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

I apologise to right hon. and hon. Members for the fact that the Bill arrived only this week. I had prepared an earlier and much shorter Bill that was ready as long ago as July. However, that had to be changed in response to requests from interested parties. The Bill now appears somewhat complicated. I hope that it will be agreed that that is inevitable as it deals with an involved subject. I hope that if the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament it will be comparatively simple to operate.

The Bill has a single and clearly defined objective—that in a single-parent family the absentee parent should shoulder his or her responsibility towards the maintenance of the child or children. The absenteee parent may be either the mother or the father. There is no sex discrimination in the Bill. However, for the purposes of my remarks I shall refer to the absentee parent as the father.

My reason for introducing the Bill is that my constituency experience—I expect that it is experience that has been shared by other hon. Members—has frequently brought me into contact with single-parent families, single parents who are in receipt of contributions from absentee parents. In the majority of cases the scale of the contributions was fixed some years previously and is now totally inadequate, and the custodian parent turns inevitably to social security. Once she is in receipt of social security payments there is no incentive for her to work to improve the welfare of herself or her child or children because her earnings would be deducted from the sum that she receives from social security payments.

Conversely, if it can be so organised that the absentee parent contributes realistically, the custodian parent is not penalised and will be able to work to improve her situation and that of her children. I hope that it will not pass unnoticed by the House that in so doing there will be an effective and substantial saving to the State by way of reduced social security payments.

There is a further defect in the present arrangement. There is a widely held belief—it has been put to me by some magistrates' clerks—that absentee parents who are recorded as being in arrears pass cash payments to the custodian parents to avoid a reduction in the social security benefits. I believe that all right hon. and hon. Members will agree that the present law is totally unsatisfactory. The Finer report, which was published five years ago, called for a thorough reform. During those five years there was no sign of Government action. Therefore this Bill is a small but, I hope, significant step to assist those hundreds of thousands of lone parents and children whose expectations were raised by the Finer report but so far have been doomed to disappointment.

The chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission, Professor Donnison, in a letter to me recently expressed the hope that:

"… your Bill, as eventually amended, will: (i) encourage consistency and comprehensible simplicity in the making of maintenance orders for women and their children—a consistency which would also guide all parties concerned with negotiating the large number of voluntary agreements which never come before the courts".

My Bill purposely excludes maintenance orders for women. It is based on the concept of the "liable relative" in the terms of the Supplementary Benefits Act 1976. That definition now has a legal establishment. It may be that at some time in the future the principles of the Bill will be extended to all maintenance orders. However, at this stage I am purposely confining the Bill for the benefit of children.

Referring to the professor's other point, I hope that the Bill will achieve his aspiration. I hope that it will encourage "consistency and comprehensive simplicity" by the introduction in clause 3(2) of an "eligible provision", which is intended to be the amount that can reasonably be required to maintain an average child in average circumstances in an average spending week. The eligible provision should therefore become a guide to voluntary settlements outside the court.

The professor—to whom I am extremely indebted for the help and encouragement that he gave me—then expressed the hope that orders and voluntary agreements would retain their real value year by year. That is the major defect in the present situation. I hope that my Bill will achieve that objective by obliging the Secretary of State to revise annually the eligible provision. Any voluntary agreement could carry a proviso for uplifting by the same amount as the uplift in the eligible provision. Thus I hope, through having a formula, that much of the time of our courts will be saved.

Another point that was raised by me in discussions on the Bill was the need to preserve the right of parties to the order to appeal against it. That is expressly preserved in clause 9. Such applications to change orders will be greatly facilitated, as instead of the custodian parent making application for an increase, with the difficulty of establishing the financial situation of the absentee parent, the boot will be on the other foot. It will be up to the absentee parent to apply for downgrading. Therefore, there will be no difficulty in establishing the financial situation that is necessary for the courts to come to an equitable decision.

An additional important provision of the Bill is that it permits the Supplementary Benefits Commission to become a direct party to an order when the custodian parent is supported from public funds and an absentee parent is failing in his or her responsibilities. At present the Supplementary Benefits Commission must go to court to seek that objective via the custodian parent. However, in many cases the custodian parent is unwilling to assent to such an application because she will not benefit if the application is successful, as the amounts recovered from the absentee parent will be deducted from the social security benefits of which she is already in receipt. Certainly, if she is receiving cash payments unknown to the court, and the court makes the order, she will be substantially worse off.

The Bill deals with all children affected by orders. Despite the technicalities of the title, the Bill is not confined to those who are born out of wedlock. It is a provision for children as such and not for mothers as such. The Bill is founded on the established legal definition of a liable relative.

I recognise that there are certain defects in the drafting of the Bill, especially where it refers in clause 10 to previous legislation. If the House agrees that the Bill should go to Committee, I shall be anxious to meet, by amendment, further representations from such bodies as the Supplementary Benefits Commission and the Justices' Clerks' Society, and indeed to achieve any improvements sought by the Government. In the meantime, I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will assent to the Second Reading.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome the initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Taylor) in bringing forward this Bill with its admirable concept of helping children. If brought to fruition, it will affect a large proportion of the single-parent families, numbering three-quarters of a million.

The Bill will apply—my hon. Friend used the good phrase "custodian parent"—to both men and women. However, in the main, it is the women who are left with children to look after—sometimes single women, sometimes married women with up to four or more children—who are deserted. It is often difficult for them to get a maintenance order uplifted not only in line with inflation but in any circumstances. The men are apt to disappear and cannot be found. I well remember sitting in a magistrates' court years ago when a man against whom a maintenance order had been made shouted from the back "You will not find me—I shall move". The lone parent is left not only without money but without the facilities, if she is busy looking after her family, to find the missing parent. She cannot afford to hire detectives. She is in distress. She may be ostracised by her family.

The total cost of family income benefit and supplementary benefit payments to one-parent families is now running at about £900 million a year. My hon. Friend's Bill will probably result in a substantial saving in Government funds.

There are other aspects. The Finer report aimed at a guaranteed maintenance allowance backed by a similar system for recovering maintenance for all lone mothers. Perhaps the guaranteed maintenance allowance, however desirable, is too costly for the State to undertake in full at present. However, the system for recovering maintenance for lone mothers is not too costly. An interim system was suggested, but as the Labour Government did not accept the major proposal it appeared that they did not want the interim system either. This was after a study had been made by an interdepartmental group of officials.

It was thought at that time, in 1976, that it was too costly in Civil Service manpower, that there were no matching savings in magistrates' courts, that there were no financial gains to the mother, and that there would be extra complexity between the courts and the Supplementary Benefits Commission.

The Minister, in a written answer, said:

"The Government recognise that the Finer committee wishes to spare lone mothers the need to take court proceedings for maintenance wherever possible, but they consider that this would not be practicable."—[Official Report, 2 December 1976; Vol 921, c. 255.]

That surely is not good enough, in view of the very large scale of suffering that exists and the increasing scale of this problem, mostly for women but for some men as well.

The numbers involved are very considerable. Separated, divorced and single women in November 1977 who were in need of supplementary benefit numbered 299,000, with 550,000 children. There were as well nearly 14,000 men, with 29,000 further children, involved in similar circumstances. This represents a very substantial measure of distress. The lone-parent family is surely almost the last area of our social security system that is still without adequate real help from the Government. That help ought to be provided. The Bill would go some way towards meeting this gap.

The scale and measure of the problem can be seen when it is realised that the number of one-parent children exceeds that of all two-parent families who are in receipt of supplementary benefit due to unemployment or sickness. When we realise how many more two-parent families there are, we can see how great is the need of the single-parent family.

But the position is growing worse and the numbers are likely to grow larger. The latest international comparisons I have of the high rate of divorce per marriage show that the figures are 1 to 3·5 marriages in this country in 1974, in the United States 1 to 2·3, and in Sweden 1 to 1·7. We are likely in this country to get nearer to the American figures. When we add desertion, we have an even greater problem.

If the Bill is examined in Committee, as I hope it will be, I hope that two special aspects will be considered. One is the aspect of the conflict of laws. There have been many distressing cases in which courts in Scotland have overruled courts in England. I hope that the Committee will consider this aspect so that protection may be given, even though the husband or deserting spouse has gone to Scotland or abroad.

The second aspect is that the custodian parent should surely be encouraged to work, but if a husband fails to pay maintenance under a court order the mother ought not to be sued by the Commission for the refund of money that she earns if she bravely goes out to work when she has been deserted by her husband. I know that the Government may not be able to meet the guarantee of maintenance, but at least her position could be protected, under the Bill, by giving the Commission the power to act through the courts against the errant husband, or against the spouse of whatever sex.

It is right that the missing parent should be called upon to make payment where able to do so. I hope that the Government will take up the Bill and give it a fair wind. It will be helpful in saving money, as it will put the responsibility where it should lie, namely, on the parent who has deserted the home and children. It will be helpful to mothers—and to husbands at times—who will not have to seek fresh court orders against the missing spouse so that the payment may be kept in line with inflation. The Bill concentrates the matter where it ought to be and where my hon. Friend has said it should lie—on the welfare of the children. For reasons of compassion and economy, I am very glad to support the Bill.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Taylor) on bringing forward the Bill. It is an attempt to do something about a problem with which many of us are well acquainted in our daily work in our constituencies and in our surgeries. People frequently come to us for help with problems of family maintenance. I speak as the chairman of the single-parent family group in the House and therefore I am very happy to support the Bill, which is a step in the right direction.

We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Mr. Loveridge) that there are 750,000 single-parent families in this country. He also mentioned the rapid increase in divorce in this country. It is regrettable, and it creates a great social problem. We have to recognise it and try to help. The problem is now accelerated by divorce among much younger people than used to be the case in the past. This results in maintenance arrangements being made for children at a very early age. Unless the mother is able to return to the court to get the amount of maintenance increased, naturally the value of the maintenance decreases with inflation. This has very serious results for the young children involved. Clearly, wives suffer badly under the present maintenance arrangements.

Those who have been through divorce tell me that it is a very humiliating and lonely business. Women suffer particularly when they are left with the full responsibilities for the home and the children. The problems arising from maintenance payments and from going to court are part of the anxiety, embarrassment and suffering. On an increasing scale, husbands are avoiding the payment of maintenance. They do this by going on to social security and then joining the black economy and working on building sites.

There is a gentleman in my constituency who moves very rapidly from one building site to another so that the authorities can never catch up with him. He owes a considerable amount of maintenance to his wife. The emphasis placed on the children in the Bill is a very important aspect of it. When the Finer committee studied other economies, it found that in the Scandinavian countries and in Germany in particular the emphasis in giving maintenance and help to the single-parent family was towards the child. It is right that it should be so, and I therefore welcome the emphasis placed on the child in my hon. Friend's Bill.

I hope, however, that the Government will continue to keep the Finer report constantly in mind. It is a very worthwhile document and much time and energy went into it. It was produced in 1974 but very little has been done about its recommendations concerning the single-parent family. I favour the payment of a guaranteed maintenance allowance, which is one of the proposals of the Finer report. I should like the Government to consider this. It would avoid women having to be involved in the court proceedings. Instead, the State would be chasing the man and making sure that he paid his maintenance. Whatever happened, the woman would get her maintenance.

A great deal has been said in the House about tax credits. I hope that the Government have not abandoned their thoughts in this direction. The whole question of a guaranteed maintenance allowance would be expensive to set up. However, the savings on social security could be quite large when the system was implemented and working fully.

I support the Bill. I merely came to make a short intervention to show that the group of which I have the honour to be chairman welcomes the Bill. Of course, the Bill has defective parts, as my hon. Friend said, and perhaps in Committee they can be examined. I wish the Bill good luck. It is a useful, helpful step. I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing it forward.

First, I warmly welcome the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Taylor) and extend my best wishes to him for the future of the Bill. I hope that nothing I say will deviate from the total consistency that we have had about the objectives of the Bill. We wish to help children in lone-parent families where there are maintenance orders.

I shall have to make certain comments about the Bill because, as my hon. Friend understands, we would welcome some modification of its current clauses in Committee if the House gives the Bill a fair wind today.

My hon. Friend has given a broad outline of the objectives which his Bill is aimed at achieving. Though the Bill's title suggests the simple idea of uprating court orders annually, its scope is in fact wider and covers two distinct areas. The first of these is the index-linking of court orders made for the maintenance of children. The second area is the aspect of supplementary benefits work, for which my Department, via the Supplementary Benefits Commission, is responsible, known as liability of relatives. The provisions of the Bill have the effect of giving statutory backing for various existing procedures used in our local offices by people known as liable relative officers and of extending their responsibilities, and those of the Commission, to a wider area involving persons—usually women, but not exclusively—who are not entitled to receive supplementary benefit.

While most of the second area is purely the preserve of my Department, the index-linking concept has extensive ramifications for the Home Office, the Lord Chancellor's Department, the Inland Revenue and the Treasury.

There are two principles behind this Bill with which the Government, and I am sure many members of the Opposition, agree. The first is the effort to find a way to help financially many one-parent families. I am thinking particularly, for example, of those mothers with children who depend on the regular receipt of maintenance as their main source of income. While wages may rise and State benefit rates may be increased, a maintenance order can too easily lose some of its real value as the cost of living increases, and it is often not easy, for a variety of reasons, for the mother to apply to the court for an upward variation of her order. It is not always realised that it is a minority of one-parent families who reply on supplementary benefit for all, or part, of their income and who therefore have the protection against rising costs that the increases in supplementary benefit bring—in fact, fewer than 350,000 out of about 800,000 one-parent families.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Mr. Loveridge) said, the number has gone up dramatically. We are well aware of the problems that this is likely to cause in future, particularly if, as my hon. Friend said, our divorce figures get nearer to those of other countries which he quoted.

Of the other 450,000 one-parent families, about 125,000 have a widow's pension of some kind but no supplementary benefit. That leaves roughly 325,000 who rely on maintenance payments and what they can earn—often from part-time work. The second principle I have in mind is that of safeguarding the payment of public funds via the supplementary benefit scheme. It is, of course, quite proper that single parents should receive such benefits to the fullness of their entitlement, but it is equally right that effective steps should be taken to ensure that the liable relatives—or absentee parents as my hon. Friend calls them—should regularly maintain their dependent children as far as they are able to do so. To illustrate the scale of what is involved, it is estimated that, as at November last year, supplementary benefit was being paid to 342,000 families in which there was a liability to maintain aspect against another person. But that is not the full story, because the turnover in such cases is considerable. Approximately 233,000 claims for supplementary benefit are made each year by one-parent families.

I should like to turn now to some of the specific ideas in the Bill and to give my reactions and those of my ministerial colleagues in the other Departments that I mentioned. Let me start with the first four clauses of the Bill, which are concerned with the index-linking of court orders. As my hon. Friend explained, the Bill is concerned only with court orders for children, but it is not limited to those children who are the subject of affiliation orders. Any maintenance order would count. It applies only to orders in respect of children in England and Wales and hence does not extend to any maintenance decrees in Scotland. My hon Friend the Member for Upminster mentioned that sometimes a Scottish court will overrule an English court. Therefore, we foresee that there might be some difficulty there.

The intention is to uprate these orders annually to take account of any increase in the cost of living. The responsibility for determining the amount of any percentage increase to be applied rests with the Minister, who is defined as being normally the Secretary of State for Social Services. That Minister is also required to supply the court with a statement giving the old and new rates for any periodic payments due under each order covered by the scope of the Bill. In other words, this requirement is not limited merely to those orders payable to recipients of supplementary benefit.

I am sure that the initial reaction of many people to the idea of index linking maintenance orders to the retail price index must be favourable. They would, I am sure, argue that the Government have a duty to protect those who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of inflation, and that certainly includes children who are dependent on fixed maintenance payments.

But we must recognise the fundamental change of direction implied by index linking in this respect. In awarding maintenance orders, the courts in this country are required to consider the individual financial circumstances of both parties. Likewise, in considering the upward variation of an order, the court will decide whether, in the light of the facts available concerning the payer's income and commitments, it is reasonable to expect him to pay the order at a higher rate.

Index linking assumes that, because the cost of living has gone up, the absentee parent—normally the father of the child—has increased income from which to meet a higher order. I know that the Bill ensures in clause 9 that the manor the woman—has an existing right to seek a downward variation so that he could apply for this if he could not pay the increased amount. Nevertheless, the concept of index linking removes the onus from the woman of having to seek an upward variation if she wants to update the real value of the order and places it on the man. He would then have to show why he could not comply with the automatically increased order, and some men would be nervous of going to the courts for such a reason. We must be fair to both sides in this difficult problem.

A second question of principle concerning index linking relates to its proposed limitation to children's orders only. The Home Office points out that the Bill will not help wives and former wives who have no dependent children, and they also suffer the effects of inflation. I point out to my hon. Friend that, under the Supplementary Benefits Act, a man is liable to maintain both his wife and children and a woman is liable to maintain her husband and children. There is a slight difficulty here which I am sure my hon. Friend will understand.

Even in the case of orders for children, the Bill will not benefit those whose orders are for an amount above the level of amount that my hon. Friend has called the "elegible provision". I shall return to that definition later. The Bill does not help those children, because it specifically provides in clause 6(a) that the balance of any amount in payment above the level of "eligible provision" should be proportionally reduced. This means that overall the order will not go up.

In our view, a further grave difficulty is that the Bill takes no account of any variation in the amount of the order which may have been ordered by the court. The court could have decided to increase or reduce the amount of an order at a hearing only a week or so before the date fixed for index linking in the Bill. So far as one can see, the order as varied would be increased by the full amount of the index. The Bill provides that if an order has been made in the immediately preceding period it should not be indexed that year, but has nothing to say about orders which have just been varied—in other words, continuing orders. That is a further difficulty.

One of the key concepts of index linking as envisaged is that of the "eligible provision". Clause 3(2) provides:

"The Minister shall determine annually the amount of the eligible provision by reference to the level of supplementary benefit entitlement in similar circumstances."

This appears to me to limit the part of any order for a child which should be considered for index linking to the level of supplementary benefit payable for a child of the same age—in other words, in supplementary benefit jargon, to the scale rate for that child. The scale rates for children are age related. For example, following the uprating of benefits as from next week, these rates will range from £5·20 weekly for a child under five years of age to £11·25 weekly for a young person of 16.

At least three implications follow from the "eligible provision". First, it introduces tremendous complications both to operate and, perhaps more important from the point of view of both parties, to understand—and that at a time when we are trying to simplify things generally. Secondly, the advantage of any index linking to the mother—or if she is in receipt of supplementary benefit to public funds—is limited. Thirdly, the majority of women with court orders for themselves and/or children are not actually in receipt of supplementary benefit.

The exact figures are not known, but it is likely that there are three or four times as many women with such orders not in receipt of regular supplementary benefit as are in fact receiving it. This majority of persons rely on the full amount of the court order to maintain their standard of living. Why should only one part of the order for their child or children be index linked if they are fortunate enough already to have an order for a weekly rate in excess of the eligible provision? This is a problem, but I am sure it can be overcome in discussion in Committee.

As I have mentioned, the Bill places a requirement on my Department to uprate and notify the court of the relevant information in respect of all qualifying orders. An estimate by the Home Office puts this at 290,000 orders. I am not convinced that if such a scheme were introduced the responsibility for its operation should become that of my Department.

Clearly the concept envisages centralised facilities to handle the administrative aspect, probably involving computer usage. However handled, a major liaison difficulty is inevitable between all the courts in the country and this centralised point. For example, there would be a need to keep the information up to date in respect of age changes of the children, or when orders for particular children are extended or cease.

I turn now to the effect on payment of supplementary benefit which my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West mentioned. The initial apparent effect of index linking on the payment of supplementary benefit ought to be favourable. In other words, to the extent that "absentee parents" increase maintenance payments for their children who are otherwise supported by public funds, there should be a saving in benefit outlay. But, before assuming that this will be so, consideration must be given to the effect of the Bill on the courts.

The Home Office advises me that the Bill will add to the work of the courts. Clause 4 aims to reduce the burden placed on the courts by requiring the Secretary of State for Social Services to supply them with the old and revised amounts of maintenance orders. Even then, it seems, the court will have to request this information; it will not be supplied automatically. However, many maintenance beneficiaries are not in receipt of supplementary benefit. The Department will not have details of their maintenance orders and will not be able to supply recalculations to the court.

