already indicated, highly competitive. Indeed, in that respect they have been praised by the hon. Gentleman. There is no reason to make any apology on behalf of anybody for that fact. As shareholders of British Airways, we ought to applaud the fact that they are going out to get the business instead of adopting, in this respect at least, the somewhat narrow, carping and cantankerous approach, as represented by the hon. Gentleman in his speech.

The question of how many travel shops British Airways should have, and where they should be located, is entirely for the commercial judgment of British Airways and is not one on which the Government should intervene. I do not think it is the job of the Government to run the business of British Airways, and that has always been the view expressed by hon. Members on both sides of the House.

If the hon. Gentleman wants to question British Airways' policy in this matter, he should take it up directly with British Airways. Indeed, I understand that Mr. Draper, the Director of British Airways Travel Division, has offered to discuss the whole matter with the hon. Gentleman. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman chose to reject the offer on the grounds that he was too busy. I have no doubt that he is a very busy Member—not too busy to argue the toss, but simply too busy to investigate the evidence. Steadfastly he applies the doctrine "Do not confuse me with the facts. My mind is made up."

It is precisely because, over a matter of months, I have been unable to obtain a single specific cold, hard fact from Mr. Draper that I have not found time to discuss even more generalities with him.

The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. Mr. Draper has offered the hon. Gentleman the opportunity of a lunch at which he can discuss these matters. This does not, of course, include matters which are strictly confidential. He cannot expect that, because he is in the trade himself. Concerning certain basic facts, however, Mr. Draper offered to discuss these with the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman deprived himself of that opportunity. I find that quite extraordinary.

However, the hon. Gentleman has alleged that the competition is in some way unfair. I think we ought to examine that allegation. If he wants to take the term literally, there is legislation on the kind of trade practices that are fair or unfair. There is the Office of Fair Trading, which looks into these matters conscientiously and fairly and, where necessary, takes steps to enforce the law. If the hon. Gentleman feels that the matter falls into that category—and I rather gathered from some of his remarks that that is his view—that is the avenue that ought to be explored. I shall say no more about that, because it is not for me to prejudge a verdict of the Office of Fair Trading.

In substance, however, the hon. Gentleman's complaint is really not along those lines. The real complaint is that British Airways are big and are in a position—I do not think that the hon. Member actually said this, but it has been the complaint made from other sources—because of their big capacity, to cross-subsidise these retail activities from their other earnings in other parts of their business.

I understand that British Airways dispute that allegation. They contend that their retail business in the United Kingdom is profitable by the usual commercial yardstick. They contend that each branch is also profitable in its own right, except that naturally, as is common business experience, shops which have been opened recently take time to establish themselves. That is a practice in ordinary commercial private enterprise. British Airways notionally credit each travel shop with the commission which a travel agent would receive, and its profitability is assessed on that basis.

The hon. Gentleman alleged that British Airways had engaged in this expansion deliberately and wilfully to damage the interests of travel agents. That is a serious allegation. But I must point that they now operate the same number of shops as they operated when the BEA and BOAC shops were merged. Some have closed and others have opened.

If it were true that the establishment of British Airways travel shops was taking business away from travel agents, it is inevitable that they would see the proportion of their direct sales increase and the proportion of sales through travel agents decline. In fact, that is not the evidence at all. There has not been any reduction in the share of British Airways' total United Kingdom business generated through travel agents over the last two years. That fact has not been mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. Of course, he has this personal vendetta with British Airways in this regard. I assume that the hon. Gentleman must be seeking to stimulate trouble where it does not exist. That is not a very good thing to do.

If a travel agent in the High Street feels that there is a threat of a new British Airways travel shop opening a few doors away and that that is likely to affect his interests, I sympathise. But, whatever is the national average, he may feel, particularly if he reads the hon. Gentleman's speech, that he may feel the draught. Therefore, we should look at the evidence in that regard as well. British Airways are not unaware of these anxieties on the part of the travel agents, who, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, have an interest conjointly with British Airways.

What British Airways did, have done throughout and will continue to do was to make careful records when they opened their shop in Croydon. I specify Croydon because that was one of the shops illustrated by the hon. Gentleman. The opening of that shop was accompanied by a substantial local publicity drive. The effect was to increase the total market. The figures showed that the total sales in the Croydon area increased by more than the amount sold in the British Airways shop. Some people came in and collected a leaflet and then booked through their own local trusted traved agent. This evidence was presented to the ABTA Retail Agents Council, which accepted it after scrutiny. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman is not prepared to accept the credibility of the consideration of this matter by ABTA. That is up to him. The House will have to make up its mind as to which evidence it prefers.

The fact is that the hon. Gentleman, like others in the Conservative Party, is highly selective in his condemnation, because he complains bitterly at the top of his voice about British Airways travel shops but does not produce a whisper of protest about other private enterprise carriers who maintain a retail chain operating under not dissimilar trading conditions. Indeed, one could apply virtually all the hon. Gentleman's yardsticks to those organisations.

In view of the hon. Gentleman's remarks, I think that I should advise the House of the true facts relating to this matter. All the main international airlines have shops in our major cities, as well as having retail shops abroad. There was not a whisper about that from the hon. Gentleman. Britannia, the holders of the gold medal, according to the hon. Gentleman—and that is a Thomson private enterprise outfit—has a bigger chain of shops than have British Airways, and it has recently announced that it will open another 30 to 40 shops. It, too, operates in the High Streets, but I did not detect a note of criticism in the long harangue from the hon. Gentleman about the operations of those holding the gold medallion —not one word.

As the Minister has gathered around him some support, perhaps I might make the point I endeavoured to make throughout my speech, namely, that those people are risking their own money in acquiring this business. What is being done by British Airways is to acquire business with public money. That is the distinction I was trying to make.

The truth of the matter is that, when it comes to a question of competition, the hon. Gentleman does not want British Airways to compete.

Other airlines having retail outlets are British Caledonian, Laker, and British Island Airways, which is part of the Union Castle group, and there has not been a whisper about them. All this is consonant with normal commercial practice. It may be—I am prepared to concede to the hon. Gentleman—that he is simply unworldly about these matters, or perhaps he seeks to ignore these facts for the purpose of advancing a politically sterile philosophy. The House will have to judge what position he occupies.

Frequently, manufacturing industry uses its own retail outlets to promote its own products. ICI does that. The petroleum companies do it. They have captive users or own petrol stations. Brewers do it with their tied houses. I am not saying whether that is right or wrong. What I am saying is that these are the facts of life in this rough, tough capitalist world which the hon. Gentleman and his party seek to promote.

rose—

The hon. Gentleman was not here and did not have the advantage of listening to his hon. Friend.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) to leap into the attack in this way, having missed the bulk of the speech of the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert)? It would appear not to be in order for the hon. Gentleman to intervene in this way.

. It is in order. It is done from both sides of the House from time to time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I should rather leave you to be the judge of what is in order.

I do not want to leap into the attack on this matter. I think the Minister will concede that many of us rejoice in the fact that British Airways are as toughly competitive as they are, but he should give a little more weight to the worries of my hon. Friend, which centre around the fairness of competition where one competitor is risking his own money and the other is risking State money, and where it is not always possible for us to be clear on the extent of cross-subsidisation and when loss-leading that is legitimate becomes unfair. I think that the hon. Gentleman would want to be fair in that regard.

Of course I want to be fair. I am one of the fairest people in the House. Nobody can accuse me of being other than that. The hon. Gentleman should not get worried when arguments that need to be refuted are refuted. His hon. Friend is capable of taking care of himself. He is now an experienced Member of the House and does very well. He articulates his point extremely well.

The hon. Gentleman talks about applying the criteria of fairness, public money, and so on. This applies equally when British Airways are in competition with other private enterprise carriers. Is he suggesting, therefore, that British Airways should contract out of that competition because it is in some way unfair?

The hon. Member for Romford proclaimed that British Airways should not follow the oft-practised procedures followed in other respects in industry. He proclaimed that they should not try to match the competition, that they should not compete and that they should contract out. If, in consequence of this, British Airways fall behind, the hon. Member will then complain about the stodginess, stuffiness and lack of enterprise of this nationalised undertaking. British Airways may lose money, but the Tory Party dogma will be preserved. On no account can British Airways win that sterile argument.

If, in taking vigorous action to sell seats in their aircraft—which is surely what we as shareholders want to see—British Airways take some business away from travel agents by the ordinary operation of the competitive market, I see nothing wrong in that. But all the evidence shows that this is not the case. Many other airlines as well as British Airways have their own retail outlets.

I find it refreshing that a nationalised industry is being accused—perhaps for the first time—by the Opposition not of being a lazy and inefficient monopoly but of being too competitive, too robust and too vigorous in the pursuit of its sales policy in an attempt to run an efficient and competitive business in a highly competitive world. I am glad that we as a Government are associated with such an enterprise. We all wish British Airways to be efficient and profitable.

The hon. Member talked about the no-surcharge guarantee by Sovereign and Enterprise. He said, in effect, that this guarantee of no surcharge on package holidays this season was in some way unfair. He suggested that the guarantee must have been subsidised from the rest of their business. I am advised that this is not the case. The guarantee has proved attractive to customers and has proved to be a commercial success. It did not involve any loss being borne by the rest of the business.

The hon. Member referred to the acquisition of Martin Rooks and Co. Ltd. This is a very good illustration of what the argument is about. Martin Rooks is a very small tour operator who quotes low prices by advertising only through direct mailing to past clients, thus avoiding the travel agents' commission. The owner is selling the business because he wants to retire. Nearly all the business of this company is British Airways business. If the business should be acquired by a competitor, British Airways would lose all the traffic. By the hon. Member's standards that is OK, but not by ours.

British Airways proposed, quite rightly, to buy the business and sought departmental consent. After investigation of the terms of the deal was undertaken by the Department, we considered that there was absolutely no reason in the world why consent should be refused. It has now been given. There is no reason at all, not a tittle of evidence, to suggest that British Airways will subsidise this business. That is not their practice. The business has been very successful up to now as a private firm without any subsidies. I see no reason why this should cease to be the case.

The hon. Member concluded his speech by asserting that British Airways would somehow monopolise the whole of this aspect of the travel business. He implied that this was their singularly unpleasant ambition. That is not the case. However, the corporation is living in a highly competitive world. It is right that it should seek to preserve and maintain its interests, and I believe that there has not been any argument by the hon. Gentleman to refute that British Airways have conducted their business honourably and fairly and that, far from disadvantaging private travel agents, they will in the end enhance their interests.

Northern Ireland (Disabled Persons)

11.46 p.m.

I wish to draw attention to the tragic way in which social services in Northern Ireland, particularly those for the handicapped, are falling sadly behind what is provided in all the other regions of the United Kingdom.

We have always regarded Northern Ireland as a deprived area. When I talk of the plight of the disabled I am not exaggerating, because there is real distress among many thousands of disabled people in the Province. Tonight I wish to focus the Government's attention on their plight. If as a result the Government take remedial steps, that will be just one more honour that they will have picked up.

Let me put the problem in its true perspective. This is not just a question of failing to provide a telephone, an adaptation to a house or some other amenity which is normally provided. This problem is linked with many of the other problems in Northern Ireland. Over the last 10 years there have been many social advances in this part of the United Kingdom, but allied to all the problems created in the Province by the campaign of violence are other more deeply inlaid problems of people who cannot defend themselves.

There are tremendous difficulties in trying to deal with the political and constitutional problems, but while concentrating on those we should never forget that the ordinary people who are not involved in the great political issues are also the responsibility of the Government. One of the reasons for the lack of social advance in Northern Ireland has been the absence of legislation. Legislation is needed to impose sanctions and to compel steps to be taken which otherwise would not be taken.

It is possible now to look back and see that the Labour Government in 1966–67 presided over a period of great social reform. During that time many Labour Members and some Conservatives succeeded in getting Private Members' Bills on to the statute book. These measures eased the disabilities from which many people were suffering at that time.

Just before the defeat of that Labour Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) had taken on to the statute book one of the most compassionate pieces of legislation passed this century—the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. That Act has brought tremendous assistance to many people throughout Great Britain, but tragically it does not apply to Northern Ireland.

I hope that I shall have the support of hon. Friends and hon. Members from Northern Ireland in my plea that the Act's provisions should be extended to Northern Ireland. The procedures of the Whips Office will prevent my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard), who has had an all-consuming interest in the problems of the handicapped for many years, from expressing his support, though I know he is in full hearted agreement with my objective.

People refer to the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act as the Alf Morris Act, and it will always be identified with its sponsor. We had our own political and constitutional problems in Northern Ireland on the day that the Bill was given a Second Reading here, and I did not take the opportunity to ask then that it should be extended to Northern Ireland.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe said on Second Reading:

"The Bill deals with many problems, all of them intensely human, but has a single intention. This intention is to increase the welfare, improve the status and enhance the dignity of the chronically sick and of disabled persons."

Those are my sentiments exactly. I hope that they will be shared by the Government and that they will be persuaded to extend the provisions of the Act to cover the people of Northern Ireland, who are now under the direct control of this House.

My hon. Friend concluded his speech by saying

"if we could bequeath one precious gift to posterity, I would choose a society in which there is genuine compassion for the very sick and the disabled; where understanding is unostentatious and sincere; where needs come before means; where, if years cannot be added to the lives of the chronically sick, at least life can be added to their years; where the mobility of disabled people is restricted only by the bounds of technical progress and discovery; where the handicapped have the fundamental right to participate in industry and society according to ability; where socially preventable distress is unknown; and where no man has cause to be ill at ease because of disability."—[Official Report, 5th December. 1969; Vol. 792, c. 1851–63.]

I am sure that those sentiments have the approval of the whole House—Government and Opposition, major parties and minor parties. I hope that at the conclusion of the debate we shall be told that there would be no great political difficulties or upheavals in the Government in extending the provisions of the Act to include Northern Ireland.

It is not enough for Members of Parliament to have visions. It is necessary for us to make visions become reality. My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe has done so. He has demonstrated his courage and tenacity in Opposition and in Government. That attitude has benefited many people throughout the island of Great Britain. I am sure he will have earned the undying gratitude of the beneficiaries of the Act, who are not in a position to defend themselves.

Section 1 is the key to the whole Act. It lays the obligation on local authorities in the United Kingdom to ascertain and compile statistical evidence of the disabled within their communities. They have an obligation to ascertain the exact number within their area who are deaf or partially deaf, blind or partially blind, immobile because they do not have the use of their limbs, mentally handicapped or suffering, for example, from spina bifida. They have an obligation to direct their attention to those who in any way find themselves afflicted by a disease or by an injury which has been brought about by accident.

In the latter case it is possible to refer specifically to Northern Ireland, where it is made all too clear that there are many people, including the young, the old, children, babies and old-age pensioners, who have lost their limbs and their mobility and are suffering grievous bodily harm because of the explosions that have taken place.

Section 1 of the Act makes it obligatory for local authorities in the United Kingdom to compile that information. If that is not done, how is it possible to know the numbers involved or the extent of the problem or to take remedial action to ease it?

I contend that my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office would not have any of the difficulties involved in compelling reluctant local authorities to implement this legislation if the Act were extended to Northern Ireland. That is because the social services are operated by the area health boards, which are under the direct control of the Minister who is in charge of health and social services in Northern Ireland. He would not have to force compliance or compel authorities to engage in this operation against their will. He would be able to give an instruction to the area health boards to get the information. Having obtained it, we should know the extent of the problem in Northern Ireland.

It is not right that in 1976, when I asked the Minister responsible for health and social services in Northern Ireland for the total number of households that have received adaptations because of the disability of the inhabitants, I should get an answer stating that the statistics are not available. I have put down a number of Questions on this subject. I would not say that the answers I received were evasions, and I do not blame the present Government for those answers. However, those answers have highlighted the problem which exists and they are the reason why I am engaging in this debate tonight.

When I recently asked the Minister whether he could tell me the total number of households which had received assistance, and what the figure was per thousand of the population, the answer I received was:

"This information is not available in the form requested. It is hoped, however, that statistics will be available for future years."— [Official Report, 27th July 1976; Vol. 916, c.198.]

That consolidates the case I am putting forward. No attempt has been made by the authorities in Northern Ireland, whoever they may be, to collate this information so that we can once and for all know the total number of disabled and deprived people in Northern Ireland.

Since engaging in the exercise of questioning the Minister, and involving myself deeply in this problem, I have received numerous letters and personal telephone calls from the various voluntary organisations in Northern Ireland which are trying to cope with a problem which the Ministry is not even aware of. I contend that those well-intentioned people, giving of their time and energy, and trying to cope with the problem, are not receiving the assistance they require.

Until I received a letter from the Spina Bifida Association of Northern Ireland, I did not know that Northern Ireland had the highest rate of spina bifida in the world. More than 160 children are born there every year with spina bifida. Anyone who has any knowledge of that dreadful disease will recognise the hardship it presents to the parents of the children who are born with such a disability. After reading that letter, which I intend to give to the Minister, I am convinced that not enough has been done to help even that one section of the disabled in Northern Ireland. Even that one section has been deprived.

When we discuss Northern Ireland in this House, the statistics that are given usually relate to the number of people shot or killed or the number of explosions which have taken place. I regard the figures for the disabled as equally important because they represent people who are not involved in the troubles. More information about the disabled needs to be gathered before the Minister can take positive action.

Recently the Government commissioned an Amelia Harris report about the disabled, and statistics were gathered throughout Britain. But that survey did not apply to Northern Ireland. In addition, all the legislation aimed at bringing about social reform does not apply to Northern Ireland.

I was a Member of the Northern Ireland Parliament for many years. That Parliament fell down badly in respect of what it should have been doing throughout its existence to try to alleviate the distress which existed within the Six Counties.

There will have to be a crash programme now. Every agency available to Ministers should be used to ascertain the extent of the problem. The incidence of handicap in Northern Ireland can only be gleaned from another set of figures. In 1971, identical legislation was introduced in Great Britain and in Northern Ireland giving the constant attendance allowance to people who needed frequent attention and supervision by day and night. The evidence of the payment of that allowance is that the incidence of handicap in Northern Ireland is twice what it is in other parts of the United Kingdom.

On 1st January 1976 the number per thousand of the adult population receiving the allowance at the higher rate was 5·88 in Northern Ireland and 4·55 in Wales but less than 3 in Scotland and every other region of the United Kingdom. The lower rate was paid to 3·68 adults per thousand in Northern Ireland, 3·01 in Wales, 2·24 in the North-West, 2·10 in the North and less than 2 in Scotland and every other English region.

Before one can qualify for this allowance, one must be really incapacitated —almost completely unable to move. The fact that over 12,000 people in Northern Ireland receive it shows that that is only part of the problem. What about all the other people who do not qualify for the allowance but who are still severely disabled? If those numbers are added, a situation is revealed which no Government should tolerate for a minute longer than is necessary.

I have been in touch with many people before bringing this matter before the House tonight. They have convinced me that the incidence of handicap—whether it be people who are blind, those who are dumb or those who cannot use their limbs—is twice as high in Northern Ireland as it is in any other part of the United Kingdom. I accept the validity of the figures which have been given to me. If the Minister wishes to challenge them, I shall listen with interest to what he has to say.

There are three categories on social service registers in Northern Ireland—the visually impaired, the hearing impaired and the general classes. In England, between 1970 and 1974, the numbers in the first two categories—the blind and partially sighted and the deaf and hard of hearing—increased slightly, whereas in Northern Ireland they fell by 15 per cent. What was the reason for that fall? I do not accept that figure. I believe that the fall shows only that people do not want to know and that no agencies are available to find out the true figures.

The total number of handicapped people in England and Wales rose from 234,100 in 1970 to 497,200 in 1974—an increase of 112 per cent. During the same period in Northern Ireland the increase was only 16 per cent.—from 8,052 to 9,331. Again, there must be some dramatic reason for the fact that these figures are falling or are remaining static or increasing very slowly in Northern Ireland while there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers in other parts of the United Kingdom.

Again, the percentage of the population on the general classes register in 1970 in England and Northern Ireland was roughly 0·5, but by 1974 it was 1·07 in England, but only 0·61 in Northern Ireland. There is no reason to believe that in Northern Ireland the situation has changed or improved so much over the past few years.

Latest estimates in England suggest that at least 650,000 people were on the general classes register at 31st March 1976, making 850,000 together with those with sight and hearing impaired. That represented about 1·4 per cent. and would seem to be in line with the statistical evidence of the Amelia Harris Report, which did not cover Northern Ireland. We should get something like that report in Northern Ireland.

I am raising this matter tonight because of my fear and because of replies I received in response to Questions I put down recently. In one reply, the Minister in charge of social services said:

"In a planning paper issued in 1974, the Northern Ireland Department of Health and Social Services advised health and social services boards that they should supplement the information available from their handicapped registers and their existing knowledge by drawing on any other source to which they have access and by carrying out local sample surveys to build up an assessment of the total number of physically handicapped persons, the nature of their handicap and the need for services."—[Official Report, 6th July 1976: Vol. 914, c.515.]

That all sounds very well. It was an instruction given in 1974 to local authority area boards to try to elicit such information as they could.

In another reply the Minister said:

"The health and social services boards have not yet in general had the staffing and other resources to undertake formal surveys of the needs and numbers of disabled people in their areas, but are in contact with and providing services for a large number of disabled people."—[Official Report, 8th July, 1976; Vol. 914, c.702.]

To say the least, those replies seem inconsistent. In one the Minister said that area boards had been instructed to find out all they could, but in the other he said that area boards did not have the staff to carry out the surveys.

We heard only last week that there is to be a cut in public expenditure of £35 million. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is here tonight and he has to arrive at a decision, I think, as to where those cuts are to take place. I should hazard a guess that cuts will apply to health and personal social services in Northern Ireland.

I am drawing the attention of the House to the neglect of the past, by past Governments in Northern Ireland, then by local authorities and now by the area boards. How, in the name of Heaven, shall we engage in trying to halt the rise in these statistics if we are not given them and if there is not the money to employ staff?

We are dealing with the disabled, the partially blind or deaf and the immobile. Disablement arises for many reasons—for instance, mental handicap. The mentally handicapped cannot attend at a social security office and argue their case. If these cuts are imposed on the health and social services, further confusion will be created and we will never be aware of the true extent of the problems in the Province.

I am grateful to those of my hon. Friends who have stayed tonight to support my point of view. Under the Act to which I have referred, local authorities and the Northern Ireland area boards could supply telephones to the disabled, whose only lifeline is in many cases the telephone. Until the latter end of 1973 not one telephone was supplied. In 197374, 70 telephones were supplied—what extravagance ! —in contrast to the 4,550 telephones supplied for the disabled in Manchester in 1976.

I acknowledge the economic difficulties with which the Government must contend, although I object to the way in which the cuts are being imposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There are certain areas in which, in view of the enormity of the social problem, a Government with any compassion or humanity cannot make cuts.

I hope that what I have said has convinced my hon. Friend the Minister that the restriction of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act—the Alf Morris Act—has led to an aggravation of the deprivation experienced by many in the Province. Section 1 of the Act is the key, because until we ascertain the figures we cannot hope to come to grips with the problem. Some London employment agencies use the slogan "If we do not know you, we cannot help you." That slogan could well be used by the Department of Health and Social Services in Northern Ireland.

I hope that my hon. Friend, when replying, will indicate that the Alf Morris Act, perhaps with improvements, will be implemented in the Province. I have complimented this Act, although it does not do all that was intended of it. No social services legislation could solve all the problems. Whatever its deficiences, we need that Act in Northern Ireland—or something like it—before we can begin to grapple with the problems with which we have lived for so long.

I hope that the Minister will accept my criticisms. They were not directed against him or the present Government, but I want him to tell us that when we return after the recess we shall be able to consider a one-clause Bill to extend the Alf Morris Act to Northern Ireland.

12.20 a.m.

On many occasions when I have followed the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) there has been contention between us, but tonight I heartily agree with him and support what he has said about the Act. I believe that I speak for my colleagues when I say that we support him and agree with every word he has said. We are willing to sit all hours of the night to pass an Order extending the principles of the Act to Northern Ireland. We have sat through the night on other issues and we are willing to do so again.

The main theme of the speech by the hon. Member for Belfast, West, was the plight of the handicapped. Some time ago I received a letter from the National League of the Blind and Disabled, and I wish to make a plea on its behalf. I ask that the blind should qualify to receive the mobility allowance for the disabled. Government Back Benchers recently tabled a motion which stated that:

"this House is of the opinion that blindness is a locomotor disability and should be recognised as such for the purposes of all State benefits and allowances."

But the blind do not receive mobility allowance unless they have an ancillary condition which is taken into account in the overall judgment of their mobility.

We all have a deep sympathy for those who are deprived of the use of their lower limbs and who are confined to wheelchairs, but the loss of sight is perhaps the greatest disability that anyone can suffer. To live in a world of perpetual blindness, never to see the faces or forms of friends, never to appreciate the colour of the land, sea or sky, must be the worst deprivation of all. Blindness is a paramount disability and should be regarded as such. I sincerely and earnestly plead that the blind be considered for mobility allowance.

I now turn to the decline of the National Health Service in West Ulster. The service is crumbling in that area. The problems are practical and not ideological. I recently talked to two or three doctors, who said that they did not give two damns about the controversy over the phasing out of pay beds. Their problem was the lack of staff. The main reason for the failure of the health services in my constituency and many other parts of Northern Ireland is the lack of medical and para-medical staff.

In the Committee stage of the Health Services Bill the question of queue-jumping was laboured continually. It is a big jump from Enniskillen to Belfast—about 100 miles. That jump is made to get on the queue for medical or surgical attention, never mind jumping the queue.

I have received some statistics from the town of Omagh, where the Tyrone County Hospital is situated. I am told that there is reason to believe that three senior consultants, one from Omagh and two from Enniskillen, are planning to leave. A senior surgeon in Omagh, at present on sick leave, retires at the end of November. His retirement will leave a big gap in the hospital. There is no possibility of filling the vacancies. Nobody wants to come in to make good the wastage caused by retirements for health reasons and age.

We have reason to believe that the third Omagh consultant is planning to leave. He is the only surgeon in the area. His departure would mean the closure of surgery, accident and emergency cover in Omagh and the closure of the casualty department. That is a serious matter in a country where, in addition to accidents in the home, in industry and on the roads, terrorist activities can occur out of the blue, causing a big problem for any hospital or medical staff.

I recently heard that in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) the large Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry had closed its casualty section because of lack of staff. I suppose that that is the town with the largest population in my right hon. Friend's constituency. With the upsurge of violence in recent days, this poses a great problem. The health service is unable to meet the demands thrust upon it.

There has been no surgical relief in the town of Omagh since 1st June. There we have one specialist in anaesthetics, who is providing a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week service for three hospitals. If that is not a desperate situation, I do not know what is.

The senior medical officer for the Western Region, based in Londonderry, informed me on Friday morning that he envisaged only long-range cover for a consultant service in Omagh for the foreseeable future. The outlook is black. Something must be done to encourage consultants and specialists to come into such areas. We cannot expect junior doctors to give their services unless we have senior consultants who are already at the top of the tree.

I turn to the general practice service. In the Mid-Tyrone area there is one doctor who has the largest national health panel in the whole area. At the moment he is a sick man. His partner, or assistant, is a compulsive drinker. On any given evening between 6 and 7 o'clock this man is not fit to diagnose a cut on his own finger, let alone give medical attention to a district that covers 25,000 to 30,000 people. I am told on good authority that in this area there are three doctors who, if they are not alcoholics, are compulsive drinkers. Not much can be expected from them on any evening. Thus we see that the general practitioner service in the area is in a serious condition.

I understand that the Prime Minister is to meet the British Medical Association soon. He would be well advised to understand that doctors need to be reassured. They need to be encouraged to stay in the United Kingdom, because there is a vast exodus of qualified doctors, specialists and consultants from the United Kingdom. This poses a serious problem for the health service. Morale and staffing must be kept up. Doctors must be encouraged to stay in the United Kingdom.

I was in consultation with some doctors last Friday morning about the problems of the Western Region. They told me that they went on a month's holiday, some to the United States, some to Canada and some to the Continent. I was told that at the end of that month they came home with approximately £1,000 net after meeting their expenses. They said that most of them applied the money to buying a new car for the next year. Surely it is no wonder, if men can earn these sums, that they give in their notice, pack their bags and make for those lands where everything is so much better and where their services are able to command better rewards. The key to the problem, not only in Western Ulster but in the whole of Northern Ireland—indeed, in the whole of the United Kingdom—lies in the question of rewards. These must be adequate and competitive to keep our medical and para-medical staff in this country. Money spent in encouraging consultants, specialists and doctors to stay in this country would be well spent.

Not so long ago I received a glossy report from the Northern Health and Social Services Board. It contained a report of a project which I do not think will materialise in the next decade, yet the report said that the board had already employed a consultative, planning and organising staff. A senior medical officer, a deputy senior medical officer, a senior nursing officer and an assistant nursing officer had also been employed. These people are drawing salaries in connection with a project that has not even been begun. Not a brick has been laid, and most probably will not be in the present economic climate for perhaps 10 years.

Would not the money being spent be better employed in encouraging qualified men and women to go to remote areas of Northern Ireland and bolster up the health service? I ask the Minister and the Government to use all their influence to encourage medical staff to go to these needy areas of West Ulster and prop up the present crumbling health service there.

12.35 a.m.

I must declare an interest. I am the oldest Member of this House and I am to some extent disabled in that I have a plastic hip. My excuse for intervening in the debate, and for stopping until this very late hour in order to do so, is that I took a prominent part in the deliberations which led to the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. I am particularly interested in the cause of the disabled, wherever they are.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) said, the Act does not apply to Northern Ireland, unfortunately. He has described the failure of the Northern Ireland authorities to inform themselves of the needs and the numbers of handicapped persons in the Province. Clearly, if one does not know who they are and where the need arises, one cannot give assistance. Section 1 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, as my hon. Friend very rightly said, puts a mandatory duty on local authorities to keep a register of the disabled.

I remind the House of the difference in the set-up between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The division which separates the health and the personal social services here has been removed by incorporating the health and social services into four area boards. I think my hon. Friend referred to them. The area boards are responsible to the Minister of State.

Here, when Government Ministers are asked about the great variation—and there is often a great variation—in the provision of services for the handicapped, they can to some extent fob the matter off by referring to the fact that the responsibility is that of the local authorities. In Northern Ireland, however, it is the Minister of State who is responsible and who, of course, is responsible directly to Parliament.

Those area boards, I understand, were set up as agents of the Ministry in 1973. Although there can be great administrative advantages in combining the health and social services, there can be dangers. It is possible for one to absorb too much of the financial cake. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister has figures to show how the proportion of expenditure by area boards between health and social services has changed since their inception.

I draw the attention of the Minister to some figures in the Public Expenditure White Paper Cmnd. 6393. Tables 2.11 and 2.15 give the figures for expenditure on the health and social services in Great Britain and Northern Ireland respectively, and there are special analyses of such expenditure in Wales and Scotland in Tables 3.1 to 3.4.

I should like to compare the figures given for the current year—that is, 1976–77—with the estimates for 1979–80, the last year to be included in the tables. In Great Britain as a whole—that is, excluding Northern Ireland—the total expenditure will rise from an estimated £5,317.3 million in 1976–77 to £5,548 million in 1979–80, an increase of 4.34 per cent. That is an increase in real terms, not money terms, and it is far more modest than most Members would wish. We must, however, accept the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

If separate analyses for Scotland and Wales are worked out, one can discover that the increase in Scotland, Wales and England will be very much of the same order but that in Northern Ireland the increase from 1976–77 to 1979–80 is from £166.9 million to £172 million. That is an increase of only 3.06 per cent.—considerably less than the 4.34 per cent. in the rest of Great Britain.

The Public Expenditure White Paper is a complicated document. It may be that the figures I have quoted are not absolutely comparable, but, on the face of it there is a discrepancy which is unjustified. I hope that the Minister will give a convincing explanation or rectify this anomaly.

The other document on which we have to rely for the Government's intentions in Northern Ireland is called "Strategy for the Development of Health and Personal Social Services in Northern Ireland", which was published last year. It is full of good intentions but in fact it is a disappointing and vague document, particularly when compared with the paper "Priorities for Health and Personal Social Services in England" which was published earlier this year.

In the chapters concerned with disabled people, the latter document bears the imprint of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security who has responsibility for the Disabled, but I fear that handicapped people in Northern Ireland will miss his direct influence more and more in the coming years.

The Department's document provides a breakdown of expenditure on personal social services in Northern Ireland which is not provided in the Public Expenditure White Paper. The price bases are not the same, so I shall not give the actual figures. However, it appears that in 1974–75 the proportion of expenditure on personal social services within the total health and social services budget in Great Britain was 14.5 per cent. In Northern Ireland it was 8 per cent. Again, I should like the Minister to explain the discrepancy. It may be that the figures are not comparable, but I am sure that they point to the truth.

I do not deny that in past years there has been a greater increase of expenditure on personal social services in Northern Ireland than in other sectors. In general, however, the document bears out the implications of the subsequent Public Expenditure White Paper that personal social services in Northern Ireland are increasing at a moderate rate but from a very low base.

The pressure generated in England principally by the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act and, indeed, by the efforts of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has not been equalled in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I am afraid that the relative position must decline still further.

It is important that the House should remember that Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970—unfortunately it does not apply to Northern Ireland—put a mandatory duty on local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales to make arrangements for the provision of certain services for handicapped people where they are satisfied that those services are required. It is important to remember what services were set out as being part of that mandatory duty: practical assistance in the home; the provision of wireless, television, library or similar recreational facilities; lectures, games and outings; facilities for, or assistance in, travelling to benefit from these or similar services; adaptations to the home—that is important—or additional facilities designed to secure greater safety, comfort or convenience; holidays; meals at home; a telephone—that is most important—and any necessary equipment to enable the disabled person to use the telephone.

Perhaps the most controversial items on that list are telephones and adaptations, telephones because some of our bureaucrats cannot understand their true value—we know that that is the case in England—and adaptations, to which they cannot agree, because they involve substantial expenditure. We recognise that telephones are a lifeline to people who are housebound, but the need has been far from implemented even in England although the provisions of the Act lay that mandatory duty upon the local authorities.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West said, we have to recognise the present economic situation, and in the light of public expenditure cuts which, I am afraid, must come I suppose that the needs of the disabled will be less and less fulfilled. It must be emphasised again and again, however, that those to whom the normal means of social contact are denied because of their disability deserve a telephone as of right, and that is the intention and meaning of the Act.

I should like here to ram home the point that no local authority in England or Wales had a rate of provision of telephones of—although it is not enough—less than the average in Northern Ireland of 0·04 per thousand of the population. That statistic was revealed in an answer given to the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) on 22nd July. In fact, the variation of provision by local authorities in England and Wales was from 0·056 per thousand population in Bradford to 3·742 per thousand population in the London borough of Islington. It is a great pity that Northern Ireland should come so far behind. I have again and again stressed that we do not do enough in England with our local authorities to carry out what the Act requires, but we can see how much less is done in Northern Ireland.

The position regarding assistance for adaptations is a little better, and there has been a distinct improvement since reorganisation, but I should like to quote the figures given in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West. They show that between 1970 and 1974 the number of structural adaptations carried out by the former welfare authorities, and in 1974 by the area hoards, rose from 129, a rate of 0·08 per thousand population, to 0·27 per thousand population, while the figure in England for 1974–75 showed that 41,200 households were assisted with adaptations—a rate of 0·89 per thousand population.

In the light of the figures I have quoted, I want to say something more about the document to which I referred, "Priorities for Health and Personal Social Services in England". I want to ask my hon. Friend the Minister specifically whether he will ensure that the expansion specified there for England is not only matched in Northern Ireland but is surpassed in view of the low base.

Hon. Members in England have viewed with some measure of approval the second paragraph in the chapter on services for the physically handicapped which says:

"A high rate of expansion (9 per cent. a year) is suggested for home aids and adaptations and certain other services provided under Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 which make an important contribution to the quality of life of the physically handicapped."

The contribution would be no less important in Northern Ireland than in England. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West has made an eloquent plea, supported by statistics, and a very sound argument for the introduction of legislation to extend the benefits of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. I support that plea and ask the Minister, in view of the appalling position and the dreadful need, to help in ensuring that assistance is given in a quarter where it is surely well deserved.

12.52 a.m.

Helping the disabled to try to lead normal lives is a heavy responsibility throughout the United Kingdom. The problems and the challenges are no less severe—indeed, they are perhaps all the more severe—in Northern Ireland.

As a member of the all-party Disablement Group in this House and a member of the Northern Ireland Group of the Parliamentary Labour Party, I hope that I may be permitted to make a brief intervention in this debate. We would all pay tribute to the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) for initiating this debate and for his speech, which was a characteristic contribution of an hon. Member who has cared about the problems of Northern Ireland ever since he came to the House. I thank the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Dunlop) for his contribution. He raised the question of the provision of a mobility allowance for the blind, which many of us think is long overdue and is urgently needed. We must also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for being here to answer the debate and to the Secretary of State, who has also attended the debate, thus showing his personal concern.

All hon. Members who have spoken have drawn attention to the fact that important sections of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act do not apply to Northern Ireland. Many of us recognise that this omission was tragic and deplorable, and we hope that it will be remedied as soon as possible.

It has been estimated that there are 835,000 handicapped and impaired people in need of rehousing in England alone. Accommodation occupied by these people is no older or newer than that occupied by the general population of the United Kingdom. Three-fifths of these handicapped people live in accommodation with stairs, although it is not known how many have to climb stairs in order to get to their accommodation. We can expect that the relative position in Northern Ireland is far worse, and certainly statistics demonstrate that this would be the position.

The White Paper on Public Expenditure refers to this matter in paragraph 5 of the chapter dealing with Northern Ireland. It says:

"A recent survey has shown that the condition of the housing stock in Northern Ireland is worse than in any other region. Greater emphasis will, therefore, be placed on the rehabilitation, repair, and improvement of existing houses in order to increase quality and number of houses available for occupation. In addition the survey provision will be large enough to allow rather more new houses to be completed in the public sector over the next five years than the 36,406 which were completed in the past five years."

I want to know from my hon. Friend the Minister whether that statement's optimism must be tempered, particularly in the light of the recent statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on public expenditure. We must ask ourselves tonight what type of homes are needed for the disabled in Northern Ireland and in other regions of the United Kingdom.

In a recent report on the mobility of physically disabled people, Lady Sharp said:

"A home in which a severely disabled person can, as far as possible, be independent is something that every one of them ought to have. I believe that nothing like enough has been done to see that disabled people have such homes; though there is no information available about the amount of housing that exists in which the disabled could manage for themselves and…could manoeuvre in a wheelchair."

There has been reference to the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. Section 3 is in two parts, and they are most important because they emphasise not only the duty to provide special housing but the duty to provide the Secretary of State with information on what is proposed and achieved.

What is lacking in Northern Ireland, therefore, is not only this same duty but adequate information. In reply to the hon. Member for Belfast, West, my hon. Friend the Minister of State said recently that since the inception of the Housing Executive in 1971 about 1,500 dwellings had been specially provided for disabled persons. These included mobility, wheelchair and sheltered houses, together with adaptations of existing dwellings, and represented provision at the rate of approximately one dwelling per 1,000 of the population. The Northern Ireland Departments of the Environment and of Health and Social Services and the Housing Executive were considering what additional steps needed to be taken to deal with the special housing needs of the disabled.

On the surface that sounded impressive, but lumping together many different types of provision can be misleading. In a reply on 5th February to my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) the Minister admitted that in the previous 12 months the Housing Executive had completed only four wheelchair housing units, 22 sheltered housing units and no mobility housing. The position on starts was even worse with only seven wheelchair housing units started and no mobility or sheltered housing starts.

The most fundamental aspect of wheelchair housing is that it provides extra space for the circulation of the wheelchair beyond the normal Parker Morris standards. As a result, costs rise above the normal cost yardstick allowances. The structure of the house is designed throughout for the wheelchair user, and fixtures are selected to meet his or her needs where he or she is thought to be likely to use them. The Central Council for the Disabled has various specific criticisms of the criteria. I shall not go into that. It is more important for me now to describe the people who are likely to need wheelchair housing designed from scratch with them in mind.

It caters, therefore, primarily for those confined to a wheelchair who must have access to all principal rooms and be able to operate freely in them. It is also desirable for those currently ambulant or semi-ambulant but with deteriorating conditions. It is obviously sensible for someone with multiple sclerosis or muscular dystrophy not to have to move from ordinary housing to mobility housing and later to wheelchair housing as the disease progresses.

The number of people needing wheelchair housing has been estimated at 1·6 per thousand of the population of the United Kingdom. The authorities in the United Kingdom have a long way to go before the need is met, and I hope that the housing cuts recently announced will not impair the drive to increase the numbers of this type of housing.

Mobility housing is difficult to define. The report of the Central Council for the Disabled states:

"Mobility housing is intended to incorporate certain basic features for physically handicapped people, so that it can accommodate either able-bodied tenants or disabled tenants. The basic criteria are that door sets and corridors should be 900 mm. wide, that there should be a level or ramped access, and that bathroom, WC and at least one bedroom should be at the same level as the entrance. Fundamental principles of the concept are that there should be no extra space and no extra cost beyond normal Parker Morris standards."

Mobility housing is designed for people who do not require wheelchair housing. That is a rather negative definition, but in general it is designed to cover disabled people who, even if they use a wheelchair, are not confined to it and who can, for example, leave the wheelchair when they wish to use the bathroom.

All possible housing should be subject to mobility standards. Perhaps its greatest advantage is to allow the full integration of severely disabled people into the community. It is not often realised that, even if a person confined to a wheelchair has a perfectly designed house, he cannot be considered a member of the community if every time he wishes to see his friends they have to visit him because he is unable to get into their homes.

