On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I was reluctant to raise a point of order this morning because I have said too much perhaps on many things in the last few days. However, I am in a difficulty about the wreck, "Eleni V" The Lord President of the Council said to me earlier in the week:

"The hon. Member for Yarmouth asked whether a further statement could be made before the House rises for the recess. If there is a change in the situation or a special requirement for a statement, my hon. Friend who has been dealing with these matters would be prepared to make a further statement on Friday."—[Official Report, 24th May 1978; Vol. 950, c. 1641.]

There has been a dramatic change in the situation this morning. That dreadful wreck, spewing forth its filth, is now off the coast of Yarmouth, more or less free. This represents an enormous change in the situation.

Unfortunately, I understand that the Minister concerned does not intend to make a statement. I am sorry that neither he nor the Leader of the House is here to say what is to happen and to explain the Government's intentions. It is odd that I should have had a half-promise and that now no one is here from the Government to deal with it.

I wish I could help the hon. Member. He will understand it is beyond my powers to do so.

By leave of the House I shall put together the Questions on the two motions relating to Statutory Instruments.

There is an urgent need for a decision about the future manufacturing programme of British Aerospace. The importance of this decision is such that it will settle the direction which this country takes in civil aviation manufacture for the rest of the century and beyond. Everybody agrees that our future production programme must be a collaborative one with other nations. No longer can we go it alone as we have in the past.

The question is—with which other nation or nations should we collaborate on aircraft production in the future? The choice is between working with Europe to develop a new short- to medium-range airliner and accepting a deal with Boeing or McDonell Douglas of the United States to participate in the development of one of the new jets which those companies are planning. The outcome of the decision will affect the future of British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce engines, and of course it will have an effect upon the fleet that British Airways flies in the future. For the Government it is a decision of the highest importance. It has important political implications.

It is an important decision. All three of the companies involved—British Aerospace, Rolls-Royce and British Airways—seem to have different views on this matter. Therefore, in the end the Government will have to decide and the main consideration will have to be commercial. Whatever aircraft is produced must be a seller. It is no good participating in the production of an aircraft the sales of which are in doubt.

For the British aircraft manufacturing and aero-engine industries the decision is doubly important. The decision will settle whether we shall stay in the mainstream of production in the future or whether we shall end up as sub-contractors for others. The future of the industry and the jobs of everyone involved are at stake. The trade unions have been in touch with us. My union, the Transport and General Workers Union, has been in discussions on this matter and is concerned about the future job prospects of its members who are employed in the aircraft industry.

At the root of our decision is the fact that a new generation of short to medium-range civil airliners is on the way. The world's airlines want an airliner seating around 160 to 180 passengers and capable of flying a distance of up to 2,000 miles. It is estimated that about a thousand such jets will be needed in the next 10 to 15 years, and many more by the end of the century. This will be the biggest market of all, and all the world's manufacturers are interested in it. That is the background to the decision that has to be made.

The problem for us in the United Kingdom is that manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic are moving to meet the needs of this market, and broadly comparable types of aircraft are being planned. We have to collaborate with one option or another, which is why the present decision is so vital.

Boeing's widely publicised offer of a partnership in building the 160-seat twin engined 757 jet, the wings and engines of which could be built in this country, has attracted much support. Boeing is the world's biggest jet builder, with more than 3,300 aircraft produced to its credit. Some sources say that the 757 Boeing would offer us 50 per cent. of the work, taking into account design development and production of the wings, rear fuselage, part of the tail, the undercarriage, nose-wheel and the engines for all 757s to be built. This point must be borne in mind. In many cases airlines specify which engines are to be fitted to the airliners they purchase. It would therefore not be possible for Boeing to guarantee that Rolls-Royce engines would go into all 757s. Some airlines might want other engines. That part of the offer, therefore, may not be so attractive after all, and Rolls-Royce should bear that in mind.

The other new Boeing jet—the 767—has also been mentioned as part of the deal. It is reported that United Kingdom participation in the 757 programme would enhance the possibility of Rolls-Royce getting its RB211–524 engines into that aircraft. But that idea is little more than a long-term gamble.

Compared with the Boeing offer, the European programme seems not so secure. The Europeans have two projects. The first is the Eurojet which will seat upwards of 130 people. But it would have Franco-US CFM-56 engines, and the aircraft could be regarded as a competitor to the 757.

The second European venture is the proposed B-10 version of the A300 airbus. That would seat roughly 217 passengers and be a competitor of the 767. It could—and I repeat could—be fitted with the 524B Rolls-Royce engines. But the position is not yet clear. No one doubts the technical competence of the European industry, but its collective experience in the world jet airline market is fewer than 600 aircraft—and these mainly British. So its position is much less well established than that of Boeing. If we in the United Kingdom pulled out, that would greatly weaken the base of the project. Accordingly, many Europeans would regard British collaboration with Boeing as destroying any hope of a deal with Europe and would cut Britain out of the European civil project until the end of this century.

They further feel that such a move would jeopardise continued co-operation in the military area. Moreover, the more pessimistic voices in Europe say that the Americans wish to kill off the European competition by splitting us from the rest of Europe, thus killing the challenge to Boeing's supremacy, destroying the European industry now, and reducing Britain's role to that of a sub-contractor to the Americans for the future.

Against that, many in the United Kingdom feel that it is now a fact that the Eurojet will not have British engines. The British share of manufacturing in the B-10 is not clear either. The financial terms involved are so high that the Government may not be prepared to entertain them. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary can help us with these matters when he replies to the debate because it is in the area of the European project that the big question mark lies. That has to be cleared up before a firm decision can be made.

It may be too early for my hon. Friend to say how the talks between the Secretary of State and the Germans and the French went this week. I was, however, heartened to know that my right hon. Friend had these talks. This is a Government matter which involves public funds. The British corner in these negotiations must not be left to others. I believe that direct negotiations are called for when the Government's money is at stake.

It is said that because Rolls-Royce has so far been excluded from the Eurojet and because it has only a limited interest in the proposed B-10, it is anxious to see the Boeing deal go ahead. Rolls-Royce believes that it stands a better chance of a big long-term market by linking with the 757 and 767 programmes.

Aero-engine interests cannot be divorced from airframe interests. Each relies on the other. If we ceased to produce airframes, how long do hon. Members think we could continue in the aero-engine side of the business? I hope that the airframe and aero-engine manfacturers recognise the existence of this mutual dependence. The question about all this is whether talks are in progress between British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce on the subject of common interest. If they are not they should be.

There is then the partnership offered by McDonnell Douglas which has indicated its willingness to consider collaboration with more than one European partner. The centre piece of any partnership would be McDonnell's ATMR—the advanced-technology medium-range transport—which would be a direct rival to the Boeing 757. Detailed designs are not complete, but it would be powered by Rolls-Royce engines. It is also said that as part of the deal McDonnell Douglas could help with marketing the HS146 and possibly the development of a more advanced version of the Harrier.

There is the suggestion that the ATMR could be linked with the Eurojet project, but it is difficult to determine whether this suggestion is conceivable. Perhaps my hon. Friend the under-Secretary will comment on that matter in replying to the debate.

In all this the role of British Airways is vital. It has publicly confirmed its wish to buy 19 Boeing 737s to replace the existing Tridents from 1980 onwards. Some people believe that by pressing for Boeings as replacements rather than buy- ing more BAC 111s British Airways is doing a disservice to the British aircraft manufacturing industry. It is believed that if when the United Kingdom is trying to sell 111s to Romania and Japan our own flag carrier does not buy the aeroplane, foreigners will interpret that as a lack of confdence in the home product. That will have extremely damaging effects on sales and will lead to a loss of jobs in the industry.

I hope that the hon. Member will not press that point too heavily. It is very important for everyone to understand that the 111 which is being marketed in Japan seats approximately 75 passengers, and that is directed at that market. British Airways says that it wants a 120-seat aeroplane. If it goes for the 737 in the end that will be because it is a larger aeroplane which is in no way comparable with the aeroplane that BAC is marketing in Japan.

While I agree with the hon. Gentleman, I believe that it is necessary that we review the whole picture with regard to aerospace. What I am saying is not necessarily what the facts are; it is what others will interpret them as. This is very important. If we do not make these sales of 111s, the hon. Member knows full well that many of my constituents and many of his will be adversely affected by this matter. This is the problem in regard to the 111.

Therefore, I believe that the message to the Government is this: do not let British Airways press us into the arms of Boeing, whose real aim is to give themselves a monopoly of aircraft production in the future. The best collaborative project for Britain depends on complex factors, including the best deal that can be obtained for design and work-sharing, as well as aircraft marketing. We must not be pushed prematurely into this decision before all the factors have been taken into account. This is the reason why the British Airways intervention at this stage has confused the situation.

The total labour force in the aerospace industry has fallen from some 300,000 in 1957 to 195,500 in 1977. Of the work force, 36 per cent. work on airframes, 30 per cent. work on engines and 34 per cent. work on equipment and avionics. It is still a very viable industry. It must not be allowed to contract any further. Britain's industry has dropped in financial turnover in the Western world from second place to the United States in 1971 to third place, after France, in 1975. But ours is still an industry which is strong in exports and which helps the balance of payments tremendously. That is why it must not be allowed to contract.

Those employed in the industry, who welcomed the public ownership of the old companies, now look to the Government for a lead. The partnership must be one that will preserve both the airframe and the aero-engine sides of our industry. There must be a market for the product produced. We all remember the despicable way in which the Americans tried to kill off Concorde. Many people wonder whether this kind of thing will happen again if we go it alone with Europe on the European jet. Will there be further pressure and sanctions against us from across the Atlantic?

The Rolls-Royce lobbying compaign designed to get the Government to buy American aircraft has raised fears that people are being misled. What has emerged is that British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce are totally divided in their views about which way the industry should go. In my view, attempts have been made to stampede British Aerospace into decisions on future projects that will have far-reaching effects for many years.

The decision made must be the right one as the jobs of workers and the livelihood of everyone concerned in the industry are at stake. My preference is for establishing a strong European collaborative aircraft industry. Then we can explore the possibility of collaborative projects with North American industry. But to go in with the Americans now and destroy the European competition to the Americans would be an act of folly which would reduce us from the main stream of aircraft production to the eventual role of sub-contractor for the Americans. This must not be allowed to happen.

We have an industry of which we are justly proud. Now is not the time for the Government to stand by while this heritage is given away. I hope, therefore, that in replying to the debate, my hon. Friend the Minister will give us as full a reply as possible, though I do not expect him to go all the way, because the fears about the proposals that I have outlined are very strong. The Minister's reply will be listened to with interest by many thousands of workers and their families. Will he give a pledge that Britain's independence as an aircraft manufacturer will be safeguarded long into the future?

I shall take up only a few minutes, because other hon. Members wish to speak in the debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Walker) has given a very detailed exposition of many of the major problems facing the industry. I, too, hope that the Minister will reply in some detail.

First, I entirely support what my hon. Friend said: the industry faces crucial decisions. They are crucial decisions to be taken against a background of an industry on which, if we are to have any semblance of being a technological power in the future, we ought to be concentrating resources. The aerospace industry is constantly pushing forward the frontiers of technological advance. We need to bear in mind that these decisions have to be taken against a background of British manufacturing industry caught in a spiral of contraction and decline. The aerospace industry is one on which we ought to be concentrating resources. Therefore, these decisions will be absolutely crucial for the future.

It seems to me that British Airways has put out all kinds of information about whether it will be buying BAC 111s or Boeing 737s, and that that information is based on all kinds of extrapolations of figures which are highly dubious. Indeed, British Airways already admits that when thinking about figures well into the 1980s and 1990s, there is a margin of error, such as to make some of the figures highly suspect.

I believe that there has been a considerable seduction attempt by the public relations officers of Boeing. As far as I can see, it is not the engineers who have done this but the PROs. They have come here and have gone to many other places, and they have made all kinds of promises. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Boeing cannot guarantee that Rolls-Royce engines will go into the aircraft. Only one firm can guarantee that—Rolls-Royce itself. If Rolls-Royce produces the best engines, they will be demanded.

However, I believe that what will happen is that Boeings will say "Yes", the engines will go into a few of these aircraft, but from then onwards it will be pure open competition with American companies, and so on. Therefore, I am not impressed at all by this public relations exercise, this attempted seduction by Boeing.

We have received a very detailed document from British Aerospace. It raises a whole number of questions. I shall mention some of them quickly. I understand that British Airways has said that the 111 cannot be as profitably operated as a mixed-class aircraft. In reply, British Aerospace has pointed out that about 160 DC9s are operating in Europe on a mixed-class configuration. I am sure that the airlines concerned cannot all be wrong.

The whole question of commonality is given a very low sum in terms of the "guesstimates"—I cannot think that they could be anything more than that—that British Airways has made. There is the whole question of the balance of payments and the sum of £140 million. I find it rather strange that the 5 per cent. import duty on the 737s would apparently be waived. I understand that that is another £13 million. There are all kinds of questions such as these to be considered.

Then there is the whole question of the numbers of crew that will be necessary. The document from British Aerospace points out that Air France has recently dropped its option to lease Boeing 737 aircraft because, like United States airlines, a three-man crew is considered necessary by its flight crews. This could reduce British Airways' "guesstimate" of an operating surplus by about £55 million. All kinds of questions such as these are being raised.

This House ought to have an opportunity to go into these figures in detail, because figures are being thrown at us from all kinds of direction. We have had no real opportunity to debate these figures with the Ministers concerned.

I make two brief points in summing up. First, we must do something about the seeming lack of co-operation between British Airways, British Aerospace, Rolls-Royce and, indeed, the Government. We must knock some heads together and get those concerned to discuss what is best for the whole aerospace industry.

Those of us who, night after night, sat on the Committee dealing with the Bill to bring the aerospace industry into public ownership, with all the attempted machinations of the Tory Party to defeat that legislation, did not do so to bring that industry into public ownership so that it would become a sub-contractor to the Americans or to anybody else.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Walker) has done a service to the House by initiating this debate, thus giving hon Members the opportunity to comment on some major decisions that face the aerospace industry.

My hon. Friend clearly set out most of the options and dealt with the problems. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Thomas) pointed out, we all have difficulty in trying to cope with the many facts and figures that have been presented to us by the protagonists of one option or another. I do not believe that the decisions we make should be arrived at on the basis of simple prejudice. Nobody should take the view "I believe in European collaboration" or "I believe in American collaboration" and rule out any option that might present itself to be more in the interests of our workers and consumers. We should not work on that sort of blind prejudice. We should work on a rational discussion of the options. To arrive at a rational debate, we need much more information than we are now being given.

I share many of the reservations about the Boeing 757 option which have already been voiced. When weighing the options offered on a 160-seater or larger plane, we must consider not simply that particular plane and package but the effect of the building of that aircraft and entering that collaborative project on the future of the industry. This is my main fear on the Boeing option. I believe that Boeing, by offering a package that presents itself in attractive terms, is crudely seeking to buy off, at sale price, 20 years of competition from the European market. That would be a tragedy both for our industry and for Europe's.

We have already spoken about the difficulties of reconciling the interests of the three great State corporations, Rolls-Royce, British Airways and British Aerospace. It is somewhat blinkered of Rolls-Royce simply to look to the Boeing option as a save-all. It does not recognise the intensity of the competition in aero engines in America. Anybody who examines the airbus programme—an aircraft that is sold with an option of two rather than three engines—and considers what the American producers are offering to customers in discount terms to buy each other off in the airbus stakes can see the dangers for Boeing.

Having made clear that on the broad issue I can see a future for this country which does not rule out participation, I believe that enormous assets would be gained from building on the success that we have had with the airbus programme and going ahead with the B10. I believe that the airbus has been a great success because it is just beginning to break into the American market. The significance of that breakthrough should not be underestimated. I believe that the B10 would be an excellent plane. There is the possibility of Rolls-Royce engines, and in view of the boost to morale in Europe and other factors I believe that we should go ahead with that project.

In regard to the 160-seater aircraft, I believe that the McDonnell Douglas option looks more attractive, particularly if we could bring about a partnership involving Europe and Britain.

There is one other option that faces British aerospace—a project which is very much further advanced than all these others and on which we could now go ahead in this country. I refer to the HS146. I believe that the first decision that should be made when considering aircraft in this country is to go ahead with the HS146.

My hon. Friend the Minister knows as well as I do the history of this aircraft, but it is now four years since it was put on ice by the Government. Workers at Hatfield, Filton and Manchester, as well as those at Short's and Scottish Aviation—indeed, throughout British Aerospace—would be affected if that project were given the go-ahead.

Those workers have been given a variety of reasons for the delaying of decisions on the HS146. The first excuse was that the market had receded and that the project had to be kept on ice to see whether the market would return. We then had to wait for nationalisation because there was such a question mark over the future of the industry. Because of the parliamentary position, we had to wait for two years during nationalisation. Then we had to wait, so we were told, because the Government would not encroach on the commercial judgment of British Aerospace but had to await a recommendation from the board of British Aerospace.

At the end of March, British Aerospace came to the Government and said "We want to go ahead and build this plane". What happened then? Instead of an answer being given, the decision on the HS146 was taken up and submerged in the larger decisions involving the future of the aerospace industry. The HS146 project is different because it is much nearer to a go-ahead. If we are to go ahead and participate in the major, larger projects, it is very important that we should get on with them now, otherwise there will be a problem of human resources in designers and engineers if we start on three major projects all at the same time in six months.

There is another point which is particularly important and significant in Hatfield. We are losing design staff and engineers day by day and week by week. I was talking to the design office staff yesterday in Hatfield, and the chairman of the staff unions co-ordinating committee said "We used to have in our design office a cricket team and a football team. We now have a bowls team". That is the age of the people who are working on design in British Aerospace. Those people are our nation's most precious asset in an industry which has served us so well financially and in other ways in the past.

I believe that a decision on the HS146 can be taken separately. I believe that market considerations and the commercial viability of the aircraft dictate that we take it separately and in advance. It is obvious from the customer surveys which have been checked out by McDonnell Douglas in the United States and which are taking place in Third world countries and in the Commonwealth that customers in those countries will have to replace their turbo-props and Viscounts. They are not particularly interested in any option that is now on the market, but they do not know whether the HS146 will ever be built. They will not give an affirmative answer until somebody makes up his mind.

British Aerospace has said what it wants to do, and the workers in British Aerospace have made it clear what they want to do. Despite the background of other decisions that need to be made, I implore the Minister to give an answer at the earliest possible date.

I wish to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Kingswood (Mr. Walker) on securing this debate. I hope that he is not disappointed that there are not more hon. Members present. He and I know why there is not a greater attendance, but I am sure that what has been said this morning will be read by many people outside the House as well as inside it.

I do not intend to refer to the current order by British Airways for 111s or 737s. I do not think that that matter is relevant to the broader issue we are examining this morning. What I have to say will be said in a spirit of nonpartisanship, and I hope that it will be received in the same way. There is, I believe, no partisan difference between us over these matters at the moment.

I hope that the HS146 project will not become an object of partisan controversy, but I fear that if it is launched without the backing of substantial orders to confirm its commercial viability it will run that risk. I know how strongly the hon. Lady the Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman) feels, but she must understand that in this market at the moment the F28 is selling, and 40 per cent. of every F28 that sells is already of British manufacture. It would seem foolish to spend a very large sum of money to secure perhaps an extra 2 per cent. or 3 per cent. share of that market.

However, that apart, I think that the issues are pretty clear, and the hon. Member for Kingswood has laid them out. There is no future for our industry in non-commercial aeroplanes. There is a future for it granted that it has the dynamic leadership which it deserves. That is the rub at present.

The Opposition think that the Government were right to invite the United States manufacturers to discuss with Ministers their programmes and possible collaboration, as they have done recently, because we were becoming increasingly worried that the concentration of British Aerospace on the European options was a dangerous policy, a policy which we feared might lead to the loss or rejection of the other options by default before they had been adequately considered.

We should welcome participation for Britain in a secure international programme to which each partner was fully committed—a programme in which the costs were equitably shared, as were the jobs which would flow, and, indeed, the profits. To be secure, however, such a programme must be commercial. The Prime Minister and many other Ministers have made this point. To be commercial, the programme must offer an airliner which the airlines want to buy, when they want to buy it and at a competitive price. It must not just be a programme for the airliner which we would happen to like to make or even for the one which happens to suit the engines which somebody has available and wants to find a market for.

I hope that that message will be clearly understood. It is, perhaps, directed not so much at Derby as at Paris and Toulouse. Of course, the interests of Rolls-Royce must be protected, and those of British Airways, too. The stakes are high. The sums of money for investment—they have not been mentioned this morning—are enormous. I believe that the 146 programme is guesstimated now at about £200 million. The cost of the derivative 535 version of the RB211 engine is suggested as being in the £300 million to £350 million class. That is all before we come to any question of investment in what the hon. Member for Kingswood rightly described as the major market for a 160 to 180-seat aircraft, which can run to 1,000 or more aeroplanes over the next 10 or 15 years.

The number of jobs involved is huge, too. The scale of this industry is often forgotten. I believe that British Aerospace employs about 60,000 people directly—curiously enough, about the same number as are employed by McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. I only wish that our production were as large and as profitable as that of those two aerospace giants.

The hon. Member for Kingswood rightly concentrated on the civil market, but the military market requires collaboration too. He mentioned some of the possibilities there, such as the Harrier, and I hope that the Minister's colleagues in the Defence Department will be emphasising to the United States that we accept that the defence sales arrangement is, indeed, a two-way street, but, unhappily, all the traffic at present seems to be in one direction. Certainly the prospects for selling into the United States would be greatly enhanced if we could secure collaboration not only on civil but on military projects. The Hawker Hawk as a replacement trainer for the United States military is an obvious case in point.

It is our view that this is most certainly not a two-horse race, a contest between Boeing and Europe. McDonnell Douglas is another powerful contender with an excellent balance between military and civil work, and, because its plans are not yet so firm as those of Being, it may offer a chance to secure a multinational programme involving not only America and Britain but France and Germany. Certainly access to the rich American market will be much easier in such a partnership. I believe that it would be difficult to secure adequate access into America, especially if protectionism took a further hold, without our having an American partner.

We are unhappy—I have to say this—at the apparent lack of leadership from British Aerospace. I do not believe that that is a partisan comment. It would, I am sure, be reflected in the comments of a number of Members on the Government Benches too. But while the Government's policy is directed towards exploring—and, one hopes, securing—an option of collaboration, preferably across the Atlantic, and across the Channel too, they will have our support. As their policy decisions become clear, we hope that they will be such that we shall be able to continue to give them support.