But I am afraid that the work of the courts only begins with the recalculation of the order. Magistrates' courts are responsible by law for collecting maintenance and keeping proper accounts. Each court will have to update all its records each year. It will have to inform both parties of the change in the order. Where an attachment of earnings order is in force, the court will have to notify the man's employer.

Another task for the court, which is not mentioned in the Bill, is the need to inform the Inland Revenue. This is because the amount of a maintenance order affects the individual's tax liability. Where the order was made by the divorce court and registered in the magistrates' court for enforcement, the divorce court will have to be informed. These new duties, as I am sure the House will readily appreciate, would place a substantial extra burden on magistrates' courts, which are already hard pressed.

The Home Office estimates that to carry out these tasks at least 50 extra staff will be needed in magistrates' courts alone, at a cost of over £300,000 a year. This estimate is based on my hon. Friend's scheme for index linking, which, of course, applies only to maintenance orders for children and which also has the effect that orders for an amount above the level of "eligible provision" will not actually increase. If index linking were applied to all orders, the cost would be greater. Again, solely for magistrates' courts, it is estimated that over 80 extra staff would be needed at a cost of more than £500,000 a year.

In addition to the extra administrative tasks that would fall on the courts as a result of the Bill, it is likely that there would be an increase in applications by men for a reduction in the amounts of their orders. It is reasonable to assume that, if the amount is automatically increased without regard to the man's ability to pay, some will be genuinely unable to afford the new amount while others may object to the basic inequity of a system which takes no account of their own financial situation.

Against this there will be fewer applications by payees seeking an increase, as my hon. Friend pointed out. But research has indicated that twice as many orders are reduced as are increased. Overall, therefore, there is likely to be a net increase in proceedings. At present is it impossible to say how many applications there will be, but if only one man in 20 applied for a reduction as a result of index linking, even allowing for a substantial drop in applications by payees, there could be as many as 11,000 extra applications to magistrates' courts. These would take an estimated 220 weeks of court sittings to clear. Again, this estimate is based only on the Bill as it stands. If all orders were index linked, the corresponding figures would be 18,000 applications and 360 weeks of court sittings.

Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that not all maintenance orders are paid in full. Those who try to avoid paying now are even more likely to seek to avoid paying an amount which increases each year. Inevitably this would lead to more court proceedings to enforce payment. Without incurring substantial extra costs, there is little scope for increasing the number of hearings per week. This can only lead to considerable delays in hearing cases, with consequent hardship for those women seeking to obtain or enforce a maintenance order.

As I have indicated, despite my hon. Friend's intentions, there is no doubt that this Bill would place a substantial extra burden on the courts. The bodies representing the magistrates' courts service which have been consulted by the Home Office are all opposed to the Bill on the grounds that it would produce inequitable results and that it would add greatly to their work. They include the Chief Magistrate, the Justices' Clerks' Society, the Magistrates' Association, the Inner London Magistrates' Courts Service, the Association of Magisterial Officers and the chairman and secretary of the Central Council of Magistrates' Courts Committees.

Whatever personal views hon. Members may hold about the aims of the Bill, the House will understand that we cannot ignore the views of those who are most closely involved with the administration of maintenance orders in magistrates' courts, and on whom most of the work arising from the index linking would probably fall.

Does my hon. Friend agree that she has, in fact, made a very good case for introducing the guaranteed maintenance allowance? She has really made the whole case, which is laid out in Finer in great detail, in what she has said. Perhaps she ought to consider that.

My hon. Friend is very much on top of all the Finer arguments which he can possibly display to the House. He knows that many of us who have worked with the problem of one-parent families and all their difficulties for many years are sympathetic. However, I must remind my hon. Friend that in the present economic circumstances there is no way in which we, as with the previous Government, could accept the proposal for a guaranteed maintenance allowance at present. Whilst there are many things which we would happily wish to do when we have controlled inflation and improved the economy, I think that my hon. Friend realises that his suggestion, however necessary and however much it would answer the points I have just made on behalf of the Home Office, is not a possibility at present.

I turn now to the effect on county courts. The Lord Chancellor's Department is also certain that the Bill would lead to a large number of applications to the courts on the part of fathers for downward variation of orders which have been automatically increased through index linking. Several additional county court registrars may well be needed to deal with such applications. Extra civil servants would almost certainly be necessary to handle the administration. Without the extra judicial strength, there could well be greater delays in hearing all county court cases, including small claims, proceedings for the possession of property and other family matters.

It also has to be remembered that our judicial strength has to be considered as a whole. New work for registrars makes them less available to relieve circuit judges of simpler cases, and that in turn limits the capacity of the circuit judiciary to turn over civil work in the county court, and criminal cases in the Crown court.

I realise that those remarks may have depressed hon. Members, just as much as they affected me when I first learnt about the problems. However, I think that it is right, at this stage of the Bill, that we should consider the full effects of the Bill. I hope that it will give us a lead to things that we may decide when, one hopes, the Bill is taken to a Committee stage.

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, because this is the only point that I want to make. The Minister has referred several times to the Committee stage. This is the third of the Private Members' Bill by ballot. The first two are highly controversial. Unless action is taken by the Government to set up a parallel Standing Committee for Private Members' Bills, this Bill, in the ordinary course of events, will not go into Committee until next March. That also applies to Bills which we are to discuss later today. Will the Minister and her hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Taylor) consider making representations to the Leader of the House? Otherwise, following the Second Reading, on the nod or without dissent, anyway, this Bill will lie dormant for several months. I do not think that that is the Government's intention. I hope that the Minister will make some representations to the Leader of the House.

I gladly take that point and, indeed, I shall bring the hon. Gentleman's remarks to the notice of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I certainly have sympathy for Back-Bench Members whose Bills may be even further down in the queue than those that we are to discuss today. Certainly this can be a matter for discussion.

I turn back to the Bill to look at the problems it may raise concerning income tax. I have been asked to add that the Bill, in its present form, would cause considerable administrative problems and staffing costs for the Inland Revenue in dealing with the tax implications for both payer and payee of the proposed arrangements.

The rules for the taxation of maintenance are horribly complex and I cannot attempt to describe them here. I can only say that the selective nature and timing of the increases would produce problems of identification which in turn would affect such questions as the right to receive maintenance in full or under deduction of tax and would be bound to lead to imprecise PAYE codings, with all the resulting problems of overpaid or underpaid tax. Some hundreds of extra staff may be needed. This is an aspect that we must look at further.

The tax treatment of maintenance is already a most difficult area and it inevitably causes confusion about tax liability amongst many payers and payees. The proposals as they stand would, I am afraid, only add to this uncertainty. This is something that I am sure all hon. Members would want us to avoid.

I turn now to the parts of the Bill which are particularly the concern of the DHSS and the Supplementary Benefits Commission.

What about the Foreign Office?

Hon. Members know that Foreign Office matters are not my responsibility.

The arrangements for my Department to collect court orders would be severely affected by the Bill. The first major change that the Bill would bring about, by virtue of clause 5(1), is that it would give statutory force to the present administrative arrangements whereby women authorise the Department to collect court orders on their behalf, and it would make that arrangement compulsory. Thus, the Commission would have no choice about whether to seek authority and the woman would have no option but to give it. Court collecting offices would equally be compelled to accept it. That is specifically in the Bill.

It is widely known that the Commission already has a general policy of inviting a woman, whenever her order is paid through a court, to authorise the court to pay the order to the Department, and the procedures are described in the SBC handbook. Most women are only too pleased to accept this invitation because it means they get their money from one place—the post office—rather than two, and they receive an assured income without the anxiety and inconvenience that irregular payment of the court order would otherwise cause. But some women prefer to receive their court order personally, and the Commission does not insist on such authority. It may be that something like a permissive power for the SBC to insist where there are good reasons, and an obligation on the courts to accept, would be useful. I hope that we shall explore this fully.

There are difficulties about going further because many county and High Court orders are paid not through a court but direct to the beneficiary. Similarly voluntary payments usually go direct, often, for instance, paid when a father visits his child. There could be practical problems about insisting on direct payments to the Department in such cases.

The number of such cases involved is large. There are about 146,000 women receiving supplementary benefit who have court orders, and of these 116,000 are paid to the Department and the balance to the women. There are about 66,000 voluntary payments made by liable relatives and of these 17,000 come to the Department and the other 49,000 go to the claimant. But that 17,000 is not of women's payments diverted to the Department—it represents cases where our own liable relative officers have contacted a husband or father and he has then agreed to pay us direct.

The second change in this aspect is in some ways an extension of the first because it would give the SBC power not only to collect an order but to "stand in the place of" the woman in all respects with regard to the order. The Bill does not amplify what this means but presumably it would mean that the SBC would have the power, and the duty, to enforce the order if not paid in full, or to seek variations in the amount payable. That is the broad principle, though it would be limited by the eligible provision concept. There are many aspects of this that need to be discussed in detail, and again I hope that we shall have the opportunity later to do so.

I should like to make two points now. The first is one that will be well understood by Labour Members. It is that obections may be raised to the State taking over from the woman in this way and that some modification of what is in the Bill may be needed for that reason alone. The second is that where a court order exceeds the eligible provision, or includes the needs of the mother as well as the child, there would be the obvious difficulty about enforcing only part of the order in the event of a default in payment.

The third big change is that by clause 5(6) the Supplementary Benefits Commission will be given extensive new duties and powers in those cases where benefit is payable and there is liability to maintain but no court order exists and no voluntary payment is being made. The Bill says that a precondition for the receipt of benefit is that the woman should authorise the Supplementary Benefits Commission to act for her. I think that that rather puts things the wrong way round. The first responsibility of the supplementary benefits scheme is to meet financial need. Liable relative action, though important, is secondary to that.

The Supplementary Benefits Commission's policy, which we fully support, and which is widely publicised, is to talk things over with the wife or the child's mother and to use its own powers, already in the Supplementary Benefits Act 1976, if the woman does not want to take proceedings herself. This procedure is followed whenever a man, when approached by the Department, denies liability or refuses to maintain voluntarily, though admitting liability. In practice, a large majority of women initiate their own proceedings for maintenance, often as part of a divorce action. It would be a sweeping and drastic change to remove from a woman the right to take her own proceedings. Putting these responsibilities on the Commission would also have considerable staffing repercussions at a time when or staff resources are scarce.

The fourth point that concerns the Commission is perhaps the most significant of all. It would give the Commission additional duties to act as an intermediary to help certain custodian parents who are not entitled to supplementary benefit. It envisages that the Commission may require payment of its reasonable costs in such actions. But my first reaction is that the kind of people who would be likely to seek such help would be unlikely to be able to pay the costs, so that the service would not be paid for. We could not take on such an extra task.

Our local offices, as hon. Members will know, are already working at full stretch. We are trying to relieve them of work, not to put more there. Even without the cost, though I fear it would be high, this we must resist. We already have legal aid and legal assistance schemes through which help is available when needed. It would not be right for us to provide another channel, though I am grateful that my hon. Friend recognises and appreciates the expertise and skill of our liable relative staff.

Everything that I have said so far relates to the Bill. In respect of liable relatives, I would like to put the matter in fuller context. Hon. Members will know that a second stage of this supplementary benefits review is going on. In this review, we intend that there should be public discussion of all the aspects of liable relatives. With a helpful Bill such as this coming before the House, timing difficulties could ensue, but I do not think that discussion on the review should preclude us from taking action.

I know the difficulties that hon. Members face in drafting their own Bills. The House will probably feel that I have been over-critical. I should warn the House, however, that the Bill, as it stands, is entirely unsatisfactory in the drafting of the provisions. We would have to do a great deal of rewriting, although we are sympathetic towards what my hon. Friend wishes to do. I mention one example. The title of the Bill refers to affiliation orders and aliments. Affiliation orders are specifically orders for payments for illegitimate children. The term does not include orders for legitimate children, although my hon. Friend, I know, intended to include them. So far as I can see, the word "aliments" does not occur anywhere else in the Bill, nor is it defined. "Aliments" is a word used only in Scottish law. But the Bill does not extend to Scotland. In short, it is far from clear in the drafting to which orders the Bill really applies. We would be happy to assist my hon. Firend over this matter.

We sympathise very much with the broad intentions of the Bill. Any scheme to maintain the value of court orders for one-parent families will benefit a section of the community that is vulnerable. It will also, incidentally, reduce public expenditure in the form of supplementary benefit.

I have shown that this is a complex issue. There are many difficult problems to be resolved, not least the costs incurred. I appreciate that most of the clauses affecting my Department and the Supplementary Benefits Commission are intended to be of assistance to us. I have indicated why I must have reservations about much of the Bill, but I do not want my comments to create the impression that we reject it out of hand. We do not. I look forward to detailed discussions in Committee if the House gives the Bill a Second Reading. I can assure my hon. Friend that, in the meantime, we shall be looking closely at the Bill in order to be as helpful as possible. I am most grateful to him for introducing it.

I have a short statement to make to the House. There is an error in today's Order Paper. The Second Reading of the Diseases of Animals (Declaratory Amendment) Bill has been omitted. This Bill should have appeared as No. 12 on today's Order Paper; that is to say, immediately after the Freedom of Information Bill. The Order Paper is being reissued in its correct form and copies placed in the Vote Office. I thought, however, that I should specifically draw the attention of the House to this matter. I take the view that the Member in charge of the Bill should not be disadvantaged by this error, and I should like to thank the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) for the manner in which he brought this to our notice. The Bill was properly set down for today and appears for today in the Public Bill list.

Further to your statement, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thank you most warmly for the action that you thought it right to take so that the Bill could follow its normal course, and it would have done if this error had not been made. I am grateful to you and to the authorities of the House.

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

I should like to pay tribute to my parliamentary colleagues who have preceded me with a Youth and Community Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst), Sir Edward Brown, until recently Member of Parliament for Bath, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend). Although little has been achieved on the legislative front after sections 41 and 53 of the Education Act 1944, several milestones have, nevertheless, been established along the road during the past 35 years. In 1958 there was the Countess of Albemarle report and in 1960 the setting up of the Youth Service Development Council, which was disbanded in 1971. In July 1968 the Seebohm report recommended a comprehensive inquiry into all services for young people. In December 1976 there was Professor Court's report into child health services. The Youth Service Forum had a short life between 16 December and July 1979. In 1978 the Wolfenden report recommended on page 74, inter alia, the expansion of the voluntary services.

Over the period, solid work has been achieved by the statutory and voluntary services. As the years have accumulated and the requirements of youth have changed, Governments in the post-war era have shown a marked disinclination 0either to identify the change or to accommodate it. According to the Commission for Racial Equality in its report "Youth in Multi-Racial Society" issued in October 1979,

"The general feeling amongst workers we have spoken to is that the present youth service in most areas is quite inadequate to meet the needs of most black (and also most white) youth in a changing society."

In France there is a Minister for Youth, Sport and Leisure. In the Federal Republic of Germany there is a Minister for Youth, Family Affairs and Health. In the Netherlands there is a Minister for Cultural Affairs, Recreation and Social Work. In Belgium there is a Minister for National Education and French culture. In Australia there is a Federal Minister of Youth and Employment. But in the United Kingdom British ingenuity has produced only a Minister responsible for sport, and the framework for the youth service remains nebulous and ill defined.

With the approach of an International Youth Year in 1985, under the auspices of the UNESCO, it is sincerely hoped that the Government will embrace this Bill, which at least gives the youth service statutory backing and makes it less vulnerable to the retrenchment which normally accompanies the turn of the economic cycle.

In my judgment there are three reasons why the youth and community service should be cherished. First, there arises an obligation to quarry the potential in our youth and extract the valuable qualities that lie within. The total size of the population is of little concern. It is the quality of the nation and the stature of the people that matter. National wealth is multiplied many fold through the added value of extracted skill, experience and talent.

Secondly, there is some correlation between the amount of juvenile crime and the attention paid by authority to youth. Accompanying under-provision is an understandable rise in vandalism, yet local authorities fail to take into account the cost and the natural causes of delinquency in their areas. They readily pay for the repairs, when they should be preventing the crimes that flow from their neglect. At the recent Conservative Party conference in Blackpool my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary referred to the advent of discipline camps with a strict routine stretching from 5.30 in the morning until 10 at night. Attention paid to youth at an earlier and more appropriate time would, in my opinion, pay far greater dividends than attempts to correct youth later when, unprepared and misguided, young people have become corrupted by irresponsible elements in society.

Thirdly, youth is the occasion of important decisions—to enter employment, to marry, to enlist in the Services, to vote and to become liable in contract, to mention only a few instances. This is the time when the investment should be made to ensure that youth is properly informed, motivated and equipped to face the years that lie ahead. The opportunity missed, and the character of the adolescent, may crystallise with harmful effects on his ability, prospects and human relationships. As H. G. Wells indicated in his book "The Outline of History",

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

The Secretary of State for Education and Science lavishes the fruits of education on the young up to the age of 16 and extends them to those going on to the colleges of higher education and the universities. For the greater part, however, youth passes into the post-education void and faces austere conditions in the outer world, with little enduring care. I am certain that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science will appreciate that expenditure on youth and related services in 1977–78 worked out at only 1·2 per cent. of the total spent on education—that is, £95 million out of a total of £7,951 million, which is equivalent to barely 24 miles of a three-lane motorway, and only £30 million in excess of the cost of one project on the East Coast, the Humber Bridge.

Speaking at a seminar on youth and young people at the University of London union on 3 March 1979, the Secretary of State, then an Opposition spokesman, said:

"The youth service must surely be the Cinderella service of education. More than three decades after the 1944 Education Act it is still a malformed creature … and the response of local authorities to the need to provide services and recreational facilities for young people varies enormously."

I should have thought that that was an outstanding indictment. While travelling round the country in recent months in a consultative process, I have been informed that the present cuts could lead to a decimation of the service. As one man in Bradford told me, "If you cut back in services to youth, you will pay for it 10 times over later on." [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Retrenchment here is a false economy.

The voluntary services have been particularly resourceful. I quote one example, the Boys' Brigade, which covers 146,000 boys and 27,000 leaders. It costs the Government barely ½p a boy per annum. On the other hand, the time and effort—unpaid services—granted by the 27,000 voluntary leaders and others must run into millions of pounds. Investment in youth is not without its significance, as the young are the tenants of tomorrow's estate. There are twin terminals in life—youth and age. Special provision is made for the latter, but scarcely for the former, yet the damage sustained in youth's formative years could be irreparable.

Most of the obligations contained in the Bill are, in fact, discharged by advanced local authorities. Is it unreasonable to suggest that all authorities should conform to acceptable standards laid down by Parliament? Is it extravagant to suggest that there should be a small shift in resources from formal education to the broader area of social education so that more could be achieved for young people than at present? I can tell the House that the Bedfordshire county council, which is located in my area, believes that the Bill could be accommodated.

There is no one Act of Parliament to cover all the requirements of youth. The lead Ministry is the Department of Education and Science, and its task is to co-ordinate the activities of other Ministries, including the Department of Health and Social Security, the Home Office, the Departments of Employment and Environment and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. A variety of Acts appear on the statute book, but there is no law which says that common sense should prevail. Of course, the national position is reflected locally, and the Bill goes a long way towards meeting the plea of those who say "Let us ensure through co-ordinated activities that more is achieved with existing resources". Unfortunately, there are many small departments within local authorities, yet there seems to be no lead department among them.

This situation was epitomised by the Secretary of State himself, and I have already referred to that occasion, when he said:

"Many of the current problems with provision for young people stem from lack of co-ordination between one central Government Department and another, between central and local government and between statutory and voluntary bodies."

My observation is that there is little expenditure in this essential work, but disintegrating the empires of the mighty to assist the particular lot that they are intended to serve requires both political will and a readiness to strip off the growing encrustrations of local bureaucracy.

I now turn to the clauses of the Bill. Clause 1 provides for the setting up of a joint committee comprising representation from local education authorities, voluntary organisations and young people. It is this body that will co-ordinate the services of local authorities and a variety of local agencies. The mechanism is provided by schedule 1.

It has been argued that local authorities have power under sections 101 and 102 of the Local Government Act 1972 to set up committees to discharge any of their functions, but they are not obliged to do that, and many have not done so during the past seven years. Clause 1 makes that mandatory in the context of the Bill. Further, they are not obliged to enter into partnership with voluntary agencies, but they are required to do that under this clause.

Under section 53(2) of the Education Act 1944, local authorities are simply enjoined to

"have regard to the expediency of co-operating with voluntary societies".

