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

With this it will be convenient to take all those amendments that I have grouped together, namely, Government amendments Nos. 1, 11, 12, 13, 14, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 and 46.

I should indicate at this stage that I do not intend to press amendment No. 37, which we feel is not necessary.

The requirement for the new clause and for the consequential amendments arises from changes in practice in the drafting and publication of legislation largely in consequence of the Renton report, "The Preparation of Legislation", published in 1975 and of the new format in which legislation is being made available in the "statutes in force" series. It is a rather dramatic list of amendments, but I assure the House that they are all of a technical and drafting nature in order to conform with the new requirements as recommended by Lord Renton's committee.

Chapter XIII of the Renton report considers in detail the process of amendment of existing legislation. The House will see that in effect everything contained in the Bill is operating on an existing body of law, namely, the provisions of the Countryside Act (Scotland) 1967. The Renton committee recommended that in amending existing legislation the practice of using what it chooses to call the textual method should be applied. That simply means that one should proceed by amending the actual text of original legislation rather than by simply adding new provisions.

The purpose of this approach is to make it easier for the user of the ultimate Act to understand what is intended. Instead of having two separate pieces of legislation which have to be linked, the user will be able simply to look at, in effect, a single document.

The Bill is considered to be an appropriate example of legislation which can be amended in this way in conformity with the Renton recommendations, partly because all the provisions that it seeks to deal with are contained in a single piece of legislation, namely, the Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967. The various amendments dealt with in Committee are consistent with that general provision.

It therefore seems sensible that the Government should put forward these amendments at this stage. As I have said, they are not substantive. Nevertheless, they have the desired effect to which I have referred. In most cases, the amendments merely insert a clause of the Bill into the 1967 Act as a new section. In that way, the provisions become subject to the specific rules of interpretation contained in that Act and separate provisions are no longer required.

It is also right that the sequence of clauses in the Bill should, so far as is reasonably practical, follow the sequence of the provisions that they affect in the 1967 Act. That is the sole purpose of the series of proposals for transfer of clauses which form part of this rather frightening list of Government amendments. They do not affect the substance of the Bill's provisions. They will make it easier to read the provisions accurately and to see where they amend the existing legislation.

On that basis, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser), who is the promoter of the Bill, and indeed hon. Members on both sides of the House will accept that this is not only a sensible Bill to which to apply these changes but that this will make the task of those who have to work with the legislation that much easier. On that basis, I commend the new clause and the amendments to the House.

The Under-Secretary certainly seems to have dreamt up a formidable thicket of amendments, but I take his point that they are principally a matter of rejigging, revamping arid giving a face-lift to the form of the Bill. If the Bill is going to another place, where their Lordships are, for reasons we understand, keen on the recommendations of the Renton report, I would not wish to delay the amendments here or to criticise them.

The general principle of integration into the 1967 Act makes sense, and if clause 1, which enables byelaws to be made to deal with vehicle and aircraft noise, is to remain in the Bill, it seems sensible that it should be incorporated into section 56 of that Act where it would fall naturally into place.

I am a little surprised that the amendments should have been brought forward at this relatively late stage. I understand that the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser) had help with the drafting, and it is therefore a pity that the amendments were not made in Committee. However, it is better that they should be made now than not at all.

The Government have tabled an awesome list of amendments, but I have no objection to their form. They in no way alter the substance of the Bill, and, anxious as I am to secure favour for the Bill in another place, I certainly present no opposition to them.

I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser), who is the sponsor of the Bill, for their welcome for the amendments. Although it may have been useful for the amendments to be tabled in Committee, it may be preferable in some respects to deal with them now since we can incorporate in them the amendments made in Committee. That makes the whole task of adjusting the Bill to the Renton recommendations slightly easier than it might otherwise have been.

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

The clause deals with consultation between local authorities and the Treasury and other parties who might be involved in the matter of capital transfer tax exemptions for land in areas of outstanding scenic importance. This is an unlikely topic to be tackled in the Bill. Capital transfer tax is for me a mysterious and erudite business, and I do not pretend to be an expert in it. It is worth giving it an airing at this stage, however, and the clause raises matters of genuine importance that the Minister might be glad of an opportunity to comment upon, given some of the public anxieties that on occasions have surfaced in the matter.

We are dealing here with an arrangement by which land is given an exemption from CTT in return for certain guarantees by the owners about its future management. I do not object to that aim. We are all in favour of proper management of areas of outstanding scenic interest, and if that can be achieved by taxation arrangements such a policy is not per se wrong. It would be difficult for me to say that it were. The Minister would no doubt point out that similar arrangements operated under Labour Governments. One of the more noticeable examples which has had great publicity was contained in the Treasury memorandum of October 1977 when Labour Ministers would have taken the decision.

It is self-evident from the drafting of the clause that I am not seeking to abolish the arrangement. If I were to seek to do that, I think that the Finance Bill would be a much more appropriate vehicle. I might have encountered considerable difficulties over the long title and various other matters if I had tried to do it in this Bill. What I am seeking to do, and am entitled to do, is to suggest that when such arrangements are considered there should be a specific statutory duty to consult the local authority within whose area lies the land that is the subject of the agreement. We are also entitled, when attempting to decide whether such a provision is wise or necessary, to consider how the arrangement has been working in practice and whether, to the best of our knowledge—the Minister may shed new light on the matter—these arrangements constitute a sound bargain for the public purse. These are legitimate questions to ask when we are considering whether some formal consultation machinery involving the local authority, as suggested in the clause, is needed.

9.45 am

I am no expert in this matter—I am making a virtue of necessity—and therefore I shall give a simple description of the arrangement. In return for exemption the owners of land of particular scenic importance give certain undertakings about preservation and public access. I wish to confine myself to the situation where a conditional exemption is granted and where a charge or potential charge to CTT has arisen. Those who are about to bear the burden express a willingness to do a deal on access, preservation and management in return for that conditional CTT exemption. The exemption is granted on the condition that if at some future point the land is sold in an arm's length transaction not only will there be a liability to capital gains tax, but the capital transfer tax which was not levied when the arrangement was made will fall due.

There might be other possibilities. There is the strange arrangement by which land can be sold to one of the public bodies listed in schedule 6, paragraph 12, of the Finance Act 1965. In those circumstances, only part of the CTT due is the subject of exemption. This arrangement is covered by a strange fiscal term. One is allowed to keep a douceur or a proportion of the tax that otherwise would have been due. That is not so much a bribe as a tip for good behaviour. This is a mysterious twilight world in which one can pass the land on to another member of the family or to someone who will maintain the original terms of the agreement. The CTT liability remains in limbo and does not fall upon the owner at that point.

That is as adequate a description as I need to give. This is a mysterious and, perhaps inevitably since it involves private finance, a hidden matter. A deal is made. I do not use that word in a pejorative sense. It is not often exposed to the public eye. However, it surfaces occasionally and when it does it creates a considerable amount of emotion and debate. The outstanding example, which is on everyone's mind, and which crops up occasionally is of the Vestey family and their Assynt estates in Sutherland.

On 19 October 1980 the matter was raised in an article in the The Sunday Times which stated that the Vestey family had made an arrangement to deal with an estate which it put at 100,000 acres where it got an exemption on the condition that it must not develop the property without consulting conservation bodies and must allow the public to have reasonable access to the land.

It is alleged—I say "alleged" because I am in no position to confirm or deny the figures—that the exemption was worth some £540,000. To complete the picture I should recall that there was a hearing a week ago on Wednesday of the Public Accounts Committee at which the matter was raised. Sir Lawrence Airey of the Inland Revenue was giving evidence, and he said that to talk of sums in excess of £500,000 was "grossly wrong". He did not go further—perhaps for reasons we can understand—to put the record straight in any positive sense, but he entered a protest against what he thought were inflated figures.

I do not know the truth. I have no reason to question—I would not wish to do so for a moment—the evidence of the Inland Revenue. However, we can for our purposes assume that the exemption was of substance, and the consideration, from the point of view of the revenue forgone by the public purse, must have been substantial.

According to press reports, in return there is a promise that there will be no development without consultation and that there will be public access. That is a good example, in the sense that one is entitled to know the worth of what is being given in return. do not know that part of the world as well as other hon. Members, especially Members who represent it, such as the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), although I have been there on a number of occasions. I did not gain the impression that there was great difficulty about access. It is a large wilderness area and I am not clear what access promises were made that were of substantial value to members of the public.

I hope that I shall not be thought rude. but I have never gained the impression—although others could give better evidence—that with that group of proprietors there was not a great rush to develop anyway. The promise to consult conservation bodies before developing seems to be an empty gesture, but one which may have brought—I stress the word "may"—a substantial return.

We are entitled to ask whether, in these circumstances, there is a strong case, as the amendment suggests, for saying that before the bargain is struck the local authority concerned should be brought into the dialogue to pass judgment on whether what is being offered is of realistic and genuine value to the public, and whether anything else is reasonably required in terms of management of the estates in return for the exemption. If what was asked for was unreasonable and was a bargain, there would have to be consenting parties, but there should at least be the opportunity for that to be considered.

At present the Countryside Commission for Scotland is consulted. I do not complain about that. It is important that it should be consulted about the preservation of areas of outstanding scenic worth. But it also has a statutory duty to consider an area from its point of view. A local authority, elected by the people of the area, surely has a much broader view of the proper considerations in weighing up whether a bargain is in the interests of the public. It is dangerous to exclude the local authority, and it would be positively useful if it were to have a part in the arrangements.

In October 1980, a new memorandum was produced which recently came into effect. That presumably will govern all future matters in this area. I am unhappy about what I have discovered in the memorandum. It is written in such vague and general terms that it is almost impossible to discover what criteria will govern the bargaining process under one of these arrangements. Paragraph 5·3 reads:

"To satisfy the conditions of exemption an undertaking has to be given by the appropriate person, usually the new owner, broadly to the effect that reasonable steps will be taken to preserve the property and to secure reasonable public access."

I confess that the loosely drafted phrase

"broadly to the effect that reasonable steps will be taken"

is not exactly fighting talk. If substantial sums of potential public revenue are to be forgone in capital transfer tax exemption, at least it would be a reasonable safeguard to involve local authorities in such negotiations, to ensure that that rather timid, hedged-about and qualified series of words were given teeth to get a reasonably "good buy" for the taxpayer and the public purse.

There is undoubtedly a feeling that in the case I have mentioned the people involved—we do not know the figures—gained much and, in practical terms, gave little. It is a matter of "blessed are they that have for to them shall be given" by successively naive Governments. That may be grossly unfair, but it is a genuine feeling. Putting it no higher, it would be a safeguard against misunderstanding, and the anger that such deals can generate, if the local authority were on the inside as a party and contributing positively to the discussions.

I do not want to labour the point, but we know that anger can be real and understandable. There were widespread reports of a debate in the Highlands regional council—reports appeared in The Scotsman on 20 November 1980 and on the same day they appeared in The Press and Journal where they were a front page story—in which a number of councillors, perhaps in the heat of debate, made sweeping criticisms. The nature of the criticisms shows how understandably strongly they feel about the lack of information that surrounds such deals. A number of comparisons were, made with Nazi Germany, but I shall not bother the House with that matter. However, that shows the background.

The Scotsman reported that the vice-chairman of the local planning committee, Mr. Francis Keith, when talking about the Lochinver area, complained:

"There was no land for a cemetery—the nearest was ten miles away, he said. No houses could be built without loss of crofting land, and despite a queue of potential developers, there was considerable difficulty in getting, sites for industry".

"These are some of the restrictions. As to the benefits, I don't know. The people of Lochinver are very much afraid of expressing opinions because the estate has an iron hand clamped on the village".

I am not endorsing those views because it would be presumptuous of me to do so, but they are genuinely held. Conversations that I have had recently have suggested that they are still strongly held.

I suggest to the Minister that to take on board this comparatively modest amendment will not wreck the scheme or rule it out of court but will involve the people who, above all, should be involved—the elected representatives in the area where the land is situated. To involve them is common sense and is not the stuff of red revolution or ideologically unacceptable to the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser), the promoter of the Bill, or to the Minister.

There are genuine advantages in consultation in the memorandum which governs these agreements, paragraph 5.4 reads:

"Once the property has been designated for conditional exemption, it and the undertakings given will be kept under review, to ensure both that ownership continues on the basis et the approved exemption and that the undertakings … are being honoured."

What does that monitoring consist of? Are there possibilities for further conversations to tighten up the arrangements? Could not local authorities be involved in that part of the process as well as before the bargain has been struck?

I have said enough to outline my feelings and the case. I recognise that there are not many of these arrangements—at least to my knowledge. I am grateful that the Countryside Commission for Scotland has conveniently published its thirtieth Report. That says that the commission has been involved in only three such cases in 1980. In two of them, to be fair, it came to the conclusion, no doubt for good reasons, that the land was not of sufficient scenic importance to justify a capital transfer tax exemption. The commission made one slightly barbed reference. It said that it welcomed the arrangements, notwithstanding some ill-founded criticism and comments regarding one case.

I hope that no one will resent my bringing up the matter on this occasion. I am not trying to make pejorative or prejudiced judgments. I am merely reflecting an anxiety and suggesting a sensible way of overcoming the difficulties. The Countryside Commission for Scotland is fighting already, but let us have a second point of view—a second adviser to the Treasury. Let us choose one which is solidly based in local democracy and which knows what the local view should be.

It is important that we should have the refreshing realism of local authority directly elected opinion. Some aspects of the document which governs these arrangements are thoroughly unsatisfactory. The commission fairly says that it welcomes the arrangements that have been made for maintenance funds for heritage property. That is where there are special tax concessions on money earmarked in trust to manage and maintain an area which has been granted an exemption.

10 am

That is fair in its way, but paragraph 10.2 of the Government's memorandum states:

"The principle behind these specially favourable arrangements is that it is generally desirable for outstanding land and buildings to remain in private ownership rather than to be taken over by the State."

I do not want to debate nationalisation and public ownership. Ownership is not as important as use. The sentence in the memorandum assumes that arrangements ensure that private ownership continues. It is open to question. It gives colour to the alarm about whether a fair bargain is struck when exemptions are given. That alarm could be defused if the local authority were involved.

In some areas of the Highlands there is a strong suspicion that people do not come first. Land is held sterilised and undeveloped when use could be made of it. The sentence gives credence to the theory that there might be a tacit conspiracy by, or lethargy on the part of the Government. If the local authorities were allowed to advise the Treasury—but not to dictate what should happen—that would reassure the authorities and public opinion.

I hope that the Minister and the Bill's promoter will be sympathetic to the new clause. If it is not properly drafted, I hope that a similar provision can be made in the House of Lords.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said, correctly, that it was not possible under the Bill to consider the appropriateness or otherwise of the capital transfer tax exemptions with which the clause deals. I recognise the debate's limitations. However, I feel less constrained than the hon. Gentleman in relation to the events which gave rise to the new clause. Because of my constituency knowledge, I am able to be more outspoken about the effect of the arrangement in relation to Glencanisp, near Lochinver.

There is legitimate and growing concern throughout the Highlands and islands of Scotland that the interests of the environmental lobby are being given undue weight in relation to appropriate land use, the need for local development, and the creation of employment locally. The areas are in danger of becoming mere wildernesses, devoid of people even to provide the basic services which visitors expect. I was ignorant of the existence of the Treasury memorandum of 1977 until The Sunday Times performed a useful service in bringing it to light. It is one of a number of measures which reinforce that trend.

The National Trust for Scotland has the power to enter into conservation agreements with proprietors and to interpose its view about whether a development is acceptable. Throughout the Highlands and islands, particularly in coastal areas which are most likely to provide development opportunities, the National Trust for Scotland is making agreements on a wide scale. The effect of the agreements has not been tested in the courts. They constitute yet another obstacle in the way of development. In my constituency, for example, the National Trust for Scotland sought to obstruct the desirable development of a caravan site and restaurant in the alleged interests of leaving a strip of coast line untouched.

The role of the Nature Conservancy Council is also causing controversy. Through the designation of sites of special scientific importance, it is intervening to stop, for instance, the sale of land for forestry without reference to local planning authorities and without considering whether the proposed use of land will create employment. It seems to view proposals in isolation. The memorandum, replaced in 1980, takes us further away from the democratic control of planning authorities.

What public benefit is derived from the exemption from capital transfer tax of proprietors who are fortunate enough to own land of national scenic importance? In every respect they gain what they wish at the public expense. The hon. Member for Garscadden referred to the Vestey family. For many years that family deliberately sought to inhibit development. In the old days before the Labour Government amended the law on the imposition of feudal conditions enabling them to be challenged in the lands tribunals, the Vestey family was notorious for attaching feudal conditions to limit the use of land. The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) saw evidence of that when he visited my constituency a few years ago.

