I have pleasure in presenting to the House a petition entitled "Petition for the Protection of the Human Embryo". It has been signed by over 4,500 of my constituents who feel strongly about the need to enshrine in legislation protection for the human embryo as a real, living, individual human being and the need to oppose those practices which violate his or her human dignity and right to life.

The petition continues:

Wherefore your petitioners pray that the House of Commons will take immediate steps to enact legislation which forbids any procedure which involves purchase or sale of human embryos, the discarding of human embryos, their use as sources of transplant tissue or as subjects for research or experiment (unless this is done solely for the benefit of the embryo concerned).

And your petitioners, as is duty bound, will ever pray.

I beg to ask leave of the House to present a petition, signed by 3,564 of my constituents, which is in similar terms to that presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate). I fully support the petition, which reads:

Wherefore your petitioners pray that the House of Commons will take immediate steps to enact legislation which forbids any procedure that involves purchase or sale of human embryos, the discarding of human embryos, their use as sources of transplant tissue or as subjects for research or experiment (unless this is done solely for the benefit of the embryos concerned).

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

I have the pleasure to present on behalf of 1,359 of my constituents in Hornchurch a petition in similar terms to that of my hon. Friends the Members for Faversham (Mr. Moate) and for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) which concludes:

Wherefore your petitioners pray that the House of Commons will take immediate steps to enact legislation which forbids any procedure that involves purchase or sale of human embryos, the discarding of human embryos, their use as sources of transplant tissue or as subjects for research or experiment (unless this is done solely for the benefit of the embryo concerned).

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

I wish to present a petition to the House on behalf of many hundreds of my constituents, some of whom are still sending me copies of this petition, in similar terms to that introduced by the hon. Members for Faversham (Mr. Moate), for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) and for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire). This is a particularly apt time for these petitioners to come forward when people who have been involved in this type of work and experimentation are suggesting that even some of the restrictions proposed by the Warnock committee should not be accepted and, further, that it should be possible to implant human embryos into the bodies of animals.

The petition continues:

Wherefore your petitioners pray that the House of Commons will take immediate steps to enact legislation which forbids any procedure that involves purchase or sale of human embryos, the discarding of human embryos, their use as sources of transplant tissue or as subjects for research or experiment (unless this is done solely for the benefit of the embryo concerned).

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

I beg to ask leave to present a petition entitled "Petition for the protection of the human embryo", signed by 2,200 of my constituents in Stratford-on-Avon who have expressed concern over the contents of the Warnock report. I share their concern.

The petition states:

Wherefore your petitioners pray that the House of Commons will take immediate steps to enact legislation which forbids any procedure that involves purchase or sale of human embryos, the discarding of human embryos, their use as sources of transplant tissue or as subjects for research or experiment (unless this is done solely for the benefit of the embryo concerned).

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

I beg to ask leave to present three petitions from residents in Romsey and Waterside entitled "Petition for the protection of the human embryo". The first was initiated by Mrs. J. Mason of 153 Woodlands road, Ashurst and contains 1,205 signatures; the second by Mr. C. F. Mackrell of 16 Fox Hills, Totton, and bears 25 signatures; the third by Mrs. E. M. Hurst of Bryn-Gower, Awbridge, and bears 29 signatures. All are in identical terms.

They affirm the petitioners' belief that the newly fertilised human embryo is a real living individual human being and they oppose all practices which discriminate against the embryo or violate his or her human dignity and right to life.

The petition continues:

Wherefore your petitioners pray that the House of Commons will take immediate steps to enact legislation which forbids any procedure that involves purchase or sale of human embryos, the discarding of human embryos, their use as sources of transplant tissue or as subjects for research or experiment (unless this is done solely for the benefit of the embryo concerned).

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will every pray etc.

It is my pleasure to present to the House a petition for the protection of the human embryo which has been presented to me by my constituent Peta Peeris of 4 Rutherglen walk, Eaglescliffe, Cleveland, and almost 2,000 other constituents. It gives me pleasure to present the petition to the House and I hope that the Ministers responsible will take into account the strength of feeling expressed by my and many other constituents on this vital issue.

I have pleasure to present the House a petition, signed by over 1,800 people in my constituency and handed to me at the end of a large and successful public meeting, in the following terms:

We the undersigned people living or working in the Parliamentay Constituency of Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, do hereby call on the Honourable Commons of the United Kingdom to urge Her Majesty's Government to call for a world-wide halt to the testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems as a meaningful first step to reduction in nuclear arms.

And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray etc.

The petition has my full support.

I wish to present a petition signed by some 20,000 people from my constituency and other parts of the United Kingdom and including, on my reckoning, at least 35 bishops, supporting Amnesty International's campaign against torture.

The petition urges Her Majesty's Government

to support an effective United Nations convention against torture and in particular the extension of compensation for torture victims to include anyone who has been the victim of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; to support proposals, both at the United Nations and at the Council of Europe, to create an international commission to make unannounced visits to any place of detention; to intercede whenever and wherever possible on behalf of prisoners being tortured.

The petition has my full support.

This short debate on privatisation in the National Health Service comes at the end of a week when the Government announced that they had appointed Mr. Victor Paige to the chair of the NHS management board. I understand that he is a subscriber to BUPA—the private medicine scheme. Therefore, he shows his commitment to the NHS in that alone. It later emerged, under close questioning of DHSS officials and Ministers, that he is being paid £70,000 per annum, which is about £1,500 a week. At the same time, the wage for most domestics and cleaners in NHS hospitals is £1·72 per hour. Indeed, cleaners at the Barking general hospital have had their wages reduced to such a level that they are now being offered £17 per week by a private cleaning company.

That shows the sort of contrast that we are facing within the NHS. The Government are prepared to spend such a large amount of money on appointing someone to streamline the NHS and at the same time they continue to pay disgracefully low wages to people working within the NHS. They threaten those people's jobs and existence by the promotion of privatisation within the NHS. The Government have an obsession with privatisation which is matched only by their obsessional hatred for trade unions in general. In an article in The Guardian, the Under-Secretary said that he hoped that in a few years people would wonder what all the fuss was about over contracting out of services in the NHS. In what poses for a philosophical piece, he went on to ask who should wash the sheets in NHS hospitals and whether that really mattered. It cannot matter much to the Minister concerned, but it matters a great deal to those who work in the NHS. It also matters a great deal to those who use and rely on the NHS and wish to be able to continue to rely on it.

Many, not necessarily Labour Members, but people in trade unions and others all round the country, believe strongly that if the NHS means anything it means a comprehensive Health Service which can take care of everybody within the community and which can provide a full Health Service under some form of democratic control. I want to see changes in the structure of the NHS to enable greater democratic control to be obtained, but I also believe that by contracting out of any particular services within the NHS that control is weakened and the service is weakened and seriously damaged.

The Government's plans for privatisation within the NHS go back some years. It is interesting to note—the Minister may care to refute this—that as far as I am aware there is no legal power whatever to make a district or regional health authority privatise any of its services. But there is an enormous amount of cajoling, arm-twisting and blatant brow-beating of individual members of district health authorities. Letters are frequently sent from the Under-Secretary of State to the chairmen of the regional and district health authorities saying whether their performance is satisfactory.

Let me quote from one, signed by the Minister, to Dame Betty Paterson, the chairman of the North-West Thames regional health authority. After saying that he is pleased at the level of commitment shown to competitive tendering by some districts in the region, he goes on to say:

"For the other districts you no doubt have action in hand to secure satisfactory programmes. Could I now ask you to get in touch immediately with those districts to inform them that their programmes are not acceptable to Ministers, and if they are not already doing so, to seek urgent action to improve that? I would like a further report from you by 17 September at the latest giving revised programmes for those districts, or, exceptionally, where this is not possible, a report of the action in hand to obtain satisfactory programmes."

The Minister does not say in that letter what he plans to do if he does not get satisfactory replies from those districts or if they do not go out to competitive tendering. But we know full well that he looks closely at the appointment of members of district health authorities. He looks closely at the form of tendering that is put forward by those authorities which eventually succumb to his iron fist and his threats. The Minister then goes on to encourage them to privatise. In privatising, he opposes the use of NHS wages and conditions and the use of the fair wages resolution which the Government have been kind enough to abolish so that there is now no minimum protection for the lowest-paid, predominantly women workers in Britain. The Government are then surprised when there is opposition to this disgraceful programme of destroying people's jobs.

Opposition comes from many people. Let me quote from a letter. Many will be surprised where it has come from. It is from someone who has resigned from a district health authority and says:

"My immediate occasion for taking this step is the so-called privatisation of the hospital cleaning services and the terms of the contract that we have accepted. You will recollect that when privatisation was first proposed, I expressed the view that for the hospital to be run in the spirit that it should be for the patients' sake, we ought to be concerned that all those working in it, and particularly those with direct contact with patients, should enjoy terms of service that would enable them to focus their main concern on the wellbeing of the public rather than their own. I believe that to save money by further separating the status of the professional from that of the ancillary staff would not serve this end if it means employing the latter as semi-casual labour. Certainly in my wards we value very highly the responsible and loyal work of our cleaners and the personal help that they often give to our patients and their parents."

That letter is not from a district officer of the National Union of Public Employees, which sponsors me in this House, or from any other union within the National Health Service. It is from Professor J. A. Davies, the professor of paediatrics at the University of Cambridge clinical school, department of paediatrics. He is passionately concerned about his patients in the National Health Service and is not prepared to see the service destroyed.

Throughout the country there have been a number of disputes on the issue of privatisation of jobs within the National Health Service. The Minister might sigh, as he sits down to his Christmas lunch next Tuesday, "Thank goodness I have not got to worry about Barking, Hammersmith, Addenbrooke's, High Royds, or any other hospital," but I warn him that if the Government continue on their ludicrous course of destroying employment prospects for part-time women workers in the National Health Service, and of destroying the Health Service by handing it over to their friends in the private contracting industry, they will have not three or four disputes on their hands next year but hundreds. Workers in the National Health Service, who have shown enormous dedication and loyalty to the patients, will show that they are not prepared to see their jobs destroyed.

The strike which has been running the longest is that at Barking hospital, which comes within the Redbridge district health authority. It has lasted almost as long as the miners' strike, and it is about the proposal of the contract cleaning company concerned, Crothalls, to make cuts of 40 per cent. to 60 per cent. in wages, and changes in working practices. The total hours of 87 cleaners in the hospital were to be cut by the same proportion—by 41 per cent., from 2,189 to 1,313 a week. Women earning £57 a week were expected to take cuts in hours which would mean that they would take home only £17 a week. Yet the Government show surprise at the opposition to the proposals, which involve the worsening of conditions with less sick leave, less holiday pay, less maternity leave and so on. Conditions which have been argued and fought for within the National Health Service for a long time are destroyed by privatisation.

At the Barking general hospital there have been numerous reports by people working in the hospital who are qualified to judge environmental health conditions. They say that the hospital is in a dirty, disgraceful and dangerous state, and will continue to be so as long as the authority allows a company such as Crothalls to continue to use very low-paid and unskilled labour, while other people are forced to stand outside the hospital on the picket line, trying to get themselves a decent living wage. The charge against the Government is that they are destroying the living standards of many very low-paid part-time workers within the National Health Service.

Recently there was a dispute at the Hammersmith hospital, which comes under the Hammersmith special health authority. The contract that was offered involved a cut in hours from 6,170 to 2,802 per week. Jobs were to be cut from 207 to 158, and full-time jobs were to be reduced from 122 to 28. There were to be only two weeks' annual leave after six months' service, instead of the usual NHS conditions. Disputes of that sort arise frequently throughout the country, and there will be more of them.

There is a dispute at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge where Professor Davies has resigned from the health authority in disgust at the way that the Government have forced privatisation on the National Health Service. The strikers are standing outside the gates at Addenbrooke's hospital because they want the people who work there to have decent working conditions, decent standards of service and decent wages.

There are many question marks over the companies which are involved in contract cleaning, contract catering and other forms of contracting business. The firm involved in the Addenbrooke's dispute, OCS, has very limited experience of hospital cleaning, as have many other contract cleaning companies. They line up outside district health authority meetings and offer themselves as the lowest bidder for the cleaning contract in each year in each district health authority.

The National Health Service was set up to provide health care for the people of Britain. The health authorities were set up to ensure that there would' be a healthy population. Under privatisation, the district health authorities become conveyancing mechanisms for passing money from the public purse into the private purse. They become a mechanism for making huge profits out of low wages and inadequate and inferior service. The authorities will rue the day when they realise how much damage they have done to the National Health Service, and to the lives of so many people who have given long and dedicated service to health authorities.

The NHS hospitals are treating more patients than they have ever treated.

The Minister can hardly contain his excitement at this point. I shall gladly give way to him if he has something useful to say.

There are numerous examples of the failure of contract cleaners in hospitals all over Britain. I have been unable to find any cleaning contract in any part of the NHS that has not been beset by problems of greater or lesser magnitude. Hospital administrators and health authorities are concerned that they have very limited control over the standards and the methods of cleaning in hospitals.

If the Government feel proud of their performance on cleaning, what will it be like when they move on to the privatisation of the catering services, and as we see the incompetence of some of the private catering companies as they try to provide special diets which they are not qualified or capable of doing? They have not the experience of the people who work directly in the NHS.

High Royds hospital, which is within the Leeds western district health authority, is a 900-bed hospital for the mentally ill. The authority terminated the contract with Home Counties Cleaning Group because of low standards and gave the new contract to Hospital Hygiene Services. A Sunday Times report in June 1984 said that Dr. Terry Nelson, head of the hospital's medical services committee, had complained to managers about the erratic standards of the contractors. One senior nurse had complained of faeces, urine and vomit on the floors, which remained uncleaned, and there were numerous other examples of the failure of that contract. As a result, the contractors were eventually changed.

At Hinchingbrooke hospital, which is within the Huntingdon district health authority, the contract for cleaning was run by B. A. Lester when the new hosptial opened in 1983. A report by Dr. William Newsen, a bacteriologist at Papworth hospital, in January 1984, records high levels of dust in clinical areas, including laboratories. He states:

"The contractor is in breach of the contract in failing to use impregnated mops. Mops with over one inch of dust were found in the cupboards. We grew coagulate positive staphylococci, i.e. potential disease producers from three samples of the dust in the Nursery and Rowan wards."

That is not an untypical example of what happens when contract cleaning companies, with their lack of experience, work in NHS hospitals.

Why are the Government so obsessed with privatisation in NHS hospitals when they know the damage that is done by contracting services? The Government claim that the purpose of privatisation is to save money for the NHS and to allow more money to be spent on patient care. That is patently not proving to be the case. The Government have not created jobs. They have reduced wages and they have allowed enormous profits to be made by private cleaning companies. There has been a greater cost on the public purse at the other end of the DHSS, as former NHS workers become unemployed when they could be doing a good job in NHS hospitals.

My union, NUPE, has commented:

"This massacre of earnings, conditions and cleaning standards will be faced by thousands of health workers in the year ahead."

That is exactly what is happening.

There are likely to be fewer jobs in the NHS and fewer jobs in total in contract cleaning services in hospitals as privatisation goes on. Fundamentally, the motive for privatisation is very different from the motive set up and led the National Health Service for so many years. Those contract cleaning companies are concerned to make money out of the NHS and are not concerned primarily with patient care, which is what those who work in the NHS are concerned with.

In pushing privatisation in the way that they have, the Government have ensured that wage levels are automatically lower. They have ensured that every year or every two years, whatever the contract period is, workers in NHS hospitals have to sell themselves to the lowest bidder who is prepared to exploit them and to exploit the NHS at the same time.

I have some examples of the pay and conditions offered by the Merton and Sutton health authority. When the Government say that in-house tenders are acceptable and that they are prepared to allow them to be considered, it is interesting to note that they deliberately say also that Whitley agreements are not binding on contract cleaners, but they know perfectly well that they are likely to be in any in-house tenders. It is a Hobson's choice for workers in the NHS. Either they accept the in-house tender, which probably will be on NHS wages and conditions but certainly will mean much lower staffing levels, more difficult hours of work and generally inferior working conditions, or they can go out to a private cleaning company where they will get what the Government euphemistically call "the going rate" for cleaning work, which is the most exploited section of the market. The Government have an obsession with exploiting part-time women workers, and the opposition to them is mounting.

Very little publicity is given by the Government to the reports which come out regularly about the way that contracts have failed. I have an excellent report published by the west midlands regional TUC health services co-ordinating committee. It is described as a preliminary report on the 47 companies approved by the West Midlands regional health authority as being eligible to tender for contracts within the NHS for catering, domestic and laundry services. It goes through in excruciating detail the background to these companies, who the shareholders are, who put up the money for them and the number of Conservative MPs who have shares in them—a matter that was referred to in the House during the debate on the NHS in July. The co-ordinating committee feels, quite rightly, first that there is no contract which has been successful and approved of fully by any district health authority, and, secondly, that there are untold elements of corruption or the potential for corruption within the contract cleaning process and the privatisation of NHS services.

This Government are intent on destroying the NHS in many ways — by cuts, by privatisation and by the promotion of private medicine. They are also destroying the working conditions of many people who have given loyal service to the NHS for many years. For example, on 7 December this year, which is fairly up to date, of the 240 health authorities and boards, 14 were not complying and 26 had adopted fair wages clauses. As we look through the contracts increasingly being awarded, lower and lower wages are being offered as the Government use the hammer of the dole queue to force down wages of part-time workers in the NHS and to destroy the service by the same process.

It is a scandal of the highest proportions. Here we are on the eve of Christmas. The Minister might have a little compassion, although I have my doubts, and think of the fear in the minds of thousands of NHS employees next year when privatisation is threatened, with their jobs being taken away, their livelihoods destroyed and their being forced to work for private cleaning companies on lower wages and with longer hours and worse and worse working conditions.

The Government believe in the free market economy. For many of the poorest of our people, that means poverty and the dole queue. That is what the Government are trying to do through privatisation. But I can assure them that the workers in the NHS who have loyally supported the service for so long will continue to oppose privatisation. There will be disputes and there will be opposition for as long as the Government are in office. They look forward to its being replaced by a Labour Government who are determined to provide good, decent working conditions and a good, decent NHS.

The hon. Member for Islington, North, (Mr. Corbyn) has not exactly enhanced his reputation in the House in recent days, and I have just listened to one of the most unpleasant speeches that I have had to sit through in my five years here. The hon. Gentleman raised groundless fears and made groundless allegations. His speech was a tissue of allegations without substance.

The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) has been in his place on the Opposition Front Bench throughout his hon. Friend's speech. I do not seek to do the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras any personal or political damage when I say that there is a wide gap between the way in which he and his hon. Friend express their strongly held views on this issue. I always listen to the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras because he talks reasonably about these issues rather than in the fatuous way that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Islington, North, who demonstrated clearly the different attitudes to the NHS between him and other right hon. and hon. Members.

Government supporters regard the NHS as being there primarily to provide a service for patients, and for no one else. We are proud that this year the NHS is treating more patients than ever before. From what the hon. Gentleman said with his repeated references to the trade union that sponsors him in the House and to the needs of trade unionists, it is clear that he believes that the NHS exists primarily for the benefit of the staff. Ancillary workers do an excellent job in the NHS, but it is the patients whom the service seeks to serve most of all. There is an unbridgeable gap between me and the hon. Member for Islington, North. Sadly, with his curious perception of the NHS, the hon. Gentleman has completely missed the point of our competitive tendering policy.

Our policy is about competitive tendering. It is not about privatisation pure and simple, because that is not its purpose. We have called for competitive tendering in the NHS to test the way in which it provides catering, cleaning and laundry services. It is a very successful policy.

We have asked domestic, catering and laundry services, which cost the NHS about £1 billion a year, to subject themselves to the same close scrutiny as that to which the private sector is subjected. It might be more comfortable to leave matters as they are. But, for too long, health authorities have accepted without question that they should provide services in hospitals by direct labour when for years they should have been asking what is the best way of providing those services in the interests of the needs of patients.

Will the Minister give way?

I have only a very short time. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not give way to him. I must try to reply to those matters that his hon. Friend raised.

I do not think that I will forgive the Minister.

Health authorities should have been asking themselves what is the most cost-effective way of providing these services, because the NHS—

rose—

—is not in the business of providing laundry, catering or hospital services.

rose—

I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman. If I did, it might encourage his hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North to seek to intervene and, while I am prepared formally to answer his debate, I am not prepared, after what he has done in recent weeks, to extend to him any of the normal courtesies.

If we had allowed matters to carry on as they were in the NHS, we would have missed a golden opportunity to save money that could be spent on patients. That. is what this policy is about. I fail to see the logic of the complaints of the hon. Member for Islington, North. Is he saying that he does not wish to have patient services improved and that the money saved on these services should not be spent on patients? That is ludricous.

We have told health authorities that, through competitive tendering, they should check that they are getting the best possible deal, and that they should get services provided by whoever can provide them best—in the interests of the service and of patients—whether that is a contractor or the excellent NHS in-house staff.

If a hospital's own service and staff can provide what is necessary, that is a good thing. If not, someone from the private sector should be given the opportunity. There is nothing dogmatic about that. It is a fair and even-handed policy, which is leading to substantial savings. Costs in the NHS are reduced when contracts are awarded within the service as a result of tendering.

We already have evidence that substantial savings are being made, not only by letting contracts to the private sector, but by driving down the cost of providing services within the NHS. For example, 37 contracts have been let privately and have resulted in annual savings of about £6·5 million for health authorities.

Publish the evidence.

Two of the contracts have saved over £1 million a year.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not contrary to our rules for the Minister to mislead the House? He is asserting that savings have been made—

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not accuse another hon. Member of deliberately misleading the House. He must withdraw that statement.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I seek your advice about what I should do if I have reason to believe that what the Minister has told the House is at variance with the facts?

Hon. Members have various views about speeches, but each hon. Member is responsible for his own speech.

The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras is falling lamentably below his usual quite high standards of debate.

