To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to improve the provision of wheelchairs and artificial limbs.

The Disablement Services Authority was established for this purpose. Its first annual report was published in 1988, detailing the improvements made in the service to date. A copy of the report is available in the Library. The annual report for 1989 is being prepared and will be published in August.

I am sure that the authority will be happy to answer any particular questions that the right hon. Gentleman may have.

I am grateful for that full reply. Will the Minister exercise his influence to ensure that every disabled person who acquires an artificial limb or a wheelchair receives an appropriate one soon, that outdoor power wheelchairs are soon made available, and that the funds of the Disablement Services Authority are increased to enable it to provide these?

I and my hon. Friend the Minister responsible for the disabled are in regular contact with Lord Holderness. It is certainly our commitment that everyone who needs a wheelchair or artificial limb should have one. Work is going forward, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, on the indoor-outdoor occupant-controlled powered wheelchair, and we hope that it will be possible to set up studies of its effectiveness in actual use. We are also keen to develop an active-user wheelchair for younger and more active disabled people.

Will my hon. and learned Friend support the appeal by Professor McColl to doctors who prescribe wheelchairs, to the effect that millions of pounds could be saved on wheelchairs that are hardly ever used or are not returned when they are no longer required? That money could be used to upgrade heavily used wheelchairs.

To my mind, that is a useful additional point to that made earlier by the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). Just as it is our commitment that everyone who needs an artificial limb or wheelchair should have one, we believe that it is a waste of resources if people who do not need wheelchairs or artificial limbs are prescribed them. We need sensible prescribing which meets the needs of disabled people. Otherwise, as Professor McColl has pointed out, limbs and wheelchairs are stored and never used.

Does the Minister accept that there has riot been rapid enough progress in recent years in making available to people in need of them special wheelchairs which are suitable for their circumstances? So far, there has been a general approach and a standard wheelchair which has failed to meet the needs of many people. Although we are waiting the outcome of studies, is it not possible to be more flexible and responsive to individual needs?

I sympathise very much with what the hon. Gentleman says, in that I certainly believe—I hope that I conveyed the flavour of this point in my initial answer—that wheelchairs need to be more tailored to individual needs. That is why we are keen on the active-user wheelchair and keen that the studies on the indoor-outdoor occupant-controlled powered wheelchair should go ahead. It is also why I had a most useful meeting with Lord Holderness the other day. I know that the Disablement Services Authority is keen to make progress, too.

Is it not now extremely urgent for the Minister to press the Disablement Services Authority for a commitment to provide outdoor powered wheelchairs and to supply the resources? Has he read the article in the British Medical Journal by Dr. Graham Mulley which shows that only one in four hospital wheelchairs is safe and in good order, with the result that patients suffer pressure sores, fatigue, falls, shin injuries, chafed heels, penetrating foot injuries and lacerations? Does the Minister agree that that is deeply disgraceful, and what action has he taken since the article was written?

The action that we have taken, as the right hon. Member knows, preceded the article in the two respects that he mentioned. First, on the indoor-outdoor powered wheelchairs, he will know that the Disablement Services Authority started a 12-month pilot study in January, and I hope that that will proceed successfully. The right hon. Gentleman will also know that the report in 1986 by the McColl committee, which was established by the Government, first drew attention to the large number of inadequacies in wheelchair repair arrangements. The wheelchair repair service was open to competitive tendering in 1988–89. Some 79 contracts have been awarded, and we intend to ensure that the service is much improved. We certainly do not mind articles pointing out its deficiencies as that is a spur to further achievements and improvements.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether any improvements have been made to the time in which results of cervical cancer screening are issued as a result of the use of private sector laboratories.

I am pleased to say there has been a further improvement in the time taken by National Health Service laboratories to report on cervical smears. More than 85 per cent. are currently meeting our target time of one month. This is due partly to the use of private laboratories. Other measures taken have included employment of additional staff, overtime working and use of other NHS laboratories.

I am grateful for that encouraging answer. Does not this successful co-operation between the private sector and the NHS have wider implications?

Yes. I am sure that such a partnership will be useful in a whole range of NHS activities. Fortunately, examples of co-operation between district health authorities and the private sector over a whole range of NHS activities are legion.

Will my hon. and learned Friend ensure that his Department loses no opportunity for co-operation with the private service in any way, as this often cuts worrying waiting time for patients after tests, and leads to much better treatment?

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. We have the highest hopes for our extremely complex cervical cancer screening programme, but obviously much of that is set at naught if there are long waiting times. I am glad to say that while in December 1988, in 43 districts results were taking more than four weeks to come through, by the end of March 1989 the number was down to 25. I hope that by improvements in NHS laboratories and, where appropriate, use of private laboratories we shall be able to reduce that figure still further.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the total number of representations received by his Department since the publication of "Working for Patients" which express criticism or anxiety in regard to present Government health policies.

So far, I have received more than 5,500 representations on the White Paper, "Working for Patients". Many ask questions, many support all or some of the proposals, and some refer only to specific aspects. It is not possible to distinguish the letters in the way that the hon. Member suggests.

Does the Minister expect to receive more letters, not just about resources and the apparent commitment to destabilise the service but in response to yesterday's announcement, which seems to reveal an assumption that a captain of industry is very much in a part-time position, while nurses are so busy caring, in a way that the Government do not reveal, that they cannot be spared to serve on the policy decisions board of the NHS?

