Commons Chamber

                    The text on this page has been created from Hansard archive content, it may contain typographical errors.
                

House Of Commons

Tuesday 27 January 1981

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

Prayers

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Private Business

Allied Irish Banks Bill

Read a Second time and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

Barnsley Borough Council Bill

Read a Second time and committed.

British Railways (No 2) Bill

British Railways (Pension Schemes) Bill

British Transport Docks Bill

Orders for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time upon Thursday

Charterhouse Japhet Bill

Read a Second time and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

1	2	3	4	5	6
Date when Closure claimed, and by whom	Question before House or Committee when claimed	Whether in House or Committee	Whether assent given to Motion or withheld by the Chair	Assent withheld because, in the opinion of the Chair, a decision would shortly be arrived at without that Motion	Result of Motion and, if a Division, Numbers for and against

and (2) in the Standing Committees under the following heads:—

1	2	3	4	5
Date when Closure claimed, and by whom	Question before Committee when claimed	Whether assent given to Motion or withheld by the Chair	Assent withheld because, in the opinion of the Chair, a decision would shortly be arrived at without the Motion	Result of Motion and, if a Division, Number for and against.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL

LLOYD'S BILL

LLOYDS BANK BILL

LONDON TRANSPORT BILL

Orders for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time upon Thursday.

Whitehaven Harbour Bill

Yarmouth (Isle Of Wight) Bill

Read a Second time and committed.

London Transport (No 2) Bill)

Order for Third Reading read.

To be read the Third time upon Thursday.

With the agreement of the House, and in accordance with usual practice, I propose to call the Chairman of Ways and Means to move together all nine of his motions for unopposed returns.

Adjournment Motions Under Standing Order No 9

Return ordered,

of Motions for Adjournment under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration), showing the date of such Motion, the name of the Member proposing the specific and important matter and the result of any Division taken thereon, during Session 1979–80.—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Closure Of Debate (Standing Order No30)

Return ordered,

respecting application of Standing Order No. 30 (Closure of Debate) during Session 1979–80, (1) in the House and in Committee of the whole House, under the following heads:—

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Delegated Legislation

Return ordered,

of the number of Instruments considered in Session 1979–80 by the Joint Committee and the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments respectively pursuant to their orders of reference, showing in each case the numbers of Instruments subject to the different forms of Parliamentary procedure and of those within the Committees' orders of reference for which no Parliamentary procedure is prescribed by statute, and the numbers drawn to the special attention of the House or of both Houses distinguishing the ground in the Committees' orders of reference upon which such attention was invited; and of the numbers of Instruments considered by a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments and by the House respectively, in Session 1979–80, showing the number where the Question on the proceedings relating thereto was put forthwith under Standing Order No. 73A(5).—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Private Bills And Private Business

Return ordered,

of the number of Private Bills, Hybrid Bills and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders introduced into this House and brought from the House of Lords, and of Acts passed in Session 1979–80:

Of all Private Bills, Hybrid Bills and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders which in Session 1979–80 were reported on by Committees on Opposed Bills or by Committees nominated partly by the House and partly by the Committee of Selection, together with the names of the selected Members who served on each Committee; the first and also the last day of the sitting of each Committee; the number of days on which each Committee sat; the number of days on which each selected Member served; the number of days occupied by each Bill in Committee; the Bills of which the Preambles were reported to have been proved; the Bills of which the Preambles were reported to have been not proved; and, in the case of Bills for confirming Provisional Orders, whether the Provisional Order ought or ought not to be confirmed:

Of all Private Bills and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders which in Session 1979–80 were referred by the Committee of Selection to the Committee on Unopposed Bills, together with the names of the Members who served on the Committee; the number of days on which the Committee sat; and the number of days on which each Member attended:

And, of the number of Private Bills, Hybrid Bills, and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders withdrawn or not proceeded with by the parties, those Bills being specified which were referred to Committees and dropped during the sittings of the Committee.—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Public Bills

Return ordered,

of the number of Public Bills, distinguishing Government from other Bills, introduced into this House, or brought from the House of Lords, during Session 1979–80, showing:
(1) the number which received the Royal Assent, and
(2) the number which did not receive the Royal Assent, indicating those which were introduced into but not passed by this House, those passed by this House but not by the House of Lords, those passed by the House of Lords but not by this House, those passed by both Houses but Amendments not agreed to; and distinguishing the stages at which such Bills were dropped, postponed or rejected in either House of Parliament, or the stages which such Bills had reached by the time of the Prorogation or Dissolution.—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Select Committees

Return ordered,

for the Session 1979–80 of Select Committees in Session 1979–80, with the Sub-Committees appointed by them; the number of the meetings of each and the number of meetings each Member attended; and the number of Members who served on Select Committees; together with the total cost (estimated where necessary) in respect of each Select Committee and Sub-Committee of:—the attendance of witnesses; overseas visits; visits within the United Kingdom; Specialist Advisers' remuneration and expenses respectively, and other work commissioned; entertainment; the preparation for publication of the Minutes of Evidence; and printing and publishing; with so much of the same information as is relevant to the Chairmen's Panel and the Court of Referees.—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Sittings Of The House And Business Of Supply

Return ordered,

of (1) the days on which the House sat in Session 1979–80 stating for each day the day of the month and day of the week, the hour of the meeting, and the hour of the adjournment; and the total number of hours occupied in the Sittings of the House, and the average time; and showing the number of hours on which the House sat each day, and the number of hours after the time appointed for the interruption of business; and (2) the days on which Business of Supply was considered.—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Standing Committees

Return ordered,

for Session 1979–80, of (1) the total number and the names of all Members (including and distinguishing Chairmen) who have been appointed to serve on one or more of the Standing Committees showing, with regard to each of such Members, the number of sittings to which he was summoned and at which he was present; (2) the number of Bills, Estimates, Matters and other items referred to Standing Committees pursuant to Standing Order No. 73A (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.) considered by all and by each of the Standing Committee, the numbers of sittings of each Committee and the titles of all Bills, Estimates, Matters and other items as above considered by a Committee, distinguishing where a Bill was a Government Bill or was brought from the House of Lords, and showing in the case of each Bill, Estimate, Matter and other item, the particular Committee by whom it was considered, the number of sittings at which it was considered and the number of Members present at each of those sittings.—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Special Procedure Orders

Return ordered,

of the number of Special Procedure Orders presented in Session 1979–80; the number withdrawn; the number against which Petitions or copies of Petitions were deposited; the number of Petitions of General Objection and for Amendment respectively considered by the Charimen; the number of such Petitions certified by the Chairmen as proper to be received, and the number certified by them as being Petitions of General Objection and for Amendment respectively; the number referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses; the number reported with Amendments by a Joint Committee, and the number in relation to which a Joint Committee reported that the Order be not approved; and the number of Bills introduced for the confirmation of Special Procedure Orders:

Of Special Procedure Orders which, in Session 1979–80, were referred to a Joint Committee, together with the names of the Commons Members who served on each Committee; the number of days on which each Committee sat; and the number of days on which each such Member attended.—[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Questions For Oral Answer

Employment

Wages Councils

asked the Secretary of State for Employment whether he will make a statement on the effect of the operation of wages councils on employment.

Wages councils set minimum rates of pay in trades and industries where there is no other adequate machinery for the determination of pay. The rates are determined by representatives of both sides of the industry, who clearly need to take into account the consequences of their decisions for jobs. It is, of course, essential that wage rates, whether fixed by wages councils or otherwise, should be realistic.

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for that answer. Does he agree that communications, labour mobility and collective bargaining have changed radically since the wages council system was started in the 1920s? Will the Government give a detailed response to the recent well-researched document from the National Federation of Self Employed, whose conclusions, which have been confirmed by a number of my constituents, are that the main result of wages councils as presently constituted is to deprive groups such as school leavers and ethnic minorities of much-needed employment opportunities?

The wages councils still cover almost 3 million workers in sectors of industry where there does not appear to be effective collective bargaining machinery. At the same time, I agree with my hon. Friend that we must watch the position carefully. If there is evidence that wages councils are making awards that have the effect of reducing jobs, the Government will consider that a serious matter. I read with great interest the document produced by the National Federation of Self Employed. My noble Friend intends to meet representatives of that organisation in the near future, and will listen to what they say.

Does the Minister agree that the scale of underpayment, either deliberate or accidental, is astronomical, with 70 per cent. following a complaint inspection? Does he agree also that we must reform wages councils—not abolish them—increase the number of inspectors, institute blitzes again, and simplify the whole range of orders, so that both employers and employees can understand what minimum rates are?

I understand that the recent reduction in the number of inspectors will bring the number down to the level at which it stood in 1978. There is no clear evidence that blitzes have the effect of increasing job opportunities for people, and that is the important thing.

Does my hon. Friend accept that the wages councils have specifically narrowed the differentials between juveniles and adults, and in that way diminished the job opportunities for school leavers and young people?

I agree with my hon. Friend that over the years wages council awards have narrowed the differentials between the rates paid to young people and those paid to adults, but I must point out that that has been the effect of wage bargaining throughout the whole of industry. That in itself may not have done other than reduce work opportunities for young people.

I welcome the hon. and learned Gentleman to the Front Bench and hope that he lasts rather longer than his predecessor, who was so spitefully sacked from under the right hon. Gentleman.

May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman why, on 16 December, I received a parliamentary answer from his Department saying that cuts in the Wages Inspectorate would be phased in over three years, whereas the unions have now been told that they will be completed by April 1982? More importantly, does he recognise that by cutting the Wages Inspectorate by one-third, by reducing the inspection cycle to once every decade, and by other changes that are being made, he is making a mockery of attempts to deal with rogue employers who are underpaying and breaking the law? How does the party of law and order square that one?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his welcome to me, but I am sorry that he coupled it with the rather snide remark that he made about my hon. Friend, who performed great services when he was holding the office that I now hold.

I must repeat what I said a short time ago. The recent reduction in the number of inspectors will merely bring the number down to the 1978 figure. That does not seem to me to be a dramatic reduction.

Shop Stewards

asked the Secretary of State for Employment what consideration he has given to the provision of training for shop stewards.

Relevant training can be an important element in securing improvements in industrial relations, but its provision is primarily a matter for trade unions and management.

Will my hon. Friend look again at the training provided by the TUC, with the assistance of the Government, and will he consider whether, next year, we should make some provision, as urged by many conveners in major works in the Midlands, for the in-plant training of shop stewards, which they consider would be one of the best ways of avoiding unofficial disputes?

My hon. Friend will be aware that for the current year, 1980–81, the Government have continued the arrangements established by the previous Government. My Department and the Department of Education and Science make a grant towards the cost of training initiated or undertaken by the TUC. A further sum is available for non-affiliated unions. No final decision has yet been taken on the way in which the money may be allocated next year. Clearly, this is a difficult time at which to speak of additional moneys being made available. The suggestion made by my hon. Friend will be carefully considered, but there are obvious advantages in providing general training, rather than training that is specific to one particular plant.

Trade Union Immunities

asked the Secretary of State for Employment when he expects to publish the Green Paper on trade union immunities.

I published the Green Paper on trade union immunities on 15 January.

On a day that sees one out of 10 people out of work for the first time since the war, should we not remind ourselves how much of the present level of unemployment has been brought about by obstructive, shortsighted, politically motivated trade unionism and ask whether by that attitude unions have not long since forfeited their right to many of the immunities that they traditionally enjoy?

There are many factors, including industrial relations, that have contributed to the unemployment position that we face today. One of the purposes of the Green Paper on trade union immunities is to draw attention to and have a wide consultation on what can be done to improve industrial relations.

Will the Green Paper contain any provision to give trade unions immunity from any damage that may result from their being responsible for the election of the leader of the Labour Party?

Not specifically on that point, but chapter 3 deals fairly fully with the whole question of damages being awarded against a trade union for breach of contract.

Merseyside

asked the Secretary of State for Employment what are the latest unemployment figures for Merseyside.

At 15 January the provisional number of people registered as unemployed in the Merseyside special development area was 109,483:

Is not that an appalling figure? Is the Secretary of State aware that Merseyside in general—and my constituency in particular—is rapidly becoming an industrial desert? Is he also aware that the decision to close Tate and Lyle Ltd. in Liverpool can be prevented by political action if his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will agree to restrict sugar beet growth in the United Kingdom, and by accepting the proposals of the EEC? Will the Secretary of State have urgent discussions with his right hon. Friend, or is it his intention, and that of the Prime Minister, to stand by idly while Merseyside goes down the plug hole?

May I also remind the Minister—

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not remind the Minister. I believe that he has asked the question that he wanted to ask.

Not yet, Mr. Speaker.

Very well. I invite the hon. Member to complete it.

I warn the Minister that the workers of Liverpool will never forgive this Tory Government if Tate and Lyle closes.

We regret very much the closure of Tate and Lyle Ltd. in Liverpool, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, there is surplus refining capacity in Britain, and has been for a number of years. What is more, he will know that in the last year and a half we have allocated large sums to try to help Liverpool, whether through the special employment measures or through regional aid, and we shall continue to do so. In addition, Liverpool is one of the areas that is to have an enterprise zone. It is also to have an urban development corporation. We shall continue to do all that we can to help.

How can the right hon. Gentleman talk about an enterprise zone when, in the middle of Liverpool, in the inner city area, Tate and Lyle Ltd. is about to close, with the loss of 1,600 or 1,700 jobs? Does he realise that the people on Merseyside—and in Liverpool in particular—are reaching a stage of utter and complete despair? Is he aware that they feel that the Government should be put out of office at the earliest possible time, so that a Labour Government can deal with the matter?

I am not aware of the latter point, but I am aware that the situation in Liverpool has deteriorated over a number of years. It did not begin in 1979 and, regrettably, it has not yet ended.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that school leavers are having to bear an unfair proportion of the burden of mass unemployment? What is he prepared to do about providing special training programmes for school leavers on Merseyside, in the North-West, and in St. Helens in particular?

We have increased the help under the youth opportunities programme from 300,000 places this year to 440,000 places next year, and that is double the figure for last year. One-fifth of those places will go to Merseyside and the North-West. I believe that, much as school leavers may be suffering, those who are older are beginning to bear the full brunt of unemployment, rather than the school leavers, for whom we have been able to do a great deal.

Unemployment Statistics

asked the Secretary of State for Employment what has been the absolute increase in unemployment since May 1979; and if he will make a statement.

Between May 1979 and January 1981 the total numbers registered as unemployed in the United Kingdom increased by 1,120,170. Excluding school leavers and seasonally adjusted, the increase was 929,800.

The Government will continue to provide help wherever possible, including through the special employment measures, which are currently assisting 828,000 people, and also through other means.

Is not the Secretary of State deeply ashamed at the desperate plight in which Britain has been placed by this most reactionary and doctrinaire of all Governments? Does he not realise that whole areas of British industry are now empty, arid and bleak and are becoming worse? When will his Government realise that their policy of monetarism is defunct and hopeless? When will the U-turn come about and bring some of our people, especially the young, back into work?

I share the concern of the whole House about unemployment. No one likes to stand at the Dispatch Box with unemployment at this level. [Interruption.] I believe that the policies, however difficult, that have been adopted by the Government, are more likely, in the long run, to get the country back on to a firm footing than anything that has been suggested by Labour Members.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, wretched as these figures are, the increase in unemployment in West Germany and other European countries over the last three months has been at a substantially higher level than we have experienced? However, having said that, may I ask my right hon. Friend to look again at the measures that he announced before Christmas and see whether they need to be supplemented, and particularly whether we need to do more under the job release scheme, by reducing the qualifying age?

I shall look into the latter point raised by my hon. Friend. With regard to his former point, it is true that other countries are now beginning to feel the recession that hit us earlier. Over the last two months there has been a rapid rise in unemployment in West Germany. We can get out of our problems if we become more competitive. It is as simple, but yet as difficult, as that.

Has the Secretary of State read the report that was published today by the Manchester chamber of commerce about the devastation of industry in the North-West? Does he not consider that the time has come for the Cabinet to stop using unemployment as an economic weapon? Does he not take the view hat actions speak louder than words? If he cannot persuade the Cabinet to stop using unemployment as an economic weapon, has not the time come for him to resign?

The Cabinet is not using unemployment as an economic weapon. The amount of aid that we are now giving, through special employment measures, through the temporary short-time working compensation scheme, and through aid on a massive scale to British Leyland, British Shipbuilders, the British Steel Corporation, the National Coal Board and many others, is on a scale that refutes the argument of Labour Members that the Conservative Party and the Government do not care about unemployment.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the training content of the youth opportunities programme has been substantially improved? Will he also say something about greater use being made of skillcentres?

The training content of the youth opportunities programme has increased from 17 per cent. off-the-job training two years ago to over 40 per cent. this year. We have improved the guarantees so that young people are out of work for a shorter time before being offered a place. We shall use any spare capacity at skillcentres to give young people a chance.

Why does not the Secretary of State come clean and admit that the policies that are being pursued make a bleak situation much worse? Is he aware that, on any analysis, whether it is of investment, output or average unemployment in industrial countries, our situation is much worse than the world recession? Is he further aware that, by any measure, he is as discredited as the name of his job—a job that he has signally failed to fulfil? Does he not realise that if he were to leave office now, that would be one redundancy in which the whole country would rejoice?

The right hon. Gentleman is right in saying that our unemployment is worse now than that of other countries. However, he is wrong in not recognising that the position has been growing worse for 20 years. He, as the Secretary of State for Industry in the Labour Government, must take his share of the responsibility. If he had done what was necessary to help to thin down these old outdated industries at the right time, we might not be facing the difficulties that we are facing today.

Industrial Training Boards

asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a further statement regarding his plans for the future of the industrial training boards.

asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a further statement on his plans for the industrial training boards.

My right hon. Friend has asked the Manpower Services Commission to undertake as a matter of urgency a review of the institutional arrangements for promoting training in each sector of industry, and hopes to be in a position to take decisions on the future of particular boards this summer.

The review will take careful note of the views expressed by industry. Both the Government and the Manpower Services Commission would welcome views on this matter from as wide a range of organisations as possible.

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend on assuming his richly-deserved eminence. In the course of this review, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that while some of the training boards perform a useful service, others are as much use as a sick headache? Is he aware that some of the most useless, such as the Road Transport Industry training board, have given themselves the most fantastic salary structures for their staff? Will he take great care to ensure that if the cost of paying for the staff is transferred to the private sector it will not be required to pick up chat sort of tab?

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks. We shall take into account the points that he makes. That is the aim of the review. We shall listen closely to and learn from all those involved. If my hon. Friend has a further point of view to put forward, I shall take it into account seriously.

Is my hon. Friend aware that while many of the boards may be held in ill-repute, that is not true of them all? Is he further aware that the Hotel and Catering Industry training board is held in fairly high repute within the industry? Is it the view of the Government that the need for training remains as important, if not more important, than it was in 1964? Will my hon. Friend please be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water?

I am aware that there are conflicting views about training boards. I receive a number of letters giving both sides of the argument. It is the view of the Government that the training is as important as ever, but it is also our view that the time has come to review the situation to see how we can improve it.

Why does the Minister expect the House to accept the assurance of the Secretary of State that he will do everything that he can to increase employment measures, when he is destroying future employment by his proposals to disband the industrial training boards?

I do not think that the hon. Lady quite understood what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said. He said that he intends to review the existing training boards, and that he will wait to hear the views of the Manpower Services Commission and both sides of industry before making proposals to the House.

Does my hon. Friend accept that if we are to improve the supply side of the economy and meet the rapidly changing needs of industry for more highly skilled people, a statutory provision on training is required? Does he agree that we should not go back to the old days of relying on individual companies to do that?

No. I do not entirely agree with my hon. Friend. In some instances voluntary organisations are better at doing things than are statutory organisations. I am not so prejudiced as to go all the way down that route. We shall have to come to a decision when the proposals come forward.

Is the Minister aware that the Manpower Services Commission has recently published a report entitled "Outlook for Training", and that the Bill that has been put before the House by the Secretary of State defies the most important of the recommendations included in the report? Will the hon. Gentleman confirm the assumption, which now seems to be widespread throughout industrial training, that the Government are intent on abolishing 20 of the 24 boards? It is incredible that at a time when nearly 2½ million people are unemployed the Government should worsen the prospects of employment and add to the problem by stitching £50 million out of training, thereby dealing the most devastating blow to industrial training since the 1964 Act.

I am aware that the MSC has already published a report. I am aware also of what is set out in the report. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, as a prominent member of the Opposition, wants a flexible and perhaps radical approach to training, and that is exactly what we have. However, it is right that we should carry out a review.

Youth Opportunities Programme

asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many people in the London area are currently on youth opportunities programme schemes; and how many of those eligible for such schemes are unemployed.

At the end of October 1980 there were about 3,000 young people participating in the youth opportunities programme in the GLC boundaries area. The latest available figure for those young people unemployed but eligible for the programme is for the October count, when there were about 19,200 young people with more than six weeks' unemployment. The analysis of the count made this January will be available in mid-February.

Does the Minister agree that the figures that he has quoted indicate that the YOP schemes are making no significant contribution to the problem of unemployment among young people in the London area? Should he not do something to review the schemes, so that we do not have a generation of young people in London, and elsewhere, who will never have learnt what it is like to go to work, because there is no work for them under this Government?

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I visited some schemes in his constituency yesterday to learn what is happening. I cannot agree with his contention that the schemes are not doing any good. Indeed, I admired what I saw. He will probably be aware that in 1979–80, 5,000 young people in London entered a YOP scheme. Next year, provisional allocation is being made for 11,000 young people. Efforts are being made to deal with the problem.

Although the number of young people unemployed in London exceeds the number of registered job vacancies suitable for young people in the Metropolis, will my hon. Friend bear in mind that there are thousands of vacancies suitable for young people? Does he intend to take any initiative to encourage young people, who are unemployed to take up some of these jobs, at least temporarily, while they look for a permanent job more suited to their taste?

I am always keen to examine any new initiative on jobs for young people. If my hon. Friend has any particular ideas that he thinks I have not noticed, I hope that he will talk to me about them. If he does, I shall consider reviewing the present policy.

Is the Minister aware that the relationship between job vacancies and unemployment in London is worsening and that it is a misconception to suggest that there is great potential for dealing with the problem? Will he confirm that the unemployment figures for London generally, for both the young and the adult unemployed, are second only to those for Merseyside? How can that be squared with the fact that hundreds of millions of pounds of Government resources have been switched out of London in recent announcements by his fellow member of the Cabinet, the Secretary of State for the Environment?

The right hon. Gentleman flatters me by saying that I am a fellow member of the Cabinet. I am not in that position. I confirm that unemployment in London is a little worse than it was. However, I cannot confirm that London is as bad as the right hon. Gentleman suggests. I represent a part of the North-West, an area that has much greater problems than those of London.

Young Persons

asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on progress made towards a solution of the problems of youth unemployment.

We have massively expanded the youth opportunities programme, which is designed to help unemployed young people gain the training and work experience they need to get jobs. This means that up to 440,000 young people will be helped in 1981–82 compared with 216,000 in 1979–80. The two undertakings will also be improved, so that those young people who leave school this Easter or summer will be offered a place by Christmas and not the following Easter as was previously the case; and all other 16 and17-year-olds unemployed for three months will be offered a place within three months. A long-term solution to youth unemployment is a matter of sticking to correct economic policies.

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there has been a dramatic rise in youth unemployment in the past 12 to 18 months? Will he confirm that while that rise has been taking place there has been a dramatic fall in the number of vacancies for them? Will he convey to the Prime Minister and to other Ministers that it is not enough to say that these young people must wait until there is a change in the economic situation? Is it not the case that youths will have no prospect of a job for years to come as long as the present policies are continued.

Yes, there has been a rise in a number of unemployed and a reduction in the number of vacancies. That is why we have increased the number of youth opportunity programme places. Indeed, we have doubled them in two years. We have also brought forward guarantees and increased the amount of training that takes place within the programme. All that helps to prepare young people for a better future.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the youth opportunities programme in the Northern region is being used effectively, and that no fewer than 19,000 young people have been through the scheme in the past two years?

Where are they now?

They are still on the dole.

However, is my right hon. Friend also aware that employment experience positions are unfilled, and that co-operative employers find that difficult to understand? Will he do his best to cut through the Opposition-engendered gloom and suggest to young people that unemployment is not inevitable and that training is available for those who are ready to be trained?

Yes. I shall ascertain whether we are able to give more publicity to our schemes in the North-East. The figures that my hon. Friend has produced demonstrate clearly the great concern on the Government Benches about the level of youth unemployment and our determination to do something about it.

Does the right hon. Gentleman concede that under his Government teenage unemployment has reached crisis proportions, especially in our major cities? Does he know that in Wales, in Scotland and in the North unemployment now exceeds 500,000? Does he understand that that means a bleak future for our young unemployed? Does not this represent a breakdown of Government economic policy?

No. I do not think that it represents anything of the sort. However, it indicates the great difficulties that Britain has got into over a period of years and our determination to adhere to economic policies which, at the end of the day—

Which day?

—are more likely to get Britain out of the difficult problem of unemployment than anything that has been done before.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that figures released today show that the youth opportunities programme in the West Country is proving outstandingly successful, and that so many firms have subscribed that there is a waiting list for trainees? Does he not think it encouraging that local companies are prepared to go out of their way to help young people in this manner?

Yes. I am grateful to those employers in the West Country who are giving this help. I appeal to employers throughout Britain to come forward, in larger number to provide places and to help young people in what is, admittedly, a difficult time both for them and for young people.

Unemployed Persons

10.

asked the Secretary of State for Employment what further action he proposes to take to reduce the level of unemployment.

We shall continue the programme of special employment measures in 1981–82, including a major expansion of the youth opportunities programme. The latest estimate is that 828,000 people are being assisted through these measures. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry announced yesterday, we shall provide further resources for BL. In the long run, only through lower inflation and greater competitiveness will Britain get out of its problems.

On the day of the announcement of an increase of nearly 1 million unemployed under the Tory Government, is it not sheer hypocrisy for the Secretary of State to express concern, when he himself has cut back the job retirement scheme, abolished the small firms employment subsidy and cut back the temporary short-time working compensation scheme? Is it not a fact that the creation of unemployment is the deliberate economic policy of that Government, an attack on the working classes and an attack on the trade union movement? Is it not time, if the right hon. Gentleman is so concerned, for him to get out of office?

No. The hon. Gentleman was for a short time a member of the Government which had the opportunity to follow different economic policies if they had sought to do so, but saw a similar rise in unemployment in their first two years in office. I reject what the hon. Gentleman says. I should have thought that the fact that through employment measures we are supporting 828,000 jobs would be a matter for praise from him, rather than anything else.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that we do not need lectures on unemployment from the Labour Party, which pushed up the level from 600,000 to 1·3 million when in office? However, we take seriously, and we hope that my hon. Friend does so, too, the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Scott) about the need to look again at our employment proposals.

Yes. I constantly look at them. It is a matter of great concern to hon. Members on both sides of the House that we should do everything that we can. The fact is that despite all the money that has been put into the schemes, and into a number of industries, the level of unemployment has been rising inexorably in Britain over the last 15 or 20 years. It will take time to get this right.

Does the Secretary of State not realise the extent of the holocaust in employment that is hitting Scottish industry? Has he had an opportunity to look at today's figures, which show that unemployment in Scotland has gone up by 25,000? Does he not feel that the time has come for him to drop the sanctimonious cant that we get and for some action to be taken on getting changes in economic policy?

I do not think that I want any lessons in sanctimonious cant from the hon. Gentleman.

Is it not a sad fact that unemployment has been rising, economic cycle by economic cycle, in all the advanced Western countries? Is it not correct to say that the creation of employment through sound economic policy, especially to aid and assist small firms, would be a beneficial supplement to existing policy?

Any extra help that we can give to small firms would undoubtedly help enormously. We have to recognise that it is no good going through the problems of high unemployment now if all that we ace going to do is to revert to the policies that have created worse situations year after year. It is the Government's determination that we should stick to our policies, to make certain that this does not happen again.

Has the Secretary of State seen the report in The Times today of the speech delivered by his hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), in which he admitted that the present unemployment level was the inevitable outcome of Government policies and that they should make a virtue of it because this represents a useful reserve? Will the right hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to repudiate his hon. Friend his wicked and callous outlook on the unemployment situation?

When one is seeking to reduce the level of inflation, it is always the case that the level of unemployment is bound to rise, as the previous Government saw only too clearly. To that extent the Government have to accept—as that previous Government did—an increase in the level of unemployment. Once we get inflation down, unemployment should start to fall. That is the only way in which to build a successful economy.

Will my right hon. Friend consider introducing measures by which the weakest sections of the community have the lawful right to price themselves into employment? Will he consider, in particular, legislation to abolish wages councils?

As my hon. Friend pointed out earlier, 3 million people are covered by wages councils. They are the lowest paid workers. My hon. Friend, went on to point out—and I point out too—that there is a danger that young people, particularly, are pricing, and can price, themselves out of jobs. This is a matter that we are constantly looking at to see whether we can bring about an improvement in that part of the age range without undermining the need for a reasonable basic wage for those who are unable to negotiate for themselves.

Prime Minister (Engagements)

Q1.

asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 27 January.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, including one with the French Ambassador and another with the Foreign Minister of Mozambique. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall be having further meetings later today.

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the warm welcome on the Conservative side of the House for her initiative in arranging a seminar in Downing Street last night for inventors and entrepreneurs.—[Interruption.] Apart from the reaction on the Labour Benches, which all of us expected, can my right hon. Friend say what further steps she has in mind to promote the interests of small firms, which, after all, will provide the way out of the heavy unemployment problems that the nation faces?

I am glad that my hon. Friend gives a warm welcome to the useful reception last night. I note that the Opposition are neither interested in new inventions nor in getting them into technological production. Those who attended naturally wished to have more tax reliefs in the future, but were grateful for what the Government have done for small business. They pointed out that one of the real problems was that years and years of high taxation in this country had deprived us of people who were either willing to take risks themselves or were willing to take risks to back others.

Does the right hon. Lady not think that these tragic and terrible unemployment figures announced today should be debated immediately in the House of Commons in time provided by the Government who have created them?

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that they are very tragic figures—

Do something about them.

—and if he wishes to pursue the question of debating them I am sure that he will find a ready ear with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Will the right hon. Lady go further? We have asked, as she knows, and as the right hon. Gentleman knows, that figures of this tragic significance should be debated and arrangements should be made for the Government to provide time. Is she aware that the figures announced today are not merely worse than any unemployment figures announced since the end of the war, but worse even than any figures for a January, except for one month, even in the 1930s? That is the situation that we face.

Is the right hon. Lady aware that in May 1977, when the unemployment figure was more than 1 million less than it is today, speaking from the Opposition side of the House she said that the Conservatives would have been drummed out of office if such figures had prevailed at the time? Is she not prepared to face the House of Commons and debate these matters properly? Will she acknowledge that she has been responsible for the worst unemployment figures recorded in this country in this century?

The right hon. Gentleman can pursue the question of a time for debate with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House through the proper channels. As a former Leader of the House, he knows full well that that is the correct place and time. Dealing with his specific accusation, these times are quite different from the 1930s. In the 1930s only about 18 million people were at work. The employed working population today is nearly 24 million.

As the right hon. Lady has now apparently acknowledged for the first time that the unemployment figures are different, tragic and of momentous consequence, does she still intend to persist with the policies that have helped to produce them?

The right hon. Gentleman appears to indicate that we cannot fight inflation and unemployment together. Fighting inflation is the best way to fight unemployment in the longer run. One reason for increasing unemployment is that for 20 years we have not taken the steps that we should have done to put right the fundamental and deep-seated problems.

Will my right hon. Friend, in a busy day, consider raising with President Reagan the extremely unfair and non-reciprocal arrangements between our two countries over visas, which are likely to affect over 1 million people from this country this year?

I am perfectly prepared to raise with President Reagan a considerable number of topics, including that matter, if my hon. Friend will give me full details before I go.

Will the Prime Minister, in the course of today, take the opportunity to discuss with the Secretary of State for the Environment the serious loss of rate income suffered by some authorities in the North-West, of which Rochdale is one, as a consequence of textile mill closures? Will she ask him to consider the possibility of a special rate grant such as he announced for those areas suffering a loss of rate income through steel closures?

The scheme announced by my right hon. Friend is primarily for the loss of rate income through steel closures. However, it is possible that it also pertains to other major closures that affect certain authorities, and he will be prepared to consider the matter.

Will my right hon. Friend find time today to consider the constitutional implications of the fact that henceforth the Leader of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition will, as Mrs. Shirley Williams said, be appointed by a handful of trade union leaders?

I believe that the essence of democracy is that in this place we are each free wholly and fully to say exactly what we think, in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Q2.

asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 27 January.

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some minutes ago.

Is the Prime Minister aware that the figure of 287,000 unemployed in Scotland today represents a doubling of unemployment since May 1979, when she took charge? Is she dressed in black because of the unemployment figures? Does she not recognise that her advice to keep on taking the medicine is creating industrial wastelands all over the United Kingdom? When on earth will she come to her senses and face reality?

The policy of fighting inflation, trying to get industries competitive and trying to encourage innovation and investment is the only one that will create jobs in the long run.

Come off it!

I do not intend to depart from that policy for one moment. Yes, the figures are very serious. We are trying to assist as best we can in the interim. In Scotland we have considerably increased the youth opportunities programme so that young people are helped. In the United Kingdom as a whole we are spending altogether on special employment measures and training about £843 million, which is a measure of the concern with which we view the situation.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the welcome reduction in the level of pay increases, had it occurred last year or the year before, would have done much to reduce unemployment?

Yes. I gladly confirm that. Had pay increases marched hand in hand with productivity increases some firms would not be as uncompetitive as they are today and we should have a lot less unemployment and a lot more jobs.

In view of the Conservative Party's propaganda at the last election on unemployment and the statement that a Conservative Government would reduce the number of unemployed, can the Prime Minister make clear to the country whether it is the Government's deliberate policy to increase unemployment, or whether they are doing so by accident and their policies are out of control?

There are two main reasons for the substantial increase in unemployment. One is the world recession. I am reminded very much of what the right hon. Gentleman who is now Leader of the Opposition said when there was a similar recession and unemployment rose similarly. In July 1975 he said:

"The main cause of the unemployment throughout the whole of this period has been the recession which has hit the whole Western world."—[Official Report, 1 July 1975; Vol 894, c. 1173.]

The other reason is that for years in this country we have tolerated overmanning, restrictive practices and pay increases far in excess of productivity. At last we have a Government who are dealing with the underlying problems.

Q3.

asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 27 January.

I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave some moments ago.

Will my right hon. Friend find time today to pay tribute to the management and work force of British Aerospace? [HON. MEMBERS: "Nationalised."] Is she aware that because of the continuing success of the Airbus project a further 2,000 jobs will be found at Chester, that because of the continuing success of Jetstream a further 500 jobs can be found at Prestwick and that if there is success in selling the excellent Tornado abroad there will be even more jobs at Preston?

I gladly pay tribute to companies that are looking to the future, whether nationalised or not, unfortunately, not many nationalised companies are making a good profit, otherwise we should not have to find so much money to pour into them. I gladly pay tribute to British Aerospace and wish it well in the future with its new developments and scope for extra jobs.

Is the Prime Minister aware that unemployment in Staffordshire, which was prosperous under Labour, has risen to 9·7 per cent. today, which is in no way due to high wages? Will she accept that employers and trade unionists alike agree that it is due to a lack of competitiveness, but that competitiveness has been destroyed since May 1979 by the Government?

With all due respect, that is absolute nonsense. Competitiveness is usually destroyed by unit labour costs that are higher than those of our competitors. The only way to secure more jobs in the future is to see that our unit labour costs are approximately the same as, or even better than, those in other countries.

Q4.

asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 27 January.

I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave some moments ago.

Has my right hon. Friend had time to study the excellent speech by Sir William Barlow to the Royal Institute of Public Affairs, in which he called for the denationalisation of as many industries as possible? Will she follow up his suggestion that the remaining nationalised industries should be turned into Companies Acts businesses, so that they can more easily raise capital on the open market at home and abroad?

I saw the report to which my hon. Friend refers in The Times. I agree that where we have a nationalised industry that is a monopoly it has advantages in being able to secure a higher price than other companies and, indeed, that it does not concentrate on cutting costs and securing efficiency as much as it should. The real answer is to denationalise such companies in whole or in part. We shall pursue that policy as far as we can. It is not enough merely to put the whole lot into a company, because, as we know from British Leyland, it is still in the public sector. However, I agree that we should denationalise.

Is the Prime Minister aware that as her policies have been decisively rejected by the electorate of Scotland—[Interruption]. Our time is coming? Is the right hon. Lady aware that as her policies have been decisively rejected, she does not have the slightest political or moral mandate to increase unemployment in Scotland? Is she further aware that, in one month, 25,000 people more have become unemployed? What steps does she intend to take to correct that?

In so far as I heard the right hon. Gentleman, I very much regret the unemployment figures in Scotland, just as I regret those elsewhere in the United Kingdom. There are substantial job opportunities in Scotland through the oil related industries. In addition, there will be increasing job opportunities as the new petrochemical complexes and the gas gathering pipeline come on stream.

European Community Documents

Ordered,

That European Community Documents Nos. 10994/80, COM (80) 992 Final and COM (80) 920 Final be referred to a Standing Committee on European Community Documents.—[Mr. Thompson.]

Hon. Members will no doubt be able to recall similar cases—not, I hope, such drastic cases—involving perhaps less noteworthy properties in their constituencies. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was asked to ensure that the unlawful demolition of listed buildings would never occur at the profit of the owner. He said:

"An amendment of the kind proposed would be, in practice, extremely difficult to devise. However, the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 provides for fines and imprisonment, on conviction, if a listed building is demolished without consent … I would, nevertheless, consider legislation if I became convinced of growing abuse."—[Official Report, 15 December 1980; Vol. 996, c.82.]

It is in the context of growing abuse that I seek leave to bring in a Bill to amend the present penalties, which are, for the demolition or alteration of a listed building without consent, on summary conviction in a magistrates' court, a fine not exceeding £1,000 and/or a term of imprisonment not exceeding three months; on indictment in the Crown court, an unlimited fine or imprisonment up to a maximum period of 12 months, or both. As regards offences tried in the Crown court on indictment, there would be a valuable consequence if that fine were raised to a minimum that had a specific bearing and relevance to the enhanced value of the site without the demolished building. It would, therefore, be directly related to the speculative profit that the vandal would make. An additional fine should be levied to compensate the local authority, which would, one hopes, rebuild a facsimile—if practical—on the site.

In addition, there would be a valuable consequence if the penalty were raised from one year's imprisonment to five year's imprisonment. Of course, it would not be necessary to impose such a term in every case. In that event, the action would become an arrestable offence and the police would be empowered to arrest anyone who was reasonably suspected of lurking within the curtilage of that building with intent to demolish. In these circumstances, a citizen's arrest would also be possible, but after an offence had taken place. Therefore, if a policeman saw a bulldozer within the curtilage of an existing building he would realise that the bulldozer driver was probably not out walking his dog on a Sunday afternoon.

I submit that if such legislation had been in force when the demolition contractor demolished the seventeenth century building to which I have referred the West Midlands—and, no doubt, other areas—would be better blessed with buildings today. In addition, these measures would prevent speculators from committing such irresponsible acts of illegal vandalism. Speculators are quite happy to convert our heritage into a pile of rubble by using their bulldozers as vehicles for ill-gotten gains.

I suggest that repairs powers should go hand-in-hand with repairs grants. It is beyond the scope of a Bill of this nature to propose an increase in grants or loans for the repair and maintenance of listed buildings which, sadly, as a result of changed circumstances, have become redundant. The majority of owners of listed buildings have to bear an unenviable and costly burden and have to maintain properties to the standards that local authorities think fit under sections 111 and 115 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. They have to maintain properties long after they have outlived their useful lives and the purposes for which they were designed and built.

Local authorities have two principal roles to play, I am not sure whether as judge and jury or gamekeeper and poacher. Nevertheless, that level of government is primarily responsible for protecting listed buildings. For various reasons, they are the owners of listed buildings which, in many instances, have fallen into disrepair. As guardians and owners local authorities' performances—with a few notable exceptions—have been abysmal. The Bill seeks to introduce measures that will place direct responsibility on local authorities to explore every avenue in order to help the owners of such buildings to find other uses for them before repairs notices are issued. In this way will redundant barns become suitable for nursery units and light industrial units, and will be the seedcorn for small businesses. In this way will a new lease of commercial life be breathed through the corridors of rambling, redundant country mansions where once fun and laughter abounded. In this way will the owners of those fine buildings be able to afford to repair and maintain them in the manner which they and the community would wish.

The Bill is designed to discourage the cold, calculated and illegal demolition of listed buildings for pure capital gain to encourage local authorities to understand and appreciate the financial burdens facing owners of such buildings, and to treat positively and with sympathy planning applications for a change of use.

For these reasons, my right hon. and hon. Friends hope that the Bill will command the support of the House today.

rose—

Does the hon. Gentleman wish to oppose the motion?

Yes, Mr. Speaker, but I shall not force it to a vote. It may be laughable for Conservative Members, but some of my constituents have no homes; some have no bathrooms and no toilets inside their homes. When they ask for grants to carry out improvements, the Government say that they cannot have them. In fact, Governments of both parties have refused them.

I am opposed to the Bill because more cost would be put upon local authorities. They would be compelled to spend more money. Once the Bill is passed, the Government will say that grants may be made, but because of the economic situation, which they have created, they will not be able to give such grants. They will not help the local authorities. That is happening in my constituency. My council has tried and is trying to build houses.

It is all right for hon. Members on both sides of the House who are adequately housed, and probably have two houses, to say that help should be given to maintain designated houses. I read in the press recently that the Leader of the House, who is living in a big country mansion, has a designated house which he and his forebears have allowed almost to rot. I am told that he will receive grants to enable him to repair it. Why should the taxpayer give him money to restore it? Why should the taxpayer give money to restore such places when people cannot have the money for an inside toilet, a bathroom or hot and cold running water? Conservative Members who are sneering should not think that this applies only to areas such as mine, because thousands upon thousands of men, women and children living throughout—

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

I shall give way to a point of order.

It is customary to allow 10-minute speeches for and against the motion without interruption. I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would keep his point of order for another time.

I am putting forward reasons why I believe that there should be some doubt about giving leave to introduce the Bill. I have given reasons why I am opposed to it, because the hon. Gentleman suggests that public funds should be drawn upon. He mentioned that local authorities should be called upon to give aid. From where will the local authorities obtain those funds? Perhaps they will raise them from the owners of the property. If the owners of the property cannot do the job now, how will those funds be raised—through tax rebates?

I am more concerned for the living, for the children who have no roofs over their heads and for people who live in rooms with the water pouring through the ceiling. Even if they go to the local authority, they do not get anywhere. If they appeal to the local authority to help them as they have no roof over their heads, the local authority replies that they are not in a designated house but in a house which was built 150 years ago by a private landlord, who has milked it dry over the years. The landlord gets more back in one year than the house cost when it was built. Hundreds of pounds may have been spent on the house and it is now worth more—£30,000, £40,000 or £50,000 on the present inflated market—than when it was built 150 years ago for £100. There are such houses in all hon. Members' constituencies. How many places are there in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) which he would like to see renovated and improved?

Therefore, I hope that we shall give serious consideration to the motion. If the Bill receives a Second Reading, and if it goes into Committee, I hope that some of the points which I have raised will be considered.

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business) and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. John Heddle, Sir Derek Walker-Smith, Sir Graham Page, Mr. Percy Grieve, Mr. Patrick Cormack, Mr. Michael Morris, Mr. Tony Durant, Mr. Sydney Chapman, Mr. John Major, Mr. Stephen Ross, Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann and Mr. Peter Hardy.

Town And Country Planning (Protection Of Listed Buildings)

Mr. John Heddle accordingly presented a Bill to increase the penalties for unauthorised works to buildings or historical of architectural interest; to make further provision for the repair and maintenance of such buildings; and for related purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 13 Feburary and to be printed. [Bill 53].

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I would not have sought to raise a point of order in the middle of the speech of the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis) if I had not thought that I should raise two points of order with you, Mr. Speaker.

