Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to debate this subject at this time of the year. In a way, it is a Christmas present to be able to address the House on it.

I turn directly to the Minister of State's statement in a written answer on Wednesday 17 December about the gas gathering system. At first glance it seemed reasonable, but I think that the Minister will agree that it raises more questions than it answers.

The statement in no way attempts to quantify the issue. There is an amazing absence of statistical data. We are not told the level of the natural gas liquids available, nor is there any attempt to assess in cost-benefit analysis terms the national economic advantage of the proposed arrangements. One cannot avoid the distinct impression that the Government's oil and gas policy, while appearing to judge the issue in terms of maximum benefit to Britain's economy, is in reality trying to maximise the revenues flowing into the Exchequer so as to underpin the tottering Tory regime. In the absence of a statistical approach, no one on the Opposition Benches can do better than hazard enlightened guesses.

What would be the best arrangement for the British economy? While I have a great regard for the Minister of State, Department of Energy, I must say that he should have a great deal more respect for the House—I hope that he will give me his attention—and show a little more understanding of our position than simply to deal with this complicated issue on the basis of a written answer to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Osborn), who is conspicuous by his absence today. The hon. Gentleman showed such great interest that he tabled a question for written answer but has not appeared when the issue is being discussed in the House. The whole business of Members allowing themselves to be used in that way should be examined by the Procedure Committee. It is disrespectful to the House that Members should allow themselves to be used by the Government so that the Government can give ostensible regard to the House while in reality ignoring it.

I wish to deal with what I consider to be the enlightened guesses about the maximum economic advantage to Britain. Some time ago the Minister and the Secretary of State were good enough to meet a deputation of my hon. Friends the Members for Kirkcaldy (Mr. Gourlay) and Fife, Central) (Mr. Hamilton) and myself, together with representatives of the Fife region and the Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline districts, to discuss the issue. While we agreed that there might be a case, after the gases had been landed at St. Fergus, for some of the other natural gas liquids, fraction C3 and above—I am sorry to speak in shorthand chemical terms—going around the corner to Nigg Bay, there was no case whatsoever for any of the ethane going round the corner. As far as we can gather, the Government accept that view. However, the statement leaves the options open to put ethane round the corner to Nigg Bay at a later stage.

In the absence of statistical data, we have to ask whether the Secretary of State expects the supply of ethane to exceed the joint capacity of the crackers at Mossmorran and the refurbished or altered crackers at Grangemouth and Teesside. If so, what is the basis for that assertion? Does he think that at some stage in the 1990s we shall need another world-scale cracker in the United Kingdom? If that is the case, what is the basis for arguing that it ought to be sited on the Cromarty Firth? Is it not equally arguable that it could be sited somewhere down the line, either in North-East Scotland or elsewhere? Those are questions which the statement leaves unanswered.

I turn to the other fractions. On what basis can the Secretary of State argue, bearing in mind the capacity of the NGL facility at Mossmorran, that he ought to make provision for any of the other fractions going round the corner at present? The opportunity at Mossmorran could be to increase capacity there.

One topic that is not discussed, but which it is important to discuss, is safety factors. If we take two lines, as is proposed—an NGL line and an ethane line—down to Mossmorran, will that make the position safer and will it expedite planning matters?

I come to the crucial role of the BNOC and British Gas. Under participation and, I assume, some equity arrangements, the BNOC and British Gas might have access, notionally again because we have no statistical data, to between 50 and 60 per cent. of total gas liquids. They are in a key position. Why is it not possible for both corporations to come together and operate the system jointly, either onshore or offshore or both? The only restraining feature seems to be related to the Government's obsession with the public sector borrowing requirement. The Minister shakes his head. Perhaps the restraining feature is the opposition of the oil companies.

There would be a mess of warring competition if we did not have the BNOC in its key position. Even the Government recognise that. The BNOC reduces the warring factions. The Secretary of State says that the Government will expect the sharing of the spoils to be determined on a strictly commercial basis. Mr. Philip Shelbourne agrees with that view. He wants the corporation to act commercially—after it is put in a privileged position.

The views of Mr. Shelbourne seem to suggest that the payment of £50,000 a year to Professor Walters is wasted. We get the same stupid, narrow, monetary echoes from Mr. Shelbourne, who knows a lot about banking and law but seems to know little about the oil industry and nothing about socio-economic factors. If we allow the oil companies to bid for important, valuable national assets on a commercial basis, who will look after the national interest in terms of infrastructure, jobs and the level of unemployment?

If Dow Chemicals is the biggest bidder, will we allow the gases to go to Nigg Bay or wherever the company wishes to take them and forget unemployment in central Scotland or on Teesside and all the infrastructure that has been provided there? I suggest that Mr. Shelbourne and others ought to have another look at that matter.

Arms-length deals are one thing, but, to be fair to the oil companies, they do not know in detail the supply of the gases or the terms of ownership of control of the gas lines. To give the BNOC the aura of a commercial entity yet to restrict it from going downstream is economic and industrial nonsense. How can the Government say that they expect issues to be determined commercially but say to the BNOC "Do you not think that you ought to participate in joint ventures downstream?" How can they justify that, when they say that the corporation will act commercially? It is another indication of the Government's general doctrinaire stupidity.

I turn to the bona fides of the parties. I have some rules of thumb in dealing with oil companies and their personnel. First, I recognise their capability to employ the best brains. Secondly, because of that, their personnel are invariably devoted to the interests of the companies. If the Government are to squeeze them in the national interest, they must have some instruments available to achieve that end.

Companies with assets and a track record here are more amenable to such an approach. I am sure that the Minister agrees. Without saying that the hon. Gentleman has leaned on companies too much, we know that there have been some benefits to the United Kingdom economy recently that we would not have achieved if the companies had not had a track record and an asset base here. How do the Government judge the bona fides of companies such as Dow Chemicals and Highland Hydrocarbons? I am the last person to begrudge the Highland area of Scotland economic development, but is it realistic to put our trust for such development into the hands of such companies? The track record of Dow Chemicals internationally, and particularly its promise to do certain things for the Spanish economy, does not lead me to believe that we should have a lot of faith in the company in Scotland.

I hope that the Minister will comment on dealing with the Norwegians on their gas finds. I know that these are delicate matters of discussion and that the posture of British Gas is important. The Opposition are not privy to the negotiations or explanations, and we should welcome further information if the Minister can provide it, but it is important to recognise that there would be an enormous bonus in terms of downstream petrochemical development to the United Kingdom if an agreement could be arrived at with the Norwegians, certainly for Statfjord gas. I understand that the Minister has had good relations with the previous oil Minister and the new Minister in Norway.

If we are to embark on the £1 billion development, at current prices, how much will come in job terms and material and equipment terms to the United Kingdom? I trust that the Minister will bend his efforts to secure the best result for us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central is in the Chamber. He represents an area of high unemployment in Cowdenbeath. We in Fife look for the economic advantages of the cracker and NGL plant at Mossmorran and the terminal at Braefoot Bay. We are not unmindful of the safety factors; it is not jobs at all costs. We are also mindful of the effort that the local authority in Fife has made to secure that base.

We want assurances from the Minister that nothing in the Government's decisions will endanger the long-term viability of that plant. If we can ensure its long-term viability, the spin-offs will come to central Scotland. There may be some argument among some Scottish Members, though not from me, because there will also be a spin-off to Teesside. I should welcome assurances from the Minister on those matters.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline (Mr. Douglas) on providing the opportunity for this debate on a matter of great importance, not only to areas directly affected, to which I shall refer, but to the whole national economy. I also congratulate him on the way in which he has analysed the problem, particularly from the Scottish point of view but also from the national point of view.

My interest, of course, is in the position of Teesside, where we have very substantial petrochemical plant. The industry is the second largest employer of labour in the area and, naturally, we are anxious that its use should be maximised and that it should continue to be a successful part of our own economy and of the national economy.

For that reason, all of us on Teesside—I am sure that this applies equally to the people of Grangemouth and Mossmorran—wish to see the feedstock that is to become available from the gas gathering scheme being made available as quickly as possible to the under-used capacity that already exists in those areas. On Teesside, over the past year, two of the crackers at ICI Wilton have been closed down for some of the time and operating at only about 40 per cent. of capacity. The area has a dreadful unemployment problem—a rate of 14.4 per cent. overall, rising to 16·2 per cent. for male workers. More than 23,000 people are unemployed. In the past week it has been announced that a further 3,700 people will be put out of work at the British Steel Corporation on Teesside. That will increase the level of unemployment even more.

In the light of that situation and of over-capacity throughout the country, it seems ludicrous to be pressing ahead on making provision for new capacity in the North of Scotland when the potential of our existing plants is not being fully used. The existing plants, and our British companies also—this is probably the most important aspect—need security of supply of their feedstock. The situation will be ludicrous if they have to rely upon the supply of feedstock from all other parts of the world when we have on our doorstep a feedstock which they cannot use but which from the point of view of the national interest they should be able to use.

We have had representations in the House from various industries—not least the fibres industry—which have been in difficulty in recent times because of the cheap feedstock enjoyed by competitors, particularly in the United States. On visits to the United States over the past two or three years, I have on every occasion made representations to Senators and Congressmen on the Hill in Washington to seek a more reasonable and competitive position for feedstock supplies to their petrochemical industry. But they have not responded to that plea. As a result, industry after industry in this country is being damaged by the uncompetitive prices that they are forced to charge by comparison with the cheap prices that the American companies can charge because of their low feedstock prices.

In those circumstances, and against that background of over-capacity and of cheap feedstock available to competitors, it would be quite wrong of the Government not to press ahead with the utmost speed to provide the pipeline from St. Fergus down to Mossmorran, Grangemouth and Teesside, so that existing capacity may be used to the full and that there will be security of supply and a more competitive situation for our existing plants and our existing British companies.

I therefore appeal to the Minister this morning not to support the plans to provide extra capacity in the North of Scotland but to press ahead with the pipeline to the South with the utmost speed. The capacity is there to use the feedstock. If the pipeline can be provided in the next few years, it will ensure the security of employment of existing employees in the industry. It will provide security for the firms in the future and increased employment in the years to come.

One could not be considering this at a worse time in terms of unemployment. I therefore hope that the Minister will respond to the appeals of those of us who have existing capacity in our areas and thus ensure that the jobs at present there are secured and that growth will come in the future.

I shall be brief. Historic decisons are being made, have been made and will be made on these matters. These decisions are of critical importance, not just locally but nationally. I believe that if we get this right we can lead the whole of Europe in petrochemicals. The stakes are no less than that. The Minister will recall that when the Fife authorities came to see him and the Secretary of State some weeks ago, we agreed that some compromise arrangement would be acceptable to us. If we got the ethane going south we would not mind, and we would certainly support the provision of certain facilities in the Nigg area, despite the fact that the Minister might be accused of plugging his constituency line—I think that he and we must face that. But this is far too important a decision to take on narrow considerations of that kind.

We in Fife are very excited by the prospect of Mossmorran and of the ethane coming south. We are very much concerned with the spin-off arising from this project and the creation of what we hope will be long-term jobs. Of course there are risks involved in the project, but as a mining community Fife has lived with risks all its life. Therefore, while we are naturally concerned, this is not an inhibiting factor to the extent that we would not want the project.

I do not know what time schedule the Minister has in mind. Perhaps he could give us a little more detail about the time schedule for developments in his area. The Fife authorities made the case very strongly about provision of the infrastructure, as it were—education, housing facilities and so on. Although additional facilities will need to be provided in his area, that should be no insuperable objection to some provision in his area. I therefore hope that we shall not be accused of being intensely parochial in this matter. We very much appreciate the importance of the project within the context of regional policy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thornaby (Mr. Wrigglesworth) is quite right to plug his area. That area is very hard pressed. So is ours. But so, in its own way, is that of the Minister of State. In that context, I congratulate him on what seems to me to be a reasonable compromise at the moment. I hope that he will continue the good work.

I join with others in congratulating the hon. Member for Dunfermline (Mr. Douglas) on giving the House the opportunity to discuss this very important matter. I also congratulate him, despite his strong constituency interest, on the very moderate way in which he put his case this morning. I realise that to some extent we perhaps shot his fox by making a statement earlier in the week. Clearly, he applied for this Adjournment debate not knowing that that statement would be made. Therefore, I am still grateful to him for giving us the chance to talk about it now.

The hon. Gentleman dealt with the matter at some length in asking for statistics. In a short debate such as this I shall not go into great detail about the volumes that might be available, but at the outset I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the quantities given in Department of Energy paper No. 44, published in June 1980. BGC-Mobil, for example, forecast all liquids coming ashore at 1,659,000 tonnes, of which 647,000 tonnes would be ethane. It estimates that by 1990–91 a total of 3,398,000 tonnes could be expected, of which 1,325,000 tonnes would be ethane. Onshore and offshore estimates are also given in paper No. 44.

The offshore gas reserves are increasingly precious resources, and the Government are determined to make the most of the asset and to avoid the wasteful flaring of gas. It is significant that within the past year we have managed to halve the flaring of gas in the North Sea, but even that is not enough.

The Government welcome the report of BGC-Mobil, published in June, which recommended that a new offshore gas pipeline system should be built. We believe that that gas gathering system should be built as quickly as possible, and we therefore invited Mobil, BP and the BGC, together with a financial adviser, to form an organising group. That group has done a lot of detailed work in carrying on the project and formulating recommendations on organisation and finance.

The organising group submitted an interim report at the end of October. It described progress and confirmed that the target of getting the gas ashore by 1984–85 could be achieved. The report made recommendations in two key areas—organisation and finance, and the onshore distribution of natural gas liquids.

On organisation and finance, the group recommended that it should work towards an interim pipeline company, to be formed by 31 March 1981. We agreed with this, and work has proceeded on that basis. An information document has been prepared, and has been sent to producers and large customers, to determine the basis on which they would participate in the company. At the same time, the Bank of Scotland is discussing interim financing with potential lead banks. These arrangements are designed to permit construction to proceed with all speed, pending finalisation of the long-term financial agreements. Meanwhile, work is being financed by BGC-Mobil and BP through joint venture arrangements.

I now want to deal with the principal question that was raised by the hon. Gentleman and which was also commented upon by the hon. Member for Thornaby (Mr. Wrigglesworth), who, I acknowledge, has a strong constituency interest in this matter. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) for taking part in the debate and putting forward the case for his region.

The disposing of the gases onshore is a complex question. First, the dry gas for the British Gas Corporation must be separated from the total rich gas stream. That will be done at St. Fergus. That process will leave a mixture of natural gas liquids, consisting of ethane, propane and butane, and natural gasoline. This mixture is almost unusable without further treatment, and fractionation to separate it into its components will be necessary.

The organising group has recommended that this process takes place in two stages. As the St. Fergus terminal will anyway have to include a facility to remove the ethane from the natural gas liquids in case of emergency, that facility should be used permanently to provide a separate stream of methane—a gas that is an extremely valuable petrochemical feedstock. The rest of the NGL stream should be taken to Nigg Bay and fractionated there. Means must also be provided to ship out the propane, butane and natural gasoline, although it is possible that certain quantities of those may be of interest in downstream development at Nigg. The organising group has recommended that preparatory work, route surveys and so on should be started for a pipeline to take the ethane south to Mossmorran, Grangemouth and a link to Teesside, while consideration should also be given to a pipeline to Nigg Bay.

The important issue is that there is no provision to bring any of the of other C3s which come ashore from this fourth link down the line to Mossmorran. Is that what the Minister is really saying?

No. That is not exactly what I am saying. I am describing the recommendation of the organising group, which we accept in the meantime. But there is no reason why certain of these at some future time should not come south.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has accepted that the organising group should plan on the lines recommended, which, I think, implies some expectation that such planning is unlikely to be completely wasted. However, he has made it clear that the pattern of disposal will be determined by commercial negotiatons. I know that many people have been pressing us for a firm decision on the pattern of disposal in advance of such negotiations. Certainly, over the past month newspapers have been full of suggestions that the Government have decided in favour of one group of contenders or another. However, anyone can claim that he wants ethane. The validation necessary to decide the pattern of disposal can come only when these claimants start to put their money where their mouths are—in other words, when they start to give commitments on such matters as price and penalties if they are unable to take the ethane that they requested. In order to obtain those commitments, commercial negotiations are obviously essential.

The Government have now cleared the air for those negotiations to commence. There is a need for fast progress so that the location of the onshore facilities can be quickly decided. With about 40 licensees involved in the production of the natural gas liquids from the first dozen fields expected to be tied to the new line, there would be too much risk of delay amid confusion if the negotiations were left solely to the licensees. We needed, so to speak, to create a wholesaler who could bring together enough of the material to make sales commitments that would justify a particular pattern. The BNOC—with its participation options—and British Gas provide that quantity and will be co-operating closely in the disposal of the arrangements.

I tend to think that the hon. Member for Dunfermline must have been looking at my speech before coming into the Chamber, because I seem to be enunciating exactly what he has been suggesting.

There is not enough ethane currently identified to satisfy all the claims from the various contenders in the mid–1980s. Therefore, some of those claims cannot immediately be satisfied. We have instructed the corporations in the negotiations to seek to maximise not just their commercial benefit but the national economic benefit, recognising the importance of petrochemical activity based on these natural gas liquids.

I am pleased to hear what the Minister said about the role of the BNOC and British Gas. Can he clarify their role? Why both, and how will they both fit in?

By virtue of its participation agreements, the BNOC will have access to a substantial quantity—in the region of 50 per cent. The British Gas Corporation will also have access to a certain amount—in the region of 5 per cent. or 6 per cent.—so that between them they have a substantial interest. We therefore felt it reasonable to ask the two corporations to combine in their role as wholesaler. Obviously, the lead in respect of the natural gas liquids will be taken by the BNOC, and the BGC will take the lead in respect of dry gas.

In the few minutes that are left, it may be useful if I outline the progress that has been made so far. The leading organisation group that we have set up is making very good progress. BP is assuming responsibility for the offshore work and the British Gas Corporation for the onshore work, with Mobil providing technical expertise in both areas. Onshore, the British Gas Corporation has received outline planning consent for construction of the terminal at St. Fergus and for the construction of plant on land to be reclaimed at Nigg Bay. Land at St. Fergus on which the terminal is to be built has been acquired, and a design study for the terminal is already well under way.

Various contracts will shortly be let in connection with the preliminary work needed at Nigg Bay. These include the facility design study, the reclamation design and the subsoil investigation and topographical study.

Offshore, BP expects to complete in the next few days its detailed conceptual engineering design. It has awarded contracts for the study of the junction platform needed to link northern and southern parts of the gas gathering line and for the analysis of gas flow in the system. Contracts for the survey of the pipeline route and junction platform location will he let shortly.

I wish to turn to the question of gas for the pipeline. There is no doubt, as shown in the BGC-Mobil report and Energy paper No. 44, that the pipeline will be economic on the basis of United Kingdom gas alone. The knowledge that the pipeline will be built has stimulated further drilling programmes in the areas that it will serve, and the prospects look rosy. Once flows have built up, the pipeline will land, each year, gas and liquids worth about £1.5 billion.

The economies of scale inherent in such projects mean that the British Gas Corporation has been able to make the Norwegians a very good offer to buy their share of Statfjord gas and bring it to Britain through the pipeline. The Norwegians have yet to decide whether to accept this offer. I must, however, stress that 16 per cent. of the Statfjord reserves lie in the United Kingdom sector of the continental shelf. I therefore expect United Kingdom Statfjord gas and natural gas liquids to come to the United Kingdom irrespective of the decision reached on the disposal of Norwegian Statfjord reserves. I refer to United Kingdom gas and United Kingdom natural gas liquids, needed in the United Kingdom.

We believe that an alternative disposal route would be economic nonsense. There is no way that any alternative can be ready until a long time, probably years, after ours. Since we are already so well advanced along the path towards an economically and technically robust system, we are not prepared to see years of unnecessary gas flaring or loss of oil through years of unnecessary gas reinjection.

I want to stress that the work is proceeding well and that the United Kingdom is right up to schedule on the gas gathering system. We expect to see a massive reduction in flaring in the second half of the decade as the pipeline brings ashore the gas and liquids that the country so desperately needs. I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving us the opportunity of discussing this important subject. I emphasise to the House that the Government's determinaton to ensure that the natural gas liquids are used in the best national interest continues to be paramount.

I am grateful for the opportunity to ventilate my concern and that of commuters throughout South-East London about the proposed reductions in rail services in the area. Since, in the next few minutes, some of my remarks will be less than complimentary towards Southern Region, I wish to make clear that I am by no means unappreciative of the difficulties of the task that faces those who run British Rail's commuter services. They shift thousands of people daily, often in a relatively short period. They operate a very complex and closely integrated rail network. They have some achievements to their credit. Southern Region has a good safety record, particularly in the commuter areas. It has installed new signalling at London Bridge and Victoria, with the minimum of inconvenience to regular services.

The services that Southern Region offers to South-East London are very good, on paper. Unfortunately, only sometimes are those promises realised. I can get a train from my local station to the City, a distance of 14 or 15 miles, which takes 20 minutes. That is no small achievement when it is on time. Alas, often it is not on time. The trouble is that the service advertised cannot be relied upon. There are daily cancellations and delays. Needless to say, I was 10 minutes late arriving in town this morning. Southern Region is now planning to reduce the quality of the service even further.