Sheltered housing is a concept used in connection with the elderly. There are good grounds for thinking that many elderly people, by choice, wish to live together, but there are no grounds for thinking that young disabled people wish to live together merely because they are disabled. Exactly the opposite is usually the case.

When thinking in terms of sheltered schemes, we are thinking of housing for the elderly or, by an extension of the phrase to include warden-assisted dwellings, for very severely disabled people who need so much support in the community that it is impracticable, with the best will in the world, to house them other than in some form of cluster.

Housing for such people requires the closest co-operation between housing, health and social service authorities. In the United Kingdom, and especially in Northern Ireland, the opportunities for such people to leave hospital and residential accommodation and lead their own lives in their own homes is almost non-existent.

We are concerned in this debate about the disabled in Northern Ireland, but disability knows no barriers. It is the same whether the disabled person is in Northern Ireland, Yorkshire or London. What makes the difference is the financial circumstances of each person. The better-off can temper their disability. We must be particularly concerned about people of modest means living in underprivileged and deprived areas.

This debate is about the two nations. The nation that we are talking about in particular is Northern Ireland, but the nation that I represent in the deprived part of the North of England experiences the same deprivations as some parts of Northern Ireland. The list of the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster of inadequacies in the number of doctors, dentists, hospitals and the rest could be repeated for my constituency. We share that bond of underprivilege.

The only way to remedy the situation is to ensure that all disabled people are given the same opportunity to overcome their disability. We must make sure that resources are allocated fairly and without discrimination and are not determined by where a person lives.

That brings us back to the central argument of public expenditure. It is all very well for hon. Members to talk about the need to reduce public expenditure, but they sometimes overlook the fact that it is not a paper exercise. It concerns people and the ability to provide resources to help underprivileged people.

I wish that the people who press for less public expenditure would attend debates such as this. We have had debates tonight about the sea and the air. Now, at last, we are talking about people, and the Benches normally occupied by the official Opposition are barren for the first time. It is also to be remembered that the advocates of maximum cuts in public expenditure come from the Opposition Benches. It should not go without notice and comment that those Benches are barren now that we are talking about people and the consequences of reducing public expenditure.

rose—

I must apologise, I did not see the hon. Gentleman sitting in the far corner. If he, like me, had been in the Chamber at 3 o'clock this morning discussing broadcasting, I am sure he would have been reassured to know that where he happens to be seated has been rescued from the establishment of the broadcasting booth. It is now to be established in the opposite corner. That will enable the hon. Gentleman to sit in that dark recess on other occasions.

I believe that an imaginative housing programme is the most important single item in the integration of disabled people. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will reassure the House that the Northern Ireland Office and the Housing Executive share that view. I hope he will be able to give us some hope that the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, which has done a great deal to alleviate the difficulties of disabled people, will be extended to Northern Ireland. I hope that he will be able to give us some glimmer of hope that the blind will be in receipt of the mobility allowance before long.

Most of all, I hope my hon. Friend will make it clear that he will be defending the interests of the underprivileged in Northern Ireland and that as a member of the Government he will be defending the interests of the underprivileged in other parts of the United Kingdom in the exercises that are concerned with reducing public expenditure. I warn my hon. Friend, as many of my hon. Friends have warned members of the Cabinet, that that is not a paper exercise. In fact, it concerns people. We should remember this in our consideration of these important matters. I hope that my hon. Friend will give us some information about positive action which is being taken in Northern Ireland on the part of and in the interests of disabled people.

1.8 a.m.

I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) for bringing this matter to the Floor of the House. I have been involved personally with the physically and mentally handicapped for many years. I am aware of the deep feelings that are held on these matters.

The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 has been the subject of most of the discussion. It is believed that in Northern Ireland we urgently and badly need that Act. That is not so. Services under the 1970 Act are provided under the basic legislation, and we have the Health and Personal Social Services Order 1972. It is widely drawn and covers every situation that has been brought to the notice of the House during the debate.

In Article 4(1) the Order places a duty on the Department of Health and Social Services to provide or secure the provision of personal social services designed to promote the social welfare of the people of Northern Ireland. In Article 15 it requires the Department to make available advice, guidance and assistance to such extent as it considers necessary. The Department discharges its duty through its agents, the four area boards, and is thus in a position to influence directly the provision of services for the handicapped under these powers.

The Department has reviewed the provisions of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act to ensure that no disabled person in Northern Ireland is, so far as can be ascertained, deprived of any service or benefit that he or she might have had under that Act. The Health and Social Services Order provides sufficient powers to enable the area boards to offer the basic health and social services. We shall continue to keep the position under constant review. If additional legal powers on the lines suggested by hon. Members are found to be required, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already assured the House that he will be quite willing to take appropriate action.

Where the Department or agencies other than the area boards are concerned, the Department maintains a close liaison in order to ensure that the interests of the disabled are adequately represented. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive, for example, provides special housing for wheelchair or mobility cases, and in co-operation with the area boards it provides adaptations and aids where these are necessary. The Department of the Environment operates a limited "orange card" scheme for parking, and this will be extended when conditions allow. The provision of means of access to publicly-owned buildings is already a matter of policy, and this will be further extended to all new places of public access by means of amendments to the Building Regulations. New Crown buildings already follow the code for the provision of special toilet facilities, and district councils and other agencies have been requested to pay particular heed to the need to make provision.

A booklet "Help for the Handicapped" has recently been revised and reissued and distributed to handicapped persons and organisations interested in their welfare. This sets out very clearly the benefits and services available and is intended to encourage the handicapped to make use of them. I shall send copies to right hon. and hon. Members and if they require further copies I should be grateful if they would let me know their requirements and I shall see that they are dispatched.

With my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, I am very conscious of the need to maintain and develop services for the handicapped. In reality the constraint is not lack of law and will but lack of money and manpower. Our basic philosophy is to provide as much support and manpower. We want to encourage them to make a useful contribution and to keep active in community affairs. We hope to encourage them to aim at a full life and to assist them to play their part.

Within the limitations imposed, we intend to seek every opportunity to extend care and services to which we attach high priority. As the economy improves, more resources will be devoted to improve the range and standard of care, and we have the duty, the power and the will to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West drew particular attention to the lack of recent statistical information or adequate information. Frankly, I accept that this is so. But I can tell him in all honesty that I would defy anyone in this House to tell me of any local authority which has adequately identified the disabled and the range of their disablements. It is one thing to make that mandatory upon local authorities by putting it in legislation, but to leave them to provide the resources to identify and quantify the needs of the disabled and handicapped has been a mammoth task.

I myself have been involved with voluntary agencies helping to identify disablement in my own neighbourhood. We did a canvass on the doorsteps—not a political canvass but a list of questions about people in need, mentally or physically disabled and about consequent problems in the home. That was done intensively in one small area and it took nine months.

If we could harness the agencies which have shown interest and enthusiasm in this matter to do the groundwork and provide the statistics and identify areas of need, perhaps that would give us an indication of what we must do to serve the needs of the community.

I take completely my hon. Friend's point about collecting information. Any of us who know the difficulties of local authorities must recognise the truth of what he says. Is there any possibility within the job creation scheme and similar exercises not only of mobilising the means of acquiring the information but also of providing employment, even if only temporary? That would meet two important objectives in Northern Ireland.

My hon. Friend has pre-empted me. I was about to suggest that that was an area that we could consider and discuss with the Manpower Services Agency.

Returning to the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West, last year's figures are not yet available in all cases, and reorganisation has meant some of the boards computing figures on an entirely new basis. I, too, regard this as important. While I and my colleagues are concerned to improve the collection and publication of these important statistics, I must say honestly that some of the problems will not be easily overcome, bearing in mind what I have said about collecting and collating the statistics required.

Does not the Minister agree that we probably came nearest to the ideal in ascertainment and registration when we had in Northern Ireland the special care authorities which dealt with that area of the mentally handicapped which I know is of great concern to his Department? Is there not a lesson to be drawn from the fact that that service has deteriorated since we streamlined its operation and integrated it into the work of various other bodies?

I have no evidence to support what the hon. Member says. I cannot speak with great authority because I have not given the matter the study it deserves, but the hon. Member will know of the interest I have already shown. We have now started to work towards finding some of the solutions which are required. I hope that in the near future my right hon. Friend and my other colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office will be able to give more information on this matter.

The hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Dunlop) referred to the mobility allowance for the blind. Northern Ireland has parity in all the allowances with the rest of the United Kingdom. I would only add that whatever changes are made will automatically be applied to Northern Ireland.

On the question that the hon. Member raised concerning medical services in West Belfast, may I tell him that that part of Northern Ireland shares with several other parts of the United Kingdom the difficulty of providing acute hospital services in thinly populated areas away from large centres of population. The problem is not peculiar to Northern Ireland or unique to West Belfast.

The Tyrone County Hospital problem is short-term and has been caused by the unexpected illness of two out of three consultant anaesthetists—the other is on annual leave and has been asked to return urgently to cover the present emergency. There is, however, a registrar available to give cover as required. We hope that that cover will be sufficient to meet demands at present. Following the retirement of the consultant radiologist, the post has been advertised three or four times but no applications have been received. Arrangements for a radiology service on a temporary basis have been made with the Eastern Health and Social Services Board.

In these smaller hospitals which provide a surgical and medical service, consultant staffing under the health service has been increased to two in all specialities in order to cater for sickness and leave.

It is increasingly difficult to fill consultant posts in many of the smaller hospitals, and because of the stricter criteria for recognising posts for postgraduate medical training it is difficult to attract junior doctors to these hospitals. The board and the Department have set up a working party to look at the longer-term problem of maintaining acute hospital services in remote areas, but we shall not easily overcome the problem of attracting staff to these smaller hospitals.

I should like here to pay tribute to those dedicated consultants and doctors who, along with the nursing and supporting staff, make such a significant contribution to the health and well-being of the population in remote areas through this service in small local hospitals. Hon. Members will wish to join me in that tribute. General practitioner services in West Ulster, judged by the average size of a doctor's list, compare favourably with any other part of Northern Ireland, and the number of patients per doctor is substantially lower than the average for Great Britain.

I sympathise with the concern expressed by the hon. Member, and I know of the desire of people to have available the best possible hospital facilities and to have them close at hand. These two desires cannot always be easily reconciled. I have had this in my own constituency—as have most hon. Members in rural and urban areas. The problem is not directly one of money; it is how long we can continue to attract even the most dedicated doctors to work in these small hospitals.

There is a tendency to specialise, and it appears to me as a layman that from time to time there is overt pressure to divert young and capable doctors, who might otherwise serve in the smaller hospitals with distinction and dedication, to bring them into the larger hospital units. Whatever reason the medical profession has for it, it is a known fact.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. In that connection, how far has consideration been given to the linkage of the smaller hospitals with the larger ones and with hospitals where teaching is carried out? The hon. Gentleman will probably be aware that in London and other parts of England that has been done with beneficial effect. I wonder whether the possibilities of something of that kind are being considered in Northern Ireland.

This is being considered. No doubt what the right hon. Gentleman illustrated is well in the minds of those who are studying the matter and who will be making firm recommendations. This policy is not working efficiently in all parts of the United Kingdom. It can be adapted only in limited and constrained circumstances. There must be an understanding in the profession in the area concerned in order to bring it into effective operation.

A number of questions were put to me relating to statistics. We are gravely short in certain respects. It would be wrong of me to give answers which might be inaccurate. I have told the House that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and all my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office are determined to overcome this problem. We hope in the coming year to receive the help of those Members who have expressed interest in Northern Ireland affairs tonight. We hope that they will extend their enthusiasm to those who are mentally handicapped. The 1972 Order gives us all the powers we need.

I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West on bringing this matter to our attention tonight and I express the hope that what has been said will be noted by those who read our debates.

Waste Disposal (West Midlands)

1.26 a.m.

I suspect that I shall be the only speaker in this debate other than my hon. Friend the Minister.

I wish to raise two main questions concerning waste disposal in the West Midlands. One concerns toxic waste disposal. The second is the long-term situation as regards general waste disposal in the West Midlands by means of incineration and land fill.

The people in the area of the West Midlands County Council have been made very aware of this problem by the local Press in the past six or seven weeks. The local Press has excelled itself by bringing to the public's attention a major hazard which has occurred. There is near Walsall the shaft of a former coal mine—Walsall Wood Colliery—which for some years has been used for the dumping of toxic waste. In a recent 12-month period 10 million gallons of waste was poured down the mine shaft. It is a warren of toxic waste, because the shaft goes 500 feet underground and then 3,000 feet along the old mine workings.

The action of dumping waste has been defended by the company disposing of the waste—Effluent Disposal Limited. It intends to continue dumping millions of gallons of waste down the mine shaft for the next 20 years—in fact, till the end of the century. It claims that the mine shaft is a safe geological bottle, because the toxic poisonous waste cannot escape.

In fact, this is a geological time bomb which will probably affect our children and future generations. No one really knows what is happening down there. It is not possible to inspect the underground area. Even worse, six weeks ago a blockage occurred. The shaft and the workings can supposedly be used for 20 years. Because of the blockage, nothing is being dumped down there. The company is attempting to get planning permission to bore a hole to release the blockage by means of air pressure. The local residents are very opposed to this. Most of them did not appreciate what was happening. It was only the blockage that brought the operations at the mine shaft to the attention of the public.

Toxic waste is still being generated in the West Midlands. It is, in fact, being generated all over the country, because 40 per cent. of the waste which was being disposed of down the mine came from other parts of the country. The waste is still being disposed of, but now it is not hidden away several hundred feet below the ground but is being disposed of in an open lagoon of several hundred thousand gallons of poisonous waste. It is so dirty that the Health and Safety Inspectorate will not allow its inspectors to investigate the site. The lagoon is littered with tin drums and other rubbish which cannot be recovered. The area has been condemned as "monstrous" by Sir Stanley Yapp, who says that it is

"The unacceptable face of tipping",

and that

"Effluent Disposal Ltd. is showing a reckless disregard for planning conditions".

It has been condemned by the chairman of the county council's planning committee as totally unacceptable. Calls have gone from the county council, which has overall responsibility for the problem, to the Department of Industry urging Ministers to explore the possibility of offering incentives to firms to purchase equipment with which to treat their own waste. That is a laudable step because little is being done in that direction in this country—although I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will describe moves that are being made to avoid the dumping of waste in Essex. Wholesale dumping occurs off our shores, and there is also the nuclear waste that we do not know what to do with.

In theBirmingham Evening Mail of 6th July the Managing Director of Effluent Disposal Ltd, Mr. Malcolm Wood, referring to the remarks of Sir Stanley Yapp, is quoted as saying:

"Sir Stan is fully entitled to his opinions. He has only to close us down and he can deal with the 800 industrial firms in the West Midlands who seem to think that we are the right place for them. If he will tell us to which county waste disposal sites we can take the effluent, we will do it tomorrow."

That is an irresponsible attitude. He shows not the slightest concern over the generating of waste. Those 800 firms should be doing something about the problem themselves.

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will support the initiative of Sir Stanley Yapp and his colleagues on the West Midlands County Council and persuade the Department to take action. The problem will not go away. There will be constant battles over the planning application to bore a hole to open up the mine shaft. My constituents will not stand for that, nor will those of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Edge). He has received representations against the proposal to open up the mine shaft. We cannot allow waste to be deposited in an open lagoon for many more weeks. Action must therefore be taken.

While that specific problem is urgent, it is peripheral to the general problem of the disposal of household and industrial refuse. As long as their dustbins are emptied each week, the public do not want to know about the problem. They acknowledge the difficulties only when their dustbins are not emptied. The massive amount of refuse generated by modern society creates an enormous problem.

A very useful report by the West Midlands County Council chief executive, published in January, outlined the waste disposal problems in the county area. A horrifying picture was presented in the report, a copy of which was sent to my right hon. Friend. I shall mention the main areas in which his Department is responsible for finding a way round the problem.

The crunch is that land-fill sites are insufficient to allow for effective medium-term or long-term plans for waste disposal. In some areas there is a critical situation. We have different techniques for land filling. I shall not go into the technical aspects, such as the compression of waste before it is put in land-fill sites.

I thought that it would be impossible to find a benefit from the 1974 reorganisation of local government, but certain areas of the West Midlands will benefit. In Walsall there is only two to three years' supply of land-fill sites available. Dudley, Sandwell and Solihull District Councils will exhaust their land-fill sites in the next three years. Wolverhampton and Coventry operate only incineration and have no emergency tipping sites for use if the incinerators break down. Birmingham, a former all-purpose local authority, had a good record in many aspects of local government, and it has massive incineration sites, land-fill sites and emergency land-fill sites.

There were no plans before local government reorganisation to build incinerators at Dudley, Sandwell and Solihull or to extend the land-fill sites. I do not know what would have happened if local government had not been reorganised and the problem had not been pushed on to the county council. How those three large urban districts would have disposed of their rubbish, I do not know. This shows a degree of incompetence by the officers of the three former authorities.

I level no charges against the officers of the present authorities, although they may be the same people wearing different hats. Those responsible before 1974 for waste disposal policy in the areas I have mentioned probably would not last five minutes in a job in industry. If they are still involved in waste disposal in local government they should be carpeted, if not booted out. Their lack of planning has put a burden on the ratepayers of the districts that had done something about the problem, particularly the largest, Birmingham. The Birmingham ratepayers will have to get the ratepayers of other areas out of the mess their officials got them into through lack of foresight and planning.

The problem will not go away. I understand that demand for the use of land-fill sites in the West Midlands runs to 1·1 million cubic metres a year, even with the present use of incinerators in the area. I think that there are nine incinerators run by the county council. There are some private incinerators as well. Land-fill sites are being used up much faster than they are being acquired. As can be seen from the figures, within the next three years a serious situation will arise. We cannot wait three years before we start finding new sites.

One of the problems which is constantly raised in the West Midlands concerns the tight boundaries drawn around the West Midlands County Council following reorganisation in 1974. There is little green belt. Reorganisation plans were severely criticised by all parties in the West Midlands county area. This has prevented many policies for housing, industry and transport being pursued. Waste disposal is not something that is at the top of everyone's agenda—until something goes wrong and the waste starts piling up in the streets or poisonous industrial waste is tipped and forms lagoons in residential areas.

The Warwickshire County Council has been approached by the West Midlands County Council. The reply from Warwickshire, summarised in the report of the chief executive on page 25, says that the Warwickshire County Council indicated to the West Midlands County Council that there might be difficulties in the use of certain sites in the Warwickshire area for waste disposal operations

"due to the public's objection to imported waste from the West Midlands conurbation."

That is a pretty disgraceful attitude when we think that a good many of the people who live in the villages of Warwickshire county area conduct their business activities in the West Midlands county area, either as owners of businesses or as employees.

It is the West Midlands county area that provides a great deal of the wealth of the West Midlands area. It ill becomes areas such as Warwickshire, which has umpteen exhausted gravel pits, which will have to be filled in some day and which are a scar on the landscape, to take this attitude. There is adequate capacity there for several years—well beyond this century. The attitude shown by Warwickshire should be taken up by the Department. It will be a serious handicap.

I understand that the Greater London Council has similar problems. One of the Press cuttings I have says that the GLC has been exploring as far afield as Warwickshire and Worcestershire looking for land-fill sites. The problem for the GLC is exactly the same as it is for us. There are tightly-drawn boundaries. This problem will not be solved by each authority having to dispose of its own waste when there are so many areas around the country which can be used for this purpose.

That is not to say that I do not want policies that will lead to our avoiding the generation of waste. I do not believe that twentieth-century society is known for its care of the environment in many aspects, certainly not for its wholehearted use of resources in a meaningful way through reclamation and recycling. We waste an enormous amount of resources, be it rubber, glass or paper, manufactured goods or natural materials. Once they are dumped, they are lost forever. There are examples of district heating schemes which use waste to generate heat.

A large company in the middle of Birmingham, IMI, has one of the largest private incinerators in the West Midlands. It uses waste from outside sources on a commercial basis and supplies half of its power requirements. During the three-day working week it was able to operate properly because it had this large incinerator. There are problems outlined in the county council's report regarding special waste such as that from hospitals and abandoned vehicles. A total of 1,700 vehicles abandoned in the West Midlands annually. That is not a large number. It shows that some vehicles are being taken through the trade.

With regard to animal carcases, the point is made in the report that the situation could become quite terrifying. The disposal of animal carcases in the West Midlands is generally left to two private firms which pick up 100,000 animal carcases per annum from the RSPCA, the PDSA and so on, and use them for the breeding of maggots and the manufacture of fertiliser. The county executive states in the report that the ratepayers would be faced with a serious problem if either of these firms ceased operations, the reason being that the incinerators used for the purpose have to be specially modified to dispose of animal carcases.

The situation concerning the disposal of scrap tyres in the West Midlands is bordering on the ludicrous. Some 20,000 tons of used tyres has to be disposed of in the West Midlands county area. I am told that 45 per cent. is reprocessed in one way or the other, leaving some 55 per cent.—11,000 tons of scrap tyres—to be dumped. What could be more ludicrous than a natural resource that originally came from the ground, via the trees, being buried back in the ground?

My right hon. Friend will be well aware of the Green Paper dealing with waste, published in September 1974, heralding a new policy for reclamation. It talked in paragraph 34 about rubber and the disposal of car tyres. There had been a national survey, and it pointed out that one-third of a million tons of tyres had to be disposed of each year. The survey suggested that substantially less than half the tyres were dumped. That may be the position nationally but it is certainly not the position in the West Midlands, where 55 per cent. or more is being dumped and buried underground. In addition, there is no generation of waste heat from the tyres. They are simply filling up sites which would normally be used for other purposes related to waste.

Ministerial action is required by the county council and by the taxpayers in the area. We cannot convert overnight the 800 firms which are disposing of their own waste, much of which is extremely dangerous. Therefore, some appropriate action has to be taken to deal with the problem. We cannot just go round the country looking for odd sites. The matter has to be handled with care. Hydrological surveys have to be taken, otherwise we simply pollute the water that is in the ground.

As to reclamation, I have read the report on the trial in the city of York by the glassware manufacturers. They wanted to train or encourage people to save glass and to separate out the coloured glass from the rubbish. The idea was related to no-deposit glass bottles, but after a three months' exercise it appeared that 12 per cent. of the bottles collected were deposit bottles. Apparently the people did not even bother to collect their deposits. There is something more than the situation existing in York which needs to be tackled, and perhaps it requires to be done on a national basis.

We cannot go on building incinerators willy-nilly, and the number of gravel workings and quarry sites available for the dumping of waste is limited. We cannot continue to do this for centuries to come. Incineration can be clean and can be very efficient technically. The county council is at the moment building a new incinerator at Tyseley, in Birmingham. The chairman of the environmental services, Councillor Knowles, said in a letter to me two weeks ago that

"under the Government directives we are unlikely to get any money for capital schemes of this type for some years to come".

If the implication is that incinerators will not be built in the West Midlands, at least three of the seven areas I have mentioned will not have any capacity for disposing of household rubbish. My right hon. Friend must take that matter on board.

Site acquisition is the next possibility. If we do not build enough incinerators, action must be taken to sort out the areas—I have highlighted Warwickshire, but there are other places—where there are adequate sites which are not close to residential areas. We must not have a situation where a county can say "We do not want the rubbish from the conurbation." That is not a reasonable attitude to take.

I realise that this is a West Midlands problem, but I have a constituency interest. Within my constituency is the site of some disused gravel workings. My right hon. Friend knows about it because he lived in the area at one time. The site covers 147 acres. Some of those responsible for waste disposal in the West Midlands have got their beady eyes on that site. The potential for landfill on the site is 3 mililon cubic yards. At the rate at which we require sites—1 million cubic yards a year— that would be available for only three years; but that would buy a lot of time to look for other sites.

I understand from the county planner that the site would not take more than 1 million cubic yards if a proper reclamation scheme were operated for the site. I am referring to the old site of the Queslett Sand and Gravel Company, known variously as the Queslett or Great Barr quarry or the Booths Lane site.

The county planner has said that the county will not allow the area to be used as a landfill site without its forming part of a total reclamation plan. The site is in a built-up area alongside schools, houses and the M6 motorway. The residents will not stand for it being filled up, levelled, and someone saying "What shall we build on it?" That is no use at all. It has been a disused quarry for some years and there is a nature reserve on the site now. It could be used for housing and recreation. Indeed, it is being used for certain emergency refuse disposal. No one will object to 1 million cubic yards of waste being dumped there if the reclamation plan is worked out before the dumping takes place.

The Severn-Trent Water Authority is to conduct a hydrological survey in the area of the site to ensure that any dumping of waste will not affect the water in the area. I should like my right hon. Friend to bear in mind that different authorities—the Severn-Trent Water Authority and the West Midlands County Council—are already looking at that site. I hope that the Department of the Environment will take a national view.

We should not allow a situation to develop which will enable people in two or three year's time to say "It is a major scandal. Neither the Government nor the council have done anything about it. No one has blown the whistle on it. There has been the usual cock-up that tends to occur in this area."

That is why I have taken this opportunity to raise the matter. I do not expect my right hon. Friend to give me any cast-iron answers, but I expect those in the West Midlands who are concerned about the position to be able in future to refer to this short debate and to hold the Government responsible—I know that my hon. Friend takes a keen interest—for taking action.

We must see some action if, first, future generations are not to be poisoned because of the dumping of toxic waste and, secondly, if the general industrial situation and householders are not to be buried in mountains of their own rubbish, the creation of the throw-away society that we have constructed in the twentieth century.

1.55 a.m.

I am sure that the House listened carefully as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) gave us a catalogue of the difficulties of waste disposal in one of our great industrial conurbations. As a sideline, he let my colleagues into the intricacies of the geography of the area in which my wife and I did our courting in our early days. It is, therefore, right to say that I have an intimate knowledge of the area.

I listened very carefully to my hon. Friend, especially as he concluded by saying that posterity would hold me and the Government responsible. The fact is that the Government do not have responsibility for the things for which he thinks they should accept responsibility. I shall try to deal with some of the points raised by my hon. Friend, but every matter that he raised is the responsibility of the local authority.

The Government have done more on this subject than has ever before been attempted. My hon. Friend spoke as though the Control of Pollution Act has not been passed. The first thing that we did on returning to power in 1974— and I regard it as no small achievement—was to get through Parliament, between the two elections of February and October, the 109-section Control of Pollution Act. It is the most advanced piece of legislation of its kind in the world, and I think it is evidence of the Government's acquaintance with the real and serious problems involved. I take no issue with my hon. Friend over that. He is right to outline the problems, but the passing of the Act means, as I am sure my hon. Friend will accept, that the responsibility for action lies firmly with the local authorities and the regional water authorities.

If at any time the West Midands authority, which is the waste disposal authority designated under the Control of Pollution Act—and particularly my old friend Councillor Dick Knowles, whom many of us remember for his work on behalf of the Labour Party and who is doing sterling work as a member of the authority—were to feel that efforts or initiatives were required by my Department, we should be delighted to listen to what he has to say.

With regard to the general problem of the disposal of toxic waste and the disposal of rubbish generally, and in particular the situation with regard to Walsall Wood, if my hon. Friend thinks that it would help me to visit the West Midlands and look at the situation, perhaps in company with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Edge), in whose constituency one finds the Micto site, I should be happy to put myself at the disposal of the authority and to do what I can to make sure that it has the powers that it requires.

It is the opinion within my Department that the West Midlands County Council is probably one of the most progressive and relevant local authorities in this respect. It has a very highly-qualified technical staff, and it is one of the authorities which, in advance of being required to do so by the Government under the Control of Pollution Act, is conducting a survey and providing a plan of the refuse and waste within its area. The council has, in fact, taken the initiative to conduct the survey and provide the plan.

This will be one of the important requirements of the Control of Pollution Act. Because of the financial limitations that are imposed on local authorities, we are asking them to start this on a purely voluntary basis in advance of making it a statutory requirement. It is very difficult to ask local authorities to exercise considerable restraint and then impose further financial burdens upon them.

We believe that there are many areas like the West Midlands which could get on with a survey and a plan, and we ask them to do so. As soon as we can, we will make it a statutory obligation on all the other authorities which have not yet got the staff to make a start now.

As my hon. Friend said, the West Midlands authority, in association with Imperial Metal Industries, is carrying out a pilot study to investigate the scope for using domestic waste as fuel. The West Midlands is one of the authorities which takes very seriously the responsibilities laid upon it in the Deposit of Poison Waste Act—the second of the great environmental Acts which this Government have piloted on to the statute book.

Of course, I pay tribute to the fact that those Acts have gone on to the statute book, but many parts of them are taking a long time to come into operation. When my right hon. Friend has made it a statutory duty on the councils to get their waste disposal plans done, he will find that the Department will be confronted with a problem. There will be areas, such as the West Midlands, in which there are not normally enough land-fill sites, while in neighbouring areas, such as that of the Warwickshire County Council, there will be an excess of sites. Will the Department be in a position to reconcile the problems of these two councils?

At this time of night I certainly would not suggest that members of one local authority could march into the area of another and commandeer sites. If, however, we have the surveys and plans to which I have referred, it will be a duty of my Department to confer with the local authorities about any shortcomings these surveys and plans throw up. I give the undertaking that we will do this.

I agree with what my hon. Friend said about the very narrow confines of the boundaries by which the metropolitan authority was drawn. I do not share his great enthusiasm for the results of the local government reorganization—

It was the only good point.

My hon. Friend says that it was the only good point, and it may be that this is so. But the very point he has made illustrates the real shortcomings of putting together in one metropolitan county such as we have in the West Midlands—stretching from Wolverhampton to Coventry—all the social, industrial and waste disposal problems of the Midlands. Their confinement within one local authority's boundaries means that that authority cannot solve its own problems. Sooner or later, and I believe it will be sooner, we shall have to look again at the results of this rather ludicrous local government reorganisation which was foisted upon the country.

Under Section 1 of the Act a waste disposal authority is required to ensure that adequate arrangements are made by that authority and other persons for the disposal of controlled waste. It is now made an obligation for each local authority to be responsible for the disposal of the waste arising within its area. That is not to say that it must deal with all the waste that arises, but it must be responsible for it. There are two major sites for toxic wastes in this country, one at Walsall Wood and the other at Pitsea. I have always thought that it was totally unsatisfactory for large tankers to have to travel from all over the country to deposit toxic waste in only two sites, but it is very difficult to find other sites.

This is the first debate that we have had concerning the site at Walsall Wood, but I have taken part in a number of other debates about the problems arising at Pitsea. That site causes offence and creates problems with the large tankers carrying toxic wastes through the streets. For the moment, however—and this is one of the great justifications for the Act—only two such sites exist. The local authorities have far wider powers for dealing with those sites. They have a bargaining position when dealing with other local authorities in whose areas the wastes arise. They can say that they will no longer accept waste on the same scale as hitherto.

Under Section 2 of the Act, a waste disposal authority has a duty to survey both the waste and the facilities. As my hon. Friend said, the Severn-Trent authority has to be brought into the question of the Booths Lane, Perry Barr site. It is vitally important where there are lagoons or where dumping takes place in shafts that there should be daily tests of water resources and so on to make sure that the toxic wastes are not escaping into the watercourses. That was the great concern in the Pitsea case. The Thames Water Authority continued to monitor the site daily. I would expect the Severn-Trent Water Authority constantly to monitor the situation on the Walsall Wood site.

My hon. Friend asked what could be done about these sites. The Walsall District Council and the West Midlands County Council are unhappy about the present disposal operation on the Mitco site.

They are discussing with Effluent Disposal Ltd. what improvements should be made. I understand that the district council has served a "stop" notice under planning legislation on the site for alleged breach of planning conditions. If there has been a breach of planning consent, the law is adequate to deal with that and we shall follow with interest the result of the council's action.

The council is also considering, if it has not already taken, further action under the nuisance provisions of the Public Health Act 1936. It is open to the West Midlands County Council to prosecute under the Deposit of Poisonous Waste Act 1972 if it considers that environmental hazards are being created on any of the sites mentioned by my hon. Friend.

A licence tinder the Control of Pollution Act will be required immediately for the use of a new shaft if one is to be sunk, and I see from aBirmingham Mail cutting that the county council seems agreeable to the sinking of a new shaft because the existing shaft is blocked. No one knows why it is blocked or how long it will take to unblock it.

I hope I have convinced my hon. Friend that we take his general point very seriously. We understand the difficulties. The whole nation has to be served and plans must be made.

If shortcomings become apparent when those plans have been made, we shall have to return to the matter. In the circumstances outlined by my hon. Friend, there would be shortcomings that we should need to consider.

I think that I covered my hon. Friend's question about the Walsall Wood shaft in my general review. It is the responsibility of the West Midlands County Council, in association with the regional water authority, to satisfy itself that the dumping undertaken by Effluent Disposal Ltd. is safe. It has adequate powers to do that.

I shall look carefully at the four points on which my hon. Friend suggested that ministerial action was required—toxic waste, reclamation, incineration and site acquisition—but I do not think that they are the immediate responsibility of Ministers as we have put responsibility for the control of pollution on local authorities and regional water authorities. However, I shall write to my hon. Friend if there appears to be a void in the legislation dealing with these matters.

Incineration would require a major amount of capital, which could be difficult in the present climate. Capital availability is known to local authorities and they must determine their own priorities. In some areas the priority might be incineration, in other areas it might be another aspect of local services.

My hon. Friend has raised some extremely important matters. It is right that they should be brought constantly before the House. It is right that we should examine our legislation and procedures to ensure that they are adequate. My hon. Friend is right to say that the problem is likely to become more pressing and not less pressing. It is right that we may have to return to these matters to strengthen or extend legislation after the planning and surveying has taken place. I can assure my hon. Friend, on behalf of my right hon. Friend, that we shall not fail to take that action if we feel that it is needed. I hope that for the moment he will rest assured that the priority we have given to this subject in the past two years is evidence that we share his concern.

London (Employment, Social And Economic Problems)

2.16 a.m.

My hon. Friends and I are glad to be able to initiate this debate at a crucial stage in the development of London, at a stage when we believe that a whole series of decisions are about to be taken. Therefore, we hope to contribute some ideas and some guidance to the Ministers who are studying the important problems that London is facing.

I believe that the most critical of all the decisions being taken is to come to a conclusion on the optimum size of the capital's population. I go along with the idea which I understand is circulating in the Department of the Environment—namely, to try to aim for an ultimate population of about 6½ million by 1981. That is about right if we are to get throughout the London boroughs the environmental conditions that we should all like to see. It is uppermost in our minds that the highest priority should be given to the improvement of the London environment in every way possible. That can be achieved now that practically all the London boroughs have come to the conclusion that there should be no more high-rise development.

We should now be concentrating our ideas towards the general spread of the population and an improvement by way of increased open space and community amenities. There is general agreement that that is the way to do it. If we are thinking in terms of a multi-racial capital, the only way in which that can be established is by concentrating upon a vast improvement in the amenities available to our communities and in local authority provision for improved communities throughout the whole of the area.

It is essential to recognise that by and large throughout London the only organisations contributing in anything like a sizeable way towards the improved environment and the development of London are the local authorities. For many reasons, especially the cost of site clearance and new development, it is only the local authorities that are able to do so. In most of the Inner London Boroughs very few sites are being redeveloped or replanned except by the local authorities themselves.

A number of other things are happening which make London today a very different place from what it was 10 years ago. It is interesting to note that London has the fastest office development anywhere in the world and that it has built more square feet of office space than any other capital city. To our everlasting shame, London also has the fastest industrial decline in Britain. That is the seriousness of the situation that we are now facing.

We have the finest offices but the poorest factories. Indeed, many businesses have renewed their office accommodation in recent years but there has been total neglect of the industrial plant which is supposed to provide the resources to keep the offices in being. Where we find the most magnificent accommodation for administrative staffs we often find, on the other hand, that the industrial workers in the same organisation have to suffer the most primitive machinery and the most out-of-date equipment. They have to struggle in order to compete, not only in this country but with the rest of the world. There has, in fact, been industrial starvation. London is being starved of capital investment. At the same time, however, a lot of money is being poured into the property boom, which has changed the skyline of the city.

In many respects we have a city of empty sky blocks, declining industry and neglected means of productive manufacturing. It is, therefore, not surprising that we have a London that is in a totally unsatisfactory state. Indeed, the serious decline in skilled and unskilled manpower has been at a rate which has been unsurpassed anywhere. From the latest figures, I understand that there are something like 110,000 unemployed manual workers in the greater London area. That is an unbelievable figure. From that, one can imagine the size of the problems that will occur before very long, and no one can have much optimism that these difficulties will be overcome.

While the national average for manual workers within the total work force is about 44 per cent., according to the 1971 Census, the percentage in my constituency of Tottenham at that time, was 54 per cent. and in Southwark and similar boroughs it was 56 per cent. Over recent years there has been a higher proportion of manual workers in the inner London boroughs than anywhere else in the country. That comes as a great surprise to many people who have the impression that the whole of London depends upon administrative workers of one sort or another and that everyone is involved in some form of clerical work. The figures disprove that. In fact, they again emphasise the difficulties from which London suffers because of the rapid decline in manual work.

There is only one answer for London, as elsewhere in the country, and that is fast economic growth. I believe that London is as much entitled as the rest of the country to its fair share of any industrial aid that is made available. There is no justification whatever for this Government, or any Government, taking the view that London is not entitled to its share of any industrial aid, because our problems are equal to those in the rest of the country. The problem is being made worse by the very nature of the policies now being pursued and the deliberate directions that are being given to industrialists to seek new premises on new sites elsewhere in the country. They are encouraged to do that by the most generous grants which are made available to them.

That is bad planning. Manufacturers should not receive Government assistance merely to enable them to transfer their roots from London to another part of the country. It would be different if they were creating new industry. They should not be given assistance with reinvesting in new plant and machinery and buildings merely to enable them to move their roots. That aspect of industrial development should be urgently reconsidered.

The size of area qualifying for industrial development certificates has been increased to 12,500 sq. ft., but the system is a nonsense. There have been no recent rejections of applications, because manufacturers are not coming to London. They say that they cannot afford to do so. They certainly cannot extend in London and deny themselves the Government assistance which is available elsewhere. If no new public sector jobs are to be created and local authority staffs are to be frozen for the next three years, if there is no chance of expansion in huge sectors of the service industries and if the Government intend to provide 1 million new job opportunities, what will happen to London, which has an enormous unemployment problem among young people? If Government policy of shifting industry from London is not changed, London will not get any of those job opportunities.

Therefore, if for no other reason, this debate is important because it allows us to say strongly to the Government that there must now be fundamental changes in their industrial policy and the relocation of industry so that London has a fairer share of the promised job opportunities. I hope that we shall hear some good news about that.

Certainly there must be planning, the Government must have interventionist powers and the whole question of regional industry and grants must be reconsidered. The Government should now be building advance factories and other industrial development in London. Commercial developments will largely avoid the capital city. If there is to be balanced development, the Government must do it themselves—not only in dockland but throughout the GLC area. There should at least be a Minister of Cabinet rank responsible for co-ordinating all these developments and linking up with the GLC and the London boroughs. So great a job cannot be done in any other way. It must be co-ordinated in that way, and we should have political power and authority to bring about that co-ordination.

My final point is about young people. Other hon. Members will, I know, wish to comment about the situation of our youngsters in London. I understand that the national figure of unemployed youngsters under the age of 18 is about 400,000. It may be that the figure for those under 20 is about 500,000. In London we have the biggest share of those under 18 who have no job. Probably of greater significance is the fact that there is a diminishing possibility of youngsters in London getting a successful trade apprenticeship, not only in the engineering industries but in other skilled trades like printing. The chances of London youngsters getting an apprenticeship are in fast decline, for reasons about which we all know. An urgent problem is facing us.

I know that employers in many engineering and other skilled industries find that it is far cheaper to go to a skillcentre to get their labour requirements for a wage payment. Skill is presented to an employer at a skillcentre, and that is much cheaper for him than providing facilities for the training of young people. There is an attraction for employers to solve their problems in that way.

There is an immense difficulty and challenge in trying to provide balanced apprenticeships for London youngsters in certain skilled trades when we know that from whole areas of London industries are on the way out. Those opportunities will not be given, and we have to come to terms with this and do something about it urgently. It is not enough to talk youngsters into remaining at school or to provide interim training on a payment basis or otherwise. That is no way to do it. It has to be done in industry. That is the only way. There are no short cuts. We have a special responsibility in that direction.

Those are some of the problems that worry me. I know that these worries are shared by those of my hon. Friends who wish to take part in the debate. I hope the Government will consider these matters and before long produce a White Paper or a Government statement setting out their determination to do something about the problems facing London and to do something to give the city its fair share of the resources available so that it can face the future with optimism.

2.34 a.m.

I shall not follow in great detail what the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) has said but I want to touch on one or two of his points. I agree with him that things in London are not right. They have been neglected over a long period and it is urgent that the Government look seriously at the way our capital city is to develop.

As one who has had an interest in regional policy for some time, I would tell the hon. Member that he should not turn up his nose at office and commercial jobs, because jobs are jobs and we need them in London. If the hon. Member goes round the regions and talks to his colleagues who represent development areas and places like that he will discover that they are longing for commercial development. Both Governments have given substantial sums to encourage the location not only of manufacturing industry but of service industry in development areas. We should not turn up our nose at commercial development and offices, which are an essential part of our capital city.

The hon. Member for Tottenham made a reasonable point in saying that manufacturing industries have to some extent run down in London. They do not receive the substantial aids that are given to manufacturing industry in development areas, as the Member pointed out. However, hon. Members delude themselves if they suppose that London's problems in industrial and unemployment problems can be compared with the fundamental problems of places such as Merseyside, Glasgow and, perhaps, the North-East.

Having said that, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that regional policy must be flexible. It must be reviewed periodically. It is absurd for it to be kept in a straitjacket. It is a long time since there was a review of regional policy. In the past two years unemployment has increased by 90 per cent. in the development areas, by 122 per cent in the intermediate areas, and by no less than 159 per cent. in the South-East non-assisted areas. This is not tolerable, and I hope that the Government will take the matter seriously.