Does it not constitute an abuse of the Ten-Minute Bill procedure for an hon. Member speaking in opposition to the Bill to say at the beginning of his speech that he does not intend to divide the House against it? That is an unfortunate development, which wastes the time of the House.

Secondly, when an hon. Member seeks to oppose a Bill, surely he should not make what the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis) himself described as a Second Reading speech but should confine himself to what the Bill purports to do, without imagining a whole series of things which have no relevance and which the Bill does not seek to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) made it clear that he was not seeking—he could not—to increase expenditure of public money, but most of the long diatribe that we have just heard centred on that subject, and could scarcely have been further from the point. With due deference, Mr. Speaker, I had hoped that you would yourself feel inclined to call the hon. Member to order.

The sting was in the tail of the point of order. When it is in the name of the hon. Member, I take special notice.

I believe that there has been an unfortunate tendency recently for some hon. Members to say at the beginning of a speech that they will not force their opposition to a Division but will merely make a speech. Although I have no powers in this regard I hope that the custom will stop forthwith. Secondly, with regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis), I think that he was speaking according to his interpretation of what the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) said and his interpretation was obviously different from that of many other hon. Members. As for the sting in the tail, there are times when the shortest way home is the longest way round.

Town And Country Planning (Protection Of Listed Buildings)

3.31 pm

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to increase the penalties for unauthorised works to buildings of historical or architectural interest; to make further provision for the repair and maintenance of such buildings; and for related purposes.

The purpose of the Bill is simple and twofold. First, it is to increase the penalties available to the courts under sections 55 and 57 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971, where owners of properties are found guilty of wilful destruction of listed buildings without the consent of the local planning authority. Secondly, it is to impose upon local authorities the duty to explore every possible avenue to see precisely how those listed buildings can be used to their best advantage and so ensure that they are maintained to an adequate standard of repair.

I have been encouraged to introduce this Bill because of nationwide concern at the growing number of cases involving the sudden demolition of listed buildings, both large and small, urban and rural. I refer not simply to those mansions and large country houses that make the national headlines, but to cottages and farm buildings that are torn down but find themselves without an obituary in the national press. Either by design or ignorance, at least five buildings of architectural or historic interest have met such a fate since September. There is serious, nationwide concern about the effectiveness of the legal penalties available. The purpose of the Bill is to strengthen those penalties in order to ensure that the situation is not aggravated.

Perhaps the problem is best illustrated by an event that occurred in the West Midlands just before the House rose for the Christmas Recess. Hon. Members from all parties will understand if I do not go into the details of the case. The house was of seventeenth century origin and was listed. It stood in its own grounds. One Sunday a demolition contractor's bulldozer found itself in the garden. It razed the property to the ground, although the demolition contractor's employer had given instructions that the bulldozer should find its way across the road to a set of redundant outbuildings and farms in order to provide access to a factory and warehouse estate.

Hon. Members will no doubt be able to recall similar cases—not I hope, such drastic cases—involving perhaps less noteworthy properties in their constituencies. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was asked to ensure that the unlawful demolition of listed buildings would never occur at the profit of the owner. He said:

"An amendment of the kind proposed would be, in practice, extremely difficult to devise. However, the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 provides for fines and imprisonment, on conviction, if a listed building is demolished without consent … I would, nevertheless, consider legislation if I became convinced of growing abuse."—[Official Report, 15 December 1980; Vol. 996, c. 82.]

It is in the context of growing abuse that I seek leave to bring in a Bill to amend the present penalties, which are, for the demolition or alteration of a listed building without consent, on summary conviction in a magistrates' court, a tine not exceeding £1,000 and/or a term of imprisonment not exceeding three months; on indictment in the Crown court, an unlimited fine or imprisonment up to a maximum period of 12 months, or both. As regards offences tried in the Crown court on indictment, there would be a valuable consequence if that fine were raised to a minimum that had a specific bearing and relevance to the enhanced value of the site without the demolished building. It would, therefore, be directly related to the speculative profit that the vandal would make. An additional fine should be levied to compensate the local authority, which would, one hopes, rebuild a facsimile—if practical—on the site.

In addition, there would be a valuable consequence if the penalty were raised from one year's imprisonment to five years' imprisonment. Of course, it would not be necessary to impose such a term in every case. In that event, the action would become an arrestable offence and the police would be empowered to arrest anyone who was reasonably suspected of lurking within the curtilage of that building with intent to demolish. In these circumstances, a citizen's arrest would also be possible, but after an offence had taken place. Therefore, if a policeman saw a bulldozer within the curtilage of an existing building he would realise that the bulldozer driver was probably not out walking his dog on a Sunday afternoon.

For these reasons, my right hon. and hon. Friends hope that the Bill will command the support of the House today.

rose—

Does the hon. Gentleman wish to oppose the motion?

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

I shall give way to a point of order.

It is customary to allow 10-minute speeches for and against the motion without interruption. I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would keep his point of order for another time.

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business) and agreed to.

Town And Country Planning (Protection Of Listed Buildings)

The sting was in the tail of the point of order. When it is in the name of the hon. Member, I take special notice.

Times Newspapers

3.51 pm

I beg to move, That this House do now adjourn.

Leave having been given on Monday 26 January under Standing Order No. 9 to discuss:

a reference of the proposed purchase of The Times and The Sunday Times by Mr. Rupert Murdoch to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

This is an important debate. The proposed purchase of The Times and The Sunday Times raises vital questions of public interest and I think that it is timely that this House, as a guardian of the public interest, has an opportunity to consider it in the context particularly of the obligations which legislation passed by Parliament has placed upon Ministers.

I believe that the case for a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in this instance is clear and straightforward. First, on any view, the acquisition by Mr. Murdoch of both those newspapers creates a large concentration of newspaper power in one set of hands. I am told that, with The Sun and The Times, he would have a 30 per cent. share of daily newspaper readership. With The Sunday Times and the News of the World, he would have 36 per cent. of the Sunday newspaper readership. Such concentrations of newspaper power are probably unique and unprecedented in our history.

Secondly, the newspapers themselves have a special place in our national life. The Times, perhaps our most prestigious newspaper, has played, still plays and I hope will continue to play, a special and particular role as a reliable journal of record, a forum of national debate and an articulator of independent opinion. The Sunday Times has pioneered new fashions and techniques of journalism which have made it one of the most influential and successful Sunday newspapers in our history. Both newspapers play such an important role in our national affairs that particular care must be given to the question of how and by whom they are owned and controlled.

Thirdly, Parliament has already provided a method whereby these matters can be scrutinised. I refer of course to part V of the Fair Trading Act 1973, by which newspaper mergers are made conditional on the approval of the Secretary of State, except in some special circumstances to which I shall refer in a moment.

It seems to me self-evident that the machinery should be used in what is one of the largest and perhaps the most significant mergers in the history of journalism in the United Kingdom. Indeed, if that mechanism is said to be not the proper way to handle this case, one wonders why we should bother to retain it.

Simply with a view to ensuring that the House has the correct information before it, if I am not mistaken, in the event of the merger going through, the percentage of the daily market controlled by Mr. Murdoch would be 25·9 per cent., and not 30 per cent. Those are the latest figures from the ABC circulation review. I believe that they are correct.

If the hon. Member reflects on what I said he will realise that I did not talk about market share. I have some authority for believing that the figures that I quoted are correct. But let us not argue about statistics. The plain fact is that if this merger is allowed to go ahead there will be a large concentration of newspaper power in the hands of one man. I think that we can proceed with the debate on the assumption that that is correct.

indicated assent.

The right hon. Gentleman, with his usual fairness, expresses his assent to that proposition.

The relevant part of the Fair Trading Act is section 58. I want to describe what I believe to be the Secretary of State's duty under that section, because I think that a major part of this debate may concern the question of how he proposes to discharge the responsibilities that the House has laid upon him.

Under section 58, it is unlawful and void for a newspaper merger to take place unless the Secretary of State approves it and in turn the Secretary of State must refer it to the MMC. However, under subsection (3) there are two ways in which he can avoid referring it to the MMC. One is where he is satisfied that the newspaper is not intended to continue as a separate newspaper, as in the case of the Evening Standard. In that case, he has no discretion: he must not refer it to the MMC. However, I think that we can all agree that that does not apply in the present circumstance.

But there is another circumstance. If the Secretary of State is satisfied that the newspaper concerned is not economic as a going concern and a separate newspaper and there is a matter of urgency involved, he may choose not to refer the matter to the MMC. That is important, because I should like the Secretary of State to explain, if he is not going to refer this to the MMC, how he satisfied himself that The Sunday Times in particular was not economic as a going concern. I believe that he can refuse to refer the matter to the MMC only if he properly satisfies himself about that.

The position of the two newspapers appears to be different in this respect. The Times, at least for the present, appears to be making a loss, although I understand that some predictions have been made as to the possibility of its being profitable in future. Indeed, I believe that that is what Mr. Murdoch himself says.

But the position of The Sunday Times is quite different. Certain information was given to potential purchasers of both newspapers by Warburg's, the bankers who were employed by the Thomson Organisation. I understand that in appendix 11, table 2, of Warburg's report some projections and figures were given about the future performance and profitability of The Sunday Times. In 1980, I understand, there was a small profit. In 1981, it is projected, there will be a profit of £4·8 million; in 1982, of £11·9 million; in 1983, of £13 million.

In those circumstances, I believe that the Secretary of State cannot find it easy, I believe, to satisfy himslf that The Sunday Times is not economic as a going concern and as a separate newspaper, which seems to me the statutory obligation which he has to meet. I think that the House will listen with interest, if he decides not to refer the matter to the MMC, to how he justifies that decision. I hope that the Secretary of State will deal with that question when he speaks.

Do those figures of projections of profit on The Sunday Times take into account the factor of a vast increase in overheads, which would have to be borne by that newspaper if the other publications owned by the Thomson Organisation did not exist? I believe that those figures are projected on a division of overheads, which would not apply in other circumstances.

I believe that the figures relate to The Sunday Times itself. Other figures were given in respect of The Times, I think in the same set of information which was supplied by Warburg's. Presumably they were there to show potential purchasers the likely profit ability of both newspapers. For the next few years The Times will continue at a loss, but on Warburg's projections emerges with a small profit by about 1984 or thereabouts, but The Sunday Times goes into profit.

Warburg allocates what it calls group fixed costs in respect of both newspapers. I do not know how it does that, but that is the information which was given to potential purchasers and it seems to show, at least prima facie, that it is a profitable newspaper. That is the understanding of those people. I think that the argument is that one keeps them together because the profitable might support the unprofitable, or some such argument. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to deal with that point.

Of course, the profitability of newspapers varies according to the economic scene, and they are not particularly buoyant at present, but the projections are that matters will improve significantly. Whatever is the meaning of the statutory responsibilities on the Secretary of State, he cannot reasonably claim that he does not have a discretion in this case to refer it to the MMC. He does, and it is my case that he should exercise it in favour of referring.

There have been a number of objections to that. First, it is said that it would be foolish to refer this to the MMC and the special newspaper panel which exists to deal with such cases because there is not enough time for a report to be made, and that the deal would be frustrated, to the prejudice of employment and the ultimate loss of the newspapers.

I have a number of comments to make on that argument. First, the time scale involved—with 8 and 14 March as the deadline dates—was not decided by uncontrollable events or the hand of fate. It was determined solely by the Thomson Organisation, which put that time scale forward in October last year. It would be not unreasonable to ask the Tomson Organisation to alter the dates. It would not greatly inconvenience it to extend the time by a few weeks, if necessary. Secondly, it is clear from what has been said by the parties to the proposed purchase that some time must be allowed for negotiations with the print unions. Mr. Murdoch has said that that was a condition put on the purchase by the Thomson Organisation.

I believe that it is possible for the Secretary of State to refer this matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission with a request that he receives its report fairly quickly. I do not think that there is a great deal of detail to be investigated, for most of the facts are known and published. But it would be possible, perhaps, for the commission to take a week collecting the facts—one assumes that the parties would be willing to co-operate—and another week for it to prepare the report. That means that the report could be available within the time scale allotted for these discussions with the trade unions.

I understand the concern about employment and the concern that these newspapers should continue as valuable institutions of our public life. But that concern can be safeguarded because the Act says, about a time limit, that the commission must report within three months. Three months is given as a maximum, which may be extended only by the Secretary of State. There is no legal impediment on the Secretary of State to ask for a quicker report. When Governments want to move speedily they move with tremendous speed. In this circumstance, that would be an acceptable solution.

The right hon. Member said earlier that the Secretary of State should use his discretion. My understanding of the Act is that the Secretary of State does not have discretion and that he shall not approve such a merger without referring it to the commission. Is that what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, or is he saying that there is a discretion?

That is precisely what I am saying. The Minister has no discretion unless he is satisfied that a particular situation exists. I am glad that the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) understands that point clearly now, because it is important. I ask the Secretary of State to give us evidence on which he reaches his conclusion, if that is the conclusion that he reaches.

The public interest can be weighed and taken into account by reference, without prejudice, to the genuine interests of those whose jobs are involved. However, that implies a political will on the part of the Government to make the reference. If the Secretary of State does not refer it, that may be what is missing here. It would also require reasonable good will on the part of Mr. Murdoch and the Thomson Organisation, which the House is entitled to expect. I understand that Mr. Murdoch has said that his only objection to a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission relates to the length of time that that would take. If he could be met on that, presumably he would have no other objection.

Another line of argument has been developed in the course of the public discussion in the past day or two. It has been said that it is not necessary or desirable to refer this matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission because other sufficient or better safeguards exist in the assurances that Mr. Murdoch has given to the Thomson Organisation and the staff of the newspapers. We should look at these safeguards, and no doubt hon. Members will wish to refer to them in the course of the debate. Assurances given in good faith by Mr. Murdoch to the present owner are no substitute for assurances given to a publicly and statutorily constituted body, such as the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The assurances Stand, without any questions being asked.

When Lord Thomson took over The Times the case was referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Incidentally, at that time Lord Thomson was the only bidder. There are more bidders than one in the present negotiations. Lord Thomson's concentration of power was much less intense than is involved at present, and he was cross-examined by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission about the quality of the safeguards that he offered. But what are these assurances?

Surely it is not a matter of political will or assurances. If The Sunday Times is a going concern, the law says that it must be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. That presumably is what all this is about. All the other matters, such as political will, and so on, are of no consequence.

I am obliged for the assistance I am receiving from below the Conservative Gangway, repeating the point that I made at the beginning of my speech. We must wait to hear what the Secretary of State says about this. If the hon. Gentleman is right—he is on a good point, because I made the same point myself—there will have to be a reference to the commission. But I must safeguard against the possibility, remote though it may be, that the Secretary of State cannot produce a justification for not referring the matter to the commission. He may be referring it, but if he is not the hon. Gentleman will be as anxious to hear the explanation as I will.

Assurances about editorial freedom and integrity have been given to the national directors, as they are called, Times Newspapers. The assurances are in some ways satisfactory as they go. They talk about the independence of the newspapers, the control which is to be vested in the editor, the maintenance of editorial independence, the future sale of the titles, and a declaration that the newspapers are to be free from party political bias and from attachment to any sectional interests. I gather that Mr. Murdoch agreed to all those assurances without demand, qualification or query. He assented immediately to them when these matters were put to him by the vetting committee of the organisation.

But let us examine the assurances more closely and draw aside the veil contained in the assurances. First, the national directors are crucial to the operation of the safeguards promised by Mr. Murdoch. There are a number of national directors. They are very distinguished figures, such as Lord Roll, Lord Greene and Lord Roberts. I believe, these are four in all. Under the articles of association of the newspapers, there is a special class of shareholders—I think it is the Astor family—who have the sole right to nominate some of these national directors. Under the new arrangements that will be removed and the directors will be appointed by the owner of the newspaper, who will be the majority shareholder. Indeed, Mr. Murdoch will hold 100 per cent. of the shares if the purchase goes ahead. An existing safeguard which concerns the appointment of the national directors is being removed, not strengthened. Secondly, the appointment of the editor is of great importance. We know that there will be a vacancy in The Times editorship in the near future, but the appointment is important not simply because of the influence that the editor has on a newspaper but because many of Mr. Murdoch's assurances hinge on the role of the editor. It depends on the independence of the editor if the assurances are to have any meaning.

How will the editor be appointed? At present, the national directors are involved in his appointment. Under the proposed changes, which are part of Mr. Murdoch's assurances, these directors will not be involved in the appointment of the editor. Instead, all they have is a right of veto when a Murdoch appointee is presented to them, and they may reject him if they so wish. That is a different power from being involved in appointment. That is a diminution of an existing safeguard, not an additional safeguard.

These two matters alone indicate why we must look carefully at the assurances and why it is important that an expert body, such as the newspaper panel of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, applies its mind to investigating exactly what is involved.

With no disrespect to the existing national directors, it is possible that improvements will be made in that direction. There is a faint air of the Athenaeum about most of the present national directors.

What is wrong with that?

I can understand why the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South-West (Mr. Cormack) feels some affection for them, but I do not think that anyone, including the hon. Gentleman, would describe those national directors as representing the full spectrum of British public life.

It might be profitable to add two additional national directors. One might be a working journalist from The Sunday Times and one a working journalist from The Times. Who better than people with experience of working in newspapers to watch that the assurances given in good faith by Mr. Murdoch are implemented in full in the spirit and according to the letter of the assurances?

There is, of course, another great concern which people have expressed during the public discussion in recent days. How do we know that the assurances will be carried into practical effect? If the editor, for example, is prepared to go along with the proprietor, a lot of the assurances will not be worth the paper that they are written on or the words in which they are couched. The Companies Acts are not an easy method of enfranchising these assurances. The assurances will be built into the articles of association, but the articles of association can be changed by a majority, especially by a 100 per cent. owner of the organisation. That means that, whatever faith we place on them, they could be changed later on.

We also need to know the record of Mr. Murdoch in respect of assurances which he has given about other newspapers in other parts of the world. That could be looked at by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, because it has been raised in the course of the public debate.

I do not want to delay the House any longer. Many right hon. and hon. Members wish to take part in the debate. It is extremely important that Members of this House should take part in the discussion of this affair. We are, after all, guardians of the public interest.

I do not know what the Secretary of State has decided or how he proposes to discharge his responsibilities, but my argument is twofold. First, it seems to me that the Secretary of State has in these circumstances a legal duty to refer the matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Secondly, it is overwhelmingly in the public interest that such a major change in newspapers in this country should be subjected to public scrutiny.

4.12 pm

The right hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. Smith) introduced this debate in measured terms and reminded us that the House is in a very real sense a custodian in a debate such as this.

The holding of this emergency debate and the interest expressed both within this House and outside it attest the important place which Times Newspapers have in our national life. Their continuance and the manner of their continuance are issues of genuine public concern.

I believe that the general desire is to see The Times, The Sunday Times and the various supplements continue in publication and preserve the traditions of independence and editorial freedom for which they are rightly renowned.

Thomson Organisation Limited, the existing owner of the newspapers, has made it quite clear that it will not support The Sunday Times after 8 March or The Times after 14 March. The objective of continuation which I have described requires a willing purchaser, ready and able to devote considerable financial resources to the newspapers, and at the same time ready to accept the traditions to which so much importance is attached.

Thomson itself established a "vetting panel" comprising the editors of the newspapers and the national directors, and that panel has concluded that News International, controlled by Mr. Rupert Murdoch, is a suitable future owner of these titles. That is the view of the existing owner—taking account of the opinion of the editorial staff on the vetting panel. The law requires, however, that such an acquisition should be subject to my consent.

In the Fair Trading Act 1973 there is a presumption that all proposals for newspaper mergers should be investigated by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. However, in section 58(3) the Act provides for certain exceptions. Where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the newspaper concerned in a transfer is not economic as a going concern, and as a separate newspaper, and where he is satisfied also that if the newspaper is to continue as a separate newspaper the case is one of urgency, he may give his consent to the transfer without a reference to the commission.

Thomson Organisation Limited, in applying for my consent to the transfer of The Times and The Sunday Times to News International, made its application under that provision. I had, therefore, first to satisfy myself about the two conditions of the section—whether The Times and The Sunday Times, separately were each economic as a going concern, and whether the case was one of urgency. If I was so satisfied, it was then for me to decide whether I should still require an investigation by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission or grant my consent without a reference, if necessary with conditions.

My accountants have carried out a detailed investigation into the financial position and future prospects of both The Times and The Sunday Times. They have looked at the figures for the first 11 months of 1980, which are the latest available. On the basis of their advice, I am satisfied that under present ownership and under present conditions—what the Act requires me to look at—neither newspaper was economic as a going concern and as a separate newspaper. In the case of The Times, there can be no doubt about the position. But even in the case of The Sunday Times, after allocating to it a reasonable share of Thomson's fixed overheads, I am satisfied that that paper, too, is uneconomic.

Is the case, then, one of urgency? Thomson's announced in October last that because of continuing heavy losses it had decided to sell its Times titles—the three supplements, which are not newspapers for the purposes of the Act, as well as The Times and The Sunday Times—by March, and it sought bids by 31 December. Arrangements for closure of the newspapers—including the serving of redundancy notices to staff—were set in hand.

There is no doubt that if a new owner does not take over these newspapers they will cease publication in March. I am conscious that some people will regard this as Thomson bluff.

Of course. Blackmail.

It is easy to throw off such words, but this is an area where one has inevitably to make a judgment about whether it is Thomson bluff. It is my judgment, which the House can confirm or reject, that closure is a real possibility.

The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate how crucial is his assertion that The Sunday Times is not economic at present. Is he prepared to make available to the House the figures upon which his accountants have arrived at that conclusion, and will he also say whether the allocation of overheads to The Sunday Times made by his accountants is or is not that made by Warburgs, which gave information to potential purchasers?

It was the judgment of my Department's accountants, working on the figures which had been supplied by Warburgs. It turns upon the allocation, ultimately, of the overheads as between The Sunday Times and The Times within the organisation.

Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is not a question of bluff? After 15 years of ownership of these vital national newspapers, especially The Times, is it not an insult to the nation to fix a deadline of this kind and to say "Otherwise, I shall close them down"? Is it not reminiscent of what the Chrysler Corporation tried to do, when the Labour Government stood up to it?

It remains a matter of judgment.

I turn to the figures. The Board of Trade accountants conclude that in 1980, for the 11 months available, there is a loss in respect of The Sunday Times of £600,000 after making allocations of overheads and before allowance for interest on capital.

Have my right hon. Friend's accountants worked on the assumption that the unhelpful attitude of the unions which has brought about the circumstances of Thomson will continue? Is that the basis upon which my right hon. Friend has made his judgment?

No. The analysis has been made over the past 11 months, which was a period relatively free from the adverse impact of the shut-down. But no view is taken—in my view, under the Act I could not take a view—of what might be any potential profitable position well into the future. That is not a factor that has to weigh with me in determining the economics of this.

Surely, what the right hon. Gentleman has said is not fully convincing. If it is true that Warburg has informed potential purchasers that The Sunday Times will be making considerable profits in the next few years, how does the Minister explain his view that it is not economically viable? He has not explained that.

It is for the reasons that I have just explained, that I do not believe that I am entitled to take a view on future prospects upon existing experience.

There is no doubt that if a new owner does not take over these newspapers they will cease publication in March. This, of course, is the area in which, I agree, some Labour Members believe that that simply is not likely, and that Thomson would disavow its statement on this matter, but I must say that I am satisfied that the conditions of section 58 (3) are met in this case and I therefore have to decide whether to opt for a reference or to give my consent.

I approach this decision with an established preference for newspaper mergers to be examined by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Newspapers are special, and their ownership is a proper matter for public concern. The impending closure of the newspapers clearly poses a real problem. The 1973 Act requires that the commission must complete its investigations within three months unless the Secretary of State, because he is persuaded that there are special reasons, gives the commission a further period of three months. I am not empowered to require a report in a shorter period.

The right hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North suggested that we should have a quick investigation, and he did so again from the Opposition Front Bench today. I am sure that he does not want a superficial study, but is looking for a proper examination of the issues.

The chairman of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission was asked whether, notwithstanding the three months allowed for an investigation of a newspaper merger under the Act—already a short period compared with that for other MMC inquiries—he could complete an inquiry in a significantly shorter period. Sir Godfray Le Quesne, fully recognising both the urgency of this matter and its importance, considered this question with some care. In view of the possible scope of the inquiry and the statutory requirements governing the contents of the report, Sir Godfray concluded that if the commission was to conduct an adequate inquiry he could not promise a report in under eight weeks—still a significant reduction on the period allowed in the Act.

I am conscious that in some quarters there is a feeling that the Thomson closure timetable could have been arranged to allow time for an MMC investigation. I can only say that the request for my consent to the transfer of the titles to News International was received on 23 January, and on the best possible timetable an MMC report could not have been available before The Times and The Sunday Times had ceased publication.

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. This is not any criticism of him, but has he talked to the Thomson Organisation about this? Is he not profoundly unhappy about the pistol that it has put to his head?

I have talked to the Thomson Organisation and I am sure that I speak for every Member of the House in saying that we should be much happier working under time constraints more generous than we now have.

Moreover, the delay involved would affect the deal agreed between Thomson's and News International, probably requiring the reopening of negotiations. And I am told that the discussions between the possible new owners and the unions could not begin until the decision was taken following the MMC report. So a reference to the MMC triggers a series of delays clearly beyond the present closure plans.

I should add here that the commission is required to investigate a particular application, to report whether or not it judges that application to be against the public interest and to recommend to the Secretary of State whether any—if so, what—conditions might be attached to the transfer. Some commentators have implied that the commission can look at all the possible bidders for the papers and recommend the one which it thinks best. But this misconceives the commission's functions.

The choice that I faced was, therefore, whether to insist on a Monopolies, and Mergers Commission investigation and risk closure of The Times titles, with 4,000 redundancies and the possibility of the permanent closure of The Times.

I mentioned earler the importance of the "character" of The Times being preserved—the relationship between the proprietor and the editor that had been established at the time of the Thomson acquisition. I know that it has been assumed that this would be an essential point in any MMC investigation.

The Act, however, provides for my consent to be given conditionally or unconditionally, and indeed if the MMC were itself to recommend any actions these, too, could be brought into effect only as conditions attached to my consent.

After earnest consideration, and to avoid disruption and uncertainty, I have concluded that I should give my consent forthwith, and without a Monopolies and Mergers Commission investigation, to the transfer of Times Newspapers to News International, subjects to certain conditions.

Is not my right hon. Friend in danger of misdirecting himself on this issue, in that he is talking about the current state of one of the newspapers, when section 58(3) of the Fair Trading Act clearly says in very simple terms that he must consider whether it is economic as a going concern? What about the forward projections? One would not buy a village store without looking at the next few years' figures.

My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomery (Mr. Williams) is a valued neighbour and I am sure that from time to time I shall have to take his legal advice on the Welsh borders, but on this issue I am prepared to be guided by the legal advice from within my Department. [Interruption.] Oh yes—I am not acting in this matter in some casual, prejudiced fashion. I am measuring my judgment after taking advantage of all the professional facilities that are at my disposal.

As an ex-employee of The Times, may I assure my right hon. Friend that the most important thing is to keep that newspaper viable and to ensure that assurances are received from Mr. Murdoch to the effect that it continues in its present way, since any question of delaying a decision on the future of The Times by referring it to the Monopolies Commission would probably deny the future of that newspaper.

I note with satisfaction the comments of my hon. Friend, the more so as they come from somebody who was formerly employed by Times Newspapers.

I had come to that part of my speech in which I wanted to put before the House the conditions that I have attached to my consent. They are, broadly, eight.

First, the newspapers are to be published as separate newspapers.

Second, future disposals are to be subject to the consent of a majority of the independent national directors of Times Newspapers Holdings Ltd.

Third, the number of these independent directors is to be increased from four to six and the appointment of any independent national directors in the future is not to be made without the approval of the existing independent national directors.

Fourth, on editorial independence, the editors shall not be appointed or dismissed without the approval of the majority of the independent national directors.

Fifth, the editor of each newspaper shall retain control over any political comment published in his newspaper and, in particular, shall not be subject to any restraint or inhibition in expressing opinion or in reporting news that might directly or indirectly conflict with the opinions or interests of any of the newspaper proprietors.

Sixth, instructions to journalists shall be given only by the editor or those to whom he has delegated authority.

Seventh, subject only to any annual budget for editorial space and expenditure the editor shall retain control over the appointment, disposition and dismissal of journalists on his newspaper and of all other content of his newspaper.

Eighth, disputes between the editors and directors of the companies are to be settled by the independent national directors.

I am taking steps to ensure that these conditions are entrenched. Those relating to editorial independence will be incorporated into the articles of association of Times Newspapers companies and any change in the relevant articles will in future require my consent. That requirement, as well as the other conditions, will be backed up by the sanctions provided for in the Act.

I am entirely convinced that my right hon. Friend has reached the right decision. The eight conditions that he laid down are very satisfactory. But will he explain one point? He set out the circumstances in which an editor can be appointed. Will he tell us the circumstances in which an editor can be dismissed, and the safeguards that will be attached to that?

I have nothing to add to what I said explicitly in those eight conditions. I realise that the transfer of two such prestigious newspapers as The Times and The Sunday Times—

The right hon. Gentleman was asked a specific question, which arose from something that I said. What will be the method of appointing the editor under the new arrangements, and what safeguards will there be in respect of that appointment?

I thought that I had dealt with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Horncastle (Mr. Tapsell) under the fourth condition which stated:

"on editorial independence, the editors shall not be appointed or dismissed without the approval of the majority of the independent national directors".

I realise that the transfer of two such prestigious newspapers as The Times and The Sunday Times to someone who is already a substantial newspaper proprietor must inevitably raise important question of the public interest. The concentration in ownership is, on the face of it, disturbing, although I must say that The Times and The Sunday Times are appealing to different ends of the market from the existing publications of News International—The Sun and the News of the World. Moreover, the conditions attaching to my consent to the transfer will, I believe, deal satisfactorily with this problem, as well as with that of editorial freedom.

I do not deny that there is normally a great deal to be said for a thorough Monopolies and Mergers Commission inquiry limits contentious mergers and the safeguards that that course contains. That course was available to me, but in these circumstances it would have been inexcusable if, by causing delay and creating uncertainty, I had taken any steps that might have resulted in the permanent closure of one, and perhaps both, of these great newspapers.

I have, therefore, agreed to the merger application with the conditions that I have outlined to the House. I hope and believe that this judgment will secure a continuing quality of journalism that is to our national advantage. I commend my decision to the House.

4.34 pm

First, I declare two interests. I am chairman of an organisation called. Job Ownership Ltd., which exists to assist in setting up co-operatives. It was employed at one time by journalists of The Times to investigate the possibility of a co-operative owning that paper. Secondly, I am a trustee of The Guardian. Apart from a natural interest in a friendly rival—we are now about 100,000 ahead in circulation, but one never knows—we also have an interest in the printing.

Candidly, I am surprised by what the Minister said about The Sunday Times. All newspapers have been going through a bad phase. Perhaps The Sunday Times will not make much of a profit this year, but it is surely widely felt in Fleet Street that it will be a very good property for the future.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke about overheads. Anyone involved in the industry knows that they can vary from year to year. The Guardian, for instance, has been printed in several places. The Sunday Times overheads may well be affected by any new arrangements that are made. So I am very surprised by what the right hon. Gentleman said about that paper. If The Sunday Times is a viable paper, it would appear extremely difficult not to refer the whole matter to the commission.

Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the safeguards and conditions that he has attached. As far as they go, they sound reassuring. But let us consider the appointment of the editor. The trustees of The Guardian actually appoint the editor. They do not merely approve someone who has been put up from somewhere else. They appoint him, just as they appoint other leading officials of The Guardian. The appointment of the editor is a very different matter from mere approval of what is suggested by someone else. It may be difficult to disapprove of a respectable man who, nevertheless, may not be the best man available.

Moreover, the trustees of The Guardian own The Guardian. A man once tried to borrow money from me on the ground that I appeared to own 2 million shares in The Guardian. I may say that he was disappointed. But the position is quite different from that of a mere advisory board or a non-executive director—and I have been a non-executive director of the board of The Guardian. That is quite different from being the owner of the paper.

I am sure that it is common ground that any of these newspapers will be viable only if there is a change in the attitudes and conduct of the unions involved. This, again, is very relevant to The Sunday Times. It is felt that under new management and ownership The Sunday Times will shed a lot of its overheads and also increase its productivity. Much of the trouble that has occurred in these newspapers is directly due to the unions—overmanning, restrictive practices, and the other troubles that they have brought upon the papers.

It should be said, too, that there are curious defenders of editorial freedom. One is the Leader of the Opposition, who was Lord Beaverbrook's editor—and Lord Beaverbrook was hardly a man notorious for giving his editors absolute discretion. When there was the possibility of the unions interfering with the editor, the Leader of the Opposition was not among those who defended editorial rights.

It is common ground that the practices of Fleet Street have to change. But there are other people in the field besides Mr. Murdoch. That aspect has not been sufficiently stressed. Much more could be said for the Minister's argument if Mr. Murdoch were the only person who was interested. But there are several others. I said earlier that an organisation with which I was associated had been asked by The Times journalists to investigate, for instance, the co-operative which runs Le Monde, which is run by a journalists' co-operative, as are some other French papers and several in other parts of the world.

I addressed a meeting of The Times journalists who later formed an organisation called JOTT. They formed an alliance with another organisation initiated by the editor, Mr. William Rees-Mogg, and backed by an extremely respectable board. It is not a lightweight, fly-by-night alliance. Surely anyone can see that a new departure in Fleet Street is badly needed. If the press is to be on a firm footing it cannot depend indefinitely upon tycoons, often from other continents, keeping it going by means of fresh infusions of money. That has been tried again and again.

Surely it is time we considered the possibility of associating journalists themselves with the running of their own newspaper. That is exactly what The Times journalists want to do. It would be a great pity if the House did not give them all the encouragement that it could.

I stress again that not only The Times general London journalists but the editor, Mr. William Rees-Mogg, and the editor of The Sunday Times, oppose the present proposition and have other views about The Sunday Times.

There is a body of respectable opinion which thinks that the two papers should be separated. Again, I quote the editors. Both Mr. Rees-Mogg and Mr. Evans think that the papers would be better separated. One may have different views about that.

If the Manchester Evening News were to be separated from The Guardian there would indeed be trouble. We are very glad to have the Rochdale Observer under our wing—it has had to be a rather large wing in order to accommodate that newspaper, and we have extended it—but there might be trouble if even that paper were to be separated, let alone the Manchester Evening News.

There is a lot to be said for some papers working together, but it is very difficult to ignore the view of the two editors concerned that the papers should be separated, and that they would get on better if they were.

The co-operative that the journalists have set up has, through its merchant bankers, put in a preliminary offer. The journalists are now pursuing it, filling in the details, and so on. They have the advice of a man who for many years was closely connected with the printing of The Times, and they are a most serious contender.

I am perfectly sure that it would do the press an incalculable amount of good if the journalists were more directly associated with the running of their papers. They are exactly the kind of people who ought to be constantly in touch, and not merely as members of advisory bodies. We have journalists who are among the trustees of The Guardian. If the journalists are prepared to put in their own money and their own time, and appoint their own people, nothing could be better for the press of this country, which very badly needs an infusion of new thought of that sort. It would be much the most hopeful way of getting real co-operation out of the chapels and out of the unions.

I refer again to the legal position. If the Minister is wrong, as I suspect he is, about the viability of The Sunday Times, the whole of his case falls to the ground. He should exercise his discretion in sending this matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. If he says that there is not time, that drives a cart and horse through the whole of our legislaton. If that is the case, anyone can get out of having a matter referred, simply by laying down a timetable. I do not think that the Minister can accept such a position. I am not suggesting that the Thomson Organisation is attempting to blackmail the Minister, but we cannot have nonsense made of legislation simply because people lay down a timetable and say that if something is not done by a certain date they will drop all their offers. We might just as well scrap the Act.

I ask the Minister to discuss the matter with the Thomson Organisation and indeed with Mr. Murdoch and to send it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission so that the various possibilities can be discussed and a fuller and calmer examination can be made of what may be the best future for the papers.

Unless we do something about the present state of Fleet Street, what everybody in this House hopes will not happen will certainly happen, and there will be disaster for more and more papers. Here is an opportunity to associate the journalists—and conceivably the printers as well—in the running of their papers. At least that should be examined. At least, the House should send the matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and thereby ensure that the best solution possible is sought in as calm a light as possible.

4.43 pm

I find myself in agreement with many of the sentiments expressed by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond). In particular, I agree with him that one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Government's case that we have heard this afternoon was the lack of mention of the possible alternatives to ownership by Mr. Murdoch. I shall return in a moment to that theme.

Before I go further, I feel bound to say how saddened I was by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade. This is a sad day for Fleet Street, which is to see the greatest concentration of newspaper monopoly in its history. It is a sad day for the Conservative Party, which appeared this afternoon to have abandoned its traditional role of the opponent of large monopolies whenever possible. It is also a sad day for the future status and power of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which would appear to be coming to the end of its useful life. If this question is not to be referred to it, one might well ask what will be referred to it in future.

I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend so early in his speech. We all respect his motives and the deep interest that he gives to these matters, but some of us would like to know what he means by monopoly power in this context.

I shall come to that point, if I may, in the course of my remarks.

Having expressed my initial sorrow, I now go to the background, to the reasons why there is such widespread anxiety about the takeover that is about to take place. In particular, we have to consider carefully how strong and how reliable are the safeguards and conditions to which Mr. Murdoch has agreed in his discussion with the Thomson Organisation and to which he may have to agree in his discussions with the Secretary of State and his advisers.

The plain fact is that Mr. Murdoch has strewn assurances and safeguards on newspaper and television ownership like confetti, all round the world, and the more one examines those assurances the more one has to say that in far too many instances they have proved to be worthless.

When Mr. Murdoch first entered upon the newspaper scene in this country, he gave an assurance to Sir William Carr that Sir William would be able to remain as chairman of the News of the World. That assurance was not kept, and Bill Carr—some of us knew him well—felt a deep sense of grievance to the end of his days.

In Australia, Mr. Murdoch's more recent takeover of channel 10 in Sydney bore a close resemblance to his present takeover of The Times. It began with Mr. Murdoch telling the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal that unless his application for licence was granted the station would probably have to close. Then, when appearing before the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, he gave solemn assurances that he would not be introducing any changes into the television station. According to the transcript, he said:

"It would be madness to contemplate any changes at all… I wish to give an assurance to the tribunal that no change is contemplated at all."

Later in the same evidence, Mr. Murdoch denied rumours that he was intending at some later date to acquire television interests in Melbourne. Yet within weeks of these assurances several of the top executives of channel 10 had been removed, including the chairman, the general manager and the finance director, and replaced by News Limited executives. Within a matter of months, Mr. Murdoch was bidding for ATV channel 10, a Melbourne television station, again in open defiance of those assurances.

It is perhaps noteworthy that Mr. Murdoch's application for the Melbourne station was eventually rejected by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, on the ground that

"further dominance by this group"—

that is, Mr. Murdoch's group—

"would not be in the public interest".

Mr. Murdoch was criticised by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal for giving

"directly contradictory evidence".

It is perhaps worth adding to that long list that the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal found Mr. Murdoch and his companies guilty of four separate sets of contraventions of section 92 of the Australian Broadcasting and Television Act, and said that he had misled the Stock Exchange over share purchase. The Australian Press Council has found him guilty of misleading and unfair reporting, and of gaining an unfair advantage through distortion. It is as well to have the record on these issues completely full.

The record is, indeed, a disturbing one. I only hope that it will be well known to the Secretary of State and his advisers before they finally sign on the dotted line with Mr. Murdoch. The promises and the assurances that Mr. Murdoch has given, and his track record, must be treated, at the very least, with extreme caution, and must be submitted to the most rigorous scrutiny—a job that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission is well qualified to do.

Nowhere is scepticism towards Mr. Murdoch more necessary than in the area of his pledges of proprietorial non-intervention and the editorial freedom and independence of editors. Let us remind ourselves that Mr. Murdoch is the only newspaper proprietor in the free world whose journalists have come out on strike against proprietorial interference, as they did during the Australian election of 1975.

That is no isolated example. One could give numerous examples of resignations by reporters, of the Australian Press Council upholding allegations of bias by Murdoch papers in their political reporting, and of Mr. Murdoch openly pushing his commercial interests by using his newspaper powers. I read the Australian papers every day for the best part of three years when I was writing a book on Australia, and I have some understanding of the way in which Mr. Murdoch has exercised his stewardship of newspapers. It makes me profoundly unhappy.

All the signposts point to one fact, and that is that Mr. Murdoch is a strong and dominant proprietor. He has already been making changes in the editorials of The Sunday Times and The Times, even though he is not yet the owner. I believe that that situation will continue and will probably deteriorate unless the most stringent and legally binding safeguards are obtained from Mr. Murdoch by the Government. I am not sure about the legal status of the eight conditions that the Secretary of State mentioned today.

One of the things that reassure many of us is the legal status of those conditions. If an agreement with conditions is made by the Minister the breaking of those conditions would be a criminal offence.

The vision of Mr. Rupert Murdoch being hauled off to Wormwood Scrubs in handcuffs obviously diverts my hon. Friend.

I am worried about the areas that those conditions do not cover. Giving Mr. Murdoch this great power in Fleet Street may have profound consequences for the future of newspapers such as The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. What sort of fair or unfair competition practices may be used? At present, Mr. Murdoch is fighting hard at the lower end of Fleet Street by paying the highest wage rates to union members. That is why they like him so much. Mr. Murdoch is the only newspaper proprietor who pays linotype operators £550 a week on average in order to compete fiercely with other newspapers. That sort of price war in Fleet Street at the top end will cause destruction and havoc among the serious newspapers who are not paying anything like those wage rates. That is just one example of an area that is completely unsafeguarded by the conditions that have been mentioned.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State used the threat of closure as his principal argument for agreeing to the deal. I believe that the Department of Trade was taken for a ride by the Thomson Organisation. The threat of closure, if a deal with Mr. Murdoch is not rushed through immediately, is empty. The Thomson Organisation has set an arbitrary and artificial deadline for selling The Times. There was no reason why Lord Thomson should not have set his five-month deadline from the date that Warburg issued the prospectuses for sale rather than from the date when he instructed Warburg to draw them up. That would have left ample time for a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

Lord Thomson and Mr. Murdoch are putting a phoney pistol to the head of the Secretary of State and saying to him, in effect, "Stand and deliver without your reference to the commission". I believe that he should have called their bluff, because there were plenty of other serious alternative bidders in the ring. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to the journalists consortium, which had some serious finance behind it. But far more formidable than that consortium were the three major groups. Lonhro publicly made it clear, and makes it clear to this day, that it is available as a serious bidder, and it has put up a substantial financial offer, which is believed to be in excess, of the offer made by Mr. Murdoch. Associated Newspapers has also put up a substantial offer, as has Atlantic Richfield.

Having talked to the directors of those three organisations, I believe that the bidding process for The Times and The Sunday Times has not been fairly or openly conducted according to general commercial rules. The reason for this effectively unfair, prearranged package deal between Mr. Murdoch and Lord Thomson goes back a long way in the history of Fleet Street to disagreements over board appointments for Reuters well over a year ago. Since that date, Mr. Murdoch has been Thomson's favourite candidate, and from that stage every effort has been made to deliver the deal to him only.

My hon. Friend decried the strength of the sanctions, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has imposed on the deal. Is he telling the House that in his view they are not legally binding, that they are not strong sanctions, and that Mr. Murdoch could ignore them? We are all listening to the debate with interest, and we should like to know the position.

Without hearing more about them, I am not legally qualified to argue the legal rights of the safeguards. I am impressed with the safeguards as they go so far.

May I help my hon. Friend?

No. I have been interrupted twice already, I must get on with my speech.

Some of the safeguards do not even cover the areas of concern about which I have spoken. Some do and some do not. I believe that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission would have been capable of doing a more thorough and worthwhile job than the conditions that were laid down ex cathedra by the Secretary of State.