The people who will be given much more local responsibility for managing and delivering the service will be encouraged to see that we are able to recruit to the policy board the services of some high-powered and successful people with experience of large organisations. We also have an important job of nursing management to do. That is why there is a director of nursing on the management executive who is charged with that part of the management responsibility that has to be done from the centre.

In the correspondence that my right hon. and learned Friend is receiving, is he getting the sort of letters that many of us are getting from elderly patients who are being scared by the British Medical Association, through their doctors, with the most vicious lies and propaganda? What does he intend to do to make the BMA realise that it has a duty not to scare patients?

I have written to every general practitioner pointing out that the leaflets that they were distributing were inaccurate and untrue. I hope that many have withdrawn them as a result, but I cannot approach every GP who uses the tactics described by my hon. Friend. It is grotesquely unfair to make such claims to elderly and vulnerable patients in pursuit of some perceived interest. Now that we have settled the GP contract, I hope that there will be much less of that, and much more of the sensible discussion that I have made it perfectly clear that I am open to having with the BMA.

Can the Minister confirm that among those representations and anxieties, many members of the nursing profession have written pointing out that no one from their profession has been elected to the board that he has announced? Why did he not make a statement to the House about that board? Also, what representations has he received from medical secretaries who are having a tough time at the moment?

I have not yet received many letters from nurses about the make-up of the policy board. As their general secretary has written to me, I shall no doubt be receiving some more, but they will be given the same explanation—that the policy board is not a representative committee. [Interruption.] Looking back, I believe that it was an extremely bad tradition of the Health Service that everything had to be subjected to a committee consisting of one doctor, one nurse, one administrator and one treasurer, so that prolonged multi-disciplinary deliberations took place before, in most cases, no decisions were reached. The policy board is charged with the overall strategy for the service. On the executive charged with the management responsibilities it is essential to have a director of nursing, and we have such a director.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend commend the approach taken by the general manager of the Queen's medical centre in Nottingham, who said that his hospital was extremely interested in becoming an NHS trust hospital so long as that was in the interests of the patients whom it served? Is not that a constructive approach to the White Paper and one which contrasts substantially with the general approach taken by the BMA?

I agree entirely, and I believe that the decision has been supported by the majority of the medical staff at the Queen's medical centre. I take that as an expression of interest because potentially the proposal could benefit patients. I agree with the general manager that after a great deal more discussion, which has to take place, the decision as to whether the hospital becomes self-governing will depend on whether that is in the interests of the patients, the hospital and the staff.

Has the Secretary of State seen the open letter published in the Wolverhampton Express and Star last week from more than 50 per cent. of Wolverhampton consultants, saying that they could not now guarantee the inhabitants of Wolverhampton a comprehensive health service due to lack of resources and threatened ward closures? What has the Secretary of State to say about that parlous affair?

I am afraid that in all branches of politics and public life it is easier to get people to sign round robins and petitions than to give serious views and discussion. I cannot think that the majority of Wolverhampton consultants believe such nonsense.

They signed it.

There is nothing in the White Paper to justify making such alarmist allegations to the population of Wolverhampton.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is time for the hyperbole and scaremongering by the BMA to stop because it is very confusing for patients and adds nothing to the debate? As a conciliatory gesture, is my right hon. and learned Friend prepared to meet the BMA without any preconditions whatever just to talk about the proposals which will help patient care?

When the BMA announced last week that it wished to meet me for discussions, I announced my readiness to have such discussions. The precondition has to be that we all agree on the aim of improving the National Health Service. I look forward to the BMA putting forward positive ideas for improving the National Health Service. I am still waiting for a date to be arranged for the discussions. It is a great pity that after announcing its wish to talk about the proposals, the BMA has now started publishing whole-page newspaper advertisements containing a great list of blatant untruths, which I do not think for one moment that the BMA believes but which are designed merely to frighten patients in the hope that that will somehow strengthen the BMA's bargaining power in discussions with me.

What representations did the Secretary of State receive to the effect that what the Health Service needed was three industrialists all clutching their private medical cover? Is he aware that the chief contribution of Sir Graham Day and Bob Scholey to the public sector has been in closing large chunks of it and privatising what was left? Is that why they have been chosen to run the Health Service? How could the Secretary of State find places for four business men on the health policy board but no room for even one nurse? Have not those who know how to care for patients got at least as much to offer the Health Service as those who know only how to read a balance sheet and close a factory?

It is a serious criticism of the hon. Gentleman that he reminds me so much of his hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) reacting to the Griffiths report on general management in the Health Service four or five years ago. The hon. Gentleman talked a lot of nonsense about supermarkets and how the proposals were not suitable, but the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) knows that he would not wish to reverse the great management improvements introduced by Sir Roy Griffiths from Sainsbury's. He knows that a giant organisation requires people able to cope with providing leadership and guidance for managers who will be charged with such great responsibility in the service. The hon. Gentleman should not resort to such populist nonsense when his own proposals are simply that every health authority should be dominated by local councillors and trade unionists, who I suppose he imagines will bring a dynamic new improvement to the way in which care is delivered.

Would my right hon. and learned Friend like to hazard a guess as to how many of the innocent patients who are writing to us as a result of being lobbied by rather unprofessional and unscrupulous doctors— [Interruption.]—have any comprehension of the true nature of our reforms? Rather than feeding patients a diet of misinformation, would not doctors be better advised to tell them the true facts and acknowledge the Government's responsibility in overhauling a National Health Service system which was creaking under the strains and demands placed on it?