That limitation was symptomatic of the approach of too many absentee proprietors. Such proprietors gain from the exemption from capital transfer tax in return for limitations on the development of land. There is no evidence that the Vestey family is in the least interested in the development of land. It never acquired the land to develop it. It acquired 100,000 acres for the sole purpose of surrounding itself with large areas of emptiness to besport itself and its friends privately for two or three weeks in the year chasing stags over the crags. Sometimes one wishes that the Vesteys had followed the stags over the crags and that the land could return to public ownership and public use.

There is no doubt that the acquisition of those estates was not contemplated with development in mind. There is equally no doubt that the proprietors of those estates will lose no opportunity to obstruct development. The remarks of the councillor for Durness, Mr. Francis Keith, were not far wide of the mark. It is true that over the years local authorities have had great difficulty in acquiring land for development and house building, and the land that has been made available by the Vesteys in the past has been highly unsuitable for house building. At present, there is a question about whether land at Lochinver should be made available for extending the fishing port there. Although I understand that the land in question is not part of the Glencanisp estate that is covered by the agreement with the Treasury, the negotiations with the estate illustrate the difficulties that proprietors can put in the way of development.

Under the terms of the Treasury memorandum 1980, the body which is primarily consulted in determining whether it is appropriate for the Treasury to grant the remission of capital transfer tax is the Countryside Commission for Scotland. It must be said that the remit of that commission is exceedingly limited. it is not concerned with the wider issues of the public weal, but with one narrow range of questions which relate to the preservation of the countryside and the public's access to the countryside.

Although it may be appropriate to consult the Countryside Commission on such matters, many people, certainly in my constituency, regard that commission as parti pris in these matters. Its chairman, Dr. Jean Balfour, is the proprietor of an estate which is adjacent to the very estate that has given rise to this debate. She herself is not regarded in Sutherland as an ideal landowner. She has allowed a farm on her estate to go out of productive use because she believes that there is an obscure tree on the farm that is of special scientific importance. It may be thought that her interests in the matter are heavily weighted in favour of maintaining the wilderness over which she appears to have such influence with the present Government. She once described her own estate as nothing but rock and water, despite the fact that it had an extremely good working farm which she has allowed to go out of use. Despite her prejudiced attitude, she and her commission are to be regarded as the arbiters of the fate of large tracts of the Highlands which are regarded as of scenic importance.

This is not an abstract question. It involves the livelihood of the dwindling population of many parts of the Highlands. The estate of Glencanisp is not alone in the Highland and Islands in being scenically attractive. There are thousands of square miles of similar land. In Sutherland alone, the population has dwindled to below 13,000. If priority is to be given to the creation or perpetuation of wilderness, I predict that no one will be left, even to act as supervisors of the wilderness for the benefit of the few people who can afford the petrol to drive around the single track roads which are an obstacle to the growth of tourism.

The Treasury memorandum of 1980 is a wholly unacceptable way to ensure public interest in the preservation of land and access to it. It is unacceptable that private agreements should be entered into between the Treasury and the proprietor of the land. It is a matter of public interest. It is not a private matter between the Treasury and the individual proprietor. There is no doubt that the Treasury memorandum is contrary to the public interest. I regret that the hon. Member for Garscadden did not call for the abandonment of the memorandum, though I realise that this Bill is not the proper place for that to be done. A Finance Bill would be the right instrument to bring about a change of that nature in the law.

The amelioration proposed by the hon. Member for Garscadden, though it goes some way to pulling the sting out of the problem, does not go far enough. If the Government agree that local authorities should be consulted when the Treasury and an individual enter into discussions about a piece of land, I do not doubt that the local authority will make its views known with pungency and force.

10.15 am

The blanket nature of the agreements that have been entered into, apparently, in respect of Glencanisp give rise to possible concern about how that can be done. Let not the Minister say that agreements entered into between the Treasury and the individual, being matters of taxation, are matters between the Revenue and the individual alone. They are matters of public consequence. These measures are denying the public substantial amounts of money, although the Public Accounts Committee was unable to discover how much. Not only are the public being deprived of the revenue, they are being deprived of the possibility of development. Thus, the estate gains at both ends by these one-sided agreements.

I do not expect the Minister to look with sympathy on any extension of local authority influence in matters of planning. At Question Time earlier this week I raised the general issue with the Secretary of State. He said that he thought it right that the arrangements entered into by the Government—they are now enacted—whereby areas of outstanding scenic importance must be subjected to the further intervention of the Countryside Commission, should stand, even in the Highlands and Islands, although there has been wholehearted opposition to them from the Highlands regional council, the Western Isles councils, the Crofters Commission, the Highlands and Islands Development Board, and all the district councils in the area. The only body that appears to be in favour of the Government's attitude is the highly suspect Countryside Commission itself, which has such narrow tunnel vision about the development of the Highlands that it has forfeited all respect throughout the area as a body capable of giving objective advice in the public interest.

If the Government continue to be so insensitive to the needs of the area, there is no doubt that they will lose what little support they at present enjoy in the north of Scotland. The very least that the Government can do is to show their awareness that the sterilisation of large tracts of land cannot and should not be undertaken without consulting the elected local planning authorities, as the new clause provides. The new clause, although it does not go nearly far enough, should be accepted with alacrity.

I shall not detain the House for more than a few minutes. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) and to the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) for putting the case in such forthright and reasonable terms.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland speaks with great authority and justified indignation about what has happened and is happening in the Highlands of Scotland. He was kind enough to refer to my visits to his constituency. I took great delight in having working holidays with him in his area, and I am sorry that his departure from my party prevents me from doing so on the basis of political friendship. However, on the basis of personal friendship, I shall be delighted to go there again.

There is no doubt that there is an extremely radical political element in the Scottish Highlands that has been tapped by the hon. Gentleman with great success over the past few years. It originates from the Highlands clearances, and everything related to them. The Vesteys are a vestige of the feeling of persecution and exploitation of the natives in the area.

It is right to say that the environmental lobby is strong and developing. I have no great antipathy to it, because I think that it does a valuable job. However, its interests must be balanced against the wider interests on the natives who live and work in the area. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland referred to the National Trust, the Nature Conservancy Council and the Countryside Commission for Scotland, of which Dr. Jean Balfour is the chairman. Dr. Balfour is well known in Fife as a real reactionary, diehard Tory landowner. There is no doubt that she seeks to preserve the interests of feudal landlords, including herself, and to hell with everyone else. I am afraid that that attitude still prevails in large measure among the landowners in the Highlands.

The specific case to which reference has been made is that of the extremely wealthy Vestey family. The Labour Government, who produced the 1977 agreement, have a great deal to answer for. The Minister would be right to make great political capital out of the fact that these arrangements were entered into by the Labour Government. The arrangements are very simple, very stark and extremely unjust. The Vesteys come to an arrangement with the tax authorities by which they take over an enormous tract of wild land in Scotland and in return for a promise not to develop, which they would not have done in any case, they receive substantial tax concessions which they do not need.

All that benefits solely, wholly and exclusively the Vestey family and their hunting and fishing friends, for whom that estate is used. That, on the face of it, is indefensible from every point of view. From the point of view of the environment, the public, the local authority and the Inland Revenue, there is no case whatever for arrangements of that kind.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland was modest enough not to mention that this matter was brought before the Public Accounts Committee, of which both he and I are members, on his initiative. He saw the report in The Sunday Times and it was on his initiative that we got the Comptroller and Auditor General to take up the matter. That was how the Public Accounts Committee had before it a week or so ago the head of the Inland Revenue to discuss these matters with us. We took evidence which will be duly reported to the House and, I hope, eventually debated in the House. I hope that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland will watch for that debate to come up because we shall then be able to go into these matters in very much greater depth and detail than we have been able to do so far.

Although the Minister will not accept the new clause, I hope that he and the Scottish Office will take up these matters with the Treasury, the Inland Revenue and local authorities to try to find some machinery that will adequately protect the interests of those who live there and not the financial feudal interests of others.

I have listened with great interest to the various contributions. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) was right to begin his remarks by saying that most of his comments, and, indeed, those of his hon. Friends, would deal with questions of tax exemption and capital transfer tax. Those issues are not primarily concerned with a Bill that deals purely with the enhancement and the amenity of the countryside. They would be more properly directed to another Bill now passing through the House.

I wish to comment on the rather abrasive remarks of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), and on what most objective people would consider to be his unfair comments both on the Countryside Commission for Scotland as a whole and on its distinguished chairman, Dr. Jean Balfour. His remarks were slightly odd and difficult to understand. He will recollect not only that the commission does a first-class job, but that it was brought into existence by the Labour Government—which, presumably, he supported. I presume that he did not vote against the creation of the commission.

The hon. Gentleman attacked Dr. Jean Balfour in a most unscrupulous manner. She was appointed in 1972 by the Conservative Government. Her service to the commission obviously was sufficiently excellent and meritorious to justify her reappointment by the Labour Government and the former Secretary of State for Scotland, Lord Ross of Marnock. The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) described Dr. Balfour as a reactionary Tory landlord. Did he express that opinion when the Labour Government reappointed Dr. Balfour? Did the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland, who was a member of that Government, express his displeasure publicly at that time and in a way that made his views quite clear?

I wholly rebut the Minister's suggestion that my remarks were unscrupulous. I have made them before. The chairman of the Countryside Commission for Scotland is fully aware of my views about her and also about the inappropriateness of such a landlord—who presides over a devastated estate—acting in such a public role. She knows my views, and the people of Scotland know them. The former Secretary of State for Scotland knows my views. However, both he and the Minister know the rules about collective ministerial responsibility. The Minister made a highly improper suggestion by saying that I should have stepped out of line and publicly criticised a Minister in a Government to which I belonged.

The hon. Gentleman made his views known and it seems clear that the then Secretary of State for Scotland, who is now Lord Ross of Marnock, had little time for them. If the hon. Gentleman made his views known, it is clear that they were rejected by the Government of whom he was a member. If the then Secretary of State for Scotland saw fit to reject his opinions about Dr. Balfour, there is no reason why the House should now come to any different conclusion.

10.30 am

The Countryside Commission for Scotland was brought into existence by a Labour Government. Its chairman was reappointed by a Labour Government. The tax exemptions introduced in the Finance Act 1976 were introduced by the Labour Government. That Act was implemented by a Labour Government, and the details of the exemptions were issued by the Treasury during that Government's administration. Wherever criticism of these matters might appropriately come from, it cannot come from Labour Members. That must be so whether or not they were Members of this place during the period to which I have referred.

I turn to the basic provisions that are set out in the new clause. I shall not address myself to the technicalities of financial and tax matters; it is not for the House to consider those issues now. We are concerned with the amenity of the countryside. The basis on which the 1976 Act operates is that for areas of land of outstanding scenic value the owner may claim exemption from capital transfer tax as provided by the Labour Government in 1976.

The question posed by the Finance Act is whether land should or should not come within that category. The decision is taken not by the commission, not by the individual landowner, but by the Treasury. As the hon. Member for Garscadden said, the Treasury, in coining to a view, seeks the advice of the organisations to which I have referred—those that are thought to be expert on matters such as scenic value. That is the basis on which an exemption is granted. Exemptions are granted not on the basis of economic development but on whether the land in question is of such outstanding scenic value to justify the exemption.

The Treasury normally consults the Nature Conservancy Council, the commission, the Forestry Commission and other organisations of that sort. It can also consult the local authority. Labour Members have made considerable reference to the Vestey case. I understand that the local authority concerned was consulted on access and other issues relating to the decision to grant the estate capital transfer tax exemption.

There are only relatively small parts of the United Kingdom that would justify an exemption. Not all landowners with such land would seek the exemption. Would the new clause make any significant difference to the Bill's legitimate objectives? I accept that the new clause may have been intended primarily as a hook on which to hang a general debate. However, I am obliged to address myself to the new clause itself. The clause contains the strict requirement that the local authority should be statutorily consulted when any decision is to be taken on whether a particular piece of land should justify exemption from capital transfer tax. It seeks to involve the local authority in the management agreement that flows from such a decision.

Local authorities already have powers in clause 10 to initiate a management agreement whenever that may be desirable. There is no basic reason why a local authority should be the one body that has the statutory right to be consulted on tax exemption. Whether the land in question is of sufficient scenic value to justify exemption is a matter for those who are expert in scenic evaluation and for the Treasury with its responsibility for public finance. Those are the only aspects that require consideration automatically.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland and many others in the Highlands are rightly concerned about the possible sterilisation of land.

Actual.

It is "possible" in some areas and perhaps "actual" in others. I am not aware of the examples that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.

No one has ever suggested or has wished to suggest, and I am sure that when the Labour Government introduced the provisions they did not wish to suggest, that they should be used or could be used to sterilise land. As for certain landowners in the Highlands or elsewhere acting irresponsibly, that is a much wider issue that has nothing to do with the Bill or with capital transfer tax. Our consideration is limited to whether the provisions set out in the clause are likely to help development if they are changed in the way that is suggested in the new clause.

At present the designation of an area of land as eligible for exemption from CTT does not automatically sterilise that land for all development. Small development may take place within the designation. If major economic projects are thought to be essential in the national interest or for other reasons of that sort, it is for either the local authority or a Government Department to seek compulsory purchase or other means to introduce the form of economic development that is considered essential in the national interest or for other reasons. The mere fact that a piece of land is designated as justifying exemption from CTT does not in itself make the slightest difference to whether that land is or is not to be used for economic development. A number of other considerations arise, none of which is affected to its benefit or detriment by CTT exemption.

On that basis, the new clause does not hold water. I am well aware that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland is concerned about the categorisation of national scenic areas. He will appreciate that new clause 3 is directed to that very issue. Therefore, it would be more appropriate if I were to make my comments on the hon. Gentleman's remarks when we consider new clause 3.

As for the new clause now before us, the issue of tax exemption is obviously more appropriately a matter for consideration within the Finance Bill. It would be more appropriate for an approach to be made to the Treasury. As for the scenic value of the countryside, Labour Governments have acknowledged by their actions as well as by their words that they recognise the valuable and important work that is done by the commission. The result has been the enhancement of various provisions in the Finance Acts and the provisions set out in the Bill. Valuable and important work is performed not only by the chairman of the commission but by its entire staff thoughout Scotland in a most excellent fashion.

As the Bill's sponsor, I shall outline my views on the new clause. The Bill stemmed from a working party that was set up in Scotland covering landowning interests, amenity groups and local authorities. With one or two minor exceptions, the provisions that have been put in the Bill have received almost universal support in Scotland, including the support of the Highlands region, save for one small matter that may be covered by a later amendment. All those concerned have given their welcome to what is contained in the Bill.

As my hon. Friend the under-Secretary of State has said, this is essentially a matter of taxation. It would surely be inappropriate to attempt to include such matters in the Bill. Taxation impinges directly on a totally different area from the one with which we are dealing in the Bill. I regret that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) has used the Bill as a vehicle to obtain for himself some cheap local publicity.

I am totally unrepentant about tabling the new clause. It is in order. If it were not, we would not be debating it. I do not dispute that the Highland region welcomed what is in the Bill, with the exception of clause 10. However, it has a strong wish to see other provisions in the Bill that at present do not appear. I have spoken to a number of people in the Highland region in the past two or three days and there is no doubt that they would like the new clause to be incorporated in the Bill. It is right that it should be publicly ventilated and debated.

I did not make any remarks about competence or acts of individuals. I do not intend to depart from that now. However, I shall deal with a couple of the points raised by the Minister, because I am not entirely satisfied with his arguments.

It is appropriate that we deal with the matter here. The Bill deals with the countryside in Scotland and the statutory powers which affect it. The arrangements and management agreements with which we have been dealing, particularly the exemption arrangements made by to Treasury centrally, involve the management of important areas of scenic interest. They also involve the Countryside Commission for Scotland.

Clause 11 deals with grants, Treasury approval and so on. There is nothing untoward about that clause. It does not stick out like a sore thumb. The point of the exemption is not only that it gives relief from taxation to people who may or may not deserve it—that is a matter for subjective judgment—but it is supposed to be an open bargain from which both sides benefit and from which both sides receive a fair return.

We have a duty to probe whether that system is working properly, irrespective of who introduced it, and whether the public is getting a fair return for, presumably, the substantial sums which are potentially involved in those remissions.

We have talked about the Vestey example. I am sorry that we have discussed only that example. It has surfaced publicly from what is normally a private and mysterious series of transactions. No one has been able to say—and my understanding of the Public Accounts Committee's public session is that the Inland Revenue could not say—what were the substantial advantages which were given to the public which would not have been available to the public if that money had not been given to the Vesteys. The Under-Secretary has not told me that as a result of the exemption and of the Treasury forgoing revenue which we could have used, given the Government's present financial difficulties, the people of Sutherland have the important rights which otherwise they would not have received. That is what I would have wanted to convince me.