I believe in the IDC weapon. Nevertheless, there is a case for further relaxation of the rules, because, as I have said before in the House, it is absurd to suppose that if the builders of a reasonably small development in London are stopped from building it they will up sticks and go to Newcastle or Glasgow.

The Government should review regional policy and see where such places as London and the South-East, which have suffered greatly in the past two years, fit into the scheme of things.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned housing and high-rise flats. I believe that London's housing problems could be substantially resolved if the scandal of dockland were sorted out. I will say no more about that because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) has been particularly interested in the problem, is nearer to it than I am, and if he is fortunate enough to catch the eye of the Chair will have something to say about it.

I want to say something about an important part of the economic and social life of London and, indeed, of the country as a whole. I refer to tourism, which provides a considerable number of jobs and has an important part to play in London and elsewhere.

I am deeply disturbed at what I believe to be a growing anti-tourist feeling in certain quarters of the capital city. This stems partly from the very understandable concern about congestion in the centre of London. It stems also, I regret to say, from the less desirable emotions of xenophobia and the unrealistic belief that agreeable parts of London can return to the state they were in 10, 20 or 50 years ago.

That is a total delusion because, if tourism did not exist in London, Kensington and Chelsea would not return to those halcyon days that some of us remember. If, suddenly, the tourist industry were replaced by manufacturing industry—if a drop forge or a strip mill were to be sited in Chelsea, say—the squawks would be heard from King's Road to Westminster. So those who imagine that life can be as it was a long time ago delude themselves.

Some of the anti-tourists, though basically motivated by these emotions, will present their arguments in strictly financial terms. But juggle how one will with the figures, it is a fact that tourism contributes an input to the Revenue of at least £700 million, on the anti-tourists' argument alone—and I believe the figure to be much higher. It forms part of those invisible earnings without which our economy would have been sunk without trace a long time ago.

The last thing that I want to recommend at this time is an increase in public expenditure on tourism. The hotel development incentive scheme was misguided, and resulted in far too much taxpayers' money being spent on providing too many hotels in London. Some of that money should have gone elsewhere. I prefer a more effective development of the existing resources.

In the current year about £16 million is being spent on tourism. Tourism provides about 1½ million jobs. But that amount is piffling when compared with the subsidies poured into manufacturing industry. It does not compare favourably with other countries. For example, Canada spends eight times the amount that we spend on tourist boards.

People become irritated because they imagine that London is flooded with foreigners working in the tourist industry. But the number of foreign workers coming here for that purpose is declining each year. In 1975 there were 8,500 foreigners working in the tourist industry—or half of 1 per cent. of the total employed in the industry as a whole. It is therefore right, as a matter of policy, to encourage tourism—it is right for the economy and it is right in international terms. How on earth can we understand other people, and how can they understand us, unless we meet in agreeable and harmonious circumstances?

I question the rôle of the London Tourist Board. It is not necessary to market London. People will come here anyway. The rôle of the board should be to channel tourists in London to other parts of Great Britain.

I well understand the natural irritations of the oppressed and frustrated Londoners. They have to cope with the problems of housing and the cost and discomfort of transport. To travel from my constituency by car, tube or bus now costs 70 per cent. more than it did two years ago. Londoners have to bear the ever-increasing burden of rates and taxes, but I beg them not to turn against tourists or to make them the scapegoats. We do not need to further subsidise visitors to London. The top priority should be to spread tourist aid and to spread visitors throughout the country.

Whether we like it or not, London is a magnet not only to foreign tourists but to our fellow countrymen. More of them visit London than do foreigners. Why should they not? We have the best theatres, music, history and architect in the world. Why should we not want people to see them? By harassing and impeding tourists in London we shall not persuade them to go elsewhere. Instead we shall create a mean, narrow-minded and selfish image, which will undoubtedly deprive us of a valuable contribution to the economy.

Let London be proud that it attracts people from all over the world and from all over Britain. We should give our visitors the welcome and hospitality that is an intrinsic feature of our national character.

2.45 a.m.

I have the advantage of having a foot in both camps in London. Having been born in the City of London, near enough to qualify as a Cockney, and having spent the whole of my life within the central London area, I now represent a constituency in the greater London area which is increasingly sharing the problems of central London with which I am much more familiar.

The point that the hon. Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Grant) has just made throws up one of the situations in which there is a common bond. It is true that far too many tourists are about the streets of central London, particularly at this time of the year, and that they cause problems for us. I do not see many tourists in central Ilford, and I suspect that many of the other greater London areas would welcome the opportunity of providing accommodation for tourists and allowing some of their surplus workers to be occupied in the tourist industry.

However, we should not over-estimate the quality of the jobs available in the industry, which is vital to the survival of London. Many of them in the service industries are very low-paid. Only a day or two ago there was a moving account of the way in which catering workers were queueing up in the early hours every morning in central London, hoping to be picked for some of the extremely low-paid jobs which are essential if we are to retain a tourist industry. There are two sides to the need for tourism. We have a great deal to offer in London, but we may be offering it at too low a price if it is at the expense of keeping Londoners permanently on low pay.

The non-development of industry in London has had a big effect on the living standards of people in the whole London area. In my constituency a number of industrial jobs remain, but it is not easy to persuade the management of many of the large companies to stay in the London area. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Shaw) and I have visited a number of companies which had planned to move even further afield and appealed to them to remain in the area so that our skilled people should have jobs.

Tourism is all very well, but it is a tragedy that we should be losing the skills in industry which are essential to our survival as a manufacturing nation. This is one of the problems which the policies of successive Governments since the war have forced on London, creating a situation in which the very heart of London is dying rapidly. No doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Mikardo) will talk about the dreadful situation in his constituency, where so much of the industrial capacity lies barren and unused because of the attraction of the development areas and the tremendous grants which have been offered over the years.

My constituency would welcome the opportunity of more office jobs. Not only the North-East and other development areas are starved of office work. Ilford was to have been one of the many centres on the outskirts of London. The plans for this kind of development have been set back, possibly for many years. Vast numbers of people in my constituency have to face delay, inconvenience and frustration in commuting from the outer areas into central London to carry on their jobs. With the increasing pressure for economies in administrative tasks their jobs may well be under threat as time goes on.

I pass from the industrial problems, because I am perhaps less well qualified to talk about them than some of my hon. Friends who will follow, to draw attention to a short broadcast that was produced in the last couple of weeks dealing with the situation in New York. I was listening to this as I drove home after a day in the House when we had been talking about London's problems. In that broadcast I heard the same phrase used in relation to New York as is used when talking about local government here—"The party is over"—as if there has ever been a party for local government. Yes, there were the golden years—the golden years of property speculation. There was certainly a big party, as a result of which the people living in central London in particular suffered. I suspect that the same is true in New York.

This short broadcast drew attention to the parallels between the crisis in London government and that in New York. It described to begin with the setting-up of a new school in New York a few years ago to cope with some of the young people in the centre of that vast city who suffered social disadvantage. It described how the experiment which this school introduced, of specialisation in skills and branches of knowledge which had been denied these young people, had been a great success and how in a short time the intake had grown—until New York was starved of funds.

Then, because of a feeling of insecurity, the staff started to leave. With the pressure to reduce expenditure in the city, because of the attitude of the federal Government, staff began to be cut back. School places were reduced, but gradually the intake to the school began to increase. The broadcast described in graphic terms the way in which the disaffection set in within the school as not only the remaining staff but the children experienced the insecurity that this kind of change was forcing on them. It also described—I hope we shall never see this in the London area—the way in which members of staff who remained within the school were gradually forced into such competitive relationships that they were having to compare the dates when they took up their appointments to see who was last in, because they would be first out.

Certain developments in London could move in that direction unless we start thinking seriously about the position. I know that it is popular to say that the population of London is dropping fast and therefore fewer schools are needed. If we take the example of New York and regard it as being in some ways parallel to our situation we shall see the dangers that could arise if and when the time comes when it is suggested that we can start cutting down on the number of schools to reflect the drop in population. Because of the many social problems within the London area it is vital that we retain not only the schools but the staff on whom we depend to provide particularly for the immigrant communities, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) referred.

The broadcast referred to a situation in which, suddenly, people who had been either colleagues or friends were no longer so, because they were more concerned about when they weer appointed, and whether they were appointed before each other, than with the interests of the children whom they had originally come to the school to assist.

In many ways, too, this sort of attitude is reflected in New York in the hospital services. Again, oddly enough, there is a parallel to the situation in London, where it is being suggested that for one reason or another it is possible to close down a very considerable number of hospitals. In New York this has happened too, and the result has been that the most skilled people have left the area altogether to seek jobs in the developing areas of the hospital service. We have to bear in mind that private medicine reigns supreme in the United States, and that it is easy for the staff to select areas where the rewards will be greater as well as the security.

We must not overlook the fact that this could even apply in London, where greater and greater pressure is being applied concerning reductions in various of the services—both the National Health Service and the personal social services provided by local authorities. The campaign goes on daily for the provision of private services in these areas, so that it would be very easy as time went on, and with deteriorating public services, for the people with the most skills and the most experienced people to be sucked into the private sector, much to the detriment of the greater part of the population.

The hospital authorities and health authorities in New York have been fighting a losing battle on this score and it highlights for us the need for the Government to start to provide a proper strategy not just for industry in London but for health, for social services and for education. It is not good enough to argue that because there is a drop in the number of children we can do without schools, or that because there are other areas of the country not as well endowed as London with hospital services, hospital services can be removed almostad infinitum.

If London is to survive as a capital city it must regain the balance it once had. Housing—particularly council housing—and a programme of replacement of the kinds of homes which are a disgrace to any capital city, must continue through the local authorities, because there is no other rented accommodation for those who cannot afford to buy homes of their own. Giving people the opportunity of purchasing their council homes when some of them are outdated and lack by many miles facilities up to the Parker Morris standard, is no answer.

Even with modern council houses, the opportunity for purchase only produces a hollow laugh from those who, when they see the mortgage repayments—even with the cut-price offers which are being made by some local authorities—know that their income will never be sufficient for them both to pay the mortgage and undertake permanently the maintenance of these properties.

Housing must be maintained, and the Government must decide how they answer these questions. What is to be the size of London? What are to be the provisions for its maintenance? How are we to overcome the very considerable downward trend which has been allowed to continue until this date? Unless the Government do that, London will die as surely as New York's centre has already died. As was said in an earlier debate, this will indeed be an indictment of Ministers who are responsible for this problem. They know that we do not stay up until this hour of the morning to talk about London's problems for our own amusement; it is because we London Members feel so deeply about the serious problems that have emerged.

3.1 a.m.

I make no apology for returning to the question of employment and for at least starting my contribution by referring to the affairs of my own borough, which has been one of the hardest hit areas of London when it comes to industrial rundown.

Greenwich lost no fewer than 20,000 manufacturing jobs during the 1960's, and the impact on the area has been considerable. Whole areas which once were thriving industrial scenes are now simply cold, sterile warehouses which provide little contribution to employment, but add a great deal to the problem of juggernauts on our roads and similar environmental difficulties. Greenwich has no wish to be the warehouse of southeast London.

From being a borough into which people come to work, Greenwich has turned into a borough out of which people go increasing distances to work, because it is no longer easy to find employment in the immediate area for those who work in the heavy engineering which always went on alongside the Thames.

One point must be made over and over again. We cannot look at London as one travel-to-work area. We cannot say that, because there are jobs in West and North London, people in South and East London can take advantage of those opportunities. London is not one united whole. It is a collection of islands. The public transport system links between one island and another, between one part of London and another, and it is not always good. Therefore, we must look at these areas on their own merits.

The structural changes and industrial decline that we have seen in savage terms in some parts of London have left serious pockets of residual unemployment—pockets which are not solved by improvements in the economic situation.

There is a school of thought that says "Yes, there are problems in London. These problems will be solved when the upturn in the economy comes in a way which they will not be solved on Merseyside, in the North-East or in Scotland."

All the research carried out by organisations—for example, the South-East London Industrial Consultative Group—shows that these pockets of employment in London always lead the rest of London when there is a slump. When unemployment is increasing, those areas are always in front. When the reverse takes place and the boom is with us, those areas always lag behind the rest of London. The difficulty and the risk is that, in looking at London as one whole, we tend to overlook these serious areas represented in the debate tonight.

The problem of skills has already been mentioned. One of the saddest things about areas, such as mine, in South-East London is that, alongside a steady 3,500 people registered unemployed at the Woolwich labour exchange month after month, we have industrialists, month after month, saying "we cannot get the skilled labour that we need in our plants. If we cannot get that skilled labour, sadly we shall have to leave this area and search elsewhere for the skills that we need."

The tragedy is that we had those skills in South-East London. The area was built on manufacturing and engineering skills. The experience of the AEI closure in 1968 shows that many skilled engineers, having been made redundant two or three times, said "That is it. No more engineering for me. I am going to work for the Post Office. I am going to sell whatever I can find to sell. I shall use any other kind of expertise, but I shall not go back into manufacturing industry." It is tragic that we are trying to provide skilled training opportunities for a number of new people when the skills are there among many former manufacturing employees.

Others have mentioned the problems of the young. As the manufacturing base contracts, so the training opportunities for the young diminish. I was horrified to learn from an answer given by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State that in Woolwich and Greenwich alone this summer there will be 1,500 school leavers looking for a job, and that suitable vacancies for them in Area No. 83. I accept that many of these young people will travel to central London and try to find employment there, but it is still a tragic situation that that number of young people will be looking for jobs in an area such as mine. I have been to the local office of the Department of Health and Social Security and seen the sad sight of the special arrangements that have to be made for young people to sign on to collect unemployment benefit after they leave school. That is something that many of us are bitterly ashamed to see happening.

The other problem about unemployment among the young is that so many of our people who have been made redundant so often in engineering are saying "My son will not go into manufacturing industry. He will go into something else because I do not want him to go through the experience and the redundancy that I have been through so many tittles".

The causes of the industrial decline in South-East London are many and varied. We have seen the rationalisation of firms, usually rationalising themselves out of London because of the opportunities for financial assistance that are offered in other parts of the country. We have seen industrialists discover that the value of the land on which a factory stands is very much higher if sold for office or hotels or other uses rather than for manufacturing industry. We have seen the impact of high rents and high rates, and the problems that occur when small firms are pushed out by council redevelopment schemes. We have seen, too, the problems of transport in inner London and the problems of shortages of skilled manpower.

One of the difficulties is that this is a vicious circle. People are going because jobs are not available, and jobs are going because the skilled labour is not available. The vicious circle turns constantly, and one wonders whether we shall be able to reverse it. One is glad to note that at long last the GLC is saying "Let us call a halt. Let us try to stop this deliberate moving of jobs out of London to new and expanded towns". I am glad that the GLC is talking that view, because it is the council that has been responsible for robbing us of a good deal of industry in inner London. I wonder how successful the council will be.

Whether one is talking about the shifting of industry or the shifting of population, I believe that a great deal of this goes on on a voluntary basis without the sort of deliberate movement that is being planned by the GLC or anyone else. The tragedy is that the movement of population is unbalanced. What we tend to lose, by and large, are the young, the skilled and the enterprising. What we are left with are the elderly, the less skilled, the handicapped, the deprived, the poorer groups and the minority ethnic groups. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) said, we follow the class pattern of the American cities: as the social problems build up in the city because the deprived are being left behind, so the revenue base to meet that social problem declines as the better off move out, and industry, too, moves out.

There are a number of things that we ought to say we need to do in London. First, I agree with the comment that has been made twice in this debate, that we ought to be defining what size the city of London should be. Should it be the present 7½ million, 6 million or 6½ million? We ought to be debating in London what size the city we want to provide for, and then provide for that sort of size of capital city.

We need to do much more to retain our young people. On the housing front that means more opportunities for home ownership. One of the difficulties is that those young people who want to buy their own homes are forced out into Kent and Essex. If we are to stop this sort of trend we must have more of the half-and-half schemes which the GLC is experimenting with to bring home ownership within the reach of more young people.

We must provide housing for key workers in order to hold on to industries and bring in new ones. We must also provide the maximum number of industrial training opportunities for young people. This means a change in Government attitude towards industry in London. I welcome the IDC relaxation that we have seen so far, but this has not changed the image that the Government are presenting of industry in London. The general view is that the Government do not want to see industry developing in London.

We still have the crazy ban on London local authorities advertising their own advantages for industrial and commercial opportunities. The crowning stupidity is that London Tubes and buses carry advertisements urging people to open up in Peterborough, Peterlee, and every other place from Lands End to John o' Groats, but they are not allowed to advertise opportunities which exist in London. That should be changed.

We want to see fewer Government attempts to move jobs temporarily from London. When the Ministry of Defence announced that it was going to shift Government jobs many people assumed that these would be white-collar jobs, but no. They were skilled engineering jobs which were being shifted—2,200 quality assurance jobs at Woolwich Arsenal alone. I believe that the Government should think twice, or even three times before threatening to remove jobs of this kind from the hard hit areas of inner London.

We want to see a more positive attitude towards industry, and more thought being given before planning schemes and developments push out industrial firms. We want to see more co-operation and understanding between local authorities and industrialists. In my area, the London borough of Greenwich employs an employment development officer who has done a tremendous amount of work in building co-operation within the borough. We want to see more groups like the South-East London Industrial Consultative Group, in which trade unions, employers, and local authorities all get together to try to sort out the problems of industry and retain it in London.

More thought should go into our transport problems. Sitting as a Member for a riparian constituency, I believe that we should make vastly more use of our river. It is the one great, broad highway from the coast to the heart of the city which could bring in goods without any impact on the environment at all. It is a tragedy that our river is under-used.

Finally, we want to see more co-ordination between the various Government Departments involved. We need from central Government a more coherent approach to London's problems—an approach that means a realisation that the deliberate bleeding of London's resources has got to stop; it means recognising that not all London's streets are paved with gold; and it means acceptance of the fact that if London is not to go the way of New York a clear strategy for the city is necessary—a strategy involving central Government just as much as local government.

3.14 a.m.

I wish to make two preliminary remarks. Firstly, I value this debate on London and feel that it is a pity it has come so early in the morning. This House would benefit a great deal if we spent more time debating the major areas like London, and the details of their education, and social problems, rather than being solely concerned with the treadmill of legislation. If the time that was devoted here to the Dock Work Regulation Bill had been spent on dealing with London there would have been a greater understanding, with bipartisan agreement about some of London's problems and the solutions to them. The House would then have been serving London far better than it has been in the last four or six weeks.

In general, Governments cannot solve the detailed problems of a capital city like London. If it is to be a capital city it must have the freedom to generate its own growth and to solve most of its problems. One cannot rely on Governments to solve the detailed problems. Obviously the Government can settle the overall structure and lay down the target for job creation and population. But in significant ways local and national authorities have been carried away on questions of detail. The hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) referred to the decline of high-rise flats. That was an example of local authorities and the GLC being carried away—with Government encouragement—by their enthusiasm, on what proved to be a passing fad. That fad has left a scar on London society and on the London environment.

Take the question of education, where comprehensive schools have been scattered around the outskirts of London over the last 15 or 20 years. They may have turned out to be satisfactory, but I do not think that anyone would regard a school of more than 2,000 pupils as desirable in itself. If more thought had been given to the matter, perhaps some of the money that went into building these magnificent schools, of which there are two in my constituency, would have been spent on education in the inner parts of London, where the schools are old, the facilities poor and the playing facilities non-existent. The children there would then have had as good a chance as those I represent.

The major point about detailed planning and the way in which it can fail is shown up on the question of Dockland. There has been a constant decline in Dockland over the last 15 years. Five local authorities and the GLC have been involved and the Government have been looking over the whole issue, but virtually nothing has been done. That is the greatest condemnation of the way in which London has been run. There are 5,000 acres of Dockland, but there has been activity on only 25 of those acres.

I insist that before the recess the Government make a statement about Dockland. It would be doing a grave disservice to London if we went into recess without a statement on Dockland. This is an area of human waste, land waste and lost job opportunities. The Government must try to restore confidence. They can do that by showing that they have an overall plan for Dockland, agreed with the GLC and the boroughs, so that people living on the eastern side of the capital can look forward to a mode of development in which jobs, homes and the environment will be improving fast from now on.

Action must be taken to keep the young, the skilled and the enterprising in London. Employment can be facilitated by job creation schemes, but we need people with enterprise who can see a market that they can fulfil, whether in the manufacturing service or the tourist industries. It depends on individuals or groups seizing their opportunity, provided that they can get the necessary resources. These are the people who can create jobs in London, but they are being driven out.

During the crisis in education, when teachers could not be found for love or money in London—at about the time of the raising of the school leaving age—it was suggested that local authority flats should be provided for new teachers.

I conducted a survey at a school with which I was connected and was told by teachers that although they might stay in London for six months or so if they were given a council flat, they wanted to own their own homes and would consequently have to move out to Essex or Kent and face a journey to work of perhaps two hours a day. The result would be that they could not devote as much time to either their teaching or their families as they would like.

It is interesting to note how many teachers have moved out of London when their children have reached the age at which they are to be transferred to secondary schools.

The current financial stringency may help all except the extremists on both sides to recognise that there is a great deal of common ground to look for in housing and education so that we can satisfy the needs of young people for homes and families with young children for schools. It is a disgrace that so many people have left London because of the policies and, even more, the practices in housing and education.

The scandals at the William Tyndale School were a question not just of the progressives versus the traditionalists but of structure and whether it was what people wanted. The same applies to housing.

I emphasise again how important it is that London gets its fair share of time in this Chamber and its fair share of attention in government.

My party has done a great deal in recognising the power, position, and influence of London, and its needs. We have appointed a vice-chairman responsible for London, and I know that the work done by the party with business people, local organisations and people living in the city, including those represented by tenants associations or residents groups, has helped us to recognise the problems of London.

I hope that we shall have regular debates on London, preferably not tied to legislation, because that is when we have our differences. The importance of this debate is to find areas of agreement and to give advice to the Government which they can consider and act upon to make London a capital city of which we can be proud and in which we can work, individually as well as collectively, to make it a better place for ourselves and our neighbours.

3.25 a.m.

I support the call of the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) for more London debates on specific matters not tied to legislation. We are glad to have provided him and his hon. Friends with the opportunity for a debate which they would otherwise not have had.

A considerable number of my hon. Friends put their names down for this debate. The fact that they represent all parts of the city indicates the considerable concern felt about the problems of London. It is not too dramatic to say, as a number of hon. Members have already said, that London is becoming a dying city. It will die if we are not careful.

I drive regularly from Barking, which is my constituency, through Newham into Tower Hamlets and on to Hammersmith, where I live. During that drive I follow the river almost all the way. I pass through areas such as Narrow Street, Limehouse Causeway and the Highway, which at one time were humming with activity and life. Sometimes in the late hours, when it is dark and it is only possible to see the outlines of the buildings it looks romantic, but it is dead. That is because there are only empty and derelict wharves and warehouses and run-down and broken-down buildings where once there was activity. The work has moved away that once took place on those streets, and the ancillary services have gone. In a way, that seems to make the streets even more sad. One sees the boarded-up little shops, the corner places where the dockers used to go to buy their morning papers. There is the pub or sweet shop that has had to close down—all the things that used to make un life. The parts of London through which I drive are extremely sad.

The hon. Member for Woolwich, West mentioned the Docklands Joint Study Committee. I hope, along with the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members, that we shall shortly see some movement from the Secretary of State for the Environment in response to the proposals made by the committee. A great deal of work has been put into considering the problems, against a background of considerable concern.

The scene that I see when I drive through East London is repeated in West London. This shows how our efforts to shoot people out of the town have gone too far and too fast. If industry is not attracted back, and if proper use is not made of the potential capacity and talents of those who have been thrown out of work and who have always lived and worked in the capital, it will be too late to rescue anything.

In Hammersmith the problem is similar. Recently the London borough of Hammersmith has been advertising for an employment development officer. The advertisement points out that the borough has lost much of its manufacturing industry over the past few years and that unemployment levels within the borough are high. It is making a great effort to find the right sort of person to try to coordinate industry in West London.

I am sure that many of my hon. Friends and Opposition Members have looked at London not from a drive from east to west but from the river. Last year I was invited to go along the river with a couple of friends who have been concerned about these matters. They started and have been active in an organisation which I know is known to many people, namely, Transport on Water. They invited me to look at London from where they see it all the time. They invited me to go with them on their tug, which was to tow barges from Greenwich to Wandsworth. I joined them after a moment of pure terror, when I realised that to do so would necessitate climbing down the side of a wall, perhaps the height of the Chamber, on a rope ladder. It took all my nerve to go down the rope ladder and step into a tiny rocking boat to get out to the tug.

I had a fascinating trip, once on the tug. The barges that we drew, incidentally, were the equivalent of 66 lorry-loads of cement. There would have been all those lorries on the roads if the cement had not been carried by barge. The river was deserted. The only river traffic that interrupted our passage from east to west was the odd pleasure steamer with tourists aboard. I saw, from a different angle the deserted wharves, warehouses and derelict factories. There seemed to be acres of land with nothing on it. It was really striking and really a tragedy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright) has talked about the use of the river as it used to be—one of the biggest and busiest highways in our land. We have lost over 1 million tons of cargo each year in the past decade and the number of lighter-men and bargemen who used to work on the river has shrunk from over 4,000 to under 1,000 in tht relatively short time.

The overwhelming bulk of our expenditure on surface traffic is poured on to the roads. We have spent millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to subsidise roads when we should have been financing a properly co-ordinated transport system that makes the maximum use of our rivers, waterways, roads and rail, and provides continuing employment as well as alleviating the growing environmental problems caused by too much traffic.

My constituency is right on the outer edge of London and our employment problems, and some of our social problems, are not yet as great, as deep, or as obvious as those in other boroughs further into the centre of London. Many of my constituents work in inner London, but are finding it expensive to do so because of the constant increases in rail fares that have ocurred in the last two or three years.

Many of my constituents are dockers, who have been involved in the arguments that have been going on about the rationalisation of the Upper Docks, because many of them work there but live further out. The Port of London Authority plan to close Millwall and West India Docks, even with the promise to transfer the dockers to the Royal Group, or offer voluntary severance pay, has been strenuously resisted by a large number of bodies, trade unions and other organisations. From the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Mikardo) to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), who is not here this evening, and in boroughs like Tower Hamlets, the docks are a base industry. In the outer areas, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) will also find, we get a sort of spin-off effect from the difficulties which arise from disputes and arguments about what shall become of a base industry like the docks. Thank goodness the Port of London Authority is thinking again, but that is only as a result of the strong representations that have been made.

In Barking we are also worried that the unacceptable level of unemployment in the East End is fast creeping our way. Thank goodness, we do not yet have an unemployment problem to match that of the East End, but in the last couple of years unemployment in Barking has doubled. From 1975 to 1976 the figure has precisely doubled in my constituency. In the borough as a whole unemployment has gone up by one-third.

We are lucky. In the constituency next door we have the Ford Motor Company. I am glad to see that it is now in the process of taking on 3,000 extra workers. That will be of great help to Barking and other areas where Ford workers come from. But what would happen if we did not have the Ford company? It is a multinational corporation and is a complete law unto itself. There is nothing to prevent Fords, governed as it is from Detroit, from running down Dagenham and transferring the work to its Spanish or West German operations. I am sure the company does not intend to do that, but one is always nervous of decisions being made by multinational corporations which might result in large-scale unemployment, which could totally upset the balance of a city like London.

Like other boroughs, mine has been instructed to reduced spending. This is a difficult and shocking job for finance committees all over the country. We in Barking have tried to comply, but we are right up against it. We have cut our spending by about half the amount that the Secretary of State requires, but if we go further we shall undoubtedly cause unemployment. As it is, we shall have to reduce repairs and maintenance on property. Council rents will rise in October by 60p a week. Furniture and equipment that would have been ordered and that must be providing employment somewhere will not now be ordered. Goodness knows what will happen when the further, and to my mind, hated cuts announced this week come upon local authorities.

What distresses me is that although we may not actually cause redundancies, we shall not be filling vacancies like home helps. We should keep up such social services. Many London boroughs have ageing populations, who depend on this service. I learn that natural wastage in the service will not be made up. My own borough may have to consider this. We should not disadvantage our elderly people in that way.

There has been much talk recently about social security abuses. I have had representations from DHSS staff about possible redundancies because of the cuts announced this week. Opposition Members may shout and scream about abuse, but if they stop and think they will realise that it is infinitesimal compared with the overwhelming numbers who draw benefit because they need it. Cuts in social security staff would bring nothing but hardship to such people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East said that London's problems should not be considered as a whole. But there should be a basis of general co-operation, with each borough helping the others rather than isolating itself. We all know the problems. It is only by co-operating among London Members of Parliament and among London parties and organisations that we shall get the Government to understand our need for a real strategy for London and its future. That is the only way of reviving industry and bringing life back to what has always been the hub of Britain.

3.40 a.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Miss Richardson), like other hon. Members on both sides who preceded her, has rightly drawn attention to the necessity for a long-term strategic plan for London—a plan that must take account, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) said, of the size and population of the place, so as to fit within that jigsaw all the necessities of life.

The only reason I intervene—because the problem was so comprehensively dealt with by other hon. Members—is to speak of the short term and immediate, rather than the long term, because, in addition to the strategic plan hon. Members have called for, in some parts of London and in respect of some problems, we need some quick fire brigade action, some first-aid decisions, if the patient is not to bleed to death before the long-term remedies can begin to be applied.

Although I listen to all debates on London, and have taken part in most; although I listen to Ministers talking at great length about London, and although I have had many arguments with them in private, as well as across the Floor of the House, I am still not satisfied that the full urgency of some of the problems is fully comprehended.

The hon. Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Anthony Grant) gave some evidence of this. He said, grandly, "I do not want to overstate the problems, because the problems of London are not the problems of Merseyside". It may look like that from the leafy heights of Harrow, but if he wandered from those heights to the East End he would discover that what he said was wrong. Is there any difference between the problems of the banks of the Mersey and those of the banks of the Thames? Both have suffered from the same factor—loss of cargo, partly as a result of the general depression, but even more as a result of cargo-handling moving steadily downriver from upriver docks and wharves. The pattern on Thames-side and the adjacent riparian areas is identical to that of Merseyside and its adjacent riparian areas.

If one is talking about the intensity of the problem, in the area of the two labour exchanges with catchment areas nearly coterminous with the borough of Tower Hamlets, adult male unemployment is 13 per cent. That is higher than in any development areas except Northern Ireland. One problem is that we produce our statistics and our industrial, employment, and development policy with much too broad a brush. We talk about and publish unemployment statistics in terms of regions, but one can have a pocket of severe depression in a region which, on the average, is much better off than most, as indeed, one can and does have pockets of prosperity in regions which are, on average, worse off than most. So long as we do our regional development in the broad-brush sort of way, with the areas designated being much more global than they should be, we are bound to make a lot of mistakes and not deal with the problems as they are.

The hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) said that East London has been in decline for 15 years. I have known it intimately and lived in it for more than half a century. It has been in decline all that time and since before that. This is an area which has suffered from four successive blights. Till 1939 it suffered from poverty blight—the blight of low wages, overcrowding, the slum house and the sweat shop. They were the characteristics of East London.

Between 1939 and 1945 the area suffered from bombing blight to a much greater extent than the rest of London and greater than almost anywhere else in Great Britain. From then until about the early-to mid-1950s, when the housing programmes started to get under way, the area suffered from housing blight, because while the old stuff was being cleared and the sites were being prepared there were roads stopped, mud and rubble and goodness knows what, until it all started to get moving.

Fourth and last, and in some respects worst of all, apart, perhaps, from the bombing, in the last few years the area suffered from planning blight, from nothing being done in bricks and mortar, because so much was being done on bits of paper. It suffered from planning blight, which is almost the most direct and most severe example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Nothing is done, because somebody is trying to think out something better to do than one is ready, willing and able to do.

Then two or three years were lost when a firm of consultant surveyors was brought in to produce a plan. It produced 18 options for Dockland. The 18 were whittled down to five, none of which was satisfactory, because nobody had seen fit to go out and talk to anyone on the ground. Everyone had to start afresh, because all those things were unacceptable.

I am talking about the area that is roughly bordered by the Lea Bridge Road to the north and the river to the south, spilling over the river into a bit of the borough of Southwark and a bit of the borough of Greenwich and, on our side of the river, from Aldgate Pump to Barking Creek. I am talking about a population of between 500,000 and 1 million people living in circumstances of great difficulty and facing the vicious circle which was described so graphically by my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright).

Because the area is shabby and rundown, and because it is short of jobs, the young men move out. Because the young men move out, employers move out. The area is then left with older people, problem families and all sorts of social problems that create a disproportionate problem for the local authority. Of all local authorities in Great Britain my borough has the highest proportion of children in care.

At the same time, because of the rundown, rateable value is reduced, with the consequent reduction in rate revenue with which to cope with the growing problems. Only a quick, dramatic intervention will break the ring and stop the snowball rolling down the hill and becoming bigger and bigger until everything in its path is destroyed. That area of London is literally dying. One can watch it die. We cannot afford to wait for long term plans, however well conceived.

Hon. Members have explained how industry is moving out—partly because of the general run-down and partly because it has been induced to move out. We now need a case-by-case study of the threatened closure of every factory. We can identify those that are involved. There have been plenty of notices of impending closures. We should examine them one by one and find out what is necessary to persuade them to stay and then take the necessary action. For each of those threatened closures we should repeat the action taken over the East India-Millwall group. That problem was solved by people rallying round and putting their heads together to find an alternative way. That was done for one employment and it should be done for all. It is more urgent to staunch the flow of blood, to prevent firms from moving out, than to attract new people. That can be done only by a case-by-case approach.

We need urgent first-aid measures before we can get down to working out long-term, perhaps grandiose, strategic plans. Unless something is done, the area will become a desert, a home for old people and problem families with social problems of all kinds, with the life blood, the people of the best working age, best energy, best skills, running away from the place. That is happening before our eyes. I know that the Minister has been to have a look-see. I say to him "Have a few more look-sees and do something—but do it quickly."

3.54 a.m.

I last spoke in a debate on London about four weeks ago, at about 12.15 a.m., and I then expressed the hope that we would in future debate London at a different hour. The hour is different, but it is not quite what I had in mind.

The theme of the debate has been rather sad. The phrase "dying London" has been used in a number of speeches. One must accept that those hon. Members who use that phrase sincerely and genuinely feel that that is what is happening—none less than the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Mikardo) who has great experience of London, which is a different entity although complete in itself. Those of us who represent other parts of London and have not quite the same problems as some hon. Members who have spoken cannot but be conscious of the difficulties in parts of our great city.

The hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) talked about Transport on Water. I have a connection with ToW. If the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Williams) had opened the debate, as he intended, he would probably have developed that theme at greater length, as he is the chairman of the all-party group concerned with that matter.

My connection with water transport goes back to the Transport Act 1968. I support what Labour Members have said about better use of the Thames. There are other smaller waterways in London which could be developed. Heaven forbid that I, as a Whip, should suggest more legislation for next year, but something could be done to improve our waterway system not only in London but over a much wider area.

I now turn to the question of road transport. I was pleased to see yesterday a Department of the Environment hand-out and answer to a Written Question on the cuts in the motorway and trunk road programme as part of the expenditure cuts. I was glad to find that the M25, which will be the ring road round the outside of London, is one of the few roads which has not been cut. As far as I can see the completion dates for the various sections will be as planned, but I still wish that the road could be finished before 1981. However, I am pleased that the road, which will be vital to Londoners in all parts of the city, is to remain more or less on its present timetable.

There is one small problem that many of us have in our constituencies, and about which I have written to the Minister responsible. I am concerned about what I believe to be a great increase in the number of permissions being given to residents to carry on industrial machinery work in their own houses. In many areas it is a great nuisance to their neighbours. If they are not immigrants, those concerned tend at least to have names sounding as if they are immigrants. That is bad for community relations, because people turn against them.

I agree with what has been said about our employment problems. Whatever part of London we represent, we are all receiving letters every day from school leavers and those who had appointments with local authorities on a temporary basis, which they thought would become permanent but which are suddenly proving really to be temporary. The measures that the Government announced yesterday may help a little, but they must look at the matter closely.

I hesitate to talk about Dockland in the presence of so many hon. Members, such as the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow, who have such personal knowledge of the area, but I hope that there will soon be a statement from the Government. I was indirectly connected with our Government's attempt to institute an inquiry. That was a step in the right direction. I do not think that it was anyone's fault that it was slowed down and that nothing concrete came of it. It is an exciting possibility for the centre of London and it would be a tragedy if full use were not made of it.

It would also be a tragedy if, in present conditions, we were to do anything to affect the green belt that many of us on the outskirts of London are privileged to enjoy on the fringes of our constituencies. I hope that the Government will continue, as have all Governments in recent years, to protect that green belt.

We all understand the reasons for introducing the Drought Bill, and know that it is essential that local authorities should have these new powers. I was worried to see a report to the effect that every new tree planted this year is likely to die as a result of the drought. Many of us, I am sure, have planted trees as part of the campaign earlier this year. When water is available more freely again, urgent steps should be taken to deal with this situation, because these new trees are something for future generations to enjoy.

I have been thinking about the possibility of having a Minister with responsibilities for London. The Under-Secretary must be pondering this subject, too. Although we know that he is capable of entertaining us at some not inconsiderable length, should it be his wish, or should it be the wish of the Chief Whip, he has a detailed brief tonight. He has to answer questions covering a variety of matters. If he were Minister for London he would not have so many problems, because he would know most of the answers from his own experience.

I wonder whether Labour Members are right to say that we can decide the size of London. I do not think that we can. London will continue to evolve as it has always done. It may get smaller, it may grow in size. We understand that during the next Session devolution may occupy our minds from time to time. London is not likely to be devolved, and the Government may think that there is a chance for them not to pay too much attention to London. I hope that they will realise, from the strength of feeling expressed on both sides during this debate, that if they think that they will be wrong. We shall continue to discuss London's problems as frequently as possible.

4.4 a.m.

I begin by paying a tribute to the Under-Secretary. He is one of the first Members to hold the post who has shown a particular interest in London's problems. He has taken the trouble to visit areas of London to examine the veracity of our comments, I am grateful for the interest he has shown.

I ask the House to forgive me if I locate myself firmly in my constituency tonight. Normally in these debates I have ranged over a wider area. I hope that I may be allowed to take a more parochial view, because my area is a microcosm of the problems of London. In years gone by my constituency was a furniture-making centre. It was the major craft, along with tailoring, garment-making and leather working. Today, there is hardly a furniture factory to be seen. Almost all of them have gone from the area. There is virtually nothing left of the tailoring and garment-making industry, or indeed of other industries. Most of those once employed in the furniture trade can be found in Mount Pleasant Post Office. They can also be found in the brewery. I am often told that if Mount Pleasant would only employ its former cabinet makers on cabinet making the Post Office would make a profit.

It is rather ludicrous that at precisely the same time as we have large numbers of skilled workers being distributed round unskilled jobs, we have the industrial training board for the furniture industry beavering away to provide courses for cabinet makers and upholsterers—the very people who are going spare elsewhere.

I ask the Minister to talk to the Training Services Agency to see whether the money it is spending in this regard is being well spent. Something must be done to stop this skill drain. It is absolutely stupid that we should do this silly exercise of sacking skilled people on the one hand, and training skilled people on the other when there are no jobs available for them.

I had the privilege recently of showing the Minister a part of my constituency, and the latest figures for unemployment in our area will interest him. In April of this year the total unemployed in the Hackney and Shoreditch area was 5,704. The figure on 19th July 1976 in that same area was 6,213—an increase of about 9 per cent. in only three months. I am sure the Minister will appreciate the seriousness of the problem.

When people talk of devolution, it is worth reminding ourselves that the unemployed in Greater London in June this year numbered 148,479, and that on the same day the unemployment figure for the whole of Scotland was 144,134. In other words, there were more unemployed in the Greater London area than in the whole of Scotland. These are significant figures which show the dimensions of the problem. I hope that the Government will soon have something to say about it. Indeed, I hope that the Minister will make some statement tonight about the issue I raised in our previous debate, when I referred to Section 73 of the London Government Act 1963 and to Section 144 of the Local Government Act 1972, which preclude the GLC from advertising to show people the industrial possibilities for firms in London, especially for the Dockland area.

Many of us have been pressing for a statement on Dockland, and I hope that we may have it tomorrow. We have pressed this for a long time and it would be a very valuable contribution if the Minister would make a statement on Dockland tomorrow. He will remember that in talking with him on his visit to my area I drew his attention to the problems of the Job Creation Programme. Some weeks have gone by, and Hackney is still no further ahead with its Job Creation Programme. Likewise, no programme has yet been agreed for the community industry projects. I accept that these programmes can only be of help in the short term.

I am not quite sure what the civil servants think they are doing. Do they believe that they are playing a "Twenty Questions" game? Do they believe that this is a bit of fun, or do they really understand the importance of providing these schemes urgently? It will be no good agreeing a scheme to commence in January or February of next year; the unemployment of young people is a factor that we face today. I get very angry about this issue. I ask the Minister to have a talk with his civil servants and to tell them that, while we accept that it is only a temporary solution, we want action from them. They should stop playing silly beggars and trying to dot the i's and cross the t's to satisfy some peculiar bureaucratic mind. Action is needed in areas such as mine. Indeed, it is a good example of where help is desperately needed. The environmental conditions, as I have often pointed out in this House, are a disgrace. My hon. Friend saw for himself when he visited my constituency.

I shall never understand how Ebenezer Howard, 40 or 50 years ago, was able to design Welwyn Garden City. My hon. Friend will know that Ebenezer Howard did a tremendous job, in the face of great opposition, in bringing Welwyn Garden City to life. It is a beautiful place which is still protected. Yet the architects and planners were allowed to destroy my area. I have from time to time described them as dedicated educated idiots. I have no doubt that many of them have finished up in the Department of the Environment, having since won medals and scholarships; but the heritage that they left behind in my area is a scandal.