I have had the same experience as my hon. Friend. There is one village in my constituency from which I keep receiving letters, mainly from worried and elderly people, beginning "I agree with my doctor that" and then giving some nonsense description of the White Paper. I am having to write to reassure those people. That is in contrast with the large meetings that I have had in the past week —there were two in Yorkshire and one last night in Winchester—which were attended by many general practitioners and where there was much criticism, I concede, but much constructive discussion as well. It is ridiculous that when we agree with the profession that we want to make a better National Health Service for cur patients, some GPs have to resort to the low-level propaganda from which my hon. Friend and I have suffered.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the nurses regrading appeals in the Leicestershire health district.

The grading appeals are being dealt with under a long-standing agreement between the management and staff sides of the general Whitley council on procedures for settling differences over NHS employees' conditions of service. Detailed arrangements for operating the agreement are for local decision.

Does the Minister agree with the statement made by the director of personnel of the Leicestershire health authority that the appeal procedures are a major distraction from the work of the National Health Service? Does he also agree that in processing the 1,500 appeals that have been made it will take up to two years—until mid-1991—to clear the backlog, which will be a substantial hardship for those who have appealed? Why does he not just allow those appeals and enable the nurses to get the salaries that they so obviously deserve?

More than 500,000 posts in the National Health Service were subject to regrading last year. Some nurses have appealed, and those appeals are progressing at local level under a procedure agreed with the trade unions. The vast majority of nurses are satisfied with their new grading and pay last year went up by an average of 18 per cent. as a result.

Is it not a fact that whereas under the last Labour Government nurses' pay was actually cut, under the Conservative Administration it has increased by 44 per cent., including a rise of 25 per cent. in the past two years?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The statistics show that in the five years to 1979 nurses' pay went down in real terms by 21 per cent.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what matters were discussed at the last meeting with the chairman of the British Medical Association.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he last met representatives of the British Medical Association; and what matters were discussed.

I last met the chairman of the BMA formally on 22 February when I discussed with him the remuneration of hospital doctors. I have since then met the general medical services committee's negotiators on 4 May to discuss the remuneration of GPs under the new GP contract.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend discuss the current advertising campaign with the chairman of the BMA and point out that there are so many inaccuracies in it that it is difficult to believe that those responsible for it have even bothered to read the White Paper? Will he seek a further meeting so that he can present a copy of the White Paper to the chairman, together with one for the chairman's advertisers, so that they can reprint the adverts but this time tell the truth?

I was astonished that just three days after the BMA said that it wanted to see me and to have discussions, those advertisements were produced. I was equally astonished that the chairman of the BMA has kept saying that he entirely shares the Government's aims as set out in the preface to the White Paper, and that he and most of his colleagues believe that there is a great deal of good in the White Paper and want us to experiment with and pilot the rest, but followed that with advertisements containing not one word about those positive sentiments and a lot of totally untrue allegations which are simply designed to alarm elderly and chronically sick patients. I should like the BMA to stick to its more constructive proposals and to have a formal word with me about the White Paper for the first time since I presented it to the BMA.

How can the BMA, the doctors' trade union, describe the NHS as,

"underfunded, undermined and under threat",

when the Government have increased spending on the NHS since 1979 from £8 billion to £26 billion, which includes a substantial rise in doctors' pay? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the advertising campaign is misleading and that it is ovepriced, overwrought and certainly over the top?

I do not criticise the BMA for using advertising agencies appropriately, but I advise it not to leave the text entirely to the copywriters. It is best to give instructions to the agency about what one wishes to say that is positive and then to make sure that the text is written by someone who has read and understood the proposals. The BMA has not followed either rule. My hon. Friend's slogan in certainly as effective as that of the BMA.

We all agree that the NHS needs more money, although the Government have increased spending on it by 40 per cent. in real terms since we came to power. That money will have the best effect for the patient if it is spent more sensibly and by a better-run Health Service. I am still waiting to hear what positive ideas the BMA might have for improving the running of the Health Service.

Are not GPs in Kent up in arms over the Secretary of State's proposals—[HoN. MEMBERS: "Where?"] In Kent. Is opting out a solution to the problems of the people of Sevenoaks, who face the closure of Emily Jackson house and the rundown of acute services at Sevenoaks hospital? What about the League of Friends at Sevenoaks, which raised £100,000 for acute service support facilities but finds that that money has been wasted? What about the Tory Members from Kent who bleat to their constituents about what they are doing in Westminster but vote with the Government on all these stupid proposals about budget cuts?

The hon. Gentleman's new guise as a man of Kent is intriguing but I suggest that he should do a little more homework on the county before he launches into local politics there in competition with my hon. Friends.

Expressions of interest in self-governing hospitals will come to me and my Department only at the end of this month. They are expressions of interest by doctors, managers and those involved in the hospitals who can see the potential of our proposals to improve the service in their area and give them a greater ability to control what happens in Sevenoaks or wherever. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait and see whether that is pursued in Sevenoaks. Those who are interested will enter into a process of discussion with us so that we can ensure that any hospitals which become self-governing will raise the quality of service for the people whom they serve.

What will be the Secretary of State's response to the BMA representatives who voiced the concern of their colleagues, notably in Sheffield, that patients most in need of care, such as the chronically sick and the elderly, stand to be penalised through budgetary considerations arising out of his new proposals?