We are entitled to ask what is in it for us. We, the taxpayers, are giving the money and we have the right to see what we are receiving. No one has produced one iota of evidence or one suggestion about what the benefit was from that arrangement to the public who are paying.

The Under-Secretary says that there is no reason why the local authority should be the one body with a statutory right to be consulted. One good reason is that the people in the local authority are elected by those who live in that area. It is extremely important that they are consulted. I do not want to exclude the Countryside Commission for Scotland. It has a particular interest which should be fed into the process. I do not in any way make disrespectful remarks about its expertise or the value of what it might contribute to that process, but it should not be alone. The elected representatives should also be involved. This is the one interesting thing which the Under-Secretary said. If the local authority was consulted in the Vestey transaction, that comes as a great surprise to me because there has been no hint of it up to now. If that is so, it is a double-edged argument. If the Under-Secretary is saying that one should not worry because the local authority was consulted, let us ensure that it is always consulted, for the reasons which I have given.

I made it clear that on that occasion the local authority was consulted as to details of the access arrangements which were to be part of a management agreement. I am not aware of any example anywhere in our tax law or statutes which gives a local authority a statutory right to be consulted on the question whether or not an individual should or should not receive a tax exemption from the Treasury.

Let us not be afraid of innovating occasionally. Even Conservative Governments should occasionally screw up their courage in small matters and innovate. A local authority should have a statutory right to be consulted about whether the concessions which are being offered by the landowner are of substantial advantage to the people it represents. After that opinion has been received, it is up to the Treasury to follow or not follow that advice or to try to improve the terms on the basis of that advice. I am not suggesting a right of veto, but advice on a matter on which the local authority is pre-eminently suited to advise. That matter is whether there could be a substantial advantage which could not be gained in another way.

It is bordering on sophistry to point to the powers in clause 10 and to management agreements, because those agreements are totally separate and matters into which the landowner may or may not enter. They follow after the bargain on exemption has been struck. Therefore, the matter has been decided and it is too late to make a substantial contribution to the argument or the negotiations. It is a basic matter of democracy. There is a pre-eminent argument for involving those who were elected by the people who live in the area in which the land lies.

I am unconvinced that we are getting a good deal out of the agreements. The stunning silence about the worth of the concessions given reinforces my scepticism. I am more convinced that it is proper to involve the democratically-elected councillors of the area. I hope that a simple and modest amendment, which is an attempt to help by building confidence into an area where confidence is lacking and crumbling, as represented by the strong remarks of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland will be considered more sympathetically than the Minister has shown himself willing to do.

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

We shall try to move the clause along fairly fast, but it is probably the second most substantial issue of the day's debate. That is not to undervalue some of the points which are to come, but I believe that we can dispose of some of them quickly. Therefore, I make no apology for dwelling a minute or two on this matter, which again affects the area represented by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) and again is an area where we walk on sensitive ground. However, we should not be frightened to do so and we should try to face up to the fact that there are genuine anxieties about the way the present planning system is about to work.

From 1 September 1981 the Government are proposing to enter into an arrangement whereby, in the Highland regional area and in the Western Islands council area, in certain designated areas of national scenic importance, where the planning permission for a specified group of applications is at issue—for example, schemes for five or more houses, five or more mobile dwellings or a non-residential development requiring more than half a hectare of land—the Countryside Commission for Scotland must be consulted. If it is not prepared to agree to the development, the matter must automatically go forward for consideration and adjudication by the Secretary of State for Scotland.

That scheme is coming in from 1 September 1981. We should carefully consider whether that should happen. I say that with a little hesitation because I realise that, on the face of it, it is not an unreasonable proposition, because a similar scheme is operating and has been operating from 1 September 1980 in the rest of Scotland. Therefore, I recognise that there may be a temptation to ask, if such a scheme is operating in Argyll and Galloway, why it should not operate in the Highland region and in the Western Isles. I need hardly say that the commission, which will be built into the planning arrangements, and which has the statutory right to object and to force consideration by the Secretary of State, finds the scheme thoroughly reasonable.

Indeed, I have no doubt that the Minister will tell us that it is working well. The thirteenth report of the Countryside Commission for Scotland, to which I have just referred, states that there have been nine cases in 1980 in areas where the system is working and that there have been no problems at all. The Secretary of State was challenged at Scottish Question Time by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland and the right hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart). When they expressed anxieties about the introduction of the scheme, he gave them little comfort.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the scheme is opposed not only by every local authority in the Highlands but also by the Minister of State, Department of Energy, who appears to he as uninfluential with the Secretary of State as I have been alleged to be with the former Secretary of State? On a delegation to the Under-Secretary of State, he wholly failed to sway him.

That is an interesting insight into the domestic life of the Conservative Party. I was not aware of that.

Both hon. Gentlemen will appreciate that it was precisely because of the meeting with the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland and my hon. Friend that we decided to delay implementing the proposals in the Highlands and Western Isles for a full year to see whether the problems that it was said might arise would occur in Argyll and other comparable areas with a topography similar to that of the Highlands. The delegation gave us the opportunity to test the hon. Gentleman's allegations.

I cannot speak with authority, because I have not consulted the Minister of State, Department of Energy. The feelings in his area, which the hon. Gentleman formerly expressed and I trust in private is still expressing, have not abated. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland is correct that there is almost total unanimity in the Highlands about the undesirability of introducing the measure on 1 September 1981.

My new clauses have been simple in their intention and easily comprehended. New clause 3 suggests that the innovation should not be introduced in the Highlands and Western Isles until 1 September 1984.

I have to make my case, because if the system is working in other parts of the country, why should it not work in the Highlands and Western Isles? I have no doubt that the Minister will tell me—I appreciate that there is some force in the argument—that section 9 of the Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967 contains proposals about areas of special planning control which are being repealed and which would have allowed a tight and cumbersome control machinery in specified areas, which by reason of beauty, amenity or other special characteristics should be the subject of further planning control.

However, there are two differences. The first distinction is a matter of scale. It is true that we might have had areas of special planning control under the old Act, but they would have been very tight and there were few of them. The ability of the Countryside Commission to veto the local authority's right to grant planning permission there and then and to force adjudication by the Secretary of State—I think that that is a fair way of representing it—will now run in a remarkably wide area throughout particularly the Highlands and Western Isles.

I have here the publication "Scotland's Scenic Heritage", which designates no fewer than 40 areas where the rule will apply. Sixteen are within the Highland region. They are not small patches of land. There are to be 20,000 hectares in North-West Sutherland, 90,000 in Assynt, 145,000 in Wester Ross, 39,000 in Knoydart, 79,000 in the Ben Nevis area and 37,000 in the Cairngorm area. I cannot give an exact calculation of the total number of hectares and what proportion it is of the Highland region, which is a vast land mass, but I am told that almost certainly more than one-third of the Highland region will be involved.

In the Western Isles, South Lewis, the whole of Harris and large lumps of North Uist—109,600 hectares—will be covered by the new scheme, which means that at the end of the day we have in the Western Isles almost a concurrent planning authority, superimposed on the directly elected councillors of what is called an all-purpose authority but which will be a gae funny all-purpose authority if the scheme comes into being.

That is the second point. I do not want to turn romantic and dewy-eyed about local democracy. I am as capable of criticising councillors as the next man, but they are elected to do a job and answerable to their electorate. Although I am entitled to criticise, they have to live with their mistakes or triumphs and answer to their electorate at the ballot box. An unfortunate principle may be involved. Over such a vast area of land and in areas of great political insensitivity failure to agree with the Countryside Commission may inevitably mean that the Secretary of State must be involved.

I do not want to fall into the trap of casting personal aspersions. That is not my role today. Also, although I take an interest and try to get the flavour of the argument, I am not involved in the day-to-day politics of the Highlands and Western Isles. However, putting it as dispassionately as possible and following the electorate argument, the commission is inevitably bound to be narrowly based, because the people on it are there because they have a particular point of view and expertise. It might be wrong for them to broaden their standpoint too much. They have to look at things from the point of view of the commission and special interests. Also, given that the commission will have such influence in planning throughout large areas of the Highlands and Western Isles, should it be based in Perth?

I say this with a little hesitation, but I do not believe that there is anyone from the Western Isles on the commission, although that can be put right. There will no doubt be a fluctuating population on the commission. However, that underlines the difficulty of giving the commission a prominent position in planning in those two areas. It worries me a little that we should find a great deal of discontent about the way in which it exercises its power. There is a danger of that because of the wide spread of designated areas in those two local authority units, which is not true in other parts of Scotland. I put that, I hope, not in any way pejoratively, but there is a danger that the Commission may be wearing too many hats, if the specific statutory power is unregulated.

After all—we are strengthening this in the Bill—the Commission will be responsible for giving grants. There may be genuine difficulties. For example, the Countryside Commission may object to a caravan site and force the matter to the Secretary of State. He may find for the caravan site proprietor or, in effect, the local authority, and the same commission may have to decide whether discretionary grants, which may be vital to the project, should be given. If it decides they should not be given, the decision is open to misinterpretation. That is the difficulty that can arise if we enable the commission to use its powers over such a wide geographical area.

This is a modest new clause. I am merely asking for further postponement. I am absolutely certain, having talked to people in the Western Isles and Highlands at a number of levels, elected and otherwise, that I reflect fairly the almost unanimous view that they do not wish the system to be introduced this September. If I were an elected councillor in the area, I would find myself exactly in that position. It is not a bad principle when considering the worth of a proposal to put oneself into the local position and the position of those who have to decide whether it is a desirable or undesirable reform.

I believe that this matter infringes the reasonable expectations of local government about its area of operation. I believe that, because of the total difference in scale in the area, it would be better to pause and to consider whether it would not be more sensible to exempt the Highland region and the Western Isles from these proposals for a further three years.

If the Minister is right and everything, to put it colloquially, is hunky-dory at the end of that year so far as other parts of the country are concerned, I would not rule out the possibility of considering whether there should be an extension, if it has worked well over a period. But when we are talking about such a massive infringement of local government——

indicated dissent.

It is—because it means that an outside non-elected body can call in the Secretary of State at will. That will be resented. Given the difference in scale, we should hesitate about this before introducing it.

It is very much in that spirit—of reasonable conciliation, I hope—that I ask the House to consider the new clause.

I think that I have two qualifications for speaking on this matter. The first is that I am currently a member of the Standing Committee of the House which is considering the Wildlife and Countryside Bill. The second is that I am the Member for Argyll, where there are national scenic areas subject to the arrangements which are being opposed by the Highland region and the Western Isles council.

There is a great problem in this whole area. It is being rehearsed during discussions on the Wildlife and Countryside Bill. It is the dilemma between people who wish to develop the countryside, such as farmers or foresters, or developers in other ways, and those who wish to conserve it. The Labour Party appears to be caught in the most appalling barbed wire entanglement. I invite Opposition Members to read the report of the Second Reading debate on the Wildlife and Countryside Bill and the reports of the two Committee sittings we have had this week. If they really wish to put their listening ability to the test, I invite them to listen to the proceedings of that Standing Committee next week, when they will hear from some of their hon. Friends a view that is in total opposition to the views that they are putting forward.

That view is that conservation, be it via the Countryside Commissions or the Nature Conservancy Council as regards SSSIs, should be upgraded beyond almost anything else. I invite Opposition Members to read the speech of their right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) on Second Reading of the Wildlife and Countryside Bill. They will see that he was saying, more or less, that not a single hectare of moorland should be ploughed up, and that it should be left as it is today because great damage has been wreaked over the last 20 years by agriculture and forestry in the wilderness areas of not only Scotland but also England and Wales.

This is a problem that we all face. I know it within myself. It is within the Labour Party—but Labour Members are used to having divisions. This is a division within myself. It is between allowing forestry and agricultural development, which gives employment, and accepting that if one stays in a place such as the Highlands one is in the midst of an area of great scenic beauty—not just the bits that have been defined by the Countryside Commission for Scotland, but virtually all, in comparison with much of the rest of the United Kingdom.

Therefore, two problems arise whenever any planning development is considered. The first problem is the very localised problem of whether that development should be allowed. On a slightly broader basis, there is the question whether the forester and the farmer ought to have to apply for planning permission before they can do anything to change things on their land. That is being debated on the Wildlife and Countryside Bill.

Planners have not shown themselves to be brilliant in the planning of our urban areas. I do not think that they would prove to be any better if they were let loose in the countryside to decide on farming and forestry uses.

However, especially in the Highlands and Argyll, we have areas of great scenic beauty which, perhaps many of us who live there take for granted. I find that one of the advantages of having being elected to this House and being in London during the week is that I appreciate the countryside much more when I return to it at weekends than I ever did when I lived in the country all the time. There seem to be many more birds in my garden than there used to be; but that is because I now notice them much more in the mornings.

There are different interests in the countryside. There are the interests of all the people who live in our urban areas, such as the constituency of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), and the interests of future generations. The effort being made on the Wildlife and Countryside Bill and by my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser) in his much more modest Bill is to strike a balance between the two.

With regard to national scenic heritage areas, the Scottish Office has issued a document which outlines a new procedure to be followed by planning authorities in those areas. As I have said, we in Argyll have some of those areas. My planning authority, the Argyll and Bute district council, is currently operating under the procedures mentioned in the new clause. According to the director of planning, to whom I talked about this matter the other day, the council is absolutely satisfied with the way in which it works. It considers it to be an improvement on the previous situation.

I reckon that, if the planners in Argyll and Bute—which has, I suppose, percentage-wise, just as large an area of national scenic beauty as any other part of the Highlands and Islands—find the current situation satisfactory, I am not convinced by the arguments of the Highlands regional council or by the Western Isles council about it. They have already had an extension of one year. We are a little way through that year now. The procedures have operated in the Highlands—Argyll may be technically part of Strathclyde, from a local government viewpoint, but it is Highland country with exactly the same countryside and beauty—perfectly to the satisfaction of the planning people and, as far as I know, of the people who live in these national scenic areas. They have been an improvement.

I am critical of some matters. For example, a valid criticism must always be made, and has been made by Opposition Members, when bodies that are not elected are allowed to intervene in the planning process. But the most important point on this matter is that when they play their part in the planning process they should play it along with the planning authority, in consultation with it. That is what they are doing here. It is only if that link breaks down that they can ask the Secretary of State to intervene and have a planning inquiry.

It may interest the hon. Member for Garscadden to know that the Countryside Commission for Scotland does not always win in these planning inquiries. There have been two in Argyll since I was elected to this place, and the commission has lost in both of them. I hope that that will at least act as a precedent when judgments are being made about planning matters.

Neither the planners nor the commission—nor the NCC—is the ultimate source of wisdom on planning matters. I suspect that the one can be as wrong as the other on the subject. Perhaps it should be left to me. It all seems to come to me, anyway. When people disagree with planning decisions, either for or against, they seem to consider that I am the non-statutory planning appeals machinery.

The present position being operated in the rest of Scotland and in Argyll, which is part of the Highlands, is working perfectly satisfactorily. The Highlands and Western Isles have had a year's extension. I do not think that they have been able to say to the Minister, "Look what damage has been done in Argyll and at the problems in Argyll." They cannot do that. There have not been any problems. It has been perfectly satisfactory. They should come within the same procedures later this year and not wait, as the amendment proposes, until September 1984. I suppose that the significance of that date is that the Conservative Government will have renewed their mandate.

The hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. MacKay) told us of his renewed interest in birds in his garden. There is a strange new bird in his garden which resembles the emblem of the Hapsburg monarchy—a double-headed eagle which faces both ways. The hon. Gentleman's speech was redolent of seeking to please everyone all the time, but he should know that that is impossible. It is about time that the hon. Gentleman came down from his aquiline perch and spoke on the interests of the Highlands as a whole. If he thinks that Argyll's modest experience is relevant to the debate, he is either less sincere than I believe him to be or extremely credulous.

This provision has been attacked root and branch by every elected authority in the Highlands and by every authority, other than the Countryside Commission for Scotland, which has responsibility for the well-being of the Highlands. During the period in which this provision has been operative, the Countryside Commission for Scotland has shown an unwillingness to chance its arm. It is scarcely to be accepted that that is other than prudence on the part of the Commission, because it knows that, if it stirred up a cause celebre in Argyll during the period of review, it would not be possible not to extend as has been suggested by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar).

The hon. Member for Garscadden has made my task easier because he has ably represented the position and forcefully expressed the views of the authorities which he has consulted and which other hon. Members representing the Highlands and Islands have consulted.