Further, local authorities have power to provide recreational facilities under section 19 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976. However, since the submission of a comprehensive programme to the Secretary of State is no longer required under the 1979 Bill it becomes encumbent upon Parliament to lay down standards for the guidance of local authorities, thus providing broad parameters within which to exercise their discretion.

Under clause 2 the local education authority is requested to draw up a comprehensive range of services for the young, and, as I have mentioned, in accordance with Schedule VII to the Education (No. 2) Bill now before Parliament it will no longer be necessary to submit the scheme to the Secretary of State for his approval.

The range of services to be provided is broad and includes the provision of social education, which I am not attempting to define as it is readily understood by most people who have concern for youth, the provision of facilities and equipment essential to the success of any operation, the training of youth and community workers, the provision of projects designed to assist those out of reach of clubs and societies and counselling services.

The clause is integrated with sections 41 and 53 of the 1944 Education Act, which make a general commitment but provide little clarification or embellishment for the guidance of local authorities. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) stated on 1 February 1974:

"Sections 41 and 53 of the Education Act 1944 … are drafted in very general terms and provide little detailed guidance on what authorities may do. Many authorities interpret the provisions of those sections very liberally … but there could well be a welcome for more specific guidance."—[Official Report, 1 February 1974; Vol. 868, c. 782.]

Clause 3 is designed to indicate to local education authorities what Parliament has in mind when they consider drawing up schemes. They should take into account methods of enhancing youth participation, the acceptance of responsibility by youth, the promotion of leadership, and so forth, and include specifically services needed to help young people move from school to work. Nine criteria have been outlined, and each has been designed to provide the adolescent with balanced objectives or to ensure protection of disadvantaged young people, whether they be homeless, disabled, unemployed, anti-social, delinquents or, at an extreme range, members of an ethnic group.

The Bill places special emphasis on the partnership established between the voluntary and statutory services. Their work is often complementary. On the other hand, voluntary agencies, spurred on by a natural desire to serve the younger generation, may provide inexpensively what the statutory services could achieve only at considerable cost. At times of economic exigency, that may represent a significant benefit. On the other hand, the work of the statutory services is acknowledged in clause 3(viii), and additional provision is outlined in clause 2(2)(c)., (d and (e)—in fact, throughout the Bill.

Clause 3 is of particular interest, since it is calculated to raise the sights of local authorities. Somebody must give them a guide. Some hon. Members may oppose it and contend that it covers a limited demand, but this is what was apparent in 1832 when the first Reform Bill came before the House. Parliament was right to take the initiative and provide the example, and the 1832 Bill was a progenitor of the other Bills that were to follow. The scheme may, of course, be scrutinised before acceptance, and indeed modified. Review would be mandatory every seven years to allow for the changes wrought by time.

Clauses 1 to 4 form a crucial part of the Bill. To acquaint youth with the merits of our democratic process, to urge them to become more articulate and build up self-reliance, participation has been introduced in clause 5 in the form of youth councils. There are well over 100 of these in existence and their performance has varied throughout the country. The clause has been drafted only to create an obligation on an LEA where there is a local requirement. In that case either LEAs or voluntary organisations may create them. The procedure and the composition of such forums is left to be established by the Secretary of State by regulation under clause 11. Youth today has a lot to say and should be encouraged to say it. Young people should realise that by discussion, argument and persuasion they can change the world. That is at least in line with British tradition.

Housing for homeless young people is referred to in clause 7. The adolescent seems to fall outside the usual rules formulated by housing departments, but there may be many instances, especially when the youth emerges from prison, when the provision of accommodation is essential for his rehabilitation in society. Further, to tackle employment on, say, Merseyside, the provision of housing elsewhere could contribute to permanent resettlement.

The young unemployed are referred to in clause 3(v). Unemployment tends to fall heavily on youth, despite the efforts of the youth opportunities programme, and has risen faster among girls than boys. Amongst young blacks it has trebled between 1973 and 1977, and is particularly high among the young disabled, ex-offenders and the educationally subnormal. Parliament should be called upon to take some action.

Community involvement is referred to in clause 8, and it should be noted that the intention is less for the benefit of the community than for the personal development of the participant.

The age range throughout the Bill has been set between 12 and 21, which is mentioned specifically in clause 12. A specific allowance, however, has been made in clause 5, which deals with youth councils, and in clause 8, which deals with community involvement, for the age of 26 years to be established as the upper limit. ILEA has a broad age range, I am informed, of upwards of five years, while in Europe it is even lower. It is apparent that the age of stress is dropping with the early maturity of the adolescent, and it is essential that the legislation that is before the House should take account of that change and the existence of pressures that were not formerly apparent.

Due to the nature of a Private Member's Bill, I was obliged to introduce clause 9 relating to the rate support grant. However, I have provided that where, but for the Bill, a local authority would qualify for the rate support grant for services, it would not be deprived of that right. I am hoping that as the economic position improves the Government will become more accommodating to the youth service. I fear that on this occasion I should take out my handkerchief.

I am conscious that, for very good reasons, my hon. Friend the Minister decided to dispense with the services of the youth service forum. Accordingly, I have provided that no further national organisation will be required unless specified by order. The House will probably regard that approach as good sense, since it is important, in my judgment, to consolidate activity in the first instance at the base of the pyramid before any attempt is made to provide a national structure at the apex. I sincerely hope that before any attempt is made to engraft a national body on to the youth service much thought will be given to the proposal.

The road of youth is not unlike an elevator. No sooner has a young person placed his foot on the lower step than he has reached the top and moved on to another phase of life. A national co- ordinating body, if properly located and structured, could provide for a transient though vital stage in life.

To complete the Bill, I refer to clauses 12 and 13 which cover interpretation and apply the Bill to Scotland.

I understand that the hon. Gentleman has received representations from the various bodies in Scotland connected with youth and community services, or, as we say, community education, leisure and recreation. I consulted all of them. They were unanimous that the Bill should not apply to Scotland, because of the different system not only of local government but of community education. Has the hon. Gentleman taken account of those representations, and will he reconsider clause 13?

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I have received representations from Scotland of different points of view. Some recommend that the Bill should apply while others recommend that it should not. There are advantages for Scotland in the Bill, and I shall consider the point carefully in Committee. I hope that with the support of the Minister we can consider these matters in Committee. However, it would be unwise for me to say now that it should not apply to Scotland.

Clauses 1 to 4 are fundamental to youth. They are as applicable to Scotland as they are to England and Wales. I regret that the Bill does not apply to Northern Ireland. I have received representations from people in Northern Ireland that they wish to be associated with the subject but not to be included in the Bill.

Finally, there is the interpretation clause. If I am lucky enough to pilot the Bill through Committee and perform some service to the youth of this country, I hope that I shall be flexible and accommodate the Minister's point of view, and that he will accommodate youth.

The hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) is to be congratulated on introducing the Bill. It is much needed and it provides the opportunity to debate an area of great concern. Such an opportunity is not normally provided. The Bill is required not merely to give proper status to youth and community work in the country but to provide a policy on youth work to guide those who work long hours with little money—sometimes no money—in the statutory and voluntary organisations.

The Bill states the purpose of youth and community work. It goes some way towards defining the relationship between the youth and community service and the rest of the education services. Up to now, youth and community work has been the poor relation. The Bill sets out the concept of partnership between voluntary and statutory bodies. That partnership is unique in much of our public life in the youth and community service. Neither can effectively provide services without the help and co-operation of the other.

The concept of partnership is capable of extension. There are many other organisations and bodies which work with young people. There are commercial organisations, for example, local radio, and non-commercial organisations, such as the Manpower Services Commission, the youth opportunities programme and so on. Technically, they are now outside the scope of the Bill. Nevertheless, the Bill is drafted broadly enough that if co-operation and co-ordination are initiated with local youth opportunities schemes, or local commercial radio, there is nothing in the Bill to prohibit that. I am sure that the youth and community service would not wish to adopt an exclusive attitude towards work with young people.

Co-ordination of effort at local authority level is needed. The Bill will help to provide that. It provides an adequate framework—although, no doubt, there will be amendments in Committee—to ensure that the co-ordination takes place. We all think that our local authorities are the best run and that such co-ordination takes place already. However, we look over our shoulder at those where it does not exist.

The Bill also stresses the vital need for the participation of young people and for consultation with them. Clauses 2(3) and 3(1) and 5, on youth councils, make that point abundantly clear. It is delightful to realise that the Bill allows for a great deal of flexibility in the operation, setting up and running of youth councils. That is essential. It is only by experimenting and taking account of local conditions that local authorities will be able to provide the best range of services for young people.

Clause 2(1)—the promotion and setting up of schemes—is the heart of the Bill. I know that my local authority looks forward to its passing and I hope that it becomes law in this Session.

The hon. Gentleman referred to age groups. Concern has been expressed about the matter because in one clause we appear to be going beyond the statutory range for the definition of youth service at the upper end. We should take account of work with young people below the statutory age. Clauses 3(8) and 12(2) relate to that point. The youth and community service is not just an extension of the education services but it runs parallel to them. It is nonsense for education services to start at the age of 12. Of course, they begin at the age of live and some of us would like them to start even earlier. The work done with people below the statutory age will be just as important in the long run as that done with those who have entered the youth service age.

The Bill is on strong ground when it emphasises the need to take account of young people who are not in statutory and voluntary organisations—"youth groups", to use the phraseology of the Bill. I served on a youth committee a long time ago and we referred to such people as "the unclubables". They were people who would not be seen dead near a youth club, the Boy Scouts or the Boys' Brigade. I suspect that such people make up about 80 per cent. of their age group. Any Bill that purports to deal with youth and community work and does not take account of that section of young people is deficient. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is taking that point on board. It will provide opportunities for the local youth schemes to reach into that area. Up to now, the youth and community service tended to steer clear of that group.

Reference has been made to clause 2(2)(a) on social education. The provision is capable of wide definition. Many of us feel that young people should have the opportunity—not compulsorily—of acquiring political education, however that is defined. Whether or not the Bill requires amendment on that point is another matter. Social relationships are mentioned. I interpret those as being any relationships which are not individual. Interest in political affairs in the widest sense, and not merely in the party political sense, is a form of social relationship that is covered here. Instruction is referred to as a means of participating in the community. Surely one of the most important ways of participating in the community is by voting at elections, however that vote may be cast. Anything that stresses the importance of that wider area of concern is useful.

The Bill will be criticised because it does not provide the resources. The hon. Gentleman has attempted to allay that criticism. However, in the present circumstances, that is too much to hope for. I hope that the youth service will not follow the same pattern as the education service, even if resources were to be provided. There is a pyramid structure in education. At the ages of 16, 18, 19, 21 and 23 education finishes and young people get jobs or go on to further training. As one goes up the educational pyramid, the spending per head increases substantially—almost in geometric proportion—so that in postgraduate education the nation is spending thousands of pounds per head on perhaps 1 per cent. of that age group. However, the nation is spending almost nothing—in many cases nothing—on the other 99 per cent. of that age group.

The development of the State education service has always been a priority, particularly for the Labour Party, and therefore we should consider reordering our priorities. As the hon. Member for Bedford has rightly pointed out, investment in education does not merely benefit society in terms of reduced crime, vandalism and so on, but benefits the young people as individuals. The basic wealth of any country lies in its young people. If we can develop their aptitudes and abilities, and give them better means of self-expression, young people ultimately will make a greater contribution to society from which we shall all benefit.

The great Chinese sage, Lao-Tse, said that a journey of a thousands miles begins with the first step. There is a long way to go with youth and community services, but the Bill is a first step and I welcome it unreservedly. I hope that it will receive an unopposed Second Reading and will become part of our law.

We have reached the stage where a number of us will find that our carefully prepared words have already been uttered by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) or by other hon. Members. I shall therefore elaborate on some of the points already made.

This is the fourth attempt to get such a Bill through the House. That surely underlines the need, perceived by many hon. Members over the years, for such changes to be made, together with the wish that this time we shall be successful. I strongly believe in the need for the greater involvement of young people in our affairs. There will be those outside who will always criticise and claim that young people are being brought in too soon and lack the necessary experience or knowledge. However, those young people will have to live longer with the effects of any decisions taken today. If there is any doubt about whether they should be involved, we should give them the benefit of that doubt.

I welcome those clauses in the Bill that link and formalise the relationships between voluntary bodies and statutory bodies. In many areas those links work admirably and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. There are other areas that are not so fortunate, and in those areas the young people suffer and may find their opportunities restricted.

The ages mentioned in the Bill range from 12 to 25. The problem is how to define a young person. During the short time that I have been in the House, I have discovered that many hon. Members regard youth as being nothing more than two years below their own age. There is a tendency to extend the definition of youth a little far in each direction. I am sure that the sponsor of the Bill will look at that aspect in Committee.

I welcome the clause referring to the national body and the way that the clause is drafted. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford that it is better to start from the bottom. I am sure that within a short time we shall wish to benefit nationwide from the examples of groups in various parts of the country. The best way to achieve that is to have a national structure able to feed back that experience and encourage others by exhortation and example.

It is obvious to me, from conversations with erstwhile colleagues in local authorities, that there is some reserve about the Bill at a time of cuts and retrenchments. It is impossible to deny that the Bill places responsibilities on local authorities that they do not possess at the moment in statutory form.

However, the requirements of the Bill are modest by any standards. We must come to grips with an earlier maturing population. Year after year, the youth services have faced more cutbacks than any other area of local authority spending. It is time to call a halt to that, and the best method is to lay out, within a formal structure such as that proposed in the Bill, a basic and sound skeleton that will enable the community to apply its ingenuity and build on it. We cannot continue to offer, in many areas, a declining service or, in some cases, a service that is almost non-existent.

I urge the House to support the Bill, not just today but in Committee and when it returns to the House. Let us show faith in the young people of today in the certain knowledge that they will rightly and properly inherit responsibility for the country tomorrow.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) on introducing a valuable piece of proposed legislation. I include myself among the hon. Members who sincerely hope that the Bill will complete all its stages. However, I have a couple of minor criticisms which I hope will not be taken as being carping, because they are intended to assist the passage of the Bill.

I hope that the hon. Member for Bedford will consider accepting an amendment to Clause 1 that the joint committees should include independent agencies, particularly those with a neighbourhood base. I have been involved in youth and community work for over 20 years, and the "unclubables" previously mentioned are the young people whom it is difficult to involve in youth and community work. They react best to organisations that are close to home, if not on their own doorstep, run by people they know well and who know them. They do not react well, unfortunately, to the uniformed youth groups or to those based on churches—although that is not so in some areas.

I hope that the hon. Member for Bedford is prepared to build a neighbourhood bias into clause 1 that would give specific direction to local authorities in case they become a little frightened of the Bill. Some organisations are not good at dealing with their local authorities. If a local authority is sensitive to that fact, and realises the difficulties of those organisations, there is no problem. However, if a local authority is insensitive, it is the duty of the House to give some direction.

I hope that the committees will be required to co-ordinate and monitor the provision of services. If we do not have a monitoring requirement, we shall open up the possibility of serious arguments between local authorities and the committees. We ought to give the committees the duty to exercise the overseeing role which, by their nature, they will be best equipped to do in any case. It would not make things any more difficult and it would make the matter much clearer for local authorities.

I hope that we shall be able to include in the Bill a requirement that the committees should develop new services as required. The one thing that I have learnt in all my years in youth work is that times and situations are constantly changing. Unless we are sufficiently flexible to change with circumstances and with the nature of the young people with whom we are dealing, we shall fail yet again. There is provision for that in the Bill, but it ought to be spelt out as a clear duty.

As regards clause 2(2)(a), if we are mealy-mouthed we shall open up another area of controversy between local authorities and the committees. If we mean political education in its broadest sense we ought to say so and not try to get round it in the wording of the Bill. We should tighten up that part of the clause and say exactly what we mean.

As an ex-city treasurer, my problem with clause 9 is that it introduces a new concept into local government accountancy. It provides that expenditure will be relevant if an authority has spent money in this area and has received a grant, but will not be relevant if the expenditure has never been undertaken before. Given the sums of money involved, that requirement will put the Minister and local authority finance departments in an impossible position.

I hope that the Minister will be magnanimous and will give us some assistance. The sums involved are so small as to be undetectable within the normal inaccuracies built into any accountancy system. The effect of granting assistance would be to alleviate the Image that the Government are creating for themselves, even though they seem hell-bent on creating such an image. I hope that the Minister will look sympathetically at the problem. If he does not help, clause 9 will create difficulties.

I am fairly confident that the nature of the times we live in, the problems faced by young people, the increasing amount of youth unemployment and the nature of the House will combine to give the Bill a better chance than any of its predecessors. I wish it every success.

I should like to add my felicitations to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet), who is bringing the Bill before the House for the fourth time.

I remember that when the Bill was in the hands of my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst), he was the Member for Middleton and Prestwich. As a Young Conservative officer, I was running round various parts of London and the Home Counties trying to drum up support for the Bill among Young Conservative branches and, more important, among youth leaders and those involved in youth and community work. I found a most favourable response to the intentions behind the Bill, and I believe that the response to the present Bill will be even more favourable. It will be in the interests of everyone involved in youth and community work for the Bill to become an Act.

I had the dubious distinction for a while of being chairman of a borough youth council. As I was the youth leader from a church at that time, any connotations drawn about my activities as chairman of the youth council should not be discussed at too great length today.

It is important to record that the pressure required from that youth council on the local authority and senior members of society was continuing and necessary. Without it, we would have got a pat on the head and been told "You will learn, you will find out what it's all about and we really are not all that interested in your views". The activities proposed and formalised in the Bill are to be strongly welcomed.

I was interested in what the hon. Member for Waltham Forest (Mr. Deakins) said about aspects of political education, which is a development that I have believed in for many years. Indeed, I was one of those partly responsible for the bad publicity achieved by my hon. Friend the Member for Eye (Mr. Gummer) in the sixth-form conferences which were thought to be merely political manoeuvres by the Conservative Party. I cannot comment on that, except to say that the theme behind the conferences was not just a party political involvement but a genuine inculcation of political experience among young people in the fifth and sixth forms, and even earlier if possible.

As a Hansard Society report in 1978 said so pertinently, a research project sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust and promoted by the Hansard Society showed that

"the majority of pupils leaving school at the age of 16 are ignorant of even the most basic political issues."

In this context, political issues mean not just party politics but an understanding of the community and how young people have to go about buying a house, opening a bank account and being involved in such day-to-day matters. That has caused me considerable concern for many years and will continue to do so.

I am worried that the problem to which the Hansard Society drew attention has still not been solved. In various county councils and local education authorities, one still finds among older members the view that political education should not be allowed in schools because of the dodgy effects that might result if one party or another were pushing its case. That is not what we are talking about when we refer to political education. We are talking about an understanding of the community and an involvment in it. The Bill draws attention to that. I believe that attention should be drawn to that aspect even more strongly, and I hope that we can discuss that in Committee.

Anything that encourages young people from all walks of life and from all backgrounds to be involved in the community is important. I am particularly interested in clause 8(1), but my experience leads me to suggest that we need to emphasise the problem among the second generations of our ethnic communities. I served on the London borough of Haringey for a while. Hon. Members will know that the borough has particular problems in community relations, in the sense of the wide variety and disparate backgrounds of its people, including those from Cyprus, the Caribbean, the Asian sub-continent and so on.

I have found in my political experience in Luton and in my constituency that the second-generation members of the ethnic communities tend to suffer, not because they are any less bright—in many cases they are a jolly sight brighter—but because of the conflict between their background culture, what their parents believe they ought to be doing, whether in learning a language or as regards values in relation to marriage among Asians, and what they have learnt in our education system, namely, that the standards that we, the indigenous population, adopt are entirely different.

Because of the pulls of the respective cultures and backgrounds, the second-generation young ethnic community representatives often find themselves in considerable difficulty. They need advice, and they need a channel for it, if they are not involved in a club, a church youth activity or whatever. The particular problems of unemployment among those youngsters give me great cause for concern.

I am also interested in the reference in clause 7 to the problems of homelessness. Advice is needed, for reasons similar to those relating to second-generation children.

All in all, the Bill is to be welcomed. I am glad to be here on the occasion of the fourth attempt to get it through Parliament. I regret that I was not here for the previous three attempts. At least today I can support it and warmly welcome it. It is a start in codifying and enshrining in law help and advice for young people, of whatever age, and in providing a forum for their views.