I am sure that the House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Walker) for giving us an opportunity this morning to discuss the decisions which will have to be made very soon about future aircraft production. I welcome not only his contribution but also the clear way in which he set out the options available.

I am well aware of the anxieties to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention, anxieties not only in his area but in other parts of the country too. But, of course, I am equally aware of the complexity of the issues at stake and of the sometimes differing interests of the various parties to which he has drawn attention. I therefore make no apology for the amount of time which is being devoted by the Government and by the publicly owned industries concerned to a full consideration of the problems involved. I stress that these decisions cannot be arrived at in a hurry, and we do not think that it would be right to try to do so.

In passing, may I say that no one has dwelt much this morning on the contribution which the military side of British Aerospace has been making. The hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) made a brief reference to it. He will have noted that British Aerospace recently announced two contracts with the United States Air Force, totalling about £1 million, and there are hopes, I understand, of more work to follow when these projects are established.

I hope that the House will take note of the successes on the military and guided weapons side of British Aerospace. I refer, for example, to the Tornado, the Hawk, the Harrier and the Jaguar in the Aircraft Group, and Skyflash, Sea Dart and some of the other weapons systems in the Dynamics Group.

We should not lose sight of the contributions which all those activities make to the prosperity of the industry, but, important as the military work is, it is essential that we retain a full design and manufacturing capability to mount a viable civil aircraft programme. I stress that because I know that my hon. Friends who served on the Standing Committee made the point on a fair number of occasions.

That is why the Government share and endorse the determination of British Aerospace that the capacity which we have shall not be eroded and that the undoubted skills and enthusiasms of the work force throughout the country shall not be dissipated.

The House will have seen the first annual report and accounts of British Aerospace, which were published just over a week ago. They showed that the corporation is profitable and is one of our major exporters. It made a profit, before tax and interest, of over £65 million. Its sales amounted to nearly £860 million, of which 62 per cent. was exports. At the end of 1977 its order book stood at nearly £2,300 million, and nearly 70 per cent. of this was for export.

The Government are determined that British Aerospace shall remain a thriving and profitable nationalised industry, and, in response to what my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Chingford have said we shall therefore insist that any new collaborative civil aircraft projects must make sound commercial sense. We are not interested in non-viable aircraft. This would not be in the interests either of the workers or of taxpayers.

Hon. Members will know that British Aerospace has, for the greater part of the past year, concentrated its planning efforts on studies with some of the leading European manufacturers of a family of aircraft which could be produced and marketed as a joint programme. Out of these studies have come the proposals for a smaller version—the B.10—of the increasingly successful A300B airbus and for the variants, ranging from 130 to 190 seats, of what has become known as the JET aircraft. These projects have been presented to the leading airlines of the world, and the manufacturers' joint study teams are evaluating the results of these promotional efforts. British Aerospace will be advising the Government as soon as possible of the conclusions it has drawn.

However, the Government also felt that first-hand information ought to be obtained about the projects on which the principal American companies might wish to collaborate with our industry. That is why my right hon. Friend invited representatives of Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed to meet him on separate occasions earlier this month. As a result of his talks, my right hon. Friend now has a clearer picture of what the American companies have in mind.

Boeing, for example, discussed its proposed 757 project, which is for a medium-range narrow-bodied aircraft with about 160–180 seats, based on the 727/737 fuse-large but with new wings and modified tail group, and to be powered by two engines of 30,000-lb. thrust class. McDonnell Douglas developed its ideas of a possible tripartite collaboration, including Europe, on its advanced technology medium-range—ATMR—aircraft, an all-new medium-range aircraft with about 190 six-abreast seats and two 30,000-lb. class engines. The discussion with Lockheed centred on a potential partnership to develop a derivative, the—600, of its L1011 Tristar, which would be a medium-range twin-engine version with about 220 seats, involving substantial design changes, probably including a new wing. All this additional information will be very useful in the formulation of decisions on our future programmes.

Having said that, I recognise the feelings of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Thomas) with regard to collaboration on some of these American projects, and we have to take them into consideration.

Following that series of talks, my right hon. Friend concluded, in association with the Secretary of State for Trade, that it would be desirable to have an exchange of views with the French and German aerospace Ministers so that there should be no misunderstanding either of the European collaborative options or of the Government's stance.

As the House will be aware, my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry therefore visited Bonn and Paris on Tuesday this week for discussions with Herr Gruner, the West German State Secretary for Economic Affairs, and M. Le Theule, the French Minister of Transport. Like the discussions with leading American manufacturers, the talks were for information, not negotiation. They touched on the current prospects of the airbus programme and possible derivatives, the possibility of developments such as an aircraft or family of aircraft of the JET type, and the part that British Aerospace might play in such programmes. The results of these discussions will also form part of the Government's consideration of future civil aircraft policy.

In taking final decisions regarding the future production programme of British Aerospace, we must obviously take account of their impact on Rolls-Royce. We must also remember that Rolls-Royce's major product suitable for powering existing and future civil aircraft is the RB211 and its derivatives. The Department is currently considering the National Enterprise Board's recommendation on the projected lower-thrust-535 version of the engine. This would be suitable for, and is aimed at, the next generation of short- to medium-haul civil aircraft, especially the Boeing 757.

Rolls-Royce will, of course, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West has said, have to continue to sell its engines on their merits, and this fact is unaffected by whatever may be decided on collaboration on airframes. My Department is also currently considering, as my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman) said, the HS146 project. She raised this matter in an Adjournment debate about a month ago, and I recognise her strong feelings and those of her constituents about the matter.

While this is not directly related to the major international collaborative projects, it is, of course, of considerable importance to the work loading of some of the factory sites, and, of course, it is British Aerospace's most recent recommendation to the Government that full development and production of the HS146 feeder liner should proceed.

I can tell my hon. Friend that the Government are taking very careful cognisance of all factors in their appraisal of the proposal, but they also have to consider the prospects of the considerable investment involved earning a satisfactory return. A decision will be announced as soon as possible.

Is it possible that that announcement could be made before the overall programme on the larger aircraft is decided, in view of the competing requirements for capital?

I recognise the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but I am afraid that I cannot go further at this stage.

Another matter which has been of concern to the House is the request by British Airways to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade for authority to acquire Boeing 737 aircraft to replace its Trident 1s and 2s. The Government do not regard the outcome of this request as necessarily having any bearing on the decisions on future collaborative programmes for new airliners, and Boeing has agreed that that is its view also.

We are fully aware of the expressions of opinion which have come from parts of the British aircraft industry—we had another this week to make the case—in favour of a purchase of the BAC 111 which has been offered to British airways. I know the strong feelings of many of my hon. Friends' constituents on this, but it is the Government's task to take into account these industrial interests and to arrive at a decision which will best satisfy the national interest, because we must obviously take that into account.

This has been a constructive debate, although short. I congratulate again my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have quite rightly urged upon the Government the need for urgency in deciding the future production programme of British Aerospace. I know they will realise that similar difficult questions are being faced in several other countries whose civil aircraft industries have to decide which way they will go.

I know that there is wide recognition in the aircraft industry that the world's airlines will during the next few years have to undertake re-equipment of their fleets on a large scale, particularly of short- to medium-range aircraft in the capacities between 150 and 220 seats. The stakes are high. Development and production programmes of new types occupy a long period of years, and it has been said that the decisions which will be made during the next year or two will be the last major ones of the present century.

Therefore, while I accept that it is important that conclusions should be reached as a matter of urgency, I suggest that it is just as essential that we get the ultimate answer right. It is also necessary that the commercial prospects should be satisfactory. In their detailed examination of the various options, the Government have to take all this into consideration.

I wish to take advantage of the Adjournment debate to raise with the House the question of the serious situation which has arisen in connection with the work of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission for England. In view of the news in this morning's paper, perhaps this is an appropriate subject. I shall use my own constituency of Buckingham as an example, but, as I hope to show, the problems of my seat are mirrored elsewhere in England and also in Scotland and Wales.

My constituency now has one of the largest electorates in England. If the General Election is to be held this year, or before next February, it will be fought in Buckingham on an electorate of 99,101, and the constituency's rate of growth is higher than that of any other in the United Kingdom. Using the 1978 figures, which have only just been published, according to my researches I find that there are only six seats in England, which have larger electorates. They are Lichfield and Tamworth; Norfolk, South; and Meriden, with just under 100,000 electors, and Bromsgrove and Redditch; Newton; and Basildon, with over 100,000 electors.

However, while these constituencies have been growing steadily but comparatively slowly, my own constituency of Buckingham has risen at a rate of between 5,000 and 10,000 electors per annum, and this is scheduled to continue for many years to come. As far as I can see, only Bromsgrove and Redditch is anywhere near approaching the same rate of growth. It is significant that Basildon has already been the subject of an interim report from the Boundary Commission in relation to new constituencies in Essex.

Hon. Members will know that the law requires the Parliamentary Boundary Commission to report some time between June 1979 and June 1984, and because of its current difficulties it is sensible to assume that it will report nearer the latter date than the former. We must also remember that Parliament has to pass the necessary orders implementing the report, and this itself takes time. If the worst were to happen and we had to wait for another five years, the electorate of the constituency of Buckingham could by then be as many as 140,000.

To put this into perspective, such a seat would be larger than any present seat in Northern Ireland, it would exceed by 100,000 voters 10 seats in England, ranging from Newcastle upon Tyne, Central, with 24,000, to Islington, South and Finsbury, with 39,000, five seats in Wales, including the boroughs of Ebbw Vale and Merthyr Tydfil, and nine seats in Scotland, including three seats in Glasgow. I mention these urban seats in Wales and Scotland because many people believe that the small electorates in those areas are all rural, They are not. Many of them are urban.

I need hardly remind the House that if the General Election takes place this year it is highly probable that Parliament will not be in a position to consider and vote on the Boundary Commission's report before the subsequent General Election takes place. Indeed, one can speculate that if the majority achieved by any party at the next General Election were small, Parliament might not be able to take a decision on this before two subsequent General Elections, therefore, the importance of this must become very evident as we consider it.

Confining myself to England, I think that it is of some significance that of the 10 largest seats in England, five are held by the Labour Party and five by the Conservative Party, all with very small majorities, so that there is an equal political implication there. But of the 10 smallest seats in England, every one is held by the Labour Party. I mention this not to make some passing party point but simply to illustrate the dangers of the present position.

In one sense the situation is ludicrous. One can imagine a foreigner saying "No one but the British, the oldest democratic society in the world, would allow themselves to be governed in quite such an undemocratic manner." But the situation also holds great dangers. There is a widespread feeling now—much of it unexpressed—which is critical of our present system.

Those who turn their face against electoral reform, either by proportional representation or in any other way, are fond of claiming that the great advantage of our present system is that it is easy to understand. If this be so, of course its deficiencies must be as plain as its advantages. People appreciate that there must be some discrepancy between constituency size, but they find it very hard to understand why one Member of Parliament should be elected by 30,000 electors and another by 100,000 electors.

At the moment the Enfield case—this is sub judice, I realise—which is at present before the court, has stopped the operations of the Local Government Boundary Commission. I am not a lawyer and I do not know the way in which the law works, but it seems to me that this case is of such enormous importance that every effort should be made to bring it to completion as soon as possible. Until the work of the Local Government Boundary Commission is resumed, the Parliamentary Boundary Commission cannot continue its task.

The best estimate I have at the moment is that it is unlikely, even if this case is heard and settled this summer, for the Local Government Boundary Commission to be in a position to make recommendations in time for next year's local elections. This in itself will have grave implications for local government in certain parts of the country. The consequence in relation to the Parliamentary Boundary Commission is that it is highly unlikely—I do not think that it is alarmist to draw this conclusion—that Parliament will be able to take a decision on the report of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission much before 1984—a somewhat significant date, you may feel, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

It is not my task today to consider Northern Ireland, where the representation will rightly be increased following the report of the Speaker's Conference, or Scotland and Wales, where representation must depend on the outcome of the current devolution proposals. I am simply concerned with England. Hon. Members will know that this matter is governed by the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act 1949, as amended by the 1958 Act.

The main change made by the 1958 Act was to lengthen the intervals between the general reviews of constituencies so that these must be submitted not less than 10 years or more than 15 years from the date of the submission of the Commission's last report. This is the vital aspect. The absurdity of this provision can be seen in a constituency such as mine, where the electorate is changing, as I have said, at a rate between 5,000 and 10,000 per annum. The quota or average for an English seat is 65,000, so that seven years could see an entirely new seat created. In fact, we are just on the verge of seeing that position in Buckingham at this moment.

To seek a remedy, therefore, one turns to Section 2(3) of the 1949 Act, which allows the Boundary Commission to submit to the Secretary of State interim reports for areas where special circumstances occur. As I have said, I believe that such a report has already been made in Essex, but nothing has been done about it.

About three years ago, when the situation in North Buckinghamshire was apparent for all to see, I approached the then Home Secretary and the chairman of the Boundary Commission. I was told politely that it was not in the public interest to anticipate the general review of constituencies—in other words "Nothing can be done, you must lump it."

One can appreciate the problem of the Boundary Commission in Scotland and Wales, because Schedule 2 to the 1949 Act lays down that there must not be fewer than 71 seats in Scotland and 35 seats in Wales. But for England there is no such restriction. There is discretion, the wording being that for Great Britain as a whole the number of consituencies shall be

"Not substantially greater or less than 613."

There is, therefore, no intrinsic difficulty for the Boundary Commission to take one particular local authority area and make an interim recommendation.

At the moment in Buckinghamshire—and, indeed, elsewhere—the Parliamentary Boundary Commission is not proceeding because it is awaiting the decisions of the Local Government Boundary Commission, whose work, as I have already said, is prevented from continuing.

In a letter to me dated 24th February 1978, the secretary to the Parliamentary Boundary Commission wrote as follows:

"This Commission has decided that district wards should not be divided between constituencies because these wards frequently represent a community with interests in common and because in general they are used as the basis of local party political organisations. Naturally the Commission wish to take account of the revised pattern of district wards and they must therefore wait the completion of the Local Government Boundary Commission's review of electoral arrangement in all of the districts in a county before they may proceed with a review of the parliamentary constituencies in that county."

I accept what the secretary says in that letter. My contention is simply that in areas of high population change, interim reports should be made and the orders laid before the House of Commons by the Secretary of State at the earliest possible moment. This should not be discretionary, it should be mandatory. That is the short-term requirement. In the longer term, a change in the rules as laid down in the 1949 Act is urgently necessary.

In this connection, I refer the Minister to the last report of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission in 1965, the one which was eventually implemented in 1970. In paragraph 39, which discusses population movement, the Commission reported as follows:

"we are not required by the Rules to pay regard to future population movement. The Rules require the use of current electorates and do not ask us to make recommendations on the bias of electorates as they will be in say 5 or 10 years. We cannot, however, escape the fact that the intention of the present law is that a general review should form the basis of constituency boundaries for at least the next 10 years and it would therefore be desirable to make recommendation that would so far as possible cushion the effect of gains or losses of electorate so far as they could be foreseen with some degree of certainty. We had in mind that new towns"

—my constituency includes one of the largest new towns in the country—

"had been a major cause of growth of electorates in several constituencies since the last review".

I submit that that is an impossible task for the Commission to undertake, no matter how brilliant or clever its members, or what resources the Commission has to deal with the matter. For instance, a political decision in relation to a new town could completely nullify any forecast for the constituency concerned. Therefore, this imposes an impossible task on the Commission.

I believe that the only sensible solution is one that requires the Boundary Commission to consider every five years those areas containing constituencies whose electorates have varied considerably from the last review figure. Such a mandatory review would at least avoid the worst excesses that we are seeing at present and which I have tried to describe.

The counter argument that this would distort representation for England as a whole is scarcely valid. My researches show that very few areas would be involved and that the movements downward would be compensated by the movements upward. They would probably be equal. But even if they were not, would one or two extra Members of the House of Commons pose any real threat to our constitution if by so doing we convinced people that they were assured of a fairer deal?

We are all proud to be Members of Parliament. We are sent here by the people to provide a Parliament for the people. It is, therefore, essential that the system should be seen to be fair and just. Not to mince my words, I can only describe the present situation as a "democratic scandal". It must be put right quickly, because if it is not it will threaten Parliament and, more important, it will threaten democracy itself.

At the start of this debate three hon. Members were in the Chamber—the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Benyon), the Minister, and myself. Since then our numbers have gone up by one, with the arrival of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Clark). Although our colleagues are conspicuous by their absence, I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Buckingham on raising this very important matter. I have a feeling that there will be subsequent occasions when hon. Members will be rising in their serried ranks to moan, groan and make comment on the situation in which we find ourselves. It will then be interesting to remember this morning. I believe that a great deal of praise will go to the hon. Member for Buckingham for bringing such an important matter to our attention.

I appreciate the spirit in which the hon. Member talked about this situation. It does not matter that he spoke from the Conservative Benches while I speak from the Labour Benches. I think that I agreed with the whole of what he said.

It is certainly true that nowadays people have conflicting opinions about this House and about how it should change the electoral questions before it, such as proportional representation. They are all very weighty matters. But one thing is absolutely crystal clear: unless we have a system which is the same for everyone in the country the system is manifestly unfair. When Parliament set up the present system all those years ago I do not suppose that it ever dreamt that we would ultimately wind up with some electorates of 30,000 and others of more than 100,000. The hon. Gentleman mentioned examples of constituencies which now have electorates of more than 100,000. My own constituency is affected. At present, I have an electorate of more than 93,000.

I hope that the Minister will comment on the existing practice of dealing with the local government boundaries first. I believe that that has always led to trouble. I believe that one should first think of the body—the constituencies—and how they will fit in, rather than start at the bottom and try to construct the body upwards. That leads us into enormous difficulties.

A belief which is increasingly shared on both sides of the House is that the last reorganisation of local government was an unmitigated disaster. It meant that in my own area we now have a Humberside which stretches to both sides of the river. Indeed, there are petitions that we should revert to the old ways. I do not share that view, but equally I believe that the present system is totally indefensible.

I believe that this is the old "economy of scale" argument. We all went mad on computers and thought that bigger and brighter was best. But we are politicians who are concerned with people. That can be demonstrated in so many ways. The North Lincolnshire area of Grimsby, Immingham and Scunthorpe is very different from the deep heart of Lincolnshire. As I have said, we build up to the constituencies from the local base. It is nonsense to think that a group of men representing Beverley, on the other side of the water, can make detailed decisions about my constituency, especially when the representatives from that area may not have visited the places about which they are talking. What has led to nonsense at local level has led to nonsense at constituency level.

The hon. Member for Buckingham looked forward to the future. I look back to the position in the past when to some extent a case was made for changing my constituency at the time of the last reorganisation. The name was changed, but nothing else was done. Even then, the boundary was very strange, and it was difficult to fit in everything.

As I said, the position has been made much worse. The farce has been taken one stage further by the creation of the new European constituencies, and there will be some spin-off here. Of course, folly that this wretched organisation is in any event, so the way in which my own boundary has been drawn up in this respect is also a folly. They have managed to split Humberside. Grimsby, with which we have a natural empathy because we are on the south bank, has gone in with Lincolnshire, and my constituency remains as the one surviving outpost in south Humberside. It is quite ridiculous. The boundary which has been drawn on my southern flank makes no sense to anyone. It weaves in and out. There has been speculation in the past about certain great interests that managed to put on pressure to keep part of the patch in Lincolnshire.

It is vital that we get on with this business now. The pressure of work on Members of Parliament grows and grows. I know that the hon. Member for Buckingham seeks to serve his constituency well, as do most of us in this House, but, as organisations get bigger, so the mailbags of Members of Parliament grow and grow, and the problems multiply. The hon. Member for Buckingham has my sympathy if he has an electorate of more than 100,000. With 93,000 myself, I know how big my own mailbag is. The letters pour in day by day, and it is extremely difficult to deal with all of them.

If we go on as we are, we shall not have redivision for the General Election which is due to take place this year or next. Indeed, I see a situation in which we shall not get redivision before the General Election after next, and the whole system will be completely out of hand.

They were different days when Parliament set up the present system. It may be that it worked quite well then, but it does not now. I believe that this debate is the forerunner of an increasing amount of pressure that there will be to look at these matters in depth. Although we may be few in number in the Chamber this morning, I believe that we are the harbingers of that great debate which must come. I believe that the pressures will mount and, therefore, I hope that the Minister will make a response indicating that he appreciates the gravity of the situation.

We seek to serve our constituents. I believe that with more sensible boundaries speedily arrived at, we shall be able to do a better job. That is not to say that I have no regard for my present constituents. Mine is a very interesting constituency, with steel and agricultural areas. Nevertheless, if one Member of Parliament is trying to serve three or four times the accepted size of electorate he is put in a very difficult position and it obviously must make a difference. We are all indebted to the hon. Member for Buckingham for raising the subject.

I must first apologise for having missed the first few minutes of this debate. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Benyon) did me the courtesy of sending me a copy of the text of his speech which I read with the greatest interest. I can tell the House that my right hon. and hon. Friends are entirely in sympathy with the case made so lucidly by my hon. Friend.

Early on in his remarks, my hon. Friend mentioned the subject of electoral reform. I am not quite certain what he had in mind. However, if we are to retain our existing electoral system and the very special relationship that a Member of Parliament enjoys with his constituents, which I know the majority of hon. Members wish to do, it is essential that this should not fall into disrepute and that the machinery should not become so cumbersome—as would happen if constituencies became too large—that people felt that the existing system was not serving them as well as it had in the past. If that happened, the very basis on which democracy presently functions in this Chamber might be, if not at risk, at least due for change.

To avoid any misunderstanding, although I am a proponent of electoral reform I should make it clear that I mentioned it only to emphasise that the people who oppose electoral reform say that there is a great deal of advantage in the first-past-the-post system and that, if they say that, they have to have a system that makes sense.

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. That was the point that I was trying to make, in perhaps less pithy language.

In these days of greater mobility of the population, people change their addresses much faster and move from one place to another, and it may be that in the industrial climate that will develop over the next few years, with improved technologies, there will be substantial shifts in population long before the Boundary Commissions can catch up with them. There is an unanswerable case for provision for a localised revision of boundaries, and it is the view of my right hon. and hon. Friends that we should be prepared to look at the possibility, where constituency sizes greatly exceed the norm, of requiring the Boundary Commissions to look at the position ahead of their survey of the country as a whole.