My hon. Friend knows that I represent a high density constituency with 136 person to the acre. My constituents are warehoused, not housed. My hon. Friend saw some of the warehousing when he visited the area. I am sure that he will recall that I pointed out an area which is designated as an open space. I explained that the corrugated jungle that he saw commenced about 1967 when the then Conservative-controlled GLC refused to honour its obligation of providing an open space in that densely populated area.

In 1971 the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) decided to hand back all the open spaces from the GLC to the London boroughs. I objected to that proposal. I pointed to areas in my constituency on which money had not been spent by the Greater London Council to develop open spaces and complained that development would never take place. The right hon. Gentleman sent me a three-page letter explaining that I was wrong. Indeed, he suggested that, by handing back the open spaces to the boroughs, the matter would be expedited. While he could not tell me where the money would come from, he assured me that an open space would be provided and that I was wrong to suggest that it would be delayed.

The right hon. Member for Crosby, who was here earlier, has now turned his attention to lotteries. Perhaps that is as well, because as a Minister at the Department of the Environment he was a disaster. I have news for the right hon. Gentleman. The area that he handed back—the area that he said would be dealt with immediately and not subjected to delay—is still a corrugated jungle. However, it has hardly been improved by fly tipping and having juggernauts parked around.

And gipsies.

They are there, too, Actually they are tinkers, not gipsies. There is a lot of filth and squalor present in the area.

I asked the chief public health officer to look into the matter, and I have had a letter from him about it. The council has finally decided to take action to move the itinerants off the site because of the squalor. Indeed, the public health officer told me:

"I regret to inform you that the council were unsuccessful in applying for the order for possession of the land."

The reason why the council was unsuccessful is interesting. I come back to the right hon. Member for Crosby. Apparently the judge was not satisfied about the ownership of the land as between the London Borough of Hackney and the Greater London Council. Therefore, my constituents have to suffer the filth and squalor until such time as the GLC and the London borough of Hackney agree which part of that site is in the ownership of which side before action can be taken. It is a scandal.

The public health officer said that to help me he was proposing to put a skip on the site, so that all the filth and rubbish from the itinerants could be put into it and it might be collected and emptied on a weekly or monthly basis, as necessary. The site is in juxtaposition to a school, and a large number of children will suffer from the filth and squalor of this skip while they are attending lessons. This is a direct heritage left by the right hon. Member for Crosby, who is now so interested in having lotteries.

The creation of areas such as this creates contempt for the locality. That contempt leads to the problem of heavy vehicles in the area, to fly tipping, to filth in the streets, which attracts the undesirable element and, in turn, produces filthy slogans on the walls. All this leads to a tired, could-not-care-less attitude by the authorities. When I complain to the councils they raise their hands and say "What can we do, Mr. Brown?" I see the police, and they say "What can we do? We do not have enough men. We cannot do this or that". I go to the shops and to the business owners because they are contributing to the squalor, but nothing is done. Finally, the residents get fed up to the back teeth. There is a feeling of despair, that there is nothing that they can do to help themselves.

Why should this happen in my area? It would not happen in a Hampstead Garden City suburb. There are so many middle-class trendies, too many lawyers, and too many people in the upper income bracket in that area that they would not allow that sort of thing to go on. They would fight it like blazes. Where, other than in my area, would one find that a burglar alarm is allowed to ring day and night for the whole weekend without, apparently, anyone being able to stop it? Where else would one have all-night parties where nobody, apparently, is able to stop them? If a case is taken to court, the magistrates find it possible to make all the excuses in the world for levying the lowest possible fine, which acts as an encouragement to those concerned, so that within three days they hold a big party to show that they were fined only £50.

Where else would one find the pavements smashed by heavy lorries running on them and parking on them? It must be remembered that this House passed the Greater London Council (General Powers) Bill in 1974 to stop that. The result of the damaged pavements is that old folk fall over and damage themselves, sometimes seriously, and on many occasions they risk their lives. But they are too poor to go to court to get their just dues. They cannot get legal aid because of the 1968 decision. They suffer their injuries in silence, and nothing is done about the damage to the pavements due to these heavy vehicles.

Where else would one find heavy vehicles redirected through the centre of a densely populated housing area? Heavy lorries travel through the area nose to tail in both directions, 24 hours a day. They have been redirected from a designated autoroute specifically laid down for them. They were redirected because of the middle-class trendies who were able to influence the transportation committee of the GLC. Where else would one find that sort of situation?

Where else would one find post offices closed down, with the result that old people have to trundle long distances to get their pensions? The post offices were closed overnight, and the old folk have to wander through difficult areas where they come up against these heavy lorries travel-lying nose to tail. The old people are frightened out of their lives, but who cares?

Where but in my area would one find that it is proposed to close four hospitals because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) said, it is a convenient bureaucratic argument? I have come to the conclusion that the basic philosophy of the area health authority is that if only it could close all the hospitals there would be no problem. It could save all the money and spend it on something different—certainly not on health.

In what other area of the country would one find that sort of thing going on every day? The trouble is that no one—not even the Government—seems able to do anything about it. I have written to the Home Office about the burglar alarms, and to the Department of the Environment about the gas cylinders lying around, but nothing is done at all.

My constituency suffers, because my constituents are decent, honest working-class people, struggling to keep body and soul together. I have fought for too many years on their behalf to be silent now. We are entitled to decent conditions. We are entitled to be proud of our area. We are fed up with delays, vascillations and excuses.

I hope that tonight the message will get through to the Government that someone had better be responsible for ensuring that areas like mine in London are given top priority in jobs, in the provision of housing, and in environmental conditions. We do not want any more social problems added to those we already have, because we have had enough.

If hon. Members are regulating the length of their speeches by the chiming of Big Ben, they will be glad to know that their speeches have made such an impression on Big Ben that he has come out in sympathy with them, and refused to strike.

4.22 a.m.

This has been a fascinating debate, which has been of great value to everyone. I hope that the Government will take on board the real problems of London, and the fact that these have been expressed by all hon. Members, with one exception, in a completely non-political way.

It is difficult for the Minister, not being a Londoner, to understand the depth of feeling with which Londoners on both sides of the House speak. The Government have failed to understand the desperate need to co-ordinate the problems of the London boroughs and to look at the city as a whole. I do not agree with the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright), who suggests that each area and each constituency is a village. Within each of these villages there are six or seven other villages. Until one gets the whole constituency right, it is impossible to regard London as anything but a whole.

I said that it was quite wrong to regard the whole of London as one travel-to-work area. It is impossible, in terms of employment. I do not believe that people in my constituency could take advantage of jobs being offered on the other side of London.

In that context, I agree with the hon. Member. But London must be treated as a whole for governmental purposes. Employment is a problem, because we lack proper transport. South of the Thames, London does not even enjoy a proper Underground system. I hope that something will be done about that in the not-too-distant future.

The hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) spoke about the IDC refusals. He thinks that this no longer matters. It strikes me that one of the reasons why we have a small number of IDC refusals is that many companies cannot be bothered to go through the rigmarole of applying for them.

London has been neglected. I am still concerned that no one in the Government has taken on board its problems. They are not just problems of employment, transport, environment and housing. There is a collection of problems, and the capital city has had bad treatment from Governments since the war—the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Mikardo) might even say "since before the war". It has never been treated like a capital city.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Grant) said that hon. Members frequently run down the importance of the service industries. To an unemployed school leaver the prospect of a job in a service industry or in an office is better than the prospect of no job. I hope that more jobs of all kinds will be created, not just in manufacturing and light industry but in the service industries such as distribution.

I agree that the tourists are important. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, Central is perhaps a little alarmist when he speaks about xenophobia and a hate-the-tourist campaign. I remember, while on a CPA visit some while ago to Jamaica, seeing a full-page advertisement every day in the Press telling people to love the tourist because he brought in a lot of foreign currency. We should remember that.

Equally, I see no reason why a fairly substantial bed tax should not be imposed to provide additional revenue for local government in London. I do not think that that is an issue that will divide hon. Members on both sides of the House, but it would probably divide us from the Treasury who would not like it. In other countries there are such things as tourist taxes, and I see no reason why we should not have one in London.

We must end the shilly-shallying over the Docklands. This has gone on under all Governments. The time has come for a decision to be made. The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown) said that he wanted a statement from the Government tomorrow. I believe that the Secretary of State should give one today and put Londoners out of their misery.

I hope that the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) will forgive me if I say that part of her speech struck a discordant note—the part in which she mentioned her objection to selling council houses. The two sides of the House do not agree on this matter. She referred to older council houses, but I believe that if people were offered such accommodation at a lower price than a modern council house they would jump at the chance of buying it and owning their own home. Local authorities must be prepared to sell council flats. It is wrong that one section of the community should be deprived of the opportunity to pass on a piece of property to their children.

The hon. Member for Woolwich, East showed clearly that London expects more thought from the Government than it has had for a long time. The Government must draw together the strands of employment, transport and housing and try to produce a coherent policy, which will not be changed after two or three years because someone feels that London is getting more than it should. I am not sure that anyone can say that the capital city is getting more than it should. Apart from being a place in which people live and work, it should be a showplace.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) for his kind remarks. It was a most interesting experience, which many hon. Members would have welcomed, to listen—which is not easy for politicians—to people and organisations who normally have no contact with party politics. I asked representatives of groups such as Shelter and Gingerbread what sort of London they would like to see and I hope that their ideas will be incorporated in policy documents for the Conservative Party for GLC, borough and parliamentary elections, with special application to London.

We sometimes talk more than we listen, and it is a sobering experience to listen, particularly to people who do not normally come into contact with political animals like ourselves.

The hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) spoke about the need to get more trade on the river. There was a lost opportunity for commuting on the Thames. An experiment about two years ago did not go on for long enough, and I should like to see a further, longer-term experiment with vessels that have a high capacity and a low cost per maritime mile and that are less noisy than those we have seen in the past. I hope that someone will introduce a service that will be of benefit to commuting Londoners and that could take tourists down the river during off-peak hours faster than coaches, which clog up the roads anyway.

The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow said something that we have all been longing to say—that the real enemy of the people is planning blight. This is not confined to Dockland. It applies wherever there is a large scheme, whether it is a Government, local government or private development. Blight that continues for year after year brings heartache to people who cannot understand the connection between the deterioration of their community and the marvellous plans that they are told will come about when their grandchildren have grown up.

In many parts of London, blight leads to squatting, which causes great offence to people from all sections of the comunity—not just the middle-class trendies referred to by the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch—who dislike seeing property being unlawfully occupied. I use the word "unlawfully", because many local authorities, including Camden Borough Council, license squatting organisations that comply with the law and move out at the end of a certain period. No one objects to that sort of occupation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southgate (Mr. Berry), who knows so much about transport, gave us the welcome news that there was to be no hold-up in the work on the M25. This is a vital piece of road and there would have been great despair if it had been delayed.

The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch asked three rhetorical questions. Where, he asked, do we find burglar alarms ringing? He was implying that it happens in an area such as the one that he represents but not in what he is pleased to describe as trendy middle-class areas. If he goes to Hampstead and the Finchley Road he will hear burglar alarms ringing night after night. At present there is nothing to stop that happening, other than some noise regulation. We need proper legislation to protect people from that nuisance. It is not con-lined to Hackney, South and Shoreditch.

Where, the hon. Member asked, do we find all-night parties'? They are to be found in Hampstead. Those who complain are dissatisfied with the small fines that the courts sometimes mete out. Where, the hon. Member asks, do we find hospitals being closed? Closures are taking place in Hampstead and Camden. The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital is a good example. These problems are not confined to Hackney, South and Shoreditch. They do not disappear outside that area because in other parts of London there are middle-class trendies who are able to stand up against officialdom. We are all suffering from officialdom and from noise nuisance.

There is great fear for young people in London. There is anxiety about the disappearance of opportunities for apprenticeships. We are losing those opportunities, whether it be in building and construction or in other spheres. That should be a source of great concern to the Minister. Without the chance of apprenticeships we shall have many school leavers thoroughly demoralised.

I was worried by the ease with which the hon. Members for Tottenham and Woolwich, East said that we should decide upon the optimum size for London. My hon. Friend the Member for Southgate doubted whether hon. Members or the Government can decide the optimum size of a city. I do not believe that the planners can do so. On their past record they do not have very much to show for their endeavours. I am not certain that to decide upon the optimum size for London is necessarily the prerequisite that it was said to be.

Unemployment is the central feature of the problems about which we have spoken. It is mounting steadily in greater London. In August 1974 it was about 53,000, which was 1·3 per cent. In August 1975 it was 105,000 or 2·7 per cent. Today, as the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch has said, it is 148,500, which is 3·8 per cent. That is the highest unemployment since the war. The male unemployment figure in May was 141,500, or 5·4 per cent. When we last debated the change in IDC certificates on 25th February 1975, Londoners were told not to confuse their 1·5 per cent. unemployment with the 5 per cent. in Glasgow.

We were told by hon. Members on both sides of the House from outside London that we were alarmists and that our problems were not so bad. They cannot accept that we know our London better than they do. Indeed, one of the most complacent speeches came from the then Minister at the time who was bravely trying to defend his having accepted an amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch, with our full support. The Minister kept saying that he would accept it, knowing full well that if he had not the House would have voted it through by a combination of hon. Members on both sides. The Government did not seem to appreciate that London was heading for a difficult situation.

The unemployment figures that I have mentioned are only the most obvious indication of a whole series of interlocking crises. First, there is the stifling of new economic growth by the repressive system of industrial development certificates and office development permits. Until the last war, the prosperity of London was intimately bound up with the Thames. Our post-war economic recovery during the prosperous years of the 1950s masked the fundamental eeffct of Dockland's decline on London's economic infrastructure. Unless economic forces are allowed to operate freely, London cannot be regenerated.

The decay of East London is scandalous, but if its full potentialities for development could be exploited London's whole centre of gravity could be shifted to the east. We are not asking for special Government help. What we are asking for is that the Government get out of the way and do not treat London any worse than the rest of the country.

If anyone still doubts the need for more development to be allowed he ought to look at the latest unemployment figures in some parts of London. Male unemployment in Stepney is now 12·6 per cent. In Poplar it is 14·9 per cent. London's unemployment particularly affects the inner city and this leads to multiple deprivation and areas of urban stress. It also attracts immigrant communities in search of cheap housing. Over an 18-month period, up to May 1975, it would apear that whereas unemployment rose by 65 per cent. overall, it rose by 156 per cent, for immigrant minorities, according to theNew Statesman on 30th July. Therefore, we can expect that some inner city areas will have a particularly high level of immigrant unemployed.

A break-down of unemployment by employment exchanges indicates the seriousness of the problem. Lambeth, Brixton has a total of 8,100 unemployed, non-seasonally adjusted. Male unemployment there is 6,383, or 8·1 per cent. of the total male unemployment. Hammersmith, including Notting Hill but excluding Fulham, has 6,100 totally iunemployed, with 4,894 males unemployed, or 7·9 per cent. Poplar has the highest figures of all. Male unemployment in that area is 2,250, or 14·9 per cent.

I know that the Minister is not complacent. He is as aware of the figures as we are. But I do not think anyone in London could have drawn much comfort from the statement that the Secretary of State made yesterday.

It is often said that London is still prosperous, and does not need much attention. Southwark Trades Council has published an interesting document, which talks about total employment lost to London between 1961 and 1974 in the form of 396,000 jobs. The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch spoke about a comparison between unemployment in London and Scotland. In July 1975 the total of registered unemployed males in London was 87,000, when it was 96,000 for the whole of Scotland and 49,000 for the whole of Wales. Even a year ago there was not that much to choose between the problems of London and the problems of Scotland.

I underline the fact that we also question the figures. We do not believe that the figures for London accurately describe the position in percentage terms. We believe that the percentage is much higher.

We seem to be getting into difficulties with statistics and immigrant employment. We even had trouble over the junior hospital doctors' statistical pay in the report of the Expenditure Committee about three months ago.

Between 1966 and 1974, 652 firms moved from London to London-related new and expanding towns. That is appalling, because, as the trade council publication to which I have referred rightly says, the firms leaving London are the stronger ones, which are acting to enlarge their industrial base. They leave behind, in the scale and rapidity of their departure, groups of workers in London with skills which are no longer in demand, who find difficulty in getting employment. At best they have to be satisfied with lower-paid and less-skilled work, at worst with no work at all.

In case people talk about London still being well off, I would point out that manufacturing employment has been declining faster there than in the rest of the country. Between 1961 and 1974 the decline was 34 per cent., compared with 5 per cent., over the country as a whole. In the rest of the South-East there was a quite different development—an increase of 21 per cent. in manufacturing employment during the same period. I am sure that the Minister had had this publication, but in case it has got lost in the recesses of his Department I recommend it to him, as it contains some appalling figures.

Linked with unemployment are the long-term consequences for all of us in race relations. London's employment problems are also exacerbated by some of the educational policies in inner London. What chance, for example, will the children of William Tyndale School have on a competitive labour market? I have a horrible feeling that, as was said at County Hall, William Tyndale is only the tip of the iceberg. The Inner London Education Authority appears to have managed to spend more and more on teaching less and less.

A generation of London's children are threatened by educational malnutrition. Prominent among them, of course, are the children of New Commonwealth immigrants. That is worrying, because that is the generation which will resent it far more than their parents did when they are unable to get a job. They have been brought up here since birth and will feel doubly disadvantaged. For them, the transition from the chaotic environment of some of their schools to the real-life demands of the labour market will be traumatic. If they respond, by delinquency, to the stigma of rejection or of finding no jobs, the blame must rest with those who wasted public money while neglecting their duty to educate.

London can be compared in some ways with New York. We shall not face a situation similar to that in which the Federal Government told New York, "No more; you are bankrupt," because we do not have that system, but there is a real danger that the growing burden of rates upon London will drive out more and more firms which provide employment, which themselves would have provided the rate base for more income.

I hope that the Government have taken on board the fact that London, with its ageing population, with the need to develop areas like Dockland, cannot go on doing so on a smaller and smaller rate base and with such a substantial claw-back from the rate support grant. Surely we have the right to say to the Government "Examine urgently and conclude whether there is any further need to continue with IDCs, with the Location of Offices Bureau, with office development permits". It might be shown that they have contributed to London's employment plight, however well-intentioned were those who set them up.

I repeat that London is not asking for anything special. The North-West, Merseyside, and Glasgow need not say that London cannot be allowed to be relieved of the ban on advertising, outside its own area, job opportunities in factories. All we are saying is "Let us have equal opportunities". Glasgow and Merseyside need not worry. All we are saying is that London must not be treated any longer as a second-class city, finding Governments—I emphasise "Governments"—unsympathetic to its problems. I hope very much that what has come from the debate tonight is that London wants more time for general debates on the Floor of the House, at a civilised hour, and does not want to be fobbed off with so-called debates upstairs in a regional committee. It is true, that if the Minister does what I have heard him do on occasions we shall have reached a civilised hour.

4.52 a.m.

As a tourist from Newcastle-under-Lyme who would have welcomed paying bed tax this night, I begin by congratulating the 28 Labour Members who asked for this debate. I fully understand that they cannot all be here, having more pressing engagements elsewhere. I was bitterly disappointed that the noted gambling luck of my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Mikardo) deserted him in the Ballot, in which he drew number 62. If he had drawn a position on the inside rails we would all have been home much earlier.

The Government recognise that there is an employment problem in London. Over London as a whole the level of unemployment is still below the national average, although that is still intolerably high. Unemployment in London as a whole is also intolerably high, but there is not the severe problem in every part of London that there is in other parts of the country. Some parts of London are not so hard hit, but other areas, like Tower Hamlets, which I visited before coming to the House yesterday, and Shoreditch, which I saw at first-hand recently, and areas like them, have great problems.

Tonight, my hon. Friends the Members for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson), Woolwich, East (Mr. John Cartwright), Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown), Barking (Miss Richardson), Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) and Bethnal Green and Bow have sat up late to describe the unemployment situation in their own constituencies. The Opposition Members for Southgate (Mr. Berry), Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg), Harrow, Central (Mr. Grant) and Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) have joined them in describing the growing problem that besets the inner city areas of London and some other areas of London.

The Government are increasingly aware of the problems of the inner city areas, not only in London but in other towns. Employment problems are related to the grave social problems. The problems in the inner areas of London have been made much more difficult of solution by the present economic recession.

We must all work for an improvement in the economy generally. There will still be a problem in these areas, even after the recovery. Jobs have disappeared from some London areas more quickly than have the people, and far more quickly in some places. Some boroughs are now faced with a mass of unskilled workpeople with an inadequate number of factories to work in. I was brought up to believe that the very basis of work was that of making things. Although I fully appreciate the importance of service industries in London, I also recognise that in every community there must be workplaces in which people can make things.

This problem has not been caused primarily by regional policy. I believe that it would be much easier of solution were it so. Only 10 per cent. is a consequence of firms moving to assisted areas, perhaps as a result of financial incentives and IDC control. Only just over one-quarter—27 per cent.—of the job loss is due to removal, most of this to the South-East and other areas where there is no financial assistance. The North must not be blamed. Most of the job loss from London is due to firms here cutting down on staff or closing down altogether.

The reason why industry is having such a rough time in certain London areas and some other inner city areas is a complex one. One suggestion made from time to time is that firms in these areas are finding it difficult to attract skilled labour, skilled people having moved out for housing reasons, or to go to new towns. The recent report of the Expenditure Committee on new towns drew attention to the way in which new and expanded town policy may have impinged on the employment problems of the inner city areas.

The Government are now considering this very carefully indeed. It is already clear that the problems faced by the inner city areas are grave and need to be tackled urgently. We have first, however, to gain a greater understanding of the size and causes of the problem. The evidence of high unemployment in particular areas is clear to the eye if one visits career offices, job centres and employment offices, as I have done.

For technical reasons, because of the extent of commuting it is not easy to produce means of measuring unemployment in those areas, but they are needed. The figures that we now present for greater London as a whole can have no meaning for those trying to tackle the enormous problems of the inner city area. I accept the assertion of hon. Members on both sides that there is no meaning in having a travel-to-work unemployment figure for the whole of London. We have localised figures from the 1971 census, but these are of little use in today's dramatically changed circumstances.

Because of this, I have asked my officials to assist the Greater London Council and they are now discussing with the council officials ways in which my Department may be able to help the council update the census of population figures on the basis of the numbers registered as unemployed at local employment offices. If that can be achieved it will give hon. Members the figures that they need to enable them to argue the case for the inner London areas.

To help establish the complex causes, the Department of the Environment is conducting nationally three inner city area studies. The decision to do that was made because of the growing disquiet in Government about the problems that have been highlighted in the debate tonight. One of those studies is taking place in Lambeth, which was selected because it is a typical inner London borough. We hope to learn a substantial amount from the study so that there can be coordinated local government and national Government action of the type demanded in the debate.

When will the results of that study be known? I live in the area, and therefore have an interest.

I cannot say, but it is the Government's intention that the study should be completed as speedily as possible. Both the statistical exercise and the Lambeth study will take some time however and in the meantime the Government will take other action.

I now turn to the subject of docklands. The Government are concerned about the special problems created in east and south-east London by the loss of jobs in the docks and port-related industries. The Docklands Joint Committee, which brings together representatives of the GLC and the five boroughs, approved a draft strategy on 19th July which expresses the anxiety felt by the Docklands boroughs about the decline in manufacturing industry and suggests retaining and creating industrial employment in the area. The Government hope that it will be possible to make a statement to the House later today—if I have not talked out tomorrow's business in replying to the debate—which will set out the Government's views on the strategy.

I now turn to advertising. I am aware of the concern about the legislation which prevents local authorities from publicising, in the United Kingdom, the commercial and industrial advantages of London. Government Departments have examined the matter to see if it is possible to agree to an easement of the ban to help the needs of those areas which are experiencing particularly serious employment problems without prejudicing the needs of the assisted areas. But I ask hon. Members to await the statement from the Department of the Environment.

Hon. Members have recognised the easement in IDC control. On the subject of regional policy generally I should draw attention to the statement of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week that the Government have decided to move towards putting more emphasis on selective rather than general assistance to industry. There was a change in the regional employment premium, and my right hon. Friend said that more aid would be channelled through the NEB.

One or two hon. Members spoke of the importance of training. Although the main responsibility for training remains with industry, the Government have offset the declining training opportunities which would otherwise have resulted from the economic recession. The Manpower Services Commission has increased the number of training places under the Training Opportunities Scheme and made available money to finance additional training in industry. Over 8,300 people were trained in London under TOPS in 1975, and the target for 1976 is 12,600, a considerable expansion.

There are now five skillcentres in London, providing well over 2,000 places. Provision has been made in the expansion programme for new centres to be established at Deptford and Battersea and in North London, and for additional annexes at Barking and Woolwich. Temporary use will also be made of accommodation becoming available at Kidbrooke. It is hoped that all these facilities will be open by 1980. In addition, a new office training centre, the first of its kind, is to open in Croydon later this year. Altogether, these facilities will provide more than 1,200 additional training places in London. The Government have issued a consultative document on the collective funding of training in transferable skills, which will have relevance for apprenticeship.

Apart from these special training measures, the Government have introduced a number of schemes to try to help mitigate the worst effects of the present economic recession, schemes which should help London. We estimate that the Manpower Services Commission Job Creation Programme, the temporary employment subsidy and the recruitment subsidy for school leavers together have saved or created more than 7,500 jobs in London.

I was very sorry to hear that still no progress has been made on job creation and community industry in Hackney. I was disappointed to learn that more stringent conditions were being applied to job creation in projects in London than elsewhere. I have asked the Manpower Services Commission when operating the job creation programme to pay special attention to the problems of inner city areas and other similar areas experiencing serious employment problems. The same is true of community industry. We have asked for additional community industry provision, and I think that this has been granted in the past two months.

Over the past year community industry has been expanded from 90 places in London to 385. There are now six schemes—at Lambeth, Haringey, Camden, Wandsworth, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets, which I visited before coming to the House. That visit gave me the chance also to discuss with the ILEA careers service officers in the East End, who are doing a very good job, our concern about the situation facing school leavers and young people generally in London. We know how demoralising it is for young people to leave school and to be without a job. The recruitment subsidy for school leavers, the Job Creation Programme and the expansion of community industry, plus the increases in training and the strengthening of the careers service, will be of help to as many as 100,000 young people this autumn.

However, as Members will know, the Government have recognised the need to take further action. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced on Tuesday a series of special measures to help young people. There is the youth employment subsidy of £10 a week, which will be paid for up to six months to any employer recruiting a young person under 20 who has been unemployed for six months or more. The scheme will be limited to the engagement during six months from 1st October to 31st March 1977. The Manpower Services Commission is to increase the number of training places for young people below skilled level which are specifically directed towards the needs of young people.

The Commission is urgently working out arrangements for a work experience programme. I hope that London gets its fair share of this. Taken together, these measures should help about 60,000 young people to obtain jobs, training or work experience in the course of the next 12 months. We realise the truth of what ILEA careers officers told me this morning in the East End—that young people appreciate the Job Creation Programme and community industry work, and know that they can be helped by the work experience project, but what they want most of all are permanent jobs of their own. So, also, do adults. This is the policy of the Government.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow that the Secretary of State has listened carefully to the arguments that have come from Tower Hamlets. He has recognised the importance of those agruments and has agreed that officials should examine proposals put forward very quickly indeed. We in the Department of Employment recognise the urgency of the problems that the East End of London and other inner city areas face in the employment sphere. We believe that with the renewed growth of output the situation will improve, but I end as I began, by saying that we also appreciate that even when the economy revives, parts of London will continue to experience unemployment and other difficulties. We accept that it is our responsibility to do all we can to reduce the level of unemployment in this area.

Northern Ireland (Identity Cards)

5.13 a.m.

The subject which I raise this morning is by no means a new one. Indeed, in one of the earliest debates of this Parliament, my hon. Friends and I were putting forward the case that there were strong arguments for introducing in Northern Ireland, on security grounds, a system of compulsory carrying of identification and of identity cards. Even then the story was by no means new.

It was natural after the War that in Northern Ireland, as in the rest of the United Kingdom, there should be a revulsion against all forms of war-time control. But certainly the recent period of attack upon the Province has profoundly altered the attitude of the public in Northern Ireland towards this, as towards any other measure which might be of assistance.

My hon. Friends and I are convinced that, whatever might have been the case a few years ago, there would certainly be now no resistance whatsoever on the part of the public of Northern Ireland to the obligation to carry forms of identification which would be of assistance in the cause of security.

As I said, this question was raised in one of the earliest of the debates in this Parliament which took place in the context of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill at the end of 1974. We have periodically returned to the subject ever since. On each occasion it has been intimated to us that the advice of those directly responsible for security in Northern Ireland continued to be that the advantages of the introduction of compulsory identity cards in the Province were more than outweighed by the disadvantages. Nevertheless, I think that the Secretary of State will probably agree—I am not asking him, for reasons which I will indicate in a moment, to agree openly—that there has been a good deal of rethinking taking place on this subject as the months have gone by. Certainly my hon. Friends and I are impressed by the frequency with which, in our relations with the security forces, we find them returning now to this subject and placing a favourable emphasis upon the proposition that it is time that the obligation of carrying a form of identity was introduced in Northern Ireland.

It is indeed a paradox and, I think, an absurdity that when, in the eighth year of the present phase of disorder, we find the level of violence, though it varies in its form, by no means diminishing, the advantages for surveillance and control of a system of compulsory carrying of identification should not at least be practically recognised.

This is a case which is all the stronger since Northern Ireland is, of course, the only part of the United Kingdom with an open and, indeed, a lengthy land frontier—a part of the United Kingdom into which entry cannot conceivably be controlled in the way in which it can be controlled at all the other points of entry into the country.

When we bring together the uncontrolled and substantially uncontrollable frontier and the persistence at a high level of disorder and violence, murder and destruction, first in one part of the Province and then in another, my hon. Friends and I maintain that we ought no longer to leave the security forces without the powerful assistance which they would derive from a system of personal identification.

At the moment the forms of identification are as diverse as they are unsatisfactory. [Interruption.] I am doing my best, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to cope with the conversation which is taking place. I cannot hope in this instance for the protection of the Chair. Nevertheless, I persist, particularly in view of the intense importance of the subject.

I was saying that the present forms of identification are as unsatisfactory as they are various. There is, of course, the Northern Ireland driving licence which, unlike the driving licence in the rest of the United Kingdom, carries a photograph of the purported holder. But by no means all who are required to identify themselves drive vehicles and are therefore obliged to be in possession of a driving licence. Once we go beyond the driving licence, there is only a chance selection of documents by which an individual, on being challenged, might be able or expected to identify himself.

This situation unnecessarily complicates and aggravates the difficulties of the security forces in exercising both surveillance and control over entry into Northern Ireland from outside and in carrying out the identifications which might lead to arrests and to convictions.

For the armed forces, with their relatively brief periods of duty in the affected areas, the absence of a standard and accurate form of identification is particularly hampering. I am sure that this point will have been put to the Secretary of State on behalf of the armed forces. When we consider that throughout the Province at any time of the day or night, but particularly at night, large numbers of persons are being checked, or attempts are made to check them, for their identities and movements, by the UDR, the police and the Army, it amounts to a tremendous hindrance to that work that there should be no requirement upon those going about their occasions in the Province to carry any form of identification which is at all reliable.

Therefore, I turn to the form of identification itself. We would say that it ought to be a legal requirement—a requirement with which it would be an offence not to comply—to carry either a passport, which would be necessary for those entering the Province from outside, or a form of identification which would carry a recent and clear photograph, the signature and, preferably, the fingerprints of the holder—in other words, as near as maybe unbreakable proof associated with the identity of the holder.

All forms of identity cards, passports, and the rest can, if need be, be forged. No document is forgery proof. But we do not regard that as a ground on which to dispense with passports. Nor is it a serious argument against the case for a requirement of the carrying of identity cards in present circumstances in Northern Ireland. The complicated and difficult steps which would be necessary to produce an adequate forgery of the kind of identity card that I have been describing, though they might for special purposes be resorted to, would be so uncommon as not seriously to affect the utility of a universal identity card requirement for the purposes of security in the Province.

A debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill is not the occasion on which, normally and understandably, Ministers announce changes and developments of policy. In any case, I would not expect that there would be a sudden conversion on the part of the Government on this matter which has so frequently and for so lengthy a time been pressed upon them. I do not believe that developments of this sort are accepted by a kind of sudden conversion, a road to Damascus effect, upon the Floor of the House. They come about—and this is the utility of this kind of debate—by the continued pressure and impact goth of the opinions which hon. Members register in the light of their observation and of the experience and the advice—the great volume of advice—which reaches Ministers.

The purpose of my hon. Friends and myself in seeking this brief debate on this subject this morning is to register the fact—for it is a fact—that a proposition which was barely considered two years or more ago has over the past two years become a proposition more and more strongly urged by more and more of those who are concerned in the work of security in Northern Ireland until, in our view, it has reached the point when the Government ought to be considering the practical implications and the practical conditions of introducing this measure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) and others later today in the debate on the motion for the Adjournment of the House for the recess will be raising the general question of the current state of operations in Northern Ireland, as it is proper that it should be raised before the House rises for the recess. In the light and against the background of the situation of which it will be their duty to remind the House it is essential that no element, no device, no requirement which could appreciably assist the security forces should now be neglected.

The necessary conditions are certainly available for the introduction of this measure. There is the general readiness of public opinion to accept and even to demand anything which could facilitate the work of control, surveillance and identification. There is the evident fact that the security forces are still not coping successfully with the protean and ever-changing, ever-elusive enemy by which they are confronted. And there is the relative simplicity—and it is the relative simplicity—of this measure which would vastly enhance the power of identification in the hands of the security forces and add a new dimension to their potentialities.

Therefore, we make no apology for once again pressing upon the Government this proposition which we have so often brought forward, but never before with so much support behind it from those in the Province who are most intimately concerned with the work which has to be done.

5.31 a.m.

I return to the point which has already been made cogently and forcefully by my right hon. Friend the Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), and which I wish to underwrite—the fact that the forces, as well as most political commentators, are anxious to see in Northern Ireland ever-increasingly effective measures to combat terrorism.

First of all, however, I stress the point that there is no real difficulty in producing such cards in the United Kingdom. The practicalities of production pose little problem for the introduction of identity cards throughout the realm.

Those who had to live through the last war will recall that within three and a half weeks, some 47 million identity cards were produced because of the obvious security situation. It is true that these cards produced in 1939 did not have a photograph and were fairly basic. Nevertheless, the development in modern technology has been such that the production of cards with a photograph—cards which could not be easily forged—could take place easily, quickly and to the great benefit of the whole nation.

The introduction of such cards would be of great advantage to the security forces and those whose task it is to interpret the political situation in Northern Ireland. It would give them a means of instant identification.

At the moment when cars are stopped by the security forces a driving licence is sometimes requested as proof of identity. But it is often possible that three or four passengers in the car with the driver are not asked for any identification. If the driver satisfies the request of the forces, it is possible—in fact it must have occurred, by the law of averages—that those travelling with the driver may well have been involved in the pursuit of terrorism. If everyone is checked and has to produce a bona fide identity card, the tracking down of terrorists in the Province will be facilitated.

There are side benefits from having identification cards. There is the problem of misappropriation of money in Northern Ireland through illegal cashing of benefit cheques. There is abundant evidence that the IRA has been involved in this kind of misappropriation, not only in Northern Ireland but throughout the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, in Northern Ireland idenfication is not required when payments of £15 and below are being drawn, and it does not take many such payments to add up to a considerable sum.

If identification cards were required for every statutory payment whenever a Giro cheque was cashed in a post office there would be a further and most significant reduction in the amount of money misappropriated and redirected into the coffers of the IRA.

In 1974 about £133,000 was misappropriated, and there is good reason to believe that much of it was turned into weaponry to hurt and destroy the economy of Northern Ireland. It is estimated that in the rest of the United Kingdom £2 million was misappropriated, much of that money being used by the IRA. In that respect therefore the issue of identity cards would have a beneficial side effect.

There are inconsistencies at the points of embarkation and disembarkation. It is well known by those who commute frequently from Northern Ireland to the mainland that embarkation cards are used. As well as completing one of those cards one is obliged to produce one's driving licence or passport. It seems unnecessary therefore to fill out such a card if a passport or driving licence will suffice, and if the officer is satisfied only by the production of a photograph.

We return to the possibility of forgery. The examining officer becomes very agitated if one does not fill in the card, even though it may be superfluous, and on occasions tempers have become frayed. An identity card would remove that situation and the need to complete a card. It would also satisfy the examining officer.

If there were a commitment to introduce identity cards, it might involve a redefinition of British citizenship because we should need to decide who should receive the cards. That is a wide and important debate, but it would be no bad thing for the Kingdom as a whole—and not just Northern Ireland in its present plight—for that debate to take place. We must discover sooner or later who truly ought to be designated a British citizen and whom, within the shores of the Kingdom, we can trust.

The British Nationality Act 1948 is under consideration, not because we have raised this issue, but for many accompanying reasons. It would be of great benefit to the nation to have identity cards, not just in respect of terrorism in Northern Ireland but for problems which will soon emerge on the mainland. We need a re-vamping of the Act to define who shall be entitled to British citizenship.

This is not an academic study. It is an important requirement in the battle against terrorism. It is thought by the forces in the Province that our suggestion will save lives and even if only tens of lives are involved, it should be considered for implementation in the near future. I believe that the scheme would also save jobs and encourage people to hold on in the belief that the battle against terrorism is being won.

5.42 a.m.

I commend my colleagues for their persistence in pressing for action on this matter in the past and particularly at this early hour when they have been faced with considerable competition.

There would be no problem in the mass production of these documents. As a former Home Office Minister, the Secretary of State can correct me if necessary, but I seem to remember that during the war we had green identity cards in areas of Northern Ireland where security was particularly tight. They carried a photograph of the holder and his signature which made them more valuable than the documents that were issued nationally.

The present range of identity documents is thoroughly unsatisfactory. I often think that it must be bewildering for a young soldier on his first tour of Northern Ireland to be confronted with an apparently very wide choice of methods of identification.

The driving licence is one of the most commonly demanded documents. However, it can take anything up to three weeks to renew a driving licence. When I was asked for my driving licence in June I had to reply "I am sorry, it has gone to that great streamlined unit at Coleraine which was designed to speed up the operation." Under the old system in the county council days we managed, with all our supposed inefficienly, to issue a driving licence within three days. It now takes three weeks, but that is progress. During the time that an ordinary citizen is waiting for his licence to be renewed he is left without what is apparently regarded by the security forces as the most favoured identification document.

There is a further weakness in the driving licence identification as the address of the holder is not kept up to date. That is partly because the licence runs for three years. It is then renewed as it stands for a further three years. That means that the holder's address can be five years or six years out of date. A further complication has been caused by the numbering of roads. The system is completely unintelligible to those who live within a very few miles of each other. It is causing a great deal of confusion in the minds of those who have to check these documents. Both the old address and the new address can be held, legally, to be the correct address. Someone has gone to town on the supposed updating of the addressing system and the result has been confusion.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford) has said, there is a further flaw in that it is only the driver of the vehicle who is asked to produce his licence. There is far greater difficulty with public transport vehicles. The passengers of a train or bus cannot be expected to carry with them any form of identification as matters stand. In the centres of many towns there are areas where access is restricted to pedestrians only. There is no requirement that they should carry any form of identification.

There are also external checks. They are external in the sense that they take place outside Northern Ireland but not outside the United Kingdom. There is the identification that is demanded at ports and airports, where the confusion has to be seen to be believed. On the incoming airliner, in addition to the warnings to remain seated and to keep the seat belt fastened until the engines are switched off—those of us who travel regularly to and from Northern Ireland could go through the procedure as well as a member of the airways staff as we know it by heart—the passengers are informed as they go into Heathrow or Gatwick that they will be required to produce some form of identification. If the steward happens to be especially helpful, he will go on to say that it can be a driving licence or a bank cheque card.

If one is not required to carry a driving licence, or if one does not possess one, presumably the bank cheque card is thought to be a suitable alternative. With my present overdraft I should never dare to use one, but I understand that such a card is valid only if presented in a bank and if the signature is duplicated in the presence of a bank employee. It is no good one simply giving this as a kind of token across the counter. A cross-check has to be made, and that cannot be done at the points of entry.

On another occasion I related how my House of Commons pass was treated as something of very small account and that I was asked for something more positive, such as my airline ticket. I am not sure whether the official concerned was obtaining a commission from British Airways in order to make sure that I had not been joy-riding—not that I would engage in such an activity. But it seems most extraordinary that the left-over carbon copy of an air ticket should be held to be more valuable, as far as proof is concerned, than a House of Commons pass bearing the photograph of the holder.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) has said, and truly, that there was a time when there was opposition in Northern Ireland to the idea of identity cards on the ground that the issue of identity cards would make us different from the other citizens of the United Kingdom. However, it so happens that we are different from other citizens of the United Kingdom. We are being murdered at the rate of six a week, and that is different from the rest of the United Kingdom. The subject that we have been discussing this morning would be welcomed, at any rate, by those people who for the moment survive.

rose—

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to intervene at this stage but I wanted to raise a matter concerning the other business in respect of the Consolidated Fund Bill. I was under the impression that item No. 14, in respect of the Heavy Commercial Vehicles Act, was to be the ensuing item of business but I understand that the order has been changed somewhat. I may have missed a point of procedure about the way in which the Consolidated Fund Bill Second Reading is managed and arranged, but it seems extraordinary that I have been pacing up and down all night waiting for this debate and learning my speech and have not been called.