People in Sheffield are still complaining about the contract. Frankly, they would be well advised to take the advice of their negotiators who are commending a package that is fair to doctors and will pave the way for a big improvement in the quality of the family doctor service in this country. The hon. Gentleman's comments on the elderly and chronically sick are the opposite to the truth. There is a greater variety in the quality and range of service provided for the elderly and chronically sick than there is for most other people. The introduction of the new systems of clinical audit and charging district health authorities with the responsibility to use their money to most effect for the services that local residents need most will have the effect of raising the overall quality of care for the elderly and chronically sick. The scares about them are part of the background to the dispute over the new contract for GPs, which I hope is now resolved.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, bearing in mind the assessment of Kent by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), the hon. Gentleman would be better advised to spend his time looking after his own constituency in Cumbria? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree further that all doctors in Kent have had the opportunity to consult their patients and that many of them have expressed approval of the new plans, and that, where there is interest in self-governing hospitals, it is because they believe that it will be in the interests of the provision of better service for the people of Kent?

I am sure that the attempt by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) to be a latter-day Wat Tyler and raise the population of Kent will be highly unsuccessful. My hon. Friend is quite right to say that many people are interested in the proposals. Among them are medical staff and others in Kent. Kent has a tradition of being an extremely go-ahead county in the forefront of many reforms in medical care and social services. Many people in Kent will be eager to see the opportunities that our White Paper gives them for improving their ability to deliver good quality services.

When the Secretary of State next meets BMA representatives, will he answer their frequent questions about when he will respond to the Griffiths report on community care? Is he aware of the stark contrast between pushing through his proposals, which are opposed by everybody in the medical profession, and the year that he has taken sitting on the Griffiths report, which is supported by the health profession? Did he note the inquest last week into the death of Beverley Lewis who, blind from rubella, starved to death in the community? How many more scandals must there be before the right hon. and learned Gentleman recognises that a growing number of elderly and handicapped people in the community need better community care, and need it urgently?

For 10 years we have been giving priority to the needs of elderly, mentally ill and mentally handicapped people. There has been the most enormous development in community services both in the National Health Service and local authorities over that time. As far as I can recall, the Labour party did nothing in that respect. We set up the Griffiths committee and we are now considering its extremely detailed proposals. I tell the BMA, as I tell everybody else, that we will report soon with our conclusions. It is an important and extremely complex problem, and we must determine how best to take forward the continuing development of good quality community services in this country.

When my right hon. and learned Friend next meets the chairman of the BMA, will he draw his attention to the enormous variations in unit costs throughout the NHS, which are clearly shown by the Department of Health's own performance indicators? Will he point out that they clearly show how much room for improved performance there is in the NHS and that the proposals for an internal market are designed to achieve that improvement?

I certainly will. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that high costs do not always mean the best quality of care and that it is possible to achieve extremely good quality at a reasonable cost and thereby extend the service that we give to patients. In an internal market we will ensure that far more is known than ever before about high quality care, what the variations in cost are and why, and then place doctors and managers in a much better position to make sensible decisions about how to maximise good quality care for their patients.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will pay a visit to the Glasgow, Central constituency in the next few weeks to meet local doctors in order to discuss the White Paper "Working for Patients".

I have no plans to do so at present.

That is a disappointing answer. Scottish Members of Parliament and, above all, my hon. Friend the Member for the Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) will be particularly disappointed. As the Secretary of State is not to go to Glasgow, will he get in touch with and make representations to the Secretary of State for Scotland and ask him to ensure that the two dermatology wards at the royal infirmary in the Glasgow, Central constituency are kept open, as he plans to close both wards on Friday?

First, I regard the Vale of Glamorgan as having been won in part by a campaign of untruths about the Health Service report. The local general practitioners, then in dispute about their contracts, persuaded some people that there was a threat that the Health Service was going to be privatised, or something of the kind. I accept that that influenced the result. In my experience, such campaigns cannot run for very long. I do not believe that they will run again in Glasgow, Central now that matters have already moved on a great deal since the last election. I advise the electors of Glasgow to beware of people from Nottingham who suddenly take an interest in dermatology in Glasgow for party political reasons.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend bear in mind that if he reconsidered his decision to visit Glasgow, Central, he would be welcome in my constituency of Tayside, North to meet my GPs and discuss the changes proposed in the White Paper, particularly because the money will follow the patients? Cottage hospitals and other popular hospitals in Scotland can be kept open by the doctors directing the patients to them.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's invitation. I have held three meetings in Scotland on the National Health Service White Paper and I found an extremely interesting reaction. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth), are responsible for delivering health care in Scotland. I know that they are pointing out to their colleagues in the Health Service the great potential advantages that our reforms open up for them.

I should like to express my deep, heartfelt and sincere regret at the fact that the Secretary of State is not to visit Glasgow, Central. If he does visit, I hope that he will be just as effective from everyone's point of view as he was in the Vale of Glamorgan.

If the Secretary of State goes to Glasgow, Central, would he care to take a 50p bus trip up the road to Motherwell to meet doctors from the health improvement service campaign for Lanarkshire? Will he have the guts to tell them to their faces what he and his colleagues have called them today, unscrupulous liars who are misleading the population, or will he recant and accept that they are non-political and fair minded people who welcome one or two of his proposals, but who conclude that in general the proposals will be the beginning of the end of the NHS? When he is in Glasgow, Central and Lanarkshire, will he explain why everyone in Britain with an interest in the Health Service is a liar and out of step, except him?

I am always glad to visit Glasgow, and I did so often in my previous job, because it is one of the most successful examples of urban regeneration in the country in its inner-city area. It has benefited considerably from the revival of the British economy and the Government's enterprise in restoring life and prosperity to the city centre.