I return to what I call the prearranged package deal between the Thomson Organisation and Murdoch. It was almost an Alice-in-Wonderland situation—sentence first, verdict after. It became curiouser and curiouser, especially when we examined the role in this affair of Warburg, Thomson's merchant banker. The chairman of Warburg is Lord Roll, and in that capacity he must take prime responsibility for what many see as the less than evenhanded treatment of all bidders other than Rupert Murdoch. But we must also remember that the same Lord Roll is also a national director of Times Newspapers Ltd. He is one of the quartet of noble Lords whose duty it is to uphold the national interest and preserve the integrity and independence of Times Newspapers and, we now learn, to approve the editor. What is the role of Lord Roll? Is he banker of fees or the bulwark of liberty? Is there a conflict of interest here? On the face of it, there would seem to be some pertinent questions that need to be asked. It reminds me of the remark that was attributed to Lord Queensberry when he addressed Mr. Oscar Wilde—"Oscar, I don't say that you are, but you look as though you are, and that is worse."

Will my hon. Friend attribute that remark to Lord Roll?

I hope that when my hon. Friend was a reporter for Times Newpapers he was more careful in his attribution of quotes.

The Warburg-Thomson plot thickens and becomes rather more murky, especially when we look at the question of the prospectus that was put out by Warburg at the beginning of the process, and which is highly relevant, if not crucially important, to the question of the reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. This is, of course, a secret document that was issued in confidence to each bidder. This morning I tried hard to obtain a copy, both from Warburg and Thomsons, but was refused permission to see one. Perhaps the fact that it denies us access to that document is an interesting sidelight on Thomson's attitude to Parliament's right to safeguard public interests. It was quoted to some extent by the Shadow Secretary of State for Trade, the right hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. Smith), who summarised some of its contents.

I understand that that circular stated unequivocally that The Sunday Times was a profitable newspaper and that it would become still more profitable. It went into some detail. The House has not seen those documents, and it is no wonder that they are regarded as somewhat embarrassing, and that there is no enthusiasm on the part of Thomsons to make them public. It must be highly relevant that one section of the Fair Trading Act 1973 states that the transfer of a newspaper with a circulation of over 500,000 must be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that the newspaper is not a going concern. That word is in the singular. That section of the Act does not refer to newspapers in the plural or to groups of newspapers. The Secretary of State's decision this afternoon and his refusal to implement that section of the Act may be tested by the courts. I believe, on the basis of a conversation that I had today with the managing director of Associated Newspapers Ltd., that his company is likely to test the decision by means of an injunction. That is what he indicated. If his company does not do so, I am sure that another member of the public will issue a writ of mandamus, saying, in effect, "We demand that the Secretary of State fulfils his obligations under the Act." When that happens, the differing views of the companies' legal advisers can come out into the open.

I am sorry to be so critical of my right hon. Friend. However, I cannot sit back and watch the House being stampeded by the pressures of commercial exploitation into giving parliamentary blessing to a newspaper merger that concentrates monopoly powers in the hands of one organisation to such an extent that I believe it to be totally contrary to the public interest.

Let the last words lie with Mr. Murdoch. In an interview published in an American magazine called More in 1977, Mr. Rupert Murdoch was quoted as a saying:

"England has eight or nine major daily newspapers. I would not be allowed to buy another successful daily newspaper there. The Monopolies Commission would say 'No'. That is quite correct and proper."

Out of the mouths of babes, sucklings and newspaper proprietors, cometh forth great truth. I think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State may well have acted in an incorrect manner. That is why I shall vote with the Opposition tonight.

5.2 pm

I congratulate the hon. Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken)—who is associated with me in the early-day motion, which 92 hon. Members have signed, calling for the referral of the proposal to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission—upon his speech.

Public life needs what Thomas Jefferson called the artillery of the press. It should not be thought by anyone on either side in politics, or as a result of any speech or partisan contribution to the debate, that the direction of that artillery and where it is laid down should condition our opinion of the free press. I do not detect in this debate the views and opinions of the Secretary of State, who has given us his verdict that the referral should not be made. I detect the opinions of the Prime Minister. I think that it is the Prime Minister who has dictated that Rupert is owed a favour and that the proposal should not go to the commission. The Minister is an honourable man and a man somewhat given to private and public agonising.

No.

I am sure that he has had one or two sleepless moments in thinking how he could come to the House to face the criticism so legitimately applied by the hon. Member for Thanet, East.

We have to decide three questions. They have already been touched upon by hon. Members on both sides of the House. First, is Mr. Murdoch the only bidder for Times Newspapers Limited? Is he the only proper, legitimate or possible bidder? If he is, should he not have his bid referred to the commission? If, as we are contending, there should be a referral, what questions should properly and legitimately be asked by the commission?

Let us consider the motion of Mr. Murdoch as the only valid bidder. There has been some dispute in the debate already about the profitability of the Thomson papers and whether the admitted financial difficulties of The Times, which has cost the Thomson family so much money over the past 15 years, should be allowed to colour the position of the group. Is there the possibility of profitablility for The Sunday Times, for example, when separate overheads are considered? I am informed—this relates precisely to the Warburg documents that we have not been allowed to see—that it is calculated that The Sunday Times could be profitable, even when separate overheads are considered by the end of 1981, and that it could be making a profit of about £7 million in the financial year up to the end of 1982.

That is why it is an attractive proposition. That is why, if an individual were to go to Thomson newspapers to buy The Sunday Times, he would have to pay more for it than the £12 million or £14 million which Mr. Murdoch will have to pay for the entire group, with his eye on the principal booty of The Sunday Times, that extremely profitable newspaper.

The right hon. Gentleman told us that his accountants, using the Warburg figures, or figures supplied by Warburgs for the purpose of the debate, could not recognise that The Sunday Times could be calculated as a profitable paper. Has he considered that issue through the eyes of the bidders—through the eyes of the many organisations who would like to buy the The Sunday Times?

If The Sunday Times can for a moment be extracted from the package and can be shown to be a newspaper that has actual or potential profitability, I submit that the Minister has no option but to refer The Sunday Times, at least, to the commission. If that title has profitability, what are we to say of the other bids that have been submitted?

It was an exciting departure in British journalism when the present editor of The Sunday Times and his staff put together a bid. The backing that it received made it almost copper-bottomed. Bearing in mind the possible conflict of interests, it is unfortunate that the editor and his staff went to the merchant banker, Morgan Grenfell and Co. Ltd. to put the package together, since it acts for Mr. Murdoch in another capacity. It has acted for him in some of the dealings to which the hon. Member for Thanet, East referred. An example is the Ansett case in Australia, which caused a great deal of condemnation of Mr. Murdoch.

The fact is that the editor and his staff have a proposal. The proposal has never been put to the vetting committee. They have been in the same position as the other bidders, including the commercial names that have been bandied about in the debate. They have never had the opportunity of matching the timetable that was set out specifically to preclude referral to the commission and to ensure that the package of Times Newspapers Ltd. could be sold to one buyer.

We have been told that it was not until early January that Mr. Murdoch emerged as the favoured candidate. The decision to sell was announced on 22 October. The deadline will expire in March. I do not believe for a moment, nor should any other hon. Member, that Mr. Murdoch appeared as the favoured bidder for Times Newspapers Ltd. some time in January. I believe that discussions were going on for much longer, and that the deadline was set when the debate had eventually to be held in the House and when a Minister, if one could do so with impunity, could say what the right hon. Gentleman said this afternoon.

If the right hon. Gentleman asked the commission how soon it could carry out an investigation and it said eight weeks, why did he not go back to Times Newpapers Ltd. and ask "Why cannot you extend the deadline for three or four weeks?" When we calculate how much the Thomson Organisation stands to lose if the entire enterprise collapses as against what it will make with the additional four or five week extension that is required while the proper scrutiny of Mr. Murdoch is engaged upon, can it seriously be suggested that the Thomson Organisation and Times Newspapers Ltd. would not have extended the deadline? Of course they would, and I think that the right hon. Gentleman knows that. I pause to enable the right hon. Gentleman to tell me that he asked the Thomson Organisation for an extension of the deadline. It seems from his silence that he did not ask for very much.

I discussed with the Thomson Organisation and with News International the implications of an eight-week Monopolies and Mergers Commission report. I indicated to them the real advantage that there would be if they could so extend the deadline to enable a report to be made. They said that they were not prepared to extend the deadline.

I can only say that the right hon. Gentleman did not extend his powers of persuasion very far. I am sure that it will be the contention of many on both sides of the House that it would not need great powers of persuasion, given the money in the equation, to make the Thompson Organisation extend the deadline by three or four weeks. If we do not refer this bid to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission we might as well tear up the fair trading legislation. The Act is a dead letter if it is not to be used in this case.

We should look at the other objection which has been raised by some of the people who work for the present Thomson Newspapers. All three of the printers' unions have written to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition saying that they hope that there will not be a referral and rather regretting the fact that there was to be this debate. I have to say to them that there are matters of more concern and more moment here than the printers' belief that they can do a deal with Mr. Murdoch on mutually satisfactory terms, perhaps with mutually agreeable assumptions. The assumptions that Mr. Murdoch may have about how to run newspapers, which could be met by some of the printers in the same way that Mr. Murdoch met those assumptions in New York when he outmanoeuvred all other proprietors, are not necessarily those that should commend themselves to the House.

Many of the printers are friends of ours. In party political terms, they sit with us in Labour Party committees that deplore the concentration towards monopoly. I do not know how they vote, but they deplore concentrations of ownership and the Tory control of the mass media. They should look more seriously than they have done so far at the way in which Mr. Murdoch's newspapers have operated and the way in which this concentration of power would operate politically in this country.

Will the hon. Gentleman agree that the printers and managers at The Times had the opportunity to put their house in order during the 11-month shutdown?

I shall not be drawn into the question whether the management or the unions at The Times are more or less to blame for what has happened to Thomson Newspapers. There have been faults on both sides. We are concerned here with picking up the pieces and trying to extend, if possible, editorial diversity in Fleet Street. That is healthy in a democracy. That diversity will be further narrowed and diminished as a result of what we are asked to agree this afternoon. We are told that the vetting committee will be able to approve a new editor. The vetting committee will perhaps not have the right of appointment or the opportunity to see a short list but it will be able to say, by majority decision, whether it takes Mr. Murdoch's nominee or not. I am not sure that these national directors will be much more effective in that role than the vetting committee has been in looking at Mr. Murdoch's bid so far.

My last point concerns how it is that we can expect these newspapers, under the kind of editorship that they might be asked to accept, to report the news in our society in the future. We have to look at Mr. Murdoch's record. The hon. Member for Thanet, East has already looked at his record in Australia. Mr. Murdoch's multi-media concerns there have caused legal challenges and a large measure of public concern. I remind the House that when he gave undertakings which appear subsequently to have been breached in the Channel 10 inquiry, it was said by Senator John Button, one of the people at that tribunal hearing

"If one looks at what was said in the Channel 10 inquiry on oath…a cynic would perhaps be entitled to say as far as the tribunal is concerned that Mr. Murdoch's oath seems to be inferior to his credit."

The Australian is supposed to be Mr. Murdoch's quality newspaper in that country. The staff of The Australian in the strike in 1975, to which reference has been made, addressed this remark to its proprietor:

"We can be loyal to The Australian, no matter how much its style, thrust and readership change, as long as it retains the traditions, principles and integrity of a responsible newspaper. We cannot be loyal to a propaganda sheet. Indeed, we cannot imagine that you would want on your staff journalists whose professional standards were so low.

We cannot be loyal to those traditions, or to ourselves, if we accept the deliberate or careless slanting of headlines, seemingly blatant imbalance in news presentation, political censorship and on occasion, distortion of copy from senior, specialist journalists, the political management of news and features, the stifling of dissident and even unpalatably impartial opinion in the paper's columns."

That is what happened in what is supposed to be the quality paper owned by Mr. Murdoch in his home country. I do not want to have to see, in few years' time, as a result of a lapse of concentration by this House and an increase of concentration of power in Fleet Street, open letters of that sort addressed by the staff of The Times or The Sunday Times to their new proprietor. I remind the House that the newspaper The Australian has had three editors in the past year. Mr. Murdoch's editors come and go pretty quickly all round the world.

I believe that Mr. Murdoch was in the editorial room of The Sunday Times, a newspaper that he does not yet own, on Saturday night, looking at the editorial and putting in a factual correction. I am not saying that he was distorting the record but he was there, altering the galley proofs.

I should like to examine what was said by Mr. Roy Thomson—as he then was—when he was taken to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in 1966. At that time, Mr. Thomson had about 7 per cent. of the press circulation. We are now dealing with a proprietor who has 30 per cent. plus. Mr. Thomson said, about relations with his editor:

"Denis Hamilton and I have worked together since I appointed him editor of The Sunday Times in 1961, and we frequently talk together. I have views on various questions and I make sure he knows them, but I never see them appear in the paper unless he agrees with them. We discuss things, and he knows that on certain matters I am very concerned in my mind that this is the thing and so on, but he is editor and nothing of my views goes in the paper unless they are also his views."

I ask the Minister to tell me now if there is any newspaper owned by Mr. Murdoch in the world today—there are a great many of them—where that is the relationship between the editor and the proprietor. I submit that there are none. I also submit to the House that Lord Thomson, or Mr. Roy Thomson as he then was, was asked a number of other questions before the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in 1966. He was asked, for example, whether he respected the independent political slant of The Times. There are hon. Members on the Labour Benches who would laugh at the notion of The Times as an independent newspaper. It attempts, however, to be a paper of record. I am not saying that it is always very successful. It attempts to be less than the narrow partisan propaganda sheet that some other newspapers are.

Has Mr. Murdoch given any undertakings to this Government that The Times will continue to be a paper of record and that it will attempt to continue to take an impartial look at the news? If any hon. Members have doubts about whether one should be concerned about the use of newspapers owned by Mr. Murdoch, I refer them to the annual report of the Australian Press Council, report No. 4, adjudications Nos. 74 and 75, where complaints of the consistent partisan bias of Mr. Murdoch's newspapers were upheld by the council. What undertakings have been requested on this score? I do not think that very many have.

My conclusion is not that the The Sunday Times and The Times are presently perfect. I do not think that they are. The Times in particular is often far from that. I am not saying that Mr. Murdoch has a cloven hoof that other potential proprietors do not show, or do not have. I am saying that this whole operation has been designed to circumvent the Fair Trading Act. That strengthens the case for submitting it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The fact that many hon. Members, like many journalists, do not want to voice their fears about Mr. Murdoch makes it all the more imperative to do so in this place.

The future of the Thomson papers is more important, in my view, than a quiet life for the Thomson management or a secure life for the Thomson printers. They know only too well how they got where they are now. Unless Mr. Murdoch's claims and promises are tested before the commission, the Fair Trading Act will be seen to be a dead letter. We might as well write a blank cheque for Rupert Murdoch and write it on the back of the legislation, because that is all that the legislation will be worth.

5.18 pm

I welcome from the bottom of my heart the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade. I congratulate him on his courageous decision in difficult circumstances.

I speak as a former journalist who worked on The Sunday Times for a number of years. I have never worked on The Times. I accept that the anxiety that most of us feel probably concerns the future of The Times. It would be a tragedy to allow that newpaper to close as a result of action that we took or advocated today, the consequences of which we had not thought through properly.

We should welcome Rupert Murdoch's willingness to buy Times Newspapers Ltd. The provisional sale agreed is the best that can be obtained in the circumstances for the newspapers concerned and for the reading public. The Secretary of State is right not to erect a major obstacle by way of a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

The argument so far has fallen under two heads. The first concerns concentration of ownership. It is urged that it is undesirable that a man or group owning a daily and Sunday newspaper at the popular end of the market should also own a daily and Sunday newspaper at what is generally termed the quality end. However, concentration of ownership is a feature of newspaper production today and has been for some time. It is necessary for the viability of newspapers. We could argue against having a number of newspapers concentrated in the present ownership, but the alternative would simply be to have fewer newspapers.

It is not correct to assert either that the loss of editorial independence is a necessary consequence of that concentration of ownership in Fleet Street today. I give three examples. I also worked for the Thomson group for a number of years. For some time past that group has owned The Times, The Sunday Times, a string of morning and evening regional newspapers and one regional Sunday newspaper. That is in many ways a more comprehensive dominance of newspaper readership than we are now discussing. However, at no stage has there been any question of the independence of the editors of those newspapers being compromised. For many years past the Mirror group has owned two Sunday newspapers at the popular end of the market with a combined circulation of about 8 million. I at present have a connection with the rival Express newspaper group, which owns two popular daily newspapers at roughly the same end of the market.

It is legitimate to express concern about editorial independence, which we all greatly value. However, Rupert Murdoch has given undertakings concerning editorial independence to the present owners and staff and, I understand, to the Secretary of State. Those who oppose my argument ask what guarantee there is that they will be kept. My right hon. Friend has announced pretty strict and entrenched conditions for approving the transfer. They are as stringent as any that could conceivably arise from an investigation by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

The second aspect of the argument underlies the first. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) concentrated on this aspect—namely is Rupert Murdoch the sort of man who we think should own The Times? That argument explains the sneers about whether page 3 nudes will appear in The Times. A certain degree of hypocrisy and snobbery is involved here. Arguments have been presented as being against concentration of ownership, whereas the real objection is to the personality of the prospective owner.

I may not have been listening carefully, but I cannot believe that the argument has been about nudes in The Times. Speakers from both sides of the House have concentrated on the occasions when Australian tribunal, headed by High Court judges, in a completely judicial manner have condemned Rupert Murdoch for his activities.

A good deal of the argument has concerned fears of trivialising the approach to news in The Times. Listening to the Leader of the Opposition last week, I also suspected a certain political motivation in the objection to the transfer of ownership. One felt he was objecting to Mr. Murdoch simply because he had fastened on to the truth that when put together tits and Toryism are marketable commodities.

There should be only one test of Rupert Murdoch's ownership: can he provide what The Times needs to make it a viable and successful newspaper? First, it needs resources; there is no doubt that he has resources. Above all, it needs an injection of publishing flair; he certainly has that. On three continents he has a track record of successful newspapers. We want to produce circumstances in which The Times can succeed. Rupert Murdoch as a rough and tough operator. I do not know him personally, but I know that he has the essential quality of drive that The Times needs.

One argument has been in favour of a number of consortia of business men, some backed by journalists, to run this great newspaper. To deliver The Times to such a consortium would be the kiss of slow death. It might save it for a short period, but I believe that it would not last beyond a year. Sir Richard Marsh of the NPA put it correctly when he was interviewed on radio. He said that it was a choice between elegant failure or rough success.

Bearing in mind that the editorship of The Times is about to become vacant, what sort of a newspaper would my hon. Friend have us have?

I believe that The Times could be a much better newspaper than it is now. It needs an injection of publishing flair. It was once the paper of record. I do not believe that many hon. Members would argue that it is now. Its foreign news coverage was once ahead of all others in Fleet Street. We could not say that now. It has never entered the race in investigative journalism, which is undertaken far better by other newspapers, including The Guardian. Its financial coverage often leaves something to be desired compared with the Financial Times.

It is a red herring to suggest, as many have, that this change of ownership will result in The Times being pulled downmarket. Why should the owner of the most successful popular paper in Fleet Street want to pull The Times in the same direction? It is far more likely that success for The Times, and commercial success for its owner, will be brought about by improving its quality and providing more space for news coverage.

Is it not a fallacy to suggest that, because Murdoch does not want to push up the standards of The Sun, he will not want to pull down the standards of The Times? There is a great difference between the two.

The secret of Rupert Murdoch's success is probably that he correctly defines the markets that need to be filled. He has defined The Sun's potential market, and he sees that the potential market for The Times is much greater than at present.

Another requirement for the survival and prosperity of The Times is that the new owner should have the confidence of the staff. There is divided evidence on this. On the one hand, there are the votes that were taken in the National Union of Journalists' chapels. On the other, I learnt last night of an assertion by 100 of the approximately 280 journalists employed on The Times that they wanted the transfer to go ahead and not be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. I am confident that the conditions that my right hon. Friend spelt out today will ensure the support of a much larger proportion of that journalistic staff.

A further requirement is that the new owner should have the ability to forge a constructive relationship with the print unions. I shall not dwell on the lamentable story of the damage inflicted on Times Newspapers Ltd. by the dispute that lasted 11 long months. On his record, Rupert Murdoch certainly has that ability. On all those tests, I believe that he is the right man—and certainly the best man around as far as we can see—to give The Times a new lease of life.

What would have been the effect of referring the transfer to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission? As my right hon. Friend explained, the deal depends on arrangements being made between the new proprietor and the print unions within the next two weeks. There is no way that that deadline could be met if the transfer were referred to the commission. Some hon. Members have asked why Thompson could not be persuaded to extend the deadline. What is in it for Thompson if he extends the deadline? Redundancy notices have already been issued. Money would have to be coughed up immediately for those employees who chose to cash in their notices.

In addition, if the issue were referred to the commission the talks between Rupert Murdoch and the print unions would immediately go into limbo. No progress would be made. Publication would cease and as a result a completely different deal would be necessary. A new situation would arise and we should have to contemplate the separate sale of different newspapers. Some argue that The Sunday Times would readily find a purchaser. That would be the kiss of death to The Times. I do not accept that the two newspapers can exist independently. Such separation must be avoided.

My right hon. Friend has seized the chance to allow The Times to be placed on a sound commercial footing that will have the support of journalists and of the print unions. He is right, in the interests of the staff, its readers and the general public, not to obstruct the transfer by referral to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. We have all seen and digested the effective advertising campaign that The Times has mounted. It asks:

"have you ever wished you were better informed?"

Today the Secretary of State has ensured that he is fully informed of the situation. Those who argue against him may well come to regret that they were not better informed on the realities of newspaper publishing today.

5.35 pm

I have nothing to say about the speech made by the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Gardiner), except that it cannot have helped the Secretary of State in his sad and difficult position.

In his first major decision the right hon. Gentleman has failed to stand up to the Prime Minister. That is the reality. I shall examine the facts and show why later. This is a straightforward pay-off for services rendered by The Sun. If it is not, let us see the facts and figures to show that I am wrong.

There are many aspects to this complex situation. Whether the level of concentration is 30 or 36 per cent., it is a major concentration of power. That is a matter for concern to all in the House.

One must also consider Mr. Murdoch's character. During my short career in the House I have always been prepared to say outside the House anything that I have said in it about any person. It is not a question of snobbery or scorn for Mr. Murdoch. Indeed, one could have more respect for him than for the Secretary of State. He is a buccaneering entrepreneur. He is unfortunately in the wrong business. I do not think that he is the sort of person appropriate to the newspaper industry. For this reason, his character is involved. Hon. Members have already commented on it.

I read an article in The Observer that was not a terrible criticism of the man as a man, but a terrible reflection on him as a man in charge of two major national newspapers. It said:

"Another senior Fleet Street manager, also an admirer"

—the article is obviously not against Mr. Murdoch—

"says: 'I happen to believe that guarantees of editorial independence simply wouldn't work—not because Rupert is not telling the truth, but because of the force of his personality and of the kind of people he has around him. Editorial independence often doesn't mean a great deal. Under Rupert, it would mean nothing. Because of the way in which he operates, acquiring The Times and The Sunday Times would make him the most powerful man in Britain.'"

Some of us might think that Rupert Murdoch is a very unworthy successor to Jack Jones. Rupert Murdoch's character is important and should be borne in mind, but, in itself, it is not a sufficient reason for reference to the Monopolies Commission, which is the subject of today's debate.

The heart of the matter was touched on by the hon. Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken). I do not know how far back the cosy and collaborative relationship between the two parties to this sordid deal goes. I cannot altogether agree with the hon. Member for Thanet, East, because he knows far more about the subject than I do. I shall rely on his informed intelligence rather than on my uninformed reading of the situation.

It would seem that, at first, two separate sales were desired: one of The Times and one of The Sunday Times. The staffs and editors of both papers wanted separate sales, for reasons with which Labour Members and many Conservative Members would agree. I refer to variety and other well-known considerations. However, they seem to have fallen into a terrible trap. Lots of things can be done with merchant bankers. They put out a prospectus that made The Sunday Times appear very profitable and The Times a pretty hopeless proposition. I am not sure why they did that. At the time, the idea was to have two separate sales. Around mid-December the emphasis suddenly changed to a package deal, with the two sales taken together. Ruper Murdoch emerged as the only man who could do that. But they got into a muddle, because the 1973 legislation requires that the Secretary of State should refer the matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on the basis of the prospectus figures for The Sunday Times. Hence there was a rather intriguing connivance between the two parties on how they could wriggle out of an Act of Parliament. That is what it amounts to—it is as serious as that.

In order to get round that problem the clever suggestion was made by the Secretary of State today which implies that perhaps the merchant bank's prospectus was not quite right. He did not say that the prospectus was fraudulent or misleading, but that it had been reviewed by the accountant in his Department. The conclusion of the accountant provides the only little loophole through which the Minister is trying to sneak. Today's decision is that the reallocation of overheads—none of which is so far public, any more than is the prospectus—shows that neither paper would make a profit over the next 11 months.

The period is 11 months, because last month's figures are not available.

What does the Act say? Is it on a retrospective basis? The Secretary of State says that this is a case of urgency because of the deadline. Enough has been said about that. One might refrain from calling this blackmail, as did the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), but it must be a threat, and it is reminiscent of Mr. Ricardo of Chrysler and other different matters.

The Secretary of State said, most importantly, that The Sunday Times is not economic as a going concern. I have not had the time to look up the exact definition of a going concern—I am not sure whether we could apply it in these curcumstances—but I have had a brief look at Palmer's. It is difficult to define something as a going concern if it does not exist as a separate entity. It is difficult to define something that is not a going concern until someone has made an offer for it, on the ground and with the information on which the right hon. Gentleman has decided that he need not refer it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

What sort of tortuous logic is the right hon. Gentleman using? What frame of mind has he got himself into—he has a logical and lucid mind—to have come up with such a proposal? Does he believe that it would stand up in a court of law if determinedly challenged? We have a viable and profitable company. Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that on the basis of an internal accounts document provided by his own Department he can recommend to the House that it is not a going concern? On that basis, how can he say that we must go ahead because there is no other alternative? We are back again with the TINA syndrome.

Under the prospectus proposals, the right hon. Gentleman might have argued that there was no alternative but he would have had to refer it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. However, he cannot argue that this was no alternative under his own proposal, because he has not made the figures available. He must not put other viable alternatives at the significant and unacceptable disadvantage, referred to by the hon. Member for Thanet, East imposed by the decision today.

Labour Members and many interested parties to whom this affair is causing great concern will not let the matter rest. This is not the end of this story; let us hope that it is just the beginning. We must require full disclosure from the Government. In the House, we must have not just the prospectus from Warburg. That will not do. We have seen the figures; they all add up. We must have full discoverability of the working papers, on the basis of which a prospectus was put forward which the right hon. Gentleman says is no good. With those working papers we must have the management accounts for the separate entities—the Thompson group so that we can see where the overheads should go and what definable entities can or cannot stand up. Then we can take a decision about the reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

I suggest that if the Monopolies and Mergers Commission does not look at this, one or two Select Committees might summon persons and papers.

The hon. Member may be aware that I am not a great fan of Select Committees. Their deliberations might be even longer and more ponderous than those of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The commission will do for me.

We cannot stop there. That is only half the story.

I know that my hon. Friend is not a fan of Select Committees, but some Select Committees can call evidence and report on the same day on this sort of issue. Might that not be, for a number of Select Committees that might be involved, a reasonable way of getting, under the powers of Parliament, those papers and records to which my hon. Friend has referred?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. If we have to go to the length of having a Select Committee, and if it will be able immediately to demand documents, as it effectively did on the question of the British Steel Corporation, I shall agree to use that mechanism.

We could go to the Select Committee and send a messanger from the House to the Department, asking for the full accessibility and discoverability of all the documents used in this marvellous accounting procedure. We would want to see the working papers which now are alleged to show—nobody believes it—that neither paper is a going concern and lead to the conclusion that a reference is not necessary.

Today's decision is not worthy of the right hon. Gentleman. We cannot and shall not let it rest there. The light that access to the papers will shed on the prospectus and on the accounting exercise in the Department will, we hope, blow the case sky high. In any event, the right hon. Gentleman will rue the day that he tried to put that decision through the House.

5.48 pm

Great emotions are stirred when discussions take place in the House on the future of a national institution. These emotions become even greater when that national institution stands a chance of being forced into oblivion or out of business. The Times is such an institution, and these emotions have been apparent during the debate today.

I believe that nearly every hon. Member wishes to ensure that in some way The Times can continue to be published and its editorial independence safeguarded. How that should be achieved is open to much discussion and disagreement.

I came to the House today to argue that the conditions are not such as to make it legally essential for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to make a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Therefore, I congratulate him on having the strength to make the difficult decision not to make such a reference. The easy and popular decision would be to make the reference. The suggestion by some Labour Members that he has attempted to subordinate his decision to that of any other member of the Cabinet is beneath contempt. I have known my right hon. Friend for 18 years, and I have no doubt that this is his decision and the decision that he wanted to make.

Having said that, I want to examine the Fair Trading Act as it applies to ministerial responsibility. I was the Minister responsible for getting the Act on to the statute book, so perhaps I know a little about it. Newspaper mergers are different from any other mergers in industry or trade. They are the only instances in which, by law, references have to be made to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission for a report, except in two defined cases which are inserted as safeguards. It is those safeguards that are of the greatest importance for the House to consider. It is no good the House denying that they exist, or Labour Members saying that they should not apply. They do apply, and they are very important.

Under section 58(3)

"Where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the newspaper concerned in the transfer is not economic as a going concern and as a separate newspaper",

and if he is satisfied that if the newspaper will continue as a separate newspaper the case is urgent, he may give his consent without a reference. That is what my right hon. Friend has done.

No one has suggested that that is not a correct decision in respect of The Times. Everybody believes that it is not a going concern and has not been for a long time. That brings us to the cause celebre, The Sunday Times. Before I heard the Secretary of State's speech—I listened carefully to that of the right hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. Smith)—I had come prepared to argue that in the figures presented for the sale all the overheads of the Thomson Organisation had been put together and that a management allocation had been made—not surprisingly, I should have thought—to make the most favourable presentation.

Therefore, if one is to analyse on a purely management accounting basis—

The hon. Gentleman ought to know.

Perhaps I do, and perhaps I do not, but I am putting the case strongly to the House and I have no interest in it. I am speaking purely on my own information, not information supplied by anyone else, as the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser) snidely tries to suggest.

What I am saying is that if The Sunday Times had to operate as the Act requires, as a going concern and as a separate newspaper, the overhead allocation would be much higher than it is at the moment. It is in that sense that I believe that the economic viability of The Sunday Times may be open to question. If the Secretary of State had concluded that that was the position, I defend absolutely his right to make that decision.

On the question of the allocation of overheads, obviously, in the first prospectus—we keep coming back to this and must not forget it—there was some misallocation, according to what the Secretary of State told us, between The Times and The Sunday Times. It cannot be right to ask people to go ahead on that basis, which is correct, and then change the basis, as the Secretary of State is doing, and maintain that his decision is still correct. We have not determined whether viability is possible under a different allocation of overheads.

I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman has not followed me closely enough. The Act contains the phrase

"is not economic as a going concern and as a separate newspaper".

The initial figures were based on a different division of overheads than if The Sunday Times were to be entirely separate, so the Secretary of State is right to determine this matter—as he has done with great courage.

I came to the House today to ask the Secretary of State to make certain conditions if he approved a sale. I am pleased that he has already met much of what I wanted. We must defeat the argument, from both sides of the House, that the entrenched clauses are not as strong when they are propounded by the Secretary of State as they would have been if there had been a reference to the MMC. Irrespective of what the MMC might have recommended, the only way in which the obligations could have been made legally binding would have been if they had been dealt with by the Minister and put into his consent. The fact that they might have been in the MMC report or considered by the MMC has no legal standing. It is not correct to say that the requirements that the Secretary of State has made have no legal strength. Those who use that argument have not read the Act.

I have only one question of my right hon. Friend about the assurances and the entrenched clauses. Is he absolutely certain that the eight statements that he has obtained will ensure editorial independence? That is what I wanted to ask him before he announced the entrenched clauses, and I am not as happy as I would like to be that they completely cover an assurance of editorial independence. I should like some assurance on that matter, because it is future editorial independence about which so many hon. Members are concerned. So long as I can have that assurance, I shall have no difficulty in supporting my right hon. Friend in the Lobby.

5.57 pm

I begin by declaring an interest as a sponsored member of NATSOPA, the printing union. Before I came to the House, I worked as a printer on most of the newspapers in Fleet Street, including those owned by Rupert Murdoch.

I have been fascinated by this debate. Hon. Members on both sides seem to be worried and concerned about the further concentration of press ownership. I understand that six multinational corporations and two large family concerns control the mass, circulation British press, and thereby most of the written information available to the British people. Also, most of those proprietors, because of their background and the circumstances of their lives, are Conservative. I have not noticed much evidence of the editorial freedom that has been so widely discussed today.

Although in theory we have a free press, if we are to be honest we must admit that it is largely a myth. In reality, most British newspapers seem to agree on most of the vital issues which confront the country. If we were to take, for example, the referendum on the Common Market, we would find all the newspapers took one view. Is that not so? I do not want to go through all the issues, but if we were to take one more recent example concerning who should be the leader of the Labour Party we would see that all the mass circulation newspapers made their position clear.

Perhaps they had a right.

Indeed, perhaps they had a right. It is not necessary to disagree with that consensus to recognise that such a view is unhealthy if we are to aspire to becoming a real democracy. The situation cries out for a change because, if the free flow of information is the lifeblood of democracy the present ownership and structure of our press is incompatible with it.

I know that any proposal for a freer press will be controversial, but surely it is unacceptable that newspapers such as the News Chronicle and the Daily Herald, each of which had a circulation of more than 1 million, found it impossible to continue. There must have been something wrong. But what are the alternatives? I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) is not here, because we must investigate these matters. We should think in terms of independent trusts. I should have liked to welcome the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, as a member of the co-operative movement of which I am a member, to join us if he wishes to develop that idea. We need much more industrial democracy in the media, including members of the printing trade unions.

I remind the House of the minority report of the Royal Commission on the Press, which suggested a national printing corporation which would own printing machinery and make it available to new publications and which also wanted a launch fund to enable new publications to come into existence. But these desirable objectives, unfortunately, will not come about next week. I hope that they will come about under a future Labour Government. I shall work for that. However, we can be sure that there will be developments in the coming days and weeks. That is happening now. There will be action. There will be a sale in the market place, where newspapers are bought and sold as commodities, rather like packets of tea over the counter.

I ask hon. Members to ruminate on the fact that we have a market economy which inevitably leads to concentration of ownership and monopoly. Is it not true that we have monopoly in virtually everything else, in the motor trade, steel and chemicals? Does not the market economy move towards monopoly? The newspaper industry is no different from the others. The concentration of ownership in the newspaper industry is a result of the society in which we live, as a result of the market economy and a society which Conservative hon. Members support.

I do not wish to embarrass Conservative Members, but Rupert Murdoch is an efficient predator in the jungle. He has been described as a buccaneer. He is efficient at operating in the system which they support. What is more difficult is for people such as myself to say that he is any worse than any of the other predators or buccaneers. In fact, some of the other buccaneers should have given up buccaneering a long time ago.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) is not here, because he has family connections with a newspaper empire. The organisation which has descended from that still owns, as far as I know, four daily newspapers. He also put forward two options. The first was Atlantic Richfield. Do we really want to consider that? It already owns The Observer. It is not British. Do we want to give it The Sunday Times as well? Will that give us greater press freedom? That would not give me a thrill at all. The hon. Member for Thanet, East seemed primarily to be carrying the torch for Associated Newspapers.

Associated Newspapers bought the Empire News. That was amalgamated with the Sunday Dispatch and it shut down the lot. It merged the News Chronicle, which I thought was a good newspaper, as I used to read it as a lad, with the Daily Mail. It also bought the Daily Sketch—do hon. Members remember that newspaper—and amalgamated it with the Daily Mail. They also bought the Evening Star—I say that as a Londoner—or was it the Star?

The Star.

The Star. We must not get it confused with the Morning Star or the Daily Star. The Star was merged with the Evening News, and what did they do with that? It was shut down. It merged into the New Standard, or whatever it is called. In London, this great capital city of ours, there is a complete monopoly as a result of Associated Newspapers' actions. I hope that hon. Members will excuse me if I am not completely convinced by the arguments of the hon. Member for Thanet, East when he tells us that the answer is Associated Newspapers.

There is another point. It has been said, and I hope it is true, that Associated Newspapers is thinking of opening a new Sunday newspaper. I have heard strong rumours to that effect. If Associated Newspapers had acquired The Sunday Times there would be no incentive to start a new Sunday newspaper. Thu s, ironically, as a result of Associated Newspapers failing in that acquisition we might have another Sunday newspaper.

We all want the Times newspapers to continue. I have never noticed the The Times give conspicuous support to the Labour Party, but I still want it to continue. Like everyone else, I am prepared to pay my compliments to The Times. My right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), whose book I am reading at present, will correct me if I am wrong, but one of the first jobs he did after achieving a double first at university was to work for The Times. Under Geoffrey Dawson, The Times suppressed reports of its two correspondents in Nazi Germany about what was happening in Germany and did not inform the British public of the truth. However, I still want to keep The Times going as an organ of public opinion and record and to provide employment.

The previous management failed grievously after the departure of the original Lord Thomson. The company then diversified out of newspapers, first, into Scottish Television—the licence to print money—and then into oil. Then, because it was, to quote the Financial Times, "awash with money", it moved its headquarters to Canada, where it could invest without having to pay the investment premium. It was then that labour relations deteriorated. The company wanted to bring in the new technology—

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Thomson Organisation was not involved in television and had not other interests before buying Times Newspapers? If he is saying that, putting it at its mildest, he is being totally inaccurate.

I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. However, there came a time when, with oil revenues, the company's main interest was not the newspapers. It was then that decisions were taken across the Atlantic about introducing the new technology. The idea was to have a perfunctory non-negotiation with the unions. The company's thinking was "Give them all the sack. The unions will soon run out of money. The workers will come back with their tails between their legs, and we shall get the agreement that we want." Across the Atlantic, the company did not understand what was happening in Fleet Street. It did not understand that if people could not buy The Times they would buy other newspapers, which meant the other newspapers putting on extra machinery. The labour previously employed on The Times was then employed on those other machines producing those other publications. It took the company 11 months, at a cost of £70 million, to realise the awful mistake that it had made.

The printing trade unions and, I understand, a very large number of journalists take the view that the best chance of keeping the publications in existence is Rupert Murdoch—not Atlantic Richfield or Associated Newspapers. Eventually, I hope to see the break-up of the monopoly in newspapers. I wonder whether I shall receive Conservative support in later years when I put forward proposals along those lines. For the present, one of the unacceptable faces of capitalism is this monopoly ownership of the press, and Government Members have to accept that that is the nature of the system which they support. The trade unions will have to do their best to exist within that system, but it is our view that the most viable offer is the one from Murdoch.

rose—

I may tell the House that this debate will end at 10 minutes to seven. I understand that the Secretary of State has been good enough to say that he will not seek to catch my eye again until 6.38 pm. The hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) wanted five minutes. I hope that it will not be a Welsh five minutes.

6.13 pm

I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for calling me. It is a pleasure to be called immediately after the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) who, as he said, is an hon. Member sponsored by NATSOPA.

I probably have in my constituency more print workers than any other hon. Member, and the main tenor of my remarks will be to make, quite unashamedly, a constituency point relating to this matter. I do not enjoy the sponsorship of any of the unions in my constituency. However, I make a point of speaking to each union and, given some of the difficulties in the printing industry, I believe that there is some advantage in not representing one union's point of view and attempting to represent the whole.

The Sunday Times colour supplement is printed by Sun Printers, in my constituency, and both the chapels of the unions involved and the management of Sun Printers have made it clear that they are delighted with this deal and hope very much that it will go ahead. The management made it clear to me this morning that if the deal does not go through, for whatever reason, Sun Printers will move immediately on to short-time working.

I can say with confidence that the management and the print workers of Sun Printers are not unaware of the other consequences and implications involved in this matter. However, there is no doubt that they will be delighted by the decision that my right hon. Friend has taken, and I want to suggest one reason why I believe it was the right decision.

When I came into the Chamber today I had no inkling of what my right hon. Friend was about to say. The proposal that I had intended to put to him was to say that if he made a referral to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission we had no reason for knowing not only what the commission might say but what recommendations it might make.

As I understand it, any proposal made by the commission is not in itself necessarily legally binding. But, reading the Fair Trading Act 1973, I discover—and I was surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) was not aware of it—that any conditions placed upon this deal by my right hon. Friend are legally binding.

Section 62(2) of the Act provides:

"Where…the consent of the Secretary of State is given to a transfer of a newspaper or of newspaper assets, but is given subject to one or more conditions, any person who is knowingly concerned in, or privy to, a breach of that condition, or of any of those conditions, as the case may be, shall be guilty of an offence."

Subsection (3) provides:

"A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine or to both."

When I read that section it seemed to me that it was in the interests of those of us who wished to preserve The Times in its present form—we hope, improved in its independence—we should urge the Secretary of State to use his powers and lay down these conditions, since they would be legally binding.

I had drawn up in my mind a list of conditions that it would seem appropriate to suggest that my right hon. Friend might lay before the parties in this proposed deal. However, the conditions with which my right hon. Friend has come forward seem to be wholly comprehensive and wholly satisfactory.

Many Opposition Members have seemed to say that the Thomson Organisation is bluffing and that Rupert Murdoch is bluffing. Right hon. and hon. Members are really asking my right hon. Friend to call that bluff. However, in a game of poker, a player who calls someone's bluff has to come up with the "ante". The ante to this bluff is that if Thomson and Mr. Murdoch are not bluffing and the deal does not go through, my constituents lose their jobs, the print workers referred to by the hon. Member for Newham, North-East lose their jobs, and the nation loses one of its great institutions.

I do not believe that my right hon. Friend should call that bluff, and I do not believe that he should put up that ante. At the end of the day, the ante will be taxpayers' money. I am convinced that the conditions that he has laid down are perfectly acceptable to most of us. The legal provisions contained in the Act seem to be very severe. I hope that my right hon. Friend will say where the conditions are to be printed, whether they will be available to the House, how they will become legally binding, and how they will be enforced.

On behalf of my constituents, who have a great personal interest in the deal going through, I can tell my right hon. Friend that we very much welcome his decision and congratulate him on taking it.

6.20 pm

The curious thing about this debate is that it is on the Adjournment of the House. There is no other motion before us. Therefore, one assumes that by voting for the Adjournment we are opposed to a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. There are variations of view on the Opposition Benches, particularly among those of us who support the trade unions and their studies of the submissions that have already been made, and also the reservations of the trade unions in Fleet Street, including my own, the AUEW, with regard to such a reference. I follow in detail the comments of the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), who put what is generally looked upon as a "print" point of view.

Related to what I have just said is the fact that many of us, as Socialists, believe that the MMC is the wrong commission for such reference because it is concerned more with commercial aspects and commercial diversity than with editorial diversity. We therefore feel that consideration by a commission of this nature might be the wrong kind of consideration. Given the dominance of commercial Fleet Street over our means of communication, we believe that there should be some other kind of commission to which references of this kind could be submitted and which would be primarily concerned with editorial diversity. That is the Labour Party's point of view and attitude at the moment.

I wish to make one or two comments on the debate so far. The curious thing about the Minister's statement is that, presumably, he will have to alter the rules and some of his comments when he comes to consider Associated Newspapers' takeover bid for the Bristol Evening Post and the five other titles now being discussed. When all is said and done, that would be a takeover of some size—000A3;7·8 million. Some of the comments that have been made will surely not apply to that, because if they do, it must be essentially a commercial consideration rather than one of editorial diversity.

Having said that, however, I turn to the question of the unions in Fleet Street, which are not concerned with commercial diversity, which means nothing at all to us. The fact that there is an anti-Socialist monopoly in the national newspapers concerns Labour Members very much, and we cannot see anything coming out of a reference of this kind to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. I believe that all of us on the Labour Benches are hostile to and critical of what goes on in Fleet Street and would therefore wish to analyse the whole matter in a very different way from what is involved in the debate.

