I beg to ask leave to present a petition on behalf of over 500 workers in Plessey in my constituency. The company was founded in my constituency over 60 years ago and the registered office is still there. The petition has been organised by Mr. Eddie Lewis, the convenor of the shop stewards. The workers are upset that within two and a half years they are again having to organise a petition against the proposed takeover by GEC, which is a predator company wishing to asset-strip and strip the research and development that has been so carefully carried out over the years. The petition states:

"the undersigned object to the proposed takeover of The Plessey Company plc by General Electric Company-Siemens because such a takeover would result in very heavy job losses, serious harm to the research and development in which The Plessey Company plc has up to now been involved and the creation of a monopoly which would limit the choice facing major customers in the electronics and defence markets.

Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House do urge the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to take all such steps as are open to him to prevent the said takeover."

That is the petition and I hope that the House will take due notice of the concern of my constituents in this important matter.

I beg to ask leave to present a petition containing 25,000 signatures concerning HM coastguard. It is a great honour, not only as an Opposition spokesman but as an ex-seafarer, to present the petition, which represents the views of people from local councils, coastal dwellers, auxiliary coastguard volunteers, lifeboat crews, fishing fleets, merchant seamen, yacht, boat and sub-aqua clubs. They wish to petition against the cutbacks in Her Majesty's coastguard. Stations have been cut from 28 to 21, sectors reduced from 150 to 110 and manpower from 700 to 500 while incidents increased by over 10 per cent. last year alone.

"The Humble Petition of the undersigned sheweth that the coastguard provides a vital service to the mariners, coastal dwellers and holidaymakers alike, is currently threatened by cutbacks in resources available to the service and the proposed closure of coastguard stations at Hartland (North Devon), Moray (Peterhead), Ramsey (Isle of Man) leading to deteriorated service.

Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House ensure that Her Majesty's coastguard receives the resources necessary to the maintenance of full and thorough rescue service throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom's coastline and coastal waters; and that no coastguard station closures take place, in particular that the threat to Hartland, Moray and Ramsey be lifted."

I hope that the House will pay due attention to the petitioners.

I first applied for an Adjournment debate on this topic at a time when the immediate fate of 10 community care projects in Dundee and 23 in Tayside as a whole hung in the balance. Those projects had been brought into existence under the old community programme and had therefore, been fully funded by the Government. They provided a variety of community-based services for some of the most needy and disadvantaged groups in Dundee, including many elderly people.

There were involved projects such as Crossroads in Dundee, which provides a home-care service for the severely handicapped and chronically ill as well as for the carers who look after them. They also involved Kandahar house, Dundee, which provides day facilities for the mentally and physically handicapped and former psychiatric patients, and Menziehill community care project in Dundee, which provides a home visiting and caring service for the single elderly and other vulnerable groups and which plays an important preventive role in keeping people in the community and out of institutional care. Whitfield court playgroup, which provides playgroup facilities for children from an area of multiple deprivation and which also provides educational and training opportunities for the parents of those children was another of the projects. St. Salvador's day care is a day centre for the mentally handicapped adults in Dundee and assists them to become better integrated into the community.

Such projects, along with the Coldside and Ardler community care projects and the adult learning support and agency teams, provided Dundee with a range of vital personal services which were available to vulnerable groups in our city. The initial threat to the continued survival of those projects arose when the Government announced their intention to scrap the community programme from September 1988 and to replace it with the new employment training scheme. The Government's message to the Dundee community care projects was simple: if they wanted to go on, they had to get into the new employment training scheme, which was the only source of funding that the Government were prepared to make available to them.

Of course, such a proposal was impractical and unacceptable to everyone who understood the nature of the projects and who wanted them to continue on the same basis. The Government's case does not bear examination. For example, the Secretary of State for Scotland made much of the fact that the Clydeside branch of Crossroads had already agreed to go into employment training. He singled it out as an example that should be followed by all the other Crossroads schemes. However, the Secretary of State and other Ministers ignored the fact that 47 other Crossroads branches across Scotland had already taken an informed decision not to follow Clydeside's example. The minutes of the executive committee of the Scottish Council on Disability said:

"the other 47 had given careful consideration and decided that this employment training scheme was not designed for Crossroad care attendant schemes."

Ministers would be better advised to listen to the advice of 47 of the 48 Crossroads branches in Scotland instead of latching on to the one branch that happens to suit the Government's argument.

It was not just a matter of the Crossroads care attendant schemes. In Tayside, voluntary day care units at Brechin, Montrose, Forfar and Kinross agreed to enter employment training when the community programme was wound up last year. After five months' experience of employment training, they wrote to the Minister of State with responsibility for education and health, saying that, having had the opportunity to evaluate ET, their blunt opinion was that the system did not work satisfactorily. They pointed out that employment training rules were different from the old community programme rules. They did not allow, for example, for sufficient full-time staff members on the projects. They said that it was difficult to recruit suitable personnel, leading to gaps in the core staff who were essential to the success of the projects. Elderly clients were unhappy with the constant changes in staff, which are inevitable under employment training. The voluntary day care units said that the uncertainty in service provision caused by employment training was discourag-ing private sector support for the projects.

Those schemes had learned from experience that the Government's advice was impractical and that alternatives for ongoing funding were essential if they were to continue to provide the service that they had provided. Fortunately, the 10 Dundee projects and 13 other similar Tayside projects were saved from the bitter experience of the voluntary day care schemes by the minority Labour administration of Tayside regional council. Last September, the council intervened to extend the funding of the projects until the end of this month. The question was: who would provide the funding beyond 1 April?

At that point, I had hoped to raise this issue with an Adjournment debate. Unfortunately, some sharp practice by the Government Whips succeeded in scuppering the final scheduled debate on housing, and with it my Adjournment debate. I am therefore grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for having allowed me a further opportunity to raise this matter in one of the debates this morning.

Events have moved on in the interim period. On Wednesday 15 March, the policy and resources committee of Tayside regional council unanimously agreed to intervene and to grant an 11th-hour reprieve to the projects. All 23 projects in Tayside will receive continued financial support from the council for six months, beginning on 1 April. The permanent staff members are to be retained in the meantime on their existing terms and conditions of service. Temporary staff will be similarly retained until 30 September or the completion of their 52 weeks, whichever comes earlier. Council officers have been instructed to identify with the care groups their minimum staffing requirements and to report on the feasibility of continuing the projects beyond the six-month period from 1 April.

The Office of the Under-Secretary of State—the hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth)—contacted my office during the week to ask whether I still wished to pursue this Adjournment debate following those developments. Of course, the answer is yes. That approach speaks volumes about that Office's deplorable attitude to this affair. The only point that concerned it was that, wherever else funding was to be found to save the projects, it would not come from the Minister or from direct Government funding. As far as the Minister is concerned, now that Tayside region has stepped in to save the projects, that is the end of the story.

It is, of course, anything but the end of the story because a number of vital questions remain to be answered by the Minister. Why have the Government refused to accept responsibility for funding the projects when the Government alone are responsible for the funding crisis that threatens the projects' existence? Why have the Government failed to respond to the wide-ranging criticism of their suggestion that community care projects of this kind can be accommodated within the employment training scheme? Why do the Government leave regional councils to pick up the pieces when those councils are severely strapped for cash, whereas the Government had a huge budget surplus of billions of pounds which they wasted in the recent Budget in paying back the national debt? What do the Government intend to do about the long-term funding future for such projects in Dundee and elsewhere in Scotland?

The Griffiths report on care in the community has been carefully ingored by the Minister since its publication just over a year ago. The kind of infrastructure of community care that would make possible the transfer of patients from long-term institutional care back into the community is not in place. That is why projects of this kind have developed through schemes such as the community programme. Instead of withdrawing support funding from the projects as the Minister has done, he should have provided development funding through health boards and social work departments to enable the work of the projects to be built on and developed into the sort of community care that Griffiths envisaged.

It is surely ironic that, far from providing additional development funding to councils, the Minister and his friends are hounding councils to cut the resources available to them. For example, had Tayside levied a poll tax of £178 as Scottish Office Ministers advised it to do, instead of the £220 poll tax upon which it finally decided, Tayside region would have had between £11 million and £12 million less to spend on its social work education and other services. Had that happened, not just the community care projects that I have described would have been at risk.

For the moment, the projects have been saved by a council that cares, but their long-term future and the long-term future of community care as a whole remain depressing because of a Government who do not care and will not live up to their funding responsibilities. I hope that, in responding to the debate, the Minister will address the issue of funding for the long-term future of community care projects such as envisaged in the Griffiths report—something that the hon. Gentleman and other Ministers have failed lamentably to do in the recent White Paper. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) on obtaining an Adjournment debate on a subject which is important to many thousands of individuals and to families and concerned organisations in Dundee and Tayside.

It is important to remind ourselves who is involved in care in the community. We are talking about people whose families find it difficult to look after them and for whom voluntary organisations have formed groups to provide services that normally would have been provided by the social work department of Tayside regional council or Tayside health board in day care centres or hostels. If the council or the health board had to take on the responsibilities of the voluntary organisations they would have to reduce services in other areas. That would increase pressure on individuals in Dundee and Tayside.

It is important not only to outline the views of my hon. Friend and myself, but to remind ourselves of some of the main players in the drama and some of their comments. I shall spell out the views of those who are supposed to be concerned and of those who are genuinely concerned. On 25 January, the Secretary of State wrote to the chairman of Crossroads (Scotland) saying:

"I find it most regrettable that Crossroads organisations have largely rejected Employment Training as a source of funding and I remain unconvinced that other Crossroads organisations could not follow the Crossroads (Clydesdale) example if the will to do so existed. Crossroads (Clydesdale) clearly believes that it has a future operating within Employment Training and I welcome and share that belief. More generally, I remain convinced that caring organisations like Crossroads could provide excellent Employment Training opportunities. I have however to accept that the management of other Crossroads schemes, having assessed what Crossroads (Clydesdale) proposes to do, have decided not to follow that example. That is of course a decision for them."

The executive committee of Crossroads in Scotland held a meeting on 23 February, having had time to consider the correspondence from the Secretary of State. The chairman, Dr. Kuenssberg reported that it was totally absurd of the Secretary of State to have said what he did in his letter of 25 January. One branch out of 48 had joined the employment training scheme and the other 47 had given careful consideration and decided that the employment training scheme was not suitable for Crossroads care attendant schemes. He also reported that a number of Crossroads schemes had folded.

You represent an English constituency, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and there may be other hon. Members who do not understand the differences between the system that operated for Crossroads in Scotland and that in England and Wales. Ms. Hunt from the Scottish Office said that Crossroads schemes in England and Wales were run very differently, as they were based on funds from health boards and local authorities. It is clear that there were two methods of achieving the caring facility. It was far more beneficial to the Crossroads care schemes in Scotland to use the community programme for funding and looking after those with whom they were concerned.

The community programme in Scotland was far more centred on the caring aspects of the voluntary sector—that is, the sector outside the statutory bodies which have responsibility in these matters. Against that background, the Scottish National Council for Voluntary Organisations had a series of meetings with the Minister of State, Scottish Office with responsibility for industry and employment in Scotland prior to the ending of the community programme to make it clear to him that many of the care schemes would not be suitable to go into the new employment training programme. I put it on record that the association did not say simply that it saw the matter as wholly or only the responsibility of the Government. It offered the Government, and the Scottish Office in particular, a package. It said that if the Department of Employment and the Minister of State would agree to establish a separate fund under the Department of Employment—on which it put a figure of £1 million—those caring organisations could continue.

Some of the caring organisations have not only invested considerable time in training the carers whom they have used under the community programme, but have built up a great deal of expertise and have gathered together equipment which they used on community programmes. The association's request was simple. It asked not for a continual handout, but for a breathing space of two years and for £1 million to be set aside from the money allocated to employment training. During the two years, the care organisations would be able to redefine their needs and priorities and gather together extra funding. That was not an unreasonable request, but to this day we have had no formal response to it other than the views of the Secretary of State, set out in his letter of 25 January. He said that all the money previously spent on the community programme would now be given to employment training and that, whether they liked it or not, caring organisations had better get themselves into employment training.

That mistake was further compounded when I went to see the Minister of State to discuss the problems of the Menzieshill community organisation. The organisation was formed to provide basic caring services to the elderly who live in the Menzieshill area of Dundee. Simple care was provided such as visiting the elderly, disabled or ill in their homes, collecting retirement and other benefits and doing the daily or weekly shopping—in other words, the type of jobs that we normally associate with home helps. The group also drives the elderly and infirm to the lunch club in the Menzieshill community centre. With the greatest stretch of imagination, one could hardly believe that a person would need to be trained to talk to the elderly and disabled, to take the benefit book to the local post office, to buy provisions from the local shops or to assist people from their homes to the community centre. Even the Minister would find it difficult to say that such tasks could be fitted into employment training.

At a meeting on 2 February, the Minister of State suggested that we had not looked properly at the proposals and that we should look at them again. He believed that we might be able to fit the Menzieshill community organisation into employment training. He said that instead of asking simply for money, I should be prepared to argue the case. I agreed and I went back to the Menzieshill group which agreed immediately to hold discussions once more with officials from the Department of Employment. That meeting has taken place and both sides agree that there is no way that such a service could be included in employment training. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East said, if Tayside regional council had not stepped in and found the extra money, the Crossroads scheme in Dundee would have ended. That would have added to the misery of the individuals who have enjoyed the benefits of the service.

It is not only my hon. Friend and myself whose words should be heard in this debate. One of the Minister's friends—in the sense that he shares his political views—is one W. Loe CBE, JP, who wrote on behalf of a number of caring organisations, including the voluntary day care units in Kirriemuir, Forfar, Brechin and Montrose. The Kinross day care centre had also associated itself with the thoughts expressed in the letter. William Low, CBE, JP is not a radical politician in the Tayside area, but even he thinks that the Minister should think again.

I hope that the Minister will show an awareness in his reply of the concern felt by the caring organisations in the Dundee and Tayside area and that the Government are at long last prepared to do something other than mouthing platitudes.

I may have many faults, but I do not think that mouthing platitudes is one of them.

The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) based his explanation of why we missed the opportunity to debate the matter on a previous Adjournment debate on what he described as "sharp practice" by the Government Whips. I recall that as I waited in the Chamber to discuss the matter, the business moved on, because the Opposition did not choose to speak on previous business, and while I am delighted that we have this opportunity to return to the matter, I think that the blame lay with the hon. Gentleman for not being present rather than with anyone else.

I shall try to answer some of the questions asked by the hon. Members for Dundee, East and for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross). First, however, I will explain our overall policy on community care. We shall be bringing forward proposals for further development of community care in due course, but hon. Members will accept that this is a complex subject, and I do not think that I can say anything definite at this stage about when an announcement is likely to be made.

Before dealing with the circumstances of the community project about which the hon. Member for Dundee, East is concerned, I will say something about the provision of community care nationally. Gross expenditure on the Health Service in Scotland has increased by 34 per cent. in real terms since the Government took office and the planning figure for social work services has risen by no less than 67 per cent. in real terms over the same period. Those remarkable resource increases should be borne in mind in assessing the scope for futher development in community care.

We have heard a great deal about the generosity of Tayside region and how it stepped into the breach. Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Dundee, East did not tell the House that Tayside's grant for the coming year is very substantial. It represents an 11·1 per cent. increase over this year—well above the rate of inflation and the average increase of 9·8 per cent. that authorities have received. Moreover, grant penalties have been abolished so Tayside will receive the sum in full. It is true that Tayside's grant has been abated in the past, but that was the result of overspending and inability to control its financial affairs.

As I understand it, the Minister's assessment of the need for social work spending in Tayside is not yet matched by actual expenditure. That is the result of the activities of a Conservative administration, which consistently underspent on social work provision over a long period. Since it came into office, the Labour administration has increased expenditure on social work services every year until this year and it has been penalised by the Minister and the Government for doing so.

Since the Government took office, the resources made available for planning for social work have increased by 67 per cent. in real terms. The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that Tayside spends less on the elderly than a number of local authorities. That is because of the way in which the Labour group has chosen to allocate the very substantial additional resources made available to the local authority. I would certainly wish to encourage the authority to redress the balance and make more resources available for the elderly from the substantial pool available to it. The background in Scotland has been of substantial additional support for the elderly. There has been a 16 per cent. increase in residential places for the elderly, a 68 per cent. increase in the number of day centre places and an increase of about 29 per cent. in home help provision. That is a result of the substantial resources that the Government have provided for local Government.

Will the Minister give way?

No, I want to make a little progress. I know that the hon. Member for Dundee, East is particularly interested in Tayside.

Primary responsibility for community care provision lies with the local authorities, health boards and housing agencies. The increased resources for the NHS in Scotland have led to a 40 per cent. increase in the number of beds and day places in psychogeriatric provision. National Health Service hospital provision for the elderly in Tayside stands at 26 beds per 1,000, compared with a national average of 24 beds.

The hon. Members for Dundee, East and for Dundee, West referred to the difficulties allegedly faced by care schemes in adapting to the employment training arrangements. We believe that employment training marks a significant development—in our view, an improvement —over its predecessor, the community programme. Employment training is targeted specifically at providing training designed to enhance full-time job opportunities for those taking part in the programme. That means that the Training Agency and local training managers must ensure that individual projects or schemes wishing to be involved in the ET arrangements must show that their activities contain an element of training which will benefit individuals looking for full-time jobs.

Many of the care schemes about which we hear are closely linked to the types of services that local authority social work departments or health boards can often provide at their own hand. It seems to follow, therefore, that the care schemes must be doing work which is relevant to functions already exercised by those statutory bodies.

There are claims—the hon. Member for Dundee, West has touched on them—that inflexibilities in employment training mean a reduction in the independence of individual schemes if they participate in ET. That seems to mean that for fairly small individual schemes it often makes more sense for the local training managers to bring together a number of projects for training purposes because this is the most cost-effective way of monitoring the training element. It is not the Training Agency or local training manager's intention to usurp the proper management responsibilities of individual scheme managers, nor does it mean that the aims or objectives of schemes should be significantly altered or influenced by this administrative arrangement.

A further allegation is that care schemes cannot hope to attract a sufficient number or quality of trainees because of the type of activity and the anti-social hours—that is, weekends—which those schemes often involve. I find it hard to believe that that is an overriding argument against care schemes participating in ET. Local training managers have been flexible in trying to identify and select suitable trainees and terms, and conditions of working have been adapted to suit the needs of individual schemes. The proof of this and of the other points I have made in this connection is that there are care schemes within ET that operate satisfactorily and have not suffered any of the traumatic effects that the hon. Member for Dundee, East and other detractors of ET seem to envisage. Many care organisations in Tayside have successfully made the transition from community programme to employment training. These include, Broughty Ferry community care and Clepington parish church. Indeed, I understand that both these projects are to all intents and purposes identical to Menzieshill. I am sure that the schemes are known to the hon. Member for Dundee, East, as they clearly were to the hon. Member for Dundee, West.

The obstructive attitude of the Scottish TUC and COSLA, including some local authorities such as Tayside regional council and Dundee district council, had an initial adverse impact on the implementation of employment training in Scotland. Many community programme providers were pressurised into following the STUC-COSLA line and declined to transfer to the new programme. Most of the people lost from Government training programmes in consequence reverted to unem-ployment. What does that tell us about local authority attitudes to the plight of the unemployed? Employment training is now progressing well, however, with more than 20,000 places filled in Scotland and more than 500 in Dundee. The national training programme cannot, of course, be revised to accommodate every peculiarity of every scheme. There is enough flexibility and discretion within the programme, and with co-operation and realism on both sides the scheme can be made to fit most circumstances.

The Menzieshill project was formerly funded under the community programme, but since September last year it has relied significantly on grants from Tayside regional council. The project, in common with several others in Tayside, chose not to participate in employment training. I have already set out the Government's views on the wider matter of how care schemes can take advantage of ET if there is a willingness and flexibility to do so.

The hon. Member for Dundee, West mentioned Crossroads. We have been saying to health boards and local authorities that they should use the powers and substantial resources available to them to assist organisations such as Crossroads. We have also been encouraging Crossroads to try to find patterns of operation which will meet the ET rules.

The Menzieshill project is clearly a broad-based community scheme aimed at helping a range of people, including the elderly, with ordinary day-to-day tasks. The original aim of the project was to provide a home visiting-caring service for the elderly, infirm, disabled and housebound within the local housing estate. That is community care in a very general sense, not specifically related to the health or social work services in quite the way that they were addressed in Sir Roy Griffiths' report.

None the less, I can see that for the 300 to 400 people who use or benefit from the project each year, it is a worthwhile venture.

The latest information that the hon. Member for Dundee, West has given suggests that project managers may not be particularly interested in exploring the scope for identifying suitable training elements in their activities and that project representatives see no possibility of ET being able to provide assistance to the project.

The hon. Gentleman said that Tayside regional council agreed earlier this month to continue for a further six-month period its present grant support to a number of community care schemes in Dundee, including the Menzieshill project. I understand that council officers have been instructed to discuss with each of the projects concerned their normal core funding arrangements. The council will then be in a position to assess the budget implications of its providing continuing grant support for those projects on a longer term basis. I very much welcome the positive and constructive approach taken by the regional council in the circumstances, but I must say that it is in rather stark contrast with its outlook on employment training.

The hon. Gentleman seemed to be asking whether that further six-month period would provide a breathing space and whether the Government should consider adjustments to ET more easily to accommodate community care projects. As I have said, I find that difficult to accept in principle, given that a number of projects—and one or two in Dundee which seem virtually identical to Menzieshill —have not found too much difficulty in meeting the ET criteria. On the face of it, therefore, I do not think that there is a strong case to be made for changes in the ET rules, and nothing that the hon. Gentleman has said amounts to new evidence or facts which have not already been considered.

I believe that ET can and will continue to play its part in support of community care projects. I accept that some adaptation to meet the different needs of ET is often required, but it would be unfortunate if worthwhile projects of benefit to vulnerable groups such as the elderly were to cease, not as a result of practical considerations but because of ideological resistance to ET from local authorities, trade unions and the Labour party.

We have done all that we can to make funding available for community care services in Scotland. It is clear from the organisations and care projects already within the ET arrangement that there is no intrinsic barrier to involvement. I have mentioned two schemes in or around Dundee which carry out the same type of activities as Menzieshill. If, however, schemes are forced to close or to contract significantly because of an unwillingness to look toward employment training for funding, the collective opposition of local authorities, STUC and the Labour party in Scotland must bear their share of the responsibility.

The Minister is trying to say that Labour and the STUC oppose the schemes. Does he understand that the Conservative group on Tayside regional council, who originally thought that ET could be used, has reversed its position and agrees that there should be special provision for community projects of that kind?

Regrettably, the Conservative group is not in power in Tayside region. If the behaviour of the Labour party in Tayside region in respect of ET is anything to go by, I look forward to the day, which may not be far ahead, when the Conservative group is in power as a result of the strong feelings of the electorate about the way in which politics are being used to the disadvantage of the elderly and other vulnerable groups in the community.

The unhelpful background of prejudice cannot detract from the success of ET in Scotland. The voluntary sector is already helping to provide over 10,000 project places —50 per cent. of all ET places in Scotland. Nor can it diminish the high standard of community care development in health and social work that was achieved during this Government's term of office.

I put a simple and stark proposition in relation to the testing of cosmetics on laboratory animals. In 1987, 14,534 animals died needlessly, and often suffered needlessly before they died. No more licences for such animal suffering should be granted.

I will not harrow the House with details of what some experiments involve, but they are, perhaps, symbolised by the irritancy test which is applied to the eyes of rabbits. Scientists want to see whether a human being would suffer irritation and other unfortunate effects from a substance. Those substances are applied to rabbits' eyes, and they must be secured so that the animals cannot interfere. Many of us have been sickened by such experiments when we have seen either descriptions, or even worse, illustrations of them.

I shall explain to the House and to my hon. Friend the Minister why my opposition is entirely practical and not simply pie in the sky. First, my understanding is that there are no regulations in this country requiring animal experiments for the purposes of cosmetics. The 1984 regulations, which relate to the safety of cosmetics, state only that

"a cosmetic product shall not be liable to cause damage to human health when it is applied under normal conditions of use."

The term "cosmetics" covers a wider range than simply what one might think of as lipstick, mascara, face powder and the like. It applies to any substance which goes on the body to cleanse it, improve its look, protect it in some way from the sun, or improve its smell. That includes a range of substances such as toilet soaps, perfumes, antiperspirants, hair lacquer, hair tint and bleaches, anti-wrinkle products, and sun-bathing products.

As far as I can judge, there are no mandatory requirements for animal testing of such products in northern European countries, the United States, or Australia. France has its own twist. The authorities there ask for a detailed dossier on a certain ingredient or formulation, and can require animal testing if they think that it is necessary, but it is by no means a mandatory universal requirement. There are particularly interesting arrangements in the United States. They have a list of ingredients which are generally recognised as safe—GRAS, they call it for short. Those substances which have a long proven record of safety and reliability, primarily in household products and cosmetics, can go on the list, and no further testing is required.

My main point is that, irrespective of whether such applications are mandatory—and I hope that I have proved they are not—it is unnecessary to test such products by the use of animal experiments. There is a very long history of the application of some ingredients and formulations. If we want to have proof positive of that, it lies in the number of firms that state now that they have either never tested on animals or no longer do so. The impressive list includes such well-known names as Yardley, the own brands of Boots, Marks and Spencer, and Sainsbury, Rimmel, Innoxa, Body Shop products and a host of others.

Indeed, if anyone is interested, the RSPCA has produced an interesting booklet which I have in my hand, listing the firms that do not use animal tests, and their products. The list is as comprehensive as it is possible to be, although it is never easy to keep it up-to-date.

At the end of the booklet is a very interesting statement of the policies of various companies and I shall read two of them to give an indication of their appoach. For example, Rose Laird International says:

"first stage of testing is under laboratory conditions for culture testing. Each batch of manufactured goods is tested on approximately 30 to 50 women, prior to filling into final packaging. Samples of each batch are kept as a matter of course for historical testing."