The hon. Gentleman said that the doctors conceded that there was a great deal to welcome in the White Paper. They came out with some slogan or other which the hon. Gentleman repeated. I must point out to the doctors that their advertisements are patently untrue. When I meet individual doctors in Motherwell or elsewhere, I find that they avoid the question when I try to get them to justify the statements put out in the name of their association. That is no way to campaign on a serious subject like the National Health Service. I welcome constructive discussion with doctors from Motherwell or anywhere else.

Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that there are many elderly and other vulnerable people in Glasgow, Central who are caused unnecessary distress by unfounded suggestions that the Government intend to privatise the Health Service? Does he agree that Opposition Members who try to fan such deliberate untruths are unscrupulously and uncaringly exploiting those vulnerable people for their own sordid political advantage?

I do not think that it will work to their advantage as they believe it will. I agree with my hon. Friend that that is what they are doing at the moment. However, I cannot see how they will defend the Vale of Glamorgan when they must face a situation where there has been no privatisation, where a great deal more control and influence has been placed in the hands of local doctors in relation to local services and where the situation is plainly improving for patients. As we are getting on well with the implementation, I remain confident that that will be the position by the time we reach the next general election.

Returning to the original point about the dermatology units at Glasgow royal infirmary, will the Secretary of State reconsider his decision not to speak to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland because this is a vital issue? Does he realise that dermatology units have been quite separate from other wards in Scotland for more than three decades and that apparently none of the consultants involved have had discussions with Greater Glasgow health board on the matter? Would it not make more sense to await the outcome of the strategic review which was planned in 1984?

I shall draw the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland to the representations that have been made on this important subject today, particularly when they come from an hon. Member who comes from north of the border and somewhat nearer to Glasgow than the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) who previously raised the matter. This is not a matter for me, but it is a serious matter which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will be considering seriously.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the new general practitioners contract will affect women doctors.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he will make a statement on the response by general practitioners to the new contract announced to the House on 5 May.

Women doctors are an asset to partnerships because a number of patients prefer to see a woman doctor. Our proposals for formalising part-time working and job-sharing arrangements will help women doctors seeking a reduced commitment—for example, because of family responsibilities. Women general practitioners will also benefit from retention of partnership average list sizes for calculating entitlement to basic practice allowance and the reduced threshold for full basic practice allowance from 1,500 patients previously proposed to 1,200.

On the overall contract, the negotiators undertook, as part of the agreement between us on the major outstanding issues, to commend the new contract to the annual conference of local medical committees on 21 and 22 June.

I am grateful for that helpful answer, but does my hon. and learned Friend accept that despite the BMA's propaganda, which was designed to mislead and frighten patients, the general practitioners' contract will formalise part-time working arrangements for lady doctors, help with job sharing and ease conditions for locum assistance?

Yes, the contract will do all those things.

Is my hon. and learned Friend aware that those of us who were unhappy about the first proposal for the contract warmly welcome the flexibility that Ministers showed in putting forward the revised proposals which have now been accepted by the BMA negotiators? Is he further aware that those of us who pressed for changes now expect the BMA collectively to settle on the matter?

I endorse what my hon. Friend says. We listened to what was said about the draft contract, including representations from hon. Members who had met their general practitioners. We listened and changes were made on both sides. This is a fair deal and I trust that the local medical committees will endorse it.

Does the Minister agree that, although the new proposals are slightly superior to the unbelievably crass original proposals, the typical woman doctor who joins a general practice now has a list size of about 350, on which the change from 1,500 to 1,200 will have no bearing? Does he further agree that, although averaging will now be allowed, women doctors will probably not be allowed to become partners, and, since 50 per cent. of those now leaving medical schools are women, they will hit a brick wall and will become only employees, not partners, in general practice?

None of that is right. Averaging will remove the principal point that the hon. Gentleman made. The BMA negotiators have agreed the contract. I appreciate that that means that the hon. Gentleman's fox has been shot—but there it is.

I welcome the Minister's reply, but will he confirm that, in practice, a two-doctor practice may be divided into three part-time practices, similar to one that we saw in Newcastle recently which wants to continue to give good service to its patients?

I shall confirm that point in writing to the hon. Gentleman, but it sounds right to me.

Having heard what my hon. and learned Friend has to say, is it not now clear that the only doctor, whether man or woman, who has anything to fear from the new BMA contract is the bad or the idle?

For the first time we have what many progressive doctors have been asking for for a long time —a performance-related contract that rewards initiative and those doctors who offer more services to their patients, not just those who are sick but those who need screening and better services to maintain themselves in good health. The capitation arrangement of 60 per cent. will ensure that there is a proper consumerist approach within the Health Service—and not before time.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research he has commissioned on the impact of private medicine on the National Health Service; and what have been the findings.

Three studies have been commissioned from Sheffield university. These studies have been published and I am arranging for copies to be placed in the Library. We welcome the private sector's contribution, which adds choice and flexibility in health care.

The Minister did not say what the findings were. He is aware that adequate research has not been done into the impact of the private system on the National Health Service. Is he aware that we really must get away from assertions and have adequate research? Is he further aware that the findings of that research would be that the private health service badly affects the NHS? Would the Minister agree with that?

No, I would not agree. The research shows a very modest loss, of 0.3 per cent., of nurses each year from the Health Service to the private sector. The official Labour party policy, just published, is that Labour remains firmly opposed to the private sector. That is based on dogma. The private sector is complementary to the NHS. It offers choice and flexibility.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 May.

This morning I had a number of meetings. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today with ministerial colleagues and others.

Does the Prime Minister recall that three months ago she said that we were proceeding towards zero inflation? Will she take this opportunity to update the House on progress?