The Minister of State, Department of Energy, the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray), was at least as forceful in his criticism of the Government's position as I am. If the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is prepared to argue that the rule of collective ministerial responsibility can be breached in respect of myself, it is reasonable to point out the breach within the Government's ranks on this issue. I regret that the Minister of State finds his colleagues as utterly intractable and insensitive to Highlands opinion as I have throughout. He has considerable powers of persuasion, but even he has failed to move his junior colleague, who is more familiar with matters in Edinburgh than in the Highlands. Often in the Highlands people say to me, "Let us deal with a Whitehall Department any day in preference to the Scottish Office, because Whitehall Departments do not pretend to understand our problems, whereas the Scottish Office almost invariably claims omniscience."

The new clause is modest. It proposes an extension of the status quo for a further three years to allow the situation to develop and to see what happens in other parts of the country. What happens in other parts of the country is not wholly germane to the Highlands. As the hon. Member for Garscadden pointed out, the scale of the land in the Highlands and Islands designated by the Countryside Commission for Scotland is much greater than in any other part of Scotland. As the hon. Gentleman said, about a third of the Highland land mass, which is about half of Scotland, is affected by this measure.

The Under-Secretary of State interposed from a sedentary position—no doubt he will return to this point if he replies to the debate—that powers such as this already exist. They do not exist for such a vast area of Scotland, and he should bear that in mind. Though these powers exist, they are in desuetude and have not been invoked for many years.

On Wednesday, at Question Time, the Secretary of State, in reply to me, said that the local authorities could do with a bit of advice on these matters. Is do not quarrel with the view that local authorities could do with advice on these matters. The commission has a legitimate statutory role to offer advice, but the question whether planning permission should be granted is pre-eminently a matter to be decided by elected authorities. Advice is one thing, but the power to impose an embargo on development is another. The fact of disagreement between a local planning authority and the commission resulting in a reference to the Secretary of State can impose wholly unacceptable delays.

11.15 am

The Under-Secretary of State and hon. Members will know that development in these fragile areas is difficult to achieve. If an obstacle of this kind is interposed between the developer and his project, he will find it much easier to go elsewhere. That operates against the interests of authorities in the Highlands which are responsible for development. It is for that reason that the Highlands and Islands Development Board is so rootedly opposed to what the Government are proposing and have implemented for the rest of Scotland.

For example, the extension of Highland Stoneware Ltd. at Lochinver, which could create about 20 jobs, could be put at risk if this measure goes through, because there is a need to move rapidly to take advantage of an expanding market. If this kind of project were opposed by the Countryside Commission for Scotland—there is no reason why it should necessarily be opposed to it, but it might be—the firm would probably look to some other favourable location where such planning obstacles do not exist.

I fail to understand how the Minister and his colleagues cannot appreciate this matter. It must mean that they are prepared to give supervening, overriding importance to matters within the specific authority of the commission and that wider planning questions are to be regarded as of less importance.

I have listened to many debates on the relationship between local government and central Government in the context of local government finance this year. I confess that I do not understand the Government's attitude to the role of local authorities. It appears to be that they should exist to carry out certain statutory functions but that, wherever possible, they should be confined and eroded, that the Secretary of State should be called in to take decisions in their place, and that the Government should rely on the advice not of local authorities but of their appointed bodies—for example, the Countryside Commission for Scotland—to override the local authorities' views.

The Government are confining local democracy into such narrow bounds that any altruistic person who wishes to contribute to local government will be driven out because its role is so diminished. It is symptomatic of the centralising tendency of the Government towards local government matters. It is deplorable, and it is opposed root and branch by every elected authority, that this arrangement, dreamt up by the Countryside Commission for Scotland, will apply in the Highlands and Islands.

It is not only those authorities that have said that the Government are wrong in the matter. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has expressed the strong view that the Government should not apply the proposals to the Highlands and Islands. I do not speak for Argyll. The hon. Member for Argyll did so. If his authority is prepared to strike the balance as it has, that is satisfactory. I have explained why I think it likely that there will be problems, though there have been no problems yet, and perhaps there will be none. It may be that the composition of the local authority is different there and that it wishes to strike the balance differently. It may be less interested in development than in the kind of considerations that the Countryside Commission for Scotland must pay attention to.

However, that matter is not for me. What is for me is the interests of the Highland area. The Highlands and Islands councils have been at one on this matter, and COSLA also agrees. It is time the Government listened to the voice of the people affected by their measures. This is a matter of pre-eminent importance in an area where a third of the land mass is affected, and they should accept the advice of all those bodies, appointed and elected, which are at one.

I wish to speak to the new clause because it is directed primarily at the Countryside Commission for Scotland whose headquarters are in my constituency, and because of the comments that have been made about its chairman and, indirectly, its staff.

Anyone who has ever listened to me knows that I am no lover of quangos, but I must compliment the chairman and members of the commission and its staff on their dedication to their work and its high standard. Some of the comments that we have heard this morning were unjustified. I can only presume that the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), who has now left the Chamber, has exalted the commission's chairman to the ranks of royalty, because normally he saves for royalty the kind of venom that he used this morning.

If we are serious about having a Countryside Commission, if we mean that it is to do a job, it is nonsense to pretend that it should do it for only one part of Scotland.

I am at a loss to reply to the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), because he has now left the Chamber. I assume that he will return soon——

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) probably underestimated the time that the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Walker) would take. That is understandable.

It would appear that that is not all that the hon. Gentleman underestimated. That, too, may explain his absence.

The new clause deals with a matter that has been the subject of controversy for some time in one part of Scotland. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland said in passing that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities was at one with the Highlands and islands authorities in their opposition to this provision, that was incorrect and misleading. The truth is that when the Government consulted the convention it gave complete support. It was only after the proposals had been implemented elsewhere in Scotland, and no doubt after intensive lobbying from the Highlands region and the islands, that COSLA said that, whilst it was still in favour of them for the rest of Scotland, it thought that they should not be applied to the Highlands and islands. No reason was given for the sudden change in its opinion.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland has returned to the Chamber, as I have deliberately waited until now to come to the substance of my remarks. The basis of his representations was the implication that the commission could stultify development in the Highlands and islands. He said that it would be able to put an embargo on development or impose unacceptable delays. The hon. Gentleman did not say that he feared that that might happen; he stated it as a matter of fact. Yet he must accept that in the parts of Scotland where the powers are currently operating there have been no delays. There is no basis on which the hon. Gentleman can state that as a matter of fact. Experience so far is to the contrary.

The only way in which the hon. Gentleman could try to explain his assertion was by the suggestion that the commission was deliberately not trying to use the powers in case that affected the implementation of these proposals in the Highlands and islands. That is an unfair suggestion, unless the hon. Gentleman has some evidence to support it. His whole approach today has been to rely largely on abuse rather than evidence. That is unfortunate, because it is not his usual standard.

Will the Minister accept as evidence the opinions that have been expressed by so many people? I explained the reason why I thought it unlikely that the commission would stir up matters at this time, which is that the question is still capable of being debated.

The hon. Gentleman is an advocate by profession. He must know what is evidence and what is opinion, and that in a matter such as this opinion weighs as heavily as anything else.

The hon. Gentleman has confirmed that what he is talking about is his opinion and the opinion of others. I do not question that it is a genuine opinion that there may be unacceptable delays, but I think that he will accept that the evidence so far does not justify those fears. That evidence comes from the remainder of Scotland, where the proposals have been implemented.

I did not start my discussions with the hon. Gentleman and the local authorities with a hard and fast view of what must or must not hold. I was anxious to hear the views of the Highlands region and of Members of Parliament. It was largely for that reason that we agreed to delay the implementation of the proposals in the Highlands and islands. We did so on the basis that if the fears of those in the Highlands and islands who expressed these views were justified that would show itself in other parts of Scotland, particularly in Argyll, which is part of the Highlands, over the first year of their operation.

The opposite consequences have been shown. Not only have none of the problems been of the kind suggested, but it is the belief of the local authority in Argyll that the new procedures are an improvement on the previous ones. I am not surprised. We should briefly consider what those previous procedures were. Section 9 of the 1967 Act, which is repealed by the Bill, required, first, that the Secretary of State should designate a special planning area because of its scenic beauty. Secondly, he could give directions to a local authority to provide information in regard to any planning application. Thirdly, if the authority received such a request or direction from the Secretary of State, it had to give the information not only to him, but to the Countryside Commission within 21 days. Fourthly, the commission was empowered to make recommendations to the local authority. Fifthly, the authority had to tell the Secretary of State whether it was prepared to accept the commission's recommendations. Sixthly, in the light of the authority's response to the commission's recommendations, the Secretary of State had to decide whether to call in the application.

I mention those procedural matters for two reasons. First, they show that the previous procedure was immeasurably more complicated. I do not think that anyone could disagree. Secondly, for that very reason, they would be much more likely than anything in the current proposals to result in unacceptable delays.

There is one major way in which the new provisions are less attractive to the Highlands, if there is any substance at all in the concern and fears that have been expressed. I refer to the geographical area over which they apply. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland is correct in saying that, because a much wider area is covered by the national scenic area categorisation, a much bigger part of the Highlands and islands area would in theory be affected if major problems arose from these provisions. But the controls themselves are not only far less cumbersome and complex, as Argyll district council itself recognised, but when implemented they cannot possibly take the same length of time as would be required under the provisions of the 1967 Act.

I acknowledged in my speech that the existing powers were cumbersome. But they gave rise to no problems because they had simply fallen into desuetude. Is the Minister aware of any cases in which they have been invoked and caused problems? The local authorities in the area are not aware of any problems of the kind that he suggests existed.

I do not think that one can talk about provisions passed in 1967 as having fallen into desuetude. One would normally use that phrase with regard to something a good deal more ancient. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, the section 9 provisions have not created problems. But nor have the new proposals for national scenic areas over the whole of Scotland, including most parts of the Highlands, where they have been implemented. I understand from Argyll and Bute district council that since the provisions came into force there have been 10 applications within the notifiable categories, all of which were decided with no difference of opinion between the local authority and the Countryside Commission for Scotland. The authority says that it has found no difficulty in applying the procedure, which it considers superior to the old procedure, no doubt for the reasons to which reference has been made. The House should take that into accout.

Our proposals would not give one single power of decision to the commission. If we did that, the hon. Gentleman would be entitled to say that it was being given a right to overrule the views of the local elected planning authority. But that is not the case. If the local authority wishes to involve itself in any development and is unable to reach agreement with the commission, it goes to the Secretary of State not to decide, but to decide whether to call in the application. There may be cases in which he may have no desire to call in the application, notwithstanding the inability to reach agreement. Irrespective of whether he decides to call in the application, however, the crucial decision as to whether there should be development will be taken either by the local elected authority or by the Secretary of State as a member of the elected Government. In no case will a non-elected body take a decision as to whether development should take place in the Highlands and islands or elsewhere in Scotland.

Does not the Minister realise that the power of the commission to delay a project resulting in its reference to the Secretary of State is the power to kill a project?

Again, I believe that that is an unfair suggestion. First, the hon. Gentleman implies that the commission would wish to delay for the sake of delaying in the hope of killing a project. No evidence has been produced by the hon. Gentleman or indeed by anybody else to suggest that the commission would deliberately seek delay.

Secondly, the question of how long it should be before the matter goes to the Secretary of State is within the power of the local authority. If the authority makes it abundantly clear from the beginning that it is not interested in the views of the commission or does not accept them, the Secretary of State will consider the matter straight away. It will take a few weeks only if the local authority itself decides that there is something worth discussing with the commission to see whether agreement can be reached. But that will be within the control of the local authority. It is not as though the proposal was for the commission to refer the matter, if and when it chose to do so, which could give the commission a power to delay if it wished to use it. Even then, there is no evidence to suggest that it would wish to do so.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that the commission does not have even the power of delay. The local authority will indicate what it wishes to do. The commission may indicate whether it agrees, just as it has that power under the 1967 Act. If agreement cannot be reached, the Secretary of State may then decide whether to call in the application. As with all planning applications, in scenic areas or elsewhere, wherever there is the slightest suggestion that delay might harm employment, economic development or any other matter due to the urgency with which a decision is required, under successive Governments there is special provision for the Secretary of State to ensure that decisions can be taken in order not to stultify a decision which might be ruled out simply because of delay.

The Scottish Office has no interest in stultifying desirable economic development. I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts that. This is not a party matter. It does not depend upon which party is in office. We all have the same objectives and the same interest in development. These proposals have worked perfectly satisfactorily elsewhere in Scotland. We deliberately responded to the fears expressed by agreeing that, instead of implementing the proposals last September, a whole year should be allowed to go by so that we could see the experience in other parts of Scotland, including Argyll, which is part of the Highlands region. The evidence so far—and it is quite considerable, particularly from Argyll—indicates that the fears, which I accept are genuinely expressed, are nevertheless unjustified and unnecessary.

On that basis, I ask the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland and the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) to accept that the proposals will produce not only a far simpler procedure than that which has been available in the past but one which, far from damaging the Highlands and islands, will benefit them from every point of view.

I remain unconvinced. I am grateful that the Under-Secretary of State has at least recognised that we were expressing a general concern that is reflected in the Highlands. The differences of scale are manifest and I believe that the dangers of delay are real, as the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) suggested. I do not believe that six months' experience in an area where the amount of land designated is relatively small compared with the Highlands and the Western Isles is a fair run to reassure and defuse those anxieties.

I suppose, however, that I shall have to accept that the Minister will not be moved. But I hope that he will have second thoughts about new clauses 2 and 3 and will be prepared to consider the matter, despite the extremely harsh exterior that he has displayed during the debate.

As an unconvinced sceptic in the face of the Minister's arguments, and recognising that I represent genuine views, I hope that the commission will do all that it can to smooth the passage of events. I understand that the Highlands region has decided, with great reluctance, that it should have discussions about criteria and machinery. I hope that that will be approached in the most helpful spirit possible by the commission and indeed by the region if we are to make what I believe is an unfortunate innovation on the basis of insufficient experience.

At this stage, however, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the new clause.

I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 12, after 'of, insert—

'power driven heavier than air'.

With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 3, in page 1, line 12, at end insert—

'(1A) For the purposes of subsection (1) above the term "aircraft" shall include any model aircraft which is driven by a petrol engine.'.

No. 10, in page 1, line 21, at end insert—

'(3) In this section—

(a) "aircraft" includes model aircraft.

(b) "vehicles" includes model vehicles.`.

The object of amendment No. 2 is to spell out exactly what kind of flying machine or aircraft it is intended should come under the byelaws of local authorities, so that the authorities may exercise control over the landing and taking off of those aircraft.

In the Committee debates, it was obvious to me and to others that there was some doubt as to exactly what was meant by the definition "aircraft". I understand that the promoter, my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser), intended to cover aeroplanes and not balloons. I thought it wise to put down this amendment so that there would be no doubt in anyone's mind as to what was intended. According to Jane's "All the World's Aircraft", if it is simply described as an "aircraft", the definition includes:

"All man-made vehicles for off-surface navigation within the atmosphere, including helicopters and balloons."

Chambers' dictionary describes an aircraft as

"any structure or machine for navigating the air".

The "Encyclopaedia Britannica" states:

"All aircraft fall into two general categories—lighter-than-air or heavier-than-air. Several distinct types are recognized within each group. Each may perform a variety of missions calling for modifications for special usage.

"Lighter-than-air craft rise and float because they displace a volume of air the weight of which is equal to or greater than the total weight of the aircraft. Such craft include balloons and airships".

"A balloon is a light, nonporous bag (usually spherical) filled with hot air or a light gas (hydrogen or helium) to which a basket (or car) may be attached to hold pilot and passenger. The wind provides the only propulsion."

I do not believe that it was ever intended that the balloon should be covered by this clause. It is aimed at the heavier-than-air craft and they

"derive their flight capability (lift) from the dynamic reaction of the air flowing around suitably shaped aerofoil sections."

That would include gliders.

We are here concerned primarily with noise nuisance, and that is why it is necessary clearly to describe and put beyond doubt the kind of flying machine that we wish to cover with the clause. The definition that I have produced is the definition used in air navigation for describing aeroplanes and gliders with engines—

"a power driven heavier than air"

aircraft.

Amendment No. 3 is, I suggest, misleading, and the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) would be well advised not to press it. Model aircraft are not in the main propelled by petrol engines. They do not use that fuel. They use a diesel type of fuel containing methanol, ether and other additives and operate with a glow plug. If we were to use the hon. Gentleman's definition we should catch only a relatively few model aeroplanes. I do not believe that this is what the Bill intends. It seeks to cover all aircraft which fall into the category of being power driven and heavier than air, regardless of whether they are models or full size.