Yardley, a very well-known name in cosmetics. says:

"The safety of our products is confirmed by human patch test studies, no animal studies, either on formulations or ingredients, are undertaken on behalf of or at the request of the company."

If it is good enough for such major companies and household names not to test, I fail to see why any tests are necessary.

Let me deal now more specifically with the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, under which licences for cosmetic testing must be applied for. I recall that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), when he was piloting the Bill through the House made it very clear in his direct and forthright way that he did not regard the Act as static. He deliberately tried to formulate the Act so as to respond to new needs and requirements, and a new approach. I am sorry to see, so far, that that point has not been taken on board sufficiently clearly with regard to cosmetics experiments.

Under the Act, all cosmetic licence applications must be referred to the Secretary of State's statutory advisory body, the Animal Procedures Committee. It should take a very much harder line, and should recommend that a new requirement is attached to applications for licences, to ensure that unnecessary experiments do not take place. There should be some form of needs condition, whereby a company would have to indicate that human volunteers are not possible. Even more important—I stress this to the Minister today—there should not be other products on the market that would fulfil the role that the new product has in mind. On that basis, 99 per cent. of licences would be turned down.

In many ways, I am surprised that licences have been granted under the Act. A useful cost-benefit analysis is provided by the Act, whereby the benefit that will accrue is weighed against the pain, suffering and loss of life suffered by the animals. It would be hard for any cosmetics company to put hand on heart and sign that declaration with sincerity. The procedures committee should look hard at that formulation to see whether the committee should allow licence applications to succeed, as that criterion is already built into arrangements for licensing.

In many cases, it is not possible for members of the public lawfully to take direct action. I would be the very last to commend anyone to do an act that broke the law. But here we have a superb example of where women and men—some items are used by men, including shampoos and after-shave lotions—can decide whether it is acceptable that an animal should suffer during testing. They can choose from the very wide range of products that are no longer tested on animals, or never have been. I commend to anyone who feels strongly about this, as I do, to look at the lists available and make their views known by buying the cruelty-free products, as well as writing to firms whose products they usually buy to say that they will no longer do so unless action is taken to stop the testing.

I hope, too, that cosmetic companies will not be too coy about saying in their advertising that they do not test on animals, or no longer do so. I recognise that some of them might feel awkward because they have commissioned studies in the past but we are concerned with what they are doing now and what they intend to do. I hope that they will not be backward in coming forward in that respect. I am sure, from the number of letters that I and other hon. Members have received, and from the many signatories to early-day motion 44, that there is a groundswell of opinion that this activity is no longer acceptable.

People may say reluctantly that testing is necessary and must be accepted because of its role in medicine to save human life and suffering, but I for one do not want to use make-up or other toiletries that have been used on animals. In order to beautify ourselves, we have made unhappy, innocent animals suffer.

I hope that my hon. Friend will reply in a forthright way on the lines that I have so strongly advocated this morning.

I am sure that the whole House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Dame J. Fookes) for bringing the subject of the safety testing of cosmetics before the House this morning. It is undboutedly a matter of public concern. It is also one in which it is very important to strike a balance between ensuring that the substances that we use every day are safe, and reducing the number of animals and the severity of procedures that are used in this essential safety testing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Drake was right to draw the attention of the House to the broad interpretation given to the word "cosmetic". We must be clear about its meaning. In ordinary language one would assume that it was confined to ornamental substances such as lipstick or mascara, but as my hon. Friend rightly says, that would be a mistake; "cosmetic" has a very wide meaning.

Under the European Community cosmetic directive 76/768, which was promulgated on 27 July 1976, cosmetics include any substance intended for placing in contact with the external parts of the body, the skin, the hair, nails, lips, genital organs, the teeth and the mouth in order to clean, perfume or protect them, so as to keep them in good condition, change their appearance or to correct body odours.

Clearly, cosmetics are a wide category. As my hon. Friend fairly said and as I have already stated, we are not talking exclusively about lipsticks and perfumes. We are also talking about virtually any cream, lotion or oil; virtually any powder; soaps, shampoos and shaving creams; toothpastes and mouthwashes; deodorants and products for what is known technically as "intimate hygiene"; and a range of products used in factories such as a form of gel to remove oil from people's skin. It is a long list, that could go on and on.

Inevitably, some of the substances are applied to sensitive parts of the body for prolonged periods, so the House will agree that we must ensure that they are safe and that the very best and most effective procedures are used for establishing the safety of these products when in use. When I say that we must do those things, I mean that we are under a legal obligation, a moral obligation and a social obligation to do so. My hon. Friend has set before the House her case for the reduced use of animals in cosmetics testing. I agree with her objective of the reduced use of living animals. That is the Government's position. However, where I disagree with her is on the possibility of the total elimination of such testing.

My hon. Friend has been kind enough to recognise that, under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which was so successfully steered through the House by my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Department of Health, we have introduced a substantially more rigorous system of control over the conduct of all scientific procedures on animals. All work now has to be authorised by project licences.

Under section 5 of the 1986 Act, the Secretary of State shall

"weigh the likely adverse effects on the animals concerned against the benefit likely to accrue"

and

"not grant a project licence unless he is satisfied that the applicant has given adequate consideration to the feasibility of achieving the purpose of the programme … by means not involving the use of protected animals."

It is thus a balancing exercise. All project licence applications for the testing of cosmetic substances are subject to special conditions. They are carefully scrutinised by the inspectorate and all are referred to the Animal Procedures Committee.

We are not talking here about a very large number of licensees—there are currently only six project licences. All are held by commercial concerns with special expertise in safety testing.

All the licencees have an obligation to ensure that substances which might be expected to have a severe reaction are not tested under a cosmetic project licence, and all the licensees are aware that the purpose of safety tests on cosmetics is to establish the mildness of the substances they are testing. That point was highlighted in the discussion of cosmetics in paragraphs 3.6 to 3.14 of the 1987 annual report of the Animal Procedures Committee.

The effect of the stringent conditions that we have put on cosmetic testing using living animals for many years, and the concern of the industry to use animals only when strictly necessary, has led, I am glad to say, to a progressive reduction in the use of animals for cosmetic testing over recent years. In 1980, for example, the number was 31,300: by 1987, this had fallen to 14,500, or less than 0·5 per cent. of all animal procedures.

I come now to the part of my hon. Friend's argument where I cannot wholly agree with her. I cannot agree with her when she suggests that we can now bring an end to all cosmetics testing on living animals because the effect of that would inevitably be to stop the innovation and development of new ingredients.

It is important that I emphasise once again that we are not talking merely about mascaras and lipsticks, because there might be a case for saying that we know quite enough about mascaras and lipsticks and so there is no need to develop our knowledge further; as my hon. Friend fairly said, "cosmetics" is given a broad definition. I do not think that it would be right to put a prohibition on development and innovation across the broad spectrum of products that are covered by the definition of "cosmetics".

I shall give some examples that might be worth thinking about. This morning the House could easily have been discussing aerosols and the threat to the ozone layer. All hon. Members are now wholly persuaded of the need to find alternatives to CFCs for use in aerosols, but many of the products for which aerosols are necessary are cosmetics. It is inevitable and right that the alternatives to CFCs must be tried for safety before they can be marketed.

I shall give another example. For reasons that are well known to the House, the House has been concerned about food safety. One question concerning the industry is the safety of preservatives used in food. The same thing applies to cosmetics because, by the nature of cosmetics, when broadly defined as I have defined them, preservatives play an important part. It is essential that we should ascertain the safety of those preservatives. We must ascertain whether chemical or microbiological degradation is likely to lead to infection or adverse reaction. Preservatives are one of the more common causes of allergic responses to cosmetic products. I do not think that we should say that we can now draw a line under our knowledge of preservatives. I find that proposition difficult to accept.

It is right that work should continue to make preservatives safe. The only way of guaranteeing that they are safe—in so far as guarantees are possible—is to carry out some tests on living animals. The testing of such preservatives counts for statistical purposes as the testing of cosmetics.

The plain fact is that similar arguments apply for a wide range of other cosmetic products. It goes without saying that shampoos must not irritate the eyes or cause hair loss, that toothpaste must not inflame the gums and that creams to protect the skin must not produce a rash.

Even substances which we may use very rarely must be tested to make sure that the workers who produce them, and are therefore exposed daily to large quantities, are not at risk. Again, such testing counts in our statistics on cosmetics testing.

Understandably, my hon. Friend raised questions of law. The point is that, if cosmetics are to be made in this country, manufacturers must comply with a common law requirement to ensure that their products are safe as well as meeting both our own and European Community legislation, in particular the Cosmetic Products (Safety) Regulations 1984, which implement the European Community's cosmetics directives, and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Indeed, without proper testing involving animals, manufacturers could become liable—in my view, rightly so—for heavy damages if they sold cosmetic products which seriously injured the health of their customers.

Taking a broad view of the matter and having regard to the liability, or potential liability, of manufacturers, it seems to me that they simply could not establish that they had taken "all reasonable care"—which is the test in negligence actions—if in certain cases they had failed to carry out procedures on living animals. I do not see how they could satisfy their common law, not to say their statutory, duties in that respect.

We should also note that the European "Notes for Guidance for the Toxicity Testing of Cosmetic Ingredients" make the requirement for testing in living animals explicit, following an earlier report by the Scientific Committee on Cosmetology.

That report stated:

"some in vitro systems have been developed so that they can be used as screening tests to indicate the possibility of a long-term risk, but the results still have to be confirmed in mammals. Most of the adverse effects associated with cosmetics … are such that they can only be demonstrated in mammals".

As I have told the House, we share the concern of hon. Members to ensure that this testing is kept to a minimum. The Home Secretary has specifically sought the advice of the Animal Procedures Committee about cosmetic testing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Drake will agree, that committee is an unusually distinguished and independent-minded committee.

In its annual report laid before Parliament in December the APC set out its current position on cosmetics testing. It has asked for special reporting requirements to be imposed on cosmetic project licences to enable it to carry out a thorough review of the subject in due course. We are also encouraging alternatives to the use of living animals whenever possible, and I am glad to say that the industry has responded.

At the moment, alternative methods are used to screen substances before they are tested on living animals. This is particularly important with tests such as the Drain eye test to which my hon. Friend referred. Before embarking on such tests, a safety evaluation must be carried out using published information to establish lack of irritancy. When available, tests not involving living animals must also be used. Only if those are satisfactory are tests performed using living animals, arid, whenever possible, the substances are diluted for the test.

My hon. Friend, in an interesting speech, talked at some length about so-called "cruelty-free" cosmetics produced by companies which claim not to test their products on living animals. do not pretend that we in the Home Office are particularly expert in that sphere. Our concerns, as my hon. Friend will be aware, are to ensure that all procedures involving living animals are properly justified and correctly carried out.

One should approach some of the claims with a degree of caution. The term "cruelty-free" is certainly vague. It could be judged to be emotive. Like a number of similar claims for products, such as those which are described as "home made" or "organic", it is not always clear exactly what is being claimed.

The phrase "cruelty-free" may imply that the product has not been tested on living animals or that when it was, the testing did not involve cruelty. It is of course always possible for a company to market a product which is known to be non-toxic without the need for further testing —we would encourage that whenever possible—but I am told that some of the claims about "cruelty-free" substances are not always what they seem. I know that some companies claim that their finished products are not tested on animals, but that as a proposition is true for the majority of products, as, in general, it is only the ingredients which are tested, and then only when they are being developed.

I know, too, that some companies claim that the substances they use have not been tested on living animals within the last five years. But most companies could claim that with a degree of justice. Because of the time it takes to develop a new ingredient and obtain European Community acceptance, it is relatively uncommon for a new ingredient to be marketed within five years of its safety clearance.

I share the wish of my hon. Friend that, whenever, possible and whenever it is safe to do so, the safety of cosmetics should be established without recourse to animal testing. In the meantime, we should be clearer what the claim to be "cruelty-free" means, and perhaps we would be wise not to take all these claims at face value.

I am sure that this is not the last time that the House will debate these issues. It is right that there should be a continuing awareness of them. It is right, too, that my hon. Friend, with her knowledge and expertise of this issue, should take opportunities to bring the matter before the House.

The Government are concerned to ensure a correct balance. The correct balance, as we judge it to be, is the balance between, on the one hand, the proper and effective safety testing of everyday personal hygiene and toilet preparations and other cosmetics broadly defined and, on the other, the use of living animals in this testing.

We believe that the controls that we have introduced in the 1986 legislation are effective in ensuring that the only testing which is done is that which is necessary and which is required by proper regulatory authorities and testing which is properly conducted.

We are keeping the matter under review and are in discussion with licensees about the conduct of their work. The public must be reassured that experiments on living animals are conducted only when there is no alternative and, equally, that the wide range of what are defined as cosmetic substances which they may use every day are safe for them and for their children.

I now understand what it means when hon. Members tell me that the timetable of the House is extremely fluid. I am reminded of the time when I was an advocate in the magistrates court, standing outside the court waiting for my case to come on, to be told that the best estimate was such and such a time, only to discover that that estimate was wildly inaccurate. I am grateful that I have not been caught out on this occasion.

I am grateful to the Minister of State for being here to respond to this important debate. In normal times, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary would have been at the Dispatch Box, but unfortunately he has been indisposed of late. I trust that the Minister will convey to him my best wishes and those of my hon. Friends for a speedy recovery. Indeed, I am sure that that is the wish of the House generally.

On 3 March of this year the Secretary of State for Wales approved plans by Gwynedd health authority to close a number of hospitals in the county and to transfer some services to other sites. This could be seen as the culmination of a long period of public discussion and concern which began in the autumn of 1987 when the plans were first announced.

What else, may one be forgiven for asking, is there to say? The Secretary of State has given what some will see as the final word on the matter, save that there will be a further short period of consultation on the future of Caernarfon cottage hospital. I say that some people might come to that conclusion, but my hon. Friends and I have not. I aim through this debate to highlight the profound concerns which remain.

The Secretary of State carries the ultimate responsibility for the provision of health services in Wales. That duty is clearly set out in section 1 of the National Health Service Act 1977 which states:

"It is the Secretary of State's duty to continue the promotion in England and Wales of a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement—

(a) in the physical and mental health of the people of those countries, and—

(b) in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness, and for that purpose to provide or secure the effective provision of services in accordance with this Act."

I stress the word "comprehensive". It does not mean the provision of an unbalanced, incomplete or disjointed service, but that provision of services should be across the board, dealing with all aspects of mental and physical health for children, young, middle-aged and old people in the acute sector and in the community.

The Secretary of State is also charged with a more specific duty in section 3 of the Act, which states:

"It is the Secretary of State's duty to provide throughout England and Wales, to such extent as he considers necessary to meet all reasonable requirements—

(a) hospital accommodation;

(b) other accommodation for the purpose of any service provided under this Act;

(c) medical, dental, nursing and ambulance services;

(d) such other facilities for the care of expectant and nursing mothers and young children as he considers appropriate as part of the health service;

(e) such facilities for the prevention of illness, the care of persons suffering from illnesses and the after-care of persons who have suffered from illness as he considers are appropriate as part of the health service;

(f) such other services as are required for the diagnosis and treatment of illness."

That is the Secretary of State's remit. He fails in his duty if the Health Service in any part of Wales does not meet the general requirement in section 1 and the specific requirements in section 3 which are subject to some qualifications.

Neither the Secretary of State nor his Department have day-to-day conduct or control of the service. Under sections 13 and 15 of the Act, he has powers to direct district health authorities to carry out those functions on his behalf.

I shall outline the background leading to the rationalisation plan and seek to persuade the Minister to set up an inquiry under section 85 of the Act, having regard to the fact that the authority is not providing a comprehensive health service in Gwynedd.

The Welsh Office commissioned a firm of management consultants, Deloitte, Haskins and Sells, to report on the health authority's financial affairs. As the Under-Secretary of State admitted in a debate in the House on 14 June 1988, that was a direct result of Welsh Office concern at the way in which the authority ran its finances. The Under-Secretary of State for Wales said:

"I cannot say that I am satisfied with the level of financial management shown by the authority. That was one of the reasons for calling in management consultants. The consultants' recommendations bear out that."—[Official Report, 14 June 1988; Vol. 135, c. 549.]

The report was scathing in its condemnation of the authority's management team and its lack of financial planning, budgetary control and management accounting system. I shall quote some examples of the comments in that report, but there were many others. Paragraph 54 states:

"Insufficient management action was taken".

Paragraph 55 continues:

"We have to conclude that the authority's senior managers have not addressed the difficult but necessary task with sufficient urgency and co-ordination"

and paragraph 86 goes on:

"Planning operates outside the general management structure".

The clear implication is that the Welsh Office demanded that the authority implement the package of measures proposed by Deloittes to bring it back into balance and avert a major financial catastrophe. The measures suggested by Deloittes largely formed the basis of the rationalisation plan which was ultimately backed by the Secretary of State in toto except for the hospital at Caernarfon, which had a temporary reprieve.

The part played by the Welsh Office in the plan cannot be denied. It appointed Deloittes in May 1987 to report on the authority and that was quite clear from the terms of reference it gave. Arising directly from the instructions to the consultants are the hospital closure plans. In giving the consultants terms of reference which did not mention the need to have regard to the adequacy of health care in the county, the Welsh Office effectively directed the consultants to produce a report which would recommend cuts.

The Welsh Office wrote to Deloittes on 6 October 1987 referring to assurances of continued support to the authority

"so long as they accept the need for full implementation of the programme".

When the authority told the public during the consultation period that the package had to go through as a whole, it obviously had that stricture very much in mind.

The inevitable question which now arises is why was the authority in such a financial predicament. The clear implication is that once again the financial difficulties arose in the 1980s, partly due to the authority's failure to control the capital and revenue costs of ysbyty Gwynedd. That is referred to in Deloittes report.

The willingness of the health authority to axe community hospital services because of financial pressure and its reluctance to give priority to community service development led many to believe that those with a preference for the further growth of ysbyty Gwynedd wielded real power at the expense of the outlying communities. In my opinion, the authority's current management structure contributes to the concentration of resources at ysbyty Gwynedd. The management team includes officers who represent geographical districts rather than clinical disciplines. There is a strong case for arguing that discussions on spending should be based on priorities within disciplines rather than geography. Effectively, that means that no one person is responsible for community services. As a result, weaker districts constantly lose out in the battle for cash. Cuts are nearly always made in community provision because of the geographical strength of the district in which ysbyty Gwynedd is located.

It is true that Gwynedd health authority has a strategic plan which includes plans for community hospitals, but they are nothing more than academic exercise. In my view and those of my colleagues, the authority should have grasped the nettle long ago. Clwyd health authority did so in the mid-1970s and it now has a network of small community hospitals with full attendant services. I challenge the Minister to say that Gwynedd has a single community hospital anywhere in the county which meets those basic requirements. I refer the Minister to the remarks of the junior Health Minister responding to a similar debate on 21 March setting out four basic provisions which are required for community hospitals, none of which are present in Gwynedd.

Gwynedd health authority says that it does not have the resources to contemplate such a programme, yet the Welsh Office claims that it is one of the best-funded health authorities in Wales, based on the latest capital and revenue formulae. Who is right? The debate continues and while statistics and formulae are discussed ad nauseam the public suffer. The general public, who are not responsible for the authority's financial crisis, have been denied a comprehensive health service. Elderly people are being denied dignity in their old age and some are being hospitalised and institutionalised due to the lack of adequate day-care facilities and support for carers. There is a chronic shortage of speech therapists for children with speech problems and elderly people who have suffered strokes. Gwynedd has 11 speech therapists when it should have 45. There is also intense pressure on physiotherapists and occupational therapists. I have seen elderly people suffering from senile dementia shunted from establishment to establishment because of the lack of adequate facilities to care for them. Relatives of elderly people have telephoned me late at night in desperation and at their wits' end because they have been told that they must find accommodation for their elderly relative urgently as the hospital bed is required by another patient.

I am particularly worried about the lack of provision for the elderly mentally ill. Why should Gwynedd be denied these services? Who in reality pays the price for the health authority's inability to come to terms with its financial and planning responsibilities? Why has it failed to develope a coherent strategy? The health authority seems to get away scot free——

I regret to have to inform the House of the death of Robert McTaggart Esquire, the Member for Glasgow, Central. I desire on behalf of the House to express our sense of the loss that we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the hon. Member.

With permission, I shall make a statement about the explosion at Vibroplant, Fengate, Peterborough.

At 9.35 yesterday an ICI Nobel's Explosives lorry of standard design, carrying 800 kg of explosives, caught fire while on a routine delivery. I understand that the driver pulled into the nearest yard, which was that of Vibroplant plc, Newark road, Fengate, Peterborough, and called the fire brigade. While in attendance, the lorry exploded, killing one fireman and injuring more than 80 people. Some have serious injuries. I want to convey the Government's sympathy to the families of the dead fire officer and the injured.

At least five premises were seriously damaged and the police declared a major emergency. The scale of this tragic incident has been major. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney) is at the site and will be giving us an urgent report. My noble Friend the Minister of State, Home Office is visiting the Cambridgeshire fire brigade. Two factory inspectors and two explosives inspectors are at the site to conduct an investigation. The Health and Safety Executive will be preparing a report. I will not pre-empt the conclusions of the investigation. The report will be published and a further statement will be made to the House then.

The relevant legislation is the Conveyance of Explosives on Roads Byelaws which lay down rules for the carriage of explosives by road. New Carriage of Explosives by Road Regulations, to be made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, will be laid before the House in early April. A copy is being placed in the Library.

The current byelaws do not require vehicles carrying explosives to display any warning signs. For security and safety reasons, it was believed that the presence of a two-man crew should be sufficient. During the drafting of the new regulations and after detailed consultations, the Health and Safety Commission has concluded that the balance now lies in favour of secondary safety. The new regulations will require appropriate description placards to be displayed on vehicles. We accepted that judgment when I approved the regulations earlier this month. I apologise to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) for not giving him earlier a copy of the statement.

First, I thank the Minister for his statement. I extend my sympathy and that of my right hon. Friends to the family of Mr. John Humphries, the fire fighter who lost his life in the furtherance of his duty and in the service of the community. I also extend our sympathy and concern to those who were injured and those who are anxiously waiting at their bedsides. I note that the hon. Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney) is at the scene of the accident, and I appreciate what a difficult time it is for him.

We share the admiration of the whole House for the devotion and commitment shown by all the emergency services involved and for the hospital staff, many of whom will now share the heavy burdens of trying to heal serious injury and trauma.

Sadly, in recent months the House has had occasion to debate far too many tragic accidents involving ships, trains, planes and now, regrettably, lorries. No one can doubt that in this complex society of ours, where people and goods are constantly on the move, safety in transportation must have the highest priority. We will give every possible support to the Government in their quest for that greater safety, and in that context I welcome the Minister's statement. The issue before the House this morning is whether enough has been done to ensure the safe transport of explosive materials and whether the tragic loss of life and the injuries could have been prevented.

As with all such tragedies, some immediate questions must be asked, but asking them has not been straight forward. When I first telephoned the Department at 4 pm yesterday I was told that it was not the Department's responsibility but that of the Department of the Environment. I am grateful both that the Minister has clarified the position and to have the opportunity to ask him the following questions, particularly those with relevance to the part of his statement on new regulations.

How long has the process of consultation on the new regulations for the transport of explosives taken? When were the consultations completed? At what point were they ready to come before the House? I appreciate and support the fact that they are now coming before the House in early April. Naturally, we guarantee our support for them and we are pleased that we shall have the opportunity to give that support. Does the Minister agree that, given the clear intention of the Government to regulate, it would now be possible for the industry to act immediately, thus ensuring that, should any similar emergency occur, the fire fighters would be warned that such a dangerous cargo was on board?

While I appreciate that there have been few serious accidents of this nature, as the Minister has said on other occasions, the potential for tragedy with such hazardous loads is all too obvious. Will the Minister confirm that the regulations to which he has referred deal solely with the issue of labelling such vehicles? We support clear labelling of the hazards contained in vehicles transporting explosives. Does the Minister not consider that he should make a complete review of all aspects of the transportation of explosives? Will he undertake to make such a review and will he tell the House the number of movements of such loads of explosive cocktails on our roads each year?

In so many of these tragedies, a conflict has emerged between the needs of confidentiality and security, and those of safety. We believe that the safety of the public, the communities through which the vehicles pass and particularly of our emergency services must take priority over other considerations. In these matters, the people must have the right to know.

We welcome the new regulations and we shall support their speedy progress through the House. This latest tragedy has placed a special duty on all of us again to ask: is enough being done? I think that today the House would like to call upon safety officers, workers, managers, owners and all who work in transportation, particularly those involved in the transportation of hazardous goods, to give some extra attention and thought voluntarily to reviewing their procedures to ensure that such a tragedy does not happen again.

I agree with nearly everything that the hon. Lady has said. I want to reinforce her message of sympathy, which I am sure comes from all sides of the House, for the fire service in particular, which gets called out to incidents, not knowing what caused the incident, what the incident may be or what consequences it will have. We know that they are brave people and we pay tribute to them. It is right to pay tribute to the medical services who cope with the consequences of injury and often, sadly, death on and off our roads.

I still believe that the last time that the road transport of explosives led to a fatality was in 1957. That is a good record over 30 years for an industry which has about 15,000 to 20,000 movements a year. That is the best estimate that I have had so far and it is subject to correction. There may be some incidents of which I am not yet aware.

The work to protect both the public and those who work with explosives, which are a necessary part of our industrial life, is maintained to a high standard. Clearly, when things go wrong, and yesterday things did go wrong —we do not know what, why or who, and I do not want to prejudge any of that—we must learn the lessons. We must learn how to make existing regulations work and how to ensure that regulations can be modified at least to maintain and if possible to enhance safety. I notice the presence of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who got that clause into the Health and Safety at Work Etc. Act, which only allowed regulations to be made which would maintain or enhance safety. I am sorry: I mean the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer). The House must forgive me for mixing the two up.