Two of the contracts that have been let will save £1 million a year. The Hammersmith contract, to which the hon. Member for Islington, North referred, will save between £500,000 and £600,000 a year. Is the hon. Gentleman really saying that he would wish that money to be taken away from patients and spent on unnecessary costs? That is a ludicrous argument; it is an anti-NHS argument. It may be a pro-NUPE argument, but it is not a pro-patient argument.

The NHS has obviously been running some parts of its services inefficiently. It must examine critically the way in which it provides services and they must be provided at a high standard.

The hon. Member for Islington, North alleged that a substantial number of problems had occurred in private contracts. Because the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras has interrupted me with fatuous points of order, I have only two or three minutes in which to deal with the matters raised by the hon. Member for Islington, North.

The comments of the hon. Member for Islington, North about the Barking hospital dispute are scandalous. He said that what has been going on at the hospital is dangerous. He should substantiate that allegation or withdraw it. Even the trade unions have stopped picketing the hospital. The only people there now are representatives of a fatuous local organisation called Health Emergency, which is funded by Mr. Ken Livingstone and the GLC.

In recent days, the hospital has suffered vandalism and a series of break-ins. Hospital lavatories have been blocked and staff have been put to extreme inconvenience. None of that is in the interests of patients. It is in the interests only of the hon. Member for Islington, North and his extremist colleagues.

No facts, only a smear.

The hon. Member for Islington, North ought to reflect about what the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) said about him in the debate on Northern Ireland last night. How right the hon. Gentleman was in what he said about the behaviour of the hon. Member for Islington, North in recent weeks in encouraging terrorism.

I believe that we should look at the overall benefits that our policy will bring, the savings that will be achieved, the improvements in local services for NHS patients and the improvements in the efficiency of NHS management that will flow from that policy. I find it difficult to see any arguments against that cause and I shall be surprised and disappointed if the Opposition wish to deny the public such benefits, either for doctrinaire reasons or because of their associations with trade union interest groups that support the hon. Member for Islington, North.

I am grateful for the opportunity of raising the important subject of the treatment of British expatriates working abroad, particularly in Nigeria and Libya.

I propose to raise a number of individual cases which are significant, but the subject is of general importance, because the growth of international trade that we hope to see will mean that there will be more expatriates working overseas. The protection of their rights and assets will remain a matter of the greatest concern to us and the responsiblity of the Foreign Office.

I am delighted to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton), the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, is to reply to the debate. I congratulate him on holding his office with such great distinction. I recall that many years ago I was one of a group of 15 people being interviewed. One of us was to be chosen and the process involved a long group discussion to which we all contributed. Many brash, excitable, enthusiastic young voices rushed into the discussion, eager to put forward their views.

My hon. Friend made no contribution until about two thirds of the way through the discussion when, in three sentences, he demonstrated that he had grasped the subject and seen the flaws in the arguments of others and put forward a carefully thought out, constructive approach of his own. He was chosen and his career has not looked back since. I have every reason to suppose that this debate will follow the same pattern and I look forward to the pearls of wisdom that my hon. Friend will utter.

Many thousands of British expatriates work abroad, many for foreign-owned companies, many for British companies and some for multinational companies, which often receive a bad press, but are an important link in the economic chain that binds the developing and developed worlds to each other. Some expatriates work for Governments or governmental agencies.

It would be surprising and regrettable if, as international trade grows, the number of expatriates working abroad did not increase. I believe that the number will increase. I pay tribute to the energy and enterprise of those people who do work that is of the greatest service not only to the British economy, but to the economies of the developing world.

Newly independent countries of the Third world are often sensitive about expatriates and are not uniformly welcoming. Some, like Nigeria, are the beneficiaries of immense natural resources. However meandering the present economic path of Nigeria may seem to us, its resources will be developed and exploited, with help from outside. Naturally, I hope that the help that Nigeria receives will continue to come from people in this country.

All countries of the Third world wish and need to develop their own economies. They look first for the most basic resource, which is food. In the end, aid must gradually give way to trade, and most of those countries want assistance in developing their agriculture. I recall the Christian Aid advertisement of some years ago

"Give a man a fish and you give him lunch for today; give him a fishing rod and you give him lunch for his life."

Those of us who were burdened with a classical education recall our astonishment to find that once upon a time the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates was fertile. Once upon a time Sicily was the corn centre of the civilised European world. Parts of Africa that are now desert or bush produced food. Undoubtedly there are large parts of the developing world where, with irrigation and the necessary agricultural skills, deserts could be made to bloom.

I believe that it will be increasingly the role of Western industrial countries to provide the necessary management, advice and services to make that happen. The work of the United Nations agencies alone is quite insufficient for that purpose. Whether aid is given bilaterally or multilaterally, project work must continue to expand, just as trading contacts must do. More expatriates working in Third world countries will result, however those developments take place.

I am not advocating or prophesying a revival of colonialism. Twenty-six years ago I served in what was then Tanganyika, preparing for independence under the guiding hand of the United Kingdom. I pointed out then that it would be in the interests of Tanganyikans for the connection between that country, Britain and the EEC to remain close. Sadly, the progress of that country since then has illustrated how much the skills and resources necessary to develop Tanzania's agriculture are lacking in that depressed economy.

It is essential that Third world countries recognise that the development of trade and aid will involve the work of expatriates, and that that is very much a two-way process. Just as expatriates must respect the laws of the host country and must adapt to local conditions, so the host country, too, must see that the basic rights of individuals are not infringed. The host country has an interest in protecting such individuals, whether they are buying, selling, constructing or maintaining. Expatriates from western industrial countries will play an increasingly important part in the development of the economies of Third world countries if the aspirations of their citizens are to be fulfilled.

On the other hand, the Foreign Office has a direct responsibility for expatriates and must be robust in protecting their interests, seeing that they are well briefed and provided with all necessary assistance. The Foreign Office today is at last adjusting to the changed relationships between developing and developed countries, and is recognising that trade is a vital part of the business of the Foreign Office. Undoubtedly some embassies and high commissions recognise that more, and provide a better service for expatriates than do others.

I have corresponded with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and his colleague, the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Rifkind) on this subject, and now wish to mention two cases, in particular, with which I have been concerned. The first case is that of Mr. and Mrs. Strong of Shaftesbury in my constituency. Mr. Strong worked in Nigeria from 1978 until early 1982, and for the last year and a half for a Nigerian company, Lopin Ltd., which withheld his pay for six months without grounds for doing so. Mr. and Mrs. Strong suffered severe harassment, were threatened at gunpoint by the company's security guard, and lost furniture and belongings as well as a good deal of money and their passports in the process. Mr. and Mrs. Strong fully recognise that the British Government cannot be responsible for privately contracted agreements, but the efficacy of the legal processes in countries such as Nigeria is not as great as it is in Britain. It is, therefore, even more necessary for high commissions or embassies in such countries to take an active and vigorous interest in protecting the interests of British people working there.

My hon. Friend the Minister of State is aware of the details of that case, so I shall not go into further detail now. But my constituents felt—and I agree with them—that the high commission seemed to have given some indifferent advice and had certainly failed to pursue matters on their behalf with the sort of zeal and energy that they are entitled to expect. As a result of my investigation of the case of Mr. and Mrs. Strong, it became apparent that there are many other expatriates who have worked in Nigeria and who are having difficulties in securing payment of their salaries and moneys owed from their time working there.

There is now an organisation called Unpaid Personnel Nigeria, which is actively assisting its members to obtain payment of moneys they are owed. I have been in contact with the company Expatriates International Limited, which runs a magazine and provides services to expatriates. About 7,000 members of that organisation are assisted by it in avoiding some of the worst pitfalls that are to be found by those seeking work for foreign employer companies. The organisation has encouraged those owed money to submit claims to a London bank before the IMF was prepared to lend Nigeria further money. That is certainly one way of trying to secure the payment of moneys that are owed.

It has to be recognised that in the context of Nigeria companies employing expatriates can often use the protection of their Government or of those in authority there to avoid the payment of moneys that are due. That is why this is a matter with which the British Government should be concerned. My hon. Friend the Minister of State and his colleague Baroness Young have been helpful in looking into the facts of this, and other such Nigerian cases generally. But in my view there comes a point at which Government-to-Government pressure has to be applied. I should like to see that pressure applied, and I urge my hon. Friend to take up all such matters with the Nigerian Government. I hope that he will put the repayment of moneys to expatriates on the table in any bilateral negotiations, and will also raise this issue at the EEC level.

I also wish to raise the case of my constituent, Malcolm Pike of Blandford, whose experience in Libya is altogether different, but illustrates again the need for vigilance on the part of our Foreign Office in protecting British people working abroad. Mr. Malcolm Pike had worked in Libya for a company called Lomond Engineering between August 1980 and June 1982, but was unable to secure employment thereafter on his return to Britain. He therefore accepted an offer of work from Lomond Engineering again, and went to Libya in June 1983, following that company's nationalisation.

Mr. Pike's task was to assist in finalising the claim for compensation with the National Petroleum Services Company of Libya and to assist in dealing with the tax office in view of his previous experience with the company and knowledge of its affairs. It subsequently appeared that the company had substantial tax liabilities and the only other employees of the company left Libya, leaving Mr. Pike to continue his work. The two executives in the company to whom he was reporting became impossible to contact, and despite various assurances Mr. Pike has been left in Libya without pay and is owed a substantial sum of unpaid salary and expenses. He is not allowed to leave the country as, under Libyan law, he can be held hostage for the unpaid tax of his employer company. Mr. Pike is now subsisting on the generosity of friends, without money or work. Despite the admirable efforts of the British Government's representative in Libya, Mr. George Anderson, he is in effect being detained there.

It must be clear by now to the Libyan authorities that the employer lacks resources, and is abundantly clear that Mr. Pike has no funds himself. My constituent faces a bleak Christmas. His case should be an awful warning to anyone contemplating work for such a company in a country that has such an oppressive law enabling it to hold tax hostages. I know that my constituent's parents will, like me, much appreciate all efforts that my hon. Friend can exert to secure the release of that young man in Libyan limbo.

I have drawn these two cases to my hon. Friend's attention because of the important work available for British expatriates to carry out in developing countries and because of the need to ensure that they are encouraged to do so rather than deterred by the unfortunate circumstances of my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Strong and Mr. Malcolm Pike.

My hon. Friend will have my full support in strong measures to convince the Governments of the foreign countries concerned, however delicate relations may be, that the duty and determination of the British Government are to ensure that British citizens are protected and their rights safeguarded.

My message is that British expatriates working abroad do an invaluable job, but are entitled to expect the support and positive assistance of the Government. I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend has to say.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Mr. Baker) for raising this important subject on an Adjournment debate. He recalled that many years ago, he and I were together on a selection interview committee. I think the seat involved was Sheffield, Park division—which, despite its salubrious name, was described in the local paper as being a roll-call for all the council houses and tower blocks in Sheffield. It was an extremely safe seat for Labour, which was duly won, again in the forthcoming general election, by the present Lord Mulley. Since then, my hon. Friend has gone on to what might be described as the greener pastures of Dorset, and I to the greener pastures of Sussex. Perhaps we have both benefited from the experience of appearing before the selection interview committee.

My hon. Friend quoted from his classical knowledge to remind us of the days when some of the countries of northern Africa which are now threatened by drought and famine were the corn belt of the then civilised world. As he said, while it may be hard for deserts to bloom again, there is no doubt that one of the great challenges to trade and aid working together in the years ahead will be that of tackling the increasing problem of drought, overpopulation and too many animals, that lead to the severe famine that we are now seeing in Ethiopia and Sudan.

As my hon. Friend rightly said, there is a role for expatriates from western countries to help in that process. He referred to the number of expatriates and the important task that they carry out. I wholeheartedly endorse his words. Many expatriates work for British companies. They assist not only the countries where they are based but help Britain to regain trade that we may have lost and to bid for important new contracts that would be of great benefit to our manufacturers.

The size of the problem is mirrored in the number of expatriates. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office believe that there are between 5 million and 6 million. While for many of them the work that they do is very important to this country, they must accept that they must abide by the laws and regulations of their host countries. At times, they must adapt their own living styles to comply with local customs.

My hon. Friend called for vigilance from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but I am sure that he will endorse my belief that those going to work abroad must themselves be vigilant in considering the living conditions and the laws of the countries where they want to work, and accepting that they will not be the same as those in the United Kingdom

It is worth repeating that living in other countries is not the same as living in Britain. Expatriate workers must make judgments based on many factors. They will no doubt receive high and, in many cases, tax-free salaries as an inducement. They often have good living conditions. But they must remember other factors such as local customs, security conditions and the fact that the drinking of alcohol may be banned, all of which will make their lives different. It is not possible for Britain to tell other countries what their laws should be, any more than we expect other countries to tell us what our laws should be.

Britain has had exchange control regulations in the past. We might — God forbid — under a Labour Government have such regulations again. Britain has managed to get rid of them but other countries have not. That has a bearing on the flow of salaries and pensions from other countries to workers who have returned to the United Kingdom, and I shall mention more about that in relation to Nigeria. We cannot automatically expect other countries to follow suit when we make a change for the better. It is worth remembering that the laws of countries change because of a change of Government, and they sometimes deprive expatriates of rights that they expected when they went to work in those countries.

Our consulates department is open every day of the year, other than Christmas day, to advise people who are intending to travel. It is important that would-be expatriate workers find out as much as possible about the country that they intend to visit. We shall do all that we properly can to protect them. To assist with advice before expatriates travel, my Department, in conjunction with the Central Office of Information, has produced a leaflet entitled

"Get it right before you go"

with the subtitle

"What the British consulate can do for you, what the British consulate cannot do for you and what you should do for yourself".

I am pleased to say that last week, on behalf of my Department, I accepted a plain English award for the leaflet—

Hear, hear.

I am glad to have the approbation of my hon. Friend.

The first print of the leaflet—700,000—has already been used and we intend to have an even larger reprint next year. This graphic leaflet spells out the role of the consul. It makes it clear that consuls abroad are not lawyers, doctors or nannies. They are there to advise and help those who are in difficulties. Their role especially is to advise those who are in difficulties on how to get good local professional help. Their job is to offer helpful and realistic advice, which may at times be unpalatable. I strongly suggest to hon. Members that they suggest to their constituents who are considering working abroad that they read the leaflet or get in touch with the consular department before they go.

We are conscious that more Britons are working abroad as well as travelling abroad for their holidays. This means that the volume of work for our consular staff is increasing. We are confident that the staff is working well. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office keeps staffing levels under constant review so that, in spite of cuts in a few places, temporary or permanent staff reinforcements are sent out as necessary. I have already referred to the 5 million expatriates who are working abroad. In addition, 25 million Britons go abroad on holiday. My hon. Friend will realise the burden of the workload that falls on the 292 diplomatic service officers abroad who are involved in full-time consular work along with another 170 locally engaged staff. Thus, a total of 462 are involved solely in consular work. That has to be measured against the 5 million expatriates and the 25 million who go abroad on holiday. It is correct that all our ambassadors and high commissioners are actively interested in consular work. It is against that background that we give strong advice to those going to live or work abroad to find out about local conditions in advance. That must be said in the light of the volume of work that comes over the desks of our consular officials.

I recognise the strong merit of my hon. Friend's remarks and I turn to the two places that he has mentioned. First, I direct myself to the difficult case of Mr. and Mrs. Strong and the sad experience that they had with Mr. Strong's employer in Nigeria. As my hon. Friend probably knows, there are 11,000 British citizens who remain in Nigeria; many more have returned to the United Kingdom. I fully understand from the details that my hon. Friend has given why he felt that he should become involved in the case.

Mr. and Mrs. Strong's difficulties in Nigeria were first brought to our attention in London in April 1983, more than a year after they had left Nigeria. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentland (Mr. Rifkind), Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has had lengthy correspondence with my hon. Friend. I refer especially to his letters of 29 December 1983 and 9 February 1984. By and large, the high commissioner could not intervene in what was a private contractoral dispute for settlement through legal channels. It would be useful if my hon. Friend were to remind Mr. and Mrs. Strong that when it comes to fair treatment for Britons employed by Nigerian companies, contracts of employment between British citizens and Nigerian companies are essentially private matters between employee and employer. Her Majesty's Government have no standing to intervene when things go wrong.

Our high commissioner in Nigeria, as elsewhere, is willing to give advice and formulae should a dispute arise but if, as in Mr. and Mrs. Strong's case, an amicable settlement cannot be reached, the employee has to seek legal advice and pursue his complaint through his own legal channels. Mr. and Mrs. Strong's case is a private matter and we have no standing to negotiate a code of practice with the Nigerian Government for employment in the private sector. Equally, we would not expect the Nigerian Government to try to negotiate a similar code of employment for Nigerians working in Britain.

I turn from the particular to the general and to my hon. Friend's point about the problem and delay in obtaining remittances of salaries, pensions or other payments that are due from Nigeria. He will realise that the difficulties are caused by the shortage of foreign exchange in Nigeria and the prolonged recession combined with Nigerian bureaucratic confusion and delay. Her Majesty's Government have no legal standing in individual cases but my hon. Friend has asked for Government-to-Government pressure to be brought. I can assure him that that is the sort of pressure that we have been trying to bring to bear. We have tackled the problem on several occasions, including approaches at ministerial level, and we have received assurances that financial commitments will be met and that remittances will eventually come through, although the delays may be lengthy.

One member of the high commission in Lagos is employed virtually full time in taking action with the central bank to expedite remittance applications when progress in individual cases appears to have stopped. This has helped to achieve a successful outcome in many cases, including some where delay in receiving payment is causing especial hardship. However, the only long-term solution to the problem is an improvement in Nigeria's economy. We shall continue to work with the Nigerian Government and in consultation with the International Monetary Fund towards this end.

I am glad that, earlier in the year, Mr. and Mrs. Strong finally received their passports from Nigeria. I know that the return of their passports was due in no small measure to the hard work of my hon. Friend in pressing for that to happen.

I turn from the problems of Mr. and Mrs. Strong in Nigeria to those of Mr. Malcolm Pike, who is in Libya. This is a very difficult case. My hon. Friend will know that there are about 5,000 British citizens living and working in Libya. We have had no diplomatic relations with Libya in the past months. Relations were severed after the tragic murder of Policewoman Fletcher in April and the subsequent Libyan embassy seige. The Italian embassy in Tripoli has been our main channel of communication since then with the Libyan authorities. We are generally confident that, thanks to their help and our own British interests section in Tripoli, which is staffed by two diplomatic service officers, we are able to do everything possible to protect the interests of British citizens who remain working in Libya.

We first heard of Mr. Pike's case in June. Mr. Pike is an accountant and he has been held responsible by the Libyan authorities for the debts of the company for which he works, which is Lomond Engineering. He is not in prison but the Libyans have been holding his passport. Mr. Pike's solicitors in London are also pursuing the matter with the London office of Lomond Engineering. My hon. Friend referred to Mr. George Anderson, who was our consul in Tripoli. His place has been taken in recent weeks by Mr. Hugh Dunnachie. Mr. Dunnachie has been in frequent touch with Mr. Pike. I understand that their last meeting was about 10 days ago. I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that our consul believes that Mr. Pike's difficulties are gradually being resolved.

I have just been passed a note saying that Mr. Pike has now been able to leave Libya by arranging to allow a deputy to substitute for a while. Doubtless, that will be of great help to Mr. Pike and it will be specially welcome news with the Christmas holiday just ahead.

Mr. Pike is involved in a commercial dispute in which, for the reasons I have stated, it is not proper for the Government to intervene. Her Majesty's consul on the spot is giving Mr. Pike all the assistance he can properly give.

I have spoken about these two individual cases and the inevitable volume of work that comes to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office generally and to the consular section in particular in dealing with the large number of expatriates working abroad and Britons going on holiday abroad. I remind the House that the consular section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is open every day, save Christmas. Those on the staff do their utmost to give sound advice to the Britons about to leave Britain to work or for a holiday. I believe that it would be in the Christmas spirit if the whole House were to use this opportunity to send its good wishes and thanks to all our diplomatic officers who are serving overseas during this holiday period, whether in embassies, high commissions or consulates, for the difficult task they do and the manner in which they perform that task with limited resources.

I certainly join in the Christmas wish my hon. Friend has expressed to all our diplomatic staff. I thank him for his reply about Mr. Malcolm Pike. On other occasions, an arrangement of a substitute to take his place has been in train and has not taken place. My hon. Friend's news is welcome, and I hope that it will result in my constituent being able to join his parents for Christmas. Will my hon. Friend encourage Mr. Hugh Dunnachie to continue the kind assistance he is obviously giving? I shall be completely happy with the conclusion only when my constituent is able to leave Libya and return home.

I thank my hon. Friend for those remarks. Mr. Dunnachie is the consul who recently took Mr. Anderson's place in Tripoli. I fully understand my hon. Friend's comments, and I have no doubt that Mr. Dunnachie will pursue the course my hon. Friend has requested.

I shall end in the spirit of Christmas and goodwill—I hope the House will not mind this — and quote a message sent on 12 October 1984 to the high commission in Lagos. In part, it reads:

"I am writing to thank you and your consular staff for all support, help and advice that was so freely given over the past two weeks. That they were able to complete so much in settling affairs was due in no small part to the active and willing involvement of your consular staff."

It is always nice to end a debate with a bouquet, and I am sure that the whole House will be pleased to know that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office regularly receives such bouquets.

I am delighted to be able to participate in this Adjournment debate. It is the Friday before Christmas, and I am looking forward to going to Venice; so one is more emollient in this debate than one might otherwise be.

I raise an important issue, because, to put it mildly, these have been unhappy times for the City and Hackney district health authority. Only just over a year ago there was a riot at a meeting of the authority. On that occasion, I had to escort the authority chairman out in order to protect him. That involved me in sharp political criticism. However, I am glad that we got him out of the meeting in good order.

It is interesting to note that Mr. Louis Freedman, who has just retired as chairman of the City and Hackney health authority—I think I could call him a high Tory and a millionaire racehorse owner—expressed some unhappiness about the Department of Health and Social Security. He thought that decisions had been taken too quickly and that the authority had not been allowed to adapt to new circumstances. I would put it more strongly and say that the closure of the hospital is creating great discomfort and unhappiness in Hackney.