This is a very important issue for my constituents. I have had many letters from constituents expressing their concern. A number of constituents, including rail passengers—I am a commuter myself—have spoken to me. I come up to town daily by rail from my constituency. When they see me sitting in the train, people do not hesitate to express their views forcefully. The volume of this reaction is hardly surprising. A large number of my constituents and people throughout South-East London rely entirely on British Rail to get to and from work. I have 10 stations within, or on the edge of, my constituency boundaries, serving my constituents and bringing them to town.

The proposed reductions take various forms—a reduction in the frequency of services, the early closing of certain London termini and the closing of suburban stations on Saturday evening and Sunday. It is proposed to cancel certain peak-hour trains and to reduce the off-peak service from a 20-minute interval to a 30-minute interval service. That will be inconvenient. I shall not, however, raise any strong objections to that aspect of the proposals, provided only that the timetable will be adhered to. The present timetable is unreliable. I would much prefer to have fewer services that ran on time than a large number of services advertised but not materialising.

I have had correspondence with the chairman of British Rail, Sir Peter Parker. In a letter to me, he implied that the sort of ad hoc cancellations suffered at the moment due to staff shortages are far easier for British Rail to organise than the straight withdrawal of certain services. It may be easier for British Rail, but it is not easier for the passengers. It is no consolation, on missing an important appointment, to be told that, unfortunately, the train has had to be withdrawn. I hope that any revised timetable can be relied upon and that the trains will be punctual.

The proposed closure of stations is not as drastic as was predicted in the widely circulated leaks. They are nevertheless still extensive. In particular, it is proposed to close Cannon Street and Holborn Viaduct stations at 7.30 pm. There are a number of City workers who, on a regular basis or occasionally, work well after that hour in the City. There are also those who like to have a drink at a pub before they go home. Why not? There are quite a lot of people who are still in the City at 7.30 pm who will be considerably inconvenienced by the proposed closures. I would like to see some well-supported figures to justify the claim that it is reasonable to close these two termini.

In a debate earlier this week, the Minister quoted figures from British Rail showing that there are 14 departures from Cannon Street after 7.30 pm, with an average of 10 passengers on each. Having used Cannon Street myself from time to time, I query those figures. I wonder whether they were taken over a period, or on just one evening. I wonder whether some services are used more heavily than others. I suspect that the station is used more heavily between 7.30 pm and 8.30 pm than it is between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm.

My hon. and learned Friend the Parliamentary Secretary also said the other day that, after all, only 10 minutes' walk away from Cannon Street is London Bridge station, which will remain open. That is true, but it is 10 minutes' walk over and above a passenger's walk from his office to Cannon Street station, and much of it is a very exposed walk across London Bridge itself, which is not all that agreeable on a wet and windy winter night.

I accept that it may not be necessary to keep these two termini open until 11 or 12 o'clock at night, but I hope that some sort of compromise will he reached of, say, 9 pm or 9.30 pm.

Again, the predictions of the extent to which suburban stations would be closing on weekdays have not been fulfilled, with two exceptions—Sundridge Park and Bromley North, both of which serve my constituency and which it is proposed will close on weekday nights at 10 o'clock.

Why does British Rail propose 10 o'clock? For the reasons that I have indicated already, 7.30 pm would be objectionable, but at least it would be understandable, in being immediately after the peak hour. But 10 o'clock will inconvenience people coming home from theatres, restaurants, and so on, in the West End. Closing these two stations less than a couple of hours earlier than normal seems to effect the absolute minimum economy and to cause considerable inconvenience.

The same arguments apply with a good deal more force to the proposal to close no fewer than 32 stations on Saturday evenings after 7.30 pm and all day on Sundays. That list includes Bickley and Elmstead Woods, which are in my constituency, as well as the two stations to which I have referred already.

Nearly all these 32 stations are in residential areas. Those who live there depend on the trains. It must be remembered that in South-East London we have no Tube service to supplement the other forms of public transport. People came to live in these areas because of the convenience of the trains for pleasure as well as for business. I should be interested if we could be given figures of station use at these stations. Presumably British Rail has the figures and can make them available.

My impression is that many people use the stations in my constituency on Saturday evenings and Sundays. What are they expected to do if these stations are closed? The bus services are poor, and some of the stations on the list, including Elmstead Woods and Sundridge Park, have no buses serving them. What are elderly people coming home late at night to do? What is to happen to girls who have been up to town during the evening and who are coming home late at night on their own? Are they supposed to go to the next station, either before or after their own—if after, presumably they have to pay more—and then walk home alone? In some cases they could not even do that, because, going through the list of 32 stations, one discovers that in at least three instances two adjacent stations are being closed, resulting in an even longer walk.

There would he uproar if it were suggested that people should be prevented from using their cars as a means of transport on Saturday evenings or Sundays, yet this is a comparable form of action, because many people rely completely on the trains. If these stations are to be closed, people will be effectively isolated throughout this period.

There will be other effects, too. In my constituency and those of a number of my hon. Friends, there are several homes for the elderly and the handicapped. Staff on evening, night and weekend shifts rely on the trains to get them to and from work. Those homes will lose their staff if they find that they cannot get to the stations near to the homes. It will also cause hardship to those wishing to visit friends and relatives in those homes on Saturday evenings and Sundays, which are popular visiting times. The same applies to people who like to go to hospital visiting to see people in other parts of London on Saturday evenings or Sundays. They, too, will have difficulty.

The proposal will also affect the trade in West End theatres and restaurants, for which Saturday evenings are very popular. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) emphasised this strongly in his Adjournment debate earlier in the week. People will think twice about an evening out in the West End if they know that they cannot return to their local stations on their way home.

What is the purpose of all these closures? What will the savings be by running the trains through stations rather than stopping them? The saving in labour costs must be minimal. Quite often at that time of night, if the stations are staffed at all—and often they are not—there is only one person on duty. The only saving would appear to be a saving in electric light.

The impression was given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in reply to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) recently that she believed, as many of us did, that the stations would simply not be staffed but would be available for people to get on and off trains. That no longer appears to be the case.

The West End trade is also affected by another feature of the proposals which does not seem to have received much publicity so far. It is that last trains are being scheduled to leave earlier than they do at the moment. Most last trains already leave before midnight. After June, they will leave 20 minutes earlier. On the Orpington and Swanley lines, at least we have had our last train at 24 minutes past midnight. I know it well, because I often use it. After these new proposals come into force in June, the last train will leave before 11.15 pm.

British Rail receives finance from the Government for what it describes as "passenger service obligation", which recognises the unprofitability of commuter traffic. That figure has just been raised by £23 million to £678 million, which is a substantial sum. Yet, as British Rail receives this sum and imposes yet another hefty fare increase, it is announcing proposals to reduce the quality of the service in the manner that I have indicated. In the document announcing these reductions, British Rail claims:

"The total package is designed therefore with the following in mind…To maintain the region's wide network of services for commuting and optional travel."

How is that claim possibly met by closing 32 stations over the weekend?

In his reply to the debate earlier in the week, the Minister said that British Rail must improve its efficiency and productivity and meet the needs of the customer. That is a sentiment with which we will all agree, and we urge British Rail to do this rather than to curtail the service.

Cannot British Rail look at ways of improving the service by, for example, providing later trains? A few later trains during the week would be extremely convenient for people who, for example, like to go to the theatre and have supper afterwards. That is quite impracticable, given the present train timetables.

Why cannot British Rail make greater efforts to fill trains during the off-peak period? We have heard a good deal recently about the £1 old people's ticket, which, if anything, has been too successful. People have complained about overcrowded trains and about the extent to which the facility has been used. A pensioner has been able to travel from Land's End to John o' Groats for £1 on British Rail. It costs my constituents more than that to travel less than 15 miles to London on an off-peak return for shopping or the theatre. Is there not scope there for some improvement in the fare structure to encourage more business? I suggest that there is plenty of scope for improving services and no justification for curtailing them. I do not think that these proposals have been properly thought through. I do not think that the implications have been considered fully.

In its covering letter, British Rail tells us that these proposals are still a matter for staff consultation. May I suggest very gently that there are one or two other people as well as the staff who might be consulted? What about the passengers, for a start? What about the passenger organisations? I suggest that British Rail might even consult local Members of Parliament, who are not totally uninterested in these matters.

It is curious that, if British Rail wants to close a station, the matter has to be taken to the transport users' consultative committee and an inquiry has to be held. No such consultation is legally required if the station is simply to be closed during certain periods, such as weekends. I suggest, however, that there is a considerable moral obligation on British Rail to undertake consultation. I appreciate that detailed management matters are not the responsibility of my hon. and learned Friend, but he should urge British Rail to think again about plans that will cause widespread inconvenience and distress to my constituents and to many of the people living in South-East London.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) on having raised this crucial matter on our last day before Christmas, because so far it has not received enough publicity. I want to say a few words about the effect on my constituency.

Of the 12 stations within and adjoining my constituency, nearly half—five of them—are now disappearing at weekends, and others are being closed at an earlier hour during the week. The five that are going are Ladywell, Beckenham Hill, Sydenham Hill, Crofton Park and Lower Sydenham. The result will be a tremendous deprivation in the normal public transport arrangements which people have relied on in the past and, indeed, for as long as they can remember.

Genuine anger is felt in my constituency. Indeed, some of the letters I have received contain expletives to which it would be unfair to expose the Minister. As the hon. Member said, that is on top of an already unsatisfactory situation, quite apart from the irregularity of the trains. In the rush hour, trains are still overcrowded and unreliable. Sometimes they are half the required length.

In the short time at my disposal, I want to put three points which have been brought to my attention by my constituents. First, it is felt that these cuts are discriminating against South-East London, an area which is already deprived in the overall London public transport system. One of my constituents says:

"I travel daily from Sydenham Hill station to London and this is the line which will apparently be almost non-existent when June comes—closing down after 7.30 pm in the evenings, closed altogether on Sundays and a lot of cuts during the rush hour.

I do feel that we commuters in the south-east are really badly served for transport, with buses unreliable and no underground." That feeling is strongly held in South-East London.

The second point that has been put to me by my constituents, and I give only a representative sample of the letters that I have received, is that the South-East network has suffered far more from lack of investment over the years than any other part of the public transport system in London. Another constituent says:

"why or how they"—

that is, British Rail—

"lose millions of commuter services is beyond my imagination, and how they think people who work in the evenings are going to travel to work, if they cut the rail services is even more mysterious. If the fares were more reasonable, a great many more people would gladly travel by rail, as things are now drifting it will only be the rich who will be able to afford to consider a train journey."

I urge the Minister to take note of those remarks. I realise that he is not responsible for the detailed management of British Rail, but other parts of the country are not so badly affected. I used to be a Sheffield councillor and I was up in South Yorkshire the other day and travelled by bus a distance of five miles for 5p. I do not suggest that British Rail could reduce its fares to that level, but there is a point beyond which, if services are cut and fares raised, money is not saved. In fact, more money is lost.

It is all very well British Rail writing to Members of Parliament and saying that financial savings are expected to be between £2½ million and £3 million per annum. I am not remotely convinced that there will be any savings at all as a result of the cuts. I suspect that they will just add to the mounting deficit.

My third and final point concerns a matter which was raised earlier in an Adjournment debate—namely, that these cuts simply add to the decline of London. Many constituents have written to me on this matter, a number of whom are not Labour voters. One of them says:

"I am a floating voter with no really strong party affiliation. This insane measure proposed by BR, but having its real source at the Ministry of Transport, has so incensed me as to tip the voting scales in favour of Labour."

I do not receive letters like that very often. In one way I am pleased to receive such letters, but in another way I am not, because I think that the Minister has a responsibility for the basic structure of the public transport system. If these cuts go ahead, there will be real deprivation in South-East London, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some words of comfort today.

One-third of the population of my constituency travels to London every day, and more rail passengers travel daily to London from Orpington station than from any other station in the London area. It is, therefore, a matter of great importance to my constituents that any adjustments or alterations in rail services should be made with due regard to the interests of rail passengers. It cannot be fairly said that the recent proposals do that. Those of us who live in South-East London, especially on the fringe, are badly served.

As has already been said, South-East London does not enjoy all the transport facilities that are available in the rest of the metropolis. In particular, we have no Underground services. Nor do we have all-night buses. So all that the proposals achieve is a serious cut in our quality of life. The proposed reductions in weekend travel and off-peak travel are in just those areas where people, other than those who are travelling to work, like to enjoy themselves, travelling up to town for entertainment and culture. Stations are closing in our area, an area which has no all-night buses.

My constituents who live near stations that are to close will be deprived of a service that is essential if they are to travel at all. Many of them will be stranded. My constituents will suffer because late trains have been cancelled and because of the inadequate provision of buses, particularly all-night buses. It will be particularly hard, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) said, for children and young women travelling back home. British Rail should give some thought to that matter.

The reason for all this, according to the communication that I have received from the general manager of Southern Region, is that the financial position of British Rail has deteriorated and it feels obliged to make economies in order to reflect market trends. All one can say is that that is not good enough and British Rail can do better.

South-East London is already penalised as regards fares. The fare structure is biased against the short-haul traveller, who gets less value for money than commuters who travel longer distances—for example, from the Kent coast.

South-East London is penalised also as regards rolling stock. I have not seen so many dirty carriages and vandalised seats as I see in our area. Seats seem to be impregnated with dirt and grease. Windows are near opaque, and all too often the floors are littered with debris when one travels at off-peak hours.

Most of all, a fair criticism of the proposals is that they reflect inadequate consultation with those in the best position to offer advice. My hon. friend the Member for Chislehurst made the sound point that the channels of communication are not always those which serve the interests of the travellers. They are quasi-statutory bodies which, like all such bodies and quangos, serve the public interest inefficiently. It would be far better to consult much more those who come into the consultation business of their own free will, determined, with a public-spirited attitude, to serve the interests of people like themselves who desire improved public services. There are many rail commuters'associations in the London area which should be consulted. Mine in particular, the Orpington and District Rail Passengers Association, has on its committee expers on the subject who could be of great assistance if they were consulted by British Rail.

It is fair also to mention the campaign waged by The New Standard and its two predecessors, the Evening News and the Evening Standard, to improve facilities and gain a better deal for rail passengers.

It is only by the unremitting vigilance of the travelling public, through their associations, that we can prevent a further fall in standards.

I should like to add my voice on behalf of the commuters of Bexley, an area built up round the railways. The road system is inadequate to take any increased traffic. In the rush hour it takes me one and a half hours to cover the 12 miles to my constituency.

British Rail is entitled to close stations, and it should operate its services flexibly, but what it has proposed is unacceptable and unrealistic. I hope that it is just an opening salvo in its battle against the Treasury. I do not accept the concept of a downward spiral—fewer passengers justifying fewer services.

The 7.30 pm deadline is ridiculous. Many of my constituents do shift work. They have to work late on an order. Some have to visit granny in hospital. The entertainment facilities for them are not in my constituency but in central London.

I receive continual complaints about British Rail services—the cancellation of trains, dirty trains and the fares increases. The cuts on top of all that are too much.

British Rail still operates 200 marshalling yards, which cannot be justified, and has more than 1,000 manned level crossings. It has guards on new suburban electric trains, and I believe that the failure of guards to turn up is one of the main causes of the cancellation of commuter trains.

A compromise is needed. I hope that the Government will make clear today that the proposed draconian measures are unacceptable to them.

I echo the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) on initiating the debate. My constituents, like his, are angry and alarmed about the cuts and closures proposed by Southern Region. Some of them might be prepared to accept some cuts in trains, or service rationalisation, as Southern Region chooses somewhat quaintly to call it, if at the same time they could be assured that the remaining trains would run to time, without cancellation.

At present the Southern Region timetable is a work of fiction. It is difficult to describe the sense of frustration and exasperation that comes from the sudden cancellation of trains, on both the morning and evening journeys.

What has aroused real resentment in my constituency is the early closure of London stations, such as Cannon Street and Holborn Viaduct, and, at the local level, the changes involving Bromley North, Shortlands and Sundridge Park and the weekend closures to which other hon. Members have referred. British Rail must remember the extent to which its captive commuters in South-East London, without the advantage of the Underground railway which serves other parts of the capital, are dependent on its surface railway.

Faced with its undoubted and acknowledged difficulties, British Rail has taken the easy option of cutbacks, closures and fare increases, without tackling the perennial problem of overmanning and general inefficiency. I hope that, in the light of this debate, when my hon. and learned Friend the Parliamentary Secretary next sees Sir Peter Parker he will put these points to him forcefully and forthrightly.

I know how strongly my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) and his constituents feel on this issue. My hon. Friend was present at a very later hour only a few nights ago when we had a similar debate, and this morning he has again pressed upon me his concern about the reductions in the level of service in the area of his constituency.

The Government and I also appreciate that underlying the concern expressed by all the hon. Members who have spoken today is a continuing concern about the level of service given to commuters generally in the South-East. Ministers are in no doubt, and I am sure that the British Railways Board is in no doubt, that there is a very low level of consumer satisfaction at present with commuter services in and around London. It is felt on all sides that there is considerable room for improvement. Therefore, it is not surprising that reports of service reduction and early station closures have given rise to another upsurge of feeling.

The Government have recognised the particular problems of the commuter and have tried to make a positive contribution towards solving them, first by choosing the services for a special examinaton by the new Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The first report that that body produced gave rise to some valuable recommendations on means by which the services might be improved.

The report contained some praise for the level of performance of British Rail's line management, but it also made 36 positive recommendations for eliminating faults and improving performance to the general benefit of London and suburban commuters. It set out in particular suggestions for more effective targets for management, new methods to control costs and greater efficiency in the use of manpower, which might improve the present position. The report helped to underline some of the problems of absenteeism and the abuse of the sick pay arrangements in British Rail, which often give rise to cancellations.

At our meetings with it, the board has responded positively and has told us that it is taking action on each of the recommendations. We have already begun talks with British Rail about the clearer Government guidelines that the report rightly said British Rail needed on the basis on which it runs its commuter services. In drawing up clearer guidelines, we shall take on board the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook).

In the final resort, fares policy is a matter for the board, and the board alone, but the Government disapprove of any suggestion that there should be a weighting of fares increases or alterations in fares policy in future which discriminate against the captive commuter in London and the South-East. One of the commission's recommendations was that there was room in the area for services to be altered to match demand more closely. As several of my hon. Friends have conceded, in broad principle there is a case for saying that where there are lightly used services, and, therefore, wasted resources, British Rail must be entitled to take management decisions to alter its train services to match passenger demand. Some economies of that kind can undoubtedly be made in London and the South-East.

Yesterday, I saw that after the Rail Council meeting union spokesmen were quoted as being against service cuts anywhere, and at the same time wanting more resources for the railways. But, if service reductions save costs, that releases resources which can then be devoted to bettering the service given to passengers where there is real passenger demand.

As every hon. Member who has spoken has acknowledged, in putting that policy into practice British Rail has a management role which would not be assisted by Ministers directly interfering. It would not improve matters for Ministers to start taking political decisions about the times at which the trains run or fare levels and so on. Nevertheless, we are as concerned as hon. Members are that in taking management steps British Rail should make sure that it is genuinely saving costs and is not merely reducing services which are of some value to hard-pressed commuters.

Hon. Members pressed this morning for more figures to be made available. Figures of passenger usage must come to the Government from British Rail. I have no doubt that it would respond positively to any specific queries hon. Members put to it about passenger usage at particular stations and usage of particular services. It must have that information backing up the decisions that it has taken.

On Tuesday I gave the House some figures about the weekday closures, which particularly concerned hon. Members. It is true that only 14 stations out of 566 on Southern Region are proposed for closure after 7.30 pm on weekdays. I have also been given figures by British Rail which suggest that Cannon Street and Holborn Viaduct are very lightly used after 7.30 pm. British Rail says that the remaining 12 stations to be closed are each used on average by about only 45 people each evening, but I have no doubt that there are considerable variations in those averages.

For example, Sundridge Park and Bromley North, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ravensbourne (Mr. Hunt), are used by more than that average figure, and I have no doubt that Sir Peter Parker and the British Railways Board will bear in mind his submissions about those stations, as I hope they will bear in mind all the other submissions made about particular services by hon. Members.

The question of leaving stations unstaffed but allowing the trains to stop there was referred to in a parliamentary answer by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister a few days ago to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend). It was our understanding from British Rail, and it was the Prime Minister's understanding then, that that was widely proposed. There are already about 45 unstaffed stations on Southern Region.

The board tells us that cutting out the stops enables it to make better use of the rolling stock and staff time, but I have no doubt that it will consider, as it should do, whether many of these economies might be made by simply leaving the stations unstaffed but allowing the passengers to board as they like without needless supervision.

I turn now to the Government's role and some of the other implications of the point made in this debate that in some way financial cost lies behind these closures and that the Government are involved, first, as the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) said, because of our overriding obligation towards public transport and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath said, because of British Rail's continuing battle with the Treasury, which he felt lay behind these reductions.