It is in the interests of our parliamentary system and of democracy that young people should be encouraged to be involved and that they should be aware of the involvement that they must have as soon as they have the chance to vote or to participate in any way.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford on bringing the Bill before the House again. I wish it speedy progress through Parliament.

This will be my third speech on a Youth and Community Bill. While previous proponents and opponents have switched from side to side of the House and in and out of the House, I remain steadfast.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) on the sympathetic, compassionate and understanding way in which he moved the Second Reading. It is always strange to see liberalism flow from such a Right-wing frame. I compliment the hon. Gentleman.

I was surprised that the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire) thought that because something had been said before it could not be said again in the House. That shows a simplistic approach, of which maturity will undoubtedly teach him the error.

It is essential to accept the importance of the Bill. It is one of the most important pieces of legislation. Seeing a junior Minister from the Department of Education and Science alone on the Front Bench, the House will hope that he was asked to deal with this matter on account of his youth and not on account of his lack of seniority. Matters affecting youth are currently the concern of five major Government Departments, and it would have been pleasant to see the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Education and Science or the Secretary of State for the Environment here. I warn the Minister now that if he intends to remain standing at four o'clock this afternoon he will do so at his peril.

The Bill is the result of a Young Conservative idea that dates from the beginning of this decade. It has been ably argued by the successors of the Young Conservatives who originated it. I had hoped that the Minister would intervene to say that the Government were in favour of it and would allow it a Second Reading.

At present, the only intimation of the Government's feeling and concern for youth is the cancellation of the youth opportunities programme, the cutback in expenditure on a vast range of educational concepts and a fair amount of money going to the construction of glasshouses in order to give what the Home Secretary calls a short, sharp reminder of discipline to people who, I think in the view of most hon. Members present, would be far better off without that sort of treatment.

I do not believe that there is anything in the Bill, which is handsomely flexible, that we cannot discuss in Committee, where I hope that we can make it become as many of us would like it to be. I am slightly disappointed about the lack of priority given to the housing of young people, but it will be a difficult matter, with the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. This is something that we must discuss and settle in Committee.

I should like to tell the House of an experiment in which I was deeply involved and which has great bearing on this matter. I was invited by the International Year of the Child organisation to be the chairman of the steering committee of the Young People's Parliament, and eventually to be its Speaker. That exercise should be a prototype for youth councils. Every local education authority, every member organisation of the British Youth Council and every political party's junior branch was asked to send representatives.

The parliament met in the Greater London Council hall, which was kindly provided by the council, and was opened by the Prime Minister. In the parliament, 220 people with no political experience had their first look at, and taste of, what it is like to be in a position of power. They discussed the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, tabled amendments, formed themselves into committees, gave reports at a plenary session, debated the amendments and voted.

I was impressed by the responsibility of those young people, aged from 12 to 18, and the way in which they grew in stature from the morning when they registered until the next afternoon, when they joined hands and sang "Auld Lang Syne", which many of us feel is a far better song than "The Red Flag".

Or "Land of Hope and Glory".

Yes, or even "Land of Hope and Glory".

I know that many hon. Members wish to catch the eye of the Chair, so I simply reaffirm that it is a tragedy that this country has no Minister for youth. It is sad that here is another instance in which we have lagged behind our partners in the EEC. I hope that, if it becomes law, the Bill will provide a blueprint for youth activity.

I hope that the very sensible remark made by the hon. Member for Bedford, that it is shortsighted to deny money to a project when the denial will cost the country much more, will remain firmly in the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and whoever else gives his consent to the spending of money.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, and urge the House to facilitate the Bill's move to Committee.

I join those hon. Members who have congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) so warmly on the way in which he has introduced the Bill. I doubt whether any hon. Member could have worked harder on its preparation. We know this from the correspondence that we have received. I know also that my hon. Friend has attended a considerable number of meetings around the country—meetings which I understand have all been extremely well attended. That emphasises the interest in, and importance of, the Bill. Its objectives and intentions have my full support.

In certain respects, it is a consolidating Bill. In other respects, it is an idealistic Bill. It is a consolidating measure in that it highlights and draws together some of the provisions for youth which already exist in some parts of the country. However, it is idealistic in that it demonstrates a concern for youth which is all the more important at this juncture in our history. There may be some argument about this, but, in my view, collectively, we have the most educated, I suspect the healthiest, and certainly the most energetic generation of young people in our history. In view of the efforts of successive Governments since 1945, it would be strange if that were not so. However, the world in which these young people are growing up is not one in which large numbers of them find it easy to make sensible and constructive use of their qualities and energies. The instability of the modern world can so easily lead people down paths which are neither to their advantage nor to that of the rest of the community.

The social stability which used to come from a static population has largely disappeared. In the old days it was common practice—almost universal practice—that people were born, grew up, worked and eventually died in the same place. That is not so now. The mobility of the population is constant and increasing, and therefore the old disciplines of static communities have largely gone.

In another sphere, the problm which so many young people have in obtaining work—and this is well known to us all—creates for them worry and sometimes despair. In this connection my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins) drew attention to the difficulties facing young members of the ethnic communities. Therefore it is highly important that the Government and the local authorities should take note of the position and react to it. If they do not, there is the constant danger of a growth in social instability and its consequences—delinquency, vandalism and so many other forms of the misuse of human qualities. Thus, the Bill is even more important and relevant today than it was back in the time when it was first introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst). I seem to remember taking part in the debate on that occasion.

In practice, the Bill sets out not least to marry the statutory services provided by local authorities and the work and activities of the voluntary organisations. The statutory and voluntary sides together may be better able to provide a co-ordinated service so that resources may be used to better advantage, and so that the best possible return may be obtained from the resources of manpower and money to the maximum possible advantage of young people. Therefore the Bill is timely, and I trust that it will be able to make progress.

I cannot believe that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State intends to put any obstacles in the way of the progress of this measure, despite the apparent presumption of the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud). However, we have to face regrettable reality. The Bill is timely in social terms, but it is untimely in economic terms. We are all aware of the pressure on public resources. We are all aware of the pressure on local authorities. We have all taken note of clause 9, which provides that any local authority expenditure resulting from this measure shall not attract rate support grant. The contents of that clause are causing serious concern to local authorities. Against the background of the cuts which they have to introduce, and the new responsibilities which they are being asked to take on in respect, for example, of school transport and school meals, it is no use anyone trying to pretend that the financial problems of local authorities are not serious.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that whereas the proposed cuts in respect of school meals and school transport are actual financial savings, this is a self-financing investment?

I take the hon. Gentleman's point. In fact, he is repeating what he said in his speech. He argued that, in the ultimate, at least the money spent on this Bill, if it became an Act, might be an investment that would save money. However, I am talking about the short term and the problems facing local authorities at present and in the coming year. Those problems are emphasised by the fact that inflation continues and that at the same time, naturally, local authorities have a desire to contain rate increases. As I say, that is a natural desire, but, in addition, there is considerable political pressure on them. Consequently, it is an understandable, albeit regrettable, fact that local authorities are loth to take on still more duties and responsibilities.

The Bill sets out to mandate local authorities to perform a series of very worthwhile but potentially quite costly duties. There is a genuine difficulty.

Clause 7 refers to housing for homeless young people. The objective is admirable, but it will not be regarded with favour by most local authorities. After all, it is not as though local authorities looked with much favour on the present Housing (Homeless Persons) Act. The position may change as time passes and more and more local authorities sell more and more council houses, as I hope they will. It seems to me that one subsidiary advantage of the sale of council houses is that it provides a recycling of the financial resources of the local authorities. As that occurs it will be easier for them to cope with existing responsibilities such as the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act and new ones such as this provision for homeless young people. Nevertheless, it is the constant grumble of local authorities that this House wills ends without willing means. Therefore I hope that it will be possible in Committee to build into the Bill a little more discretion for local authorities and to reduce the duties as opposed to the objectives which currently the Bill imposes.

The Bill sets out a blueprint. If that blueprint is to be turned into action, there must be adequate resources. If there are not, the Bill may be a source of friction rather than a source of progress in terms of youth provision. Therefore I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford will be able to build in more flexibility. When the Bill was first mooted, we did not know the seriousness of the reductions necessary to curb any increase in public expenditure. We do now. It is for that reason that more flexibility is necessary.

I welcome the Bill. On this, the fourth occasion, I hope that it will have a chance of becoming an Act of Parliament. I congratulate my hon. Friend on his efforts so far. I wish him well in his continuing efforts towards enactment of the measure.

As a new Member, I should like to compliment and lend my support to those hon. Members who have tried in the past to get a Bill of this sort on to the statute book. I hope that Conservative hon. Members will be able to convince Members such as the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Morrison) to support the Bill so that it can be put on the statute book, in spite of the criticisms and qualifications that he made.

Like other hon. Members, I, too, have had experience in building youth organisations. I was involved in the foundation of an organisation called the Coventry young workers' social club, which had to be built by the young without support from any sort of authority. That is why I am interested in the principle contained in clause 3, which states that

"the acceptance of responsibility by young people by entrusting to them as much of the responsibility as practicable for making policy administration and the execution of the provisions of this Act."

In establishing youth organisations it is vital and important that the young should feel that they are a part of the organisation, that it is theirs and that they are involved in its operations and decisions.

The young members of the Coventry young workers' social club provided their own chairman, committee and leaders. They even provided each other with instructions, each teaching the other what they knew best. In that way the club developed. I am pleased to say that a section of that club still exists some 20 years later.

There is a crying need for youth service as proposed within the Bill in areas such as Hackney. There are many thousands of immigrants from a multiplicity of different national backgrounds and cultures. Recently I visited a school in Hackney where the teacher told me that there were 18 different nationalities in one classroom. That area suffers from a lack of recreational and sports facilities that could be used to bring together the immigrants and the local youth.

There is little done for them except that being done by the local borough council. They set up a community building called Centreprize. It is a cafe and bookshop, with some meeting rooms used for a variety of different activities. The youngsters run their own newspaper called "Gasbag". They learn photography, how to write and how to express themselves. Unfortunately, even that venture suffers from a lack of finance, and more needs to be done.

Clause 2 refers to advice centres. Advice is always necessary and is needed by the young. However, advice is never an alternative to having a job. That is the primary problem for the young, and unemployment is driving them to crime. I recently visited Stoke Newington police station. I was told that the area has the highest crime rate in London. That is because of the lack of opportunities for the young to engage in useful and fruitful activity. The obnoxious practice of "sus" is a serious problem. It could be stopped if young immigrants were provided with work, recreation and decent housing or hostel accommodation as referred to in clause 7.

The Bill could help to solve many of Hackney's problems and those of other inner London areas. Yet the Bill's proposals are wishful thinking because, as the hon. Member for Devizes said, finance is not being made available by the Government. The Government's recent White Paper on expenditure sets out local authority cuts totalling more than £800 million for 1980–81. However, there is money available. I urge the Government to look at the colossal expenditure on arms. A little of the money being spent in that direction would serve a useful purpose in helping to put the Bill on the statute book. I will certainly give my support to the Bill.

I warmly welcome and support the Bill. At this stage it seems somewhat far from the statute book but it has already achieved great things, not least in the generation of interest across the country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) and others have been canvassing for a long time. I pay tribute to the Young Conservatives' campaign. They have worked extremely hard in co-ordinating thoughts on the Bill and bringing them to our attention. I declare a vested interest in so far as I am the only hon. Member who currently serves on the national advisory committee of the Young Conservatives. Notwithstanding the greying hairs, that says something about the state of my age.

Hon. Members have already adverted to previous attempts to introduce legislation. I do not wish to repeat what has already been said. If the Bill reaches the statute book—and we all hope that it will—it will be the first piece of legislation dealing effectively with the young since the Education Act 1944. That Act imposed a duty to secure adequate facilities but failed to define what adequate facilities were for young people.

The Bill puts an obligation on local authorities to provide schemes and to submit those schemes to the arbitrament not of the Department of Education and Science, or some other statutory body, but of the people themselves for public consultation. That is an important aspect of the Bill. People will be brought in to make judgments on the local authority's proposals.

Some say that the Bill does not go far enough and that there is not a sufficient element of compulsion upon local authorities for the provision of mandatory services. I say to them that this is a beginning. As has already been pointed out it is flexible, as the youth service should be. We would like to see it as an incipience towards what we wish for, rather than being the final expression on youth services.

There is a great need for the co-ordination of services for the young. I hope that when we talk about the young we do not speak in a patronising way, as though they are some separate genus. They are not. They are developing adults and perhaps some of us are closer to them than others. There are various bodies concerned in co-ordinating facilities for voluntary organisations. I have in mind the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services, which has a wide ambit. However, there is a great need to co-ordinate not only voluntary organisations but organisations that are provided by various parts of the Government as a whole, and to provide an emphasis where the need is greatest.

In Gwynedd, the council, in common with education authorities, maintains its own youth clubs and centres as part of further education provision. The county council assists voluntary bodies with current expenses and the capital cost of building projects. The Department of Education and Science makes contribution towards the capital costs of such projects in addition to the grant that it makes towards the headquarters administrative costs of a number of national youth organisations. I hope that we shall see the co-ordination of all these bodies and facilities for young people.

Reference has already been made to the Manpower Services Commission. I suggest that the services provided by the Commission be brought into greater co-ordination. I welcome the involvement of young people in making decisions themselves about the facilities and activities that are best suited for them. I am firmly of the belief that a responsibility that is shouldered by young people leads to greater maturity. That can best be achieved by young people becoming involved in decision making.

Political education in schools has already been mentioned. It is an issue that we should consider carefully. I should like to see far more done in schools to train pupils in politics in the broadest sense of the term so that they may accommodate themselves far better when they achieve adulthood. A recent survey among sixth formers revealed that the majority of them thought that the Conservative Party stood for further nationalisation. Bearing that in mind, I for one think that something should be done quickly.

The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Roberts), who has left the Chamber, mentioned defence expenditure. In many ways such expenditure can benefit young people. The Army cadet force provides responsibility for young people. It gives them the sense of adventure that so many of them seek. In that way young people learn not only to receive but to give orders and to accept responsibility and the discipline of life. The result is that the fulfilment they seek in their older years is greatly enhanced. Only a short while ago I visited the Gwynedd Army cadet force at camp at Swinnerton. I was much impressed by the enthusiasm and dedication of the young people who had gone there voluntarily to experience what life is like in uniform.

It is true that there are many courses available for young people outside the Army ambience in which they may exercise themselves in adventure training. I am deeply concerned that the cost of these courses often precludes those who are most in need of them. The cost of provision is great. That means that many of those who join the courses are funded by employers. Employers send on the courses those who they know will be kept in employment and who will benefit especially. Those who are not receiving the benefit of such courses include those from inner urban areas, the deprived areas and deprived sections of society. Those are the young people who are most in need. I hope that something will be done to ensure that they benefit as well.

It is popular to entertain a somewhat cynical view of young people. Crime rates are increasing, especially rates of juvenile crime. If we concentrate less on trying to correct those who have gone wrong and concentrate more on ensuring that those who are coming up never go wrong, we shall be living in a much better society. I know so many young people who are well deserving of the assistance that the Bill will provide.

I like to think of myself as a young man—at least I did six months ago. It is not only the privilege of six months' service in this place that leads me to the conclusion that the future is not ours, not mine, but belongs to the young people who are coming forward. It is their future, and we should ensure that it is bright for them all. By means of the Bill, we shall ensure that we have the greatest investment in future that a country can ever make.

First, I apologise for not having heard the speech of the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet): The Bill came before the House rather sooner than some of us expected. Secondly, I declare an interest, although not a financial one. I am the chaiman of the council of the National Youth Bureau. I was so appointed about three years ago by the previous Administration. The Government have to make a decision that will affect the bureau for the next three years.

The bureau is an interesting phenomenon. It is a macrocosm on the national scale of the set-up that the Bill seeks to produce on the local scale. It brings statutory and voluntary bodies together to review youth issues. It provides a vast range of services to youth organisations at a local level. Since the establishment of the bureau, the most encouraging change that has taken place is a new respect for young people organising their own lives. There has been a complete change in the older and more traditional role of youth workers. They are no longer organising young people's lives but are helping young people to organise their own lives. That change, in the sense that it is looked forward to in the Bill, is one that should be developed. If the Bill is enacted, I hope that it will be developed.

My three years as chairman of the bureau has convinced me that whoever chairs the committees to be established by the Bill will not be faced with an easy task. Young people have strong views about how things should be organised. To hold them together and to try to promote common purposes is not as easy as it seems at first sight.

If the Government are to talk about the encouragement of the Bill, they should direct themselves to the co-ordination of provision for youth at Government level. I spent some time while the previous Administration were in office trying to get the Department of Employment, with its responsibility for the Manpower Services Commission, the Department of Education and Science and to some extent the Department of Health and Social Security and the Home Office to tell one another what they were doing and, at best, to co-ordinate their actions. Almost every other European country has a Minister for Youth whose specific job is to deal with this area of co-ordination. In my experience, that is not done in Britain. The youth service is not a statutory one in the sense of a compulsory education service. It tends to get squeezed out. It is subject to the chops and changes of public expenditure and suffers thereby.

The Minister takes a great interest in this matter. I congratulate him on the fact that his first action on taking office was to visit the National Youth Bureau in Leicester. I hope that he will say what the Government intend to do to bring together those Departments that have an interest in the matter. I make special mention of the new Minister with responsibility for the arts. Perhaps it is good that the arts are separated from the Department of Education and Science, but I have my doubts about that. However, some of the most exciting developments among young people are the com- munity arts developments, which are flourishing in the Greater London area. If those developments are to flourish, those involved must know that they have not lost their sponsoring Minister in the sphere of education.

I hope that the Minister will refer to the Government's attitude to young people generally in all their other policies. It is no good the Government offering a fair wind to the Bill—I do not know whether they will—and at the same time cutting the youth areas of the education service. There is difficulty in providing a compulsory education service for children between the ages of 5 and 16. The education services available to youngsters over the age of 16 tend to be put at risk when the Government make a sudden level of cuts and when decisions must be taken far too quickly by local authorities without their having a good think about the effects of those decisions.

Cuts are being made in the youth opportunities programme, in the further education service and in colleges of further education all over Britain. Hours are being cut, part-time teachers are being dispensed with and the chances of going on an educational course are becoming fewer. We are doing a disservice to those who need education most by ensuring that they suffer the heaviest cuts because the local authorities receive no guidance on where to make reductions.

Youngsters view the cuts in education, associated as they are with increased expenditure on law and order—and especially the Home Secretary's short, sharp shocks, in which no one has any confidence—with misgivings. At the recent National Youth Bureau meeting it was impossible to find anyone who supported the new Home Office view of the right way to deal with young offenders. I do not think that young people, who see the Government making cuts and introducing a harsh regime, will think much of the few more additional committees that the Bill will produce. If the Government want a youth policy, it must be co-ordinated. One hopeful aspect is that young people, rather than youth workers, are making their voices heard. I hope that the Bill will succeed in bringing about its objects at a local level.

During my chairmanship of the National Youth Bureau over the past three years, one of the achievements of which I am most proud is the evidence that it submitted to the Royal Commission on criminal procedure. That evidence was criticised by the police and by others at the time that it was put forward, but it was one of the few pieces of evidence put to the Royal Commission that contained verbatim statements from many youngsters, some of whom were black and many of whom were from Handsworth in Birmingham. It described how they saw our criminal justice system in Britain and how it impacted upon them. I heard from several members of the Royal Commission that it was evidence of a different order from that put forward by other bodies, which tended to contain generalities and proposals. I hope that if the committees are established they will engage in putting together réalités—the events and reactions to situations made known to the elders who are responsible for running the services.

When the Secretary of State visited the National Youth Bureau a month or so ago, he said he greatly hoped that private industry would put money into this area. We must be careful about this. I realise that it is the policy of the Government to attempt to persuade private industry to make up the shortfall created as a result of their cuts, but I am not sure that this is a sensible way of going about the matter. I prefer to tax private industry a little harder and put the money forward in a co-ordinated way. However, if the youth service is short of funds, the money is welcome from whatever source it comes. The brewers have sponsored a project with the National Youth Bureau, which I welcome. I hope that it will help young people. As people from the brewing industry are involved in it, I hope that it will bring home to them the appalling danger facing a generation of young people at risk of becoming teenage alcoholics.