I know that the Minister has been up all night and that he has a busy ministerial schedule later today. It seems extraordinary that this can happen as a result of a rearrangement of the list of speakers in the Irish debate. I understand that the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford) was to have initiated this debate but that instead the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) opened the Irish debate.

Can you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, explain precisely what has happened? There are many people in the country interested in the heavy lorries legislation, such as environmentalists and those concerned with the road haulage industry, and they are waiting to hear the Government's views in order to give them the opportunity for an important reappraisal of how the legislation is being operated. I would be most grateful if you could explain what precisely has happened.

I am glad the hon. Gentleman has raised this point of order. He is absolutely right, because I noticed him in the Chamber throughout the evening and early this morning. The position is that Mr. Speaker's ballot makes a choice of hon. Members who have been successful and whose subjects will be debated during the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill. However, the priority accorded is not in respect of the subject but in respect of the individual hon. Member. The hon. Gentleman is therefore quite right. The hon. Member who was No. 11 on the sheet was not present. Had the hon. Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker) been present she would then have been the next one called—not the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). The hon. Lady may have been waiting until the Irish debate was settled, but because the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman were not present, the right hon. Member for Down, South, being next in the list, was called. Had they been present this debate would not have been going on at the present time, because the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford) was not here. I am sorry about the misunderstanding and I can understand the genuine grievance of the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) in being missed out altogether now.

Further to the point of order. I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for your explanation and your expression of sympathy. I understand that this procedure or a similar one has obtained in the past on the Consolidated Fund Bill. I should like, with your permission, though not necessarily with your approval, to write to Mr. Speaker to raise this important point. I do not want to take up more time, because Irish business is important—although a good deal of time has been devoted to it this Session. The absence of the hon. Member for Belfast, South has produced an accidental, haphazard effect on other important items, including consideration of the Heavy Commercial Vehicles Act. I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for what you have said.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) has been most unfortunate. He has been in the Chamber for a good deal of the evening. I know that it is a poor substitute, but if he were to raise the points he wanted to make tonight in a letter to me I should certainly reply to all of them.

Perhaps the hon. Member can raise this matter in the debate this day on the Adjournment for the Summer Recess. I do not think that Mr. Speaker is in any way at fault. It may be that hon. Members thought that subjects were grouped together on the list, whereas in fact it is the individual who is selected according to his number. I expected that if the hon. Member for Wallasey had been present we might have had a bit of a row, because I saw that the right hon. Member for Down, South was expecting to be called next. However, with his great knowledge of procedure I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would have known that he would not be called after the London debate because the hon. Member for Belfast, South had to be called first. He was No. 11 and headed that list.

I must express my regret to the hon. Member for Harrow, East. He was not present at the time and a Whip was sent to find him but apparently just missed him. If he tries to get in on the debate later today, Mr. Speaker may be sympathetic.

5.58 a.m.

Much has been said in the last year or so about improving security in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, much of the advice given on both sides of the House has been ignored. This advice has included such things as internment and other methods of combating terrorism, but this advice has not been followed up.

There was never a stronger case for identification cards. The security forces have made clear that it would make their job much easier if they had the opportunity to check people by identity cards. Many people in Northern Ireland have told me that. Why will the Government not introduce at least identity cards so that terrorists can be identified much more easily?

The only group who would fear identity cards would be the terrorists. Members of this House do not find it objectionable to carry identity cards and many people in Northern Ireland already carry them as a means of identity and admission to their place of work. That applies to the electricity board, to members of Belfast City Council and to people employed by other bodies, for example. They do not at all object to carrying a means of proving their identity to get into their place of employment.

People in Northern Ireland have been seeking for seven years a way of solving the present tragic situation. The present Government have been asked what they can do to end terrorism and violence, and that is an appeal from everybody in this House and from the hearts of the people of Northern Ireland. As my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) said, we are in a some- what different situation from the rest of the people in the United Kingdom because the people of Northern Ireland are being killed at the rate of six a week. That is tragic.

It is sensible that everybody there should be registered and be required to carry an identity card. The security forces have told me that every time a known terrorist is brought in for screening, a photograph is taken. It is posted in the operations room and issued to members of the security forces and they are told that that is of a known terrorist. If such a person is intercepted they can arrest that person and take him or her for interrogation.

The Minister will agree with me that it has been known in the past for certain terrorists to be interrogated and screened. Eighteen months later the person is rearrested. It is easy for people to change the colour of the hair and to change clothing and the appearance of the face. It has been known for terrorists to be arrested by the security forces and then allowed to go, having produced false identification.

I support what my right hon. and hon. Friends said. It is essential that the Government should yield to the pleas of these people of Northern Ireland. This would be simple but it could equally be effective.

We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford) that the driver of a car can be called on to produce a driving licence. But he could have the most important terrorist in Northern Ireland in the back of the car with him, and he could easily be smuggled across the border or taken through another part of the Province. It is important not only that the driver should produce a driving licence but also that the passengers should produce evidence of identity.

The security forces are doing a job that is appreciated by all law-abiding citizens. If the House appreciates the work of the security forces, as I am sure it does—the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, one of the best forces in the world until it was torn apart by politicians and others—it is essential that it gives them the support they need and deserve in tracking down terrorists in the Province.

I emphasise that law-abiding citizens will have no objection. Many people, from housewives shopping in the street to businessmen who drive to their place of work, have said to me "Why can we not have a means of identity so that when we are stopped by the security forces we can produce an identity card?"

Recently a bomb went off near Ann Street, Belfast, inside the so-called security zone. The gates were immediately closed. People were forced to line up for a long time. The Secretary of State will recall that there was an outcry. The security forces took the name and address of every person leaving the zone. Had identity cards been in use, it would not have been necessary for names and addresses to be taken in that way. The details of any suspicious person could have been checked by radio with headquarters.

My right hon. and hon. Friends have made a good case which will command the support of hon. Members on both sides. I know that we speak for the vast majority in Northern Ireland—and I do not mean just the Protestant side; I mean the minority and the majority. Law-abiding citizens will support the Secretary of State if he introduces identity cards because they will make the job of the security forces and the police easier and will, perhaps, even save life.

6.10 a.m.

The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) said that a debate of this nature illustrates one of the values of the House because it gives hon. Members a chance to wear away at the Executive on a particular issue. That is right. My security advisers are constantly thinking and rethinking security policy. I constantly read and reread, discuss and rediscuss security policy, one development of which is the committee on law and order. I agree that hearing an argument deployed again is of value to all of us who are concerned about security problems.

But there is a danger. Because people feel frustrated and are faced with a changing type of violence they may find it too easy to latch on to something new and to believe that it will prove to be the solution to the problem. Sometimes people say "Let us do something". But that plays into the hands of those who, in this type of warfare, play on a lowering of morale. Sometimes people say out of frustration "Why do not the Government do something?" They want something done for the sake of doing something new because they feel that not enough is being done.

The hon. Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford) said that identity cards would be a clarification of citizenship. I do not hold him to that because I am sure that he meant clarification of nationality. We do not have citizenship in the European sense and if the hon. Member waits for that before we have identity cards he will have to wait a long time.

Many people carry identity cards in the form of driving licences or authorisation connected with electricity boards or other public corporations. In Northern Ireland one needs identification to gain entry to many places. I do not know whether that proves or disproves my argument, but many people carry identification as an employee of a particular organisation.

The security forces have pictures of the people they want. I shall not go into the analysis of those pictures, which are to be found in "ops" rooms throughout the country. Wanted people come in cars having grown beards and equipped themselves with a false identity. Although there may be value in identity cards, they would not make it impossible for such people to assume a false identity.

We are not short of information about whom we want. Identity cards would not mean that those chaps would put wigs on and grow beards to go through road blocks, saying "Here's my identity card showing that I have changed my mode of living in the past couple of years".

The point is, if we think of it in terms of passports, that although it would be possible to obtain a new passport with one's new face it would be a considerable obstacle to changing one's appearance to be obliged to prove one's identity with a document bearing a photograph that cannot easily or frequently be altered.

I am sure that the Provisional IRA would set up a factory to make it possible for its members who are about their business in Northern Ireland to have not only a changed look but the appropriate documentation to pass themselves off. That is one of the differences about the problem in Northern Ireland compared with war time. It is a major factor that my security advisers take into account.

The question of the use of identity cards must be put in the context of the type of violence we have in Northern Ireland—the sectarian murders, the bombing, the killings, the interfactional assassinations, all of which look different when reported in the newspapers. Sometimes a killing that looks like a sectarian assassination I know to be an inter-factional assassination. People say of the person killed "Never been involved in anything in his life". All of us living in Northern Ireland know that situation.

Identity cards were a feature of life in the Second World War. I am not sure whether they were generally used in the First World War—I made these notes as I listened to the debate—but they were a major factor in the points system of rationing in the Second World War. When people got married they needed the cards to obtain points for utility furniture, for example.

The work done by Mr. Bevin at the Ministry of Labour and National Service was a major part of the war effort, and the identity card was part of the apparatus of life in using all the manpower and resources of the community. It must have had a bearing on the strict security situation, but I am sceptical about its importance in that regard. I believe that the value of the card was much more in the apparatus of life. One was in a community where the vast majority had one sole aim—victory. We were not in a divided community in which large numbers of people were against the community's essential aim.

Identity cards were not used in the context of the security situation. They had a much more deep-seated role in the last war. Many people choose to forget this and to think that the war was won at the sharp end. While I give credit to those at the sharp end, the blunt end was one of the most important elements in the last war. Identity cards were part of the apparatus.

We must not work on the assumption that because we won the last war and had identity cards, to have them now would mean that we would immediately win, after the seven years of urban and guerrilla warfare. In this situation complete support is not forthcoming from one part of the community. I mentioned detention and internment. The fact that we had internment under the Special Powers Act and then detention under the Emergency Provisions Act, the fact that 10,000 people could be protesting in Belfast, 3.000 people protesting outside the Maze and large number in Londonderry and other smaller places in the Province was a sign that whatever the Government of the day were doing on behalf of the community as a whole they certainly were not accepted by a sizeable part of the community in Northern Ireland. We shall see whether we shall get the dustbin lids banging again and a part of the community saying that it does not support the Government in what they are doing to deal with the problem of violence in Northern Ireland.

For identity cards to work properly they have to be accepted and used by the community as a whole. We are operating against para-military groups, against intimidation, control of pubs and clubs, rackets, easy money and women—with a smallish section of the community supported by many more.

From talking to the security forces I know of the problems they face in some rural areas when they are looking for half a dozen people who just disappeared. They cannot do that by hiding in the grass. They are supported and protected by people in the area. This is one of the factors which we did not have when we were organising the Second Front between 1939 and 1945.

There is one other matter in terms of the security situation. It is incredible how some of those involved in this grow affluent every day. That is another factor in the security situation. It is the nature of the organisation that they belong to. We are not in a world war situation. We are not talking in terms of landings and crossings of rivers. We are in a situation when part of the community is supporting the security forces while part is working against them. It is against this background that we must look at this point whether an identity card would aid the security forces rather than just reassure people who want something to be done in dealing with this blowing up and killing of people.

If the Government were satisfied that identity cards would improve the security situation we would introduce them. Security advice to me is clear and it is that such a scheme would not be helpful. We have re-assessed the situation only recently. I make that point in the context of a situation in which the whole community does not support the efforts being made by the security forces. This is the problem facing us. This is the major weakness we face in Northern Ireland.

I return to the question of defining nationality and, by inference, those who recognise the need to co-operate fully with Her Majesty's Forces. Will the right hon. Gentleman not accept that we are, to some extent, returning to the important question raised earlier, namely that of getting to know the people who matter? Will the Secretary of State not accept that those who show a marked reluctance to co-operate with Her Majesty's Forces must have a question mark placed by their names and must therefore be the subject of investigation, and perhaps even interrogation, because this will help in reducing the number of deaths? This is what the recommendation for identity cards is all about.

I will say only that if it is a question of knowing whom we want in Northern Ireland, we know very well whom we want on both sides of the community. Therefore in terms of knowledge there is no problem. Getting the evidence to put them behind bars is the difficult thing.

It would be a new theory of citizenship that reluctance to support the Government should be a reason for not being a citizen of a country. To have been born inside a country is the basic reason for being a citizen of that country. Hon. Members may point at my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) but I do not know what is meant by this. My hon. Friend is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies because he was born in Northern Ireland.

I think we are now moving to a new factor. A large number of people can also get passports—a slightly different aspect of citizenship. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Belfast, South for raising this point, because it muddies the water sufficiently to make it clear that Northern Ireland is different from the rest of the United Kingdom in loyalty. That is why one group of the community call themselves Loyalists, to distinguish themselves from those they feel to be not loyal to the community in the sense in which they understand the term.

The question is one of the use of identity cards to try to deal with the security situation. The purpose of identity cards is that all persons shall be required to carry them, and that they will provide a ready and sure means of identifying a person to those who are authorised to question him in that respect. I have made the point already that some sorts of identification cards obviously do that already.

In Northern Ireland, if we were to do this, the names, addresses and dates of birth of some 1½ million people would have to be compiled so that they were up to date and accurate. In my view, they would have to be more up to date and accurate than the cards we used in 1939–45. Some 1½ million cards would have to be prepared under secure conditions. They would have to be issued to the right people—and I would not be sure of that in some areas. The law would have to be amended. That would be quite simple, and could no doubt be done by Act of Parliament. I am trying now to assess what we would have to do.

Inevitably, there would be a large number of innocent people—I have to take this into account—who occasionally forgot their identity card. To be effective, the scheme would require a sanction for not carrying a card. This would not apply to the innocent but to those deliberately trying to put a boot in the machine. There would have to be a sanction. There would have to be a fine. The security forces would have to operate this sanction—keep the records and deal with the summonses. If a person lost his identity card—I can think of many who would lose them pretty quickly and deliberately—the security forces would need to have an elaborate system for notifying the loss to their people, and inquiries would have to be made before a replacement was issued. It would be added work for the security forces in Northern Ireland. The amount of labour involved would be substantial. Some of the work burden could be undertaken by civilians but the police and the Army, I am told, would have to divert men in order to look after the identity card scheme.

The main problem is that a system of identity cards is effective, within the limits that I have described, only if the community co-operates. If the whole of a community co-operates, enforcement is manageable. But I can imagine the Provisional IRA organising ritual burnings of identity cards in Londonderry on a scale which would make it difficult for the security forces to deal with the situation. That is an important matter to be taken into account in the administration of the scheme. The security forces would find themselves tied down in an even more static and defensive role. Those are the principal objections.

One point that has been made to me is that in Northern Ireland a high proportion of terrorists rely on cars. We have means of checking on cars, and such checking is done successfully with the aid of the driving licence which contains a picture, and so on. However, that by itself does not get us too far. Even though a great deal of crime is carried out by people with motor cars, the identification of the drivers of motor cars is not all that helpful in breaking down and dealing with the motor car terrorist, whether carrying the bomb or the gun. The Government will continue to keep the matter under review, but the security forces' advise at present is as I have mentioned.

Arrangements would have to be made to cover business men and tourists coming into the ports. I am sure that can be done. Temporary documents would need to be issued and people would be required to run the system. The police would have to carry the main burden.

How would we deal with the problem of the border? Presumably requests for documents would have to be made some time in advance. There is a great deal of criss-crossing for historical reasons. There would have to be a scheme for checking the bona fides of those coming in—and in a deeper way than is done now.

Would identification cards have stopped the bombs in Portrush? Would they have dealt with the situation in Dungiven when a soldier in the Hampshires was killed?

I am often sceptical of staff papers which are produced to me. They are done brilliantly. But I learned during six years of war to be sceptical of staff papers, because I was low enough down the line to be at the other end. They always looked good to those who wrote them, but they should have been the chaps at the other end carrying them out. I am sceptical of papers which are put to me, but I look at them to see how they would work in practice.

In my view, identity cards are not a particularly effective way of hindering the determined criminal, terrorist or spy. Documents issued on this scale are almost inevitably subject to forgery, loss and theft.

What is needed is a power to enable the security forces to establish a person's identity without doubt, and a sanction if he does not co-operate. The security forces have power to stop a person and question him about his identity by virtue of Section 16 of the Emergency Provisions Act. The value of identity cards would be to assist such questioning. But if they would lighten the load on the security forces in that direction, they would increase it in others.

The strong view of the security forces is against the identity card. Sometimes I hear people say that the Army is in favour of the identity card. The fact that a soldier or an officer, in talking to somebody in an area, is in favour of it is one thing. But the General Officer Commanding and his staff firmly put to me that they are against identification cards in Northern Ireland, and I take their view into account. Indeed, in this context I accept it. It is my decision at the end of the day. As my right hon. Friend the Minister of State knows, I am reporting the advice that has been given to me.

Identity cards would not help in the difficult weeks ahead. We must look not only at the past but at what we might have to face within the next fortnight to see whether identification cards would help. In my view, the Provisional IRA has decided to up its campaign on the streets, as in Portrush, where it seems to believe that terrorising its fellow citizens will lead to a united Ireland. I believe that it will have the reverse effect. We may have trouble not only on the streets but in the prisons.

Identity cards would not help to deal with young people with shoulder bags. I talk about this generally, because I was not able to get over to Northern Ireland last evening. It seems that the police in Portrush are looking for youngsters on holiday carrying an Adidas bag or one with "Glasgow Rangers" printed on it. The police want to talk to youngsters who were dressed or were carrying bags in that way. I make no comment other than that. I merely say what they are looking for. Whether that were or were not the way in which the bombs were loaded, would an identification card have dealt with the situation? I do not believe that it would.

We are likely to have trouble in the prisons, with the aim of keeping special category status. It may be that there will be a strange alliance between the Provisional IRA and Loyalist paramilitary groups in the next few weeks, and we are ready to deal with that. In that situation I am convinced that, given the nature of the violence, identity cards might look good—they would make people feel that something was being done—but they would not deal with the basic security situation.

Until we get to the position in which we get the co-operation of more people in the community, not just because of intimidation—and I have to accept that it is there—we shall not win through. But we shall win through at the end of the day. Of that I have no doubt. There will be no backing down by this or any other Government of which I can think. We shall stand up to those who bomb, kill and murder, and to those who associate with them in private—and that happens on both sides of the divide.

The identification card is not the means for dealing with the situation. If the situation changes so that we need it, we shall have it, but the strong advice that I have, and the view that I put to the House, is that we should not at this moment have identification cards.

College Of Air Training, Hamble

6.38 a.m.

The matter that I wish to bring before the House tonight and to impress upon the Minister is the quite intolerable nuisance caused to large numbers of my constituents by the operations of the College of Air Training at Hamble.

There are four aspects that make this nuisance particularly unbearable. First, training aircraft are, by their nature, noisy planes. Secondly, they fly at a low height over areas of considerable population. The one with which I am particularly concerned is the housing estate at Thornhill, in Southampton, which includes many high-rise flats. I understand that the regulations say that these planes must fly at 2,000 ft, but I am never sure whether that means 2,000 ft above sea level or 2,000 ft above the ground. There is a difference. In this area 2,000 ft above sea level would be much less above the ground, because this estate is on high ground.

Thirdly, the planes follow particular and regular flight paths, which means that they pass directly over the same houses every two or three minutes. What we are dealing with here is virtually continuous noise.

Fourthly, and most important of all, is the fact that these operations continue until 11.30 pm or midnight during the summer months.

I can personally verify the extent of this nuisance. I have sat in a house in the area and listened to the noise. It was my intention at one stage, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to try to smuggle a tape recorder into the Chamber and play a recording of the noise during the course of the debate. Only the fact that I thought that you would disapprove of my action deterred me from doing so. If the Minister heard a tape recording he would appreciate fully the nuisance that my constituents have to put up with.

I realise that noise is a very personal thing. What affects one person may not affect another. It could well be that one constituent who lives in a house in the flight path is severely affected while his next-door neighbour may not even notice the noise. But I have information from local doctors who say that people have been treated for nervous conditions that were directly attributable to the operations of those aircraft night after night after night. I shall read one letter that I received from a constituent. It is typical of a large number that I have received. It says:

I must write to thank you for your efforts on behalf of people who live in areas intolerably affected by the operations of the College of Air Training at Hamble. For 16 hours a day we have this constant, almost unbearable noise. On this day alone the first flight took off at 9 a.m., and at this moment—11.32 p.m.—aircraft are still taking off. I have a very personal grievance about this, because earlier this year my husband had a nervous breakdown, and he is still on anti-depressant tablets. How can I ever hope to see him again a happy and contented man if he cannot have peace and cannot sleep?"

As well as noise, there are other factors to consider. While sitting in the house I found that while the planes were going over it was almost impossible to watch the television because of considerable interference from the aircraft.

There is also the safety factor—although I do not want to make too much of this. However, there have been two crashes, and there is always a danger when trainee pilots fly over thickly populated areas.

I realise that we have to train pilots, but at the moment many of the trainees at Hamble are being trained not for British airlines but for foreign airlines. I recognise also that the college provides employment in the area. I had a letter from the Hamble Parish Council asking me to bear that point in mind.

Many of my constituents and those of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Price) have complained to the principal of the college on numerous occasions. Their complaints have been met with considerable lack of understanding. The principal takes the line that he is running a commercial undertaking, and while it is unfortunate that hundreds of people have to suffer as a result, it is just something they have to put up with.

This attitude has made my constituents very angry indeed. Many of them are threatening to take direct action. It has been suggested that they may drive their cars on to the runway to prevent the aircraft from landing or taking off. I have warned them against any such action because, apart from anything else, it is dangerous. But the fact that they are continually talking about such action shows the strength of feeling on the subject. I have argued that every constitutional means should be explored; that is why I have sat through the night in order to secure this debate. I hope that the Minister will be able to hold out some hope that the nuisance will be alleviated.

I do not want the college to close if that can possibly be avoided. All I want is a reasonable compromise. Perhaps may suggest how the compromise might he reached. Most important, all flying should cease at 9.30 pm at the latest, throughout the year. It is planes flying late at night, night after night, keeping people awake, that causes the real trouble. Why cannot the planes use different flight paths? That possibility should be investigated, because if implemented it would mean that the same people did not suffer the nuisance every night.

Thirdly, the planes should endeavour to fly at a greater height. If they are going to fly at 2,000 ft, it should be 2,000 ft above the land, not above sea level, because there is a great difference between the two. The college should also explore the question whether aerodromes could be used elsewhere in the country, so that the load can be spread.

If a compromise is not possible—and the suggestions I have made have hardly been greeted with enthusiasm by the college—the alternative is that we shall have to press very hard for the closure of the college. It is unfair and unjust for my constituents to have to suffer in this way every year. I do not want the college to close, if a compromise can be reached. We must therefore try for cooperation and compromise from the college authorities.

6.48 a.m.

The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Mitchell), the Minister and I have certainly done nocturnal penance for those of our constituents who have their peace and quiet disturbed by low-flying aircraft. It is now nearly 7 a.m. and both the hon. Gentleman and I have been up all night in order to take part in the debate. I intervene because the college is in my constituency. Last summer the college nearly closed because British Airways stated that it would not be requiring any new pilots until 1978. Since the college was reconstructed in its present form in 1960, British Airways has been its mainstay.

The decision seemed to be a mortal blow to the college, but by the strenuous efforts of all concerned it obtained sufficient overseas orders from countries such as Iran, Kuwait, Bahrein, Indonesia and Zambia to enable it to keep going. This was due largely to the vigour of the principal, Mr. Scott.

The college holds 240 students, not all of them for flying, and it is earning about £7 million a year in foreign currency. It employs directly a staff of 240, a figure not to be sneered at in these difficult days.

I mention these facts in order to put the problem in context. I know that the hon. Member for Itchen does not want to see the college closed any more than do most of the objectors; they merely want peace and quiet.

In recent years, there has been a considerable amount of new housing in our constituencies below the flight paths of these training aircraft. However, aircraft have been flying out of Hamble since 1916 and the airfield has had existing user rights in planning terms. The hon. Member for Itchen receives many complaints from Thornhill, which is a relatively new estate, with high-rise flats, at the eastern corner of the city of Southampton. Most of the complaints to me come from Old Netby and parts of the parish of Hedge End, principally Foord Road and Burlesdon Road.

I have been in touch with the principal of the college on many occasions and he has told me that this part of Hedge End is particularly badly placed because, owing to the proximity of Eastleigh airport and its commercial traffic, most of the college's aircraft have to pass over this area when landing or taking off to avoid the risk of collisions.

The college was using these routes long before many of these houses were built. I know that it is no comfort to the people living in the houses, but it is worth pointing out that the local authority built or allowed to be built a number of houses in the flight path of these aircraft.

I have represented this area for the last 21 years. We tend not to get complaints in the winter, but there are complaints every summer—for obvious reasons.

How serious is the disturbance to people's peace and quiet from the training aircraft? The basic authority on this matter, the Wilson Committee, said that

"Neither experience nor experimental evidence support the suggestion that some measurable figure of noise intensity might be accepted as a universal limit towards which all noise control might be directed."

There is no single measure, as, for instance, with toxicity in water, to measure acceptable noise levels.

The committee also reported that

"Of all effects, repeated interference with sleep is least to be tolerated; it is especially important to diminish noise during the earlier part of the night, because during the later phase of deep sleep even loud noises have less effect in wakening the sleeper."

That is an important conclusion. It supports the view that night flying causes the greatest problem.

Equally, we must take into account the next point that the committee made, when it stated that

"we have not been able to find any evidence that moderate noise produces any direct and measurable physiological effect on the average person. The general effect on health must therefore be more psychological than physical."

My own experience—I have included the period when I was a Minister dealing with complaints about Concorde—is that aircraft noise has a psychological effect rather than a physical effect upon people. This is where one gets into an uncertain area. But although it is uncertain it is still real to the sufferer.

It is only fair that I should put the other side of the picture. I must tell the House that the Hamble Parish Council, as the hon. Member for Itchen mentioned. took a different view from that taken by the complainants. Indeed, it produced a document in which it said that the majority of local residents are wholly in favour of the flying operations of the College of Air Training. It asked the lion. Member for Itchen and myself not to pay disproportionate attention to the objections that we have received.

As the Member representing the Hamble area, I have taken up the complaints that I have received both with the college and with the local authority, the borough of Eastleigh. The borough representatives tell me that they find the principal helpful. They say that he attempts to alleviate the problem as far as it is in his power to do so. They tell me that the circuits are varied as much as possible, although it is necessary for fixed routes to be used to avoid flying over the same routes that are used by other aircraft.

I believe that it is also the view of the hon. Member for Itchen that it is night flying in the hot summer weather that causes most of the distress to which he referred. None of us wants to have our peace disturbed by aircraft noise if it can be avoided. The hon. Gentleman and those who have organised the action group have put forward a number of specific proposals, which I shall not go over again at this late hour. If the proposals were accepted by the college it would cause great relief to those who are being disturbed. I am in no position to say what precisely what would be the effect upon the college's training programme of implementing the proposals. I leave that to the Minister, the Civil Aviation Authority and to the college to comment upon.

I end by putting to the Minister and the hon. Gentleman a point contained in a very fair letter that I received yesterday from a constituent from Bursledon, who wrote:

"The classic 'British Compromise' has characterised the manner in which we sort out disputes, internal and international. It indicates a sophisticated level of political problem solving. The problem of night flying over the Hedge End/Old Nettley area seems ripe for a little 'give and take' on both sides. Perhaps, Mr. Price, it is the right moment for you to act for the good of all the community."

It is in that spirit—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would reciprocate—that I ask whether we can find some compromise that will enable the college allowing for all the troubles it has come through, to continue and, at the same time, give a little more peace and quiet to the hon. Gentleman's constituents and mine.

There is no universal acceptable level of noise on which we can come to an agreement. We must recognise that a level of noise is acceptable to one person is not acceptable to another. Therefore, I hope that the Minister can produce what I and the hon. Member for Itchen both want, as well as my constituents, namely, a middle way.

7.0 a.m.

I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Mitchell), who has demonstrated yet again that tenacity and conscientiousness that the whole House admires in him by having remained there throughout the night and opened this debate at 6.40 a.m. That exemplifies the very keen interest that he has for his constituents, which is reflected not only in what he said in the debate but in the correspondence he has addressed to me on this subject.

I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Price), who speaks with a wealth of experience because in the past he has undertaken the role that I fulfil in this Government, of trying to hold the balance between aviation and environmental interests. He knows very well that this is never as easy balance to hold and that what normally happens is that we upset both interests, please neither, and are left in the middle. Nevertheless, I think it is important that one should continue to occupy that middle position if one is to do the job at all and try to avoid the brickbats whenever one can. Both hon. Members have spoken on the basis not of hearsay evidence but of direct evidence. I therefore listened to them with keener interest than I would if they had merely been reporting events that they heard from someone else.

I hope that both hon. Gentlemen will feel that this is an offer made in good faith, and that it indicates my keen interest in trying to resolve some of the problems, if I tell them that I propose to visit Hamble myself during the summer, when the problem, as I understand it, is at its worst.

One of the things that I try to do when I adopt this sort of policy—I have done it in relation to Heathrow, Gatwick and other airports that I have visited—is not to announce when I am going, so that I cannot be got at by either the aviation or the environmental interests. In that way I can make up my own mind about the burdens of the problem that have to be borne.

Will the Minister ensure that the news does not get down through the "old boy" network, because it has happened once before, and no planes flew that day?

If no planes were to fly, however naïve I might be, I would suspect that something untoward was going on.

Having said that, I accept that, for some people living near to the airfield at Hamble, the continuous circuit flying and other aspects of the training operations that are carried on may be extremely annoying in terms not only of noise but of interference with television. I am not sure whether television blight is necessarily one that compares with the first that I mentioned. I suppose it depends on what one is concerned to look at. It is hardly comparable to the noise nuisance that arises from the large jets at Heathrow, but it is of a different kind.

If there are breaches of the flight regulations, that is a matter for the CAA, which could take action if satisfied by the evidence. Any evidence of substance should be passed on to the CAA for investigation and, if necessary, action.

I take it that my hon. Friend is referring to the height factor. Is the 2,000 feet limit meant to be above sea level or above the area over which one is flying? That makes a substantial difference to the noise.

I think that it is the latter, but I shall confirm that—I have not previously addressed my mind to the matter—and write to both hon. Gentlemen.

The hon. Member for Eastleigh recounted some of the history of the college. It was originally established in an essentially rural setting. Now, about 1,000 people live within a mile of the centre of the airfield and another 20,000 live between one and two miles away. There are several schools and hospitals within a distance of two miles. Practically all this development has taken place in recent years while the airfield has been in active use for training pilots. One may wonder whether the local planning authorities had always been wise in giving consents to such noise-sensitive developments, but this problem is not unique to Hamble.

We must deal with realities. The only certain cure is to close the college. The training of pilots is an absolute necessity, I agree, for our civil aviation, quite apart from the incidental fact that in recent years the college has been a foreign currency earner from the training of overseas trainees. It is right, therefore, to say that closure is almost impossible to contemplate.

The only alternatives are to leave it at Hamble or to find another site. Even if we disregarded the problems of finding a site in the present economic climate, which is not something that a junior Minister at this Department can contemplate with equanimity—I know my station—could the outlay of several million pounds be justified?

All the studies of the annoyance caused by aircraft noise show that it is a subjective matter. What annoys one man does not necessarily annoy another. Nevertheless, it is frequently a torment to the person who finds that it is so annoying. I have described it in the House, in another context, as a pestilence.

The hon. Member for Eastleigh is right also in asserting that there is no readily defined limit of noise available at present, nor, I think, will there be in future. How does one distinguish, in these terms, between day and night flying by the measurements available to us. The other fact, perhaps surprising on the face of it, is that there is little or no evidence of property values being diminished by reason of airport noise. I relate that remark not simply to Hamble but to other airports throughout the United Kingdom.

Having said that, I do not gainsay that there are real difficulties for some people. My task is to see how we can, in practical terms, take some steps to mitigate these problems, and in the last part of my speech I wish to go into the question of possible further ameliorative measures which may be available at Hamble.

I start from the proposition that all aerodrome operators will do their utmost to take all measures reasonably open to them to keep noise to the irreducible minimum, consistent with efficient use of the aerodrome. At Hamble measures have already been taken to so arrange the circuits flown that some of the schools and hospitals in the area are not overflown. That is helpful, as far as it goes. I would hope that there may be some scope for circuit changes, and perhaps for changes in heights flown, for restricting weekend flying and, although it must be accepted that some night training is essential, for achieving some limitations in night flying.

On that point, will the Minister say whether it would be possible, now that the Royal Navy is flying so much less, for the college to fly into the airspace that was hitherto taken by the Ministry of Defence? I leave that thought with the Minister without expecting an immediate answer.

That is a possibility that might be considered, because it will fit into what I shall say in a moment.

Although it must be accepted that some training flights at night have to be undertaken for obvious reasons, there may be scope for achieving limitations in that night flying. My hon. Friend suggested a curfew at 9.30 p.m., or thereabouts. A time even earlier than 9.30 p.m. might be possible. I believe that an examination should be made of the possibility of undertaking some of the training from other airfields in the United Kingdom, or even abroad, using Hamble as a base.

The only feasible way of investigating these propositions is to do it locally. With that in mind, and in order to ensure that the local amenity societies, through which complaints are often channelled, and the local authorities within the noise shadow, are fully in the picture, my officials have suggested to the college authorities that there should be established a formal consultation machinery, in the form of a consultative committee, with an independent chairman, on which all interested parties are represented.

This proposal follows the pattern established at other airports in the United Kingdom, which the hon. Gentleman will recall. I hope that the college authorities will respond favourably to this proposal, which I understand they are considering. I would like it to be kept in mind—although this is a subject for negotiation—that the committee membership should include representatives of the local authorities to which I specifically drew attention and of amenity societies in the area overflown by Hamble traffic. That can be considered.

Clearly, the college principal should be on such a committee, together with his director of training, someone from flight training licensing in the CAA, necessarily someone from my Department, and our air traffic adviser. That would form the basis of the proposal that I hope will be implemented with the agreement of the college principal.

I have made my position quite clear. I hope that that will be of some influence in the matter.

First, am I right in thinking that the Ministry has no power to impose such a solution, and that it would have to be done voluntarily by the college authorities? Secondly, on the composition of the committee, mention was made of amenity societies. Would that include a body that has now been formed in the area? I attended a meeting of over 100 people recently. The body has been formed to get something done about aircraft noise at Hamble. It is not an amenity society.

That is a matter that should be sorted out locally. I have suggested some lines of guidance that might be followed. I do not think I should take it further than that. What normally happens is that certain amenity groups that have achieved a recognised status are represented on the committee. I do not know what the local set-up at Hamble is likely to be. I should not be wise if I attempted to predicate what should happen beyond having given those general guidelines.

On the first point, my hon. Friend is right. Section 8 of the Civil Aviation Act 1968 is relevant. We expect aerodrome managers to take steps that are open to them to reduce noise nuisance from the aerodromes that they control and manage. In furtherance of that aim, the busier airfields, including Hamble, have been designated under Section 8. The relevant part of the section provides that

"The person having the management of any aerodrome to which this section applies shall provide for users of the aerodrome, for any local authority (or, if the person having the management of the aerodrome is a local authority, for any other local authority) in whose area the aerodrome or any part thereof is situated or whose area is in the neighbourhood of the aerodrome, and for any other organisation representing the interests of persons concerned with the locality in which the aerodrome is situated, adequate facilities for consultation with respect to any matter concerning the management or administration of the aerodrome which affects their interests."

The usual way of doing that is through the form of consultation to which I have referred.

I do not suggest that what I have proposed offers a panacea. Local consultation, however effectively organised, is not likely to remove the problem, and perhaps will not even produce radical solutions. However, I think that it has the advantage of enabling those who are involved on both sides to understand more directly the respective problems of the other people who are concerned with the problems of the local population, and of those using the aerodrome. I believe that, in consequence, solutions, albeit only partial, will be facilitated and that the very least it may be possible to satisfy everyone that what can be done is being done.

I hope that that line of thought will avoid the threat of direct action, which, apart from being unconstitutional—which is one reason why it is opposed by my hon. Friend—would also be counter productive, because it would get people into entrenched positions from which they would have difficulty in extracting themselves.

My hon. Friend briefly alluded to safety. Operations at Hamble are subject to the same regulations as those at other aerodromes, and any departure from that rule would be pursued by the CAA, which licences the aerodrome and is generally responsible for safety aspects. Risk of damage to property or injury to the local population is small. I do not want to appear complacent, but Hamble's accident record over recent years is a typical one for a flying training school. The preponderance of accidents have occurred without injury, and have involved students. In the last 10 years three serious accidents have occurred, none of which injury to third parties. They were each subject to searching inquiry by the accidents investigation branch, and immediate measures were taken to prevent any recurrence.

I understand why my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Eastleigh raised the matter. I hope that what I have said establishes my sympathy and understand- ing of the problems, and that the proposals that I have advanced will lead to a mitigation of the problems that cause anxiety to their constituents.

Social Security Benefits (Abuses)

7.22 a.m.

In recent weeks certain hon. Members, particularly Conservatives, have sought cheap and nasty publicity for alleged abuses in the social services. In the course of that publicity they have used some highly emotive and extravagant language, aided and abetted by some, but not all, of the popular Press—not least by theDaily Mail, the night soil of Fleet Street. Often the newspapers and hon. Members have shown little regard for the truth. They have taken little trouble to ascertain the facts before they have produced what they presumed would be nice, juicy headlines attacking the Welfare State and engaging in cheap jibes about layabouts scroungers and so forth.

I exempt from my strictures on the Press theEvening Standard which carried a reasonable editorial on 3rd August. That spoke about the emotive use of the words "scrounger" and "layabout" and went on:

"There is a grain of truth within this equation, with the Department of Health and Social Security reporting 7,250 prosecutions for misuse of its benefits system in the first five months of this year. But the sensational nature of the cases picked out, with their large embezzlements and cunning ways of fraud, has put everything out of proportion.

A good way to put it back is to look at the other side of the social security world, the amount of money (almost all of it from means-tested allowances like supplementary benefit) left unclaimed by people entitled to take it up. Set beside the sum believed lost through fraud (an estimated £2,000,000 by 45,000 claimants last year) the saving to the Government is vast.

Mr. Frank Field director of the Child Poverty Action Group, reckons the annual unclaimed total at £330 million."

The article went on in that vein—a highly responsible, and highly exceptional, leading article.

The recent attacks by Conservative Members would be taken more seriously if they directed some of their venom at the sharks in the sea of corruption, fraud and scrounging in the higher echelons of our society. I wish the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) would read the report of the Lonrho inquiry rather than the annual report of the DHSS. The former Conservative Prime Minister described Lonrho as the unacceptable face of capitalism—and no wonder! It is appropriate that the next debate should be on that report. Because we are to debate it next I shall not go into it in detail, but I want to refer to Part 7, entitled

"The Financial Arrangements Made With Mr. Duncan Sandys",

which talks of his receiving a consultancy fee of £11,000 a year, how that was increased to £51,000 a few months later, and how he accepted a change of role to chairman of the company in return for £130,000 compensation—

Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying into a matter which is not strictly relevant to the subject of part of the Votes which he desires to discuss. The question he has raised concerns alleged abuses on the payment of social security benefits. I shall be grateful if the hon. Gentleman will continue with that discussion and not stray into a different matter.

I am not straying, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but merely making an interesting comparison of fraud, swindling and scrounging. This document reveals much more blatant scrounging and fraud than anything suggested by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South. When the money was to be paid into an account in Jersey and subsequently in the Cayman Islands, both to avoid taxation, that was condoned by the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann), Chairman of the Tory Party's 1922 Committee, who said, as quoted in the report, that the then Mr. Sandys had acted as a just and honourable man. I leave it at that.

I come to the lesser fry. Under the headline

"Confessions Of A Taxman",

theSun on 28th July reported Sir Norman Price, who had been the £18,675-a-year Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, as saying, speaking of his experiences of fraud in the tax system:

"The taxman's biggest headache is the estimated 2,200,000-strong army of self-employed people.

They have the best chance to fiddle."

I need go no further.

Next I quote the Child Poverty Action Group, referring to the specific charge about social security benefits. In a letter to the DHSS, Mr. Frank Field said that if there was to be an inquiry there should also be one into tax evasion.

If there is one message which I want to convey to my hon. Friend it is this: investigations are being made into social security benefits but I hope that he and his colleagues will make the strongest representations to the Treasury to the effect that there should be equally firm and comprehensive inquiries into tax evasion. That is where the sharks are. The minnows are here but the sharks are elsewhere.

Mr. Frank Field estimated in his letter that £9 million a year was being lost by people going abroad, maybe to Spain, without paying their tax bills. He estimated that £1,300 million was being lost as a result of loopholes in estate duty and that up to £500 million was being lost—according to the estimates of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation—through under-statement of income by self-employed people.

I come to the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South. He has been making the headlines for some weeks now. I wonder whether he has made representations to my right hon. Friend to say that he would attend this debate. It has been known for some time that this debate was to take place. The hon. Gentleman knows me well enough to know that I would not miss it. I would not have missed it for worlds. Why is the hon. Gentleman not present to give his evidence?

I have had no indication from the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) that he was to attend this debate. Notice of the debate was given 36 hours ago. My hon. Friend and I have been here all night waiting for the debate. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman, like the evidence he promised to the Government, has not seen the light of day.

I wonder whether theDaily Mail will make inquiries and find out whether the hon. Gentleman has already gone off scrounging to Spain on holiday. Shall we see the headline in theDaily Mail

"M.P. for Aberdeen, South on scrounging holiday in Spain"

when he is being paid his parliamentary salary for duties performed here?

I remind hon. Gentlemen of the kind of thing the hon. Gentleman has beeen saying, as reported inThe Times on 26th July. He said that fraud and abuse was costing £500 million a year, that a man can get £100 a week tax-free with no bother, that £250 million was being paid out in social security to people who are working and that 500,000 people on the dole were on the fiddle because they were not in fact unemployed.