I cannot emphasise too strongly that the answer to British Rail's problems in the commuter areas and elsewhere cannot in the end rest entirely on producing more money from the Treasury or from the customer. British Rail has had no cuts in its finances in recent times. Indeed, its resources have been increased. The Governmnent have shown flexibility, despite the present difficult economic situation, and there has been an increase in the taxpayers' contribution to British Rail's finances over the last few months. There has also been a substantial increase in the contribution by the passenger, with fares increases running well ahead of the level of inflation.

When one notices how heavily some in the railway community are campaigning on the issue of finance—even going in for expensive advertising out of their budget to seek to persuade the Government to give them more money—one should bear in mind the background. The railways are being given more money. Their external financial limit was extended recently by an extra £40 million, so that the passenger should not have to bear the costs of the problems with the freight business. We have just increased the PSO by £23 million.

We have not cut investment. It has been entirely spared from the cuts being made elsewhere, with investment maintained at the high level set by the previous Government, and 25 per cent. of it going to London and the South-East. So the railways are being financed—of course, not as much as those concerned would wish; but in the short term British Rail must look to making the best use of its resources and giving the passenger satisfaction out of the money going into the system.

I think that we are all grateful for the amount of public investment which goes into British Rail, but does the Minister agree that even so British Rail is one of the least subsidised public rail systems in Europe and that if we are to have the standard of the systems in other countries, that simply means more public investment, not less?

European comparisons are freely made in this area, but they are difficult to make with any accuracy because there is wide variation among the accounting methods employed in the different Western European countries and wide variation in the different ways in which individual Governments contribute to their rail systems.

Having said that, I accept that British Rail is one of the more successful of the European systems in making contributions from its own revenue towards its operating costs. However, that gives no ground for complacency and I see no basis in policy for taking examples from the systems of countries where internally it is regarded as a scandal that the railways cost so much and arguing from that that British Rail, with the present state of our economy, should be entitled to similar support.

Someone recently estimated that, over the entire EEC area, subsidising the railways costs the taxpayer more than the common agricultural policy. Britain should not be in the lead in raising subsidy to its railway system to get itself into line with the least successful systems in Western Europe.

In a debate on railway services in the South-East, the cutting of late-night services must be important, but is there not a particular problem in cutting Sunday services when that cuts off whole communities? When he is talking to British Rail about these matters, will my hon. and learned Friend bear in mind particularly places in my constituency such as the whole Isle of Sheppey and especially the town of Sheerness, which on a Sunday, even when ferry services from the town are increasing, will, it is proposed, be totally cut off, with bus and rail services diminished or eliminated? There are special social consequences here which should be calculated by the whole community. One hopes that British Rail will take such factors directly into account.

My hon. Friend correctly brings me back to the underlying point of the debate, which is the immediate point—

Order I remind the Minister that he is addressing the House, not just his hon. Friend, and that I am included in the House.

I accept that reproof, Mr. Speaker, and I apologise. It is becoming a habit with me, when pressed by my hon. Friends sitting behind my right shoulder, to turn and address them directly.

The whole House is concerned about these announcements of possible service cuts. Similar adjustments to services may have to be made in other regions. All those who have spoken have accepted the underlying need to match services more closely to passenger demand, and I think that they have accepted that there is a case for saving costs on lightly used services if the effect is that the resources released are used for the improvement of other services, for the benefit of more passengers.

This morning, widespread concern has been expressed about the particular effects of the recent announcements in London and the South-East. The problem is particularly sensitive in this area because of the dissatisfaction with the existing services. I hope that British Rail will study all the representations which have been made in the debate and will respond to them. As I said, when I am pressed for figures and details of the savings made from changes I can obtain them only from British Rail. I am sure that the British Railways Board will freely provide them for those hon. Members who have pressed for them.

In the end, I hope that British Rail will make as many economies as can sensibly be made in this area and that it will act not only on this recommendation of the MMC but on all the other recommendations as well and that in the long run we shall see a steady improvement in the present disappointing levels of performance by British Rail in London and the South-East.

It is near enough to 11 o'clock and I think that it will be for the convenience of the House if I call on the Secretary of State to make his statement now.

I will, with permission, Mr. Speaker, make a statement about the position in Northern Ireland prisons.

The seven Republican prisoners, who were in the fifty-third day of their hunger strike yesterday, have begun to take food. This includes the one prisoner who had been moved to Musgrave Park hospital in view of his grave condition. In addition, I can confirm that every prisoner at the Maze took breakfast this morning.

This is most welcome news. The hunger strike could not achieve its objects, and it is encouraging that the influence of all those who sought to persuade the prisoners of that fact was finally effective.

I sincerely hope that the same conclusion will be drawn by all prisoners, men and women, who have been protesting in the cause of political status, including the three remaining hunger strikers at Armagh.

With the full support of the House, the Government have made it clear all along that they were not prepared to grant political status. The European Commission of Human Rights considered the case for political status made to it by the protesters and rejected it. It asked the Government to keep the humanitarian aspects of the prison regime under continuing review. We responded positively to that request with the changes in the spring and summer which I repeated in my statement of 4 December. That remains in every particular the Government's position.

Yesterday, I sent into the Maze and Armagh prisons a summary based on the Government's statement of 4 December which set out what will happen. A copy of that summary, which I shall be repeating in a broadcast to the people of Northern Ireland later today, has been given to every protesting prisoner. I shall arrange for the text to be printed in the Official Report.

The Government earnestly hope that the knowledge of what will happen when the protests end will lead all the prisoners concerned to stop all their protests.

On behalf of the Opposition, I welcome the statement and the good news that it contains. I refer not only to the good news that the lives of the seven protesters will be saved but also to the possibility that other lives will now be saved both over the Christmas period and later on. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged that this was largely a House of Commons matter and that the Opposition have been constructive and helpful throughout. The statement is good news and we welcome it.

However, we should like a few assurances. Where do we go from here? As regards the summary that has been sent into the prison, based on the statement of 4 December, may we have an assurance that those privileges will appertain only if prisoners stop the dirty protest and accept prison rules? Prisoners in Northern Ireland have far greater privileges than prisoners in the rest of the United Kingdom. The Opposition are in favour of prison reform, but it must be made on a certain basis. I hope that the Secretary of State will confirm that privileges will not be given until the dirty protest has come to an end.

I have great experience of Northern Ireland and I have met thousands of people who belong to the minority faith. Quite a lot of them are personal friends of mine. The view expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) is far more representative of the views of those who belong to the minority faith than many have claimed. I wish that the House would take more notice of my hon. Friend's views. On those grounds, we welcome the Secretary of State's news. It would be churlish not to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, who has just gone through a very difficult period.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. I am sure that he spoke for the whole House when he welcomed the news that I announced. As he said, the vast majority in Northern Ireland welcome the news and are greatly relieved. There is no doubt that there was tension in the community and that people were fearful about what might happen. We are all delighted that that tension has been removed.

The Government were greatly helped by the knowledge that the House of Commons supported the position that we have maintained throughout this unhappy affair. I confirm that the privileges referred to in my statement of 4 December apply only to those prisoners who conform to prison rules.

In view of the firm assurance that the Prime Minister gave me yesterday during Question Time, can the Secretary of State give an equally firm assurance that the phrase "what will happen" will not leave the way open for further concessions?

Yes, Sir. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the statement that I have just made. In relation to the Government statement of 4 December, I said:

"That remains in every particular the Government's position."

As regards further alterations in the regime, that is a matter for the future. I have repeatedly said that the Government keep under review the regime in Northern Ireland prisons. As time goes by, it may be possible to make further improvements.

Does not the right hon. Gentleman remember that in his written answer of 4 December he listed the hunger strikers' specific demands? He said that the Government would not give in to those demands. Those demands were to wear their own clothes, to refrain from prison work, to associate freely with one another, to organise recreational facilities and have one letter, visit and parcel per week, and to have lost remission fully restored. Will the right hon. Gentleman explain the difference between the stand that the Government took then and the stand taken in the 30-page document that has been released to the heads of Churches and to prison chaplains? Is it not true that the document shows a considerable weakening on those five specific points?

That is not the case. On 4 December I gave a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Marland) and at the same time I placed this document in the Library. There is no difference between the two.

What was the purpose of the statement that the right hon. Gentleman was going to make today, before the strike was terminated, if it was not to make it possible for the strikers to end their strike, if not with a victory, at least with a draw? If it is the right hon. Gentleman's continuing purpose to use his office in conjuction with the Foreign Office to undermine the Union and Ulster's place in it would he not be better out of it?

The last part of that question does not really deserve an answer. As regards the first part, in the statement that I would have made I would have informed the House that I intended to send into the prisons the document to which I have referred and that I would broadcast to the people of Northern Ireland later today. I would have sought to get the support of the House in urging everybody to end the protest. Most of the hunger strikers have ended their protests, but I urge those who are still making any kind of protest to bring it to an end.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the decent, law-abiding people of Northern Ireland, who are in the eleventh year of their agony, will take great heart from the Prime Minister's courage and firmness and from the support that the House has shown for the Ulster people by rebuffing the IRA terrorist hunger strikers? Those hunger strikers tried to use the occasion as a propaganda exercise to gather support and funds, which have been dwindling. I hope that that message will be heard throughout the world, particularly in the United States of America.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those remarks and I will draw them to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I agree that the Provisional IRA's claim that the so-called motive for the hideous crimes that it commits somehow deserves special treatment has been completely rejected, not only by the House but by the people of Northern Ireland.

Is the Secretary of State aware that we share his relief that these events are over? We also commend him on the steadfastness that he has shown during a period that must have been terribly difficult for him. We hope that he will assure us that the constructive attitude that has permeated everything he has said this morning means that we can hope for a clean slate.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks. I hope that the blanket protest, the dirty protest and all the hunger strikes will come to an end so that a normal regime can be returned to in the Maze and Armagh prisons. It is easier to run a good and humane prison regime when things are operating normally than when disturbances are going on. If the protests are brought to an end, we shall be able to run such a regime.

rose—

Order. I propose to call those hon. Members who have been rising in their places. We shall then return to the Adjournment debates.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the whole House congratulates Her Majesty's Government on their constancy, which has been reflected in the helpful attitude of our European partners in the European Assembly? Will he tender the admiration of the whole House to the Northern Ireland prison service, which has lost 19 men? They were murdered in cold blood by the sort of men for whom they have shown great concern. We care about human life and they do not.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks about the prison service. I entirely endorse everything that he said. Those in the service have shown steadfastness and courage in dealing with an extremely difficult situation within the prisons and an unnerving situation outside which commands our admiration. As I have said, the Government have been helped by the steadfastness of the House of Commons. However, there is no doubt that it has been helpful to know that the European countries have shared our view that murder is murder no matter what the motive.

Does the Secretary of State accept that now is not the time to claim either victory or defeat? Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom have emerged from a difficult period and from a crisis. However, confusion exists. Will the right hon. Gentleman give an undertaking that those who are convicted of terrorist crimes, be they Republican or Unionist—those who are convicted of killing, maiming and using weapons to further their own political ends—will in no circumstances be given any treatment different from that which is afforded to any other criminals in the prisons in Northern Ireland? That undertaking must be given to the people of Northern Ireland

I am happy to give that undertaking in an absolutely unqualified way. There will be no differential treatment between one sort of prisoner and another. Anyone who is sentenced to prison by the courts will be treated in exactly the same way as anyone else. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about his present feelings. My feeling is one of thankfulness that it is over. The hon. Gentleman's position over the past few weeks has been an enormous help in resolving the problem.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, contrary to the view expressed in some quarters, it is necessary to continue discussions with the Government of Eire in view of the expressed intention of the Provisional IRA to destroy democratic institutions in both the North and the South?

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. As he will remember from the communiqué issued after the most recent meeting between my right hon. Friend and the Taoiseach, it is planned to continue regular contact with that country.

Will the Secretary of State accept congratulations, too, from those of us who are members of the Back Bench committees, who take an interest in political initiatives and who are hopeful of the initiatives making progress? May I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we all share his relief at the outcome of the most recent initiative? We do not criticise him for sending a statement. If there was a statement sent in yesterday, we welcome that, too. The only victory in the present conflict is one for common sense and Christian compassion.

Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind, while we still have some Christian compassion left in the season of good will, the victims who have suffered so far in this terrible tragedy? Does he agree that in the forthcoming 12 months we should resolve to redouble our efforts to find a political solution to the problem? Let us take the necessary political initiatives if that means following up the recent discussions in Dublin to improve the relationship between us and the Republic in trying to find a joint solution to the problems of Northern Ireland.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his expression of support for what the Government are seeking to do. I believe that, with the relaxation of tension on this issue which I hope will come in Northern Ireland, the various ways of making progress in the Province will be easier.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that there will be widespread relief that the grotesque mass suicide pact has been abandoned? There was some evidence that IRA activities were being curtailed while it was on. Is it the view of my right hon. Friend's security advisers that there is now an increased risk of such activity in Northern Ireland and in Greater London?

The immediate effect of the ending of the hunger strike and, as I hope, of the whole protest will be a lowering of tension in Northern Ireland. I have not yet had time to consult the chief constable and my other security advisers in Northern Ireland, but I shall do so during the course of today.

Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify whether the document that he held in his hands a short time ago and is to have published in the Official Report is the same 30-page document as some considerable time ago he put in the hands of Church leaders and in the hands of the prisoners? If it is that same document, are there not further concessions both on work and on clothing?

It is the same document. I have it before me. It is the document that I placed in the Library of the House of Commons on 4 December,. If the hon. Gentleman cares to study it, he will find no difference between it and my statement of 4 December, save that there is much greater detail.

rose—

Order. We shall now return to the Adjournment debates. We have lost a quarter of an hour of Adjournment time. However, I have made allowances for that. I suggest that a period of seven and a half minutes be taken from the Adjournment on Anglo-Canadian relations and seven and a half minutes from the debate on the BBC licence fee. The two debates will each be seven and a half minutes shorter than the time that appears on the Order Paper.

I am rather surprised that we should have reached the last day of the parliamentary year without having had the opportunity to debate the Canadian constitution. I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for making it possible to do so this morning, although thanks to the welcome statement that we have had time is desperately short to consider such a major subject.

The House knows of the stated intention of the Canadian Prime Minister to revise the British North America Act. We are conscious that the troubles in our neighbour's garden are likely to spill into our own. I sense that we are not yet fully alerted to its implications. It appears that there is something of a family quarrel threatening, and I raise this issue in the hope that it may yet he averted. In a close-knit family, I feel that there are few problems that cannot be resolved behind closed doors. I am all for the use of quiet diplomacy. I have never been convinced of the merits of open government.

I first sailed to Canada at the early age of one. In the intervening years I have been back and back. I am conscious that many hon. Members have links and friendships with Canada. Ever since the famous Durham report in the last century, Canada has never been very far from our thoughts. We need no reminding that the Table in the centre of the Chamber is the gift of the peoples of Canada. I pay tribute to the hard-working Select Committee that is considering the issue. Its report should be in our hands this coming month. I believe that its guidance will be of great help to us all. If any hon. Members think of attending any of its proceedings, they will be mighty lucky to find a seat such is the throng and interest in its proceedings. We need the Committee's help. It is a desperately complex situation and few of us in this place claim to understand the British North America Net. Many of us are puzzled about the duties of the House, and all of us agree that getting out of the Empire business can be harder than getting in.

I am concerned on two grounds. They are quite distinct, and I should like to deal with them separately. I am concerned, first, lest damage be done to the good relations between this country and Canada and, secondly, lest our Government should find themselves isolated on the issue.

I shall take first relations with Canada. There is not a Member of this House who would not wish to see the British North America Act patriated. There is not an hon. Member who would not wish to see Canada given her own constitution. It is absurd that in this day and age a sovereign and independent country should in theory still have colonial status. The fault lies partly right back in 1867, when the federal pattern lacked a proper amending formula, and it also stems partly from historic differences within the borders of Canada. We should be only too delighted to be relieved at once of these final and technical trappings.

However, we look to be faced with an unenviable choice. Either we can please the federal Government in Ottawa, while alienating the provincial Governments, or we can refuse a request that touches upon Canada's independence. Neither is a course that we would choose. Above all, we must maintain impartiality in Canadian affairs. The difficulty is to be sure where the path of noninterference lies.

Westminster talks to Ottawa and Ottawa talks to Westminster. Those are the two sovereign Parliaments. Both are made up of Members democratically elected from all parts of Britain and Canada. That is the song that our Government are singing.

However, one thing is certain. If we hand over all power of amendment of the constitution to Ottawa, like it or not, that will be regarded by the provinces as a British betrayal. We whom live in this small island find it difficult to appreciate just how strong are regional feelings in a country the size of Canada. Canada is the size of Europe. Just as Europe has France, Spain, Turkey and Poland, so Canada has Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Alberta and British Columbia.

We all agree that opinion polls are notoriously unreliable. In Canada they have veered this way and that on the issue. However, for what it is worth, in recent days a poll has shown that Canadians are divided on the issue 2:1 against their federal Government, whom they themselves recently elected, because of the strength of regional feeling.

The House knows that the legality of present plans is being challenged in the courts in Canada. The questions being put to the provincial appeal courts are the same as those that this British Parliament will have to answer. I therefore hope that the courts will be allowed to rule before we grapple with the points.

The controversy is providing the lawyers with a field day, and lawyers have to live. I am no lawyer, but it is my reading that over the years the convention has been that, when amendment is proposed that affects the balance between federal and provincial Governments, it has been subject to consensus first being reached within Canada. The nub of the argument lies there, and the point is highly contentious. It looks like presenting this House with a painful dilemma in the spring. Therefore, while yet there is time, I urge my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal to do all in his power through the channels available to him to defuse the issue and to forestall what could be a bitter family quarrel. There never was a time when cohesion of the West was more important and there never was a situation in which wise counsel and moderation were more needed.

Time is running on, so I turn to the second of my fears—that the British Government could find themselves isolated on the issue. It is hazardous to a degree to give assurances to our friends in Canada at this early stage on the attitude likely to be adopted by our Parliament here in London. This House is never less predictable than when it comes to constitutional issues. It is all too possible to misread the mood of this House of Commons, and miscalculation is surprisingly easy. My right hon. Friend will remember how the attempt to reform the other place ran into the sand here. The Government thought one thing; Parliament thought another. Again, only last year, we had another example: additional powers for Scotland and Wales. We witnessed an astonishing miscalculation by the previous Administration, and it cost them very dear. Again, it was a constitutional issue; The Government thought one thing and Parliament another.

This subject, I accept, provides one of those occasions when a Back Bench Member can say things that cannot be easily said from the Front Bench. On these Benches we have a freedom that is denied to my right hon. Friend. Although there is a Salisbury in New Brunswick, my concern must be for Salisbury in Wiltshire, but my right hon. Friend has to think further afield and his responsibilities range wider.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for coming to the House this morning. I had planned to say more, but I want to hear what he has to say in the time allotted to us. On my first point, I hope that he will succeed in averting bitterness between ourselves and the oldest member of the Commonwealth. On my second point, I hope that he will find time to talk widely to his many friends in the House.

We all sympathise with the Lord Privy Seal and his colleagues in the discussions they have been having on this subject.

It is not up to us to decide what Canadian constitutional conventions are. They were perfectly well set out in a 1965 White Paper of the Canadian Government. That had an introduction by the then Prime Minister, Lester Pearson—a Liberal Prime Minister, so there is no question of any party differences inside Canada. It was written by Guy Favreau, the Minister of Justice in that Liberal Government, just after he had chaired a committee of all 10 provincial Attorneys-General. I do not think that there can be any more authoritative statement of Canadian constitutional conventions. Certainly, it is the one upon which personally I should be most inclined to rely. It is not for us to try to determine or invent what those conventions may be.

Of the four principles that Guy Favreau set out, three are relevant to this issue. The first is that we ought not to legislate on matters concerning the Canadian constitution unless we are requested to do so by the Canadian Parliament. It would appear from what is happening in Canada that the Canadian Parliament is being asked to make such a request to us. One of the most relevant questions is another of Guy Favreau's principles that no such request should be made without consulting the provinces, which has been done, and securing their agreement, which, it would appear, has not been.

I do not think that in advance of any request to us we can assume that a Canadian Government or Parliament will break the constitutional conventions of Canada. That might happen, but we in this House should not assume at this stage that it will. I hope that in the discussions and negotiations inside Canada all parties would wish to conform to the constitutional conventions. If they do, I am fairly certain that everyone in this country would wish to conform to the remaining constitutional convention, which is that we should enact what they request if the request is coming from the federal Parliament after the approval of the provinces has been secured.

The only question which might arise is if those constitutional conventions were not adhered to, but we cannot say at this stage what should happen then because it is not possible, when there is a set of conventions, to rely on a couple of them and assume that the third will be broken. If that is to be done, it must be a matter for the Canadian people.

There are two bodies in a federal State, both of which can claim to represent the people. One is the federal Parliament, which represents the people of Canada as we here at Westminster represent the people of the United Kingdom. But the 10 provincial legislatures also represent the people of Canada. If a majority of the federal Parliament disagrees with a majority of the provincial legislatures, representing another majority of the people of Canada, that places anyone outside Canada in a grave difficulty, in that representative democracy is producing two contradictory answers. It is not for us to solve that. If the Canadian Government believed that certain changes should take place, beyond the mere change of repealing section 7 of the Statute of Westminster 1931 and altering the British North America Act 1949, and in believing that disagreed with the provinces, it would be most difficult for this Parliament to resist a request from the Canadians if that request had been backed by a referendum of the people of Canada, possibly with majorities on the lines suggested in the proposed request to us. We should find grave difficulty in doing that.