The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms. Ruddock) said that we should look at the major hazards of transport of dangerous substances. Within the Health and Safety Executive, there is an advisory committee on dangerous substances which I believe for a number of years has been considering the updating of the regulations. The regulations came to the Department of Transport towards the end of January and within two months—after settling some of the questions—I approved them, a week and a half ago.

As far as I know, no other country is carrying out such good work on the issue of major hazards of transport than Britain. We look forward to the sub-committee looking at the major hazards of transport and presenting a report on all forms of dangerous goods and all modes of transport of them. It will be looking at loading and unloading, in movement and when resting up, whether on trains, in lorries or any other way. Therefore, all the information that the hon. Member for Deptford requested will be provided.

I apologise, however, if at 4 o'clock it was not possible to give a clear definition of responsibility. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Employment for being on the Front Bench. From my time at the Department of Employment, I know the necessary links of the Health and Safety Executive with many Government Departments. That does not mean that we can always define boundary problems straight away, but there is no ducking of responsibility.

I would ask those people who are ringing my office and jamming the switchboard over a potential option for a road scheme in north London, to please stop doing so immediately. It has been virtually impossible for anyone else to ring in for the past two hours, which is one of the reasons for my coming rather late to the House with the statement.

rose—

Order. I appreciate the importance of this tragedy, but I must remind the House that this is a private Members' day, and I ask for brief questions.

This is indeed a great tragedy for the people of Peterborough and surrounding constituencies, such as mine in north-east Cambridgeshire. In the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney) who was on duty in Northern Ireland when the tragedy occurred but who flew immediately this morning to be with his constituents, I wish to make a few comments with which he wishes to be associated.

First, there is no praise high enough for the emergency services of Cambridgeshire—the fire service, the police and the members of staff of the Peterborough district health authority. We would like to offer our condolences to the widow of John Humphries and our sympathy to all those who have been seriously injured. We wish them a speedy recovery.

Many jobs on the Fengate industrial estate are now at risk. About 40 small businesses are now devastated by the event and I ask the Government to make every move possible to ensure that the security of those jobs is not put at risk.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am aware that the impact of the accident will be felt not just in Peterborough but also in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon.

On behalf of my party, I would like to extend our sympathies to the family of John Humphries and also to all those who were injured in this terrible incident. I would like to extend our thanks for the brave work put in by the emergency services.

The Minister has not said whether he has any information about why the emergency services were not informed of the nature of the load. I would appreciate it if he could comment on that, although I realise that it is very early. Can he also say whether there are any rules regarding notification of such large loads of explosives as they travel around the country?

The view has been that that would not be appropriate. As I have said outside the House, a balance must be struck between security and such notification. I do not believe that any hon. Member needs reminding of what the effect of explosives in the wrong hands could be. Secondly, there is the issue of safety, which is labelling the outside so that the fire service or other emergency services can know what they are dealing with. After due consultation, the decision has been made to reverse the emphasis. Only time will show whether that is right or wrong. I say to all those involved in risk assessment in this and other areas that we are grateful for their work, because these issues are not easy.

I am sure that the whole House shares in the grief of yet another transport tragedy. Has my hon. Friend had any further thought about the possibility of a national emergency number being established? We have had the crises of Clapham, Lockerbie and others, and now a further one in Cambridgeshire. It causes great distress to the relatives involved, at a time when they are under much pressure, to remember a special telephone number. If there was a three-digit number appropriate for such accidents, I am sure that not only would British Telecom deal with that, but my hon. Friend's own staff would not have the difficulties to which he has alluded.

Secondly, as I am sure that the House will wish to have those regulations at the earliest opportunity, would my hon. Friend invite those companies which are involved in the transport of explosives to advise between now and then their movements to the services concerned, so that they can learn from the lessons and we will not have a repeat of this incident in future?

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's interest. One of the reasons why we have the safest roads in relation to population within Europe—possibly within the motoring world—is that we do not use the ministerial voice as a microphone to give an instant response to every suggestion, however well intended. The reason that we kill so many fewer than in other comparable countries, such as France and Germany, is that we rely on the collaborative work within, for example, the network of the Health and Safety Executive and the Health and Safety Commission, which is a tripartite body. We try to rely on the assessment of risk by those involved, together with the health and safety inspectorate. I pay tribute to its work, too.

I know that an emergency number is under consideration. Can I separate the point that I was making earlier about my own office? I may not be important, but the work of my office is on a day like this. If people could avoid using the private office number as a way of registering protests which they could make in other ways, it would be easier to obtain the information that I want to give to the House.

The Minister will be aware that in a series of answers since the M6 crash, about the carriage of dangerous goods, he has told me that he believes that the existing legislation is adequate, but that there are increasing numbers of accidents in which heavy goods vehicles are involved. By definition, a percentage of those will carry dangerous, if not explosive, substances. Will he undertake that the regulations will not only be laid before the House the minute it resumes, but that they will contain checks and balances? If the men driving lorries, and the emergency services, are always informed of the nature of the goods being carried, they will be able to take appropriate action when an emergency arises.

Significant changes in the new regulations are better training, marking and information on the nature of the cargo being carried and what to do with it.

The Minister will be aware that, in the chemical-producing areas such as my own, there is widespread concern about the packaging of dangerous substances which are carried on the roads. He will undoubtedly remember that I wrote to him on 28 January about a specific incident in which marking had been removed from a lorry on the instructions of the police. Subsequently, my hon. Friend will remember that he wrote to me on 9 March saying that the Government were reviewing the whole question of hazardous and explosive packaging. He then gave me the welcome news that the Government intend to act on that very soon.

That letter was also warmly received in the chemical-producing area of Teesside and my hon. Friend's statement will also receive a wide welcome. I urge him to bring forward the proposals as soon as possible to ensure that those hazard markings are improved.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Certainly the expertise of the police and other emergency services on Teesside and around Cleveland is immense and much relied on.

As has been said outside the House, there will be a European dimension, and we have asked the secretariat of the ADR system to review the decision that it wants to take, which is that there should not be marking.

I welcome the tentative tone of what the Minister has said—he is always reasonable—in the hope that we will see the shock of yesterday as a great warning. There are many circumstances in which, if the incident was repeated, the devastation would have been far more severe —for example, if a lorry had been fully loaded, if it had been in a confined space and in a built-up area. Does the Minister recall the more than 50 questions I tabled more than a year ago following the conviction on a breathalyser offence of an ammunition lorry driver who was to pick up a load in my constituency. As a result of those inquiries it is known that there have been three fires on ammunition lorries in Britain and numerous collisions and other incidents over the years.

With all the possibilities of accidents not just from explosives but from chemicals and gases carried under pressure on lorries and the possibility of a cocktail accident, are we saying today that we see yesterday as a warning and a lesson? Will our best memorial to the brave fireman who died yesterday be our realisation that our long-accepted practice of allowing tons of explosives, plus loads of inflammable fuel, plus a combustion engine to pass unguarded, unmarked and unprotected along our roads at great speed within a few yards of our homes represents a combination of risks that we can no longer tolerate?

If the hon. Gentleman really meant that last sentence it means an end to a fair amount of industry and contribution to national employment and prosperity.

In terms of risk management, I agree that we need to ensure that we have the best possible reduction of risk and that we put our efforts into the areas that will bring the greatest return. The record of the transport of explosives in this country is good. I have suggested what I believe the figures are for the past 30 years, they may be wrong, but they are certainly in the right order. It is also important to consider this matter in a both/and sense rather than an either/or sense. If yesterday was an average day, 14 people died on our roads and 5,000 will die this year—and many of them are likely to go up in fires caused by the petrol in their cars, let alone as a result of a collision with other vehicles.

I pay a general tribute to the drivers in the heavy goods vehicle industry, whose involvement in casualty accidents has been coming down at twice the rate of car drivers.

My hon. Friend will be aware of the concern felt not only by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney), who has already been mentioned and who has visited the scene, but by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) who we are glad to see in his place today.

Could my hon. Friend have discussions with those companies that convey explosives and other dangerous substances to see whether, in advance of the implementation of the new regulations, it might be possible for them to improve their procedures particularly relating to the marking of the substances? That would ensure that, even before the regulations come into effect, a repetition of yesterday's accident will be made much more unlikely.

I know that the House will acknowledge what my hon. Friend has said about my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major). The Nobel division of ICI has, over the years, had one of the best records in terms of the consideration of health and safety. I am not saying that it or anyone else is perfect, but I am sure that it is already making the investigations and inquiries to which my hon. Friend has referred.

I have taken advice and, without being able to confirm that it is absolutely right, I believe that it would not be unlawful for any company to put markings on vehicles now. They do not have to wait for the regulations to be laid and regulations to be passed.

Will the hon. Gentleman make the regulations a little more comprehensive? Together with his hon. Friends in other Departments, will he ensure that those regulations cover the transport of nuclear weapons, radioactive and other forms of nuclear material?

I think the House would prefer me to take the regulations that come from the Health and Safety Commission after the work of the Health and Safety Executive and lay them before the House as they are.

Many hon. Members who have quarries in their constituencies will be aware that those of their constituents who live close to them will have been particularly shocked and distressed at yesterday's accident. Explosives are a vital part of the quarrying and mining industry. When my hon. Friend considers this matter, will he assure us that he will bring in the mines and quarries inspectorate to consider the safety of the materials as they are conveyed to quarries, and the route that some of those materials take? I am sure that many people will be reassured by the figures that my hon. Friend has given about accidents, which should allay some people's fears. I should be grateful if he would involve the mines and quarries inspectorate in this work.

I know from my previous service at the Department of Employment that the Health and Safety Executive brings the relevant inspectorates together. I believe it is better for either myself or other Ministers to be answerable in this House, but to maintain the Health and Safety Executive and the Commission as the bodies that primarily bring the industries and the experts together from all sides of industry. It is the practitioners who have the responsibility to ensure that their work is as safe as reasonably practicable and, in this respect, I believe that the record shows that they generally have. What happened yesterday was things going wrong rather than things going according to the book.

Will the Minister accept that there seems to be a leisurely course in dealing with health and safety at work regulations? A study of the current statutory instruments list shows that many of them are intended to raise charges for optical and dental examinations and a whole host of other things. Last night the House approved many instruments that will cut legal aid without any proper scrutiny. That happens when the Government want to increase charges.

Why have health and safety regulations taken so long? Will the hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that those regulations will make absolute provisions for training and marking and that we are not about to go down the road to qualifying the requirements with the words "so far as reasonably practicable", which the Health and Safety Executive and the commission are rather fond of using? The Minister knows that those words place a cost on carrying out that requirement and such words can be used in a defence in court. We want an absolute provision so that employers are required to ensure training and proper and adequate marking.

Having transferred a partial tribute to the hon. Gentleman from his hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), I now believe that he does not deserve it. To introduce other extraneous matters when we are dealing with the serious issues of what happened yesterday and the new regulations that have come through the Health and Safety Executive machinery is to end this statement on a low note.

The hon. Gentleman should remember—assuming that he knew in the first place—that the words "so far as reasonably practicable" lift up the level of provision rather than providing a ceiling to it.

That is just not true.

If a firm can do something that is reasonably practicable, it has a duty to do it. The obligations go beyond what is just written down if it is reasonable to do that. As somebody who is not a lawyer, I do not think that I shall take legal advice from the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).

Will my hon. Friend confirm that detonators and explosives must have been carried in the same load for the explosion to take place? Will he take steps to ensure that in future, such materials are never carried in the same load? Further, will he ensure that all explosive material is immobilised in any transit journeys of the type undertaken on this occasion?

I think that my hon. Friend is asking me if such loads can be rendered inert, rather than immobilised. I cannot give an answer to his first point, but I am sure that the Health and Safety Executive's inspector's report, which will be published, will cover that issue.

Where was the vehicle destined to make its delivery? Is the Minister suggesting that the existing regulations do not require those transporting explosives to show warning signs? I am sure that many people will be astonished if that is the current practice. Will the Minister answer two questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms. Ruddock) which I do not believe he answered? When did the consultation on the new regulations begin, and when did that consultation end?

I imagine that consideration—I am not sure whether it involved consultation—started in 1979, when the last amendment to the previous regulation was made. There is a continuous process of review. I suspect that the passing of the new regulations will be the start of a new process of considering what more can be introduced.

The key point is that the majority of countries in Europe still believe that our previous, and up to now present, practice is right: the security of not advertising the fact that explosive material is being carried is better than the secondary safety which will be introduced as a result of our consultations and changes of view. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that there is a clear-cut answer, he is wrong. It would need only one more example of illicit explosives being used to cause the death of a number of people for others to turn round and say that the "obvious" point recognised by the hon. Gentleman is wrong rather than right. I have been open with the House about the change of view as to what will provide the greater protection.

In view of the time taken by the statement, the debate in the name of the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) will now conclude at 5 minutes to 12, and the debate on the legal profession will start at that time.

Before the statement I was asking who would be paying the price for the health authority's inability to develop a coherent strategy in financial and planning terms. I am convinced that in this case the patients in Gwynedd will pay the price: what a heavy price it is. Is it right that the patient pays a penalty when he or she has committed no wrong? Why should we be punishing innocent victims?

As the Minister will know, the people of Llandudno lose a children's ward, and Groesynyd hospital will close. The Druid hospital closes, with the proviso that a new ward is to be built on the Cefni site at Llangefni. The Madog hospital is to close. Caernarfon cottage hospital may have had a temporary reprieve but still faces the axe. St. David's hospital is to close and services are to be transferred to ysbyty Gwynedd.

Let me assure the Minister that neither I nor my colleagues are saying that every hospital should be kept open for all time. Hospitals need to close when the buildings are old, difficult to maintain and heat and when they become costly. However, they should not be closed at the expense of decent. comprehensive community provision.

I was astonished at some of the statements in the Secretary of State's letter of 3 March to the authority approving the plans. It said:

"The Secretary of State accepts that implementation of your Authority's proposals will in fact mean some reduction of services, including loss of beds, notwithstanding that overall implementation will maintain services and indeed improve some."

To be charitable, the Secretary of State is saying that there will be virtually no change, but, at worse, there will be a significant reduction in the provision for many people. I have no hesitation in saying that the old will suffer as a result of the plans.

On the position in Llangefni, if the health authority had introduced plans for a fully resourced, fully funded community hospital, I would not have objected, and neither would the staff and patients, to the closure of Druid.

What should be done? One does not criticise others lightly and I accept that I have been highly critical of the health authority today. I have done so only after careful consideration of the matter and in the knowledge that my views are likely to be reported. However, there are occasions when one feels that there is a duty to speak out and I do so today on behalf of my constituency and the people of Gwynedd. In my view, the authority has failed in its statutory duty to provide a comprehensive health service for Gwynedd. I call upon the Secretary of State to set up an inquiry into the affairs of the authority, as he has powers to do under the National Health Service Act 1977. If he finds that the authority is in breach of its statutory duty, he should issue a direction to ensure that it complies with that duty.

In the meantime, I call upon the members of the health authority who voted for the rationalisation plan to consider their position and ask themselves whether they can, in all conscience, remain members of an authority that has failed the people of Gwynedd.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) on securing this debate. It is a timely debate in view of the major threat to the vital hospital facilities in Gwynedd. Two hospitals in my constituency are under threat. The first, the ysbyty Madog in Porthmadog, has regrettably had its closure confirmed by the Welsh Office and the second is the Caernarfon cottage hospital, which is subject to further consultation on the dental facility, but which we fear will be subject to the same rubber-stamping exercise thereafter, as has happened to the four hospital facilities that are being closed.

I need not stress to the Minister the outrage that is felt in Gwynedd about the proposals. He should know that from his constituency. The outrage was manifested in Llandudno on Monday this week when 400 people unanimously passed a vote of no confidence. He should remember the experience of his predecessor but one, now Lord Thomas of Hendon, who, because of the strong local feelings on the issue of leasehold reform, lost his seat. The Minister should take note of that lesson.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn has put the general arguments about the failure of performance by Gwynedd health authority over a number of years. I touched on those arguments in our debate on 14 June 1988 and they were not answered by the Under-Secretary of State. They are even more persuasive now. The guts of the argument is this question: why on earth should the ordinary people of Gwynedd who depend on these hospitals be chastised and lose their services because of the health authority's ineffectiveness—an ineffectiveness which the Welsh Office has acknowledged?

Our impression is that, because the Welsh Office was not able to get from the health authority the performance that it wanted, it sent in consultants. So as not to be criticised by the Welsh Office, the health authority slavishly adhered to the consultants' report, without differentiating between or looking to the merits of individual proposals. We suspect that the health authority has called the Welsh Office's bluff. The Welsh Office is afraid not to rubber-stamp the closures in order to ensure that the health authority does not blame any future predicaments on the Welsh Office. This yo-yo game is not good enough. There is a need for greater statesmanship and vision and a need to ensure that any rationalisation is part of a coherent, long-term strategic and investment plan that ensures that there are services worthy of the 21st century.

In Porthmadog we should be moving towards a new community hospital to serve the ysbyty and north Meirionnydd area. That proposal has been put forward on numerous occasions by the health authority but is not part of any strategic plan. The closure is taking place in a vacuum. It is ridiculous that a town of the size of Porthmadog should face the prospect of having no hospital.

The number of objections to the proposed closure is so large that the Secretary of State has failed to take proper note of them. In annexes E and F of the decision the Secretary of State said that no objection had been received from any of the community health councils in Gwynedd. That was said as a justification of the closure decision.

On 13 March, a letter from the secretary of the Arfon-Dwyfor community health council to the Welsh Office said:

"The members of my Council at their recent meeting were astounded at the statement in Annex E and F that 'no objection had been received from any community health council'. A letter was sent to the Gwynedd Health Authority on 7th March, 1988, setting out this Council's detailed objections to the proposals affecting the 3 hospitals in the Arfon-Dwyfor area, namely, St. David's Hospital, Bangor; Cottage Hospital, Caernarfon; and Madog Memorial Hospital, Porthmadog. On the same date, a copy of the letter was sent to your Department".

The Welsh Office is playing with words. On 20 March, the Welsh Office said in a parliamentary answer to me that it was firmly aware of the objection of the community health council dated 7 March but, because it was it was dated March and not April, it had referred to the fact that no objection had been received from any community health council. The Minister cannot get away with that. It is not good enough. Why does the Welsh Office not just admit that it made a mistake?

indicated assent.

That would be much more honourable. I see that the Minister nods. If he is going to admit that a mistake was made, that is fair enough. However, if a mistake has been made, the whole issue should be reconsidered. The Minister should go back to the drawing board because the decision on Porthmadog was reached after an 8:7 vote at the Gwynedd health authority meeting. It was a knife-edge vote. Given the enormous number of objections, the Minister should think again.

The Porthmadog hospital was set up as a trust, as a memorial to those people from the Porthmadog area who lost their lives in the first world war. Does the Secretary of State have the right to close the hospital and reduce the service in the area? Does he have the right to sell off the building? Surely it should revert to the trustees as a war memorial building. This matter may well be taken up in a legal case by people from the Porthmadog area, who feel strongly about it. If the closure goes ahead, the Welsh Office should be warned that there will be an enormous campaign to have a new, much-needed community hospital for the area.

I should like to refer to the cottage hospital in Caernarfon. There is still a glimmer of hope because the Welsh Office has asked for further consultation to be undertaken on the dental side. The Minister knows that I and my family have a strong personal commitment to this hospital. My goodness, that hospital is not going to close if there is anything that I can do to stop it. I say that in all seriousness.

Many objections have been put forward by people in the Caernarfon area and it seems that, again, evidence has been lost. I have a full list of the names and addresses of the people whom the Welsh Office recognises as having submitted objections. It was sent to the area health authority and it has come into my possession. It does not include the names of numerous people who, I know, have sent objections. I have a letter from Selwyn Griffith, clerk of the Llanddeiniolen community health council dated 15 March, confirming that objections were sent formally opposing the closure proposals. Yet his name does not appear on the Welsh Office list or the area health authority list. That is only one example. I could quote dozens of examples of people who have written in and have had their letters acknowledged, but who have not received a copy of the consultation document or any other acknowledgement of their objection. This serious matter needs to be looked into because it appears that consultation procedures have not been carried out as they should have been.

Circumstances at the cottage hospital have changed dramatically over the past 15 months, since the closure proposals were put forward. Utilisation at the hospital in 1988 was 80 per cent. of a 14-bed facility, compared to only 67 per cent. of the 10-bed facility in the original proposal. That is a massive difference in utilisation. The staffing level is now down from 21·5 full-time equivalents in 1987—the figure given in the consultation document —to 17·5 full-time equivalents. Those two factors taken together mean that the cost at the Caernarfon cottage hospital for patients is equivalent to 10 per patient per day cheaper than in ysbyty Gwynedd, one of the alternatives being put forward. It would be ridiculous for the health authority and the Welsh Office to go ahead with the closure when circumstances have changed so dramatically since the proposals were drawn up.

There has also been an increase in the demand for geriatric provision at ysbyty Gwynedd and the specialists there have used the cottage hospital increasingly for people to recuperate in the community. Further consideration is to be given to dental provision. I ask the Minister for assurances that there will be a further public meeting in Caernarfon to consider the new proposals that he has asked the health authority to bring forward. Will he also clarify whether objections should be sent to the health authority or the Welsh Office, as the Welsh Office does not appear to take much notice of objections sent to the health authority? Will he also confirm that the whole proposal to close the cottage hospital at Caernarfon will be looked at again, rather than just the dental aspect? One aspect affects the others and logically the whole matter must be considered afresh, in its entirety. Finally, can the Minister confirm that, as circumstances have changed since 1987, those changes will be considered by the Welsh Office before a decision is taken? I support the plea made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn. Members of the health authority should consider their position and the Welsh Office should consider seriously the future of the health authority itself as a result of this sad saga.

This debate is being held in the light of the decision letter issued by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on the hospital rationalisation proposals of Gwynedd health authority and I fully understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) and for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley). Their constituents are affected, and so are mine because I too am a Gwynedd Member.

I believe that my right hon. Friend's decisions on the Gwynedd health authority's proposals were right in the context in which they were taken and that they lay the foundations for a potentially better health service in Gwynedd. Of course, my right hon. Friend and I appreciate that the process of transition to a new pattern of services is not easy, but the long tradition of service by those hospitals scheduled for closure should not blind us to the strenuous efforts of the health authority to provide a full and effective service elsewhere. The proposals that have been approved by my right hon. Friend include a number of features which will improve the service available to Gwynedd as a whole, such as the reprovision of psychiatric facilities in purpose-built accommodation at ysbyty Gwynedd and the integration of maternity services on the district general hospital site. They also include proposals of local benefit such as the centralisation of care for the elderly in refurbished premises at Llangefni in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ynys Môn. The approved proposals provide an opportunity for the health authority to build for the future, and the Welsh Office will be watching with interest to see whether the lessons that have been learned can be applied elsewhere.

The hon. Member for Ynys Môn has spoken at some length about his assessment of the management of Gwynedd health authority. It may help, therefore, if I dwell for a moment on the relationship between the health authority and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

My right hon. Friend is of course ultimately responsible for the National Health Service in Wales, but the day-to-day running of hospital services is delegated to the district health authorities. Health authorities are responsible for providing effective and efficient services to people in their districts from within the revenue resources allocated to them. They are also responsible for planning the future pattern of services, using the most appropriate combination of buildings and equipment, within the capital funding provided to them and on the basis of capital allocation assumptions for future years published for planning purposes by the Department. Authorities' shares of both capital and revenue resources are determined each year using formulae agreed by the joint NHS/Welsh Office resource allocation working group. Health authorities are under a statutory duty to keep their finances within balance.

The hospital rationalisation plans to which my right hon. Friend has given his approval form part of a package drawn up by the health authority to bring its finances into balance. The health authority first drew the attention of the Welsh Office to its financial problems at the beginning of 1987. After discussion with the authority's chairman and senior officers it was decided to bring in management consultants, at the Welsh Office's expense, to investigate the authority's financial position. The consultants concluded that the authority's problems had their roots in 1984–85, with a developing trend of overspending on budgets in following years. The authority had managed to contain its overspending by taking advantage of non-recurrent savings—including slippage on capital schemes—and in 1986–87 by substantially increasing its creditor balances. But by 1987–88, the position had become untenable.

The consultants attributed the authority's position to the cumulative underfunding of pay awards, an increase in activity levels, particularly in high-cost specialties at ysbyty Gwynedd, the failure to make recurrent savings to finance the 0·5 per cent. transfer of funds to priority groups and the effects of incremental drift on pay.

The consultants also concluded that insufficient management action had been taken to control activity and spending levels. Later in their report they were critical of the authority's systems of planning, budgeting and financial control. It is vital that, as part of its programme to restore financial balance, the authority takes vigorous action to improve its arrangements for planning, budgeting and financial control, and I am pleased that action has been set in hand to achieve that.

The authority remained within its cash limit in 1987–88 mainly as a result of advances from the Welsh Office and the effect of emergency measures adopted by the authority when its financial crisis first became apparent. A similar combination of advances, together with the effects of the emergency measures, has contained the position in 1988–89.

The problems are the more serious when set against the background of an authority that has been shown—by both the capital and revenue formulae used to assess the relative funding position of Welsh heath authorities—to be one of the best resourced in Wales. The growth in recurrent revenue resources which will have been made available to the authority in the period 1978–79 to 1989–90 is some £21·5 million, or more than 51 per cent. after adjusting for actual and expected inflation. That is the second highest rate of growth of any authority in Wales, and it compares favourably with the Welsh average of 44 per cent.

In the light of these figures, I cannot say that I am satisfied with the level of financial management which has been shown by the authority in the past. However, I am encouraged by the steps that the authority is now taking to improve its performance in that respect.