I listened with interest to the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Brigg and Scunthorpe (Mr. Ellis) about first settling the parliamentary boundaries and then looking at the local government boundaries. I have some sympathy with that, because I think that the system of approaching the parliamentary boundaries from the bottom upwards leads one into the kind of territory in which the resulting difficulties can hold up the rest of the process. Probably the best procedure to follow, therefore, is to settle the parliamentary boundaries first and let the local boundaries take care of themselves, in terms of the various localised arguments and considerations.

But surely this is the kind of question which we should be discussing in a full-dress debate. I very much hope that the Minister will give the House an indication that there is a possibility of this in the near future, when these and many other matters can be discussed and remedies implemented to correct what in certain parts of the country is a serious, threatening and unjust situation.

The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Benyon) prefaced his remarks by saying that this subject had a certain topicality in view of comments in the papers this morning. The hon. Member should, first of all, differentiate between news and speculation—something which it is not always easy to do with the newspapers. The item that he mentioned falls into the latter category.

I recognise the importance of this subject for the quality of democracy in this country. There are a number of other issues which must be considered, along with numerical equality in our constituencies, as being relevant to the point. We would all agree, particularly because we discuss our own conditions incessantly—we are all experts—that there is a dire need for the Local Government Boundary Commission and the Parliament Boundary Commission. They are the ways in which we have settled upon fixing seats. They are the means by which we remove this subject from the arena of party controversy and put it in the hands of those charged by Parliament to do their best to secure the results which Parliament wishes.

There was one serious error of fact in the speech of the hon. Member for Buckingham. He referred to Basildon and implied, no doubt in good faith, that there had been interim proposals for Essex which had been brought forward in view of the size of Basildon but not acted upon. That is not so. What he is talking about is Essex as part of the general review. That county was brought forward as part of that review. It is one of the six counties where the parliamentary seats have already been decided upon. It is simply not true to say that either an interim report has been brought forward or that it has been brought forward and not acted upon.

I am grateful to the Minister of State for his comments. I quite understand the point. What I was saying was that here was one of the seats about which I had been talking which has been the subject of a recommendation from the Boundary Commission. I should not have used the word "interim". It is perfectly possible now to act for Essex.

I should like to deal with that point in due order, because I accept what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Although the debate has revolved around the Boundary Commissions it has largely concentrated on the parliamentary situation. One of the central themes has been whether we should start work from the bottom upwards or from the top downwards so as to get a result on the patterns of Government in this country, using that word to cover both systems. We must remember that whichever way we do it there will be problems.

The hon. Member made a case for saying that working from the top was the more logical, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Scunthorpe (Mr. Ellis). I am sure that with equal facility and no little speed after that decision was announced there would be others rising in their places in this House to make exactly the contrary argument. One of the central reasons why it makes sense to do things from the bottom upwards is that as they are at present organised—and my hon. Friend touched a responsive chord when he spoke about the quality of the reorganisation—the fact is that districts are often much bigger in area than would normally be encompassed by one parliamentary seat. We are not always talking about one seat to one district; we are often talking about two seats to one district, or even three seats to a district.

I return to the point about quality of representation. It is certainly true, I concede this at once, that one of the factors that must be involved when considering the quality of our democracy is the point that a person who votes should be represented in roughly the same proportion as all others. There are at least three other points arising from this and some of these militate against the simple arithmetical tyranny.

The first point is that, of course, there are seats in parts of our country which are rural in character and where the population is low but the distance so vast that it would not be feasible for us to have strict mathematical equity. My hon. Friend is in an unusual position in that he represents a rural and urban seat combined. There must be tolerable variations in the system.

Another point which bears upon the quality of democracy is that of certainty. A person must know where he is and in whose constituency he is, so that he can build up an identity with that constituency and with his representative. Here we return to the question of the frequency with which these matters are reviewed. It is not true that the 10–15 year rule has been immutable. When the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act was passed in 1949 the rule was that the review should be between three and seven years. It was as a result of complaints in this House that the rule was changed in 1958, making the period 10–15 years. It was thought that reorganisations were taking place almost as soon as the previous patterns had been laid down. There was no chance to establish a firm basis and therefore no chance for an association to form between a Member and his voters. In view of the high volatility of the electorate, which I acknowledge and which has been described, that is a peculiar problem.

It is no good saying that an electorate of 65,000 would automatically benefit the elector and the Member unless that Member is sufficiently associated with the constituency as to feel involved in it. Otherwise we should get the situation that we see in some parts—the London boroughs, for example—where there is a high turnover of population with a very low percentage poll because no one feels an essential association with the area and often the Member is not well known.

I am following my hon. Friend's argument, and I believe that he has a point. The other argument is that if the process is done from the bottom upwards, when we work out the constituencies we get Members representing various districts and half districts. This leads to agitation because it is unsuitable. People say that it is nonsense. They want to change it, because it has such an empirical form.

Let me deal with that point, because it borders on what my hon. Friend has said. One of the issues that agitate voters is the question where they vote. They ask "Do I vote at the same place as last time?" We all know people who ask this. Certainty on this matter is important. The ward organisations, upon which all parties depend and upon which democracy in this country largely depends, play a great part, not only in determining that a person knows in which constituency he lives, but in discovering whether a person is willing to play a part in the constituency by voting.

One of the obvious and admitted improvements of working from the bottom up—this is a factor to be weighed in our minds—is that by starting from the district we begin on the basis of completed wards and therefore we are able to graft those completed wards on to the national Government base, whereas if we start the other way round we would very often have to chop up wards or lump them together for local government purposes. This is absolutely clear to me beyond peradventure, having studied the local government reports, as I have to do.

rose—

I am bearing in mind that this is an Adjournment debate and I do not want to give way too often. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman a little later. Having started with a three- to seven-year review period it was found to be too frequent for the good of parliamentary constituencies and the period was increased to 10–15 years. That means that the Parliamentary Boundary Commission must report at some time between early 1979 and April 1984. It cannot report before that. Although I concede that there is delay—I shall deal with that later—the fact is that at this stage there is no delay which is fatal. This is because it could not report before April of next year at the earliest. During the interval it is dealing with the question of the European constituencies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Scunthorpe made a powerful attack, as he always does, upon European Communities. He has mistaken the nature of the present boundaries, in that they are provisional. If he has points to raise about the unsatisfactory nature of the boundaries as they affect his constituency, he has a right to make representations to the Parliamentary Boundary Commission on these European boundaries at this stage. I hope that he will do so in order to reinforce the powerful case that he has made.

The Parliamentary Boundary Commission, charged with that duty, relies heavily upon the Local Government Boundary Commission, which, like the Parliamentary Boundary Commission, has devised procedures which allow for maximum local involvement and maximum opportunity for the public to make representations upon the various proposals that are made. Then the local council puts forward draft proposals with the Commission considers. The Commission issues draft proposals which are circularised and advertised. At each of those stages representations are possible. Members of the public can make comments. When the reaction to the interim proposals is received, if the Commission is not satisfied that it has all the information or sufficient consensus on which to found a final decision it can have a local review and frequently does so.

It is only at that stage that the matter comes to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. Even then, another six weeks elapse for representations to be made. That is not wasted time. Many hon. Members have made such representations upon the final proposals of the Boundary Commission to my right hon. Friend. So far, the Local Government Commission has submitted 264 final reports on 224 non-metropolitan districts, eight metropolitan districts and 32 London boroughs. So far, orders have been made in 193 of the non-metropolitan districts, in one metropolitan district and in 31 out of the 32 London boroughs. It is the thirty-second that is causing the current problem. It is the subject of appeal and therefore, I cannot comment on it in detail. Suffice it to say that the Enfield case is crucial as to how the Commission carries out its work and what criteria it has to bear in mind. Therefore, it cannot—nor can my right hon. Friend—properly act on the basis of ignoring this decision. But it is hoped that the appeal will be heard in the latter part of July.

We have, at all stages, been anxious to hear the appeal and to have certainty established at the earliest opportunity. However, the law courts are under a heavy burden and it is not always possible to hasten cases. I hope that a clear and unambiguous decision will be arrived at from that appeal which will enable everyone to proceed with his task with some certainty.

The notice of a general review was given by the Parliamentary Boundary Commission in February 1976. So far, it has published its recommendations for new constituencies in six counties—Cleveland, Essex, Lancashire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire and Somerset. There are two rounds of local inquiries provided for in that procedure. Local inquiries have been held in four of the six counties. That is evidence of the sensitivity of the proposals and the interest of the local public.

The draft Order in Council has to be laid before Parliament, with or without modification, and must be approved by the House. The important point is whether it is possible, without further distortion, to separate the largest and fastest growing constituencies from the general run of constituencies in order to give them speedier treatment. I have taken note of what has been said on this matter and I should like to study it. It would be devaluing the interesting contributions of hon. Gentlemen to the debate if I said now "No, we have a ready-made solution".

One of the factors undervalued in the debate is the question of the ripple effect—the separation of one large constituency and the idea that this could be pared down to a reasonable size. The argument for making two convenient whole parliamentary constituencies would be easy to understand, but frequently it makes only one and a half good constituencies, and there is then the problem of fitting in the other constituencies. We would have a general review but it would proceed from the bottom upwards. We would start from the nails in the horseshoe and work up. Those who argue from the bottom upwards would find that although local government would not be dictating the shape of parliamentary constituencies, one, six, nine or 10 constituencies would be shaping the destination of many other constituencies. One would find that one was building from the few to the many.

Although it is difficult to represent growing numbers of people, particularly quickly growing numbers of people, there is no substitute for a general review. I shall consider carefully how and whether those procedures can be speeded up, consonant with giving people the opportunity to have a full say at local level. I do not know whether there will be a general debate in future, but the Leader of the House will read this debate and there will be opportunities to discuss the particular and the general points long before we have to decide these matters. I hope that by then we shall have a more informed debate, because others will be able to read this debate.

The work of both Boundary Commissions is painstaking and meticulous. It is part of the quality of our democracy and it should continue to be so. I do not dissent from the fact that over-large constituencies should be reorganised as quickly as possible. However, I come back to the central point with which I started. Part of the quality of our democracy is that the Boundary Commissions themselves, outside the party political arena, should decide the issues having given the maximum, rather than the minimum, opportunity for public intervention.

The point has been made that we are in danger of not simply going past the forthcoming General Election but that if the matter goes on much longer there will be two elections before it is dealt with. Will my hon. Friend comment on this and undertake to deal with the question? It may be necessary for the Secretary of State to be in a position, when we next debate the matter, to make a statement on whether we may be in danger of having to go through two General Elections without reforming the boundaries.

No one would deny that there would be a ripple effect, but when a constituency becomes so bloated and cumbersome as to impede the proper function of the representational process and the prospect of a general review remains remote, surely the ripple effect has to be accepted and confined as best it can be.

As to the question of wards, of course we all depend on the ward structure for the political awareness of those whom we represent and for their participation, whether hostile or friendly. But where there are population movements and extensions of areas on the sort of scale that we have been discussing in what might be called the emergency cases, some wards become extinct anyway and some areas do not even have a proper ward structure. This must be taken into account when we consider whether we get the parliamentary or the local government boundaries settled first.

I take that point, though it is rather stronger in relation to voluntary party organisations than on the ward structure for the individual voter who knows where to vote. We all have experience of the shifting of a polling booth to a new location confusing people and deterring them from voting. It may sound strange, but that does happen. A different location is often crucial.

I do not overvalue the ripple effect. I wanted to counteract what seemed to be a slight undervaluation of that effect. I am not sure that it is good enough to say that we would have to cope as well as we could. A number of the shot-gun marriages that would be needed to build up the one and a half seats into two seats could be bitterly resented by those who had such changes wished upon them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Scunthorpe asked whether the review would take place for the next General Election or the one after that. This is so intangible that neither I nor my right hon. Friend could give an answer. When we next debate the matter and we have some certainty in the House, we may be able to say rather more, but I have already fought as many elections as my predecessor had by the time he had been an hon. Member for 20 years. One can never guarantee the size of majorities or the frequency of elections.

I can promise my hon. Friend that the Parliamentary Boundary Commission is seized of the urgency of completing its consideration of these boundaries. It will proceed with all dispatch, consistent with giving people their say on how their future should be shaped. In the end, it is the people whose future is involved who have the best right to comment on the quality of the democracy they have.

I start by thanking the Minister for hurrying back from his foreign travels to take part in this important debate. The House does not often have the opportunity to discuss the affairs of Hong Kong. I should like to use this occasion to report on the reaction of the people of Hong Kong to the recent Multi-Fibre Arrangement and to devote the main part of my speech to British exports to Hong Kong, with all the benefits that an expansion of these exports could bring to Britain in this time of severe and intractable unemployment.

I declare an interest as a friend of Hong Kong and as chairman of the all-party Hong Kong group in the House. However, I should add that I have spent most of my working life in Yorkshire and Lancashire textiles during the period in which the industry has suffered its longest decline so I have direct experience of the effect of imports from Hong Kong and elsewhere on the home textile industry.

The people of Hong Kong were upset by the MFA for three reasons. The first was its severity. Hong Kong's exports to Great Britain have been under restraint for 20 years. The bulk of its exports were restrained under the old MFA to growth rates of ½ per cent. or so per annum. Its textile exports are being undercut by Korea and Taiwan. In 1977, Hong Kong with less than one-tenth of Britain's population, lost as many jobs in textiles as Britain's average annual rate over the last 10 years. It has coped with this by improving the quality of the textiles and garments sent to British customers. Although the value of exports has risen, the volume has been pretty well static.

Hong Kong has long experience of dealing successfuly with restriction, either in the form of quotas or wage competition, but the restrictions imposed by the latest MFA are so severe that, even in the event of the economic recovery that we all hope for here, Hong Kong cannot benefit.

Hong Kong's second complaint is the unprecedented arrangement by which newcomers to the trade—by which our Government say they mean poor countries—are to have a greater share of the United Kingdom market. That sounds charitable enough until it transpires that imports from rich countries are not to be reduced to make room for imports from the poor. Imports from America, Japan, EFTA and EEC countries remain unlimited by quota. It is Hong Kong, a comparatively poor country, which is required to make sacrifices for the benefit of the very poor.

Can the Minister say how the newcomers' share of the quotas of the British market is to be allocated?

Hong Kong's third complaint is that the British Government, which was expected to act as its representative at the MFA negotiations, appeared to take a leading part—and, indeed, has since boasted of taking a leading part—in imposing these restrictions on Hong Kong.

Hon. Members with textile constituencies have justified these restrictions in various ways. Some have said that less-developed countries would receive greater sympathy if they did not impose punitive tariffs on exports from Great Britain, but Hong Kong has no tariffs on textiles from Britain, which are among its principal purchases from this country. Yet Hong Kong was among those especially discriminated against in the renewal of the MFA. Other hon. Members have justified restrictions by reference to wages and social conditions in the colony. This is a strange argument from us in Britain because we are in exactly the same position when exporting to Germany, which could, no doubt, complain that our wages are only half those of the Germans.

Hong Kong wages are rising fast and are now second only to Japan in the whole of Asia. As to social conditions and housing, the miracle is that this tiny territory, with no raw materials and with a population which has multiplied seven times in the last 30 years, now has housing, social conditions, education and health facilities that have improved at such a pace and on such a scale that they have become a subject for study and admiration in all Asian countries. The only threat to these social improvements would be a spread of world protectionism because it is on trade, and trade alone, that Hong Kong depends for its standards of life to continue to rise.

Working conditions in the best of Hong Kong's factories are not merely the best in Asia; they stand comparison with any in the world, including this country. When buying imports from Hong Kong, no one need feel that he is enjoying the fruits of sweated labour. Their purchase is much more likely to help the ordinary factory worker to pay instalments on his television or fridge, or to eat out—a pastime which is more widely indulged in by workers in Hong Kong than in England.

I turn to the subject of our exports to Hong Kong. I shall begin with a few startling figures to show how Hong Kong compares in importance with our other export markets. At £270 million last year, Hong Kong bought from Britain two-thirds as much as Japan, which has a population of 110 million—25 times that of Hong Kong. Hong Kong's 4 million citizens bought as much from us as India's 600 million citizens, despite a large proportion of India's purchases being paid for by British aid. Hong Kong's 4 million citizens bought four times as much as China's 900 million citizens. Hong Kong bought £60 a head from Britain last year, while Japan bought £4 a head and other Asian countries spent minute amounts.

In spite of these extraordinary statistics, imports from Britain constitute less than 5 per cent. of Hong Kong's imports. In the early 1960s Britain had 10 per cent. of the Hong Kong market. Then me merchandise trade between the two countries was in balance. Today there is a deficit in merchandise trade, probably balanced by invisibles, including the usual financial, insurance and shipping items, the bulk of Cable and Wireless profits and that economic curiosity of profit arising in British Airways through the United Kingdom's being the only European or American country with landing rights at an Asian airport at its disposal.

Has the Minister any figures to illustrate the benefit that we get from invisibles? I understand that Lloyds brokers draw hundreds of millions of pounds in insurance premiums from Far Eastern Hong Kong offices. Clearly, more could be made of this market by British exporters.

Let us examine the market and the many British success stories from which one can glean lessons for the future. It is a highly competitive market, but it does not have many of the problems that are found elsewhere. There are no tariffs or quotas. Duties are charged on a few items—alcohol, tobacco and petroleum products—to raise revenue, but that is all The language of business is English and the law follows British patterns. There are no non-tariff trade barriers. Documentation is simple and payments are prompt. There is no restriction in the movement of money.

Communications by air, sea, telegram, telex and post are excellent. The container port is the most modern in the world, and among the four biggest. Above all, there is sustained economic growth and a vast long-term programme of public works in building new towns. Exporters who are not in this market need not feel that they have missed the bus. Many more are coming.

I turn to the subject of British successes. Power station equipment worth £100 million has recently been sold to China Light and Power. This is the biggest overseas sale of power station equipment ever achieved in this country. The ECGD has guaranteed its biggest ever loan in this connection. It amounts to US $360 million. Contracts for the further £100 million will be going for transmission and distribution equipment. Later this power station will have to be doubled in size.

The Mass Transit Railway has placed contracts in this country for £160 million in goods and services and is to be extended. The railway to the border is to be double tracked and electrified.

Electrical machinery and vehicles are the leading exports from Britain. Textiles come next. Woollen textiles, particular, have done well. Hong Kong imports more high-class worsteds than does the United States of America. Hong Kong is our best single customer for fabrics made of synthetic fibre mixed with wool. Britain needs those types of exports most. They create jobs in the areas of heavy industry and textiles where unemployment is most severe.

Only last week a ship on order for Swires was launched at Austin and Pickersgill's yard in Sunderland. Yorkshire mills are in need of woollen orders.

About 1,750,000 tourists visited Hong Kong last year. They spent about £270 million in the shops. That figure happens to be precisely the value of the total British exports to Hong Kong. High-quality consumer goods are what this market demands. Our fellow members in the Common Market seem to do better than we do. The French have persuaded the Chinese in Hong Kong that brandy promotes virility while whisky induces impotence. The result is that Hong Kong has the highest per capita consumption of liqueur brandy in the world.

Independent sales initiated by Hong Kong entrepreneurs are Rolls-Royce aeroengines for Cathay Pacific, ships for Hong Kong owners, and construction equipment for Jardine's undertakings in Indonesia. It would be interesting to know the sum of these sales, not all of which figure in Hong Kong's trade statistics. These projects do not represent the total indirect sales generated in Hong Kong. Japanese department store operators are known to travel to Hong Kong to see what Hong Kong stores are selling—and it should be British. Hong Kong is a shop window in Asia. If British goods are not seen there in a British colony Asian buyers will not bother with them.

There is yet another way in which Hong Kong can help the economic growth of an advanced industrial country such as Britain. This is in joint ventures with part or all of the manufacturing and all the marketing from Hong Kong. If shipping costs and those of some of the more labour intensive parts of manufacturing could be reduced a market for some products could be developed in Asia, where straight exports would be unmarketable. This way into the Asian market, where rates of economic growth are consistently high, should also be explored by British firms.

The market is there. What is being done to make this known to British exporters? Are the resources devoted to exports to Hong Kong comparable with the potential result? Other markets might seem more prestigious, but Hong Kong has shown by results what it can do. What is done by the Minister's Department to stimulate exports to Hong Kong? Is the staff devoted to this end comparable in size to that dealing with exports to India, which is a market of a similar size?

The Hong Kong Government are doing more than their fair share of promotion. The Governor is taking the lead. I attended an admirable seminar at the CBI which was addressed by the Governor and successful exporters, such as Lord Nelson, of GEC. This was the first of seven such seminars to be held.

Hong Kong is a dependent territory. That means that the House, the Government and their Ministers have responsibility for the welfare of its people. Hong Kong does not ask much of Great Britain, but offers a great deal. The disillusionment about the Government's treatment of the colony over the textile negotiations has not affected Hong Kong's willingness to buy British. There is a fund of good will towards Britain in Hong Kong. Its market is competitive, but open and straightforward.

Industrialisation and trade have done more for Hong Kong than aid could have done. Other Third World countries are finding the same. Hong Kong presents a challenge to Britain. If Britain fails to come to terms with industrial enterprise and economic growth in this small part of the Third world for the Government of which it is responsible, it cannot expect to contribute much towards or gain much reward from the industrialisation which is now rapidly developing in East Asia and other parts of the Third world.

If, on the other hand, Britain can develop its markets for its exports in Hong Kong and use its technology in combination with Chinese ingenuity for manufacturing and marketing, it can set a firm practical example to the rest of the developed world which professes to wish economic benefits on the Third world.

Having left Baghdad at 4 a.m. this morning I turn with particular relish to the topic raised by the hon. Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan), who made an eloquent plea for greater atteneion by British industry to the potential of the export market in Hong Kong. I agree with the hon. Member that Hong Kong is an extremely important market for the United Kingdom, providing, as he said, a shop window for British goods for the booming markets of the Far East and South-East Asia.

I accept the hon. Gentleman's general point that there has been some neglect of Hong Kong by British exporters in the past. Too many have regarded it as a traditional market, and that attitude has meant a sad decline in the United Kingdom's percentage of Hong Kong's total imports. However, I think that there is a change in the situation, and I should like to indicate the signs there are of that.

Let me first comment on the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks about the effect on Hong Kong of the renegotiated Multi-Fibre Arrangement. Let me give the general background. In its approach to the MFA textile negotiations, the EEC had two main objectives. The first was to secure more effective quotas generally with more realistic base levels and lower growth rates related to the circumstances of the textile and clothing industries in the Community. The second was to seek to stabilise import penetration for the most sensitive products by restricting all low cost imports within a single limit.