The trade unions say that they are concerned about the situation in March. Above all else, they want continuity of production. Because 4,000 jobs are involved, they see that continuity of production as essential. They must therefore ask themselves what is the alternative to Rupert Murdoch's proposal. The conclusion must be that there is no viable alternative at the moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) shakes his head rather wearily. I understand that.

I was fascinated by the convincing argument that my hon. Friend put to the House. For two years I have been involved, in an informal way, in trying to seek out possibilities for the formation of a press co-operative that would be interested in launching a Labour Party national newspaper or a national weekly. [HON. MEMBERS: "How is it getting on?"] I shall tell hon. Members how we are getting on, as this applies to the merchant bankers who say that they will back such a journalists' consortium or co-operative. I, too, support that. Indeed, I suspect that almost 100 per cent. of Labour Members would agree with that and support my hon. Friends in backing the idea of a journalists' co-operative or consortium, which was almost suggested by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond). It is along the lines of his views that we would go. We also support the ideas developed by Le Monde. We should like to see that kind of situation in this country.

In Fleet Street there is a golden rule that applies above all else. The rule is that he who provides the gold makes the rules. In this case, the person who makes the rules also sets editorial policy. It is because we are Socialists that we feel excluded from that monopoly in Fleet Street and wish to get in. What was the Labour Party's experience when we talked informally to these people about how a press co-operative capable of producing a Socialist daily could be established? One or two people made the position clear to me—privately, of course, asking me not to identify them or what their conditions were.

I put those conditions to one of the print leaders in the TUC print committee when we were discussing a possible coming together of the Labour Party and the TUC for this purpose. Those people said that they would give every assistance to the Labour Party to produce a national daily. They also said that there were many sources from, which adequate capital could be obtained to sponsor such a project. However, the Labour Party and the trade unions would first have to agree to techniques such as simultaneous transmission and computerised typesetting with direct input, and so on.

They saw this as a marvellous opportunity to construct a huge Trojan horse right in the middle of Fleet Street, backed and supported by the Labour Party and the trade unions. They knew that the only way in which we could get a national paper was by agreeing to simultaneous transmission and by using or leasing the facilities of the vacated presses used for printing the evening papers, so that we could use them during the night on a synchronised basis in order to make it financially viable for us to carry out such an operation. At the end of the day, what would they have done? They would have opened the gates—in some cases the floodgates—to the introduction of modern technology. That is why they were prepared to finance ideas of that kind.

That situation does not apply now. There are suspicions that a journalists' consortium or co-operative of this kind would not get full backing from merchant bankers on some of those terms because of the question of viability and whether the journalists would be given complete editorial freedom on a co-operative basis. I invite hon. Members to ask themselves whether that is a likelihood, knowing the hard-faced and determined way in which press proprietors in this country have gone about establishing editorial policies in the past. There are therefore doubts about whether those editorial freedoms would be forthcoming.

The trade unions have considered the whole question of continuity of production. Their concern is about the situation in March. They want to get over that period, not for purely selfish reasons of seeing about severance terms or negotiating redundancy pay but for other, more basic reasons.

Does my hon. Friend agree, at least, that the print unions and all the other working people in Fleet Street who are concerned with these papers and these titles should have had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Harold Evans and Mr. Hugh Stephenson and the people maw put these two consortia together, to see what their financial backing was and whether they were proper bidders for the papers. They never had that opportunity.

I condemn that situation with a ferocity equal to that which my hon. Friend has shown on previous occasions. I support the protest that has been made about it. The only saving grace in all this is the question of The Sunday Times. The assurances given by Mr. Murdoch, allied to what the Secretary of State has said—which must be backed, I take it, by legal sanctions, because the Department will have the same attitude to the rules that he has laid down as it has to insurance companies, their viability, and so on—in this case are editorial conditions and are legally enforceable. That is a good thing.

In putting those two things together, the trade unions, particularly the print unions, when looking at the question of editorial freedom, have faith in a person like Harold Evans. Indeed, they and I and, I think, a majority of my right hon. and hon. Friends, credit him with being possibly one of the greatest editors of this century. He has built up a Sunday newspaper that has innovated editorially all kinds of features that have been a positive contribution to investigative journalism in this country. He has registered a number of "firsts".

The unions say that, given the conditions that have been laid down, they would probably get more from what is proposed than they would from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The commission could not read out the rules that the Secretary of State has read out, because its track record proves the opposite. The commission is the wrong place to which to refer such a situation. It cannot grant editorial freedom. It is concerned more with the commercial aspects and with commercial diversity than with the opposite. That is the trade union point of view, and I have tried to put it as fairly as possible. I have taken heed of your comments, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that the considerations that I have put will be borne in mind by the House.

All workers in this country look to the day when they can have a newspaper that will faithfully put their point of view, without being tied to a political party. It is because of that kind of determination that the Labour Party and its national executive will undoubtedly ensure that in the manifesto for the next general election there will be a version of the minority report of the Royal Commission on the Press, written by Mr. Geoffrey Goodman and Mr. David Basnett, that will be the basis of Labour policy at that election. It is for the reasons that I have set out that I believe that that statement will be acceptable to the majority of people.

6.33 pm

I am glad that we are having this debate. What seems to me to be important is not necessarily the character of the present proprietors or of any future proprietors but the simple test whether the Fair Trading Act requires the Secretary of State to make a reference. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that in his judgment he was not required to make a reference and, having made that determination, he was using his discretion not to do so. Then he went on about the assurances. I think that I have stated the position correctly.

What seems to be important is whether The Sunday Times is in an economic state to continue and whether my right hon. Friend was correct in deciding that the test that he would use would be the last 11 months. I do not know—perhaps he does, and I hope that he will tell us if he does—what was the operating success or otherwise of The Sunday Times in the last six months, because the Fair Trading Act, in determining circulation, refers to a period of six months, up to the application. I hope that my right hon. Friend will say whether his researchers show that The Sunday Times w8 making a loss during that period.

I put the test in a different way. If The Times is not profitable, why would anyone pay money to buy the group? One assumes that The Sunday Times is worth more than the money being offered for the group as a whole. If The Sunday Times is not worth more by itself than the group as a whole, presumably The Times is an economic proposition.

That is a simple, logical test and it cannot be applied both ways. It seems fairly clear, on a commonsense point of view—and I may be wrong in saying that common sense is the way in which this matter should be determined—that The Sunday Times is an economic proposition, and therefore the Secretary of State has a duty, if my line of thinking is correct—it is not a question of whether I disagree with him, for I clearly do—to make a reference.

I do not believe that it is up to the House of Commons to determine this issue. It is clearly up to the Secretary of State in the first place, and then up to the courts if people believe that he has been wrong. That is perfectly reasonable. It is not for the House to determine what guarantees should be given, although it is worth while debating the assurances which have been offered and which my right hon. Friend is requiring. The simple question which the House should be deciding is whether it believes that my right hon. Friend has put the right test to himself in making his judgment, and I fear—unless something is said during the rest of the debate to change my mind—that he has chosen the wrong test.

Looking at the whole issue of the prospectus and the story about it put forward by the right hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. Smith), the question that came to my mind was whether my right hon. Friend had seen the prospectus, whether it was a material document to him in making up his mind. Again, it would be useful to those of us who have any doubts as to the way we are likely to behave at the end of the debate if my right hon. Friend could say whether the prospectus was made available to him and to what extent the figures produced by his accountants differed from those shown in the prospectus. These are simple, relevant issues which the House should know about.

I may add that I believe that the usual channels or the party managers, were wrong to put the Whips on for this debate. When there is an urgent matter for an emergency debate, when it is a test of what hon. Members believe to be the honourable behaviour of a Minister, whether we believe that honourable behaviour to be right or wrong in our own judgment—it is not a question whether he is right or wrong in his own judgment, for we all believe that hethinks that he has got it right—and when we are deciding whether we believe that he has got it right, to make the matter subject to a heavy Whip is wrong. For example, if there had been a free vote I am sure that many more hon. Members would have been present. I have noticed during my relatively short experience in the House that that is what tends to happen in a debate where there is a freevote.

I have no direct interest in this debate but if the features editor of The Times reads the debate, will he or she please make sure that my counter article on the future of Family Forum is put in, because I want to correct the misleading impression given by Ronald Butt in his article last Thursday?

6.39 pm

rose—

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is only one minute left to him?

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I shall confine myself to one brief point. As I understand it, the guarantees that the Secretary of State has announced apply to the two newspapers only and not to the three supplements. The three supplements, as it were, because they do not qualify, stand outside those assurances which Mr. Murdoch has given.

I ask this question with a certain urgency, since Select Committees of this House have the power to send for persons and papers. It is my view that the matter could be further probed if it is the case that The Times Educational Supplement, the Higher Educational Supplement and the Literary Supplement are not subject to the assurances given, because they form a very important part of the educational and cultural life of the nation, and they should be protected in the same way under these assurances as the newspapers themselves are protected.

6.40 pm

There are occasions when a Minister makes a statement, when the House has a sense, that all is not well. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House will have felt unease as the Secretary of State made his speech—an unease that has not diminished as the debate has gone on and as hon. Members on both sides have expressed their concerns.

The first concern is whether the Secretary of State has properly carried out the duty laid upon him in the Fair Trading Act, whether he was right to satisfy himself, as he appears to have done, that The Sunday Times, in particular, was not a going concern. It came as a great surprise to many hon. Members and to me that the Secretary of State reached that conclusion.

We know that certain figures were given by Warburg in the prospectus. I do not know whether those figures are accurate. Some information was given to me which I conveyed in my speech. I think the time has come, since there is doubt and surprise at the Secretary of State's conclusion, for more information to be made available than has been forthcoming so far. Apparently, application to the bankers and to the organisations concerned has not revealed the information, as the hon. Member for Thanet. East (Mr. Aitken) discovered. Some hon. Members may seek that information through other procedures of the House. In this regard, Select Committees were mentioned.

The Secretary of State must allay the concern felt by the House by providing—perhaps he could make the information available in the Library—the papers upon which he reached his conclusion that The Sunday Times is not economic or a going concern. Indeed, it may surprise Mr. Murdoch himself to discover that The Sunday Times is not economic or a going concern. He may even reconsider the whole matter. But I think he will understand perfectly well what is going on here.

I believe that the Secretary of State is a man of integrity. I cast no aspersions on him. But genuine doubts have been raised which the Secretary of State should seek to satisfy, as he could legitimately do. Unless he is able to satisfy us in that regard, the matter will clearly be taken further.

Reference was made to a possible action in the courts by some of the interested parties. I do not know whether that will happen. But, irrespective of what happens in the courts, the House is entitled to receive more in the way of assurances than it has received so far.

Apart from the legal question, we should not lose sight of the other side of the argument. Whatever the law, there is nothing to stop the Secretary of State referring the matter. It is our submission that, in this case, he has come to a completely wrong decision. This large concentration of newspaper power will happen without the use of the scrutiny mechanism which Parliament itself has provided. We have to rely on the Secretary of State signing and endorsing those assurances that the parties themselves produced, and most of the assurances are those which were asked of Mr. Murdoch and which he has given.

There is great doubt also about how this arrangement can be effectively enforced through the mechanism of the Companies Acts. All these matters could have been looked at. We are told by the Secretary of State that that could not have been done in eight weeks. Had there been a real will, it could have been done in a shorter period than that. But even if it took eight weeks, would another four or five weeks' delay in dealing with the matter have been too much to ask, when so much is at stake? Are Parliament and Government to be held effectively to a position where they cannot use the legislation that they have provided for themselves, because the parties so arranged their affairs that they put the Government in this difficult position?

It is therefore important that Parliament should speak on the matter. If we were to let the matter pass without a vote, it would amount to Parliament's sanctioning a very doubtful proceeding. Parliament should not give its approval or sanction to the way in which the matter has been conducted. There is something badly wrong, and in their hearts and minds hon. Members on all sides know that. It is for that reason that we shall seek to divide the House, and I hope that our motion is carried.

6.44 pm

The right hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. Smith) made a fair point in his winding-up speech when he said that there was great concern and anxiety in all parts of the House about this matter. I understand and accept that. I should not wish to pretend otherwise. But, having come to the decision—I assure him that it was not an easy one—I am certain that it is the most appropriate one, given all the relevant facts.

Passions have run high during the debate, and much has been said about motive. The hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson) talked about a "pay-off for services rendered." "Rupert deserves a favour", said the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead). My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken), in a formidable speech, spoke about the Government being stampeded by the forces of commercial exploitation.

We can conduct the debate at some levels that are more productive than others. To conduct the debate in the thrall of the conspiratorial view of history does no sevice to the weighty measures that we have to consider. These decisions are difficult enough without their being compounded by mischievous judgments about motivation. I prefer to consider the issues on the mechanics of the decision and the way in which I have to satisfy myself and proceed to take subsequent action. That aspect was mentioned by both Government and Opposition Members.

Of course, in all parts of the House there would have been much satisfaction if the normal procedures of a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission could have been effected. The difficulties arose because of the balance that had to be judged and which, in this instance, I concluded required that an alternative conclusion should be reached. At the heart of the matter was whether it was possible to refer to the commission and not invoke the proposed closure plans that had been drawn up by the Thomson Organisation.

A number of people have talked cheerfully about calling bluff and counter-bluff. I am not sure that that would be a wise posture for anyone deciding the public interest in these matters. It was a question of trying to secure a referral. That is why I took up the question of speed. I must say that I accept the judgment of the chairman of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. It is not within my prerogative to tell him that he does not know his job and that if he were to think a little more sharply two or three weeks would be sufficient. Others might take a more robust view of the Government's role, but I do not believe that that is a wise or sensible way in which to proceed.

I discussed with the Thomson Organisation and with News International whether the deadlines could be extended to enable an eight-weeks' referral and I was told "No", after consideration of my request. The arguments that they advanced related to the substantial dislocation that would take place in the business if that happened, meaning, as it would, the renegotiation of redundancy arrangements. So the main question remains whether I was wise in my judgment that The Sunday Times was not an economic and going concern as a separate newspaper.

As I told the House, there is the question of the allocation of overheads—a matter that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West. The overheads were allocated between the papers by the company on the advice of its auditors. My Department's accountants considered the basis used and found it to be fair and reasonable. Secondly, there is the question of the losses that were assumed for the 1980 period. The figure that I quoted of £600,000 after allocation of overheads would rise to about £2 million, taking into account the remuneration of capital. So I have not understated the case.

Finally, there is the issue of the conditions that I attached. The sanctions that are implicit in the conditions that I attach under section 58 of the Fair Trading Act are contained in section 62(3) in particular. They are formidable sanctions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Mr. Emery) asked about the extent to which editorial standing could be secured by those conditions. I could requote some of the arguments that I adduced earlier, but there is a more formidable participant in this debate than I, namely, Mr. Harold Evans, who said this afternoon:

"No Editor or Journalist could ask for wider guarantees of editorial independence on news and policy than those Mr. Murdoch has accepted and which are now entrenched by the Secretary of State."

It has not been an easy decision, but I have made it, and without any hesitation I recommend it thoroughly.

Question put, That this House do now adjourn:—

The House divided: Ayes 239, Noes 281.

Division No.53]	[6.50 pm
AYES
Abse, Leo	Cowans, Harry
Adams, Allen	Craigen, J. M.
Aitken, Jonathan	Crowther, J. S.
Allaun, Frank	Cryer, Bob
Alton, David	Cunliffe, Lawrence
Archer, Rt Hon Peter	Cunningham, G. (Islington S)
Armstrong, Rt Hon Ernest	Cunningham, Dr J. (W'h'n)
Ashley, Rt Hon Jack	Dalyell, Tam
Ashton, Joe	Davidson, Arthur
Atkinson, N. (H'gey,)	Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)	Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)
Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (H'wd)	Davis, T. (B'ham, Stechf'd)
Benn, Rt Hon A. Wedgwood	Deakins, Eric
Bennett, Andrew (St'kb'tN)	Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)
Bidwell, Sydney	Dewar, Donald
Booth, Rt Hon Albert	Dixon, Donald
Boothroyd, Miss Betty	Dobson, Frank
Bottomley, Rt Hon A. (M'b'ro)	Dormand, Jack
Bottomley, Peter (W'wich W)	Douglas, Dick
Bradley, Tom	Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Bray, Dr Jeremy	Dubs, Alfred
Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)	Dunn, James A.
Brown, R. C. (N'castle W)	Dunnett, Jack
Brown, Ronald W. (H'ckn'y S)	Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
Buchan, Norman	Eastham, Ken
Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n & P)	Ellis, R. (NED'bysh're)
Campbell, Ian	English, Michael
Campbell-Savours, Dale	Ennals, Rt Hon David
Canavan, Dennis	Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)
Cant, R. B.	Evans, John (Newton)
Carmichael, Neil	Ewing, Harry
Carter-Jones, Lewis	Faulds, Andrew
Cartwright, John	Field, Frank
Cocks, Rt Hon M. (B'stol S)	Flannery, Martin
Cohen, Stanley	Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Coleman, Donald	Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.	Ford, Ben
Conlan, Bernard	Forrester, John
Cook, Robin F.	Foster, Derek

Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh	Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)
Fraser, J. (Lamb'th, N'w'd)	Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)
Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald	Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Freud, Clement	Moyle, Rt Hon Roland
Garrett, John (Norwich S)	Newens, Stanley
George, Bruce	Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon
Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John	O'Halloran, Michael
Ginsburg, David	O'Neill, Martin
Golding, John	Orme, Rt Hon Stranley
Gourlay, Harry	Owen, Rt Hon David
Graham, Ted	Palmer, Arthur
Grant, George (Morpeth)	Park, George
Grant, John (Islington C)	Parker, John
Grimond, Rt Hon J.	Parry, Robert
Hamilton, W. W. (C'tral Fife)	Pendry, Tom
Harrison, Rt Hon Walter	Penhaligon, David
Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith	Porter, Barry
Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy	Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)
Haynes, Frank	Prescott, John
Healey, Rt Hon Denis	Price, C. (Lewisham W)
Heffer, Eric S.	Race, Reg
Holland, S. (L'b'th, Vauxh'll)	Radice, Giles
Home Robertson, John	Rees, Rt Hon M (Leeds S)
Homewood, William	Richardson, Jo
Hooley, Frank	Roberts, Alberts (Normanton)
Horam, John	Roberts, Allan (Bootle)
Howells, Geraint	Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)
Hudson Davies, Gwilym E.	Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)
Hughes, Mark (Durham)	Robertson, George
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)	Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)
Hughes, Roy (Newport)	Rooker, J. W.
Janner, Hon Greville	Roper, John
Jay, Rt Hon Douglas	Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)
John, Brynmor	Ryman, John
Johnson, James (Hull West)	Sever, John
Johnson, Walter (Derby S)	Sheldon, Rt Hon R.
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)	Shore, Rt Hon Peter
Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rh'dda)	Short, Mrs Renée
Jones, Barry (East Flint)	Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)	Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald	Silverman, Julius
Kerr, Russell	Skinner, Dennis
Kilroy-Silk, Robert	Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)
Kinnock, Neil	Smith, Rt Hon J. (N Lanark)
Lamborn, Harry	Spearing, Nigel
Leadbitter, Ted	Spriggs, Leslie
Leighton, Ronald	Stallard, A. W.
Lestor, Miss Joan	Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)
Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)	Stott, Roger
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)	Stang, Gavin
Litherland, Robert	Strang, Jack
Lofthouse, Geoffrey	Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley
Lyon, Alexander (York)	Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)
Lyons, Edward (Bradf'd W)	Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)
McDonald, Dr Oonagh	Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)
McElhone, Frank	Thorne, Stan (Preston South)
McKay, Allen (Penistone)	Tilley, John
McKelvey, William	Tinn, James
MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor	Torney, Tom
Maclennan, Robert	Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.
McMahon, Andrew	Wainwright, E. (Dearne V)
McNally, Thomas	Wainwright, R. (Colne V)
McNamara, Kevin	Walker, Rt Hon H. (D'Caster)
McTaggart, Robert	Watkins, David
McWilliam, John	Weetch, Ken
Marks, Kenneth	Wellbeloved, James
Marshall, D (G'gow S'ton)	Welsh, Michael
Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)	White, Frank R.
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)	Whitehead, Phillip
Martin, M (G'gow S'burn)	Whitlock, William
Mason, Rt Hon Roy	Willey, Rt Hon Frederick
Maxton, John	Williams, D. (Montgomery)
Maynard, Miss Joan	Wilson, Gordon (Dundee E)
Meacher, Michael	Wilson, Rt Hon Sir H. (H'ton)
Mellish, Rt Hon Robert	Wilson, William (C'try S E)
Mikardo, Ian	Winnick, David
Millan, Rt Hon Bruce	Woodall, Alec
Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby)	Woolmer, Kenneth
Mitchell, R. C. (Soton Itchen)	Wrigglesworth, Ian

Young, David (Bolton E)	Mr. Hugh McCartney and
	Mr. Gerge Morton
Tellers for the Ayes:

NOES
Adley, Robert	Fletcher, A. (Ed'nb'gh N)
Alexander, Richard	Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Amery, Rt Hon Julian	Fookes, Miss Janet
Ancram, Michael	Formen, Nigel
Arnold, Tom	Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Atkins, Robert (Preston N)	Fox, Marcus
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony	Fraser, Peter (South Angus)
Bendall, Vivian	Fry, Peter
Benyon, Thomas (A'don)	Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Benyon, W. (Buckingham)	Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)
Bevan, David Gilroy	Garel-Jones, Tristan
Biffen, Rt Hon John	Gimour, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Biggs-Davison, John	Glyn, Dr Alan
Blackburn, John	Goodhart, Philip
Blaker, Peter	Goodlad, Alastair
Body, Richard	Gorst, John
Bonsor, Sir Nicholas	Gow, Ian
Boscawen, Hon Robert	Gower, Sir Raymond
Bowden, Andrew	Gray, Hamish
Boyson, Dr Rhodes	Greenway, Harry
Braine, Sir Bernard	Griffiths, E. (B'y St. Edm'ds)
Bright, Graham	Griffiths, Peter Portsm'th N)
Brinton, Tim	Grist, Ian
Brittan, Leon	Grylls, Michael
Brocklebank-Fowler, C.	Gummer, JohnSelwyn
Brooke, Hon Peter	Hamilton, Hon A.
Brotherton, Michael	Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Brown, M. (Brigg and Scun)	Hampson, Dr Keith
Browne, John (Winchester)	Hannam, John
Bruce-Gardyne, John	Haselhurst, Alan
Bryan, Sir Paul	Hastings, Stephen
Budgen, Nick	Hawksley, warren
Bulmer, Esmond	Hayhoe, Barney
Burden, Sir Frederick	Health, Rt Hon Edward
Butcher John	Heddle, John
Butler, Hon Adam	Henderson, Barry
Carlisle, John (Luton West)	Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)	Hicks, Roberts
Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (R'c'n)	Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Chalker, Mrs. Lynda	Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Channon, Rt. Hon. Paul	Holland, Philip (Carlton)
Chapman, Sydney	Hooson, Tom
Churchill, W. S.	Hordern, Peter
Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th, S'n)	Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldf'd)
Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)	Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Hunt, David (Wirral)
Clegg, Sir Walter	Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Cockeram, Eric	Hurd, Hon Douglas
Colvin, Michael	Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)
Cope, John	Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Corrie, John	Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Costain, Sir Albert	Jopling, Rt Hon Michael
Cranborne, Viscount	Kaberry, Sir Donald
Crouch, David	Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Dean, Paul (North Somerset)	Kimball, Marcus
Dickens, Geoffrey	King, Rt Hon Tom
Dorrell, Stephen	Knox, David
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.	Lamont, Norman
Dover, Denshore	Lang, Ian
Dunn, Robert (Dartford)	Langford-Holt, Sir John
Durant, Tony	Latham, Michael
Dykes, Hugh	Lawrence, Ivan
Eden, Rt Hon Sir John	Lawson, Nigel
Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)	Lee, John
Eggar, Tim	Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Elliott, Sir William	Lester Jim (Beeston)
Emery, Peter	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Eyre, Reginald	Lloyd, Ian (Havant & W'loo)
Fairgrieve, Russell	Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Faith, Mrs Sheila	Loveridge, John
Farr, John	Luce, Richard
Fell, Anthony	Lyell, Nicholas
Fenner, Mrs Peggy	McCrindle, Roberts
Finsberg, Geoffrey	Macfarlane, Neil
Fisher, Sir Nigel	Mackay, John (Argyll)

Macmillan, Rt Hon M.	Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)
McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)	Prior, Rt Hon James
McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)	Proctor, K. Harvey
McQuarrie, Albert	Pym, Rt Hon Francis
Madel, David	Raison, Timothy
Major, John	Rathbone, Tim
Marland, Paul	Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)
Marlow, Tony	Renton, Tim
Marshall Michael (Arundel)	Rhodes James, Roberts
Marten, Neil (Banbury)	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Mates, Michael	Ridley, Hon Nicholas
Mather, Carol	Ridsdale, Julian
Maude, Rt Hon Angus	Rifking, Malcolm
Mawby, Ray	Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Mawhinney, Dr Brian	Roberts, M. (Cardiff NW)
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin	Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Mayhew, Patrick	Rossi, Hugh
Mellor, David	Rost, Peter
Meyer, Sir Anthony	Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Miller, Hal (B'grove)	Scott, Nicholas
Mills, Iain (Meriden)	Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Miscampbell, Norman	Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)
Mitchell David (Basingstoke)	Shelton, William (Streatham)
Moate, Roger	Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Monro, Hector	Shepherd, Richard
Montgomery, Fergus	Shepherd, Michael
Moore, John	Silvester, Fred
Morris, M. (N'hampton S)	Sims Roger
Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)	Skeet, T. H. H.
Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)	Speed, Keith
Mudd, David	Spence John
Murphy, Christopher	Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)
Myles, David	Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)
Neale, Gerrard	Sproat, Ian
Needham, Richard	Squire, Robin
Nelson, Anthony	Stanbrook, Ivor
Neubert, Michael	Stanley, John
Newton, Tony	Steen, Anthony
Normanton, Tom	Stevens, Martin
Nott, Rt Hon John	Stevens, Ian (Hitchin)
Onslow, Cranley	Stewart, A (E Renfrewshire)
Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.	Stokes, John
Page, Rt Hon Sir G. (Crosby)	Stradling Thomas, J.
Page, Richard (SW Herts)	Tapsell, peter
Parkinson, Cecil	Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)
Parris, Matthew	Temple-Morris, Peter
Patten, Christopher (Bath)	Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.
Patten, John (Oxford)	Thomas, Rt Hon Peter
Pattie, Geoffrey	Thompson, Donald
Pawsey, James	Thornton, Malcolm
Percival, Sir Ian	Townend, John (Bridligton)
Peyton, Rt Hon John	Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)
Pink, R. Bonner	Trotter, Neville
Pollock, Alexander	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg	Vaughan, Dr Gerad

Viggers, Peter	Whitelaw, Rt Hon William
Waddington, David	Whitney, Raymond
Wakeham, John	Wickenden, Keith
Waldegrave, Hon William	Wiggin, Jerry
Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir D.	Wilkinson, John
Waller, Gary	Winterton, Nicholas
Walters, Dennis	Wolfson, Mark
Ward, John	Young, Sir George (Acton)
Warren, Kenneth
Watson, John	Tellers for the Noes:
Wells, John (Maidstone)	Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and
Wells, Bowen	Mr. Anthony Berry.
Wheeler, John

Question accordingly negatived.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Without any criticism of the conduct of the Chair, may I point out that some hon. Members unsuccessfully attempted to speak in the previous debate, having sat through the entire proceedings, whereas one hon. Member who came into the Chamber very late was called immediately. How are we to have genuine debate in the House when those hon. Members who have attended the whole debate are not called? Although we understand that all hon. Members cannot be called to speak, those hon. Members who attend the debates and who wish to take part in them surely should be given some precedence. We also understand that there are special occasions when Privy Councillors and others have to arrive late, but those occasions should be regarded as exceptional. I am sure you will remember, Mr. Deputy Speaker, from your experience as a Back Bencher, how dispiriting it is for a Back Bencher and how dispiriting it is for the whole future of debate in the House if hon. Members come into the Chamber and deliver set-piece speeches and then leave immediately, as the hon. Member in question did.

The hon. Gentleman will know that I am aware of the hon. Member to whom he is referring, because he indicated his intention to do so to me privately. He was in the Chamber when I returned to the Chair at 5.50 pm. I did not call him until very near the end of the debate. I think that he was the last but one to be called. I am aware that if hon. Members sit throughout the debate it is a frustrating experience not to be called, especially on a major occasion. I shall take note of what the hon. Gentleman said.

Lorries And The Environment

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Brooke.]

7.5 pm

The purpose of this debate is to discuss the document entitled "Report of the Inquiry into Lorries, People and the Environment" which was presented to me by Sir Arthur Armitage at the beginning of last month. As time for the debate is limited, and as many hon. Members wish to speak, I shall be brief.

Quite rightly, there has been pressure for a debate on this report ever since it was published. The Government shared the desire that the House should be given the opportunity to debate it, and it seemed right to us that once the opportunity for a debate arose, that opportunity should be taken. Of course, I recognise that the shortness of notice may have been inconvenient to some hon. Members and I apologise for that. However, I hope that the House will agree that it is right that this report should be debated before the Government make any decisions upon the recommendations in it. I should like to say a word or two about the consultation in a moment, but before I come to that perhaps I could say a word about the history of the inquiry.

In April 1979 the Labour Government announced that there would be an independent inquiry into the whole question of lorries and the environment. The reasons for such an inquiry are clear. There is deep public concern about the effect on the environment of the lorry, while at the same time there is a strong feeling in industry that economic benefits could be gained by allowing heavier lorries. The essential question is whether we can get the economic benefits of the lorry without paying an environmental price that the public would regard as too high. In other words, where does the public interest lie?

My predecessor, the right hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Rodgers) took the view that we should best proceed here by way of an independent inquiry—an inquiry that examined all the issues concerned.

In Opposition I accepted that proposal, and in Government we took it forward. In July 1979 I appointed Sir Arthur Armitage, the vice-chancellor of Manchester university, and professor of common law, to carry out this inquiry. He was helped by an equally distinguished team of assessors. As I said at the time, it was not intended to be a long, drawn-out inquiry, and the work was completed in 15 months. I should like to pay tribute to the work that this committee has done, and the way in which it has dealt with the vast amount of evidence that it has been given—evidence from 130 national organisations, 219 local authorities, 369 local amenity groups, 146 commercial and industrial firms and 963 members of the public. It has carried out a massive job with great distinction.

I should add that while Sir Arthur makes it clear that he takes full responsibility for the conclusions and recommendations, the report is jointly agreed by all four assessors. What I have also made clear from the time that this inquiry was set up is that we would consult in the House of Commons on how Members saw the issues that are involved in the report. So let me repeat that the issues in this report have not been considered by Ministers: no decisions have been taken; and this debate is one part of the process of fulfilling our promise to consult the House. I obviously appreciate that the debate has been arranged at short notice, and I should like to make it clear that I do not regard it as an end of the process. I am still very willing to listen to or receive any representation about the report following this debate. I hope that I have made the Government's position absolutely clear.

This debate has come as a surprise in its timing, not merely to Members of the House but to some outside organisations which would like to put to the right hon. Gentleman their views on the report before he reaches a final decision. Is he now assuring us that he will listen to them, as well as to hon. Members, before he makes up his mind?

Yes, I should like to give that assurance to the right hon. Gentleman. Obviously the period of consultation cannot go on for ever but, given a reasonable time limit, I would in no way wish to shorten that period of consultation. That is for the very good reason that we want to ascertain the views of the House and the views of the other organisations that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned.

The right hon. Gentleman has done a great deal to satisfy the House. We were genuinely worried. Will he give an assurance that, following the discussions that he has suggested, the House will once again have an opportunity to debate the issue?

I do not think that I can give the undertaking of a further general debate. However, it follows that any proposals that come forward from the process that I have outlined will have to be debated in the House. As I said to the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), I am prepared to receive representations from hon. Members and from outside organisations. I shall do everything in my power to take as much note of the representations as I can.

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for the assurance that he has given. Many of us feel that the debate has been bounced on us and that at such short notice it cannot possibly be regarded as a debate that reflects fully the feeling of my right hon. and hon. Friends. Many of us have had no time to prepare for the debate.

I appreciate the time factor. I say in defence of the timing of the debate that when the report was published I said that we hoped to have a debate within two months. I think that we are within the seventh week following publication. There was notice that a debate would follow. I fully understand what my hon. Friend is saying about timing and short notice.

In view of the full and helpful assurances that my right hon. Friend has given the House, will he help the House by explaining why we are likely to be voting at 11 o'clock when the debate concludes? Are we likely to vote, and if so, on what?

I am not in a position to answer my hon. Friend. If there was misunderstanding previously, I hope that that misunderstanding has been cleared up and that we may now proceed with the general debate on the report. The Government want to hear what hon. Members have to say on this important issue.

Is it a fact that consideration of the Transport Bill in Committee was adjourned this morning to facilitate the right hon. Gentleman's briefing for this debate? I am not moaning about it if that happened, as I welcome the opportunity to have the debate.

As I understand it, the adjournment of the Committee took place at the request of the Opposition. I cannot take responsibility for that. I am trying to be as helpful as possible. I know that some hon. Members may find that difficult to believe. That is the Government's position in considering and debating the report.

I shall seek to review the position. The lorry now has the predominant share of freight transport in this country. In terms of tonne-mileage it now carries about two-thirds of all the goods transported in Britain. That compares with the position in 1953, when road freight accounted for only just over one-third of all goods. It is important not only at home but overseas, and in recent years there has been rapid growth in the lorry traffic with other countries. It is an important employer—employing an estimated 190,000 in the hire and reward section of road haulage and a further 125,000 in own-account road transport. In addition, it should not be forgotten that there is an important lorry and trailer manufaturing industry.

It is not difficult to see why the lorry has become the predominant method of freight transport. As the Armitage report says, it is not Governments or road hauliers who have decided that; it is customers. The lorry offers a door-to-door service for the simple reason that all suppliers and customers are connected to the road system. The Armitage committee points out that we are now economically dependent on the lorry, that the lorry has brought economic benefits, and that in some form it is here to stay. It has also pointed out that a price has been paid in the effect of lorries both on the public and on the environment.

I in no way wish to understate that problem. No one who has done my job for any length of time can but be aware of the great and genuine public feeling that there is about the intrusion of lorry traffic. Frequently the complaints are about lorries travelling on roads which are inadequate for them—roads which were never designed to take lorry traffic. There are frequent complaints of lorries parked in the wrong place—for example, in residential roads as opposed to lorry parks. There are complaints of noise, of fumes, of vibration. These are real and urgent problems, and I believe that they must be tackled. They must be tackled both for the sake of the quality of people's lives and because unless they are tackled hostility towards the lorry will increase and will put at risk the economic advantages it brings.

How do we achieve that? We can first ensure that by taxation there is no unjustified incentive for lorry traffic—in other words, that the lorry pays its full track cost. Unless it does, it will be at an advantage compared with, for example, rail competition.

At present, the very heaviest lorries do not pay their full track cost. This is dealt with in the Transport Bill now in Committee and it is, I think, a matter of common agreement between both sides of the House that action to rectify this anomaly should be taken.

As for rail, the Government will want to consider carefully what the Armitage report says on section 8 grants and their extension. I have a great deal of sympathy with that part of the report.

Armitage argues that the proper way of tackling this question is essentially by regulation. One of the most important ways forward here is construction and use regulations. In other words, we should build into the lorry the improvements that we want to see. For example, we all of us want to see quieter lorries. A great deal of work has been done on this. Hon. Members will perhaps have had an opportunity of seeing the Foden quiet lorry.

However, it is not enough that the quiet lorry should be some kind of exceptional showpiece. It should become standard throughout the country. To achieve that, Armitage proposes radical reductions in noise levels. The report also proposes that to make lorries safer and better they should be fitted with under-run guards at both front and rear, and lightweight sideguards. This has been done with the Leyland Roadtrain and Leyland's safe lorry was exhibited for the first time at the end of last year.

The Armitage committee wants more enforcement and tougher penalties. Enforcement of the overloading regulations is an important aspect. In October last year the Ministry of Transport instituted a blitz campaign on the South and East Coast ports. As a result, 27 per cent. of the vehicles that were stopped and checked were immediately prohibited. We shall want to have further checks over the coming weeks. There will be a further check shortly. These are some of the ways that the impact of the lorry can be reduced. I believe that many in the House will welcome the clear statement in the report by Sir Arthur Armitage of what is needed in this country.

Another part of the proposals concerns efforts to take heavy traffic away from residential areas. In this respect, Armitage backs the emphasis in the roads White Paper of last year that we have sought to give to bypasses and relief roads. Some examples of the importance of bypasses are given in the report. The Bridge bypass on the A2 in Kent has reduced the number of lorries in the town from 760 a day to 14. The Tring bypass on the A41 reduced the number of lorries in that town from 960 to 285 a day. The proposed motorway from Oxford to Birmingham—the M40—could relieve roads through at least 10 communities. Part of the effect of the M25 is to take traffic away from villages and towns.

As I said in the roads White Paper, there are still too many towns and villages choked by heavy traffic. It remains one of the Government's priorities to seek to improve this situation by the construction of bypasses and relief roads. Obviously, I have to make it clear that funds are limited but we shall do everything that we can to achieve a road building programme which brings environmental benefit particularly by removing lorry traffic from towns and villages. Whatever decisions are taken, they will not achieve immediate results on the ground because, inevitably, the mounting of a programme of road schemes takes time to complete.

Would my right hon. Friend agree that road improvement schemes that still go through towns are not the answer? It is essential that bypasses should be genuine bypasses that avoid town areas completely.

As a generalisation, I would agree with that point. Many bypasses in the programme seek to achieve that object.

I should like to raise the matter of the time scale. The Secretary of State seeks to be helpful. When he poses the problems of road provision, bypasses and taking lorries away from urban areas, he must take account of the need of the House and the country to be satisfied that there has to be a time scale. What are the intentions in terms of priorities to meet the Armitage recommendations on roads and lorries? Do we have the roads first and then the lorries? Will they be together? What is the plan?

The hon. Gentleman will have read the roads White Paper which I published last year. This set out the Government's proposals on road building. I am now saying that as a result of the Armitage inquiry and its report we have to look at the programme in that light. As no decisions have been taken in the main, clearly no decisions have been taken in this respect.

Is not my right hon. Friend aware that at this moment his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is busily cutting a lot of bypass schemes out of the 10-year county structure plans? This is not compatible with what the Minister is telling the House.

The policy on roads, set out in the roads White Paper, which I am sure my right hon. Friend has read, is the policy that we are pursuing there. As I hope I have sought to say to the House, this is clearly a matter that must be considered in connection with the Armitage inquiry. Clearly, we have not come to decisions about this, just as we have not come to decisions on the Armitage inquiry. That it is a factor is a matter which I hope would be common ground between both sides of the House.

I turn now to the other group of recommendations, on weights and dimensions. Of course, it is lorry weights which have given rise to most comment on the Armitage proposals. They will be one of the central subjects of the debate this evening.

On damage to roads and bridges, the report focuses attention on the key importance of axle weights—that is, the weight of the individual wheels of a lorry on the ground. Axle weights will be affected not only by the weight of the load on the lorry but by the number of axles it has and the way the load is spread across them.

It is important, when considering the Armitage report, to remember that it rejects the types of lorry proposed in the EEC draft directive, specifically because of the high axle weights, which would impose unacceptable loadings on our older bridges, which would be very costly indeed to strengthen. The report explains this point clearly. It makes alternative proposals for lower-than-EEC axle weights which, if they were implemented, would involve no further expenditure on our bridges. That is worth emphasising. Armitage does not involve vast new spending on bridges. Indeed, it envisages no extra spending on bridges.

The lower axle weights proposed by the report have other advantages. The report draws on work by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory to estimate that because of the larger number of axles, the heavier vehicles proposed eventually reduce road damage. I know that many people are concerned about this aspect, and, obviously, the Government would not accept proposals for heavier vehicles if we were advised that this would worsen the state of our roads.

The report also deals with lorry size and Armitage rightly identifies this as one of the main areas of public concern. It rejects the idea of even bigger lorries, and I am quite sure that this will be welcomed. Indeed, the report proposes additional new controls on length and height to ensure that lorries cannot get any bigger than they are already. These would properly be the subject of detailed consultation with vehicle manufacturers and others directly affected. I should like to say a word about the proposed additional half metre on articulated lorries to bring the maximum legal length from 15 to 15·5 metres.

It is clear that Armitage does not see his proposal as resulting in articulated lorries becoming more intrusive. He recommends that the intrusive part of the lorry—that is the trailer—should be restricted to its present dimensions. The additional half metre would recognise the fact that slightly larger cabs, often fitted with a "sleeper" bunk for the driver, are coming into more and more frequent use. The new length limit would accommodate this development, and the report also makes the point that the additional space could in future be used for other new features, such as noise insulation.

Sir Arthur is quite definite that the heavier lorries that he proposes should be subject to precisely the same environmental standards as the existing heaviest lorries. He proposes the same safeguards on noise, braking and axle weight distribution to ensure that this would be so. Concentrating on the environmental aspects of heavier lorries as I have, I do not believe that we should overlook the important economic and industrial aspect, and the report goes into this in some detail. At this stage, I make only one or two rapid points.

Armitage believes that by allowing increased loads, fewer vehicles could be used to meet transport requirements. There would be substantial savings on transport costs as a result. More particularly, the increased weight limits proposed would allow the 40 ft containers, which are standard world-wide, to be fully loaded.

At present, these containers can be loaded only to about 70 per cent. of their full weight capacity if they are to be carried by road in this country, which puts a cost penalty on our exporters and importers. This also applies in the case of containers carried by rail, because the vast majority of them have to begin or end their journey by road.

Finally, our own vehicle and trailer manufacturers have indicated a need for a strong home market for heavy vehicles to provide a base in retaining and developing their position in export markets. The uncertainty necessarily created by the Armitage proposals for new weight limits has had the effect of depressing the demand for new vehicles, and particularly trailers, in this country. The issue is really this. Does the Armitage committee chart a way forward that this country can take? It is a package of proposals. I accept that. But I hope that in our debate we can seek as much common ground as possible.

Armitage resulted from agreement between parties. It was the Labour Government who announced the setting up of an independent committee. It was this Government who made the appointments to it. We were both agreed that that was a sensible way of proceeding. What I am now seeking to do is to ask the House for its views on that question, for the good reason that Members of Parliament are in an exceptionally good position to judge both the environmental consequences and the economic benefits in their own areas.

The House often complains that it is given no opportunity to express its views before proposals are made. It is argued that unless it does it is too late, because Governments will be committed. As I have said, in this case no decisions have yet been taken. I hope that the Opposition Front Bench understand that that is the position. I hope that the House will welcome this opportunity to give its views before that stage is reached.

7.30 pm

We strongly object to the Government's decision to hold a debate on the Armitage report at only 24 hours' notice and in a framework that makes it impossible for us to vote properly on a major contentious issue. In such a debate it is necessary not only to give our individual views but to reflect the considerations of organisations seriously concerned with the proposals raised in the report.

We have had a series of consultations with outside bodies in the belief that we should know their views before the debate. It has been impossible to complete the consultations. Some of the organisations that we were able to notify of the debate today must have worked through the night. I have a communication from one responsible body of employers with a 4.15 am stamp from the House of Commons post office. That illustrates the importance attached to the issue. The Association of Metropolitan Authorities told me today that it had put the issues to its members and had considered a paper but could not give us a reply in time for the debate.

Over the past 33 years there has been a continuing trend towards heavier lorries. In 1960 we had 10 times as many lorries over 8 tons in weight on our roads as we had in 1946. In 1979, there were 100 times as many. That is a rough guide to the accelerating trend that has come about with each successive decision of Government to increase maximum permitted lorry weights.

One significant decision was that taken in 1955, to permit a gross axle weight for vehicles of 24 tons. More significant was the raising of the four-axle articulated weight to 32 tons in 1964. Then there have been decisions to increase the permitted width and length of lorries. Each decision has been followed by an increase in the number of heavy lorries on our roads.