Mr. Freedman has gone, and Mr. Evan Stone has taken his place. I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State will be pleased to note that I do not intend attacking Mr. Stone. I should have preferred Mr. Donald Hoodless, whom I and the community health authority recommended to the post, but Mr. Stone is in office and he must be judged on his performance and not condemned before he starts.

As it happens, neither Mr. Stone nor Mr. Hoodless came from Hackney or the City. I believe that they both came from Islington. It is worrying that there are fewer local people on the City and Hackney district health authority than on any other health authority. I may be wrong, but I should be surprised to hear otherwise. Well under half of its members live either in the City or in Hackney.

We talk a great deal about devolving powers to the people, taking power from central Government and local people knowing what is best for them. I believe that that is right. I am not sure why Hackney has been picked out for preferment. Why is it that, of all the areas in Britain, it is in the City and Hackney that there are thought to be insufficient decent people able to conduct the affairs of their own health authority? That cannot be right, and it is time that Ministers started to shift the balance.

One of the reasons for this action concerns the conduct of some members on the authority and the events that followed the occupation of St. Leonard's hospital. Following the Minister's announcement of the effective closure of St. Leonard's hospital, an occupation occurred in the summer. Following that occupation, disciplinary action was taken against Miss Andrea Campbell and Mr. Geoffrey Craig. Miss Campbell was a shop steward for the Confederation of Health Service Employees and Mr. Craig was a shop steward for the National Union of Public Employees. They were dismissed as a result of that disciplinary hearing, and they then appealed. I did not give evidence at the original hearing, but I did so at the appeal on behalf of both those people. I believe that, when selecting members of a district health authority, one must select members who not only can carry out the administration properly, fairly and justly, but can carry out tribunal hearings properly, fairly and justly.

I have been puzzled about the reasons why disciplinary proceedings were taken against those two people. Thousands of people in Hackney were involved in the occupation. I went to the hospital both during and following the occupation. I spoke to members of NUPE and to nurses sitting on the wall outside waiting for vehicles to take them home. I spoke at meetings composed of hundreds of workers, most of whom worked at that hospital. They all supported the occupation. One might say that the occupation was right or that it was wrong. One might say that it was responsible or that it was irresponsible. It is extraordinary to note that, of all the workers who supported the occupation, only two were picked out to be the subject of disciplinary hearings.

I have tried to find out from Mr. John Dennis, the district administrator, why he acted in that way. Is it that he wants war and not peace? Does he think that adopting a hard line will help him to be the general manager of the authority? If society is to act fairly — I speak as a barrister—one cannot arbitrarily pick out two people from the hundreds involved in a particular industrial dispute and say, "We will subject you to condign criticism, we will punish you publicly; we will make you scapegoats; we will set an example; we will show the public that we are not prepared to tolerate this by picking out two individuals."

In addition to the workers who started the occupation, there were thousands of members of the public. What is more important, if I can catch the Minister's ear for a few moments—

I apologise. I was consulting my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for the Environment.

I am glad that the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health and Social Security liaise. It does not always happen but perhaps a change for the better is coming.

It is also noteworthy that at least one third of the members of the district health authority supported the occupation, and, rightly or wrongly, that the two local Members of Parliament supported it.

As I said at the appeal hearing, the district health authority might have liked to try the two Members of Parliament and the one third of its own members, and it might have liked to take disciplinary proceedings against members of the public. Given that all these people with all these different roles in public and private life were involved in that occupation, how could one take those two individuals and say, "It is just you two whom we are bringing before this tribunal."

The first tribunal which dealt with Miss Andrea Campbell's case upheld her appeal and said that it would remove the dismissal notices and that she would be given a warning.

When I gave evidence to the tribunal, I found that it was relaxed, friendly and courteous. As I was giving evidence, I did not know what decision it would reach. The tribunal seemed to be conducted properly. When I gave evidence to the tribunal which dealt with Mr. Geoffrey Craig, it was rather different. To put it mildly, it was cold, abrupt and unfriendly. The tribunal consisted of Sir Robin Brooks, who was in the chair, Mr. D. Joines, a former treasurer of the authority, and a Miss B. M. Bartram, who is a nursing officer. I did not find their conduct satisfactory, which is why I am raising this matter, because I am not sure that the three of them should be members of the district health authority. If they are about to retire, I hope that their membership will not be renewed.

I do not want to be unkind to Sir Robin. I suppose that one way to describe him is to say that he is a dinosaur living in the wrong age; another would be to say that he is the sarcophagus of a philosophical theory that has perhaps seen its day. I detect from his conduct of the tribunal and his general conduct at the meetings of the district health authority that he appears to be motivated by political ideology, if not by spite.

I am unhappy about the way in which that tribunal was conducted. I am unhappy that one of the members of the district health authority, Ms. Lucy De Groot, gave evidence, but was not allowed to make a statement. After she had been asked some questions, she asked whether she could make a statement at the end of her evidence. That is a normal practice at a tribunal, as I know from my experience at the Bar. She was abruptly and discourteously told that she could not make that statement.

I have also spoken to Miss Dorothy Hardman, who conducted the case on behalf of Mr. Geoffrey Craig. She was treated in an unfriendly and discourteous manner. When tribunal hearings are being conducted, and when there is such sensitivity and public opinion has been outraged—there have been many difficulties over the past years—these things should be done differently.

I was also disturbed by the manner in which I was questioned at the second tribunal, not because I cannot handle it—good Lord, I used to go into the courts every day of the week—but by the way in which Mr. Joines seemed to be injecting prejudice into his questions. That is all right for a defence barrister in a criminal case where there might be a question of life or death or of someone getting three or five years' imprisonment, but in an orthodox tribunal hearing interested in the possible dismissal of an employee, people should not ask questions, all of which are leading, and seem to inject the prejudice of the questioner. What that and the whole atmosphere suggested was that the people on the tribunal had made up their minds before they had heard the evidence. That appeared to be borne out by the fact that, having heard the evidence over a number of days, the tribunal retired for about five minutes and reached an extraordinarily quick decision. It seems inconceivable that it could during that time have weighed up and balanced the evidence given at that hearing.

We should ask whether the three people involved in the hearing are fit to run tribunals. We should question whether they should now be on the district health authority. I have talked to many people and many MPs involved with the Health Service and they say that the City and Hackney district health authority has a reputation for being hopelessly out of date with its industrial relations. I do not know the history of that because I am fairly new to the area. I hope that the Minister is prepared to appoint more younger and more local people to that district health authority so that we can have a new start. If the Minister can tell me that—

On a point of clarification, the Department does not appoint members to district health authorities; they are appointed by the regional health authority. The ministerial appointment to the district health authority is that of the chairman. The hon. Gentleman's remarks might best be addressed to the chairman of the regional health authority rather than to me.

I am grateful to the Minister for that information. We all know the way that these political processes work. The region should be appointing, with the Minister's encouragement, more younger and more local people to the district health authority.

If when he replies the Minister can assure us that he will encourage such appointments, we can all go home for Christmas even happier and I can have an even more pleasant time in Venice than I would otherwise have.

I hope that the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) has an agreeable and enjoyable time in that most beautiful of cities. I must apologise to the hon. Gentleman for appearing momentarily not to be paying his speech the closest attention. I was in consultation with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) whom I am happy to see on the Front Bench. He was telling me that in an earlier manifestation as one of my predecessors in the Department, he had answered a similar debate from another hon. Member from the area. My hon. Friend has a distinguished career in answering Adjournment debates. Indeed, today, 21 December 1984, will see my hon. Friend breaking his ton and answering his 100th Adjournment debate.

There are a number of things for which I must thank the hon. Gentleman. I join in the thanks of Mr. Freedman, for his actions during that unruly health authority meeting — which it is best to draw a veil over and to forget—for helping to protect him. The hon. Gentleman's considerable size and stature and his expertise, no doubt acquired during his distinguished rugby-playing career, must have helped a great deal when he protected Mr. Louis Freedman during the problems that were facing him during that lamentable series of occurrences.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Health and myself are all deeply indebted to Mr. Freedman for the work that he did as chairman of the health authority. We wish his successor, Mr. Stone, a distinguished Queen's counsel, good fortune in what he does as chairman of the authority in the future.

I entirely share the hon. Gentleman's views about Mr. Hoodless. He is a man with an exceptional record and, because he has that exceptional record, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has recently renewed his appointment as a member of the regional health authority, where he has done such good work for such a long time. I know Mr. Hoodless and I greatly respect what he has done for both housing and health over the years. I hope that people will continue to give public service in the selfless way that he has during his career thus far.

When my right hon. Friend selects people to serve as chairmen of regional health authorities, as members of regional health authorities and chairmen of district health authorities, he invariably seeks, on the advice of officials, colleagues and people who know the community to appoint those people whom he believes will do the job best. I am convinced that the regional health authority that appoints members to the district health authority does exactly the same with regard to the City and Hackney district health authority.

I was looking at the list of members, and without wishing to read it out or go through their high personal qualities, the authority is lucky to have such a strong membership. I do not share the hon. Gentleman's views of Sir Robin Brook. We have complete confidence in the work of members of district health authorities such as Sir Robin and nominees of, for example, the TUC, such as Ms. de Groot. We are very lucky to have such people to help us to carry out Government policy, reflect the interests and demands of local people and help to mould health care in the City and Hackney area.

The hon. Gentleman made two real points. One concerned his feeling that the balance of the district health authority membership was not quite right, and that there were not enough young people on it. One often hears such a complaint about public bodies. Sometimes it is hard to find younger people to take up the job, which is understandable, because of the careers that they are following, they are just married, have mortgages to pay and all the other problems that make people say, "No, I shall not do a job at 30 or 40 that I shall be content to do at 50 or 60." It is a pity, but it is understandable. I shall draw the contents of the hon. Gentleman's speech to the attention of the chairman of the regional health authority. I shall send him a copy of Hansard so that he can read what the hon. Gentleman said and in future years, with his authority and membership panel, take the hon. Gentleman's feelings into account because I know that the hon. Gentleman does his best to reflect the feelings of those whom he represents.

The hon. Gentleman's second point, which was substantial, concerned his fears about the conduct of a tribunal that led to disciplinary action in a couple of cases. I know that he is motivated by the interests of the individuals and of making sure that natural justice was observed and they were treated properly. His own distinguished legal career suits him well for that purpose.

However, it would be inappropriate and probably highly improper of me to comment in any way on the details of the case raised by the hon. Gentleman because it is entirely a matter for the health authorities concerned. In a sense, the issue is also sub judice as regards his constituent and those authorities. Under standard Whitley council procedures agreed between employer and employee, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services has no locus whatsoever in the case. I should like to explain that.

I was interested to see the facts when, through the assiduity of one of the characteristically alert civil servants whom we employ in the Department of Health and Social Security, I was warned that this topic was likely to be the one that my hon. Friend would raise. I am sorry, I meant the hon. Gentleman. I must not carry the Christmas spirit too far.

Each district health authority has procedures for dealing with disciplinary matters concerning its employees. They are set out in the authority's terms and conditions of service for its staff. They are based on the nationally agreed procedures set out in the Whitley council handbook, that voluminous and detailed tome. A district health authority's terms and conditions of service set out the full procedures for disciplinary matters — from warnings, either oral or written, through suspension to dismissal. In cases where the action leads finally to dismissal there is provision — as there is for written reprimand or warning — for appeal to the health authority. The procedure for such appeals is in turn set out in the authority's standing orders. All district health authorities up and down the land have that procedure written into their standing orders.

If an appeal to the authority is unsuccessful, the matter does not end there. The employee can seek redress elsewhere if he or she wishes. There is provision under section 40 of the general Whitley council handbook—which might be interesting Christmas reading for the hon. Gentleman in Venice—for an employee of a district health authority who has exhausted its procedures to seek an appeal to the appropriate regional health authority. Whether an appeal is granted is not a matter for Ministers but is entirely at the discretion of the regional health authority. The decision is for it. It has the responsibility for deciding whether there are grounds for an appeal. If the regional health authority decides that there are no grounds for such an appeal or if an appeal is heard and turned down, there is no provision for appeal beyond the regional health authority. Neither the Department of Health and Social Security nor Ministers, including the Secretary of State and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Health, have any locus in the matter.

That is the sequence of events under National Health Service procedures. For completeness, I should also mention, although I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is also aware of this, that an employee who feels that he has been unfairly dismissed can appeal to an industrial tribunal for it to review his case. The employee has to apply within three months of the date of dismissal.

Those are the procedures for disciplinary action and dismissal of district health authority employees. As I have explained, the Secretary of State, because of the very nature of an agreement between employer and employee and not for any other reason, is not involved at any stage. It would therefore be totally inappropriate for me to comment on the events described by the hon. Gentleman or, indeed, to respond to his specific questions. In this case, it would be doubly inappropriate because I understand that that case is in a sense sub judice. I am advised that the hon. Gentleman's constituent has appealed against his dismissal, as is his right, and City and Hackney health authority heard his appeal at three hearings on 12 and 19 November and 4 December, and that its recommendation went to the full authority for ratification or otherwise only last Monday, 17 December. When the appellant is notified of the result, he will need to consider what his next steps, if any, will be. I have tried to outline, in the hope of being as helpful as I can, what the next stages might be.

The hon. Gentleman said that the dismissal of his constituent was a draconian punishment. He criticised the members of the authority who heard the appeal, one of them quite forcibly. If the appeal is upheld by the full authority—I do not know what the result is—no doubt he will criticise it as well. He is, of course, entitled to his opinions on those matters, but this morning I cannot and must not comment on them because they are not issues that concern Ministers. That is not because we do not care about the fate of individuals who work in the NHS but because it would be totally wrong for Ministers to seek to intervene and vary procedures that have been set down through agreements that have been freely entered into between employer and employee. That is not what I would seek to do. I am sure that criticism would rain down on our heads if we sought to do so at any stage. In this particular case, we must await the outcome of events.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I should like to mention this matter before the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security leaves.

The House is in some difficulty. An important decision was made yesterday on the Gillick case about advice on contraception to girls under the age of 16. Naturally, one thought that there would be a statement to the House this morning. Late last night question 162 for written answer on this subject was tabled, and obviously there will be an answer in Hansard when we return on 9 January. I wonder whether you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, could consult Mr. Speaker to see whether there is any way in which the House can be protected in such a case, when on the last day before a recess something of national importance occurs. The Minister for Health will have either to accept or to reject the idea of altering legislation. Naturally our constituents, especially general practitioners, will be concerned—

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not pursue the argument. It is not a matter for me. The Minister is here, and there are several other important matters about which the House would like to be informed.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Government do not control the sitting patterns of the courts, which take their decisions on days that suit them. The decision happened to be taken yesterday by the court. Further, the matter is still within the courts as my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Health has announced his intention to appeal to the House of Lords against the decision.

I am most grateful.

First, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I wish you and all my parliamentary colleagues a very happy Christmas. This debate on drinking and driving very much concerns the festive season. Christmas is a joyous time for everyone, but drinking and driving is a sombre topic. Every year some 1,200 people die as a result of road traffic accidents in which drink is a contributory factor. In 1983, 109 pedestrians were killed and 1,077 injured by vehicles driven by people who failed the breath test. It may be of interest to note, too, that one third of car drivers and motor cyclists who are killed have more than the prescribed limit of alcohol in their blood. On Friday and Saturday nights, between 10 pm and 4 am, the proportion rises to a dramatic two thirds.

There must be a responsible reaction to the problem. Many people in the licensed trade are as concerned as I am, but the public at large is desperately short of facts and information. We must make a concentrated effort to inform people of the effects of alcohol, the penalties for drunk driving, the relationship of various drinks to blood alcohol levels, and so on. Some members of the licensed trade have been extremely helpful. The Wine and Spirit Association recently produced a 15-minute videotape entitled "Alcohol Abuse — What Must Be Done". A copy has been placed in the Library. It acknowledges that it does not give answers but merely poses the questions, but it is an ideal introduction for discussion purposes, especially among young people in youth clubs and so on.

The Brewers Society has produced three road safety films to make young people aware of the dangers of drinking and driving and on 18 December it launched a nationwide campaign under the title,

"Don't gamble with your licence"

and much material has been produced in connection with that. I am glad to see that my hon. Friend the Minister of State is to answer the debate. As we have come to expect each year, the Department of Transport has launched its own campaign. That, too, is greatly to be welcomed.

It is important to deal with some of the myths about drinking. For example, spirits are not invariably more dangerous than beer or wine. A product called "double gin and tonic" in 175 ml bottles can be drunk straight from the bottle but the strength of 11·4 per cent. is no greater than table wine. Spirits diluted in that way may be considerably less strong than some sherries. When mixed with tonic and the like, spirits are not nearly as strong as many people think. The key to any valid campaign to ensure a reduction in the tragic waste of human life through drinking and driving must be the principle of moderation. The aureum mediocritatem or golden mean of the Roman poet Horace is indeed a good guide to us all in this as in every aspect of life.

Alcohol in moderation can be beneficial. People who drink in moderation—under 20 units per week for men and 13 units per week for women—are likely to live longer and suffer fewer heart attacks than teetotallers. I am sorry to hear that teetotallers have been singled out as likely to suffer more, but that is substantiated by medical evidence. That, too, is part of the dilemma. Although in many cases alcohol can be beneficial, if taken to excess it can, like most other things, be positively harmful and dramatically dangerous not just to those who consume it but, more importantly, to innocent bystanders caught up in the tragic results of drinking and driving. I should explain at this point that one unit of alcohol is roughly equivalent to a single whisky, one glass of wine or half a pint of ordinary beer or cider.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on the Government campaign, which has been described as the "Stay Low" campaign. Although there has been much controversey about the campaign and the title has unfortunately been misleading, there is a beneficial aspect in that the campaign has been far more widely debated than it otherwise might have been. I hope that my hon. Friend will make it clear again today that to be fully safe people must not drink at all when they drive. In fairness to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, I will read the press release in its entirety, as that is indeed the message that comes across. It reads as follows:

"Don't drink any alcohol at all if you are going to drive. That's the only way to be sure you won't be affected by drink and liable to be convicted of a drink-drive offence.

And it's the best safeguard you can give yourself that you won't be involved in an accident.

Although the 'breathalyser' law puts a limit of 35 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres on drivers' breath, you can still be prosecuted below that limit if a policeman thinks your driving ability is impaired by alcohol.

So the only way to be certain is not to drink. That's what the Department of Transport means by its advice to drivers this Christmas to stay low—very low."

Taking the press release as a whole, that is clearly the message.

People must also be made aware of the cumulative effect of alcohol. An advocate who has represented many defendents charged with drinking and driving offences has pointed out that many people do not realise that a drink at lunchtime, for example, materially affects the degree of driving impairment if the person concerned has another drink before going home, because the earlier drink may not have been fully dissipated by that time. Equally, a person who goes out on a massive drinking spree in the evening and then sleeps for six hours or more—my hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have to manage on much less to carry out our parliamentary duties—he may think that he has "slept off" the effects, whereas in fact when he gets into his car the next morning he may still be substantially over the limit and therefore driving unlawfully.

I shall not go into the subject of the somewhat controversial intoximeter designed to measure the level of alcohol, the limit being 80 mg per 100 litres of blood or 35 mcg per 100 millilitres on the breath. We know that some free pardons have already been issued to people wrongfully convicted on evidence involving the Lion intoximeter. Nevertheless, even at a level of 50 millilitres per 100 litres of blood, driving is impaired although the level of alcohol is below the legal limit. A person with that amount of alcohol in his blood is already three times more likely to have an accident than if he had taken no alcohol at all. We must do more to warn and inform.

The Government commissioned a study of alcohol policy, and the report was ready in 1979, but it has never been published in Britain. It was published in Sweden. It recommended that the Government should make a policy statement on alcohol, but that has not been done. There is a great need for information about alcohol and its effects. In 1981, Government expenditure on health education advertising about alcohol was less than 5 per cent. of what the alcohol industry spent on advertising, which was about £100 million. The Government receive in revenue, directly and through VAT, about £6,000 million a year from the sale of alcohol. It is not too much to ask them to spend more than £5 million on health education.

Yet people still do not know the consequences. In 1982, the British Crime Survey contacted more than 3,000 drivers who provided information on drinking and driving since the beginning of 1981. The alarming statistic—one of many that I could quote but with which I shall not detain the House—is that about 40 per cent. of males aged between 16 and 30 who were over the limit and, therefore, driving unlawfully believed that they would pass a breathalyser test after drinking five units of alcohol.

One way of dealing with the problem that is within the power of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State is to include something in the highway code about the effects of alcohol and the consequences of disobeying the law. That has the attraction of simplicity in getting across the message, and it means that one can be satisfied that at least once in a driver's life he will have had brought to his attention the consequences of disobeying the law and the effects of alcohol, because everyone must pass an examination on the highway code as part of the driving test.

Alcohol is eliminated from the body at a rate approximately equivalent to half a pint of beer or a single measure of spirits each hour. Of course, that is not uniform. A lighter person has less water in his body than does a heavier person and will reach a higher blood-alcohol level for a given consumption. The elimination of alcohol cannot be quickened. Coffee — popularly believed to be an antidote—may keep one awake, but it does not reduce the alcohol level. Therefore, it was with great anxiety that I saw about four weeks ago the launch of a product called "Alcaway". Its advertisement describes it as

"the answer for all those occasions when a person has consumed more alcohol than he or she had intended."

Under the heading

"How much will it affect my alcohol level?"

the advertisement states:

"It depends. Perhaps 25 per cent. — or a 32 per cent. reduction. It could be as high as 45 per cent. On average about 30 per cent."

That is grossly iresponsible advertising. In view of what I have said about the inability to reduce the blood alcohol level, the advertisement could be extremely misleading.

Is there any validity in those claims? That was considered by Mr. John Teller, the director of Avon Council on Alcoholism in Bristol. He noted that it had been claimed recently in the press that blood alcohol levels can fall by as much as 77 per cent. in 30 minutes. He contacted Mr. Peter Bate of the company Five Swallows in Stansted, Essex, which is marketing that product in Britain. Mr. Bate sent to Mr. Teller the research upon which the claims were based. He sent him five documents, two of which were copies of published research carried out in South Africa in 1983—Alcaway is produced in South Africa — and in Australia in 1982. The two studies involved only 19 white males. Mr. Bate also sent two typewritten sheets describing the effects of Alcaway on blood alcohol levels. That study involved only 12 subjects. There were no controls. In that document we find the magic figure of a 77 per cent. reduction, although not in 30 minutes.