It seems, therefore, that there are two courses of action that would enable this Parliament to assist Canada without interfering in its internal affairs. One is that the present law and conventions should be followed, in which case I hardly see how we could conceivably wish to break the convention that concerns us directly. The other might be described as a political solution which says "These conventions cannot be followed, but the people of Canada as a whole, the individual people, each of whom is a citizen of the federation and of a province, seek this. Will you in the United Kingdom refuse it?"

One circumstance that would cause great difficulty would be when neither the legal nor the political approach was adopted. If the Government of Canada chose to ask us to do something that was unconstitutional within the terms of Canadian conventions and that was not desired by the people of Canada as a whole, we would not in the circumstances be interfering in the internal affairs of Canada if we did what the people of that country desired.

My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Hamilton) regretted or complained that there had not been a debate on these matters so far in this Session. He will be aware of the reason for that. The parliamentary timetable has been extremely, not to say excessively, crowded. Quite apart from the other possible reasons, there simply has not been time for such a debate. My hon. Friend has now done something to remedy the state of affairs of which he was complaining by introducing a short debate on Anglo-Canadian relations, a debate to which he has contributed in so distinguished a way. We are also grateful for the authoritative contribution of the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English).

I cannot claim to know Canada anything like as well as my hon. Friend does. I have been there only once. I certainly gained some of the impressions that my hon. Friend has about the size and regional feelings of that country. The latter are no doubt due to the history of Canada, as well as to its enormous size. Flying over it, initially on my way to Alberta, I was told when we got to Newfoundland that we had travelled only half-way. That is an illustration of the great size of that country.

The Anglo-Canadian connection is still a close family one. My hon. Friend's phrase that it was a close-knit family fits well, although the family relationship continues to evolve. Some of the value of our relationship today lies in the context of our common membership of the Commonwealth and NATO and of the many international organisations within which we work together to achieve mutually agreed aims. The hon. Member for Nottingham, West talked about Mr. Lester Pearson, a most distinguished exponent of diplomacy, who did good service to many international organisations. The current relationship between Britain and Canada continues to be harmonious bilaterally, and we concert our efforts in the whole spectrum of multilateral activity in which we are jointly engaged.

We enjoy excellent relations with the federal Government of Canada and, as a result, we understand clearly the other's approach to international affairs. Our two Governments have co-operated closely in the course of the series of economic summits which have proved of such worth in enabling Western nations to co-ordinate their approach to the complex issues that face us today. Next year's summit, the seventh, is to take place in Ottawa. As my hon. Friend said so eloquently, our relationships are sustained by countless personal ties. I wish to stress this at the outset. There are no major differences of opinion between our two countries.

Canada remains one of our most important trading partners and continues to be a key source of raw materials for our industries. Last year we maintained our position as a major exporter to Canada, despite competition from elsewhere. Canada is our fourteenth largest export market—nine of the top 10 are European—and, bearing in mind that 70 per cent. of Canadian trade is with the United States, our share of its market is around 3 per cent., which is slightly larger than in 1978, which is not bad. We hope that that position will be maintained.

I come now to the question that dominated my hon. Friend's speech and also the speech of the hon. Member for Nottingham, West. The subject is of particular concern to the House. I wish mildly to take up one phrase used by. my hon. Friend, who talked about the colonial status of Canada. I know what he means, but it is inaccurate. I do not think that for many years Canada can be said to have had colonial status. The subject that we are discussing is anomalous in that respect. For many years, Canada has been a fully sovereign independent country. She is a founder member of the League of Nations. Even any theoretical elements, as opposed to real elements, of colonial status were swept away by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. Long before that, Canada was a fully-fledged sovereign Power.

Hon. Members will know that the set of Canadian proposals were laid before the Canadian Parliament in October. The Canadian Government secured a majority of 156 to 83 at the completion of the debate on those proposals in their House of Commons. The proposals are under consideration by a special joint committee of the Canadian Senate and House of Commons. The reporting date of that committee has been postponed from 9 December to 6 February. That shows that the proposals are attracting a great deal of interest. It is also true that they have come under considerable criticism from some quarters in Canada. I am told that about 400 bodies or individuals wish to give evidence before the committee. No doubt that explains the change in the date. Once the committee reports, parliamentary debate in Canada will follow. We do not know how long that process will take.

As my hon. Friend said, the matter has been carefully studied by our Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, which has done such sterling work since it was established. I do not have the advantage of having attended any of its hearings, as my hon. Friend has, and I do not know what its conclusions will be or whether I shall agree with them. I do not wish to anticipate its conclusions. We all appreciate the great effort that the Committee has made on this and other matters.

At the present time, neither the Parliament of Canada nor the legislatures of Canada's provinces can pass laws repealing, amending or altering the central provisions of the British North America Act 1964. To do so still requires an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament. That is what my hon. Friend meant by "colonial status".

However, by constitutional convention and by reason of Canada's sovereign status, the British Parliament cannot act to amend the Canadian constitution except when requested to do so by the Canadian authorities—normally in a joint address to the Queen by both Canadian Houses of Parliament—but it is bound to act in accordance with a proper request from the Canadian authorities and cannot refuse to do so. The British Parliament or Government may not look behind any federal request for amendment, including a request for patriation of the Canadian constitution.

My hon. Friend drew a distinction between Government and Parliament which is valid. He used as an example the attempt to reform another place. He reminded us that it had run into the sand. I do not need arty reminding of that, nor does the hon. Member for Nottingham, West, because we were part of the sand at that time. My hon. Friend also drew attention to the more recent event.

We have as yet received no request from the federal Government of Canada. It is possible that the text of the proposals, as it now stands, may be changed by the time any request is received. The hon. Member for Nottingham, West referred to that possibility. We do not know when the request to our Parliament, based on those proposals, will come. I do not see how I could conceivably start offering opinions on the substance of the proposals in such circumstances. My hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Nottingham, West were understanding when talking about their greater freedom to comment. It would be wrong for me, or any Government spokesman, to make remarks that inevitably would be construed in Canada as an interference in her internal affairs. The hon. Member for Nottingham, West strongly emphasised, by implication, that there can be no denying that the matter is at present a wholly Canadian one. No proposals have crossed the Atlantic.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister pointed out to the House on 9 December that the democratically elected Parliament of Canada is dealing with the matter, and, provided that the expected majority is received, it will be putting to this country a request for patriation in due course. My right hon. Friend said that when such a request is received from the Canadian Government we shall try to deal with it as expeditiously as possible and in accordance with precedent.

My right hon. Friend added that on 14 previous occasions the House had been asked to deal with requests from the federally elected Parliament of Canada. We have done so in accordance with well-established precedents, bearing in mind that we are an elected Parliament and the federal Parliament of Canada is a similar elected Parliament. When we receive a request, we shall try to deal with it as soon as we can.

I am grateful for the way that my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Nottingham, West have approached the matter. We all agree that it is a delicate issue within Canada and that it would be wrong for the House to anticipate its response to a request for patriation. That would inevitably exacerbate the controversy within Canada and could not fail to affect our relations with the Canadian federal Government.

Our good relations bring mutual benefits and encourage co-ordination of our approaches in international fora. There are close family ties. The House would not wish those relations to be affected. We all know the difficulties of the matter and the restraints under which we are acting. I am grateful to my hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman for what they said.

I wish to discuss the funding and role of the BBC at a time when significant cuts are being forced on public service broadcasting. The background is provided by the director-general's letter to all BBC staff in February this year, stating that over the next two years the corporation was aiming to make cuts in planned expenditure of £130 million.

It is proposed to achieve those savings by cutting back on new items of budgeting expenditure and by deferring indefinitely improvements that the BBC had proposed to make in the conditions of service of its staff. Even so, £40 million still had to be saved by cuts in existing services. While they were spread over all areas of domestic service, those cuts were particularly heavy in the regions and in local radio.

I wish to raise the question of the Government's responsibility for driving the BBC into this position, the justification or otherwise for the policy, and the alternatives. In particular, I wish to raise the question of the role of public service broadcasting in an era of cuts, without conceding—because I do not—the case for the Government's misguidedly monolithic obsession with the public sector borrowing requirement and public expenditure cuts in general

I shall leave aside that essential wider point. I wish to question, within the constraints of the cuts, the whole direction of Government policy on broadcasting. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) wishes to speak briefly after I have finished and I hope that he will be able to do so.

The background to the present position lies in the Home Secretary's publication a year ago of the BBC's forward plan. It acknowledged that the BBC's productivity had improved markedly over the past decade. For example, it showed that, at constant prices, expenditure in 1978–79 had risen by nearly 5 per cent. compared with the figure in 1969–70 but that during the same period the hours of output had increased by 20 per cent. in television and 38 per cent. in radio and, since 1971–72, by 63 per cent. in local radio. The plan also indicated that the cost of each hour of output had reduced during that period by 13 per cent. in television and 25 per cent. in radio and, since 1971–72, by 22 per cent. in local radio.

Nevertheless, the Home Secretary chose to award a licence fee increase which, while it was the highest-ever percentage increase, provided a licence fee for colour sets of £6 or £7 less than the right hon. Gentleman knew was needed if the BBC was not merely to begin the first two years of its 10-year plan but to maintain even existing services. I contend that, as a result, the BBC remains under-financed, even though its output remains substantially greater than that of its competitor.

For example, net advertising revenue to ITV is expected to be about £550 million this year, while the BBC's total income for the year will be about £500 million. The BBC therefore has less money to operate two television channels, four radio networks and 22 local radio stations, as well as all the regional services, than ITV has to run a single network. In addition, the average production costs of an hour of network BBC television is less than half the cost of an hour of network ITV.

I do not believe that anyone can defend those huge discrepancies as a fair and justified distribution of the nation's resources. They reflect purely the anomaly of different forms of financing. The implications are profound. The Government's decisions on the fourth television channel, the expansion of independent local radio and the licence fee imply a significant shift in the balance of resources away from the BBC and towards independent broadcasting. Those decisions raise the fundamental question whether the BBC will be able to maintain its charter obligations to educate, inform and entertain. So far, the BBC has shown clear signs of retreating from regional and local broadcasting and from its commitment to educational programmes.

There are two aspects to the central question. The more important is to determine what should be the BBC's role in the 1980s and, hence, what is an adequate level of finance to meet that role and the most appropriate form of funding. The other aspect, which is a shorter turning point, is to maintain the fabric of the BBC and its existing services and to prevent what could otherwise be a precipitate adoption of a course of action that would transform the BBC into a London-dominated organisation primarily concerned with competing with independent broadcasting for mass audiences.

On the first issue, it cannot be stated too strongly that what is wrong is that the enforced so-called economies of £130 million have evolved not from the presentation to the public of a coherent or structured plan for the future of the BBC but as a resigned reaction by BBC management to political pressure. The Government's policy on cash limits is being used to shift the balance of influence from the public to the private sector by hamstringing the BBC.

Can it really be claimed that it is a considered strategy for survival to cut back on regional broadcasting, and to finance a half-hearted local radio expansion at the expense of existing stations, at a time when the commercial sector on both television and radio is set for unprecedented expansion? Can our foremost national cultural institution really hope to survive if its response to commercial expansion is to shrink back into its metropolitan shell and reliance on big city production centres? Can it be right that the BBC's news gathering operations, which are second to none, should be crippled in some of its key elements by cutbacks in the regions and in local radio? Surely, this is a classic example of sacrificing in the interest of short-term cost-cutting appeal assets which are crucial to the BBC's very survival as an organisation.

I am aware that there are two possible objections to this line of argument, and I want to deal with each. The first is to ask whether it is justified to put such emphasis, which I and others have, on the preservation and expansion of the BBC's present position. I believe that the answer to that question is positive, because there is clear evidence both that the BBC is cheaper than independent broadcasting and that it is run more efficiently. I am not saying that the BBC does not suffer from many faults. I am not making a "commercial" on its behalf. I am saying that the comparisons are clearly in its favour, and that should be taken fully into account by the Government in their funding proposals.

I take as an example a straight comparison between the BBC and ITV for the year 1978–79. I draw the ITV figures from those that have been published by the IBA. One sees that the BBC has an operating cost of just over £19,000 per hour while ITV has an operating cost of nearly £35,000 per hour. The cost advantages are in the BBC's favour by almost two to one. Furthermore, there is no question but that the BBC operates with manning levels that are far below those of its commercial competitors, and it works with substantially fewer facilities. For example, in 1977 it had 10 fewer studios and six fewer outside broadcasting units. The situation certainly has not improved since then.

Not only that; the private sector makes almost no contribution to training, and ironically it receives substantial indirect public financial support from the fact that the £385 million spent on television advertising is tax-deductible. Indeed, Annan itself concluded that:

"The BBC's production costs are three times lower than those in America, and it is more economical in resources, costs and output than ITV ½ we conclude that the public is getting good value for money for the licence fee."

Therefore, I submit that the efficiency argument tells only in favour of the BBC.

I recognise that there is a second objection that may be used against the argument that cash limits should not be the basis of forcing the nation's single important cultural institution to change its identity in an unplanned manner. It is that the nation cannot do otherwise because the money is just not available. That is simply not true, for two reasons. First, money is available, but it is not distributed appropriately according to the national interest. The BBC is being depleted, and is asked to compete with a new television channel and a great many new independent local radio stations, when its competitors have soaring profits and an enormous cash flow. The problem is not the overall lack of national resources but rather the unwillingness of Governments—the previous as well as the present—to grasp the problem of dealing with the disparity of resources available to independent broadcasting and of those available to the BBC.

Secondly—this is an absolutely central point—this whole situation of cutbacks arises out of the inadequacy of the current licence fee funding. If, since the colour licence was introduced in 1968, the licence fee had kept up with wages, it would now be £54 instead of £34. If it had kept up with the cost of a newspaper such as The Daily Telegraph, it would now be £72. In fact, out of 13 European countries, the BBC's black and white licence fee is the lowest, Only two countries have a lower colour licence fee, while no fewer than eight countries have colour licence fees ranging from £40 to £67. To save the BBC from cuts, decline and even rundown as a public service broadcasting institution would require only an additional 2p a day on the licence fee. At 11p, which is what it would then be, it would still be cheaper than The Daily Telegraph, and in the view of many a great deal better.

What is the alternative to the present policy of forcing the BBC to cut its cloth according to arbitrary cash limits? It is to the great credit of the unions—the Association of Broadcasting Staffs and the National Union of Journalists—that they have faced this question and begun to provide positive answers at two levels, both on the primacy of the question of role and on alternative systems of funding. The unions have insisted above all that the BBC must remain the major instrument of broadcasting in this country. It is they who have insisted that the BBC must provide television and radio programmes of high quality for both majority and minority audiences, operate throughout the United Kingdom and be provided with the finance to enable it both to maintain its position and to compete effectively with independent television and radio.

Having said that, it is only fair to add that the unions have by no means rejected the idea of economies as such in the public sector. Both the ABS and the NUJ have made it clear that in their view—I entirely agree—economies can be made only when there is a political consensus on what the role of the BBC should be in the 1980s.

The other crucial matter, which the unions and others as well have rightly stressed, is the need for an urgent reappraisal of the way in which the BBC is funded. The licence fee is far from satisfactory, in that it is obtrusive and hard to collect, unfair, regressive and hard to adjust. Many consider that at the very least it ought to be index-linked. An alternative proposal, which would achieve the same goal of buoyancy, would be an extra percentage on VAT sufficient to finance the BBC's requirements as agreed. It would be unobtrusive and easy to collect via the existing machinery and it would have the attraction of being close to the way in which ITV is financed, since the cost of advertising on ITV also puts up the price of goods.

An even better suggestion, perhaps—one that retains those benefits but adds a further important one—is that a small percentage, perhaps 0.3 per cent. would be about right, should be added to the current level of national insurance cintributions. That has the extra advantage that it would be paid exclusively by the working population, and it would thus exempt pensioners from what has for many of them become quite an onerous tax.

I ask the Minister to confirm his support for the several points that I have raised—first, that there is an urgent need for a public debate to achieve a political consensus, which I do not believe exists at present, on the role and coverage of the BBC in the 1980s; secondly, that the BBC has been chronically under-financed and that comparative efficiency indicators justify a substantial improvement in funding; thirdly, that serious examination of alternative methods of financing should now be set in hand, and in particular the drawing of a percentage from the national insurance levy should be considered; fourthly, that whatever alternative system is adopted, Government control over the finances of the BBC should be phased out either in favour of an automatically inflation-proofed system or reviewed by an independent "buffer" committee which could protect the recipients of public money from political control as is already done—the Minister should not laugh—in the case of the University Grants Committee and the Arts Council.

I very much hope that the Minister will be positive on all those points.

rose—

Has the hon. Gentleman the permission of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) to intervene?

indicated assent.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) on his lucid presentation. I support him in his view that the licence fee should be increased. I cannot entirely follow him in all his ingenious variations. I spent three years on the Annan committee agonising over replacements for the licence fee. If the House wishes to will the achievement of good broadcasting and sees the consequences in social and economic terms and the crisis of morale that now affect the BBC, we should be prepared also to will the means. That means all hon. Members saying that they believe in a higher licence fee. It is a regressive tax. It is unpopular with our consitituents. We should, however, say why we believe in it and what is at stake.

The only point that I wish to make concerns the crisis of morale in local radio, which is now acute. At the House recently my hon. Friend chaired a meeting of the staff of local radio on the day when they took industrial action as a protest against the constraints under which they are placed. Local radio is now being forced through the cost-cutting to which my hon Friend referred into producing what will be much more of a network service—a kind of Radio 5—rather than the comprehensive community service that was planned for local radio and is still envisaged in the announcement of the working party made yesterday.

The Minister said in the House yesterday that he cannot tell the BBC how it must dispose of its services, because that would be political interference. I should like to examine the proportion of the budget that goes to BBC radio. This amounts to 21 per cent. for Radio 2, 24 per cent. for Radio 4, 18 per cent. for the regional services and 11 per cent. for local radio. Does the Minister believe that the BBC can sustain expansion and maintain a genuine community service on the basis of 11 per cent. of the total radio budget that it now receives? Is he prepared to say in the House that he feels that the future of local radio, or, at least, the BBC segment of it, is secure? My own view is that it is not. Morale in local radio stations throughout the country is lower now than at any time since local radio was introduced. That is directly the fault of the Government, who are not providing the means for the expansion that is needed.

The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), who presented this subject before the House, as is so often his wont, presented the Government's policy in a slightly sinister context, portraying it as if there was a deliberate intention on the Government's part to have it in for the BBC and to support the independent sector of broadcasting. The hon. Gentleman talked of a shift of the balance of resources and matters of that kind. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman and to the House that in talking in those terms he failed to accept that whether the broadcasting services provided by the BBC are financed through the licence fee or by some other method, such as his proposed surcharge on national insurance, there must be a profound difference between the financing of a public institution through public money and the financing of an independent system.

It is idle, however hard one tries to think of alternative methods of financing, to think that an institution such as the BBC which, at the last analysis, by whatever mechanism one chooses, is financed by the decisions of the community through the Government and through this House, can do anything other than reflect economic circumstances and economic whims blowing through the economy as a whole as they affect the public sector. The hon. Gentleman's comparison between what is happening in the BBC and what is happening in the independent television world and the independent local radio world will not lead us to a solution of the real problem in regard to the funding of the BBC. The hon. Gentleman made much of the alleged lack of efficiency of the independent sector compared with the BBC. I do not propose to deal with that point in any detail except to point out one or two aspects of the matter to which the hon. Member has perhaps failed to do justice.

If the hon. Gentleman's argument is true, it goes very much against the theme of his speech. The more efficient the BBC is, the higher its productivity and the more it can achieve with a given sum of money. If one is trying to mount that argument and to say that the BBC is able to produce programmes at lower cost than the ITV and the ILR, that is an argument for allowing it less money rather than more. That is not an argument that I seek to make. I merely make those remarks to show the fundamental irrelevance of that sort of comparison. If one is talking of independent television and its costs, it is right to say that the income of independent television companies is not wholly spent on programmes. Part goes to profits, but of those profits substantial sums come back to the Government in both levy and corporation tax.

Secondly, it is right to say that independent television is a federal system. It necessarily follows that the same economies of scale cannot be achieved by a company whose output of programmes is only a small percentage of that of the BBC. That applies even to the largest of the ITV companies. If one is looking at the cost pressures, and if the hon. Gentleman chose to meet some of the companies involved in independent television and heard what they say about the additional expenditure involved in financing the fourth channel, he might take a different view.

I would also mention in this context that my right hon. Friend told the House on the Third Reading of the Broadcasting Bill that he and my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer were reviewing the levy on independent television. That remains the position. There is no question of hypothecating the proceeds of the levy for any particular purpose. All that indicates that the picture presented by the hon. Gentleman of a flush independent sector made more flush in some sinister way by Government policy as compared with a lean, taut and spare BBC is one that I do not think really bears close scrutiny even if it was relevant to the substantial point that I had understood the House would be debating—namely, the role of the BBC licence fee in financing the BBC. I do not think that it is.