There have been several references to the consultation procedures which led to my right hon. Friend's decision letter. It may be helpful if I outline the details of the procedures under which Gwynedd health authority consulted upon its hospital rationalisation proposals. Before I do so, one or two points have been raised by the hon. Member for Caernarfon about objections by two community health councils. I openly admit that there has been an error, for which officials have already apologised to the community health councils in question, in that the letter of 3 March conveying my right hon. Friend's decision did not record the fact that objections were submitted to him by Aberconwy and Meirionnydd community health councils following the health auth-ority's meeting on 25 April. Although the decision letter in the case of Meirionnydd CHC was inaccurate in not correctly attributing the objection by Meirionnydd CHC, the council's two objections were discussed in paragraphs 19 to 21 and 34 of annex F of the decision letter.

In view of the council's statutory duty with regard to representing the interests in the Health Service of the public in Gwynedd, my right hon. Friend has looked again at its objections, but he is satisfied that his original view of them is correct and that the authority's proposal to close the Madog memorial hospital is still to be supported.

The bulk of the objections submitted by Aberconwy CHC was a copy of its representations to Gwynedd health authority during local consultation. They were considered by my right hon. Friend before the issue of the decision letter. A letter is being sent today to all those who received the original decision letter notifying them of the additional consideration that has been given in each case.

I am aware also that the hon. Member for Caernarfon has written to my right hon. Friend raising several points about the additional consultation to be carried out on the proposals for the cottage hospital at Caernarfon. My right hon. Friend will send a separate detailed reply to him. I should like to confirm that my right hon. Friend will be prepared to take into account all objections received about the cottage hospital as part of his additional consultation, whether or not they relate specifically to the dental service.

I have already referred to the responsibility of district health authorities in Wales for the detailed planning of health service provision. Responsibility for local consultation on the plans produced also rests in the first instance with district health authorities. In formulating plans, authorities are required to have in mind the need to make the most efficient use of their available resources which is consistent with the changing needs of patients. Ultimate ownership of all health authority buildings is normally vested in my right hon. Friend. In view of the fact that proposals for permanent closure or change of use can have a significant effect on the community, special arrangements have been designed to ensure that the public and all local interests are fully consulted. The procedures provide a right of appeal to my right hon. Friend, who decides on the proposals in the full knowledge of the contending considerations. Guidance is contained in the procedures for consultation on the closure and change of use of health buildings set out in planning paper No. 5. I stress that the role of my right hon. Friend is essentially to consider whether to approve the health authority's proposals, in the light of objections made to him. Under the consultation procedures, it is not the role of the Welsh Office or my right hon. Friend to draw up proposals of their own.

He has a duty.

The hon. Gentleman says that my right hon. Friend has a duty, but his duty is exactly as I have spelled it out. Of course he has a responsibility for the National Health Service in Wales, but when these sort of proposals are put before him his role is to decide whether to approve them. It is not up to him to make his own proposals.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to be the Member of Parliament who initiates our first debate on the Lord Chancellor's Green Paper on reform of the legal profession.

As, sadly, this debate has been personalised in some quarters, let me state my credentials. I am a barrister, although I make no claim to being a distinguished or senior one; I have devoted too much time to politics since the age of 20 to aspire to that. But I have a good working knowledge of criminal courts. I venture to suggest that MPs are rather more in touch with public opinion than most barristers. That is not the fault of barristers: it is simply that it is our job and not theirs.

The Green Papers have been widely reported and, it must be said, criticised by interested parties—or perhaps I should call them vested interests. There is nothing pejorative about that phrase. In a democracy, vested interests have as much right to comment as independent observers who, while they may be more objective, may be less knowledgeable.

I thought that it was time for an hon. Member to congratulate the Lord Chancellor on bringing forward the Green Papers. They are an excellent working brief for our debate. Above all, they deserve sober comment rather than hysterical outbursts in newspaper advertisements.

In my conversations with fellow barristers, it has been put to me that the Green Papers begin with dogma. My colleagues say that there is no sustained proof of the shortcomings of the Bar or of how reforms could benefit the public. The "dogma"—the alpha and omega of the papers—is a belief that restricting rights of audience and the promotion of solicitors is a restrictive practice that should be swept away. I do not view that as dogma. It is a sensible assumption.

My barrister colleagues, however, would say that such a restraint on the rights of solicitors is an historic and well-tested tradition and also protects the rights of small country solicitors, enabling them to brief the best in the land. It provides an independent cadre that is dedicated to the pursuit of justice, rather than profit or success in courts.

It has been put to me by my colleagues that, were the reforms to proceed, there would be no incentive for able young men and women to join the Bar, which would wither away as an independent force. I hope that I have been fair to the comments of my colleagues.

In my conversations with the public, I am afraid, I have found not a shred of sympathy for the barristers' case. That does not deter me from my opinions. Lawyers were unpopular long before politicans. The public seem to take the discomfiture of barristers with a large pinch of salt. I attach considerably more respect to the informed lay arguments, that barristers must take their turn to be reformed, like everybody else.

I now come to my views. I hope that they represent a reasonably informed and objective view of these matters. I hold the Bar and its traditions in deep affection. I respect its senior men and women for their learning and their commitment to justice. As a nation, we should be proud of our incorruptible and dedicated judiciary. It would be a tragedy if the independent Bar was swept away or even withered away.

The traditions of integrity, the skills and the low overheads of an independent Bar compose what is probably the most efficient economic mechanism known to man. The independent contractor freely offering his services in the open market will—this is the crux of my argument—survive and prosper if the reforms are brought in.

The experience of the Commonwealth shows that an independent Bar survives such reforms. The Australian experience in New South Wales proves that an independent Bar can survive and be prosperous, vigorous and independent despite giving rights of audience to solicitors in all courts; nor have large in-house firms of advocates in New South Wales taken work from the independent Bar.

However, we need not look to Australia to confirm that analysis. Our own experience as practising barristers is cogent enough. When solicitors were granted rights of audience in county courts, many of the same arguments were used, such as: "They cannot be trusted as instruments of justice." Not only have those arguments been proved groundless, but the independent Bar flourishes in the county courts. When one walks into any magistrates court in London—I fear that I have walked into too many in my life—one sees that the benches are filled with young barristers, notwithstanding open competition from the solicitors. Why? The barristers are cheaper. They are not paid for those interminable hours of waiting around for their case to be called.

In my experience, few solicitors running busy criminal practices with large overheads and enormous out-of-court work pressures, such as meeting clients, organising bail late at night and much else, would dream of taking on lengthy, relatively poorly paid Crown court trials. Why should they, when most solicitors have known to them a group of experienced advocates who devote their whole life exclusively to court work and to the paperwork that is directly connected with it?

Again, experience in New South Wales shows that little High Court work—only about 10 per cent.—has been taken from the independent Bar by solicitors. However, equally, I have come across solicitors who can present an excellent case in long old-style committals—men with a lifetime of experience in the law and in the lower courts. Is it seriously contended that those men of mature years, of sound legal training and practical experience, are not capable of representing a client just as ably as a 22-year-old barrister with six months' desultory pupillage under his belt? Of course not.

My barrister colleagues have said that if somebody wants to become an advocate, "Why not become a barrister?" They say, "Why should we labour for years in the vineyard for little reward as a barrister, while the prodigal son—a solicitor—walks in at the last moment and helps himself to the plums?" What sort of argument is that? The enemies of the Bar would claim that it merely shows an attitude based on exclusivity—even snobbery—that has no basis in logic.

We all know how difficult it is to start at the Bar, especially for women and for minority groups, but in reality it is difficult for all of us. We have all had that experience. If a young man or woman has been forced by economic necessity to become a solicitor and if increasing family commitments make it impossible to transfer, should that young man or woman, assuming that he or she develops into an outstanding lawyer, be denied the ability to practise his or her trade at the highest level? Of course not.

At one end of the scale there is an unanswerable case in justice for the solicitors; at the other, we have well-attested evidence that the Bar will survive and prosper, even in the face of open competition. Put like that, the case for the Lord Chancellor's reforms is unanswerable.

However, all that is beside the political point: how can we, members of the Conservative party, justify dealing with restrictive practices, closed shops and vested interests for working-class people—for dockers and print workers —but not for our own people? What would the country think of us, especially as there is widespread belief that legal costs are too high?

The public remains to be convinced that more competition will not lower costs. Indeed, members of the public consider that, if they are not fortunate enough to be wealthy or able to obtain legal aid, the legal system—certainly as regards civil proceedings—is closed to them, and that is a disgrace.

Time does not permit me in this short debate to deal with conveyancing, except to address the central issue of advocacy rights. My advice to the Lord Chancellor is to listen and ponder, and perhaps to compromise on some issues, but to proceed on the main issues of the rights of audience.

I have a few suggestions, for what they are worth. Worries about multidisciplinary practices and their effect on an independent Bar should be taken seriously, and if a compromise must be made, perhaps this is an area for so doing. However, it can be asked, if barristers are to lose their right of exclusive audience in the higher courts., why should they not be compensated by free access to partnerships and direct relationships with clients?

We are giving our opponents a handle by setting up a structure of legal advisory committees and advocacy certificates. The constitutional arguments from certain judges are, frankly, bogus. The Lord Chancellor already appoints judges, and the committees will only set clown standards of practice. Perhaps we should consider simplifying matters by extending rights of audience and leave the rest to self-regulation.

In any event, I call on the judges to lower the temperature. The remark by the Lord Chief Justice was, frankly, way over the top. The judges must take the lead in suggesting consensus and refrain from using inflammatory language that does their case with the public no good.

The Bar will have to do a deal with the Law Society. The Law Society pressed the Lord Chancellor to act. and his proposals are the result. The Bar cannot will them away with a Saatchi and Saatchi advertising campaign. Indeed, it will have to do a lot better than the "Wrong, wrong, wrong" advertisment. What nonsense to suggest in that advertisement that, if the reforms were to proceed, high street solicitors would wither away. This week the Law Society published a temperate and sensible response. Its views cannot be ignored by the Bar, any more than by the Lord Chancellor.

As a Government, we believe in self-regulation. Clearly, the Bar Council and the Law Society must sort out standards of advocacy, and it is better that they, rather than we, do it. The Lord Chancellor must also do some more work on the effect on the consumer. Will this reform lower costs? As I have said, for too many people it is just not an option to go to court. Can we have more information on foreign experience?

The Crown prosecution service question must be examined in more detail. That service has not been a success. Nor, in my view, will it ever be able to attract sufficient first-class entrants, if employed barristers cannot practise in Crown courts. It would clearly be absurd if employed barristers could prosecute but employed solicitors, often working in the same office, could not. The "Wrong, wrong, wrong" advertisement from the Bar Council was also deeply insulting to the integrity of Crown prosecution service personnel.

We need more information on the nature of the Bar. I doubt that it is the small elite known to judges that it was. To what extent, however, does the esprit de corps feeling facilitate justice, and how much has that esprit de corps broken down in recent years?

Those are a few suggestions and questions. I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on having the courage and determination to take these issues on in a positive and understanding way. He has conducted himself in an exemplary fashion in this debate. He deserves the thanks and the praise of the whole House.

We live in stirring times. After 700 years, a determined Government of outsiders has dared to question the automatic rights and the closed shop of the Bar. The Bar's response has been surprising. Here is a profession which is supposedly good at thinking on its feet and which can always see the tactical advantage and the way forward, yet from this profession I see an outraged and hysterical response—hardly the cool and dispassionate dissection of an argument that I was taught as a young pupil.

I have yet to attend a meeting as a barrister where the word "consumers" is used—certainly not with approval. Now the Bar has moved to lower forms of attack. We have already heard arguments ranging from exaggeration to obvious misrepresentation and they have done no good.

The Bar has accused the Government of a sinister attack on its independence. What of news given to me last night by a colleague at the Bar, that the Bar Council has a file on me and other hon. Members which it intends to use for future attacks? It has already criticised my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor. It said that the Lord Chancellor is a Scot and does not understand the English system, that he had not thought out his proposal carefully, that he prepared it on a Sunday afternoon when he did not have a great deal of time, and that he had been pushed into it by the Prime Minister, another barrister. It says that the Prime Minister had only a short time at the Bar and does not understand how it works, and that she is simply seeking revenge for some petty pique that she acquired during her brief period at the Bar.

That is a total disgrace and does nothing to enhance the standing of an ancient profession worthy of the highest respect. The Bar argues tha the client is entitled to Rolls-Royce treatment and therefore has to pay Rolls-Royce prices, but that rests on a number of assumptions held by senior members of the profession who seem not to know or care about the junior end of the profession.

There are great variations in the ability of individual barristers and it is not necessarily the best who get into chambers or who take silk. When this year's new Queen's counsel are announced, it might be interesting to see exactly who they are. I have not had time to scan their qualifications, but I did go through last year's list.

In 1988, the proportion of QCs who had been to state schools was 28 per cent., while 72 per cent. had been to fee-paying public schools. Oxbridge provided 63 per cent., other universities provided 24 per cent. and those who had been to no university—horror of horrors—accounted for only 8 per cent. Women accounted for a mere 5 per cent. and a number of articles published two days after the silks were announced pointed out that three out of four of the 57 silks appointed that year had had the greatest difficulty in getting into chambers in the first place.

Let us examine the fate of those who do not get into chambers. They go to the City or they retrain as solicitors, but why should they not be able to become solicitors automatically? Those people are not necessarily less able: more often than not they do not come from a legal family or their faces do not fit. I suspect that part of the Bar's anxiety about rights of audience is that many of those people, who may be more talented, will be able to remain in the profession and compete as solicitor-advocates. That shows a monumental lack of self-confidence. If the Bar is the cream, the cream will rise to the top.

I know from my experience as a barrister that some of the most successful barristers have already been solicitors. The Bar must exist by its excellence alone and not be buttressed by legal restrictions.

I believe that there will continue to be a demand for the services of the Bar. Many solicitors' firms regard junior counsel as cheap overflow labour. Most clients do not care a fig for the independence of the Bar and are sick of seeing barristers fumble through cases as they learn them on their feet. The whole business of independence is a myth, certainly at the junior end of the Bar. Many firms of solicitors have a semi-permanent or permanent relation-ship with particular chambers and often send along junior counsel who deal with clients direct.

The system is charging for two tiers but only providing one. There are no complaints. Those of us who have had to go to Worksop on the Wednesday and have been given a file with a piece of pink string around it containing a piece of paper with a chap's name on it and a note saying, "Please do the necessary," do not complain, because that is our bread and butter, our £50 in the bank to make the bank manager a bit happier. [Interruption.] Yes I will speed up and get on.

It is worth pointing out that there is already competition between solicitors and barristers in the county court. We have had all these arguments before. We are now watching London firms and provincial firms of solicitors merging, but that is not cutting down work for the junior Bar. We should go in for purse-sharing. That is a sensible new reform.

At the top end of the spectrum the solicitor-advocate will be able to free himself of overheads and take work from several firms, not just his own. The crucial question is not the future of the Bar or of solicitors, but how consumers get a cheaper, quicker service with a more predictable outcome. The law has become a lottery in which only the rich and very determined will take part. The Government must step in once again to crush a vested interest in the interests of the overall good of the nation. Competition is a wind which generally blows the consumer much good. Solicitors have shown that they can withstand it, when they lost their conveyancing monopoly. If barristers are the cream of the profession, as many of them seem to believe, they, too, can adapt to a changing world.

This is a short debate and no substitute for fuller consultation with Members of Parliament. It is not possible to give any comprehensive critique of the three Green Papers.

We in the Opposition readily agree that the aims and objects of the Green Papers are beyond dispute. Legal services should be cheaper, without loss of quality. They should be readily accessible, and the services of those with expertise should be more readily known and affordable. I want to deal with the principles which should govern the approach to the Green Papers.

I shall not become involved in any inter-professional row. There is no case for restrictions which exist for the benefit of the professions, not for consumers. That goes for all the professions: judges, solicitors and the Bar. They must make themselves more readily accessible and user-friendly, and they should have the ability to advertise and inform about their specialities. I hope that the idea of advertising and making specialities known can be developed.

The hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) touched on the principle of what is described as the independence of the professions. One must be careful. The independence of the professions is an important element. By "independence" I do not mean detachment from responsibility or accountability to the general public. I do not mean that the professions should be immune from change, because that would be an arrogation of privilege. The independence of the professions means that collectively they should not be subservient to the state or amenable to any detailed political control.

I take the hon. Gentleman's point that the Lord Chancellor may wish to loosen the arrangements of access to higher courts for solicitors and to have a system of advocacy certificates. He is absolutely right that, having had that broad-brush approach from the Lord Chancellor, the detailed control of such matters should be left to the professions. That is not a vested interest argument. It is simply a point which has been made powerfully by the National Consumer Council. It stated:

"We welcome greater lay participation in the regulation of the legal profession. We are concerned, however, that the Lord Chancellor proposes to make final decisions on whether a particular area of expertise should be recognised and the standards of education and training appropriate in each case. In our view, such decisions should be made by a statutory Legal Council … employing its own secretariat."

The NCC then recommends that the detailed control of these matters should be for the professions, not the Lord Chancellor. That is absolutely right. We have had far too detailed a degree of political control exercised by the Lord Chancellor.

The next principle concerns the individual independence of lawyers. Lawyers are officers of the court and have an ethical duty to act properly, but their main and central duty must be the client they represent. They should be able to do that without fear or favour, or any conflict. When the Lord Chancellor is studying the conveyancing proposals, he should consider the way in which the property market has become concentrated in the hands of a few people. For example, the influential Prudential Assurance Company may well now be selling property as an agent, providing the mortgage to the vendor, providing an insurance policy for the vendor, providing—subject to the current proposals—legal service to the vendor, providing a mortgage to the purchaser, an insurance policy to the purchaser and so on. As the Lord Chancellor pointed out in the Green Paper, in those circumstances, the legal adviser will owe a duty to two people.

The Lord Chancellor must study carefully what is already becoming a complex monopoly of property services in the market. It would be strange if, at the time that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission is loosening up the tied arrangements of brewers, a new kind of monopoly and ties were created in relation to other services.

It is important to ensure access to all legal services and freedom of choice for the consumer. There is no difference of opinion between my party and the Lord Chancellor about the need to provide safeguards for consumers. The Lord Chancellor must consider carefully, however, the independence of employed lawyers in relation to property transactions.

Any discussion of adequate provision of legal aid is absent from the Green Paper. We do not want the contingency fee arrangement to be some kind of smokescreen for not extending legal aid and accessibility to legal services.

This is not the time to have a detailed and thoughtful discussion of the Green Paper, but I ask the Solicitor-General to make a request to the Lord Chancellor to extend the period of consultation. There is a lot of interest in the proposals.

The Royal Commission on Legal Services took a long time to consider many representations. In view of the comments that have been made, the Lord Chancellor should extend the time for consultation beyond the May deadline, particularly since his proposals did not come from any kind of multidisciplinary inquiry, but from within his Department.

Before I call the hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind), I must remind the House that this debate must conclude at 12.30 pm.

I shall be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

The Bar, as part of the legal profession, must accept that the Conservative party, which is dedicated to free and open competition, will naturally push forward its reforming ideas into the professions having dealt with many other aspects of our society.

I am concerned that the quality of the profession, its expertise in advocacy, its high standards of discipline and honesty are maintained. The independence of the Bar is not under threat from the Green Papers. Many of my colleagues at the Bar have gone over the top in their criticisms of them.

There are three important considerations. First, commercial solicitors are not coming forward in droves to seek to recruit barristers—they cannot afford them. Some 80 per cent. of solicitors' practices in this country are four-man practices or smaller. They will need an independent Bar to provide expertise on the cab-rank basis and, accordingly, it will continue. The third important consideration is that the market will rule on costs because the Bar provides a much cheaper service than solicitors, who will be unable to compete in certain areas of litigation, such as crime. For the foreseeable future, therefore, the independent Bar will survive and it is essential that it does.

There are three things that the Lord Chancellor must consider carefully in his deliberations. The first is recruitment. Earlier certificates should be granted to young barristers who go to the Bar with the intention of becoming specialists in advocacy. That must be borne in mind when considering the generalist who becomes an articled clerk to a solicitor. Barristers should be allowed to form partnerships to help them recruit and to pay new young barristers. The Lord Chancellor must give great consideration to the salaries of Crown prosecutors who will appear in the Crown court. Those prosecutors must be paid a great deal more; otherwise, the necessary quality of advocate will not be attracted.

Those are important matters, and I hope that the House will seriously consider them.

This inevitably has been a short debate and it has rightly attracted a great deal of interest. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) first on initiating the debate, and I thank him on behalf of my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor for his kind remarks, which will be much appreciated.

It will be understood that in just over five minutes I cannot cover the whole of the broad and profound issues that are dealt with by these Green Papers. Three main issues appear to have been concentrated upon in the public debates and in the debates by my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser). They are, first, the future structure of the legal profession—I emphasise the word "structure"—in relation to the rights of audience; secondly, conveyancing by financial institutions, on which the hon. Member for Norwood has made some comments; and, thirdly, very briefly, although more widely in the public, the issue of contingency fees. My hon. Friends have concentrated principally on the first issue, which is the question of rights of audience and advocacy and the questions that flow from that concerning the structure of the legal profession.

The first point that I want to emphasise, is one that my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor has been at pains to emphasise in two recent conferences—one more expensive than the other; costs may have had something to do with attendance—that these are Green Papers and that the Government are listening. They are consultation papers, on which the Government welcome comments from as broad a range of opinion as possible. I think, as lawyers, that we understand better than anybody else that it is difficult for any individual—that includes a lawyer —to put his own case. That is why the Lord Chancellor looks for comments beyond the range of lawyers and beyond barristers and solicitors arguing for themselves, and wishes to draw in the consumer and the wider public.

The second point that my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor stressed is that the measures deserve to be studied with care. They start to examine from first principles a question that has been discussed for as long as I have been at the Bar. That has inevitably been disturbing, because those who begin an argument from first principles do not feel that they can control where that argument may end up.

In the context of this short debate, I would like to draw the House's attention to a few passages in the Green Paper that show that the Government are aware of different arguments and are especially aware of arguments that may bear upon the structure of the professions.

Chapters 5 and 8 of the Green Paper concentrate on those arguments. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) asked what help we could draw from Commonwealth and other common law experience. The Green Paper—after reviewing some of the competitive arguments in paragraphs 8.7, 8.8 and 8.9—especially asks for comments on that at the end of chapter 8. I invite the public and the House to concentrate on the issues highlighted in those paragraphs.

The Green Paper starts with principles that I believe are very difficult to gainsay. Basically—I shorthand them—those objectives are set out in the first chapter. They are to ensure that the public has the best possible access to legal services and that those services are of the right quality for the particular need of the client.

Everybody who has spoken in this debate has said that they wish to see a continuance of a strong independent Bar. I hope that I have paraphrased correctly. They make the point that barristers should not be afraid that they cannot compete against solicitors and that barristers should have the courage to welcome competition from solicitors. I believe that that is right as far as it goes.

The legal profession has, over the years, divided itself into two portions, one specialising in advocacy and the other in general legal services, if that is not a contradiction in terms. We should concentrate our minds on how in future, on the basis of the principles proposed in the Green Papers, the profession will structure itself. There have been valuable contributions from within the House and from outside on that important question, together with important contributions from the Law Society on the question of financial services in the context of conveyancing and wider contributions on contigency fees. The Government will be paying close attention to those arguments during the further six weeks of the consultation period and before forming their conclusions on these highly important issues.

I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on behalf of thousands of retired people, for giving me an opportunity in this Adjournment debate to raise the problems facing them in retirement flats with unresponsive managers. Over 20,000 new flats and houses for retired people have been built in this decade, yet their residents have minimal rights. Elderly people have been lured in their thousands into purchasing retirement homes only to find that they have no control over the accounts or the managers. Many of them are having to suffer incompetent management and soaring costs. There is ample evidence of firms profiteering at the expense of the frail and elderly.

I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me last Tuesday and for the courtesy and sympathy he has shown on this matter. I do not believe that changes in housing benefit regulations offer a solution, and changes in management practices will not suffice. We need a change in management and a choice for residents. Many residents are satisfied with the current arrangements but many are not, and with good cause.

People responded in their thousands to advertisements such as that from McCarthy and Stone which said:

"You are free of future worries of running a large property … Our friendly management support team, Peveril Management Services … now offers you the perfect retirement home in Homeroyal House."

Once residents move into such homes they often find that the management prices soar. The developers are either luring people in with artificial prices or imposing large increases to swell their profits. At present, it appears that management agencies of retirement properties allow developers to write themselves blank cheques at the expense of tenants and residents. Complaints are dismissed out of hand. I shall read some of the letters I have received.

At Fleetwood farm in Southport, the managers, Northern County Homes, took exception to a committee being formed. An elderly resident writes:

"Now they have sent their bully boy with a stick. We all fought in the last war and won—but not for this kind of treatment."

McCarthy and Stone wrote to residents in Scotland's largest retirement complex in Edinburgh saying:

"We do not recognise any committee or other group as representing the views or interests of residents as a whole." Yet Mr. McCarthy, with an eye on public relations, claims publicly to encourage residents' associations.

At High Wycombe, the Warden housing association has not produced properly audited accounts after 22 months. In Crowborough, a resident of Martlet's court wrote to me saying:

"The elderly are being conned and it is time the Government should bring in laws to protect us."

In Upminster, retired people who are not satisfied with management are forced to sell at two thirds of the market price. In Homeabbey house in Cheltenham, one resident writes of McCarthy and Stone:

"their replies have been totally unsatisfactory and often unrelated to the issues I raised. I have been disgusted with their attitude towards elderly people."

It is a scandal that retired people who have reached the pinnacle of their professions in the services during and after the war, in Churches, public administration, commerce, business and industry should be treated as if they are doddery old fools. If I were ever to hold the Minister's position, I could wish for no better or more competent advisers than the residents who have briefed me in Homecross house in Edinburgh or the retired people who have written so lucidly from Torquay to Tunbridge Wells, from Harrow to Hove and from many other parts of the United Kingdom. It is an insult to those retired people who have served this country so well that developers like McCarthy and Stone often refuse even to acknowledge their letters.