What worries Mr. Teller and what worries me is, first, that no tests were carried out on women. Secondly, increasing the rate at which alcohol is broken down by the body can cause poorer judgment, such as in driving. Thirdly, fructose, on which Alcaway is based—it is an apple-flavoured drink — can cause painful side effects. Fourthly, Mr. Bate does not know of any side effects. Fifthly, Mr. Bate expects to sell 400,000 cans of Alcaway before Christmas, and about 4 million cans next year. Finally, it is naive in the extreme to assume that people will not use Alcaway — the name leaves little to the imagination — in the belief that it will then be safe to drive after drinking. No guidance, advice or warnings have been issued to retailers or customers. The company hopes to market the drink next year in the United States of America under the brand name "Arrive Alive".

In fairness to Mr. Bate, I should say that he is reported as having said that, in his judgment, people should not drink and drive. But it is naive to believe that people will not be misled by the product.

As a result of my anxiety, I put down several questions about this—one to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport and another to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Services. I asked whether there was a policy about marketing products designed to reduce blood alcohol levels, and I received this reply from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State:

"If a product were marketed explicitly for the purpose of interfering with the normal operation of a physiological function, it would probably require a licence under the Medicines Act. If any such product appeared on the market consideration would be given to enforcing the requirements of the Act."—[Official Report, 19 November 1984; Vol. 68, c. 71.]

I am glad to know that the Department is now considering the product carefully to see whether it should come under the Medicines Act.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State replied in this way:

"The rate at which alcohol is absorbed into the blood stream is affected by a variety of factors. While some products can slow down this process, I am not aware of any evidence which suggests that the elimination of alcohol from the body can be significantly speeded up. My general policy is to warn drivers of the risks involved in driving after drinking under any circumstances."—[Official Report, 19 November 1984; Vol. 68, c. 46.]

There seems to be no doubt in the mind of my hon. Friend and her Department that no substance can artificially reduce blood alcohol levels. I hope that that message will go from the House to the general public, and also a message about the side effects that could be caused by a fructose-based drink.

I have written to the Advertising Standards Authority about this matter. I said in my letter:

"Although fructose does, in some instances, accelerate liver function the consequences of this can themselves induce drowsiness and inability to concentrate and in view of this the claims made for the product appear to be unsubstantiated. The statement 'research has proved beyond doubt' is derived from two small studies in South Africa when less than 20 people were tested. No structured or creditable scientific experiments can be discovered."

Not only the group of which I have the privilege to be chairman — the all-party parliamentary alcohol policy and services group—but the drinks industry expresses considerable reservations about the way in which the product is being marketed. The implication that it might be safe to drive after using Alcaway is especially disturbing. It is simply not true. As the final paragraph of the advertisement says,

"Only you will know how well it works."

No one will know that until he or she breathes into an intoximeter, and by then it may be too late.

The reply that I received from the Advertising Standards Authority on 20 November of this year was that this is being pursued as a matter or urgency.

I believe that the trade is concern about the marketing of this drug. In the Morning Advertiser of 21 November, under "Viewpoint", it was noted that concern was being expressed about the claims made for it. From the time that the breathalyser was introduced products have been launched at intervals making claims that they are antidotes to alcohol. The attitude of the trade has been made clear from the start. It will have nothing to do with such products. The trade has adopted the same attitude towards the various do-it-yourself breathalyser kits that have been marketed. Their comment is that they can only repeat the advice that has been given to licensees in the past and that they are reasonably sure that brewers take the same attitude—that is, to leave well alone.

There is the additional danger that immediate allegations will be made that licensees are only out to get customers to drink as much as possible without thought for the social consequences. By putting such products on the market for sale they would be putting themselves in danger of fierce criticism from several directions.

While accepting my congratulations on the campaign which the Government have launched, I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will realise that this is not the end of the story. There is much more that the Government can do and which I expect the Government to do in the form of information and helping to explain to people the problems of drinking and driving and its effects. I have made one or two suggestions which I hope the Under-Secretary will look at carefully. Ultimately we need to change attitudes. We need to ensure that there is moral condemnation of the concept of drinking and driving. This matter is as much in the hands of the public as it is in the hands of the Government. However, the Government can take a lead on information and education. I shall be satisfied if the result of the debate is that more people are alive and uninjured after the festive season than might otherwise have been the case. If so, this will have been a worthwhile debate.

I am well aware that my hon. Friend the Minister of State who is to reply to the debate wishes to do so fully. In those circumstances, my speech will be shorter than I had intended it to be. At the moment we are in the midst of the normal Christmas campaign. On this occasion it is a controversial campaign, although I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Best) that the very controversy may have drawn people's attention to the campaign. We should always remember that driving with an excess of alcohol in the blood is a continuing problem. It does not happen only at Christmas, although people may be well aware of the risks that they run and may be more careful at Christmas.

We have been given today the figures relating to accidents throughout the year. As many as two thirds of those who are involved in fatal accidents have too much alcohol in their blood. The level of alcohol in their blood is above the permitted limit. This year Derbyshire does not intend to have a special drive over the Christmas period. Last year, however, 935 people were stopped in Derbyshire and tested and were found to be negative. They were driving within the limit; only 53 positive results were found.

Once the figures are as far apart as that, one is getting virtually to random testing. I am not against random stopping and testing, but I believe that the time has come when we must make up our minds about where we stand on random testing. Car checks occur regularly on a random basis. Breathalysers are often used at the same time. The use of radar is random; it is not known that a radar check is round the corner. When a motorist is stopped, the breathalyser may be used. In this country, therefore, there is random testing and we must make up our minds about whether random tests should continue and stealthily increase. My view is that it would be better to acknowledge that random testing is taking place and that we should allow the police to stop anybody whenever they wish and test them if they wish. It is a continuing problem on our roads. It may lead to political difficulties. In the past we have made promises that this would not happen. However, every time anybody who has had a drink takes a car on to the road it becomes a lottery. Therefore, the Government would be well advised to take their courage in their hands and say that they will allow the police to stop anybody whenever they wish.

I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Best) and my hon. Friend the Minister of State for agreeing to my brief participation in the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend upon the timeliness of the debate and I endorse all that he has said. In the interests of saving time I shall not reiterate any of his remarks, apart from stressing that anything that can be done to reduce the carnage on our roads, in particular at Christmas, is to be welcomed.

I declare a double interest in taking part in the debate. First, I am the parliamentary adviser to the National Union of Licensed Victuallers. Secondly, I am one of the only two licence holders in this place. The purpose of my intervention is to acknowledge what the licensed trade, both the licensees and the brewers, are doing to promote responsibility among pubgoers regarding drinking and driving. This week has seen the launch of a national campaign entitled "Don't gamble with your licence". I see that my hon. Friend the Minister of State is holding a copy of a poster which, she will notice, is drink and drip-proof. I have in my hand a drip-mat. It is an example of 15 million such mats that are being distributed throughout the country. The number of posters that are to be sent out is 100,000.

I welcome also the involvement in the campaign of some of the police authorities. Sussex is one. I am sure that there are others. Both the police and the licensed trade have a joint interest in promoting safety on our roads at Christmas.

May I also draw the attention of the House to two other measures that are being undertaken by the trade. First, the trade is stepping up its promotion of low content alcohol and non-alcoholic drinks. I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn has said about dubious products that make extreme claims about their safety in relation to alcohol content and ability to counter alcohol. This does nothing but bring the trade into disrepute. Advertising claims for such products must be backed by clinical evidence, or those who are involved in the manufacturing and marketing of such products are taking part in an activity that borders on the criminal.

Secondly, may I draw the attention of the Minister of State to the fact that public transport is being organised over the festive season by brewers and local licensed victuallers associations? One example is the Phoenix brewery in Brighton. This is very welcome. It may be continued throughout the year. It is unfortunate that in some areas public scheduled bus services stop running at 10.30 pm. At Christmas and the new year, with so many pub extensions, this presents considerable difficulties for those who want to get home without having to drive their own cars.

I should be grateful if the Minister could acknowledge what the licensed trade is doing. Will she also look into the problems presented by the proliferation of off-licence outlets for alcohol? We have seen a growth in the number of supermarkets that now sell alcoholic drinks, often with completely inadequate supervision of the age of those who purchase drinks. I am horrified to hear—I have yet to find the concrete evidence—that some garages are now selling alcoholic drinks in their off-licences. As we prohibit the sale of alcohol on motorways, some guidance must be given to magistrates to ensure that on no account should off-licences be granted to garages.

Let me conclude by quoting a statement made by Mr. Danny Trevelyan, the president of the NULV, when launching the "Don't gamble with your licence" campaign this week. He said:

"Celebrating Christmas and New Year in a pub is a tradition in itself but drivers who exceed the limit are risking their licences, their livelihoods and sometimes their lives and the lives of other people. Licensees will welcome this opportunity to warn drivers to think before they drink before they drive."

I am sure that the House will join me in applauding that statement and the campaign that it introduced.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Best) on having this most timely debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside (Mr. Colvin) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) who have participated. They do the House, and indeed the country through the media, a service in continuing to remind us of the potential fatality that any driver who is foolish enough to drink and drive or get on a motorcycle may cause, not just for himself and his passengers, but for anybody else who may be on the road or even on the pathway beside the road.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môon is right to say that we need more education on the dangers of drinking and driving. In due course my Department is planning to give even wider information than has already been given out in the facts leaflet on drinking and driving from the road research laboratory because it needs to be much more widely available and influential.

Like my hon. Friend, I am worried by much of what he described this morning and I shall be taking up what he said with my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Health. The new 1981 legislation, which became effective in 1983, gave us procedures for dealing with high risk drink-driving offenders, but the problem of what alcohol does to one's perceptions needs to be taken forward in a rather different way in future.

My Department is reviewing the highway code, as it does from time to time and I shall see what entry in that might be useful in persuading people to do the sensible thing. Unfortunately, although the highway code is full of sensible advice, once people have taken their first driving test it is usually only those who go on to advanced training who look at it again. The fact that there are three copies of the highway code in my flat is something to do with the fact that I am always telling people what is in it. If only people would go back to it after they had passed their tests, a little more common sense might be produced on our roads.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North was right to remind us that drinking and driving is not just a problem at Christmas but a fatal combination at any time. Of course, we see a higher consumption of alcohol around this time of year, but the incidence of drinking and driving is not appreciably higher at Christmas than at other times of the year. I hope that it is the publicity, and indeed the debate that we have had about this year's campaign—just as we had a rather smaller debate about last year's campaign—which makes people aware just how stupid it is to drink and drive.

When Christmas and the new year are over, with, we hope, fewer fatalities, injuries and accidents than in previous years, we still cannot let the matter drop until 12 months hence. The threat posed by a drinking driver at any time of the day, night or year must be taken account of in our policies. However, successive Governments, including this one, have taken the view that a particular lead should be given at Christmas to bring home the appalling risks. There are two reasons for that. Inevitably, there is anxiety that if no action were taken people might begin to forget the alarming numbers of people who drink more than is probably wise for them over the festive season. Secondly, a continuous programme of major publicity throughout the year would not be as effective.

The present campaign documents, such as the facts on drinking and driving published by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, and also the reminders which my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside gave us in the campaign that the brewing industry has launched this year, all help to make sure that we see more responsible attitudes and behaviour now and throughout the year.

For 10 years a substantial proportion of my Department's publicity budget has been dedicated to Christmas advertising to prevent drinking and driving. I am grateful too, for the parallel efforts made by some local authorities and many police forces. I echo the welcome that my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside gave to those organisations and companies which are helping to provide a safe get-you-home service with somebody else doing the driving, whether it be local car hire firms or the new year's eve free travel on London Regional Transport which is being provided by one brewery this year.

It is impossible to gauge the effects of campaigns; that my hon. Friends know that was clear from the way that they approached this debate. We must try to see whether our campaigns are getting through to the people on whom we have to make a positive impact. Surveys suggest that advertising has played a part in increasing general public awareness about drinking and driving. It is more encouraging that over the period that we have had such campaigns alcohol consumption and the volume of motorway traffic has been rising, but the incidence of drinking and driving appear to have at least remained fairly steady, and may even have dropped slightly.

We know, because of the problems that we face on road safety—so depressingly familiar and rather intractable some of the time — that there is a great need for a stimulus of fresh and innovative thinking if we are to have any chance of getting to grips with the problem successfully. We must present our message in a forceful and arresting way. The last thing that would be right would be for the campaign against drinking and driving to become just part of the traditional background to the festive season.

It is not enough just to go through the motions of condemning drinking and driving and to leave it at that. As my hon. Friend the member for Ynys Môn said, we must be ready to search for new approaches which persuade people to think afresh about what drinking and driving involves, to be conscious that they should never put the two together and to alter their behaviour accordingly.

The campaign strategy has been debatable, but as my hon. Friend said, we have had much more media coverage, and I hope that that in itself will this year save lives that would not otherwise have been saved. We are aiming this year's campaign particularly at young people who are at the beginning of their driving careers and — I do not want to call it a drinking career — but at least their experience of alcohol.

Young people face particular risks. They are inexperienced as drivers, even if they think that they are great on the road. They have not the experience of alcohol that older people have. They may not readily appreciate how easily alcohol can impair performance at the wheel or on a bike. The attitudes of young people are still at a formative stage. Therefore, there is a good chance that responsible habits developed at that stage will stay with them in later life. With that same aim in view, more attention is now being given to drinking and driving as an issue in traffic education in our schools.

We all know that the young are not an easy audience to reach. We carry out research in preparing all our campaigns. Research demonstrates that the response of young people to a message depends very much on its presentation to them. Every piece of evidence indicates that to adopt a heavy-handed, authoritarian approach produces an immediate switch-off. If we wish to communicate effectively, we must ensure that we do not switch people off. We must be conscious about the kind of message and the tone of voice to which young people will respond. That is why the whole thrust of the campaign this year has been to bring home the truly awful human consequences that can follow from drinking and driving. Commercials and posters put that message over in no uncertain terms.

I cannot accept for a moment—and I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn takes the same view—the criticism that the campaign lacks punch. One needs only to take a good look at posters such as "Too Much Punch For Judy," "Christmas For Carol" or "Stephen on the Terrace" to see that the criticism is untrue. As I stand at the Dispatch Box today, I go cold when I remember what is involved for a family who perhaps lose someone or have a disastrously injured person among them for the rest of their lives—perhaps an innocent victim of someone else's thoughtless drinking and then driving.

There can be no doubt about the message at the heart of the campaign. It is, "Don't drink and drive". That is what we have always said. I have said it this year on every occasion when I have been given the opportunity, and I shall go on saying it. The campaign gives no comfort to anyone who is tempted to run a stupid risk — or to gamble, as the Brewers Society advertisement says, with drinking and driving.

Why, then, does the message this year stop short of the explicit statement that people must drink absolutely nothing when they are driving? I will give the House two reasons. First, the law does not involve a complete prohibition on alcohol for drivers. The law says that they must not he over the limit, nor must their driving be impaired, whether they are under or over the limit. It is important that what we say in our campaign is consistent with what the law says. Indeed, there has been criticism in the past that our advertising appeared to extend the law by administrative edict.

Secondly, the stark injunction never to drink and drive is just the sort of message that turns off the target audience of younger people to whom I referred. They dismiss it, and then they do not listen and take further note of the message. So the campaigns are designed to produce a response. If we do not get a response, whether it be for a target group or for others, we know that we have to do something different.

People must not be misled by concentrating only on the caption "Stay Low". The campaign as a whole must be looked at. The overwhelming majority of the people in the 16 to 19 age group-in the pre-campaign research thought that the symbol, the slogan and the message meant either "Don't drink" or "Don't drink and drive". That proves that the message has gone through to them.

I hope that the current campaign, which is one of the most powerful we have ever had—and the debate about it will ensure that over this festive season—and, with luck, beyond—the message goes home. My own contact with young people shows that the campaign is having an effect. I understand that Stevie Wonder has produced a record called, "Don't Drive Drunk". That should reach many young people. In all those ways, the message for which my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn asked is being brought home.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North went a little further than my other two hon. Friends. He told the House how certain police forces have conducted their campaign in trying to ensure greater safety on the roads at Christmas time. Those campaigns involve the breathalyser. I remind him that there was a new Transport Act in 1981, and that some of the measures were brought into force only in 1983. This is only the second Christmas period when the new penalties have applied —a maximum fine of £2,000, up to six months in goal, and the minimum of a year's suspension of a driving licence.

While we must watch exactly what each police force is doing, we must also watch exactly what the public are doing. We must know whether they are taking the message. I think it is right to wait for at least two years before asking whether there should be any change in the way that we operate the law. We are nearly at the end of those two years.

We do not have random testing in Britain but if anything appears to be wrong with a vehicle on the road it is liable to be stopped. Any police officer who smelled alcohol on a driver's breath would be failing in his duty if he did not then ask the driver to take a breathalyser test.

The debate is valuable for us all. My hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside mentioned not only the get-you-home services but the fact that some garages seem to have off licences for the sale of alcohol. If such a development is taking place, I view it with considerable alarm. I know that the Home Office will also want to look at it. I think that many of us are concerned that alcohol is becoming available through various new outlets.

With regard to Alcoway and any other potential so-called alcohol remover that might be marketed, I do not know in detail about the product that my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn mentioned. I am glad that he has referred the advertising of the product to the Advertising Standards Committee. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services and I shall need to look with some care at any products, marketed in whatever way, which could perhaps mislead the public into thinking that they could get protection by using them.

I shall continue to look for new ways of improving education and awareness still further, and of winning the battle against unnecessary damage to life and limb, let alone to vehicles. There is only one safe way to drive on the roads, not just at Christmas time or the new year but throughout the year. My message to people is, "If you are going to drink at Christmas, by all means have a good time, but do not then get on your motor bike or into your car. Go home safely by public transport, or by letting someone drive who does not take alcohol. If you cannot get to your destination by either of those means, use your own feet." There is a good song:

"These boots were made for walking".

I remind people that their feet were also made for walking. If people have been celebrating at Christmas—which I hope everyone will enjoy—I beg them to have a care for others on the roads and not only for their own families. I ask people to make sure that they do not drink and drive.

I applied for this debate because I believed that there were important problems in our information technology industry which should be brought to the attention of the House before we went away for the Christmas recess.

The information technology industry is vitally important for Britain. It is one of the few areas in which we can see economic growth and job creation, with the opportunity to improve people's living standards.

The Government are presiding over an industry that is in serious trouble and that the recent NEDO report described as being in crisis. In 1983, the industry had a deficit in our balance of trade approaching £1 billion, and that deficit is growing rapidly. Although the industry is growing and appears on the face of it to be reasonably healthy, it is only when we make international comparisons that we see that there is a very wide technological gap between Britain and Japan, the United States of America, France and Germany. This is very important for Britain.

The Government are displaying indifference to science and technology, and the recently announced moratorium on the Government's support for innovation scheme means that they are incredibly complacent about the future. This support is vital because many areas of advanced technology such as the microelectronics support programme are being deprived of the funds that they need.

Even more recently, during one of the most embarrassing climb-downs by the Secretary of State for Education and Science, the Government hacked away at expenditure on science and technology because of the pressure from the House not to increase parental contributions to student fees. The upshot is that the Government are cutting their planned expenditure on equipment grants by £6 million, the Science Council will lose £3 million, and a range of other schemes, including the microelectronics programme, will lose about £2 million.

There is no doubt that the Government are fumbling. Their inconsistent and fragmented policies are accentuating the technological gap between Britain and its main competitors. The Government are showing themselves to be hypocritical towards the information technology industry. They use fine words, but they are very light on action to save the industry.

The consequence of this is that our indigenous information technology industry is dying before it has had a chance to blossom. I am convinced that many people are not aware of the seriousness of this. We are last in the technological race with our major competitors, and that means that the opportunity to create jobs, to stimulate the economy and to improve our standard of living is likely to be lost for ever if we continue the way that we are going.

The Alvey project is one of the major sources of Government support to the industry, and this has to be welcomed. However, I understand that the companies receiving grants under the project must be British or have a strong British base. What policy has the Minister to ensure that this Government's money being spent on these advanced projects will be exploited by industries in Britain? If I may put it another way, how will the Minister ensure that the multinationals, which are so strong in the microelectronics and information technology industry, do not exploit this research facility for the benefit of other countries' jobs and economic growth?

It has been suggested to me by a number of people in the industry that we would need to spend about 10 times the sum going to the Alvey programme to convert projects into commercial products that could be sold worldwide. If that is true, is the Minister confident that the estimated £3·5 billion needed to back up the Alvey programme will be forthcoming? Finally, is the £350 million currently being spent on it sufficient? When we compare it with what our international competitors are doing, I have serious doubts.

It is important that any Government initiative in information technology should be followed up. I refer especially to the Department of Industry's pilot project for "Office of the Future", which it initiated three or four years ago. How many of these innovative projects that his Department has supported have been replicated in other places in addition to the sites in which the trials were conducted?

The Minister will probably say that if there is some follow-up to be done, it should be done by industry, and that is a fair argument. However, I believe that the Government can create the market for these pilot schemes and advance research projects by having the right kind of procurement policy to support our home industries and British companies. The Government have control over the public sector, and that is a huge IT market. What plans has the Minister for introducing a procurement policy to support especially the new small and medium-sized businesses that are attempting to survive and grow in this fast growing but very competitive industry?

The NEDO report, "Crisis in the IT Industry", also highlighted the manpower shortages in the industry. This is a major factor inhibiting growth. I feel that the Government have made ghastly mistakes in their policy on training and education, and I have to refer to the ludicrous cuts made in the budgets of our universities. Clearly these will have an affect on education and training, and this at a time when there is a shortfall in skilled people in the industry. The Government's attack on the universities will result in our not having the people whom we want. Imposing cuts on technological universities such as Salford and Aston does not make any sense.