Amendment No. 10 in my name would cover model aircraft. It ensures that model aircraft and vehicles are covered. If I have understood my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus accurately, I believe that he wants to prevent noise from engines whether fitted to model vehicles and model aircraft or vehicles and aircraft. I hope that the short but clear definition that I have produced is in accordance with what he intends and will be accepted.

There are few areas of human endeavour in which I would give best to the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Walker), but one in which I certainly do is the internal combustion engine when fitted to model aircraft. I am prepared to accept his guidance. I should be happy not to proceed with amendment No. 3. I tabled it as minor matter. In Committee we discussed the obtrusive noise of model aeroplanes that are flown on a fixed wire. They can produce a persistent and annoying buzz. I put the amendment down to remind the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser) that the problem had worried the Committee. If he is sympathetic in principle to this idea it is no doubt something that car. be examined in another place, where a better draft can be devised.

Since the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) has indicated his intention not to proceed with his amendment I shall confine myself to those tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Walker). I thank him for his assiduous attendance every time the Bill has come before us in the House or in Committee and for his attention to the details of the Bill.

I deal first with amendment No. 2. Today and in Committee my hon. Friend has given us a learned discourse on a subject on which I am bound to bow to his superior knowledge. However, notwithstanding his comments I am not convinced that amendment No. 2 adds anything to the existing term "aircraft". It appears simply to exempt lighter-than-air power-driven aircraft such as airships. No doubt a power-driven airship could be just as noisy as any other aircraft. No doubt he was concerned to ensure that powered gliders were covered by the term "aircraft", and I can asure him that they are.

For these reasons I am prepared to accept amendment No. 10 which clarifies a point that caused concern on both sides in Committee.

I beg to move amendment No. 4, in page 1, leave out line 15.

With this we may also take amendment No. 8, in page 1, line 21, at end insert—

'(3) Subsection (1) above shall not apply to the Crown.'.

These are drafting amendments to clarify the position of the Crown in relation to the powers given in the clause. The combined effect of the amendments is to convert into a form more generally used in statute the exemption for the Crown and its servants from bylaws that may be made under clause 1.

The convention is that the Crown is normally bound by statute unless it is given specific exemption. Such an exemption is considered necessary in these circumstances to allow, for example, the use of vehicles by Crown servants acting in the normal course of their duties. That would cover a wide ambit of activity, from the visiting agricultural inspector to the movement of military personnel in the countryside.

There is, effectively, no substantial change as a result of the amendments, but they frame the Bill in a more appropriate form.

I beg to move amendment No. 5, in page 1, line 20, leave out from 'for' to end of line 21 and insert

'agriculture, forestry, the maintenance of the land or for the exercise of sporting rights'.

With it we may also take the following amendments: No. 6, in page 1, line 21, after 'agriculture', insert 'fish-farming'.

No. 7, in page 1, line 21, leave out 'sport', and insert

'sporting rights connected with hunting, fishing and related activities.'.

No. 9, in page 1, line 21, at end insert—

'(3) In this section—

"sporting rights" means rights of fowling, shooting or fishing, or of taking or killing game, deer or rabbits.'.

In Committee a number of hon. Members were concerned that the use of the word "sport" went too wide and might cover more land uses than the Bill intended. The effect of these drafting amendments is to redefine "sport" to make it clear that traditional country sports that are generally accepted as countryside pursuits are exempted.

I recognise that the countryside is increasingly used for a number of leisure pursuits, but it is appropriate to continue the distinction between those sports and the traditional sports that form an integral part of the economy of the countryside.

The amendment that stands in my name is perhaps the most suitable of the three options before the House in that it covers land management while avoiding the unnecessary complication of defining "sporting rights".

I believe that that term has already been adequately defined in the law of Scotland in relation particularly to such matters as valuation and rating. It would present no difficulty as it stands should a court ever be required to consider it.

Perhaps I may anticipate the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway (Mr. Lang) on fish farming. I suggest that the House does not accept my hon. Friend's amendment. I do not expect that, should fish farming develop even further than it has in Scotland, there would be any noise problem. It is an activity that is essentially static, relying on tubs and ponds in the sea apart from a limited use of outboard motors on boats going to and from the buoys and the various set-ups involved. That is unlikely to cause difficulty.

For that reason I invite the House to support amendment No. 5 and to resist the others.

I want to speak to amendment No. 6. In Committee when we were discussing the exemptions from engine noise provisions, I raised a question about fish farming and horticulture. My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser) undertook to consider that. I accept that horticulture is subsumed under agriculture. I listened with interest to what my hon. Friend said about fish fanning. However, in speaking to my amendment, I hope that the Minister will respond to some of my comments.

Some people may feel that fish farming, or aquaculture as it is sometimes called, is appropriately part of agriculture. I am not certain that the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries would agree. At the centre of my amendment is the question whether fish farming is a branch of agriculture. If it were, that would remove anomalies, but because of its uncertain status I want to clarify its position in the Bill.

My amendment is a probing amendment. Fish farming is an increasingly important industry. It is a new rural industry deeoly rooted in the natural assets and resources of the coastal and inland countryside.

It is true that fish farming was not unknown to the earlier civilisations. The ancient Romans may have had knowledge of it and no doubt in ancient Egypt and even the distant Chinese dynasties one might find traces on friezes or vases. I am told that in my constituency there are the remains of a marine coastal fish farm built by Napoleonic prisoners of war.

In essence fish farming is a new industry which has expanded dynamically over the past 20 years. It is of inestimable value to country areas where it creates new jobs. In Scotland about 400 jobs have been created in the industry. That may not seem a large number in total but in country areas it is a substantial figure. The total output has a value of about £5 million per annum. About 30 million trout and 300,000 salmon are produced, with a fair proportion going to export.

The industry is important because of its growth potential. The House will be fascinated to know that at present we eat one trout per person every four years, so the scope for expansion can readily be seen. Recent developments have strengthened the case for fish farming being treated as a branch of agriculture, notably the victory in the shape of agreement by the Government by means of an amendment to the Local Government, Planning and Land Act, whereby fish farming was effectively de-rated as from 1 April this year and was placed on the same basis as agriculture. That was strengthened by moves to render fish farming eligible for grant aid under the agriculture capital grants scheme. That, in turn opens the door to various European Community grants.

The picture is confused because fish farming is being discussed in another place under the Fisheries Bill, whose main aim is to set up a Sea Fish Authority, in place of the White Fish Authority and the Herring Industry Board. The Scottish National Farmers Union was alarmed at the prospect that the sea fish authority might be given power to raise levies from fish farmers, which the union regarded as an agricultural preserve. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Bill, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll (Mr. MacKay) referred—a Bill that one would imagine was concerned primarily with land and the countryside—there is a proposal for the setting up of a marine nature reserve. Fish farming is experiencing a crisis of identity. It is not just a psychological crisis. It has important implications for finance and other resources. Fish farmers are denied access, for example, to the services and funds of the Central Council for Agricultural and Horticultural Co-operation for help in marketing development. The enabling legislation of the Agricultural Training Board prevents the extension of that board's activities to fish farming. In the same way the Agricultural Research Council is debarred from researching fish farming. Finally, there is a dispute about where control of the industry should be vested, whether under the jurisdiction of area fishery boards or under that of some agriculture-oriented organisation.

That matter cannot be solved in this minor Bill—I do not mean that in a pejorative sense to my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus. We are primarily concerned with engine noise and he implied that that was not a problem with fish farming. I could show him a photograph of a pneumatic discharge trout-feeding trailer being towed by a tractor. That is but one of the mechanical aids used in this capital-intensive industry.

I am anxious to establish that fish farming—which at present is neither fish nor fowl—is more clearly defined as a branch of agriculture. I should be glad to hear the Minister's comments.

My amendment No. 9 attempts to define the term "sporting rights". I understand that the concept of sporting rights is understood to the law of rating, but I hope that my amendment, which defines it as

"rights of fowling, shooting or fishing, or of taking or killing game, deer or rabbits",

may be a further helpful clarification of the matter.

I accept amendment No. 5. The inclusion of the words

"the maintenance of the land"

deals with most of the important points raised in Committee that concerned a number of hon. Members.

I understand that the definition of "sporting rights" as proposed in the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway (Mr. Lang) is considered unnecessary as the meaning of sporting rights is well understood. Therefore it may be unnecessarily restrictive to spell that out in the Bill, although I have no objection to the way that he has suggested doing it.

I was impressed by the eloquent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway in support of fish farming. The Government take a similar view of the desirability of expanding the industry. The amendment is concerned with noise and the extent to which fish farming is considered as having processes comparable with commerce and industry. I understand that some processes, such as the extraction of water and the discharge of effluent, might be more readily compared with commercial and industrial processes. Therefore, for the purposes of the regulations, it might be more sensible not to accept amendment No. 6.

12 noon

I accept that that is not a strong argument. If ultimately agriculture is held to include fish farming my hon. Friend's amendment would be unnecessary as that would be covered by the existing wording of the Bill. However, if fish farming is not encompassed in agriculture, that suggests that it would be inappropriate to make a specific further exemption, especially if the noise associated with some of these processes would make it more comparable with a commercial process and therefore suitable for these regulations. I hope that my hon. Friends will feel that it is not necessary to press that amendment to a Division.

I beg to move amendment No. 15, in page 3, leave out lines 9 to 12 and insert—

'5. After section 48 of the Act of 1967 there shall be inserted the following section—

"48A. A regional park is a park, set in the countryside, extensive in size in which the dominant land use in selected parts is public recreation and which is so located as to be accessible to a substantial number of the public.".'.

With this we shall discuss the following amendments: Government amendment No. 16.

No. 17, in page 3, line 9, leave out 'park is a park' and insert 'management area'.

No. 21, in page 3, line 15, leave out 'parks' and insert `management areas'.

No. 22, in page 3, line 17, leave out 'park' and insert `area'.

No. 23, in page 3, line 20, leave out 'park' and insert `management area'.

No. 24, in page 4, line 14, leave out 'park' and insert `management area'.

One of the Bill's major provisions is to give statutory backing to regional parks throughout Scotland, if that is the wish of local authorities and if it secures the support of the Secretary of State, who has the ultimate decision. The proposal originated in a document entitled "A Park System for Scotland" by the Countryside Commission for Scotland. The idea is novel. It is unlike the national parks system in England because it does not involve the setting up of a new authority with planning roles; nor does it necessarily involve the acquisition of land.

A regional park already exists at Clyde/Muirshiel. Hon. Members might be surprised that I, a Conservative Member from the east coast of Scotland, should pay a compliment to the Labour-controlled Strathclyde council for the support that it has given to that park. It is an illustration of what we seek to set up throughout Scotland. The park contains a loch for water recreation. A number of paths link concentrated areas of activity in the park.

In Committee we discussed whether the Bill contained a proper definition of a regional park. The definition proposed in amendment No. 15 is a result of what the Countryside Commission for Scotland said in its document. Page 22 states:

"We see these regional parks, where recreation is the dominant form of land use in selected parts only, as larger and more diverse in character and owernership than a country park and so less suited to a unified management programme. Regional parks are intended to provide a comprehensive system of public access to countryside, ranging from areas of nil or low recreational use to site, used intensively, including picnic sites and possibly one or more country parks, and linked by footpaths or wider areas over which access agreements could be negotiated. Because of the diversity of land use and their size, such parks cannot be regarded as being merely large country parks."

My definition encapsulates everything that organisations interested in the countryside want to be established in Scotland. We must make it clear to people with countryside interests, such as farmers, that the establishment of a regional park will not cause concern or upset the traditional countryside activities. We must ensure that regional parks do not spring up all over Scotland in large numbers. That is why the definition says that a regional park should be

"so located as to be accessible to a substantial number of the public."

That is why it would at this stage be inappropriate to set up a regional park in Assynt, which has been the subject of much debate.

Regional parks should be established around Scotland's great cities where the public have a legitimate right of recreation. Regional parks would ensure that people can exercise that right and at the same time ensure that traditional countryside activities and industries are not unduly disturbed.

My definition is longer and fuller than that proposed by the Minister. There is some force in his more limited definition. We have not yet fixed what regional parks are. I do not want to restrict this novel and developing idea by definition. Whatever definition is chosen I hope that we will do nothing to restrict their development.

I wish to speak to amendment No. 17. I should have appreciated it if the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) had been in the Chamber because he supported me in Committee on this issue. I am amazed that the right hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart), who also supported me, is not attending this important debate.

I welcome the Bill, as do the Scottish Landowners Federation, the SNFU, the Countryside Activities Council and all organisations with interests in the Scottish countryside. As a sponsor I do not wish to weaken the Bill. I wish to clarify what it seeks to achieve.

The English language presents a number of problems. It presents a number of problems for me. The double meaning of words is one of its greatest weaknesses. We have a responsibility not to add extra meanings to words. It is necessary to say "a park is a park". I object to the word "park" being used in this context.

The definition in the Bill is not the same as that in Chambers' dictionary. The word "park" conjures up many pictures. It could be a beautiful urban park with flowers, greenery, cut grass and waters in which the public wander freely and enjoy themselves. It could be a car park where vehicles are parked with access by the public and where the public have rights—although they often have to pay for them. It could be a wildlife park with firmly defined borders formed by a high mesh fence, to keep out the people or to keep in the animals. It could be a national park like an English national park. It could be, as it is in Aberdeenshire or Banffshire, a field.

Robert Burns used the term in his poem "On the death and dying words of poor Maillie" when he said:

"Ca' them out to park and hill

And let them wander at their will"."

The Scottish Landowners Federation says:

"The Federation has always been opposed to the term park in terms of countryside legislation in Scotland except in certain specific circumstances. Country parks already in existence under statute are aptly named, these being areas of land owned by local authority and managed by them for the intention of recreation by the public. In Scotland we have no national parks as exist in England and the term 'park' as applied to rural land consequently has a different meaning. The public's conception of the term is an area of land, usually publicly owned, set aside for their use and over which they have a primary right of access and for recreation. This is of course a correct description of city parks and country parks."

I could also quote the words of a farmer in the Pentland hills who objects to the use of the word "park" in this context.

Therefore, I am at a complete loss to understand what, if anything, the public would gain from this erroneous designation, apart from an impression of public ownership. I therefore ask the Government to accept my amendment.

I listened with interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Banff (Mr. Myles). The question is whether the phrase "management area" that he suggests would be preferable to "regional park". In fact, it might be even more deleterious to his objectives. The management area implies that the whole area is being managed in some way, giving an impression of bureaucratisation and over-control, which the National Farmers Union, and certainly local farmers, wish to avoid. For the parts of a national park that remain in private use and may be devoted to agriculture, there will be no extra burden on the local farmers in connection with the use of that land. Therefore, it would not be consistent to define that as being part of a management area which, by definition, implies that the whole area, including farming areas, were managed by the Government or by a local authority or other public body. For that reason, the term "regional park" seems more appropriate.

I wish to say a word on amendment No. 15, standing in the name of the sponsor of the Bill. I have carefully considered the wording of his amendment and, of course, that of Governmtent amendment No. 16. There is not much between them. My hon. Friend's amendment is inappropriate, in that it defines "regional park" as an area in which the dominant land use is public recreation, and the purpose of a regional park may be to provide an area for recreation in the future which may not exist at the time the park is created. That is why the Government's amendment refers to a regional park as being an area

"a substantial part of which is devoted to the recreational needs of the public."

That shows the purpose for which the park is being created, rather than the use which might exist at the time the park comes into existence. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will support amendment No. 16.

I accept the Minister's comment that what is happening in Scotland is still a developing system of regional parks. I should not wish to do anything to hinder the fact that we have settled upon a fixed number of regional parks. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

I beg to move amendment No. 20, in page 3, line 13, after 'councils', insert

'in consultation with the District Council or District Councils within whose boundaries the designated land lies.'.

I do not wish to delay the House, but we should pause a little to discuss this subject. In clause 5, we are creating a new animal in Scotland—a regional park. As yet, it is ill defined. The hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser) made something of a virtue of that fact. I got the impression that he almost did not know what he was creating. Generally, it is seen as a good idea.

The difficulty is that the only power to designate a regional park lies with the regional council. That involves considerable problems, and we shall have difficulties about definition for some time to come. On 24 March, I received a letter from the planning director of Glasgow district council. He said:

"It is not explicitly stated what the difference if any would be between a regional park and a countryside park. A reasonable assumption would be that they amount to one and the same thing."

I assume that they do not amount to one and the same thing, because they are totally different concepts. However, it is interesting that someone as well informed as the planning director is still in the dark about what a regional park constitutes.