The hon. Gentleman went on to say that frustrated civil servants in the Department had told him that four-fifths of suspicious claims submitted to higher authority were returned marked "No further action". I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend would comment on that allegation and on the allegation that 500,000 people claiming unemployment benefit are not unemployed. In early July the hon. Gentleman asserted that 20 per cent. of all unemployment claims were fraudulent. There was an article in theSun or theMirror a week or two ago dealing with the nonsense of that kind of claim. To suggest that 20 per cent. of the people who go to the employment exchange and go through the degrading exercise involved in claiming benefit are fraudulent is an obscenity.

The hon. Gentleman was asked, in a letter from the Secretary of State, on 14th July, to substantiate the charges he was making. Nothing has been heard from the hon. Gentleman, I think I am right in saying. Over three weeks have now passed. Last week there was a full hour of Questions to the Department of Health and Social Security. Not a single Question was asked on this matter. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South was here all the time—I noted this myself—and not once did he attempt to get up, even on a supplementary question.

TheGuardian some weeks ago offered the hon. Gentleman facilities, in its open letter column, to produce his evidence, and that offer has not been taken up.

The biggest frauds and cheats are to be found among supporters of the Tory Party and in the higher income groups. Fraud must be rooted out at all levels. I hope the Department agree with that.

In the social security field, 18 million benefits are paid out weekly, 8 million of them to old age pensioners, 7 million to children, 500,000 to widows, and 500,000 to the sick. Supplementary allowances are drawn by 750,000 people and 300,000 people get disablement benefits. Old folk over 65 occupy two out of every five beds in the National Health Service. Old folk take 40 per cent. of supplementary benefit payments and 65 per cent. of all national insurance expenditure. These are the people who are under attack by Conservative Members.

Undoubtedly there are some scroungers in all walks of life, and not least in this place, among Members of Parliament. Some persons at the very top are getting £35,000 a year, by leave of this House. But the cases that get into the Press and into the mouths of Tory Members of Parliament are those of people on supplementary benefits and national insurance benefits.

As I have said, undoubtedly there must be some abuse, and where evidence is provided I presume that it is acted on within the Department. I know that already a big inquiry is under way into the steps taken by the Department to stop abuses. I gather that there are 30 new projects already launched, and already this year, as I have said, more than 7,000 have been caught and prosecuted.

In yesterday's exchanges in this House, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South, in his snarling, snivelling intervention, mentioned the Deevy case. A full inquiry is now taking place into that case. Deevy received £36,000 over seven years by using 41 aliases. His fraud was discovered by the police and he got six years in prison.

The need for action against fraud need not be the subject of party political controversy at all, unless hon. Members choose to make it so. If Conservative Members choose to make it so, we shall answer in kind. Successive Governments have tried to tackle this abuse. In fact, most of Deevy's swindles took place under a Tory Government. He probably was a Tory. He probably learned a few tricks from the folk in Lonrho—Duncan Sandys and the Lonrho mob.

It was a Tory Government that set up the Fisher Committee in March 1971 and had to deal with that Committee's recommendations in March 1973. They acted on some of the recommendations but rejected others. For instance, they properly rejected the recommendation that there should be random sampling. In my view and, I hope, that of this Government, that would have been an unacceptable intrusion into the affairs of honest claimants—and the large bulk of claimants are honest.

The process of taking tougher measures began with the Conservative Government and it is now being continued by the Labour Government. There are now twice as many prosecutions of social security swindlers as there were five years ago—over 15,000 now compared with just over 7,700 in 1970. Those prosecutions are not undertaken by dragging people into court without prior and thorough investigation. That is proved by the fact that 98 per cent. of those prosecuted were convicted.

The number of special investigators has increased under this Government from 290 in 1973 to 370 now. The Government are accused by the Opposition of increasing the number of civil servants. There are 500 specialist fraud staff in local offices and specialists sections in each regional office. For various reasons—not least to protect the credibility and civilised and humane character of the Welfare State—this Government have gone further than their predecessors in responding to the recommendations of the Fisher Report.

A specialist headquarters unit was established and is now, I gather, fully operational and has been for more than 12 months. A detailed action plan has already been drawn up concerning every aspect of fraud detection and investigation, including ways of preventing fraud. If the Tory Party wants more to be done, it must present the case for more staff, more inspectors, more snoopers and more intrusion into personal privacy. The right balance must be struck between the interests of the vast majority of genuine, honest claimants and the need to find and punish severely the swindlers and the scroungers.

In my view, the biggest fish in the latter category are to be found in the City, in Fleet Street and in Mayfair rather than in Central Fife, Keighley or Salford.

I hope that my right hon. Friend will assure the House that the action being taken by the Government in this area will be as firm as the action being taken by the Inland Revenue in other areas to get after those who are our political and social enemies.

7.44 a.m.

I am sure that the House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) for raising this issue. A mood of near hysteria is being whipped up by certain sections of the media. I include in that stricture some radio and television programmes and certain newspapers. It is being done in a manner that can only bring the whole Welfare State into question and, more important, make life more difficult for those who are genuinely entitled to benefits—the unemployed, the sick, those who need supplementary benefit, the disabled and many others.

It is interesting that on the one hand we are accused of paying out too many benefits to too many people and on the other hand we are pressed—often by the same people—to extend benefits. My hon. Friend has played no small part in seeing that help is given to disabled and other people in need.

My hon. Friend has laid the facts before the House and the Government are at one with him in seeking to eradicate any form of fraud or abuse from the system. Those who abuse or defraud the system do a disservice to the millions of people who are justly entitled to benefit. The more successful we are in prosecuting people who abuse the system, the more publicity we get. In the recent case, Mr. Deevy received a sentence of six years imprisonment for his crimes against the social security system. The more people we prosecute, the more successful we shall be in getting people convicted.

In the inquiry that I am conducting I am trying to develop means of preventing frauds on the system. There is no doubt that those who defraud the system should be prosecuted and convicted, but I want to try to tighten up the system so that it cannot be abused. We hope to close the loopholes such as the one that enabled Deevy to adopt a number of aliases without detection, but we must do it in a way that will not make things more difficult for the genuine claimant. That is one of the problems. Every time we tighten up the system we have to be careful that we do not hurt the people who genuinely want aid and are entitled to it. It ought to be made clear that people are entitled to supplementary benefits as of right.

My hon. Friend touched on the wider issue of the Lonrho case. That is the subject of the next debate and I am sure that the Chair would not appreciate my referring to that. My hon. Friend referred to tax evasion and other problems in our society. All I can say is that some people seem to adopt double standards. Why was it that the Government were harried night and day on the Finance Bill when they wanted to increase the number of people to prevent tax evasion? The Government were harried by the Opposition because the Government wanted to prevent that abuse, yet apparently in the Opposition's eye, there are not enough inspectors and social service staff to look for people who are abusing the system for providing benefits. That is what I mean by double standards. My hon. Friend was quite right to draw attention to this.

He asked about the evidence submitted to Ministers and to the inquiry which I am conducting. Many hon. Members have been exceedingly helpful in this matter. Suggestions coming forward are being analysed, and a full report will be made to me very shortly. Every case submitted to the Department will be investigated. At the moment there is one partcular hon. Member who has not yet given the Government any assistance—that is the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat). No information has been forthcoming from him, and my right hon. Friend wrote to him as long ago as 14th July.

It is now absolutely imperative that the hon. Member for Aberdeen South, having said that 50 per cent. of the unemployed were not properly unemployed at all, and that there was a 20 per cent. rate of fraud on the supplementary benefit scheme, should provide the Government with evidence. We want that evidence. I want to analyse and examine it. The hon. Member claimed that he receives 1,000 letters a week and the sooner we get this evidence—

I was on Anglia Television with the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) last Thursday, and he said then that he was receiving 1,000 letters a week. But when asked, he was unable to quote any of them. He had not brought a single letter with him.

I fully accept that. It is time that the evidence for his statements—if they are correct—was put on the table. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South is blackening the characters of millions of people who are justifiably claiming unemployment benefits and who are entitled to supplementary benefits, and he casts aspersions across the whole spectrum of social security claimants.

My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central said that in the social services field those aged 65 and over accounted for 40 per cent. of NHS beds, 41 per cent. of supplementary benefit and 65 per cent. of all national insurance expenditure as well as most of the cost of the personal social services. If the birth rate continues to fall we shall have a smaller work force supporting more elderly people, and it would be foolish to deny that several social tensions will result. He quoted those facts from a Conservtive document issued recently, and entitled "Politics Today. Social Welfare: Striking a Balance". There is a lot more information in this document which I would like to see hon. Members opposite use.

That brings me to the famous Spanish case about which we heard so much yesterday. The same document says of overseas retirement:

"UK citizens who retire overseas are often surprised and distressed to find that their NI pensions are 'frozen' and that they are not eligible for pension increases. Instead, they find their pensionable income continually falling in value.

Excluding countries with which there are reciprocal arrangements, Australia (where there is provision for residence-based pensions) and Canada (where reciprocal arrangements are being discussed) the cost of providing pension increases to the remaining U.K. citizens involves the comparatively small sum of £12 million a year and would be a welcome and overdue reform."

The document welcomes reciprocal agreements with other countries, the very sort of agreement that we settled with Spain so that our people could go there when they retire, yet still draw their pensions. The Conservatives did not quote that to us yesterday. The right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin) did not mention that to us. That is an indication of the hysteria that was whipped up in this place yesterday by the media. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State destroyed the allegations by showing that there was no evidence to support them. One of the evening newspapers last night said that the Government had closed the loophole on unemployment benefit in Spain. But it was never open. The case upon which the whole story was based had been turned down by a national insurance commissioner.

I have before me the first editorial in theGuardian this morning. One paragraph is worth quoting. It says,

"Over half the unemployed do not need supplementary benefits but are paid unemployment benefits by the National Insurance scheme to which they have contributed. (None of the present campaigners, incidentally, ever seem to mention the bank managers, who at 60 can—and do—claim both a pension and unemployment benefit.) Three years ago Sir Keith Joseph was quite convinced on the attitude the Government should take towards claimants: 'This conference would howl if we had pictures on TV of children going hungry because their fathers did not get benefit.' That was an address to the 1973 Conservative Party Conference. The main thing that has changed since then is that a Labour Government has perforce pushed up unemployment in the hope of holding down inflation. Perhaps Mr. Brotherton should re-read Sir Keith's admirably sensible speech."

That is an indication of the attitude which exists. But one of the regrettable things is that people who should know better are jumping on to this band wagon and are creating in our society a feeling of uncertainty when it appears profitable to attack minorities. Those minorities could he coloured, they could be on supplementary benefit, or they could come from the Republic of Ireland. I urge my hon. Friends—I am sure they need no urging—to keep this boat steady. I say also to the many Conservatives who are concerned about this matter that they, too, should keep the boat steady and should keep in check such people as the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South, who is in pursuit of cheap publicity.

There is a great danger that certain hon. Members on both sides of the House will be devoured by their own publicity. I have seen it happen. There was a notable case of one hon. Member who used to sit on the Front Bench below the Gangway. I saw that person disintegrate before my eyes and I regretted that very much because, although I did not approve of what he said politically, he was an intelligent and courageous man in his dealings with issues in this House. I am sure that hon. Members know of whom I am speaking.

My hon. Friend has asked what we are doing. I am chairing the inquiry to which I have referred. It is important that we have enough fraud specialists, that we deploy them where the risks are greatest and employ selective drives in high risk areas. There will be no reduction in this category of staff as a result of the Civil Service cuts. In fact, there has been, and will be, an increase. We must train specialists in the best techniques of fraud investigation and provide facilities for them to do a good job. We must ensure that their results are as effective as legal and humanitarian constraints allow. We must develop new measures against fraud and, wherever they prove successful, get them generally applied throughout the Department.

We have to bring home to line management at all levels in the Department the importance we attach to tackling fraud and the need to give their full support to the specialists and we must use the knowledge gained in discovering fraud to find better ways of preventing it. If we need new legislation, the Government will not hesitate to introduce it.

We are responsible for 96,000 staff on the social security and pensions side of the Department. They administer 18 million benefits a week—a considerable job—and their morale is badly affected by this campaign. They feel the pressure of the wild accusations that they are not doing their jobs propertly.

I fully support the staff. If mistakes have been made, it is only human in an organisation of this size. The staff have been extremely hard working and loyal in dealing with many of the distressed cases in our society. It is not an easy job.

Many of the people who come to hon. Members' surgeries are victims of the pressures within society and they need a lot of time and attention. We may sec them for two hours a week and do what we can, but the staff in my Department are sometimes dealing with them five days a week.

I had a case brought to my attention recently in which it was put to me that a person was exploiting the system and laughing at people who were at work. When the case was examined, it was found that the person was not mentally stable. That is the sort of fact which can come to light when the issues are examined.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. I urge the country to keep on an even keel, because if we are not careful we could turn in on ourselves to no advantage to the community. If we believe, as most hon. Members do, in a compassionate society which looks after its sick, its young and its old and which believes that these people—and not least the pensioners and disabled people—should be given priority and assistance, we should remember that those who attack the system are attacking these people. Therefore, while we shall not countenance fraud and abuse—that is against the system and it destroys all that has gone before—the Government will not allow a dismantling of the Welfare State. That is what we believe in, and that is what I mean by a compassionate society.

Lonrho

8.6 a.m.

I am most grateful for this opportunity to discuss the Lonrho Report. First, the House should place on record its grateful thanks to the inspectors of the Department of Trade who investigated the circumstances that gave rise to the report. Their sole purpose was to investigate the circumstances and to bring to light the seamier side of capitalism, with the aim of raising the standards of company life.

It is interesting to reflect on the background against which the investigation took place and the report was compiled Throughout the whole period, leading members of the Conservative Party—they were not associated particularly with Lonrho, but they were supporting the principle of capitalism—were constantly asking the workers to make sacrifices for the common good.

When I entered the House I had been a teacher on £2,600 a year. My salary was regarded by many people as being pretty good. My wife and I were not complaining we recognised that compared with the position of millions of people my salary was not at all bad. Millions of people were existing on much lower salaries and were being asked to make sacrifices. They were finding life far from being an easy path. It is true that millions of our people feel that deals in the hoard room involving, for example, £130,000 are just a dream. They fill in football pool coupons week after week in the hope that they will be able to touch a little of the sort of money that is to be gained from the shabby arrangements that go on in which a tiny group of beautiful people can divide up the spoils between them. That is a stark contrast.

It is interesting that this debate should follow the one introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton). Some hysteria has been raised by the Tories over the past few weeks, and it is an interesting reflection that the two hon. Members principally concerned, the hon. Members for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) and Louth (Mr. Brotherton), who are proud to open their mouths about people who are existing on the margin of life and make statements that reflect on every unemployed person and every person who applies for social security, are not to be heard decrying the abuses that take place in the company sector. They have not led a campaign pressing for the Lonrho Report to be debated. That is significant.

If we are to remind people of the injustices that exist in society today, we must constantly remind them of the existence of the Lonrho Report. I do not suppose that many wage earners have obtained copies of the report. It costs £13·20, and for three reports that is what many people earn in a week. It is good value, but many people cannot afford it.

The stories of the report have been outlined in the papers, and it must be recognised that yesterday's news is no news. However, our duty is to remind the nation, through Parliament, of the things that have been happening in board rooms behind closed doors. We cannot ignore them. If we have an unjust society, we cannot shrug it off by saying that only a few people are involved. If we were dealing with a crime, we would not do that. If we were dealing with murderers, we would not say "It is only a few". If they were armed robbers, we would not say "Only a small number of robberies took place, so let us ignore them". We would say that an injustice is an injustice. We did not say that George Davis is only one person and the fact that he is inside wrongly does not matter, hard lines on him; we said that that was an injustice, which must be righted. The fact that Lonrho concerns not a large section of the population but only a tiny group of people who are lining their pockets busily does not mean that we should ignore it, or sweep it under the carpet. We must bring it into the open, and make clear that a system that allows this to happen is a rotten one.

Our aim, and the aim of the Labour movement, always has been to achieve justice for people who create the wealth of this nation. Just about now lots of people will be clocking in to factories When they finish they will clock out again, and if they go to the lavatory they will ask the foreman. They have to keep production up hour after hour in order to get a production bonus. That is the reality of life for most of our people. We are therefore talking about two different and stark contrasts.

The first point I wish to make about the report relates to Lord Duncan-Sandys, because it is important to point out the way in which some people can be diverted from their job when they are actually paid by the taxpayers. That is one of the extraordinary things about this matter. Members of Parliament are paid £6,000-plus a year. If we worked outside in an ordinary job, most people would take the view that at £6,000 we were being very well paid. We should not be able to get odd jobs on the side, and people would not expect us to. They would argue that we get a good salary to do our job. They do not expect us to get a few parliamentary adviserships. In any case, I am not in favour of parliamentary adviserships, because we are paid to be here and do our job. It is a pretty good job.

One of the other things that are brought out in the report is that it was a matter of deliberate policy that some of the payments should not be made in this country, not because the people concerned had any particular affection for any other part of the world but because the tax position was better.

The report states, in paragraph 7.35. that

"The second point on which Mr. Sandys had a view was the extent to which the consultancy fee was to be paid overseas. Under the first series of consultancy arrangements it had been at the instance of Mr. Sandys that the consultancy fee had been allocated to overseas companies. Mr. Sandys explained his attitude as follows:

"A. The services were to be rendered abroad. It was to be the overseas companies. It was merely thought that for taxation purposes it was good that this should be made clear."

Of course, the "taxation purposes" were to his financial advantage.

Does my hon. Friend know whether any of the services to be rendered to the company by Lord Duncan-Sandys—I have written to him as a matter of customary courtesy to say that in this debate he might be criticised by hon. Members and by me—would, in order to be to the advantage of the company, have had to be in the Cayman Islands?

There is no suggestion that I can find. My hon. Friend is quite right to raise that point. The situation was that he had a tax advantage and chose to use it. I think it extraordinary that as a former Minister of the Crown and leading member of the Conservative Party, he should take that view. What is more, I find it extraordinary that after all this he is now in the Lords and that his career has not been held back. It has not landed him in a difficult position. People do not go around whispering "He has been naughty; he should not have done this". Instead, he is given a title. Some extraordinary people have been given titles, particularly recently, but nevertheless it is a poor sort of system that gives titles to people who are lining their pockets at the expense of the British taxpayer because they were not prepared to pay tax in this country.

Another extraordinary thing was the way in which this information about the £130,000 was kept from members of the board. In a question and answer session, a Mr. Butcher explained why not, in paragraph 7.46 of the report. He said that

"There was to a certain extent a certain amount of dislike in certain Members of the Board against Duncan. Duncan had always said that he would only come in if the vote was ananimous, and he was right, and I knew that there would be no unanimity. I told you this morning, the company was bleeding to death, and this is something which I did, and I might say that knowing as I do the circumstances at that time if I was faced with the same position I would do it now, because it was a question of the benefit of the company. I may be wrong."

"I may be wrong", he said, referring to concealing from the board the payment of £130,000 to the adviser.

The questioner continued:

"But your hope, Mr. Butcher, was that the £130,000 spread over three years and paid in the way which you have indicated would be omitted entirely from the Lonrho accounts. Conversely you hoped that £130,000 of income would be derived from certain sources that would provide the funds to pay that £130,000 and that too electively would be omitted from the Lonrho accounts."

The answer was:

"It would not have been disclosed in the Lonrho accounts. I accept all you say."

So there were people engaged in concealing from the company accounts a payment of £130,000.

Tiny himself, the anti-hero of our drama, was questioned in paragraph 7.47, as follows:

"Therefore, you are committing the company to a six-year contract at £50,000 a year but not telling anybody about it?"

He replied:

"Well I plead guilty to that one because at that stage I was so keen to get Mr. Sandys as Chairman that I agree that I would have done everything possible—this is what I said to him, 'I will do everything possible, Duncan, to let this agreement go for the full five or six years on condition, firstly, I am still at Lonrho in this position and, secondly, that you continue to work for the company effectively.'".

So they were all at it—all those three deciding to conceal from the company the information about the payment.

That was not the end of it. Duncan Sandys then apparently failed to tell shareholders, in a circular to them, anything about the £130,000 compensation. So they did not just keep it among the chums, among these beautiful people, who were talking about sums that most working people never dream of obtaining, even when they win the football pools; they kept it from the shareholders as well.

In paragraph 7.52, we read:

"One of their first tasks was to raise further capital from shareholders to improve the liquidity position and on 25 May 1972 a circular was sent to shareholders inviting them to subscribe for further shares at 73p per share on a 1 for 4 basis. As is customary in such a document there was attached a list of material contracts entered into by the company during the two years prior to the issue. This list did not include details of the cancellation of Mr. Sandys' consultancy agreements."

Then, in section 7.54 on page 386, the report says that

"Mr Sandys was the new Chairman of Lonrho and he presided at the Board meeting at which the circular to shareholders was approved. The circular required the disclosure of any material contracts entered into by Lonrho within the two years prior to the issue of the circular other than those entered into in the ordinary course of business. We believe that the agreement to terminate Mr. Sandys' consultancy agreement on the payment of £130,000 compensation was material in at least two respects. In the first place it was large in amount and very unusual in nature; and in the second place it related to the Chairman who had been brought into the company to improve the standards of Boardroom control. In these circumstances we think that there was an onus on Mr. Sandys to ensure that the payment was disclosed in the circular. Mr. Sandys told us that he believed that the payment of £130,000 compensation to him had been properly approved by the Board and he assumed accordingly that the point was known to and had been duly considered by the professional advisers acting in connection with the circular and that he himself took no steps in the matter."

That sort of reason, if advanced to a Conservative MP by an applicant for supplementary benefit who had omitted mention of the fact that he had done a bit of window cleaning, would not have been accepted; it would have been followed, indeed, by stories in the papers and we should have the hon. Member for Louth opening his big mouth—that rhymes well—saying that people should not do that, and that if they did not like it they should starve, which is more or less what he said yesterday.

Others were concerned. Sir Basil Smallpiece wrote letters. I shall not quote them all, because others of my hon. Friends want to speak but this report is a great mound of information. I quote briefly from Sir Basil's letter. He said:

"If I am blunt in what I am about to say next, it is only because I am anxious, as a friend, to see that your own personal position does not become intolerable. I think there is little doubt that the unreasonably high remuneration which Rowland has arranged for you, and the improper issue to you of incentive shares, could be looked at by many people, however mistakenly, as indicating that your allegiance has been bought."

Imagine the view of somebody writing to an applicant for social security: "I am terribly sorry you did not disclose that you were earning money at the same time. You should correct it. It could look improper". That was the warning about his attitude to this former Minister of the Crown and, for much of this period, a Member of this House and of a party whose general attitude—I do not blame all its members for this—is that workers should work harder.

We had the view of the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) that this Lonrho business was the unacceptable face of capitalism. This unacceptable face of capitalism happened to pop out because of a dispute in the board room, not least with Sir Basil Smallpiece, who had different views.

The matter went to court. Had it not, this might not have come out. We are concerned, and members of companies should be concerned, to get tighter legislation to make sure that standards in all board rooms are higher than those prevailing at Lonrho.

I turn to the question of perks. We have had some discussion about taxing perquisites. As my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Services pointed out, when taxation increases, many on the Opposition Benches say "This is a terrible business. You are grinding the face of the middle class, who are already struggling," but it is worth pointing out that the cost of perquisites are quoted in the Lonrho Report, and they should be highlighted. This kind of thing may, for all we know, still be going on in some British boardrooms.

In the section on houses and flats it is pointed out that the company bought a house called Hedsor Wharf, at Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire, at a cost of £73,500. Many people cannot raise a mortgage of a few hundred pounds for a £6,000 or £7,000 semi-detached or terraced house. Many people do not even have homes. This house at Bourne End was bought several years ago. It will be worth much more now. It was felt that the house was not quite suitable and that, therefore, it should have a few improvements and that some remedial work should be carried out. So another £25,000 was spent on the house.

It would appear that the house was for use by the chairman of the company. However, it was made clear at one stage that it should be sold off to the chairman as he was using it. He said that he would use it for entertaining the company's guests, but it was decided that he should buy it and clarify and legitimise the position; so he did.

However, with the record of the company, the chairman did not go to the solicitors and say "Here is the brass" and peel it off in fivers. He did it through a company called Boullier Investments (1964) Limited. I quote from page 415, paragraph 9.22 of the report:

"Mr. Butcher subsequently decided that it would be unwise for Yeoman Investments to acquire a property in the UK which might suggest that it was resident in the UK for tax purposes and he concluded that it would be preferable for Yeoman Investments to make funds available to a company in the Channel Islands which in turn could acquire the property. In order to meet Sir Basil Smallpiece's deadline of 30 September 1972 Mr. Butcher flew to Jersey on 29 September 1972 and arranged for a firm of solicitors in Jersey, Le Gallais and Luce, to write the following letter to Lonhro".

The letter is an offer by Boullier Investments (1964) Limited for these various properties.

Here were members of a company using tax havens for their financial advantage. This is something that the report points out on page 417, paragraph 9.25:

"Boullier Investments was essentially a front for Mr. Rowland and Mr. Ball and the sale of Hedsor Wharf and Mr. Ball's flat to this company was never completed."

The point that

"Boullier Investments Limited was essentially a front for Mr. Rowland"

is an important one. I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the fact that these tax havens still exist and that we have not got legislation through. I have tabled a number of Questions on the matter. We need legislation to ensure that the Channel Islands do not continue to form a haven for the nefarious activities of people who are evading their communal responsibility of paying taxation to the British economy.

My hon. Friend is right about the need for new legislation, but is it not right to say that the Bank of England has been grossly negligent in the sanctioning of the transfer of tax domicile in some companies and, indeed, in the transfer of payments generally? Is my hon. Friend aware that Mr. Gordon Richardson has completely fallen down on his job?

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. He is right. The Kilbrandon Minority Report pointed out that there should he an urgent inquiry to make clear the position of these tax havens and to prevent their continuation.

The matter will not be dealt with without difficulty. The right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford—the House may recall that he is called Patrick Jenkin, that he is the spokesman for the Opposition in DHSS matters; and that he was at that Dispatch Box yesterday attacking the Government for the completely false story put out by theDaily Mail in big black letters on its front page, but taking the part of theDaily Mail and never apologising for it—is quoted here as saying:

"It would be quite improper for the United Kingdom Government to interfere with the tax arrangements for the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man."

Those remarks were made when the right hon. Gentleman was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Whilst he is keen to seek after social security scroungers—and so are we all—he is not too keen to seek out tax scroungers.

Tax scrounging still goes on. I have an advertisement for a course that people can attend if they have a few spare days and a bit of brass in the bank, which would be impossible for ordinary working people to attend. If people have been lining their pockets through consultancy agreements they can attend a programme running from 1st to 3rd December at a London hotel. There they can discuss such subjects as "What is a tax haven?", "Factors involved in choosing a haven", "Where is the source of income?", "The financial advantages of the Channel Islands", "Switzerland as a centre of operations". That is a constant topic of conversation in Keighley. People say "Where will you put your adviser-ships this year, Jack—in Zurich or the Channel Islands?" The course also includes a subject described as "Tax advantages for people who work in Europe."

The advertisement ends by saying:

"Please note that this is not a conference to discuss the rights or wrongs of tax havens."

I bet it is not. They are too busy lining their pockets by avoiding paying tax for services while working people work day in and day out. Their morality is such that the rights and wrongs depend upon how much their pockets can be lined. That is their morality—like that of some of those connected with Lonrho. To obtain such nuggets of information they must attend a course, the fee for which is £140. That price would exclude the vast majority of working people, because they could not afford that sum. Social security recipients would not be able to afford it either.

I want the Minister to ensure that my remarks are brought to the attention of the Chancellor the Exchequer and the Treasury, because we want them to take action on tax scroungers. It is unjust that people should be able to learn how to get their money out of the country. I have tabled Questions on the subject, but I have never received a direct reply.

I want a clear statement to the effect that any fee paid by a company director or anyone else for attendance at such conferences does not count as a tax expense. It would be kicking the British taxpayers in the face if they had to pay for such people to go to conference. It would be a greater abuse than abuses of the social security arrangements.

I turn now to the cost of the perks offered in the form of expense accounts to Mr. Rowland. This is a serious matter. It involves a fairy-tale world which most people do not understand and do not realise exists. Page 517 of the report says that Mr. Rowland had overdrawn his personal account by over £306,627, that PAYE tax was not paid but that it should have been. That overdrawn account was magically transformed into an expense claim. On page 518 of the report we read:

"Those present at the Board meeting on 19th February were Lord Duncan-Sandys, Mr. Ball, Mr. Butcher and Mr. West with Mr. Butler and Mr. Pratley in attendance plus the Chief Accountant, Mr. King, and the company's secretary, Mr. Turner. The minute on Mr. Rowland's expense claim read as follows: '(3205) Chief Executive It was resolved:

That resultant upon minute 3186 of the meeting held on 13th February, 1975, it was agreed to approve Mr. R. W. Rowland's claim for expenses from 1st October, 1967 to 30th September, 1974 in the total amount of £307,471".

That is extraordinary. Not only did the board make retrospective provision for an account dating back to 1967, it kept the information from shareholders. On page 519 we read:

"It is our view that the explanation finally incorporated in the directors' report did not give shareholders a fair explanation of what had happened. In particular the omission of the last sentence of the draft left shareholders unaware of the manner in which Mr. Rowland's unlawful loan account had been expunged."

Not only had he had an unlawful loan account; he had tried to fiddle the accounts to get it past the shareholders.

It is very interesting that leading lights in the Conservative Party should take this view of retrospective action. They held a very different view of the case of the Clay Cross councillors—11 principled men who were not lining their own pockets. When they came to office they decided that they would not go to conferences, and the chairman had £25 a year in personal allowances. Not many urban district councils can claim the same attitude. Those councillors were working for Socialism and the people they believed in.

There was a clause in a Bill simply to remove the disqualification of those 11 people, arising from the auditor's surcharge, and many Conservative Members said that retrospective provision was terrible. I think that it is necessary, sometimes. People who talk about retrospective legislation and action might apply the same standard to retrospective provision for "Tiny" Rowland and the sum mentioned in the report. Nobody on the Opposition Benches has raised a peep about it.

There are many parts of the report that I cannot cover, because I want to be brief. One extraordinary matter I must mention is the threatening manner of our "Tiny". One of my hon. Friends will reveal how that threatening manner has been perpetuated by Mr. Rowland. On page 655 of the report we read:

"You see, Mr. Heyman, the past, and I have got an idea what the future could be depending on whether you want to kill it. But, by God, it has got one thing, and that is it has got a protector and that is me. In other words, anybody who wants to kill that company has got to have a sub-machine gun, mortars, guns, all sorts of ammunition, because I am going to protect it to the bitter end. Believe me, Mr. Heyman, in me you have got somebody you have got to fight when it comes to Lonrho."

He is telling a Department of Trade inspector, who is doing a proper job to raise the standard of public life—of people in companies—that there will be a fight, involving the use of machine guns.

If an ordinary working man said to a policeman or a social security officer "I am going to fight this thing. I've got a claim and I'm going to fight for it, and you will have to come with submachine guns and all the rest" he would probably end up in the magistrates' court. I hope that this will not be overlooked by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

That is the extraordinary story of this shabby and sorry saga. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind that what is needed is for the DPP to take a close look at this—in fact, I know that that is happening. He should not be intimidated by the fact that some of these people are in important positions. The Director should undertake prosecutions as and where necessary, because that is in the interests of justice.

Secondly, we want much tighter company legislation. The myth that companies do not have to be interfered with is exploded by Lonrho. They have to be supervised; otherwise greedy people will be lining their pockets in the way described in the report. I draw the attention of my hon. Friend to the supervision exercised over the Meriden Co-operative. The co-operative has to report every fortnight to the Department of Industry. It has a loan of only £1·4 million from the Government, and it is paying interest on it. It is doing good work, providing about 750 jobs. There is constant supervision. If it can be done for Meriden it can be done for the rest of the company system, so that we do not have any more cases like Lonrho.

8.42 a.m.

I realise that at this time in the morning, after an all-night sitting, it is easy to suffer from nausea. I am afraid that this topic is one which encourages that tendency and I must apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if in your position you have to suffer as a result of hearing a rather unsavoury tale. We have been hearing a lot in the past two years or so since I have been a Member of this House about the greed of workers in their anxiety to improve their wages. We have heard of their unreasonableness and their lack of patriotism. This is constantly on the lips of Conservative Members. Recently we have had the disgraceful attacks on ordinary people who are in the unfortunate circumstances which have already been discussed.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) pointed out, neither the Opposition nor the Press seem equally interested in the activities of a small minority at the top of our society. It is not a question of how the other half lives—this is a tale of how a tiny minority lives. But this is a tiny minority whose associations do not seem in any way to affect their careers. In this report there are some passages which could be described as "purple prose". I start by reading a sober statement of fact. In paragraph 7.1 the inspectors say:

"In this part of our report we describe how Mr. Duncan Sandys became a consultant to the Lonrho group in May 1971 at a fee of £11,000 per annum and how this consultancy fee was increased to £51,000 per annum in November 1971."

We hear a lot about wage increases but so far we have not heard of anything like that scale of increase being given to anyone doing a useful job in our society. The report goes on:

"we explain how Mr. Sandys was invited to become Chairman shortly thereafter and how he accepted this change of role in return for £130,000 compensation;".

That word "compensation" is an interesting one. It is a word that I normally associate with people who come to see me at my surgery and who have been injured at work. Usually they tell me that they are hoping to get compensation but that the injury was sustained two, three, four or five years ago and still the compensation has not been arrived at. In the meantime, of course, they are struggling with the adversity which faces them with their broken lives. Usually they are in the prime of life, and their accidents at work have frequently been contributed to quite grossly by management and employer negligence.

When I see the word "compensation", therefore, I normally feel an instinctive sympathy with the person claiming compensation. But I must say that compensation of £130,000 for what most people would regard as promotion is extraordinary.

The inspectors went on to deal with the question of taxation. I do not intend to labour this point, which has been dealt with adequately by my hon. Friend. I just want to reinforce his contribution by a reference to paragraph 7.3, which quotes a letter from Mr. Sandys. The letter says:

"You will see that in (a) I have specified 'overseas' companies. This is on the advice of my accountants for taxation reasons. But it will of course make no difference in practice."

There is an interesting remark—that it makes "no difference in practice" whether these are overseas companies or domestic companies. I think that most working people would feel that it jolly well ought to make a considerable difference in practice, and that there must be, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, grave deficiencies in our taxation system.

I notice that the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) spoke earlier in the debate on another subject, and it may be that this will preclude him, unfortunately, from taking part in this one. In case it does, I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I do not intend to make any personal attacks on him. But I should like to quote from paragraph 7.61. This is a letter which the right hon. Gentleman wrote to Mr. Sandys when Mr. Sandys sought advice on his remuneration. The right hon. Gentleman said in the letter, quoted in the report at paragraph 7.61:

"I have had extracted from various company reports a list of chairmen's salaries which I thought you might care to glance at. I do not think there is any special point to be made except that the £38,000 in aggregate proposed for you by Lonrho seems perfectly well within what one might call 'normal compass'."

That is a perfectly factual quotation, and I am quite sure that the right hon. Member for Taunton has his facts right. It is very interesting for my constituents to know that there is a group within our society for whom £38,000 is a normal remuneration for a job whose function and scope it seems very difficult to establish, and, furthermore, for someone who was already, during the whole time, one would have thought, fully engaged as a Member of this House and drawing taxpayers' money therefor.

I was very interested in the references in the report, which I have no doubt my hon. Friend has noticed, to the effect that the chairman of the company would give his whole time to Lonrho—his whole time, that is, except for his political commitments. But his political commitments were as a Member of this House, drawing a salary which most people would regard as being for a job of work. I think that matter needs some scrutiny.

There are references in the report to someone whose position is rather sensitive. I do not want to dwell on any sensitive matters relating to Mr. Ogilvy, but the relationship between Mr. Rowland and Mr. Ogilvy who, between them, were pillars of society and in a position of power, is extremely interesting. It is exemplified in paragraph 5.69. When the inspectors asked whether Mr. Rowland had paid £60,000 to Mr. Ogilvy, Mr. Rowland said:

"I cannot tell you.…

Q. Why not?

A. This is a matter between Ogilvy, Alan Ball and me. I mean if I paid my dog, or some people when they die, leave all their money to a cats' home. If I wanted to pay Mr. Ogilvy £60,000 or £600,000 and he was prepared to accept it then that is a matter between him and me and nothing to do with Lonrho. If I paid Mr. Ball £120,000 or £200,000 or £300,000 that is my business.

Q. Mr. Rowland, if I may say so, you are not doing yourself full justice because earlier on when we were discussing this sum of money you said that some was distributed—?

A. Yes.

Q. Some was distributed to Ogilvy and some was distributed to Ball?

A. Yes, but I did not say how much. You have said you are entitled to do with your money what you like: if you want to give it to a cats' home you can do it can you not?

Q. Yes, but what I am asking you is—did you give £120,000 to Ball and £60,000 to Ogilvy?

A. My answer to that is if I did they deserved it and if I did not it is just too bad."

Those answers were given to a responsible inspector carrying out a job on behalf of the Department of Trade.

We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley other quotations relating to attitudes displayed by the people at the top of this company in their dealings with these public servants, and I think that this one is worthy of being added to that list. I am quite sure that no applicant for social security would be permitted to talk to the humblest public servant in such terms.

Of course, I am impressed with the scale of generosity displayed by the upper classes when they are apparently rather vague whether amounts of £60,000 are gifts, loans, shares, or what. It is breath-taking to find generosity on such a scale.

In the course of the inquiry Mr. Ogilvy pointed out that he was in some difficulty in explaining thoroughly the £60,000. He said:

"my finances are so complicated."

It is certainly a sidelight on a different facet of life to come across people whose finances are so complicated that a small matter of £60,000 is difficult to account for. But Mr. Ogilvy has had his problems.

I think that the anxiety and worry that this kind of life imposes on its participants makes it our duty to relieve them of these positions of wealth and power, because clearly it has a deleterious effect on their personal relationships. This is shown by paragraph 5.70, where Mr. Ogilvy said:

"What happened was that Rowland in May…in effect said that he felt I had behaved quite abominably and if it was the last thing he was going to do he was going to crucify me.…In fact I put the receiver down and said 'Publish and be damned', and I went through everything to see what he could possibly have on me."

That is an interesting description of the state of mind and relationship between these people wielding their immense power, and it is worth putting that statement alongside the quotation about machine guns, and so on, given by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley. It suggests that we are dealing with people whose mental stability may, in charity, be thought to be somewhat in question. If these things are meant literally, they seem to verge on the edge of crime and threats of crime, and if they are meant as metaphors, I suggest that they are too colourful to be a proper part of business life.

This report is a rich mine of information, and I think that the inspectors have done a remarkable job, but I must say—and I hope that the Minister will note this—that I am deeply disquieted by the final paragraph in the report, paragraph 12.139, in which the inspectors' concluding words are:

"We believe that Mr. Rowland has a great deal to offer Lonrho and its shareholders but his achievements will be all the greater if he will allow his enthusiasms to operate within the ordinary processes of company management."

Coming as it does at the end of a report in which the inspectors have established such an extraordinary and alarming situation I find that deeply disquieting, because I wonder what are the ordinary processes of company management.

As has been said, this matter came to light by accident. It came to light because the participants quarrelled amongst themselves. It may be that, as the saying goes, the thieves fell out, but can we rely on this as an adequate regulator of company affairs? We now know some of the facts about Lonrho, but how many other large and powerful companies are there about which we do not know the relevant facts? It has been said that the Press is not showing a tremendous desire even to publicise the facts that we know about this company. One might think that the term "a conspiracy of silence" would not be too harsh a term to apply to the Press in relation to the Lonrho affair.

We have a situation in which these disgraceful and disgusting machinations were discovered by accident. They have been reported on at length. I trust that the Government intend to take various suitable actions as a result, but I fear that at the end of the day we shall be left with a situation that is fundamentally unchanged. I commend to my hon. Friend a statement with which I have no doubt he is familiar, and which is the only appropriate conclusion to a consideration of this affair. It is that far from being merely an unacceptable face of capitalism, this is, I submit, the, face of capitalism, a face that is deformed and distorted by personal greed and the only remedy in the end, in addition to whatever palliatives and ameliorative mechanisms the Government bring forward, lies in fact in the commitment in the Labour Party election manifestos to ensure that there is a fundamental shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families.

Wealth and power in our society are now usurped by people whose sense of personal and public probity leaves much to be desired and whose effect on the life and economy of the nation is nothing short of disastrous.

9.1 a.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mrs. Wise) said that this matter had been discovered by accident. She could have reinforced her case even more by pointing to the fact that this is not the first time a major public scandal has come to light as a result of a row between the participants.

But for the bankruptcy of Mr. Poulson, the whole sordid tangle of events in the North-East of England might never have come to light. The sordid row of the feuding directors—or, should I say, of feuding mistresses of directors?—of the Rank Board brought that matter into the open. The same could be said about the Slater-Walker row, whose shenanigans in Singapore and Hong Kong are under investigation at the moment. That would not have become public property for a considerable time, if ever, had it not been for disputes within the magic circle of the people most concerned.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West referred to a phrase used by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath). I dislike almost everything the right hon. Member stands for, and I shall never forgive him for taking this country into the Common Market. But when he used the phrase "the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism" it did him great credit. That phrase was as striking and as opposite, in its way, as the "winds of change" phrase used by Mr. Harold Macmillan. We should give credit where credit is due, and the right hon. Member's phrase deserves credit, uncharacteristic and rare though it may have been.