As a result of the Government's investigation into skill shortages, they are recommending a new initiative between industry and the colleges of higher education to set up new institutes. Bearing in mind the urgent need for skilled staff, why do not the Government use our existing universities? Will the Minister also say whether there are yet any firm commitments from industry to support these new institutions? Will he also say when fully trained students can be expected to emerge from these new institutions? What other initiatives will the Government be taking in the meantime to solve the crisis?

There is no doubt that our information technology industry faces serious international problems. The recent NEDO report said that the deficit of trade last year was over £800 million, and it has been suggested that that figure is on the low side. Will the Minister give us the exact trade deficit for 1983?

Our failure to keep up with our competitors means that our share of the aggregate market served by Japan, United States, France, West Germany and Britain has fallen from 9 per cent. in 1970 to 5 per cent. To put it another way, our share of the output of the five major countries in the IT business has tumbled by 50 per cent. since 1970.

Is the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who is to reply to the debate, worried about our rapidly accelerating trade deficit? About 50 per cent. of our home market is satisfied by imports. In contrast, imports account for only about 10 per cent. of Japan's home market and the comparable figure for the United States is 6 per cent.

The NEDO report suggested that unless urgent steps were taken to rectify the problems, our indigenous industry would die. Will the Government take urgent action to save that industry or will they allow existing trends to continue? What will they do, and when?

In October, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) tabled a parliamentary question asking what action the Government proposed to take in response to the NEDO report. The Minister for Information Technology said that over the past five years there had been a significant shift in the Government resources devoted to IT. He said that the Government were not complacent about the problems created by international competition and that they shared NEDO's objective of creating a climate in which the United Kingdom industry will be able to increase its international competitiveness. The Minister said that the Government would continue to pursue that objective vigorously. How does the Under-Secretary square that statement with the moratorium on spending on the support for innovation scheme?

Mr. Eric Hammond, the general secretary of the EETPU and chairman of the electronic components economic development committee, wrote in a report to the National Economic Development Council on 5 December:

"My EDC has charged me to tell you that the moratorium has chilled the heart of the industry. The long term plans of companies will be held up while Government contemplates. This is especially damaging to the smaller and more innovative companies, but even the larger ones will be hurt because of disruption to their programmes."

Mr. Hammond said that at a time when the Government should be encouraging companies to expand they were giving them the "sweet and sour treatment". This year, the Government had increased spending on microelectronics, but had effectively neutralised that increase by withdrawing the 100 per cent. first-year capital allowances and by announcing the moratorium on applications under their principal microelectronics programme.

Mr. Hammond added:

"In the financial years 1981–84, Government support (excluding Regional Development Grants) totalled more than £2 billion to the steel industry and almost £650 million to shipbuilding, but only £126 million for the whole of microelectronics. It is time for the Government to finance the future as least as much as it subsidises the past."

I am inclined to agree with Mr. Hammond's statements. It is certainly questionable whether the support for innovation funding, which was £61.3 million in 1979–80 and is now only £155 million, at 1979–80 prices, is enough. It can reasonably be argued that because of the immense growth in the industry we should be matching that with our expenditure on support programmes.

The Government were wrong to impose the moratorium on the industry at this time. There is no doubt that the Government will reap the consequences of their inept decision.

The rapidly widening gap between, particularly, the information technology industries in Japan and Britain can be partly accounted for by the amount that we spend on research and development on defence. The proportion of our research and development budget allocated to defence is considerably higher than the proportion spent on defence in France, the United States, Japan and West Germany.

For example, the United Kingdom spends about 53 per cent. of its research and development budget on, defence, compared with the 2 or 3 per cent. spent by Japan. That must be the reason why Japan is so strong in the civil IT sector. Surely the time has come for the Government to take early action to divert to civil information technology some of the massive resources spent on military research and development. What specific plans do the Government have for reallocating part of the massive research and development expenditure on defence?

I am very worried about the decline in the number of jobs in our IT industry. The steady decline over the past 10 years has been due partly to our industry's poor performance and particularly to the level of imports, which represented 54 per cent. of our market last year and are still growing.

Does the Under-Secretary realise that if we continue in this way, our IT industry will comprise merely a set of branch sales offices of the large multinational corporations? When will the Government start to provide the environment in which this vital industry can thrive and move out of the crisis that the Government have helped to create? The time has come for action, and I hope that the Government realise that if they continue with their current policies of slashing science and technology our indigenous information technology industry will be lost for ever.

I thank the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) for giving us an opportunity to debate the very topical issues that he has raised concerning the future of the British information technology industry. I am sure that he will agree that it is impossible to define the industry exactly. It is not just an electronics, software or computer industry. It now takes in a whole range of disciplines and activities whose effect on the economy is all-pervasive; hence our mutual concern to see that British skills and capabilities are enhanced, and indeed dramatically improved.

As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, the industry must be seen in the context of its general effect on economic growth and job creation. We must also consider whether there is a crisis and, if so, to what extent it should be a preoccupation of Government and others. There is no question of sweet and sour treatment for the information technology industry in the United Kingdom. We are most definitely not indifferent to the industry's prospects. We not only have fine words—as the hon. Gentleman put it —but our actions, too, have been very concrete. It was this Administration in the preceding Parliament who introduced the concept of a Minister for Information Technology. Indeed, I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the contribution made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker) in driving forward information technology policy. We were unique in having such a Minister, and virtually still are. The former Minister for Information Technology introduced new budgets and objectives and took forward a significant number of new policies. Those policies still ride forward.

In that context, I shall deal with the moratorium. Expenditure under the heading of "Support for Innovation" for the financial year 1983–84 was approximately £190 million, which meant an increase from a fairly low base in 1979. That is a spectacular growth in spending under the SFI head of account. In the current financial year, projected expenditure across the generic heading, "Support for Innovation" is £230 million. Applications for funding have been subject to a moratorium purely because awareness of the various schemes available arrived like an express train both last year and this. For the first time we found ourselves spending up to the limits of our budgeted amounts in very short order.

Thus, whereas there had been a slight underspend on that head of account prior to 1983–84, we find that the work we have done on awareness has paid such dividends that—to put it a little more positively—the Department of Trade and Industry is now a victim of its own success.

If there is a demand for those funds—which I am delighted to hear about—why have not the Government responded by increasing the amount available to that crucial industry?

That is precisely the sort of question with which the Department is now grappling. The hon. Gentleman will know that there are broader considerations involving, not least, how we rejig our spending within our budgets next year. They are generally considerations that affect my colleagues in other Departments, which may be reporting to the House in due course. But, like my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I shall not be tempted this week into trying to give some idea of the profile of spending within my Department in the coming financial year. Thus, I am sorry, but I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the detailed response that he may require. It is not that we are hung up on monetarism, but that we are anxious to continue to build on the achievements of the past three or four years. However, we wish to do so in a cost effective way that is relevant to the requirements of this important industry. I shall deal later with the Alvey programme, and also with the very important question of skill shortages, which concerns not only my Department but the Department of Education and Science, the Manpower Services Commission and all those who consistently look after the interests of the supply side of the economy.

With regard to skill shortages, we are anxious to ensure that our universities participate fully in what we now call the "new partnership" between industry and the higher education sector, including both polytechnics and universities. We are also anxious to ensure that no one is written out of participation in what we hope will be a very dramatic exercise during the coming years. I shall be delighted to report progress on the IT skills agency that the CBI is setting up under the auspices of its education foundation.

The Government are concerned about the deficit in IT trade. The information technology industry underpins so many other commercial and industrial issues. The Government attach great importance to the success of the industry and have placed a high priority on seeing it prosper. As a nation we are not alone in doing this, of course, for it is the fastest growing sector of economies throughout the world. And it is not just because the IT industry itself benefits the nation through its growth, but so, too, do the rest of our manufacturing and service industries as they take up IT products and so improve their own performance, viability and profitability. No modern, industrialised nation can afford to ignore the health of its IT industry. It is central to achieving a more general internationally competitive position for the United Kingdom.

That is why five years ago we embarked upon such an energetic programme of change aimed at raising the profile of the industry and getting over to all sections of our community the message that IT matters. Nobody surely can deny the spectacular success of that campaign. At all levels—school, office, home, shop and factory floor—there is now a readiness, even an eagerness, to find new ways of doing things using the products and services of the IT industry. That change will transform this country in time, especially as our youngsters subsequently turn their easy familiarity with IT to advantage in the working environment. Not only has our micros-in-schools programme provided us with this springboard for the future, it has given us an international lead in educational hardware and software on which to capitalise in overseas markets.

As I said earlier, the success of our awareness programme has made this country one of the most receptive in the world to the application of IT. For an example, we need only to look at the take-up of home computers. In an area of burgeoning demand, it is significant that we now have three or four British-based companies manufacturing products to satisfy that demand. Most of these companies are looking hard at exploiting the export opportunities that come from the dynamic home base.

However, our balance in IT has worsened, and now that we have achieved many of our major objectives in awareness we are correctly turning our attention to supply, and the contribution to be made by British-manufactured hardware and British-developed software.

The hon. Gentleman suggested that, in contrast to the picture presented in the NEDO information technology economic development committee report, the deficit could be as high as £2.3 billion. The obvious difficulty in arriving at reliable estimates of the balance of payments position for IT is in deciding what elements of the industry to include in the definition of IT. The picture varies depending on what categories are included, using a definition that embraces the hardware elements of IT, but not the software. I regret that figures are still difficult to come by. We estimate the deficit to be £2.1 billion for 1983. It is clear that on that basis the position has deteriorated during the past five years.

That suggests that the British IT industry has a major task ahead of it to retain international competitiveness, and the Government are not complacent about the level of overseas competition that our industry faces. But it is a mistake to adopt too pessimistic a view. There is a real and beneficial effect on the efficiency and competitiveness of our manufacturing and service sectors arising from this increased application. Concentration on balance of payments alone may be too narrow and, although we are concerned about it, we should also recognise the increase in efficiency within our economy generally through raised awareness and application of the products.

We have a policy of seeking inward investment, which is bringing significant benefits to the British economy in terms of technology transfer and international competitiveness. Inward investment projects such as Hewlett Packard at Bristol and IBM in Scotland will help to reduce the deficit as they meet United Kingdom orders and begin to export.

We must see the industry in an international perspective. Research and development expenditure by American industry or electronics and IT for 1983 was $8 billion. In the same year NEC and Fujitsu alone spent over $1 billion. The rate of growth in R and D expenditure projected for American and Japanese industries suggest that the Japanese figures will double in less than five years and the American figures in about eight years.

With a smaller home market and a lower turnover, a country of the size of the United Kingdom cannot match this effort alone, which is why we have attached a high priority to Europe, both as a market for our products and as a partner with whom to share the burden of research and development expenditures.

The Government's support for innovation in IT has been substantial. About £570 million has been spent since 1979. That compares favourably with support from other Governments. The recent IT economic development committee report on the industry rightly acknowledged the Government's contribution, especially that of my Department. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman skipped so lightly over this massive contribution. I recognise that it is the duty of the Opposition to oppose, to probe and to check for weaknesses, but I feel that the hon. Gentleman was less than generous in his acknowledgement of the Government's contribution, which has been £570 million of extremely cost-effective expenditure.

Perhaps one of the most significant events is the bringing forward of the Alvey programme. The hon. Gentleman referred to that, and the difficulties that British industry may experience in finding the finance to convert the output of the programme into commercially exploitable products. We are delighted that the Alvey directorate has established itself so quickly and effectively. Indeed, the speed with which progress has been made has surpassed our expectations. The first annual report of the Alvey programme, of which a copy will be placed shortly in the Library, shows that 300 research proposals have been made, of which about 100 have received technical approval. Over 50 companies, 43 academic institutions and five research establishments are involved in these projects. For example, under the computer-aided design for the VLSI programme, the Alvey directorate announced on 14 December approval of the first eight projects. These collaborative projects involve 15 companies, six universities and two Government laboratories and will cost £13 million in total.

One obvious difficulty that is faced by the industry is having to compete from a relatively low turnover and to build large and long-term R and D programmes. The Government can help by putting in some R and D funding, but ultimately United Kingdom companies must seek their own solutions through collaboration in R and D with overseas partners — for example, ICL and Fujitsu —through mergers or by attacking world markets vigorously and thereby generating the higher growth in turnover that is needed.

Japan grew fast by attacking the large American market as well as other markets and so must our industry if it is similarly to succeed. I accept entirely that further investment will be required to turn the results of research into products. That was understood by the Alvey committee and the proposed programme takes that into account. I would like to think that the objective of bringing products to the market will be reinforced as the programme develops. I am bound to say that our industries still have a long way to go, and much hard pounding, to attempt to gain the same presence in the American market and to achieve the same presence as Japanese companies. Apparently Japanese companies are finding it a little easier to achieve and maintain a presence than British companies: we too, must bring in new marketing skills to parallel the undoubted excellence of the United Kingdom industry especially in software and, I hope, more and more in the hardware sector.

The hon. Gentleman referred to our office automation pilot programme when talking about the office of the future. Industry has recognised that this market is potentially one of the most crucial for the future and sees other countries positioning themselves to exploit it. Industry has welcomed our pilot project initiative with enthusiasm. It is seen as yet another good example of the Government's imaginative policy towards the IT industry. Whether the fruits of the initiative are turned into internationally competitive and marketable products is largely a matter for the industry. We can provide the seed corn, but the industry must make it flower. Governments cannot do that. I certainly hope that companies will act because we have a real chance to be involved.

Does the Under-Secretary of State agree that the Government can provide the market? I asked whether we could formulate a procurement policy that would help to alleviate this problem.

We have already formulated a procurement policy which is known as the public purchasing initiative. It clearly defines what we mean by enlightened public purchasing. It applies to IT products right across the board. We say, for example, that procurement departments should be buying British products, not just because they are British but because the policy, through its working, encourage the production of British products which are best — one buys British because it becomes best through enlightened purchasing. That means closer relationships between suppliers and buyers. It means post mortems if there is a failure on the part of one supplier. It means specifying the products profiles clearly and well in advance to the potential suppliers.

We are anxious to ensure within the generality of £7 billion of Government spending on capital goods and services that the private sector is used to good effect. As for IT products, we are anxious for Government Departments and those bodies which are Government funded to buy British products whenever possible. But we cannot specify that they must be bought simply because they are British.

Although I have laboured the point about producing an enlightened purchasing policy, I believe that our line of approach is the only effective line that can be taken—otherwise we shall suffer from the phenomenon, described by the hon. Gentleman, of products which are specified as compulsory and which are not relevant in the international market. An example is our telecommunications industry where a cosy buyer and seller relationship emerged and where our international market share plummeted during that relationship. We must ensure that our companies break out of the domestic market.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West did not deal with one aspect, that of standards. If we in the United Kingdom can take the lead in establishing European and international standards, we shall be well-placed to exploit truly open international markets. No doubt, the hon. Gentleman will have noted the debate about the proposed IBM-BT joint venture. In such an issue we can legitimately ensure that there are open markets and, therefore, gain benefits for British suppliers.

As I have made clear, there is a whole tranche of policies for the IT industry. Those policies must be highly complex. It is not just a question of swinging as much purchasing power as we can into British companies. We must first reassure ourselves that those British companies are capable of reacting to a public purchasing initiative rather than being undermined by it.

Defence research and development must be at the forefront of a modern type of high technology policy. It is not only that the electronics and information technology industries are among our strongest and fastest growing. They produce computers, telecommunications equipment, electronic devices and the software that is essential for civil industry. Some of the most valuable research results of the industries is come from the defence research laboratories. The royal signals and radar establishment at Malvern, for example, did much of the materials research for the now familiar liquid crystal display. Its work on electronics, materials and high frequency devices has a world-wide reputation. My Department has helped by spending more than £5 million on research to enhance the spin-off from Malvern's defence work. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has already announced his intention further to open up the work at some of his laboratories to enable the venture capital industry to assess opportunities for civil industry. Through his policy of placing the maximum amount of work with private industry, his Ministry ensures that the work is done by those in the best position to exploit the results.

I detect that one or two of my colleagues might wish to contribute to the new subject which is about to be launched, and so I do not intend this side of Christmas at this time on a Friday to prolong the debate unduly.

I say to the hon. Gentleman, who has done the House a service by opening up the debate that, first, the Government are not complacent; secondly, we are working hard on the issues that he has legitimately raised; and, thirdly, although we are worried about the trade deficit, we see signs to make us optimistic which may not have been evident two or three years ago. We can now tackle the skill shortages and help, where help is required, with hardware and software. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear with me to the extent that we cannot today give him the clear answer that he requires on how our future spending will be designed and allocated under the support for innovation head.

On 18 July this year the Secretary of State for the Environment sent a letter to local authorities which was ostensibly a request to restrain their capital expenditure. In fact, the letter contained scarcely veiled threats — effectively to impose an immediate moratorium on capital expenditure of whatever character and however financed.

There followed a protracted correspondence between the leader of the council of the London borough of Bromley, Councillor Dennis Barkway, and the Department of the Environment and between me and the Department about the effect on Bromley of the moratorium, especially with regard to the use of the proceeds from the sale of assets. The Department appeared completely deaf to Bromley's case and, eventually, the stage was reached where it seemed necessary to ventilate the matter publicly and last week I applied for an Adjournment debate to do so.

Within hours of learning that I had succeeded in obtaining a debate, we heard a further announcement which was followed by a debate on Wednesday. We learnt that, far from taking into account the representations that had been made on Bromley's behalf, there was to be a further turn of the screw.

We are not talking about a council which imposes extortionate rates, which throws money about on grants to eccentric organisations or indulges in frivolous projects. The London borough of Bromley, represented in the House by my hon. Friends the Members for Ravensbourne (Mr. Hunt), for Beckenham (Sir P. Goodhart) and for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) has been a model of rectitude. It has consistently kept its expenditure within the grant-related expenditure assessment; and it has consistently kept its expenditure within targets. Bromley has always complied with Government requests. It has diligently carried out Government policies. It has sold council houses at the rate of 1,000 a year, and as a percentage of houses sold it is top of the league of the London boroughs.

Bromley has sold unwanted land; and it has rationalised its school properties by selling land and premises, and that has often involved politically unpopular decisions. A few days ago, the Audit Commission issued a report urging local authorities to study their holding of school properties. Bromley has done more than that; it has disposed of some of them.

Earlier this year Lord Belwin, on a visit to the borough, complimented Bromley on its asset sales policy. The council has used roughly 50 per cent. of the proceeds to pay off debt and 50 per cent. to improve the borough's housing stock. It has taken full advantage of the housing improvement and renovation grants scheme; it has supported many of the housing associations which do such good work in the borough; and it has also used the funds to improve schools and on projects such as the high street relief road—and all that not on borrowed money.

The result of the moratorium is that there has had to be deferment of several schemes involving school replacements and adaptions and road improvements, and especially affected have been improvement and renovation grants. Even with the moratorium, it is likely that in the financial year 1984–85 Bromley will spend about £14 million on grants. If the present situation persists, in the next financial year Bromley will be able to spend £2 million, although there is a considerable demand for those grants, particularly for the improvement of pre-1919 houses.

A further clamp-down is proposed. We are told that some boroughs— it is not yet clear whether Bromley will qualify—may get an extra 5 per cent. allocation; in other words, an extra 5 per cent. of money that they are allowed to borrow. That would allow the building of five or six houses. Bromley would much prefer to be allowed to use its own funds to improve the thousands of properties that need such improvement.

Why has that situation arisen? Because the Government, in the shape of the Department of the Environment, although we all know that the Treasury is lurking behind it, are seeking to control all public expenditure regardless of its nature and of how it is financed. The argument centres around the magic words "public sector borrowing requirement".

How can spending money that one already has affect the PSBR? The Secretary of State says that if one sells assets, and uses the proceeds to pay off debts or make short-term loans, one is reducing the PSBR. Obviously that is right, but he goes to say that when one calls in those loans in order to spend the money that increases the PSBR.

I am not an economist, and I must say that I do not understand that argument. If it is true, it is an argument against selling assets, and we understood that the Government wanted authorities to sell assets. If one sells one's assets but, instead of loaning out the proceeds on a short-term loan, puts them in a sock under the bed until one wants the money, how does that affect the PSBR? That argument makes neither economic nor common sense. In any case, at the end of the day, the Department can still control the money that the local authority borrows.

I have referred to what Bromley does with the proceeds of the sale of those assets. It uses roughly half to pay off debts, as a result of which the borough has virtually rid itself of its rate fund debt. It uses half to finance new projects or improvement work. If the money is not immediately required for such purposes, either it is put in the bank where it earns interest or it is used for internal loans, either way helping to keep down the rates.

The argument put to us by the Secretary of State in the debate the other day was that if the councils were allowed to spend all their accumulated receipts it would immediately have a serious effect on the money markets and interest rates. That may be so if they spend the whole lot all at once, but of course they do not and would not. Any prudent and responsible council such as Bromley would spread its expenditure over a period, if only to keep within GREA.

I simply cannot see the argument for controlling capital expenditure of this character when the local authority is keeping within its target, nor can I understand why the Government are reneging on the clearly given understanding that the proceeds of the sale of council houses could be used for housing. Bromley relies heavily on capital receipts, but what incentive is there now to continue with its policy of selling assets?

This is not an unavoidable or inevitable situation. The so-called "voluntary restraint" of July and the recently announced imposition of restrictions does not have to take the form proposed, nor does it have to apply to all local authorities.

I hope that the Secretary of State will abandon these further restrictions on the use of proceeds from assets. For the reasons that I have given, it is not justified. I felt unable to support the Government in the Division on Wednesday and, if the proposals come before the House unchanged in the form of an order in the new year, I may well not confine myself to abstaining.

I offer a way out to the Government. I suggest that a clear distinction should be drawn between local authorities which co-operate with the Government and those which do not. The restrictions should not apply to local authorities which keep their expenditure within GREA and within target. That is a very simple solution. It is easily applied and requires no consultation. I can say on behalf of Bromley that if the Government were prepared to agree to that Bromley would happily forgo the 5 per cent. bonus in allocation to which it hopes it is entitled.