We are concerned not only by the number of heavy vehicles but by the mileage done by the largest vehicles on our roads. The heaviest vehicles account for about 80 per cent. of the mileage on United Kingdom roads by articulated vehicles. There has been a much faster increase in the use of heavy lorries on United Kingdom roads than in other EEC countries, most of which have far more of their heavy freight conveyed by rail. In this country there has been a massive switch of freight from rail to road.

I do not argue that tonnage is the best guide, but between 1953 and 1979 the ratio of freight carried by road to freight carried by rail increased from 3:1 to 9:1. A better guide is probably tonne-mileage. In 1953 our railways were carrying slightly more tonne-mileage than our roads, but by 1979 we had five times as much tonne-mileage on our roads as on our railways. It is therefore clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that heavy road freight vehicles play a dominant part in the road-rail freight equation.

The post-Beeching length of our rail network is 12,000 miles compared with 200,000 miles of road, so it is almost inevitable that a large number of heavy goods vehicles will be needed for the freight requirements of our industry and services. We must decide whether we want the trend towards greater use of heavy lorries to continue, to stop at the stage that it has reached or to be reversed. We must form a clear view based on a realistic appraisal.

Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that there will be a natural inclination to send more freight by rail over longer distances and to curtail the distances covered by road freight as a result of the limitation on drivers' hours?

The drivers' hours regulation have not halted the trend towards road freight. If there were a much greater reduction of hours worked per driver, the trend might change. However, I do not believe that that is likely. I believe that the effect of further regulations concerning hours will be marginal compared with the effect of decisions taken on raising heavy lorry weights.

If we decide that we wish to halt or reverse the trend towards heavier lorries, we have to decide how far the proposals in the report will enable us to achieve that end and what time scale we should aim for. Part of the trend towards heavier lorries is the result of lack of capital investment in our railway system. I do not wish to raise a party point, but I agree with the part in the Armitage report that states that better investment in railways would have had some effect.

May I refer the right hon. Gentleman to paragraph 49 of the Armitage report? It states:

"in strictly economic terms it seems likely that the failure to invest more in the railways…has been the result of their inability to produce a sufficient rate of return on their investment."

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that? What are his views?

I do not accept the overall view of the Armitage report that the market should prevail in the freight system. Other countries have not had a free market transport system. Their Governments have had a considerable bearing in the size of the mode of transport. We could justify adopting that view. Therefore, I do not fully accept what Armitage has to say on that point.

Surely the point that the right hon. Gentleman has been making about investment is disproved by another even more important quotation from the Armitage report. Page 17 states:

"excluding this international traffic"—

which applies for geographical reasons—

"British Rail have the same share of all freight traffic in terms of tonnage as the railways do in France and West Germany and a greater share than on other European railways."

Does that not contradict what the right hon. Gentleman was saying?

No. It shows that it is unrealistic to suggest that international traffic can be disregarded when comparing one country's rail system with that of another. If the French or German railway systems have a greater degree of electrification than the British system—because they can invest for international traffic purposes—they have the advantage of a highly electrified system for internal rail freight. Therefore, I disagree with the report on that point.

If the railways are to achieve the share of freight that they should have, and if there is to be a more balanced use of the differing modes of transport, there must be more door-to-door conveyance by the railway system. That is a major point. It should be possible to shift freight from mines to power stations and from factories to warehouses. It is essential that if railways are to be in the market of freight transport more private sidings should be opened.

There are only 1,700 sidings in Britain. In Germany there are 13,000. That is one reason why Germany has more rail freight. If goods have to be loaded on to a lorry and taken to the railhead or station, and if they are then shipped by rail and offloaded once again on to a lorry in order to get the goods to their destination, it must cost more than siding-to-siding traffic. That is why we welcome the proposals to extend the scope of the grants made under section 8 of the Railway Act, as proposed in the Armitage report. Armitage says that the standard grant should be increased to 60 per cent. Where it can be shown to be of environmental advantage to put in a siding, there should be a grant of 80 per cent.

We are particularly anxious that freightliners, which convey many of the large containers that are so objectionable when carried by road, should be included within the scope of the grants. Therefore, I welcomed what I thought the Secretary of State was about to say when he indicated some sympathy with the argument. However, before a decision is reached we should be told whether the Government intend to make available to the railway system money that is clearly needed if it is to carry its proper share of freight.

Paragraph 182 of the report contains a poor piece of reasoning. It purports to show that if measures were taken to transfer 40 million tonnes of existing long-distance freight to rail it would result in a reduction of 8 per cent. in road ton-miles. That figure is so low because it includes all goods vehicles, including milk floats that deliver pint bottles to doorsteps. If the calculations had been made on the basis of transfer from road to rail that had been measured in terms of heavy lorry mileage, the correct figure would have been at least 20 per cent. That is a significant reduction.

At the very least, competition between road and rail should be based on particular modes meeting their full track costs. The Secretary of State touched on that point, and its relevance to the Transport Bill. I shall not pursue it as it may be touched on by us later. The Freight Transport Association, which represents a considerable body of employers, accepts the principle of lorries meeting full road track costs. The Armitage report states that not only should the maintenance of the way be taken into account but also the cost of accidents. Even on the basis of the Armitage proposals, there would be a considerable increase in the vehicle excise duty on lorries. The figure of £1,188 would have to increase by about £800. If one included the cost of accidents and other damage the present duty would have to be raised by £1,465, Therefore, we are discussing making massive changes in the duty levied on the heaviest of vehicles.

Although it is important to get our road-rail equation right and to use our differing modes effectively, it is probably more important to the majority of citizens whom we represent to remove large numbers of heavy lorries from the centres of our towns and villages. That point crops up time and again, in constituency after constituency. Many more bypasses are required to deal with the amount of traffic. People and lorries just do not mix on the roads in most of our towns and cities. When attempts are made to mix them, people are killed and maimed. Therefore, it is a major issue.

The effectiveness of bypasses cannot be disputed. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State quoted from paragraph 199 of the report. The right hon. Gentleman and I agree that Armitage picked two particularly apposite examples of bypasses which produce a desirable result. However, I now part company completely with him because the White Paper on roads fails to match promises and achievements as regards bypasses. The White Paper says that the present Government castigate their Labour predecessors for being unrealistic. Paragraph 6 of the report states:

"it would be wrong to promise what cannot be achieved."

It also states that the road programme set out in the White Paper should be within the country's means. Until March 1984, £1,100 million of schemes are scheduled, yet less than £900 million will be available to pay for them.

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East (Mr. Conlan) tabled a question on this subject. It became clear that at least six of the schemes scheduled for 1981 would not start. It is interesting to note that the Government now propose to promote none of the 1980–81 reserve list schemes. That calls into question the purpose of reserve lists. The schemes on the reserve list include some of the most important bypass proposals. The A6 Elstow bypass, the A17 Heckington bypass, in Lincolnshire, the A45 Ipswich bypass, the A49 Brimfield pypass, the Troutbeck diversion in Cumbria, and the Greenodd diversion—which would greatly help my road journey to my constituency—are all on the reserve list. None of them has been brought forward.

I thought that we were agreed on the need for bypasses and the need to maintain the road programme. The six schemes upon which work is not likely to start this year are held up because of problems with public inquiries and legal proceedings, and not because of a lack of resources. I am glad to be able to tell the right hon. Member, as some of my hon. Friend's whose decisions are affected also know, that many of the schemes now on the reserve list will be built in the near future. They are not vanishing from the programme. It is not right to say that we have cut the programme, because cuts were made in the road programme in 1976 by the Labour Government.

I can give the Under-Secretary a number of examples. I picked only those referred to in the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East. There are many more.

The White Paper said that the Government had decided to fit as many bypasses as possible into the programme. Thirty-seven bypasses are in the suspended list; only 36 are in the 1984 onward reserve list and 39 others will not start until 1984 onwards. I have a list of the 39 bypasses that will not start until 1984, a list of another 36 which are on the 1984 reserve list and another 31 which are on the suspended list. There are massive numbers—over 100 bypasses—supposedly from a programme which will result in a major improvement in this area, but they are not in prospect, including the Dalton bypass.

During the Christmas Recess I went to Dalton to talk to the mothers who pushed prams down the side of the A590. They showed me that it was impossible to do so in places without going out into the road. There are therefore accidents on that road. That is one of the schemes that is being pushed into the last list to which I referred—the 31 bypasses in the suspended list.

A massive number of bypasses need to be built before we can cope with lorries at their present weight and in their present number, and before we can turn our attention to the question whether we should have heavier lorries.

The Government road programme includes 400 schemes to take traffic out of towns and villages. The British Road Federation tells me that 550 trunk and local road schemes are cast as bypasses. The County Surveyors Society, which has some expertise in this matter, says that there may be 600 or more by passes which can be justified in economic terms. Even if we accept the most conservative—with a large and a small "C"—estimate, namely, the Government's one of 400 schemes, the bypass programme could not be completed at the present rate of expenditure until about the mid-1990s. In about 15 years, they may be built.

I put it to the House in all seriousness that there is no justification for proceeding tonight as if it were right to sanction the Government to go ahead and take decisions about heavier lorries when in 15 years we might have the sort of bypass programme that is necessary to deal with the present lorry weights. We must have a further opportunity to deal with this issue.

The right hon. Gentleman has not answered the question. The major cut in road building took place between 1975 and 1978. That appears from page 69 of the Armitage report. How does the right hon. Gentleman justify the policy of the Labour Government? This Government have slightly increased the expenditure on road building.

I am talking not about the policy of the Labour Government but about the claims that the right hon. Gentleman and the Government have made about the bypass programme in their White Paper and how it fails to measure up to their own claims and to the requirements of the issue with which we are dealing.

The Armitage report is weak in two key areas. One is the estimation of the environmental effect of heavy lorries; the second is the consideration of the major energy implications of transport planning.

The environmental effect concerns harm to people and to buildings. We support without question the proposals to get the lorries out of towns and villages. The proposals to reduce noise and vibration should be proceeded with irrespective of current arguments about raising lorry weights. However, overall, I am dissatisfied with the treatment that Armitage gives to environmental issues.

Armitage recognises that lorries are held to be ugly, noisy and smelly and that people object to heavy lorries in their towns. However, the report goes on to devalue the impact of its environmental proposals by saying:

"No common unit exists with which to measure one environmental effect against another, still less to set them against economic costs."

That is not a good enough approach to the problem. The bad environmental effects are here for everyone to see, feel and smell. The difficulty of constructing a yardstick to measure them cannot be accepted as a justification for tolerating with any complacency the increase in the use of lorries.

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will refer to one matter of importance which, with respect, was not referred to sufficiently by my right hon. Friend. Regardless of the question of axle weights, the total weight of these lorries is of considerable importance. Many of us who represent ancient cities and towns with subterranean structures of drainage and cellars would be devastated by any increase in weight. My right hon. Friend referred to bridges. Surely, if the lorry is shorter than the bridge and the total weight of the lorry is increased, regardless of how many axles it has there will be an increase in pressure, and damage to the bridge will result. That is the central point to which the right hon. Gentleman should refer.

I take that point fully. I entirely agree that one cannot judge merely by considering axle weights, particularly static axle weights. Dynamic weights are more important in damage to buildings than are static weights. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, we have to consider the total weight of lorries on bridges or any span structure greater than the weight of the lorry. To try to reduce it to a simple equation of a limited increase in axle weight avoids many of the real issues.

I shall quote two other examples of the inadequacy of the Armitage conclusions. The first quotation is on damage to underground services, such as water pipes, and sewers. In its evidence, the National Water Council said:

"The impact of road traffic on underground services causes considerable damage and is responsible for a large proportion of the sewer and water mains maintenance repair bill, amounting to £50 million per annum."

That was its assessment.

However, in the context of the Armitage proposal, it is necessary to measure the additional damage to underground services by the proposed change in weight. That is very difficult, but any common-sense approach to this problem suggests that increased weight must be more detrimental to underground sewers and pipes than the existing weight. Surely that alone would have justified a clear-cut proposal from Armitage on that point.

The other example is the payment of double glazing grants in the lorry action areas. The recommendation of Armitage is a pale reflection of the actual needs of those who have the misfortune to live in these areas. The Noise Advisory Council, which has made a considerable study of the subject, estimated that it would cost £1,600 million to insulate against noise from all traffic at the levels which the Government themselves adopt for insulation of noise from new roads. Yet Armitage talks in terms of £6 million a year for this purpose. In other words, people can expect to wait for a few centuries in some of the lorry action areas before they have double glazing capable of giving that sort of protection. So there are areas in which Armitage does not measure up to the seriousness of the problem. Nevertheless, it contains some important recommendations.

It must be clear to all hon. Members who have taken part in energy debates—I read with great interest the speech by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) in a recent debate—that our energy equation has a significant bearing on the long-term planning of the use of different transport modes. That is a factor which Armitage considered far too little, because he relied very much on the market mechanisms to put right modal use in accordance with fuel costs. I do not think that we can rely on that.

It is important to note that areas in which railway freight is developing are such that a comparison of fuel energy efficiency favours rail over the heavy lorry by a factor of three to one. We cannot sweep that aside. With electrification of rail and longer trains, there will be even greater advantages in rail use for some of the long-run freight traffic.

I wish now to say something about the way in which we shall handle this issue in the House. In 1972 the House expressed its view clearly on this issue, when the late Anthony Crosland, then the right hon. Member for Grimsby, moved,

"That this House, mindful of the environment, is against bigger and heavier lorries."—[Official Report, 29 November 1972; Vol. 847, c. 511.]

That was a simple and straightforward proposition, which was accepted completely by the House. Thus, the House is on record as being mindful of the environment and against bigger and heavier lorries.

That decision was taken by the House following two increases in the legal limit on lorry weights—both taken by Conservative Ministers of Transport, the late Ernest Marples in 1964 and the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) in June 1972. Both of those changes were introduced under the statutory instrument procedure by the Construction and Use (Amendment) Regulations, and, so far as I can discover, neither was debated.

That must never happen again on an issue so important to the House. No decision on this issue should be made except after a full debate on a clear proposal. The only way in which we can make that crystal clear tonight to the right hon. Gentleman and the Government is to vote against the only motion which is before us and to continue to press until we have an absolute guarantee that we shall not have a repetition of the previous method of determining the issue of lorry weights.

8.3 pm

I shall try to be brief, because I realise that many other hon. Members wish to speak. I am grateful for the opportunity to do so, although the debate is much too short, because I represent a lorry-battered constituency, where the prospect of heavier lorries will be greeted with about as much enthusiasm as would the announcement in a rural constituency of a fresh outbreak of Dutch elm disease.

I do not want to criticise the management of the business of the House. Having been unable to do so for some time, it would be indelicate of me to start doing so at this moment. However, it seems already to be the feeling of the House that no irrevocable decision should be taken until we have been able to debate this issue again.

Lorries, of course, are never very popular. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we get economic benefits from them, but those benefits must be paid for by a small number of long-suffering people, who face a real deterioration in the quality of their lives.

Paragraph 133 of the Armitage report talks about those areas where the quality of life will be hit even harder over the next few years. I imagine that the authors may have in mind, among others, those of my constituents who have to live on the London Road in Bath or the Lower Bristol Road, and who have an intolerable time.

The story of Bath's attempts to deal with its traffic problems is like one of those nineteenth-century Russian novels—very long and very gloomy. It was made even longer and gloomier when we heard last year that once again the Batheaston bypass would not be constructed in the next four or five years. [HON. MEMBERS: "That is another one."] Labour Governments were not exactly enthusiastic about turning the first sod on that bypass.

The report talks of the importance of bypasses. We have heard that in Bath a great deal over the years. Governments come and go, but the Batheaston bypass and the associated road improvements around it never actually happen. As a result, one of the most beautiful cities in England—in Europe, for that matter—continues to be pounded and battered by heavy lorries and a great deal of other traffic.

That is why I welcome, as I think does everyone in Bath, a number of the proposals in the report for improving the environment, or curbing the effect of heavy lorries on the environment. I welcome the proposal that heavy lorries should pay more for the use of our roads. I welcome the recommendations, although I am not sure that they go quite far enough, on noise level, limitations on size, and the long-overdue extension of section 8 grants.

I am also pleased about the suggestion on lorry action areas, although I agree with the right hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) that the report might have gone a little further. I hope that my right hon. Friend will himself go further when he sets them up and that one of his earliest decisions will be to designate Bath as a lorry action area. I am sure that it will be.

I was also pleased by the proposals in paragraph 283 that we should seek to obtain, through the EEC, more stringent braking standards. I have written to my right hon. Friend on this subject at least a couple of times. There have been two or three very serious accidents involving lorries and brake failure on the hills in and around Bath. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to take action on this matter before there is a major tragedy.

The heart of the report is the proposal that we should accept heavier lorries, though not to the draft EEC specification. In that way, we are told, we shall reduce environmental wear and tear by cutting the number of lorries on our roads. I find the arguments adduced for that proposition less than wholly convincing. In the past, "heavier" has not usually meant "fewer". I looked in particular at paragraph 361, which fails to deal adequately with the suggestion that heavier lorries might attract more freight on to our roads, as has happened in the past.

If we accept the arguments put forward by Armitage for heavier lorries, I hope that my right hon. Friend will think about the psychological effect on people in those areas mentioned in paragraph 133, especially if he takes a decision on heavier weights for lorries in isolation from the whole package of environmental measures set out in the report.

In paragraph 414 the report says:

"Some people ask: 'Where will it all end?'"

Indeed, they do.

"'What is to stop there being subsequent increases in weights until eventually we have 100 ton lorries on our roads?' The answer is simple: it will end right here. The reason is: bridges."

One reason why we might end it right here is equally simple, but rather more important: people. I do not think that we can expect our constituents who live in those areas mentioned in such terms in paragraph 133 to accept an increase in lorry weights without implementing the other environmental measures set out in the report, at the least the lorry action areas, the limitations on size and noise, and so on. I should have great difficulty in supporting any proposals to increase lorry weights without the whole environmental package.

The day on which my right hon. Friend or one of his successors cuts the tape on the Batheaston bypass and the associated road schemes around Bath will be the day on which I shall look with greater equanimity at the major proposal in the report.

8.13 pm

It must be stressed once again that the Secretary of State would be wise to understand the significance of the caution that right hon. and hon. Members are voicing. We have not had much time to prepare or to consult, and, regrettably, we feel that this method of introducing business into the House—no matter what the excuses—cannot be in the best interests of dealing with a subject of such magnitude and importance. We have not had a chance to investigate in depth all the significant consequences of the major proposal, which will be in the minds of powerful lobbies, to have larger lorries on our roads.

The Armitage report is a combined package that has significance and meaning only if, as a package, it is co-ordinated, harmonised and implemented, with increasing resources to make it possible. One of the most alarming papers that we have received, albeit hurriedly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) mentioned, was postmarked in the House of Commons at 4.15 this morning. However, we have another from the Association of County Councils, a body that represents 30 million people, 47 non-metropolitan counties and about 96 per cent. of the highway network. Everyone will understand the association's concern. It has no experience of increased resources.

Sir Arthur Armitage and his committee, in paragraph 208 of the report, understandably question resource applications. They say that

"the effect of keeping expenditure on road construction at low levels is to continue to condemn many people to the avoidable effects of large numbers of lorries passing through unsuitable places. It is not for us to comment on the Government's decisions about total public expenditure but the considerations which we have described suggest that the continuous process in recent years of reducing both actual expenditure on road building and the share which it takes of total public expenditure has been shortsighted and should be reversed. This should be a consideration for central Government not only in deciding expenditure on its own roads but also in allocating money for local roads."

It follows from that that an important recommendation of Armitage is quite succinct and precise and cannot be ignored. It is that the absolute decline in road building and in the share of total public expenditure allocated to it should be reversed. The evidence there is clear. I should understand it if the Secretary of State jumped to his feet, as he did a little earlier, and compared the position today with the road building record of, say, the 1970s and made a political point about it. That would be legitimate, and I do not deny it. However, we are dealing here with a completely new set of circumstances. We are discussing whether we should commit ourselves to the 44-tonne lorry. In that context, it must be said that all the evidence shows that we have no policy to commit resources sufficient to meet the combined package of recommendations of the Armitage committee.

That being the case, we have to accept the need to probe the Government's thinking a little further. If we look at Armitage, we see some little clues here and there of a possibly preconceived notion of the desirability to fall in line with the Common Market and to meet the great, influential lorry lobby. A Labour Government did it on one occasion and botched up a package in such a way that the House was not able, as we are not in this case, to attack any part of it without a response from the Government saying "If you do that the rest cannot be considered".

If that is the position, the package in its entirety must be a decision of the Government after the House of Commons, consequential to the discussions that have been promised, has decided to support the Government. It cannot be contemplated for a moment that the Government can get away with introducing legislation for the large lorry without making decisions about resource applications for the protection of the environment, for the road construction requirements, for the bypass needs and for the protection of buildings and of our urban areas.

It follows from that that we must bear in mind the Transport Bill that is going through its Committee stage. It is no secret, because the Secretary of State referred to it, that it contains taxation proposals. I notice that Armitage recommeds that the taxation burden in terms of road costs should be lessened on the lighter lorry, with an increased burden being put on the heavier lorry.

It is always a temptation for any Government to say in a case such as this "We need the revenue, and we cannot make a commitment about the 44-tonne lorry unless at some point we can say that we have made provision for the revenue". Does that mean that with the Bill upstairs in Committee and so near to the immediate follow-on from the Budget the Government are thinking of a taxation requirement so that the 44-tonne lorry shall become a matter of policy before the House has been able to deal with the problem?

Those are not original thoughts from a partially informed Back Bencher. I have the honour to be chairman of the transport group of the Parliamentary Labour Party, but I am a recipient of information rather than an originator of new ideas. However, I am proud that the Association of County Councils has confirmed the sense in what I have said. The ACC has said that if the Government are not prepared to make available the necessary additional resources for the identified environmental safeguards the net effect may simply be to legitimise the 44-ton lorry.

It is important that the combined package should be treated as a whole and that at some point the Secretary of State should tell us the Government's policy on resource applications for research, environmental protection, administration and roads. If that is the sort of proposal that the Government have in mind, we shall be able to look at the matter objectively.

We have to ask whether, in all the circumstances, it is desirable to have 44-ton lorries. That question must be argued within the package, because we shall lose the logic and effectiveness of the argument if we isolate it from the package. We shall be charged with giving the topic prejudicial consideration.

The Secretary of State would be wise to accept my suggestions, which have been confirmed by the Armitage committee and the ACC. The right hon. Gentleman is an energetic Secretary of State, who wishes to do the best that he can for transport. We shall have disagreements about the ends, as well as the means, but having attributed to him the qualities of energy and vigour—after all, what previous Secretary of State has had two Transport Bills in less than a year?—I should like him to undertake to meet the recommendation of the Armitage committee on another matter.

It is vital to understand that an efficient road network, co-ordinated with rail and port requirements and with the distribution of goods and people, is as important as the industrial sector as a wealth-producing consideration. Our industrial regeneration, economic growth and prosperity depend upon a recognition by the Government, first, that we can no longer have fewer resources devoted to roads and, secondly, a commitment by them to meet the recommendations of the Armitage committee and the needs of industry.

I hope that the Secretary of State will plead that case with the Treasury. More resources are needed, and unless the right hon. Gentleman gets them he will not get the support of the House for the recommendation for 44-ton lorries.

8.25 pm

There is one matter on which I find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter). I, too, regret the short notice of this debate. Not only is it important that the House should know what individual Members think; it is important that organisations should be able to tell Members what they think. Allowing for the Christmas Recess, the time scale has been short. Unfortunately, this may well give the impression that tonight's debate is a rushed job to suit the parliamentary timetable rather than to have an informed discussion, which is what we are here for.

It is doubly unfortunate in that there are people who regard this debate and the report as a charade—a way of bringing in the heavier lorry weights dressed up so as to be acceptable to the public at large. I do not believe that. I am sure that the Secretary of State does not believe it either. Nevertheless, there are bodies of opinion in this country that feel that way, and I am afraid that the way in which the debate has been organised will add to their concern.

I wish to deal with the anxieties that exist on both sides of the argument. There are those whom one may loosely describe as being in the environmental lobby. They are very concerned about the Armitage report and the proposals for increased axle weight. On the other hand, there are those in the haulage lobby who are concerned because they foresee greatly increased costs being imposed upon their industry if all of the Armitage proposals are put into effect. The two groups have a common fear. Both believe that what they want may be delayed, whereas what they do not want may be put into effect.

The main purpose of today's debate should therefore be to put a number of legitimate questions to the Secretary of State. I have a great deal of regard for my right hon. Friend, but I was a little disappointed in his speech tonight, because he gave very little indication of the Government's thinking. Surely, before long, we must have some clear ideas from him on the order and precedence that he envisages for events.

It is not only the haulage industry that is affected. It is not only the people of Bath who are concerned. Great areas of the country will be affected by a decision on this matter. The whole of the commercial vehicle building industry, which is in dire straits, needs an early decision. If we are to revive that industry we must give it the opportunity to build on equal terms with its Continental rivals. It can do that only if it can build lorries of equal size.

In addition, with the gradual imposition of the legislation on drivers' hours, it is important that a decision should be taken on speed limits. The Armitage report recommends that the speed limit should be raised to 50 mph on the all-purpose trunk roads. That could be crucial in terms of timing and costing in the haulage industry.

As my right hon. Friend said, many of the changes proposed have to be carried out through the construction and use regulations. Ample notice must be given of changes in those regulations. We cannot expect anything to happen overnight.

Nowhere is the need for a decision and for questions to be answered more apparent than on the provision of proper roads and surfaces for the new vehicles—if we are to have them—to run upon. One could make a party political football of the question of which Government have done—or which party has done—more to provide better roads or bypasses. All that we know, however—and this has come from both sides—is that there are far too many towns and villages in all of our constituencies that need road improvements and bypasses, quite apart from the appalling damage and the interminable repairs that we see on motorways such as the M6 and the M1.

I put it to my right hon. Friend that if we are to achieve a proper programme of building bypasses there will have to be a speed-up in the enormous amount of time that it takes from the beginning of an idea to the time when the road is actually opened. We are talking in terms of at least 10 years from the beginning of an idea to its fulfilment, and if we have to wait for that time we shall be debating the Armitage report and heavier lorry weights for many years.

There is one aspect of the report that I find very interesting. In paragraph 340, it suggests special help in lorry action areas

"recouped by taxation on lorries."

That suggests a hypothecated taxation, and I shall be interested to know whether my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will try to persuade my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to accept a degree of hypothecated taxation. If it is accepted it will open up a very interesting vista, because, despite all the harsh words said about lorries and covering their track costs, the latest figures show that in 1980–81 goods vehicles paid about £840 million in taxation, whereas their track costs amounted to about £797 million. That leaves a surplus of £43 million. If we are to start thinking in terms of hypothecated taxation, we might use some of that £43 million to build some of the bypasses that have had to be put back in the programme.

There is one further question that my right hon. Friend should try to answer as soon as possible. He rightly pointed out that the Armitage report suggests limits that are slightly better, in terms of being lower, than the EEC proposal. I should like him to tell us that he is prepared to accept the Armitage report in this matter, rather than the EEC directive. It is the fear of something worse that causes considerable worry. I am delighted to see my right hon. Friend nodding in agreement.

Unlike some hon. Members, I welcome the Armitage report, not only because in my view, inevitably, there will have to be an increase in the gross weight but because it brings into one report all the various factors that concern people. It brings out the need for a better and bigger road programme, and it brings out also the fact that we have to reconcile what people want in their own areas with what we need to regenerate our industry and economy.

The main problem, as I see it, is that if we are not careful the debate will develop into a somewhat knockabout one, pro- and anti- the lorry. To those hon. Members who are tempted to criticise road haulage, I point out that the Armitage report contains only four recommendations that could be considered pro-lorry rather than those that are concerned with making the lorry more acceptable, namely, better roads, bypasses counted in environmental advantages, slightly higher speed limits, and slightly longer vehicles and increased weight. Virtually every other proposal in the report—and there are a great many—is specifically attuned to answering the environmental objections.

That is why I believe that the Freight Transport Association is speaking the truth when it says that the report provides a basis for developing an acceptable package that will benefit everyone. This debate is important, but I believe that we must look to the Secretary of State to make clear his answers to the questions that have been put to him in it, because we cannot delay for too long. We must know whether the Government are prepared to devote the resources that are necessary to make the environmental improvements that are needed, and also to give the answers to our haulage and commercial vehicle industries so that they can plan for the next 10 years.

8.35 pm

I am grateful for the manifestation of political solidarity shown in calling me, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Despite the courteous explanation given by the Secretary of State about the amazing haste with which this debate was brought before the House, I join almost everyone who has spoken in saying what a disservice it is to parliamentary democracy to debate a technical report with so little notice. It is a disservice, not only to our constituents, but to the pressure groups. For such an issue to be debated in a House when the Gallery is more than half empty—less than half full, if that is preferred—speaks for itself. Despite the forewarning that the debate might be held within two months, I believe that the customary five days' notice that the parliamentary timetable requires should have been given.

I did not quite understand the history of the report. It appears that the right hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Rodgers) decided in April 1979, and I quote the Secretary of State,

"to set up this committee".

I remember April 1979 well. The Government had been overthrown. We were in our constituencies preparing for an election. It is amazing, though obviously commendable, that, while the rest of us were electioneering for 3 May, the right hon. Gentleman was convening the Armitage committee to look into this matter.

However, I was glad that the Secretary of State announced that this debate was not the end. I assume that he meant that in the temporal rather than the qualitative sense. I do not like the Armitage report; my right hon. and hon. Friends do not like it, and neither do my constituents. I have yet to meet anyone, with the possible exception of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry), who has much good to say about it.

When the Secretary of State expressed his usual courteous appreciation of the hard work that went into the report, I noticed that there was not even the customary murmur of approval from anyone. I shall give an instance of where we and Armitage fundamentally disagree. Paragraph 330 says:

"The limitations of the available information made it very difficult to calculate the costs of overloading. The Foster Committee suggested that 5 per cent. and 20 per cent. of damage was caused by overloading, and that the cost of this damage might be between £10 million and £50 million. Whatever the true figure, these costs represent a penalty on law abiding hauliers as compared with the operators of overweight lorries, who are paying less than they should in the light of the damage being done by their lorries."

The penalty is on the people of this country. It is high time that we stopped saying that this is harsh or tough or unfair on hauliers. It is the people of this country who are being inconvenienced and caused considerable anguish by the proposals.

With respect, that is a gross misstatement of the context, and an injustice to the report. In paragraph 328 Sir Arthur Armitage gives the reasons for wanting more effective enforcement of maximum lorry weights. He lists damage to roads, damage to bridges and the danger to road safety. The hon. Gentleman is quoting completely out of context when he says that the Armitage report is concerned only about overweight lorries because of the effect on road hauliers. What he read out was merely a footnote to the main points that Sir Arthur was making.

I am grateful to the Under-Secretary. In all fairness, each of these paragraphs has to be taken on its own. My feeling was not that paragraph 330 had not been led up to with some care but that the concern seemed to be for the things, and not for the people. This is something that my party has always cared about deeply.

The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter), in an intervention in the opening speech, asked which was to come first—better roads or heavier vehicles—or were these to come about concurrently? I maintain that this must not be a question; it must be a statement. We must have decent roads. When we have those let us decide how quickly we are to wreck them, and then what sort of weight of vehicle we shall have to do this.

I have the honour to represent one of the great railway towns of this country—March—which had the largest shunting yard in Europe after Hamm was bombed in the 1940s. The whole of March and the prosperity of the town grew up with the railway. I make a plea for the railways—and, indeed the canals—to be used more. This would come about if road hauliers paid their proper share. We have always believed that competition must be fair. At the moment there seems to be very unfair competition between the rail and the road hauliers, who are not abiding by the law, and who are getting it all too cheaply, which is the main reason for the decline in rail freight.

If it is to be accepted at all, the Armitage report must be accepted as a package. It is no good the Government being permissive if they also avoid anything expensive. If there are economic benefits from heavier lorries, the money should not be used to benefit road hauliers. It should be spent on proper lorry parks, and that includes parking facilities at transport cafés.

Recently I have had more and more letters from constituents who have come to London, have gone to a transport café, had their lorries towed away, and had to pay £35 to get them back. If that is to happen, at least let there be a notice somewhere warning them of it, because a lot of people from the country, who make only the occasional trip to London, have a miserable time wondering where the nearest police pound is from which they can recover their vehicle.

The money raised should be spent on the incorporation of better safety precautions into lorry design, and to finance lorry action areas, to suppress lorry noise, and so on. The suggested benefits of £150 million per year might sound a lot. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. Penhaligon)—who did so much to highlight the damage that lorries caused to roads—has a very good way of quantifying sums of money. He divides them by 635 and says "That is what each constituency would get out of the total sum." Although £150 million sounds like a lot of money, divided by 635 it works out at about £230,000 per constituency, and that is not very much.

Armitage calls for a massively increased bypass programme. My constituents in the cathedral city of Ely would agree with Armitage, because their bypass has been on the books for a very long time and they are still waiting for it. The Government cuts make more bypasses very unlikely. The current Ministry of Transport costings attribute only 15 per cent. of bypass costs to lorries. That is ludicrous. There is no doubt that heavy lorries, with their danger and vibration, are by far the most important reason for the public clamour for bypasses.

The report seems to understate the damage done to roads by lorries. Is there not an illogicality about paragraphs 58 and 59, one of which says that lorries account for 15 per cent. of expenditure on new road construction while the other says that lorries account for 90 per cent. of the damage done? Perhaps the junior Minister—who was so quick on his feet when he thought that I took one paragraph out of context—would like to look at paragraphs 58 and 59 and try to find some sense in them.

The report airily talks about many European countries having experience of heavy lorries but it does not seem to have investigated what they have done to tackle the programme. That is just sloppy. A great deal of the report is shoddy. What about the United States of America, the home of everything big? The United States has just imposed limits of 9 tonnes per axle for inter-State trucks. We have gone about 20 per cent. over that in our recommendations.

There is already massive avoidance of current regulations. For example, the Greater London Council estimated a 40 per cent. avoidance rate for lorries ignoring the ban in London. That is covered in paragraph 235 of the report. The report admits, in paragraph 339, that there is an even more serious overloading problem. More than 10 per cent. of lorries are overloaded. When we talk about the fourth power ration for road damage, any overloading is very serious. Overloaded 44-tonne trucks would not only be very serious; they would be catastrophic. There are dishonest double standards over road safety in the report. Armitage looks only at fatal accident costs. The morbid truth is that the accident that does not kill but maims and injures is far more expensive to the country than a fatal accident.

The costs of safety measures, as set out in paragraph 293 of the report, are difficult to understand. I heard the Secretary of State talk about—paragraph 293 mentions it—the annual cost of fitting guards. Surely a guard is a one-off item of expenditure. Perhaps the Secretary of State will explain the annual cost of fitting guards, because it defeats me. Much is made of the fact that 200 lives might be saved by spending 20 million a year. I should like to remind the Secretary of State that British Rail had to spend £5 million after the sleeping-car fire in 1978, in which 11 people died. Those were the first fire death in a sleeping-car for 90 years. On that standard, the expenditure is not particularly generous.

In his speech the Secretary of State rightly said that only limited finance was available. I suggest that a proper "small investment" would be to improve the signposting in this country. It would be a small investment, but a very effective one. A substantial percentage of the heavy lorries that drive down roads where they have no right to be are lost. They found a diversion sign somewhere, which left them nowhere that they could tell.

There is no European country that excels in signposting although Germany is probably the best. We lead the league table in confusing road signs. There is no statutory distance between a left or right turn off a major road. One sees a sign and there might be an infinite number of little roads before one reaches the one to which the sign refers.

I accept that there are a goodly number of other vehicles that are on roads where they should not be because the drivers know the roads and the district too well and are taking short cuts where they should have no right to be. If the Secretary of State is worried about that sort of thing, he must provide finance for better policing.

The Government must face this whole problem properly by encouraging rail and canal transport. They should make efforts to keep lorries out of residential ares, and they must resist any temptation to increase lorry weights. This Department of Government, which pioneered the U-turn of this monolithic Administration when it scrapped the tax on possession, must go away and come up with something better than the Armitage report.

8.50 pm

I have some sympathy with those who complain about the shortness of notice of this debate and the shortness of time to prepare for it. However, I lose sympathy totally with the hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) when he says that he will divide the House. I can think of nothing more foolish, ill advised or politically inept on an occasion such as this. On an issue such as this the right hon. Gentleman knows, or should know, that there is a great deal of cross-party feeling. When we take a final decision, I suspect that it will not be a vote taken on party lines. If the right hon. Gentleman insists on dividing the House on the Adjournment, on the first debate that we have had on the subject for many years, he will succeed only in alienating many of those who instinctively might share some of the views that he expressed.

The speech of my hon. Friend the member for Bath (Mr. Patten) demonstrated that clearly. What he and the right hon. Gentleman said was much in tune in many respects. I shall say much the same. However, the right hon. Gentleman insists upon dividing the House. Even at this stage I urge him not to do so. There will be more opportunities for us to come together to consider the problem that is now before us, which is perhaps one of the most important problems that millions of people will want to think about. This issue will have an effect on millions of people's lives for many years to come. A vote on party lines will be irrelevant and possibly quite damaging.

I am rather disappointed with the report. I hoped genuinely that it would present a package to Parliament and to the country that would allow us to resolve one of the most difficult and painful debates that we have had for many years. I am sorry to say that it has not done so. I represent a constituency which has as many rural roads, narrow lanes, ancient towns, residential areas and industrial areas as any other constituency. The problem of heavy lorries is as acute for me as it is for others. The right hon. Gentleman referred to an earlier debate, when the House defeated a proposal for heavier lorries. I voted against the introduction of heavier lorries on that occasion.

If we had been able to produce a modest compromise that could have minimised the environmental damage and maximised the commercial benefit, and if the Armitage report had been able to produce such a deal, I should have considered it with considerable sympathy. I regret that the Armitage report has not done that. By bringing forward a 44-tonne package, an opportunityy has been lost. The report has presented my right hon. Friend with a substantial 44-tonne headache. I do not know how he is to resolve it.

On this issue most of us have a degree of schizophrenia. Most of us want maximum commercial efficiency and most of us want to protect our historic towns and villages and the way of life of our people. I recall an instance when a road haulier at a certain meeting was arguing for heavier lorries and rather shamefacedly admitted that a day or two before he had signed a petition in his own village against heavier lorries going through the village. That is the feeling of most of us. However, we want to resolve this dilemma.

It is important to understand the context in which this decision will have to be taken. Many of us had assumed—I certainly had—that the real pressure upon the United Kingdom for the introduction of heavier lorries had to be seen in a European context. This may sound strange, coming from me, but I can see a strong argument for a European decision. There is an argument for the harmonisation of lorry weights across Europe, whether we are in or out of the Common Market. It is common sense to wish our lorries to be able to travel across the frontiers in the best interests of commerce and industry.

There is another argument for harmonisation, namely, that we should be competing on equal terms with our competitors, that we should all be subject to the same limitations, and that and we should be able to use the same sized lorries. However, we must understand clearly that the decision that we are talking about is not a European one. It is essentially a British decision. It is a decision about our lorry weights within the United Kingdom. It is a decision that has to be taken by the British Cabinet on that criterion alone.

In going for a 10½-tonne axle weight, the Armitage report is a long way from the European proposal, which talks about 11 tonnes plus a 5 per cent. tolerance, which brings the axle weight up to 11·55 tonnes—a whole tonne difference. The report makes it clear that the 11½-tonne European proposal would be too expensive, and would be unacceptable for the United Kingdom. The Armitage proposal distances us from a European decision.

I can see some logic in not taking a decision now but endeavouring to try to come to some European agreement. If looking for a European agreement, I would have different figures. It surprises me that Armitage has opted for the figures that he gives. The figures of some other nations of Europe are more comparable to those that we now have. For example, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Denmark and Holland all have 10 tonnes approximate axle loading at present. Yet we are going up to 10½ tonnes. The 38-tonne limit—the sort of compromise that I was half expecting from Armitage—or less, is the maximum in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. Would it not, therefore, have been more logical to go for those sorts of figures—for 10-tonne axle loading and a 38-tonne limit?

If it is right to say, as I believe it is, that we are talking essentially of a British decision alone, my right hon. Friend is still free to produce that sort of compromise, to reject Armitage and to choose whatever figure he wishes. I still say, reluctant as I am to see any increase in lorry weights, that he stands more chance of securing agreement from this House and from the many interested parties throughout the country if he produces a compromise figure of that kind.

I have referred to what I call true harmonisation. If we are eventually to secure harmonisation with our European partners so that we are competing on level terms, it is important that we have true harmonisation. I cannot believe that if we settled on a 10½-tonne axle limit in this country or 11½-tonnes as a European limit, the French would suddenly reduce their axle limit from 12 tonnes or the Dutch their maximum limit from 50 tonnes. There is no way in which that will happen. We should not pretend that we are going for true harmonisation, as is often advocated. We shall still be labouring at a disadvantage even if we accept these figures.

I stress again that this is a British decision. There is no great pressure upon us except that which comes, quite properly, from the commercial interests—the Road Haulage Association, the Freight Transport Association and the manufacturers of trailers. I understand pressure. It is not new. It has existed for a long time. Those interests are entitled to certainty. It is unfair not to allow them to know what figures will be adopted in years to come. There is, however, no sudden and new pressure on us to have heavier lorries.

I should like to look at what the Armitage report says about the commercial need for these heavier lorries. The hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) referred to the benefit of £150 million. That is the figure put by Armitage upon the economic benefit. It is a very small figure. My right hon. Friend should comment on it when he responds. The report also shows that the user of road transport spends £13,500 million every year. The sum of £150 million has to be put into that context. It is so small and so far within the margin of errors as to be insignificant and useless. There must be some other economic benefit. I am prepared to believe that these exist. But they have not been spelt out clearly in Armitage.

It is a matter of disappointment that Armitage did not go into other options—for example, the option of staying where we are, and the option of 38 tonnes. I do not think that proper consideration was given to those matters.

The immense benefit that is supposed to flow from heavier lorries and, therefore, we hope, fewer lorries is very speculative. I am dubious about whether there would be fewer lorries as a result of heavier lorries. I would guess that the extra efficiency and extra profitability would probably generate even more lorries.

The figures are crude and misleading, but when in 1964 the maximum lorry weight was increased to 32 tons an explosion occurred in the number of heavy lorries. I am prepared to accept that there are 101 other commercial reasons for that. However, that increase took place in 1964. In 1960 there were 11,000 vehicles of more than 8 tons. By 1979, the figure was 121,000. I believe that we could again see an increase in the number of heavy lorries. The case has not been made out by the Armitage report. My right hon. Friend does not have sufficient evidence or ground swell of opinion behind him to put forward a definite proposition to Parliament based on Armitage.

I have two final points. The first concerns vibration damage, which is an issue close to my heart and one which I have raised on previous occasions. This is perhaps the first time that we have seen a report that clearly states that groundborne and airborne vibration damage by heavy lorries, as well as damage to underground pipes and sewers, should be costed. The report regards such damage as sufficiently serious to be taken into account in calculating user costs of heavy vehicles. That is an important development.

Finally, I believe that my right hon. Friend stressed that we had to see Armitage as a package. If that is so, I see little prospect of the recommendations being carried into practice for many years to come. We have only to look, for example, at the road construction proposals, which state that we must reverse the absolute decline in road building and must continue to give greater priority to bypasses, and so on. I endorse those views, but is it realistic to imagine that within the next decade we shall see a major reversal in road building? Give us the bypasses and give us quieter and cleaner lorries, and then let us consider heavier lorries. However, until we can get that package, the Armitage report should be put on the shelf.

9.2 pm

Tempting though it is, I hope that the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) will forgive me if I do not take up his arguments in detail, although I shall at the end of my speech refer to one point that he raised.

I have been asked by the Transport and General Workers Union group in the House to put forward its view. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State, in the Committee on the Transport Bill and in the Select Committee, will pay attention to the attitude of transport road workers, whose voice is not heard sufficiently in our debates or in the Armitage report. Apart from Sir Arthur Armitage, on the committee there was an engineer, someone with a medical degree, an architect and an economist of some repute. They all have strings of letters after their names. I do not suggest that they are not people of considerable repute. The Secretary of State said that they were chosen by the Government.