Moreover, the monopoly of designation that is given by clause 5 to the regional council seems to me to me to be open to question. The Stodart report, which looked carefully at the overlapping responsibilities in local government, came down firmly in favour of parks being a district function. It said:

"For our part we see the range of countryside functions at present exercised by local authorities as being essentially related to amenity, and this leads us to recommend that these should form part of district councils' comprehensive responsibility for leisure and recreation … Where facilities such as country parks straddle district boundaries we envisage that the districts concerned would co-operate in planning, provision and management. There seems to us no reason for regional involvement, other than by perhaps contributing financially".

The regions might have something to say about that. It is a definite recommendation that a designation—even of regional parks and even ones that straddle districts and are therefore substantial in size and are presumably something like what is thought of as being of mixed ownership and therefore very expensive—should go to districts or combinations of districts.

When I raised that matter in Committee, the Under-Secretary was unusually unconvincing and ill at ease. He said:

"If, at the end of the day, Stodart's recommendations are accepted, there will be a need for legislative means to implement those recommendations thought appropriate. That will be an opportunity to reconsider this matter in the light of the general response to Stodart. At this stage, it is sensible that we show clearly that it is appropriate that one tier of local government is appropriate for designating regional parks.

It is an extraordinary argumemt that although we cannot decide which tier, we should have a prize draw and fly in the face of Stodart's advice and give it to the regions. He also said:

"No urgency is involved. No one will lose out as a result of a decision that we may take today on this matter. We wish to have time to consider what the hon. Gentleman says are the likely representations. That is why it is sensible to move in this way."—[Official Report, Second Scottish Standing Committee, 11 March 1981; c. 62–3.]

If there is no urgency, surely it would be sensible just to leave it as an open option.

I hesitate to suggest that we take out clause 5 altogether, but surely it would be sensible to write in, as the amendment seeks, a specific responsibility to consult and involve in consultation, and possibly management, the district councils in whose area the area to be designated lies. We should do no less than that, because to do less would cause bitter friction and lead to misunderstanding that the decision has been taken and that Stodart is being rejected. The fact that there is to be a regional responsibility with no reference to district councils may be seen as a sort of legislative equivalent to possession being nine parts of the law when the argument and discussion about Stodart finally take place.

The Loch Lomond park, which might now be described as a regional park, not only involves the Strathclyde and Central regions but also a large management input from Stirling and Dunbarton districts. In view of Stodart's remarks, and for common sense considerations, we must recognise that by accepting the amendment the district councils have an interest which should be included in the statute. The Minister appears to have an open mind about the distinct recommendation from Stodart that it should be a district function.

I have listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar). His amendment proposes consultations with district councils when a regional park is being designated. I assure him that it would be the Secretary of State's intention, in any circular issued as a result of the Bill, automatically to suggest that there should be consultation with district councils if the regional council is considering designation of a regional park.

The hon. Gentleman's amendment proposes a statutory requirement. I am prepared to consider that further. The Bill will be considered in another place. My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser) and the Bill's sponsor in another place might be prepared to accept such an argument. I assure the hon. Gentleman that any circular will recommend consultation. We shall give further thought to whether a statutory reference should be written into the Bill.

I am happy to leave the matter there. There is no great difference between us. I have an open mind. I am not suggesting that the Stodart decision should be one way or the other. It is important to be even-handed about an undecided issue. I hope that the Minister will consider the matter sensibly. I have received representations from a number of district authorities, including mine in Glasgow. It would create a better atmosphere if the Minister could move in the direction that I have indicated.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

I beg to move amendment No. 29, in page 6, line 15, after '35A' insert '(1)'.

With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 30, in page 6, line 21, at end insert—

'(2) Part II of Schedule 3 to this Act shall apply to orders of the kind referred to in subsection (1) above as it applies to other orders made under any of the said sections 31, 34 or 35.'.

Clause 9 provides that orders for the creation, diversion and extinguishment of public footpaths need no longer be confirmed by the Secretary of State unless objections about them are sustained. The intention is that the provisions in schedule 3 of the 1967 Act should continue to apply to the procedures to be used for making such orders.

Since the Committee stage of the Bill, I have received a number of representations from the Scottish Countryside Activities Council, which otherwise supports the Bill, saying that it is concerned about whether the normal procedure for advertising objections will continue. It is feared that an authority might make an order without seeking confirmation on the grounds that there was no objection, and without complying with the requirements of schedule 3 about giving notice of the order and allowing a period for objections to be lodged. That would not be feasible, as the procedure would have to be completed before it could be established that an order was unopposed.

To put the council's fears at rest—whether or not they are real—I propose to write into the Bill confirmation that an appeal about an unopposed order, made without the Secretary of State's confirmation, should continue to lie to the Court of Session when an aggrieved person would consider whether the proper procedures had been followed by the promoting authority. That should assure affected individuals that their interests are being properly protected in the Bill.

I beg to move amendment No. 33, in page 6, line 22, leave out 'or', and insert 'after consultation with'.

With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 34, in page 6, line 28, at end insert—

'(1A) Before entering into any management agreement, the Commission shall consult the relevant planning authorities.

(1B) In this section, "the relevant planning authorities" include any planning authority for an area within which any land liable to be affected by the management agreement is situated'.

No. 35, in page 6, line 28, at end insert—

'(1A) Where, in the opinion of the Commission, it is necessary in the national interest that such an agreement be made and the relevant planning authority has not entered into such an agreement then the Commission may, after consultation with the Planning Authority, take such steps as are necessary to conclude an agreement.'.

This is the last debate of any substance that I intend to initiate. I do not intend to intervene on Third Reading. I take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser) on the splendid progress of this measure. I have some reservations around the margin, and I believe that it would have been better as a Government Bill. However, the hon. Gentleman has done splendidly. He has conducted the Bill with great courtesy and persistence. He should be congratulated on controlling his Back Benches on Second Reading so that no one shouted "Object." That is usually a reflex action from Tory backwoodsmen. The hon. Gentleman is now at the point of success.

I feel strongly about these amendments. Clause 10 concerns management agreements and provides that a management agreement can be entered into with the owner of land by the planning authority or the Countryside Commission for Scotland. I have received a number of strong representations from the Highland region, which had caveats from the beginning. I have also heard from a number of others that this is a matter of some dispute and contention. If management agreements are to be entered into, whether they be for capital transfer tax exemptions or otherwise, they are the responsibility of the local authority. While there should be consultation with the commission, as has been provided for in the amendments, the final decision should lie with elected local authorities. That point was made earlier in the debate. On this occasion I have an unlikely ally in the hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. MacKay), for which I am grateful.

I want to refer to a letter to the Scottish Development Department from a Mr. F. H. Orr, dated 3 April. It was addressed to the joint director of law and administration of the Highland council. That council had been arguing that under clause 32 of the Wildlife and Countryside Bill a similar right for England and Wales had been confined to local authorities, and had not been given to a non-elected quango. I mention that dreaded word "quango" for the first time. Mr. On said that we should not be bound by the contents of the English Bill, and that Scotland should look for its own solutions. I do not quarrel with that view. He made an important point, with which I am sure the Minister will wish to deal. He said:

"The Scottish provision which allows the Countryside Commission to enter agreements as a principle was the outcome of agreement of a working party which included"—

and listed the distinguished and wide-ranging bodies that had been involved. He continued:

"They took the view that both local authorities and the Commission should have enabling powers"

That is embodied in clause 10. He continued:

"the latter"—

meaning the commission—

"confining its use to agreements where a significant national interest was involved."

There is no sign of any such qualification in the Bill. Such a qualification is not simply laymen's words, but is often found in statutes.

I draw the attention of the House to section 15(2) of the Countryside Act 1968, which states:

"Where, for the purpose of conserving those flora, fauna or geological or physiographical features, it appears to the Council expedient in the national interest to do so, the Council may enter into an agreement"

That is, in effect, a management agreement. The Act refers to the phrase "in the national interest". Mr. On believes that there is no doubt that that qualification should be included. It was also the view of the working party on whose findings the Bill has been built.

I am including such a provision in amendment No. 35. It is not included in the Bill. It should be included, and I wish to stress that. Mr. Orr said in his letter:

"We would expect the Commission to keep local authorities advised of any proposal to enter into a management agreement."

That is a pious hope, although no doubt on many occasions it is justified. However, it is only a hope. There is nothing in the clause to provide that that consultation should take place. If there is to be any sort of involvement as a principle by the commission, the qualification "only where significant national interest is involved" should be included. The right to make a management agreement is wide-ranging. In Committee, the hon. Member for South Angus gave a number of examples of planning and compensation for planning that did not take place—for example, the regeneration of scrub land and drystone dyking.

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The hon. Member for South Angus said that the opportunities within the clause are limitless. That is right. They can involve land management and a wide range of matters that are normally the preserve of the elected council. If we are to have the commission making agreements off its own bat as a principle without any statutory duty to consult, and if the opportunities are limitless, we should try to limit them in the way that the working party wanted by putting in a qualification about the national interest.

The amendment is not designed to be hostile. Its purpose is to ensure that the commission operates within agreed limits, limits that are agreed by the working party and supported by common sense. I hope that it will be agreed that the amendment proposes a modest and sensible limitation in view of the Scottish Development Department's letter, the working party's report and the remarks of the hon. Member for South Angus about the scope of management agreements and their limitless opportunities.

I shall direct my remarks to the amendment that stands in my name, amendment No. 34, which tries to achieve the same result as the amendment of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) but in a slightly different way.

I am surprised that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) is no longer in his place. This is another issue on which the Highland regional council had much to say. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman's two amazing outbursts this morning were just his ration for the week. He took up a great deal of the time of the House and I feel obliged to foreshorten my remarks due to his electioneering. I was rather insulted when he said that I was trying to face both ways between the conservation lobby and the farming lobby.

One has to take both positions into account in trying to find a compromise that satisfies both groups, legitimate interests. It is insulting indeed for a Social Democrat to accuse anyone of facing both ways when he must find it extremely difficult, when facing all different ways at one and the same time, to have the addition of a tartan version of the Social Democratic Party. I am happy to say that it is not to be found at the bottom of my garden.

In discussing management agreements we embrace a topic that is raised vis. a vis the Nature Conservancy Council and sites of special scientific interest. As I said on 3 March in an Adjournment debate, if we are to have conservation in rural areas it is important that some account is taken of the economic consequences of the activities of the NCC or of the commission. Management agreements are one of the ways in which the economic consequences can be taken into account.

Under the terms of the Bill, the commission can enter into management agreements with the owner of the land, whether he be an estate owner of the sort that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland has decided to make his Aunt Sally to heip him win his next election as a Social Democrat, or an ordinary working farmer who finds that he is farming over land of special scientific interest or special beauty. The management agreement is the way in which to arrive at a compromise between the interests of the farmers and the interests of the conservationists. Whether the issue be beauty or scientific conservation, the planners should at least be consulted. That is what the amendment seeks, as does the amendment of the hon. Member for Garscadden.

I do not wish it to be thought that I think that the planners are necessarily correct. The most serious planning application refusal of which I am aware was in the Highland part of my constituency. The Highland regional council refused permission for an important development that would have brought employment and wealth to that part of the country. The whole operation was put in danger by that refusal. The NCC was not involved and it was not an area of scenic beauty, but the Highland regional council was involved. I am happy to say that the reporter on the appeal not only found that its judgment was sadly lacking but that its interpretation of the law was sadly lacking. I am not convinced that planners are necessarily always right on those matters. The Highland regional planners have made the biggest mistake which I have seen in my two years as the Member involved in planning matters.

Therefore, I hope my hon. Friend will accept that the planners have a contribution to make. It would help the Highland regional council if it felt that it would be consulted. I hope that if my hon. Friend is not able to accept my amendment or the amendment of the hon. Member for Garscadden, he will be able to devise an amendment which might be introduced in another place.

The points which have been raised in the amendment are important. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll (Mr. MacKay) probably has the balance right.

I propose to my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Fraser) that we might consider recommending acceptance of amendment No. 34. That amendment includes the planning authority and ensures that it is consulted on all occasions. I prefer amendment No. 34 to that of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), firstly because his does not deal with a situation where a number of local authorities might be covered by the area affected by a management agreement. In those circumstances, it is sensible that the Countryside Commission for Scotland should be a body which can initiate such an agreement. Unlike England, Scotland does not have a national parks authority. South of the border, that authority has the power to initiate management agreements wherever it thinks that those are appropriate. The nearest equivalent that we have is the commission.

If we ensure a statutory requirement to consult the local authority and if the commission wishes to introduce a management agreement, that gets the balance right and guarantees that the planning authorities are involved. It enables them to make such an agreement, and in other limited areas it enables the commission to make an agreement in consultation with the local authorities. That is fair to all parties concerned. I hope that the hon. Member for Garscadden will feel that that is a reasonable area of assurance to the local authority, that it must either directly or indirectly be involved whenever a management agreement has been reached.

That is not what I wanted. The concept of what is necessary in the national interest is not included. That valuable concept came from the working party and was prayed in aid by the Minister's Department in correspondence. However, what the Minister is offering is better than nothing. It may even send the hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. MacKay) tramping home happily. Who am I to throw any shadow of spleen over his happiness? Therefore, I shall withdraw my amendment. However, I hope that the Minister will at least consider the matter before it goes to the Lords. There is some virtue in the points which I have made. I hope that he will not entirely close his mind to further thought.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Now that we have reached the Third Reading of the Bill, which I have introduced, I thank my hon. Friends who have been here to support me in taking the Bill through the House. I also thank the Countryside Commission for Scotland for the support which it has given me in putting together the Bill.

I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) for the constructive approach he has taken to the Bill and for the criticisms he has made. I include also my thanks to the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson), who sponsored the Bill and who supported it wholeheartedly in Committee. With the happy advent of a child in his family, he is not able to be here today.

It will be convenient also to debate clause 2 stand part and Government new clause 1—Experimental reopening of lines for railway passenger services—plus the following amendments to the new clause:

(a), in line 3, after 'line', insert 'or from a station'.

(b), in line 6, after 'line', insert; or from that station'. Government amendment No. 4.

In bringing this measure to the attention of the House, let me first explain how it came into being. It is common belief that this is the age of the train and that it is time that, wherever possible, we got people off the roads and back on to trains. Moving into a new house, I discovered without surprise that adjacent was a railway line that carried a fair amount of goods but no passengers. It goes from Barnstaple to Bideford and on to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Devon, West (Mr. Mills). With commuters crowding the road outside my back door, it seemed logical that they would be more comfortable on a train, particularly as the line was already there.

That small and fairly obvious thought brought me to the discovery, as a new Member of Parliament, that British Rail has every right to open or reopen a line, but, if the experiment fails, it is a lengthy and extremely expensive process to close the line. Principally for that reason many perfectly good lines carry only a little freight, when they could be used much more usefully.

Gathering around Me four of my hon. Friends and four Opposition Members of like mind, I have produced a simple Bill that seeks to allow British Rail to open experimentally lines closed to passenger traffic and, if the experiment fails, to allow British Rail to close them on notification to the Minister, without the length of time and cost at present involved.

In my early ignorance, I omitted to realise that not only the line had to be reopened but also stations. I accept entirely that the Minister's clauses are superior to my original ones and thank him, but hope that he will accept my amendments (a) and (b) because stations are important. The amendments will ensure that line and station go hand in hand.

There is probably more general interest in railways now than at any time since they began. Few constituencies do not have a good and active railway conservation group, probably allied to a group seeking to increase the number of trains along a line or to improve timetabling, and often feeling frustrated that their efforts appear to go for naught.

That is not the fault of the British Railways Board which now appears to be more far-sighted and far less defeatist than in the 15 or 20 years that I have been involved in local government and now in the House. At long last, the organisation has gone from defensive and defeatist, if not on to the attack at least to comparative aggression, and I hope that it may be possible to do the logical thing and work hard to revitalise and reinvigorate our system.

I hope that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister will tell us that we shall not have a continual increase in the number of closures of rural lines. I hope that we shall hear that the Government will support the idea of the rail-bus. I hope that the Government will go forward, as they seem now to be doing, in encouraging railways and saying that it is better to move people and, wherever possible, freight by railway than in an inevitable polluting motor vehicle.

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The basic problem is that we do not have flexibility, particularly in local services. The high-speed trains are a great boon to those who live near high-speed train services. Some of us who have to drive 45 miles to find them have a slow-speed lane in Devonshire to reach a high-speed train in Exeter or Taunton.

We are grateful to British Rail for the greatly improved timetabling that is being produced and are grateful for every face-lifted station. At this stage, it seems right to grant more freedom for the British Railways Board, which can be given at no cost at all to the Government, and to remove the involvement of the Minister in the day-to-day operation and short-term forecasting of the railways. Anything which reduces ministerial involvement reduces cost and reduces bureaucracy. As this measure is aimed at improving a vital public service, I feel confident that we shall not get too much opposition to it today.