Many older people in retirement flats face spiralling costs of management charges, which are far above the rate of inflation and the rate of increase in the retirement pension. Assurances from developers such as McCarthy and Stone that costs will be kept down have proved worthless. Often the new residents have looked to move from large, draughty family homes which are hard to heat and a constant drain on their resources to a smaller, comfortable retirement home. This was to be their dream home where they could expect many years of happy retirement. Sadly, for many people throughout the country, that dream has turned into a nightmare.

In Homeroyal house in Edinburgh, residents were issued in 1987 with a brochure from McCarthy and Stone which said:

"management charges rise at a rate either slightly below or at the level of inflation."

The sales staff repeated that assurance, yet in the 18 months since one of my constituent's purchased a flat there, the management charge has risen by over 16 per cent., twice the then rate of inflation.

McCarthy and Stone has done nothing to honour its promise to keep charges down. The charge for the son of one of my constituents staying overnight in the guest room rose by 60 per cent. in the five months between April and September, although each resident had already contributed £250 to furnish the guest room—a total of well over £8,000. I wonder how much of that went to equip one bedroom and how much went to McCarthy and Stone's profits. As one resident said to me,

"The strategy is to lure retired people in. They become trapped in the vice with no escape."

In many cases, the management agency is a subsidiary of the developer. Peveril Management Services serves McCarthy and Stone, not the residents. Their interests are all too often neglected.

In Homeroyal house in Edinburgh, one of my constituents has told me that if management costs continue to rise at their present levels, he will not be able to afford to remain in his flat. We are facing the prospects of thousands of older people bankrupting themselves to feed the profits of unscrupulous developers. These people have almost no rights.

In Homeroyal house there was a burglary over a year ago. McCarthy and Stone's surrogate, Peveril Management Services, holds the insurance policy. Between January and June, none of the communal equipment in the lounge or kitchen had been replaced. Then a Minister visited the property in June in a blaze of publicity. The lounge fire was replaced for that visit, but the stolen pictures were not replaced until November; nor was the fridge, while the vases and the clock were not replaced until this January and other equipment has not been replaced over a year later. There is only one expression for such management—uncaring and incompetent. Residents were charged for maintaining a garden which does not exist.

McCarthy and Stone and other management agencies say that cost rises are inevitable, but when the accounts are examined we see that the largest rises are not in service provision of the warden or in the rises in rates, gas or electricity but result from what is euphemistically labelled "management charges". Those charges for the mismanagement of Homeross house in my constituency have risen by 18 per cent. in the past year. They are set to rise by more than 40 per cent. in the next three years in return for no improvement in service.

When I first wrote to McCarthy and Stone about these rocketing costs, John McCarthy wrote back saying that that was a ludicrous claim. I gave him the figures, and he wrote back saying that his present costs were unrealistically low. The McCarthy and Stone residents do not believe that those costs are unrealistically low. In Homeross house about £20,000 is spent on staffing, £20,000 on service provision and a further £20,000—one third of the total —goes on management charges for which only minimal management services are given.

From Homedrive house in Hove, the residents committee has written to me saying:

"We do not wish to line the pockets of Peveril Management Services."

Such letters are all too familiar to Ian Cowie and The Daily Telegraph. I pay tribute to them, to Allison Clements of The Scotsman and to the Edinburgh Evening News for alerting Parliament and the public to the pitfalls of retirement homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) has also been pressing for retired people to be given justice by McCarthy and Stone.

Colonel Scott, the residents association convener at McCarthy and Stone's Homeross house, wrote to me:

"Our main difficulty is that we cannot get replies to our letters."

People have written to me from Bournemouth to Blackpool saying the same. At Homeabbey house, a resident wrote complaining to McCarthy and Stone and enclosed a cheque to settle an account. McCarthy and Stone replied saying that the original letter had got lost. Surprisingly, the cheque in the same envelope had been cashed.

Years go by, yet McCarthy and Stone still fails to produce proper accounts. The pattern is the same in Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Torbay and Torquay. Residents are promised the accounts next week, then next month, then next year and then they are told that the accounts are in the post. At Homeroyal house, only one set of accounts has been finalised in two years. At a meeting minuted in April last year, the McCarthy and Stone manager agreed to produce audited accounts in October; that was not done. In November, he told the residents that the accounts were ready; none appeared. In February this year, he informed residents that the accounts would be produced the following week. A month later, they still have not been produced.

Throughout the country, millions of pounds are unaccounted for. The money has not vanished; it sits in the bank accounts of McCarthy and Stone and Peveril Management. When the residents write to John McCarthy about that, they receive no answer. Arthur Young, the accountants for McCarthy and Stone, present accounts for charges that have not been incurred. It sends bills to residents such as one for £3,000 that was sent to one of my constituents and it then issues a correction saying that McCarthy and Stone owes the residents £2,000.

Until proper legislation is enforceable, retired people move to such properties at their peril. They face rising bills, not for rates, services or wardens, but for a bureaucracy. Experience shows that that bureaucracy has forced up costs by almost 70 per cent. Since it was announced that I was introducing a Bill to give choice, rights and protection to retired people, I have received letters of support from all over the country. I have been swamped by complaints, ranging from discourtesy to dishonesty against some of the major retirement property developers.

Mr. McCarthy spoke out in an article called:

"The truth behind the gossip."

It was so full of inaccuracies that it was really the gossip behind the truth. It was a half-fictional account of the workings of McCarthy and Stone that many of the residents found hard to credit.

People should think carefully before purchasing retirement homes. I would not urge anybody to buy from McCarthy and Stone. Indeed, I would urge them to boycott McCarthy and Stone until another piece of valuable work has been carried out in this House. The hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) has done invaluable work on a voluntary code of practice for the retirement homes industry. I very much welcome that. But the House has heard me detail the problems facing retired people.

Mr. McCarthy wrote to me on 20 February:

"We are already implementing the code of practice."

Does a 69 per cent. increase in management bureaucracy charges comply with that code of practice? Is it part of his code not to carry out repairs, not to reply to letters, to charge people £100 for parking their cars, to charge them for selling their own houses or to dictate to them who their managers and accountants will be? He has brought the code of practice into disrepute even before the ink has dried.

That is why I shall introduce a Bill on 7 April which will give people rights in these matters, such as the right to choose a competent management agency and not to have an incompetent one foisted on them. There will also be the right to have the accounts presented properly and timeously and the right to appoint an auditor who serves the residents, so that they will not have to foot the bill for the manager's accounts. The consumer is not king in the domain of so many of those managers. My Bill will give legislative teeth to the code of practice, and I hope that it will command support on all sides.

I should like to thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths) for raising this interesting and important subject, which I know is causing many elderly people concern. Although the hon. Gentleman and I may differ somewhat in our approach to finding a solution to the problem, I share his worries and I am as anxious as he is that this cause of anxiety for a number of elderly people should be removed.

There is no doubt that the concept of sheltered housing for the elderly is an excellent one. In most cases, those elderly people who opt to move into sheltered accommodation are happy, both with the standard of the accommodation and with the way in which their homes are managed.

The amount of sheltered housing has increased significantly over the past decade and there are now more than 20,000 homes nationwide. The industry is to be congratulated on its efforts to meet a real and growing demand. Typically, sheltered housing consists of a cluster of purpose-built flats, with some communal faciltities and a resident warden. The vast bulk of such properties are owner-occupied, usually bought outright on a long lease with the proceeds from the sale of a previous home. I understand that in Scotland the homes are likely to be freehold rather than leasehold, due to differences in property law. This has some implications for the legal protection afforded to the owners, which I shall come to later. In all cases, however, the residents will pay rates—or the community charge from 1 April in Scotland—plus a service charge to cover the costs of items such as the warden service, cleaning, heating and lighting any communal areas, and management and administration. This service charge may run into several hundred pounds a year.

The attraction of such housing for the relatively fit elderly is obvious when the home in which they have lived, perhaps for many years, becomes too large and difficult to maintain. Sheltered housing combines the dignity and independence of a home of one's own with the convenience of modern purpose-built housing, the security of knowing that a warden is at hand should help be needed, the congenial company of like-minded neighbours and freedom from the need to worry about organising and paying for maintaining and repairing one's home.

It is that last consideration—the freedom from worry about the possibility of large unbudgeted bills for unexpected repairs or improvements, that concerned the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South in his detailed and copiously documented speech. As I said, most residents of sheltered housing are very happy with their decision. But some are undoubtedly finding their retirement years fraught with unexpected anxieties caused by large bills for service charges of which, they say, the glossy brochures published by the builder or management company completely failed to warn them. In some other cases their invoices have been incorrect or misleading.

Naturally, the effect on residents facing such a situation is worrying. Most elderly people are on fixed incomes. Their capital is tied up in their home. they have budgeted prudently on the basis of the service charges that they were led to expect when they bought their property. They now see their careful calculations upset by steep increases or additional charges for "improvements" that they may not have requested and do not want.

I know that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South is not alone in his concern about this problem. As he rightly said, my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) has been addressing this very subject through a joint working party with some of the organisations most concerned, and I am grateful for his generous recognition of my hon. Friend's efforts. Those represented on the joint working party include Age Concern, the National Consumer Council, the National Federation of Housing Associations and the National Housebuilders Federation. The aim of the working party was to draw up a voluntary code of practice with the builders and managers of sheltered accommodation, which will ensure that the good management practices of the best-run sheltered housing are adopted by them all.

The code will focus on four main principles: first, how to develop a soundly planned housing scheme; secondly, deciding what estate management services to provide; thirdly, calculating the service charges to pay for those services; and fourthly, customer information, complaints procedures and arbitration to deal with some of the problems that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South rightly highlights.

The code will stress the need for adequate pre-purchase information and include model guidance—for example, a model leaflet on consumers' legal rights. It will ensure that developers do not hand schemes over, once sold, to inexperienced management agencies. The latter must be reputable and developers will have to sign a standard agreement with them to ensure they inherit the original obligations that the developer entered into with his buyers. The draft code has gone out for consultation and the final version should be published later in the year.

In England and Wales, where most sheltered housing is leasehold, owners already have a measure of legal protection. A long leaseholder's primary safeguard should be the terms of the lease, which should set out the basis for any service charges, including management fees, and make clear the respective rights and duties of the parties to it, including the level of ground rent, the provision of services, the level of warden cover, and so on. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South said, those matters should be taken into account when the original lease is drawn up or assigned.

Tenants paying management fees and for services that are recoverable as a variable service charge have statutory protection under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. That includes a right to be consulted about major works, a right to information about costs, an opportunity to inspect the supporting documents on which the service charges were based, and a right to challenge unreasonable demands. Those protections were originally for tenants of flats, but they were strengthened and extended to other dwellings by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987.

That act gives further protection to tenants. For example, when the landlord or his agent is failing in his duties to the tenants, they now have a right to apply to the county court for the appointment of a manager to take over the running of the block; when leases do not provide for the satisfactory management of a block, any party to the lease can apply to the court to vary the terms of the lease; and recognised tenants associations are now entitled to ask landlords to consult them on the appointment of managing agents. Also, from 1 April 1989, under section 42 of the Act, all service charge contributions, including contributions to sinking funds, will have to be held in trust for the benefit of the tenants. The same applies to any income accruing from the investment of such money. That change will be very welcome for some residents particularly those in some of the categories to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman's argument for further legislative action, but I do not feel that there is a case for additional coercive action at this stage. I would like first to have an opportunity to test the effect of the voluntary approach. I hope that the code of conduct which I have outlined will be adopted and that it will substantially strengthen the position of residents of sheltered housing. At the end of the day, it is in the interests of those who build and run sheltered accommodation to see that their management policies benefit the residents. Their business interests are not served by widespread dissatisfaction among their customers and potential customers. We must work to ensure that all management companies meet the high standards which are already maintained by the very best.

That will benefit all residents of sheltered accommodation, not merely those who are able and willing to spend their retirement monitoring the performance of their landlords and going through some complex prescribed procedure when they wish to sack or replace an unsatisfactory management company. I do not think that it would be justifiable to treat the owners of sheltered housing differently from the owners of ordinary service flats. However, I and my colleagues in the Department of the Environment will watch this issue with close attention. We shall expect to see a reduction in the complaints received from residents of sheltered housing as the voluntary code of conduct is adopted. If that does not occur, no doubt my colleagues at the Department of the Environment will wish to look at this matter again to see what might be done.

The hon. Gentleman may find it helpful if I finish by considering what help may be available to residents of sheltered housing who are now facing hardship because of unexpectedly high service charge bills. That help may be available through income support or housing benefit. The two principles underlying the way in which help is given are, firstly, that housing benefit cannot be paid to help owner-occupiers with the cost of acquiring or maintaining their own home. Secondly, when it is payable, housing benefit can meet costs related only to the accommodation itself. It does not pay for items such as care, fuel, or meals when they are provided with the accommodation.

In most cases, sheltered housing is owned outright by the occupants. Housing benefit would not be payable except to meet up to 80 per cent. of the occupant's rates or community charge if his financial circumstances justified it. If the owner is entitled to income support, some help may be available with that part of the service charge that relates just to the accommodation. This would include the cost of heating, lighting and cleaning the communal area of the accommodation. If the owner is buying the sheltered accommodation on a mortgage, income support would be available to help with the cost of the mortgage interest payments, but not with the capital element.

There may be a few examples of sheltered accommodation that is rented rather than owned by its occupant. In these cases, housing benefit could be paid to meet the full amount of the eligible rent if the tenant's other income justifies this. The eligible rent would include such items as the cost of heating, cleaning the communal areas, and the cost of providing an alarm system in property that is specially adapted for the use of elderly or disabled people. Eligible rent does not, however, include items such as personal nursing care, heating of the rented accommodation and any meals. The cost of these items is expected to be met through income support and its premiums and other social security benefits for the elderly or disabled, or help may be provided by local social service departments. Thus, a range of help is available to elderly people in sheltered housing who are on low incomes and unable to meet the costs of their accommodation.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will realise from what I have said that the Government share his concern for the predicament of elderly people who find that the cost of their retirement homes is greater than they anticipated. Although we may differ about the best solution at this stage, I am grateful for his views. I hope that he will continue to monitor the position, in his constituency and more widely. I know that my colleagues in the Department of the Environment will be ready to consider any further representations that he wishes to make. Finally, I congratulate him on securing the time to raise this important issue today.

I was born deaf and I have been liberated. Most of my hearing comes from the best of modern technology. As a result, I am 95 per cent. as good as any normal hearing person in terms of what I can hear. Sometimes in this place, I am very grateful to be able to miss the last 5 per cent., especially with the insulting things that Opposition Members shrill across at the Prime Minister during Prime Minister's Question Time. But if I look at a speaker, I can understand what is being said, because, alas I retain the facility to lip-read.

I thought that I knew the extent of the problem of deafness. After all, if one is born severely deaf and does not obtain the sort of technology that one needs until the age of 40, one has had personal experience of deafness. But I did not realise the extent of this huge problem until I received a mammoth postbag in the weeks since an excellent article was published in The Daily Telegraph by Emma Burstall. She is a young journalist who knew me from the west country, and she has just come from The Western Morning News. She asked me to explore the topic with her when she heard that I was launching a campaign. Since then, my postbag has been crammed with letters whose poignancy I cannot repeat here.

There are hundreds of people who are deaf in some way or another. There are many different scales of deafness. They have become isolated, and the quality of their lives has been greatly diminished. They have become withdrawn and do not go out. They are still looked upon as freaks or mentally handicapped by the public and even by friends and family. There is still a stigma attached to deafness.

Some hon. Members are old enough to remember a time when children who wore glasses at school were laughed at by other children who called them "four eyes". That is a thing of the past. Because of the provision of spectacles on the high street, it is now normal to have several different pairs of spectacles with different coloured frames, perhaps to match one's dress if one is a woman or one's tie if one is a fashion-conscious man, and to go in and out of opticians' shops freely, without any fear, shame or embarrassment, to purchase the correction that one needs and that modern technology provides for sight that in some way is imperfect.

However, it is a different matter with hearing. What happens when one discovers that one is deaf? The first thing to say is that it takes a little time for one to realise that one is deaf. Most people go deaf in old age. One in three people above the age of 70 has a significant enough hearing loss to need a hearing aid, but that is not all. Many young people go deaf. There is what one might call "self-induced" deafness from going to too many discotheques, from getting too close to the speakers and not turning the sound down. There is also work-induced deafness if one gets too close to a piece of loud machinery. The human ear is sensitive—much more so than the human eye. Hearing loss is easy to acquire.

Mercifully, people who become deaf through my condition—or through the reason that I became deaf—are now very rare. My mother had rubella and luckily we now have vaccinations against it, so that cause of deafness is no longer common. None the less, there are still some things for which we do not adequately test in the United Kingdom. For example, toxoplasmosis is a blood disorder for which we do not test in pregnancy as I believe we should; it can cause physical defects, including hearing loss.

As one in 10 of the population of the United Kingdom has a significant hearing loss, which could be corrected, it can be seen that this is a large problem.

If one discovers that one is deaf, one goes first to one's doctor. National Health Service practitioners often know little about hearing because the medical profession knows that it cannot do much to correct hearing loss. Very little can be done surgically except in rare instances. Nonetheless, the filter that has been set up to enable one to achieve one's goal, which is to have one's hearing corrected, is a series of fine screens, which are so effective that few people emerge at the far end having achieved their goal.

I shall take my area—the south-west—as an example. I represent a constituency with 92 villages, 35 hamlets and five market towns. It is the most glorious part of the United Kingdom and is spread over 1,000 square miles. Because it is so beautiful, many elderly people retire to our area, and because it is so lovely, mercifully, people live for a long time. Therefore, we have a well above average age profile in our population and a low pay-out of child benefit.

The hospitals to which such people must go to get their first appointment with an ear, nose and throat surgeon—that is the second hurdle that one must face—are far away geographically. It could take somebody living in the village where I live two and a half hours to get to Barnstaple. My constituents are unlikely to have transport—we are not a rich area—so they will use the hospital car service. Marvellous though it is, it is mainly a volunteer service and sometimes it forgets to come or it may be late.

The hospital car service was late in calling for the lady who lives with me. As I was up in Westminster I could not take her and she cannot walk. She was going for hydrotherapy. When, eventually, after two and a half hours, they reached Barnstaple, the appointment had evaporated. Other people in different villages may be nearer Plymouth, which can be just as difficult to get to. or Exeter, which is the third referral point for ENT surgeons and consultants.

ENT consultants are busy professionals with lengthy waiting lists. In Plymouth, for example, the waiting time—this is no fault of the ENT consultant—is over 18 months. I have two constituents aged 83 and 85 respectively who have waited for well over 18 months to get on that step of this Jacob's ladder to heaven. They still have not seen him, and the consultant can offer them no date. I hope they will not be dead by the time they get an appointment.

Once they have an appointment, it is 99·9 per cent. certain that the consultant will not be able to do anything for them, because virtually all hearing defects are inoperable. Few people qualify for Cochlear ear implants, which are new and difficult and can cause problems. So, generally speaking, the consultant refers one to the clinic in the hospital which deals with hearing aids.

As a hearing aid user, I am aware of how many fittings one may need to make the aid work for oneself. The first one selected may not be the most suitable. If that happens, it will not be the fault of the dispenser, and I pay tribute to the excellence of the audiology departments in hospitals. Their staff are superb but, alas, they are gravely handicapped in what they can offer the patient.

The NHS hearing aid provision comprises only one type of aid. I sometimes wonder whether the NHS has noticed that God has given us two ears. Balance is best achieved by both ears hearing equally, and the provision of hearing aids is designed to correct imbalances in hearing. Often when one goes deaf the two ears do not age, in hearing terms, at the same rate. Nevertheless, in the NHS it is one only, so if one is lucky enough to get an aid, one emerges unbalanced.

Being unbalanced, one canot tell where the noise is coming from. One is fussed and bothered and must turn round trying to puzzle out whether the noise is coming from behind, from left or right or ahead. We have two ears to act as funnels for the input of noise. Hearing aids are not like spectacles in terms of technical excellence. They will be one day. After all, if we can put men on the moon, why cannot we correct the hearing of those left on earth?

Instead of having spectacles ground to one's prescription so that they exactly match—or as near as science can manage—one's defects, hearing aid provision is similar to buying a dress or a shirt. There are a number of sizes. One chooses the article closest to one's size and has it altered. The hearing aid is altered by the dispenser.

The NHS thinks that we are all fat, medium or thin. On the other hand, Marks and Spencer knows in its wisdom that we range from size 8 to size 24. The NHS thinks that all human beings are one of three stock variations. I have news for the NHS. That is not the case. If one goes to a private hearing aid dispenser one can choose from perhaps 250 variations of aid.

One is given an aid under the NHS and it does not fit one's hearing. Worse still, it may hurt. Hearing loss occurs at different levels. One may have lost hearing at the lower level, affecting the lower range of hearing. The tone control on the NHS hearing aid can be adjusted to help that lower tone. It cannot be adjusted to help the top range, and one may have perfect hearing at the top. That means that the hearing aid will amplify until perhaps it hurts at the higher level of noise.

That does not happen when one goes to a private dispenser, where one has a choice of 250 variations, the chosen one then being modified to suit one's needs. The modification of hearing aids is the key mechanism in creating the perfect answer. I have the perfect answer, and I know how fortunate I am that, although I was born with this boring handicap, which I did not regard as a handicap, I am perfectly all right. But most elderly people I meet are not perfectly all right because they have to go back to the hospital time and again for fittings to adjust a wretched device which ultimately does not help them. That is why at least one in three hearing aids lives in the top right hand drawer of somebody's dressing table and the drawer is never opened.

What is the answer? I offer several solutions. The aim must be to make it as easy, simple and socially acceptable to get a hearing aid as it is to buy a pair of glasses or a tin of baked beans. A hearing aid should be a normal commodity which is bought and sold so that no one is ashamed or embarrassed, and people would put all their energies not into deflecting public criticism or family ostracism, but into the effort needed between the patient and the dispenser to achieve the best result. Not all people with hearing loss are as lucky as I am in terms of near-full correction being available practically anywhere. Most people have to seek the best possible correction while the technologists create ever better hearing aids.

I seek the provision of hearing aids on the high street with a voucher system because it is important that patients are referred by a doctor. It is crucial to see the doctor, because people go to hearing aid dispensers with conditions that have nothing to do with deafness. For example, if tinnitus—a horrible buzzing in the ears—is a new condition, it is conceivable that it is nothing to do with hearing but is an acoustic neuroma, a tumour on the auditory nerve. To leave that alone would lead to real trouble. The onset of deafness definitely needs a medical examination. If one's ears are infected, one needs antibiotics, not a hearing aid; vertigo could be the onset of Meniere's disease, so a private dispenser must have a code of practice by which he refers a patient to the doctor before he starts his work.

Hearing aids should be available on the high street, and once a doctor has referred someone to a hearing aid dispenser he should give him a voucher to buy the best possible aid available throughout the full gamut of hearing aids.

The production cost of a National Health Service hearing aid is approximately £21·50, or £23 for the better variant. But private aids are horrifically expensive. Mine is not, as I go to someone of integrity, but people have written to me that they have spent £2,000 on useless aids, nearly always because they have been sold them on the doorstep. I would outlaw doorstep selling, with no further ado. It is a dreadful way of providing a health care product. Elderly people are vulnerable at home. I have had people knocking on my door trying to sell me hearing aids. It is a disgraceful state of affairs and it is sad that companies indulge in such practices, but they do so because the number of their clients is so small. Yet the volume of people needing hearing aids is vast.

If there were hearing aid shops on the high streets as there are opticians' shops, and people had vouchers, they could spend that money as they wished on the variant that suited them best, with the doctor's chit, to prove that they needed an aid in the first place. Children under 16 should go to hospital. We must continue that facility. Perhaps the disabled need home visits, but otherwise the High street is the place.

Furthermore, I would abolish the Hearing Aid Council which reports to the Department of Trade and Industry on a matter of health. It is a most peculiar body and is oddly constructed. That is not its fault. It was set up by a Government. Manufacturers and those who are meant to represent users sit on it. It is a hybrid, a mule, and can produce no fertile offspring. There should be a council, but for quality control, reporting to the Minister for Health. The hearing aid industry which produces aids should have its trade association. When a farmer buys a tractor, he does not expect there to be a tractor council comprising all those who build tractors and farmers who drive them, working out whether they have the best mechanism for ploughing the land. Other reforms could also be introduced. That is the substance of my plea to the Minister today.

Much marvellous work is done for the blind—so much so that Guide Dogs for the Blind has £80 million per annum in income. Hearing Dogs for the Deaf does not have a fraction of that income, yet the need is as great. There is a huge submerged audience. I am proud to have been able to articulate their deprivation in the House. I call on the Minister to comit himself to investigating with his usual penetrating thoroughness and vision this social scandal. Perhaps he should set up a working party, but let it be time-limited. The problem has been invisible on the agendas of Governments for too long.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) on an impressive and persuasive speech. She and I have been able to hear each other during the debate, which is not always the case—certainly at certain times of the proceedings in this honourable House.

Perhaps it is not untimely or inappropriate to pay tribute to those who work in the House operating our effective system of microphones and loudspeakers. Many who listen to our proceedings do not know that the microphone is switched on immediately above the hon. Member who is speaking. Hon. Members like me, who do not have as brilliant a range of hearing as our colleagues, find the loudspeakers immensely helpful. Frequently I have been saved from embarrassment when being asked an oral question which I cannot hear by catching the last phrases of the question from the loudpseaker on the back of the Bench.

My hon. Friend and I met recently at the Department of Health to discuss this matter. Today she made six major points. I followed her speech with great care and I agree with her analysis. She talked about the social stigma and misunderstanding about deafness. She said that it was a widespread disability. She has that disability and other hon. Members and I have members of our family with that disability.