This debate is not the end of the road. We are not dealing with a Green Paper or a White Paper. It is a red paper. I hope that a future Labour Government will ensure that there are representatives of the trade union movement on such a wide-ranging inquiry. It is imperative to give sufficient weight to trade union views. I do not want to debunk the report. I found it wide-ranging and educational. One can join issue with many of the recommendations that it contains.

I turn to one or two aspects of the evidence given by the Transport and General Workers Union. They are important, given the size of the union. It looked for a report that would not be limited to one aspect of transport. However, that was not in the inquiry's terms of reference. As a former transport worker, I agree that one cannot consider one aspect of transport alone. I hope that one day it will be possible for people with the talent of those who produced the report to provide a wider report covering the full range of British transport.

Transport can be dealt with only on the basis of an overall system. Individual modes of transport can be contained within that overall system. Both national and international transport should be examined. Indeed, they should have been referred to in greater depth in the report. At a national level there is wasteful competition in the industry, and too many vehicles are involved. Lack of co-ordination allows parasitic clearing houses to operate to the detriment of the industry, undercutting reputable hauliers in competition, and offering back loads at low rates. They rely on the need of most hauliers for a return load to avoid a loss on the journey. Those are the realities of road transport.

There should be a central clearing house in each main area, jointly controlled by employers and representatives of the workers—the trade unions—to ensure fair competition and fair rates to the users. It would stabilise rates for customers and carriers. The immediate effects would be savings in energy costs, tyres and maintenance. There cannot be a full or effective inquiry unless those matters are taken into consideration.

It is not sufficiently well known that the Transport and General Workers Union disagrees with the argument for larger vehicles. The current carrying capacity of vehicles is not fully utilised, due to inefficient operation. Simply increasing carrying capacity adds to the cost of operation. When vehicles in the industry are utilised efficiently the question of examining larger-capacity vehicles will arise. Therefore, there is a general deficiency in the report.

The fragmented ownership of the industry, in which the majority operate five or fewer vehicles, must be inefficient and wasteful in terms of men, vehicles and fuel. The Government should exercise their responsibilities and encourage new attitudes and ideas in order to increase our export efficiency.

Freight transport costs in our external trading justify a high priority in industrial and Government thinking. Distribution costs and facilities should be a major factor in deciding geographical market objectives. Road haulage in European trade is highly individualistic. It is from that quarter that the pressures come to increase lorry weights. The issue requires detailed examination and analysis. It is a growth area that should not develop along the traditional lines of road haulage.

The Government should take positive steps to further this section of the industry. It is in direct competition with our foreign competitors. Unless they exercise some licensing control on forwarding agents, exporters will experience delivery delays, because each agent will handle insufficient freight and will be unable to fill containers on his own.

All that is a matter for detailed examination. This is not the end of the road or the end of the debate. The manner in which the debate has been conducted in the House necessarily renders it deficient. Conservative Members have voiced that opinion as vigorously as have Labour Members. Therefore, I hope that the Government will not think that the debate in Parliament is at an end because of tonight's experience.

Post-report, this is the view of those of us who maintain close contact with the road workers. The report contains 58 recommendations and should be taken as a whole in reaching conclusions, and not picked at. Otherwise, its value will be minimised.

The Transport and General Workers Union remains opposed to the introduction of vehicles with a larger carrying capacity because they will not contribute to an improved road transport distribution system, or to an improvement in the working environment, or to an improvement in the terms and conditions of employment of road haulage workers. The previous increase in the carrying capacity of vehicles, in addition to the wider use of articulated vehicles, did not improve either the working environment or the terms and conditions of employment. There is no provision in the report to achieve any such improvements. The basic contention of the report and alleged benefits to be achieved result from hypothetical arguments which mainly involve lengthy calculations, the result of which remain largely theoretical.

We recognise and understand the arguments put forward by environmentalists about heavier vehicles and environmental damage. We are mindful of public reaction to the report in this regard. It is necessary to say that, because there are sometimes allegations that the road transport workers and the TGWU have no outlook other than their own narrow, selfish interests. Those of us who are on the road a great deal, as motorists, and so on, know that that is not usually the case. Therefore, I am pleased to impart that to the House tonight.

There is a possibility that local authorities, in support of environmental arguments, or to preserve historic buildings or the social environment, will introduce bans on heavy goods vehicles travelling through their locality and not limit such an embargo to vehicles of more than 30 tonnes gross weight. That should not be ignored. It has had the full support of organised workers when they have expressed themselves from time to time at conferences and so on.

Environmentalists represents a wide sector of public opinion, and many are members of both local and regional authorities. Authoritative forecasts by the Cambridge group project a continuing weak demand for road freight services, expected not to recover significantly until 1983. The record demand for freight in 1979 is not expected to be repeated until 1989. Therefore, there is no great urgency in the forecasts of the economists.

Investment in new commercial vehicles is expected to fall by about 9 per cent. in 1981 compared with 1980. That premise is supported by the Society of Motor Manufacturers, which estimates that sales of commercial vehicles could fall by 8 per cent. this year to about 240,000 vehicles. In 1980 sales declined, compared with 1979.

The proposals on larger carrying-capacity vehicles would allow the immediate penetration of foreign-owned vehicles of the maximum weight. That is what people in Britain are seriously worried about. Economic reasons would limit United Kingdom operators, except where financially viable, to uplift the plated weight of existing units to 38 tonnes.

The practice of committees of inquiry in producing reports that pay no regard to improving either the working environment or the terms and conditions of employment of road transport employees is to be deplored.

The report concentrates on allegations either to improve economic operation or to impose further restrictions on the industry, and particularly on its workers. The Armitage committee, unlike previous committees, had wide-ranging terms of reference, and the union deplores the lack of recognition given to transport workers, in particular to their working environment, both physical and social.

Despite some of its partly ominous aspects, the approach of the report will be adopted by the Government, which means that they are leaning towards allowing heavier goods vehicles to take to our inadequate roads. At the same time, they are attacking the Road Transport Industry Training Board, which has done such great work, and are looking to the industry itself to provide those resources.

That is ludicrous. The training and educational facilities of the RTITB are second to none in Europe. What will happen to its top-class establishments?

The Government can advance no argument to justify their plans. We shall do all that we can to prevent their being implemented.

What I have said might be considered extraneous to the Armitage report but it is pertinent to the operation of the British transport industry and is something that seriously worries the workers. Neither of the Whiz kid Ministers in the Department of Transport can ignore those facts.

The Secretary of State has just been promoted to the Cabinet. He may recall that in the Select Committee report I told him that we in the Labour Party believed in the rate for the job and that the proper place for a Transport Minister was in the Cabinet. I hope that he is exercising his influence to the extent implied by his promotion and that he is in the Cabinet because he is an arid Tory and not a wet. We hope that he will pay particular regard to what has been said about selling everything off, and listen to the collective, well-researched and well-intentioned views of a great section of the industry and of its workers, whose anti—social hours I have experienced in another part of the industry. Ministers will not bring half their intentions to fruition without the co-operation of the workers.

We have had an incomplete debate, at short notice. It is because of those feelings that I think that my right hon. Friend is right in proposing to divide the House tonight.

9.18 pm

Although the Armitage committee considered many issues concerned with lorries as a whole, attention has naturally been fixed, both before and during this debate, on the heavier lorry, and particularly its weight. The issues with which Sir Arthur Armitage and his committee dealt so competently are complex, so we should not be entirely surprised to know that many of those who have interested themselves in these questions have made incorrect assessments because they have failed to see much of the evidence.

It is unfortunate that some of those who have sought to guide public opinion, both in the press and—dare one say it?—even in the House tonight, are either unaware of some of the facts or else have deliberately ignored those that do not suit the case to which they are committed.

For example, the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) suggested that Armitage was more concerned with haulage companies than with people. But two of the longest chapters in the report are entitled

"Getting Lorries away from People"

and

"The Effect of the Lorry on People and the Environment".

Indeed, the title of the report indicates, to all who care to read it carefully, that Sir Arthur Armitage and his colleagues were concerned about the effect on people. What is more, they considered the effect in terms of accidents, both serious and less serious, and not merely those involving the deaths of road users.

What I said was that the report made much more of the fatal accidents when the country was disadvantaged to a much greater degree by accidents causing injury and maiming. That was my objection.

I do not think that it can be said that the report was concerned more with fatal accidents. Tables 17 and 18, for example, carefully detail the changes in accident involvement rates over a decade by severity in terms of "fatal", "serious", "slight" and "all accidents". That is clear throughout the report. The report states that many of the factors that people dislike about lorries are not readily quantifiable. One may list visual intrusion, smell, vibration—which one of my hon. Friends mentioned—and the difficulties involved in crossing a road. All those factors come readily to mind. Where it is difficult to quantify factors of that kind and where the degree of intrusion and inconvenience varies so much in the perception of individuals it is easier to play upon personal prejudices.

Armitage documents many of the changes that have taken place, particularly the swing to larger lorries, which has reduced considerably the overall number of lorries, despite what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten). That is shown clearly in table 1, which shows that the number of medium-sized lorries has fallen considerably in recent years.

Few people like heavy lorries. All of us accept that. I do not see many small boys rushing up and down roads taking the registration numbers of lorries as they do train numbers. It might be dangerous for them to do so. But we have come to rely on lorries.

If one were presented with a petition opposing moves towards heavier lorries, one would be likely to sign it. I am sure that a majority of people presented with such a petition would sign it. But surely such petitions are not very valuable. Perhaps more valuable is the work carried out by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory. A survey was carried out by the laboratory four years ago asking whether people would prefer a larger number of small lorries or a smaller number of large lorries. One might say that even that survey was slightly simplistic. Such indications of opinion do not have much value if they take no account of the costs of denying to our manufacturers vehicles which put them on a fair basis with their overseas competitors. In the end it is the consumer who has to pay the bill.

Armitage pointed out that a lorry of 40 tonnes maximum weight can carry a load more than 23 per cent. higher than that which a 32½-tonne lorry can carry.

Whatever Sir Arthur Armitage may have said at the press conference to launch his report—he is reported to have said that his recommendations did not have to be seen all together as a package—I see it as a package. To implement some recommendations while at the same time failing to carry out certain others, though not necessarily all others, could produce an unfair situation.

I am delighted that the Secretary of State has anticipated the report's recommendations relating to taxation. The Transport Bill at present in Committee will enable the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tax heavier lorries at a rate which corresponds with the environmental damage that they do. It is fair to say that until now smaller lorries have tended to subsidise larger ones, and this is manifestly unfair.

I am especially glad that the Government are committed to taking into account in taxation the social and environmental costs of lorries, including the cost of accidents and the time lost by congestion. Few will deny that the social and environmental cost which lorries impose on the community in congested urban areas is much greater than that which they impose when they use purpose-built motorways and dual carriageways. Thus, just as smaller lorries at present subsidise larger ones in terms of the taxation which is paid, so lorries which predominantly avoid congested areas subsidise those which fail to do so. An ideal taxation system is one which would take account of this fact, imposing a heavier tax on those vehicles which impose a heavier cost and allowing the market to control the level of nuisance.

I suppose that it is possible that at some time, perhaps in the far distant future, technological development will enable some kind of road pricing to come into effect, and this situation could be brought about. In the meantime, we need to rely on the kind of controls described in chapter 6.

No one is more committed than I am to the preservation of historic and architecturally important buildings, and it is vital that we do everything possible to keep lorries away from towns and particularly away from people. I hope that the Government will pay due regard to the report of the Select Committee on Transport on the roads White Paper, which urges that the momentum of road building, particularly with regard to bypasses, must not be lost.

Having said that I broadly support the package of regulations and controls recommended by Armitage, I should say that I also support his recommendation that six-axle lorries with three axles on the traction unit should be permitted up to a weight of 44 tonnes. Heavier lorries do not in this instance need to mean longer or larger lorries, although I do not regard the proposed permitted increase in length of half a metre as unacceptable.

As paragraph 129 of the report points out,

"It is size which seems to determine people's fear and apprehension about lorries and their feelings that lorries are out of scale with their surroundings."

When people are asked what their feelings are about heavier lorries, I suggest that they tend to think of larger lorries. The distinction is crucial, but it is rarely appreciated, any more than the fact that heavier lorries will mean fewer lorries.

I have read the critique of Armitage produced by Transport 2000 and although I have very much respect for some of the work done by that organisation I do not think that it has been able to argue successfully with the basic points that Armitage makes.

I venture to suggest that this is an issue on which we should not merely respond to our constituents's fears but one on which we as Members of Parliament should give a firm lead. When and if the change comes, I do not believe that a great deal of difference will be apparent to the great majority of people. I believe that most people will probably wonder what all the fuss was about.

9.29 pm

I do not want to go on at length about the disgraceful lack of notice that we have had for this debate. However, it is worth pointing out that Sir Arthur Armitage and his colleagues started studying this matter in July 1979 and presented the Minister with a report in December 1980. It took them quite a long time, and they had various people working for them. We have a report of 159 pages. More than 1,000 organisations or individuals gave evidence to the committee. We have been expected to try to cobble together our comments on the report and its ramifications, in effect, in about six hours. It is quite unsatisfactory, and I am sure that the Minister feels equally deprived, in that he, too, has had to do it all rather quickly. However, unlike Back Benchers, the right hon. Gentleman has 13,000 civil servants working for him, even if only eight or nine are here tonight to help him.

We have had no opportunity to consult all sorts of organisations that have serious reservations about the report and would be disturbed if the Government proceeded to decisions on the basis of the report. If we were to allow the Government to go ahead with proposals on the basis of the report and this rather shabby little debate we should bring the House into disrepute. I am not being disrespectful about the contribution of any hon. Member, but we are all aware of the inadequacy of the opportunity that we have had to brief ourselves.

All the technical, trade and environmental press has stated that the report is shot through with inconsistencies and contradictions, and contains questionable assumptions. Consequently, it has produced questionable conclusions and it is, therefore, all the more important from the Government's point of view that we should not have a questionable debate and consideration of the report by the House.

There is a questionable background to the establishment of the inquiry. I remind the House of the famous Peeler letter and memorandum. When the Labour Government were in office that internal memorandum in the Ministry of Transport stated that the inquiry:

"should provide a focus for the various road haulage interests to get together, marshall their forces, and act cohesively to produce a really good case which should not merely establish the main point at issue but should do good to their now sadly tarnished public image."

There are some who believe that the Armitage report is precisely that sort of effort. I do not go that far—though some of my hon. Friends would—because I do not question Sir Arthur Armitage's integrity. However, if the questioning of the integrity of the report and its basis is not to be continued, everyone must be given an opportunity to look carefully at what it says and to get expert outside advice on many aspects. There is, therefore, all the more reason why we should be given time to question people and consult about the report.

I do not join the Secretary of State in praising the quality of the report. I must draw attention to some of the more glaring inconsistencies, especially in paragraphs 58 to 60. Paragraph 58 states:

"additional costs imposed by lorries are estimated to be about 15 per cent. of expenditure on new road construction and improvements."

Paragraph 59 states:

"Lorries account for over 90 per cent. of the damage done".

Paragraph 60 states:

"there is no evidence that they"—

that is lorries—

"are the main cause of damage or even a main contributor" to damage to pipes and installations under or adjacent to roads.

That is not true. The evidence submitted by the National Water Council to the Armitage inquiry stated:

"Impact of road traffic on underground services causes considerable damage and is responsible for a large proportion of the sewer and water mains maintenance and repair bill which is one of the order of £50 million p.a."

It follows fairly clearly, even to the ignorant layman—of whom I claim to be a supreme example—that if lorries do 90 per cent. of the damage to the surface of roads it is probable that, because of their greater vibration and general impact, they are the source of all the damage to the services under the road.

Paragraph 151 of the report argues that bigger lorries will mean fewer lorries, but no evidence is adduced anywhere in the report for that argument. Indeed, there is every possibility that that claim is simply not true. A large number of lorries at the moment are not fully laden. If one increases their capacity it does not follow at all that they will be more full than they have been in the past. Indeed, with the pressure on firms to reduce the amount of stock that they carry, they are, generally speaking, taking smaller loads in order to save money. With the increased use of microchip technology there is likely to be far more sophisticated and careful ordering and less bulk ordering in the future. There are, therefore, many trends to suggest that the increase in size of lorries will not in any way reduce their numbers.

In paragraph 166 of the report a complicated comparison is made between freight railway track costs and lorry road costs. That is factually quite wrong. I shall not read out the paragraph, but it is factually wrong. It maintains that there is a straight comparison, but whereas roads are designed at their maximum to meet the demands of a lorry, railway tracks are not designed to meet the demand of freight traffic, their ultimate parameter being the design needs of the passenger traffic. The complicated comparison that is drawn out in paragraph 166 is therefore based upon a misunderstanding of the situation.

Paragraph 201 makes a claim for the economic benefits of new roads, and makes a general suggestion—an assertion, indeed—for which no evidence is given in the report, that it stimulates economic growth close to new road construction. That matter was virtually outside the terms of reference of the Armitage committee. It was certainly not looked into in any depth, and no evidence was adduced to suggest that the assertion was true. It is worth pointing out that the Leitch report of 1977, a considerably more thorough document, which went into these matters in much greater depth and which has not been subject to any substantial professional challenge, said in appendix G:

"We conclude, therefore, that trunk road construction does not yield significant economic development gains over and above the direct benefits to road users".

That shows another clear shortcoming in the Armitage report. It seems to me that the report is shot through with all kinds of inconsistencies of this nature, and it needs to be looked at much more carefully than the House is being given the opportunity to do tonight.

There are calls for more enforcement of existing regulations, but there is no suggestion that there should be any stepping up in the number of staff available. Under the present Government's policies it is extremely unlikely that there will be. The report does not give sufficient emphasis or draw sufficient attention to the massive time lag that would be involved even if we were to demand that new lorries should meet high environmental standards. Unless those standards are imposed upon the existing fleet, we are unlikely to see any benefit until the late 1990s. That is an absurd time scale.

What we need from the Secretary of State is an undertaking that he is not prepared to go ahead with an increase in lorry weights—certainly not without that being part of a general package which will ensure that if there is an overall increase in lorry weights the whole of the British public will get, in return, the imposition of severe environmental controls on the existing fleets. To make sure that life is worth living for anyone living anywhere near a major road we must have all these restraints.

The big problem is that there is every prospect that the Government will say in the next Budget, or as a consequence of it, "We are going to impose a substantial increase in taxation on lorries, and in exchange for that increase, which is being done basically for revenue purposes, we shall allow the increase in lorry weights." That will not be good enough. We want a lot more in return than just a benefit to the Treasury and we must press for it.

There is great danger that the Government will snatch at this opportunity of increased revenue and make a shabby swap of an increase in lorry weight for that increased revenue. I hope that the whole House will resist that move and that we shall have an opportunity, properly briefed, both to debate the Armitage report and to make absolutely sure that the clear-cut decision whether to increase lorry weights is put to the House so that we can vote on it—and it should be preferably on a free vote.

9.41 pm

I could not let the occasion go by without saying to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that there has been much comment about the debate and that I, perhaps, among the few Members here, understand truly that it was probably the result of his great passion and desire to bring transport matters swiftly in front of us that led to the debate being introduced tonight. I would only urge him on future occasions when slots appear to press my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to ensure that yet other transport matters are brought in front of us with the same rapidity.

I should like to follow that, if my right hon. Friend will accept it, by saying that there are a number of paradoxes in life and in society, and this is one of the most difficult to resolve. Hon. Members on both sides of the House share the problems that I have in the heart of England constituency of Meriden, where the M6, the M42 and the nearby M1, plus a mass of through-route roads, make one's countryside, one's villages and therefore one's constituents extremely vulnerable to what is in the end a benefit on their breakfast plate, but the very product that ends up on their plate has to travel in lorries.

A series of compromises has been achieved over the years, some satisfactory, some unsatisfactory. There is no doubt that we have in the Armitage report an opportunity to resolve some of the problems which have been plaguing the country and our constituencies for many years. I think that we have to ensure that the system that is created by any decisions which eventually result from the report offer to the community benefits that more than overcome the problems that the implementation of some aspects of the report might create. I want to give two separate shopping lists which I believe will in the end balance and offer our society—our community—a net benefit.

If one compares the lorry with one's car or even motor cycle, one accepts that the degree of sophistication in the design of present vehicles of the two-wheel and four-wheel car variety is very much ahead of that of the truck. The truck design is archaic and has been needing refinement for years, as is clear when one considers that it still has heavy axles, sprung by basically semi-elliptic springs, and that this in itself, in a dynamic reaction to the road, is really going back to the horse and cart.

I agree very much with the policies outlined in the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) in saying that this opportunity to strike a deal, to seek changes to the design of the vehicle, is vital and must be taken in the context of an ultimate weight which will be acceptable. One of my shopping lists specifies that there must be, well before any changes are permitted by legislation to the weight and operating condition of the lorry, improvements in road safety.

I must add that as a member of an all-party group I have heard chief executives or top development men in a number of lorry manufacturing firms state the very reasonable policy—from their point of view—that they react to market demands, and that they are unlikely to give the customer great bonuses in terms of innovation and development unless there is a good practical commercial reason for doing so.

It is therefore vital that these changes in safety and other aspects should be legislated. We cannot expect a deal to be struck in bargaining terms. We cannot expect the industry to take these steps speculatively. We cannot expect our industry to build in benefits which are cost penalties and which are not happening in other countries where vehicles are built that will compete against us.

The initiative has to come from us. If the shopping list is to be agreed, the benefit shopping list will have to be included in type approval, perhaps in construction and use regulations or in some mechanism which ensures not that we say in these regulations "You shall have the following items" but that we specify the minimum standards of performance in such areas as braking in the wet, with lorries equipped to ensure that there is maximum protection from impact with side and rear impacts from other road users.

Although there is some debate on the subject, the really damaging effect on the roads is not just in relation to the fourth power of the axle rate but in relation to its dynamic effect. If roads were billiard table smooth there would not be a dynamic effect.

And inflexible.

If my hon. Friend wishes to intervene, I shall be happy for him to do so. If there are bumps on the road, axles react, and unsprung weight—of which there is a great deal in lorry axles—tends to react.

We need a specification to ensure that the dynamic properties of the behaviour of the suspension and the road gear of vehicles is drastically improved. This will mean improvements to wheels, to brakes, to tyres, and to anti-skid systems of all sorts, as well as to anti-jack-knifing systems.

It will also mean adopting many of the specifications that have been included in the excellent Motor Industry Research Association experimental truck project, and in the Foden quiet lorry and the Roadtrain safe lorry project. These are not innovations which have not yet been dreamt of; they are realities.

We are also talking of such things as are available from Monsanto and elsewhere for the restriction of spray from lorries, yet this product, although commercially available, will in my view suffer the same fate as have many other innovations in the motor vehicle industry. If it costs more, unless it offers a realisable benefit in economic terms or in some other terms that can be seen, it will not be used. Where there are economic benefits in reducing spray there are also safety benefits, and we have a responsibility, if we accept change in the specification of the lorry and its weight, to ensure that embodied in the law of all these points on road safety.

I feel very strongly that we should not be stampeded, in bargaining terms, with our European colleagues into the maximum permitted axle weights. Armitage has recommended an axle weight of 10·5 tonnes, and I agree with previous speakers who have said that we should do all we can to ensure that the present 10·17 tonnes is not exceeded. Whether static or dynamic, if it is increased to 11 tonnes—the Commission or the European Parliament will be pressing for this—it will increase damage to Britain's roads, to an extent that we cannot afford.

It has been useful to many of us—although the time has been short—to see the excellent way in which many organisations have responded in welcoming these points. One might have thought that the FTA and the CBI would say "Ignore everything. Give us the benefits. We are in haulage". But they have taken a responsible attitude in outlining what they consider to be the compelling case for the acceptance of Armitage in total. They also agree with us that the civilising of the lorry is important to them not only in moral but in practical terms. The whole question of the civilising of the lorry, in terms of its safety performance, braking, spray, and, in particular, segregating it from people, is vital. Organisations such as Friends of the Earth and Transport 2000 share these views to an uncommon degree, and I was grateful to them for the briefing that they gave us.

This sort of protection is really needed, because there are some diverse views on people's expectations and reactions to alternative lorries. A TRRL report has shown that people would prefer two 8-tonne lorries to one 16-tonne lorry or four 4-tonne lorries.

This is a difficult area. A Marplan survey was commissioned by FTA, RHA and other bodies. There has been some accusation that it was somewhat biased, but I quote it to the House. It said:

"only 26 per cent. of the sample in this report felt that the heavy lorry was a very serious problem."

It had ranked the problem with drug addiction and vandalism, so it may be a somewhat biased sample, but it indicates that if we can ensure that the public experience real benefits in terms of a more civilised truck or lorry perhaps the attitudes of resistance to some change will not be entirely against it.

I ask my hon. Friend to consider specifying in his reply, as has been suggested elsewhere, that 30 per cent. of the weight of the vehicle should be over the driving wheels. As an ex-tyre designer, it is my experience that that is important. The Europeans may press my hon. Friend to go for 25 per cent. and others may tell him not to specify anything, but it is important that we ensure that the distribution of weight across the axles of a vehicle allows 30 per cent. on the driving wheels. On articulated tractors, we should try to ensure that there is pressure for innovation towards load sharing between the two axles. That would help to reduce damage to the roads.

The next item on my shopping list is greater enforcement. A number of organisations have contacted hon. Members to complain about the present abuse. During the Committee stage of the Transport Bill I shall press my right hon. and hon. Friends on the downplating scheme which relates to vehicle excise duty, but I am equally aware that whatever schemes exist at present or might exist in the future, unless they ensure that there is a system that will prevent overloading, either deliberate or because a vehicle with a greater weight has entered this country from abroad, we shall not see justice done for those on the roads.

The next item on my shopping list—I promise my colleagues that this will be brief—is the need to recognise that roads must be improved before we accept any significant change to vehicle weights. I was disappointed in the abrasive way in which the right hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) tackled the Government's White Paper. Perhaps his hon. Friend will say, when he replies, whether he can commit a future Labour Government, if one should ever come to power, to revitalising suddenly a more dramatic and more expensive road building programme. My right hon. Friend is most realistic in his approach and has certainly done more than the Labour Government did. I urge him to realise—as we all realise from our constituencies and nationally—that there is much to be done about bypasses before this change that I have suggested may be beneficial and can take place.

The British Road Federation poses the argument that in 1980–81 goods vehicles will pay £840 million in tax and that track costs will amount to £797 millon, leaving a surplus of £43 million. It is logical for the federation to suggest that that could be used to help build more bypasses. Lorry routeing, strategic areas where lorries could be controlled, and parks are among the excellent suggestions in the Armitage report. I reiterate to my right hon. Friend that, for the sake of the peace of mind of our constituents and of hon. Members, we must find a system which will guarantee that the changes that we agree in terms of lorry weights are dependent on achieving all these other factors.

There is a great suspicion by constituents and others that they will end up with juggernauts, no better roads, vibration, spray, and all the other problems. I have tried to reassure them, and I am sure that with a responsible attitude that will not happen. But the world is practical, and they need more than that. They need some sort of inbuilt control in the legislation to ensure that when the final solution is achieved there will be direct benefits, and that we shall have tight legislation and a timetable upon which changes are dependent. I hope that we shall achieve better road safety—shorter stopping distances in the wet, and better and more realistic control of vibration. It is not good enough to wait until 1990 to achieve 80 decibels. We should reinstate the European requirement that that should be achieved by 1985 at the latest.

We should ensure that roads, bypasses and all the other measures that are mentioned in the Armitage report are built into legislation so that changes for the lorry are retrospective but definitely will occur.

We accept that many lorries on the roads of Britain are already 38-tonnes vehicles. However, under the present law, they are restricted to 32 tonnes or 33 tonnes. Those lorries may not change. An axle may be added, but the size of the lorries, the paintwork and the chips on the paintwork will not change. As I have said, the Armitage report recommends 44 tonnes. That represents only a small change. If we restrict changes to 38 tonnes or 40 tonnes—I would favour 38 tonnes—we shall give the road haulage industry definite benefits, while ensuring that our constituents have, along with the changes in truck specifications and the road programmes that have been outlined, a definite, fair and just deal.

9.55 pm

I shall be as brief as I can, since I know that other hon. Members want to contribute to the debate.

An interesting phrase was used by the hon. Member for Meridan (Mr. Mills), namely, "civilising the lorry." The Armitage report gives the impression of being a package to be presented with a glittering aura, showing how good larger lorries would be if only certain aspects were fulfilled. Reference has been made to the Peeler memorandum. The report underlines the suspicion that is held by many that the report is part of a manoeuvre to modify and mould public opinion so that the idea of heavier lorries becomes acceptable and inevitable. Part of the manoeuvre is the claim that there are economic advantages. It is claimed that about £150 million would be saved.

However, the Armitage report states that if we are to increase our lorry weights to the EEC level the cost of strengthening our bridges would be £1·2 billion. The report refers to "Operation Bridgeguard", which was an exercise in restricting or strengthening bridges in the 1960s and 1970s. As paragraph 393 states, "Bridgeguard" assumed that bridges would be regularly inspected and maintained. That may not be the case. The cost of £1·2 billion almost certainly underestimates the work that is needed on our bridges throughout the country.

Paragraph 403 of the report states clearly that the increased axle loads

"would bring our limits closer to those proposed by the EEC."

Does any hon. Member know of any move towards EEC standards that has been halted at any stage? Our experience in the House is that if there is any move towards the EEC it is rarely interrupted. There is a sort of gravitational pull towards EEC standards. Although the report purports to say that standards can stop here, with the recommendations of the report, that simply is not true. I think that there would be a momentum towards EEC standards. It would be far better to stop not at the Armitage report but at our existing weight limits, which have already been increased on at least three occasions.

As for the economic arguments, the report makes it clear that there would have to be a massive increase in the taxation of heavy lorries to pay for what are described as the track costs. There is already a problem of enforcement of existing lorry weights. The Government have no intention of adding to the strength of the Civil Service to ensure that existing enforcement is adequate. Indeed, they will cut it down, so more and more breaches of existing lorry weight restrictions will be broken.

There has already been a massive switch to heavier lorries with increases in 1964, 1966 and 1972. Armitage blurs the issue. Although there has been damage to the surface of the roads, Armitage skirts round the issue of the damage done underneath the roads. An article in the magazine "Building" was drawn to my attention by a civil engineering contractor in Bradford, who was amazed, frightened and concerned to discover, when he started work on a contract, that the road surface of a minor road consisted solely of two or three layers of tarmacadam because a sewer had collapsed—

It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Ordered,

That, at this day's sitting, the motion in the name of the Prime Minister for the Adjournment of the House may be proceeded with, though opposed, until Eleven o'clock.—[Mr. Thompson.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Thompson.]

The building contractor was concerned to find that only a few layers of tarmacadam prevented serious accident. A leader in the magazine "Building", beneath a heading "Crisis under the ground" stated:

In a sense it is unfortunate that sewers have to be built below ground, for out of sight is out of mind and that is how they remain for most of the time. But the state of the country's sewers is a cause for serious concern … water authority planners and engineers are becoming increasingly worried about the ability of sewers built over 100 years ago to continue to serve city centres which have experienced massive increase in population and traffic volume."

It concluded by saying

"The only solution to the problems posed by deterioration of the sewers is money in vast quantities—perhaps £5,000 million every decade. Sooner or later this will have to be faced. In avoiding it, the issue can only grow more serious."

Armitage does not face that serious issue. It is the first priority for any expenditure.

The social problems caused by the lorry—problems of intrusion, damage to buildings and damage to people—already felt widely in most constituencies, including mine. There has to be a political will to ensure that goods are shifted from road to rail, an increase in section 8 grants and an increase in private sidings. It has already been stated that West Germany has 13,000 private sidings as opposed to 1,700 in this country. On both sides of the House, there is a determination to oppose Armitage. I hope that it will be sustained in the Lobby.

10.2 pm

In my constituency the problem of the impact of heavy lorries on people's lives is second only to housing. That is why I put down an amendment to early-day motion 80 insisting that, as a precondition for any increase envisaged under the Armitage report, measures should be introduced to lift the burden of the juggernaut menace from residential areas of London and other major cities. One of the problems about the debate and about the Armitage report has been an assumption in some quarters that the existing situation is tolerable and that we can therefore consider increases in lorry weight. The situation is not tolerable for millions of our fellow countrymen. It is intolerable. For thousands of my constituents, the position is unacceptable.

I want to use my few minutes this evening to make an unashamed plea on behalf of those constituents. Many hon. Members will have come into London by the one-way system that runs through Earls Court. They will have seen the juggernauts moving along those streets, nose to tail, shuddering and vibrating their way towards the Embankment through Earls Court and Redcliffe, along narrow, unsuitable, residential streets, turning unsafely from the outside lane across traffic coming through on the inside, mounting pavements, crushing the bollards erected on the pavement to keep them off and make life safe for pedestrians, causing danger, inconvenience and, frankly, terror to people walking on the pavements. The juggernauts then move from the one-way system on to one of the most beautiful streets in London, one that can be compared with the Inns of Court and Queen Anne's Gate for architectural merit. I refer to Cheyne Walk. It is a place where Whistler, Turner, Rossetti and Brunel went to live because of its beauty and because of the river. It has been turned into a channel for juggernauts.

I agree about the disappointment with Armitage over postponing the chance of getting to the EEC levels of noise restriction in 1990 rather than 1985. Filth also accumulates on the houses along Cheyne Walk. I should like to see a study undertaken of the canyon effect in Earls Court, with its tall buildings on either side, building up lead in the atmosphere. The residents are extremely concerned. The vibrations also cause immense damage to water mains and sewers, bringing very much closer the expenditure mentioned by the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) on the sewer systems of our major cities. When the day comes, billions, and not millions, of pounds will need to be spent.

My constituents petitioned the House last year about the impact of lorries on their lives. We received a rather dusty answer from my right hon. Friend, hiding behind the answer about the night lorry ban, as previous Governments have done. The ban is more honoured in the breach than in the observance in my constituency. The Armitage report argues for physical barriers across roads to prevent lorries from using certain routes, but the authorities, including the police, are against that because of potential complications when accidents or other incidents occur. My constituents face the prospect of the nightmare continuing. They certainly do not want increased lorry weights. They want the present system to be remedied and made tolerable before considering any increase.

There should be an immediate strategic night and weekend ban on all heavy lorries in big cities, as a minimum requirement. Armitage states that those are decisions that have to be taken locally, but the lorries will then evade and ignore the bans and our constituents will continue to suffer. In London we must look to the completion of the M25. When we have that, in central London we should look for a total ban on very heavy lorries.

Transshipment into smaller lorries was rather too carelessly dismissed by the Armitage report. Great advantages can be gained from transshipment. In its experiment, Marks and Spencer found that by breaking up loads brought into central London it could replace six loads with one, although admittedly it was still using large lorries. Many juggernauts charging around central London deliver only small loads of up to 5 tons and are half empty, yet they take up an immense amount of road space. I should like a survey to be undertaken of the economic benefits of transshipment, which could be substantial. The social and environmental advantages would be tremendous.

I looked up the definition of "juggernaut" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Leaving aside its historical definition, it states that it is:

"an institution or notion to which persons blindly sacrifice themselves or others."

Too many of our fellow citizens are having the quality of their lives blindly sacrificed to the notion of heavy lorries.

10.9 pm

Recommendation No. 3 of the Armitage report states:

"Lorries in general, and each class of lorry, should pay in taxation at least the road track costs which they impose."

On 19 December I asked the Secretary of State for Transport, who was then the Minister for Transport, for his estimate of the relative damage done to roads and roadside structures by a 44-tonne lorry and a saloon car. The Under-Secretary of State replied:

"The damage to the road pavements would depend on actual axle loadings. The damage caused by a 44 tonne lorry as recommended in the Armitage report is estimated to be about 12,800 times that of a saloon car."—[Official Report, 19 December 1980; Vol. 996, c. 434–35.]

Many motorists will look at the Budget to see whether their contribution to the vehicle excise duty bears any relation to that paid on behalf of heavy lorries. From my question, I gather that the 32-tonne lorry is even more damaging. Therefore, I hope that the next budget will proportionately increase taxation.

I am the sponsor of an early-day motion:

"That this House believes that no increase should be permitted in maximum lorry weights before all the environmental and fiscal proposals of the Armitage Report have been put into effect, that no increases in axle weights be permitted in any circumstances."

I hope that I heard the Secretary of State correctly. In his opening speech he said that the Government would not carry out the EEC directive on axle weights. I hope that that is kept to and that the present level is maintained.

It is the whole weight of the vehicle on an area of road—not on a particular spot—that causes the damage to sewers, and the same applies to bridges. My early-day motion also says that

"the increased profitability of heavier lorries shall not be allowed to produce an increase in the total number of lorries on roads in the United Kingdom to the detriment of the environment and to the further impoverishment of the safer and less energy-consuming service of British Railways."

Much has been said about the importance of private sidings. Compared with Britain, there are a vast number of sidings on the Continent. The previous Government cut the amount of money to be spent on roads, but, at the same time, voted a great deal of money to increase the number of sidings. I welcome the amendment tabled to my early-day motion by the hon. Member for Chelsea (Mr. Scott). If my early-day motion and the amendment were put to the vote tonight they would receive an overwhelming majority. I hope that the Secretary of State will take note of that.

Paragraph 67 of the Armitage report states that the environmental effects of lorries cannot be accurately estimated. At present there is no means of measuring those effects. The report urges the Secretary of State for Transport and the Secretary of State for the Environment—it is a pity that there is no Minister from the Department of the Environment in the Chamber—to work out a system of measuring those environmental problems. It urges that we should not take any action to alter lorry sizes until such measurements have taken place.

Lorries have a detrimental effect on health. Vehicles 50 ft long and—even more intimidating to the public—13 ft high are a disaster for the environment. As the hon. Member for Chelsea pointed out, not only are villages and towns involved, but also inner city areas, which have many other problems to face.

Lorry parking has not been tackled properly. The Armitage report says that vehicles tend to park in residential areas and on council estates. I support the remarks about the transshipment of goods from heavy lorries to smaller lorries to facilitate movement in cities. If goods are taken by train into a city, they do not go on a 32-tonne lorry from the station to the delivery point. The same should apply to heavy lorries. It might be argued that they are all right on motorways. Nevertheless, they are frightening. If the proper transshipment of goods from 32 tonne—and eventually 44 tonne lorries—does not take place, the environmental disasters that face our inner city areas will be added to over and over again.

10.15 pm

All hon. Members who have spoken have described their concern about the rushed nature of this debate. I feel ill-prepared to make a proper judgment on this matter. I do not think that any one can easily make a judgment about such a detailed and cogently argued report on some controversial matters. Nevertheless, the report has made a useful contribution to a controversial debate. It contains a wealth of data and cogent arguments. I believe that the rason for the circumstances of this debate might have more to do with tax considerations in the Budget, in which the increased taxation recommended by Armitage might be implemented.

This important industry is responsible for 83 per cent. of freight mileage, 65 per cent. of tonne-mileage and has an expenditure equivalent to 8 per cent. of the gross national product. The report shows that over the last 12 years the amount of freight tonnage carried has been falling. Although tonne-mileage has risen by 40 per cent. and the average distances travelled by the larger lorries have doubled—from 23 miles to 44 miles—it seems that the same amount of freight is carried in the bigger lorries.

I agree with the report that the road haulage industry is and will remain an important sinew of our economy and that there is not one simple solution to the problems that it presents. The report addresses itself to the question of the proper mix of economic, public and environmental advantages. The public interest lies at the heart of the debate, but Armitage's justification for larger lorries is increasingly being questioned, not only here but elsewhere. Therefore, it is a matter for regret that the House apparently will not be able to express its view on a free vote. There is precedent for a free vote on the increase of lorry weights. That affects our attitude to a vote tonight.

The Armitage report bases its recommendation for the 44-tonne lorries on the fact that they cause relatively less damage and pollution and less polution, that the lorries will look no bigger, that they will be quieter and that they will not be faster. The justification for the recommendation that the speed limit for these lorries should be increased to 50 mph—the Minister apparently has not yet accepted that—is that they already travel at that speed and we might as well recognise it.

We on this side are genuinely uncertain why the hon. Gentleman proposes to vote tonight. We agree with many of the things that he and his right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) have said. It would be helpful if he told us what he is voting for and what he is voting against—and in particular whether he will be voting for or against Armitage.

I shall be addressing myself to that, of course. It was my intention to do so later in my remarks. But I want first to deal with some of the arguments for dividing the House.

The Secretary of State said that Armitage was concerned to know how to make the report more acceptable. Therefore, the approach to this issue seemed to depend on whether one approached freight transportation from a market-oriented point of view or from that of intervention for more integration. The Secretary of State knows from earlier debates in this House and in Committee that I am more in favour of active intervention for an integration policy. However, it is clear from the approach of Armitage that the committee took the view that market forces were the best way to determine the issue of freight distribution. I disagree with that basic approach, but it is clear from the Armitage recommendations that the committee was actively involving itself in intervention.

There is no leaving it to the free market system as opposed to a kind of integration and intervention. Both systems involve a considerable amount of intervention, and many hon. Members have put considerable emphasis on certain areas to show why the Government should intervene. We are all aware especially of safety considerations, hour regulations, the level of taxation for lorries, environmental pollution and noise. They are all matters to which the Secretary of State addressed himself, and he indicated why he felt that they should be dealt with before we considered introducing heavier lorries on to British roads. Nevertheless, it shows a kind of "organised market" and one which appears to serve private gain from public expenditure.

It will be known to the Secretary of State that the Opposition have always believed in a considerable amount of freight integration. During our consideration of the last Transport Bill we were against the proposed abolition of the Freight Integration Council, which gave some merriment to the Secretary of State who felt that we were wasting our time in attempting to support a body which had not acted very effectively whilst it had been in being. It had met four times, and it represented the four chairmen of the nationalised industries. The Government argued that its reports never dealt with any specific matter and in fact had no contribution to make. As we were not able to get published copies of any report, we were almost bound to accept that judgment. In fact, I served on a Select Committee which tried to investigate what conclusions the council had arrived at, and we were singularly unsuccessful. However, in the last few weeks, evidence has been supplied to me showing that that was not the case and that a report was produced by that council, but not published, which addressed itself to one major area of freight integration, namely, that of parcels. It was felt that there could not be agreement between the nationalised industries and, therefore, the council failed to get any kind of integration.

I have that report before me. It makes it clear that the chairmen of the nationalised industries were able to produce a joint report and an agreement in the Freight Integration Council about how the parcels section should be brought together. That report was given to the Minister on 4 July 1972, and discussions continued on it in 1973. However, it is clear that the Minister at that time was not prepared to intervene in order to impose a solution along the lines generally agreed between the chairmen of the nationalised industries.

The argument put forward constantly in this House about integration suggesting that the chairmen of the nationalised industries failed to agree is not necessarily borne out by the unpublished evidence. If agreement had been imposed at that time on parcels by the Minister it may be that the problem of losses on parcels could have been solved.

That is untrue.

I leave others to judge whether it is untrue or not. I am merely quoting a report made to the Minister at the time. It shows that there was no lack of agreement among the chairmen of the nationalised industries. I do not challenge the Minister's right to decide that he should not intervene. However, we believe in intervention in the market, and the Freight Integration Council undoubtedly contributed to a solution in that area but was ignored.

It is interesting to note that the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, in a report published a month ago, called for integration at the local authority level. The Armitage committee rejected the concept of intervention by local authorities, but the authorities see a need for such action and are beginning to advocate that there should be a more rational way of dealing with road and rail integration in their areas.

Another matter to which the Armitage committee turned its attention was quantity licensing. The power for such licensing was contained in the Transport Act 1968. It was removed in last year's Act. A number of my hon. Friends and I defended the concept of quantity licensing, which is that traffic may be directed according to criteria other than price. We believe that other criteria should be taken into account.

If quantity licensing is such a good idea, why was there so little progress made between 1974 and 1979 when the Labour Party was in office?