The Community agreed that if it was to secure its overall objective in bilateral negotiations, the terms of the agreements for Hong Kong—which through a combination of high base levels and generous growth rates had consolidated its position as easily the EEC's largest supplier—had to be severe. This applied also to other dominant suppliers, such as South Korea and Taiwan. In particular, for the eight most sensitive products it has been necessary to set quota levels for 1978 for the dominant suppliers which in many cases are below the 1976 levels of trade. This is essential if the overall limits are to be maintained and some room made for new suppliers.

The hon. Gentleman said that we had perhaps not represented Hong Kong's interests to the degree that we might have done. We have fought hard, however, for Hong Kong's interests inside the Community. It is only because of the repeated and strong attempts by us that Hong Kong has progressively been given most of the benefits of the Community's generalised system of preferences scheme.

In particular, I disagree with certain of the hon. Gentleman's conclusions about the new MFA and its effect on Hong Kong. The overriding concern of the United Kingdom was to ensure adequate protection for the home industry from low-cost imports whilst allowing for some measure of growth in exports from the supplying countries. Whilst the Government certainly recognise their obligations in representing Hong Kong's interests, the facts are that cumulative import penetration by low-cost suppliers was causing serious disruption in the European textile industry with the United Kingdom one of the chief sufferers.

I am aware of the disquiet expressed by Hong Kong over the outcome of the negotiations, but I disagree strongly with some of the criticisms voiced by the hon. Member.

First, although there have been some cutbacks in Hong Kong's exports of certain products, there are items where import penetration into the EEC as a whole has reached very high levels and for which restraints have been placed on all low-cost suppliers. I need hardly say that there was certainly no question of special discrimination against Hong Kong. It would be entirely wrong to suggest that. Secondly, cutbacks were necessary to allow room for entry into the market of new suppliers amongst the developing countries. It is spurious to argue, as the hon. Gentleman did, that restraints should be placed instead on the United States, Japan and other high-cost suppliers. The whole intention of the MFA is to limit imports of low-cost textiles and clothing. Finally—this is most important, because it is the other side of the coin—the new agreement does in fact allow Hong Kong to increase her exports to the EEC by about 2 per cent. a year, which will enable her to maintain her position as the largest supplier of textiles and clothing to the EEC.

Let me turn now to the main burden of the hon. Gentleman's speech, which concerned exports. I very much agree with his presentation. He produced some interesting comparisons. I cannot immediately confirm the figures that he gave, but they seem to be about right to me, and they present a picture which I hope British industrialists will examine with increasing care. I hope, too, that they will take note of the general conclusions about the attractiveness of the Hong Kong market.

In 1977 United Kingdom exports to Hong Kong totalled Hong Kong $2,192 million out of total imports of Hong Kong $48,701 million. This is only a 4·5 per cent. share. We should be doing much better than this, although there are obvious areas, such as basic foodstuffs which Hong Kong has to import, where we could not be competitive. My Department, in conjunction with the British Trade Commission in Hong Kong, is making strenuous efforts to ensure that British industry is made fully aware of the opportunities and potential of the Hong Kong market. The importance of the market is recognised by the British Overseas Trade Board, which has a separate trade advisory group for Hong Kong. The senior British trade commissioner in Hong Kong has recently visited the United Kingdom to participate in a series of seminars throughout the country. The hon. Gentleman referred to that. The Hong Kong Government have co-operated with us is this effort, providing us with guest speakers at the various seminars and also working with the trade commission in analysing British export performance to the territory. This assistance has been of considerable value, and I am pleased to say that the response from British industry at the seminars was very encouraging.

I see this as one sign of growing appreciation by industry of the real potential of the Hong Kong market. One straw in the wind and a relevant indicator of this growing interest is that when my Department organised a major British industrial exhibition in March of this year, the response from British companies to participate was so large that we were unable to accommodate the applicants, even though the largest available site in Hong Kong was put at our disposal. In all, almost 150 companies took part and, during the week of the event, orders to the value of £800,000 were placed, and there are good expectations for follow-up orders amounting to about £2·75 million. That is some indication of the trend of growing interest by British industry in this market.

In addition to this, we have seen in the last few years substantial British involvement in a number of major projects in Hong Kong. Again, the hon. Member quite rightly drew attention to a number of these. I echo what he said. In the transportation sector, British exporters have been engaged in the construction of the cross-harbour tunnel and, most recently, are substantially involved in building Hong Kong's mass transit underground railway. I add here that it was very pleasing to note that the first rail cars for the underground railway, supplied by Metro-Cammell of Birmingham, were despatched to Hong Kong earlier this month, which was almost two months ahead of schedule.

British exporters have also recently been awarded a contract to supply one of Hong Kong's electrical utility companies with a power station to the value of well over £100 million.

My Department also has plans to support British participation in a furniture exhibition in Hong Kong later this year, and several of the outward missions, about 14 in number, scheduled to visit Hong Kong this year—again, this is a considerable number—will concentrate on consumer products.

I should like to add a comment about the relationship between Hong Kong and China, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. We are also very much aware of the growing industrial and exporting interest in China as a market. Considerable efforts are being made to support new initiatives in selling to China, and we are seeking to associate this effort with promoting exports to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong link is of real value to the United Kingdom. To draw further attention to the potential of the Hong Kong market, it has recently been agreed that BOTB-supported outward missions to China from Britain will have their attention drawn to the advantages of spending a few days in Hong Kong on the Far Eastern visit.

However, there is another special feature of the Hong Kong market which is of particular relevance to our trading relationship with her and which deserves mention. This arises from the very substantial holdings which British interests have in the territory's major trading and service houses. It is a known fact that with their world-wide trading interests, these houses are in a position to place—and, in fact, do place—substantial business in Britain, which features in our exports not to Hong Kong but to third countries.

The hon. Member referred to this matter and asked if I could give some quantification of this. A typical example is the recent purchase by Cathay Pacific Airlines of Tristar airliners, with the customer's specification of RB211 engines. These engines will in due course appear in the trade statistics as exports from Britain to the United States of America. For indirect exports of this nature, I understand that one large trading house—this is, perhaps, as far as I can go in giving some quantification—has recently estimated its purchases from Britain for delivery to third markets as approaching £100 million per annum. I certainly agree, therefore, with the hon. Member's general point that there is a substantial export trade here which does not enter directly in the trade statistics between the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

Another example—again, this was mentioned by the hon. Member—is shipping. By world standards, Hong Kong has a significant merchant fleet. I need hardly say that we would welcome more of her own flagship purchases being made from British yards—a matter which I know British Shipbuilders is actively pursuing—the picture is by no means entirely negative. I understand that at least one Hong Kong fleet owner has ordered ships in Britain for registration under a third country flag. Once again, that is substantial business which does not feature in the statistics as an export from the United Kingdom to Hong Kong.

Then, of course, there is the invisible account. Here again, the hon. Member asked whether I could give figures. In what is a complex, dynamic and faschanging trading situation, I do not think that it is possible to quantify with any real degree of accuracy the value of our invisible trade balance with Hong Kong. But it is clear that with its involvement in banking, shipping, insurance and other service industries, Britain is—I readily accept this—a substantial net earner in Hong Kong.

It is realistic to point out—perhaps I may be brief about the other side of the coin—that the benefits are not all one way. Throughout our long historic link with the territory, which goes back to 1841, the United Kingdom has increasingly featured as an outlet for Hong Kong products. About 10 per cent. of Hong Kong's exports come to Britain. We imported £450 million worth in 1977 and no less than 60 per cent. of those imports were in textiles. Currently, on the visible account—again, from looking at the general impact in terms of Hong Kong trade—the overall exchange is approximately 2:1 in Hong Kong's favour.

Therefore, I very much welcome what the hon. Member said about the importance of this market to exports. I think that this is an area that we have neglected. I hope that the hon. Member is convinced that my Department is doing all it can to promote trade in Hong Kong. We hope that British industry will take advantage of all the benefits of increasing trade with Hong Kong that the hon. Member rightly mentioned.

I am sure that the key to the relationship between the United Kingdom and Hong Kong has always been and will continue to be the development of two-way trade. I expect to see increases on both sides. I am sure that they will increasingly continue to be to the benefit of both sides.

As we prepare to depart for a short holiday, I am mindful of the fact that for many thousands of my constituents there will be no question of a holiday as such. Indeed, their problem has been that for periods of from one year to 10 years they have been on a constant holiday. They have not been able to find employment in the city of Belfast.

It is with that in mind that I attempt to bring this problem to the Government's attention and to try to elicit from them whether they can see any remedy to the present intolerable situation of unemployment in the constituency that I have the honour to represent in this House—Belfast, West.

I have no hesitation in saying—and I defy contradiction—that my constituency is the most underprivileged and socially deprived of all, in housing, in the lack of opportunities and in the lack of employment. It is the worst constituency in any part of the United Kingdom, if not in Western Europe.

The electoral role of my constituency contains the names of 67,000 people. Indeed, when the new electoral role is published it may be found that the number is substantially lower. Taking the figures of 67,000, one must allow for the aged people in retirement, men over the age of 65 and women over the age of 60, who account for so many thousands. Then one takes the number of wives who are not seeking employment and are acting as housewives. One then deducts those numbers from the total electorate.

By a series of Questions over the past few weeks I have ascertained that the total number of people signing the unemployment register in the Falls Road social security office in West Belfast is 6,214. The total number signing the unemployment register in the Shankill Road, which is substantially in West Belfast, is 2,190. There are parts of the West Belfast area that are not included in the social security office in the Shankill. I refer to Unity Flats and other parts of the area.

In the West Belfast constituency there is a total of 10,000 unemployed. I emphasise that that is in only one constituency. We have had to learn to live with the fact that Northern Ireland as a region of the United Kingdom has always had by far highest unemployment figures, even at times when the rest of the United Kingdom has been prospering economically. Northern Ireland has always accepted that its unemployment figures are substantially much higher than those in the rest of the United Kingdom. The present unemployment figure for the whole of Northern Ireland as a region is about 10·9 per cent.—62,000 or 63,000. That has been the situation over a number of years.

I appreciate that the Government have tried to introduce schemes to alleviate unemployment, but certainly in West Belfast they have not been successful. Let me give a further figure which I have elicited from the Government. A total of 6,214 people signed the unemployment register in the Falls Road social security office, but only 2,015 of those persons qualified for unemployment benefit. That tells a story. They have been so long unemployed that their claim to unemployment benefit has run out and they now receive full supplementary benefit. That does not surprise me because I know the districts concerned and, unfortunately, I know many hundreds, if not thousands, of people who find themselves in this difficult situation.

I tabled a number of questions on this subject and I discovered that in Northern Ireland it is not necessary to sign the unemployment register weekly. Some people sign the register quarterly. That is tantamount to an admission that the authorities concede that it is highly unlikely that a person over the age of 50 or 55 will find employment, particularly in areas such as West Belfast. Therefore, to save administrative work and staff, they inform the unfortunate person who is unemployed "You do not have to come to your local office. You can come here every three months."

Once a person is told that he does not have to sign the register every week but can sign every three months, he is virtually being thrown on the scrap-heap. That is bound to be highly demoralising and will knock the heart out of anybody. These people are being told, in language they know only too well, that it is highly unlikely that they will ever obtain a job.

Many people who find themselves in this position live on supplementary benefit allowance. We all know that such an allowance is not designed to let one live at very high or luxurious standards. People in this category have to live at the lowest possible standard, as designed by the Government. The majority of these people, having found themselves unemployed for so many years, naturally find themselves in debt. A number of them are in debt not for political reasons, not because of their objections to internment, but because they cannot live on the allowances which they are receiving.

The Government, in attempting to retrieve the debts owed to them, have had recourse to the Payment of Debt (Emergency Provisions) Act. They take substantial amounts of money from these persons by way of benefit allocation grants. That again considerably lowers the standard of living of these people—if that standard can drop any lower Than it now is.

There was a recent "Money Programme" on BBC television which sent researchers to Northern Ireland. In the West Belfast area, the lowest rate of unemployment they could find was 25 per cent. In some areas there were 35 per cent. unemployed, and in the West Belfast area some heads of households had not had a job for many pears.

I recognise that there is no magic wand to be waved to create employment overnight. The political troubles and violence in the constituency have caused industrialists to think twice about setting up industry in the area. However, there are many sites in the West Belfast area which could be used for industrial purposes. I am thinking of a large number of vacant sites on the right-hand side of the Falls Road up to the beginning of Royal Avenue. I believe that something could be done to try to industrialise that area and to bring employment to sadly deprived people.

We have recently been told that the EEC is considering making grants to Northern Ireland because of the high unemployment among youth there. I do not know how true this is, and I do not know the figures, but I hope that the Minister will be able to say what truth there is in that information and what are the prospects for financial help from the EEC to allay the scourge of unemployment.

A very well-known and respected clerical figure in West Belfast, Canon Murphy, saw so much poverty and social deprivation in his parish that he felt compelled to voice his concern about what he saw as the continuing tragedy of unemployment in West Belfast. I have known Canon Murphy for many years. He is not a political figure, but he has been clear in voicing his opinions. I know that some hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford), have tried to cast aspersions on Canon Murphy for trying to bring the problem to the attention of the Government.

Again, recently in Northern Ireland there was a meeting of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. My hon. Friend the Minister will be aware of the sentiments expressed at that meeting, and he will know the deep concern felt by sincere and honest trade unionists. Many of those trade unionists feel that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister should go to Northern Ireland and discuss these matters with them to see whether some extraordinary steps should be taken. We all know that every Tuesday and Thursday the Prime Minister is asked Questions calling on him to say when he will meet the CBI or the TUC. He replies, almost without fail, that he has just met the TUC or intends to meet it within a few days.

The trade union movement in Northern Ireland does not have such ready access to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister as it would like to have. I believe that, psychologically, it would be a tremendous boost for the trade union movement in Northern Ireland if my right hon. Friend were to go there and have discussions with its organisations.

In saying that, I am in no way suggesting that any Minister in the Northern Ireland Office is not interested, is unconcerned or is incompetent. But I am sure that it would be of great value if the Prime Minister himself were to go to West Belfast. I remember my right hon. Friend coming to Northern Ireland in 1969. I accompanied him on a tour of my constituency. Things were bad then, but they are a hell of a lot worse now. What has happened in the intervening years has brought nothing but distress and despair to many people in the area.

I do not expect the Government, especially when they have economic problems affecting the whole of the United Kingdom, to wish to give, or to appear to be giving, extra-preferential treatment to Northern Ireland. But Northern Ireland, which has been part of the United Kingdom in law since 1920, has been sadly neglected throughout all these years, and, if it might appear to some that Northern Ireland was getting priority treatment at this time, I feel that the Government would be fully justified in taking the steps which are so needed to alleviate the depression and despair now felt in that part of the United Kingdom.

The figures which I have given—almost 10,000 unemployed in a constituency with an electorate of 67,000—are sufficient to indicate the level of despair. If there were one other constituency in the length and breadth of the United Kingdom with such an intolerable unemployment figure, the Member representing that constituency, were he on these Benches or the Opposition Benches, would be doing everything he possibly could. I feel that I must be in no disadvantageous position in doing all that I can for the people of West Belfast.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will probably say that he is aware of the figures. He will probably be right when he says that the Northern Ireland Office and the Government are aware of them. But I think it right to put the figures on record in the House so that hon. Members of all parties representing other constituencies may see the extent of the problem with which we have to grapple in Northern Ireland.

I remember that, when we were putting through the Act dealing with fair employment, there were some hon. Members from Northern Ireland who felt that that legislation was unnecessary. Indeed, some of them had the audacity to say during those debates that people with a certain political background or association with others of whom those hon. Members disapproved should not be given jobs—that they should be prevented from getting jobs.

That suggestion is in line with what we heard the other day from the hon. Member for Belfast, South. At a time when employment is so hard to come by in an area such as West Belfast, the hon. Member used his privileged position in the House to try to tell the Government not to employ people in security positions in the Royal Victoria Hospital because he did not agree with their politics. In fact, he went quite a long way to label and slander people who were trying to do a job in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.

The Minister will recognise that, certainly in West Belfast, there are many who sympathise with the idea of an eventual Irish Republic. In fact, the majority of those who are now unemployed would sympathise with that ideal. But I am certain that the Minister will not allow himself, because they sympathise with that ideal, to be driven on to the path advocated by the hon. Member for Belfast, South and wish to deny these unfortunate people the employment to which they are just as entitled as are others living in United Kingdom constituencies.

I hope that the Minister will be able to offer some hope to West Belfast today. I recognise that there are other constituencies in Northern Ireland with a heavy unemployment problem, but nowhere is it as bad as it is in West Belfast, where Ballymurphy has 45 per cent. of the adult male population unemployed and Turf Lodge has between 20 per cent. and 30 per cent.—far exceeding the level of unemployment in other black spots such as Derry, Newry and other parts of the Six Counties.

I recognise that we have the Belfast areas of need programme, and we have the youth opportunities programme and other innovations designed to give training to our unemployed youth. But many young men who left school and were given Government training, taking that training in the hope that it would make them more skilled and able more easily to get a job, still find themselves without employment.

That experience only exacerbates the existing tensions. To some extent one can admit that somebody without skill does not easily find a job, but when people who have skills given to them by a Government training centre still find themselves without employment, this only serves to increase tension.

No one will suggest that unemployment is the sole reason for the criminal activities or the campaign of violence which has been continuing in Northern Ireland, but it is certainly a factor because, when young people leave school and cannot find employment, they stand around on the street corners and are easy prey for unscrupulous people who then use our young generation to carry out acts of violence.

There is, therefore, everything to be gained by the Government in taking whatever steps may be necessary to reduce the scourge of unemployment in Northern Ireland. I know that I have my hon. Friend's sympathy. I know that the Northern Ireland Office is sympathetic and is aware of the extent of the problem. I hope, however, that my hon. Friend will this afternoon be able to give us just a little more hope that something will be done in the near future to remedy this awful situation.

In my brief contribution to the debate, initiated by the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) I shall not attempt to score political points. I wish merely to say that my right hon. and hon. Friends share the hon. Gentleman's concern over the high unemployment in Northern Ireland generally. The hon. Member is right to highlight the grave problem in his constituency. It spills over into my constituency of South Antrim, and I appreciate the problem in, for example, the area to the south of his constituency.

I do not take the view that the most effective remedy would be an extension of the experiments in artificially establishing Government factories, because such experiments as have been made have not been conspicuously successful in the recent past. There is no evidence that workers employed in what are to them manifestly non-viable operations draw any satisfaction from their work.

I feel that the answer is for people with initiative in West Belfast and the immediately surrounding areas to make full use of the opportunities that exist in those areas to create, perhaps from small beginnings, undertakings which will be permanent and stay the course. In this respect, there is a great part to be played by the Northern Ireland Development Agency, which, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, is only too anxious to support such undertakings by people who are willing to take initiatives and risks.

If, however, such objectives are to be achieved, there must be a change in the atmosphere on the whole Western side of the city. Hard-headed industrialists and business men are not greatly interested in the political or religious complexion of a locality. The first question they ask is whether it is a separate area.

It cannot be denied—the hon. Gentleman did not seek to deny it—that the unrest has been one of the factors in the present situation. The remedy lies in the hands of all responsible people. I support the hon. Gentleman and, I hope, the Government, in appealing to all such citizens to assert themselves and do all in their power to try to restore the reputation of Belfast and Northern Ireland. Once that is achieved, all parties represented in this House can begin to make significant inroads into the unacceptably high level of unemployment throughout Northern Ireland and the appalling waste of human resources that it represents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) did not understate the extent or nature of the problems that he has in his constituency. They are historic and deep-seated and at the moment they seem to be intransigent. I have visited virtually every street of West Belfast and I have seen the effect on young people and those who had to be pre- maturely retired or who have lost their jobs for one reason or another. These problems must be dealt with, and the Government are determined to deal with them. I hope that what I shall now explain will cover the problems not only of West Belfast but of Belfast itself and Northern Ireland as a whole.

The hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) said that he doubted the wisdom of innovation. The Government's view is that in the face of the high unemployment problem in Northern Ireland we must, as a public authority, experiment economically. The nature of the problems in Northern Ireland are now so deep-seated that it is the opinion of my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Minister of State that we must do everything possible to search out employment opportunities. If that means some form of experimentation here and there, I think that we are bound to do it.

The Government completely share hon. Members' concern about the unemployment problem in Northern Ireland, particularly in West Belfast. There is a difficult unemployment problem in the Province as a whole—at the last count 61,944 people were unemployed, which is a rate of 11·4 per cent. The problem is particularly severe in certain areas, including West Belfast. The 1973 survey of areas of special social need suggested that in parts of West Belfast it may be as high as 25 per cent. My hon. Friend put it higher than that.

This is a situation which causes us all great concern, and the Government are determined to tackle it as vigorously as possible. I would like to spell out in detail the action that the Government have been and are taking to remedy this very worrying situation, particularly in their industrial development and manpower development initiatives. I shall first of all deal with industrial development, because that is the keystone to the provision of sufficient jobs not only in West Belfast but in Northern Ireland as a whole.

The Department of Commerce is committed to taking positive action to provide new employment opportunities wherever jobs are needed. In West Belfast, special measures are available to meet the special circumstances and disadvantages which the area as a whole suffers. The package of incentives offered to potential investors is the best available.

Since August last year, the maximum rate of financial assistance to new industrial projects in West Belfast has been 50 per cent. on plant, machinery and building costs, and, indeed, exceptional financial assistance may be offered in return for substantial investment by strong, soundly-based, international companies willing to establish an employment providing manufacturing capacity in the area. These levels of assistance are as good as can be obtained.

New investment for Northern Ireland, including West Belfast, is being sought on a world-wide basis. My right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Minister of State have travelled extensively to promote the attractions of Northern Ireland as a location for industrial development. In addition, the Department of Commerce's industrial development team has been considerably strengthened. Earlier this month, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State announced that three new industrial promotion officers will take up their posts in the United States later this year. This will add considerably to the Department of Commerce's overseas strength and ability to persuade American companies to consider investing in Northern Ireland generally, and in particular in high unemployment blackspots like West Belfast.

As well as the efforts of the Department of Commerce, the Northern Ireland Development Agency is charged with the promotion of publicly financed industry in areas of high unemployment where private industry is reluctant to invest. The Agency, which is already actively involved in West Belfast, has been allocated £50 million to achieve its overall objectives and is expected to play an increasingly important role in the provision of job opportunities in high unemployment areas.