I do not expect the Minister to make an immediate response to that suggestion. Instead, I wish him a happy, restful and well-earned Christmas. Nevertheless, I ask him to consider carefully early in the new year the arguments that I have advanced and in particular the suggestion that a distinction should be drawn between different authorities. I trust that he will respond in a manner that will help rather than hinder local authorities such as Bromley which would much prefer to work with the Secretary of State than to be at odds with him.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) on securing this Adjournment debate and on the formidable case that he has presented on behalf of Bromley, which I certainly echo and endorse. The presence of all four Members of Parliament for the borough shows the strength of local feeling on this.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst has recounted the history of this. He has told the House how the Government's restraints on capital spending were received with shock, horror and alarm by Bromley council. The original moratorium has now been intensified by the Secretary of State's announcements this week and further dismay and distress has been caused.

I understand that when the axe first came down on 18 July no fewer than 1,000 improvement and renovation grants were in the pipeline. That gives the House some idea of the heartache caused by the present policy. Like my colleagues, I have received many sad and anxious letters from pensioners, young married couples and many other people who feel baffled and resentful at what has happened. Their grant applications were on the verge of approval but have suddenly been axed.

I beg my hon. Friend the Minister to consider the social and human consequences of what he and the Department are doing. My constituents will now have to wait a year or more to repair leaking and draughty homes and to make other improvements which, although being carried out for those people themselves, also improve the housing stock of this country.

We are baffled and bewildered at what has happened and we feel resentful about it because we are frankly not convinced by the Secretary of State's convoluted arguments about the public sector borrowing requirement. In the debate on Wednesday my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) said:

"Local authorities have in their possession capital receipts. They could spend them on housing or whatever, without borrowing more money and without raising extra taxation. For the life of me, I cannot see the economic objection to that"— [Official Report, 19 December 1984; Vol. 70, c. 306.]

Neither can I—and my hon. Friends are still awaiting a convincing answer to that challenge, which my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst has repeated today. As he said, in Bromley's case the resources have been accumulated largely as a result of the council's successful council house sales policy. Now Bromley is to be penalised for its success and for carrying through the policies urged upon it by the Government. There can be no logic or justice in that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst and I were preceded as Member of Parliament for Bromley in the House by Mr. Harold Macmillan, now my noble Friend the Earl of Stockton. The House will recall that his major achievement as Minister for Housing was the completion of 300,000 houses a year. At that time there was real understanding of the housing needs of our people— a sense of compassion and concern that is sadly lacking in some quarters of the Department of the Environment today. My hon. Friend said, and I know, that the real ogre in this affair is the Treasury, but my hon. Friend the Minister and his colleagues have acquiesced in the Treasury's demands and, to that extent, they must carry a heavy share of responsibility.

I hope that this short debate will help to convince my hon. Friend the Minister of the strength of feeling in Bromley and of the need to adopt a more flexible and sympathetic approach. I hope that he will respond to the suggestions of my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst. Local authorities such as Bromley have backed the Government in every way. They deserve help, encouragement and support, not the kick in the teeth that these measures represent.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) and to the Minister for allowing me to intervene briefly in the debate. I wholeheartedly support what my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst said against the Government's policy, and I look forward with him to maintaining pressure on the Government, with the possible threat that we shall be forced to withhold our support from any order that seeks to implement the policy.

Many of my constituents have been disappointed and frustrated because their pending applications for home improvement grants, to which they believe they had a right and which they believed were the subject of a binding promise, have not been allowed. The Government's decision came like a thunderbolt into local negotiations for housing improvement grants, and in many cases debts have already been incurred. There was a great physical need for the repair of some houses in my constituency which was dependent on obtaining housing improvement grants. Moreover, elsewhere in the constituency, the council has correctly and under pressure from the Government carried out a policy of selling its assets, including a large school and its grounds. The council expected that the money obtained from the sale would be of great value to my constituency as well as to the London borough of Bromley. Those expectations have been frustrated.

I deplore the Government's policy. The economic validity of their arguments is weak, and the political arguments go entirely the other way. By instituting such a policy the Government will cause dissatisfaction among their loyal supporters and will debase their promises. I implore the Government to reconsider this matter. I need not refer to previous occasions when there has been insufficient consultation with Members of Parliament, but I should say that the Government cannot continue indefinitely their cavalier treatment of local authorities in circumstances that reflect a turnround in Government policy. The London borough of Bromley deserves much from the Government, but it has been frustrated and insulted by the change of policy.

I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) and to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment for allowing me to intervene briefly in this important Adjournment debate. I note that home improvement grants provide a notably labour-intensive form of capital spending and also help to tackle the problem of home dilapidation. I note, too, that, thanks to wise Conservative policies, there was nationally a sixfold increase in the number of houses being repaired and improved between 1978 and 1983. As one would expect, Bromley played a notable part in that expansion.

In 1978–79, Bromley council spent just under £300,000 on home improvement grants. In 1981–82 that figure had increased threefold: Bromley was spending just under £900,000 on home improvement grants. In 1984–85 that figure has increased to £12 million and will probably reach £14 million by the end of the financial year. This rate of expansion was perhaps too great to sustain, but I regret that the Government's restrictions upon capital expenditure in Bromley will result in a cutback in the home improvement programme from £14 million to less than £2 million.

As I wrote recently in a "One Nation" pamphlet, "Jobs Ahead", on both employment and housing grounds I hope that the Government will take action so that the volume of home improvements and repairs will again increase. Since the pamphlet appeared, the Government have moved in the wrong direction both for Bromley and the construction industry. I hope that the Government will think again before they bring their capital spending plans for Bromley and other local authorities before the House in the new year, otherwise I, too, may have to think again about my support for the Government's local government policies.

Nothing is more impressive than when the united parliamentary forces of an area speak to the House on such an issue as this, which is of passionate importance to the locality involved. Every single point that my hon. Friends have made about Bromley council is right. Bromley council is one of the best run councils in the land. Its leader and his group are among the most distinguished of our Conservative supporters in local government. In many respects they have given us stalwart support. I mention also the personal contribution of the leader to the development of policy over the abolition of the Greater London Council. There is nothing, therefore, that I would wish to argue about in what my hon. Friends have said but I must take issue with them on the fundamental choice that faced the Government.

My Department knows better than any other Department in Whitehall about the distress, difficulty, anxiety and real problems that have been caused for local councils by this policy. I personally meet, as do my right hon. Friends, delegation after delegation. At all times we are in close touch with our friends and officials in local government. We know the costs involved for them in such decisions as this. As Members of Parliament we know about the problems. I am the Member of Parliament for an inner city constituency, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State represents a constituency that is not far from Bromley. Other Ministers who are here today for other debates face exactly the same pressures and problems. We come across them in our surgeries and in letters from the worried people who have been referred to this morning.

Why then do we have to continue with the pain and grief that this particular policy creates? The only point that I want to take issue with was the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) that there were deaf ears. That is not so. The Government know exceedingly well that their policy causes pain and grief for local authorities and for their supporters in many respects. But it would be wrong for me as a Minister, and perhaps even for my hon. Friends, to suggest that hidden somewhere in the depths of Government in a lair unknown to the rest of us, is an ogre who is enforcing on spending Departments a policy of his own, nothing to do with those of the Government, with no origins in the manifesto, with no backing from Cabinet Ministers, with no backing from the House, and that somehow that ogre so terrifies my Department that we have lost our wits and sought to cause unnecessary difficulties for councils such as Bromley, which is, as I say, among the best in the land. That is not so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Sir P. Goodhart) belongs to a distinguished group, of which I was once a proud member. Having assented to the Government's general economic strategy, I cannot now say, when it becomes inconvenient for my Department, when it begins to be troublesome to my supporters, that that policy must be abandoned. Let me reminisce briefly. In my previous Department I had some discussions with my hon. Friend about university spending. Again, I had to say that if spending is above Government plans it must be brought down.

It is not difficult to make the connection between that spending and the central economic policy of the Government. Some of my hon. Friends, not so much today but when we have debated the matter previously—we shall come back to it in the new year—have made a greater difficulty here than is necessary.

Local authorities have accumulated large amounts of money through the sale of land and houses. Some of that has already been spent. The remainder has been used in two ways. It has been loaned to people outside the council to offset the council's debts, or loaned to other accounts within the council to reduce borrowing from outside. Such legitimate strategies reduce the net borrowing of local authorities and thereby they reduce the borrowing of the public sector as a whole. The figures are exceedingly large. We are talking about something in the region of £5 billion. The potential effect on public borrowing is enormous. The overhang of those figures is enormous.

This year, we were heading for an overspend of the order of £1 billion. That makes things a little different from the matter of student grants which my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) implicitly referred to, about which there was some dispute recently. In that case, at the end of the day, it was possible for the Government, moving sums of £10 million to £11 million around, to make some modification in policy which it would be absurd to describe as abandonment of any central financial strategy. The figures, although uncomfortable for the Treasury which always looks for saving, were hardly central. But we cannot treat figures of the order of £1 billion a year as marginal to the Government strategy. There is no question whatever about their effect on PSBR. The PSBR is a net figure. There is no problem about that at all.

There may be two separate problems. There may be those, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who have some difficulty with the economy policy itself. But that is a quite different category.

There may be those, such as the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), who take the view that different parts of the PSBR have different kinds of monetary effect. That is an argument which, as often happens with the beautiful arguments of the right hon. Gentleman, may be seen to dissipate a little when it is examined more closely. We can get into some rather curious difficulties if we take the view that different parts of the PSBR have different monetary effects. The implicit guarantees to the whole of the public sector have very similar effects.

We either have to say that we are assenting to the overall Government strategy or that we are not. We can say with regard to some things that, de minimis, there will be a £10 million adjustment to meet the legitimate worries of colleagues. But can we have any hope of being taken seriously by other spending Departments in Whitehall, by our own colleagues—or, indeed, by ourselves when we wave our Order Papers at the end of Budget speeches when taxes have been cut—if we say that figures of £500 million or £1 billion are marginal to the central strategy? I would say, with respect, that we cannot.

We shall look at the suggestions made by my hon. Friends to see whether there is any marginal way in which we can make the impact better or fairer, but the central argument is that we cannot abandon a great chunk of borrowing to its own devices and allow an overspend of perhaps £1 billion this year or perhaps hundreds of millions of pounds next year.

The hon. Member for Orpington suggested that the economic argument ran one way and that the political argument ran the other way. I have to take issue with my hon. Friend. I believe that two factors are absolutely central to the legitimacy of the Government. The first is that the Prime Minister and her Cabinet, backed by Conservative Members in Parliament and by our supporters in the constituencies, have restored a genuine pride and strength to Britain's position overseas.

The second aspect, which is central to the feeling of all our supporters, is that against all seductions — some from our own side and others, less attractive, from the other side of the House—we have stuck to the economic policy with which we started. Indeed, it is fair to say that we have stuck to it through thick and thin.

In my previous Department I used to have to say to our supporters, "I quite understand the importance of university spending, but at the heart of our mandate is the belief that we must stick to our guns on the broad economic policy. Are you really asking me to abandon it?" That is itself a political argument. Once the story gets about that the Government will in the end be pushed off their course, that will snap the thread that has bound us to much greater continuity of support — from the Conservative party and people outside it—than most other Governments have achieved in recent times.

It is not the legitimacy of the Government that is at stake but their credibility. They appear to be dishonouring promises on which many people, including councillors, have acted. It is not good enough to say that the economic policy of the Government made that necessary. The political argument is that the Government must keep their promises, and that they must not let down people or local authorities. That is far more important in the long run, and far more related to whether the Government will be re-elected.

I accept entirely the word "credibility". Perhaps it is a better word than "legitimacy". I am saying that the central, overriding promise of the Government was that they would see through an economic policy which we all knew, and which some people in advance believed was too difficult to follow through, and warned us that we could not do it. We are doing it, and we are sticking to it. That is the promise, both explicit and implicit, in a range of the policies that the Government have had to adopt—many of them very unpopular—and it is why it is so astonishing to the Opposition that, despite that, our support in the opinion polls does not disappear.

Enfield, Southgate?

I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would not want to refer to that by-election from his party's point of view. The support has remained because people have said that they understand the often difficult decisions that we have had to take. They have a justification that makes sense, tough though it is, and which is what, above all, keeps us together.

I do not believe that it is easy to break the link between this kind of capital spending out of accumulated receipts and the PSBR. That link is quite clear. The link between the PSBR and the Government's central economic policy is equally clear. Following my right hon. Friend's statement and the emergency debate after it, I heard nothing from my right hon. and hon. Friends to make me doubt the linkage between those two. I have heard plenty of people saying that we must moderate or change the policy in that case. But then I run up against the argument that my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington used, only I use it in the opposite way and say that if we move away from the policy, we are lost, because we are left with the tough decisions that we have had to make over the years, having abandoned the policy, too.

I cannot resist referring briefly to the greatest of our noble Friends. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Ravensbourne (Mr. Hunt), I have a tremendous affection for Lord Stockton. However, I wonder whether, in retrospect, we shall see again that period of tremendously expanded council house building which he undertook as being the high point of his career. It is so often in those post-war housing estates that we face the most severe problems today.

Putting that aside, I want to call the noble Lord in aid because, when he was accused of having a policy of stop-go, he said in his inimitable way that he had never seen how it was possible to drive a car without using both the brake and the accelerator. That has always seemed to me to be a good answer. We had a period when there was underspend, and we tried to bring it forward and say that, without any damage to the central policy, we could afford to do more. This year, demonstrably, we are way over the top. All the indications were that we would be for next year. We decided that we had to slow down.

We are talking only about the phasing over a longer period of the spending of these receipts. If we go back into a period of underspend, the time may come to try to steer a little more spending. Inevitably, that makes very difficult the management of programmes in the councils. The interests and convenience of administration at one level are sometimes at conflict with the interests and necessities of national administration at another. This is sometimes inevitable, though it is part of the process of good government to try to diminish it as much as possible.

There is no question of the measures that we have taken having been introduced in any way as a policy aimed at Bromley or a policy which means that Bromley has failed or is at fault in some way. The policy has had to be applied nationally because of the danger to our borrowing limits. Since it derives largely from the overhang of past receipts, it is even more inconvenient for those with receipts. That, too, is inevitable. It causes problems of delay and gives us trouble over other high priorities, such as the housing improvement grants programme. However, it derives not from wilfulness or from the fact that the ogre referred to has terrified us out of our wits and out of our political senses, but from the fact that overspends of £500 million or £1 billion, directly reflected in the PSBR, cannot, if we assent to the Government's economic policy, be taken as other than matters of the deepest concern to all of us—in the Cabinet and, I hope, in the Conservative party in the House and in the constituencies.

However, I well understand the difficulties that I, like any other hon. Member, will have at the weekend in explaining matters to people who will be upset about not getting their improvement grants on time. That is a job of political leadership which we must undertake, difficult as it is.

This may be the only opportunity that I ever get to speak at the Opposition Dispatch Box, so I have seized that opportunity.

My reason for seeking an Adjournment debate on sport in London was the answer given by the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, who is responsible for sport, during Question Time last month. He said:

"Only in the last 12 to 18 months has the GLC started to show some interest in sport in the metropolis. The London boroughs and the metropolitan districts are infinitely better prepared to know what is required at local level. The GLC has only come along later to shell out our constituents' money for wrong projects." — [Official Report, 28 November 1984; Vol. 68, c. 913.]

That statement was as profoundly oblivious to the truth as it was offensive to myself and my colleagues at county hall.

The Minister's apparent ignorance is exceeded only by his malice towards the GLC, but that is typical of Department of the Environment Ministers who try to cover up their appallingly weak case for the abolition of the GLC by a combination of bluster and insults.

However, there is no excuse for ignorance on the part of the Under-Secretary, who is to reply to the debate, or his civil servants, so I shall start by telling the hon. Gentleman what the GLC does for sport in London. He may stop me at any time either to identify what he described as "wrong projects" or to apologise for his comments.

When the Labour party won the 1981 GLC elections, I became chairman of the arts and recreation committee. I asked my vice-chairman, Mr. Peter Pitt, to take over responsibility for sport in London. He performed that task well and is now the chairman of the arts and recreation committee, so sport is well served by having him in that position in county hall.

However, although Mr. Pitt was the first person at county hall to be given specific responsibilities for sport, the London county council first established county hall's involvement with sport. The LCC started London sports championships in 1946; the GLC has built on that and organises 11 major championships ranging from cyclocross to swimming. The LCC started tennis coaching in the parks in 1951; the GLC had greatly expanded those schemes.

I must assume that when the Minister made his comments he knew that the GLC had met 50 per cent. of the running costs of Crystal palace—currently about £1 million from county hall — since the national sports centre was built in 1964. Indeed, Crystal palace is a GLC park.

The sports holding of the GLC includes two athletics stadia, four athletics tracks, 231 football pitches, including those at Hackney marshes, which has the greatest concentration of football pitches in Europe, 41 cricket pitches, 14 rugby pitches, 11 hockey pitches, three swimming baths, seven boating lakes, 116 tennis courts, seven bowling greens, nine horse riding facilities and two golf courses. Most of those facilities are located in the GLC's 5,500 acres of parks and open spaces and in the 11,000 acres of green belt land.

The GLC currently spends £41 million on parks, open spaces and recreation. That should be compared, for example, with the £7 million that the Sports Council has spent on sport in London over the past six years. The GLC is spending £41 million on recreation in this current year. But in the Local Government Bill, which is now in Committee, there is unfortunately no recognition whatever of that enormous contribution made by the GLC, or of the larger contribution, in financial terms, made by the metropolitan county councils.

One feels that the Minister has let down sport very badly. The Minister for the Arts was able to obtain an extra £34 million of central Government funding for the arts after the arts lobby really went to work on him; but I believe that the Minister with responsibility for sport has let down the sports community by singularly failing to secure additional funding, or certainly failing until now to announce what funding he has got. Frankly, he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

Apart from the Minister's failures, there are other reasons why sport does not seem to rate so highly in the priorities of this Government, or indeed in those of previous Governments. First, sport cannot mobilise the powerful establishment figures that the arts world can. There is no real sports lobby as such. Secondly, the Sports Council has proved itself to be toothless and ineffective in acting for sport in the political arena. Perhaps that is because too many administrators in sport are conservative with a small and a large "C". Thirdly, sport simply does not have the standing in our political community that it deserves.

That is in stark contrast to the situation in many other industrialised countries where sport is given a much higher political priority than Britain gives it. Fourthly, sports activities are largely working-class based in a society where middle-class values tend to predominate. In other words, we know very well what the Prime Minister thinks about Shakespeare and opera, but up to now we do not know what she thinks about sport. Perhaps one day she will let us know.

None of those reasons exonerates the Minister from the comments that he made in the House on 28 November. He seemed to assume that the London boroughs would take up the £41 million that the GLC is currently spending on sports and recreation facilities in London. That is nonsense; it is as nonsensical as when the Minister for the Arts said that the boroughs would take up the GLC's spending on the arts. But he changed his mind—or had his mind changed for him. However, the Minister responsible for sport seems to be just as blatant about that statement now as he was when he made it.

How can local authorities take up this enormous added burden? They have got rate capping. They have their own targets and there are also the penalties. We must continually bear in mind that sport rates as a discretionary service provided by local authorities and not as a mandatory one. Thus, if there is to be pressure on different services — as there undoubtedly will be given rate capping and further reductions in the expenditure of local authorities—it will be the discretionary areas of council expenditure that go. I am afraid that that will include sport.

When the Minister replies, I hope that he will say how he feels that the boroughs can in any way replace the GLC. For example, Mile End and Burgess parks were created by the GLC over several decades. The Lea Valley park would never have been created without a massive input from the GLC. The Brixton recreation centre is somewhat dear to my heart, because I was a member of Lambeth borough council when that project first came up. Lambeth has had to ask the GLC to take over responsibility for the centre, because, if Lambeth had to run it, it would soak up 40 per cent. of its amenity services budget, and put 4p on the rates in Lambeth. If the GLC is abolished, will Lambeth be asked to take back the Brixton recreation centre in 1986?

The Minister must address his mind to the whole question of sports centres in London—assuming that he can even be bothered to listen to me. It is quite obvious that the boroughs have those sports centres within their boundaries, but the centres themselves are regional in nature. Yesterday the GLC agreed a major package amounting to £1·75 million to support the construction of indoor sports halls in Peckham, Greenwich and Barking, and the upgrading of the Terence McMillan stadium in my own borough of Newham. I hope that the Minister will welcome that decision by the GLC—that is, if he can ever bring himself to say anything nice about the GLC. Because of the Government's expenditure restraints, especially on capital, local authorities would never have been able to consider the building of indoor sports halls without the support of the GLC. Will the Minister tell me whether the GLC was wrong to provide money for those facilities?

We need to know what the Government propose for those regional sports centres in London should the GLC be abolished. There is no mention of them in the Local Government Bill. If the Government manage to force the Bill through against good advice from both inside and outside the House, there will be calamitous results. We can trace what is happening already. For example, Hillingdon—a good Tory borough—closed the Uxbridge pool in 1982, despite 12,000 visits a year. It was reopened in 1984 by community groups with the assistance of the GLC. During the first eight months 48,000 visits have been recorded. Hillingdon intends to close the south Ruislip leisure centre on 31 December, yet that centre contains the only purpose-built gymnastic facilities in London. Only the GLC can rescue it. It is all very well to look at Albanian, Russian and American gymnasts performing for our television audiences, but what are we doing for gymnastics in London? We are closing down the only purpose-built facilities, and that is disgraceful.

Hammersmith and Fulham, another Tory borough, is considering selling the Eternit wharf sports centre and the Broadway squash centre. Will that authority be able or willing to take over responsibility for the West London stadium and Wormwood Scrubs should the GLC be abolished? Both those facilities are regional. It may be that the Conservative privateers are happy that local authorities should sell sports facilities, but unfortunately all that does is to reduce the access available to the poorest members of our community, especially the unemployed youth. The Scarman report had something to say about that, and I shall refer to it later.

The Minister may say that there will be plenty of cross-borough co-operation. I shall give him an example of that. In 1974 the GLC devolved Beckenham place park in south-east London to the boroughs — one third to Bromley and two thirds to Lewisham. To date, only Lewisham has contributed—it is bearing the full cost. What then are the chances of Barnet and Camden managing Hampstead heath on an amicable basis?