The steps that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken will deal with the problem—[Interruption.]—and get inflation down and on a downward course again. I remind the hon. Gentleman that 8 per cent. was low for Labour. It is unacceptably high for us.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 May.

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

Following my right hon. Friend's successful visit to Teeside in November 1987, when she met the then unemployed Mr. Eric Fletcher, may I ask if she has seen last week's Middlesbrough Evening Gazette in which Mr. Fletcher is reported to be "doing smashing"? He is now buying his council house, has money in his bank and is grateful for the day he met the Prime Minister.

Yes. I understand that, on my advice, he took a good training course, that he did well on that course, that he has a job and that due to his own vigorous efforts, he has done well in that job. He is to be warmly congratulated. So should the Government, on having the right policies which enabled him to do that and which are bringing increasing prosperity to the north-east, among all other regions.

Does the Prime Minister recall saying last week that we picked up our inflationary tendency by trying to shadow the deutschmark? Will she say exactly who made the decision to shadow the deutschmark?

The policies are the policies of the Government—[Interruption.]—asare all our policies, and they have been infinitely more successful on inflation than the 26 per cent. that was reached under Labour.

So, the Prime Minister is saying that the reason we have 8 per cent. inflation and have picked up that tendency is that the Government, under her leadership, made a complete mess of it?

No. A complete mess would be the way to describe what Labour Members did when they were in office.

As my right hon. Friend continues her commendable resistance to the threats of Socialist harmonisation by the bureaucrats in Brussels, may I ask her to seek also to promote some European initiatives to protect rain forests in Brazil and elephants in Africa?

Yes, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for those comments. We have policies to help protect rain forests in Brazil through our aid programme and through training people in Brazil and elsewhere to do precisely that. As for elephants and the worrying tendency to sell ivory, we agree with the international convention and we shall be raising the matter again at the next Environment Council. We believe that the sale of new ivory should be stopped altogether.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 May.

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

Does the Prime Minister realise that the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Confederation of Health Service Employees, the National Union of Public Employees, patients and staff are all finding it difficult to convince the Secretary of State for Health to scrap his White Paper "Working for Patients"? What plans does the Prime Minister have for recovering the £11 million of unpaid bills left by people who have abused the private facilities of the National Health Service?

The White Paper "Working for Patients" will improve the Health Service by giving hospitals more choice and more say in their own affairs, and by giving doctors more choice in running their own budgets. And there has been an enormous increase in resources from £8 billion to £25 billion per year, which has enabled doctors—finterruptionl If hon. Gentlemen cannot recognise correct accountancy, I am not in the least surprised. Perhaps they can raise the matter under the public expenditure survey, which shows that Labour spent £8 billion on the Health Service and that we are spending about between £24 billion and £25 billion now. That is the measure of the improvement to the Health Service.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 May.

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

Has my right hon. Friend seen the recent report concerning the low level of prosecutions and fines related to litter offences? Has she studied also the findings of several reports of the Select Committee on the Environment showing a similar situation in respect of very serious environmental offences? Does she agree that greater concern should be shown by the prosecuting authorities and by magistrates?

Yes, I saw the report—and clearly the situation varies greatly from one part of the country to another. In areas where the local people, magistrates, the Tidy Britain group and the prosecuting authorities are greatly concerned to have a tidy Britain, there is much more success in achieving that than in other places. I agree with my hon. Friend that prosecuting authorities and magistrates should have regard to the need for a tidy Britain, and I hope that there will be a sufficient number of prosecutions and sufficiently severe sentences.

Is the Prime Minister aware that the whole nation will welcome yesterday's announcement by the Foreign Secretary that he had renegotiated his treaty with the Prime Minister, so that the decision on the European monetary system will be taken by the Government as a whole? Will the right hon. Lady tell the House whether that decision will be taken on the basis of a majority vote or will it be, as usual, subject to her personal veto?

I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman has no experience of government. Under collective responsibility, we are all responsible.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 May.

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

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that her Government have no plans to reintroduce secondary picketing, to renationalise British Telecom, or to give away our nuclear deterrent in exchange for today's equivalent of a piece of paper from Munich? Does she agree that such policies amount to a cynical attempt to trade beliefs for votes, and if implemented would spell disaster for this country?

I confirm that we have no plans to reintroduce secondary picketing, to re-nationalise British Telecom, or to get rid of the nuclear deterrent. All our policies are sound—sound at home and sound for the best defence of Britain—and there is not a cynical policy among them.

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the warm welcome that will be given to the report in today's Daily Mail that she has joined the fight against the extinction of the African elephant? However, is my right hon. Friend aware that the all-important convention on international trade in endangered species is not due to take place until October and that many elephants may be killed before then? Will she use her influence to cut through the red tape and to secure immediate action on that very important issue?

As my noble Friend, the Minister for Housing, Environment and Countryside announced yesterday, having just returned from an official visit to Kenya, he will call for concerted European support for a total ban at the next Council meeting of Environment Ministers, which takes place in Luxembourg on 8 June, considerably before the international convention is due to meet.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 May.

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

The whole House will appreciate the reason for the Prime Minister's total opposition to television viewers being able to see her performance at Question Time. Can she confirm that that reason is that this is one photo opportunity that she cannot stage-manage?

The hon. Gentleman talks his customary poppycock.

In view of the indication by the Secretary of State for Wales of his preference for a different emphasis in economic regional policies, will the Prime Minister confirm that the entire reason for the existence of the Welsh Office—and of the Scottish Office—is to enable a different policy to be pursued where circumstances dictate it? Will she tell the House whether she has full confidence in the Secretary of State for Wales?