The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) told me that he wrote to the Norwich Union Insurance Group asking what money it was willing to put into the youth service on an actuarial basis if it felt that it could save the community money by investing these funds. He asked it to do the actuarial calculation and invest some money on an experimental basis. I hope that that goes ahead, although it is no substitute for the Government putting in their proper share.

I welcome the Bill. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford on bringing it forward. I hope that discussion of it will give the House an opportunity to consider the best way in which to provide for young people, and, even more important, give the Government an opportunity to think about their youth policy and state it clearly. This is not a party matter, as I was equally critical of the previous Administration. One day a decision must be taken in Whitehall to ensure proper co-ordination and a policy for youth that is worthy of its name.

It is a pleasure to follow the well-informed and moderate speech of the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price). I do not claim to agree with all of his speech, but he gave the Bill helpful and constructive criticism.

I am well aware that at this stage the House does not want to hear long speeches welcoming the Bill. Instead, we want to hear of the Government's strong backing for it.

I want the Bill to go into Committee as soon as posible so that its detailed clauses can be examined and it can then be placed on the statute book.

It is four and a half years since I atetmpted to introduce a similar Bill. I was delighted when I listened to the rounded, robust phraseology of my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) to find that the torch has been successfully passed to an older generation. He has admirably brought my Bill up to date and taken into account the most recent reports. Several hon. Members have rightly pointed out that the initial impetus for the Bill came from young people—from the youth clubs and in particular the Young Conservatives. It has never been a party political issue, although I remind new Members that the previous Bill was talked out by a Labour Minister. That gentleman fell by the wayside not long after. It was, of course, mentioned in the Conservative Party manifesto in October 1974.

The Bill encourages young people to work together with society and within society, rather than to feel alienated and possibly against society. I have no doubt that there is much idealism among young people. The media describe their crazy escapades, their vandalism and their violence, but when, for instance, my local civic society wished to have the river cleaned, who did the work? Who is running the stalls at church bazaars? Countless causes and charities would wither away without the support of young people.

From time to time in my constituency I find a certain cynicism about young people. I remind such critics of my experience when I visit the Armed Forces in Northern Ireland. Who is being sniped at in sangars in South Armagh? Who is standing guard at 3 o'clock in the morning in the rain in the streets of Belfast? Who is flying military helicopters at night?

The Bill gives enormous encouragement to those involved in youth work. All too often they are ill-paid and ill-supported by their local community. It has a direct message for young people—a group to whom we as a House seldom bother to speak. It offers them a degree of partnership within their communities—partnership, not patronisation. The country needs that partnership today. Young people need our immediate help. We must give a Second Reading to this idealistic but not unrealistic Bill.

So often our society tantalises young people with the gold, the glitter and the glamour, but at the same time it ignores them and shuts the doors to them, as if experienc was all and as if energy, enterprise and fresh minds were of no importance to the nation. Let us try to put that right this afternoon.

As a sponsor of the Bill, I support my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, which I consider to be very useful to young people. It is rightly called the Youth and Community Bill, because I do not believe that we can isolate young people from the community.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) eloquently pointed out, community work is carried out almost exclusively by young people, and we should give them full credit for that. For that reason, I am not only a sponsor of the Bill but also a strong supporter of it.

I am aware that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science may express concern about the public expenditure that the Bill might incur. He may argue that at this time of economic difficulty it would be wrong for the House to place upon local authorities mandatory duties which would inevitably result in additional expenditure, particularly when the Government are asking local authorities to pull in their belts and reduce expenditure.

I am sure that in Committee my hon. Friend will be flexible in his approach to he matter and will be aware of the problems that could accrue to the Government and to local authorities by placing upon local authorities additional expenditure at this time. I am sure that these and other allied matters will be carefully debated. I am perhaps anticipating the Committee stage, but I hope that the Bill will go through today without a Division, with lukewarm, if not wholehearted, support from the Government.

I point out to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, whose interest in young people is well known, that the Government, in supporting this Bill and perhaps ensuring minor amendments in its subsequent stages, could ultimately save considerable sums of public money. I believe that the benefits that would accrue from the Bill could be beneficial to young people and give many young people a purpose in life. If young people are given a purpose in life, they will not go off the straight and narrow but will make a positive contribution to our country and to the running of its affairs. That is why it is important for young people to have a proper forum in which to express themselves and to feel that the views that they express will be heard and heeded by people in positions of responsibility. I hope that that message will be received by the Minister.

I am president of the Poynton Centre in Macclesfield, one of the largest youth and community centres in the country. As on previous occasions, I pay tribute to the leader of that club, Eric Brock, who has a dynamic personality. Perhaps in age he is running to the end of his particular line, and no doubt his retirement cannot be too long delayed, but the guidance and leadership that he has provided for young and old is of great benefit to the community and is something we want to foster.

I am also president of the Macclesfield Fermain Club, which started as the Macclesfield boys' club. It is part of a federation with which my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) is involved. I have with me the annual report of the Cheshire Association of Boys' Clubs and the Cheshire and Wirral Association of Boys' Clubs. One hundred and twenty clubs make up this federation, with a membership of over 13,000 young people. The objective of the Bill, moved so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford, will be of great benefit to young people.

I ask the Minister to ensure that there is closer liaison between his Department and local authorities in youth and community provision. There is a gap at present, and I believe that it can be filled by positive guidance and leadership from him and his Department. There should also be closer liaison and contact between various other Government Departments, such as the Department of Industry, and local authorities. We cannot divorce the commercial and industrial interests of this country from the aspirations and ambitions of the young people who will be the creators of the future.

I welcome the Bill warmly. I am honoured to be a sponsor. I hope that it will have a very swift passage in this House and in Committee.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) and associate myself with the remarks already made about the Bill. The hon. Member was very fortunate, as I am sure he will admit, to have the opportunity to present it. He is also somewhat fortunate that we are able to debate it today, because there were several times yesterday when it seemed that today's business would be threatened.

Some of my hon. Friends were hoping that the debate might be delayed, because my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) and for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor), who have a great interest in the subject and are sponsors of the Bill, would very much have liked to be present. Unfortunately, it was not possible for them to be here.

It will come as no surprise to the hon. Member for Bedford to learn that the official Opposition will not be opposing the Second Reading. The Bill has been generally welcomed by my hon. Friends. It deals with an important subject and we welcome the chance to debate it. We do not consider that the Bill is correct in every detail, but we look forward to being able to discuss it in detail in Committee.

Although we are glad that the hon. Gentleman has introduced the Bill, we feel that to a certain extent it is a watered-down version of what is required. Perhaps it is a watered-down version because the hon. Gentleman feels that as such it will have a greater chance of success. Perhaps the Bill is watered down because of the Government's somewhat ambivalent attitude towards local authorities. We have heard recently a good deal of talk about the need to give as much freedom as possible to local authorities, yet at the same time the Government have been instructing them to reduce their expenditure. This makes nonsense of that freedom. If we are to do much in the area of youth and community, local authorities will be required to undertake more responsibilities and duties, and that will inevitably require more expenditure.

The Government are proposing to excuse local authorities from some of their duties and from some of the statutory obligations upon them. The Government are certainly trying to reduce the expenditure of local authorities. We shall be particularly interested to hear the Minister's approach to this question. Does he think that local authorities should have more statutory obligations placed upon them concerning youth and community services? If so, where is the money to come from?

With regard to clause 1, we feel that many of the requirements that the Bill places upon local authorities are already being undertaken by the good local authorities which have given a lead in this respect. There are, for example, many areas which have a type of joint committee with voluntary organisations. In those areas, the authorities have made a reality of the kind of co-operation of which the hon. Member for Bedford spoke. I think that he acknowledged this fact. We hope that other authorities will follow the example of authorities such as Doncaster. We hope that their good practices will be adopted elsewhere and that local authorities will follow the spirit that is behind the Bill and not simply the detailed requirements.

I listened with interest to the suggestions on clause 1 made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam), and in particular I noted his reference to the need for monitoring. I hope that the hon. Member for Bedford will consider this suggestion before the Bill goes into Committee, and perhaps consult my hon. Friend and others about the possibility of amendments there.

The Bill proposes an age limit of 26 for youth. We could have a long philosophical discussion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, about the meaning of "youth" and about who is youthful and who is not. I shall not be drawn into that discussion.

I heard the hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins) mention the interest of the Young Conservatives in the Bill. When I was in the Young Socialists in Bolton, we were always very improssed by the seniority of the local Young Conservatives. Perhaps that is why there is an age limit of 26 in the Bill, although it would seem to be a very junior age, bearing in mind the general age of Young Conservatives. We feel that there is a need to consider the age limit and perhaps to reduce it. I believe that the National Association of Boys' Clubs has made representations along similar lines. The hon. Member for Bedford might care to consider this aspect before we go into Committee.

With regard to clause 2, we have had several interesting contributions from each side of the House concerning social education. We have the problem of defining social education. It is difficult to understand exactly what is meant by it. Although we cannot define it, we generally know what we are talking about when we speak of social education. In general, we welcome the clause and hope that it will enable local education authorities to create a link between school and those vital years immediately after school, so that what we understand by social education can be continued and developed.

Clause 2 also deals with the use of available facilities. We think that a great deal could be done to enable much better use to be made of the existing facilities. There is obviously some prestige in having new buildings, new facilities, new sports halls and so on, but I know that a survey carried out by the Department of the Environment some time ago showed that new facilities are not always what are most required. Local communities and voluntary organisations could in many cases make better use of older buildings. Such buildings can sometimes prove more successful than newer ones, which require a great deal of planning and so on. There is a considerable scope in the Bill for making better use of older buildings, but, whether we are concerned with new buildings or with the better use of old buildings, we still come back to the important question of cash.

Conservative Members have mentioned that previous Governments have not introduced legislation to strengthen the youth and community services, but the last Labour Government gave specific forms of assistance to the development of youth and community programmes. I have in mind in particular the inner city programme and the urban aid programme, both of which have made important contributions to youth services. But again we come back to the question of money. If the Government are to make any cuts in programmes of that sort, obviously they will hit young people very considerably.

The hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) mentioned the cuts in the youth opportunities programme. If the Government are to continue to make cuts in areas of this kind, it will be very difficult to do anything that will specifically help the hon. Member for Bedford with his Bill. The real question is: where will the money come from? Earlier the hon. Gentleman said that any money spent on young people is an investment. We agree completely. However, we want to know where the Government are to get the investment from.

Clause 9, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon, states that the Bill will not attract rate support grant. There are dangers in that. We fear that existing programmes may be threatened by some withdrawal of finance.

If the hon. Lady will refer to clause 9(2), she will find that it covers existing programmes.

We accept that, but we think that the programmes need to be developed. If they are not to be funded, the Government may catch the hon. Gentleman. If he wants expansion and new money is not available, that clause may not give as much protection as he thinks. At a time of cuts in education generally, it is difficult to see where the extra funds will come from.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science said that he was in favour of developing services for young people. That is the kind of statement that we would expect from a Secretary of State. But at the National Youth Bureau annual conference on 17 October the right hon. and learned Gentleman made some interesting statements about the Government's expenditure plans. I presume that he was trying to reassure those involved in youth services. For example, he said that he did not assume that there would be any reduction in local authority expenditure on the youth service. He went on to say that he attached high priority to the needs of the 16 to 18 age group. I do not think that many people would dissent from those sentiments. Returning to the implications of expenditure reductions for the youth service, he said:

"You will understand that I cannot give any undertakings."

That is the nub of the problem. It is all very well to attach high priority to the Bill and to services for young people, but, unless finance is to be found to back the programmes which we have talked about, the Bill will not achieve what is intended. We must look at the Bill in the whole context of the Government's current policies on expenditure.

Unfortunately, the hon. Lady seems to want to make a meal of public expenditure cuts. Surely she appreciates that the Labour Government cut expenditure by £4 billion. Unlike the Labour Government, we are cutting it by £3½ billion, with a mandate to do so.

I am not sure about the mandate. We did not hear in detail a great deal about that during the general election. We made some unfortunate cuts when in Government, and we acknowledge that; indeed, there is no alternative but to acknowledge that. However, after we had been forced to make public expenditure cuts, we made plans to expand public expenditure, and some of that expansion took place.

This is not only about cutting public expenditure but about priorities when cutting public expenditure. I remind the House of the debate earlier this week. We spent Monday discussing the Education (No. 2) Bill. That Bill deals with public expenditure cuts, because its basic aim is to facilitate further cuts in the provisions for the majority of schoolchildren—cuts in school meals, school milk and school transport on top of cuts in books, capitation, nursery classes and so on.

When talking about public expenditure, it is important to consider priorities. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman drew me on to this matter. Another provision in the Education (No. 2) Bill related to the assisted places scheme. That provides that, when educational provision is being reduced for the majority of children, that is where money has to be spent.

Order. I hope that the hon. Lady will not follow the hon. Gentleman too far down that path. She must relate her remarks to this Bill.

The hon. Gentleman led me on to talking even more about public expenditure cuts.

I hope that the hon. Member for Bedford has discussed with Ministers in the Department of Education and Science possible alternative ways of using the money presently designated for the assisted places scheme. It would help a far greater number of young people if it were spent on youth and community services. It would not only help more young people, but it would be of far greater help to the community as a whole.

The Opposition welcome the Bill. Some hon. Members have reservations about it. There is a fear that the Government will encourage voluntary organisations to take on even more responsibilities and not want local authorities to take direct action in these areas because of the public expenditure implications. Some professional youth workers are also concerned about how they fit into these proposals.

Basically, we support the propositions put forward by the hon. Member for Bedford. We share the view expressed by hon. Members on both sides of the House that young people come in for a great deal of criticism today. We believe that young people have much to contribute to society and that society must do a great deal to encourage young people to make their contribution. In that context, we support the Bill. We shall look at it in detail in Committee. In the meantime, we shall want to discuss some of the ways in which we feel the Bill may be improved.

It might be for the benefit of the House if I intervene briefly at this stage.

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) on introducing the Bill. The knowledge that he displayed and the compassion and sincerity with which he developed it in his speech will come as a source of revelation to many hon. Members. I congratulate him on his speech and on the work that he has done in drawing the Bill together.

I must acknowledge a degree of envy, because my hon. Friend has been consistent in drawing a high place in the Private Members' ballot in recent years—something which is denied to many Members of Parliament over a whole working life here.

On balance, it was a pity that the speech by the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) should have somewhat soured what has been a constructive debate. I welcome the speeches which have been made on both sides of the House. I hoped that there would be non-contentious progress this afternoon. However, I noticed that the hon. Member for Bolton, West was anxious to repeat her Second Reading speech on Monday. No doubt we can dot the i's and cross the t's in Committee.

Before turning to some of the anxieties of many hon. Members about certain aspects of the Bill, I should like to try to deal in as constructive a way as possible with some of the points which have been made.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford and other hon. Members referred to the fact that we do not specifically have a Minister for youth. I am happy to point out that, even if my title is not exactly that specifically, the fact is that I am a junior Minister with responsibility for youth and as such act as the lead for co-ordination between other Government Departments. We intend to maintain tremendous momentum with our colleagues in other Departments because we acknowledge the vacuum which has existed for a number of years.

I welcome the remarks made and the support given by the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price). I should like to deal with one particular matter that he raised. The hon. Gentleman referred to a speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State at the annual general meeting of the National Youth Bureau—comments I echoed in a speech to the National Association of Youth Clubs in the City a week or so later—in which my right hon. and learned Friend referred to the involvement of private enterprise as a means of providing additional resources.

I hold the view that it is not right to expect the Government to be the great provider all the time. I am convinced that there is a greater role for private enterprise and nationalised industries to play in helping the community within their locations. To assume that central Government, by increasing taxation on private enterprise, is the best means of providing funds for youth programmes is, I believe, not necessarily right. There is a wealth of potential that we are currently exploring through a number of agencies. We are trying to achieve a greater input within the regions and communities, which I should have thought was a thoroughly sensible approach.

At present we are reviewing a number of issues, including the question of 16- to 19-year-olds. A number of initiatives were undertaken by the previous Administration for which I think there is all-party support, but it is important to involve the chambers of commerce and industry within the local community.

One thing that has impressed me during my brief six months' tenure at the Department of Education and Science is the tremendous dedication and devotion of people from all the voluntary bodies. They do a tremendous amount of work in very difficult circumstances. From my conversations with representatives of the Confederation of British Industry and other bodies, I believe that it has at long last been acknowledged by many organisations that they have to do more to help young people.

There are potential areas for us to explore and I want to see local commerce involved, playing a part in the community to a greater extent than it has done so far. In many areas help from local commerce is extremely effective. I should like to see organisations release their personnel more often than they do at present, without penalising them in their salaries. These people could be released to work within the community to the benefit of young people. That is an area where we shall try to create some momentum.

There are many facilities available in towns and cities. Private enterprise has many extremely effective sports halls and other facilities which we ought to look at closely to see whether we can expand their use. The Government are devoted to the principle of the greater dual use of school facilities, but that must be encouraged by the local authorities. There can be no central edict from the Department of Education and Science.

I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not answer every point that has been raised. A great deal of interest and sincerity throughout the House has been shown. I would not want to incur the wrath of the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) by still being on my feet at four o'clock, whether figuratively speaking or otherwise. It is certainly not the Government's intention to do that, even though on 21 February 1975 the Labour Administration talked out the Bill which my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) introduced. That was done by the former hon. Member for Putney, Mr. Hugh Jenkins. I am sure that that had an unsettling effect on many Labour Members at the time, and I hope that they are not feeling guilty about what happened. We certainly would not want to do anything to impede the progress of the Bill through Committee.

There are certain points that I should like to highlight. I have listened with great interest to all speeches, many of which show a great depth of understanding and reflect the feeling that more should be done for young people. I fully appreciate that there is a genuine feeling that changes in society, changes in social values and specific problems such as youth unemployment call for greater effort to help young people. I believe that those feelings are what have led, naturally, to a series of Private Members' Bills on this subject over the years. I hope that we shall now have the opportunity of pursuing these matters in Committee.

The Bill is concerned with the needs of all young people. However, I was glad to see that it makes mention of groups with special needs—young people who are disadvantaged or at risk, young unemployed, and ethnic minorities. Many of these issues have already been discussed this afternoon. Much has already been done for these groups by local educational authorities and voluntary organisations and through programmes funded by bodies such as the Manpower Services Commission. The hon. Member for Waltham Forest (Mr. Deakins) touched upon that matter.

The Government do not oppose the Bill in principle. Indeed, we very much support its objectives, which, in general, offer an excellent model of good practice. It is nice to know that the hon. Member for Bolton, West endorses that view. No doubt we shall be seeing a lot of each other in Committee between now and next summer.

There are, however, a number of important aspects of the Bill which run counter to Government policy, notably over relationships with local authorities and over public expenditure, and amendments will be needed in Committee, as has been mentioned by many hon. Members, if it is the wish of the House that the Bill be accorded a Second Reading this afternoon.

Let me explain why some changes are needed. It goes without saying that the Bill is obviously in conflict with some of the basic elements of the Government's current policy. It is not consistent with the traditional relationships between central and local government on the running of the education service to provide, by statute, for detailed and specific guidance relating to the way in which a local education authority should provide a particular service. In some respects that point goes wider. The recent White Paper entitled "Central Government Controls over Local Authorities" made clear that the Government's aim, for local government as elsewhere in the economy, is to place responsibility where it properly belongs—within the local authorities. I acknowledge that democratically elected local authorities are wholly responsible bodies which must be free, to get on with the tasks entrusted to them. The proposals in the White Paper for the removal of various controls represent a first step in giving authorities more choice and flexibility.

The view of the Government is that local authorities should exercise maximum autonomy within national resource constraints. The Bill would, by contrast, impose further duties and further guidance and would, as it stands, be quite inconsistent with the Government's general philosophy. However, a measure which permitted, rather than required, authorities to carry out the functions referred to in the Bill would not be subject to the same objection.

A measure of the type which I have just described, which permitted rather than required certain action by authorities, would also satisfy objections on grounds of public expenditure. A major concern has been that the Bill as drafted would involve increased public expenditure. That was referred to by a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Devizes (Mr. Morrison) and for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), who has a special brand of experience, not only as a local councillor but also as the leader of my local council in the London borough of Sutton. He was quite right to highlight this problem and point to other problems that might exist.