When one talks about railways these days, one must talk about pollution—if only because railways must be the least pollutant and most comfortable way of moving people. I come from a rural area with a long coast line. However, it is 42 miles from the nearest major railway station and inevitably our tourist business suffers because British Rail cannot improve the service, because of the sheer cost of doing so under present conditions.

The rail-bus is what it says it is. It is a bus chassis, produced by British Leyland and built in Britain. A single unit can carry 50 seated passengers. A double unit can carry 100 seated passengers and 100 standing passengers. This gives it a good capacity at a low running cost. It has export potential—"Made in Britain"; excellent. It has already been on trial in Massachusetts. I believe that its first trial run was on the Boston-to-Concord line, which has historical interest to Britons as a place where we had a fairly rough ride a few centuries ago.

As we have this rail-bus potential and are ahead of the world, let us for once capitalise on our advantage. The rail-bus concept offers the most likely way of opening the country up, from the urban to the rural and the rural to the urban, for the commuter, for students, and, perhaps most important of all, for the day-to-day car-bound motorist who has not one but possibly two private cars in his family. In Devon he probably has a lower than average income, but he requires two cars—one to get to work, and the second to get his family probably to school and certainly to the shops.

This simple measure can give great advantage in reducing congestion on our roads, in the cost of roads, arid perhaps even in reducing the size of vehicles. Most important of all, it will give the public a genuine choice about how they want to move at, one hopes, a fair and economic rate.

Economic facts must be faced. Much of our public transport will always be subsidised. One of the problems that we have had in the past has been that, when a local authority sought to assess the cost of any transport grant, it could not assess the cost of just one or two years but had to do so for a far longer than "trial" period. Should the British Railways Board reopen some sector of line, or station, it had to accept that it was lumbered with that cost right through the long closure process if the experimental reopening was a failure. This simple measure gives local authorities a great deal of assistance in costing and forecasting cost within acceptable limits.

I am grateful to the Association of District Councils for its thoughts and comments on the Bill. Not one, but 131 district councils took the trouble to reply Some made the case that I have already made about stations being as essential as lines, some referred to costs and, in many instances, specified areas where they would welcome improved services and, by definition, since they have to fund them would accept the costs involved to their ratepayers.

The spread across the country is perhaps the most remarkable of all. I started out to seek a simple measure to help a small stretch of railway line in north Devon. The replies came from areas as widespread as Cannock Chase, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Merthyr, Milton Keynes, old and new, from Watford and Stockton and many others. I find it encouraging that local authorities clearly support the need to reconsider our basic means of public transport and to go back to the sensible railway as opposed to the expensive and pollutant road.

We talk about the people who would use the railways under this Act, as I mist it will become, but we have not mentioned goods traffic. I shall not expand too much upon this aspect, if only because the goods traffic side has specific handling problems. Having said that, I am delighted to say that in my part of the country we have had a grant to improve goods handling facilities for clay at Meeth in Devon. Here is a bulk material which is far better off on the railway, and consequently reduces congestion on the roads.

The rural commuter going to work by train could save one car per family in many families. There is also the rural commuter who goes to study. This is a great problem. We lose young people only too easily as they grow up if they have to find work outside our country areas. if we can help them to get to their studies and encourage business to come into rural areas because communications are better, that will be of great help to our students and of value to our communities.

People travel to town to do their shopping and they may live in rural areas all the year. But what of the holidaymaker? The one thing that holidaymakers do not want to do on holiday is change trains or buses when they have children, a carrycot and possibly a plastic bucket with them.

A good inter-city service will get tourists to this country, but not out into our countryside and to the coast. Here, the rail-bus concept offers the best possible hope for short journeys, but it is equally important for business visitors and others going from the country to the big cities to get good connecting trains. This means having a coach to hook on to a through train and also means better timetabling, which British Rail may find it easier to afford if it is getting more revenue from tourists who love the coast but do not enjoy lugging their children and luggage from one place to another when they have to change at some terminus.

I suspect that there is a railway development group in almost every constituency. There are certainly strong ones in the West Country. Two years ago most of the railway development group literature was hostile towards the Government. It was felt that the Government did not have any concern for the smaller units outside the big cities. I was fascinated to see only this morning the May edition of the North Devon railway line development group's publication. It refers to the Minister approving a freight improvement grant. It states that the "most helpful development" for years is a new passenger timetable. It refers to a 'facelift' for Barnstaple station. These are interesting straws in the wind, because for so long Governments of both complexions have been unpopular as they appeared to talk down or write off our railway system.

I believe that we have the public with us. I do not think that we shall create any great problems in allowing British Rail to work with local authorities rather than the Minister to encourage these experimental services. For all these reasons, I give heartfelt support to the whole spectrum of change covered by this much-amended Bill.

If we hear at the end of this debate that there will be not more closures, but no more closures, it will be good news. There is now a better future for British Rail than at any time in the past decades. We need flexibility and economy in our transport system. As one who drives many miles to and from the House each week, because there is no suitable train within reach, I believe that my experience can be multiplied a thousandfold or even a hundred-thousandfold throughout the land.

I very much welcome the Government's interest in the Bill. I welcome and accept every one of the proposed amendments.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller), the promoter of the Bill, together with his colleagues and my hon. Friends who are sponsors on introducing this short but important measure. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman's tenacity and his keenness to ensure the survival of the British Rail network as it is today and the prevention of any further closures, whether rural or otherwise.

Perhaps I may take the opportunity of this truncated debate to make some observations about the general condition of British Rail, remembering the neeed to stay in order. My party is committed to the maintenance of the present overall rail network. That includes the rural and unprofitable lines that genuinely meet a social need. I think that almost everone rejects the Beeching approach these days. Certainly my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) and I reject it. We believe that the railway system cannot be planned simply as an accountancy exercise, regardless of the community's dependence on what are essentially unprofitable lines.

If that principle is accepted, it means public expenditure to support uneconomic rural lines. The core of the British Rail network is the branch and rural lines. The demand for the profit-making services such as the inter-city service, depends to a large extent—varying by region—on the way in which those lines can feed the mainline rail terminals.

We must constantly look for a way to maintain the rural branch lines on a low-cost basis and try to encourage public authorities to make available funds for that purpose. Therefore, the Opposition welcome the Bill, because it provides a better opportunity for British Rail to reopen branch line services on a more flexible, albeit experimental, basis.

The 1962 Act is too inflexible. As I understand the Government's amendments, British Rail will still be obliged to make known to the public its intentions for all lines, even if the procedure for consultation through the transport users consultative committees is not to be enforced. That is a good principle if we are embarking on an experimental system.

The Bill should not be regarded as sufficient to secure the future of branceh services. The debate gives us an opportunity to consider two additional problems of which the Minister should be aware. First, many believe that the level of investment for repairs and replacements, as well as for new projects, has reached a critically low level. British Rail's investment needs are critical at this time, given the life expectancy of some of its rolling stock. It is not good enough for the Government to mantain that the level of investment over the years has been sufficient to sustain that. British Rail needs substantially more money if it is to maintain its existing services at this critical time.

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I am informed by reliable sources that about 3,000 miles of the 12,000 miles of railway track risk being placed under speed restrictions and, who knows, ultimately closed as a result of inadequate investment. The long-term future of both the Barmouth and Ribble Head viaducts is in question if replacement decisions are not taken soon. I am also reliably informed that the central Wales line can operate only a diesel multiple unit because of the threat to the track posed by heavier rolling stock. A further example of the declining services of British Rail is the withdrawal of the inter-city service between Oxford and Worcester, which I am informed has been replaced by a diesel multiple unit.

The situation will become worse if local authorities, like British Rail, respond to the Government's cash limits and withdraw support from many of the non-profit making lines. Investment in the railways is coming to a standstill this year with a deliberate underspending by British Rail of some £50 million below an already inadequate investment ceiling, due to the necessity for British Rail to keep within its external financing limit. British Rail cannot even spend the amount that it is permitted to spend because of borrowing restraints placed upon it by the Government and adherence to the external financing limit. If British Rail is to have a secure future, as we all wish, its investment and borrowing ceilings must be reviewed urgently and increased.

Secondly, we should take very seriously the points made by the hon. Member for Devon, North and look carefully at the innovations now taking place in order to achieve value for money and to run rural lines at as low a cost as possible. British Rail continues to put forward proposals involving its light-weight rail-bus, as the hon. Gentleman said. Radio signalling and automatic crossings also form part of that package of proposals.

Those developments are needed, and I believe that they are a more attractive solution to rural transport needs than the replacement of rail services by bus services. We have all seen railway lines closed when agreements were reached and assurances given that they would be replaced by an adequate bus service. All of us who represent constituencies with a rural element recognise that that has not taken place. Railway lines which had been in existence for a long time have been closed, but the bus services intended to take the traffic have either been very infrequent or they have not been permanent. It is therefore vital to take on board at this stage the suggestions made by the hon. Member for Devon, North.

There must also be a commitment to British Rail's innovation of the rail-bus. That is one way in which the transport requirements of our rural lines and communities could be revitalised. I hope, therefore, that the Government will see the suggestions from BR as a positive way in which to serve our rural communities.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) described in a speech to the House on 10 February this year our dissatisfaction at the level of the public service order grant. Although the Government raised the grant by £23 million last December, we believe that if the Government are serious in their commitment to maintaining rural services they must go for a realistic level of PSO grant. We believe that they are serious, because, in a reply to a question put down by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Transport stated:

"I wrote to Sir Peter Parker on 9 November to make it clear to him that the option of closing 40 services is one that the Government reject."—[Official Report, 10 December 1979; Vol. 975 c. 472.]

I therefore believe that the Government are endeavouring to maintain existing services and lines. I do not doubt their sincerity in trying to do that, but I doubt the capacity of BR to maintain them if it is placed in a financial strait jacket. If an EFL imposed on BR prevents it spending £50 million, and if the Government insist on not raising the PSO grant level, none of the good ideas that are coming forward from BR and from hon. Members—including the hon. Member for Devon, North in his Bill—will come to fruition. Without a commitment to finance them, they cannot succeed.

Therefore, it is time that the Government took this issue on board. It is a pity that we cannot debate the state of the railways. Perhaps at some stage we shall. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Devon, North, however, for bringing the Bill forward. It has enabled me briefly to state the Opposition's case on railway finance. We certainly view it as an encouragement and we shall give it every support.

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend, the Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller) on bringing forward this valuable Private Member's Bill. The Government amendments that are selected for debate with the new clause look drastic and amount almost to a complete re-writing of the original draft. They are, however, technical changes. We support entirely my hon. Friend's proposal that experimental rail services should be allowed to open as he suggests. It is a useful innovation and the amendments are intended to be helpful.

My hon. Friend has discovered that the 1962 Act, which is designed to protect the public against uncalled-for closures of passenger services, can in certain circumstances unintentionally inhibit the reopening, for passenger services, of whole lines, lines presently used for freight only or individual stations. If anyone at the moment wishes to try out the market to see whether there is a general public need and the necessary custom to justify, with some subsidy, the reopening of branch lines to passenger traffic, they can be deterred by the thought that if the experiment is unsuccessful they will have to undergo the full 1962 Act procedure, involving reference to the TUCC, obtaining the Secretary of State's consent and so on, before closure can go ahead and money be saved.

Obviously no one ever intended that those safeguards should deter anyone who wanted to reopen lines or stations experimentally. It is a sensible suggestion that BR should be able to reopen on an experimental basis and if, unfortunately, the experiment fails, should be able to retreat without too many statutory inhibitions. That would be the effect of the Bill. No one knows how quickly or to what extent the Bill will be taken up. It may be some years before anything comes forward. A great deal will depend not only on BR, which will have to be the initiator of any proposal, but also on local authorities and their judgment of the transport needs of rural areas. I am sure that this is a valuable change to the law. I hope that it succeeds in initiating some useful experiments, perhaps in North Devon which I know is my hon. Friend's chief concern. As he has discovered from his response, he has excited much interest throughout the country.

I should explain the effect of the Government's amendments before I deal with the general policy behind the Bill and the points touched upon by my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Stott). The Government's amendments deal first with drafting points, with which I shall not burden the House, and to make it quite clear that there should be no role for the Secretary of State in experimental rail passenger services of this kind. Having considered the suggested procedures, it seemed best to suggest that the railway board should begin and end an experiment and not involve the Secretary of State or the Government. That could lead, under some Governments to political and other difficulties in the process. We tried to draft the Bill so that it would allow a simple procedure whereby proper notice is given to the public that a service is being opened on an experimental basis outside the 1962 Act safeguards and that proper notice is given to the public if the experiment fails and the service has to be withdrawn.

The Government's new clause seeks to achieve those objectives. New clause 1(1) provides that section 56(7) of the 1962 Act, which requires that the railways board should announce locally a proposal to withdraw a rail passenger service and permit users to object to their local TUCC, should not apply to experimental services. It still provides that the Board should give due notice of its intention to close what we are calling an experimental service.

Clause 1(2) provides:

"rail passenger services shall be taken to be provided on an experimental basis only if'

the Railways Board has published due notice of that intention and warned the public that it regarded it" as an experimental service and not protected by statute.

Clause 1(3) merely provides a common procedure for both notices—the notice of intention to reopen on an experimental basis and the subsequent notice of proposal to discontinue the service. We are proposing that, when notice of either kind is required, it should be published not less than six weeks before the opening of an experimental service and closure for two successive weeks in two local newspapers.

The real effect of the Bill is in clause 2, which provides that the provisions of the 1962 Act which require the Board to offer the opportunity for users to object to proposals to withdraw ordinary passenger services should not apply to experimental services. British Rail initiates the discussions, no doubt with the help of the local authority, and gives straightforward notice that it is to be an experimental service. If it goes wrong it can give straightforward notice that the service is to be withdrawn.

The fact that the Government are backing that is yet another indication that we share the optimistic approach to the future of the railways which has been voiced both by my hon. Friend and by the hon. Member for Westhoughton on behalf of the Opposition. Of course, we all want to see this truly made the age of the train. The problem is to ensure that our railways are changed into a modern, efficient and cost-effective system, that can win its traffic by the standard of its service and the quality of its trains.

Some services may have to be rationalised—perhaps occasionally some retreats made such as the reduction of services in line with demand such as is taking place in various parts of the country to ensure money is not wasted by running empty or near-empty trains. On the other hand, equal attention must be paid to looking for new business and new traffic, trying to win back passengers and industrial users by service, quality and price. In the rural areas as elsewhere, the opportunity should be provided for the railways to seek new business or for the local authority to call on the railways to provide transport needs, which at present are inadequate for some of our scattered rural communities.

That is the basis of the Government's approach. I shall explain, as I have been invited to do, how we apply that approach to the rural rail and branch services about which there is understandable concern.

The Minister says that the Government will back the idea. He implied that he would back British Rail in the experiment and assist the local authorities. To what extent will the Government back the experiment other than by words?

If local authorities use ratepayers' money to assist, I hope that the Government will assist local authorities by providing grants. Such an experiment can be pushed along by British Rail only in accordance with the money available. British Rail does not have sufficient money. To what extent will the Government back the experiment with money? It is no good the Minister telling us that he will back it. The country, British Rail and the railwaymen have a right to know how much cash will be given.

The hon. Gentleman reinforces the argument of his hon. Friend the Member for Westhoughton. I shall take the opportunity to rebut some of the myths that surround the subject. Support is available to local authorities and British Rail to provide services, so long as they provide them cost effectively and where there is real need. We have increased the cash available to British Rail and we have been flexible about its external finance limit. More real resources are now at British Rail's disposal.

We give substantial grants to local authorities in the form of revenue support for bus services and railways. The bus industry receives subsidies of about £500 million from central Government. Local government receives enormous help from central Government in grants for railway services. Many local authorities, particularly in the metropolitan counties, already support their passenger transport executives. This year we accepted in full all the metropolitan counties' bids for revenue support for rail services. We have not cut the rail element of the grant that we give to local government.

I shall state our policy towards rural rail services and branch lines. The hon. Member for Westhoughton said that the opposition would reject a repeat of a Beeching-type approach. We share that view. The present Government reject any return to the Beeching-type approach. My right hon. Friend has said repeatedly that there will be no fresh round of Beeching branch line closures. I do not know how many times we have to repeat that. The hon. Gentleman was fair in his criticisms today, but at regular intervals there is a flurry of excitement when somebody starts a rumour that a programme of closures is being planned.

Sometimes maps are published. It is claimed that the maps exist in our Department, so we make great efforts to find them. Sometimes the maps exist but sometimes they do not emerge. A flurry of excitement is sometimes caused in a locality because someone has the idea that a local line is about to be closed.