That is a fair point. We had to address ourselves in Committee to why the Labour Government did not use quantity licensing. There are controversies among my right hon. and hon. Friends concerning the usefulness of quantity licensing. The Foster committee did not agree with the idea, and though it did not totally reject it, nor does the Armitage committee. It is a matter of dispute between individuals.

I spoke to Sir Richard Marsh when he was chairman of British Rail. He did not believe in quantity licensing when he was the chairman and he did not support it when he succeeded Barbara Castle as Minister of Transport. The idea died the death, but that does not mean that it does not have a contribution to make to integration in transport. It is used in Europe and has been used in Britain. We envisaged using it after the 1968 Act, though anyone reading the reports of the debates on that measure will see that it was envisaged that quantity licensing would be used after Freightliners Limited was established. As envisaged, that took two or three years, but the concept of quantity licensing was not acceptable to the then Government and it did not become the force that it had been expected to become after the 1968 Act.

The Armitage committee said that it did not feel that quantity licensing would contribute to solving the problem of the introduction of large lorries. It suggests that we will not be able to put off larger lorries and solve the problem by directing more traffic on to the railways.

One vital part of the argument on quantity licensing is that it was never envisaged that all road transport licensing should be subjected to freight quantity licensing, However, there is an argument that some direction of traffic, even in a marginal area, could make a considerable difference.

For example, when one compares the share of traffic between road and rail in Europe and Britain it is claimed that the differences can be explained by the different geographical distances. However, if one considers the shares of tonnes of traffic, the difference is not so marked. It can be 1 per cent. or two per cent., but that could be considerable contribution to rail freight.

As Armitage pointed out, a 2 per cent. difference in tonnage is equivalent to 40 million tonnes, and that represents about 22 per cent. of BR freight or 2½ per cent. of the total market. If British Rail were to get that sort of freight allocation, even though it is only a small part of total freight demand, it would make a considerable difference to BR's finances and would not lead to the closure of 54 terminals, as is being envisaged, with redundancies for railwaymen. It would certainly be welcome to British Rail and would lead to a greater utilisation of important public assets.

Like other hon. Members, I welcome what the Armitage report says about section 8, which has led to the diversion of traffic to rail totalling about 16 million tonnes. I welcome the Armitage recommendation that there should be wider criteria and greater incentives for the introduction of section 8 grants, particularly for Freightliners Ltd. and Sealink. That has made quite a difference in Germany, as a number of hon. Members have pointed out, and it is something that we should take into account.

I believe that Armitage made a number of mistakes in assessing the consequences of market forces. As a number of hon. Members have said, the reality of the market force at present is that rate wars are going on and a considerable number of bankruptcies are taking place in the industry. The National Freight Corporation, in its evidence to Armitage, pointed out that full loads are only about 35 per cent. of a full movement, and that if one reaches about 90 per cent. of a full load diseconomies begin to occur. Insufficient attention was paid to this when Armitage was assessing the economic savings of larger lorries. Indeed, I and others dispute that larger lorries will bring about the kind of savings that Armitage envisaged in this respect.

I certainly do not accept that larger lorries will necessarily mean fewer lorries, as the Secretary of State suggested. Nor do I accept that they are less likely to go into urban areas. Armitage seems to assume that larger lorries spend most of their time on the motorway. I am sure that that is true. But, at the end of the day, the lads do not live on the motorway. They live in urban areas, and that is where the lorries go. That is the reason for the growing problem of parking areas, which is of great environmental consequence.

The proposals for larger lorries will certainly lead to greater competition between rail and road—to the detriment of rail.

The Secretary of State said that he was open-minded on this matter and that he had made no decision. Yet he did not indicate to the House whether he fancied the weights of 38 tonnes, 40 tonnes or 44 tonnes that were mentioned in the debate. I understand that he may not have arrived at any conclusion about the tonnage. Nevertheless, it is usual in debates of this kind to give some indication of the Government's thinking. It would have been useful to hear the Minister's thinking on that point.

The Secretary of State says that he has an open mind, but his whole approach to the debate showed that he was very sympathetic to the views put forward by Armitage in his package deal to justify the 44-tonners. He said that there was a desire for more enforcement. He had found, for example, that many lorries were overloaded. The Foster committee had shown that there were problems of enforcement. I am bound to say that I should have been a little more convinced if he had adopted many more of the 91 recommendations of the Foster report, instead of recommendations that seem to be highly influenced by how much they cost and what manpower is available. That is clear to anyone who looks at the Foster recommendations.

The Secretary of State also said that he wished to improve the road programme and bypasses. I do not wish to claim that our road programme expenditure was ideal. Labour Governments have used cutbacks in road expenditure as one of the easy options in public expenditure cuts, and the Conservatives are continuing along the same road. It is the same with bypasses. We can see from the White Paper on roads that there are delays with bypasses. We know that even in the present circumstances the road programme would not be concluded until the mid-1990s. The Minister says that he is now considering reviewing that in the light of the Armitage report. But Armitage makes it absolutely clear that the problems of pollution and safety and all the other problems associated with juggernauts exist now with the 32-ton lorries. He does not need to review what will happen with the 44-tonners. If he has any doubts about that, he has only to ask his own Back Benchers. Those problems exist now, and I have some doubt whether he will be successful even in that review in achieving the increase in the roads programme and bypasses called for by Armitage.

On one aspect of pollution, namely, noise, it was suggested, as a number of hon. Members have pointed out, that to provide double glazing to the levels presently applied to new building programmes would cost about £1,600 million. Armitage recommends £6 million per year. That is scarcely a major contribution to solving that aspect of the problem of pollution.

The Secretary of State also made clear that in relation to damage to roads he rather accepted that the £1,400 million for bridges was not now needed because it had been found that, due to the theory of the concept of the fourth power and the effects of axle weights, there would not be the effects on bridges that he had envisaged. That is being contested. We were awaiting some evidence from a civil engineer who was looking into that theory, but we have not been able to get it in time for the debate. That was one of the reasons why we thought the debate should not have taken place at the moment.

The right hon. Gentleman claims that there should be a payment of full track costs. Armitage, while rejecting the idea of environmental track costs, said that a tax of £800 per heavy lorry would be a proper track cost. But we have to bear in mind that the overall surplus on road taxation is £43 million. The heavier tax is on the lighter lorries. The Secretary of State did not say whether he was considering the possibility of lightening the tax on the lighter lorries. If that were to be done, he would not get any extra revenue from the tax. It would be balancing out between the heavy and the lighter areas. My money is on putting the tax on the heavier lorries and leaving it on the lighter ones.

The more serious point is that £800 is considered by some not to be a sufficient track cost. For example, it is argued that we should add to that sum £450 for increased public road costs, £125 for road accident costs, £100 for underground costs—the damage to pipes and so on—and end up with the more realistic cost of £1,465. If one multiplies that by the 85,400 lorries, the amount of subsidy is equivalent to £125 million.

I am not in a position to make a judgment between the £800 recommendation and the suggestion that the true cost would be £1,465. But I should like to have heard from the Secretary of State where the Government's thinking lies in this matter, and what consideration they are giving to the two arguments—perhaps the two extreme views—concerning what the real track costs are.

Once the right hon. Gentleman gets into making these judgments, these are purely the arguments of a market policy, somehow trying to treat each traffic mode the same. It is extremely difficult to do, as we have seen in the past with the various formulas that have been used in the railway industry and in the road haulage industry. It is not an easy process, but it is the one that seeks to direct itself to the market incentive approach.

I do not think that the Armitage committee looked at the social costs regarding the employees. We have heard from the representative of the Transport and General Workers Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell), that the union is against the development because it fears that fewer lorries will mean more redundancies. Experience shows that longer lorries have not led to improvement. Armitage rejected the idea of freight centres and transshipment centres, but all these are important parts of any transport policy.

Armitage seemed to be convinced that the best way was to leave it to the market. He did not take into account the social consequences. But probably the most classic example in regard to the employee aspect is the argument for park security areas. They were recommended by the Berry committee over 10 years ago, but the industry has refused to finance them, and because of that the Armitage report seems to suggest bigger and better beds for lorry drivers in their cabs—giving the reason why the lorry should be longer, apparently, according to the report, but doing very little about getting a man away from his place of work, where he is putting in many hours, driving a heavy lorry, and giving him recreation and rest time. That aspect was not addressed by Armitage and he has done nothing about it.

The Opposition consider that Armitage has refused to grasp what we believe to be an essential part of the transport problem—developing more intervention and integrated techniques. That is essential for freight transportation development in this country. We feel that the proper track costs have not been itemised and that the figure of £800 per lorry is certainly not sufficient for the package cost.

We certainly welcome, if one is to accept such lorries, the idea of package aspects. But, as the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) pointed out, among all the recommendations made by Armitage only four could really be called pro-road. What is more crucial is that Armitage himself has said that it is not a package, and in fact the likelihood is, in view of what the Secretary of State said, that because of limited resources, already evident in the road programmes, there will be further delays in bypass construction and in implementation of the tax.

We are all aware of the temptation to say that we should tax now, introduce the larger lorries and then all these other benefits will follow. That would be the worst possible thing to do, and if the right hon. Gentleman loses the argument with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and we get the tax and the larger lorries without any of the benefits mentioned in the packages proposed in Armitage we shall have the worst result. That is one reason why we shall be voting against this motion.

The hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) said that there would be other opportunities to debate and vote on this matter. The reality is that there will not be any other opportunity—except when the Government bring forward their own proposals. In 1972 the House had a free vote on the principle of the introduction of heavier lorries. Then, the House unanimously said that it did not want them. We believe that the House now should have such an opportunity, and if the Minister points out that this is only an Adjournment motion, I remind him that he could have used the early-day motion on the issue tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks). Then we would have had a proper motion to debate and vote, giving the Government a true indication of the House's view on larger lorries. But since the Government have taken every action to avoid a vote, we believe it is essential that we vote against the motion to show that we do not accept the conclusions of the report.

10.40 pm

I should like to begin by saying something about the timing of the debate and the status of it, particularly because of the apparent confusion over what we shall be voting on at the end.

The purpose of the debate is to consult the House before the Government move to the stage of considering decisions on this very difficult and controversial report. When the report was first published my right hon. Friend and I made it clear that before we moved to decision-taking we would like the opportunity to consult the House and have a debate. We expressly specified a time limit of two months within which we hoped to have this kind of debate. Seven weeks have since gone by. The business of the House was rearranged in the middle of the week and an opportunity occurred for four hours of debate, which has expressly been allowed to take place on the Adjournment so that the House should not in any way be rushed to take a decision, and because the Government themselves have not started to contemplate a decision.

I should like briefly to take off my ministerial hat and speak for a moment as a Member of Parliament. The House should not be so churlish about a rare opportunity to have a debate before the Government start making decisions. This is a difficult matter. My right hon. Friend has not yet approached his colleagues with it. We realise that there are strong feelings in all parts of the House, and we thought it right to give the House a say, as well as to consult outside bodies.

We have had complaints that there has not been time to talk to all the outside bodies, and we have been asked whether my right hon. Friend would see this or that outside body. All the outside bodies are, of course, important, but they do not tell us what to say, and they do not tell the Government what to say. The House of Commons is just as important as any of the outside bodies. This is an exceptional occasion for it to be involved at this early stage so that it can give a reaction to the report.

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

I shall in a moment, but as the right hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene, let me say that I take the criticism least of all from him, because there was a discussion through the usual channels about the timing of the debate, when the opportunity arose yesterday. We have the response of his right hon. Friend the Opposition Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) who, when the change of business was announced, said:

"I thank the Leader of the House for his statement and for the way in which he has responded to the Opposition's representations. I am most obliged to him."—[Official Report, 26 January 1981; Vol. 997, c. 728.]

That was the reaction of the Opposition yesterday. This morning we suspended any discussion on the Transport Bill in Committee to allow more time for preparation for this debate. We have had a debate, in which many of my hon. Friends and Opposition Members have taken advantage of the opportunity to put their strong feelings. Now the right hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) comes forward with a typically daft suggestion that we should wind up with a vote on the Adjournment, the purpose of which only he and his hon. Friend can understand.

Before the hon. and learned Gentleman starts talking about typically daft suggestions, he might consider whether he is obtaining a reputation for making typically misleading statements. He said that the House was consulted before the Government proceeded to act on the recommendations. If he cares to consider the matter for a moment longer he will realise that the Government have placed recommendation 3 of the Armitage report in a Bill that is in Committee. Secondly, if he wanted to find a transport subject to debate at short notice, he might care to recall that the Opposition Front Bench asked for a debate on BR finance, and that I wrote a letter on the subject. Lastly, if he wishes to speak of the usual channels, he might tell the House, why neither he nor his right hon. Friend contacted me on this matter, and why the first that I heard of it was through the usual channels at 8.30 pm yesterday.

With regard to the changes that we are making to increase the taxation on the heaviest lorries, we had, of course, announced our intention to do that before Armitage reported. It was in the Bill that was published before Armitage reported, and it is a happy coincidence that that action has already been taken by the Government. As far as I can gather from the debate it has received universal acclaim in the discussions that we have had. I shall not go into the question of a debate on British Rail. We shall obviously have to give the right hon. Gentleman a great deal of time to prepare for that, but we shall try to have one in due course.

I am sorry that I did not personally speak to the right hon. Gentleman, but it is usual in these matters to rely in part on the Opposition Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Bristol, South, as we rely on our usual channels. I can rely only on what was put on the record by the Opposition Chief Whip—I believe on the right hon. Gentleman's behalf—during the discussions yesterday.

The Opposition must leave me some time to reply to the debate on the Armitage report, the main purpose of which has been to listen to and appreciate the reaction of the House to the many recommendations in the report, including the most controversial—that on the nature and weight of lorries.

Because we are all elected politicians, we begin from the basis that no one likes lorries. Perhaps some of the 300,000 people who work in the road haulage industry do, but on the whole most of us do not. My constituents do not, nor do other Members' constituents, and nor does my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington (Mr. Wheeler), who is one of the most passionate speakers on this subject because he has one of the most damaged constituencies.

It is because we wish to try to accommodate the lorry within our overriding aim to preserve the environment and the pleasantness and attractiveness of life in most parts of this country that the Armitage committee was invited to consider all those problems, and in particular the impact of the lorry on the environment. Armitage has produced a large number of recommendations, all of which merit detailed attention. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. Waller) pointed out, most call for further restraints and improvements in controls on the safety and pollution-causing aspects of lorries, and one or two go in the other direction and appear to be attractive to the road haulage industry.

We must look at all the recommendations and react to them in time as we gauge the true public interest and the reaction of the House. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) that we must try to strike a balance between the need to preserve the quality of life in this country and our desire to have an efficient industrial economy and be in the forefront of prosperous economies.

It is no good going through the report and simply taking out those few recommendations that happen to be attractive to the road haulage industry and automatically reacting hostily to them. But nothing should be done that is attractive to the road haulage industry unless the public and this House are satisfied that what is being done is not causing environmental damage. As my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mr. Mills) said, the whole matter must be looked at as a way of civilising the lorry, given the extent to which whatever one does one has to live with the lorry in a modern industrial economy such as ours.

Because no one likes lorries, and because no one is seriously advocating putting juggernauts into residential areas on any greater scale than at present, we begin by looking at the arguments that are put forward about the possibility of diverting traffic from the roads on to rail or waterways. I do not believe that any hon. Member would not be happy if more traffic could go by rail or by waterway, so long as it did not cause unacceptable economic costs or other incidental environmental damage. Armitage contemplates some improvements in that direction, but the report points out some of the limitations of that approach. We must all accept that there are practical limitations on how far we can go.

Let us begin by evidencing the willingness of the Government to divert traffic to railways wherever suitable opportunities occur. Section 8 grants are available to customers who need grant-aid to invest in facilities to move to the railways traffic that otherwise would go by road. We have been giving section 8 grants. We have not cut the amount of money available for section 8 grants. We have turned down requests for them only when customers have failed to demonstrate that any significant traffic would transfer if the money were forthcoming. I had talks with waterways interests about the possibility of extending section 8 to waterways before the Armitage committee reported. I listened sympathetically to their case and the Government are doing likewise.

The Government are interested in the Armitage recommendations; for example, that section 8 should be extended to Freightliners Ltd. and Sealink, and that perhaps the percentage grant should be increased. We shall consider those recommendations as part of our deliberations on the report.

We must not run away from every decision that has to be taken about the lorry by saying that the answer is to put all the traffic on to the railways. In the real world there are practical limitations on how far that can be done. Many of our industries are far away from the railways. The railways are suitable and attractive only for bulk goods that have to travel long distances. Using the railways is an inefficient and costly way of handling food distribution. In any event, there is a limit to how much traffic can be moved on to the railways.

The right hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness compared tonne-mileage on the railways in Britain with that in Western Europe. There are factors that he did not include in his comparison. One factor is geography. It is difficult to get the long rail haul in Britain that is possible on the Continent, which improves the attractiveness of the Continental railways. There is more international traffic on the Continent because there are land barriers over which the railways can travel while we have a sea barrier that inhibits the development of international rail traffic. We have a smaller loading gauge. In the nineteenth century our ancestors made a mistake with their smaller loading gauge, so that we cannot have piggy-back lorries on the backs of railway waggons, of the sort that are used in Western Europe.

Despite those inhibitions, when we compare the tonnage carried by British railways with that carried by Western European railways, it is evident that we carry roughly the same proportion. Their tonne-mileage is higher because they operate over longer distances. Our record compares favourably with Italy's, where less is carried on the railways. We are not too far away from the performances of Western Germany and France.

Insofar as it is possible, every sensible hon. Member would like to take steps to divert traffic from the roads to the railways, so long as the cost is not unacceptable. The Government will pursue that aim. However, in the real world we are left with a situation in which most of our freight will be carried by road on lorries. If our economy grows—I assume that the majority of us intend that our economy and the level of our economic activity should grow—more freight will be carried by lorry. That will determine the number of lorries on our roads, rather more than the Armitage report or anything else.

Some of the traffic is vital. Lorries carry goods to the ports for our export trade and distribute to the shops on which we all depend. We have to face the issue of deciding the type of lorries that we shall have and the controls and restraints that we shall impose on them to minimise the damage to our villages, countryside, rural peace and the traffic-filled suburbs of our larger cities. We must take a decision. It is as much a decision to determine that what we have by way of weight and size constraints is satisfactory as it is to move to the Armitage recommendations, to the EEC proposals, which are different again, or to any other proposals that might come forward that are a compromise in their character, such as the one advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) and by others.

We need a decision in the not-too-distant future. I include in that process a decision to say that what we have is the best of all possible worlds. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough said, there are those with serious industrial interests who need a resolution of the problem. There are trailer and vehicle manufacturers that will go out of business if the House wishes to indulge in such a process of consultation and repeated debate that years roll by before we even decide that we shall not change anything. There is a need to face the choices.

The choices must be affected, above all else, by the views of our constituents on what they Consider to be the quality of their lives. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough that the greatest hostility that we now encounter to large lorries arises from their volume. There are more complaints from the villages that I represent about the size of the lorries on our roads than about their weight. There is obviously some relationship between the two factors. Fortunately, we are not facing anyone who is advocating an increase in the size of our lorries.

In fact, the Armitage proposals are somewhat constrained. One proposal bears on the problem that we have no limitation on the height of lorries in this country. They are of course, constrained by bridges, but, as the regulations stand it would be possible, near ports, for some of the higher American-type containers to start appearing on our roads. Armitage is against that—a view, I imagine, that is generally acceptable, to judge from the debate.

The size of lorries is confined, as Armitage recommends and as is the practice at the moment, by the standard type container that we use to indulge in international trade. The International Standards Organisation has various sizes of container, including the biggest, which cause all the problems. These are 40 ft long, are on our roads at the moment and, given that the debate has gone into history, were authorised by the Labour Government in 1968. Twenty per cent. of our containers now go through the ports on these big ISO 40 ft long containers. They are the same size when they rumble from the British side on to the ship as they are when they emerge at the other side and rumble across Germany.

The present situation, which the House has to decide whether it wishes to maintain, is that if one has heavier goods, one can only fill our lorries with up to 70 per cent. of the possible weight. Similarly, given our present dimension limitations, our tankers cannot get up to the maximum permitted weights that are allowed in other countries. With fixed flows, like the transport of milk from Wincanton to London, the present restrictions mean that more tankers have to make the journey. Nothing in Armitage suggests bigger dimensions except a possible small extension to the cab to contain bunks and to turn more into sleeper cabs.

The Government have not taken any decisions. The issue is whether the obvious benefits to efficiency of bigger weights will be acceptable and the damage to the environment reduced by going for the axle weight proposals in the Armitage report. The Armitage case, which all hon. Members will have to consider, and which cannot possibly be decided tonight, is that what matters is axle weights and whether the footprint of the lorry matters more than the overall weight of it. I have no time to go into technical details. I have no technical expertise. The argument appears to turn on the more familiar equation that a thin lady in high heeled shoes can do more damage to a floor than a fat lady wearing carpet slippers.

That is the issue that has to be faced. We have to come to a decision eventually that will determine the type of lorries that we have over the next decade or so. We are asked to consider that problem as part of a package. Of course, we look at it in terms of a package. All the proposals dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden, including safety protection, the bars at the rear and the side, lower noise levels, the quieter lorry and all the restraints proposed by Armitage can be looked at as a package. All our policies should be consistent and in one direction.

The only warning that I give is that it is no good putting off all the decisions until we have made more progress on bypasses. I have not even time to point out that the previous Government cut the road programme in 1976. Our road programme reflects that. Fortunately, our road programme is based on greater priority for bypasses. We are building in Wimborne, Bere Regis and Bowes. We fixed the line for the Batheaston bypass about a month ago. I promise my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) that we shall look at the possibility of resuming work on it as soon as possible.

We must look at all these matters as a package. The House eventually, although not tonight, will judge them as a package. The Government will come to their conclusions when they have had time to evaluate the opinions of hon. Members and to consult outside bodies.

If we decide that any change is required—and such a change might be, for instance, merely to introduce a height limitation, which we do not have at present—it would involve our producing draft regulations, having statutory consultations, printing them and coming back to the House for a debate and a vote on the merits of the proposal. We shall move to a vote on the merits if anybody ever decides to do anything. Tonight we are consulting, we have consulted, and I am left as my hon. Friends are about what on earth the Opposition believe they are about to vote on.

Question put, That this House do now adjourm:—

The House divided: Ayes 231, Noes 282.

Division No.54]	[11.00 pm
AYES
Abse, Leo	Ellis, R. (NED'bysh're)
Adams, Allen	English, Michael
Allaun, Frank	Ennals, Rt Hon David
Alton, David	Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)
Archer, Rt Hon Peter	Evans, John (Newton)
Armstrong, Rt Hon Ernest	Ewing, Harry
Ashley, Rt Hon Jack	Faulds, Andrew
Ashton, Joe	Field, Frank
Atkinson, N. (H'gey,)	Flannery, Martin
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)	Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (H'wd)	Ford, Ben
Benn, Rt Hon A. Wedgwood	Forrester, John
Bennett, Andrew (St'kp't N)	Foster, Derek
Bidwell, Sydney	Fraser, J. (Lamb'th, N'w'd)
Booth, Rt Hon Albert	Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald
Boothroyd, Miss Betty	Freud, Clement
Bradley, Tom	Garrett, John (Norwich S)
Bray, Dr Jeremy	George, Bruce
Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)	Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
Brown, R. C. (N'castle W)	Ginsburg, David
Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)	Golding, John
Buchan, Norman	Gourlay, Harry
Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n & P)	Graham, Ted
Campbell, Ian	Grant, George (Morpeth)
Campbell-Savours, Dale	Grant, John (Islington C)
Canavan, Dennis	Hamilton, W. W. (C'tral Fife)
Cant, R. B.	Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Carmichael, Neil	Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Carter-Jones, Lewis	Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Cartwright, John	Haynes, Frank
Cocks, Rt Hon M. (B'stol S)	Healey, Rt Hon Denis
Cohen, Stanley	Heffer, Eric S.
Coleman, Donald	Holland, S. (L'b'th, Vauxh'll)
Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.	Home Robertson, John
Conlan, Bernard	Homewood, William
Cook, Robin F.	Hooley, Frank
Cowans, Harry	Horam, John
Craigen, J. M.	Howell, Rt Hon D.
Crowther, J. S.	Howells, Geraint
Cryer, Bob	Hudson Davies, Gwilym E.
Cunliffe, Lawrence	Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Cunningham, G. (Islington S)	Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Cunningham, Dr J. (W'h'n)	Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Dalyell, Tam	Janner, Hon Greville
Davidson, Arthur	Jay, Rt Hon Douglas
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)	John, Brynmor
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Johnson, James (Hull West)
Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)	Johnson, Walter (Derby S)
Davis, T. (B'ham, Stechf'd)	Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Deakins, Eric	Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rh'dda)
Dewar, Donald	Jones, Barry (East Flint)
Dixon, Donald	Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Dobson, Frank	Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Dormand, Jack	Kerr, Russell
Douglas, Dick	Kilfedder, James A.
Douglas-Mann, Bruce	Kilroy-Silk, Robert
Dubs, Alfred	Kinnock, Neil
Dunn, James A.	Lamborn, Harry
Dunnett, Jack	Leadbitter, Ted
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.	Leighton, Ronald
Eastham, Ken	Lestor, Miss Joan

Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)	Roberts, Allan (Bootle)
Litherland, Robert	Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)
Lofthouse, Geoffrey	Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)
Lyon, Alexander (York)	Robertson, George
Lyons, Edward (Bradf'd W)	Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)
McCartney, Hugh	Rooker, J. W.
McDonald, Dr Oonagh	Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)
McElhone, Frank	Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)
McKay, Allen (Penistone)	Ryman, John
McKelvey, William	Sever, John
MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor	Sheldon, Rt Hon R.
Maclennan, Robert	Shore, Rt Hon Peter
McMahon, Andrew	Short, Mrs Renée
McNally, Thomas	Silkin, Rt Hon J. (Deptford)
McNamara, Kevin	Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)
McTaggart, Robert	Silverman, Julius
McWilliam, John	Skinner, Dennis
Magee, Bryan	Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)
Marshall, D (G'gow S'ton)	Smith, Rt Hon J. (N Lanark)
Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)	Spearing, Nigel
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)	Spriggs, Leslie
Martin, M (G'gow S'burn)	Stallard, A. W.
Mason, Rt Hon Roy	Steel, Rt Hon David
Maxton, John	Stott, Roger
Maynard, Miss Joan	Strang, Gavin
Meacher, Michael	Straw, Jack
Mellish, Rt Hon Robert	Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley
Mikardo, Ian	Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)
Millan, Rt Hon Bruce	Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)
Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby)	Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)
Mitchell, R. C. (Soton Itchen)	Thorne, Stan (Preston South)
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)	Tilley, John
Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)	Tinn, James
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)	Torney, Tom
Morton, George	Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.
Moyle, Rt Hon Roland	Wainwright, E. (Dearne V)
Newens, Stanley	Walker, Rt Hon H. (D'caster)
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon	Watkins, David
O'Halloran, Michael	Weetch, Ken
O'Neill, Martin	Welsh, Michael
Orme, Rt Hon Stanley	Whitehead, Phillip
Palmer, Arthur	Willey, Rt Hon Frederick
Park, George	Williams, Rt Hon A. (S'sea W)
Parker, John	Wilson, Rt Hon Sir H. (H'ton)
Parry, Robert	Wilson, William (C'try S E)
Pendry, Tom	Winnick David
Penhaligon, David	Woodall, Alec
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)	Woolmer, Kenneth
Prescott, John	Wrigglesworth, Ian
Price, C. (Lewisham W)	Young, David (Bolton E)
Race, Reg
Radice, Giles	Tellers for the Ayes:
Rees, Rt Hon M (Leeds S)	Mr. Joseph Dean and
Richardson, Jo	Mr. Frank R. White.
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

NOES
Adley, Robert	Bowden, Andrew
Aitken, Jonathan	Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Alexander, Richard	Bradford, Rev R.
Ancram, Michael	Braine, Sir Bernard
Arnold, Tom	Bright, Graham
Atkins, Robert (Preston N)	Brinton, Tim
Baker, Kenneth (St. M'bone)	Brittan, Leon
Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)	Brocklebank-Fowler, C.
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony	Brooke, Hon Peter
Bendall, Vivian	Brotherton, Michael
Benyon, Thomas (A'don)	Brown, M. (Brigg and Scun)
Benyon, W. (Buckingham)	Browne, John (Winchester)
Berry, Hon Anthony	Bruce-Gardyne, John
Best, Keith	Bryan, Sir Paul
Bevan, David Gilroy	Budgen, Nick
Biffen, Rt Hon John	Bulmer, Esmond
Biggs-Davison, John	Butcher, John
Blackburn, John	Butler, Hon Adam
Blaker, Peter	Carlisle, John (Luton West)
Body, Richard	Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Bonsor, Sir Nicholas	Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (R'c'n)
Boscawen, Hon Robert	Chalker, Mrs. Lynda
Bottomley, Peter (W'wich W)	Channon, Rt. Hon. Paul

Chapman, Sydney	Hannam, John
Churchill, W. S.	Haselhurst, Alan
Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th, S'n)	Hastings, Stephen
Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)	Hawksley, Warren
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Hayhoe, Barney
Clegg, Sir Walter	Heddle, John
Cockeram, Eric	Henderson, Barry
Colvin, Michael	Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael
Cope, John	Hicks, Robert
Cormack, Patrick	Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Corrie, John	Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Costain, Sir Albert	Holland, Philip (Carlton)
Cranborne, Viscount	Hooson, Tom
Crouch, David	Hordern, Peter
Dean, Paul (North Somerset)	Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'Idf'd)
Dickens, Geoffrey	Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)
Dorrell, Stephen	Hunt, David (Wirral)
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.	Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Dover, Denshore	Hurd, Hon Douglas
du Cann, Rt Hon Edward	Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)
Dunn, Robert (Dartford)	Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Durant, Tony	Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Dykes, Hugh	Jopling, Rt Hon Michael
Eden, Rt Hon Sir John	Kaberry, Sir Donald
Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)	Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Eggar, Tim	Kimball, Marcus
Elliott, Sir William	King, Rt Hon Tom
Emery, Peter	Knox, David
Eyre, Reginald	Lamont, Norman
Fairgrieve, Russell	Lang, Ian
Faith, Mrs Sheila	Langford-Holt, Sir John
Farr, John	Latham, Michael
Fell, Anthony	Lawrence, Ivan
Fenner, Mrs Peggy	Lawson, Nigel
Finsberg, Geoffrey	Lee, John
Fisher, Sir Nigel	LeMarchant, Spencer
Fletcher, A. (Ed 'nb'gh N)	Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Fookes, Miss Janet	Lester Jim (Beeston)
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Fox, Marcus	Lloyd, Ian (Havant & W'loo)
Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh	Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Fraser, Peter (South Angus)	Loveridge, John
Fry, Peter	Luce, Richard
Gardiner, George (Reigate)	Lyell, Nicholas
Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)	McCrindle, Robert
Garel-Jones, Tristan	Macfarlane, Neil
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian	MacKay, John (Argyll)
Glyn, Dr Alan	Macmillan, Rt Hon M.
Goodlad, Alastair	McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)
Gorst, John	McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)
Gow, Ian	McQuarrie, Albert
Gower, Sir Raymond	Madel, David
Gray, Hamish	Major, John
Greenway, Harry	Marland, Paul
Griffiths, E. (B'y St. Edm'ds)	Marlow, Tony
Griffiths, Peter Portsm'th N)	Marshall Michael (Arundel)
Grist, Ian	Marten, Neil (Banbury)
Grylls, Michael	Mates, Michael
Hamilton, Hon A.	Mather, Carol
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)	Maude, Rt Hon Angus
Hampson, Dr Keith	Mawby, Ray

Question accordingly negatived.

Mawhinney, Dr Brian	Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin	Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)
Mayhew, Patrick	Shelton, William (Streatham)
Mellor, David	Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Meyer, Sir Anthony	Shepherd, Richard
Miller, Hal (B'grove)	Shersby, Michael
Mills, Iain (Meriden)	Silvester, Fred
Mills, Peter (West Devon)	Sims, Roger
Miscampbell, Norman	Skeet, T. H. H.
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)	Speed, Keith
Moate, Roger	Spence, John
Monro, Hector	Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)
Montgomery, Fergus	Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)
Moore, John	Sproat, Ian
Morris, M. (N'hampton S)	Squire, Robin
Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)	Stanbrook, Ivor
Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)	Stanley, John
Mudd, David	Steen, Anthony
Murphy, Christopher	Stevens, Martin
Myles, David	Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)
Neale, Gerrard	Stewart, A. (E Renfrewshire)
Needham, Richard	Stokes, John
Nelson, Anthony	Stradling Thomas, J.
Neubert, Michael	Tapsell, Peter
Normanton, Tom	Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)
Onslow, Cranley	Tebbit, Norman
Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.	Thomas, Rt Hon Peter
Page, Rt Hon Sir G. (Crosby)	Thompson, Donald
Page, Richard (SW Herts)	Thornton, Malcolm
Parkinson, Cecil	Townend, John (Bridlington)
Parris, Matthew	Trotter, Neville
Patten, Christopher (Bath)	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Patten, John (Oxford)	Vaughan, Dr Gerard
Pattie, Geoffrey	Viggers, Peter
Pawsey, James	Waddington, David
Percival, Sir Ian	Wakeham, John
Peyton, Rt Hon John	Waldegrave, Hon William
Pink, R. Bonner	Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir D.
Pollock, Alexander	Waller, Gary
Porter, Barry	Walters, Dennis
Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)	Ward, John
Prior, Rt Hon James	Warren, Kenneth
Proctor, K. Harvey	Watson, John
Raison, Timothy	Wells, John (Maidstone)
Rathbone, Tim	Wells, Bowen
Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)	Wheeler, John
Rees-Davies, W. R.	Whitelaw, Rt Hon William
Renton, Tim	Whitney, Raymond
Rhodes James, Robert	Wickenden, Keith
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon	Wiggin, Jerry
Ridley, Hon Nicholas	Wilkinson, John
Ridsdale, Julian	Williams, D. (Montgomery)
Roberts, M. (Cardiff NW)	Winterton, Nicholas
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)	Wolfson, Mark
Rossi, Hugh	Young, Sir George (Acton)
Rost, Peter
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy	Tellers for the Noes:
Sandelson, Neville	Mr. Tony Newton and
Scott, Nicholas	Mr. Selwyn Gummer.

Prisons

11.12 pm

I beg to move,

That the draft Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act 1980 (Continuance No. 3) Order 1981, which was laid before this House on 22nd January, be approved.

Before I give the reasons for the Government's request that sections 1 and 2 of the Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act be renewed for a further month—[Interruption.]

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will you ask hon. Members at the Bar either to get out of the Chamber or to keep quiet?

That would be generally acceptable to the House. Would those at the Bar please either come in and sit down, or leave?

It might help the House if I were to explain the present position in the prison officers' dispute which occasioned the introduction and passage of the Act.

During the debate on 15 December on the order renewing part I of the Act, my predecessor as Minister of State outlined the terms of the offer we had made to the Prison Officers' Association. As the House will know, the delegate conference called by the POA from 16 to 18 December failed to take up that offer and it continued with its industrial action.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made it clear to the POA how much he regretted its decision and when he met its representatives on 12 January emphasised his determination to achieve an early settlement. He stressed that it remained the Government's view that the way forward from the dispute lay in the adoption of a new duty system designed to eliminate the anomalies which gave rise to the dispute. He therefore renewed the offer made to the POA in December, with certain adjustments to meet objections raised by the POA mainly concerning the timing of the negotiation on the new duty system, and the return to normal working after the suspension of the industrial action. I shall not go into the detail of the offer today: the essential features are the same as those explained to the House by my right hon. Friend on 15 December. As my right hon. Friend stressed, the acceptance of the offer and, in particular, of the new duty system would not only benefit prison officers considerably in their conditions of service; it would also enable the management of establishments to be placed on a more efficient footing.

Following its meeting with the Home Secretary, the POA announced its decision to suspend its industrial action from midnight on Saturday 17 January, pending further consideration of the duty system. As the House will know, the great majority of local branches of the POA suspended their action in accordance with the decision of their national executive committee. Subsequently, however, the Ashford branch of the POA took legal action against its national executive committee on the grounds that the decision to suspend action should, under the POA constitution, have been taken by a delegate conference. On Friday 23 January, the High Court found in favour of the Ashford branch and made an order compelling the NEC to rescind the instruction suspending industrial action. The operation of the order itself was, however, suspended for six weeks. We do not yet know what consequences that decision will bring. However, we must all hope that the POA will find a way to carry through its earlier decision to suspend action while negotiations continue.

As the House will know, the main consequence of the prison officers' industrial action has been that up to 5,000 prisoners at any one time have had to be held either in police cells or in emergency accommodation at Frankland prison and Rollestone camp. The first priority after the suspension of industrial action was to secure the orderly transfer of those prisoners to normal prison accommodation. Clearly we were anxious that that should be achieved as soon as possible: as we have repeatedly stressed, it was grossly unsatisfactory that prisoners should have had to be detained for long periods in accommodation never intended for that purpose. Moreover, we were determined that the additional burden on the police and the Armed Services by the prison officers' action should be lifted as soon as possible. I should like to place on record once again the thanks of my right hon. Friend and of the Government for the way in which the police and the Armed Services have shouldered that burden.

Can the hon. and learned Gentleman tell us how much it has cost in extra duties for the police and the Army so that we can judge that against the possible cost of settling the dispute?

The House will recall that provision has been made, by way of additional Estimate, in the sum of £13 million. That was based upon assumptions as to the likely date when the action would finish, which have not, alas, been fulfilled. I cannot give the individual breakdowns, but it has been a costly and damaging dispute.

The transfer of some 5,000 prisoners into prison is a complex process, especially since the prisons are simultaneously coping with their normal intake front the courts. Moreover, the process is hindered by the continuing refusal to receive prisoners of the few establishments, including a number of local prisons, which are continuing to take industrial action. Nevertheless, the process of transfer is well under way and by this morning there were only 1,656 prisoners in police cells, as compared with 4,027 before suspension of industrial action, 183 in Frankland as compared with 603 before suspension, and only 11 in Rollestone, as compared with 352. We propose in the interests of flexibility to retain Rollestone until the process of transferring prisoners is completed.

The process of transfer cannot, however, be completed by midnight on 28 January when the currency of the order approved by the House on 15 December ceases. That is why we have laid before the House the present order. The House will be aware that we are not seeking to renew sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Act, which respectively enabled the Secretary of State to reduce the numbers in prison custody by authorising the release of unconvicted and unsentenced prisoners, by restricting the powers of the courts to imprison for non-payment of money and by authorising the early release of prisoners. My right hon. Friend made it clear that these provisions would not be used unless absolutely necessary. Since that has not proved the case, and since the great majority of establishments have returned to normal working, we are content to allow these powers to lapse. However, I must make it equally clear that we cannot take for granted a settlement of the dispute, or even the continuing suspension of industrial action, although, of course, we hope for it. We have made some progress during the past week, but a resumption of industrial action would lead to the kind of disruption we have seen in the past three months. If it became necessary, therefore, we should not hesitate to ask the House for the reactivation of sections 3, 4 and 5.

However, we must ask that sections 1 and 2 of the Act should be renewed for a further period. Section 1 permits prisoners to be held in places other than prisons approved for the purpose by the Secretary of State. Thus, so long as prisoners remain in the places approved by the Secretary of State—Frankland prison and Rollestone camp—section 1 will be needed. We hope that both places will be empty in the very near future, and, of course, they will not be used for this purpose again unless there is any further serious industrial action.

Section 2 will also be needed in the present circumstances. The speed of the return of prisoners to prison establishments is, to a large extent, dependent on the availability of police and prison officers for escort duties. The ease of reception and absorption of prisoners at prisons is also affected by the numbers of prison officers available. For these reasons, and because there are still some prison officers taking industrial action, we are asking for the continuance of section 2 so that the provision of escorts to take prisoners to remand hearings does not hinder the return of prisoners to normal custody. However, we will be urging the courts to restore the usual cycle of remand productions as soon as possible. The House will recall that, under section 2, courts can make special directions requiring defendants to be produced, and we will recommend them to use that power generally as soon they are satisfied that it is reasonable to do so in their areas.

I have stressed that the prison officers' action has at best been suspended, not terminated. Nevertheless, there is now some hope that the end of this sad episode in the history of the prison service is in sight. If that is so, I hope very much that we can once again begin to tackle the fundamental problems facing the prison system which the May committee identified. One of these clearly centres on industrial relations; my right hon. Friend is determined to seek with the POA ways of avoiding the industrial action which has scarred not just the past three months but, indeed, much of the last 10 years.

Another and perhaps the most fundamental problem facing the prison system is that of the prison population. My right hon. Friends have noted on previous occasions in the House that the fall in the numbers in custody from 44,000 to the recent figure of about 40,000 has been the only welcome feature of the past months, although I view with concern the increase of 1,000 that has taken place in the last week. If this increase continues, the consequence will be very serious. We naturally have the reasons for the fall in the prison population during the dispute under examination. It may well be that they do not quickly become apparent or, indeed, that they are not all even established beyond doubt. Some of them may prove of purely temporary effect. But certainly we in the Home Office must consider—and I hope the courts and police will do the same—whether there are any lessons from the steps we have had to take which can help us as we face the urgent and important task of keeping the prison population within tolerable numbers.

I assure the House that the Government, for their part, will continue their urgent search for acceptable means of reducing the prison population consistent with the protection of the public. Indeed, my right hon. Friend has taken up a helpful and constructive suggestion made to him by the governors' branch of the Society of Civil and Public Servants last year. This should, we hope, result in a modest, but useful, reduction in the prison population. The Prison (Amendment) Rules 1981, which have today been laid before the House and will come into force on 23 February, allow those with very short custodial sentences to qualify for one-third remission for good conduct. At present, sentences of one month or less do not qualify for remission, and remission may not operate to reduce a sentence below 31 days: in future, remission will be available on any sentence of more than five days, but will not operate to reduce a sentence below five days.

The present qualifying period of one month is, of course, arbitrary, and it seems right in principle to apply remission to as many prisoners as possible. The five-day limit has been retained to avoid anomalies arising from section 109 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952, which allows a magistrates' court to order a convicted defendant to be detained in police cells for not more than four days.

This grave problem of overcrowding is one among many affecting our prisons calling for urgent attention. It will be far easier to provide this when this dispute and its consequences become things of the past. In the interim, I must ask the House to approve the order, to enable us to cope with the remaining consequences of the prison officers' industrial action.

11.24 pm

The Opposition were extremely reluctant to give a Second Reading to the Bill that became the Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act 1980, and it is with great regret that we find it necessary to renew the provisions of the Act once more, after only a month. The provisions of section 2 still represent a serious infringement of basic civil liberties—the rights of detained people. It contains unprecedented powers which we do not wish to see on the statute book.

The Minister of State's predecessor was fairly optimistic during the last debate about the prospects of a satisfactory settlement of this unhappy dispute within the prison service, but the situation now appears to be, if not worse, at least more complicated and depressing. We have now reached the sixteenth week of unrest in the prisons.

The hon. and learned Gentleman gave the House a brief account of events during the past few weeks. We have heard that the High Court ruled that the executive committee of the Prison Officers' Association acted unlawfully in suspending action without convening a special delegate conference. Will the Minister clarify the position of the Home Office in relation to a report in the newspapers of a statement in the High Court by Mr. Justice Browne-Wilkinson? He was reported as saying that he thought that the executive

"may well have been misled by the Home Secretary into feeling that it was essential for the preservation of their bargaining position that industrial action should be suspended."

The House, and perhaps readers outside who saw the comment, would like to hear from the Minister whether that was the case. Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will also clarify the statement that the executive was misled, even if unintentionally.

The order by the High Court judge was a seemingly unique and unprecedented one in industrial relations. It would be useful to know the part played by the Home Secretary that led to the reference made by Mr. Justice Browne-Wilkinson. Readers of The Daily Telegraph were given only that part of the judge's statement.

The Prison Officers' Association now appears to be split, since the executive committee does not have the backing of all its members. The Home Secretary faces the unhappy position of there being factions among the prison officers. This power struggle can apparently be resolved only at a delegate conference, which may mean a delay of up to six weeks from the time of the High Court decision. Like the Minister, and I am sure all hon. Members, I hope that the association will find a way to suspend the industrial action.