The making of schemes and the consultative process involved, by setting up and servicing joint committees and youth councils, and by the general effect the Bill might have, could promote additional expenditure. I have no doubt that because of the manner in which my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford has researched the programme with local authorities, including his own authority, he will be able to say a few words about this if he can catch your eye once more, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

My hon. Friend has referred to Cmnd. Paper 7634, which returns considerable powers to local authorities. If that has been done, should not the House lay down certain guidelines for local authorities so that they can work inside that discretion, because these plans will no longer go to the Secretary of State for approval? Surely, by complying with the terms of the Command Paper, my hon. Friend should be doing precisely what I have been suggesting all afternoon.

That is a point which will be well worth reading. It is an important point and I fully accept it.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Bill as drafted, with its mandatory provisions but with clause 9, goes a long way to meeting the Government's legitimate concerns about the relationship between central and local government? If the mandatory provisions were to be made permissive, there would no longer be any need for clause 9. I do not believe that the Government can have their cake and eat it.

That is a point that was made by the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam), and we shall review it in Committee.

Central Government cannot place themselves in the position of saying to local authorities "There will be less money in future than planned. Nevertheless, we intend to impose further duties on you which are likely to cost more money." If, however, the functions in the Bill are to be provided at the discretion of local education authorities, local authorities would be able to decide whether they wished to undertake the additional expenditure involved as part of their normal process for the consideration of priorities.

Of course, the Government are certainly not opposed to expenditure on youth. Indeed, at a time of extreme constraint on public expenditure—the House is well aware of this—we have assumed, within our overall expenditure plans for 1980–81, that there will not be any reduction in local authority expenditure on youth services. But if administrative expenses are increased, this could have the effect of diverting resources away from where they are most needed—directly helping young people.

With all this in mind, it is important for the consultation process to go on with local authorities so that we can fully understand their feelings. I was very encouraged to hear from hon. Members following their consultations with local authorities that local authorities were not over-anxious about what the Bill might impose upon them. That is encouraging.

Amendments could be needed where the Bill clearly covers ground which is already adequately covered by existing legislation. The area that I have in mind—there may well be others which we shall examine closely—is clause 7, which relates to housing for homeless young people. Local authorities are already under a duty, under the Housing Act 1957, to consider the housing needs of their areas in providing accommodation. This consideration must take account of needs of all groups, including the young and single, and the Housing Act 1974 makes it clear that such provision may include hostels. Moreover, the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 has recently been enacted, giving statutory recognition to the principle that all homeless young people should receive help of some kind from local authorities in solving their housing problems. The 1977 Act has already gone most if not all of the way to giving statutory expression to the intention of clause 7 of the Bill. I mention that for my hon. Friend to consider and reflect upon.

Finally, there are some points relating to particular clauses, and these also give me a welcome opportunity to say what I support about the Bill. First, the Government strongly believe in the need for co-operation between local authorities and voluntary bodies in all fields, and I therefore endorse the systematic formullation of local policy for the youth service, in consultation with voluntary organisations and young people, which is referred to in the first clause of the Bill. One of the main purposes of the youth service is to foster responsible participation by young people and thus avoid the sense of alienation which seems to me to be only too common. Participation by young people in the running of a service intended to help them therefore clearly has relevance. The crucial role of the voluntary organisations also clearly makes it appropriate to involve them in policy and planning.

Clause 1 does, however, envisage the joint committees as having the function of co-ordinating the services for young people provided by the authority with those provided by the voluntary organisations. It may be that it is already intended that such consideration should be accomplished by persuasion, but I am bound to say that this is not the way the clause reads to me. If more than persuasion is envisaged, I doubt whether either voluntary organisations or local education authorities would find this acceptable, and it is, of course, the local education authorities which have the statutory responsibility for providing facilities under the 1944 Act.

I am therefore all in favour of planning where this arises voluntarily from a local initiative which demonstrates the willingness of those concerned to co-operate, and I am certainly in favour of the participation of young people and of voluntary organisations. I am also equally in favour of standing consultative machinery to this end, but only where all this is acceptable to those at the local level; it should not be imposed on them.

On clause 5, I am in favour of the establishment of local forums to give expression to the aspirations of young people, and, indeed, my Department is giving financial support to projects by a number of youth organisations, including the British Youth Council and the National Youth Assembly, which will have the effect of encouraging the development of local youth councils. This is, however, in my view, the way to work—through youth organisations, rather than through requiring local education authorities to act as brokers—if the authenticity and spontaneity of the youth movement is to have proper scope.

I also strongly support the value of community service performed voluntarily by young people, and this is, of course, stressed in clause 8, although I am sure that local education authorities already recognise this.

Perhaps I may summarise briefly. I believe that the Bill has value, but I am sure that some major amendments are needed if it is to be consistent in a number of ways. We certainly do not oppose the Second Reading. Furthermore, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford and to the backers of the Bill that we shall do all that we can in the Department to facilitate the progress of the Bill. I look forward to joining my hon. Friends in the Committee stage as soon as possible.

What will be the benefit of having this Bill if it is only a permissive measure? Surely all the provisions in the Bill are permitted at present. There are no legal restrictions on them. Therefore, what is the benefit of having the Bill without the mandatory elements?

I find the hon. Lady's stance quite extraordinary. On the one hand, a few moments ago she was endorsing and supporting the Bill; on the other hand, she is now asking what its purpose is.

No.

What is the hon. Lady suggesting? What amazes me is the Labour Party's inconsistency on this matter.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I shall not give way any more. I think that that is possibly to the hon. Lady's benefit.

But the provisions are not mandatory.

The Bill will receive the Government's support. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford on its introduction. I hope that it will receive all-party support, both here and in Committee.

I welcome the statements by my hon. Friend the Minister in support of most of the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet), the presenter of the Bill, on such an excellent approach. There is no doubt that we need a new, excellent approach if we wish to achieve standards of excellence among the youth of Britain.

Mention has been made of the social changes that we are experiencing. There is no doubt that those who have old-fashioned attitudes, who believe that youth has always been able to develop in some way by a natural process, are really very much behind the times, bearing in mind the structured, organised and difficult life that we live today. We face not only the difficulties of discrimination and racial and ethnic difficulties but the differences and difficulties created by our present industrial and economic climate. One therefore welcomes the Bill as a means of providing for youth, by participation, their own development system, so that they can adjust by their own efforts to the difficulties of an organised and structured society.

The difficult transition from school to work is one which young Members of this House must remember as a painful period and which older Members probably find in the dim and distant recesses of their minds. But difficult it was and difficult it is. As society becomes more and more sophisticated, so also will the adjustment between the pleasant life at school and the more competitive life at work in industry or business become more difficult.

Therefore, one welcomes certain clauses to provide facilities, forums and a mechanism that will allow young people, by their own efforts, to make that adjustment. Just as the return for this process to youth is their participation, so the return to industry will be great in people with much more realistic expectations from the structured and mechanical processes of life.

In amplification of the Minister's comments on the cost of such a scheme it is my belief, after 20 years in industry, that industry could adopt a much more positive and practical role in aspects of the Bill which involve costs, a role which is possibly contrary to the Government's dilemma and their policies for resolving the economic situation. I would suggest the provision of facilities by industry, going so far as the provision of training rooms, which all large industries have in profusion and which are often used only between 8.30 am and 5 pm, not only in apprentice schools but in other establishments. This goes well beyond private industry. It encompasses most nationalised industries as well.

In addition to the provision of facilities or venues for meetings under the various ideas outlined in the Bill, could not industry also consider the free provision of such secretarial facilities as will be required, particularly in relation to the clauses referring to youth councils, for the necessary secretarial back-up? Because of present Government attitudes, and because of the way in which our party is reshaping economic thinking, this is the wrong time at which to employ extra clerical staff at Government expense, so why not ask business, commerce and industry to step into the gap? It would be to their advantage to do so. Young people coming through their office and factory doors would be able to contribute more. Industry would penetrate much more deeply into the roots of the community. Instead of employees occasionally bringing their children to see their place of work, a situation could arise where those children had been involved for years. Recruitment would benefit. A rich and interesting panorama of possibilities could develop in a new relationship between youth, Government and industry.

Is my hon. Friend saying that he supports clause 1 and the formation of joint committees with voluntary organisations and other bodies, including, perhaps, commerce and industry? He has recommended that industry should pay for the secretarial backup. Does he agree that a better use of physical, manpower and building facilities could save the Government and local government considerable sums of money? A local authority might be prepared to undertake some of the secretarial back-up to the committees recommended in the Bill, as well as the youth councils.

As always, the words of my hon. Friend are good and excellent. I agree with him. As my hon. Friend is not likely to offer me a job with excitement, I hope that my remark does not seem too sycophantic. On a more serious note, I accept and concede the point that he makes. In my enthusiasm for seeing industry, with which I have long been associated, play its role, I should not like hon. Members to feel that there is not an equally positive role for local authorities. In the development of a new partnerships some form of mandatory or statutory involvement of local authorities will be necessary. One can only ask industry to provide, where possible, the necessary back-up facilities as a result of those initiatives.

I welcome clauses in the Bill as a means of providing what has been lacking in those areas that are experiencing difficulty with social changes caused mainly by housing projects but also by the entire structure of industrial society. I can give no better example than the Chelmsley Wood housing estate in my constituency, where a community is struggling hard and positively, with no political bias, to develop a strong community identity for a massive housing development that includes all the mistakes of the housing planners of a decade ago. Such areas have not been classified as new towns and lack the youth facilities that one would like to see develop a community identity. Young people have neither the facilities nor a forum with which they can associate themselves and feel pride in their areas.

I should like the Bill to permit large-scale aid to be given to the development of cohesion and a focus of identity in difficult communities. The efforts of a few people, like those at the Chapel-house boys' club in my constituency, could become concentrated, strengthened and distributed in larger areas under the provisions of the Bill. Any change in this direction would help in dealing with crime rates, vandalism and social problems in areas such as Chelmsley Wood. Even 1 per cent. would be better than nothing. It would mean 1 per cent. more cohesion, more responsibility and more involvement with the community. It would pay off many percentage times in less frequent vandalism, fewer social problems and much better community relationships.

These problems are encountered not only in high-density areas of new housing. They occur in the older towns, such as Coleshill in my constituency, where changing patterns of industry and travel to work have resulted to some extent in over-development of estates lacking town facilities. Cutbacks by successive Governments and local authorities, and the application of stringent measures to meet directives, have resulted in the provision of very few facilities. A young man aged 12 in Coleshill has spent his holidays collecting a petition that was delivered to me asking for help in the provision of facilities for young people.

If this Bill allows these dynamic young people to be creative and to participate in decision-making in communities, I welcome it. My hope is that the Bill will provide a more structured framework in which people can concentrate their efforts. Those efforts should not simply become the contents of an MP's postbag. An MP does what he can, but action through the local authorities would be most welcome.

The whole effect of participation in these measures will be important. My only concern is that 26 years of age may be too old. My fear is that people over 20, perhaps more intellectually developed in communicating, may dominate events, to the detriment of younger people. I should like the age of 26 to be re-examined. I should assure the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor), if she were here, that many young Conservatives in my constituency below the age she seemed to indicate and many young but ageing Socialists could become involved in this work.

I hope that the slight exchange of views between the Front Benches will not stop any hon. Member from supporting the Bill. It is a totally non-political matter. In my constituency and, I know, in many others, Labour councils and Tory members, and vice versa, co-operate without bias to try to achieve some of this necessary identity. We wish to provide a self-sustaining and growing source of dynamic young people who have ideas, who are competitive and who will be able to take our country through the next few decades to a greater future. They will need our help. A Bill such as this can provide them with the mechanism and structure to achieve their aims.

I should like to add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) on briging forward this important Bill. I pay tribute to his brilliant and persuasive speech in introducing the measure. He has shown the House extensive courtesy by listening to every word of the debate and making careful note of all the points that have been raised. I should like to thank him also on behalf of the many youth organisations with which I am connected for the extensive and exhaustive consultation that he has conducted with a large number of groups throughout the country. We thank him for the great deal of time and trouble that he has taken.

I was glad to hear the words of the Minister. I believe that he has already impressed the youth world with his commitment to youth issues. I pay tribute also to his ability to co-ordinate other Government Departments. In the past this has been a stumbling block to a coherent youth policy. We welcome his initiative in this regard, as well as his commitment to the Bill.

There are always pressures on the Government from the Establishment against a measure of this nature. That is why three previous attempts have failed. It is to the Minister's credit and to that of the sponsor of the Bill that they have managed to push aside those pressures and to see the Bill and its importance clearly. They have fought hard for it, and we now await its move into Committee. We particularly welcome what the Minister said about making representations so that the Bill can move into Committee swiftly. A number of people are rather concerned about the presence of other Bills of a highly controversial nature which must not be allowed to stop a Bill of this importance proceeding apace.

I welcome also the words of the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor). Leaving aside her party political points, she made a number of important Committee points which I hope will be considered. It is difficult to know whether the power should be discretionary or mandatory. We must try to resolve this issue as fairly as we can, while at the same time retaining the Bill's main thrust and purpose.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud), who welcomed the Bill on behalf of the Liberal Party. He made a rather witty speech which contained an unusual but nevertheless warm tribute to the Young Conservatives, which I am sure all Young Conservatives will read and welcome.

The Bill has received a considerable amount of support from the youth world. Along with other hon. Members, I pay tribute to the Young Conservatives and the Conservative students for the fight that they have conducted, as well as to the much wider lobby that has come from all youth organisations. I have the honour to be president of the British Youth Council. Last Sunday I had the opportunity of chairing a day-long meeting of that council, and in the discussions about the Bill the council demonstrated that it was concerned to see that it meets with the approval of the House today.

I was a little worried initially when I thought the Minister was saying that some parts of the Bill seemed inconsistent with Government policy. In fact, I am sure that no part of it will be inconsistent. But it is necessary to have the fullest discussion in Committee, and I was delighted when my hon. Friend accepted word for word the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford. I suppose that it is difficult to see exactly what the result of the Bill will be. If it is not possible to introduce all the mandatory elements, I hope that some other way will be found of ensuring that the sort of structure in the Bill, which is seen as so important, is acceptable to local authorities.

As has already been mentioned, sections 41 and 53 of the 1944 Act are now totally out of date. They are very vague indeed. I was just looking at section 41, which is concerned with provision for

"leisure-time occupation, in such organized cultural training and recreative activities as are suited to their requirements, for any persons over compulsory school age".

Therefore, that section does not do the job that this Bill seeks to do. The fact that the Act is out of date, with such little detailed guidance, is ably demonstrated by the Albemarle report and the report entitled "Youth and Community Work in the 1970s".

There must be some worry about the Bill's provisions at a time of public expenditure cuts. But it appears, especially over the last five or 10 years, that cuts in public expenditure are always being made. The sad fact is that they always seem to fall heavily on the youth service. Indeed, during the debate on the previous Youth and Community Bill my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office said something that seems to ring just as true today as it did five years ago. He then said:

"The implementation of my hon. Friend's proposals, in so far as they involve local authorities in expenditure, must wait until the financial situation improves."—[Official Report, 1 February 1974; Vol. 868, c. 787.]

They all say that.

As my hon. Friend says, they all say that. It is about time that we recognised the importance of youth provision, before it is too late. I believe that the Bill represents a vital legislative measure that underpins the youth service, which is so necessary at this difficult time. Of course the Bill does not answer all the problems of youth. It does not set out to do so. It is but a step in the right direction.

What are the needs of young people? I was helped in this by a recent report from the National Association of Youth and Community Education officers—NAYCEO—which is the professional association of local authority youth and community education officers. The worrying and serious state of youth provision today, particularly the youth service, is clearly shown in that organisation's representations and the point that it has recently made, particularly its call for a Royal Commission to inquire into the needs of the young. I do not support that call. I believe that it is far more urgent that we make adequate provision now. The setting up of a Royal Commission would, in my view, only put off the problem for too long.

However, there are six areas of serious concern which that organisation has voiced: first, the absence of any positive national, coherent youth policy giving enough dynamism to combat widespread support from the public and all the agencies most concerned; secondly, the lack of a co-ordinated approach to issues through the various Departments of national, and increasingly local, government; thirdly, the gross inadequacy of the apportionment of national, and hence local, resources either directly or through voluntary groups to those seeking to resolve issues of a local nature in a local way; fourthly, the disenchantment arising from the incidence of champions of one or more of the causes at issue and their rise to prominence, which is all too frequently based firmly upon non-consensus views and energies; fifthly, the lack of a nationally recognised vehicle through which the continuity of genuine concern can be harnessed; and, sixthly, the extent to which almost all such action of evaluation as has been generated occurs with only limited debate or consultation.

Those summarise six of the major concerns of those working in the youth world at present. The Bill does not meet those concerns, but I believe that it is a valuable step in the right direction. I am pleased with the Bill's extensive long title, which I hope will permit us to raise a number of these vital issues in Committee and to discuss them at length in order to give them the relevance that they deserve.

I should like to refer to the question of departmental overlapping. This is now extremely serious. With the historic, deliberate separation for young workers and students of training from education, there has now arisen a serious difficulty between the Department of Employment and the Department of Education and Science. The problem is not limited to the competing careers service but includes many other areas. There is the commitment of the Department of Industry to the young worker, the responsibility of the Home Office to the young offender, of the Department of Health and Social Security for the young person at risk, of the Department of the Environment for urban aid, particularly sport and recreation, and of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for international youth work. We have too many Government Departments with too much responsibility doing too little for youth.

This Government have been in office for only five months, and my hon. Friend the Minister inherited this situation. He has taken important steps to overcome that damaging overlapping, and I wish him every possible strength in continuing that work. I hope that a coherent national youth policy can be introduced. There has been no policy in the past and certainly no forward thinking. We need an overall strategy for youth, and in that spirit we welcome the provisions of this vital Bill.

I hope that my hon. Friend the sponsor will contiue his widespread consultations with local authorities and representatives of youth organisations, because certain areas of concern still exist. Regarding clause 1, I welcome the concept of the joint committee, but unless it has some responsibility for policy formulation over a wide field it will not have the relevance or the teeth to give a lead.

I welcome the suggestion of the hon. Member for Waltham Forest (Mr. Deakins) to include the words "political education" in clause 2. I hope that my hon. Friend will consider that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins) said, it is vital that much more emphasis is placed on political education. I say that as president of the first body to receive funds for the promotion of political education.

I believe that we all noted with care what the Minister said about clause 7, which deals with housing for homeless young people. I hope that the serious problems suffered by large numbers of homeless young people can be overcome. The situation has reached crisis point in a number of city centres and crisis measures are needed to overcome the problems.

My hon. Friend appeared to be concerned that we should not move towards a national structure for the youth service forum but should be primarily concerned with local structures. The youth service forum received a great deal of criticism from the youth movement, and the Minister has adequately explained the reasons for its abolition. I hope that the talks that the Minister is undertaking can be brought to a speedy conclusion and that a proposal will result that can be introduced in Committee. The youth service forum failed, but that must not be taken as a precedent not to set up any national structure. We need a meaningful national structure, and we must get it right.

I speak for a number of members of the British Youth Council, and we welcome the inclusion in schedule 2 of representation from political youth movements. Many statutory youth officers who are used to working with nonpolitical bodies do not give as much prominence to political youth movements as they should, and political bodies have a great deal to contribute to the councils.

I hope that in Committee we can look in a broad way at what services are needed and that our consideration will range over the wide and varying quality of services in a number of local authorities. I hope that we can consider carefully the difficulties of contacting and influencing unattached youth. Much more should be made of local media. There is a need for these young people to be involved more than they are now.

A large body of young persons are disaffected and disillusioned. If we allow that condition to ferment, we are asking for trouble. We have already made too many decisions, in particular in planning, which have not taken young people into account. There are barren housing estates with no provision for youth, such as those in my constituency, the Woodchurch, the Ford and the Noctorum estates. Large gangs of young people have nothing to do, and they are angry and frustrated. We have to find a way to meet their expectations. We shall have an opportunity to discuss that matter in Committee.