Small businesses are a critically important part of the Northern Ireland economy, and the local enterprise development unit, which has the responsibility of promoting such businesses, has recently appointed a new Belfast area officer and self-help adviser to encourage a growth of small businesses in the inner city area. Already, nine projects from West Belfast are under consideration.

I can assure anyone interested in investing in West Belfast that a substantial reserve of industrial land and factory accommodation is available to any new project. At this point, I am pleased to announce that a second new advance factory of 2,300 square metres will be built at Kennedy Way to supplement the factory scheduled to be completed in September this year. In addition, the Department of Commerce has over 150 acres already developed or earmarked for industrial development in West Belfast, including sites being developed at Glen Road and Musgrave Park, and a 65-acre site associated with the Poleglass project.

The Department of Commerce is also examing the possibility of developing facilities for industrial development between the Falls and the Shankill. The Department has recently received the final report of a survey of the Falls Industrial Estate, commissioned to investigate the condition and potential of this 24-acre complex. The Department is currently considering the report and hopes to be in a position to give details of its response in the near future.

The importance of maintaining small-scale businesses in the inner city is also recognised, and a total of five acres is being developed on two sites for small neighbourhood business units to provide 20 units varying between 80 square metres and 300 square metres, specifically geared to the requirements of businesses displaced for whatever reasons. The date of the completion of this project is November 1978. These are the first such units built in Belfast, and I can assure hon. Members that there will be more.

Clearly, then, as a result of the vigorous industrial development policies being pursued, we are in a position to give every encouragement to potential investors to locate in West Belfast. It is the case, however—I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree—that the solution to the unemployment problem in West Belfast will not be found in West Belfast alone and it is therefore very important to encourage as much labour mobility as possible.

Undoubtedly, the problem in West Belfast has been aggravated by the relative immobility of some elements in the West Belfast labour force—this perhaps understandable, given the background of sectarian violence which has, I am glad to say, reduced very considerably. It must be remembered that the great majority of employed people in West Belfast work outside the area and will continue to do so.

Perhaps I may now turn to the vital area of manpower development policy, with its emphasis on skill development and preparing people for work. The Government believe that every assistance should be given to unemployed people in Northern Ireland to train for and obtain employment. That is the aim of the sophisticated training and employment services provided by the Department of Manpower Services. Although these services are available throughout the Province, they are especially tuned to areas of high unemployment like West Belfast.

In West Belfast there are two Government training centres which together provide 12 per cent. of the total training places available in Northern Ireland. There are currently over 400 training places in these two centres at Boucher Road and Whiterock. In addition, approximately 150 people living in the West Belfast area are attached, for the purpose of training, to industry and other training facilities throughout Northern Ireland. Furthermore, two integrated work force units, comprising up to 12 persons in each unit, are located in the industrial estate at Whiterock. This concept offers an important opportunity to groups of workers under training to help themselves towards independent operation.

The range of training offered by the Department of Manpower Services and the large number of places available—particularly apprenticeship opportunities—are of the greatest importance to the West Belfast labour force, providing solid foundations for incoming industry and enhancing at a personal level the vocational qualifications of the people in receipt of training.

An important factor in the Department of Manpower Services strategy is the employment service, which offers comprehensive placement and guidance services. Further to assist people in West Belfast to find employment, the employment service supports the employment services provided by the Andersonstown and Suffolk industrial promotion associations job-centre in Andersonstown.

Enterprise Ulster, which is sponsored by the Department of Manpower Services, also provides a number of opportunities for people in West Belfast. As the hon. Member is aware, Enterprise Ulster provides valuable employment for people who have difficulty in obtaining work, and contributes substantially to the enhancement of the environment. Enterprise Ulster operations in the area are presently providing employment for 81 people in three different projects.

The problem of youth unemployment, which is particularly difficult in areas of relatively high unemployment like West Belfast, is, of course, a major concern to Government, and for that reason last year the Secretary of State announced the youth opportunities programme. The programme will provide opportunities in training and work preparation for 6,000 unemployed young people throughout the Province. The programme will, however, be concentrated on areas of high unemployment.

A number of the places in the programme will be provided by the development of existing schemes for young people, including places in Government training centres, attachment places, Enterprise Ulster, Younghelp, and courses for young unemployed people provided by colleges of further education. In addition, a number of new places are being provided through new work experience schemes in employers' premises. The programme also aims to provide a substantial number of places in new schemes sought from community interests and supported by the Department of Manpower Services. These new schemes take the form of locally based experimental work preparation units.

The work preparation units will give unemployed young people training and experience in a wide range of activities over a period of, on average, 52 weeks. Although funded and supported by Government, the units will be organised and managed by local organisations which promote the schemes. These schemes therefore represent a unique opportunity for Government and the community to co-operate in dealing with the problem of youth unemployment. Four work preparation units have already been approved for the Falls and Shankill areas of Belfast. These units will provide places for over 120 young people. Negotiations are under way with other groups to provide additional units in the West Belfast area.

I have been stressing industrial promotion and manpower development policy, because naturally resolution of the unemployment problem depends to a significant extent on progress in these areas. There are, however, other aspects of Government social and economic policies which have an important impact on employment opportunities for the West Belfast community.

In March, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced the allocation of about £13½ million to public services in Northern Ireland. This will involve additional jobs, particularly in the education and health and personal social services sectors. The reallocation as a whole is expected to create a total of 3,550 new jobs in the years 1978–79 and 1979–80, and to preserve 1,800 industrial jobs. In announcing this reallocation, my right hon. Friend emphasised his intention that the maximum possible benefit of the reallocation should go to areas such as Belfast areas of need.

The Belfast areas of need programme is significant in terms of improving the environment of those parts of the city which have experienced the greatest difficulty in recent years. The greater part of BAN falls within West Belfast. The programme has also considerable significance in terms of employment. From its inception in 1977, to 1982, some £17·3 million will be devoted to the schemes under the BAN programme creating up to 900 jobs during the period.

One of my own particular interests—housing—has important employment implications. As the hon. Member is aware, a substantial number of his constituents look to the construction industry for employment. A multi-million pound programme is under way throughout the area to ensure rapid progress in new buildings, redevelopment and rehabilitation and improvement of existing stock.

A vital part of this housing programme is the Poleglass development scheme, which will include the provision of 2,000 new houses which are urgently needed. Appropriate machinery is being established to ensure the scheme's early implementation. As I have already mentioned, 65 acres of land in the scheme have been reserved for industrial development.

Clearly, this significant housing programme will offer substantial employment in the construction industry. On a wider front, the Northern Ireland construction industry was allocated £9 million from the recent United Kingdom package to maintain employment. Two million pounds of this has been allocated to the renovation and rehabilitation of the major cities of Belfast and Londonderry. Apart from these moneys, the total amount of public moneys redirected towards inner Belfast, where many West Belfast people find employment, is now over £12 million.

As I have demonstrated, the Government are working strenuously to deal with the problems of West Belfast. Progress is being made across a wide front. I must not, however, suggest that there is an early or short-term solution to the difficult problems of the area which have accumulated over the years and, as the hon. Member will appreciate, the West Belfast problems aggravated in recent years by the economic situation and the security problem.

The recession and the continuing sluggishness in the international economy have taken their toll, not only in West Belfast but in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom as a whole. Unemployment in Northern Ireland has increased from 5·2 per cent. at June 1974 to the present level of 11·4 per cent. and in Great Britain during the same period from 2·3 per cent. to 5·7 per cent. The number of new jobs promoted in Northern Ireland over the last few years shows clearly the effects of this economic situation. In the years 1975–77, only 800 new jobs were promoted by new companies from outside Northern Ireland. Indeed, during this difficult period, maintenance of jobs has been a major concern of Government and West Belfast as other parts of Northern Ireland have benefited from the job maintenance action of the Departments of Manpower Services and Commerce. Over 1,900 jobs have been maintained in about 15 firms in West Belfast since 1975 with the help of the Department of Manpower Services. The Department of Commerce has also been active in job support. In this context I mention particularly Strathearn Audio and Antrim Crystal, which provide clear evidence of the Government's preparedness to commit substantial resources to the area.

I could have gone on and dealt in further detail with the extent to which the Government have in the past months and years tried to alleviate the unemployment problems of West Belfast. I can assure my hon. Friend—and, indeed, the Member for Antrim, South—that we shall leave no stone unturned in our search for satisfactory solutions.

Before I start my speech, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I have your guidance? I am listed on the Order Paper as starting the debate at 2p.m. You have allowed the debate on unemployment in West Belfast to go on for a further eight minutes after 2 p.m. May I hope that you will allow me the same leniency, so that my debate will not be foreshortened, as clearly the Order Paper requires that it should not?

I quite understand the concern of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson). I can put his mind at rest. The matter is entirely in the discretion of the Chair. Although the previous debate overran, and I know that two other hon. Members, as well as the Minister, desire to intervene in the hon. Member's debate, it is conceivable that I shall show latitude there as well. I hope—piously, perhaps—that in later debates the time may be made up in other ways. The hon. Gentleman does not need to worry unduly.

I am most grateful for your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and most grateful to have the opportunity this afternoon to debate the future of RAF Greenham Common in my constituency. As you may be aware, the future of the base and whether it is to become fully operational again has been exercising my mind and the minds of many of my constituents since February of this year, when I was informed that the United States authorities had requested the reactivation of Greenham Common as a fully operational air sta- tion from which to operate 15 KC135 tanker aircraft.

The KC135 is generally acknowledged to be one of the noisiest, if not the noisiest, four-engined jet aircraft flying anywhere in the world today. It was the forerunner of the Boeing 707 airliner. Because it is a military aircraft, it has none of the sophistication in terms of noise suppression machinery which might be found in existing marks of the 707. Fully laden with 27,000 gallons of aviation fuel, the KC135 has a long, low take-off and climb, during which it emits a very high level of jet noise, which has been described as a shattering roar. Local officials in my constituency estimate that operating these aircraft from Greenham will mean that literally tens of thousands of people living along an 18-mile by 2-mile-wide corridor through West Berkshire from the end of the runway will be subjected to noise levels of not less than 100 pndB, a level which will be extremely instrusive and disturbing. Those living close to the base and immediately below the flight path will be subjected to noise levels as high as 135 pndB, a level which outside their houses could cause physical pain.

As well as the thousands of houses around the base, there are also 12 schools and two hospitals, one of which is for geriatric and maternity cases and lies directly under the flight path. On take-off the KC135 emits a large quantity of dark smoke and unburnt kerosene which causes an odour and fall-out nuisance. By anybody's standards, it is a very unsocial aircraft. Yet if Greenham is reactivated that is what my constituents will have to live with, plus the danger of one of these aircraft being involved in an accident and falling on parts of Newbury, Thatcham, Greenham, Brimpton or, conceivably, even Aldermaston, with consequences which could be catastrophic.

That is the nature of the threat to those living around Greenham and in West Berkshire. At least, that is what we suppose it to be. In fact, since the United States proposal was put in at the beginning of this year nobody, either from the United States Air Force or the Ministry of Defence, has proffered any details as to exactly what we should expect.

Such details as I may myself have gleaned I owe in part at least to a visit paid to me by an American general in 1977, at the instigation of the Minister of Defence, when he gave me certain facts and figures on a confidential basis and until the proposal was put in. Those are all that I or my constituents have had to go on. We are at least grateful to General Rosencrans for his candour and responsibility in telling us what he thought we might have to put up with. I therefore hope that this afternoon the Minister will show the same candour and responsibility. I hope that he will break the wall of silence and tear away the veil of secrecy which surrounds the American proposal.

Before asking a number of key questions with regard to the American proposal, it might be helpful if I explain the genesis of RAF Greenham Common and show how we have come to the situation in 1978 that this non-operational air base is now threatened with reactivation.

Greenham Common was first requisitioned in 1939 by the Air Ministry and was used as an airfield by the RAF until the end of the war. It was then partially derequisitioned, so that by 1950 part of it had been returned to agriculture and several of the air base buildings had been demolished. In 1951 it was requisitioned again, this time for the use of the United States Air Force, which operated from it until 1964, when it was closed. It was closed in such a definite way that in 1964 a civil servant in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government wrote to the Berkshire County Council that

"The Ministry of Defence no longer has any interest in the use of this airfield for flying purposes."

In fact, the base has remained non-operational ever since, although in 1968 it was designated as a standby deployment base for the United States Air Force in the event of an emergency.

In 1976 it was used by the United States Air Force for its F111 strike aircraft while the runway at Upper Heyford was being resurfaced. The noise of those aircraft brought me literally shoals of letters demanding to know whether the Americans were remaining at Greenham for only the three months which they promised or whether their temporary stay would become something rather more permanent. I have passed many of those letters on to the Minister. He may remember that on 16th December 1976 he was able to write to me, and I was able to write to my constituents that the Minister had said:

"There is no intention to alter the standby status of RAF Greenham Common and consequently, of course, no plans to station any aircraft there permanently."

The Minister's assurance set the minds of my constituents at ease, and mine with them.

Since the F111s had flown away and peace had been restored to Greenham Common, we thought that that was the end of the matter. But, of course, the Minister's assurance was just one more assurance along the line since 1964. It was his assurance and assurances like it which prompted local authorities in Berkshire to allow so many houses to be built near the air base. It must have been that sort of assurance that the Department of the Environment was working on in 1975 when, on appeal, it consented to allow the construction of 81 houses in Russell Road, very close to the air base. Then, emboldened by that decision, and no doubt by its conversations with the Ministry of Defence, the Department of the Environment gave consent on appeal in 1976 for 620 houses to be built at Thatcham, again extremely close to the base.

I remind the Minister that that was far closer than the advice which the Government gave to local authorities in their White Paper on airports policy earlier this year, when they stated:

"New housing developments should not be permitted in areas close to major airports seriously affected by aircraft noise."

The White Paper acknowledged that

"Of all the problems associated with airports, the disturbance caused by aircraft noise remains the most serious."

Yet those consents were given although the local authority had originally turned down the requests.

Today we have around Greenham many thousands of houses which will be very seriously affected if the base is reopened. Many hundreds of people have bought those houses on mortgages and have used their life savings. Since February of this year, when the American proposal went in, they have seen the value of their houses plummet. It is estimated that £1 million has been wiped off the value of houses in and around the Greenham air base.

The Minister will know that I have asked him what compensation the Ministry of Defence is prepared to give to those people if it is decided to let the Americans use Greenham. What sort of grant is the Ministry prepared to give to all those other people whose lives, from the moment of reactivation, will be intruded upon by excessive noise which will spoil the quiet existence which they are now enjoying? I remind the Minister that if Greenham were a civil airport both the compensation and the noise insulation grants would be given as a matter of course. It would be less than justice if my constituents could not enjoy the same privilege.

I have outlined the American proposal and how we believe it will affect us if Greenham is reopened. I have traced the history of the base to the present day. I should now like to ask the Minister to spell out the details which so far no one has given us. Will he tell me just exactly what the American proposal involves? Will he tell me whether the 15 KC135s are all the aircraft that will be stationed at the base, or are they just the thin end of a very much bigger wedge? Will he say how long the Americans intend to keep the base open if he gives them consent to use it?

Will the Minister say what are the most up-to-date noise levels of the KC135 and what sort of noise footprint they will create around the base and in West Berkshire? Will he tell me what noise suppression procedures American military pilots are required to follow? Will he say how many American service men will be stationed at Greenham? Will he say what sort of build-up in road traffic we should expect? Will he tell us that the MOD and the USAF are working out compensation plans for householders whose properties have been blighted and that they are prepared to give noise insulation grants? Will he perhaps tell me that a decision has been made whether it is to be Greenham?

My constituents and I believe that Greenham is the wrong place for the tanker aircraft, for some of the reasons that I have tried to explain. If anyone seeks to tell me that it is the cheapest of the alternatives available, I think that I can and will reply that perhaps it is cheapest in physical terms, but what about the cost in terms of human suffering from excessive noise, what about the blight on house values and what about a despoiled rural environment? These, too, have a cost, and they have to be put in the balance before any decision is made.

We all recognise that NATO needs strengthening. We recognise that new air bases may be required and may have to be reopened because the existing ones are utilised fully—if they are. I submit, however, that Greenham is not the only air base standing vacant and that the problems surrounding its reactivation outside an emergency or war-time situation require that it should remain on standby and nothing more for as far ahead as anyone can see.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) for allowing me two minutes of his time.

The Minister knows that both the Lincolnshire County Council and hon. Members representing Lincolnshire constituencies have urged that this United States Air Force base should come to our county. I ask him, therefore, to give an assurance that before he makes a decision about choosing a base other than in Lincolnshire he will first meet a deputation from the Lincolnshire County Council so that its case can be put to him.

In view of what we have heard from my hon. Friend, it is clear that the main argument in favour of Greenham is one of costs. It follows, therefore, that the Minister must weigh in the scales the costs which can be put in cash terms about going to Lincolnshire—we are told that they may be quite considerable—and the other items which cannot be quantified in money terms of the kind described by my hon. Friend and, perhaps not least of all, the damage which can be done to Anglo-American relations if this base goes to an area where there may be resentment. That resentment will not exist in Lincolnshire, for a variety of reasons, and I hope that the Minister will listen to what those reasons are when he meets a deputation from the Lincolnshire County Council.

On the subject of costs, I refer the Minister to a news item which appeared in The Times recently, and ask him whether it is really true that the Americans propose to spend $15 million on a school alone in Greenham Common. That is £6 million or £7 million, and that is some school. If that is the kind of estimate that we are getting from the Americans, is it not to be questioned? In respect of Fairford, there is an estimate of $35 million for family facilities. If these estimates are correct, I urge the Minister to apply his sharpest critical faculties to all the other estimates, especially those which may relate to the base going to Lincolnshire.

I, too, am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Mc-Nair-Wilson) for allowing me a few moments in which to make a brief intervention.

It will be known that two of the alternatives to Greenham Common which are being considered are Fairford, which is in my constituency, and Brize Norton, which is not in my constituency but which would affect it greatly because a large part of the flight path for the aircarft would come across the central-southern part of my constituency.

It is right for me to say—it is a view shared by the vast majority of my constituents—that we would not wish to do anything to obstruct the proper defence of our islands through NATO with the help of the United States Air Force. If it were proved that it was essential for the base to go to any one location, it would be right for everyone to support that. However, I am by no means convinced—certainly my constituents are not—that either of the two bases that I mentioned would be in that category.

It is right for me to represent in public the fact that about 20,000 people in my constituency would be affected greatly, especially by the Fairford decision if that were to be taken, and that they are greatly alarmed and apprehensive about the pollution and noise which would be caused by the aircraft going to Fairford.

I have every sympathy with the Minister in the dilemmas which face him. One is the dilemma between the need to preserve the environment throughout the country and the even more overriding need to provide for defence and to welcome our American allies. On the other hand, the Minister has the dilemma about which base should be chosen, and I support him in the careful evaluation that he is making of that.

I am grateful to both my hon. Friends for what they have said, and I believe it right to place on record the extremely strong feeling which exists among my constituents that the area in the South Cotswolds which would be affected by either Brize Norton or Fairford would not be a suitable one, in view of the large population, the extremely attractive nature of the countryside, and the fact that many people have moved to that part of the world to avoid the noise which is so much feared from these aircraft.

The fact that three hon. Members have participated in this debate and expressed the concern of their constituents at the prospect of the development of an RAF station at Greenham Common or some other place is an indication of the difficulties which we face both in the Ministry of Defence and in the United States in reaching decisions which are vital if we are to provide the sort of defence capability and mechanisms which are so important to maintaining the peace of our country in all its aspects and our security and freedom.

The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) has been in regular contact with me about this matter for some time. I think that he will acknowledge that, both at the meeting on 17th March when he led a deputation which saw my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and myself and on 4th April, when the delegation of local authority representatives which he led to the Ministry of Defence saw me on my own, his constituents and his local authorities had a very fair hearing. I can assure him and his constituents that everything that they said has been taken note of and that we are fully aware of the problems at Greenham Common.

I welcome this debate because it allows me to state how matters stand at the moment and perhaps to deal with some of the misunderstandings which have arisen as a result of this vital and welcome request by the United States authorities to strengthen their forward commitment in Europe in the defence of freedom.

I should like first to explain a little of the strategic background to the United States' request. It is one which is welcomed greatly by the British Government and I am sure that the Opposition are pleased by this firm indication from the United States Government of their intention to increase the effectiveness of their ready forces which they have committed to the defence of Europe. One of the most effective and economic means of doing this is by the provision of additional tanker aircraft for air-to-air refuelling of combat aircraft. Tankers have been aptly described in this role as "force multipliers". Their use can increase the operational effectiveness of the aircraft they support several times over. It is, therefore, an important contribution to our total ability in the air.

As has been recently announced by my right hon. Friend, we plan to strengthen our own RAF air-to-air refuelling capability by buying extra VC10s for use in this role. The United States Air Force in this country already has KC135 tanker aircraft based on RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk. The United States Air Force has, with our agreement, recently increased the number of its tactical aircraft stationed in this country. To maximise the contribution of these aircraft to NATO's defences there needs to be a parallel increase in the number of supporting tanker aircraft. I am sure that all those who have spoken, and the Conservative Party as a whole, will agree that this is an important request by the Americans. It is certainly one which, in principle, has the full support of Her Majesty's Government.

As the debate reflects, what we are now faced with is the difficult problem of finding the most suitable location for these aircraft. There has been a lot of attention given by the media recently to the request of the United States. It would do no harm if I were to reiterate some of the basic facts about the request which seem to have been overlooked. In doing so I shall probably deal with a number of questions which the hon. Member for Newbury posed. There is, first, the question of numbers. What the United States authorities have asked for is agreement to base up to 15 more KC135 aircraft in this country. This deployment, if agreed, would be introduced gradually over a period. Secondly, there would not be round-the-clock flying, seven days a week. The number of sorties which would eventually be generated would amount to about eight a day and in general there would be no flying at night or at weekends.

Thirdly, the United States Air Force has recently started a programme to change the fuel used by its aircraft in this country to the type used by the RAF, which is similar to that used by civil airlines. This is in accordance with the NATO decision to standardise fuel for land-based jet aircraft. The tanker aircraft will not, therefore, normally carry the so-called highly dangerous JP4 fuel. They will fairly shortly be converting to the new—for them—fuel which is the safer type of aviation fuel already used in military and civil aircraft in this country.