It is reasonable, if one is having a system of public funding—I shall come in a moment to the question of alternative approaches and alternative mechanisms—that the community should decide at a given point how much it will require its citizens to pay for a service such as the BBC. Nothing that I say is meant in any way to detract from, or reflect on, the tremendous achievements of the BBC and its central role in our national life. I feel that the hon. Gentleman did a disservice to the reputation of the BBC with his dark hints and statements about the consequences of the cuts that the BBC had to make as a result of the level of licence fee which was fixed by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.

The hon. Gentleman talked about a threat to the BBC's charter obligations. However, the BBC has not come to the Home Office saying that it is unable to maintain its charter obligations, and anyone who listens to the output of the BBC or watches what it puts on television will see readily that there is no truth in such a suggestion, if it is made.

A little later in his remarks, the hon. Gentleman went a bit further in his flights of hyperbole and said that the very survival of the BBC as an organisation was at stake. I find it difficult to feel that the cuts that the BBC has had to make in its expenditure as a whole can possibly be described as threatening its survival as an organisation.

On 18 April, when the governors announced their decisions about the economies that they were to make, they made it clear that £90 million of the £130 million cuts involved the postponement of desired improvements and planned increases in expenditure. I am not saying that those improvements were not desirable, but there are many other things which are desirable and have to be postponed if economic circumstances necessitate that.

I do not think that it can be said with any pretence of credibility that the postponement of desired improvements to that sort of tune threatens the very survival of any organisation. To use language of that kind is to endanger one's very credibility, and it is important, because reputations are crucial in this matter, for us to put the matter in proportion.

Looking at the position in this sort of way, we see that the BBC has had to make cuts which undoubtedly it did not want to make. It would have been ready, willing and able to spend public money if the public money had been provided. I have little doubt that that is the case. But that does not mean that the consequences of the licence fee level reached have been as dire as the hon. Gentleman suggested.

What is more, for the hon. Gentleman to say that the BBC made those cuts in an unplanned manner is to do less than justice to the BBC. It is no part of the duties of the Government, nor should it be, to express a public view about the distribution of resources within the BBC. That must be a matter for the BBC. Although on occasion I am tempted by events such as the present ones to express views about what the BBC should do, I have no doubt that, the moment such views were expressed in any firm form, the line of attack would rightly change and there would be criticism about undermining the independence of the BBC by attempting to dictate to it the structure and pattern of its planning and programmes. That is a temptation into which I shall not fall. However, whatever the BBC did in its announcement on 18 April and whether it chose wisely, it was not an unplanned response.

We are left with a genuine and real problem. The BBC can find things on which to spend almost unlimited sums of money. I do not say that in any critical sense, because the frontiers are always moving forward and it is possible, perfectly responsibly and without any kind of inefficiency, to find new things which could usefully and valuably be done if the money were there. But the question which the Government have to decide every time this comes up is how much of this we as a nation can afford and whether the financial arrangements, as opposed to the programming arrangements, of the corporation are such as to justify compliance with a request for a particular licence fee. The corporation produces its plans and programmes, and a decision has to be taken.

A proposal has been made by the BBC that an independent body should be set up to provide an impartial assessment of any request by the corporation for increases in the licence fees. There are obvious difficulties about that in that an independent body could no doubt pronounce upon the efficiency of the operation and the viability of what is proposed. But it might be more difficult for such a body to go beyond that and express a view about the share of national resources which the BBC should take. That is a very different matter from looking at specific proposals from the point of view of whether they make sense on their own as opposed to whether they make sense in the context of the public financial picture as a whole. None the less, my right hon. Friend is considering that proposal. I am not in a postion to express a concluded view on it either way and would not wish to be interpreted as doing so.

If the total level of the spending that the BBC can be allowed to carry out in a given year is determined in any other way than the present—with the assistance of an independent body or in some other way—even if that is possible, it will still be necessary to consider the question of the means by which the money is raised. Here I come to the licence fee. I hope that the hon. Member for Oldham, West will not think that I am teasing him too much if I say that when it came to the practical suggestion of an alternative, as opposed to the more philosophical call for a public debate leading to a political consensus, his hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) was noticeably less enthusiastic, in his brief intervention, for the solution reached with admirable speed by the hon. Member for Oldham, West.

It may just be that the experience of serving for three years on the Annan committee, which considered in considerable detail the merits and disadvantages of alternative means of funding the BBC, gave the hon. Member for Derby, North an assessment of the matter founded on realism. I am not suggesting that he did not have it before. Joking aside, if one is on a body looking specifically at the alternatives, one looks fully at the pros and cons over a period. The committee came down firmly in favour of the licence fee as the method of financing the BBC.

The hon. Member for Oldham, West suggested an alternative in the form of an addition to the national insurance tax. Although it is true that the overwhelming majority of people have radio and television—television is the only one that is relevant to this debate—they choose to have them; they are not obliged to have them. Although television is a central part of the lives of millions of people, there are sound objections to financing the BBC out of general taxation. Those who do not have television would have legitimate cause to object.

The tax suggested by the hon. Gentleman would be a tax on jobs. Whether that would commend itself to everyone is another matter on which there may be some debate. No doubt one could find another tax to which that objection would not apply, but I have little doubt that there would be an alternative objection of equal cogency. That is, no doubt, one of the reasons why no such tax has been found suitable, even if one accepted, which I do not, that taxation was the alternative.

I do not believe that the interests that the hon. Gentleman has at heart would benefit in any way from a transfer from a licence fee system of funding to a taxation system. I cannot see how that would help. It certainly would not help in giving the BBC more money, unless one assumed that the £500 million or so that the BBC costs would simply be absorbed in the general maw of taxation and that increases in its finances could be forgotten, being lost by sleight of hand in the general level of taxation.

The hon. Member for Oldham, West shakes his head. I am sure that someone with his intellectual rigour would not wish that to happen. If it does happen, one will be faced with the problem that we have at the moment of deciding how much the country should be required to pay for the BBC.

It is not an easy task, but I suggest that it falls on the Government and must fall on the Government. I say to the hon. Gentleman, in support of the proposition that the Government have got it right, that when the licence fee went up the Home Office was not inundated with correspondence complaining that the increase was too low.

I thank the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) for curtailing his debate, after the important statement today, to enable me to raise this matter. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Hamilton). We all know how difficult it is to make shorter speeches. I also thank the fates for giving me the luck to draw a place for this debate. It would have been wrong for me to go home for the Christmas holidays without bringing this important matter before the House. An Adjournment debate is perhaps the best means of outlining our problems and, we hope, of getting some answers from the Government.

Many hon. Members are dissatisfied with their water authorities. One water authority has been taken to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The authorities are like the giant ships, such as the "Great Eastern", or the giant aeroplane the Brabazon. They were constructed at the end of an era and never really took off, because everything changed almost the moment they were constructed.

The water authorities have lurched from crisis to crisis. Whatever their newer duties, their prime job must still be to provide pure and wholesome water—in this case for my constituents. Their second job is to provide water for industry to a standard which has been set over many generations. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) in the Chamber. I hope that she will be able to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and expand on that aspect.

The water authorities do not seem to think that it is right that they should provide water for industry. Mr. Barraclough, the chief environmental health officer of my local authority, Calderdale, has said:

"The Yorkshire Water Authority seem to be of the opinion that is not their duty to provide waters tailored to the needs of industrial users."

Sowerby is in the middle of the Pennines. It has been renowned for its pure water for hundreds of years; hence, the wool textile industry is based there. The water is more important than the sheep. Better wool comes from other areas, but the industry grew up because of the purity of its water.

The water has always been pure. In the mid–1970s, when I was chairman of the local education authority, I asked the Yorkshire water authority to use one of its reservoirs for water sport for the children. That use was denied. The water authority said that the water was too pure, so the filtration system was not and need not be rigorous.

The Yorkshire water authority inherited a good system, but it has gone downhill since then. It now has a deficiency of delivery. In the delivery of pure water, the water authority has woefully and complacently—that is the worst part of it—failed in its duty.

I shall not bore the House with the vast array of documents I have setting out every detail of the Yorkshire water authority's complacency over the years. It started in 1974, when a Mr. Goulden, the divisional public health inspector, in a letter to Mr. R. H. Wood, the chief environmental health officer, said:

"You will appreciate that apart from passing complaints on to the Yorkshire Water Authority, which do not always receive attention, there is very little the department can do. I feel it is time the Yorkshire Water Authority 'came out of hiding' and issued some statement regarding their water supplies, as I understand that complaints are not only confined to this division, but also other areas of their distribution service."

More and more complaints have followed. Fear has been allowed to breed in people's minds. Whenever people have complained—whether they be old ladies living alone and frightened by press reports and by black water coming from their taps, whether they be firms or parish councils, which in my area are very active and useful in monitoring local difficulties—they have been met with complacency.

This year, a crisis was reached. Apart from industry being crippled, more importantly, after years of complaining, the quality of the water has twice been found unacceptable to the World Health Authority. An analysis was taken in July in Mytholmroyd, a village in my constituency. The analyst said:

"The above sample is completely unacceptable for mains water due to a very heavy deposit of manganese, associated with smaller quantities of iron and traces of lead and copper. The recommended WHA limits were exceeded for all four metals."

That is not acceptable, and it was not an isolated instance. In October 1980, another sample was taken at Scarbottom House Cragg Road, Mytholmroyd. The analyst's report concluded:

"The levels of iron and manganese found are likely to give rise to complaints regarding taste, discolouration, deposits and turbidity. In my opinion, since the manganese exceeds the internationally set maximum permissible limit, the source is undesirable for domestic use."

Had a manufacturer of food been the subject of two such damning reports over those months, he would have been put out of business.

However, we have again received complacent answers from the water authority. Speaking of Mytholmroyd, it said:

"Although the supply can be very discoloured, it does not follow that the water is bacteriologically unsafe. The bacteriological quality of the water is checked regularly and frequently. The basic problem in the Mytholmroyd area is in fact typical of many areas."

If it is typical, the authority should be doing more about it. The problem of impure water is not a problem for the citizens but a problem for the Yorkshire water authority. The citizens are the victims.

However, amazingly, since I announced in the local press that I was seeking this debate, the water authority has said that it has found some cash to proceed in two years' time. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is in some difficulty, but I should like to know whether that money will be available sooner and whether we still have any reason to trust the Yorkshire water authority. Can he give my citizens—children, old people, those going about their daily business, who must rely on this supply of water—any further assurances as to its safety?

I thank the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Thompson) for allowing me briefly to intervene in his debate. I strongly support and confirm everything he said.

We want to impress upon the Minister the fact that the water in our constituencies should satisfy two criteria: it should be safe to drink and it should be clean for domestic and industrial purposes. This is a long-standing problem and has not just cropped up in the past few months or weeks. Our constituents have beets extremely patient. There is every evidence that the problem has become worse in the past few months, with complaints regarding colour, taste, deposits and turbidity.

Our major concern is the health aspect. Samples of water have been shown to contain a level of iron that is well above the level set as the permissible level by the World Health Organisation. Will the Minister give a categoric assurance that the water being consumed by the citizens of Calderdale is completely safe to drink and that it does not constitute a danger to health?

This problem affects an important industry in my constituency called Reliance Hosiery. The managing director first complained to the Yorkshire water authority three years ago. For four years, he has experienced a steady deterioration in the quality of water supplied to his dye house. Since June 1980 it has proved impossible to dye any white socks in Halifax because of the severe greenish-yellow discoloration of the water. He now has to send 15,000 pairs of socks a week to outside companies in the Midlands. The dyeing of all socks is affected, and the managing director has to put additional chemicals into the water. The authority's analysis shows that an increase in iron, aluminium and manganese has taken place over the past two years. It has caused increased production costs, including several thousand pounds on filtration equipment.

Times are hard enough for manufacturing industry. The water authority has not offered a satisfactory solution. Presumably, the deterioration will continue unless the present trend is stopped. I have referred to one of Halifax's most successful companies. However, it represents only one example of the way in which industry is being hit.

We are told by the Yorkshire water authority that work to improve Calderdale's water will begin in 1982, which is the year after next. It says that the work might not be completed until 1985. I shall pause to let that sink in. That is a long time for anybody to tolerate such a situation and to remain patient until something is done.

Yesterday, on the eve of this debate, I received a card from the Yorkshire water authority which wished me a happy Christmas. My Christmas, and that of my constituents, would be a lot happier if the Minister were to give us an assurance that the water is completely safe. My constituents will have to drink that water until the end of 1985. We should also be happier if he would give us an assurance that the condition of the water will not deteriorate further before 1985 and that the work will start before 1982 and end well before 1985.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Thompson) has established a reputation as one of the most dedicated attenders of debates. It is typical of the attention that he devotes to his constituents' concerns that he has managed to raise this important issue at a time when many hon. Members have already departed for the Christmas Recess.

The anxieties expressed about the purity of the water supply in Calderdale have mostly emanated from the upper valley in my hon. Friend's constituency. Recently I have also received complaints, particularly about the situation in Hipperholme and Clifton in my constituency. At best, the discoloured water proves an embarrassment and an inconvenience. My constituents bathe in water that probably leaves them dirtier when they get out than when they got in and they have a just cause for complaint. One can imagine that washing clothes is impossible. An undesirable flavour is given to tea that is brewed with it.

At other times, the water is quite clean and apparently pure. However, the situation can change rapidly and is apparently unpredictable. At worst, my constituents might naturally, rightly or wrongly, fear for their health. Reassuring statements from the Yorkshire water authority are out of accord with those from such people as Calderdale's deputy chief environmental health officer, who is reported to have said:

"We think the situation quite appalling and the committee was amazed by the findings."

The county analyst, when referring to a sample that was taken from a home in my constituency, said that he found it completely unacceptable for mains water due to a heavy deposit of manganese. The World Health Organisation's recommended limits were exceeded for lead, manganese, iron and copper. Even if the amount of lead is below the maximum permitted level, it is still very much higher than the maximum desirable level. A sample taken in Brighouse in my constituency had five times the desired level of iron although it was still within the maximum permissible level.

I can only repeat what the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby have said—namely, that it is vital for the situation to be clarified as soon as possible. The water authority must take steps to ensure that it supplies clean water to those who work and live in Calderdale and pay high water rates for the privilege.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Sowerby (Mr. Thompson) and for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. Waller) and the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) for bringing this important issue to the attention of the House. They are three diverse Members. The only connecting link must be that they are all dyed in the wool in that part of the world. The fact that they have all contributed to the debate indicates that there is a real concern. I am grateful to my hon. Friends and the hon. Lady for giving me a chance to renew the acquaintance that I used to have with the textile industry in Halifax, Linthwaite and Wibsey, and I know some of the problems to which my hon. Friends have referred.

The House will recall that when the regional water authorities were set up in 1974 they took over from about 1,400 public bodies. During the past six years they have been grappling with many inherited problems. Discoloured water supplies are not peculiar to the Yorkshire area but they are particularly difficult there, especially in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby and in that of the hon. Lady.

The problems derive from an inheritance of many upland reservoir sources of soft peaty water with inadequate provision of treatment facilities to remove colour. This problem has been exacerbated in some areas by a large proportion of unlined iron mains in the associated distribution systems. These old mains are encrusted with iron and manganese deposits built up over many years of service. Such deposits can be stirred up by fluctuations in the rate of flow in the mains and can reach consumers' taps on occasions in larger than usual concentrations.

I am advised that concentrations of iron and manganese in the Calderdale supplies are high. However, I am advised—I must choose my words as carefully as I can—that they are not such as to be hazardous to health and consumers should have no fear on that account. However, in the light of what my hon. Friend has said about World Health Organisation reports, I shall draw the particular attention of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment who has responsibility for water to what has been said and ask him to write to my hon. Friend when he has had proper investigations carried out on his behalf.

What is the source of the hon. Gentleman's advice? Who has advised him that the supply is not hazardous to health?

No doubt the hon. Lady has replied to several Adjournment debates. I can say only that I am conveying the best advice that is available to me within the Department. If I am able to let my hon. Friends and the hon. Lady know of a more exact source, I shall undertake to write to them.

Water authorities with discoloured water problem areas are working continuously, albeit perhaps slowly, towads an elimination of the factors which give rise to such conditions. Long-term programmes of mains relining and renewal are in progress, but the scale of the work to be done is such that many years will be required before all unsatisfactory systems have been cured.

I understand that in Yorkshire there are some 20 existing treatment plants with raw water colour problems and an associated 4,000 kilometres of unlined iron mains adding to the difficulties. Although the problem is recognised, it clearly cannot be solved overnight.

In the Calderdale area, the water authority plans to reconstruct the Thrum Hall water treatment works by 1985 at a cost of nearly £5 million, and this, I understand, should enable colour to be removed from the raw water before reaching supply. Renovation of the associated unlined distribution mains is estimated to require the expenditure of some £20 million, and no target date for completion of this work has yet been forecast.

Discoloured water is not the only problem which has faced the Yorkshire water authority since reorganisation in 1974. The great drought of 1975–76 highlighted the region's lack of adequate source works and hon. Members will know that great strides have been made since then in the construction of the Yorkshire grid to strengthen the availability of reliable water supplies to consumers. New intakes have been constructed at Barmby on the river Derwent, at Niddsmouth on the river Ouse and at Lobwood on the river Wharfe to feed to an interconnected system of supply to the larger urban areas of West and South Yorkshire. A new regulating reservoir is under construction at Grimwith to support abstractions from the Wharfe, and the existing intake and treatment works at Elvington on the river Derwent has been extended to increase supplies.

While Yorkshire does not appear to have sewerage problems as serious as those which are apparent on the other side of the Pennines, there is still a great deal being done to improve and upgrade the inherited systems. In Sheffield the Don Valley sewer scheme is under construction at a cost of over £25 million, new sea outfalls are planned at Bridlington and Scarborough to clean up the beaches there and major sewage works and reconstruction projects are under way on the rivers Calder, Aire, Don and Wharfe to improve the quality of their waters.

Because of the heavy concentration of urban development on the slopes of the Pennines, the main Yorkshire rivers downstream have been of relatively low quality for many years, and much capital expenditure will be necessary over an extended period before they can be improved to a more satisfactory condition, capable of supporting some fish life and providing areas of recreation and amenity for enjoyment by the public.

While all this work is in progress, the authority must ensure that existing water and drainage facilities are extended and enlarged to service new development for industry and housing, as well as coping with known areas of low capacity where water pressures are low or inadequate sewers cause flooding.

The Yorkshire water authority is spending this year about £71 million on new water and sewerage capital works and plans to continue at roughly this rate for the next five years or so, subject to the availability of national resources.

Of that total, some £24 million would be spent on water supply works, including replacement and renovation of treatment plant and distribution mains as well as new source works. Of the remainder, about half would be spent on improvements to the sewerage system and half on reconstruction of sewage treatment works.

Much more information on the past performance of the water authorities is contained in their annual report and information about their future proposals is given in their annual corporate plans. These plans set out their proposed capital expenditure programmes, which form an input to the annual public expenditure survey and are discussed in more detail with officials of my Department.

In drawing up these plans and programmes, the authorities are given central guidance and are expected to have regard to Government policies and priorities. They are additionally required to consult local planning authorities with regard to structure and local plans. Within this framework they are relatively free to assess their own individual priorities in relation to local and regional circumstances.

This Government's determination to control and then reduce the rise in the public sector borrowing requirement and general public expenditure has an effect on the way in which water authorities prepare their annual plans. Their annual spending on capital works is constrained within the available national resources which can be allocated to them, and, in addition, tight cash limits have been imposed on their external financing. Internally, the authorities are constrained also in the rate at which they can finance improvements by the levels of charges which they consider their consumers can reasonably be asked to bear.

In short, it is not physically possible to do at once everything which is needed, and individual authorities will arrange their priorities for work, within their limited resources, according to local circumstances. This detailed assessment is something only they are equipped to do, and the Government do not interfere in this type of day-to-day management decision.

The views of my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Halifax will be conveyed rapidly to the Yorkshire water authority so that it knows the strength of feeling that has persuaded three hon. Members on the last day before the Christmas Recess to raise this important matter in the House. I shall ask my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Fox), who has the responsibility in the Department for this matter, to look into it.

In respect of the aggregate level of capital spending by the water authority, I assure the House that I have been told by the National Water Council that Government priorities for the maintenance of public health and the servicing of new developments are in general being met. In our current economic circumstances, it would be folly to expect to do more.

I welcome the opportunity for a short debate on the privacy of the individual and the safeguards that do or do not exist to protect that privacy.

I understand that it is not in order to make proposals as a basis for new legislation. I am aware that that is not appropriate, and I shall make no such suggestions.

Privacy has many aspects, but my particular concern has to do with the keeping of secret personal records about individuals and the consequences of this practice. By that I mean the relationship of an individual or certain aspects of that relationship to the State and its institutions or privately owned institutions. I am not concerned only about computers. The use of computers to control records has recently attracted much public attention. Computers are just one way in which records are stored and do not affect the principle of what I shall say.

There are relatively few controls over the way in which such private information can be used. Information may be supplied for one purpose and used by the institution collecting it for a different purpose.

But I turn to the good side as examples of what has been done well. The Consumer Credit Act 1974 gives an individual rights of access to information about him that may have been collected by credit reference agencies. If the individual concerned does not like what he finds, he is allowed to add a note of dissent about the way in which the records are kept. If he is in dispute, he may go to the Director General of Fair Trading for arbitration. That is an interesting model of what can be done and how safeguards have been built into past legislation covering one aspect of privacy.