I wish to tell the Minister about some of the GLC's recent sports initiatives. He may think that many of them are wrong, and he can stop me and detail them if he wants to do so. The Scarman report influenced the GLC's policy on sports provision within the inner city. Scarman laid great stress on the role of recreational facilities. With 400,000 unemployed in London, clearly the provision of sports facilities as an ameliorative resource is something on which we must all agree.

The Government set up Action Sport in 1981 through the Sports Council. Again, due to cash limitations, the Sports Council has been unable to develop in the way that it might want. The GLC has given a grant to the Sports Council to help with the development of tennis and cricket initiatives in London. I understand that the Sports Council intends to give a further six months' funding for Action Sport, but the reaction from Hammersmith and Fulham is that it is not prepared to include such projects in long-term budgeting because of Government expenditure cuts and uncertainty. The fact is that the position in London is looking very bad, even before abolition.

The Sports Council, with which the GLC has a close relationship, developed its regional strategy with considerable assistance from the GLC planning staff. We were able to identify major areas of recreational deprivation in London. It would take a regional stategic authority like the GLC to tackle those problems in conjunction with the boroughs.

Among many other aspects of sport, the GLC has provided £1·8 million in individual grants to sports bodies during 1984 — for example, £100,000 to the British Olympic appeal and £68,000 to set up Sports Line for London, a telephone information service covering the whole of London. In the current year the GLC has given £55,000 to the Sports Aid Foundation, an organisation which I am sure the Minister supports. It does a great deal of splendid work in developing young sporting prospects. The London boroughs have given so far this year £350 to the foundation as opposed the GLC's £55,000.

The council has recently launched a series of major pilot schemes to encourage greater participation in sports by the disabled. It is developing a "football in the community" programme. The programme started at Fulham and it will be extended to other professional clubs in London.

I could list dozens of other grants and initiatives which have been made and taken by the GLC in sport. I shall give the Minister a copy of the council's reaction to the impact on sport in London should the GLC be abolished. The document is entitled "Recreation in Ruins". If he reads it, it might prevent him from making any more fatuous remarks about my council and its role in sport in London.

When the Minister reads "Recreation in Ruins", he will learn that the GLC is the largest local authority in the country that is providing sports facilities. The chairman of the council's arts and recreation committee, Mr. Peter Pitt, was correct when he said:

"If the abolition Bill is enacted, it will have a disastrous effect on recreation in the capital."

I shall conclude by asking the Minister some specific questions. I wish to be constructive. First, what extra resources will he be making available to the London boroughs when they take over the GLC's sports and recreation facilities should the GLC be abolished? Secondly, when will he be bringing forward proposals for a "limited" extension of central funding by the Sports Council, as promised by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment on 11 April? How much will this "limited" extension amount to and when are the proposals to be put before us? Thirdly, which organisations has the Minister consulted over the future of sports facilities, events and schemes that are of "wider than local interest"? Those were the words used by his right hon. Friend on 11 April. If the Minister has consulted, what was the response of the organisations? Have the local sports councils of London been consulted? Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to meet a delegation from the London sports council's standing committee?

Fourthly, what is to be the future of the Brixton recreation centre and other GLC-funded sports centres in London which are regional in character? Who, for example, will take responsibility for Hackney marshes and the Herne hill stadium, which Southwark borough council has said it cannot afford to do? Fifthly, what is to be the future of Thamesday and the south bank weekend, each of which has attracted 300,000 visitors? What does the future hold for the Greater London horse show and the 11 greater London sports championships if the GLC is abolished?

Sixthly, the Minister said that the London marathon would be safe with the Government. Will the Government be prepared to provide funds equal to the GLC's effort to ensure that the marathon continues? Will it really be safe in the Government's hands? I remind the Minister that the previous Tory administration at county hall under the leadership of Sir Horace Cutler initiated a feasibility study on the possibility of holding the Olympic games in docklands. The present GLC wishes to host a future Commonwealth games. However, bids have to be made by the world's cities for these major international events. Who will speak for London if the GLC is abolished and there is no one authority speaking for sport and other areas of social activity and taking a citywide view?

The Minister has failed miserably to defend sport from the onslaught threatened by the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. The Local Government Bill scarcely acknowledges the existence of sports facilities. However, when the Minister answers my questions the sports world may feel less threatened than at present. If nothing else, I hope that I have demonstrated how ill-informed and gratuitously insulting the Minister was on 28 November when talking about GLC provision for sports facilities in London. I hope that he has learnt something this afternoon. I hope, too, that he will have the grace to withdraw his previous remarks and apologise to the House for what he said.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) on his elevation to the Front Bench. He sells himself short if he thinks that he will not appear there again—I am sure that he will. The hon. Gentleman must realise that the time he has left me to speak will hardly allow me to answer all his points. I do not for one moment blame the hon. Gentleman for taking two thirds of the time of this debate.

I compliment the hon. Gentleman on his choice of subject, because this timing is all-important. His interest in sport, like that of the GLC in recent years, seems to be of recent origin. It is clear from his remarks that, to most people who genuinely believe in sport—not politics and sport — the greatest threat comes from the present occupants of county hall. Those who are genuinely concerned about sport believe that many events in recent weeks have proved that much of the ratepayers' money has been squandered in what has been described outside this place—I substantiate the point—as a sordid attempt to defend the GLC's record in a variety of spheres.

The hon. Gentleman has not provided us with a specific figure for that expenditure, part of which went to sport. For many people in London, it amounted to no more than a massive bulk purchase of whitewash. The hon. Gentleman should think about that point. I understand the difficulty the Socilaists and their colleagues have about county hall. The GLC was not set up some 20 years ago to oversee sport in the 32 London boroughs. The GLC has certainly had a part to play but it has not had a duty to oversee sport. In the past, the GLC has had a contribution to make. The fact is that, during the past 20 or so years, the GLC has lacked the historical expertise that is prevalent in the boroughs and the governing bodies.

We must oversee sport not only in London but throughout the country. We have the Sports Council, which was set up 10 or 11 years ago, and a regional council on sport and recreation which does great and good work in the south-east of England. The Sports Council has produced a strategy, "The Next Ten Years", and the Greater London and south-east regional council on sport has produced a report on sport in London and the south-east. The report is an excellent document, and I pay tribute to the work that has been done. The recommendations must now be implemented, and I believe that they would be better implemented by the local London boroughs.

The Government's record on sport generally is one of which we are justifiably proud. Since 1979 we have doubled the Sport Council's grant-in-aid to more than £30 million. My Department's contribution to the urban programme and the derelict land grant runs at more than £23 million a year. London has received a handsome share of that money. Since 1979 the Sports Council has made available nearly £8 million in grants and loans for well over 1,000 projects in our capital. No doubt the hon. Member for Newham, North-West will be delighted to learn that the London borough of Newham has received well over £500,000 for 16 capital projects, and that is just one small example of the assistance given.

We hear from the GLC of a range of statistics about its contribution to sport and recreation. The GLC's contribution is very recent. Let us be clear about the facts. The GLC's expenditure of £40 million a year, or whatever the lofty figure with which the hon. Member for Newham, North-West currently seeks to impress us, is not what it appears to be. At least £20 million a year goes on parks, tending flower beds and such services. They are important activities, and I certainly do not decry them. I take as much pleasure in London's parks as the hon. Gentleman does. He should not present this work and its annual costs as going to sport in London. The hon. Gentleman's figures tend to encompass the arts and recreation at its broadest. I ask the hon. Gentleman to concentrate the debate—today and in the future—on sport in London.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I ask the hon. Gentleman to allow me to continue, because I wish to place a number of points on the record. Obviously, because of the many questions asked, I shall have to write to the hon. Gentleman in due course.

The help for voluntary groups and projects that is trumpeted forth from county hall amounts, on the figures we have, to no less than £500,000. I certainly would not criticise individual grants, as the hon. Gentleman appears to ask me to do. They are mostly small grants, but they appear to be highly selective. They appear to be dotted around the London boroughs on the scattergun technique. Our criticism would be that such grants are a strange use of the funds and powers of a county council. Helping small clubs and schemes is surely a matter for the borough concerned. They have the necessary local knowledge. My criticism is that the GLC is highly selective and does not genuinely help all sport in our capital city. That is the change that we seek; we see no need for a massive bureaucracy such as the GLC to assist sport in minor ways by a few small grants. The boroughs should do it. That is our policy. They have the knowledge.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the GLC's contribution to Crystal palace. That has a strange ring to it. I have much more confidence in the future of the Crystal palace under the London borough of Bromley. It is a substantial regional facility, and the GLC has contributed significant funds to it. It is also, of course, a national centre. We propose, therefore, to enable the Sports Council to take over all the running and operation of Crystal palace to maintain its national and international place and reputation.

It is unfortunate but, alas, typical, that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues should have decided, within recent months, to use such a popular facility as Crystal palace as a new stage for their threats and intimidation, and, as people involved in sport have said to me, what border on bully-boy tactics. The GLC promised grants and support and now it is going back on its promises. I ask whether that is consistent with the fine words that we have heard today about the GLC's contribution to sport.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for paying attention to the important role that the boroughs play. It is important to place on record the fact that the boroughs, despite the difficulties that they face, have increased the amount of money that they have spent on sport and recreation during the past year. The figures coming from the GLC show that that amounts to over £160 million. The importance of strategy has been mentioned, but there is no sporting strategy coming from county hall. The fundamental strategy for sport in London is participation, action sport and sport for Londoners. Those are the Sports Council's strategic priorities for the development for sport not just in London but throughout the country.

My hon. Friend is perhaps better qualified than anyone in the House to talk about sport. He is a member of the Sports Council and he is a London Member who has represented his country at the highest level.

The fine words that we heard from the GLC spokesman this morning ring rather hollow. The GLC was not set up to cater for a strategy for sport in London. That is the problem that has confused so many of the people, who are responsible for local government and those who are on the governing bodies of sport. They are the best placed to run their sports at all levels.

My major criticism is that the GLC has sought to introduce politics into sport in a way that we have never seen before. It has pulled out of supporting our national centre at Crystal palace. It is not helping those people who represent and live in that part of London. That is sad. When it comes to it, I think that the GLC will sacrifice the interests of a major sporting facility in London simply because of political expediency. That is a poor example.

There have been many wild and exaggerated claims in recent months about the future of the London marathon. In recent years, many people have thought that it has been a highly successful event. I congratulate the major organisers, Sir Christopher Brasher and John Disley. They have made it the success that it is. Zetters pools has provided the use of a computer for processing all the applications.

What about the GLC?

It is nothing to do with the GLC. It is a wonderful event, which has been run by an organisation, and my Department has promised every assistance to the organisers since the first London marathon. The Department offered them one of its royal parks and the use of various routes through its royal parks.

The Government have also taken the lead elsewhere by stimulating investment in major new facilities. The Olsen shed project, which I launched in September this year, is a magnificent new project in docklands which arguably will be one of the finest centres in north-west Europe. It is a partnership, with money provided through the Government. They have contributed £3·2 million in a consortium of major national companies and the athletics governing body. I shall give further details in due course when I take up many of the points that the hon. Gentleman made. Early next year we shall be announcing—as we have for the past couple of years — pound-for-pound schemes, with the Government providing money with the private sector. Action sport has been a huge success here and in Birmingham. It has enabled 3,000 opportunities to be developed.

With the Sports Council and the regional council on sport and recreation, the structure is there, together with the 32 London boroughs. They are the ones who are best placed to know what is best. It is obvious that there is still a great deal to be done for sport in London, as, indeed, in most of our capital cities, but the Government are alive and alert to the measures that have to be introduced.

The demand for new facilities grows daily as leisure time increases. I agree on that with the hon. Gentleman. The Government recognise how important recreation is to the social fabric of our capital city, but, unlike the GLC, we have achieved a great deal in the past three or four years, and we shall continue so to do. The most important thing is to create the right structure outside politics and let sport run itself. The Sports Council and the regional council on sport and recreation are the experts. The hon. Gentleman and his acolytes in county hall are not.

The House will soon be adjourning for the Christmas recess. In this country, Christmas is a time for the unity of the family and religious worship. It is essentially a happy time. For Members of the Baha'i community, of whom there are some 5,000 in this country, it will not be a happy Christmas because they will be thinking of their families, friends and relatives in Iran who are still suffering great persecution. It is to that community that our thoughts and actions should turn. I am grateful for the opportunity of introducing this brief debate on the intense suffering of the Baha'i community in Iran and I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office for coming to reply to the debate. His great interest in the subject is much appreciated.

I emphasise that since my hon. Friend's answer to a written question on 16 May this year, the situation in Iran has worsened. While it is true that recently relations between Britain and Iran have improved — I much welcome that—I do not believe that the position of the Baha'i community has improved at the same time. I ask Her Majesty's Government constantly to remind themselves of the plight of the Baha'i community. I hope that the Minister will have the chance to affirm to the House today that the Government will take full advantage of the recently improved relations with Iran to alleviate in any way they can the problem of the Baha'i community.

I have maintained correspondence with some members of the Baha'i community in my constituency. They live in constant worry for members of their families among the estimated 300,000 Baha'is who have not been fortunate enough to escape from Iran. That fear for the lives of their relatives and friends is profound, and understandably so.

Before explaining the exact nature of the present Baha'i problem, it may be beneficial to the House for me to describe briefly the nature of the Baha'i faith, which is relatively new to me and has been explained clearly by my constituents. It was born and developed under Islam in the middle east in the 19th century. Arnold Toynbee described the faith as

"an independent religion, on a par with Islam, Christianity and other recognised world religions. Baha'ism is not a sect of some other religion; it is a separate religion and has the same status as other recognised faiths."

The implication is that the Baha'i faith is no heresy or perversion of an existing religion, but should be respected as a separate religion.

The Baha'is' creed does not threaten the existing regime in Iran in any way. A fundamental theme is the oneness of mankind, and the teachings of the faith are auxiliary to that principle: they are beliefs in education, individual freedom and equal respect for men and women.

Members of the Baha'i faith support efforts to bring about international unity which, they believe, will ensure progressively more equitable distribution of world wealth. They regard other world religions, however antagonistic their beliefs or morals, as providing the key to international unity.

I draw attention to the comments of Lord McNair who correctly said in another place on 10 February 1982 that the Baha'is reminded him of the Society of Friends, showing the same gentleness, tolerance and rejection of force. They have, however, been persistently subjected to intense persecution in Iran.

Although the 1979 revolution was hailed as a breakthrough for political liberty, persecution has since escalated. Since 1978, 188 named Baha'is have been executed and a further 15 have disappeared. A further 750 are believed to be in prison, 19 under sentence of death. I ask the House to consider the grave implications of that for their families and friends in this country and throughout the world. One of my Baha'i constituents has told me that since 1982 three members of her immediate family have been imprisoned and then hanged. I have also received specific reports of relatives being tortured. The House will understand if I do not go into the details here.

The House should roundly condemn the false justifications advanced by the Iranian Government for their behavior. The Baha'is have been accused of supporting the previous regime. Yet they refused all political appointments under the Shah. They are accused of being anti-Islam. On the contrary, they accept the divinity of the Koran as well as the Bible. Their headquarters in Israel is said to show Zionist sympathies. Yet that headquarters was established 80 years before the creation of the state of Israel. Finally, they are said to form part of a Western conspiracy concocted in the 19th century by the British Foreign Office in league with the United States and Russian Governments and have therefore been arrested on charges of conspiracy. If the Baha'is are not executed for their beliefs but for their alleged illicit activities against the state, that is a paradox as their religion forbids them to be involved in any kind of political activity.

In 1975, the Government of Iran ratified the international convenant on civil and political rights. They have also ratified several other significant covenants which together encapsulate the fundamental rights to life, freedom from torture, fair trial and freedom of conscience and opinion. In 1981, the Islamic Council issued a universal declaration of human rights, granting freedom of creed and protection from harassment by all official agencies. In addition, the Koran itself declares that minority religions must be protected under Moslem law. The treatment of the Baha'i community is therefore in direct contravention of the Iranian Government's own moral and religious principles.

The world in general and Britain in particular are justified in urging the Iranian Government to observe the basic principles of human justice and religious liberty. Those are the cornerstones of our society, and we should not be ashamed of championing those principles and broadcasting their importance to all Governments, especially Iran's. So far the British Government can only be congratulated on their contribution to the efforts o international organisations in condemning Iranian policy.

The United Nations has maintained constant pressure, and as my hon. Friend the Minister said in a written answer in May this year, the United Nations Economic and Social Council has vociferously deplored the persecution. In May 1984, the council decided to appoint a special representative to make a thorough study of the position. I understand that that was endorsed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on 29 August. The House would appreciate some information from the Minister as to how matters stand in relation to the United Nations resolution that has the endorsement of the Commission on Human Rights.

Similarly, on 10 April 1983, the European Parliament called upon Iran to suspend the persecution and condemned the

"gross violation of human rights."

The European Parliament asked individual Foreign Ministers to

"make representations … in order to … halt all manner of persecution and discrimination to which the Baha'i minority is subject."

That is a round condemnation and a clarion call. In addition, Australia, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada and the United States of America have all condemned the Iranian persecution.

While the persecution increases, the Government should increase their pressure on Iran. Full advantage should be taken of the recent improvement in relations between the two countries—an improvement which I wholeheartedly welcome. Regrettably, the openings for such action may be limited. The House will realise the many limitations upon direct pressure and persuasion, but the Government should continue to pursue this matter within the forum of international organisations.

The opportunity exists for the Government to exploit the thaw in relations for the good of the Baha'i. Those who are suffering in Iran, and those in my constituency, other constituencies and throughout the world, who live in constant fear for the lives of their families and friends in Iran, beg the Government to do all that they can and to use all their goodwill and muscle, directly and indirectly through international organisations, for the sake of the Baha'i community in Iran.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Freeman) has done the House a service by raising this important matter, and I congratulate him warmly on the great deal of thought that he has put into the issue and on the knowledge that he has displayed of the plight of the Baha'i people in Iran. I assure him that I listened carefully to his views.

This matter causes the Government much concern. Indeed, they have taken several positive steps to try to help the Baha'i community in Iran, and I shall describe some of those steps in a moment. My hon. Friend echoed the disquiet that has been expressed by many hon. Members for many months, if not years. I have received many letters from hon. Members expressing anxiety on behalf of their constituents about the position of the Baha'i community in Iran. I will go further and say that I maintain close contact with representatives of the Baha'i community in the United Kingdom. Only yesterday I met the Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United Kingdom, Mrs. Hardy, who also visited me in 1983 to express her worries about the Baha'i community in Iran. The assembly in this country keeps me and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials carefully briefed about developments there and their own anxieties—above all, about the imposition of the death penalty on many Baha'is. I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall continue to keep in very close touch with the leaders of the community in this country.

My hon. Friend spoke with great knowledge about the background to the Baha'i faith which, as he said, was established in Iran in the middle of the last century. It grew out of Shia Islam and its adherents describe it as an independent religion but one which is not opposed to Islam. It is a monotheistic faith. It acknowledges all past revelations but to the fundamental believers of Islam the Baha'i faith is regarded as a heresy. Baha'i communities exist in over 150 countries. In 23 countries, over 1 per cent. of the population are Baha'is. It is estimated that there are about 300,000 Baha'is in Iran, a very large number in India and several thousand in Europe. The community in the United Kingdom numbers about 5,000. They are organised into about 190 local assemblies, all of whom elect representatives to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United Kingdom.

There are persistent accounts of the persecution of members of the Baha'i community in Iran, including a number of executions, to which my hon. Friend referred. The Baha'i community is able to produce a good deal of evidence of discrimination and ill treatment. Unlike the Christian community in Iran, the Baha'is are not a protected minority under the constitution. The Iranian authorities claim that no Baha'i has been persecuted or discriminated against as a result of his faith. Rather, they take the line that any Baha'is that suffer punishment do so for other reasons, such as political opposition to the Government, a point to which my hon. Friend referred during the course of his speech.

I should like to comment, first, on the attitude of Her Majesty's Government to human rights as a whole. We deplore the abuses of human rights that occur in many parts of the world. Indeed, in 1978 I wrote a pamphlet on the subject of human rights and foreign policy. A central element in our foreign policy is to work to defend and strengthen human rights in many parts of the world. We all share a sense of outrage over gross abuses, such as summary execution, torture, detention without trial, denial of political rights, repression of religious minorities and many other abuses of human rights. I believe that we in this House all share the desire to use Britain's influence to help to make the world more humane.

In my view, there is no one way of doing this. It is a continuous process of choosing the right means and the right time to take action which is likely to be effective. There is a range of options that we can and do pursue. These include bilateral pressure, representations in conjunction with our partners in the Ten or with other countries in various parts of the world and by taking a leading part in the United Nations—for example, the Commission on Human Rights and the General Assembly. I assure my hon. Friend that we shall maintain all our efforts in this crucial field of human rights. We must, in each individual case, judge the best approach to adopt in order to help those whose rights are violated. The kind of influence we can best bring to bear will vary in each case.

As for Iran, one of several countries in which human rights abuses cause us great concern, the Baha'i community is subject to real and particular suffering. Our overriding concern as a Government, and that of my hon. Friend, is the safety and well-being of those to whom we are trying to give help. We must never at any stage do anything that we believe might jeopardise their prospects. Western representations on behalf of the Baha'i community have, on occasions, served only to strengthen Iranian feelings against the Baha'is. Britain is not the country best placed to make bilateral representations on behalf of the Baha'is. Our historical involvement in Iran is an important factor that militates against our success in this matter at the moment. We must take care not to take action which is counter-productive. I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree with that.

Equally, we shall not be afraid to voice concern and disquiet where that is necessary, appropriate and helpful. Against that background, in general, our best approach on the issue is to act in concert with our partners in the Ten and to couple that with action in international forums. A good deal has been done in both those respects.

The Ten—this is an important area in which we can help with some influence—view the persecution of the Baha'i community with great concern. The Iranian authorities have been made fully aware of the Ten's attitude in that matter through direct contracts with the Iranian Government. We have joined our partners in the Ten in a series of démarches by the representatives of the Ten.