This is indeed a sordid story. One of its most extraordinary aspects, as I understand it, is that the authors of the report are by no means wholly protected by priviledge in matters of libel. When the same situation arose in relation to Pergamon and its chairman, Mr. Bob Maxwell, whose absence from this House hon. Members on this side can bear with considerable fortitude, there were threats of action against the reporters in that case. The other day Mr. Rowland had the gall to make threats of a similar kind against the authors of this report, and, as I understand it, those were not the only threats made. As I understand it—I do not want to go into too much detail, because it would be for the hon. Member concerned to refer to it if he wished, an opportunity he may have taken on the Summer Adjournment motion—my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, West (Mr. Sedge-more) received a threatening phone call made either on behalf of or by Mr. Rowland in terms that I would have thought constituted a prima facie breach of privilege of this House. The action would probably represent a criminal offence of itself, since it was a threat. If that is how a person under investigation behaves it seems to me unfortunate that the company concerned should at the moment be receiving an interest-free Government loan in relation to a take-over bid.

Before my hon. Friend leaves that point, will he indicate whether the alleged telephone call took place before or after my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, West (Mr. Sedge-more) participated in the Committee stage on the Companies (No. 2) Bill in relation to the question of Lonhro?

It was after that. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary was in the Committee when my hon. Friend moved an amendment to enlarge the powers of auditors in relation to companies and referred in somewhat robust terms to the activities of Lonhro.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the telephone call was received by the wife of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, West (Mr. Sedgemore)? Does that not give additional cause for anxiety?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I think, therefore, that I am now justified in describing Mr. Rowland as a bullying thug. I do not think that that is an unreasonable or unparliamentary term to use. His whole manner on this matter is disgraceful to thenth degree. If that threat had been made to my family or my wife I would have raised it as a matter of privilege at the first available opportunity, and the fact that my hon. Friend did not do so says a great deal for his forbearance.

This sordid story falls into four parts. There is, first, the making of illicit payments—I think there is no other way to describe them—stigmatised in paragraph 11(1) on page 487 of the report with the words

"Counsel consulted by the company advised that his debt"—

referring to Mr. Rowland's loan account and expense claim—

"constituted a loan contrary to Section 190 of the Companies Act"

That is pretty blunt.

Secondly, there are aspects of nondisclosure to fellow-directors of the board and to the shareholders, and the indulgence in deliberate deception of all parties who are statutorily entitled to know what is going on. Thirdly, there is the question of expenses payments and other matters of a related kind, which the report says do not stand up to examination.

Finally, there is the aspect that has not so far been referred to in relation to this matter, namely, the sanctions-busting operations in relation to Rhodesia. I do not propose to go into detail on this matter, but it is surely a matter of grave concern that a company registered in this country, the directors of which owe allegiance to the Crown and who are British subjects, should, by virtue of a series of interlocking directorships and interlocking company arrangements, set out to defeat aspects of the sanctions policy that are—whatever may be the rumblings inside the Monday Club—the agreed policy of the two major parties and of successive Governments since 1965. It is also surely grave that the directors, with knowledge of these matters, should deliberately have concealed what was going on.

That alone would justify the Government and the Department of Trade taking proceedings under the Companies Act for the winding up of this group.

My hon. Friend will understand that I shall be constrained not to comment on the specific matter to which he is alluding because the question of a breach of criminal law, which is alleged, consequential upon the report, is a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions, who now has the papers. I hope that my hon. Friend will not expect me to respond to this specific point, because it would be wrong for me to prejudge the outcome of the investigation.

I understand my hon. Friend's position and I shall not criticise him if he is reticent on this matter.

A number of matters have been referred to the DPP and we shall have to await the outcome. I would not seek to comment on specific criminal allegations even if they had been crystallised against a specific person. But even under our totally inadequate company law, when a company, for instance, through its directors, behaves in a way what is contrary to public policy, that is a ground, prima facie, to wind up the company concerned. There are well-established precedents. The Minister will probably be acquainted with the recent case of Da Costa, in commercial law.

Irrespective of whether certain directors and officials of the company can be prosecuted for offences of fraud or, more seriously, for offences akin to treason in relation to sanctions busting, sufficient irregularities have been revealed and it has been established on a sufficiently adequate scale that the whole conduct of the company—the mismanagement, the sanctioning of expenses and the sanctions in relation to Rhodesia being breached—provides sufficient grounds for an application to the Companies Court for the winding up of the whole group and for the Government to put in a receiver.

I know that this is a tremendous step. Our company law needs revision. The Under-Secretary is well aware of this fact, because he is taking through Committee the Companies (No. 2) Bill, which will do something, though not very much, to block some of the loopholes and abuses, in many cases practised quite lawfully under existing company law. Surely, as matters now stand, there is already power to take action.

I do not propose to speak for very much longer, as several of my hon. Friends have already made their contributions. We are all indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) for raising this matter. He has done extremely good work in assimilating the report and going through certain matters in detail. However, I believe that there are two further matters that require consideration.

First, I want to know what attitude the Government take towards payments to people such as Captain Klein, who appears to be a rootless international contact man and adventurer, whose purpose is to tout for custom with all sorts of people, desirable and undesirable, and especially the latter. There has been correspondence inThe Times and some rather odd remarks from the Inland Revenue regarding the acceptability of tax defrayment for the purposes of such payments. We must have a clear indication whether this sort of practice is permitted.

I am being as charitable as I possibly can when I say that we know that sometimes, when dealing with banana republics and Ruritanias, it is extremely difficult to conduct business in the way that most of us would like. However, it does not seem to be entirely confined to that sort of business; there seems to be something of the same situation in Italy, involving BP. I do not like it. It should be restricted to the barest minimum. It should be the subject of the closest scrutiny by Government, and Government sanction should be sought in advance before anything of that kind is done.

I accept that nothing of that sort occurred involving Lonrho. All that went on was a part of Mr. Tiny Rowland's buccaneering business activity. His fellow-directors, still less the shareholders or workers, knew nothing about what was going on. However, I use my previous argument as an example of something that is wholly undesirable. It is just possible to argue that in some parts of the world there are certain circumstances in which it may not be avoidable to engage in such activity, but it is something that the Government must monitor most carefully and restrict to the barest minimum. I say no more about it, save to say that in the circumstances of the report it is just one more aspect of a thoroughly sordid and seedy story.

I have tabled about 10 Questions in the past fortnight or so about the £5 million interest-free loan that has been sanctioned by the Government to enable the Lonrho Group to take over Brent-ford Nylons. I know that the Government's attitude is that the company had to be rescued. It is true that many jobs were at risk. It has been said that 1,800 jobs were at risk. Those of us on the Government Benches who are worried beyond belief about unemployment, and, perhaps, some Opposition Members, are anxious to take measures to avoid a loss of jobs. That is axiomatic.

I shall try to put my next point in temperate and moderate terms, as I realise that we are in something of a dilemma, but I find it difficult to understand why there can be no other course of action than providing preferential financial assistance to a company that is under the surveillance of the Director of Public Prosecutions. It has probably committed a number of breaches of the civil law, some of the directors having behaved so disreputably that they are not fit to run a public urinal, let alone a public company. Why should that sort of company be singled out to be given assistance to make a takeover bid when we have all the mechanisms of the National Enterprise Board and the planning agreements under the 1972 and 1974 Industry Acts?

When there are available a whole gamut of ways in which the Government could intervene, why on earth, while the matter is still pending, should this practice have happened? I put down a whole series of Questions but have not had an answer, let alone a satisfactory one.

I end by relating what was no doubt an unintentionally humourous quotation from one of the Questions that I put. I asked the Secretary of State for Industry:

"what assurances he secured that on emoluments payable to directors of the Lonrho Group in respect of any extra responsibilities consequent upon its acquisition of Brentford Nylons will be paid in any country in which United Kingdom tax law does operate before sanctioning the payment of the interest-free loan of £5 million to the group."

His answer was

"The question of directors' remuneration is a matter for the shareholders subject to the provisions of the White Paper 'Attack on Inflation: The Second Year' (Cmnd. 6507)."— [Official Report, 20th July 1976; Vol. 915, c. 470.]

I am sure that was a rather gentle and delicate touch. If so, it was the only one arising out of this whole miserable case. On that light note, perhaps it is right that I should sit down.

9.21 a.m.

It it is not too wearisome for you, Mr. Speaker—

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is quite clear that the right hon. Gentleman has a considerable vested interest in this matter. Has he the permission of the House to speak again because I understand that he has already taken part in the debate?

The right hon. Gentleman requires the leave of the House. I understood that he was referred to and that the House might therefore give him leave. However, it is up to the House.

I am grateful, Mr. Speaker. I was just about to ask for the leave of the House.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. This is the Consolidated Fund, and I and other hon. Members have been waiting for a very long time to speak. There are also Ministers waiting to answer the debates. I do not doubt the importance of this subject, or the right hon. Gentleman's right to have a say in this matter. All I say is that there are other hon. Members waiting to take part in respect of other subjects which they regard as equally important.

The right hon. Gentleman is entitled to ask for the leave of the House and it is for the House to decide whether it gives it.

I would be much obliged if I could have the leave of the House, Mr. Speaker. I totally understand and sympathise with the point raised by the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). I hope that he would accept that this is indeed an important subject. Since this is a company of which I have the honour to be a director I think the House would expect me to be in my place and to be ready to comment on what has been said.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. This really is incredible. The right hon. Gentleman put in for a debate himself and got it. He knew very well, when the list was put up, that Lonrho would almost certainly be debated. If he had wanted to take part in that debate without the permission of the House, he could quite easily have withdrawn his own debate. However, he has chosen to get the best of both worlds. If the right hon. Gentleman is getting the leave of the House I hope he will take advantage of it and defend the claim he made that Mr. Duncan Sandys acted perfectly honourable in this sordid affair.

It is not I who gave permission to the right hon. Gentleman. It is the House that has given permission. If the House does not say "No" the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to speak.

I am much obliged, Mr. Speaker, to hon. Gentlemen opposite. I have no wish to talk for more than is reasonable and I shall do my best to oblige hon. Gentlemen by commenting on the particular matters raised. The best service I can do is to be as rapid and as brief as circumstances will allow.

Although I have listened with careful attention to the three speeches which have been made, and I have examined all the other references made in this House on this matter—there have been a number—I must confess to being unsure that we are as yet discussing all the appropriate subjects under this Head which should concern us as Members of Parliament.

Although we can agree—I make common cause here with the three hon. Members who have spoken—that there might be reforms in the law, I do not think that discussion of these matters is best conducted in an emotive way. Nor do I think that too much should be made of allegories which have been quoted tonight and things said outside the House in the heat of the moment.

Certainly we can also agree with something which the Minister who is to reply said in Committee—that the law must be obeyed. It must of course be good law. I agree, too, that no one should be above the law—no entrepreneur, successful or not—just as I would say that no Minister should be above the law.

This inquiry was unusual in several respects.It was unusual especially because this company is not a failure. It is not a company which is failing to invest in Britain or overseas. It is a good exporter, it is paying considerable sums by way of taxation in the United Kingdom and in other countries. It is a company which is creating employment. It is indeed unique.

There was a dilemma for Ministers over this report. On the one hand the Department of Trade has a responsibility to support industries and commerce in this country, to support companies which are doing a good job in the national interest. On the other hand, there was some pressure to see that the report was published. I am not sure that the right decision was made.

That is a matter of opinion.

I entirely agree—it is a matter of opinion. But I am not sure that the right decision was made.

It is not for me to propose what steps should be adopted if we are to discuss reports, but perhaps we might be occupying more of our time usefully in the House if we were discussing those reports which have been published about companies which have failed—Rolls-Royce, London and Counties, Leyland, for example.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I do not want to be unreasonable at all, but we cannot help observing that the right hon. Gentleman has a very long speech in his notes. This is a right hon. Gentleman who has already spoken for 38 minutes on the hydrographic service. I should like to register objection on the basis that other hon. Members have some rights in the debates on the Consolidated Fund Bill.

Further to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should like to add my support to what my hon. Friend has said. It is clear that the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) is going to make some kind of an apologia for this squalid report. We are not prepared to accept it If I can, I should like to withdraw my permission for him to be heard any more.

I am afraid that that is not possible. I put it to the House twice and said that it was the House which must decide whether the right hon. Gentleman was heard. No one said "No." It required but one hon. Member to say "No." The right hon. Gentleman is now addressing the House by leave of the House. Therefore, I cannot ask him to sit down.

Further to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. I thought that there was an undertaking implied in what the right hon. Gentleman said—we do not want to be unreasonable—that his would be a fairly short contribution. If his speech lasts 10 minutes that is one thing, but if it is like his last one and goes on for 38 minutes on a single subject, that would seem to be an abuse of the House.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, who is one of the senior Members of the House, will bear in mind that not unreasonable appeal, since the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) has been waiting all night.

I will most certainly bear that in mind, but it is not I who am taking time now—

You have had your share.

It is not I who prescribed the subject of this debate, and it is not unreasonable, I think, permission having been given, that I should do my best to reply to it. [Interruption.] I am sure that the hon. Member for Fife Central (Mr. Hamilton) does not wish to gag me—

I do.

I note what the hon. Gentleman says, and the world will note what he says.

I shall certainly not speak for 38 minutes. I shall say what I want to say with as much expedition as I can.

I was saying that it must be right that this House should look also at the affairs of companies which have failed, and that is true. Also, we are fortunate, as the Minister said on another occasion, in that we are preparing a programme for company law improvement, for which I have argued for many years—long before it became the fashionable nostrum of today.

We can all make our own case about these matters. This is an unusual report, in that the inspectors have not recommended a change in management. Quite the reverse; as the hon. Member for Coventry, South-West (Mrs. Wise) pointed out, they passed a vote of confidence in the chief executive and endorsed the vote of confidence which the shareholders had already given. It may be thought remarkable after three years and nearly 660 pages almost no new matter is raised, nothing that was not already covered by Peat, Marwick and Mitchell; by press and television, court proceedings, shareholders' meetings and circulars.

The report dealt with matters that may be interesting and contain a lot of detail, but they are matters only of historic interest, and recommended no action of any sort.

Some hon. Labour Members and I are political poles apart. They hold strong views about companies and private enterprise—

We have seen that.

I hope that my view is more reasonable. I believe in a mixed economy, which the hon. Gentleman does not, unfortunately. Although he is entitled to hold his view, no one is entitled to suggest that this company is different from reality, to exaggerate its defects and mistakes and altogether to ignore its virtues.

Send them to gaol.

If we ignore the politics, we must acknowledge that the reality is excellent, being successful, profitable, and a substantial taxpayer, a large exporter and a provider of employment on a large scale. It should be a favourite son of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a substantial investor in capital equipment, doing practical work to raise the standard of life in developing countries. It has excellent relationships overseas, which Her Majesty's Government sometimes prefer to use, rather than relying on their own communications. It has excellent relations at home with trade unions, both in the business in which it has been engaged for some time and in the new business in which it is now engaging in Newcastle. Not only has it a good record for growth at home and overseas; it is a strong influence for political evolution, and we all applaud that here. Its work is of the greatest benefit to the United Kingdom economy because its work is constructive, as I have said, and I am proud to be associated with it.

What is now required for the company, as for British industry, is that it should have a period of peace and calm to work successfully in the national interest, if the expectations of the Chancellor are to be realised. It cannot succeed in an atmosphere of constant criticism, to which there is not always an opportunity to reply. Everybody respects parliamentary privilege, but it should be used with discretion.

I was asked for a comment about Lord Duncan-Sandys. He, no doubt, can defend himself with vigour, and will do so in future. I am bound to point out that as soon as he knew the board was unaware of the payments to him, he immediately refunded them.

The Hedsor Wharf house should be a company house. It is used almost exclusively for company purposes to entertain Heads of State and other distinguished visitors to this country.

On the question of the expense account, the view was expressed that the directors did not have full information, but that was not the view of other firms of auditors. It is quite possible for there to be two views about this matter.

On the report itself, I do not criticise the bona fides of the inspectors. They are eminent men—indeed, men of the greatest eminence—but they are not infallible, and there are some mistakes and omissions. Nor would I suggest that some method of inquiry should not be open to the Department. As a former Minister, I would be the first to agree that there should, but the question is whether this is the right way.

It is interesting that inThe Times newspaper Lord Fletcher, and Sir David Napley, President of the Law Society, had correspondence, and later the Minister had a letter from the Chairman of the Stock Exchange and Lord Shawcross, all suggesting that the method should be improved. There have been articles in the journals, inThe Guardian, and in theNew Law Journal, from which I quote quickly:

"The much awaited Department of Trade Lonrho report causes more disquiet with regard to the working of English law than to the internal affairs of Lonrho…it is the way the report has been prepared and published that is wrong and unfair."

It goes on—there is much more. I should like to quote it all. I end with this sentence:

"The situation is overdue for reform."

This seems, then, to be a generally held view. The question to which the House of Commons should probably address itself if it is to learn the lessons of this report is—what form should the reform take? If we are to answer this question we must first pose another—why do so many authorities feel that there should be reform and express that view?

I will discuss shortly some of the reasons. A report of this nature is bound to present an apparently biased picture. If inspectors, however conscientious and however competent, inquire into three, four or half a dozen matters, they are producing a balance sheet which is lop-sided. Incidentally, all the matters into which the inspectors inquired and on which they were critical have been rectified.

The inspectors say nothing about the company's successes. The company's successes are very great. There again, I do not believe—I do not know what other right hon. and hon. Members may think—that the system of part-time inspectors who are required to be prosecutor, jury and judge can possibly be adjudged to be the best possible in the circumstances.

These inquiries take too long. This one took three years. We have just seen the publication of another report on an inquiry which took six years. More inquiries are happening. They will take longer. I do not know why they were not started long ago. It is not reasonable that there should be a shadow over a company for a very long period in this way.

It has to be acknowledged, too, that, the system adopted puts those inquired into at a disadvantage. They are unaware of the accusations, if any. There is no opportunity of cross-examination of witnesses. The facts cannot be checked. Nor can malice, if it exists, as it may, be exposed. False conclusions are therefore possible.

What effect does a report of this sort have upon the company? I appreciate that it makes a number of people who read it angry and anxious. I was worried that it would have a bad effect on the morale of the employees of the company. In the case of the Lonrho company, however, no executive and no worker has left as a consequence of this report. That is some indication of their judgment of it and is a hallmark of their confidence in the chief executive and his colleagues.

What sort of company is it, anyway, that is being inquired into? I have said already that it is a very successful company. It is a company which has a turnover now—

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman is abusing the permission that the House gave him to speak a second time on the Bill and he is apologising throughout for the cesspool of this report. It really is intolerable that he should take advantage of the House in this way. I ask you to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, or to insist that he brings his remarks to a conclusion.

I do not think I apologise for any cesspool. What I was trying to do was to conduct a kind of serious inquiry whether this was the best form of inquiry into companies. If the hon. Gentleman did not keep interrupting and did not try to stop me all the time from replying to what has been said, we should get on a very great deal quicker.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you know, I submitted my name requesting a debate on the question of Lonrho. I realise that the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) has a personal interest—he is a director of the company. However, if he had wished he could have submitted to you that this subject be discussed. Instead, he submitted to you another subject, and that was discussed earlier today. I think that he should now conclude his remarks and perhaps take the opportunity of writing in one of the Sunday or daily papers an explanation of the Lonrho affair. Other Members are wishing to speak in this debate. I wish to catch your eye briefly. I hope that the right hon. Member will now conclude his remarks and allow other Members to participate in the debate.

I am in some difficulty. I know that hon. Members have been waiting through the night for the debate and that others hope that their subject will come up for debate before the debate on the Bill ends. It would help the House if the right hon. Gentleman could make his remarks as brief as possible because we are on the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill. I know that he will be brief.

Indeed I shall be brief. I have also been waiting a long time to hear what hon. Members say and for the opportunity to reply, but other hon. Members are taking up more time than I. I reserve the right, by the methods open to me, to reply at other times and in other ways if hon. Members will not allow me the full opportunity to do so now.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You were not in the Chair at the time, but I am sure that you are aware that I was extremely careful to make no attack on the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) but to use one entirely factual quotation, because I did not think that he would be able to take part in the debate.

I was very impressed by the spirit of fair play in the House. The issue is one which generates strong feelings. The House gave the right hon. Gentleman permission to speak and no one objected. There has been a sense of fair play and I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will respond accordingly. He has said that he will be brief.

I am doing my best to get on, but it is difficult. I acknowledge the remarks of the hon. Member for Coventry, South-West.

I have already said that the company is successful and the figures prove that. Here is a company which is doing extremely well for our nation.

Here we go again.

The hon. Member may not like it, but it is a fact. The company deserves encouragement and support. Here are a group of people—whether the hon. Member for Fife, Central likes it or not—who are deliberately helping to raise the standard of living here and overseas. I say that that is something in which to rejoice.

We have heard something about Brentford Nylons. If any hon. Member thinks that he can do better than Lonrho to help that company, let him do so. I should be prepared to persuade my colleagues to see to the loan which has been offered, provided they can renegotiate the agreement with the receiver and that those who talk about this case but do nothing to provide the marketing, design, production and management expertise and, what is more, the resources to back that company and to stand the loss to bring it through to prosperity.

I was proud to be welcomed by the workers at Newcastle. When I rang them last night and told union officials of today's debate they said that hon. Members should go to Newcastle where they would be told how grateful the workers are to Lonrho, a company in which they have faith.

That is the reality of the modern world. Are we to encourage those who will do, who will dare to create wealth here in the United Kingdom and overseas, and who will earn for this country? Or are we, by a constant campaign of denigration and exaggeration of mistakes, to force people to work in other countries and prevent any enterprise from succeeding? I stand for enterprise. I am proud to be a director of the company and to have been of some constructive help in the work it is trying to do for the people of this country.

The right hon. Gentleman has done very well out of it.

9.45 a.m.

I shall not make the speech which I originally intended to make because a number of other Members are waiting to contribute. The right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) had the privilege of speaking twice in the debate but he did not submit his name to speak on the subject. I find it interesting that all the requests for the debate came from hon. Members on this side of the House. But we should pay tribute to the previous Government and the then Prime Minister, who referred to the company as the unacceptable face of capitalism.

Absolutely.

It was the Government of the right hon. Member for Taunton who set up the Department of Trade inquiry into the company. Going through the report page by page we find complete justification for the setting up of the inquiry. The company was originally named London and Rhodesian. Some people have forgotten its early purposes. We read of its breaking sanctions against Rhodesia. All parties in the House have agreed that we should try to bring about a peaceful settlement of the tragedy of Rhodesia, and one of the ways laid down by the United Nations is economic sanctions. Here we have a company that deliberately set out to flout the intent of this House. The company's activities border on treason.

I do not wish to make personal attacks on the right hon. Member for Taunton. He joined the company at a later stage, but earlier a former Conservative Cabinet Minister was its chairman. Possibly he came in after the breaking of sanctions, too. Yesterday there was an outburst in the House about the alleged unemployed man who spent 12 months on unemployment benefit in Spain—a fictitious character whom nobody now seems able to find. In the report we hear of hundreds of thousands of pounds being sent to the Cayman Islands.

I support my hon. Friends. The matter should not be raised only in this way and at this hour. I appeal to the Government to make sure that it returns to the Floor of the House for a full debate, as there are tremendous implications.

We are now going into recess. I know that the Director of Public Prosecutions is investigating the whole question, and charges will probably be preferred because of the many matters that arise in the report. After the DPP has taken action the Government should arrange a major debate, because there are implications for not only the Department of Trade but the Department of Industry, the Defence Department and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. As other hon. Members wish to speak, I conclude on that point.

9.50 a.m.

By leave of the House, I welcome this debate, as does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade. In no way can I share the view of the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) that it was in any sense inappropriate for this matter to be raised.

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister at the beginning of his speech but I did not say that and I did not imply it. What I was discussing was whether we were considering all the questions that it is proper for the House to consider in relation to a matter of this sort.

If I misconstrued what the right hon. Gentleman said I apologise. I am afraid that he was rather ambiguous, perhaps not intentionally. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Evans) that this is a matter which it is right to debate, and I shall draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House the request that he has made.

This is a matter in respect of which there is a high degree of public interest, as was illustrated by my hon. Friends who have spoken. It is a matter that raises important issues affecting the conduct of public companies, and I shall have something to say about that. I am grateful to my hon. Friends for raising the issue.

The right hon. Member for Taunton produced, as he was entitled to do—and I think it was right that the House should have heard him, in all the circumstances—what was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) as an apologia for the company. Having regard to the meticulous thoroughness with which this report has been prepared. I find it extraordinary that in the 20 minutes or so, net, occupied by the right hon. Gentleman he could not find it appropriate to bring a whimper of criticism about the conduct of Lonrho at the material time. He seemed to be rejecting all the criticisms made by the inspectors. It would have been much more appropriate if he had hesitated a little before presenting this matter to the House in the way he did. The House will give his comments the weight that they deserve.

They will keep his directorship.

What we are debating today has a direct connection with the preceding debate, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central, when the House discussed allegations made and taken up by the Opposition Front Bench, concerning scrounging—I think that is the usual word employed—on social security. It was a matter on which the Opposition said that they had the true facts. There seems to be a bit of selective condemnation on their part between one sort of scrounger and another. This selective condemnation is not confined to this case; I had cause to complain about it in an earlier debate.

The Conservatives proclaim that they have an interest in establishing the highest standards in public and commercial life. I am sure that that is the motivation of the hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins), who leads for the Opposition on these matters. I would not for one moment doubt his bona fides, because I have worked with him in Committee and I know his interest in these matters. I do not think it is true to say that of the entire Conservative Party. I did not notice any blind rush to discuss the Lonrho report, which goes to the heart of the question of establishing the highest standards in public and commercial life.

I join in the tribute paid by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare to the Conservative Government led by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who had some appropriate words to say about this situation, describing it as the "unacceptable face of capitalism", and so on. That Government set up the investigative process. I am bound to say that since that time there has been no attempt on the part of the Conservative Party to raise the matter, for instance, on the Companies (No. 2) Bill [Lords]. As for the question of stimulating debate. Conservative Members have exhibited all the pulsating virility of a bunch of eunuchs in a harem of a second-class potentate. The fact is that they are schizophrenic. They divide their time between demanding stiffer laws and then excusing their friends when there is any evasion of them.

I well understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mrs. Wise) said that she was nauseated by this saga. We are talking about the conduct of the company in the past, and it is perfectly understandable that she should have to bear this state of nausea. But it is all the more nauseating when some of those who have been responsible for these affairs have the temerity to lecture not only the Government but the people of this country on the subject of national financial probity.

I am bound to say that my hon. Friend is entitled to be nauseated if the allegation is made out that some attempt was made at the telephone to intimidate and obstruct my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, West (Mr. Sedgemore) in seeking to carry out his duties to this House as he saw them. It is a matter that may be worthy of further investigation.

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to say that I know nothing of this matter? The first I heard of it was last evening. I find it very difficult to accept that there was a plot of that sort.

The right hon. Gentleman is not entitled to say that he finds it difficult to accept. What the right hon. Gentleman should have said in that intervention is "I am concerned about the allegation. I, as a leading member of the company, will see that it is investigated, and I will not prejudge the outcome of it". The hon. Gentleman'slocus in carrying out such an investigation is no longer impeccable. He has prejudged the issue.

I know the people concerned.

The right hon. Gentleman is not adding to his reputation by that sort of remark. My hon. Friends are bitterly angry about the fact that there has been a deliberate campaign by officers of the company to camouflage and distort the seriousness of these criticisms. We were told before publication, in breach of the confidentiality imposed on them, which the company accepted at the time—[Interruption.] The House will judge the seriousness of these complaints.

My hon. Friends are entitled to be concerned about the suggestion that is made by Mr. Rowland—repudiated by the right hon. Gentleman at one turn and accepted by implication at another—that if someone is successful he ought somehow to be above the law and sacrosanct. That is wholly unacceptable.

My hon. Friends are entitled to be concerned that if there had been no board room dispute, none of this murky story might have been revealed at all. I think they are concerned to wonder whether, if the story had not been divulged, the tax-free compensation which was paid to Lord Duncan-Sandys—to whom I wrote, extending him the customary courtesy of informing him of any intention to mention him—would have been returned at all. If his conduct was as honourable as he purports, there should have been no question about its return. Why wait for the criticisms? It should have gone back instantly. Why accept it in the first place?

We have a saga here of company secrecy, of the payment of huge sums by directors to other directors into exotic tax havens, and of houses provided by directors. We are told by the right hon. Gentleman that that is all O.K. We have heard of expense accounts not being properly investigated—indeed, not being investigated at all. As I said upstairs, we are talking not about small petty cash vouchers, but £307,000. It may be that is how they operated. Perhaps there were petty cash vouchers for that kind of sum. We are talking of directors getting a piece of the action. I think that there were too many pieces of gold here, too much action, and too little disclosure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Lee) asked me to refer the whole question of tax abuse to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will read with interest what he said.

Tax havens.

Tax havens, tax evasion, tax mitigation or however one wants to dignify it.

I want now to refer to the origin of this inspection and the report and to go on to talk about the lessons that we can learn from it.

In March 1973, eight directors of Lonrho, headed by Sir Basil Smallpeice, attempted to remove Mr. Rowland from executive office in Lonrho. Mr. Rowland took legal action to restrain the board, and the subsequent proceedings disclosed, in public, matters that were considered by the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to be grounds for the appointment of inspectors under the provisions of Section 165(b) of the Companies Act 1948.

It has sometimes been suggested that the decision was influenced by political factors that were important at that time. Naturally, I do not know what advice was given to the then Secretary of State, and far be it from me to seek to defend the actions of another Administration, but, in the light of the report that resulted and of the matters that have been discussed in the House today, there must be few Members who do not agree that the appointment was absolutely justified. That was a matter to which the hon. Member for Worthing rightly drew attention and accepted when this affair was first discussed at Question Time.

The inspectors, Mr. Allan Heyman, QC, and Sir William Slimmings, were appointed on 23rd May and 12th June 1973, respectively. Their job was to investigate the affairs of Lonrho, as I said, under the provisions of Section 165(b) of the Companies Act 1948.

In view of the suggestion that inspectors should be given clear terms of reference, it is of interest to note that upon their appointment the inspectors were advised by the Department that they should inquire particularly into five matters that came to light during the court proceedings. That point has not been taken on board in the post-report considerations by some of the critics.

First, three of the directors resided in properties that had been paid for by the company or its subsidiaries.

Secondly, there was the appointment of the then right hon. Duncan Sandys, Member of Parliament, as consultant to the company and subsidiaries at a total fee of £51,000 per annum and the subsequent termination of the consultancy at a cost of £130,000 on his agreeing to become chairman of the company.

Thirdly, there was the claim of the defendant directors that, on four separate occasions between 9th August and 20th October 1971, Mr. Rowland either misinformed the directors, or allowed them to be misinformed, of the true cost of the purchase of an interest in the Wankel rotary engine.

Fourthly, the company advanced £3·05 million to an associated company in which three of the directors had an interest amounting to 50 per cent. of the equity, the remaining 50 per cent. being owned by the Lonrho group.

Fifthly, on 25th May 1972 the company issued a prospectus that produced approximately £10 million extra capital for the company with a view to reducing the company's short-term borrowings. Material contracts were listed, but there was no reference to the payments to be made following the termination of Lord Duncan-Sandy's consultancy arrangements with the company.

Therefore, a clear area for investigation was specifically defined.

Inspectors appointed under the Companies Act are invested with statutory duties and powers, and the responsibility for the conduct of the investigation is theirs alone. However, most inspections follow a broadly similar pattern, and for convenience the process can be divided into five stages. Because of the criticisms that have been uttered, I think it right that I should refer to this procedure in the context of the Lonrho case, so that the House can judge whether the procedures applied were fair or unfair.

In the first stage, the inspectors examine the relevant documents in order to build up an understanding of the issues that they are to investigate. Although the legal inspector is normally a silk—a QC—there is no objection in principle to the appointment of a solicitor as an inspector where it may be thought appropriate, but the skills of cross-examination which develop from experience at the Bar are an important attribute for the legal inspectors in the majority of cases. The accountant inspector, who is normally a senior partner in one of the big accountancy firms, can and does deploy staff of his own firm in the numbers necessary to examine the vast quantity of documentation that has to be scrutinised in a major operation of this kind.

The second stage is to take evidence from the witnesses. The Lonrho inspectors took written or oral evidence from more than 70 witnesses, and some of them were examined on more than one occasion. The witnesses can, if they so wish, be accompanied by their legal representatives, who are able to advise and assist witnesses in the presentation of their evidence. Full transcripts of all evidence are taken by shorthand writers accredited to the court, and copies of the transcripts of his own evidence are made available to each witness.

In the third stage the inspectors consider all the evidence and formulate their preliminary conclusions.

In the fourth stage the inspectors put to witnesses whom they are minded to criticise the substance of the criticisms that they propose to make, unless this has been done at an earlier stage. In the Lonrho inspection, the inspectors provided to each of the witnesses a written statement of the substance of the criticisms that they intended to make of him. The witnesses were then given an opportunity to make written representations, or to appear again before the inspectors, again accompanied by their legal representatives. The legal representatives submitted lengthy written submissions to the inspectors. They also addressed the inspectors at length on behalf of their clients.

That is the process that was undertaken. I want to explain to the House that this is not a brief process; it is spread over many months. There has been criticism of the time needed to complete Department of Trade inspections. The House should understand that the time needed is materially affected by the procedures that are followed in order to be fair to witnesses. The opportunity afforded to witnesses whom the inspectors have in mind to criticise, which I have just described, adds significantly to the length of inspections.

The fifth stage is that, having heard the representations of the witnesses, the inspectors finalise their report, and in this case it was submitted to the Secretary of State on 1st March 1976.

The Lonrho inspectors and their supporting staff spent about 25,000 hours on this inspection. It was an expensive procedure. It cost approximately £200,000. I shall deal subsequently with the justification for these inspectoral procedures, because the right hon. Gentleman will expect that of me. Suffice it to say that if Parliament considers that the procedures are necessary for the enforcement of company law, it is important that they should be carried out properly and impeccably by men of standing and integrity in their own profession. That was done in this case, and the House can see for itself that this was no witch hunt as has been claimed by Mr. "Tiny" Rowland, who, of course, is not without an axe to grind.

Although Big Ben has stopped, time is passing, and for that reason and because this is an occasion for Back Benchers, I am anxious not to make a speech if I can avoid it. I set out my views in Committee on 29th July. The hon. Gentleman has discussed at some length the procedures of the Department. There has been impartial criticism directed at these procedures, and I believe that the House should have the opportunity to debate this. May we have an assurance from the Government that there will be such an opportunity on an occasion appropriate for long speeches?

That is a perfectly legitimate request. I shall mention it to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, and I have no doubt that the hon. Member will mention it to his right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) who is the Shadow Leader of the House, so that the Opposition may consider giving a Supply Day for such a debate.

With respect, it is not an appropriate matter for a Supply Day. This debate is similar to a Supply Day because it is an occasion for Back Benchers to question the Executive. This is essentially a matter of the reform of company law, with which I am gravely concerned. The Government should give time to debate this kind of matter. If we were in power I would believe that we should give time for this sort of debate. The hon. Gentleman must not dodge the issue.

I am not dodging the issue. I want the House to have an opportunity to discuss this, and I am prepared to do my best to see whether it can be arranged, if the hon. Gentleman will do his best, too. I am sure that we can work out a solution.

We are all very grateful that the hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) does not intend to make a speech, especially as he arrived one hour and twelve minutes after the debate started. We welcome the build-up in pressure from the Tory Party on this matter. Perhaps the Opposition Front Bench will reprimand the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Mr. Sproat), and the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Brotherton) for building up pressure on other matters.

I refute the first part of the hon. Members' comments. I was here.

It is right that I should try to influence the Leader of the House in order to get an opportunity to probe this matter. There is an urgent need for the Conservative Party to illuminate these issues and discuss them.

I turn now to the action that was taken by the Department of Trade after it received the report. It is a requirement of Section 168 of the Companies Act 1948 that the Department shall forward a copy of the report to the registered office of the company, and this was done. In accordance with usual practice in the great majority of inspection reports prepared under Section 165, the report was also referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions for him to consider whether it contained evidence of breaches of the law, and whether criminal proceedings should be brought.

Under Section 168 of the Companies Act the Secretary of State has discretion to decide whether to publish the report or not. It is the usual practice to publish reports of inspections into public companies carried out under Section 165. The company was told of the decision to publish over 24 hours before publication.

It has been alleged that an undertaking was given to the company by officials of the Department of Trade that they would be given 14 days' notice of publication. This allegation is totally false. At a meeting with officials, the company asked for 14 days' notice of publication. It was told that it was not the practice to give advance notice but that if the Government announced the decision to publish in a parliamentary Question the company would be told in advance. It was given no undertaking whatever as to the period of notice, although one or two people on behalf of the company or with some sort of interest sought to wheedle information out of the Department. The facts which I have just stated are taken from the record of the meeting which was made by the officials concerned immediately afterwards.

In the case of the Lonrho report the Secretary of State thought it right, before making a decision on publication, to consult certain United Kingdom posts overseas about the probable effects of publication in their localities. It has been alleged that copies of the report were sent to certain overseas Governments before it was published in this country. This is quite untrue. After considering advice about the probable effects of publication, including representations made by the company, as it is perfectly proper for my right hon. Friend to do, the Secretary of State decided that the public interest required that the Lonrho report should be published, and it was so published on 6th July. Four months therefore elapsed between submission of the report and publication. Having regard to the criteria which have to be followed, that is not a long time. In fact, the time between receipt and publication has been greater than this in the majority of cases. This is because there are often extremely difficult and complex issues to be resolved, and there is nothing sinister about that.

As regards further action by the Government now that the report has been published, I have already stated that the report, as is usual in such cases, has been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions, although I understand that the Director has asked the police to investigate certain specific matters, and it would not be appropriate for me to say anything further about that aspect. It would be wrong, however, to attach any special significance to these facts. It is the frequent practice in the case of a complex Department of Trade inquiry for the Secretary of State to pass a copy of the inspectors' report to the Director of Public Prosecutions to enable him to consider whether or not any action is called for by him.

The main responsibility of the Secretary of State and myself is to consider the implications of the report for company law, and this will be done as part of the general review which the Department is undertaking. The criticisms made by the inspectors relate mainly to what they consider to be breaches of the fiduciary duties of directors under the law as it now stands. It may be that closer consideration will indicate the need for tightening up the provisions of the law in some respects.

The main respects in which the Lonrho report is likely to be relevant to our review are, first, the duties of directors and the way in which public companies are run. The report of the Bullock Committee on industrial democracy, which the Government hope to receive by the end of this year, must be highly relevant to this subject, and the composition of company boards and the duties of directors will clearly be a central part of the major companies legislation which the Government intend to introduce to implement the Bullock Report.

Secondly, the Lonrho report has much to say that is disturbing on the subject of conflicts between the personal interests of directors and their duties to the company. Earlier this year the Department commissioned a special study of this subject as part of the review of company law. I hope that this will lead to the publication of a consultative document and will make a useful contribution in the next major companies legislation. When considering changes we shall certainly relate these closely to the need to prevent, or at least disclose, the type of unsavoury activities revealed in the Lonrho report. To my mind, one of the most disquieting features is that none of this might have come to light were it not for the dispute which developed within the Lonrho board.

Much of the comment since publication of the Lonrho report has been concerned with the point raised by the hon. Member for Worthing—the procedures followed by inspectors appointed under the Companies Acts. Some at least of this criticism has come from sources which are by no means disinterested and has been part of a deliberate campaign to blacken the Lonrho inspectors and to cast doubts upon their fairness. This has been one of the most deplorable features following publication of the report.

Mr. Heyman and Sir William Slimmings undertook this burden as a public service, as do other company inspectors. The inspection itself was arduous and complex. For nearly three years the two men devoted a great part of their time and energy to the task of unravelling the story. They have discharged it with immense care, with conspicuous fairness and with a meticulousness which should be admired, not criticised. This House and all who are concerned with maintaining the standards and integrity of the commercal life of this country are in the debt of these two men.

The system of company inspections has been a vital part of protection afforded by company law since the mid-nineteenth century. The 1862 Companies Act gave to shareholders the right to apply to the President of the Board of Trade for the appointment of inspectors. The Companies Act 1948 extended these powers by giving the Secretary of State the right to appoint where he considered that there were grounds to do so. Section 109 of the 1967 Act supplemented these powers by enabling the Department to require companies to produce documents and to provide explanations of them, with safeguards of confidentiality. In this way the Department can, where necessary, make preliminary inquiries without causing the damage to a company which can result from a public appointment.

The few inspections which attract widespread publicity are only a relatively small proportion of the total activity. In 1975, for example, inspectors were appointed to investigate the affairs of 27 companies under the 1948 Act—I think that I got this figure wrong earlier—and 150 inquiries were conducted by officers of the Department under the 1967 Act. The inspection system thus plays a vital role in the enforcement of company law, and I am glad to see that this has been acknowledged by the Chairman of the Stock Exchange and by most other serious commentators.

The primary purpose of investigations under Section 165 of the Companies Act 1948 is to establish the facts, where prima facie some irregularity has been shown in the way in which the company is run. The facts so established can serve a number of purposes. First, they are available to the DPP and other prosecuting authorities to consider whether criminal proceedings should be brought. Secondly, they can be made available to shareholders and creditors for use in civil proceedings. Thirdly, they are available to my Department to exercise its powers to bring civil proceedings to recover the company's assets or to wind it up. Fourthly, they can be made available to investors, employees and others as evidence of the way in which the company is being run, which is important. Finally, and incidentally, they provide the Government and public with a basis for discussion and action on aspects of company law reform.

When considering criticisms which have been made of company inspection procedures, it is worth recalling that these procedures became the subject of Court proceedings at the time of the investigation into the Pergamon Press case. In his judgment as a member of the Court of Appeal, Lord Denning set out the considerations which should be borne in mind in respect of an inquiry under the Companies Act.