Eventually the public will believe that the Government have not received proposals for such mass closures. We should not contemplate such closures. We are discussing with British Rail how to preserve the branch line network and how to turn our backs on the Beeching-type approach.

I shall deal with the most topical of the campaigns which has aroused excitement throughout the country. British Rail, Eastern region, published a statement entitled "Branches on the Brink". That suggested that 34 local services were at risk because of inadequate support for the railways. That caused widespread alarm in my constituency. A number of hon. Members have approached me since then. I am sure that the publishers were well intentioned but it has given rise to much alarmist nonsense. There are tiny proposals for closures in South Yorkshire but I do not think that they are on the list. I think that I am right that for the entire 34 local services we have received no proposals for closure and we are not aware that anybody is contemplating such closures. If we received such proposals, they would have to go through the statutory procedures. That is what my hon. Friend wishes to avoid for his experimental lines in the Bill. If ever proposals were put forward, the board would have to give full publicity under the 1962 Act and allow users the opportunity to object to their local transport users' consultative committee.

If there were objections, the TUCC would report to my right hon. Friend, usually after a public hearing, on the possible hardship that might be caused by the closure of a service and how that might be alleviated. He would then consider the report and any other relevant matters, including social and economic circumstances, before making a final decision on whether to make the closure.

It is not a dead letter but a live statute. My right hon. Friend's latest demonstration that he is reluctant to agree to passenger closures when there is any suggestion of hardship arises from his refusal to agree to the closure of London Transport's Epping-to-Ongar line when such a proposition was put to him not long ago.

I shall not avoid the main thrust of the Eastern region's argument. It is rather similar to the argument of the hon. Members for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and Westhoughton. The suggestion that 34 branch lines are at risk arises because it is suggested that British Rail may have to close branch lines because of inadequate Government financial support. It is important that I set out the facts of Government financial support and take the opportunity of dispelling one or two myths.

Reference has been made to the so-called PSO grant. British Rail is obliged to provide passenger services and it is paid large sums in compensation for doing so. That grant tends steadily to increase rather than decrease. The Government increased it recently by £23 million. At present the British Railways Board is receiving from the taxpayer by courtesy of the Government about £2 million every day to operate the passenger railway. That is the extent of the subsidy. It can be described as loss-making, a subsidy or the maintenance of an essential passenger network, the last term probably being a more sensible way of describing it. However, £2 million a day is a large amount to be going into one nationalised industry.

The PSO grant is large and it has recently been increased. However, as every traveller knows, the real level of fares on British Rail has increased. The inter-city service is an expensive way of travelling. The fare contribution from the travelling public remains fairly buoyant. Therefore, the board's total income for running its passenger rail service is not following a pattern of cut and decline. Its income tends to increase.

We must consider not only income but the extent to which the railways can keep clown their costs if we are to come to a conclusion on how healthy the financial position of the railways can be. As I have said, the Government are putting £2 million a day into the industry. The level of fares tends, unfortunately, to be pressed upwards by British Rail in response to cost pressures. In 1980 support for rail passenger services was 2 per cent. higher in real terms after allowing for inflation than it had been in 1975. There has not been a loss of support, a loss of subsidy or a loss of income. There has not been a decline in the real level of fares. However, British Rail is being damaged by the loss of traffic that is being experienced in some areas, That is partly because of competition and partly because of the recession. However, Government support is on an upward rather than a downward trend.

There has been reference to British Rail's investment ceiling. The Government have kept that ceiling—it is the board's responsibility to determine its own investment priorities—constant in real terms. We have kept the ceiling at exactly the same level that was bequeathed to us by the previous Labour Government. It is terribly easy to say, "It was always too low." The ceiling has been maintained at the same level despite the severe pressures that the Government are under in terms of public spending cuts and the heavy cuts that we have had to make elsewhere.

We realise that people are concerned that more investment is needed and that British Rail's ability to spend up to its ceiling is affected by the cash limits, the external finance limit set for the board and the economies that it must make if its operating performance deteriorates and it gets into difficulties within its EFL. Last year we responded to the board's pleas, which were eminently sensible, that it was suffering particular trading difficulties because of the secession. It suffered dramatic losses of traffic and its losses on the freight business in particular were climbing rapidly. We therefore—against the background of being a Government meant to be making sweeping cuts in all directions—increased the EFL by more than £40 million in the middle of the year to help deal with the problem of the recession.

It is true that British Rail is still having great difficulties. Its financial performance must be improved. It is still losing traffic, and it is having to make—I commend it for doing this—considerable efforts to get its cost down in response to the pressures upon it from its present EFL. As I have said, we have increased the EFL, but there must be some limit to overall British Rail borrowing.

When the right hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) leads for the Opposition, he is sometimes so carried away by his oratory that he seems to imply that there is no need for any EFL on British Rail. No Government could manage the nationalised industries on that basis. It was the right hon. Gentleman's own Government, the last Labour Government, that introduced the present system of external finance limits, because it recognised that nationalised industries borrowing had to be subject to some cash limit. It is not possible for any Government engaging in sensible management of the nation's economic affairs to allow open-ended borrowing by any part of the public sector.

Therefore, we have an EFL. The present Government have been flexible in increasing it in response to British Rail's trading problems. Within that EFL, British Rail has to accommodate all its costs, including investment, but the investment ceiling that we allow has been maintained at its former level There are those who claim that it should be increased. We are considering—this is not the time to debate it—British Rail's longer-term investment needs, including electrification and so on, and any implications that they may have for the ceiling in the future.

The Minister said that about £2 million a day was going to assist British Rail. The figures sound grand, but they must be compared with many other travel costs. When the hon. and learned Gentleman says that there is a limited amount of money, is he saying that that applies across the whole of transport? How much of that £2 million a day assistance from the taxpayer is allocated to each British Rail train, and how does it compare with, say, assistance to each of the Concordes that are still in existence?

Order. If the Minister answered that question, he would be going wide of the Bill.

I accept your guidance, Mr. Armstrong. Fortunately, it is no part of my task to defend investment in Concorde over the years. That is perhaps not the most apt alternative to choose.

Over £600 million a year, £2 million a day, to meet the PSO is a substantial sum. We are often accused of giving more support to the roads than to the railways. We are under constant pressure to increase spending on road building, from people who believe that present budgets are too constricted. The road haulage industry, rightly, and the motorist, somewhat controversially, are substantial payers of tax revenue to the Government, way beyond the track costs that they impose on the community, whereas British Rail is a substantial net recipient of huge sums of public money—again, quite rightly.

Within that overall financial context, let me deal with a particular problem that has given rise to concern about branch lines, a matter to which the hon. Member for Westhoughton devoted some attention: whether possible closures will have to go ahead because of deterioration of track and signalling. It is even sometimes suggested that there is risk to safety on some of our country lines.

I do not wish, nor would I be allowed, to engage in an economic debate with the Minister about the rightness of the EFL or the public sector borrowing requirement. A much more flexible approach should be taken with each nationalised industry. Although the Minister says that his Government have maintained and marginally increased the money that they have given to British Rail, he cannot avoid the current situation facing British Rail, and it is one of history. The DMU fleet is clapped out and the railway system generally is getting clapped out. If we accept that as a fact, either we live with it or we do something about it. The only thing to do about it is to get rid of the nonsense of the EFL as it applies to British Rail now and give it more public money.

I agree that cash limits, or EFLs, should be realistic to be effective, and that there are circumstances in which one should be flexible. We have been flexible in our attitude towards British Rail, as was demonstrated last year when we increased the EFL in response to the pressure of the recession.

The hon. Gentleman suggests that investment should be substantially increased because the system is clapped out. Yet British Rail's investment ceiling is enabling it to do quite a lot of investment. My hon. Friend the Member for Devon, North cited some examples. British Rail has been able to introduce high-speed trains, experiment with the advanced passenger train, and electrify the route from St. Pancras to Bedford. Diesel multiple units were mentioned, and 200 electrical multiple units a year are being built within the investment ceiling.

The problem with the diesel multiple units is that many of them are ageing and due to be replaced, and so far British Rail has not approached the Government with any plans to replace them. So far British Rail has not submitted any plans to replace them, because it has not completed the designs for a diesel multiple unit. No doubt in due course a proposal will be put to us, and we are by no means convinced that it will not be possible to do that within the existing financial limits. The investment ceiling is maintained, and the support is still there.

However, we must look at the other side of the equation. British Rail has to make a contribution. It has to reduce overmanning, raise productivity, make itself a better service industry and more responsive to the public and public needs, and improve the financial forms of its business. Then it will be possible to look at the problem of the branch lines and track renewal. All the arguments about the future of rural lines and the fear that 3,000 miles of line are at risk arise from arguments about expenditure on track renewal. I accept that the board needs to spend more on the infrastructure of the rural rail services, but most of the services that have been mentioned have been starved of investment in recent years, unlike inter-city and suburban lines.

British Rail's own estimate is that it needs an extra £20 million a year for track and signalling investment to secure the future of rural services. That sounds a lot, but it is a relatively small sum for a business whose total costs each year are £2,250,000,000. So £20 million is a tiny adjustment in that budget.

It is our opinion—to some extent, that opinion is shared by British Rail, if one looks at the corporate plan—that it should be possible to find that kind of sum by improving productivity and efficiency. The board will save £40 million a year by withdrawing from the collect-and-deliver parcels business, thus far exceeding the adjustment in the budget that is supposed to be necessary to save the 3,000 miles of rural line. I shall not dwell on the implications for the pay settlement of the £20 million. A little over 1 per cent. of the pay is involved in the £20 million that is required for investment in these 3,000 miles at risk. However, within British Rail's resources, a comparatively modest improvement in productivity and efficiency will provide that modest sum to get on with the track and signalling renewal of rural railway lines.

I shall not go into the particular cases that have been cited today. I am aware of the problem at Barmouth. I have met deputations from that part of the world. They came to see me in some concern when the line had to be closed—for the extraordinary reason that the ageing wooden viaduct was being eaten by some obscure marine worm, and millions of pounds were required to replace it.

No one has yet blamed the Government for the activities of this submarine life. We have looked at the problem. I am glad to say that British Rail has now been able to assess the extent of the problem and will be reopening services this summer—admittedly, on a very restricted basis. We have promised to look at the problem of renewing the Barmouth viaduct on the broadest possible basis, bearing in mind the transport and social needs of the area and not taking just a narrow financial view.

I shall not go back into the details of lightweight rolling stock on the Central Wales line. I well remember that line from my youth. As far as I can recall, the Central Wales line has always had lightweight rolling stock. It was a rather interesting museum piece in my youth, with Victorian steam engines going up and down the line. We are probably some years away from the advanced passenger train running through to Aberystwyth. But the fact that there are some weight restrictions is not too surprising.

Both my hon. Friend the Member for Devon, North and the hon. Member for Westhoughton touched on a very valuable point, about which not only the Government but British Rail are concerned, when they said that when looking at these branch lines we have to look for low-cost operating techniques which will enable the financial support and fares for passengers to be kept down to a reasonable level. I have had the pleasure of visiting Derby to see some of the research work that is being done there, where the new British Rail-British Leyland rail-bus was developed and where new techniques in electric signalling are being developed. My right hon. Friend has made an official visit to the Mid-Suffolk line, which British Rail would like to use on an experimental basis for demonstration projects to show what can be done.

It must be right to seek a low-cost way of running these lightly used lines. If that can be introduced, it will help to secure their future.

Both hon. Members have talked about the development of lightweight rolling stock. The board has now developed with British Leyland a rather larger rail-bus, which is capable of carrying about 100 seated and standing passengers. I am glad to say that the board believes that this rail-bus has considerable export potential if it can be produced for lines in Britain. There is certainly scope for running it on rural lines in the United Kingdom.

In addition, the board is also developing a lightweight diesel multiple unit based on the same rail-bus concept. The prototype vehicle of that project will soon undergo passenger trials, which I understand will be completed by the autumn.

Automatic level crossings also have a part to play in reducing the cost of rural lines. The Mid-Suffolk line may be a spectacular example, but from presentations that I have had I recall that because it runs along flat country it has some 26 old-fashioned manned level crossings, and obviously that leads to high-cost operations on a line which inevitably, because of the job, would be lightly trafficked.

The British Railways Board has accepted the recommendations of a joint British Rail and Department of Transport working party on level crossing protection in favour of a programme of level crossing modernisation. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it clear to the chairman of the board that he would welcome progress in this direction. Not only would it help us to reduce costs on rural lines but the economic benefits from level crossing modernisation on lines of all kinds are very worth while. Obviously, it is very good value for money as public investment.

I am also glad to say that this programme is eligible for a European Community grant. Fifty per cent. of the cost is payable as a grant under EEC regulation 1192/69 whenever a level crossing is modernised.

I am glad to say that all of us support the idea of continuing experiment in the introduction of low-cost techniques of running rural lines. No doubt my hon. Friend's experimental services, when introduced, will almost certainly be on this low-cost experimental basis.

I conclude by dealing with the question of the role for local authorities in all this, and local authority support, upon which my hon. Friend touched.

In the first place, British Rail would have to decide whether it wished to open a particular line or station. I am glad to accept my hon. Friend's amendments. Not only could stations further along the line be reopened but even a station on an existing line could be reopened experimentally. The possibility of having to go through the full statutory procedure of closure could deter an experiment to see whether an intermediate station could get the traffic by reopening it for an experimental period. The amendments are valuable.

We are talking about rural transport and communications, where one cannot expect services to be provided out of the fares box. My right hon. Friend and I are concerned about the state of rural transport and are actively looking for ways in which the subsidy available for essential rural transport can be spent in a sensible and cost-effective way. We provide substantial grants to enable local authorities to have revenue support for all kinds of rural services. Inevitably in rural areas a great deal of it is concentrated on buses, which we hope will enable essential bus networks to be maintained. However, in many areas, the old-fashioned traditional network is still on the retreat. A large organisation is not able to run a big bus through villages where only one or two people get on.

We are making progress with many councils in getting the revenue support used in and intelligent and discriminating way, whereby particular transport needs can be identified and served, with the help of revenue support from local government, by a variety of experimental and unconventional services, such as car sharing, minibuses and community buses. Under this measure local authorities will be able to look to experimental railway lines.

The Government must look primarily to local authorities to decide whether they wish to support the introduction of an experimental service. Local authorities' legal powers to pay grants extend to paying grants to the British Railways Board. At present they are used almost exclusively by the metropolitan counties in the payments that they make through the agency of PTEs to British Rail commuter services. The West Midlands has reintroduced in recent years an extensive suburban passenger service, but other shire counties are taking a growing interest in the potential for supporting the railways.

Local authorities that wish to fund experimental rail services will have to be prepared to find the necessary funding from within realistic resources—that means the resources that they are prepared to find from the ratepayers, supplemented by the reasonable level of grant that they can expect to receive within the grant-giving procedures that we have set down. Realistic budgeting within the expectations of public spending levels must be maintained in the light of the country's overwhelming economic needs in the next few years.

The terms upon which grants are paid for particular services must be a matter for negotiation between the British Railways Board and local authorities. Authorities may have to undertake to support a service for a minimum period, to accept a different minimum period for notice for withdrawal and even to bear the cost incurred by the board if it eventually has to withdraw an unsuccessful service. I suspect that the Board will understandably want some level of commitment to a particular service for some period before it will open anything on an experimental basis.

However, those are all matters which, once my hon. Friend's Bill reaches the statute book, it will be open at least for local authorities to explore and for British Rail to consider. The measure will be a minor addition to the armoury of potential transport services that can be provided in rural areas, even in line with modern difficulties and the fact that we are dealing not only with scattered communities but sometimes with prosperous and heavily populated communities, where so many people use private motor cars. Some have access to one and sometimes even two cars in the more prosperous villages in the South. However, a minority of the population have no access to a car and are dependent on public transport or the goodwill of their neighbours in helping them to make essential journeys to shops, the chemist, the doctor and so on.

Who knows how many experiments will take place? The response may be modest. It may be many years before the option is taken up, but I am sure that it is worth exploring. I congratulate my hon. Friend once more for bringing the measure forward. I hope that he will accept that our amendments are helpful. They are merely technical. If anything, they simplify the process. Our aim has been to make the measure a workable and worthwhile addition to the statute book.

I beg to move amendment no. 3, in page 1, line 21, at end insert—

'( ) This Act comes into force on the expiry of the period of one month beginning with the day on which it is passed.'.

This is a purely technical amendment. There is a longstanding convention that Acts of Parliament rarely come into force on the day when they receive Royal Assent. I am not sure why. I suppose it is believed that the law should not be changed instantly or overnight and that people deserve a little decent notice. There is no urgency about my hon. Friend's Bill, and a period of one month will not delay it excessively.