Yes, I have. The policies that are being pursued and are bringing such prosperity to Wales are Conservative Government policies, and I hope that everyone is very grateful and thankful for them.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the mendacious and inaccurate campaign being waged by the 13ritish Medical Association suggests some deficiency in diagnostic ability on the part of the doctors who are contributing to it? If their medical judgment is as bad as their political judgment, would not patients be well advised to find another doctor, and quickly?

I believe that my right hon. and learned Friends the Secretaries of State for Health and for Scotland have negotiated a very good contract with the doctors, and I hope that they will in general accept it. Among other things, the White Paper suggested that people who were not satisfied with their general practitioner could move from one to another more easily. Under Conservative Governments there have been more general practitioners, so the number of each list has gone down by about 300, giving doctors more time to spend with each patient.

To ask the Prime Minister if she has any plans to increase the amount of money being spent by Her Majesty's Government's Departments into research into the sexual abuse of children; and if she will make a statement.

We will continue to support research into child sex abuse. We have already increased our expenditure, and further research proposals will be considered in the light of the knowledge gained from existing studies.

Is not the Prime Minister ashamed that in 10 years her Government, through the Department of Health, has put just £1 million into this difficult and sensitive subject? Will she consider establishing a national institute for the study of the sexual abuse of children, as has been done in Canada, Australia, America and many other countries? The victims need help and the perpetrators need to be prevented. For a very small amount of money the Prime Minister could do a great deal of good. Will she take that suggestion away and consider it?

I do not think that it is a question of finding extra money. Well over £800 million is provided for basic research. It would be quite easy to put into that sphere and perhaps take a little away from others, but we must decide our priorities.

The real difficulty, as I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would know, is that of designing and conducting research and obtaining incontrovertible results. We need to ensure that projects are considered properly before they are commissioned.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that Bury district health authority will shortly be appointing two additional consultants, thus bringing to 16 the number of such consultants appointed in the area in the past five years? Will she welcome that contribution to the Health Service?

Order. Are these consultants concerned with the sexual abuse of children?

No.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 May.

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

Can I ask the Prime Minister to state her complete confidence in the prediction made by the Chancellor as recently as two months ago that inflation this year would peak at 8 per cent. and not go higher?

I have nothing further to add to what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor said. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that our efforts to attack inflation will be infinitely more successful than those of the last Labour Government. The Labour party was the party of inflation and when it had got inflation up to 25 per cent. had not even the resources to inflation-proof pensioners' pensions.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 23 May.

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

Has the Prime Minister noticed that the people of Afghanistan managed to see off the Red Army without the need for nuclear weapons?

Yes, Sir; with a good deal of help from other people.

I beg to move,

That this House condemns this Government's total neglect of the inner city areas of Britain which has led to a reduction in investment, a decline in the quality of housing and schools, a deterioration in adequate health care, an increase in poverty and a growth in crime; and therefore calls upon the Government to work in partnership with local authorities, to ensure the increases in both private investment and public enterprise which inner cities so desperately need.

I must announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

I have written to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the Minister apologising for the fact that, before the debate is over, I must leave for the inner city of Birmingham which in part I represent. I offer a general apology to the House for my absence later, as well as offering it to you personally and to the Minister.

Two years ago, on the stairs inside Downing street, the prime Minister promised action on the inner cities—a sudden and uncharacteristic enthusiasm that came after eight years of wilful and deliberate neglect. For a moment, it seemed that the Prime Minister had at last accepted her duty to be Prime Minister of all the country, but our hopes were confounded. Life in the inner cities continues to deteriorate relative to life in the rest of the United Kingdom, and sometimes even in absolute terms. It deteriorates because the Government's approach to the inner cities reflects all the inadequacies of modern Conservatism.

Tory inner-city policy is based on bone-headed Conservative dogma. Public expenditure is cut when it should be increased; market forces are expected to provide results that they are incapable of producing; public enterprise is stifled when it should be encouraged. Tory inner-city policy is autocratic. Decisions that would best be taken locally are imposed by Whitehall, and initiatives that should be organised in partnership with those who live in and represent the inner cities are exclusively taken and managed by bureaucrats.

Tory inner-city policy shows contempt for genuine racial equality. Most of the black and Asian British live and work in inner cities. At best, the Government patronise those British citizens and at worst they discriminate against them. They think of them as a problem to be contained, not as men and women who should be given a fair share of national resources.

Eight years ago, we debated Lord Scarman's judgment on inner-city policy. In that debate the then Home Secretary, the noble Lord Whitelaw, described the need to allocate resources to disadvantaged groups but he refused to promise that the resources that he regarded as necessary would be provided. It was a wise precaution. Paragraph 6.32 of the Scarman Report was explicit:

"It is clear from the evidence of ethnic minority deprivation … that, if the balance of racial disadvantage is to be redressed, as it must be, positive action is required."

The Labour party gave unqualified support to that recommendation. On behalf of the Labour party I used these words: we do not ask for the black and Asian British

"to be given better employment prospects than their white contemporaries. I simply ask that they be given the same prospects and opportunities. To achieve that end special action is needed."—[Official Report, 10 December 1981; Vol. 14, c. 1012.]

To achieve that end, special action is needed. We believed that in 1981 and we believe it today.