I shall summarise those considerations. First and foremost, it is a very special kind of inquiry. It is not a trial. There is no accused, no prosecutor, no charge. It is not like a disciplinary proceeding before a professional body. It is simply an investigation, without anyone being accused. Secondly, there is no one to present a case to the inspector. He has to do all the work, to seek out and study documents, to examine the witnesses and cross-examine them, and to have their evidence recorded.

Thirdly, the investigation is in private. This is necessary because witnesses may say something defamatory of someone else and it would be quite wrong for it to be published without the party affected being able to challenge it. The only persons present are the inspectors and their staff, a shorthand writer, the witness and his lawyers, if he desires them.

Fourthly, the inspectors have to make their report. If this is to be of value they should make it with courage and frankness, keeping nothing back. The public interest demands it. It may on occasion be necessary for them to condemn or criticise a man. Before doing so, they must act fairly by him. But what does fairness demand? That is the question posed by Lord Denning.

Lord Denning's judgment as to the requirements of fairness have become an essential guide for subsequent investigations. He dealt with the procedure which should be followed by inspectors in putting the substance of their criticisms to witnesses. His conclusion was that it is sufficient for the inspectors to put the points to the witnesses as and when they come in the first place. After hearing the evidence, the inspectors have to come to their conclusions. These need not in the least be tentative. They can be final and definitive, ready for the inspectors' report.

Since that case, my Department has drawn the attention of newly-appointed inspectors to that judgment. I am entirely satisfied that the procedures advocated by the court have been followed both in spirit and to the letter. However, that does not mean that there is no room for improvement. The largest room in the world is the room for improvement.

The Secretary of State and I will study with the greatest care the suggestions that have been made in recent weeks. Two years ago the Department of Trade held a conference of inspectors who had been appointed during the previous five years to discuss the procedures used for inspections. The exchange of views on that occasion proved valuable. It was then decided, not in the light of the report, that the conference should be repeated from time to time. Arrangements have been made to hold a similar conference this September. This will provide the opportunity for a full exchange of ideas between those who collectively have a wide range of experience of the inspection procedures.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hands-worth had some comments to make about Brentford Nylons. I do not want to prolong the debate as there are other matters to follow. Suffice it to say that my hon. Friend has raised a large number of questions on the issue, all of which have been answered by my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Industry. He has pointed out that it was the only available fund to rescue the company and that there were 1,800 jobs at risk. He has said that the whole matter will be monitored. It is quite clear that the Government have the ability to impose conditions.

I now turn to what someone in my constituency once described as my "perforation". As I draw to my conclusion I want to reaffirm the importance of company inspections, which I think has been well illustrated by the Lonrho report. Some of the comments which have been made appear to suggest that as long as a company makes profits the way in which it behaves should be not be open to criticism, and that it should be above the law. Those who take that view are undermining the whole basis on which the commercial affairs of the country should be conducted.

Failure to condemn the unethical activities of a small minority brings into disrepute the great majority of companies and their directors who comply with the standards established by law. To edify serious breaches of those standards by describing them as cutting corners is to weaken the fabric of industrial society. That was why I found it extraordinary that the right hon. Member for Taunton had not a word of criticism to make, bearing in mind the length and the nature of the criticisms in the report.

I know that the Minister will wish to be fair. He will recognise that I was consistently interrupted and that I barely had a chance to say half the things I wished to say.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, even if he had another half an hour, could not have been constrained to say anything critical of the then board of Lonrho Limited. I think that I am being entirely fair to him.

Is my hon. Friend aware that, according to the report, the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) began an investigation into the affairs of this shabby company and could not find anything wrong? The right hon. Gentleman and his committee could not find anything wrong with the affairs of the company at that time.

I think I have said enough about that.

The companies legislation of this country has traditionally given great freedom to the limited liability company. It has conferred great benefits. But the counterbalance to that freedom is that society should have the right, when there is evidence that it may have been abused, to go behind the closed doors of the boardroom and to expose to the daylight of public scrutiny those activities which their authors may have preferred to conceal. That is what the report on Lonrho has achieved, and it is a thoroughly worthwhile achievement.

Scottish Assembly

10.30 a.m.

I believe in terse speeches on Consolidated Fund Bills, and particularly so this morning as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Buchanan) and others have important matters to raise.

As my right hon. and hon. Friends know, there are a number of us who believe that the creation of an Assembly in Edinburgh is the creation of a political stadium for nationalism and the separation of Scotland and England into separate countries in the middle distance. On the Consolidated Fund, however, I confine myself to an altogether narrower issue. That is the cost of the setting up of an elected legislative assembly and the accommodation connected with it.

At a time when we are scrimping and scraping, when yesterday in this Chamber we heard of the agony of the local authorities, I should like to ask some direct questions.

First, are the contracts to contractors to be set up on a cost-plus or fixed price basis?

Are there to be penalties attached to a time schedule?

Secondly, what is the position about the surveyors' report? Is the Property Services Agency satisfied that the surveyors' reports that it has at present are in fact a sufficient basis for calculating a realistic cost?

May we have a breakdown of the figure of £2·6 million that was given in answer to a parliamentary Question yesterday by the Minister for Housing and Construction?

What calculations have been made in terms of the costs of engineering staff and quantity surveying staff, either public in the Government Service or private, involved in this project?

Are we quite sure that 150 Members of a Scottish Assembly, and their staff, can be accommodated in old St. Andrew's House, and what are the costs of the changes? In particular, what are the costs of the finding of accommodation elsewhere in Edinburgh?

I view with some scepticism a parliamentary Answer that suggested that by just shifting around a bit, adequate accommodation could be found for the existing officials. After all, if this accommodation is in fact available, one might well ask why there is so much fat around anyway. We cannot have it both ways.

I should like to ask particularly about the question of committee rooms, and the very particular question that, if this plan goes ahead, why it is necessary to fill in the swimming pool.

I have given notice that I wish to raise the question of electronic voting. I understood when I was on the visit by Members of Parliament to the Royal High School, it was found that there is no room for division lobbies and that therefore electronic voting is to be installed.

As a member of the European Assembly, I can tell the House that my German colleagues have told me that electronic voting is a subtle and delicate operation if we are to be sure, as they put it, that there is no cheating, and that this problem has more or less defeated, at inordinate expense, the Bundestag in technological Bonn. I am not sure that we are so much better than the Germans. I should like details of the whole subject of practicalities and costs of electronic voting.

On the question of the traffic, I confine myself to a paragraph of Christopher Fyfe, of the St. Mary's Street Society. He says,

"My belief is still that the wrong decision has been made, and that siting the building on the Calton Hill will generate needless traffic through central Edinburgh, and damage a beautiful site. But as the decision has now been made (as reported in theScotsman on 3rd July), and can be justified in the way Mr. Ewing has justified it"—

he was referring to the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing)—

"I'm afraid there is no point in trying to oppose it further."

I think that Mr. Fyfe and his colleagues deserve some further explanation.

Finally, I come to the question of the reporting of the proceedings. Judging by the proceedings on licensing, and 15 years' experience of the Scottish Grand Committee, I hardly think that Scots in an Assembly will be any crisper than we are here in the House of Commons.

Shall we not require roughly the same numbers ofHansard staff, especially if the Assembly is to be based on a committee structure?

If that is so, I must tell the House that the Library tells me

"The cost of producingHansard for the House of Commons was given in reply to a Question in the House of Lords on 13th October 1975. For the period April 1974 to March 1975 printing and binding costs for the daily issue are given as £619,250; for the weekly report, £41,375; for the bound volumes £56,425 and for 'indexes etc. £48,825. Including paper costs of £51,000 the total cost for the Commons was £816,875."

Ought not such costs to be included in any estimate for the Assembly?

Cutting things short, I simply think that there is some kind of an obligation, over a period, say, quarterly, to give an indication of the detailed public broken-down costs of what the Government have in mind, and a progress-chasing of cost.

I have truncated my remarks because my hon. Friend the Member for Spring-burn and others have important matters to raise. However, I hope that the Government will acquit me of not having gone into detail, which I am quite prepared to do at inordinate length, but it would be unfair to do so on this occasion.

10.37 a.m.

I have no wish to detain the House and many other hon. Members who have important things to say. However, as an English Member who believes passionately in the United Kingdom, I want to support everything that has been said by the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), but also to say something on the wider issue.

I believe that it is totally wrong and utterly indefensible that this Assembly building should be put in hand and that money should be spent before this House has agreed that there should be an Assembly at all. It is absolutely wrong. It is an insult to Parliament. It is an example of high-handed executive action which ought to be deplored by hon. Members in all parts of the House.

Hear, hear.

I am glad to have the hon. Genleman's support.

We shall be returning to the House in the autumn. We do not know when the new Session is to begin, but when it does we shall be plunged into long and detailed debates on devolution. This is a matter of high constitutional principle. Many hon. Members, on both sides of the House, Scottish, Welsh, English and Irish, have deeply-held convictions. I for one hope and believe that those convictions will transcend party lines. I believe that there will be some very odd bedfellows in the Lobby—and quite rightly too. I cannot conceive of supporting any scheme for devolution, and I know that there are hon. Members who feel just as passionately as I do.

To take this decision with regard to the Assembly and to put costly alterations in train before the House has decided that there will be an Assembly is utterly wrong. It is wrong not only in principle but in detail.

We have the Government's latest proposals about the size of the Assembly. However, who is to say that they will not be amended substantially? Let us assume for a moment that there is to be an Assembly. Personally, I should not be surprised if the wretched Bill got thrown out on Second Reading, and I hope to God that it does. But if there is to be an Assembly, who is to say that its membership will be 150? There might be an amendment to make it 100, which might be carried. It might be 200. We do not know. Therefore, for this money to be spent and for these elaborate plans and proposals to be put forward and implemented before the House has taken a decision is wrong in not only principle but detail.

I shall say no more now because other hon. Members are present and they have sat up through most of the night and have their own contributions to make. I close by saying once again that this is an example of high-handed executive action. Both sides of the House ought to deplore it, because until we have taken a decision here as to whether there should be an Assembly, it is wrong that we should be voting sums of money to build what in fact could become a tartan elephant.

10.40 a.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) was, as usual, an example to us all in the precision and brevity with which he presented his case. I congratulate him upon it, and I assure him that I do not measure his concern by the concision of his speech. I have read carefully the 39 Questions which he tabled on these matters, and I recognise his continuing concern. I shall not be able to reply to every point which he raised, but I assure my hon. Friend that I shall consider the matters which he put to me, and on any which are not covered this morning I shall write to him as soon as possible so that he may have the fullest possible information.

In replying to this debate, I am wearing my hat as Minister with responsibility for the Property Services Agency. I should make clear at the outset the relationship between devolution and the Supplementary Estimates for 1976–77 which are embodied in the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill. The present Supplementary Estimate is not, of course, intended to authorise devolution; it is merely to make possible implementation of the decision without undue delay if and when such a decision is taken.

The Government are working to a timetable which envisages that the Assemblies will come into being and start to hold meetings by the spring of 1978, and that is now only 21 months away. If the Assemblies are to operate effectively, they must have accommodation which both provides for a Chamber in which to meet and for ancillary facilities and is located reasonably close to the relevant Government offices. The effectiveness of any kind of Assembly depends on the provision of suitable accommodation reasonably well adapted to the functions it has to serve.

Such accommodation cannot be created overnight. A new building would take years to provide. The only possibility is to acquire the most suitable existing buildings and adapt them for the purpose. Even so, starting from earlier this year when the PSA was authorised to acquire the necessary buildings, there is all too little time in which to get the work done. Unless, therefore, a start had been made when it was on acquisition, and unless we now follow through to complete acquisition and start the adaptations, the Assembly buildings could not be provided in time.

When we were considering the business of anticipating parliamentary approval, it was decided that in all the circumstances it would be right for the PSA to be authorised to enter into commitments and start work before the devolution legislation itself was approved.

The Supplementary Estimate gives figures for the cost of this project as £2,600,000. I should stress that this is a provisional Estimate, intended to cover a capital payment of £650,000 to acquire the Edinburgh building and about £2,000,000 of adaptation works there.

The Royal High School was the only building which was both available and conveniently located and relatively adaptable to the purposes of the Scottish Assembly. It is in good condition, and we have been able to agree satisfactory terms for its acquisition from the district council which owns it. We hope to let a contract for the adaptations in September. These will cover some repairs, ensure that the electrical heating and other services are suitable for the new use, and adapt the premises to provide for a Chamber with a seat for every member, a public gallery for 90 people, together with lobbies and dining facilities. Members' rooms and committee rooms will be located in St. Andrew's House over the road.

I turn now to some of the detailed questions which my hon. Friend asked. I think that we would accept that the building itself is not ideal, but it was the best choice on grounds of location, availability and adaptability in the time allowed and at reasonable cost. We are satisfied that it will provide an adequate Assembly building in 1978. The Assembly can decide later whether it needs improvement.

The Estimate of £2 million must be provisional at this stage, but we have no reason to think that it is a serious underestimate. As I have said, no detailed breakdown can be given at present, but the overall cost of £2 million, which excludes acquisition costs of £650,000, is expected to include about £250,000 on work to improve the services—heating, lighting, and so forth—and about £200,000 for equipment for ventilation, security and catering installations. The rest will be spent mainly on repairs and adaptations.

My hon. Friend asked about structural investigations. The buildings were inspected as thoroughly as possible by PSA staff in the course of planning the work. Only limited opening up of the structure was undertaken, in the roof and elsewhere by removal of some floorboards, some stonework and so on for inspection. Complete opening up for a full structural survey was not possible as the building was in use and is not owned by the PSA. Subject to this, however, we know of no reason to expect that there are hidden defects of a major nature which will be discovered in the course of the work.

No decision has been made on the installation of electronic voting. It is expected that the Assembly itself will decide whether to install it. The PSA has, however, had discussions with manufacturers and is satisfied that there are systems available which could be used. The PSA will provide ductwork for cables for a voting system, but otherwise the cost does not include any allowance for electronic voting.

My hon. Friend asked what the basis of the contract will be. It is intended that competitive tenders will be invited on the basis of a schedule of rates. As the contract period is over one year, the contract will include provision for variation of price payments. It will not be let on a cost-plus basis.

The plans provide for the reporting of proceedings, but the printing ofHansard, to which my hon. Friend referred, is not the responsibility of the PSA and will be a matter for the Assembly when it has been set up.

I turn now to the cost of finding accommodation elsewhere for staff displaced from St. Andrew's House. I cannot give an estimate of the cost, but we certainly hope to avoid taking new space, and careful scrutiny is being made of the situation in that respect.

As for the swimming pool, the space is needed for other facilities for the Assembly, and that is why action has been taken there. There will be liquidated damages provisions in the contract.

I have tried to emulate my hon. Friend's example in the brevity of my reply, and I assure him that we take very seriously the searching questions which he has put. I shall write to him with further information on any matters which I have not covered.

Robroyston Hospital, Glasgow

10.49 a.m.

I am glad to have this opportunity to raise in the House the subject of the proposed closure of Robroyston Hospital, Glasgow, and I can tell the House at the outset that I have here a telegram from the local health council supporting me in my efforts to prevent its closure. That in itself is an indication of the way in which the decision has been carried along. The first that the staff of the hospital, the local health council, local council, lors and I knew of the proposed closure was when we read about it in the Press.

Robroyston Hospital is situated on high ground in the north-east of my constituency. I deliberately mention the fact that it is on high ground because the reason given for the proposed closure is that a sewer requires rebuilding and that the ground is unsuitable.

The hospital is on an extremely good site, with a wide open prospect and plenty of space for extensions and car parking. It has an operating theatre in regular use, and a fully equipped X-ray department and laboratory. It has outpatient clinics and a modern laundry which does laundry work for the hospital's own use and for Forresthall Hospital nearby.

The Greater Glasgow Health Board now proposes to close this busy and efficient hospital, and this is resented by people in the area. Sadly, the Secretary of State for Scotland agrees with the board. Hence, I am raising this matter in the House in the hope that my right hon. Friend will re-examine this matter and possibly change his mind.

In its annual report the local health council said:

"Our relationship with the Greater Glasgow Health Board has not been exactly ideal. We do not receive the minutes of the board relating to health services in our area or copies of appropriate papers…"

The council then highlights the way in which its views were ignored when the decision to close the hospital was taken.

The Greater Glasgow Health Board said that it had consulted most of the bodies concerned in the Strathclyde Regional Council. That council wrote to protest at the closing of the hospital, but the board did not apparently consult the Strathclyde Regional Council, the trade unions, or the staff until after the decision was made. That also applies to my colleagues in the Glasgow district and the Strathclyde Regional Council. I personally read about the matter in the Press. I have made my own inquiries and I discover that, from the Strathclyde Regional Council downwards, nobody appears to have been consulted.

The board in giving reasons for the closure stated that patients would be put here, there and everywhere. The Belvedere Hospital is worried about the disposition of 60 beds which have been in use continuously since 1958. The Royal Infirmary in Glasgow is in the middle of massive redevelopment, whose completion is still some years into the future, and operates a very busy urological unit. One of the excuses given for the proposed closure was that the consultant urologist was about to retire. The report did not intimate that the urological unit was operated from the Royal Infirmary at Glasgow. One surgeon told me that he could only operate in cases where good home care could be given for a number of days after the operation because he has no beds for long-stay patients.

The proposal to accommodate the infectious diseases unit in Stobhill takes some understanding because Stobhill is one of the largest hospitals in Britain. One cannot take seriously the suggestion that such a hospital should incorporate a large infectious diseases unit. Surely the board should not expose such a large unit to risk of that nature.

We read in the Press of new dangers lurking abroad, such as rabies and lassa fever. The Greater Glasgow Health Board appears to be assuming that the days of the epidemic are over and that there will be no more emergencies. Yet when an outbreak of dysentery occurs at Stobhill, the patients are decanted to Robroyston Hospital. Furthermore, Robroyston is the only Glasgow hospital that takes expectant mothers with TB postive sputum tests. When the birth rate was rising, a maternity unit was set up at Robroyston. This was a positive indication of the value of having a unit such as Robroyston ready for development when need arises.

There is no point in arguing, as the board argues, that the Robroyston Hospital will be put in mothballs. As soon as the key is turned in the door, vandals will move in and the cost will be, not £250,000 for a new sewer, but a figure of £2½ million to bring the hospital up to any kind of emergency standard.

There are two other hospitals in my constituency which the Minister knows very well, namely, the Eastern District Hospital and the Forresthall Home and Hospital, about whose future there is some conjecture. When I was Chairman of the Eastern District Hospital in 1955, the hospital was then said to have a life of 15 years. We could not get money for improvements because of that short life period. When my hon. Friends on the Front Bench were with me in Glasgow Corporation, we had plans for the redevelopment of Forresthall, but those plans had to be scrapped and that money had to go elsewhere.

Both Forresthall and Robroyston have large geriatric units. I shall not quote the reports, but I hope that the Minister will examine the report of the inquiry from which he will learn of the great need for geriatric accommodation. In the northern district there is a waiting period of 10 years for a place in an eventide home. The need for this type of accommodation is bound to increase. Almost 70 per cent. of old and aged people are sustained by their families.

The rapid fall in the birth rate has meant that in future many old people will not have families to care for them. Where will they go? It appears that the State will have to provide for them simply because the young will not be able to fill that requirement. Will new buildings have to be erected to take those people? This may be in doubt because of the cuts in public expenditure.

The Greater Glasgow Health Board has pointed out time and again in its reports that provision will have to be made for geriatric patients in Stobhill and elsewhere. Are alterations, additions and adaptations to take place, and will they come within the estimate? Has the cost of those works been taken into account and measured against the cost of a new sewer?

Mention was made in a letter received from the Minister about a decline in the population of the area. The Minister is quite right to take that view, but little heed has been paid to the redevelopment of the Springburn constituency. The heart of Springburn has been torn out, and much rebuilding is to take place, with consequent population increases. In addition, Glasgow District Council has plans now before the Secretary of State to develop land to the east of Robroyston Road for industrial purposes and land to the south-east of Wallacewell Road. That matter was submitted to my right hon. Friend on 13th March 1975. The land to the west of Robroyston Road is to be developed for housing, as appears from Glasgow Corporation minute 15/1387 of 21st Janury 1975. The construction of a new sewer is inevitable. The estimated cost of £250,000 will surely be shared by other land owners. I imagine that the health board will be responsible for only part of the sewer within the curtilage of the hospital.

It appears that staffing difficulties may be used as another excuse to expedite the closure of Robroyston Hospital. That is not surprising. When threats of closure are in the air, staff are obviously on the lookout for other jobs. I appeal to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to halt this closure. For a gross expenditure of £250,000—which is almost certain to be less than half in net terms when the cost of new buildings, alterations, adaptations and the possible contribution from other sources is deducted —Glasgow for that small amount of cost will be denied the use of a much-needed hospital, which has good supporting services. That situation is totally unacceptable to me and, I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider all that has been said.

11.0 a.m.

I am glad to have this opportunity to answer some of the observations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Spring-burn (Mr. Buchanan), and I hope that I shall be able to allay some of the fears expressed locally about the effects of the impending closure of Robroyston Hospital. I have almost as great a constituency interest in it as my hon. Friend and, therefore, I am aware of the problem at a personal level. I know of my hon. Friend's interest and responsibility in the past as Chairman of the Eastern District Board, a post which he occupied with distinction. Therefore, there is nothing between us in our concern about the future of Robroyston Hospital and about the alternative provision.

Let me deal first with the future of acute services in the Glasgow area. Concern has been expressed about this matter. It has to be seen against the background of a rapidly declining population in the Glasgow area. I think that it is fair to say that this is a matter which perhaps has not yet been taken fully on board by the health authority. However, this has nothing to do with the decision about the closure of Robroyston Hospital.

Nevertheless, in the context of a declining population, we need to take a fresh look at the hospital provision in the area as a whole, taking into account some of the older hospitals and some of the new district general hospitals now in the course of being provided. These are being built and will shortly be commissioned at Airdrie, Greenock and Kilmarnock, and two more are planned for Paisley and Motherwell. Therefore, hospital provision in general is adequate for the needs of the whole area, bearing in mind the numbers from outwith the Glasgow district presently using Glasgow hospitals, including Robroyston. I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that, with the alternative facilities which are available, despite the specific difficulties which may arise in Belvidere and Stobhill, to which my hon. Friend drew attention, we are satisfied that there will be an adequate provision of acute beds and of urology and gynaecological services, to which he made special reference.

As for the implications for staff, I have a great deal of sympathy with my hon. Friend's concern about the effect on staff who have given devoted and faithful service to Robroyston Hospital. It is a hospital which has attracted a special affection from its staff. If I may be permitted to use 30 seconds of time, even at this late hour, to voice my personal affection for it, I might say that my daughter was born there and that two of my best friends died there. It is a hospital with which I have had very close connections. It is the kind of hospital which has attracted dedicated service from many of its staff.

There was a narrow majority of those voting to keep it open, and I can well understand the sense of dedication expressed in that vote. However, I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that there will be detailed discussions with the staff on the alternative posts in other hospitals which will be available to them. Obviously, this is a discussion in which it would have been wrong to engage until the decision had been made. But the health board will now be able to discuss alternative employment opportunities with individual members of the staff.

I take my hon. Friend's point that perhaps the processes of consultation were not altogether adequate. That is a modest way of putting it, but it is not right for me to put it any more strongly. However, the decision is not due to the financial implications on public expenditure. Nor is it due to the future hospital provision to which I have referred, although that has a bearing, because obviously it is an obligation on the authorities not just in this area but in the whole of Scotland to ensure that services are broadly equal in opportunity to patients wherever they are from.

However, because of the decline in population in the Glasgow area, there is a need for a constant and continuing review of facilities. But there is no doubt that Robroyston probably would have had to close fairly soon in any event. The immediate and urgent problem with the sewer has brought it to a head. I can confirm that it is not a question of possible overspending in the budget for 1975–76. There is no truth in that allegation.

The future of the hospital is a matter that will be discussed. The normal procedure will be followed by the board, and it may be that the buildings and the site will be offered to the local authorities or to other Government Departments. At this stage, I cannot anticipate the outcome.

We are all sorry that this decision has had to be made. I can assure my hon. Friend that any problems which arise will be given adequate consideration. My hon. Friend will also be consulted about the alternative provisions and about alternative opportunities for the staff, although that is a detailed matter to be settled between the board and the unions concerned.

Expansion is taking place in some areas of the country, there is a holding operation in others, and in some there may even be a contraction in services linked to a shrinking population. That is the broad picture which I have to paint for my hon. Friend. However, I assure him that we appreciate his interest and concern, and I am certain that the provision of services to patients in the areas which he and I represent will continue at a high level. The quality of staff makes the provision extremely good, and that will continue even though they have to be allocated positions in other hospitals.

rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Bill, accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House; immediately considered in Committee; reported, without amendment.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standin Order No. 93( Consolidated Fund Bills) and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

European Parliament (Membership)

Ordered.

That, with effect from 1st October next, Mr. Russell Johnston be designated a member of the European Parliament.

Ordered.

That this Order be a Standing Order of the House.—[Mr. John Ellis.]

Statutory Instruments

With the agreement of the House, I propose to put jointly the Questions on the four motions relating to weights and measures.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 73A ( 5) ( Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments),

Weights And Measures

That the Weights and Measures Act 1963 (Bread) Order 1976, a draft of which was laid before this House on 19th July, be approved.

That the Weights and Measures Act 1963 (Tea) Order 1976, a draft of which was laid before this House on 19th July, be approved.

That the Weights and Measures (Flour and Oat Products) (Exemption) Order 1976, a draft of which was laid before this House on 19th July, be approved.

That the Weights and Measures (Potatoes) (Exemption) Order 1976, a draft of which was laid before this House on 19th July, be approved.—[ Mr. John Ellis.]

Question agreed to.

Police Forces (Co-Operation)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [ Mr. John Ellis.]

11.10 a.m.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of command and co-operation in national police inquiries. I am also grateful to the Minister for being present to answer the debate. I know that she has had a long and somewhat arduous night. At this hour of the morning I am pleased to see her looking so refreshed.

This matter springs from the recent Black Panther case inquiry, but I refer to that inquiry only as a springboard from which to debate the wider question of national police cross-border responsibilities in serious crime and the arguments surrounding a unified or national police force.

The Black Panther inquiry highlights the problem and I therefore wish to mention a few of the details of that inquiry. The man concerned began his dismal career in Yorkshire, where he killed. That involved one force. He went to Lancashire, where he again killed. That involved another force. He went to Staffordshire, where he killed again. That involved yet another force. He then, within the borders of the West Mercia Constabulary, engaged in a kidnapping. That involved another force. There are in addition regional crime squad responsibilities and the added dimension of calling in New Scotland Yard. We know that it is that, together with cross-border co-operation, that resulted in an inordinate amount of publicity and recrimination between individual police officers and police forces.

The problem is one of command, pure and simple. There is no command in cross-border inquiries which is satisfactory to meet the seriousness of the occasion. I am not criticising the necessity for local control. My central argument is about the lack of command in inquiries of this sort rather than whether there should be national or local control. Local command is adequate to deal with most cases. In a cross-border inquiry there should be control, from wherever it comes.

The lack of control has an effect upon the reputation and morale of the forces from both inside and outside. I do not seek in any way to knock the police force in raising these matters. On the contrary, I speak from my knowledge and that of other hon. Members that those opinions are shared by those within police forces, including senior members, and by many people outside.

To illustrate what I am saying about reputation and morale, in the Black Panther case a distinguished detective officer, Bob Booth, of the West Mercia Constabulary, received a large amount of publicity and had to carry the can for many of his fellow officers purely because of problems of command. In the full glare of publicity he suffered a demotion, although that was not admitted within the force. He was an experienced detective officer of 30 years' standing and he had the same number of commendations. He now heads the uniformed branch in Malvern.

Unless something is done, in this age when people are becoming more and more "public" and where it is impossible, even within the Government, let alone within the police force, to keep things completely within the family, the trend in the future will be even worse for morale.

Without going into details, I will give the background. As a result of regional amalgamations, the local forces are between the devil and the deep blue sea —neither one thing nor the other. For good and proper reasons, we have lost our small local forces and we have virtually regional forces. The West Mercia Constabulary is a vast conglomeration, as remote as any national police force could be. It is subject to regional control yet at the same time it is autonomous. At the head of these forces, apart from the Metropolitan Police force, there are chief constables. Chief constables have considerable power and status in their communities and their forces, but they are not effectively answerable to the Home Office.

I appreciate that in recent years there have been innovations which, at least on paper, mean that a case can be made for the Home Secretary having greater control of the police force. I know that the Minister will not take this personally, but her Department is peculiarly reluctant to intervene, interfere or even direct the activities of the police. Her Department does not in the true sense of the word control the police force. It trips around on the brink of the pool without ever diving in. That is not a good background for co-operation in command in dealing with serious crimes.

The tone of the Minister's answer to a Question I posed on the Black Panther case is a good illustration of the Home Office's attitude to the police force. The hon. Lady said:

"We are confident that chief officers are fully aware of the lessons to be drawn from this investigation."—[Official Report, 30th July 1976; Vol. 916, c. 438.]

In other words, the people who have fallen out on this and other occasions have been allowed to talk about it and it is not believed that a formal inquiry would serve a useful purpose. There is no mention of anyone being in charge of the discussion, not even an acknowledgment that the Home Office participated in it, let alone played a forceful rôle.

There are two aspects which could have a role to play in answering the case I am putting forward. The first concerns regional crime squads and the record of the "Yard" and the improved disposal of specialist bodies for the use of the constabulary throughout the country. Are regional crime squads the answer? I think not. They are welded on to the present system. Crime can be as cross-regional as it is cross-force, and once again the same problem arises.

The regional crime squads have a coordinator, but he mirrors the total inadequacy of the present system, distinguished officer as he is. I think I am right in saying that he has no formal rank at all. On ceremonial occasion he does not even wear a uniform. He sits in an office in London and has to deal with chief constables of vast police forces all over the country. In co-ordinating, he comes nowhere near to commanding anyone. He is rather like a Minister without Portfolio or a Minister without a Department. Who is he to challenge a chief constable when he is sitting in an office in London and has behind him only the Home Office, which is reluctant to interfere?

Welded on to the system as they are, the regional crime squads are principally involved in what the police call target work. They deal with people they know to be criminals or who might become criminals, making sure that the next time those people commit a crime they will be caught. They are not specifically directed towards the kidnapper, who may well be a first-time criminal, or the dedicated terrorist. In so far as they have information—and that is principally what they are getting—about those people, they will be augmenting the local forces who will have command—the Black Panther case is an illustration of this—in their different areas and over all aspects of any investigation.

It is unsatisfactory that from the centre someone in the Metropolitan Police must almost go down on bended knee and ask to be called in. All too often he is called in too late or in circumstances which lead to ill feeling among those who have called him in. If he goes in, he must be completely free to act. If a specialist squad is called in, it is difficult for the local police, who will not outrank the Metropolitan Police officer, to say "boo" to any goose. The net result is that no one is in command. This was all too clearly illustrated in the Midlands and by aspects of the inquiry to which I have referred.

One aspect which is at the root of the whole matter is the petty jealousy which arises from calling in the man from London. The whole ethos of the Metropolitan Police, providing a national police force in so far as we have it, leads to much ill feeling among regional officers, who rightly consider that they can do the job as well as the Metropolitan Police.

This matter was last examined by the Royal Commission on the Police, which reported in 1962. I must declare an interest here in that my father was a member of that Royal Commission, which makes me happy to be addressing the Minister on this subject. Much evidence was given before it—and 14 years later it is interesting to read it—on two aspects: a national CID and a national police force. The Royal Commission, having heard all the arguments, declined to recommend the establishment of a national CID but said that the matter should be kept constantly under review and that the Government should not hesitate to establish, if necessary, a national criminal investigation department.

The Royal Commission acknowledged the substantial case which was made out to it for a national police force or a unified police force by way of a chain of command. I quote paragraph (8) of the summary of conclusions and recommendations, which deals with paragraph 128 of the report and which acknowledges what I am saying:

"There is a substantial case for creating a national police service. Its organisation would be more logical, and a number of us think that it would prove to be a more effective instrument for fighting crime and handling road traffic than the present large number of partially autonomous local forces".

It is unusual for people who have signed a main report declining to introduce a national police force at the same time to acknowledge that an adequate case has been made for it. That was underlined by the dissenting report of Professor Goodhart. The core of what he said was very much the argument which I am putting now—namely, that, without a unified and clear command structure, in any police operation, as with any military operation, the same problems are bound to arise again.

As to the future, we need a command structure. I should have thought that the Minister and her Department would agree with that proposition. We know that crimes of the Blank Panther type, even in a different, perhaps terrorist, guise, or kidnapping—which will probably increase in this country as it has increased in other countries—may well happen again. In those circumstances, what do we do about the matter? Can we tighten the present system; or, put another way, is the present system all right save perhaps for a few nominal amendments? The answer is "No", because any system in which no one is in clear control, either generally by way of the Home Department or specifically in any inquiry, will remain inadequate.

If that be accepted, should we have a separate criminal investigation department or a separate national apparatus to deal with serious crime? The answer to that unequivocally is "No". It is against the modern trend in the police force of trying to move the uniformed branch into closer proximity with the detective branch. We cannot have two police forces, one nationally controlled and one locally controlled in some ununified way, running alongside each other. Therefore that is out, and I am surprised that that was not said more clearly by the Royal Commission.

Either we must leave the system alone and pretend that all is well, or we must move towards a national or unified command structure in the police force. Whatever the Minister may say, that is coming as night follows day, and I hope that both of us will be Members, on whatever side of the House we may then sit, when it does. Now we are stuck in the middle. The trend is towards greater national control. At the moment, as a result of various movements in the direction that I am advocating but in a typically British way—never going far enough soon enough—we are stuck with various independent forces which are virtually regional but without any of the assets of national control.

At the same time, and even more confusingly, we are going national in all our specialist services. The pay structure is already national, and so are the police unions and the inspectorate. Yet in the most serious aspect—the investigation of crime—there is no clear command. If we go national, we shall be equipped for proper national investigation. There will be greater fluidity in manpower and specialist services. We shall at least end the feeling caused by calling in the man from London, because London will be one division or region. People will be brought in on a national basis, outranking, if necessary, those with whom they work or, if they do not, taking orders from people in the same force.

There will be other benefits along the way, such as standardising policy and the conduct of police prosecution, which is not an unimportant matter. I have an interest here and point out to the Minister that the difference between the efficiency of the legal advisers of a first-class force such as the Metropolitan Police and that of those in certain county forces is almost too staggering to menion.

Last but not least, if there were a clear national command structure there would be clear ministerial responsibility for answering Questions. At the moment, because of the responsibility of the Home Office, it is difficult to ask Questions about police forces throughout the country. This tendency is creeping in throughout the political spectrum. As more matters leave Government control and come under separate agencies, it is more difficult to ask Questions about anything substantial.

I acknowledge that in the main what I have said concerns a specific inquiry, but the system ecnerally is inadequate and it mirrors the somewhat complacent attitude of the Home Department. I am deeply concerned that there should not be a recurrence of the situation. It may well heppen again, but if it does it will be the duty of all of us to ensure that those responsible are caught without disharmony arising in the police force. That will never happen unless we have a proper and orderly system of command.

11.29 a.m.

I welcome this opportunity to discuss general issues of the kind raised by the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris). These are important matters and it is right that they should be publicly discussed. I should make it clear from the outset that I do not propose to discuss in detail the police investigation concerning the kidnapping and subsequent death of Miss Lesley Whittle. This is not because I wish to stifle discussion of that case or of the way in which it was investigated but because the Home Secretary has no responsibility in the day-to-day conduct of a particular police investigation.

I will say this of that case: that it has been discussed by chief officers of police collectively and I am quite sure that they are fully aware of the need to learn any lessons which may be learned from such an investigation. However, as a result of reports and advice that he has received, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary does not think that any purpose would be served by setting up a formal inquiry into that police investigation.

The fact that a particular investigation is a matter for discussion by chief officers of police is a reflection of our system of policing in this country. The local control of police forces is an essential element of that system. Chief constables in this country, unlike some continental countries, do not come under the direction of a Minister of the Interior in the enforcement of the law. The responsibility of deciding how an offence should be investigated is for them and them alone.

The Home Secretary has no power to tell chief constables how to conduct an investigation. Not is it desirable that he should have such a power, although on that point I feel that the hon. Gentleman did not seem to share that view. The Home Secretary's powers in respect of the police are limited and defined. Home Office Ministers wish that this were more widely known and that its importance was more generally appreciated.

What is the Home Secretary's rôle? The powers of the Secretary of State are set out in the Police Act 1964, particularly in Part II of the Act. He has certain powers in relation to the appointment and removal of chief officers. That is most important. He has the power to call for reports from chief officers. He is responsible for providing much of the money required for the police. He may set up inquiries into any matter connected with the policing of an area and he has certain general responsibilities in connection with complaints against the police. He is responsible for making regulations about the government, administration and condition of service of police forces. He receives and decides police disciplinary appeals. He appoints members of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and receives their reports. These are all important powers.

Section 28 of the Police Act 1964 requires the Home Secretary to use his powers under the Act so as

"to promote the efficiency of the police".

He is particularly concerned with the provision of central services—the police college, district police training centres, forensic science laboratories, wireless depots and other organisations—which can more appropriately be run on a centralised basis.

Within the Home Office there are branches concerned with the development of police techniques and equipment. These services augment locally available resources, but they do not—and there is no intention that they should—take away a chief constable's responsibility for the operational direction of his officers. And there is a balance to be drawn between maintaining a chief constable's operational responsibilities on the one hand and on the other ensuring that he receives all the help he needs in the investigation of offences.

How does this work out in practice? Of course, the vast majority of offences are local and their investigation does not require the involvement of a second force. There is, however, a significant number of cases which concern more than one force, because of the mobility and pattern of activities of the criminal concerned. Although this is not a new development, it must be recognised that some criminals are becoming increasingly mobile and are committing offences over a wider area. On the other hand, the effect of amalgamations in recent years has been to enlarge force areas and to enable forces to develop a wider range of skills and equipment to deal with crime.

Aids to detection have also improved. Detective officers are able to call on the records at the Central Criminal Record Office at New Scotland Yard and at the regional criminal record offices throughout the country. If the resources of a particular force are not sufficient, the chief constable may ask the regional crime squad for assistance or he may bring in an officer from New Scotland Yard. In complicated fraud cases, the expertise of the Metropolitan and City Police Company Fraud Branch may be drawn upon.

I ought perhaps to mention one other aspect of police matters organised on a national basis. That is the Central Drugs and Illegal Immigration Intelligence Unit, which receives, processes and disseminates information about the misuse of drugs and illegal immigration.

Nor should we forget that the changes in policing in recent years have not been merely administrative. Technology has moved on too. Something which the police now take for granted—the personal radio—was in its infancy 15 years ago, yet in that time it has produced a revolution in techniques of operational policing. Communications have improved out of all recognition; research has opened up whole new areas of knowledge; and there are the police national computer as well as other common police services such as forensic science laboratories, which are partly financed by central Government. Our technical support services are probably the best in the world.

One of the features of almost all major incidents is the collection of vast quantities of information. The Police Scientific Development Branch of the Home Office is studying the feasibility of using a computer to assist police in the organisation of such information to facilitate identification of significant elements.

In listing these services, the point I wish to make is that no chief officer is in an isolated position whatever the situation he has to deal with. Chief officers of police are well aware of the need for cooperation between forces in dealing with the investigation of major crimes and the Home Secretary continues, through Her Majesty's inspectors of constabulary, to encourage the further development of cooperation. There is a wide range of services and assistance ready to hand and efforts are certainly being made to improve those services and to draw lessons from past incidents—for example, in discussions among chief constables and, at lower levels, in the detective training schools. But the overall command of the investigation rests—and in our system must rest—with the officer appointed by the chief constable and, ultimately, with the chief constable himself. It is for him to decide when to call for assistance and help and what to call for.

Of all the forms of assistance I have mentioned, the one upon which I wish in particular to say a few words is the regional crime squads. I single them out because their purpose is to give assistance in the investigation of just that type of offence which the hon. Gentleman has in mind—the offence which is one of a pattern which crosses force boundaries. Regional crime squads were introduced in 1965. They are organised in the form of regionally-based highly mobile detectives, and their particular concern—for which they have been freed from routine day-to-day inquiries—is with those who are responsible for serious organised crime. The regional co-ordinator works in close collaboration with the chief constables of the regions concerned, and each chief constable is in a position to ask for regional crime squad assistance in the investigation of a particular major crime.

I do not think that the public are sufficiently aware of the major constribution which the 850 or so regional crime squad officers make in dealing with organised crime. In 1975 the squads were responsible for, the arrest of no fewer than 7,671 prisoners. Assistance was given in 87 murder investigations and three attempted murders. There can be no doubt that their work is invaluable and I believe that it is recognised as such by chief constables.

For some time now the argument has been advanced in some quarters and by the hon. Gentleman that we ought to have a national police force and that investigation of the kidnap and murder of Lesley Whittle has given renewed currency to this idea. But my right hon. Friend remains of the opinion, which I share, that a national police force—or even a national CID, which is another suggestion that comes up from time to time—is not the answer.

The advocates of a national force claim that it would lead to a more efficient use of manpower, to a better career structure, and to greater uniformity in the enforcement of the law. They argue that such a force would be better able to cope with criminals whose activities extend—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Wednesday evening, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty minutes to Twelve noon.

Volume 916: debated on Wednesday 4 August 1976

House Of Commons

Prayers

Private Business

Cromarty Petroleum Order Confirmation Bill (By Order)

Oral Answers To Questions

Environment

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Housing Finance

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Bracknell Development Corporation

Bus Lanes (Traffic Regulations)

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European Parliament (Membership)

Statutory Instruments

Weights And Measures

Police Forces (Co-Operation)