My hon. Friend spoke about the National Health Service procedures which involve waiting lists and distances to travel. She talked about the importance of having a range of different appliances available and the greater choice in the private sector. She outlined a solution, which is liberation and transferring the service largely to the high street through reference by general practitioners. She talked about bad selling practice.

To a certain extent, my hon. Friend is pushing at an open door. We have unlocked it and our hand is on the handle. I am sure that my hon. Friend will find that the Government—obviously, I speak particularly for the Department of Health—are sympathetic to her analysis. In the coming months we must work on a sensible set of reforms, which commend themselves to all those who work in the Health Service and, above all, meet patient needs.

My hon. Friend spoke without notes, with conviction and clarity. I am not so fortunate. The disciplines of office, my lack of eloquence and my comparative lack of experience in this matter dictate that, for the remaining minutes of this debate, I shall refer to my notes more copiously than my hon. Friend.

I shall commence by explaining how the NHS service operates. When people realise that there is something wrong with their hearing, their first step should be to consult their general practitioner. If, in the opinion of the GP, further advice or treatment is necessary the patient will usually be referred to a hospital. It is normal practice for a hospital doctor to examine the patient and, where this is appropriate, to refer the patient to a hearing aid centre, to be fitted with the correct hearing aid. In a significant number of cases the person referred for a hearing aid will also require specialist medical attention.

Hearing aids in the NHS are issued free on loan. Mersey regional health authority, as a national centre of responsibility, procures the aids, stores them at Runcorn and distributes them to hearing aid centres throughout the country on demand. I understand that around 470,000 hearing aids are issued each year to NHS patients in England and Wales.

A wide range of hearing aids are available under NHS arrangements and they are mainly worn behind the ear. Some are high-powered models. Most patients' needs can be met from the NHS range. I accept, however, that inevitably, the range of hearing aids is not as extensive as can be obtained in the private sector. Hon. Members will recall that that was the case when spectacles were manufactured by the NHS.

When new users are issued with hearing aids, audiology technicians usually provide advice and information on how to use and maintain them. They also provide all new users with a copy of the Department's booklet which explains how to use a hearing aid. Efficient follow-up after issue of a hearing aid is essential and that usually takes place at a hearing aid centre or involves a hearing therapist, where one is in post. The rehabilitation of people with hearing loss is not just a matter of providing a hearing aid. It can require time and special skills.

I am aware that there are long waiting times and lists to see consultants and to have hearing aids fitted in some districts, although not in all. I appreciate that there are significant waiting times in my hon. Friend's constituency. In many districts efforts are made to prioritise patients and in several general practitioners can refer patients direct to hearing aid centres. Despite those practices, I know that many people are dissatisfied with the present arrangements and would welcome improvements.

The main thrust of the Fair Hearing Campaign launched by the Royal National Institute of the Deaf in November was that adult hearing aid services should he transferred from hospitals to health centres or group practices. Children would still be referred to a hospital ear, nose and throat department, but only those adults requiring specialist treatment would be referred there. The dispensing of hearing aids would be done by a "community dispenser", who might be employed by the district health authority, general practitioners or a private company contracted by general practitioners.

Since November, those ideas have been discussed with the RNID and others involved. I must say that not all are content with what the RNID has proposed. For example, the British Association of the Hard of Hearing and the British Association of Audiology Technicians have different views. My hon. Friend has a more radical view than the RNID.

The British Association of the Hard of Hearing welcomed the fact that the whole question of hearing aid provision had been brought into the arena for discussion. It agreed, in principle, that a community-based audiology service would be a good step forward, but it is unhappy about the detail of the RNID proposals and feels that the existing NHS hearing aid service as a whole should be reshaped, rather than creating a completely new service.

The British Association of Audiology Technicians has submitted alternative proposals to my Department. It proposes a total review of the audiology services within the existing NHS system. Such a review would cover a number of issues, including staffing levels, salaries, career prospects, working conditions and funding. The BAAT also wants to retain existing audiology departments within district general hospitals, improve audiology technicians' pay and conditions of service, accelerate referral procedures and expand the NHS range of hearing aids. There are clearly a lot of important issues for consideration in each of those packages of proposals.

I stress at this point that I am talking about the provision of hearing aids for adults. I agree with my hon. Friend that the present procedures for referring children to consultants in hospitals must be right. Most people—including the Royal National Institute for the Deaf—agree that there should be no change in the procedures for the referral of children. I have explained that the NHS range of hearing aids should meet most people's needs and that special arrangements can be made for the others. Perhaps I should add that the NHS range of hearing aids is kept under constant review by a commodity advisory group advising Mersey regional health authority. The Department of Health is represented on that group. However, of course, within the constraints of the present system of procurement and distribution, my hon. Friend's criticism of the range of choice of products is accepted and understood.

I know that a number of organisations, including the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, have expressed concern about dispensers calling at the homes of potential purchasers. The Hearing Aid Council's own code of conduct rules out an unsolicited call and the Doorstep Selling Regulations which came into force on 1 July 1988 provide for a seven-day cooling-off period during which consumers have the right to cancel a contract entered into during an unsolicited visit by a trader to their home or place of work.

The Hearing Aid Council's code requires the consumer to send back a card declining a visit rather than seeking one. I am aware that this system has been the subject of particular criticism by the RNID, and no doubt the Hearing Aid Council will be considering the matter.

The private sector sells about 80,000 hearing aids a year. The Hearing Aid Council receives about 70 complaints a year, and I understand that the RNID has received 260 in the past four months. It is important that concerns of customers should be communicated to the Hearing Aid Council, so that the extent of any problems can be objectively assessed. The Government believe that home visits do have a part to play. They provide a service to some of the hearing-impaired, particularly the elderly and infirmed. Such visits should be conducted to the highest ethical standards. The House will have noted my hon. Friend's comments about practices in that area.

There is some disagreement among those who wish to see radical changes about how closely the fitting of hearing aids can be compared to the supply of spectacles. I am aware that my hon. Friend, for example, sees a direct comparison between the supply of spectacles and hearing aids, while the organisation behind the current Fair Hearing Campaign, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, has emphasised some of the differences. Corrective lenses can return sight to near-normal, but a scientific evaluation of hearing is not sufficient to indicate the likely benefit to be gained from a hearing aid. With spectacles one immediately sees more clearly; with a hearing aid sounds are louder but, especially for speech, not necessarily easier to understand.

Subject to cosmetic considerations, people can take immediately to glasses, but it takes time and help to get used to a hearing aid. There are also differences in costs —private hearing aids can cost upwards of £400—and in the typical user, as most hearing-impaired people are elderly.

We are grateful to my hon. Friend, to the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, and to all the other hon. Members and interested organisations for bringing these important issues to public attention. We are also grateful to all the organisations who have approached the Department about this for the concerned and constructive way in which they have taken part in discussions, and retained an open mind. We take their concerns about the present service—and those of my hon. Friend—very seriously.

This short debate has not been able to do justice to the complex issues involved, both for the private sector and for the National Health Service. I must emphasise to hon. Members that it will take time to consider them all, in the context of the important reforms which have recently been announced for the NHS.

I can tell the House, however, that I shall be visiting the chairman of the Mersey regional health authority, Sir Donald Wilson, on 3 April—as my hon. Friend knows, that authority is the centre of responsibility for the procurement and distribution of hearing aids—and I shall be raising those important issues with him. Before I meet him, I shall send him a copy of the Official Report of this debate. I am grateful to his authority for its considerable contribution to forward thinking about greater effectiveness in meeting the needs of all patients who require a hearing aid. I will also convey the feelings of the House on this matter to my right hon. and hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Health, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Minister for the Disabled.

My hon. Friend has asked for a working party. We have not one but several working parties already addressing some of the issues to which she has referred. This is an extremely important matter and, as I have said, we have sympathy with some of the arguments put by my hon. Friend and other hon. Members. I shall consult my colleagues and write to my hon. Friend concerning any issues that arise from my meeting with Sir Donald Wilson. I can assure my hon. Friend that our consideration of the case for reform will continue in earnest.

No Member of Parliament could represent a constituency in the London borough of Newham without living every day in the knowledge of the appalling housing of so many of its people, the gross overcrowding of 6,750 households, the chronic shortage of affordable rented accommodation, the thousands of desperate people on the council's waiting list —currently 9,511—the 4,541 people on the transfer list and the 600 homeless families living in squalid bed-and-breakfast accommodation.

The crisis hangs like a pall of misery over the borough. It is with us constantly, with every telephone call, every postbag and every weekend surgery. Sometimes I think that hon. Members should swap surgeries and, on occasion, I should take the surgery of a Conservative Member, perhaps in a leafy suburb, while he or she takes one of mine in the inner city. In that way, they would meet the frustrated people who come to see me. They would meet the families sleeping in one room, people with fungus growing on their walls, people with leaking roofs and without adequate heating, bathrooms or inside lavatories. They would meet people without hot water and with dangerous wiring and people who cannot find anywhere to live and whose lives are being destroyed, and families who are breaking up under the strain. They would meet the genuine people who have been on the waiting list for years and are losing hope of ever being rehoused.

I would like Conservative Members to meet those people because that is Britain in 1989 after 10 years of their Government. They are our fellow citizens. Conservative Members would come out of those surgeries, as I do, emotionally drained and, I hope, shocked, bewildered and ashamed that we permit such things in our country today.

The housing crisis is a scandal and disgrace. It has been intensified every year the Government have been in office. We sometimes talk of the freedoms our citizens should enjoy in our society such as the right to free speech, and the right to vote. I would add to that list the right to a job and, after GCHQ, the right to join a trade union. But perhaps the most basic right of all is the right to a home and a roof over one's head. That is recognised even in primitive societies where, when a couple marry, the tribe rallies round to build them a hut. However, in modern Thatcherite Britain that is thought to be beyond us.

The Government's policy has been to encourage home ownership. There is nothing wrong with home ownership. Aneurin Bevan said that there is nothing in Socialism against owning one's own home, but that what we were against was someone owning several thousand other people's houses and exploiting them à la Rachman. Perversely, the effect of the Government's policy has been to push up house prices to unprecedented levels, thereby preventing access to home ownership. Some people talk of a rising market or a boom in house prices as if it were a good thing. However, when the price of anything else rises, it is known as inflation. The Government are supposed to be against inflation but they have engineered the biggest house price inflation in history, making it impossible for first-time buyers to buy. Is it any wonder that we cannot find train crews for the Northern line or bus drivers, nurses and teachers? They cannot find anywhere affordable to live.

On top of that, those who mortgage themselves to the hilt to obtain somewhere to live, find themselves clobbered by the Chancellor's interest rate rises. The increases in August and October mean that the average home loan rate of 9·5 per cent. has rocketed to 13 per cent. That means that on a £30,000 mortgage over 25 years borrowers have to pay an extra £52·80 a month. On an endowment mortgage, they have to pay an additional £65·62 a month and it will be double that for a £60,000 mortgage. Is it any wonder that people are putting "For Sale" signs on their dream homes and many are becoming homeless as building societies foreclose? All that is under a Government who pretend to support home ownership.

We need affordable houses to rent. We have 1 million fewer homes for rent in the private sector now than in 1979. The Government's efforts to reverse that will fail because it is more profitable to sell with vacant possession than to rent. The people who come to see me want local authority housing. That is the popular demand. That is precisely what the Government are destroying as a deliberate policy. They want to get the councils out of housing, and have said so.

In 1977–78, the last full year of the Labour Government, 78,606 homes were started by local authorities in England and Wales, but by last year that figure had been cut by 79 per cent. to 16,193. There has been a relentless decline. New building is grinding to a halt. In Newham there were 1,079 new build starts in 1978–79, but in 1986–87, only 83, in 1987–88 only 31 and in 1988–89 only 66. At the same time, up until September 1988, 4,120 homes were sold under the right to buy. A further 3,287 applications to buy are outstanding. This represents a quarter of the total council stock, and the best three-bedroom houses at that.

The receipts from those sales cannot be used for new building because much of it goes to the Treasury If the stock is sold, building is stopped, private renting diminishes and people are priced out of access to owner-occupation, what happens? There is an epidemic of homelessness. Newham has had a 12·5 per cent. increase in applications from homeless people each year since 1981. The cost of temporary accommodation to the council has increased from £52,000 in 1983–84 to £5·5 million in 1987–88. In the 1960s only 3 per cent. of lettings were to homeless people. In each of the past five years the majority of lettings has been to the homeless.

The council's 1989–90 housing investment programme bid—this is my main purpose in having the debate—was £100·65 million but the Government's allocation was only £14·432 million. That allocation was a cut in real terms of 24·5 per cent. over the previous year's provision and a cut of 69 per cent. over 1978–79. In other words, this year we shall get only 31 per cent. of what the borough got in the last year of the Labour Government. Housing has borne the largest cuts of all under the Government and it is destined to get even worse. Public expenditure plans show at national level a further reduction of local authority capital spending from £3·153 billion to £2·8 billion in 1990–91, an 11 per cent. cut and £2·65 billion in 1991–92, a further 5 per cent. cut.

It should be emphasised that the HIP allocation is not a Government grant but permission to spend and borrow. Virtually all housing, private and public, is financed by borrowing. Most of that expenditure is planned to be funded by capital receipts, much of it from the sale of council houses. Perversely, the new Housing Act 1988 will restrict Newham, along with other authorities, to only 25 per cent. of its capital receipts. That is astonishing. The council is prohibited from spending its own money. It cannot spend receipts from selling council houses or new buildings.

The council is asking not for Government money, but for freedom to spend its own, but that permission is refused because of crazy ideological dogma, because the Government want to push councils out of housing provision. The Government have said that they do not want councils to build any more houses and they want their existing estates sold off. In fact, at the launching of the Housing Bill, the Secretary of State for the Environment the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) said:

"We'd like to see council house building at a low level with local authorities composed of providing housing in certain categories such as hostels or sheltered housing."

If the councils cannot help the desperate people who come to my surgeries, who will? This basic need cannot be left soley to market forces. Millions of people cannot afford to buy or rent on the open market. What will happen to them? If the Government are not interested or do not care about them, why should they deliberately obstruct local councils in spending their own money to help people in acute need? That policy is not only evil, but economically illiterate, because councils are giving priority to void reinstatement, rehabilitating empty homes and new build. It costs twice as much to keep families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation as to build new homes.

The reduced housing investment programme allocation means that Newham cannot give much help to housing associations, although the original bid included £18·4 million for such projects, nor can it give discretionary grants to occupants of private housing. The reduction significantly restricts the programme of improving existing council stock. There is a huge backlog of repairs. The total expenditure necessary to improve existing stock is an enormous £120 million. The 1989–90 HIP bid asked for £6·5 million for security work, lift renewals and refurbishment for 20 tower blocks. The cut in allocation means that that has had to be reduced to £2·5 million. That means that work can only proceed on eight blocks. One of the results of that is that the residents of 12 blocks will continue to live in abysmal conditions. Only this week, an environmental inspector said that in his opinion, one block was unfit for human habitation. Pointing to the dangers, he said that the balconies were a "stepladder to oblivion". Six months ago, a 20-month-old toddler fell to his death from the balcony of his home in that block.

The borough is having to restrict the number of repairs it is able to carry out on council properties, laying up bigger and more expensive problems for the future. The inevitable and only conclusion is that the Government's decision will mean that the condition of housing in both the public and private sectors in Newham will continue to decline and homelessness will become worse. It is an appalling and evil policy. I meet the human consequences at every surgery I hold. Homeless applications are currently running at about 200 per month. The Audit Commission's recent report said that homelessness has been increasing"

"over a long period of time, across all types of authority, in different regions, under all types of political control and widely varying housing policies."

Newham has more than 500 families in often squalid bed-and-breakfast accommodation. They sometimes live in overcrowded rooms without tables or chairs for meals, with no privacy for parents or children, with no place for the children to play or do their homework and no readily available doctor, social worker or health visitor. Newham has another 500 families in other forms of temporary accommodation. The lunacy is that it costs more to keep families in such accommodation than to build new homes, but the Government will not allow the council to do that.

The Minister may mention Estate Action. Let me tell him that the council has had 11 Estate Action bids rejected. Furthermore, now that the Government are insisting that 50 per cent. of the capital cost of Estate Action programmes count against existing HIP allocation, the council is wondering whether the scheme is worth the paperwork. The £200,000 received under the area renewal initiative is too little to be significant.

The council has no ideological hang-ups about working with the private sector and housing associations. It has concluded a partnership agreement with Laing to demolish the eight remaining TWA tower blocks of the Ronan Point type and to develop the site. It has already sold, or is completing the sale of, a number of sites in its ownership to housing associations. All the council's sites are being reviewed with the option of disposal being considered. The problem is that the level of housing association grant for housing association schemes, coupled with the high price of land and construction costs, will put the level of rents of many of those schemes beyond the reach of most of the people in the most acute housing need in Newham. The truth is that, even with the fullest possible co-operation with the council, those high costs, the recent decontrol of rent, the limitation of security and the inadequate level of subsidy mean that housing association and private sector housing cannot be an adequate substitute for local authority housing in Newham.

The Government's policy of stopping council house building and pushing councils out of housing has caused and is exacerbating the housing crisis in the borough and even more human misery and family breakdown. The council's housing investment programme for 1989–90 was a carefully worked out, realistic and necessary programme, decided upon by those on the spot. By rejecting it, the Government have sacrificed the interests of the local community to ideological dogma and condemned thousands to more heartache.

I shall allow the Minister as much time as I have given myself. I hope that he will respond seriously and not take refuge in knockabout attacks on local government as he has on previous occasions—by pretending, for example, that the borough has a large number of voids. That is certainly not true of Newham, where only 1·5 per cent. of council stock is empty; indeed, a previous Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State congratulated the borough on its policy on voids.

Nor does Newham have large rent arrears compared with those in other boroughs. Rent arrears are being reduced in Newham. The figures tend to be misleading because Newham does not write off bad debt, as some boroughs do. It has a twin track policy on rent arrears: it actively counsels tenants whose rent is in arrears and it operates an active collection policy, including recovery through the courts. Its decentralised housing offices all have targets for the recovery of rent arrears. I hope that the Minister will not try to shelter behind that argument. He will know that the Government's housing benefit changes have caused problems in this regard. In my constituency some people are now spending 40 per cent. of their income on rent.

I hope that the Minister will address the housing crisis in Newham seriously. The Government now have a £14·5 billion budget surplus—a great opportunity to tackle the infrastructure and the housing backlog. I shall continue to raise this matter in the House and to keep it to the fore, and if I can get the Government to take it seriously, I shall have worked in the interests of my constituents.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about housing in Newham. In fact, I am pleased to be allowed to speak at all, Mr. Deputy Speaker—in complete contrast to your experience and mine in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

In Newham, as in many other areas—but in Newham in particular—we are entering a new period of promise, despite what the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) felt obliged to say. That promise has been built up over the past 10 years during which the tide has turned against years of neglect of a supposedly unfashionable part of London that has had to shoulder the legacy of a past that has sometimes been colourful but which has generally been weighed down by the burdens of industrial decline. Many housing difficulties remain to be overcome in Newham but they are now being confronted through Government policies which will transform housing in the area.

Let me respond directly to some of the questions that the hon. Member for Newham, North-East asked in his speech. There has been a significant decline in the private rented sector—from 50 per cent. of the total housing stock immediately after the war to 8 per cent. now. That is totally unacceptable. The amount of private rented sector housing has fallen for two reasons—first, because the Rent Acts have inhibited those who would be private landlords or potential investors in private rented stock, and secondly, because of the expansion of municipalisation. The problem that we face with large housing stocks—and no one denies that Newham has a large housing stock—is that it is impossible for local authorities to control and manage it effectively. I shall return to that later.

There will not be much political knockabout in my speech, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall address myself to the questions that he raised. I must say, though, that I find it fascinating that, despite the Labour party's love of municipal housing, the last Labour Government reduced public expenditure in public housing in each of the three years before they were kicked out of office in 1979. Labour Members have never given me a suitable explanation of that—either because they cannot or because they know what Conservative Members suspect —that the Labour Government were forced to take such action through the IMF intervening. We are all familiar with that period in the Labour Government's chequered history.

I will concentrate on two main ways in which the Government are acting to improve the homes and lives of Newham residents. First, we are acting through the opportunities provided by the Government's policies for the regeneration of east London—docklands and the areas beyond. All will benefit from the increased wealth that those policies are bringing. Housing has a major part in that regeneration. Secondly, we are acting through the Government's housing policies which offer choice, effective targeting of resources, and the attraction of private resources along with public money, in place of the hopelessly monolithic and unimaginative solutions which have previously been tried with good intentions but with poor results.

Let me begin with the first, by explaining the benefits of the exciting programme of the London Docklands development corporation for the royal docks. Although the hon. Gentleman tried to convince the House that there is no ideological difficulty with the local authority of Newham working with the private sector, I have not seen much evidence of Newham council working with the London Docklands development corporation.

I am surprised that the Minister should say that. Does he know of the memorandum of agreement between the borough and the LDDC? The LDDC has promised to provide 1,500 houses for rent in the royal docks. The LDDC is falling behind and not delivering on the promise. The borough is working. It has regular monthly meetings with the LDDC. It is anxious to work with it.

The last part of the hon. Gentleman's intervention tends to devalue the currency of what he is saying. He and I know how many questions he puts down in the House, which he is fully entitled to do, on the LDDC. He loses no opportunity to have a swipe at it in any debate on the Floor of the House.

I welcome the fact that Newham is working with the LDDC better than it has done in the past, but I have pointed out to the hon. Gentleman—if not to him directly, certainly to other hon. Members who represent Newham —that I should like to see an opportunity being taken to fill the vacancy on the board of the LDDC. Other local authorities are prepared to have borough councillors sitting on the boards. The hon. Gentleman knows that, if they were to respond positively, I would welcome it and also respond positively.

The programme to which I was referring and which the LDDC has promoted has meant a huge transformation in an area which was a sterile part of the borough of Newham. The LDDC has already spent or contracted to spend about £200 million in that area on land reclamation and new roads and transport links and other infrastructure. A whole new community will soon begin to emerge from the previous dereliction, providing major new shopping and leisure facilities, thousands of jobs—they are important to the hon. Gentleman and to myself—and, importantly, thousands of new homes.

It is planned that 7,600 new homes will be built in the royal docks. They will include a substantial number of subsidised homes let at rents affordable to lower-paid families. The Winsor park scheme will, I hope, provide about 500 of them. I welcome the co-operation between the public and private sectors, including the local council, which should make that scheme possible.

It is not only the homes directly within the new docklands community that will benefit from this massive new investment. I am confident that the benefits will spread far and wide throughout the borough and beyond. I remind the House that the Government's plans for the regeneration of east London include but do not end with the docklands programmes, massive though they are.

In February, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, announced new proposals which were welcomed by the hon. Gentleman for major new transport links between central London and east Thameside. Earlier this month, my right hon. Friend informed the House of the consultants' findings on the possibilities for providing up to 20,000 new housing units on five sites in east Thameside. Those sites would be able to benefit from improved transport links, and the Government have said that they hope that they can be developed. Three of these sites—at Stratford, the Beckton gasworks and the lower Lea valley—involve land in Newham, and another is immediately adjacent to the borough, at Barking reach. All of them have potential to breathe new life into the housing of east London.

All these exciting new opportunities for housing extension were taken into account when my Department published the draft strategic planning guidance for London on 6 March, which showed that the projected extra dwelling provision for Newham in the years 1987 to 2001 would amount to 14,000 units, the highest for any London borough. I am delighted that Newham is taking a lead in London housing in that way.

The hon. Gentleman has trailed a lot of figures purporting to show that many people in Newham could not afford to buy new homes in the area. I know that many people in Newham are not well off and that housing must be affordable to them, but the hon. Gentleman should not under-estimate the capacity of people to buy their homes. Look at the success of the right-to-buy policy on which many Opposition Members have poured scorn. Many Labour authorities are still trying to frustrate the policy. When hon. Gentlemen refer to the housing investment programme, they often fail to mention the amount of money that is drawn down in capital receipts. Of course, that makes a substantial difference to the money that is available for improved housing within borough boundaries.

The Government's policies will provide new wealth for the people of Newham and new capacity for them to buy their own homes, if they wish to do so. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall always be on the look-out for sensible and realistic ways to assist people in that endeavour.

I shall deal with the resources that are being invested in Newham's public housing and how those are being targeted to achieve most effect. Public housing forms about 36 per cent. of the stock in Newham. That stock needs resources to be drawn from all available sources, and used and managed effectively. Local authorities set their own priorities for housing within the total resources available to them. On 1 November, my right hon. Friend announced that the gross provision for capital expenditure by local authorities on housing in 1989–90 will be 13·5 per cent. higher than had been previously planned. This is the fourth successive year in which it has been possible to increase provisions, thanks to the continuing success of the right-to-buy policy. Through the receipts that that provides, local authorities have the growing resource of spending power to supplement capital borrowing.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Estate Action. I announced on 14 December that allocations to local authorities through the Department's Estate Action programme would again be increased in 1989–90, by 36 per cent. to £190 million. Estate Action targets resources at rundown council estates.

We cannot accept all of the bids that are made by local authorities, but in view of the substantial increase in real terms, that we have given to the Estate Action programme, it is clear that we shall be able to accept those programmes more than ever before. We are only too delighted to work with local authorities, especially in London, using this means of delivering taxpayers' money to turn round those estates in the worst condition. The contribution of the local authority to which the hon. Gentleman directly referred, should match ours. In that way this would be a true partnership. I have heard of many successes in Newham's Estate Action programme.

I am listening to the Minister with great interest and close attention. Because only two minutes are left for the debate, I hope the Minister will agree that this discussion must continue. Would he accept my invitation to sit down with us on the spot, in Newham, and continue this discussion?