I can best illustrate my concern by giving five examples, without mentioning names, of how the privacy of individuals has been encroached upon.

The first example concerns the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which received an allegation that a woman had battered her baby. The result was that various people called on this unfortunate woman. The allegation was based upon a rumour that the NSPCC had received, possibly through malicious intent. The lady concerned, who in no way had been guilty of battering her baby, was subjected to unfortunate and unpleasant interrogation and had no right to see the report upon which the allegation had been based. She still has no right to have her name removed from that record.

The second instance concerns an individual who was put on a drunken driving charge. By some mistake between the court and the police computer, the computer's record showed that the individual was sentenced for taking and driving away a vehicle. The mistaken record was read out in court on a subsequent occasion, to the great disadvantage of the person who was up on another and less serious charge. We are left with the position that the individual still has no right to see the police record—what is on the computer—and has no means of ensuring, in spite of his protestations, that the mistake has been rectified. It could clearly be disadvantageous to him in the future.

The third instance concerns an employee of a local authority who, on transferring to another local authority where she had been offered a job, was surprised to discover that the reference given by her former authority employer about her family life was somewhat damaging and suggested that she might not be suitable for the job for which she was applying. In spite of many efforts on her part, she has not been able to sort out precisely what is on the records. The reference has therefore been circulating and has not been helpful to her. Because she does not know precisely what the information is, the poor lady is unable to take legal action, not that she would want publicity about the issue anyway. It is invidious for many of the individuals concerned that if they publicise their cases and give their identities away it could have unfortunate consequences. So many individuals affected in that way are at a serious disadvantage in seeking to redress a wrong caused to them.

The fourth instance concerns an employer who, as a condition of taking on an employee, demanded a fidelity bond to protect him against any misappropriation of money or similar action by the employee. The application to the insurance company for such a bond was refused because it had information about the job applicant. There was no way in which that information could be revealed, and the applicant did not get the job. In future he may have great difficulty in getting a job because of something on a file somewhere. He does not know where the information originated or what it is, and he therefore cannot argue against it or prove that it is mistaken.

The fifth instance concerns medical records. There are a number of cases in which information about an individual is on a medical record, about which there is difficulty of access and thus of coming to terms with what is recorded, which may have unfortunate implications. One example concerns a woman who went to a doctor who told her that there was nothing physically wrong with her and referred her to a psychiatrist. She went to a different doctor who diagnosed a physical condition and operated to correct it. She is now concerned that there is on her NHS record a suggestion that she has psychiatric problems and that that might be unfortunate for her in the future.

This question of medical records arises in other circumstances. An example concerns a woman who was employed by a health authority and was injured in the course of her work. She took action against the authority in order to get compensation. The authority, without the lady's permission, gave her medical records to its legal advisers to use as part of its defence in the action she was bringing. That is an improper use of medical records and it indicates the dangers that exist when they can be used in this way.

Such records are not simply a matter of the relationship between the doctor and patient. The question arises of when the record is supplied by the doctor to someone else. For example, it might go not just to legal advisers of the authority but to an insurance company or a potential employer. Even in such circumstances, the person who is the subject of the medical record does not have any right to see what is said in it.

In a simpler way, there is still the difficulty that an individual may not see a medical record where there is no intention to supply it to somebody else. I understand the difficulties, for example, where an individual has a terminal illness and the doctor might feel that revealing the medical record could cause distress. That could also apply in the case of mental illness. Some information on medical records is speculative, and no doctor wants such information to be made available to a patient when it is not confirmed. On the other hand, an experiment was carried out at the Royal Melbourne hospital, Australia, and patients were allowed to see their medical records. It did not appear to have any unfortunate consequences either for the patients or for the doctors.

One safeguard would be if medical records were made available only in the presence of a doctor. Anything unfortunate contained in the records, or anything that the patient might misunderstand, could then be explained by the doctor. He could give the necessary assurances to the individual, who might otherwise be alarmed. Of course, a doctor needs to be present to decipher the handwriting on the medical records, otherwise they might as well be in a secret code, because no patient could know what they meant anyway.

There is a problem with privacy. The instances that I have given are only some, among many, of where institutions keep records that affect an individual. Those records may then be used and put into circulation in such a way that the individual is damaged by them. It may be that the records are perfectly truthful, in which case the individual may not be able to complain that they are damaging. But in other instances they may contain information that is not accurate and may be damaging. What is an individual to do in such a case? There is an increasing tendency in a modern State with modern developments for more and more records to be kept. There are people who seem to make it their life's work to keep records about their fellow citizens. That increasing encroachment on the individual is a matter of concern and something to which we should be alerted.

I have purposely left out of my speech the records kept by the police—with the exception of one instance that I quoted—fingerprints and so on. Although I am concerned about those also, they are properly the subject of another debate on a different occasion. Indeed, they have already been the subject of much discussion in the House. I have deliberately confined myself to a narrow aspect of privacy and the individual. I look forward with interest to the Minister's response. I shall then know whether he agrees that there is a problem and what action he suggests should be taken to put it right.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Dubs) on his good fortune in drawing a place to discuss a subject that is obviously of great importance. During the course of his speech he said that we have a problem about privacy. I do not dissent from that. We also have a problem about discussing privacy under the rules of the House. As the House knows, and as the hon. Gentleman indicated at the beginning of his speech, we are not able to discuss possible future legislation in Adjournment debates. That somewhat hampers any discussion of how to deal with the problems that the hon. Gentleman has put forward in his usual courteous and moderate way. I am afraid that we must observe the rules of the House. I shall try to give some sort of response to the hon. Gentleman within those terms.

As I have said already, I am glad that the debate gives me an opportunity to say a little about our views on the safeguards that exist to protect the privacy of the individual. Of course, it is a wide subject. The hon. Gentleman said that his prime concern was personal records. As well as saying something about the particular topics that the hon. Gentleman raised, I shall, if the opportunity arises, give a progress report on some of the other developments since the Younger committee reported.

The hon. Gentleman said that personal records did not concern only computers. There has been a lot of argument about personal records and data protection. One ingredient of that argument is the question whether the problem should be seen as concerning new developments in computers or records, whether on computers, in buff manilla files or wherever.

The whole question was examined by the departmental committee under the chairmanship of the late Sir Kenneth Younger. It reported in 1972 and made many recommendations, not all addressed to the Government. There was a debate on the committee's report in another place on 6 June 1973 and in this House on 13 July that year. It is worth remembering that the committee's recommendations were addressed to a wide variety of organisations, including the press, broadcasting authorities, banks, universities, the medical profession and computer users. Discussions have continued ever since.

The hon. Gentleman did not mention the names of those concerned in the cases to which he referred. I do not think that he expected me to give a detailed reply, but as he presented them carefully and reasonably it is proper that I should say a word or two about the matters that cropped up.

Except perhaps in the case about the police computer, none of the examples lies directly within the responsibility of the Home Secretary or relates to things that he can control by administrative action, but I will say what I think can be done about them on the facts as the hon. Member has described them. I will start with the one about police computer records, for which, of course, the Home Secretary does have an overall concern, though he is not responsible for the day-to-day operations of police forces.

If a demonstrably erroneous entry is included in the police records, whether computerised or not, it will be the wish of the police to correct it, and that is normal practice. But if for any reason after full inquiry a disagreement on the facts cannot be resolved, the complainant may make a formal complaint under the complaints procedure set up by the Police Act 1976. In circumstances of the sort described by the hon. Member a formal legal right to see the police records is not needed and would add nothing to the information available to the complainant. The Lindop committee did not recommend a blanket right of access by the data subject to police computer records, and I am sure that it was right.

The other cases do not appear to involve computer records or to be about areas of life for which the Home Secretary has any responsibility. The Home Secretary has no power to make anybody disclose to a third party expressions of opinion somebody has given him in confidence about the third party. I think that it would be inappropriate for the Home Secretary to seek such a power. That would go much further than the Lindop committee's recommendations for subject access to factual information recorded on computers, which specifically recognised the problem of confidentiality in relation to information furnished by third parties. If the hon. Member wrote an opinion about somebody else in his diary or provided it in confidence to a potential employer on request, it would be unacceptable that the other person should have a blanket right to read it or to substitute what he thought was a more correct opinion.

The mother who complains that a malicious and untrue complaint that she had battered her baby ought to be removed from NSPCC records ought to press the NSPCC hard to remove it. The hon. Gentleman could also join, if necessary, in pressing the NSPCC in that direction.

I turn to the question of the social worker who complains that her employing authority will not show her the references that it gave to another authority. This, again, has nothing directly to do with the Home Office, but the Younger committee commented on this kind of case in chapter 11 of its report. It said in paragraph 323:

"We consider it unobjectionable that prospective employers should ask for the names of persons and firms who can testify to the character, skill or experience of an applicant for a job. It is reasonable to suppose that applicants will provide the names of people who, in their view, are likely to provide a favourable report. If the employer is to have a balanced view, however, he must be free to seek other opinions. From the employer's point of view the purpose of employment is useful work rather than the welfare of the employee (though the two are linked), so that the primary purpose of a report on an employee is its value to the employer. This value will be much reduced if the report is not frank, or alternatively has to be disclosed to the employee without regard to the ensuing damage to staff relations. The more likely result of compulsory disclosure would be to inhibit referees and reporting officers in what they wrote. So reports would tend to be superficial and unreliable, and the employer would be driven to supplementing them by word of mouth. The problem would merely be driven underground."

I think that that was a carefully considered view on the part of the Younger committee and that it must command respect. What it really boils down to is that this is not a matter for the Government. In a free society, we have to look to employers to behave responsibly. But again, if pressure is needed to urge employers to behave responsibly, so be it.

The same applies to the man who could not get a job because he could not get a fidelity bond. On the hon. Member's account, I have considerable sympathy with the complainant's feelings. Again, if the hon. Member is seeking ways to remedy that, this takes us back into the sphere of legislation, from which we are barred, but essentially, as things stand, I think that we must look to employers and business generally to behave responsibly in this matter.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of medical records. Chapter 13 of the Younger report is about medical records. I understand that the view of the medical profession is that it is not always right for patients to have access to these records. My hon. Friend the Minister for Health said in reply to a written question:

"Medical records are maintained by doctors for the purpose of the treatment and care of their patients. Safeguarding the confidentiality of such records is primarily an ethical matter for the doctors concerned. The use of identifiable information from medical records for a purpose other than that for which it was obtained—except when ordered by a court or pursuant to a statutory requirement—would require the agreement of doctors concerned, who would decide as an ethical matter whether the consent of the patient should also be sought. I would not wish the technicality of legal ownership of medical records by the Secretary of State, or custody of medical records by health authorities, to be used to circumscribe the ethical responsibility of doctors for confidentiality in relation to their patients."- Official Report, 6 May 1980; Vol. 984, c. 86–7.]

I had better not say any more about medical records, as the subject is clearly the responsibility of my hon. Friend the Minister for Health, but I shall bring the hon. Gentleman's comments to my hon. Friend's attention so that he may take note of what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Having touched briefly on the points put to me in the debate, I wish to say a word or two about some of the other things that have happened in this area since the Younger report was published.

First, on the subject of the press, it is fair to report that the Press Council has increased its lay element in the light of the Younger committee's recommendations.

Another matter relating to privacy that was touched upon in the Younger report was the question of broadcasting complaints. As the hon. Gentleman knows, Parliament has only recently legislated to provide a means for the independent consideration of complaints by individuals about the unwarranted infringement of their privacy in, or the obtaining of material included in, broadcast programmes. The Broadcasting Complaints Commission, for which provision is made in the Broadcasting Act 1980, will be able to consider and adjudicate upon complaints of that nature related to programmes broadcast on radio or television after the relevant section of the Act is brought into effect in the spring or early summer of next year, and it will be able to require the broadcasting body concerned to publish its adjudication. It will be for the commission to reach a view on whether an individual's privacy was unwarrantably infringed in any particular case.

Another point that the hon. Gentleman touched on relates to the realm of consumer credit. As he said, what has happened there has been a good thing, and I am sure that the House would agree. A number of the recommendations of the Younger committee were given effect in the Consummer Credit Act 1974.

Another point that often crops up, and one that was considered by the Younger committee, is the question of control over private investigators. The committee recommended the introduction of controls to exclude those who on account of their known character were not fit and proper persons to be private investigators. The Younger committee did not think it practicable to prescribe standards of competence or conduct for private investigators. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary recently announced his conclusion that the case for statutory controls over the private security industry had not been made out and that it is preferable to support and encourage self-regulation within the industry. Discussions will now take place with the private security industry, including representatives of private investigators, on how that support and encouragement can best be given.

I again turn to the question of the police, which has already featured in the debate. Chief officers of police are well aware of the sensitivity of much of the information handled by them in fulfilling their role in the maintenance of law and order and the detection and prevention of crime. Such information should be collected only if it is relevant to those objectives. The use of computer and other technological aids, while facilitating the work of the service and enabling it to use scarce resources more effectively, does not reduce its awareness of the need for sensitivity. Safeguarding the individual against the risks of violation of privacy due to mishandling of police information has traditionally been of great concern to chief officers, and the means of minimising those risks are kept constantly under review, both locally and nationally.

Finally, I turn to the question of breach of confidence. The law relating to breach of confidence was discussed by the Younger committee, and it was referred to the English and Scottish Law Commissions. I understand that the report of the Law Commission for England and Wales is expected in the course of the first half of next year and that the Scottish report is expected later.

During my remarks, I have tried to pick up the hon. Gentleman's observations. I have given necessarily brief and quick answers to the points that he has made. I have also tried to say something about the way in which things have developed since the Younger committee report. A major question is that of data protection, but, as I have indicated, that is something which clearly lies within the realms of possible future legislation, and I shall not embark on it now.

I wish both you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the hon. Member for Battersea, South a very happy Christmas.

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the subject of the crisis facing Britain's motor racing industry. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for sport for agreeing to reply to this short debate. I know that he has had to come back from Scotland and to change some important personal arrangements in order to be present in the House. I thank him.

The British motor racing industry is already in a state of crisis. It is heading with characteristically high speed towards a catastrophe of grand prix cancellations and company liquidations. If the crisis is not resolved urgently, millions of Formula 1 fans are sure to be deprived of a 1981 world championship. Thousands of motor engineering and sporting livelihoods will be lost. Some of the most famous small companies in Britain will close down in bankruptcy.

Yet, despite these grim economic consequences, I must stress at the outset that the direct cause of all the trouble is not money. The world of Formula 1 racing is rich and prosperous. We are dealing here with an utterly unnecessary and tragic crisis which has erupted out of an increasingly bitter dispute between English car makers and French bureaucrats. At the end of my speech I shall ask my hon. Friend the Minister whether he will soon take an initiative to resolve the dispute at Government-to-Government level. I shall first set out the facts.

I should perhaps begin with a brief description of the British motor racing industry. At Formula 1 level, it consists of about 20 highly specialised companies which engineer, run and race the cars on the world championship grand prix circuit. These include several world-famous names such as Lotus, McLaren, Brabham, Tyrrell and Williams. Between them, these teams have won 14 world championships in the past 18 years. The industry also includes several high technology components supply companies such as Cosworth Engineering Limited, of Northampton, which builds the remarkable engine that has won over 130 grand prix races since it was introduced in 1966.

The industry should not just be measured in terms of sporting triumphs. The ordinary motorist derives many benefits from the high technology inventions pioneered by the Formula 1 designers and engineers. Disc brakes, aerodynamic styling and multi-viscosity engine oil are just three examples. The House should also note the contribution made by the industry to our national economy. These 20 small British companies to which I have referred between them directly employ about 1,000 people and bring in in excess of £15 million of foreign earnings annually. In addition, they bring huge indirect benefits, such as revenues from sponsors, advertisers, television companies and circuit promoters.

There are also intangible benefits, such as the prestige that inevitably follows the victories by British teams and their products in an international competition. Taken as a whole, I hope that the House will accept that we are talking about a great British success story and a significant British interest.

I should mention that several hon. Members, unable to be present today, have asked me to mention how strongly they feel the need to defend their constituencies and the national interest in this matter, in particular my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) and for Belper (Mrs. Faith), who have written to me asking that I mention their regret that they are unable to be present.

It is a supreme irony that the real reason why British interests are now in peril is that they have been too successful. At this point in the story, it is necessary to understand that French interests are also very much at stake in the fiercely competitive world of Formula 1 motor racing. The French have some important teams on the Grand Prix circuit. They include Renault, Ligier and the Peugeot-Citroen-Talbot group known as PSA. All are directly or indirectly supported by French Government money or by French Government-owned concerns. They are far larger in money, manpower and resources than their equivalents on this side of the Channel.

Despite such advantages, those giant French Goliaths have been consistently defeated by the little British Davids. Year after year, the world championship turns out to be the annual equivalent of the Battle of Waterloo and, regrettably from their point of view, the French defy the law of averages by always losing it. During the 30 years since the world championship started, the British have won the championship 16 times, the Italians 11 times, the Germans twice and the Australians twice, while the French have never won a world championship at all.

This becomes increasingly galling year after year as the resources poured into motor racing by Renault, Elf, PSA, Seita and the Michelin Tyre Corporation reach astronomic proportions. Yet small British entrepreneurial companies still manage to run off with the championship, as the Williams team, with the Australian Alan Jones as driver, did so brilliantly this year. Faced with this problem, what do the French teams try to do? Naturally, they are behaving like typical Frenchmen. They are starting to bend the rules to serve their own national interests.

What we see today are the familiar unfair tactics that have been employed on lamb, fish and apples now being applied to Formula 1 racing. The machinery being used to bend the rules is the Federation Internationale du Sport Automobile, always known as FISA. This Paris-based bureaucracy is very much the creation of its French president, Mr. Jean-Marie Ballestre, and it is he who must take the responsibility for having driven FISA into head-on collision with the other important organisation inside motor racing called FOCA, the Formula One Constructors' Association.

The feud between FOCA and FISA lies at the heart of the crisis which is now destroying Formula 1 motor racing. It is a complex affair, and no doubt it can be argued that there are faults on both sides. But, whatever the rights and wrongs of the various disputes, three facts stand out.

First, whatever the substance of the disagreements between FOCA and FISA, it is acknowledged almost universally that the procedures laid down for solving them have been disregarded blatantly. To give just one example of this, I refer to the FISA president's unilateral decision to issue an edict banning skirts as from January 1981. In this context, skirting is an aerodynamic device invented by the brilliant Colin Chapman, of Lotus, which enables British cars to remain competitive despite the superior engines of the Renault cars.

Mr. Ballestre is against the skirts that make British cars go faster. He has banned them, allegedly on the ground of safety. This is a somewhat transparent manoeuvre in the eyes of FOCA, which claims that outboard skirting makes cars more stable, more safe and structurally stronger. Whatever the merits or demerits of this argument, the fact is that the skirt ban is a breach of FISA's own rules of procedure, which state clearly that no changes of this kind can be made with less than two years' notice.

Secondly, it is a fact that much of the controversy which surrounds the FISA-FOCA dispute arises because FISA has created within itself an unfortunate conflict of interests. FISA wants to be both the regulatory authority and the financial authority over grand prix racing. This is an absurd proposition, which no other sport could or ever would tolerate. It is as though the referee at a football match was also to be put in charge of gate receipts, transfer fees and television rights. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the promoters and constructors of motor racing cannot accept such a double role from FISA.

Thirdly, it is a painful fact that many of the tensions and dramas that divide Formula 1 racing have been heightened by the autocratic style of personal leadership emanating from the FISA president, Mr. Jean-Marie Ballestre.

I do not think that it would be appropriate here to give details of the various episodes that have caused concern. But it is a matter of record, for example, that last season millions of fans saw Mr. Ballestre engage in fisticuffs with officials of the South African grand prix, apparently over the lack of an invitation to share the rostrum with the winner. It is also a matter of record that Mr. Ballestre unilaterally declared the result of the Spanish grand prix invalid on the bizarre ground that some unknown rules which he himself had never published had somehow been broken.

Faced with a series of what most constructors regard as many similar examples of mercurial behaviour and rule manipulation, FOCA has struck back against FISA.

The FOCA leaders are a robust collection of men, who know how to fight their corner. In type, they could be said to be the reverse of the description once applied in this House by Mr. David Lloyd George to Mr. Austen Chamberlain, of whom it was said "Austen always played the game, and always lost it." The point about the leading figures of Britain's motor racing industry, men such as Colin Chapman, Frank Williams and Bernie Ecclestone, is that they always play the game and have got accustomed to winning it. Perhaps their ebullient competitive spirits have taken them too far in their disputes with FISA. But even though members of FOCA feel their livelihoods to be threatened, and even though their own jobs and those of their employees are at risk, FOCA seems to be determined not to surrender to Mr. Ballestre on what it believes to be impossible terms. Hence the suicidal split in motor racing today.