Fourthly, fears have been expressed that because this is a defence matter there will, for some reason, be a bar preventing local people from voicing their opinions. I make it clear that the Ministry of Defence, in common with other Government Departments, has agreed to follow the procedures set out in the Department of the Environment's circular 7/77 regarding development by Government Departments and specifically concerning the question of consultation with local planning authorities on development proposals.

On the question of compensation, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the general position is that the Ministry of Defence will follow the policy laid down in the White Paper "Development and Compensation—Putting People First", Cmnd. No. 5124. Obviously at this stage I cannot say whether all of the claims which might be put forward will fall within the ambit of the White Paper, but I can give an absolute assurance that any claims for compensation in respect of these matters will be considered most carefully.

It follows from what I have said that some of the public reaction to the United States' request has been out of proportion to its real scope and implications. It would be wrong of me to pretend that the KC135 aircraft is not noisy. The nature of its role, however, means that its sortie rate is very low and, in any case, it is planned to be replaced in a few years' time, within the United States Air Force, by the quieter DC10 in the tanker role.

There have been some criticisms of the handling of the United States request over Greenham Common. I ought to take this opportunity of seeking to put the record straight. RAF Greenham Common is at present a United States Air Force standby deployment base. This has been its status for about 10 years. The principal purpose of a stand-by base is, of course, to be available for use if required. As such, the base needs to be maintained in a condition which will enable it to fulfil the role for which it is intended. In addition, such a base can be used for exercises designed to rehearse wartime plans and also for temporary deployment of aircraft from other bases. This is precisely what has happened in recent years, and some of the matters which the hon. Member for Newbury mentioned fall into that category.

I must make it clear to the residents of Greenham Common and Newbury that Greenham Common is a stand-by base. It can be, and will be, used from time to time for all sorts of activities which are essential for the training and maintenance of an effective air operation to protect this country and to enable the base to play its proper part in NATO plans. I must emphasise that a stand-by base, by its nature, is available for possible reactivation as a fully operational peacetime base as defence plans are changed, as they become out of date and are updated in view of developments like the increased Soviet threat. All of these things have to be taken into consideration.

The case history of Greenham Common has been exactly in accord with this role during the 10 years in which it has been a stand-by base. In the summer of 1976 F111 aircraft from the United States Air Force base at RAF Upper Heyford, in Oxfordshire, were deployed to Greenham Common while the runway at Upper Heyford was being resurfaced. This was followed by a NATO exercise involving over 30 transport aircraft. Plans were also announced at this time for the construction of hardened aircraft shelters at the base, and I repeat now what I have said to the hon. Member for Newbury many times, namely, that these shelters were related to the standby role of the base and not to any plans to reactivate the base, because at that time no such plans existed.

In contrast, 1977 has been a quiet year for Greenham Common in respect of aircraft activity. Much work has been going on at the base, including the resurfacing of the runway at a substantial cost. This work was also related to the stand-by role of the base and had been planned for many years.

The hon. Members for Newbury and Holland with Boston (Mr. Body) referred to the state of Anglo-American relations. I can tell the House, from my own experience and from careful study of the record over a considerable number of years, that in this country the relationship between locally based United States forces and the local population has been very good indeed. The United States the authorities rightly go to great lengths to ensure that they maintain the highest possible links with local authorities, achieving an understanding of their problems and co-operating with the local community.

The hon. Member for Newbury referred to General Rosencrantz, who, for a number of years, served with great distinction as the commander of the United States Air Force in this country. I have met him on a number of occasions since I have held this office and have always been most impressed by his dedication not only to his professional requirements as an airman but, as a human being and as a citizen, to the requirements to maintain those good relations.

I take this opportunity of saying clearly that we, as a country, are indebted to such fine officers as General Rosencrans and his successor, General Norris, for the steps and the care that they take to maintain and foster good Anglo-American relations wherever United States forces are based in this country. I am, fortunately, able to inform the House that only this morning my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was informed by the United States charge d'affaires of the United States Government's views on the results of surveys, which our two air forces have conducted in recent weeks, of possible candidate airfields in the United Kingdom. It is my intention to hold a meeting in the Ministry of Defence next week to seek to come to a decision. I hope to make an announcement in the following week.

The House will appreciate that this is a most complicated and difficult matter. It would be wrong for us to rush into taking a decision until all the relevant data has been fully and carefully considered. We shall inform the hon. Members and the local authorities concerned before an announcement is made. I have already made it clear that the procedures laid down in the Department of the Environment's circular 7/77 will be followed, and we, like all Government Departments, will be governed by those requirements wherever they are applicable.

rose—

I assume that the point that the hon. Member for Holland with Boston is about to intervene upon concerns his request that I should see a delegation from his area. I can tell him that because of the need to reach a decision as soon as possible, for a host of perfectly sound and justifiable reasons, I would not completely set my face against seeing such a delegation, but it would need to be mounted with considerable speed. I can also tell him that in our evaluation we are considering the position of certain airfields in the Lincolnshire area.

We and the Americans are conscious of the problems that would be caused by any plan to base these large and heavy aircraft at Greenham Common. Whatever the history is, it is a fact that this airfield is now surrounded by new housing development, including many schools and hospitals. Though the number of aircraft sorties has been exaggerated, there would undoubtedly be some disturbance to the local population.

Moreover, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston is not far away. Although, for safety reasons, aircraft approaching Greenham Common would not normally overfly the prohibited air space that surrounds this establishment, one cannot rule out the possibility that on some occasions one of these aircraft will inadvertently infringe this air space. This is an important factor, which we must bear in mind. While this would not rule out the use of Greenham Common by more manoeuvrable aircraft, or be an overriding consideration in a time of tension or war, it seems an unnecessary risk to take in peace-time, when there are alternative locations for the KC135 tankers, as now appears to be the case. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have therefore agreed that they should not be based at Greenham Common.

I would also like to say a few words about the planned delegations by the citizens of Newbury to explain their case to the United States Government in Washington next week. They will appreciate from what I have just said, that since the United States Government have given us their views, the matter now rests entirely in the hands of the Government, who I undertake will make their decision in a short time.

This is one of those decisions with which Ministers are from time to time faced. The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) rightly drew attention to the terrible dilemma that Ministers are put in when they have to judge between, on the one hand, the legitimate apprehensions and fears of a local community and, on the other, the overriding—I use the word "overriding" advisedly—importance of ensuring that this country, in co-operation with its allies, has ready in Europe, in the United Kingdom, sufficient forces and supporting refuelling tankers to enable us to perform our part and the Americans to perform their part in the defence of peace and the freedom and the security of all the people who reside in this country and in the countries of our NATO allies. It is in this sense that we shall be taking our decision fairly shortly, and we shall be announcing this to hon. Members concerned and to the House.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If it is not out of order, may I thank the Minister for his answer this afternoon, which will bring great relief to my constituents?

Order. Both the previous Adjournment debates have overrun their time. We are now running a quarter of an hour late. If I may have the co-operation of those who are taking part in the three subsequent debates, which must be finished by 4 o'clock, speeches can be confined to 12 minutes each and we can get them all in.

I am glad to have the opportunity of raising the serious shortage of geriatric beds in Nottingham. The need for more geriatric beds in Nottingham is not, unfortunately, a new one. We are suffering from the neglect of the past. What has not been provided on an adequate scale down all the years since the National Health Service has been in operation cannot now be provided suddenly and overnight.

When the National Health Service came into being in 1948 Britain, under a Labour Government, led Europe in postwar recovery. We topped every worthwhile table and became at the same time the Welfare State, the envy of the world. In 1951 began 13 years of Conservative Government, during which time Britain spent a smaller percentage of its national income on health, welfare and social services than did our Continental neighbours.

The neglect of those 13 years has left a terrible backlog of improvements which are necessary in the Service, and we are suffering from that today. On 20th April 1964, towards the end of those 13 years of uninterrupted Conservative Government, I put a Question to the Conservative Minister of Health, who is now the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), about geriatric beds in Nottingham and the waiting lists for those beds. I was told that there were 661 staffed beds available and that the waiting list was 253. There was a total demand at that time for 914 beds.

I asked the Minister whether he had estimated on population trends how many geriatric beds were likely to be needed in 1970 and what plans had been made for meeting the demands for such beds at that time and in the future. The answer I received was that a projection of population for 1975 indicated that about 1,060 geriatric beds might be needed by that year and that it was expected that 800 beds would be available in 1970.

The Conservative Government on that day were therefore planning to have by 1970 a number of geriatric beds which would not have taken care of the demand in 1964. That is why we have a shortage of geriatric beds in Nottingham and a shortage of all National Health Service provisions in Nottingham. Yet at that time I was rebuked by a local newspaper for raising in the House the deficiencies of the NHS.

On 30th November 1971 I put similar Questions to the then Conservative Minister of Health and was told that there were 631 geriatric beds in Nottingham—a fall from 1964. I was told that 92 people were on the waiting list and that 226 people had died while awaiting admission to geriatric beds in the year ending 30th September 1971. Of those 226 people, 97 had died in their own homes and most of the rest had died in hospital awaiting transfer to geriatric beds. It can be seen from those figures that, in that year, more than 100 people awaiting geriatric beds had died in other hospital beds. The problem of old people occupying beds needed for surgical and medical cases is not new, regrettable though it is.

At around that time, the chairman of the local medical committee made a statement about difficulties in the hospital service in the Nottingham area. He said:

"It should be recognised that all disciplines within the hospital service are working under considerable stress and, in many instances, to a degree which exceeds the obligations of contract. The unpalatable fact, however, is that the resources of the hospital service are stretched to the limit and are incapable of dealing with the legitimate demands on the service as expeditiously as the public has the right to expect."

That was said at the end of 1971, yet if one reads the comments of some people it seems as though the crisis in the NHS came along like a sudden cloud in the sky only as soon as we had a minority Labour Government in 1974.

In January 1972 I said in the House:

"Will the Minister please do something urgently…before greater problems hit our hospitals? Will he badger the Treasury until adequate sums of money are made available to ensure that proper maintenance arrangements for our hospitals are made? Will he hound the Treasury night and day until in the Nottingham area we have a right, fair and proper share of the money that is made available for our hospital service?"—[Official Report, 26th January 1972; Vol. 829, C. 1580.]

I did not receive a reply to those requests, but two days later the Minister answered another hon. Member from the area and said that he was quite satisfied that Nottingham was being allocated a fair share of resources. In all my time in the House, I have never heard a more ridiculous statement.

I have obtained information and figures about what is proposed to improve the position in regard to geriatic beds in Nottingham, but no doubt the Minister has more up-to-date and accurate information. I hope that he will tell us what improvements are planned for Nottingham.

The bed crisis which was experienced last winter in Nottingham because of the high number of surgical beds being blocked by their occupancy by old people needing geriatic beds has led to further proposals to bring about improvements this year.

I am glad that increasing use is to be made of accommodation at the Highbury Hospital. The Minister will recall that when people were incorrectly suggesting last September that the Highbury Hospital was to be closed, I said, having long pressed for more geriatric beds in Nottingham, that I hoped that the Highbury Hospital's beds would be retained for as long as there was a need for them—and there was obviously a continuing need.

Under this Government the NHS is receiving more money than ever before, despite the fact that we entered a worldwide slump at a time when we were left by a Conservative Government far less prepared for that slump than was any other country in Europe.

The Trent Regional Health Authority, for so long the Cinderella of all the regions, is now receiving one of the largest allocations of cash in the country. I congratulate the Minister on the fact that a start has at last been made towards correcting the unfairness and injustices from which Nottingham has suffered for too long.

However, I want to remind my hon. Friend that there is an awful backlog of neglect and unfairness to make up, and I shall not be satisfied until I can say and see that full justice has at last been done to the Nottingham area. Among the the services that must benefit from increased resources is that which caters for old people. Improvements are not needed only in the number of geriatic beds. It is inevitable that as the number of elderly, and particularly very elderly, in the population increases, there will be greater demands on the health and social services.

I understand that the Government are proposing to issue shortly a discussion document on a number of issues arising from the increased number of elderly people in the community and will be seeking the views of all interested people before issuing a White Paper early next year.

The hospital service will have to meet a share of the increased demand, but only a small proportion of elderly people are in hospital at any one time and the aim of the health and personal social services must be to enable as many elderly people as possible to remain in their own homes. Some will undoubtedly need the sort of continuing care which can be provided only in hospital, but the majority of families are willing to look after elderly people if they are given the proper assistance to do so.

It is important that we should assist families by providing improved domiciliary support services in the shape of home nurses, home helps, night-sitters, laundry services for the incontinent, and so on. I know that the DHSS is aiming to find the most effective way of supporting families who need that sort of help.

There are already two allowances intended to assist people who are caring for severely disabled or elderly relatives in their homes when certain conditions are met. They are the attendance allowance and the invalid care allowance. I understand that the financial position of elderly people will be one of the subjects in the discussion document. We shall have a wide-ranging discussion on provision for the elderly. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to say something more about those matters as well as about the need for more geriatric beds in Nottingham.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Whitlock) on the way in which he terrier-like sinks his teeth into the problem and hangs on until something is done about it. He is the most effective guardian in the House of Health Service interests in Nottingham. He has again raised an interesting problem.

I fully accept that the level of services provided for the elderly in Nottingham by the health and local authorities is not as high as those authorities—the Nottinghamshire Area Health Authority and the Nottinghamshire County Council—would wish. It is not as high as I should like it to be, but I hope that I can lighten the somewhat gloomy picture which those remarks might appear to indicate.

There is no doubt that nationally the growing proportion of the population aged 65 years and over will place an increasing strain on most health and personal social services in the next 20 years or more. In 1951, shortly after the foundation of the National Health Service, there were just over 4½ million people aged 65 years and over in England. Now there are 6½ million, or one in seven of the population.

In the next 10 years there will be even more elderly people than at present. The substantial increase in the past 10 years might slow down, but over the next 20 years a greater proportion of the elderly will be very old. By 1986, 20 per cent. more people will be aged 75 years or older. By 1996, there will be 60 per cent. more people aged over 85. The numbers of the elderly are growing. They are heavy users of health and social services.

The Government's aim is to enable the elderly to maintain independent lives in their own homes for as long as possible. That is what most elderly people want, and they are therefore likely to be more healthy in that environment than in any other for a longer period of their lives.

We must ensure that health and local authorities jointly plan an effective network of hospital, residential and domiciliary services. In order to effect that, our priorities are, first, the rapid development of the domiciliary services of the personal social services. Our second priority is the development of acute geriatric units in general hospitals with immediate access to full diagnostic, therapeutic and rehabilitation facilities and the replacement as fast as possible of the old long-stay geriatric hospitals. That doctrine might explain some of the differences in figures which were regarded as inadequate in the early 1960s and the figures which are likely to be regarded as adequate in the 1980s, under the new policy.

The next priority is the development of a network of local authority residential homes geared to local circumstances and special in-patient and day hospital units for the elderly and severely mentally infirm in community hospitals as part of a district psychiatric service.

My hon. Friend's chief concern is with hospital beds for the elderly, although he raised other subjects with which I shall deal later. What sort of hospital care do the elderly need? Mainly, they need acute treatment and effective rehabilitation rather continuing long-term care.

In the early 1960s the theory was that, if one became old and geriatric, one went to an institution where one was fed, watered and kept warm and dry. Not much else was done, and one was expected to stay there until death. We wish to get away from that concept. We are quite a long way from it. But too many people still associate hospital care of the elderly with the longer-stay units—the old chronic wards.

A number of elderly people will continue to need long-term care and a slower pace of rehabilitation, but the majority of those admitted to geriatric departments in hospitals now leave hospital in less than four weeks. Only 10 per cent. stay for longer than six months. That is the fundamental change that has taken place since my hon. Friend has been a Member of the House.

I turn to the detailed position in Nottingham. The responsibility for the health services in Nottingham is that of the Nottinghamshire Area Health Authority (Teaching), which leaves much of the day-to-day running and short-term planning of the Health Service to the management teams and the city's two health districts, the North and South Nottingham health districts. They work very closely together, and this is particularly so in the case of services for the elderly, since, apart from 22 geriatric beds at Highbury Hospital, the South Nottingham district looks entirely for in-patient facilities for the elderly to the North Nottingham district. Therefore, the geriatric hospital services for the city are, in effect, at the moment managed by the North Nottingham district on a cross-district basis.

Compared with recommended levels of provision—that is, recommended by my Department—Nottingham, with its present complement of 452 geriatric beds for a population aged 65 and over of 80,000, has a deficiency of about 360 geriatric beds. This deficiency is exacerbated by a shortage of hospital day places and by deficiencies in the local authority's residential and day centre provision.

Only in the number of beds for elderly patients with severe mental infirmity is Nottingham above recommended levels, and even those 463 beds are situated mostly in the two large mental illness hospitals at Mapperley and Saxondale, which, in accordance with our present policies, we do not regard as ideal.

Against this background of inadequacy, the prospect is not good because a substantial increase in the city's elderly population is projected, from its present figure of 80,000 people over 65 now to some 87,000 over 65 in 1986–87. Within this overall figure, the number of those aged 65 to 74 is expected to decrease a little from 52,900 to about 50,000. Therefore, the number of those aged 75 and over, those who make the heaviest demands on the health and personal social services will increase from about 27,700 to 37,000 in the same period.

Therefore, the problem is substantial. The area health authority nevertheless has plans to increase the number of geriatric beds in Nottingham from the present figure of 452 to 598. First, there will be 144 new geriatric beds at the Queen's Medical Centre and a further 60, together with a rehabilitation department, at the General Hospital.

It is planned to provide 40 day places as part of phase 2 of the Queen's Medical Centre, and this will double the number of day places in the city. The area health authority is also drawing up proposals to make good the deficiency of 140 day places by establishing day beds at the General Hospital and the Highbury Hospital in the early 1980s.

The area health authority has also found it possible to bring forward to 1978 provision of a geriatric orthopaedic unit of 18 beds, again with rehabilitation, at the Highbury Hospital, before transfer to the General Hospital in the second half of 1978.

Those provisions, however, are for the longer term. There is a short-term problem, too. The area health authority is considering making good some of the deficiency in geriatric beds in Nottingham, in both the short term and the long term. Fortunately, the teaching authorities had the good sense some time ago to set up a special planning team for the elderly in Nottingham.

The planning team's view for the short term is that the existing facilities for geriatric patients are unlikely to cope with the additional pressures already outlined for the next few years unless they get some further underpinning. So the area health authority is already considering the possibility of using Highbury Hospital for increasing the number of geriatric beds in the immediate future.

From reading the Nottingham newspapers, I note that there seems to be a feeling that the Highbury Hospital is about to close. That is just not true. There is no question of closing Highbury Hospital. If anyone is saying that the Highbury Hospital in Nottingham is to close, I can conclude only that that person is deliberately setting out to mislead public opinion in the city.

In addition to the geriatric orthopaedic unit of 18 beds at Highbury Hospital, the area health authority is now hoping to convert other under-utilised accommodation at Highbury Hospital. This involves 25 beds for use by geriatric patients before next winter. It can fund this development out of its existing resources. It also seems likely that it will be possible to make further wards at Highbury Hospital available for use by geriatric patients in 1979–80, in addition to the 80 beds to be opened that year at the General Hospital and in advance of the 144 new beds in phase 2 of the Queen's Medical Centre.

The Trent Regional Health Authority now has a revenue growth rate of 4 per cent. this year. It is probably as good a growth rate as it has ever had in the history of the National Health Service. It has a capital sum of about £1·7 million earmarked—to date unspecified—in 1981, 1982 and 1983 for provision of additional geriatric beds in Nottingham. That will be available for financing the short-term plans, or at least part of them, that I have just mentioned.

To summarise, after such a welter of detail, of the present 452 geriatric beds in Nottingham there are 22 beds at Highbury Hospital, 104 beds at Basford Hospital and 326 beds at Sherwood Hospital, and I understand that both Basford and Sherwood Hospitals have a wide range of supporting rehabilitation and assessment facilities. Indeed, I can confirm this in the case of Sherwood because I visited it last year at the invitation of my hon. Friend.

About 150 of the Sherwood Hospital beds are regarded as acute assessment beds for geriatric patients. If the plans about which I have talked come to fruition, the long-term position is likely to be 200 beds on the Sherwood-City District General Hospital campus, 144 beds at the Queen's Medical Centre, 104 beds at Basford Hospital, and 150 beds at Highbury Hospital—totalling 598.

In addition, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Area Health Authorities and the Trent Regional Health Authority are discussing the possibiilty of the provision of a community hospital with some 60 to 80 geriatric beds as well as accommodation for elderly severely mentally infirm to serve the populations of Long Eaton, Beeston and Stapleford for a possible start in the 1980s. This again will relieve the city of some pressure.

I should like to turn briefly to the social services, which provide an important back-up Helped by joint finance, for example, the county council plans to start building in the very near future an old people's home of 50 places at Marmion Road, due for completion in 1980, at a cost of about £1½ million. That will be financed by joint financing allocations from the area health authority. The AHA has also earmarked a further £50,000 to provide an extra 12 to 15 health visitors.

Other developments in the local services for the elderly to be funded in 1978–79 through joint financing arrangements include schemes to improve the staffing levels of the social services department's domiciliary services and support for the provision of a disposable bed linen service to the elderly incontinent.

I turn to the social services which are financed entirely by the local authority. They are still insufficient to meet all the demands made on them. But the Nottingham City division of Nottinghamshire County Council's social services department is providing 741 long-term residential places in old people's homes and some 21 shorter-stay places. About 180 day places for the elderly mentally infirm or physically disabled are provided.

The provision of meals on wheels is well regarded, with over 304,000 meals delivered in the year ending 31st March 1978 and a further 100,000 meals served at luncheon clubs. In the same period, 631 home helps provided 14,000 hours of assistance per week, making an average of 3·3 hours per client per week. The county council has also appointed a domestic services manager to each of the six areas in the City division to co-ordinate and integrate delivery of domiciliary services. The Nottingham District Council also provides about 44 schemes of sheltered housing, with an average of 26 units of accommodation in each and providing for about 1,140 residents in all.

There is, therefore, quite an extensive service building up in Nottingham, and of course, as a result of the Chancellor's Budget Statement, the Trent Regional Health Authority has received an addition of £3·8 million to what it already thought it would get as its share of the additional £44 million for England allocated in the Budget Statement, the Trent Regional Region's revenue growth rate this year from 2·8 per cent. to 4 per cent.

On the whole, the positions at present is not good and there are great gaps, but there are substantial and realisable plans for an effective service developing in future.