I have already welcomed the Bill. It is an important step forward. Sometimes the House does not think sufficiently far ahead. Ministers are adequate and expert at dealing with problems on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month and, sometimes—rather impressively—year-to-year basis. In the Bill we must seek to create the right sort of environment on a long-term basis. Too little thought has been given to the sort of society that we wish to have, not just in the 1980s but in the 1990s, too. It is now just over 20 years to the year 2000. When we consider in Committee the sort of structures to be set up, I hope that we shall consider the sort of environment that will be created for those who are now being born and will have entered their teens at that time.

Young people are looking for opportunities to participate much more closely in the decisions that affect their daily lives. As politicians and parliamentarians, we should respond to that need with a much more rationalised approach to youth policy. If we do not so respond, we will face mass alienation of the young from society.

I pay great tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford. His is a vital Bill, which receives support from all parts of the House. It is not the answer to all the problems, but it is a start that will be welcomed by the majority of the young.

I should like to say a few words in conclusion. I am obliged for the Minister's indication that he will do all he can to facilitate the Bill. He has redeemed the election pledge made in the October 1974 manifesto:

"We will re-introduce the Youth and Community Bill, which, among other things, provides local reviews of existing arrangements in the field of housing, employment, leisure and advice services as they relate to young people."

I am heartened by the honouring of that pledge. I hope that some of the difficulties that we may encounter will be resolved in Committee.

The Minister said he thought it only right to discover the great role of private enterprise in this area. That comment harks back to the words at page 74 of the Wolfenden report:

"What we are proposing is the development of a new long-term strategy, by a new examination of the potential contributions of the statutory, voluntary and informal sectors, and their interrelationship. In our view this examination is likely to point to the need for a substantial extension of the last two sectors."

In other words, the chairman recommends that there should be an extension of voluntary services.

I appreciate that there are problems with clause 7 regarding housing. We shall have to examine that matter carefully. I appreciate the Minister's point that the Bills of 1975 and 1979 largely cover the matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Horn-church (Mr. Squire) mentioned that many points had already been covered by earlier speakers, but he made one or two significant remarks. The fact that something has been stated does not mean that it should not be said again. The great poet Horace said "decies repetita placebit", which means, of course, "10 times repeated and it pleases." That is significant, for repetition is the only way to achieve services for the youth of Britain.

My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Morrison) mentioned that this legislation was timely in social terms but untimely in economic terms. There is never an appropriate time for anything, and if there is no statutory youth and community service, and if local authorities may make cuts wherever they wish, services that have no statutory authority will be the first to be cut. If youth services are cut back, our bills in later years will be that much higher. As the hon. Member for Waltham Forest (Mr. Deakins) mentioned, the Bill is an investment in the future of our country. The wealth of a nation can be magnified many fold by ensuring that its people reach their full stature and do not have their potential wasted by insufficient investment.

The subject of political education has been mentioned by many hon. Members. I was wary of introducing the words "political and social education" into the Bill as they might have proved obstacles during the Bill's initial stages. Kent county council education committee defines social education in "The Management of County Youth Clubs, Centres and Wings" as being able to

"participate actively in a democratic system and in small or large community groups."

That should be our definition. The more that social education is covered by the Bill, the less will political education be necessary. I agree with all hon. Members who have put forward ideas on that aspect.

The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam) asked that there should be a local neighbourhood bias on joint committees. That is already covered in clause 2(3). He wanted there to be provision for new services as required, but that is covered in clause 2(2)(g). He also wanted political education to be included, but that is covered in clause 2(2)(a).

My hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins) raised an interesting point. There have been a number of reports on the black community within the United Kingdom. They are here for good, they have equality under the law, and we must ensure that their life in the community is shared by us and that ours is shared by them. However, they are at a disadvantage because they have their own culture and when they come to the United Kingdom they are told that they must accept our culture. That is difficult for them, and those difficulties are increased by unemployment. Between 1973 and 1977, the number of unemployed black people increased significantly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Best) raised the key question of co-ordination in Government Departments and within local authorities. Without the political will and a determination to cut red tape, they will not give youth services a high priority. We must get across to them the importance of co-ordination, followed up by rationalisation of available services. My hon. Friend made that point well and it is right that we should bear it in mind.

The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) said that the Bill was a watered-down version of what is required. That is not the case. She cannot have read the Bill carefully. Provisions in clause 2 and other parts are mandatory and clause 4(2) demonstrates that the Bill is certainly not watered down. It says:

"The local education authority shall consider any objections and may after making in the scheme such modifications if any as after consultation with the joint committee it thinks expedient approve the scheme and thereupon it shall be the duty of the local education authority to take such measures for the purpose of giving effect to the scheme."

I have laid down comprehensive rules governing the requirements of youth, making provisions for the future as well as for the past. I have given guidance to local authorities without infringing their autonomy, and I have laid down that when a scheme has been approved it must be carried to a final conclusion.

If the Bill is as watertight as the hon. Gentleman claims, will he comment on the Minister's remark that it would be satisfactory to have only permissive provisions? Surely that would weaken all that the hon. Gentleman is proposing.

If the Bill gets a Second Reading, it will have to go to Committee where such matters can be discussed in depth. The Government will have to put their case and hon. Members will have to argue their own views.

One of the great traditions of the House is that we search for consensus, and we are trying to reach agreement here. If I had my way, I would not have brought this Bill before the House. I should like something much more comprehensive, including a Minister for youth. I say that openly, but I know that it is impracticable.

The Bill is probably the first of a number of measures that will be brought before the House to deal with young people aged between 12 and 21. They have been neglected in the past. Apart from earlier Bills that have been referred to, this is the first time since 1944 that they have received active consideration.

No doubt there will be other Bills in which modifications will be made. I hope that in future Ministers will not say that they cannot afford the expenditure because of an economic crisis, but perhaps we should leave that point for the Committee stage.

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

I am slightly surprised that we have an opportunity for a brief discussion of a not very complicated or controversial measure. I am grateful to hon. Members who spoke earlier for their brevity ane forbearance, which has made this debate possible. I hope to be as lucky, at the conclusion of the debate, as they have been, but perhaps I may briefly explain why, when I drew a relatively high position in the ballot, I chose this subject.

I must confess, as I have confessed in the House before, that I am conscious that the need for further legislation is my fault. I share the blame with the late Government, the late Opposition and, indeed, with all hon. Members, because the simple fact is that, with the best of intentions, when we last changed the law in an effort to help the wives and husbands of Service personnel we did not get it right. The problem was not spotted in Committee here or in another place. But subsequent developments have shown that, unintentionally, the law as it was then made to read has had an unfortunate effect on a number of people, particularly Service wives, who have since been in a state of considerable indignation.

I should like to quote from some of the letters that I have received on the subject. None of them comes from my own constituents, but I have received them from frustrated electors up and down the country. A typical letter comes from a lady in Tidworth, who rightly identifies my 1976 Act as the cause of the present unsatisfactory position. She presses that the law should now be amended as the Bill now proposes. She says:

"Discussion at our battalion wives' club meeting shortly after the general election revealed that a high proportion of wives had no idea that they were supposed to fill in the special form, F/Vote/34. They completed the ordinary form which is dropped through every letter box in October, and then were very disappointed to discover in May that the electoral officer had destroyed them."

I am not criticising him. I know that he must do that. As the law stands, that is, unhappily, the case.

The writer goes on to describe the efforts that she made to get herself on to the electoral register, unfortunately without success, with the result that she and her husband were deprived of their votes at the last general election. She adds:

"I beleieve it is the responsibility of the unit, or in our case the battalion, to see that Service personnel and their wives are provided with appropriate forms, and it would from a distance in Westminster be easy to blame the unit for failing to distribute them. However, living among the grassroots, we know how overworked our husbands are, due to under-manning. In October 1977, for instance, I was aware that I should be filling in a special form, hut our entire battalion was away in Norfolk and Kent on frantic crash-course training for a tour in Northern Ireland starting in early December, having only formed up after two years in Gibraltar a few months before."

There are other instances. Another correspondent, this time from Hereford, tells me that she knows of votes being lost at the last election because men were away from their units when the forms were being sent round. When they applied to register, they were told "Sorry, you are too late."

Apart from the difficulties of Service life—the turbulence and so on that we know about—other considerations bear hardly on Service wives living in this country. A flight sergeant in the Royal Air Force wrote a letter to Royal Air Force News, of which he sent me a copy. He wrote:

"Although there are undoubted advantages in the Service registering system, there are drawbacks".

As in his case, many would rather forfeit such advantages in order to safeguard their families from what he called the "'S' branding". He makes the point that his wife's

"aspirations in local government would not so easily be questioned by her rival candidates if she were free from this stigma."

That is one objection to another feature of the present system of Service registration which I am glad to know the Government intend to take steps to change, although it is not necessary that that should be done by amending legislation, such as the Bill.

Apart from any handicap that local government candidates may suffer if they have an "S" against their name on the register, many Service men, and very many Service wives, do not like having an "S" against their name on the register because it appears to single them out. In present conditions—I shall not go into them at great length—it is reasonable that they should not be singled out in this way, so it is a good thing that there should be that change.

I said that I had had a number of letters from the constituents of other hon. Members, and I am happy to say that I have a fairly comprehensive set of sponsors to my Bill. Indeed, I could have added a good many more names if the total had not been limited to 11, because this is a problem which affects every hon. Member's constituency. Although the number in each constituency may be quite small, the total up and down the country is quite large. There is a case to be met, and I hope the House will agree that it should be met by passing the Bill. It will help our considertaion of the Bill if any hon. Member who has a point to make makes it, thereby giving the House the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill carefully. I accept that it needs careful scrutiny. I am not arguing that it should be rushed through. Indeed, I suggest that it might be helpful if it were considered on the Floor of the House when an appropriate opportunity arose.

Let me first explain that part of the Bill which deals with Service registration. The position at the moment is that described in the 1976 Act. Applicants for registration as Service voters have to complete an appropriate declaration. I understand that there is form F/Vote/33 as well as form F/Vote/34, and these forms are available on Her Majesty's ships and in Army and RAF units or from electoral registration officers.

At present, anyone making such a declaration has to have it attested by a commissioned officer, warrant officer or non-commissioned officer of the rank of sergeant or above or by an officer of any United Kingdom Government Department, or, in certain circumstances, a JP, a doctor or a clergyman may add his name as the appropriate witness. Many Service men and Service wives find this procedure distasteful, and I understand that the Government take the view that we might find an opportunity in Committee to amend it in the appropriate way to remove the attestation requirement. Again, I hope that the House will think that that is a sensible provision, because there seems to be no good reason to force potential Service voters to jump through this hoop.

The effect of the 1976 legislation was to force Service men's spouses to register as Service voters. This surprised many of them and annoyed many of them, and it does not seem to have had the effect of increasing the number of those able to vote at any election, parliamentary or otherwise, which ought in this House to be our overall objective. If we can avoid it, we should never stand between the citizen and his vote. Our purpose should be the precise opposite, to make sure that as many as wish are able to vote at any election where they are duly qualified.

The provisions of clause 1 are aimed at that purpose. If it is enacted successfully, the husband or wife of a member of the Armed Forces residing in the United Kingdom will in future have the option to make or continue with a Service declaration, which attracts the advantage of Service voting facilities, or he or she may opt to register on form A as a civilian elector and to vote as a civilian elector in the usual way.

I accept that it will be necessary to take administrative measures to prevent an abuse which might lead to duplication of registration and increase the dangers of double voting. As with much else in the Bill, this is a technical matter upon which I am sure the Minister will be able to expand.

This is a convenient moment for me to express my thanks to my hon, and learned Friend, the Minister of State and his Department for the time and trouble that they have taken in enabling me to put before the House a Bill which is in such a carefully polished form. I trust that the House will find that the Bill is in a carefully polished form. It is certainly better than any amateur attempt of mine might have been. It will save the time of the House because it has been thoroughly considered by those in the Home Office whose duty it is to make sure that the Representation of the People Act is all that it should be. I hope that I have satisfied the House on the need for change.

I turn to the second purpose of the Bill, which is rather different but still consistent with its overall objective to enable people to vote. The Bill contains provision for the amendment of the electoral register after its publication. There have been some fairly well publicised cases of registers being found to be imperfect. A working party on the electoral register reported in May last year and recommended in paragraphs 37 and 38 that

"existing legislation should be amended to permit the ERO … to add to the published register the name of an elector he is satisfied was entitled to be registered on the qualifying date. The mistake may have been made by the elector, by the person who completed (or failed to complete) Form A or by the ERO or one of his staff. It would be for the FRO to decide whether an elector's name should be added in this way. He could have regard to any relevant information".

To the list of those who might be responsible for such an error should be added the previous owner of a house into which an elector has moved. Most are aware that it is the habit of registration officers to send out form A some considerable time in advance of the date by which it has to be completed. It often happens that when a house is changing hands the previous householder says "I am not going to be here so I will not fill in the form", and he tears it up. When the new elector moves in, having suffered all the traumas of setting up a new house, it is understandable that he should let the relatively unimportant matter of completing the appropriate form pass his mind until it is too late to do anything about it.

It is agreed that something should be done about that, and that is the intention of that part of the Bill. Clause 2(1) enables the registration officer to be

"satisfied by such evidence as he may require that any person whose name is not included in a register of electors as published is entitled to be registered in that register, he shall make the necessary correction in the register."

That gives effect to the recommendation of the working party. The result is that the person entitled to be registered need not be disfranchised because his name is not on the published register.

Other requirements must be met. It is important that the original requirement of residence in the right place at the right time should be met. It is proper that no late entries will be accepted. It is proper also that there should be provision for the resolution of disputes and objections. Clause 2(2) provides for an appeal to the county court from any decision of the registration officer either to add a name or not to add it. It is fan to say that both the potential elector and those who feel that his claim should not be accepted without question should have the opportunity to be heard.

It is important to stress that if there is an election already in process at the time that a decision is taken to add a name, the addition of the name will not have the effect of enabling that person to vote in that election.

Reluctantly, but I think rightly, it has to be accepted that if we are to provide for an appeals or challenge procedure, we must allow time for it to work. Given that elections are relatively short affairs, it would scarcely seem reasonable to me—I do not know what view the House would take—that somebody should be able to force through his entitlement to vote at a time when the electoral machinery is overloaded in any event. It would be most satisfactory if we were able to give instant enfranchisement. That is a matter to which the House may return on another day after further consideration.

I have put before the House the bones of the Bill and the propositions that it would have the effect of placing on the statute book. I hope that they will commend themselves to the House. I also hope that the House will feel that it will have an ample opportunity to discuss and consider these important issues. After all, all matters of electoral entitlement are important. I hope that I shall obtain the consent of the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

I think that the author of the Bill, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), who is to be congratulated upon it, made clear that the father of the Bill is very much the Home Office as well as himself. I can only hope that the trust which he apparently believes he wrongly put in the Home Office draft on the first occasion is better placed this time. I think that the hon. Gentleman is perhaps mistaken in thinking that someone in the Home Office did not realise what he was doing last time. I think that it is probably the case that he knew perfectly well what he was doing but was unaware that the hon. Gentleman had a different intention in mind.

Certainly form A, which is sent to electors at the time of registration, makes clear that wives—spouses—of Service voters are not entitled to be placed on the register in the normal way. I think that the statute as it stands makes that very clear, too. The difficulty—the error so-called that we are now trying to correct—could have been apparent at a previous time. That is as much as I want to say about the first part of the Bill dealing with the registration of Service voters.

We do not have much time to discuss the Bill this afternoon. Therefore, I want to concentrate on the second half—that is, the half relating to the correction of errors in the register. When the Minister of State intervenes, I wonder whether he could throw some light upon the matter mentioned by the hon. Member for Woking—that is, the right of a third party to object to the addition of a name to the register under the procedure provided in the Bill. Will that right exist only, as I think the hon. Gentleman implied, by means of a court action, or will there be another procedure, perhaps involving the advertising of the proposed names to be added, and then a procedure for someone to take objection to the names proposed to be added and to invite the registration officer to consider new facts that he might bring to his attention?

I understand—or I did until I heard the hon. Gentleman—that this is a matter that might be dealt with by regulation. Some time before the Bill passes through all its stages we need to have that absolutely clear, and even if the Minister of State is not able this afternoon to give us chapter and verse, I hope that he will be able at least to assert that there will be an opportunity for objection to be taken to the addition of names to the register under the provisions of the Bill.

More generally on the correction of errors, I think that every Member of Parliament, particularly, is aware of the enormous irritation caused to a person when he discovers that he is not entitled to vote, not because he lacks the proper substantial qualifications but because he did not get on to the register in the previous year. Unfortunately, of course, he normally discovers that within a day or two of the election. I think that we would be kidding ourselves if we thought that a great part of the irritation would be removed by the Bill.

It will continue to be the case that within a short period of the election a person will discover that his name is not on the register—usually when he does not receive the polling card, for example—and he will then make the same objection as he does now. Under the Bill, by that time it will be too late for him to arrange to go on to the register.

When a register remains in force from February to February, if there is a council election in the spring and a general election in prospect in the autumn, at least the discovery in the spring of the omission of a name will have the effect of enabling the person involved to have his name put on the register for the autumn election.

I accept that. I expect that my experience is similar to that of other hon. Members. When I visit polling stations on election day and someone makes a great fuss because his name is not on the register, and practically assaults the officer at the polling station, I find that it is absolutely no consolation to say to him "You cannot vote for or against me at this election, but it is all right, you will be able to vote for or against the councillors at the next election in a few months' time, perhaps." That does not calm him down. The irritation will remain as long as we do not allow corrections to be made during the election. However, principally for the reason stated by the hon. Gentleman—the burden of work upon the returning officer in the election—I do not think that it would be right to allow the corrections to take place at that time.

Why do the mistakes occur? It is partly because people do not inspect the draft register. It is unrealistic to expect them to pop into the library, look up their names and make sure that they are on the register. That will not change; not if past behaviour is anything to go by.

There are various reasons why people's names do not go on to the register. First, householders make mistakes and do not put people on the list who should be on it. Form A used to be a pretty badly drafted form. It is much better now. As forms go, it is not bad. There is still a bit of improvement that could be made by taking out all the scaffolding, the As, the Bs and the ones and twos. We do not need that scaffolding. It should be taken out once the document has been drafted. Even when it has been improved in that way it will, for many people, always be a fairly formidable form, if only because people must decide first whether those living in their households are British subjects. As one-quarter of the people in the world are British subjects, that is the first difficulty that the householder must overcome.

Secondly, a householder might intentionally keep a person's name off the register. I remember that a few years ago the hon. Gentleman entertained us one Friday afternoon with an account of one of his constituents who kept his son off the register because he knew that his son intended to vote against the hon. Gentleman. That constituent was committing a criminal offence. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was not committing a criminal offence by not doing anything about it.

It may be that we have gone a little far in softening the warnings on form A about the necessity to fill it in and the fact that it is a criminal offence not to fill it in or knowingly to fill it in incorrectly. I raise that only as a possibility. We had reached the stage where we did not want constantly to be bombarding the public with warnings that they were committing criminal offences, but we may now have gone too far with the electoral registration form.

The Bill will allow the registration officer to correct printers' errors and those made by himself and his staff. The question arises as to just how much extra work will be put on to registration officers and their staffs by that fact. This consideration—the work placed upon registration officers, especially at or near the time of an election—is one which has constantly bothered Mr. Speaker's Conference in considering this problem. That consideration of extra work cannot be the final one, but it is one that we should take into account.

In considering the amount of extra work, my view is that a large part of it will arise in respect of new attainers of the right to be on the register—the 17year-olds, for want of a better term. It is worth mentioning that, according to information that the Minister of State gave me a month or two back, one-third of all the people whose names are entitled to go on to the new register on account of age—that is, one-third of those people who in any year acquire the age entitlement to be on the register—are not put on it. Usually, the parents just do not think that their son or daughter, at 16 years and 10 months, is at the age of entitlement to go on to the register. Although the form states very clearly in bold type, only three lines from the top, that their son is so entitled, parents do not read three lines from the top of the page.

That is why I was pleased to see the recent public advertisement by the Home Office drawing people's attention particularly to this age point. More needs to be done in that direction, otherwise registration officers will find a large number of 18-year-olds asking to be added under the provisions of the Bill, having been left off only because their parents were unaware of the exact age requirements.

I hope that the Minister will consider doing more and spending more in the way of advertisement in order to correct this manifest injustice which results in one-third of the people failing to go on to the register although they are entitled to do so. Subject to those qualifications, I welcome the Bill and hope that we can go into some of these details in Committee.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) on his success in the ballot for Private Members' Bills. On behalf of the Government, I very much welcome the Bill, which covers two aspects of electoral law. I believe that, when enacted, they will be of considerable assistance to the electorate generally and to Service spouses in particular.