The outlook for the 1981 world championship is grim. FOCA and FISA are now trying to organise two rival grand prix circuits, neither of which is credible. Already one British car company—Ensign—has gone into liquidation, and others are on the verge of doing so as sponsors hang back, as they must in this uncertain situation. Already the Goodyear Tyre Company has pulled out of motor racing. Already the first grand prix of the new season, scheduled to take place in less than a month's time in Argentina, has been postponed. The South African grand prix is about to be postponed, and several others will surely be cancelled as writs and lawsuits fly thick and fast through the air.

As one who is both a motor racing fan and has an indirect connection with a motor racing sponsor, I see, from both inside and outside, all too clearly just how much damage is being done by the present chaotic situation.

If we are to have a world championship next year, surely the time has come for the deadlock to be broken by a display of true political skills. Mr. Ballestre, although apparently having political aspirations to become a French Deputy, does not seem to possess those skills.

Although one famous French statesman once coined the slogan "They shall not pass", Mr. Ballestre's apparent motto is "They shall not start". That is no good to motor racing in the coming season.

It is time that some real politicians now came into the act. That is why I today appeal to my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for sport to take an initiative at Govenment-to-Government level. I realise that no British Minister has any definite power in this matter, but I suggest to my hon. Friend that he has a responsibility to do his best to safeguard the British jobs that are at risk and the British interests that are at stake, including the interests of the fans. Perhaps he could also take a wider international responsibility to try to see that the drivers, the sponsors, the teams and the public are not deprived of their sport in 1981 by the confusing melodrama that I have attempted to describe today.

Perhaps my hon. Friend will consider a face-to-face negotiation with his counterpart in France. Perhaps he could try to arrange a meeting between all the European Ministers of Sport and the leaders of the International Automobile Federation, which is the parent body of FISA. Perhaps he has some initiative of his own in mind. If he can break the deadlock, he will earn the lasting gratitude of all who care about the international sport of motor racing and the future of the British motor racing industry.

I am glad to have the opportunity to intervene briefly in the debate to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) on the force and vigour with which he presented the case and carried the argument against our traditional enemies, the French.

I am not surprised to hear the story about Mr. Ballestre. I hope that he will divert his attention to politics. We know, after all, that a professional clown is running for the French Presidency, so Mr. Ballestre may well run for the Chamber of Deputies.

March Engineering, in my constituency of Oxford, is one of those small, vigorous, entrepreneurial companies which may suffer grievously from the effects of this unnecessary dispute. Not only may jobs be lost, but there may also be a considerable loss to technological innovation which firms such as March often produce.

For those reasons, and for the good of motor racing and the sport in general, I fully support my hon. Friend's request to the Minister to take this discussion with the French to the highest possible level.

I am sure that, since it is Christmas, the House will give the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) leave to speak for a second time on the same motion.

I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall be brief in echoing the congratulations of the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Patten) to the hon. Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) on initiating this debate. However, I shall not follow the hon. Gentleman in his Gallophobia, because I understand that the patriotic origins of the president of FISA have themselves been questioned on the basis of whether his loyalties have always lain so much with la belle France as he would now like to suppose in his political ambitions.

What we are dealing with is a confrontation between a group of small firms which have had a genuine sporting interest in Formula 1 grand prix racing against large French conglomerates which are mass producers of motor cars and are deeply enraged at their failure to win any grand prix.

I have been asked to intervene in the debate by Mr. Sloman, who is managing director of the Derbyshire firm of Advanced Composite Components Ltd., which has been placed in a parlous position by the present situation. The firm employs about 20 people making carbon fibre components for the Formula 1 car constructors—the British firms, most of which are members of FOCA.

The firm's product principally is the skirt on the motor car referred to by the hon. Member for Thanet, East. If that is banned, the firm will lose about 95 per cent. of its potential turnover for the 1981 racing season. As a result of the ban, the legality of which is open to question, the firm has already had to lay off seven of its work force and could be forced to close down altogether if the ban goes through.

I put this point unashamedly as a constituency point and I know that other Derbyshire Members who esteem this firm will want me to put it to the Minister. It illustrates the real fall-out from the bullying and authoritarian attitude taken by the president of FISA and his minions. Like other hon. Members, I hope that the Minister will be robust in his dealings with the French in this matter.

I am grateful for a chance to speak in this important debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) on the eloquent and characteristically clear way in which he stated his case. I endorse what all the other speakers have said.

For years, Britain has led the world in Formula 1 racing. Almost consistently we have beaten the French, as we always appear to beat them when we have a fair chance to do so—much to their chagrin. We have been doing it since 1815.

It is with sadness and a sense of deja vu that I see that they have been gerrymandering the rules for Formula 1 racing, in a cynical act designed to win at all costs and to change the rules, at the last moment, to the detriment of Formula 1 racing teams in this country. Those teams include Williams Grand Prix Engineering in my constituency, which is the MG of Formula 1 racing. It will be sad if my constituency should see the collapse of two internationally known companies—first MG and now the problems for Williams, which is led by the well-known and highly regarded entrepreneur Frank Williams, who has done so much work. It would be sad if that company should face additional problems because of the appalling behaviour of the French.

This is not the first time that the French have behaved in this way. They have behaved badly over sales of British vehicles in France and over sales of lamb and fish. Their history of dealing on the basis that their national interests come first at all costs has been widely rehearsed in the House. Their approach cannot be allowed to continue.

I would add any persuasive skills that I possess to ask my hon. Friend the Minister to intervene on behalf of all the Formula 1 racing teams in Britain and in his meeting with his opposite numbers to apply any honourable pressure that he can to ask them to assist our teams so that they may compete fairly with the French in international racing.

It is of great concern to me that this debate should have proved necessary. However, it certainly is necessary, I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) seized this opportunity. I am also glad that three other hon. Members joined the debate. The hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) has important constituency interests, and I agree that the carbon fibre content of skirts is important. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford (Mr. Patten) spoke about the March company and my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Benyon) also made an important point about Williams Grand Prix Engineering.

I am passionately interested in motor racing and have been since the early 1930s. I have raced and rallied, and I was lucky enough to drive a Formula 1 Tyrrell last year. I have, therefore, a close interest in the present crisis, which is indeed a sorry state of affairs. Grand prix racing has everything going for it—the cars, engines, drivers, circuits, crowds, television, charisma, excitement and world prestige. Yet, to the consternation of the enthusiasts, the two separate entities within grand prix racing are driving straight into the crash barriers at high speed.

Racing is in turmoil. There can be no doubt about that. Any level-minded person interested in motor racing is being driven to despair by the failure of grand prix racing to get together and stop sending this great sporting spectacle to destruction. There should not be any need for Government intervention. World and national governing bodies should manage their own sports themselves, but in this instance I cannot stand idly by and watch this mass suicide.

British prestige in the organisation of and participation in international rallies and racing is of the very highest order. There was nothing but praise at last month's RAC international rally for the organisations and for the performance of British cars, albeit, in some cases, with Scandinavian drivers. The RAC deserves immense credit for the standards that it sets in motor sports in this country. Over the past 20 years in particular, many of our cars and drivers have been at the very top. We are proud of that fact. Many of those drivers are household names that are familiar to us all. One could start with Stirling Moss, who drove so ably in the 1950s, and go on to Hawthorn, Clark, Hill, Surtees, Stewart and Hunt. Many others were their equals but did not achieve a world championship.

We have reached an impasse and Britain's great prospects are in jeopardy. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East ably highlighted the differences. Specific actions have been taken by specific companies. Recently, a leading tyre manufacturer, Goodyear, decided to withdraw its support from Formula 1, Formula 2 and Formula 3 cars in Europe, yet it will maintain the manufacture of racing tyres for America. The loss is estimated to be worth about £6 million. None of those interested in the sport will welcome that. It hands the Formula 1 tyre monopoly to Michelin, with possible help from Pirelli. In any event, it removes the main supplier for FOCA cars in this country. Other forms of sponsorship agreements will be affected. There will be a chain reaction throughout the sport and throughout those who sponsor our racing teams.

The future of the part of our motor industry that is concerned with Formula 1 racing is at risk. The employment of all those men and women engaged in that work, both directly and indirectly, is threatened. Last but not least, we are in grave danger of losing the prestige that has been built up over the years by British teams, the design and engineering expertise involved in the construction of racing cars, and the skill of the drivers who drive them. This is a major shop window for the British motor industry and is one that we cannot afford to lose in these difficult economic times.

It may be of help to my hon. Friend if I explain the action I took following the Spanish grand prix, when undercover warfare blew up into a major row. I was asked at that time by a FOCA member, Frank Williams—who has done so much in this area along with his colleagues—whose team was pressing hard for championship honours and eventually succeeded, whether I could use the good offices of my position as Minister for Sport to try to restore relationships between FISA and FOCA.

I believe that those relationships were sorely tested by the actions of FISA at the Spanish grand prix in refusing to allow the winner—in a British-built car—to count his victory in the points leading to the drivers' world championship.

After consultation with the British governing body for racing—the Royal Automobile Club—I sent a telex to the President of the IAF, the federation responsible for all national automobile clubs, and the senior international governing body asking for their intervention on the decisions taken. I sent this to Prince Metternich, the president of the IAF. The decisions were taken not by the democratically elected body, in which the majority, I understood, accepted the Spanish grand prix result. It was decided to intervene on the decisions which had been taken by one man, Mr. Ballestre.

The reply, I am sorry to say, was not very satisfactory, but I think my telex gave FISA a jolt. Subsequently I met Prince Metternich informally and discussed the issue with him. At least, I was then given to understand that an uneasy peace formula had been agreed. Certainly the grand prix series this year was completed with, as we all know, a marvellous win for a mainly British team, Saudi-Leyland-Williams, and the driving skill of Alan Jones of Australia.

It would appear that we have now reached the present position because Mr. Ballestre, about whom I telexed the president of FIA, has drawn up a set of technical regulations which, although acceptable to one French and two Italian teams, had been rejected by more than eight other leading grand prix teams from other countries. It looks very much as if Ligier has now been wheeled into line with FISA in France.

If my understanding of the position is correct, I must admit that I find it extraordinary how, within a democratically elected organisation, one man, and one man alone, can introduce regulations which do not find favour with the majority of his members and apparently overrule the two-year technical regulations rule.

When, because of the strong opposition that Mr. Ballestre had raised, he attempted to find a compromise solution, he was unsuccessful because Renault indicated that it must insist upon following the technical regulations that he had himself initiated. This deals with the skirts mentioned by the hon. Member for Derby, North. As my hon. Friend rightly says, this has split motor racing and the effect, if not averted, will undoubtedly seriously damage our motor racing industry. It is the possible effects on the motor racing industry to which I should now like to turn.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has received many communications urging support for the Formula One Constructors Association and I have received similar representations. I have been informed that should the grand prix series be suspended, redundancy in that part of the industry is likely to follow. I have visited the McLaren works and I know of the exceptional standard of engineering in grand prix racing today. Hon. Members have rightly mentioned Cosworth Engineering, which is world famous and powers 80 per cent. of the Formula 1 cars.

There are many subcontractors to the motor racing industry whose future will be seriously affected and whose work forces will undoubtedly have to be reduced. We must try to bring Goodyear back into Formulas 1, 2 and 3, especially if even in the longer term Dunlop and Firestone cannot return to a highly specialised sector of the tyre industry. I hope that Goodyear will rescind its decision, which I am sure was taken at the end of a most frustrating period, when I cannot but understand any major firm being driven to make the decision that it did.

However, it all comes at a time when British motor racing companies are recognised as being second to none in Formula 1 racing and development, a position that they have attained through their brilliance, hard work and endeavour. It may even be that that very British eminence in Formula 1 racing underlies the desire of some to change the rules affecting car design and so thereby removing at a stroke the lead that we currently have in the world grand prix series. However, one can never turn back the clock in technical engineering, as the French appear to want to do.

In all the circumstances, I ask myself whether there is anything that I can do to help to resolve the difficult situation. I repeat that all governing bodies of sport, both national and international, are totally independent of Governments and no Government have any locus to intervene in their affairs. The RAC motor sports division has behaved honourably and done its best to bring the two sides together. I congratulate Sir Clive Bossom and Mr. Basil Tye on their efforts to act as intermediaries.

The dispute is between responsible and independent sporting organisations. I urge them to use every means at their disposal to resolve their difficulties for the sake of the motor industry, grand prix racing and sport in general. I call upon FISA and its controlling body, the FIA, to review immediately its administrative machinery, to take fully into account the propositions put forward by all their members and to adopt the propositions that have consensus in their favour, as is always the case where democracy is at work.

Time is not on our side. Fixture lists of grand prix have been published by FISA and FOCA. The circuit owners must know where they stand. In Britain, we know that in alternate years the meeting is at Silverstone and Brands Hatch, and we want to see that such interests are safeguarded. Those venues bear allegiance to the RAC and we must be careful not to put them in an impossible position. Sponsors must know, and so must the general public, how matters stand at present.

I take one step towards breaking the impasse. I am prepared to put my services forward as an honest broker to bring everyone together. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East asked me at Government level to intervene, but I had already decided, as I said earlier, that I cannot sit idly by and do nothing. Today I am contacting my opposite number in France, Mr. Soisson, Minister of Sport, and asking him whether he will, with me, convene an informal meeting with Prince Metternich and the leaders of FISA and FOCA to see whether an early solution can be found. It is important to get all interested parties around the table. It will be a tragedy if motor sport at Grand Prix level is not prepared to take the opportunity. I hope that my message will find a receptive welcome in Paris.

We are not prepared to allow things to stop in 1980. Britain considers the matter of supreme importance, and we do not intend to let it be brushed aside. I hope that the representatives of FISA in Paris and Prince Metternich and the FIA will, with Mr. Soisson and myself, make an effort to overcome the problem rapidly. Everyone is in limbo. The designers, constructors, drivers and sponsors must know where they stand as soon as possible. Fixtures should have started in January. One is scheduled for February and more for March and they remain in doubt, and that goes on into the full season in spring. It is intolerable that we have wasted four or five months of argument. It is now time for this House to send a message across the Channel that enough is enough, and we must reach a solution.

The future of adult education is of the greatest concern to all of us at a time when it is in decline for various reasons. Despite the pressures on the service, there are in Ealing basic literacy and numeracy courses which have been highly successful in catering for the community needs for these areas. I repeat my suggestion that vouchers for courses might be given to the unemployed and to pensioners to enable them to take part when they might not otherwse have the means to do so.

Adult education means the many and various forms of continuing education for adults, mostly part-time, including academic studies from O-level and A-level to degree courses. These courses include literacy and numeracy, physical education, and civic and community vocational education. They are directed towards training for occupations. In addition, there are important newer concepts such as role education for various responsibilities such as parents, school governors, magistrates and voluntary group leaders. There is also "second chance" education, by which I mean the chance for women to study new opportunities. Pre-retirement studies also come under this heading.

The extent of adult education is considerable. Three million people are following academic or vocational courses in public colleges, centres, universities and other agencies. About 2 million people are following courses in vocational and role training for industry and commerce. About 1 million are taking largely academic and vocational courses in private establishments, including correspondence courses. Nearly half a million people are following courses in cultural, physical and role education in voluntary organisations. Nearly 15 per cent. of the adult population participate in adult education every year. The proportion having done so since leaving full-time education is as high as 46 per cent. That still means that 54 per cent. of the adult population does not participate, though many need to.

I am sorry that public sector enrolments in adult education centres were reduced by 10 per cent. last year and will probably be reduced a further 10 per cent. this year. The recent large fall in enrolments has been due to a number of reasons, mainly to do with disproportionately large fee increases. There has been a high rate of increase of fees, which is more detrimental to enrolments than the fee for the course. Fees for this year show average increases of one-third. Enrolments will be down 10 with 12 per cent. on average compared with last year. We should note the large range of enrolment shift from 30 per cent. up in one authority to 68 per cent. down in another. In the former, small increases in fees plus dedicated full-time staff were factors at work, and in the latter massive increases in fees and no full-time staff were operative factors.

I do not advocate that adult education should be free. However, when several authorities have severely reduced their offer of courses, reduced enrolments follow. Several authorities have closed local centres altogether, thus making it impossible for many citizens to reach a source of adult education. Several authorities have levied large letting charges on voluntary groups and agencies which have effectively curtailed the use of community education plant. Some authorities have cut in whole or in part their grants to university extra-mural departments and WEA districts, thus reducing the programme offered by these bodies. Some authorities have closed residential adult colleges which served the whole nation, including industry and commerce, as well as the public at large. Seven colleges were closed last year, and five are threatened this year.

Some authorities have made redundant key adult education field staff, such as principals, organisers and teachers whose dedication and wholehearted efforts previously enabled the underlying demand to be met. I pose the question: is there an underlying demand? There is strong evidence that there is an underlying demand. The recent Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education population survey demonstrated that as a fact. Where fee increases are no more than inflation and organising staffing levels are adequate, enrolment increases. There are large waiting lists for courses in many authorities. Further evidence comes from the thousands of letters of complaint from disappointed potential adult students which have appeared in the local press.

Where adult education exists—clearly limited in its distribution and uncontrollable in terms of standards—enrolments have increased. Much of that chaotic position and the results are in contrast to the previouly stated intention of the Government. They are a product of outdated, anachronistic legislation, which means that there is no national system of locally administered adult education. That is something to which the attention of the House should be drawn. Instead, there are more than 100 local systems in England and Wales that increasingly have no relationship or complementarity to one another. I instance the breakdown of the inter-authority recoupment payments as tragic evidence of that position.

The interpretations of the relevant well-meaning 1940s phrases of sections 41, 42 and 53 of the 1944 Act are legion. Before too long, and that means soon, the House must turn its attention to the matter, because the present legislative base is inadequate for the known future requirements.

The all-party adult education committee, of which I have the honour to be chairman, has received a great deal of evidence from all quarters about the present position. Dorian Williams, of showjumping and commentating fame, is a notable pioneer of adult education. For 30 years he has directed the highly successful college at Pendley Manor. His concept, which I commend to the nation and to other colleges that are not following his example, is worth bringing to the attention of the House. With my colleagues, I had the honour of visiting the college and seeing it in full operation It provides full-time courses for industry and other paying groups. Money obtained from those courses, which are run at a profit, is used to subsidise less expensive courses that are intended to be widely available to the population at large. That sort of example is a clear way in which residential colleges could proceed, and perhaps local authorities also. It is a pointer, and I recommend it to the House.

he all-party committee received representations from the Universities Council for Adult Education about the dangerous trends that are contrary to the necessary advances in part-time higher education for adults, about extension work and about liberal adult education for educated citizenry. I refer to its own terms. The representations about the plight of the Friends Centre at Brighton have stirred us. It is a Quaker foundation which has been an excellent innovator, especially in literacy and basic education. It faces closure from the next financial year because the local authority grant is to be removed entirely. In a period of financial difficulty, we all recognise that there are great pressures on local authorities. That is one example of the pressures.

I turn to the future of adult education. Plans should be based on future needs, not on old administrative structures. New vision is required, which includes the necessity for updating and training at many stages in people's lives. It should also include meeting the underlying demand for continuing education by and for adults, the adaptation to, and control of, vast technological change and new careers and roles for many. Finally, future plans should include the necessity of an educated population in matters of public concern, such as health, energy and independence in older age.

The self-dignity that can be achieved by less adequate adults through a suitable course of education is worth the attention of the House. If such courses can be provided, it is important to the mental and spiritual well-being of the nation that they should be provided.

A change of perspective is required for the future—a paradigm shift in thinking about education, away from the old-fashioned idea that all education takes place in the first 16 to 20 years of life. The front end is important but should increasingly be seen as education for subsequent reeducation and training. All education, whether in the first 16 to 20 years or later, is for life. It is not a process that finishes when a young person leaves school, college, university or any other centre of education. Adult education has a crucial role in the continuing process.

Investment in such education is increasingly understood by other developed and developing nations. With expenditure at £144 per head of population, the United Kingdom is seventh in the league table of the nine EEC countries. Denmark at £227 per head, Belgium at £209, West Germany at £197 and France at £166 are all ahead of us and only Ireland and Italy are below us.

Statistics can be misleading, and I realise that our per capita product and income are probably not comparable with those of other countries. Indeed, we are doing substantially better than some countries, but the others are a goal to which we should be aiming in global terms.

As the World Bank recently demonstrated, investment in education, especially continuing education, correlates highly with economic well-being and health and development in all countries. The future can be bright, but if the first local contact points for all types of adult education continue to be cut to the bone in some areas—a development against which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary wisely warned local authorities and the nation in January—it would be a tragedy and would butcher adult education out of existence. If adult education is cut to the bone, it will not augur well for the necessary mid-decade development of a proper, broad-band, continuing education system for this country.

The value of adult education in the lives of every type of individual is beyond estimate, because people remain motivated, content, integrated and thrusting in their ideas and intellectual vigour if they remain stimulated by what adult education can and should provide in so many forms in its courses.

Without a further development of adult education and a reversal of contraction where it is occurring, it is difficult to envisage

"a British administration cherishing the continuity of our island life",

as Sir Winston Churchill eloquently described it.

I sometimes wonder whether this is becoming a dual turn, especially with regard to the day on which the House goes into recess. We engaged in a previous debate on a similar occasion. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) puts in his request, and while it is always a pleasure to speak in the House it is no desire of mine always to be present on the last day of term. However, my hon. Friend seems to be determined that I should be present.