I welcome the opportunity to raise briefly the problem of children in long-stay hospitals. It is a sad story of society locking away children already imprisoned by their own handicaps. It involves handicapped children denied contact with normal happy children—handicapped children living in hospitals, neglected by the Health Service, and cared for by nurses abandoned by their colleagues in the medical profession. It is a story of a small number of children who, more than other children, need affection, attention, care and stability but who are denied exactly that by being placed in impersonal, under-financed and remote institutions misleadingly called "hospitals".

Many of these children are not in need of medical or nursing care. They are in hospital for totally different reasons, namely, because there is no residential accommodation in the community, because the family simply cannot cope and has abandoned them because the parents have been made homeless.

The plight of these children has been graphically described in a book by Maureen Oswin, published last month, entitled "Children living in long-stay hospitals". A teacher for 14 years in a cerebral palsy unit in a long-stay hospital, she then spent 18 months in the children's ward of eight long-stay mental handicap wards to prepare the material for her book. I draw on that book to show what is going wrong.

Maureen Oswin says, in her book:

"In rive of the eight hospitals, some of the children were suffering from what can only be described as the poverty conditions of the 19th century, i.e., chronic catarrh, runny ears, sore eyes, skin diseases, chronic recurring stomach upsets, bad teeth and worms. Some of these disorders might be ascribed to the fact that large numbers of children were living together in somewhat unhygienic conditions (e.g. sharing washing water, flannels and towels)…".

In Dickensian London one might have understood this in the poorer homes, but not in twentieth century NHS hospitals.

What comes out very clearly from the book is that the specialist services which ought to be available to handicapped children in hospitals are simply not being offered. Only 75 of the 223 physically disabled children in the study received physiotherapy. The rest received no physiotherapy either because there was not a physiotherapist employed in the hospital or because, if there was, he did not believe in extending physiotherapy to severely handicapped children.

Although speech therapists worked in some of the hospitals, not one of the 223 multiply handicapped children received any speech therapy whatever. Although there were the equivalent of 10½ occupational therapists working in the eight hospitals, only one had offered to advise the special care war staff about their children.

Maureen Oswin has this to say about the subject:

"Sixty-six of the 223 children in the study were unable to grasp objects because their hands were so affected by their handicaps and allied deformities. The other 157 children had some grasp ability, but only 11 of these could dress or wash themselves, and only 53 could feed themselves. One wonders if these figures of achievement might have been higher if the 157 children with some grasp ability had received the professional skills of an occupational therapist".

On social workers, the author is even more critical. She says:

"None of the social workers in the study took any interest in the life-style of the children in the special-care wards…This total lack of involvement in the life-style of long-stay hospital children is a common failing of social workers throughout the country, and does not only apply to those met in this study…Social workers seem not to recognise the deprivation suffered by children in long-slay hospitals, and their failure to expect the same standards of child care in hospitals as they would expect for a child in residential care in the community serves to perpetuate the division."

The study shows that the hospitals did not have enough wheelchairs for non-ambulant children and that there was a lack of suitable furniture and aids.

The study further shows that the children attending hospital schools are way below the standard which I am sure the Minister or I would like to see. The Warnock Committee's report, which was published on Tuesday, shows the lack of understanding that exists between the teachers in the special day schools and the nurses. As a result the children become pawns in demarcation disputes between the two professions. I urge the Minister to organise an early debate on that very important report produced by the Warnock Committee.

What is particularly worrying is the number of children who, despite the 1970 Education (Handicapped Children) Act which stipulated that all severely mentally handicapped children should have the benefit of local authority special education services, are excluded from the schools. The school at one hospital in Miss Oswin's study admitted only two out of 20 children to school full-time. Between them, these children were legally entitled to receive a total of 500 hours' education per week, whereas the total amounted to only 102 hours. Moreover, the shortage of ward staff and general lack of guidance about play meant that those children who did not attend school sat around in the ward doing nothing.

Another major problem, which I touch on only briefly, is the shortage of staff in the wards and the lack of training which too many receive. The impression of overwork is well illustrated by one section of the book. In 92 out of 102 day shifts, four or fewer nurses were on duty in one ward, which contained 27 children, of whom five were blind, 24 were incontinent and non-ambulant, and 19 needed to be fed.

With so few staff, the work of caring inevitably became merely a matter of moving from one routine task to another—washing, changing, feeding—with brief coffee breaks in between. In these circumstances, it was plainly impossible to satisfy the children's mothering needs. One is bound to say that one is full of admiration for what these nurses do in very difficult conditions.

The problem would to same extent be alleviated if the children played with one another, but some wards have unfortunately made this impossible, the children being anchored all day in wheelchairs, bean-bags or small chairs, and therefore denied the opportunity of social interaction. Even though a child is separated from its mother, it can still find a happy and confident place in its environment if it is given adequate play opportunities and encouragement. Regrettably, however, the study showed that, over one weekend in one ward, 20 children received, on average, one minute 15 seconds of mothering care from the staff.

From this inevitably brief survey of conditions in long-stay wards, one general conclusion emerges. There is no advantage in transferring a mentally handicapped child from a home where his parents cannot cope and putting him in a hospital where the nurses cannot cope. If a child has to leave the home and the parents whom he knows and loves, which in itself is a trauma for a normal child, let alone a handicapped one with less self-confidence and a weaker understanding of his environment, in the name of humanity one should put him into as friendly, warm, secure and stable an environment as possible. One should not move him into an impersonal exposed institutionalised special care ward where the one thing that he will not get is special care.

In support of that general conclusion, I quote a paragraph from the report of the Court Committee, "Fit for the Future":

"It is generally agreed that there is no medical or nursing reason why half of the children at present in long-stay care in mental subnormality hospitals should have been admitted in the first place.'

That is underlined by the 1971 White Paper, "Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped", which recommended that services should be made available in the community. I quote briefly again from the Court Report on that situation:

"it seems to us from visits we have made and the well documented evidence we have received that the variable progress in meeting the special needs of children in hospital has been least satisfactory in this area. We have seen for ourselves how hollow the lives of these children can be. Early to bed, and early to rise, with few toys and little education and nothing to do at weekends, their quality of life and standards of care are all too often subordinate to regimes and staffing dictated by the organisation of a large institution."

The conclusion is underlined by the Warnock Report.

From that comes the second conclusion—the need to bridge the yawning gap between the mentally handicapped child at home, where his emotional development may be best encouraged but where the physical problems of looking after him are too great, and the long-stay wards, where the physical problems are efficiently solved but at a desperately high price in terms of emotional deprivation. We must develop and encourage some half-way houses where a balance can be struck between the two.

These children need small homes, not large hospitals. They need permanent friends, not transient doctors. We must therefore shift resources back into the community to provide more support, more domiciliary help—so that parents have a better chance of coping at home—more day-care facilities, where the stress of looking after them can be shared with others, residential places where the child can be left for a day or two while the parents have a holiday, and above all, homes that provide a domestic environment where a child may find conditions similar to his own home but with the qualified care and supervision that he might get in a hospital.

If we could do that, I would join the Minister in appealing to parents not to abandon children in the community but to try to fight the battle together with the services which his Department can provide.

I invite the Minister to explain why there has been such a delay in moving towards this solution of bridging the gap between home and hospital. Maureen Oswin has some very disturbing remarks on this:

"None of the eight local authorities in this study offered residential places for children with severe multiple handicaps; they all recommended long-stay hospital admission…Only one local authority had plans to provide residential accommodation for non-ambulant multiple handicapped children".

The third brief conclusion is that a large number of these children will have to stay in these units. But we can try to improve conditions for them. A recent report by the Tavistock Institute, called "The Psychological Welfare of Young Children Making Long Stays in Hospital" identifies improvements that can be made at small cost to provide a more human environment in the hospital by breaking up the wards into smaller units, by making visiting facilities for relatives easier, and by improving the status of the nursery nurses.

I wish that one-tenth of the energy that the Minister and his colleagues have spent on phasing out pay beds had been spent instead on phasing these wards out of long-stay hospitals.

I think that much more can be done on prevention, to ensure that more of these mentally-handicapped children are not born. France is spending much more of her resources and gives much greater priority to sponsoring relevant research. I believe that over half these mentally handicapped children would not have been born if better preventive medicine had been available.

I know that the Under-Secretary of State has a deep personal commitment, but he does have some questions to answer. These are, in a sense, his children, living in hospitals that he runs and looked after by staff that he employs. Unlike other children, their future is not in their own hands; it is in his. They are entitled to a much better service than the evidence that I have shows they are getting.

I am most grateful to the hon. Member for Acton (Sir G. Young) for raising this important subject for debate. I know it to be one in which he has both a genuine and deep concern. With him, I want to see all disabled children receive the very best possible care. He will know of my view that children with very special needs deserve positive discrimination in their favour.

The majority of children in long-stay hospitals are mentally handicapped and, as the hon. Member has done, I shall concentrate on the needs of these children. They are needs that were vividly described in Maureen Oswin's recent study. I have known and respected Maureen Oswin for many years. Her criticisms of the inadequacies and, in some cases, of the sheer deprivation she found are a sharp reminder of what still remains to be done.

There is one point that I know Maureen Oswin and all who work in this important field would want me to make clear from the outset. It is that, although the vast majority of children in long-stay hospitals are mentally handicapped, the vast majority of mentally handicapped children are not in hospital. Over 80 per cent. of mentally handicapped children live with their parents. Others live in the community in residential accommodation provided by local authorities.

The voluntary organisations also play an important part, both in the provision of residential accommodation and in offering support to parents. I must mention in particular the work of the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children. The Spastics Society also does fine work, and indeed provided funds for Maureen's study. Other mentally handicapped children live with foster parents.

Fostering of mentally handicapped children is a relatively new development and not without its difficulties. I am sure, however, that if it can be made to work successfully it can be of great benefit to the child. I am very much aware of the valuable and pioneering work being done in this area by Dr. Barnardo's, and also in Leeds and Somerset by the local authorities. The Government have been glad to play their part in assisting the development of foster care. As the House knows, following amending legislation which came into effect on 29th August 1977, the attendance allowance can now be paid to children aged 2 years and over who qualify and are boarded out with foster parents by a local authority.

This afternoon, however, our principal concern is with that small minority of mentally handicapped children who are in hospital. There are about 4,500 of them. They are mostly children who are very severely mentally handicapped. They often also have severe physical handicaps or severely disturbed behaviour. A few of them may even appear almost completely unresponsive to the world around them. These children are some of the most vulnerable members of our society, and our duty towards them is correspondingly great.

Let me make my own position very clear. I regard services for these children as far from satisfactory, so I am at one with the hon. Gentleman in seeking further change.

Even the present unsatisfactory position is an improvement on what existed before. The progress there has been is due to the work of successive Ministers and to the advice given to authorities by my Department over the years. I and my colleagues have consistently stressed our concern to improve services for long-stay hospital children. We have given strong guidance and advice which covers many of the points of concern raised by the hon. Member.

Moreover, we are now taking further action to reduce the number of children in hospital. The position in this regard is already far more satisfactory than in the past. The White Paper "Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped", issued in 1971, still represents the basis of our mental handicap policy. This estimated that we would need about 6,300 hospital places for mentally handicapped children under 16 by 1991. As I have shown, at 4,500 the number of such children now in hospital is already 1,800 below that figure. Therefore, we are much ahead of the White Paper's target for 1991. Furthermore, numbers are continuing to fall. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, however, many children are still being admitted to hospitals for the mentally handicapped whose needs could better be met in the community if there were adequate provision available there.

We now intend, therefore, to ask health and local authorities jointly to review the needs of mentally handicapped children in hospital with a view to seeing how they can best be met. I know the hon. Member will be pleased to know that we shall also ask them jointly to fix dates after which no mentally handicapped child from their area will be inappropriately admitted to long-term hospital care. By this I mean that no child will be admitted unless he or she does in fact require hospital care. That is what matters most deeply.

In my view, this is not an enormous task. The overall speed with which it can be carried out nationally depends, of course, on the speed with which local authorities can provide the services which are necessary if no child is to be inappropriately admitted to hospital. We realise that authorities have been facing severe economic restraints, but we have stressed again, in the planning guidelines issued this March, the priority they should place on residential accommodation for mentally handicapped children. We shall be watching carefully to see that some authorities do not lag unnecessarily behind others in making the necessary provision. Health authorities will also need to plan for improved supportive services to families.

The hon. Member asked me when the promised guidance will be issued. I cannot give him a definite date as of today. For one thing it is the usual practice, as the hon. Member may know, for field authorities to be consulted, through their associations, on the terms of guidance before it is issued. I can tell the hon. Member, however, that the draft circular is at an advanced stage of preparation within the Department, and also assure him that there will be no unnecessary delay.

We are also putting our money where our precepts are. By this I mean that, as well as issuing guidance, we have made money available to local authorities through joint financing for selected projects which are in the interests both of the National Health Service and the local authority. The amount of money available under joint financing has increased from £8 million in 1976–77 to £21 million in 1977–78. I expect it to reach at least £40 million by 1981–82. This has been an entirely new development, which will contribute significantly to the development of better services. I know that services for the mentally handicapped have already benefited substantially from the availability of these funds.

Our efforts to reduce the number of children in hospital, and thus shift the balance of care for mentally handicapped children away from long-stay hospitals and into the community—a principle already announced in the 1971 White Paper—are one aspect of our attempt to deal with the problems we are discussing. There are people who want the Government to go beyond the policy set out in the White Paper, not just in the sense of saying that the White Paper got the numbers wrong, but by setting a date nationally, after which no mentally handicapped children will be receiving long-term care in hospital. In his letter to The Times on 12th April, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made clear his view that there will be a small number of very severely handicapped children who will continue to need the specialist services available only in hospital. I must emphasise that he was talking about a very small number. As I have said, we are committed to putting an end to the admission of every child who can be properly cared for outside hospital. I hope that the review of children in hospital which we are asking authorities to carry out will throw more light on the actual numbers involved.

Time is very much against me. I am deeply conscious that it will not now be possible to answer all the points made by the hon. Gentleman. I hope he will agree that in my reply I have been seeking to approach the matter with a sense of urgency. There is much more that should be said in answer to the very important points that he has made. I can assure him that the points he put forward will be carefully and sympathetically considered. I trust I have shown that our concern in the past to try to improve matters has resulted in tangible improvements upon which we can now build further.

I hope that I have made it clear, too, that we shall not be content until every child for whose care we have some responsibility receives the services to which he or she is entitled. That means more than just meeting the child's special needs. It means providing an environment in which he is able to develop emotionally and socially, as children outside hospital can, and in which he is not deprived of mothering care nor of the opportunities to play and learn. In other words, it means providing an environment in which he can live and develop as a human being.

The purpose of this debate is to demand an independent public inquiry into hormone pregnancy test drugs. In the process there will be complaints about inadequate answers to parliamentary Questions, the failure of the Committee on Safety of Drugs—now called the Committee on Safety of Medicines—to act responsibly, the medical malpractice of some doctors, the refusal of the Department of Health and Social Security to take appropriate action to prevent tragedies, and the role of the manufacturers of these drugs.

The basic facts are that in 1967 the then Committee on Safety of Drugs was contacted by a doctor—Dr. Isabel Gal—who warned it of the possible dangers of HPT drugs and that in the words of the Minister of State,

"she had produced prima facie evidence that foetal abnormalities might be associated with the use of hormonal pregnancy testing."

If that were the case, and in view of the gravity of severe congenital abnormality the drugs should have been immediately suspended pending full clearance by the committee. This ought to have been axiomatic and automatic, especially after our experience of the thalidomide tragedy. Instead, hesitancy was compounded by incompetence and, as a result, more than 1,500,000 pregnant women were placed at unnecessary risk by being given these drugs and thousands of children may have been gravely damaged, suffering such dreadful disabilities as blindness, deafness, spina bifida and heart and limb defects, as well as cleft palates.

Instead of taking urgent action, the Government did absolutely nothing. The Committee on Safety of Drugs began a belated pilot study only in 1969 and undertook no full study until 1972. This was clearly a leisurely affair, although the suggested link between congenital abnormalities and hormone pregnancy test drugs was eventually found to be supported. It was not until 1975—eight years after the first reports—that an official warning was published by the committee.

In 1967, when the prima facie evidence was produced, the Government should have advised all doctors immediately of the adverse report and asked them to monitor the drugs carefully, and they should have ruled that if the Committee on Safety of Medicines could not confirm or deny such reports within, say, a year, some action would be taken. If the Government had taken action of this kind, much suffering could have been avoided, but unfortunately they failed to do so. One object of the independent inquiry which I seek should be to establish why the Government failed.

How many children were damaged in that period? Nobody knows. The Government have admitted that they do not know either. So a further object of the inquiry should be to ascertain how many children were damaged and exactly what the deformities were. It will not be easy, but nothing worth while ever is. But it is no use the Department saying, as it has done in parliamentary answers, that it is impracticable, because the children are available for examination, as are the parents and the medical records. In other words, despite the difficulties, most of the evidence is available and should not be swept under the bureaucratic out-trays of committees or Governments.

The Government's attitude is curious. They have admitted to me in answer to Questions that the association between HPT drugs and congenital abnormalities was supported by the study published in 1975; they have even admitted that these conclusions were confirmed last year, in 1977. Yet Ministers persist in saying that it has not been proved that the drugs cause malformations. Instead, they prefer the euphemism that

"The study showed only a statisically significant difference between the number of malformed babies born to mothers who have taken the drugs, when compared with controls."

Is not that a memorable phrase—

"only a statistically significant difference"?

They might equally say that there is no evidence that cancer kills; there is merely a statistically significant difference between those who have and those who have not got cancer.

It does not matter, apparently, that the studies supported the association between these drugs and abnormalities. It does not matter that the drugs have been withdrawn suddenly by the manufacturers. It does not matter that parents want to present medical evidence and the broken bodies of their children. The Government parrot the phrase:

"It has not been proved that the drugs actually cause malformations".

I should like to ask the Minister of State whether he accepts that the studies conclusively prove that HPT drugs sometimes—not necessarily always—cause abnormalities. Does he confirm or deny that?

It is not only the Committee on Safety of Medicines, as it is now called, and the Government who come badly out of this affair and whose role requires investigation. There is evidence that some doctors continued to prescribe these drugs for pregnancy tests even after the official warnings. The reputable medical journal General Practitioner estimated that in 1976—a year after the official warnings, no less than 8,000 prescriptions were issued for hormone pregnancy test drugs for pregnant women. If this is true, it constitutes medical malpractice on a massive scale and must be investigated.

It is also necessary to inquire whether the Government's "yellow warning" system of notifying doctors of possible dangerous drugs is working effectively. I must say that all experience shows that it is clearly not doing so.

In addition to the role of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, the Government and some doctors, it is also imperative to investigate the activities of the manufacturing companies. For example, it has been reported that a British medical director of Schering Chemicals in Britain—a subsidiary of Schering A.G. of Berlin—urged the withdrawal of the hormone pregnancy test drug Primodos in 1969, but his plea was rejected by the company. In the same year, the author of a survey for the Royal College of General Practitioners also recommended the withdrawal of the drug, but he, too, was turned down. In fact, it was in that year that Schering issued a booklet which said:

"An existing pregnancy is unaffected by Primodos".

Thus the stage was set, and garishly illuminated by advertising, for tragedy. I claim only that the balance of probability should be taken into account, whereas the company was dogmatically asserting—against striking authoritative evidence—that these drugs were harmless. The question of who is right and who is wrong cannot be resolved by the evasions of the Government. For far too long they have uncritically accepted the company's interpretation of events and rejected demands for an independent public inquiry. But parents are increasingly concerned, and so are Members of this House. We are all entitled to know what happened, for the sake of the families and for the sake of the future.

The additional benefits from an independent public inquiry are that it would be an extra check on the work of the Committee on Safety of Medicines; it would lead to improvements in the yellow warning system; and, perhaps most important of all, it would illuminate how commercial firms work when situations of this kind arise. It would thus set a precedent which would serve notice on all drug companies that, although the Committee on Safety of Medicines has limited resources, the public interest will be carefully safeguarded by an independent public inquiry in the event of serious adverse reactions to drugs over a period of time.

I urge the Minister to reconsider his decision and to concede a reasoned, reasonable and legitimate demand.

I appreciate and share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) about possible damage to children from hormonal pregnancy testing. I hope that we might be able to return to the subject and debate it more fully in the future. If my hon. Friend succeeds in a ballot again I hope that the fact that he has raised the matter briefly this afternoon will not be regarded as an argument for giving him lower priority. This is a very important subject, in which there is a great deal of interest.

I must correct the impression that the Committee on the Safety of Medicines has definite evidence that hormonal pregnancy diagnosis tests can damage babies. On the whole, the committee can say only that there is a possibility of an association between such tests and an increaased incidence of abnormality.

My hon. Friend asked whether I accept that studies show that hormonal pregnancy testing often causes abnormalities in babies. Until today my answer to that question might have been "Yes". However, today I have been able to get some evidence of testing in this field by the German Research Association. This study was planned in 1963 in response to the thalidomide tragedy in which my hon. Friend played such an outstanding part. It is the most comprehensive investigation ever conducted. It covered nearly 15,000 women, and nearly 8,000 of the tests on those women have been evaluated in the preliminary report.

The results of the study do not provide evidence that hormonal pregnancy tests were harmful. The study shows that many other factors can influence the outcome of pregnancy. For example, women with abnormal babies had had, according to the study, more previous miscarriages, had had more abnormal children and had suffered more frequently from chronic diseases of various kinds. Cigarette smoking was shown to have an unfavourable effect.

Of the 7,870 women covered in the preliminary report, 337 had used hormonal pregnancy test drugs. In a group of this size it would be expected that there would be 5·4 major abnormalities in the births to these women. In fact, it turned out that there were six. There would have been expected to be 74·8 minor abnormalities in babies born to a group of women of this number. In fact, there were 76. Therefore, it is difficult to connect that piece of evidence with the case that hormonal pregnancy testing damages the foetus.

The answer is "No".

This is the evidence produced by the German Research Association. We must have regard to it. I do not overlook the complexities of the issues involved. An English study conducted by Sir Cyril Clarke and colleagues, as reported in the British Medical Journal, showed that there was a highly significant increase in the number of congenital abnormalities where the mother's preceding pregnancy had resulted in a spontaneous abortion.