Yes, I am only too happy to go to local authorities to discuss things in that way, and I certainly accept the hon. Gentleman's invitation. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. A visit might help us to clear up some of the points that I was making earlier. Perhaps it might even lead to further improvements in the relationship between Newham and the London Docklands development corporation, which possibly both of us might welcome. Because of the time it is impossible for me now to cover all the points that were raised by the hon. Gentleman and in view of his kind invitation I shall be only too happy to continue the conversation as he suggests.

My difficulty—perhaps I can get this quickly on the record—is that despite what the hon. Gentleman says, Newham has the highest percentage of vacant dwellings in the whole of London. That must be looked at, and although he has tried to explain it to the House—[Interruption.] It is not a matter of conjecture; it is a statement of fact. I understand that there are special reasons relating to the empty TWA system blocks which push up—[Interruption.] Yes, this is part of it—which push up Newham's total, as do the dwellings on the Woodlands estate, where the council is in partnership with Laing in refurbishing vacant properties. Nevertheless, given the general problems of homelessness, local authorities could make far better use of their stock—this applies to all local authorities—and I look to Newham to make every effort to bring its vacant properties back into use wherever feasible.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise for delaying colleagues for a few seconds, but today on ITN, we witnessed again a clear breach of air security at Heathrow. Three lads have taken film of themselves boarding a British Airways jumbo jet and getting into the cockpit. In view of those circumstances—

Where is the Minister?

In view of those circumstances and of the warning received from the Federal Aviation Administration about the possible hi-jacking of a plane, have you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, received any notification from the Secretary of State for Transport to the effect that he can tell us anything about the latest breach of security, especially in the light of his assurance to us in the House less than 70 hours ago that security at Heathrow is okay? It is not, and the travelling public are concerned about it. It is outrageous. The Secretary of State should appear before the House to explain his position.

I have not received a request from the Secretary of State about a statement. The hon. Gentleman has put his point on the record.

Just over 16 years ago, on 12 December 1973, standing in the place where I now stand, I raised in an Adjournment debate the status and salaries of clerks in the magistrates courts. I said:

"It is … quite clear that until proper recruitment and training schemes are available in the longer term the courts will be compelled to cope with an increasing amount of work with an inadequate complement of court clerks.

That situation is quite unacceptable. Urgent remedial action in the short term is therefore essential. The central problem is that the supply of court clerks has dried up because of the poor salary structure. In addition, the magisterial service does not offer career prospects which are attractive to the type of young man or woman it is hoped to recruit."

I hope that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will agree that I do not often quote my own speeches, but having made that speech 16 years ago, I must point out that it is still highly relevant because I now have to raise these matters once again.

Replying to that debate, the then Minister of Slate, Home Office, Mr. Mark Carlisle, who is now my noble friend Lord Carlisle and sits in the other place, said:

"I am aware of the overall problem, and particularly the problem of vacancies among positions for court clerks in the magistrates' court at Uxbridge, which has heavy lists and which has had to change and curtail sittings because of this shortage."

He then said that he appreciated that salary scales were important but that

"The Home Office is not represented on the committee"—

that is, the Joint Negotiating Committee for Justices' Clerks' Assistants—

"and cannot take any initiative in questions relating to salaries."

Despite the fact that that debate took place 16 years ago and that I highlighted then the real problems of recruitment, training and salaries, it appears that nothing much has been done by the Home Office in that time and, as a result, today we are facing a crisis in the magistrates courts.

The recruitment crisis is now both real and immediate. In December 1988, there were at least 167 vacancies for court clerks. At least 294 court sittings were cancelled in England and Wales and much public money is having to be spent on agency fees—£120 to £150 a day for agency lawyers who have to be brought in to act as court clerks.

According to a massive telephone poll of justices' offices throughout the country carried out this month—nothing could be more up-to-date—magistrates courts in England and Wales, apart from inner London, have a total of 278 court clerk vacancies and 35 trainee vacancies. That resulted in 473 cancelled half-day sittings in February, giving a national average of five cases per sitting. That means that about 2,500 cases are unheard. In short, in the words of the famous statesman William Ewart Gladstone:

"Justice delayed is justice denied".

Of the 278 vacancies, 117 trainees are in some of those slots in temporary appointments. As a result, magistrates are not getting experienced advice, and that is serious.

In outer London, there are 16 court clerk vacancies. In other parts of the country the situation is giving rise to concern. Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire have 13 vacancies; in Lancashire there are 19 vacancies; there are three in Slough, not far from my constituency; five in Luton; nine in Yorkshire; nine in Wessex; and in Manchester there are three vacancies, which are currently filled by trainees.

The shortage is acute because of continuing poor pay and the divisive award following the recent arbitration. Mr. David Simpson, clerk to the justices of Uxbridge magistrates court, tells me:

"The situation has become so serious now that unless action is taken urgently, the crisis will become even worse and the magistrates' courts will not be able to function properly in many parts of the country."

The Justices' Clerks Society is convinced that the separation of the functions of legal adviser and administrator would not be in the best interests of magistrates courts, or in the public interest. I therefore welcome the magistrates courts review of procedure which was announced in answer to a parliamentary question tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess). Can the Minister say when that review will be completed? Is it on schedule, and will it report to the Home Secretary in June, as was envisaged when the review was announced? Will the review of the management and control of resources in magistrates courts include the salaries, training, recruitment and status of court clerks?

Morale among those admirable men and women who clerk the magistrates courts has never been lower. The reason, simply, is that the magistrates courts service is losing out to the Crown prosecution service and to solicitors in private practice, who of course receive higher salaries.

There is today a crisis in law because of a shortage of lawyers. Is that because too few lawyers are being trained? An explanation given to me recently by an hon. Friend who is a barrister is that a number of women who qualify as solicitors do not subsequently practise for long or that their careers undergo long breaks for understandable family reasons.

I come now to the determination of salaries by the joint negotiating committee. My noble Friend Lord Carlisle said in 1973:

"The Home Office is not represented on the Committee and consequently does not and cannot take any initiatives in questions relating to salaries."—[Official Report, 12 December 1973; Vol. 866, c. 576.]

My hon. Friend the Minister made a similar point in answer to a parliamentary question from the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) on 13 March. That appears to be a very effective screen behind which Home Office Ministers can protect themselves from being held accountable for salary awards. I hope that my hon. Friend will not consider that a particularly unkind remark, but he will understand the frustration I feel after raising this matter in the House for 16 years and continually being told that the Home Office cannot intervene is not responsible and is not represented on the committee.

Is it not the case that every agreement negotiated by the joint negotiating committee or any award made on arbitration is subject to Home Office and Treasury approval? We all know that the Treasury has to provide the money, so why does the Home Office allow an apparently arms-length negotiating procedure to persist and deprive itself of the political initiative that is necessary if the long-running saga of underpaid, under-trained and under-motivated clerks is to be concluded satisfactorily?

The publication of the Andrews report on salaries for Government lawyers highlights the need for salaries to be pitched at a level which will attract and retain lawyers of the appropriate calibre. Some court clerks with whom I have spoken recently feel that the Government have wilfully engaged in depriving the magistrates courts of some of their principal assets—their clerks—to staff the Crown prosecution service. I cannot emphasise too much how bitter the magistrates courts clerks feel about the siphoning off of their best personnel to the Crown prosecution service.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has managed to persuade the Treasury to buy the Crown prosecution service out of its recruitment crisis, but that has been done mainly at the expense of the magistrates courts, and the arbitrators have now suggested that in future the backbone of the courts service must be the unqualified diploma holders. In other words there will be a second-class service. Does my hon. Friend believe that that will be satisfactory for the magistrates courts? Does the House consider that that is good enough for a very important part of the legal system? It will take at least three years from next autumn before the service receives any benefit from the influx of newlyquali-fied diploma holders.

Finally, may I draw to my hon. Friend's attention the report of the outer London working party on the recruitment, training, remuneration and retention of court takers in the outer London area? It concludes that there is concern about

"the dilution in the quality of staff now available to advise lay justices. This, coupled with the incompetence of barrister agents employed by the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute cases adequately before our Courts leads to the inevitable conclusion that unless the Government fully commits itself to supporting our service then the quality of decision making will eventually be the subject of adverse comment in the High Courts."

That is a very serious conclusion from such an expert working party and I look forward to my hon. Friend's comments when he replies to the debate.

J. Edgar Hoover said:

"Justice is incidental to law and order."

Not many hon. Members will disagree with that observation even if they disagree with the policies adopted by J. Edgar Hoover. It is vital for my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to realise that lay magistrates, not just in my constituency of Uxbridge but throughout the country, are becoming deeply concerned that they cannot do their job effectively or discharge justice properly unless they have at their disposal properly qualified and properly paid court clerks who have a status in society which is respected and admired as it was in years gone by.

I do not believe that it is beyond the power of the Home Secretary or, indeed, my hon. Friend the Minister to persuade my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer before next year's Budget that additional resources should be made available to pay these people properly. Pay is at the centre of the problem. From a decently paid court clerks' profession would flow better justice, more satisfied magistrates and a more efficient organisation of the whole magisterial system.

I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I never stop talking to our right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer about these and other issues. Perhaps it has been the success of three Home Secretaries since 1979—Lord Whitelaw, Sir Leon Brittan who is now a Commissioner in Europe and my right hon. Friend the present Home Secretary—that those discussions have secured the most substantial growth of any Government expenditure programme, by some 52 per cent. on law and order services.

I am the first to recognise that certain parts of the law and order and criminal justice system feel that they have not benefited from the biggest increase in public expenditure in nearly a decade of Conservative Government, but the increase shows the great importance which the Government give to the workings of the criminal justice system. I want to reassure my hon. Friend that we talk regularly to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his brother Ministers about these issues.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for ventilating a tricky subject which it is not easy to discuss. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) in the Chamber. He has a long-standing interest in these issues. I am not sure whether it is as long-standing as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge, whose interest goes back 16 years, but my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst is a magistrate.

I was reflecting that 16 years ago I was pounding the streets of Oxford trying to become a city councilor— which I did, much to my surprise, by one vote. At that stage my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge was here, making the same point, which is why he is so angry at having to make it again this afternoon.

I share the concern expressed about the shortage of court clerks who support justices' clerks in taking courts. As I said, it is not an easy issue for me to brush under the carpet. The latest figures provided by the Justices' Clerks Society show a picture which is even more difficult for the service than that which my hon. Friend painted. On 28 February 1989, there were 278 vacancies—that is, about 23 per cent. of the complement—compared with 66 vacancies on 1 April 1988. The figures demonstrate the serious deterioration.

By no means all magistrates courts are experiencing the same problems. It is a particular problem in inner London, to which my hon. Friend did not address himself, and a substantial problem in the outer-London service, which is of considerable interest to both my hon. Friends. Where vacancies occur, damage is caused because delays in justice are caused. That is bad for justice and defendants, and bad in terms of value for money for courts. It is particularly disturbing when my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I are trying to encourage courts to reduce waiting lists of people to be brought to trial. In no sense would I attempt to under-estimate the seriousness of the problem; I hope that my hon. Friend recognises that.

The magistrates courts service is at the heart of the criminal justice system. A shortage of court clerks means not only that the delivery of justice is delayed but that knock-on problems are created through the whole criminal justice system. There has always been some movement in and out of the court service by those who are legally qualified.

My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge referred to the fact that it appears that a good number of people may have left recently to go into the Crown prosecution service. That is undoubtedly the fact, although we have no clear statistics.

However, it is clear that the level of loss from the magistrates court service into other professions—be they to the Crown prosecution service or another career opportunity—is at present unacceptable. With some hindsight, it is clear that the inception of the Crown prosecution service—with its need for barristers and solicitors in quite large numbers fairly quickly and the levels of remuneration that they have recently been offered —has had a significant effect on the magistrates court service.

Of course, there have been more losses than ever before to private practice. It is interesting to reflect on why that should be. I am sure that some of those losses have been due to pay levels, linked to high housing costs in outer London areas, such as Uxbridge and Chislehurst. I believe too that there are some problems on the supply side. We are not getting enough legal graduates coming out of our universities and polytechnics who are prepared thereafter to follow the legal profession rather than, for example, going into business.

That is of course dependent on pay, which in turn relates closely to status. However, we can never leave it entirely to pay, and I shall now consider that aspect in some detail. We must ensure that the court service—here the Home Office must play its part—is marketing the profession as adequately as it can, possibly in a new way. I believe that that is a task for us all.

It is a valid point that marketing that profession is important. Will my hon. Friend consider the proposition that it might be useful for the Home Office to have some discussions with the Law Society—possibly with the universities—about the training of suitably qualified lawyers, so that we can perhaps move in a direction that will ensure that more of those people who train as lawyers do actually practise law?

I welcome my hon. Friend's comments. There is considerable interest at present in the future of both legal professions, as brought forward in the three Green Papers of my right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor. There are other issues that must be addressed besides possible reforms in the legal profession, and one of them is exactly that which my hon. Friend has mentioned. That was an extremely constructive suggestion.

Pay is obviously a critical factor. Court clerks are employees of magistrates courts committees and their salaries and conditions of service are negotiated alongside those for other court staff in the joint negotiating committee for magistrates courts staff. However, settlements reached within the joint negotiating committee, in order to rank for grant, must be approved by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who will have due regard to the operational needs of the service and, of course, to affordability.

Alas, in the 1988 pay round it was not possible for the two sides to reach agreement, and the matter was referred to arbitration. The decision of the arbitrators, taking into account the level of vacancies at 1 April 1988, was that court clerks should receive a 7 per cent. pay increase, and that, in addition, the minimum scale point for professionally qualified staff should be point 10 on the 22-point scale on which court clerks and senior administrative staff are paid. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has recently approved the award for grant purposes. There is now no further delay in the payment of backdated sums to those in the courts service, who give such excellent help to that service. It is being put into effect now and thus puts an end to what has been a most undesirably long and protracted pay round.

The next pay round is soon to start and the settlement date is 1 July 1989. Once again, it will be for the joint negotiating committee to give full and careful consideration to the way in which the shortage of clerks has increased over the past year. I cannot believe that the joint negotiating committee will not take that into very close account. The Central Council of Magistrates Court Committees has sought a meeting with Ministers to discuss the present difficulties which my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge has raised. My right hon. Friend and I will be glad to participate in that meeting in the not too distant future.

Earlier, I referred to the fact that not all magistrates court committees are experiencing the same problems. There is some flexibility in the pay structure and I wonder whether all employers are using that flexibility to the maximum. Court clerks can be paid by committees which wish to match that pay to the needs of recruitment and retention. Court clerks are paid within five point bands on a 22-point scale. In some areas, that is sufficient, although I accept that, in some instances, committees will be constrained in their use of the upper points on the scale by the salaries paid to justices' clerks and their deputies at the top of the profession locally.

A number of committees have decided, with the agreement of the local authorities—they meet 20 per cent. of the cost and the Home Office meets the remaining 80 per cent.—to offer local pay supplements in excess of nationally agreed salary scales to retain legally qualified staff and to attract others. It is for the committees, as the employers, to take that decision. Those of us who value the magistrates court service as part of the intrinsic locally based system of justice will want, as much as possible, those decisions to be taken locally rather than by the Home Office. We shall seek to continue with such local decision-making as far as possible. It is for local committees to decide what arrangements best meet local circumstances.

We have also approved more trainee clerks and have created an additional 25 posts. We are actively encouraging committees to apply for more. We need such posts to encourage more people to come into the profession. They represent a medium-term investment for us as they will provide some relief while post holders are under training. Eventually, they will give us a pool of qualified staff who can join the main stream of the service.

A particular problem, however, is that the magistrates court service does not have a particularly high profile and it is not brought to the attention of many who seek to follow a legal career or who are coming to the end of their training in our universities and polytechnics. Such people may consider whether to go into the City, whether to become a solicitor or join the Crown prosecution service. I wonder how often they think, "Shall I go into the magistrates court service?" Perhaps the Home Office should do more in conjunction with the legal professions' representative bodies, such as the Law Society and the Justices' Clerks Society and others, to promote the magistrates court service as a profession.

I have had a look at our recruitment literature recently and it does leave a little to be desired. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of the Ministry of Defence's book, which always produces excellent recruitment literature. We intend to produce literature that has a wider appeal than some of the bureaucratic stuff that we have put out thus far. We intend to target that literature better at schools so that the magistrates courts service is considered as a possible career before people leave school. It is important that that career is considered by those going on to higher education.

We shall launch the booklet at the Sunday Times careers fair at Olympia from 8 to 10 June. We shall give it as much of a push as possible at that fair and at subsequent ones. We also intend to produce a second booklet aimed at those in higher education who are studying law.

We are conscious of the fact that the 1990s will see an increasing amount of competition to attract those entering the job market. We shall have to fight along with others to ensure that an adequate number enter the magistrates courts profession.

Interesting initiatives have been undertaken around the country. The Leicestershire magistrates committee is pooling its resources to set up a consortium of committees to recruit clerks from a considerable area instead of a number of court areas competing with each other locally. They are beginning to try to build up links with local schools, colleges, universities and polytechnics. We need to do a lot more of such positive recruiting.

To a certain extent, the future of the magristrates courts service is under discussion. It will be coming under even closer scrutiny in the next few months as the Home Office's scrutiny of the organisation and resources of the magistrates court service is completed. We will want to look carefully at the recommendations. They will be reported to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and me in June this year. The scrutiny will cover matters which relate broadly to the use and allocation of resources—a fairly large topic. It will not look at the pay structure since that is a matter for the joint negotiating committee.

However, the deliberations of the scrutineers will inevitably include salary and pay structure matters, and they will have to be taken into account as we look to the future of the magistrates courts service in this country. That service is suffering from problems that I hope that the pay negotiations which have just finished and the negotiations which are about to start will do a certain amount to alleviate, especially when linked to improved recruiting. We all wish to attract more people into the service.

Last week The Observer led with the story, "Tornado Rip-Off". the article purported to investigate Britain's biggest ever arms deal and the middlemen who fixed it. I have to admit that the article was well written and I tender no criticism of the journalist who wrote it, except to say that I am sure that he will find that the elusive Mr. Charles Langley resides at Lonrho headquarters.

The article alleged that the British armaments industry, backed by the Government, is fuelling the middle east arms race. In referring to arms orders potentially worth as much as £150 billion and while attacking the basis for the deals, the newspaper stated:

"behind the cheers for this most profitable defence deal in our history lie moral and financial problems."

The newspaper questioned what it called huge commission payments, the morality of selling vast quantities of sophisticated weapons to middle east and Third-world countries, the role of the Export Credits Guarantee Department in providing finance for the purchases and the risk to the taxpayer of default in the payment in the event of a change in regime. The bulk of the orders go to British Aerospace. It stands accused in The Observer—I shall repeat a comment in the French newspaper L'Express—

"of being willing to pay exceptional commercial expenses."

The Observer failed to spell out clearly the origin of the story it published and the reason why it was published. Unfortunately, the newspaper is owned by Mr. Tiny Rowland and the article was a Rowland plant. Mr. Rowland is not only a newspaper proprietor but an arms dealer. He has a direct interest in the fortunes of the Dassault company in France, the country's principal military aircraft manufacturer. It was Tiny Rowland who negotiated, directly and through a labyrinth of middlemen, a series of deals primarily in Africa but also in the middle east, involving the sale of luxury jets, jet trainers, fighter bombers including Mirage 2000 and F1 aircraft.

Tiny Rowland regards British Aerospace as a keen competitor. On a number of occasions he has set out to frustrate attempts by British Aerospace to sell aircraft. The most recent example of that involved the £150 million deal to sell Hawk ground attack aircraft to Kenya. In this case, he was pushing the rival Dassault Mirage aircraft.

Dassault was also a direct competitor with British Aerospace over the deals outlined in The Observer last week. According to the newspaper's report, when the company heard of British Aerospace's success in landing the Saudi deal, a Dassault spokesman said:

"What has happened is unexpected, incomprehensible and catastrophic. The decision to acquire Mirage 2000 had already been taken on technical grounds. This brutal change is of a political nature."

Of course, there is a great deal more at stake for Mr. Rowland than mere profit. He is a man obsessed. He loathes the chairman of British Aerospace, Professor Roland Smith, because he forced him off the board of the House of Fraser during Rowland's argument with the Al-Fayeds. He equally loathes the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) for acting as an unpaid adviser to the professor and because of his failure to intervene during the Harrods takeover. The problem is that his obsessions are increasingly spilling over into the columns of TheObserver, doing immense damage to a great national newspaper. For some years, he has used the newspaper to run his personal vendetta against the Al-Fayeds and he is now, with last weekend's article, launching a new campaign to undermine British Aerospace's sales efforts in various parts of the world by using the columns of his newspaper to foster his commercial interests.

In doing so, this man is undoubtedly compromising journalists. He has, in effect, become a gladiatorial, proprietorial tyrant who is manipulating his newspaper in a way that puts him on a par with the worst aspects of Murdoch control of Fleet street journals. This must stop, and he must be stopped. He is destroying The Observer. Its circulation has fallen dramatically from 900,000 in June 1989, when he took it over, to just over 700,000 last month. Meanwhile, its rival, the Sunday Times, has held its readership steady at 1,350,000 with marginal movement.

This man is undermining British industry, and in particular British Aerospace, with accusations that equally apply to himself with relation to his arms dealings. The time has surely come for him to divest himself of control of this newspaper. An excellent team of journalists at The Observer are increasingly the subject of criticism inside and outside the House of Commons, and surely see themselves as professionally undermined as they are forced to act on occasions as Lonrho hacks. furthering the dirty work of an obsessive Fleet street mogul and international arms dealer.

I wish to turn to a different aspect of British Aerospace's activities in balancing my contribution to the debate—its acquisition of Royal Ordnance and the Rover Group from the Government, a huge rip-off at the taxpayers' cost and, in my view, the rip-off of the century. In April 1987, as hon. Members have good cause to remember, British Aerospace paid the Government £190,000,000 for Royal Ordnance. Ironically, in pursuit of market ideology, the Government acting totally unlike any sensible private vendor; desperate to get rid of a public asset at any cost, they placed a ludicrous time limit on the date by which a sale had to be achieved.

The Government failed to consider the development value of land holdings by relying on an out-of-date, totally inadequate valuation which put the price of 380 acres of prime development land in Greater London at only £3·5 million. Subsequently, Warburg Securities valued the same land at £517 million, identifying a £500 million gift to British Aerospace's private shareholders at a direct cost to the taxpayer.

Understandably, the Public Accounts Committee, a Committee of which I am a member, concluded in October last year:

"We are concerned that BAe, owners of RO, could make a substantial gain on the sale or redevelopment of these sites without benefits accruing to the taxpayer."

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence insisted,

"We got a pretty good price for Royal Ordnance."

That was only half the story. We then found out that this asset, picked up on the cheap, managed miraculously to turn in a profit of £56 million last year. What had originally been acquired for reasons of speculative asset development had somehow and mysteriously been transformed into a honey pot of new trading profitability —a nice slab of trading profit to bolster British Aerospace's uninspiring trading performance.

Not content with one back-door subsidy to British Aerospace, the Government repeated the exercise with the Rover Group sale, producing an even more spectacular "success". Lord Young was certainly not exaggerating when at the time he called it the deal of the century. Having failed in the summer of 1986 to split up and sell off Britain's last volume car manufacturer to multinational competition, the Government became desperate for a purchaser—preferably, given the recent public outcry, a British one. Of course, there was no suitable purchaser on the horizon, so to whom could the Government turn? Who owed them a favour? Why, of course, British Aerospace.

In keeping with his eccentric understanding of market discipline, Lord Young announced an auction with a difference: there was to be one bidder; the auctioneer would pay the commission; and the bidder would be paid to take the goods away. He asked £150 million for the job lot, approximately the value of the cars the Rover Group held in stock, but to sweeten the pill—just in case the removal truck broke down on its way from the auction —the Government would write off the company's debts and provide a gift of £800 million. Fortunately, the European Community, the only sane body of people around these days, moved in and forced the Government to reduce the handout to £547 million. Thank the Lord for the blessed bureaucrats from Brussels. Even so, British Aerospace was effectively given £379 million to take the Rover Group away.

Days after British Aerospace had agreed to the purchase, despite the assurances from Mr. Graham Day that the takeover would not lead to redundancies, it was announced that the Cowley, south and Llanelli plants were to close and that 3,400 people would have to lose their jobs. Promptly tackled on that squalid about-turn, Mr. Day cheekily responded that those redundancies were not the result of the merger, but of other trading considerations, including over-capacity. Only a fool could possibly swallow that explanation.

A few days ago, we all read with great interest reports that Rover made £65·7 million last year—£10 million per month, as the headlines said. The question is whether it was known that Rover Group would make such profits when it was taken over. Was that taken into account in the sale price? Was it known that, with projected profits of £100 million for Rover in the coming year, British Aerospace would recover the whole acquisition cost of their interest in Rover in little more than 18 months? That does not even take into account the asset value of the group.

Under cover of the Rover profits and the Saudi deal, British Aerospace announced that the Rover group had somehow been revalued at £829 million. That did not take into account the redevelopment land in the south. The empty site at Cowley alone had been valued by Warburg at £40 million. As was to be expected, we now hear rumours of a sale. What of its 40 per cent. share in Leyland-Daf, picked up at about the same time as the Rover group takeover? It is estimated that, when it is floated in the summer, it will net £160 million—more than British Aerospace paid for the whole of the Rover group.

In reality, Rover's performance since the takeover has been disappointing. With United Kingdom car sales at record levels, Rover has a reduced market share and looks as if it is about to lose more as its competitors bring out new models ahead of it this year. The jury is still out on whether Rover will remain in the volume car market. We now have to see whether those profits will go back into research and development or into the pockets of private shareholders.

How has the parent company, British Aerospace, been performing? As The Times put it:

"Without these two purchases, BAe would not be looking too clever."