As we first met at Oxford University Settlement when I came to London—and there is no better institution for youth and adult education—it is particularly significant that my hon. Friend has today raised the question of adult education and that I should be replying to him.

My hon. Friend is the distinguished chairman of the all-party adult education committee, which has done so much good work. I also know that he takes a keen interest in all aspects of education, both as a distinguished schoolmaster and as Member of Parliament for the constituency of Ealing, North. His constituency adjoins mine, and from time to time rumours come across the frontier regarding his activities and the respect in which he is held by his constituents.

The question of expenditure is linked to Government policy. We were elected in order to bring expenditure and income into balance. I am sure that my hon. Friend entirely agrees that for too long we have continued to live on the basis of paying interest on what we have borrowed. As the Government believe in self-help, it is right that they should cut Government expenditure and bring it into balance. As always, this is a question of priorities.

Had this debate been inaugurated not by my hon. Friend but by someone whom I did not hold in such high regard, or who did not hold me in such high regard, I would have asked "Where would the money come from if we were to reinstate the cuts that have been made?" I would have pointed out that between 1976–77 and 1977–78 the previous Government made a cut in education of £351 million—more than £⅓ billion— and that during those two years there was a cut of 6·5 per cent. in adult education expenditure.

My hon. Friend is right about the cuts that had to be made. We have tried to give priority to the 5- to 16-year-old statutory age group, which is compelled to go to school, because the country believes that its standard of education must be maintained. We have also been concerned about higher education.

I have said before, and I shall say again, that statutory education, particularly between the ages of 5 and 16, must take priority over all things. Keen as I am to fight for adult education, I would not support that to the exclusion or diminution of the sector to which I have referred.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. His intervention clearly shows that he is in complete agreement with Government policy. That does not surprise me, as he is a former schoolmaster.

In 1980–81, the amount included in the rate support grant for adult education—although, as my, hon. Friend knows, once it goes to the local authorities they can spend it in whichever way they wish—was cut by 25 per cent. Over the next three years, the cut will average out at about 33 per cent.

My hon. Friend mentioned the decrease in enrolments. The checks that we have made show that there has been a decrease of 10 per cent. My hon. Friend will also be aware that there is evidence of increased enrolment to private courses. As my hon. Friend and myself are believers in the self-help philosophy, it is interesting that there has been a development of private education along those lines. However, we must realise that many avenues cannot be covered by it.

My hon. Friend gave figures of comparative expenditure on adult education and education for various countries. It is difficult to get comparative figures on any particular aspect of educational expenditure between one country and another. The only guide is the share of gross national product that is spent on education in those countries. I have studied these figures for years. I am not throwing doubt on any figures produced by the World Bank. We bow to these great and mysterious organisations from time to time.

In 1975, the United Kingdom spent 6·4 per cent. of its gross national product on education, against France's 5·6 per cent. and Germany's 5·2 per cent. Consistently over the years, France and Germany seem to have spent a lower share of GNP on education than has Britain. I am not arguing that if it were decided to spend less on education in Britain we would rival the economic progress made by those countries. I do not believe that there is any automatic relationship between the amount spent on education and the development economically of a country. What really matters, as I am sure my hon. Friend will agree, is the handling of priorities within the amount of money available.

I turn to the question of the Government's overall attitude to adult education. I agree with my hon. Friend that we have to look at the overall picture. The Government are trying to apply this principle also to higher education. Ever since the war, when we have doubled expenditure the effect has been to double provision. It is what I call amoebic expansion, in which the one cell breaks into two cells identically the same. The time has come to ask whether the amount that is spent, particularly in higher, further and adult education, goes to the right places. Should some spheres expand while others are cut back to allow the expansion to take place? I concur entirely with the views of my hon. Friend. That is why we are funding the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education, which has operated for three years and which this Government inherited. We agreed to fund it for another three years. Public money amounting to £87,000 is going to that advisory council this year, so that the Government continue to receive advice about priorities in adult education and where every £1 of expenditure can produce the best results.

The adult education fee per hour has increased from 30p to 41p. It might be a good idea to compare the value for money of adult education with other sectors of leisure time expenditure. An adult education class costs 41p an hour. Admission to a football match is £1.50 or £2. A cinema ticket costs £1.60 upwards. A pint of beer, which will not necessarily last an hour—that depends on the rate of consumption and the thickness of the straw—costs 50p. Twenty cigarettes, which would last more than an hour unless one smoked several at the same time and became a member of the Magic Circle, cost 70p.

I understand that my hon. Friend was riding on a horse until 10 o'clock this morning. I do not know at what hour he got on the horse, but it was 10 am when he got off. I understand, however, that hacking costs an average of £3 to £8 an hour. All that emerges from what might be called those graphic illustrations, although I have no blackboard available, is that 41p an hour, which is the adult education fee level, represents good value for money.

My hon. Friend made a specific point about old-age pensioners and unemployed people. Let me make it clear that we commend to local authorities the need to keep down these fees or to make the courses free wherever possible, because it is very important that less-well-off people be given every opportunity to avail themselves of the facilities.

I particularly appreciate that remark.

It may not have been noticed by vast numbers of hon. Members in the House, but I know how keenly Hansard is read all over the country and I know that hundreds of people read each copy. So I have no doubt that the agreement of my hon. Friend and myself about that will be known throughout the length and breadth of the land within two or three days.

I turn now to the Government's priorities on three issues. The first is the one mentioned by my hon. Friend, with his reference to rapid technological change. Education is not simply a provision that is available between the ages of 5 and 18 or 21. It must be a continuous process. It must be like a 13 amp plug, which can be connected to a ring circuit from time to time to make the lights go on again. Visiting Sweden a fortnight ago, I was interested to see how well organised along these lines the Swedes are.

Recently, we published a pamphlet entitled "Continuing education: post-experience vocational provision for those in employment". We put that out to start a discussion about people coming back and retraining at any stage of their lives. About a fortnight ago, I also commended the work that the Open University is doing.

The second issue is that of remedial and basic education. We have funded for the next three years the adult literacy and basic skills unit with£½million this year, and, despite the tightness of the economic situation and the need to contain public expenditure, we have indicated that we shall be prepared to put in some more money next year, when we can see what has been done. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that no money is better spent than that which cures adult illiteracy and innumeracy and allows people to fit back not just into employment but into social groups again and play their part. We have made that a priority, and I visit such institutions regularly.

The third issue is that of direct grants from the Government to adult education institutes, which are being made immediately. There is no question of a game of "passing the parcel", with local authorities wondering whether the parcel will ever arrive. We have kept up the expenditure to the Workers' Education Association. The same amount of money is going into university extension courses and the long-term residential colleges. This year, Fircroft is reopening as a residential college. We are putting £100,000 of public money into it. The same applies to national bodies linked on the voluntary side with adult education, including the National Association of Women's Institutes, the Townswomen's Guilds and, I am sure my hon. Friend will be glad to know, the Welsh Council for the YMCA.

My hon. Friend referred to pre-retirement courses, which I am sure will be of interest to many hon. Members whenever a general election approaches. We have kept the money up there. Three weeks ago, though not with any personal interest, I spoke to the Pre-retirement Association. If my hon. Friend has not seen a copy of my speech, I have no doubt that his Christmas will be enlivened by receiving from me copies of the magazine issues that came out at the time.

This debate could continue for much longer, but I know that there is still another subject of national import that must be dealt with before the House rises. I agree with my hon. Friend that the facilities for adult education are part of a civilised society. It is a question not just of work training but of the enrichment of leisure and of the social links made in those courses. All these arrangements are extremely important. The Government are aware of that importance, and that is why we have maintained our direct funding. Where local authorities have to cut, it is important that they make sure that their cuts do not affect the main stream, which they can then develop further. I have no doubt that this debate will indicate to them the priorities which they should keep in mind.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

I rise with mixed feelings. I feel a sense of privilege at being granted the opportunity to make the last but one speech before the Christmas Recess and the last but one of 1980, but the subject of my debate is serious. Before I enter upon it, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I wish you, my fellow hon. Members, members of the Press Gallery and those in the Strangers' Gallery a merry Christmas.

The general depression in our economy, the bad recession that we are going through, has affected the textile and clothing industry more than most. The industry is under extreme pressure. I shall not dwell on the reasons. Government policy, since the election, or, as many of my constituents—employers and employees—would say, the lack of Government policy, is largely responsible for that pressure. While bringing about a depression, the Government have maintained inflation at quite a rate. Interest rates are still severely high for those who want to invest and to make goods for export. In my constituency, as in West Yorkshire generally, a high percentage of goods is exported. The increased value of the pound has severely hampered our attempts to maintain levels of production for export.

The lack of action to stamp out unfair competiton is of particular concern to my constituents. Twenty per cent. of the population of Huddersfield still work in the industry. They are very concerned about the dumping and other unfair competition, including political interference, that they have to face.

The unfair competition does not come from only one part of the globe. It comes partly from the United States, which I was recently told is importing oil at $35 a barrel and exporting it in the form of synthetic fibre at $15 a barrel. How can my constituents compete with that? The unfair competition also comes from Eastern Europe, China and many other places.

I want today to dwell on a matter that is related but different—the massive fraud that is taking place in certain parts of the world. This fraud, which is seriously affecting the present and future of British industry, is so massive that it threatens the very future of many sectors of British industry, those in which British goods are renowned for their quality and exclusiveness.

I do not speak in a narrow spirit. That would be unsuitable to the season. I strongly believe in the help that we in Britain can give to the underdeveloped world. As a sophisticated and developed nation, we must help the underdeveloped parts of the world to expand their trade and increase their prosperity. I am a great supporter of the Brandt report, but my constituents deserve protection from the outright and outrageous fraud now being perpetrated in some parts of the world, where British goods are being copied and exported as though they were our products.

Britain's greatest strength is the production of quality goods that the world wants. For at least three years, British manufacturers have been telling hon. Members and the Government about these massive frauds, particularly in Taiwan but also in Hong Kong, South Korea and Eastern Europe, especially Romania. The fraud relates not only to false labelling of goods but also to dodging the quota system under the multi-fibre arrangement. National quotas are juggled. Hong Kong and South Korean goods are diverted through Indonesia or labelled "Made in Indonesia" to expand the quotas of the countries of origin. This is fraud, not simply fair or unfair competition.

Whether the practice is condoned by the host Government is a matter of speculation, but it seems that such Governments are actively involved as conspirators in aiding and abetting the fraud, which destroys the jobs of my constituents and the future of important British industries.

I am not being parochial and expressing concern only about the wool textile and clothing industries. A frightening example is the manufacture of brake pads. I have been told that unscrupulous agents in Britain can have an exclusive branded product—made in Britain or other parts of Europe—copied exactly in Taiwan within one month. The only thing that is not exactly copied is the quality.

If we allow fraudulent goods to circulate in a free market, we shall face similar problems to those that arose in the days of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, when counterfeiting debased the currency. Bad currency always pushes out good, and we have real problems already with our economy.

Most people in this country know the genuine quality of goods made in West Yorkshire and other areas which have a reputation for quality products, but in other countries which were traditionally our markets, if people buy branded as British worsted suiting without a shred of wool in it and brake pads which last only hundreds instead of many thousands of miles, the whole quality of British exported products is debased and the future of our long-term export markets is under threat.

When hon. Members presented the Minister with examples of fraud, they were hardly impressed by the Minister's alacrity or that of the Government. Time after time Ministers have told me and other hon. Members to give them evidence. It is an interesting story. We were informed about frauds that took place not only in products with which we were familiar but which were estimated—even in Taiwan—to amount to about £400 million annually. If £400 million of shoddy goods that are falsely labelled as having been made in Britain are being dumped on markets that we have traditionally called our own, it can only bode ill for the future of our economy.

The Government have been prompted to act quickly, because earlier this year an all-party parliamentary delegation went to Taiwan. I am told that it started off as a red-carpet reception but turned into a red-faced reception. Early in the visit, members of the delegation were taken to large factories and to the largest textile mill in Taiwan. They found that half the products on the shelves were fraudulently labelled. Products that had just come off the mill had been marked as being made of 100 per cent. Yorkshire worsted, or as having been made in Huddersfield or as containing 100 per cent. English wool. Indeed, the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) recently mentioned this matter during Question Time.

The Government must realise that a massive amount of fraud is going on in various parts of the world. I hope that the Government will pursue an active policy in order to stamp out this grave threat to the future of British exports. The bizarre visit to Taiwan dramatically revealed the extent of the problem. At the time, the delegation attested that the Taiwanese Administration had no fears about reprisals from or action by the British Government. They must have felt that the British Government were a pretty tame animal. They must have thought that the British hon had had its claws clipped and its teeth pulled if they could take a parliamentary delegation round their factories and could openly and fraudulently broadcast the fact that they were copying British goods. The Government should consider it a serious matter that the Taiwanese Administration are so complacent.

It is well known that European merchants can obtain fraudulent goods. They will do so to an increasing extent. I do not only criticise the manufacturers in Taiwan, because many of them are the mere puppets of unscrupulous manufacturers in Europe. Any demands that are made either today or in future will be demands for action not only by this Government but by the European Community, however cumbersome that body might be.

Our well-known quality branded products are being copied exactly in terms of appearance and represent a great danger to our markets. The nub of the problem is that the bad drives out the good. These products not only take away our markets; they ruin our reputation. The best worsteds in the world are made in my constituency, as you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will know from your experience. When men and women throughout the world buy goods that turn out to be shoddy and fail to last, that will reflect on the future of my constituents, who are the salt of the earth. They are the people who make our exports and create the wealth of this country. Under this Government they have suffered a 158 per cent. increase in unemployment. They now face unemployment on a scale that they have never known in their history, nearing 10 per cent. This is why my constituents are especially concerned that the fraudulent practice that I have described should be treated by the Government in a severe manner. I am talking about a town that is known for its skills and its product. The message must go to the Government that we want action now. We do not want promises of future activity.

I shall explain briefly what it is that my constituents and I consider to be vital. I have spoken to many manufacturers who are genuinely distressed that they can get no action. Taiwan is in a strange relationship with Her Majesty's Government. There is no official recognition of the Taiwanese Government. We have no diplomatic ties of a proper nature with Taiwan. We have seen some successes in Korea and in other countries. We have persuaded Korea to subscribe to the Treaty of Paris. By using the court system in host countries, we have been able to achieve successful prosecutions against manufacturers who were fraudulently labelling goods. However, we are in an especially difficult position with Taiwan. There is no diplomatic recognition and there has been almost nil success in the Taiwan courts for British manufacturers even though the case speaks for itself.

I am not impugning any court system in Britain or abroad. However, it is strange, when the practice of fraudulent labelling is taking place on a great scale, that there is only one case in the courts involving British goods that have been fraudulently copied.

There is a real possibility of action. We have an unfavourable trade balance with Taiwan of £205 million imports and £205 million exports. The Taiwanese very much value Britain as a market. If the Government say to the Taiwanese authorities "We shall place an embargo on all Taiwanese goods unless you stamp out this illegal practice of fraud", the message will go home and will go home quickly. Her Majesty's Government have every right to say that immediately. It is not necessary to wait for the new year. It can be our Christmas message to Taiwan. That message should be "We shall embargo your goods. We do not mind fair competition, but we will not stand fraudulence."

We want signs of greater activity. The parliamentary delegation found that there was only one man and a part-time young lady working in the trade mission in Taiwan. The United States and Japan had large staffs. Is it not about time that we took the business of exporting seriously? Surely it is time that we had a large staff helping exporters in every part of the globe and an inspectorate that checks that fraud is not taking place. As soon as there is a suggestion—not hard evidence—of fraud, we should send out investigators to ascertain the facts. I hope that the Minister will consider introducing such a scheme in the new year.

I reiterate the facts. This is fraud and not competition or unfair competition. I do not want at any time to be associated with the call for narrow protectionism. I do not believe in that type of protectionism. However, I believe that Britain suffers through being slow to react to gross injustices and from a lack of commitment. I hesitate to equate that with patriotism.

Large sectors of our population have been persuaded over past years that it is non-U and unfashionable to buy British. The sooner that the Government introduce legislation to bolster the notion of buying British, the better. It could be through origin marking of a substantial nature, and I hope that it will be of a substantial nature. The Government are considering that at the moment. We urgently need a change in legislation to make it clear when people are buying British.

The general secretary of the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers saw a sweater in a store in Bradford only last week. It had a Union Jack on the front and said "Shetland wool", so he believed that it was made in Britain. When he turned the label over, he found that it was made in Macao.

The Government should bolster attempts to make the country more conscious that British buying means British jobs and future British prosperity. That would aid us all. The first step should be to cut out the severe threat to our quality exports.

If I do not have time to deal with all the points raised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield, East (Mr. Sheerman), I hope that he will understand. I shall write to him about any that I do not have time to deal with.

I shall not take up his invitation to debate the Government's economic policies or general textile problems, but I am sure that his constituents will be pleased that this week the Americans have removed the threat that previously existed to the export of wool textiles into America by removing the instrument that President Carter signed a few months ago. The prospects are that much brighter at the end of this week than at the beginning.

As the hon. Gentleman said, false labelling and counterfeiting of goods is a serious issue. In the past few months there has been growing concern about it, which was stimulated recently by the Taiwanese authorities, who, as he said, made the mistake of showing a good-will mission of Members of this House a factory in Taiwan where cloth was being made marked "Made in Huddersfield". If ever there was a way to turn a good-will mission into the opposite, the Taiwanese Government found it.

Earlier this week I discussed with representatives of the car industry a range of problems that they have. Its trade journal, the Auto Accessory Retailer, came forward with a group representing the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the Anti-Counterfeiting Group and leading manufacturers and presented substantial evidence of counterfeiting.

I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for sending me a note during the debate telling me where I could find further evidence. I shall follow that up.

We are getting information from a wide range of industries, including textiles, cars, films, tools and locks, about the problem of counterfeiting and the dangers and losses that are being caused by it.

May I make the position clear straight away? The best line of defence for any country is a properly registered patent or trade mark. Without that, a company is in a difficult position. Companies must obtain the relevant patent and trade mark protection before they market products.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Paris convention. We support it strongly and have played a part in ensuring that 90 countries are now members. That means that in 90 countries British manufacturers who register their trade marks have the same legal rights as does local industry. That is a very important line of defence for our industries. That is why we encourage countries such as Korea to become signatories. It is important that companies should ensure that they have rights and that the Government do their part to ensure that those rights are enforceable in as many countries as possible.

We have in this country a substantial range of possible measures to use against those who seek to bring counterfeit goods into the country. There are safety, industrial property and consumer protection regulations covering all goods imported, and we believe that the amount of counterfeit goods coming in is small. However, we are determined to stop them completely if we can.

The hon. Member mentioned brake linings and the dangers associated with them. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport is well aware of them, and I give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that if any evidence comes to him or to us of defective brake linings coming into the country action will be taken to ban their sale and to seize the goods. Companies that have evidence of fraud should present it immediately under the Trade Descriptions Act to their local trading standards officers. The Customs and Excise are again willing, using their powers, to take action against these counterfeit goods.

It will be of special interest to the hon. Gentleman that just recently the customs investigation branch of the Customs and Excise was increased by 12 members who will concentrate exclusively on textile fraud. My hon. Friend mentioned problems with Romania. That is a classic case where the new customs investigation officers can act, and they will be acting on that problem. Outside this country we have to take advantage of our rights under the Paris convention, and British industries have been doing just that. The Scotch whisky industry is a magnificent case, showing that by tenaciously pursuing its rights it has been able to jump on quite a few people who were marketing false products labelled as Scotch. We encourage all our industries to copy its example and to be as resolute and determined as it has been.

The Government are always ready to back up companies when making bilateral approaches to the Governments of countries where we discover that products are being counterfeited. We will not hesitate to do that. That is why I welcome the evidence that has been given to us. We cannot, however, act on anecdotal evidence. We need facts. When we have them, we will not hesitate to take up the problems with the Governments concerned.

Let me deal with two countries that have been mentioned and contrast their attitude. The hon. Member mentioned Hong Kong, which used to be a major source of counterfeit goods. The Hong Kong authorities did not like the reputation that the colony was acquiring. They strengthened their legislation and their investigating officers. They now have 46. Last year they carried out 600 investigations and there were a considerable number of prosecutions. They are determined to stamp out that activity in Hong Kong.

This contrasts remarkably with Taiwan, where the authorities have the law on their side—legislation that bans this trade—but we believe that they do not enforce it. If they wish to be accepted as responsible members of the world trading community, I serve notice on the Taiwan authorities that they will have to mend their ways. The recent parliamentary delegation brought back incontrovertible evidence. On vehicles, we have very strong evidence. The hon. Member said that the way forward is for us to ban the import of products from Taiwan. I must tell the Taiwanese authorities that our patience is wearing extremely thin. We are considering the evidence that we have at our disposal. They have the opportunity to avoid a major incident by taking the strong action that Hong Kong has taken. Unless they do, the Taiwanese authorities must be prepared to accept the consequences.

We recognise that counterfeiting is a dangerous menace. It costs our industry sales, it damages our reputation and it costs us jobs. A concerted attack by industry and the Government offers the best prospect of dealing with this problem. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government are ready to play their part, and I thank him for raising in this last debate before Christmas an important and interesting subject.

I express to Members of the House and the staff of the House the best wishes of the Chair for a very happy Christmas.