Equally, the German study shows that women who had had previous miscarriages tended to make greater use of the hormonal pregnancy tests. One can well understand that they would be more anxious to know quickly whether they were pregnant. This offers support for the view that the results of the committee's studies on hormonal pregnancy tests may have been due to some other unidentified confusing factor, most likely relating to the reason that the pregnancy test was used.

It may well be that these tests are not conclusive. I am prepared and will remain prepared to consider any other further scientific evidence which will controvert the findings that the German Research Association has subsequently dug up. If I have time, I shall deal with the Committee on Safety of Medicines' test, which is rather more favourable to my hon. Friend but the outcome of which is more widely known than is the new information which has come forward.

My hon. Friend says that there was delay in warning doctors once Isobel Gal's tests were available. Certainly the Committee on Safety of Drugs, as it then was, did not ignore Dr. Gal's findings in 1967, but it felt that further studies should be undertaken because there was criticism of the basis of Dr. Gal's research project.

The committee, which later became the Committee on Safety of Medicines, instituted its own wide-ranging survey of possible adverse effects of the drugs. The study began in 1969 and was enlarged in 1972. Additional staff were added to allow a follow-up of the 850 pairs of cases and controls That was a fairly substantial sample. It was not possible to enlarge the study before that date because the Department was not giving the backup to the work of the committee that subsequent wisdom would have required.

One of the good things that has come out of my hon. Friend's pressure is that my Department and I are now considering what extra resources can be devoted to the work of the Medicines Commission and the Committee on Safety of Medicine.

The outcome of the study of 836 pairs of cases and controls was that 93 mothers of abnormal babies had used hormonal pregnancy testing whereas only 55 mothers who had not used that form of testing were found to have abnormal babies. That was, to quote the phrase that slightly irritates my hon. Friend, a "statistically significant indication" that there might be an association between hormonal pregnancy testing and abnormal foetuses, although that is offset to some extent by the German study. This is the trouble in which we find ourselves.

The time for this debate is running out. My hon. Friend criticised the fact that doctors may still be using drugs such as Primodos. They are capable of being used in perfectly safe ways in other cases.

If a public inquiry is to be held, what are the questions that it is supposed to answer? Is it supposed to prove that our system of drugs surveillance in the 1960s was inadequate? If so, the answer can be given now. It is "Yes", and it was demonstrated more clearly by my hon. Friend than by any one else in the case of the thalidomide tragedy. The then Labour Government passed the Medicines Act 1968 as a result of that tragedy.

My hon. Friend asked whether the reaction of the Committee on Safety of Medicines was slow. I confess that I think that it was, but that was because it had to set up a new system under the Medicines Act and because we were probably not backing up the work of the Committee adequately at that stage. We are seeking to put more resources into this work so that it can cover a wider range of studies than it was covering at that time.

My hon. Friend criticised the yellow card warning to doctors. I agree entirely with what he said. We are convinced that the system is not adequate, and that it could be strengthened not only because of Primodos and thalidomide, but because of Eraldin, and we are experimenting with a new system to replace the yellow card warning.

Would the object of a public inquiry be to provide information to parents to allow them to seek compensation? I have considerable sympathy with that idea, but if parents are successfully to seek compensation, they must get medical research done, which I think would provide a causal connection between the application of these tests and the damage that was caused. That connection does not exist at present.

Finally, is the object to provide information more quickly to GPs? I regret that until recently some GPs were still prescribing these medicines—

My debate follows well from the subject raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). Last July the Minister and I met on a similar occasion. Following that debate he wrote a letter to me about whooping cough vaccine. I had asked him during the debate why smallpox vaccination was no longer advocated as a routine measure for young children in this country. The Minister promised that he would let me have the answer in a letter. Two weeks later he wrote to me and said that smallpox vaccination was no longer advocated as a routine measure because the incidence of smallpox abroad had declined and that therefore the risk of a child contracting it in this country was now less. He said that it was felt that the risk of damage from the vaccination was more dangerous than the likelihood of small- pox. That is true, and has been for a long time.

I wish to find some common ground with my hon. Friend before I begin the main thrust of my argument. I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that in all these illnesses, whatever the efficacy of the protection might have been, good health, sanitation and improved environmental circumstances have contributed as much, if not more, to the erosion of these infections than has any form of vaccination.

It is common for the Department of Health and Social Security to say that since the vaccination was introduced among young children in the 1950s, whooping cough has declined, but whooping cough was declining in this country long before vaccination was introduced. An examination of the figures at the turn of the century proves that. Instances of whooping cough have risen and fallen over the years, but they have never been as great as they were when the disease was at its peak at the turn of the century, although there have been epidemics.

I take issue with my hon. Friend and shall continue to do so until I at least am satisfied, because whatever one's views might be about vaccines in general, the anxiety about the whooping cough vaccine and the way in which the situation has been handled by the DHSS is militating against the use of many other protective vaccines for young children.

My hon. Friend is not a doctor. His colleagues are not doctors, neither am I. Ministers rely for their conclusions on advice and judgments given to them by advisers under the Committee on Safety of Medicine.

When the medical profession disagrees as profoundly as it does on the question of whooping cough vaccine any layman or woman has a right to go to other sections of the medical profession and ask them their opinion. Is what such people say being evaluated properly? Those who first questioned thalidomide were told that they were foolish, that there was no evidence, and that it should be ignored. A time will come when, just as we see contraceptive pill after contraceptive pill withdrawn because of new dangers associated with it, other drugs will be withdrawn. A few people stand out and say "I am not satisfied. I am not happy", and one must take note of them.

For most of my information, but not all, I shall quote Professor Gordon Stewart, of Glasgow—who is well known to the Department—and Dr. John Wilson, of Great Ormond Street. It is well known that cases of whooping cough have been declining for a long time.

I wish my hon. Friend to establish an important matter. We were told that there would be an epidemic of whooping cough and that unless there was a massive campaign of vaccination of children against it all hell would break loose. We were told that there would be a devastating epidemic. We have had epidemics before to a greater or lesser extent. The most important consideration, however, is the number of children who, having been vaccinated, were among the increasing number of cases in certain parts of the country subsequently to suffer from whooping cough. The evidence to that effect is mounting to considerable proportions. Again, I refer my hon. Friend to the work that has been done by Professor Gordon Stewart in this respect.

I believe that the evidence will ultimately show that children who are vaccinated against whooping cough suffer from it far less severely. In the early days of vaccination, doctors, believing that vaccination gave total protection, were not notifying cases of whooping cough. I hope that the Department is checking the research which has shown that recent cases of whooping cough have occurred among children who were vaccinated against the complaint. Large numbers of children—Professor Gordon Stewart puts the figure at 70 per cent.—who were found to be carrying whooping cough had been vaccinated against it. In addition to the dangers, therefore, there is doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine.

Much was made by the Department and my hon. Friend the Minister about the possibility of an epidemic and about the need for a campaign. In spite of the advice that the campaign should be delayed, he took the view that it should go ahead. He said that children who had been damaged by the vaccination would be compensated, and that the risk from the vaccination was so minimal and the risk from whooping cough so great that it was better to have children vaccinated.

It is interesting to note, however, that the incidence of measles, rubella, and influenza, as well as other children's illnesses against which protection can be given, have all increased. Has the DHSS done it work to check whether the increased incidence of these complaints has occurred among children who were vaccinated? If that is so, why pick out just whooping cough, particularly when we know some of the dangers associated with the vaccine?

Figures have been published from time to time showing the risk of death from whooping cough. The group most at risk from whooping cough always has been babies and young children. The few deaths that have occurred in the current outbreak of whooping cough have been of young babies. The reason is that young babies cannot be protected against whooping cough. Babies can be vaccinated against whooping cough only between the ages of nine and 12 months, and therefore babies outside that age range are at risk from whooping cough, whether there is a programme of vaccination or not.

Even before vaccination was introduced, young babies died more frequently from whooping cough than did older children. It is an illness that proves fatal in very young children. We now know, therefore, that babies cannot be protected against whooping cough. Even so, the Department is considering reducing the age for vaccination in order to concentrate the efficacy of the vaccine into a shorter period of weeks or months. If that is so, the DHSS must proceed with care. It may cover itself by saying that children at risk should not be vaccinated, but how on earth does one establish whether a young baby is at risk?

I do not believe that the Department can ever establish the common factors among the children who were damaged as a result of the vaccine to enable it to determine which group of children is at risk. That is because there were no common factors. Many children who suffered damage from the vaccine had not been thought to be at risk. Just what is the area of risk? What were the common factors among the children who were at risk? What were the common factors among those who suffered brain damage as a result of the vaccine? If we do not know what these common factors were, how can we say which children are at risk?

There is talk about bringing down the age in order to concertina this thing in to protect young children, but if children who have been vaccinated are getting whooping cough—I think that the evidence that has been presented is overwhelming—the likelihood of offering greater protection to babies seems very suspect.

Secondly, and, of course, more importantly, if—I do not know this—the DHSS decides that it would not be sensible to bring down the age of vaccination for young children, they will continue to be at risk, and they have the biggest risk of death from whooping cough. It has always been the argument about death from whooping cough that has been the main thrust of the argument for vaccinating children. But young babies have always been at risk in relation to the older children in the family.

Professor Gordon Stewart says that the vaccine is fairly ineffective and that this fact has been hidden because doctors believed that children were not getting whooping cough because they had been vaccinated. It is interesting that the baby in the family has often had whooping cough and no one has known where the baby has got it from, because the rest of the family have been protected. But if Professor Gordon Stewart's argument is correct, that it merely lessened the symptoms but they still got the disease, of course babies were still getting whooping cough. There is little that one can do about that, with or without vaccine.

I put another point to my hon. Friend. Has the extent of the damage to the vaccine-damaged children been quantified in any way? People talk about brain damage, but we know of cases of paralysis, of various types of mental defects, of continuous screaming, and of other minor effects resulting from the vaccine which have also been reported to the Committee on Safety of Medicines.

Among the things that I should like to ask my hon. Friend is the question whether the chairman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines has given his blessing to the campaign now going ahead for the vaccination of children. Has he given his support to the advocacy to parents that they should have their children vaccinated? If so, I believe that he and the Department are being very negligent in not taking into account and answering the constant arguments that are being put forward by Professor Gordon Stewart and others. To my mind, they have not been answered. Until they are answered, I believe that a large number of parents in Britain will hesitate not only about this vaccine but about many others. Until these points are answered, the whole case about preventive medicines and preventive inoculations, and about various other things, is very much at risk.

In conclusion, I say to my hon. Friend that I do not believe that anything that has happened since the first warning signs about whooping cough vaccine were given has wiped the slate clean, as it were. There are doubts about the efficacy of the vaccine. There are certainly doubts about the way in which one will protect those at the greatest risk—babies—without subjecting them to even greater risks. Thirdly, there are very strong doubts indeed that the risks from the vaccine are now not greater than the risks from the effects of whooping cough.

It was on those grounds that the smallpox vaccine was certainly discouraged in this country, and I believe that it is on those grounds that the vaccination of children againset whooping cough should also be discouraged.

First, I should like to say how grateful I am to my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) for offering me this further opportunity of allaying public fears about the dangers of whooping cough vaccine. As my hon. Friend mentioned, she had previously raised this subject in an Adjournment debate on 7th July last year. That was just after publication of the report on whooping cough vaccination by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Much has happened since then. I hope that what I have to say now will put the matter into perspective.

I also agree with my hon. Friend that neither of us is an expert in this field. We are laymen on these issues, like most hon. Members. The Government have to be advised by experts, and my hon. Friend is also, naturally, following one or two particular experts. When experts disagree, it is often difficult for the layman to see his or her way clearly. I accept that criticism. Nevertheless, that does not relieve the Government of the duty of making a decision in the public interest on the basis of the advice they are given. I shall come to that matter shortly.

I appreciate that my hon. Friend is especially concerned that we have had an informational vaccination campaign while the Committee on Safety of Medicines is still considering a large number of cases of possible vaccine damage submitted by the Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children. But, as the chief medical and chief nursing officers explained, in their letter of 28th February which announced it, the campaign set out to publicise in some detail the facts about vaccination—both the benefits and risks including those about whooping cough—and not to promote it. The campaign also reflected the findings of the recent report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration which emphasised the need to keep the public informed of risks, however small they might be in terms of numbers.

My hon. Friend will recollect that the Parliamentary Commissioner had no criticism of the Department's arrangements for the issue of guidance to doctors who, he recognised, have the responsibility of advising parents about benefits and risks of vaccination. But he felt that the Department should have seen earlier the need to alert parents to the risks. This has been done in leaflets published since 1975. The most recent leaflet is particularly detailed.

The need for measures to improve the uptake of vaccinations has been underlined by recent events.

I now wish to deal with one of my hon. Friend's criticisms. On various occasions my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has uttered warnings about the danger of a serious outbreak of whooping cough—what my hon. Friend called warnings of an epidemic. These fears have been realised. There have been a number of outbreaks in recent years, but last winter the total of notifications exceeded the figure for any year since 1971. There were 26,600 notifications in the last quarter of 1977 and the first quarter of 1978, compared with a figure of 2,400 in the same six-months period the previous winter. There were six deaths in comparison with one for the winter of 1976–77.

How far the outbreak has been due to the lowered uptake of vaccination is difficult to say, but the fact that the uptake dropped from 79 per cent in 1970 to 38 per cent. in 1976 and around 39 per cent. in 1977 clearly has some bearing on the figures I have quoted.

I do not dispute by hon. Friend's figures. I appreciate that the outbreaks of whooping cough have ebbed and flowed over the years. I could pick on any year. The facts are that since the turn of the century whooping cough has been on the decline. My hon. Friend says that he does not know about the efficacy of the whoping cough vaccine. That is precisely my point. I hope he will say what monitoring has taken place of the number of cases where chilren have been vaccinated.

If my hon. Friend will allow me to do so, I shall come to that point in the course of my remarks. At the moment I am dealing with facts rather than suppositions as to whether we have had an epidemic. In the opinion of the Department, we have had what can only be described as a serious outbreak. I do not know whether that ranks as a serious epidemic, but it is serious enough to warrant great public concern.

Will the Minister confirm that the increase is at the top of the cycle? There is a four-year cycle which must be taken into account. Did my hon. Friend hear his hon. Friend the Minister of State in the previous debate mention the German experience? I have never heard a more irrelevant or unimpressive argument. If, however, the Department can quote the German experience in the previous debate, why cannot I quote evidence from the German Department of Health that the authorities there have dropped whooping cough vaccinations, apart from special cases, and that there has been no increase in the incidence of whooping cough? Why cannot we take account of the German experience?

I am interested to hear about the German experience in this matter. We need not only to examine the experience in Germany but to look to the other industrial countries also to see whether we can learn from their experience. I shall consider the point made by my hon. Friend. He said that there is a cycle to be considered. I do not regard an increase from a figure of just under 2,500 to 26,500 as being part of a cycle. It is a quantitative jump. I do not believe that one can refer to the epidemic of the past winter as part of a normal cycle. I think that it is something much more serious, and we should not underestimate its importance.

In discussing the risks of vaccination, which is what the debate is about, we must not forget the dangers of the disease. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough feels that the dangers have been overestimated, but we have to go by what the joint committee said in its report last June, in chapter IV:

"It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the risk to children from pertussis is not the occurrence of so many cases of a particular complication, including encephalitis, but the total effects of the disease, the toll of prolonged morbidity, the requirements for admission to hospital of one in 10 affected children, the severity of illness and the occasional death."

As my hon. Friend will recall, the joint committee's report was issued to all doctors and nurses involved with vaccination. The members of the joint committe are, of course, experts in this field, and they are in the best possible position to offer advice. They continually review the use of existing vaccines and the introduction of new vaccines, and they have the advantage of regular use of information from the Committee on Safety of Medicines on the safety and efficacy of particular vaccines.

The joint committee's report discussed in great detail the protection given by whooping cough vaccine, based on numerous studies carried out here and abroad, and discussed in the fullest possible way the arguments put forward by the opponents of whooping cough vaccination.

The joint committee was well aware of Professor Gordon Stewart's claim that whooping cough vaccination not only gave little protection—a point reinforced by my hon. Friend—but also was the cause of many cases of severe brain damage, and it was aware of his view that it should therefore no longer be recommended for routine use, which, I think, is what both my hon. Friends the Members for Eton and Slough and for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) are advocating.

Nevertheless, the joint committee rejected Professor Stewart's evidence and does not accept his view about the use of this vaccine. Indeed, it considered that the benefits of vaccination against whooping cough outweighed any risk, and, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State informed the House on 7th February this year, it confirmed its full support for the continued use of the vaccine for basic immunisation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough asked about the position of the chairman of the joint committee. Since the passage is rather too long to quote now, I refer her to column 1212 of Hansard for 7th February this year, when my right hon. Friend gave an Oral Answer and subsequently supplied information, circulated in Hansard, about three questions which he had put to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and asked for comments. Also in that passage in Hansard there are the joint committee's replies.

May I say, in response to my hon. Friend's question, in response to the request to look at the publicity material and so forth, that the joint committee commented on the factual material about the benefits and risks of the vaccines used for routine immunisation of young children proposed to be used in the forthcoming publicity, and these comments were taken into account in revising the material. The joint committee did not say "You should not go ahead with a campaign of information about vaccination", and it was on that basis that we felt quite confident that we were doing our duty to citizens, and particularly to children, in publicising the information in the way we did.

Of course, we all accept that there is some degree of risk in any vaccination, as in any other form of medical treatment, but, as the joint committee pointed out—I think that my hon. Friend agrees with this—the interpretation of data in this field is extremely complex. It is particularly difficult to collect and study trustworthy data from past cases in order to determine whether a disability is due to vaccination or some other cause. I think that my hon. Friend made this point in the Adjournment debate last year.

Convulsions leading to neurological damage occur spontaneously, and they can occur at or about the time that routine vaccinations are carried out in childhood. Clearly, this can easily lead to a false association of damage with vaccination where in fact there may be only coincidence.

The report emphasises the dangers arising from the disease in young children, which can lead to death or permanent damage. At the same time, the committee recognises the inadequacy of the information at its disposal—there is no doubt about that—and it has, of course, set up studies, which have been referred to elsewhere, in order to obtain more reliable data on the incidence of serious adverse reactions.

I come now to the Committee on Safety of Medicines. As my right hon. Friend indicated in a Written Answer of 21st November last year, that committee, which examines evidence on the safety and efficacy of all types of medicines, is at present considering a large number of cases of possible vaccine damage submitted by the Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children. The committee is examining the evidence, at my hon. Friend's specific request, through its sub-committee on adverse reactions and two advisory panels.

Professor Gordon Stewart of Glasgow University and Dr. John Wilson of Great Ormond Street are both on the advisory panel concerned with the collection of data on adverse reactions to pertussis vaccine. There is, therefore, no danger of their views being ignored or underestimated by the Committee on Safety of Medicines. The study is likely to be a lengthy process, and it is obviously too early for the committee to report any conclusions at this stage.

Indeed, I should make it plain that when my right hon. Friend consulted the chairmen of the two committees concerned, both of them pointed out that there will be serious difficulties in drawing firm conclusions about the degree of risk now associated with whooping cough vaccine from the Committee on Safety of Medicines' study of the material, even when it is completed. Some of the cases go back many years, and, apart from the difficulty of distinguishing between coincidental brain damage and that associated with vaccination, the vaccine used in a proportion of cases has been superseded. Undoubtedly, the quality of whooping cough vaccine has been improved over the years, and research to this end, financed by my Department, is continuing. My hon. Friend referred to some of these difficulties in the Adjournment debate last year.

Now we have the national childhood encephalopathy study which has been in progress since 1976. This may give a more reliable assessment of risk. It is a study of current cases of neurological damage reported by paediatricians from which cases of vaccine damage may be distinguished. My right hon. Friend will be keeping in close touch with both committees to see that whatever new information emerges will be used to give the medical and nursing profession any advice that appears useful.

I hope that what I have said puts this matter in perspective. We are certainly not seeking to hide anything. Perhaps I can now briefly allude, although my hon. Friends will, of course, be well aware of it, to my right hon. Friend's statement on 9th May on payments for those seriously damaged by vaccination.

I know that my hon. Friend wants to be fair, and I do not think that he is being dishonest. But what interests me is that I have all the figures here, given to me by his Department, for the number of notified whooping cough cases. What interests me is that my hon. Friend picks a year to contrast with this year to show that there is this tremendous difference. He quotes 2,000 cases. I could go right through the years and quote other figures—for example, 58,000 cases in 1960. The point I am making remains the same. All that he has said so far is really that we do not know.

If my hon. Friend says that in 1970 there were 2,000 cases—I believe that was the year—I have a figure of 2,000 cases for 1973 and just over 2,000 for the year before. He says that now there is this big increase. But throughout the whole period from 1947 it has ebbed and flowed, even when vaccination was at its height. This is the point that I am making. All my hon. Friend has said today, however, is that the Department still does not know. The thrust of my argument is that, if we do not know, what right have we to say to parents "Go ahead"?

I disagree with my hon. Friend about the figures. The figures I quoted were for two successive years, not for 1970. If, in fact, there is a cycle—let us assume for a moment that there is—we still have a duty, if we believe in the efficacy of the vaccine, to warn parents about the dangers of an epidemic and to get their children vaccinated.

But I do not want to finish without reminding my hon. Friends of the scheme for payments. I shall not go into detail because my right hon. Friend made a full statement on 9th May. We hope that this scheme, which will give a lump sum of £10,000, tax-free, in respect of those who have, since 5th July 1948, been severely damaged by routine vaccination in the United Kingdom, will do something to help quickly and be of benefit to the small minority who have suffered for the general good of the community. Meanwhile, of course, the Government are studying urgently the other and wider recommendations of the Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury.

What my hon. Friends and I have said in the debate underlines the need for a sense of responsibility in all of us who put to public debate the issue of vaccination against infectious disease. It is right in any democracy to raise and discuss issues of this kind which affect so many families of ordinary people, but we should not ignore the dangers of arousing needless and unjustifiable fears which may defeat the object we are all trying to achieve—the health of the nation's children.

There has in recent years been a marked fall in the uptake of all forms of routine immunisation. We are fortunate to have two expert committees—the Committee on Safety of Medicines and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation—which constantly monitor both the vaccines employed in public policy programmes and the diseases they are intended to prevent, and keep the balance of risks and benefits constantly under review.

That, after all, is all that even experts can do, let alone laymen like ourselves. Let us, therefore, lend all the support we can to re-establishing confidence in our immunisation programmes and to restoring the levels of protection we achieved for our children in earlier years.