The world's aircraft producers are working flat out, but the commercial aircraft division of British Aerospace made a loss of £49 million last year—£41 million on Airbus alone. What the real figure will be, must be anybody's guess. The weapons and electronics division is having difficulties despite every effort within the work force. Yet on paper, as a result of Government handouts, British Aerospace looks in good condition.

Shareholders' funds have doubled to £2·1 billion and net assets have doubled. Property holdings are up from £91 million to £234 million before any Royal Ordnance or Rover Group land development potential has been realised. Most importantly for some, no doubt, dividends are up 10 per cent. The private shareholders will make a killing at the taxpayers' expense as, inevitably, British Aerospace further diversifies into speculative property development on the back of land gifted from the taxpayer in complex dealings over privatisation.

It seems that Professor Roland Smith, the chairman of British Aerospace, has found, not unnaturally, easier ways of making money than making aeroplanes—land development and acquisitions. Since last January alone, British Aerospace has bought Ballast Nedham Groep NV, a Dutch construction company, for £48 million. It founded BAe Simulation Ltd., bought an option on Reflectone Inc., a United States simulator company, was rumoured to be in the market for GEC Avionics and, as recently as February this year, acquired De Moer, a Dutch civil engineering company, for an undisclosed sum. I am sure that Professor Smith is grateful to the taxpayer.

By next year, Royal Ordnance and Rover Group may have paid for themselves out of profits alone. British Aerospace's shareholders can then continue to enjoy the benefits of at least £1·3 billion—£1,300 million—of gifted capital, even before the full development potential is calculated. The cash cow has not even begun to be milked. The question is whether the profits will be generated by manufacturing activity or property speculation. I do not for one minute suppose that the shareholders of British Aerospace are concerned about where the profits come from, as long as they are there. One can only presume that they are rubbing their hands with glee, as the beneficiaries of the biggest rip-off of taxpayers' assets this century.

The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has covered a wide area in a characteristically robust speech. I think I detect four or five main themes. We started with some extremely interesting observations about an article in The Observer. The hon. Gentleman linked that article to British Aerospace's export achievements, for which I was glad to hear him express his support.

Later in his speech, the hon. Gentleman returned to some other aspects of British Aerospace's activities, including some of its civilian work. In the hon. Gentleman's consideration of the profits achieved by companies under British Aerospace management, it would not be unreasonable for him to have regard to the quality of the management that is brought to bear on those companies and their performance, and to consider whether better management, which must be in the interests of everyone concerned, including the work force, is not something to be applauded, especially as it can be identified through higher profits. The hon. Gentleman talked also about the purchase by British Aerospace of Royal Ordnance plc and Rover Group.

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will not be altogether surprised if I draw his attention to the fact that the subject of the debate is the relationship of the Ministry of Defence with British Aerospace. Tempted as I might be to say quite a lot about The Observer and its proprietor—

Go on; have a go.

The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) tempts me further, but I must resist the temptation to discuss a matter that is not the responsibility of my Department.

The Minister should let himself go for a minute; it is the last day, after all.

We come back, I hope.

I am afraid that the same goes for some aspects of the civilian work of British Aerospace to which the hon. Member for Workington referred—for instance, the dealings with the Airbus consortium and the curious fact that it seems that the more Airbuses are sold the larger are the losses made by the participating companies. One hopes that the company will improve its performance under the restructured management of which we have read. The hon. Member for Workington will not be surprised if I do not say too much on that front.

Again, much to my disappointment, matters relating to Rover Group and its acquisition by British Aerospace are matters not for me but for my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman addressed his remarks to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster he would be given a robust response.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the acquisition of Royal Ordnance plc. He made some fairly forceful remarks on the subject, as we have come to expect of him. In his approach, the hon. Gentleman seems to be liable to give as much credence to speculative reports and matters which are not valuations but views expressed by unqualified non-surveyors as he does to professional surveyors on aspects that have been thoroughly researched.

If I understand him correctly, he is saying that the purchase of Royal Ordnance plc. by British Aerospace was some sort of monstrous rip-off. In his view, the property value of the assets of that company was astonishingly high. He quoted a figure of £400 million, and said that it was based on a Warburg valuation. I do not know how familiar he is with the origin of that figure. It was not a valuation at all. It was a bit of pure speculation by some desk operator in a merchant bank, who may have been doing an in-house analysis of the value of British Aerospace, and, lacking any expert knowledge of the situation, looked at a large number of acres of land and put against them a large valuation per acre, assuming that all that land was capable of redevelopment.

The first weakness of that approach is that the land was in the metropolitan green belt, which immediately raises a presupposition against development. Secondly, it is not irrelevant that planning applications in respect of that land had not been approved and have since been refused. Thirdly, that speculative figure assumed that, even if planning permission were to be obtained, the whole area would be redeveloped and that, therefore, all those acres could have the high figure put on them.

Is the Minister assuring the House that, when, the matters go before the Secretary of State for the Environment on appeal, he will uphold any decision to refuse planning permission? Has the hon. Gentleman been told that?

No. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that that is not what I am saying. I am commenting on the source of the £400 million. Equally, I will not be tempted to speculate upon the outcome of any planning application. It would be quire improper to do so.

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, even if planning approval were eventually to be forthcoming, the likelihood of it being for all the acres is nil. It just does not happen. Obviously, a certain amount of the area is required for access and amenity. It is my understanding that the planning applications that had already been put in envisaged substantial parts of the site being made available for public amenity and other uses. Clearly, immediately a far lower number of acres are capable of redevelopment than appears to have been assumed by the person who originated that valuation.

The next point that the hon. Gentleman seems to overlook is that, in obtaining that sort of figure per acre for developable land, great expense would be incurred. The land is low-lying, and there are canals and locks adjoining it. One matter that would have to be attended to before any redevelopment could take place would be new access roads. There may even have to be a new lock on one of the canals. Clearly, there would have to be a great deal of drainage and, in some cases, decontamination works. They are all costly. Much time will go by and much money will be spent before any return is obtained. That would tend also to reduce the net return.

If the hon. Gentleman is basing his supposition on the fact that it was some monstrous rip-off—to use his phraseology—and on the figure in what he called the Warburg valuation, it is not well-founded.

The other main point that the hon. Gentleman overlooks is that, in any case, the sale of Royal Ordnance plc was a highly competitive procedure. Several companies expressed interest. There was a lengthy bidding process. The Government were advised by merchant bankers throughout it, and, at the end of it, two bidders were left. The best price that could be obtained was obtained. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Comptroller and Auditor General's report acknowledged that the sale to British Aerospace was achieved in a competitive situation. The evidence suggested that the competition was sufficiently widely based to secure the highest price likely in the prevailing commercial climate. I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman somewhat on that aspect of the sale of RO plc.

With regard to The Observer article, I shall confine my remarks to aspects affecting British Aerospace.

I do not think that I can fully appreciate why my hon. Friend is unable to deal with many of the matters that affect the Department of Trade and Industry. Would the Minister not take this opportunity to express his understanding of the positive case for diversification? Does it not present opportunities for greater job security and a future in defence, as, indeed British Aerospace now has wider interests?

It is clearly in the interests of the work force, shareholders and customers, of which the Ministry of Defence is one, that British Aerospace is a strong and efficient company. Presumably the company sees advantages in the interaction between its various activities. In due course those might benefit the Ministry of Defence as a customer.

I very much agree with the hon. Member for Workington in his criticism of the article in The Observer as being based purely on speculation. As the hon. Gentleman says, some of the article had been printed before in French and American and indeed middle eastern publications. It is human nature, I suppose, that those losing a contract might seek to discredit the arrangements of the winners by spreading rumours based on speculation.

Would the Minister confirm that Tiny Rowland is involved in selling military equipment to Governments in Africa and parts of the middle east?

I cannot help the hon. Gentleman there. Mr. Rowland is associated with companies, not the Ministry of Defence. I cannot comment on their activities. Like the hon. Gentleman, I read the press. One has to judge what one reads for speculation or accuracy. But I suspect that we would agree that it is not surprising that the losers of a contract might seek to discredit the arrangements of the winners. I share the hon. Gentleman's concern that this sort of speculation could damage a very important project that means much to British industry.

The figure of £150 billion that was recently quoted as the value of Al Yamamah is fanciful speculation. However, this major project could extend into the next century and bring income and employment to a wide range of companies in this country.

The management and work force of United Kingdom companies have won these orders against intense overseas competition, through improving design and increasing productivity, with impressive labour relations and, perhaps most important of all, competitive pricing. It would be most unfortunate if all their efforts were damaged by ill-informed criticism.

I wish to draw to the attention of the House, as I last did in an Adjournment debate in March 1979, the considerable expansion and general success of the United Nations peacekeeping operations, to put forward some ideas on future developments and to probe the Government to find out what they are doing to match fine words with deeds.

I do so in the knowledge that an advance party of British troops is deployed today in Namibia, formerly South-West Africa, as part of the UN transitional advisory group, which is known as UNTAG for short. It is remiss of the House and the Government that we have not yet debated its participation in this important international operation.

I warmly welcome my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to the debate. What a far beach has lost, the Front Bench has gained. His contribution will be listened to and read afterwards most carefully.

The renewed interest in this form of intervention and its part in the peaceful settlement of disputes, following the award in 1988 of the Nobel peace prize to United Nations peacekeeping forces, is to be welcomed and encouraged. As a former professional soldier I believe that peacekeeping by United Nations forces has become an essential part of the work done by the United Nations for international harmony and security. We must not under-estimate the problems, but here surely is one crucial area of United Nations activity in which major advances can and must be made. So far, well over 100,000 soldiers from a third of the world's armies have worn the pale blue beret or helmet—a remarkable fact.

Peacekeeping is the use of an international force, by invitation, to reduce violence. It has nothing to do with the use of force to impose order or suppress an opponent. It is an invention of the United Nations and nothing like it existed in history before 1945. For the past 30 years, at least one United Nations force has been on duty at any given time in some part of the world. United Nations forces watched over the two truces of 1948 between Israel and its Arab neighbours. In 1949 they watched over the ceasefire in Kashmir and demonstrated how a relatively small number of observers can successfully maintain a ceasefire. Then came Korea in 1950 and Suez in 1956, when they supervised the withdrawal of Israeli, British and French forces. In 1960 the Congo tied up 20,000 United Nations soldiers for four years at a cost of 126 lives and about £200 million. It has been argued that the intervention of the United Nations force in Sinai in 1973 may have prevented a world war.

Today in the Lebanon, on the Israeli border, UNIFIL faces the most complex and dangerous challenge since the Congo bloodbath. Since it was established in 1978, the force has suffered 170 fatalities. I should like its mandate to be strengthened. Israel is responsible for the South Lebanon army, which has been firing on UNIFIL soldiers —the SLA should be disbanded forthwith.

Since my last debate on peacekeeping, the most important change has been the resolve of the USSR at last to recognise the worth of United Nations peacekeeping and to pay its outstanding dues as a further show of confidence in this aspect of the United Nations' international responsibilities.

I like to think that the Foreign Office is privately pressing the Bush Administration to renew the commitment of the United States of America to the United Nations and to make up the deficit in the payment of its dues. That is a shameful legacy from the Reagan Administration, and my hon. Friend will agree that that shortfall in the United Nations budget resulting from the abstention of the United States of America affects the very existence of the United Nations.

The United Nations peacekeeping methodology has been shown, by experience, to be more effective than unilateral or bilateral interventions from outside the United Nations. Britain took part in the ill-fated multilateral force in the Lebanon, which itself became a party in the dispute. When that force was withdrawn in disarray, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who had not previously shown much enthusiasm for the United Nations, offered the job to that world body.

British soldiers, I maintain, are good at peacekeeping. Years of using minimum force and giving aid to the civil power—from Borneo to Aden and Belize, culminating in Zimbabwe—have given them an enviable record. The 1988 Statement on the Defence Estimates reported:

"Our contribution to international peacekeeping forces has not changed: we provide contingents to the multinational force and observers in Sinai and the UN forces in Cyprus; and the Cyprus sovereign base areas give logistic support to the UN forces in Cyprus, Lebanon and on the Golan Heights."

A few years ago I spent a morning with 40 Royal Marine Commando who were on duty with the UN along the so-called green line in Nicosia, and most impressive they were. We play the main role in the UN force in Cyprus, with some 800 men attached to it, the largest single national element. I only wish that Britain's contribution to the UN was better known in this country and abroad.

Peacekeeping is also superb training for our defence forces, giving them overseas service outside Germany—all too rare—and vital experience of international co-operation. It has real value for the young NCO and the inexperienced but enthusiastic young soldier. It is excellent that we should be taking part in UNTAG and we look forward to Namibia becoming the UN's 160th member. The House has yet to be told of the exact composition of the British contingent, its likely tasks and responsibilities. We need to know what will be the rules for opening fire, how casualties will be evacuated, and to which hospitals, whether the bodies will be returned to the United Kingdom if there are any deaths, whether the Minister will be visiting our contingent in Namibia shortly, and if not, why not.

The size of the military component has been the subject of controversy. It is to comprise 4,650 persons initially, not the 7,500 originally authorised. Concern has been expressed on both sides of the House, at Question Time and in an early-day motion that I tabled, at the small size of this force in what is a large country. It seems that financial reasons, not unimportant in themselves, were the dominant reasons.

The Minister will have been told of the long list of individuals and organisations who have opposed the reduction of UNTAG, including, I am told, its commander, Lieutenant General Prem Chand. UNTAG's task is to monitor the disarming and dismantling of command structures of citizen forces, commando units and ethnic forces, South African counter-insurgency units, the confinement of SWAPO combatants to their Angolan and Zambian bases and the phased withdrawal of the South African defence forces. It is also responsible for border surveillance.

By definition, all those tasks—and there are many more —according to an internal UN document,

"require the military component of UNTAG to be very extensively deployed at strategic points along the length of the borders and to maintain a highly mobile reserve to react to any hostile acts."

There are good reasons to think that the size of the force is not sufficient to perform its assigned tasks. The discrepancy in numbers alone is enormous. The war zone in northern Namibia is one of the most concentrated areas of military personnel in the world, and about 50,000 Cuban troops will still be across the border in Angola.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that Britain will carefully watch the position and be prepared to press for the size of the force to be increased, should that become necessary? One wonders how difficult that might be in practice as new troops would need to acclimatise. Are British troops on standby for possible reinforcement of UNTAG in a few weeks' time?

The study of United Nations-style peacekeeping deserves greater attention by the British military. There appears to be very little training in peacekeeping for units or individual officers. The peacekeeping handbook should be the recognised training manual for that form of military duty.

The Nordic countries co-ordinate the training of staff and technical officers for specific duties within United Nations peacekeeping forces. Did our contingent in Namibia receive such training? Will the Minister tell us, either now or in a letter, how many hours are devoted to United Nations peacekeeping on British officer training courses and in cadet and staff colleges?

In 1979, the Government told the United Nations Secretary-General of their

"readiness to share training experience in respect of peacekeeping".

Was that followed up? Is not the time ripe to look anew at machinery and conduct of United Nations peacekeeping operations and improve them?

Will my hon. Friend note that Monday is the centenary of the death of John Bright, one of the greatest peacekeepers in British history? In the context of peacekeeping in the United Nations, it would be highly suitable for us to recall the work of that great man and note that there is a strong relationship between what he said in his own time and what my hon. Friend is saying now?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his interesting comment.

It would be excellent if our Government were to take an active part in the United Nations in bringing about a necessary review. When the United Nations is acquiring a new and brighter image it should expect the whole-hearted support of its founder members. Does the Government support the call from the Soviet Union for the reactivation of the military staff committee, with a wider membership and better terms of reference? Why should the membership of that committee be confined to permanent member states of the Security Council when other countries such as Ghana, Nepal and Fiji can boast of considerable United Nations peacekeeping experience?

What thoughts do the Government have for improving the standard operating procedures for UN forces? Should there not be a study of UN peacebuilding as a third lane alongside UN peacemaking and peacekeeping? In the Congo a UN civilian operation was mounted beside the military peacekeeping operation to assist in the reconstruction of the fabric of the Congo's administrative structure. It achieved excellent results. A peacebuilding element might become part of each UN peacekeeping operation, with its tasks dictated by humanitarian considerations. The peacebuilding role would precede and outlast peacemaking and peacekeeping.

In 1978 President Jimmy Carter called for

"the creation of UN peacekeeping reserve composed of national contingents trained in peacekeeping functions?

Nobody wants a standing army, but a small reserve bringing together international experts might be a good idea. Such a reserve would have the very latest day and night surveillance equipment including infra-red aids and listening devices such as the Army uses in Northern Ireland, and drones. The application of highly sophisticated scientific techniques including the use of satellites could help the UN solve problems which have previously been insoluble, and thereby reduce tension. As an illustration, the electric monitoring of air traffic on a military base could help to reduce the possibility of a surprise attack in the region such as the Gulf, where the most uneasy peace prevails between Iran and Iraq.

That small reserve might include a United Nations disaster relief force which would be highly trained and mobile. It could tackle disasters, such as those following earthquakes, cyclones or a major chemical or nuclear radiation leak in a developing country. Why should the reserve not help carry supplies to the starving through hostile territory or physically protect refugees, such as those in the Lebanon, from mayhem and mutilation?

Recently the world had to sit back and watch while a Lebanese faction sought to starve the inhabitants of a refugee camp to death. In future it is possible that there will be more demands for UN forces than for resources. Will a force be required for Afghanistan or Kampuchea? If there should be a successful international conference on the Palestine-Israel issue in the next five years, it is likely that UN forces will be required as part of the security guarantees.

I hope that I have said enough in this brief debate to activate the Government to use Britain's privileged position as a member of the Security Council to strengthen the world body's peacekeeping role. Peacekeeping is no vague, woolly, over-idealistic notion. History suggests that a comparatively small UN force can reduce tension and aggression, thus facilitating a diplomatic settlement. UN peacekeeping is good news, offering hope to a violent world. It is a success and we should build on it. It would be wonderful to see the United Kingdom showing the way forward.

I know that the House recognises the long-standing and almost solo interest among hon. Members of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) in this subject. He raised several interesting and somewhat detailed points which I cannot answer this afternoon, but I shall ensure that either I or my right hon. Friends in the Ministry of Defence will respond to them.

It is sad that it has taken 10 years since my hon. Friend's last debate on United Nations peacekeeping for UN peacekeeping to be accorded the international attention which both he and I think it deserves. Although inevitably the new demands on UN peacekeeping have thrown up several problems, not least that of managing the cost, I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the current interest in peacekeeping is preferable to the general neglect of 10 years ago. Britain has long supported UN peacekeeping and I assure my hon. Friend that we shall continue to do so.

It is interesting for the House to recall the origins of peacekeeping. The United Nations charter envisaged using troops only to impose an international peace against aggressors. That concept soon proved unworkable. United Nations peacekeeping evolved in a variety of forms in relation to a variety of problems. Now United Nations forces patrol buffer zones, check troop withdrawals and will, in Namibia, supervise free and fair elections.

As my hon. Friend said, since 1974 the United Nations force in Cyprus has patrolled a buffer zone between the two communities. It is a prime example of Britain's commitment to peacekeeping. We contribute the largest contingency of troops, 741 men to be exact, at a cost last year of about £24 million. We believe that our participation in UNFICYP complements our continuing support for the United Nations Secretary-General's efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement of the problem. The force provides the background of stability against which he can pursue his initiative.

We also contribute a signals squadron to the United Nations transitional advisory group, the United Nations force in Namibia, for which the people of Namibia have waited too long. I shall ensure that more information about that force is made available to my hon. Friend.

Like my hon. Friend, the Government warmly welcome the award of last year's Nobel peace prize to United Nations peacekeeping forces. That was a fitting tribute to the courage of thousands of men and women who have worn blue helmets in the cause of international peace. Many of those men have died as a result. The House will wish to join me in extending our sympathy to the families of the three Irish soldiers who were killed earlier this week in the Lebanon.

My hon. Friend mentioned his concern about UNIFIL. In common with our European Community partners and others, we remain committed to UNIFIL as a force of stability in southern Lebanon. We deplore the recent increase in fighting and all attacks on UNIFIL. Shooting at UNIFIL is completely unjustified. We condemn punitive expulsion—despite UNIFIL protests—of old men, women and children from their houses in Israel's self-declared security zone.

The continued Israeli military presence in the Lebanon is provocative, destabilising and against Israel's own long-term interests. We have repeatedly urged the Israelis to complete their withdrawal from the Lebanon and to allow UNIFIL to deploy to the international border in accordance with UN security resolution No. 425. We share the concern expressed by the UN Secretary-General about the recent deterioration in the situation, and that concern was reflected in the European Community's declaration on 20 March.

The essence of successful peacekeeping is flexibility and, of course, the co-operation of the parties directly involved. The current arrangements for peacekeeping enable the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council to respond rapidly to any demand. The UN has been fortunate in being especially well served by two British international civil servants dealing with and having primary responsibility for peacekeeping in the UN secretariat. First, there was the almost legendary Sir Brian Urquhart and now there is his successor Marrack Goulding. Their contribution to the efficient planning and implementation of UN peacekeeping operations has been and continues to be of enormous importance. In our view, and in the view of others, informal arrangements for peacekeeping have worked and will continue to work best.

I note my hon. Friend's call for a more active role for an enlarged military staff committee. The military staff committee is a body established under that section of the charter dealing with the enforcement of the peace. It is not immediately apparent that its involvement would improve the arrangements for UN peacekeep-ing as against enforcement. The composition of any peacekeeping force is often a delicate political matter. It is unlikely to prove possible to enlarge the military staff committee to take account of every possible circumstance.

It is a matter of regret that UN peacekeeping has not always enjoyed the whole-hearted support of the international community. Every member of the UN is called upon to contribute to the funding of UN peacekeeping. In the case of most major peacekeeping operations—of which UNTAG is a good example—all members of the UN pay according to a scale based on their nation's gross domestic product, but that scale is adjusted to require slightly more from the permanent members of the Security Council—including, of course, the United Kingdom—in order that the poorest members of the UN may pay rather less. We—and the other permanent members of the Security Council—have not objected to this scale of levy in recognition of the key role that peacekeeping plays in the maintenance of international peace and security, but the overall record of payment is not good. At the last count more than half the members of the UN were in arrears and the amount owed to the UN was staggeringly more than $372 million. That regrettable state of affairs risks undermining UN peacekeeping more than anything else.

In our view withholding peacekeeping dues for any reason is unacceptable. The fact that both super powers are among the long list of debtors is a cause of great concern. The Soviet Union—one of the more reluctant converts to UN peacekeeping—began withholding its dues in 1976. By 1987 it owed more than $197 million. Despite an assurance in October of that year that it would repay its arrears over the following five years, the amount currently outstanding is still $143 million. My hon. Friend rightly drew attention to the United States decision to withhold or delay its full due in respect of peacekeeping. Currently, United States' arrears amount to $103 million. We have made clear to the United States Administration our severe reservations about that policy. I am glad to say that, in January this year, the Americans announced that they hoped to resume full funding of all their UN-assessed contributions from October 1989.

The rather precarious financial position of UN peacekeeping must be seen against the background of rising demand. Last year three new peacekeeping forces were created and others are in the pipeline. Inevitably, members of the UN have been obliged to take more interest in the overall cost of the peacekeeping efforts. It would be short-sighted to do otherwise. The accent now —thanks in part to our efforts—is on both effective and cost-effective peacekeeping.

In that context we must consider the recent negotiations on the total size of UNTAG. My hon. Friend mentioned a number of countries that he said opposed the final decision of the Security Council, but I must remind him that all five permanent members of the Security Council were united in their approach. I must emphasise, however, as my hon. Friend implied, that the overall ceiling for the size of UNTAG remains as originally proposed. The Secretary-General has the power to request the Security Council to authorise reinforcement up to this limit at any time should the circumstances require it. We and other members of the Security Council have assured the Secretary-General that we shall respond promptly to any such request that he may make. UNTAG will, of course, have a medical unit supplied by the Swiss Government. I will ensure that my hon. Friend gets an answer to the other detailed points that he raised regarding UNTAG.

It would be wrong, however, to leave the House with the impression that our main concern with peacekeeping at the UN has been to reduce its cost. In company with members of the European Community, we recently submitted to the Secretary-General some practical proposals on how United Nations peacekeeping opera-tions might be made more effective. This was in response to a resolution passed at last year's General Assembly inviting member states to submit their observations. In their reply, the 12 members of the Community made clear their full support for United Nations peacekeeping, as well as conveying suggestions for improvement.

One idea was that greater use might be made of smaller-scale observer-type operations to perform certain tasks such as those in Afghanistan, and possibly, soon, in central America. The Twelve also suggested that it would be useful for member states to notify the Secretary General of their willingness, in principle to participate in peacekeeping operations and to state in what particular area they would be prepared to help, for example, by contributing troops, observers, civilian personnel, equipment and so on. In other words, there would be a potential list—a reservoir—of potential areas of help on which the Secretary-General could draw at fairly short notice.

The European Community also made proposals on the training of peacekeeping personnel—my hon. Friend is right to stress the importance of that. New demands on soldiers result not only from the new concept of soldiers being involved in peacekeeping—that is a new concept for many armies—but because each situation that they are required to face tends to differ depending on the particular task that the United Nations has given to them.

As my hon. Friend has said, the Scandinavians already provide some training—they run courses for peacekeeping. I assure my hon. Friend that the EC suggestion on training will be discussed with the Secretary-General and we shall have to await the outcome of those discussions.

I shall try to deal with all the points that I have not covered today by letter to my hon. Friend.

During the past year the improvements in East-West relations and the Soviet Union's decision to end some of her overseas adventures have led to major progress in the resolution of regional conflicts in many parts of the world —a process in which the UN has had an important role and from which its standing has gained. The presence of a UN peacekeeping force is often the first step for parties who wish to find their way from the battlefield to the negotiating table. The Government are proud of their support for UN peacekeeping and we urge all members of the UN to demonstrate their support too.

Before we adjourn, may I wish all hon. Members and our officials and staff a very happy Easter recess.