In dealing with the franchise, we are dealing with a very important matter, a most precious possession, and it is the duty of the Government and of this House to do everything possible to make sure that those who are entitled to vote can do so as readily as possible and have an opportunity to exercise freely a basic civic right.

Many wives of Service men were effectively disfranchised at the last general election because they did not feel prepared to register as Service voters. They did not want to be regarded as appendages of their husbands. It therefore gave me great pleasure to tell the House on 21 May 1979, in one of my first acts as a Minister of the Crown, that I fully understood and sympathised with the feelings of those wives. It gives me as great pleasure today to support a Bill which will remedy what was felt to be an unfair system and will enable a large number of Service spouses to exercise their civic rights once again.

As was explained, the purpose of clause 1 is to provide that, when a wife or husband of a member of the Armed Forces is resident in the United Kingdom, that wife or husband should have the choice to register for electoral purposes either as a Service voter or as a civilian voter on form A, like other electors.

The purpose of clause 2 is quite unrelated but is also important. It is to enable the electoral registration officer to amend the published register of electors so as to include the name of a qualified elector who has been omitted.

During the Adjournment debate on Service voters on 21 May, which was initiated by Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes), I said that the Government fully accepted the need for changes in the operation of the Service electoral registration scheme as it affects spouses, most of whom, of course, are wives, and I was glad to be able to take a different view from that of the previous Administration when the matter came before the other place in a Bill also put forward by a private member.

At that time, so soon after taking office, I was not able to commit the Government to the detail, nor was I at all sure of when and how the opportunity to legislate on this matter would arise, but, because of the good fortune of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking, we were able to have extensive consultations in the summer with interested groups and to examine thoroughly the voting arrangements for Service spouses. In the light of those consultations, the Government are able to support the legislation proposed by my hon. Friend. Indeed, as I shall explain, in some respects we shall in due course be asking the House to go further.

We are grateful to the political parties, the local authority associations, the many individual electoral registration officers and, not least, the Forces wives for taking part in these consultations. The comments that we received were uniformly constructive. They certainly showed wide agreement for changes in the present system, which, as my hon. Friend explained, inadvertently led to extensive disfranchisement.

The 1976 Act has, on the whole, worked well. I think that it is right to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the real achievement that the Act made. Only in limited respects has it been found defective. However, I believe that it needs adjustment to meet the needs and wishes of Service wives.

The 1976 Act required Service wives to register as Service voters through the Service channels whether or not they were living in Service quarters or accompanying the Armed Forces. That meant, for example, that many wives of those serving in the Royal Navy who had never lived in Service quarters and did not regard themselves as Service wives in that sense were obliged to register as Service voters. That proved unacceptable both in principle and practice to many Service wives. I believe that that is now widely acknowledged—indeed, it has been brought home to us by the representations that many hon. Members have received—and therefore we should support measures to put the matter right as soon as possible.

In fairness, I should tell the House that there are different ways of going about achieving that objective. Alternative schemes have been put forward, but, having considered the alternative schemes, some of which commend themselves to those interested more than the present scheme, I have reached the same conclusion as my hon. Friend—that, in all the varying circumstances of their lives, Service spouses, while living in the United Kingdom, should have the option to choose whether to continue to be registered as Service voters or, instead, to be registered in future on form A in common with all other civilians. While living overseas with their spouses on duty, it will, of course, be to their advantage to remain within the Service voting scheme.

I should also make clear that we intend to make two other changes which will benefit not only the wives of Service men but the Service men themselves. First, we intend to abolish the requirement for the attestation of Service declarations. Although the 1976 Act introduced improvements in this respect and considerably widened the field of those who could attest or countersign a Service declaration—originally it could be done only by a commissioned officer—many Service voters still object to the arrangements. The purpose of attestation was to assist electoral registration officers by providing them with a guarantee that the application was a genuine Service one. But, if they believe that there is doubt, the machinery exists between the electoral registration officers and the Services centrally to check the records and to correct errors. I hope that we shall be able to agree with the sponsors of the Bill appropriate amendments to drop attestation at a later stage. In order to do that, it will, of course, be necessary to seek to amend the long title of the Bill.

The second change which we favour does not require primary legislation and, with the approval of both Houses of Parliament, we hope to put it into effect for the 1980 electoral register now in preparation. That change is to drop the requirement for Service voters to have a simple "S" used against their name on the register of electors. To do that, it will be necessary to make the appropriate change in the representation of the people regulations.

Many people feel that, apart from all else, even on security grounds, it is wrong that "S" should appear against Service voters' names on the register. We welcome and will like the opportunity to put that matter right as well.

As has been explained, clause 2 deals with a quite separate matter. It proposes the enactment of a recommendation of the working party on the electoral register. That working party was set up on the recommendation of Mr. Speaker's Conference on electoral law of 1973–74. In its report, the working party recommended that existing legislation should be amended to permit electoral registration officers to add to the published register the name of an elector he is satisfied is entitled to be registered on the qualifying date, that this should be subject to the objection procedure, and that there should be a right of appeal to the courts against a registration officer's decision.

Hitherto, the only way a voter could have himself included, if this was not simply a question of correcting a printer's error, was by seeking an order of mandamus in the High Court. That process is obviously expensive and few electors without expertise, as well as cash, are in practice able to make use of it. It is interesting that the widely reported case during the election in May involved a member of the Bar and his wife. Clause 2 should help people to enjoy the franchise which is rightly theirs in as simple a manner as possible.

During this brief debate, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham), who speaks from the Opposition Front Bench on these matters, raised several points that plainly we shall want to look into and to deal with in Commitee with considerable care.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the procedure for objections and the right of appeal to the courts. Plainly it is important that there should be a procedure. As I have said, it is proposed that there should be a right of appeal to the courts, if necessary, to deal with the view taken by the electoral registration officer after objection has been taken either as to a refusal or as to an inclusion. But the precise mechanism by which that process of objection and appeal can and should take place is, I think, something that we ought to leave until we consider the Bill in Committee.

I understand the shortage of time, but may I ask the Minister whether he agrees that in principle, therefore, a third party ought to be able to know the names of those people proposed to be added to the register so that he can then make representations to the electoral registration officer?

I certainly agree with that, and that is envisaged in the Bill. That must be so. It is a fundamental principle. One can object to the draft register at present. It is right that one should be able to object to changes. But that means that there is a clash between the two competing considerations.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of late changes and pointed out that many people will realise that they are not on the register only when the election starts. As presently drafted, the Bill does not make changes possible as late in the day as that. Therefore, one has to try to achieve a balance. Hon. Members may wish to consider alternative possibilities to that which is proposed in the Bill, but there is no easy solution to that problem. Nevertheless, on this matter, as on the matter of Service voting, I think that the Bill marks a real improvement in our important electoral procedures. For that reason, I commend it to the House.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Second Reading what day? No day named.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Second Reading what day? No day named.

When Neville Chamberlain stepped down from his plane at Croydon in 1938 waving a white piece of paper stating "Peace in our time", it was evident that for the people of Kidwelly in South Wales the next two or three generations would be a time of continuous noise.

The bombing range at Kidwelly came into existence in 1938, but it was not used until the commencement of the Second World War, and it has been in almost continuous use since then. Immediately after the war the range was not allowed to function because, strange though it may seem, the objections of the South Wales fisheries committee were upheld. Fish seemed to have succeeded then where human beings have failed in 1979.

In the summer of 1950, after a public inquiry, the bombing range was allowed to reopen for a further period of eight years. The physical effects of the war came to an end for the vast majority in 1945, with demobilisation and a return to civilian work, but not for the people of this small locality. For us the war eventually came to an end in 1958–13 years late, but nevertheless very welcome.

The respite was to be temporary, however. Hardly had the 'fifties given way to the 'sixties when, although rumour was rife that the land was to be used for a sizeable iron and steel development, low-flying aircraft won the day.

Back in the days of the early 'sixties—1962 to be exact—when the Welsh Office was in existence, though it had not been given a Cabinet Minister exclusively devoted to its affairs, following a local public inquiry a Ministry of Housing and Local Government inspectorate approved the reopening of Pembrey range.

This relatively small, historically turbulent, rectangular peninsula lies between the much silted Bury inlet to the east and the estuaries of two rivers, the small and large Gwnendreath, to the west. The then Carmarthen county council objected, emphasising the safety aspect. The proposed operations were described as essential but possessing a high margin of error. The local council was by now convinced that any sizeable iron and steel development would not materialise. Its hopes that the disused airfield and its adjacent ammunition factory could be the site of much-needed light and more diverse industry also fell by the way. Above all, the county authority objected on the ground of continuous daytime noise and general disturbance affecting the town of Kidwelly and its hinterland villages. The coastline was also beginning to flourish as a caravan, chalet and holiday centre.

There was a unanimous decision by all local authorities, at all levels, to object to the reopening of the range. It would bring no employment. It would be an economic and developmental deterrent of the first magnitude. This function it has continued to perform 100 per cent. In the early 1960s, however, the presence of the Royal Navy at Brawdy in West Pembrokeshire, which had been of great significance economically to that county, came to an end, and it would have had disastrous economic sequelae if that had not been seen to. The Welsh Office made serious and successful representations to the Ministry of Defence. As a result, the Royal Air Force technical weapons unit was established. As the years have progressed, Brawdy and Pembrey have become inexorably entwined, Brawdy bringing economic and financial gain to one part of the new county of Dyfed and the Pembrey bombing range acting as an economic and financial deterrent to the other.

The prevailing weather over Kidwelly at about 8 am is of great significance from Monday to Friday. It is the deciding factor whether the population is to be subjected to eight hours of low-level bomb, rocket or cannon attacks. It is little wonder that the people who reside along a coastline comparable in beauty with South Devon or Cornwall break into a chorus of thanksgiving as, on some days, the Atlantic Gulf Stream brings them fog and drizzle. Such inclement weather conditions invariably mean that they will have a quiet, peaceful day, un-shattered by the roar of low-level jets. If one wishes to take advantage of solar energy in Kidwelly, one has to pay a considerable price—the price of intolerable, intractable and inescapable noise that frightens young and old, animals as well as humans. Over the past 18 years the average annual flying time has varied between 750 and 1,000 hours per year. The future does not hold any promise of lessening. There is the reality of more low-level flying to be faced and to be suffered.

The Royal Air Force base at Chivenor, 60 km south across the Bristol Channel, is being refurbished in great style for use by more modern aircraft. As a direct result, from next year Kidwelly's bomb, rocket and cannon range will have to be used on an increasing scale. After 18 years of intolerable interference with their style, standards and quality of life, the people of the locality have set up an action group. Their main aim is to force the Ministry of Defence to take pressure off this small area and to plead even to so impersonal and monolithic a phenomenon as the Ministry of Defence that their intolerable burden must be shared by other parts of the United Kingdom.

So far reason and rationality are holding sway, but lately there has been increasing talk of organising and of taking direct measures to disrupt military flying in the area. As the recently elected Member of Parliament, I still take the view that we should adhere to argument and legal constitutional measures. Those are our potent weapons, but I cannot say for how long. When I and many others have channelled our complaints, we have been reciprocated by an odd mixture of sympathy and incredulity. Why should we be bothering these persons with comparative trifles when in reality they have the defence and well-being of the country as a whole to contend with? I have to admit that when deputations met Ministers from my own party before the last general election the reception was civil, but oh so terribly unresponsive and niggardly insensitive.

Kidwelly is not without a track record of obstinacy and tenacity. In the late 1960s, when plans were afoot for a third London estuary airport, there were quite far advanced plans to bring the Shoeburyness gunnery range to the exact locality of the Pembrey range itself. Back in the late 1960s there was obviously an available alternative site. Now we are told that no alternative site is available. The situations do not tally, and there is a strange evasiveness whenever we try to press home this highly relevant point.

It now appears that, with regard to the low-level bombing range, planes of all countries other than those of the Iron Curtain are welcome. Let me hasten to tell the Minister that 2,500 people have signed a petition asking for a full and high-level inquiry into the seeking and finding of an alternative site. Those 2,500 people represent 90 per cent, of the population of the locality.

We are certainly not without a high sense of realisation that a high degree of preparedness of our air forces is essential. It is simply the case that burdens of this nature, affecting the daily lives of thousands of people, must be shared fairly and not inflicted upon comparatively small pockets of population, hoping that they will accept it with good grace or trusting that we shall continue to be a tolerant lot and that we can be taken for granted.

Teachers at local schools complain that lessons are being interrupted continually. The elderly will simply not go out of doors on fine days. Houses shake to their foundations as the noise reverberates from the hills that lie about three or four miles behind the shoreline. When we complain that pilots do not always strictly follow their planned quadrangular course, this, as it were, adding insult to injury by overflying even more densely populated areas, those who have the stamina and the determination to complain are made to feel fools, imbeciles or downright unpatriotic.

I have not dwelt upon the safety record of the hundreds of planes that have flown low over this locality over the past 30 or 40 years. I need not draw the Minister's attention to the fact that there have been serious accidents in other parts of the Principality. We in this part of Dyfed are wondering for how long our luck will hold out. I beg the Ministry of Defence to look afresh at the problem and give the people of Kidwelly the respite that they richly deserve.

The House is grateful to the hon. Member for Carmarthen (Dr. Thomas) for raising this most important matter. Whatever may be the appearance from the outside, the Ministry of Defence is not impersonal or monolithic. We are always happy to do what we can to help within the limits of the task with which we are charged.

I hope that the hon. Member for Carmarthen will bear with me if I say that a large part of my job is concerned with noise and accident problems and bombing ranges. I am extremely aware of the intensity of feeling that he has described. No one in my Department who is charged with the responsibility of fielding those complaints considers people who complain as fools, imbeciles or in any way unpatriotic. The hon. Gentleman will discover that there is a high degree of sensitivity to what people have to put up with, and there is a properly constituted claims machinery to handle damage that may be caused by low-flying aircraft, noise and other disturbances of that sort. He may also be aware that teams of senior RAF personnel are available and frequently in action around the country to liaise with local communities which suffer a variety of different levels of noise from training bases, low-flying aircraft or bombing ranges—and I accept that bombing ranges pose a particular problem.

I fear that I am unlikely to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman much that he has not already heard at the meeting on 1 November of officials of the Ministry of Defence, the Dyfed county planning committee and six other district planning councils in Carmarthen. I realise that the hon. Gentleman probably requested the debate not knowing when that meeting might occur.

The Pembrey range is one of eight air-to-ground weapon ranges used by the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom, and it is the only range that it has in the South-West. It is in close proximity to RAF Brawdy and Chivenor, and that is important because it is essential that the tactical weapons unit is able to operate from a base and out to a range within 50 miles of that base.

When I was preparing my speech, I noted that the hon. Gentleman said that Brawdy and Pembrey are inextricably interlinked, and that is a key element in the problem. In the Ministry of Defence we accept that it is a joint problem. We want to do anything that we can within the limits of the task that we are set to help the hon. Gentleman's constituents. I fully accept that it is a common problem and not something that can be contained by the people of Kidwelly and its immediate environs. That is why teams are visiting the range and why we monitor, from time to time, on an unannounced basis, the way in which the pilots fly that range. We make certain at all times that we know the sort of missions that they are flying.

A considerable part of the course at RAF Brawdy is devoted to the theory and practice of operational weapons systems. The instruction there must be supplemented with intensive training in the use of the systems in the air to the point at which the weapon would be released. I was pleased and grateful for the assurance of the hon. Member for Carmarthen that he and the local community recognise the role and mission for which these pilots are being trained.

There is no substitute for the type of flying that has to be carried out. The hon. Gentleman was perfectly fair when he pointed out that the Royal Navy participation at Brawdy ended. He mentioned Shoeburyness and the proposal that was being considered in earlier discussions about the third London airport. Indeed, it is fascinating to notice the recurrence of that theme. The planners have the problem of grappling with it yet again.

It was suggested that, if Brawdy was to be closed at the same time, the tactical weapons unit could be located somewhere else. There are eight RAF air-to-ground weapons ranges throughout the United Kingdom, of which Pembrey is one. All the ranges are reasonably close to the limits of Royal Air Force stations. Therefore, it was proposed to move the tactical weapons unit to another Royal Air Force station, adjacent to an existing range. The Ministry of Defence felt the full weight of the economic lobby of that part of Wales and it was decided, after all, to reopen Brawdy and deploy the tactical weapons unit into it. Of course, there has been considerable benefit to the local community, to the tune of about £6 million per year. There has also been the direct employment of about 300 people.

Once the decision was taken, it follows that the tactical weapons unit, its main raison d'etre being to carry out the operational weapons training, has to use the Pembrey range. The hon. Gentleman should address his campaigning to the district councils and people in the hinterland of Brawdy. He should point out that he is campaigning for something that is of concern to his constituents and which would almost inevitably result in the closure of the airfield on which the local economy largely depends. He should ask those people how they feel about the matter.

If the hon. Gentleman is able to suggest to me suitable alternative sites for the bombing ranges and suitable Royal Air Force stations that are sufficiently close to those bombing ranges, I would seriously consider it.

If we examine the logic of the situation, we must recognise that we live in a modern and dangerous world and we must have the ability to defend ourselves. The hon. Gentleman has reaffirmed his support for that. If we are to defend ourselves properly and to make a proper contribution to the Alliance, we must be ready to support and pay for an air force. If we are to have an air force, we must give it the best possible operational training, and an essential feature of that training is proper weapons practice.

If we are to have proper weapons practice, we must have bombing ranges on which to carry out that practice. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that we use ranges in Sardinia, Cyprus and North America, which have considerable attractions, not only for the crews who are deployer there but because they do not suffer from 8 am drizzle and fog as often as does Kidwelly.

We deploy to bombing ranges outside the United Kingdom in order to vary the operational diet as well as to provide some respite, however small, to the populations within the environs of the eight ranges in the United Kingdom.

As I said, hitherto Brawdy and Pembrey have been intertwined. With the development of Chivenor, will it be nearer the truth in future to say that Chivenor and Pembrey are to be intertwined? There is a fear in South Wales that since Brawdy has seen better days, Chivenor will be the dominant partner in future.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has raised that matter. I mean that; I am not using the phrase in the parliamentary way in which it is sometimes used. I can give him a categoric assurance that Brawdy's future is in no doubt. We are to have the triumvirate of Chivenor, Brawdy and Pembrey. Chivenor is being activated, though not in "the grand manner", as the hon. Gentleman suggested. That may have been a touch of Welsh rhetoric.

If we have a tripartite arrangement, with two bases supplying the planes and one bombing range, does that not mean that the amount of practice bombing at Pembrey could increase appreciably in the next year or so?

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. We are working together splendidly. I can give him a further absolute assurance that not only is Brawdy's future in no doubt but that, although Chivenor is to come in by about August 1980, with Hawk aircraft—which Brawdy is also receiving—I endorse without equivocation the assurance of my predecessor that the combined usage will not exceed the 1971 level of 1,025 hours.

I should like to continue the process of logic that I started a few moments ago. I have outlined the Ministry's desire to use suitable ranges abroad. There is, of course, a reasonable cost penalty, because we have to provide tanker aircraft and transport our aircraft over considerable distances.

There is no point in trying to pretend that I can hold out hope that we shall do anything to vary the existing arrangements at Pembrey. The right approach is one that I have adopted in other parts of the country, namely, not to try to shift the burden elsewhere. However, my offer to the hon. Gentleman is genuine and remains. If he can find an alternative site and an RAF station to go with it, I shall be happy to talk to him about it.

I believe that we should make as certain as possible that the rules, such as whether aircraft keep to the western side of the railway, are strictly adhered to. That is important.

The aircraft using Chivenor will be Hawk aircraft and not the Hunters that the hon. Gentleman sees operating from Brawdy. The Hawks will also be phased in at Brawdy. They are quieter aircraft and, although that may seem a minor consolation, I hope that even a minor improvement will be well received.

I shall be happy to consider any detailed matters that the hon. Gentleman or the local councils wish to raise with me, but I regret that, in the light of the task placed upon us to prepare properly for the defence of this country, we must have a capability of operational weapons training and ranges on which to carry it out. Therefore, we shall have to continue to use the range at Pembrey.