The most recent example of such a démarche was on 2 October this year when representatives of the Ten in Teheran drew the attention of the Iranian Government to the deep concern felt by the Ten over continuing reports of the persecution of the Baha''i community in Iran. The representatives of the Ten handed over to the Iranians a list of the Baha'is reported to have been executed in the previous six months and explained the damage done to the image of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It was pointed out that the Ten member states, together with Iran, are signatories of the international covenant on civil and political rights, and consequently are under an obligation to take an interest in the matter. The Ten asked for assurances concerning human rights in Iran and the status of the Baha'i community.

The Ten followed that up on 29 November in a speech given by the Irish presidency on behalf of the Ten to the third committee of the United Nations General Assembly drawing attention to the persecution of the Baha'i community and reiterating their support for the appointment of a special representative of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to make a thorough study of human rights in Iran.

The Ten urgently renewed their appeal to the Government of Iran to adhere to their obligations under the international covenant on civil and political rights. I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall continue to urge the Ten to act vigorously in that way.

Then we come, as my hon. Friend rightly said, to action that we can take in the United Nations. A special representative was appointed following a resolution, cosponsored by the United Kingdom, on human rights in Iran which was adopted on 14 March at the 40th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The resolution specifically referred to the Baha'is. In his speech, the United Kingdom delegate to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Sir Anthony Williams, urged the Government of Iran to accord to all their citizens all the rights to which they are entitled, in particular the right to life, liberty and security of person, the right to a fair trial and the right to profess and practise their views and beliefs—religious, political and other—even when those do not chime with official dogma. Sir Anthony noted that persecution for religious reasons is, in the view of the United Kingdom, as intolerable as persecution for racial reasons. The United Kingdom will continue to take every opportunity to express its views on human rights in Iran at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. May I suggest to my hon. Friend that this is the most important forum as far as the United Nations is concerned?

My hon. Friend has launched a valuable debate and I have no doubt that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran will note the views that he has expressed—views that have been echoed in other ways by many other hon. Members. I have sought to set out the Government's position and I have explained carefully the reasons for the steps that we have taken over the past few months. I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall continue to take seriously the views expressed by the Baha'i community and by my hon. Friend and many others.

I shall consider carefully the other points made by my hon. Friend. The plight of the Baha'is is a matter of legitimate international concern, and Her Majesty's Government will continue to take whatever action we judge to be the most helpful in partnership with the international community. I assure my hon. Friend that the anxieties of the Baha'i community will remain a matter of deep concern to my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary and myself in the coming months.

I am sure that the House will be very grateful for what the Minister has said. Has he any intelligence on whether the representative appointed by the United Nations commission to which he referred has been able to visit Iran? If not, will the Minister assure the House that when he has some information on the point he will communicate it to those who are interested in the subject, not only in this House but outside?

It will be the task of the representative to report back to the United Nations, and that will happen before too long. With regard to the activities of the representative and how far they have gone, I think that it would be best for me to write to my hon. Friend in due course. I shall let him know as soon as I can what progress the representative is making.

May I start, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by wishing you a happy Christmas and all the best for the new year? As it is Christmas, may I extend greetings to the Under-Secretary of State? I am informed that he is about to score his century in terms of replying to Adjournment and other debates. I hope that after today he will declare his innings closed and, for his own sake, move on to something different, as I think that he has been put in the hot seat rather too often. I regret that that is the last cheerful thing that I am able to say this afternoon.

The problem of families living in high rise and tower blocks is so desperately serious that, even at this time of the year, I have to express my concern—and that of thousands of others—at the plight of such families. I should like first to recall the history of this enormous social problem.

I understand that between 1945 and 1951 the Labour Government saw the future of housing policy, the relief of the problems of inner city areas, and the provision of decent homes, in terms of a major development in new towns. That policy was reversed in 1951, when the Conservative Government came into office. Instead of new towns being developed, there was increasing emphasis on slum clearance in the inner cities. The feeling was that the only way to achieve that aim was to build flats at a very high density. The construction industry welcomed the proposal and moved into system building. The larger firms in the construction industry develped some very healthy business in producing the major housing works in the inner city areas.

The problem of high rise blocks was particularly exacerbated by the Housing Subsidies Act 1956, which gave a higher subsidy for flats the higher they were built. That provision, along with system building by the construction industry — which enabled less skilled workers, at lower wages, to do the building—resulted in a proliferation of high rise blocks and tower blocks in many inner city areas.

In 1967, under the Labour Government, a new subsidy system was introduced which took away the incentive to build so high. In 1968 we had the Ronan Point disaster, and this began to make people think about whether we ought to be developing our towns and cities in this way. By the 1970s, very little high-rise or tower block building took place.

But, by then, the damage had been done. I do not seek to blame anyone in particular, but it seems to me that a generation of architects, planners, civil servants and politicians of all parties was to blame for allowing the destruction of communities and for allowing a system of building in our cities which has caused havoc and will go on causing havoc until we tackle the problem in a way that we are not doing at present.

If I may be allowed a little historical latitude, I suppose that it can be said that a French architect, Le Corbusier, is probably one of the main people responsible, if we trace the architectural descent of these buildings—

I was saying that Le Corbusier, to my mind, carried a great deal of the responsibility. But in fact all those involved in decision making at the time were responsible for what has happened to many of our cities.

The effects of this type of building have influenced many people, but the direct consequences lie on those who live in high rise and tower blocks. Figures are not too easy to come by, but my understanding is that about 800,000 households live on the second floors or higher and that about 250,000 households live on the fourth floors or above. Altogether, some 300,000 children under the age of 16 live in flats on the second floors or higher. Most of these are local authority dwellings, of course, and the problem is especially serious in London where a large proportion of the tower and high-rise blocks have been built. I understand that about 170,000 children under the age of 16 live on the second floors or higher of these developments.

Living in these conditions has posed a number of serious problems for the people there. First, there is safety. I do not wish to use this debate to discuss the problems of Bison and the other systems building difficulties which have been the subject of numerous discussions and of much concern. I mention them only in passing. But the safety problems have involved everything from concrete falling from higher levels to fire hazards. It is no coincidence that the families on the top floors of one on my council estates are having to be moved out, much to their relief and pleasure, because there are not adequate fire safety exits.

We have had difficulties with asbestos. The Livingstone estate in my constituency has had to be emptied of its tenants so that the asbestos could be cleared out. The same asbestos problem has been found on other estates. We had the Ronan Point episode. We have had the Bison problem, and there have been others. We also have smaller problems such as defective windows and windows that cannot be locked properly.

Far and away the most serious problem is that of the isolation of people, especially families living in high-rise blocks. One has only to walk along those dark corridors, often without windows, with nothing but blank front doors, to feel the sense of isolation. There are no windows from these halls and stairways. The only windows are to the outside, from which no one can be seen walking by because they are too far above the ground. Some of the families living there feel a desperate sense of isolation.

Families cannot supervise their children if they wish to play outside. There was a tragic murder of a little girl near the Doddington estate in Battersea park some time ago. I am not saying that the murder was caused by that environment, but the fact that it occurred made parents even more reluctant to allow their children to play out of their sight.

There have been a number of tragic accidents and even falls from some of the higher blocks. Children have fallen. Adults have fallen. I shall give one or two examples in a moment.

The flats lack play spaces, and children are either not allowed to play outside or are cooped up for long periods. They cannot socialise. They cannot play outside and the flats are not big enough to allow them to play with their friends. There is a desperate sense of isolation.

All the evidence from many experts and successive surveys confirms that the physical and mental health of people living in tower blocks suffers. When they move out, their health improves. Even statistics on school attainment suggests that children in tower blocks do badly.

There are also problems of dampness, water penetration at higher levels, condensation, inadequate heating and rust affecting the steel reinforcements of buildings. In this modern technological age, we ought to be able to solve the problem of defective lifts. Lifts are out of order all too often in tower blocks. When that happens, how can people get out, go about their business or go shopping? They cannot do so unless they are prepared to talk down 16 floors. That is out of the question for a mother with a pram.

Pevsner wrote about the Doddington estate in his book on the architecture of south London. The estate is on the south side of Battersea Park road and consists of post-war council housing. Pevsner says:

"chiefly Wandsworth's disastrous mistake of the 1960s, the Doddington estate … by Emberton, Frank and Tardrew … The grey chequered concrete slab blocks marching beside the railway are a chilling monument to that mistaken era of high-rise and industrialised building … The homely brick details of the low shops, library, and health centre, loosely grouped around a pedestrian square off Battersea Park road, cannot compensate for the arid, empty spaces over the car parks, the bleak upper access ways, and the inhuman scale of the whole conception."

That is pretty clear.

There have been a number of tragic deaths in tower blocks. Children have fallen from balconies and out of windows. There have been suicides. A few years ago, a three-year-old child who wanted to play threw his tricycle from a 10th floor window, threw his plimsolls after it, climbed out after them and fell to his death. There are such tragic, cases in many parts of the country and they demonstrate what can happen when children are cooped up in difficult conditions.

Some people say, "They manage to live in high-rise blocks abroad." The luxurious New York penthouse suite is a byword in the living style of the rich. However, the Department of the Environment's study "Families in Flats" revealed that even a fairly brief investigation in Europe showed that people on the Continent did not like high-rise living.

The only people who like high-rise living are those who are childless and fairly affluent and have a way of escape at weekends. For them, it is not so bad, but for people for whom life on the 15th floor is a reality day in and day out, it is tragic. They have no way of escape and usually they cannot afford to get away for the day, let alone for the weekend.

Last month, I asked the Secretary of State for the Environment about children in high-rise flats. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment replied:

"The Department's report 'Families in Flats' was sent in 1981 to the local authorities known to have multi-storey family dwellings in their stock. It concluded that it is preferable for families with young children to occupy houses or flats below the second storey. My right hon. Friend does not consider that further advice is needed." — [Official Report, 26 November 1984; Vol. 68, c. 400.]

Of course it is preferable for families to live at a lower level, but that is a rather complacent statement and surely understates the gravity of the problem.

Tower blocks will be home for some people for the rest of their lives. Although they may want to get out, they cannot do so. My difficulty is that it is hard to know whether it is right to remind people of the awful conditions in which they live, and thereby increase their dissatisfaction, or whether I should hold off and say less. I have come to the conclusion that it is right to describe such things exactly as they are, and to accept that on some of those estates the majority want to get out. It cannot be any way to live if most people are saying, "I can't stand it here. Get me out at any price." But those people cannot get out, because of the combination of the Government's policies and in Wandsworth's case, the council's policies.

The recent announcement of a cut in housing investment has only made the problem worse — a problem resulting from cuts in housing investment ever since 1979. The people cannot afford to move out and to buy elsewhere, because they just do not have the money. Many of them are on supplementary benefit and many are desperately poor.

Wandsworth council is selling not only council flats to sitting tenants, but almost every single council property that becomes vacant on any decent council estate. As a result, there are no empty flats on the nicer estates into which people from the tower blocks could move. That is so, even though the need for such a move may be compelling and urgent and have a high medical priority. That is why people feel trapped and are desperate. That is why, at almost every Friday evening surgery that I hold, people burst into tears in their desperation, and plead with me to help to alleviate their housing problems. They almost always come from such estates.

The real insult is that a mile or two away from some of those high-rise estates in my constituency is something called the Easthill estate. It is a low-rise estate that was built by the Labour council and completed by the Tories when they took ever after 1978. The whole estate was sold to people who for the most part did not come from the area and were not on the housing waiting list. They moved over from the north side of the Thames. The ultimate insult to those on the Doddington estate, or living in York gardens and on the other estates is that the Easthill estate has "for sale" signs, as those who bought their properties are now trying to make a profit and to move away.

What action can we take? First, we need recognition of the seriousness of the problem. Secondly, the Government should provide more information about the defects in those high-rise and tower blocks. On 23 October, the Government announced that there was to be an inquiry into large panel systems. I wonder what progress there has been. Will the Government consider encouraging local authorities to develop works programmes so that defective blocks that can be improved, are improved rapidly? Above all, will the Government state not that it would be nice if people with children were not in tower blocks, but that it should be the urgent priority of all local authorities to ensure that parents with young children do not live in such blocks, and certainly do not live above the second floor.

Of course, the Government cannot say that at the moment because there are no houses into which people can move. Therefore, we need a change in attitude towards housing policy. We need cash for investment, and local authorities and central Government must accept that the problem is urgent and that it should be tackled by recognising it, and by having enough money available so that houses and low-rise flats can be built, thus enabling people to move out of the tower blocks.

If the defects in existing high-rise buildings cannot be remedied—and in some cases they cannot be—there is no alternative but to bulldoze them. But high-rise blocks are suitable for some people, provided that the defects can be tackled. There are young people, single people, students and childless couples who might well say that if the lifts are working and the main defects are put right, they would be happy to live there. But for people with children, that is no way for them to spend their lives

I should like to make a plea on behalf of the hundreds and thousands of families living in such flats. It will be a bleak Christmas and a depressing new year for them. There will be many bleak Christmases and depressing new years for them while they are cooped up with their young children in such flats. We have no right to deny our fellow citizens decent housing and decent lives. But as long as they are living in such conditions, we are denying them just that. We need not complacency from the Government but something that recognises the problem and indicates that action will be taken.

This is an important debate on a very important subject. It has been introduced, as one would expect, in a fluent and compassionate way by the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs). Like him, I represent thousands of people who live in high rise flats. I cut my political teeth canvassing the residents of tower blocks in Wandsworth and Clapham 15 years ago. In about 40 minutes I will be at my advice bureau in Acton, doubtless seeing people from the south Acton estate who will be raising with me exactly the sort of problems mentioned by the hon. Gentleman.

When I looked at the Order Paper and saw the subject for debate, I thought that it had a familiar ring to it. Indeed, it was the subject of my first Adjournment debate in this House 101/2 years ago. I confess that, in opposition, I felt a mild sadistic pleasure in keeping up late at night a whole series of Ministers who had to debate with me important subjects such as the height requirements for entrance to the police force, the problem of take-away food shops in London and the need for better provision for cyclists.

Shortly before the 1979 election, after my 10th such Adjournment debate, I had no idea of the scale of retributive justice that would be visited on me. My private office tells me, with a visible lack of enthusiasm, that since 1979 I have participated in a further 89 Adjournment debates, making this—as the hon. Gentleman rightly said — my 100th. I have no idea whether that is precedented. A number of my ministerial colleagues set out on the same path in 1979, but they have either displayed enough independence of action and originality of thought and been promoted or they have displayed too much and been sacked. My sympathies lie with the occupants of the Chair and my hon. Friends from the Whips Office who have had to sit through all this, no doubt to report to their chiefs any incipient trace of incoherence.

Looking back at what I said 10 years ago, and listening to the hon. Gentleman this afternoon, I find that our concerns are very similar about the way in which the very hostile physical environment of our high rise blocks can lead to social and family stress. I said then that high rise blocks were no place for families with children. At that time, 500,000 families were living in them. Since I spoke in that debate substantial progress has been made in reducing the problems in several different ways. Large numbers of families with children have been moved out of tower blocks. We know a great deal more about the physical improvements that are needed to make these estates more acceptable places in which to live. We know far more about the importance of accessible, responsive local management and we have learnt something from experiments with different forms of tenure that seek to involve the tenants more directly either in the management or, in some cases, the ownership of the block. In a few cases, we have had to accept that the condition of the blocks has deteriorated beyond recovery, and that demolition had to be considered together with a fresh start.

I share the hon. Gentleman's analysis of the problem. The majority of high rise housing was built in the early 1960s when the local authorities, with the best of intentions, were clearing slums and were encouraged to build so-called units of accommodation quickly to overcome the severe shortage of housing. At that time, system building and factory methods of construction using concrete and other materials were in fashion, but often untried.

As a result, we had concentrations of high density housing in major conurbations, which created estates that soon became subject to physical deterioration and decline. That was compounded by remote and impersonal management with stereotyped and insensitive allocation policies, reinforced by an often ineffective repair and maintenance service. In turn, that contributed to feelings of insecurity and alienation among the residents and, in some cases, the residents reacted against that environment and began to abuse it. That completed the cycle of decay.

As I said 10 years ago, and repeat today, tower blocks are rarely suitable places for young children to grow up in. There are the practical problems, mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, of young mothers with small children trying to get to the 15th floor when the lifts are out of action, with all the problems of moving shopping, prams and washing. They are compounded by the sense of isolation, the strains of keeping children quiet and anxieties about the children's safety. Appallingly, between 1973 and 1979 about five children a year living on the second floor or above were killed falling from their homes.

In turn, the problems of the children have an impact on the parents. The study that we carried out with the National Children's Bureau showed that children who live above the first floor do worse at school and are more disturbed than children who live in houses, ground floor and first floor flats. They are affected by their mothers' dissatisfaction with multi-storey living.

The Department took the problems seriously as early as 1973. Under a Conservative Government, it issued guidance to local authorities in a circular making it clear that allocating high level flats to families with children was undesirable and should be avoided. In the debate that took place a decade ago I called for a stop to the building of high rise blocks. Modestly, I claim little personal credit for the fact that that period marked the end of an era of high rise council building. At the same time I asked the then Labour Government to issue advice and guidance to local authorities to enable them to use the high rise blocks that they already had to the best advantage. That advice finally appeared under a Conservative Government in 1981 in the Department's report entitled "Families in Flats", to which the hon. Gentleman referred. We sent copies to 120 local authorities which were known to have mult-storey family dwellings in their stock.

Progress is being made. Over the past few years local authorities have done much to reduce the number of families with children living in tower blocks. In Birmingham, for example, 16 per cent. of the local authority's stock was high density housing in 1980, and 300 of the council's 420 tower blocks have now been designated as child-free. The national general household survey shows that the number of families with children under 16 living above the first floor has fallen by about one third between 1981 and 1982. Given the problems facing families living with children in tower blocks and high rise developments, that is only right.

There have been physical changes and physical improvements. High rise blocks need not be undesirable places in which to live for those without children merely because they are high rise. Numerous privately owned blocks here and abroad give witness to that fact. A recent report published by my Department entitled "Housing Initiatives for Single People of Working Age" gives examples of where enterprising local authorities have successfully converted multi-storey family dwellings into homes for the single. I understand that the London borough of Wandsworth has successfully let multi-storey flats to single people. Other improvements, such as the provision of entry phones, have given added security to the elderly, who without the problems associated with children in the block, such as noise, vandalism and break downs, can live in the blocks satisfactorily. The elderly often prefer their privacy, the views and the quietness in tower blocks without children.

My Department has helped this process directly through the urban programme. It has supported a wide range of schemes that compensate for the problems of living in high rise blocks. These projects range from the provision of entry phones, the conversion of empty flats into accommodation for community purposes, the provision of play and recreational facilities, general environmental improvements and improved management schemes. The cost of such schemes will run to several million pounds in 1984 85.

Thirdly, I mentioned the importance of good management. When it is not possible quickly to transfer families out of flats—for example, because of the lack of suitable alternative accommodation—much can be done by good, accessible management to make the flats more acceptable dwelling places.

My Department has worked with a number of local authorities through the priority estates project in improving the day-to-day management of these estates, by local authorities. In 1981, one of our project consultants gave some advice to Wandsworth borough on a management initiative on the Henry Prince eatate. I understand that this, together with modernisation of these pre-war flats, has been highly successful.

Some of the flatted estates require capital expenditure, and when this is made available one has to beef up the locally based housing management in the way that the priority estates project has shown; otherwise we invest the capital and the benefits are frittered away. In too many places, housing staff do not devote the time and effort required to ensure that repairs are carried out expeditiously and tenancy agreements are properly fulfilled. The problems of management are more complex on flatted estates where, for example, vandalism or the neglect of common parts affects many more people more directly than on so-called cottage estates.

My Department is convinced that more locally based management is needed, which operates within defined revenue expenditure budgets and is genuinely able to manage and co-ordinate essential functions such as repairs, caretaking and cleaning, lettings, rent arrears control, enforcement of tenancy conditions, all of which fall within council policy guidelines. It is essential that this duty is discharged with the maximum amount of consultation with and involvement of the residents. If hon. Members think that their authority may be unaware of the lessons of the priority estates project, there is an excellent report on local housing management which was published by my Department in February 1984 and which is available in the Library. I understand that Wandsworth is currently proposing to take some initiatives on the Doddington estate in Battersea, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. In some respects, this is similar to the approach advocated by my Department.

Fourthly, there are changes to tenure, and here I part company with the hon. Gentleman who referred disparagingly to council house sales. I do not accept that such sales exacerbate the problems. When a tower block is sold, it can help to reduce the problem by injecting private capital, which may not be available to the local authority, and the physical improvements that are necessary. Increasing the status of the tenants and their dwellings fosters a sense of responsibility and commitment. Enhanced tenancy participation in the management of estates has, in many cases, had the effect of reducing or eliminating many of the problems I have discussed. An extra capacity in the private sector has many benefits. There are several interesting examples of multi-storey blocks being brought into use by private developers who have bought the blocks, improved them and then resold them to single buyers and couples—usually first-time buyers. In a few cases we have had to cut our losses, demolish the tower block and start again. With the progress I have described, I hope that that last resort will become more rare. Much progress has been made. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not accuse me of complacency, because much more still needs to be done.

As the last speaker before the House rises for Christmas, I take this opportunity to wish a happy Christmas to you, Mr. Speaker, your Deputy Speakers and the Officers and staff of the House. No one is looking forward to Christmas more than Ministers in my Department. I note that, unlike the usual principle of last in, first out, this time it is last out, first in, because when the House resumes Department of the Environment questions will be raised. By that time we shall be reinvigorated and refreshed, and I am sure that you, Mr. Speaker and the rest of the House will be similarly refreshed. I take this opportunity to wish you, Sir, a happy Christmas and all the best for 1985.

Before I adjourn the House, may I thank the Under-Secretary of State and congratulate him on his century. I imagine that the hon. Member hopes that the next century will be more slowly achieved. I wish the Leader of the House, the whole House and the staff a happy Christmas and a new year of good order.