The Minister told us the position in the prisons. We are pleased to hear that the number of people detained in police cells and Army camps has been considerably reduced. We are pleased for them, but some of the burden has been put back on the already overcrowded prisons.

The hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned that a few prisoners were still affected by industrial action. Will he tell the House how many, and, if possible, which prisons they are?

As for the cost of this exercise, at some £13 million by now, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) referred, it is ironic that one of the reasons given by the Government for resisting the prison officers' claim was the cost that would be incurred. It would be interesting to know what the estimated cost of agreeing to the claim would be, compared with the costs now being borne by the taxpayer to deal with the consequences of the dispute.

The Minister referred to the extent to which section 2 of the Act is being enforced. I am not aware that the probation officers, who have special knowledge and experience of this section, are any less concerned about its effects now than they were a month ago at the time of the last debate. They were concerned, and presumably still are, that as prisoners have lost their long-standing and automatic right to appear in court every eight days, there could be prisoners in cells remaining unknown to the probation service and not in contact with any form of legal advice. I hope that we shall have reassurance that that is not happening.

We look forward to further reports on the Home Office survey of 50 courts. Are requests for special direction still being granted? We should like evidence from everyone working with prisoners and in prisons on the fair implementation of section 2, which of all the sections of the Act is the one regarded with the greatest seriousness.

We are pleased that sections 4 and 5 have not had to be used. These were the two sections towards whose purpose the Opposition were most sympathetic. Their provisions would certainly help to reduce the total prison population, and it is that reduction that we all wish to see.

According to the Minister, if I understood him aright, the prison population is now 41,000. Having fallen from 44,000 to 40,000, it has now risen by 1,000, due to the transfers. It would be useful to know whether sentencing practices during the whole period of the dispute have changed in any significant way. Perhaps we could have as soon as possible the results of the evaluation which, I gather, the Home Office is making of the reasons for the fall in the prison populaton. Are fines or suspended sentences instead of custodial sentences being used by magistrates' courts, are more bail applications being granted, and with which types of offence are these changes connected?

We on the Opposition Benches have for some time advocated the desirability of reducing custodial sentences as a way of reducing the prison population. There is no evidence that the reduced prison population during the period of the dispute has resulted in a greater risk to public safety. May we therefore conclude that a high prison population is not essential for public safety?

It is hoped that the past 16 weeks will have made magistrates' courts and courts generally see the advisability of non-custodial sentences wherever possible. Obviously, less overcrowding will be better for the prisoners and the prison officers, and better for the whole atmosphere throughout our prison system. We welcome the Minister's announcement that remission will be extended for short-term prisoners. This is another step in the right direction to reduce the prison population.

Does my hon. Friend agree that, although that is a step in the right direction, it would be defeated if the courts simply increased penalties to compensate for it, and should not the outcome of that step be carefully monitored by the Home Office to see exactly what happens as a result?

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that there should be an evaluation by the Home Office not only of the way that sentencing practices have changed during the past 16 weeks, but of the way matters proceed in the forthcoming months. We must see how sentencing procedures and practices are affected—or not affected—by this new measure.

I conclude by expressing the hope that a speedy, satisfactory and permanent solution will be found to the prison officers' dispute, acceptable to the Home Office and the prison officers, so that it will not be necessary for the House to meet again in a month's time to renew this order.

11.35 pm

This has been an interesting debate, especially as we have spoken of people being released early from prison sentences. As the Minister knows, I have tabled three questions to the Home Department about people remanded in custody—refused bail—who have been awaiting trial for 12 months, 15 months or longer. I hope that some good will come from this dispute and that we shall get statistics showing how many people have been released on bail who might not otherwise have been released and who committed offences while on bail.

There is more than anecdotal evidence to suggest that people are being sentenced to imprisonment without being sentenced by any court of law. In a country which prides itself on habeas corpus, it seems odd that people can serve 10, 12 or even 17 months in Her Majesty's prisons when they are supposed to be innocent until found guilty by a court of law. I hope that some good will come from this dispute in that sense.

It is most important that we should reflect most carefully before remanding people in custody. If we are to release people because of some dispute, we either believe that they are not a danger to the public or we are releasing them knowing that they are a danger to the public. Something is patently wrong about one course. Above all, people who are charged have a right to be assumed to be innocent until found guilty. We all agree that the public need to be protected from those who are violent and are known to be violent.

If this dispute drags on, it seems that people who are charged with, for example, fraud offences will have to wait for justice because the courts are unwilling to work normal working hours, because they want to sit from 10 am to 4 pm for only about seven months in the year. We must examine the question whether it is right to remand people for 10, 12 or 17 months, with all the worry and concern which that entails, when, if they are found guilty—and some are not—they are not given custodial sentences. It is always easy to be just to the lovely child. It is, however, just as important to be just to the ugly child. People who are charged with an offence are so often assumed to be guilty because people are happy to think that. Let us hope that, arising from this dispute, there will be a re-examination of the practice of remanding people in custody. We must remember the assumption, supposed to be enshrined in English law, that people are innocent until found guilty by a court of law.

11.39 pm

I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark) on his speech. I agree with him 100 per cent.—plus. I wonder what would be said if people were held in custody in Chile, the Soviet Union or Iran when they had committed no crime. Some people find it hard to believe the Government when they say that there is overcrowding in our prisons when self-confessed and convicted criminals are allowed to go to open prisons while those who have committed no crime are incarcerated in closed prisons. It is difficult to believe that there is a shortage of accommodation.

I asked some questions only today, and I was told that on 30 November 1980 3,220 persons were in open prisons serving sentences for criminal offences. At the same time, 2,222 persons were in closed prisons on remand awaiting trial. Why cannot the unconvicted prisoners go into the open prisons and let the self-confessed convicted criminals go into the closed prisons?

I take an actual case again. I asked how much of Lord Kagan's sentence was served in a closed prison before he was moved to an open prison. The answer was given today. Lord Kagan spent a total of 14 days in a closed prison before he was transferred to an open prison. Moreover, I believe that those 14 days were the period when he was on trial and awaiting trial.

Lord Kagan can have his trial in 14 days and go straight into an open prison, yet a constituent of mine who is unconvicted, who has nothing against him, has been waiting 17 months. If and when he comes to trial, if he is found guilty, and if he receives the maximum sentence, with time off for good conduct the sentence would be less than the time that he has already served. Before even coming to trial, he has served more than he would have been sentenced. That is what is happening in Britain in 1980—not in 1880, and not in the Soviet Union—and it has been going on under this Government and the Labour Government.

I asked some other questions, and got the usual ministerial fob-off that they could not give the information because it would involve disproportionate expenditure of time and cost. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) need not laugh. The same thing happened under the Labour Government. The former Attorney-General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Silkin), is here. It was the same Department, with the same civil servants. If they wanted to dodge something they squashed it by saying that it could not be found. When they want to find things, they can find them all right.

Order. This debate concerns the Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act and its continuation, not what answers should be given to questions.

Yes, but when the Minister introduced it he explained that he did not want to keep people in these temporary prisons. He could not find accommodation for them, and he wanted to continue to put them into police cells. I am pointing out how he could find plenty of opportunities to put them into proper prisons. Let him release those who have committed no crime.

He says that one of the reasons is that they might not be there for their trial. What about Lord Kagan? He was not there for his trial, was he? He ran away. I know that it is not done in this place to refer to people in that way, but to me it is. I have constituents who have done nothing wrong at all, but who are in prisons. Other hon. Members must have such constituents, too. They are not all in my constituency, thank God.

There are 2,222 persons in closed prisons awaiting trial. So there are 2,222 places in those prisons in which the Home Office could put convicted prisoners. It is not necessary to have an order to say that those awaiting trial should go to police cells, at a cost of £150 a week to have doctors coming along to give them special examinations. We should not give the right to the Home Secretary to do what he wants. There is plenty of opportunity for him to take other action.

The lawyers are the best-paid people in the country. They are always in favour of an incomes policy—but not, of course, for themselves. They are like Mr. Roy Jenkins. The judges have also had more increases in salary than anyone else. The judges and the lawyers must not work after 4 o'clock in the afternoon—they might not get the bus home. But, of course, we supply the judges with cars. There would be no necessity for the order if the judges and lawyers were to get cracking and, as one great Britisher said, get their fingers out and get stuck in. We are always being urged to increase production. It would be wonderful if the Home Secretary could tell us that the judges and lawyers had agreed to work four or five hours extra and had doubled their production. At least, so many people would not have to wait so long on remand.

It is a scandal and disgrace that in this so-called great British democracy we have a system of justice in which a poor, ordinary working man can be kept in a closed prison for 17 months awaiting trial while a convicted, self-confessed criminal, because he happens to be a Member of the House of Lords, is allowed to serve his time in an open prison.

11. 47 pm

I am happy to be able to follow the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis) because this is probably the only occasion in which I shall be able to agree with almost all that he said. In my own defence I should say that I am a lawyer and that I am not in favour of an incomes policy. I should say in favour of the judiciary that judges do not just catch the bus at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. They have other jobs to do, particularly in connection with other cases which they may have been considering and upon which they have to reach a conclusion.

There is a consensus about what we are discussing, namely, that the sooner we see this legislation off the statute book the better. It has created certain unpleasantnesses and anomalies. One that I was particularly pleased to hear the Minister deal with is the provision in the Act that it is not necessary for a defendant to be produced in court when his bail application is being considered. Many of my professional colleagues view that aspect of the law with some fear. It has always been the case that justice should be seen to be done, and if a defendant is not by right entitled to be present at his application for bail, I do not think we can be entirely happy that justice is being seen to be done. I therefore welcome my hon. Friend's remarks in that regard.

On Second Reading I made certain observations to the Minister who was at that time responsible for the measure, but who has now been transferred to the rarer fields of being Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I was concerned, as I think most of my hon. Friends are, with the problem of overcrowding. I was concerned, as many lawyers are, with the provisions arising out of what is known as the Nottingham justices' case.

That case provided that once a magistrates' court had decided that a defendant was not entitled to bail it would not be open to a solicitor or barrister in future to make a further application for bail, regardless of the fact that there were other matters which he felt he could adduce in his client's defence. Indeed, so concerned are members of the legal profession about this case that they have been most reluctant to make early applications for bail in case at a later date they have strong evidence which they can adduce in favour of the application. That has meant that solicitors have not been getting bail for their clients at as early a date as possible. My suggestion to the Minister's predecessor was that that case could and should be urgently amended to allow early bail hearings to take place without prejudice to later applications.

When I raised the matter on Second Reading my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) quite properly intervened from his side of the legal profession and pointed out that one can always apply to a judge in chambers. In case the Minister is likely to refer to that matter, I point out that my experience is that it is very difficult to get legal aid for a hearing before a judge in chambers. Unless one is reasonably well off, it is not always possible to go before a judge in chambers once a bail application has been refused by the magistrates. It is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut to say "Keep the Nottingham justices' case going, but allow the chap to go before a judge in chambers".

The Minister has a difficult problem to deal with, but what I have suggested is a way out of the problem of overcrowding in our penal establishments. I do not call them prisons, because we are now dealing to a large extent with police stations. It will help poorer defendants who, nevertheless, are not entitled to, or are unlikely to get, aid, and it will relieve the enormous pressure on the police if he can see his way to making this very small but very significant reform.

11.52 pm

I do not think that anybody can possibly oppose the order, realising the problems with which the Home Office is faced, particularly in regard to the recent judgment in the courts.

The prison officers' dispute is about the rota system, the meal break and the payment for it. Is the Minister satisfied that the right formula has been found and will ultimately be accepted by all prison officers? We have heard that seven prison officers were still refusing to go back to normal working. The extension would probably have been necessary in any event to cover that position, unless prisoners in police cells were to be put into prisons where the officers had returned to normal working, although perhaps they would not have been accepted there. But the dispute is concerned with payment for meal breaks, and with different types of rota. I do not think that we have had evidence tonight that the dispute is to be finally resolved so that the prison officers can return to their normal duties.

In the prison service there has been a considerable amount of unrest for a number of years. The three prisons in the Isle of Wight were not particularly involved in the present dispute because on their type of rota they were being paid overtime. Nevertheless, they came out in sympathy with their colleagues elsewhere. We do not know what is the position in Northern Ireland. I assume that the prison officers there are now working on the normal rota. I should like to know whether that is so, because it is very important. Certainly it caused difficulties when the prison officers there came out in sympathy with their colleagues, particularly at the time of the hunger strike just before Christmas.

It is desperately important that the Home Office should get the formula right. There is a chance to get back to a proper relationship between the Home Office and the prison officers on which they can both build in the long term to try to prevent such a dispute from arising again. But unless we cut back the population of our prisons, it will build up again because of the frustration of the ever-increasing numbers of prisoners and the inability to deal with them. That is part of the problem.

I hope that the Minister will assure us that he now feels that the negotiations that have taken place between his Department and the Prison Officers' Association are satisfactory, and that after crossing a few more t's and dotting a few more i's there will be a settlement which is acceptable to the vast majority of the prison officers. If that is not the case, further negotiations must take place. It would have been better if the matter had gone to arbitration in the first instance. We would have saved a lot of money and, after all, the prison officers said that they would accept the decision whether or not it went against them. The fact that the matter has dragged on so long has proved that we were right in the first instance. We are entitled to ask what evidence there is that this dispute will be resolved and a formula found that will be acceptable to the prison officers.

11.56 pm

It is important that we should begin by remembering why this measure was pushed through the House and the fact that many Labour Members predicted that a long-run farce was likely to develop because of the Government's attitude.

The dispute was over meal breaks, but that was not why the prison officers took their industrial action. They asked for arbitration. If they had been given arbitration in some form, there would have been no dispute. It was the Government's refusal to consider arbitration that provoked the dispute, and which has produced the consequences. The Government should admit that they were wrong. They should have accepted arbitration as a reasonable principle at that time.

Let us look at the cost. Much damage has been done to industrial relations within the prisons. Much of the good that came from the May report and the settlement has been dissipated, and it will take time to overcome the considerable strains and stresses that have developed within the Prison Officers' Association. The financial cost is far greater than it would have been had the arbitrator ruled in favour of the prison officers rather than in favour of the Government. There is a crying need in almost every prison for money to be spent on improving facilities, both for the prison officers and for the inmates. The £13 million was a total waste of money by the Government.

It is an abuse of the House to put through temporary measures and continually renew them, as the Government have done on many occasions. However, I welcome the fact that some provisions have been dropped from the Act. The Government should make up their mind whether they want permanent legislation or whether they want to continue renewing temporary legislation in this way.

The hon. Gentleman will recall that the original proposal was that the order should last for three months. It was in response to requests from the Opposition Benches that it was agreed by my right hon. and hon. Friends that the order should be renewable every month. The hon. Gentleman is in no position to grumble.

I admit that it was a concession on the part of the Government to renew the order monthly and, that the reports to the House have been of considerable use, but had the order lasted for three months the Government would now be asking for a renewal for another three months. At least we have the hope that we can get the matter out of the way at the end of next month if the Minister will give us some idea of how much real progress has been made in trying to settle the dispute.

The real message that the Government should take on board is that they should have gone for arbitration and not wasted the £13 million, which is desperately needed to improve conditions in our prisons.

12 midnight

Although no one would have wished it to be for this purpose, the prison officers' dispute has brought forward a golden opportunity to study some of the possible lines along which our future penal policy can develop. I join my voice with those of the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) and others who have asked for a thorough examination of the consequences and the effects of the extraordinary measures that were introduced in the Act to ascertain how far we can learn lessons from it.

The penal system has been at crisis point for some time. It appears that as a result of the Act there has been a reduction in the prison population. It may be that some of the measures were frowned upon at the start, but on examination they can be seen to have been of some assistance to us. If the inquiry is thorough—perhaps even to the extent of interviewing lawyers and judges who have made decisions during the period of the legislation that we are discussing—it may be that the Government will be presented with an opportunity to persuade the public that a change of attitude towards the penal system is overdue.

I am not normally considered—certainly this applies in my constituency—to be very liberal in matters of penal reform. However, I have been struck in recent months by the apparent weight of the evidence that has come from other countries that they do not have a significantly higher crime rate even though they do not send their people to prison so frequently or for so long. Sometimes the rates are lower in other countries. That is a matter that must be thoroughly investigated. It may be that some of the matters that have come to light as a result of this legislation will satisfy not only the Government but the people that some of the steps could be made more permanent. For the community's fears are perhaps the most important reason why we have not liberalised our penal system.

By and large, people do not want the penal system to be liberalised in case more crime is precipitated. I have particularly in mind the early release of some prisoners. We shall want to know whether they have re-offended or whether the facilities for the increased granting of bail have had a good or bad effect. It may be that, presented with the detailed facts of a case study of the sad incident of the prison officers' dispute, the public will be reassured that some liberalisation could take place that would not harm the community and would result in the lowering of the extraordinarily high level of the prison population, which has been shaming our system for so long.

I should like my hon. and learned Friend to say not only how impressed he has been with the contributions of all those who have spoken—I am sure that he will do so with his usual politeness—but that he is determined to ensure that there is a thorough investigation in depth of the ramifications of this legislation to ascertain the lessons that can be learnt from it.

12.5 am

I should like to correct the rubric on the Order Paper which says that this instrument has not yet been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. The Joint Committee considered the instrument this afternoon. It did not make any comment, although it is fair for me to comment that the Committee was pleased that the explanatory note is lucid and comprehensive and was included at the request a the Joint Committee on the basis that statutory instruments should be free from ambiguity so far as possible and that an explanatory note should refer to the extent, in this case, of the sort of legislation that this is. That is simply a straightforward piece of information. I am sure that the Joint Committee will not share my views on the merits of the order, which it does not anyhow consider.

I should like to reiterate some of the views I have expressed repeatedly on the primary legislation and on the delegated legislation. These are large, significant powers that the Government are renewing to solve what is, by common consent, an industrial relations disaster. The Government argue that they should not have gone to arbitration. Most hon. Members on the Labour Benches argue that they should have gone to arbitration. The way out of the position was not to pass draconian legislation, part of which is still retained in the order. Article 1 of the order allows anywhere to be designated by the Home Secretary as a prison. That is a large and comprehensive power over which the House should hesitate before passing it. It arises, after all, out of an industrial dispute.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) has said, time and again, in industrial disputes, because of intransigence, in this instance, by management, the dispute drags on. The initial cost of settling the dispute, even on the terms claimed by the prison officers, is probably much less than the total cost of proceeding in this way and holding out for a different solution. It looks as if a solution is in sight. Everyone is pleased by that, ham-fisted though the Government's conduct of the affair has been. We do not wish to see people suffering as a result of the overcrowding of prisons and the use of facilities which have been designated as prisons by the Home Secretary but which are largely unsuitable.

The extension of the order might be seen by the prison officers as a provocative action. The officers are probably seeking some form of assurance from the Government that whatever agreement has been reached and whatever assurances were made to the executive committee, which have now been challenged, will be carried out by the Home Secretary. An element of suspicion already exists. I should have thought that the Government would be prepared, and will have to be prepared at some stage, to take on trust an agreement and not rely on the backing of legislation to bolster up their reserve position where they can take alternative measures.

The second article dealing with further remands by a magistrates' court in a prisoner's absence is a matter of concern. The hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) expressed that concern succinctly. There is only one special set of circumstances in which it can be supposed that there is some advantage in not bringing a prisoner to court. In one case the editors of many daily newspapers and evening provincial newspapers rode roughshod through the law relating to committal. I refer to a notorious case in Yorkshire where the headlines, following a mistaken and ill-judged police press conference, were such that a prisoner who had been arrested was judged and convicted by the press, by clear implication, which breached a cardinal principle of English law, that a person is innocent until found guilty in a court. The police do not make the judgment and nor does the press. I am pleased that the Solicitor-General has made clear to newspapers and to the police that such action in future will not go unheeded.

Editors who ride roughshod through the law by breaking the rules on contempt should face the consequences. They are not above the law. No matter what view they take of themselves, they should face the consequences like the rest of us. Disgraceful scenes were instigated by disgraceful standards of journalism the day before the court appearance was supposed to take place. However, I do not derogate from the principle that a man should be able to appear in court when his bail is decided. He should not be remanded in his absence. That is important.

On balance, there seems to be no reason to persist with the order. It contains unsatisfactory powers which we regard with great apprehension. Although the powers are reduced by the order, it is principally designed to resolve a situation that is at least 50 per cent. of the Government's making. They are having to seek such draconian powers because of their inflexibility, their lack of judgment and their lack of concern for industrial relations and the resolution of disputes. One hon. Gentleman said that seeking such powers was blackmail. The prison officers probably regard the order as blackmail. One problem in industrial disputes is that there are two conflicting sides. Both sides have to give a little. The Government have remained at some distance from the problem.

I hope that we are at the end of the dispute. The order should not go through on the nod. We should demonstrate a token resistance in order to make clear our reservations about using such methods to resolve industrial disputes.

12.12 am

I am grateful to the House for the many points that have been raised in the short debate, and I hope to be able to answer them all.

The House rightly views with care any proposal to continue provisions that are so markedly in conflict with our traditions on remand and imprisonment. However, the Government have made out the circumstances in which it is right for the House to reactivate sections 1 and 2 of an Act passed to deal with a wholly exceptional situation. The disruption caused by the prison officers' dispute is, regrettably, not yet out of the way. We hope that we are in the last phase, but it has not yet been completed.

The hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) raised a number of points. One newspaper, and one only, reported the suggestion that the Home Secretary may have misled the Prison Officers' Association into supposing that its recommendation could properly have been made, and had to be made. I shall put the matter in clear terms. It is not for the Home Secretary to advise the Prison Officers' Association about what it may or may not do, having regard to the provisions of its rules and constititution. That is not part of his function. The Home Secretary in no way misled the Prison Officers' Association at the meeting on 12 January or in the letter that he wrote in confirmation of what he said to the representatives then.

Nothing that the learned judge uttered was said in a spirit of criticism of my right hon. Friend. I understand that the learned judge said that the Prison Officers' Association might have misunderstood something that was stated in my right hon. Friend's letter. I do not know whether that is so.

In his letter of 12 January my right hon. Friend repeated the proposals that he had put forward in December. He said that, in that they were made at a time of severe economic recession, they were generous. He also said that if the proposals did not lead to a suspension of industrial action

"I am afraid that I cannot guarantee the future availability either of transitional payments or of the introduction of reduced hours with no corresponding abatement of basic pay."

My right hon. Friend asked that he should be told within the next few days whether the committee intended to recommend that its members should accept the proposls.

The hon. Member for Halifax suggested that a misleading suggestion had been made by my right hon. Friend. There is no hint of that. I understand that the learned judge did not express the slightest criticism of my right hon. Friend. Indeed, given the facts, it is difficult to see how he could have done so.

The hon. Lady also asked how many prisons were still affected. About 11 establishments face continuing industrial action today in one form or another.

I was also asked the cost of agreeing to the claim. The claim—which called for back payments of meal allowances to 1975—is estimated to have amounted to about £10 million, with an annual recurring cost of £3 million.

It is often possible to argue that if only one side had not stood against the claims of another the initial cost of acceding to a claim would have been less than the cost sustained by resisting it. That is a shortsighted view. In this case, my right hon. Friend was right to refuse arbitration. As the Prison Officers' Association concedes, its claim falls outside the provisions of the Civil Service agreement. In addition, it would have been wrong to go to arbitration so soon after the May committee had considered its very broad remit, and so soon after my right hon. Friend had accepted all the committee's recommendations.

We heard that argument from the hon. and learned Gentleman's predecessor. If the hon. and learned Gentleman reads the relevant chapter in the May report, he will find that there are at least two, if not three, instances in which it specifically states that the committee could not reach a decision on that particular issue. It is not true that May covered all the aspects of the prison officers' claim. That should be put on the record.

Every recommendation of the May committee on pay and allowances was immediately accepted by my right hon. Friend. That was regarded as a proper reaction. It is not profitable to rake over the embers—I was grateful to the hon. Lady for her remarks—because everybody wants to find a way out of this miserable and extremely damaging episode.

The hon. Lady referred to the anxiety expressed by the National Association of Probation Officers that prisoners in cells are out of touch with the outside world. We told the association that we should be glad to look at any cases, but it has not produced any. There has to be a court hearing for each remand, and I am sure that we can rely on the probation service to pick up the cases where its help is needed. We know of no instance of the type that the probation officers had in mind.

The hon. Lady asked whether the Home Office survey was being continued. I can tell her that it is. She asked whether requests for special directions were still being granted. The answer is that they are. I can give her some brief particulars.

Certain questions were asked of 56 courts relating to their practice over the week 5 to 10 January. There were 403 people remanded in their absence, but all of them except 25 were legally aided. About half of those 25 were not represented because they had not asked to be, and the legal representatives of the remainder were not present for one reason or another.

There were 322 people who appeared before the courts by reason of a direction of the courts under section 2. Of that number, 151 appeared to enable their cases to be disposed of by the court, 121 for the purpose of consideration for bail, and 50 for other reasons. A total of 391 persons requested directions from the court that they should appear in person. All those requests were granted, save for five: 249 were for the purpose of disposal of their case, and 106 were for applications for bail.

That is the up-to-date position as revealed by the survey, taken on nearly, although not precisely, the same sample, covering about a quarter of all the criminal cases heard in England and Wales during the relevant period.

The hon. Lady asked whether sentencing practices had changed. That is an important question, and it was asked also by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence), who drew attention to the need for a close study of the lessons that will emerge. It is as yet too early for us to be able to add anything to what my right hon. Friend said when he last asked for this act to be reactivated, on, I think, 15 December.

The effects of the prison officers' dispute on the prison population are still being examined, and until an analysis of all the available statistics is complete I do not think that any comment of mine would be very reliable. But this is important, and we want to see whether, over the relatively short period with which we are dealing, we can draw any reliable conclusions.

I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to look carefully at the experience of other countries—notably Holland, with a population and society not dissimilar from our own, where, on the whole, sentences are much lower and the incidence of crime is not appreciably greater. I believe that we have to look carefully to see whether there are ways in which, without prejudicing the safety of our population, we can reduce prison populations by imposing shorter sentences.

I am glad that the hon. and learned Gentleman has referred to Holland, because there, as he will know, there has been a deliberate policy—indeed, a policy enshrined in legislation—for sentences to be reduced. It has not been left purely to the good will of the judiciary. He will know that, as a result, sentences have been considerably lower, with no increase in the rate of crime above the rate at which it has been running in this country.

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. There are encouraging indications from the Dutch experience. I believe that we all ought to examine those closely, and I welcome what has been said quite recently in the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, on this broad subject.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Halifax for her welcome to the extension of the remission of sentence, and I agree that we want to look carefully to see what effect this has. Our estimate is that it will have an effect annually of reducing the prison population by about 300, 100 in relation to those who are there on short prison sentences, and 200 in respect of those who are in prison for failing to pay fines. That is a small contribution, but one worth making.

Finally, I take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark) and made with great vehemence—in respect of which I imply no criticism—by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis) about overlong remands in custody.

I agree that is wrong for people to be kept in custody for an unreasonable length of time. I think that there can be no gainsaying that there are instances where that occurs. In the main, it is a problem for the South-East, though not exclusively, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor is considering special measures to deal with it. However, the problem is complex. It has diverse roots. The increased length of trials, out of all comparison with what was known only a few years ago, has something to do with it. The increasing number of trials also has a part in it. The shortage of court accommodation has something to do with it, too.

Surely it is necessary to state publicly, otherwise it might be misunderstood, that there are very few such cases of lengthy remands in custody where either the person concerned has not already got an appalling criminal record or the offence with which he is charged is one of very serious violence.

That is true. It is also important to bear in mind the principal reason for remanding in custody. The principal reason is the need to protect the public. There are many people, for reasons including those mentioned by my hon. Friend, who, by reason of their records, give proper cause for apprehension to magistrates that their continuance at large would be a great danger to the public.

This is a complicated as well as an important matter. An analysis of the first year of the operation of the Bail Act 1976 is in progress. When the results are available, which we hope will be later this year, they will be published. My right hon. Friend has said that he will consider the operation of the Bail Act when the results of the statistical analysis are complete.

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Yes, but I have a great many points to answer. I hope that I shall not be criticised if I do not answer some of them, having given way so much.

Frequently, when an hon. Member seeks information, he is told that it cannot be provided because of the disproportionate cost involved in producing it. However, the hon. and learned Gentleman has now made a statement. If Mr. X, a working man, is charged with an offence, he is kept in prison on remand. A wealthy criminal who has been tried and found guilty is allowed into an open prison. Why should a working man who may have done nothing wrong be expected to abscond, whereas someone like Lord Kagan is given bail, which enables him to abscond?

It might be difficult for the hon. Gentleman to understand, but these matters are not disposed of according to whether an accused person is a working man or a member of the other place.

There is preferential treatment.

It stretches the imagination to suppose that those responsible for these matters should wish to dispose of them in that manner. I can give the hon. Gentleman an assurance that Lord Kagan has received no special favour. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman has a loud voice, and it is one the he exercises a great deal, but I assume that he asks a question in order to have an answer.

I apologise.

For the purpose of accuracy, it is worth recalling that Lord Kagan spent seven months in prison in France before he came here. From what one knows of French prisons, I should not think that that is much of a laughing matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) may have misunderstood what I said, because section 2 is being retained by the order, for the reasons that I have given. He asked about the Nottingham justices' case. My noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is considering a right of application for bail to the Crown court where bail has been refused by the magistrates' court, but that would have public expenditure consequences, and my noble Friend has not yet formed a view on it.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) asked whether the formula would be accepted by all prison officers. If we could give him a reliable answer to that question we should be an even better Government than we are. All that I can say is that my right hon. Friend's proposal, which I believe to be very reasonable, fair and generous, was accepted by the national executive of the POA. We believe that there are good prospects once its terms are fully understood by all members of the association, including those terms that have not received as much publicity as others, such as the generous proposals to assist prison officers to buy their houses and similar allowances.

The essential nature of the offer is that it will provide a new duty system that will sweep away the irritating and anomalous differences between those who serve in one type of prison and those who serve in another—the Vee scheme as against the FGS scheme. That type of irritant has served to produce over a long time damaging disputes over matters which, of themselves, are quite small. The meal allowance controversy is relatively small compared with the desperate damage that has been done.

We believe that the new duty system will prove to be a satisfactory and popular improvement. We then hope—and I know that this is the desire of the POA's leadership—that together we can get down to working out how best to ensure that industrial relations do not fall into these troughs in the future. That was a point taken by the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett), as to whether prison officers would accept the proposal. I believe that there are very good hopes that they will; there is real progress.

The hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) said that he thought that every man had the right to go before a court for bail and not to be remanded in his absence. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be reassured by the figures that I was able to give his hon. Friend the Member for Halifax, as a result of the Home Office survey, showing the way in which section 2 is operating. It permits the court to give directions that a person in custody shall be brought before it. It is open to anybody, accordingly, to request that such a direction shall be given. I was able to tell the House of the numbers of requests in the week 5 January to 10 January—391, all but five of which were granted. Accordingly, it appears that this provision—exceptional though it is, I agree—is being operated in a humane and practical way, as one would hope and expect.

I do not wish to sit down without rising, no doubt like a fat trout, to what was said by a far from slender trout, the hon. Member for Newham, North-West, about the judges. I must reject his suggestion that if only the judges worked a bit harder they would soon clear the backlog and sweep away the numbers of people held for an unreasonably long time in custody without trial. That simply is not so, and it is an unusually facile suggestion for the hon. Gentleman to make that the only work that the judges do is done during court hours. The judges work—indeed have to work—extremely hard on reserved judgments and on administrative matters. Court staff and the back-up staff have to work many hours above those during which the courts are actually sitting. Were it otherwise, the standard of justice would decline rapidly and considerably in this country.

Tell that to my constituents who have been waiting 17 months to get a trial.

That is very regrettable, of course, but, instead of shouting, let us try to get to the root of these matters—

The Minister cannot because he dodges the questions.

—and not give vent to prejudice at the top of our voices. That is not the way in which the House will get to the root of these matters.

We are in Britain, not the Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union the hon. Gentleman would find no judges, no justice, and nobody to take care of him in extremis.

We find ourselves in what we trust is the concluding phase of a lamentably long and damaging period of industrial action in the prisons. That industrial action necessitated quite exceptional measures in the public interest—[Interruption.]—which Parliament granted in the Act. We are now able to manage without—[Interruption.]—the renewal of sections 3, 4 and 5—

Order. The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis) has made his point. I hope that he will not continue to interrupt.

We are able now to manage without the renewal of sections 3, 4 or 5, which have never been used, but with the situation as uncertain as it regrettably remains, and with pockets of industrial action as yet unsuspended, it is necessary to renew sections 1 and 2, and I ask the House so to decide.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 75, Noes 5.

Division No. 55]	[12.37 am
AYES
Alexander, Richard	Marlow, Tony
Ancram, Michael	Mather, Carol
Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)	Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony	Mayhew, Patrick
Benyon, Thomas (A'don)	Meyer, Sir Anthony
Berry, Hon Anthony	Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Best, Keith	Moate, Roger
Boscawen, Hon Robert	Needham, Richard
Braine, Sir Bernard	Neubert, Michael
Brinton, Tim	Newton, Tony
Brotherton, Michael	Normanton, Tom
Bulmer, Esmond	Page, Rt Hon Sir G. (Crosby)
Butcher, John	Parris, Matthew
Carlisle, John (Luton West)	Penhaligon, David
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)	Pollock, Alexander
Chapman, Sydney	Proctor, K. Harvey
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Rathbone, Tim
Cope, John	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Cranborne, Viscount	Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)
Dorrell, Stephen	Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.	Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Dover, Denshore	Silvester, Fred
Fenner, Mrs Peggy	Sims, Roger
Garel-Jones, Tristan	Stevens, Martin
Goodlad, Alastair	Stewart, A. (E Renfrewshire)
Griffiths, Peter Portsm'th N)	Stradling Thomas, J.
Grist, Ian	Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)
Gummer, John Selwyn	Waddington, David
Hawksley, Warren	Wakeham, John
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)	Waller, Gary
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)	Wells, Bowen
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael	Wheeler, John
Lawrence, Ivan	Wickenden, Keith
LeMarchant, Spencer	Wolfson, Mark
Lester Jim (Beeston)	Young, Sir George (Acton)
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Loveridge, John	Tellers for the Ayes:
Macfarlane, Neil	Mr. Peter Brooke and
McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)	Mr. Donald Thompson.
Major, John

NOES
Bennett, Andrew (St'kp't N)	Welsh, Michael
Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)	Tellers for the Noes:
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)	Mr. Bob Cryer and
Parry, Robert	Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act 1980 (Continuance No. 3) Order 1981, which was laid before this House on 22nd January, be approved.

Hospital Services, Bolton

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Cope.]

12.48 am

For several months in 1978 and since there has been extensive consultation with the general public through the area health authority and the community health council in Bolton with the object of considering the proposed pattern of hospital development in the Bolton area.

The result of that consultation has been that virtually without dissent everyone locally came down, first, in favour of a single district general hospital in Bolton, and, secondly of that general hospital being based on the site of the Bolton general hospital.

The reason for the choice of that site was that Bolton is a relatively compact industrial town and the Bolton general hospital is situated with easy access to all centres of population and also within a mile of the motorway network. It was felt necessary to locate all the services for those people in need of acute medical and surgical treatment, including acute geriatric and mental illness, on one site, and the proposal was, basically, for a 1,170-bed hospital at the Bolton general hospital site, covering all acute beds, plus maternity, mental illness, some geriatric, and some ESMI, with other beds situated at the Bolton Royal infirmary, the Hutton hospital and the Fall Birch hospital. In the latter three, the beds would cover the post-operative pre-convalescent, geriatric and ESMI cases.

The reason for the choice of the Bolton general hospital site for the district hospital was that it was the only site large enough to accommodate all the concentrations of acute services in one district general hospital that would be necessary to be placed there. Part of the site was owned by the Bolton general hospital, part of it was reserved in the town plan, and all the site has now been purchased.

Already there has been a move towards the creation of a district general hospital by the establishment of a maternity unit, and plans for three major developments are well advanced, covering such things as roads, drainage, boilerhouse, water, engineering services and so on. But, above all, the choice of one district hospital was based on the best use of manpower and the resources that were necessary to give the back-up to such acute services.

Manpower is a scarce resource in the Health Service, and in the foreseeable future there is no possibility whereby one could duplicate the services that are necessary to give adequate acute treatment without providing at best a second rate service, irrespective of the finance that was available.

In May last year the Department of Health and Social Security issued its consultative document "Hospital Services—The Future Pattern of Hospital Provision in England". On the recommendation of the Department, Bolton was asked by the region to accept a different pattern of complementary district hospitals. This would presumably be a base at Bolton general hospital and another base at Bolton Royal infirmary.

That proposal was looked at by the area health authority and was rejected, mainly on the ground that having two district hospitals would duplicate such units as coronary care units, intensive care units and electro-cardiograph departments. It would mean that additional anaesthetists would have to be found, and the service from this scarce body of people is at the most just satisfactory. Any proposal that placed additional strain and required additional anaesthetist consultants would not, in Bolton, be a practical proposition.

Also, additional surgical and operating theatre nursing teams would be required, more energy would be required to be used by utilising two bases, more scarce junior medical staff, extra maintenance costs, extra catering equipment, one extra operating theatre at each major hospital, and a satellite pathology unit at the hospital which did not have the main unit or, indeed, extra transport to make up for the deficiency. There would require to be more supervisory staff; it would affect the male-female bed mix; and it would have implications for the medical records and also for additional transport.

For these reasons, Bolton rejected the suggestion of having two district hospital bases and then resubmitted the proposal for the 1,170 bed district hospital based on the area which is at present occupied by the Bolton general hospital.

The urgency of the debate this evening is that it is not only the pattern of hospitals in Bolton that has to be considered, for obviously there are other capital schemes which either should have been done or should take place within the next few months, and which are awaiting the decision on what the pattern should be. These include, for example, ESMI units, geriatric blocks, pharmacy manufacturing units, staff changing, long-stay kitchen improvements, medical record storage accommodation, and so on.

What we are saying is that we are concerned not only to have a decision on the pattern of the hospitals but that we would also like to have that decision as soon as possible, because each delay on the capital schemes that I have outlined will multiply each month that the delay continues.

I should like an assurance from the Minister that the developments planned in 1978 and receiving unanimous public backing will be allowed to be proceeded with. May I ask him when this procedure will take place? May I assume that the Department will back the concentration of acute services, even though this implies a hospital of 1,170 beds as outlined? May I also ask the Minister to take into consideration the other projects that are dependent on ministerial decision?

I am sure that my colleagues from the district would also support what I have said, although for various reasons they are unable to be here this evening.

12.57 am

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Young) for raising the question of the development of acute hospital services in Bolton. I know that the subject has been of concern to his constituents for many years. His decision to raise it tonight is a timely one, because I have been studying the development of services in Bolton over the past week.

The hon. Member has put his case very clearly, and he has a thorough grasp of the issues involved. He has detailed the many advantages which he believes would result from the concentration of acute services at Bolton general hospital, for both patients and staff. He has described the extensive public consultation which was carried out in 1978 about the future of hospital services in Bolton, and has laid stress on the overwhelming local support which has been forthcoming for a major acute hospital on the Bolton general site. He has rightly drawn attention to the unsettling effect which renewed uncertainty has had locally, and to the importance of an early decision which will enable much needed capital improvements to go ahead. He has urged me to put an end to the speculation about the future of services in Bolton.

I am pleased to be able to tell the House that I can now do this, and to announce without further ado that I have given my approval to a major acute hospital on the Bolton general site. I believe that this will come as welcome news to the hon. Member. It also comes as welcome news to me, for after about 40 Adjournment debates I am at last in a position to give an hon. Member something for which he has asked.

As has been pointed out, the concentration of acute services at Bolton general hospital will mean an increase in the size of the hospital from 893 beds to well over 1,000 in the long term. I shall not conceal from the hon. Member that my initial reaction to a 1,000-bed hospital in Bolton was that it might be too big, and that some alternative solution must be sought. As the House will know, and as the hon. Gentleman said, my Department has strong reservations about the viability of very large hospitals and their acceptability to patients. These were reflected in the Government's consultation paper published last year—"Hospital Services—The Future Pattern of Hospital Provision in England"—which suggested that district general hospital services could often be provided on more than one site, thus enabling many main hospitals to have no more than 600 beds.

But, as that paper also made clear, I am a firm believer in flexibility and in the importance of adapting to local circumstances. Past Governments have made the mistake of trying to lay down a single solution for the whole country, but we have learnt from that. I believe that the size of hospitals cannot be rigidly prescribed according to a formula but must be tailored to suit the local communities they serve.

When I looked carefully at the question of Bolton, I paid close attention to the local circumstances. I noted, in particular, that Bolton is a compact area, with transport links radiating out from the centre; and that the general hospital is convenient and accessible for its catchment population. I also took into account the views of the local area health authority, which has experience of running acute services from two hospital sites—the Royal infirmary and the general hospital—that they could provide a greatly improved service to patients by bringing related clinical departments closer together and deploying scarce trained staff in a more rational way.

The regional health authority has pointed out that, because the Royal infirmary site is almost completely built up, any major development there would involve a lengthy demolition programme, which would seriously inconvenience patients and add considerably to the capital cost. I understand that, even if that were to be undertaken, the small number of beds which could be accommodated on the infirmary site would not enable the beds at the general hospital to be greatly reduced; that could mean providing acute services from three separate sites.

The regional health authority has also put it to me that any departure from the strategy of concentrating acute services at the general hospital could mean substantial delays in improving services for particularly needy groups of patients—the old, the mentally ill and the elderly severely mentally infirm.

As the hon. Gentleman said, the Bolton community health council has given wholehearted support to this comprehensive development of the general hospital, and any change in the strategy, with the subsequent delays, would be regarded by local interests as a serious disappointment.

So, in the light of all these circumstances, we have concluded that a large hospital in which the acute services are concentrated on one site would best serve the needs of the people of Bolton. The hon. Gentleman will, I think, appreciate that this decision means that improvements in services in Bolton can now go ahead as planned.

I have of course, considered not just the future of acute services in Bolton, but the way in which they fit into the health authorities' strategy for the whole area. The development of Bolton general hospital must be seen in the context of plans for the smaller hospitals, and I have asked the regional health authority for an assurance about their future. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I feel particularly grave concern when small hospitals which provide an excellent service to their local population are closed in order to relocate their facilities into a large general hospital which may be much more remote from patients.

I understand that there is no proposal to close Bolton Royal infirmary, which will become a centre for long-stay services, and that the health authorities concerned propose to develop the small hospitals in Bolton as community hospitals. But I would wish to be quite certain that suitable facilities at these hospitals are definitely seen as having a useful future ahead of them, so full agreement to the proposals for Bolton general hospital must be seen in this context and be subject to those conditions.

I believe that my decision is the one which the hon. Gentleman wished to hear, and I am glad to have been able to announce it tonight.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at three minutes past One o' clock.

Volume 997: debated on Tuesday 27 January 1981

House Of Commons

Prayers

Private Business

Allied Irish Banks Bill

Barnsley Borough Council Bill

British Railways (No 2) Bill

British Railways (Pension Schemes) Bill

British Transport Docks Bill

Charterhouse Japhet Bill

Whitehaven Harbour Bill

Yarmouth (Isle Of Wight) Bill

London Transport (No 2) Bill)

Adjournment Motions Under Standing Order No 9

Closure Of Debate (Standing Order No30)

Delegated Legislation

Private Bills And Private Business

Public Bills

Select Committees

Sittings Of The House And Business Of Supply

Standing Committees

Special Procedure Orders

Questions For Oral Answer

Employment

Wages Councils

Shop Stewards

Trade Union Immunities

Merseyside

Unemployment Statistics

Industrial Training Boards

Youth Opportunities Programme

Young Persons

Unemployed Persons

Prime Minister (Engagements)

European Community Documents

Town And Country Planning (Protection Of Listed Buildings)

Town And Country Planning (Protection Of Listed Buildings)

Town And Country Planning (Protection Of Listed Buildings)

Times Newspapers

Lorries And The Environment

Prisons

Hospital Services, Bolton