Tory inner-city policy is above all else cynical. It is targeted not on the needs of inner cities themselves but on the requirements of Conservative party public relations, intended to soften the callous image with the illusion of compassion. Anyone who doubts that judgment need do no more than examine the wholly bogus announcement of the so-called "Action for Cities". That fraudulent prospectus, published over a year ago, was advertised as a programme that would invest £3 billion in the inner cities. Closer examination shows that the initiative provided £100 million of new investment, 5 per cent. of the total that the Government claimed. The rest was old money, dressed up to look like new. In fact, over the 10 years of Conservative Government, the inner cities have lost, rather than gained, public investment and public spending. Between 1981 and 1987, the seven urban programme partnership areas received £770 million in partnership money; at the same time, they lost £850 million in rate support grant.

I suspect that the Government will attempt to justify these reductions by claiming that the emphasis of their inner-city policy has shifted from social expenditure to economic regeneration. In a moment, I want to examine the outcome of that regeneration policy, on the terms and against the criteria which the Government choose. One thing is absolutely clear: the inner cities are in desperate need of increased public expenditure—on new houses and the repair of old ones, on new schools and additional teachers in them, and on hospitals and amenities. Until that money is spent, the quality of life in the inner cities will continue to deteriorate. What is more, industrial investment will not be made in areas of visible dereliction, yet the Government continue to reduce the quality of life and increase the obvious dereliction in the inner cities.

I adduce one example, from my experience in the inner city of Birmingham. For 10 years, Government policy on the renovation and improvement of houses has, at each state of its revision and development, made it more difficult for money to be spent on improving inner-city domestic property. There is no doubt, as I know to my cost from wrestling with the new proposals with the Birmingham corporation and the residents of my constituency, that the latest proposals for improvement grants will make it more difficult than ever before for inner-city dwellers to receive the money which makes their houses habitable.

I do not suggest for a minute that the problems of the inner cities are solely the products of Conservative policy. They are largely the product of history. The industries which once made the inner cities prosperous either no longer exist or have changed their form. Small companies have been replaced by large, and the largest companies have developed on sites which are at the margins of, or outside, the cities. The large houses which once were owned by prosperous inner-city families have been broken down into multiple occupation. A cumulative deterioration has set in which makes the inner cities a unique problem.

The inner cities are unique not because they suffer from disadvantages which are unknown outside them; they are unique because all the known disadvantages—unemployment, inadequate housing, increased crime, shortage of services and amenities—are to be found within them. Because all these disadvantages are concentrated within the same area, they breed off each other and multiply.

This concentration of disadvantage can be counteracted only by Government action, and that action has not been taken. In the time available to me in this short debate, I propose to deal with only four of the causes of inner-city crisis, beginning with the first essential requirement putting the iner cities back to work. That was the promise of the Government's inner-city initiatives, and that promise has been broken.

If the promise had been kept, unemployment in the inner city would have fallen at a faster rate than national unemployment, but during the past seven years unemployment in the inner cities has fallen 6 per cent. more slowly than it has in the economy as a whole. The reason is clear: the Government believe that the market, timidly influenced by marginal financial incentives, can solve the inner cities' problems. It was the market that caused the inner cities' problems, and only direct intervention can solve them.

This is demonstrated by the results of the urban development grant—the city grant. The inner cities need jobs that provide employment for unemployed men and women who live there, yet of the permanent jobs assisted by urban development grants, only 25 per cent. were new to the national economy. The rest were old jobs, which had been relocated to the inner cities and had, in general, brought their old employees with them. Only 18 per cent. of the UDG jobs were taken by men and women who had been unemployed previously. If the UDG has done little or nothing to help inner-city unemployment, that is at least better than the results of the urban development corporations. They have driven traditional jobs, the jobs that employ local residents, out of the areas, just as they have driven out the traditional residents.

I take my example from London. The London Docklands development corporation has forced 84 firms to relocate out of the area—forced them by the use of the compulsory purchase order, which the LDDC is able to operate from an autocratic position with an authority that no local government institution would be allowed to employ. The new businesses that are replacing those companies forced out of London docklands have not provided employment for displaced local residents. The Tower Hamlets example is particularly revealing. Before the development of the corporation, firms in the borough employed 35 per cent. of their work force from residents of the borough. New firms that arrived after 1982 employ only 13 per cent. of local labour. It is not surprising that London docklands boroughs now account for an increasing proportion of London's unemployed. The net result of Government policy has been quite opposite to the results that they have prophesied and claimed.

For eight years, I was a councillor with the London borough of Lewisham, one of the riparian boroughs that made up the Docklands Joint Committee, between 1974 and 1981. In those seven years, how many new houses and jobs did that committee bring to the docklands area?

A great many more than have been brought to it since then. I bow to, and am deeply impressed by, the hon. Gentleman's wide experience of these matters. If he thinks I am wrong in what I have just asserted, he had better say so. If he thinks that the LDDC is not bringing in companies that do not employ local labour, he had better say so. If the figures produced by the development corporation, which show that most of the new jobs are bringing in men and women from outside, are wrong, he had better say so.

My question, which the right hon. Gentleman clearly heard, was how many houses and how many jobs the Docklands Joint Committee brought into being between 1974 and 1981. The simple answer is that it sat and talked and did nothing.

Nobody accepts that for a second. More important than that, it did not drive out jobs. I repeat my contention that, on the evidence provided by the LDDC itself, it is effectively driving jobs out of the docklands boroughs.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Docklands Joint Committee produced a strategic plan, which in my constituency would have meant that some 15,000 to 20,000 people would have been housed in publicly owned housing on land that has now largely been sold off to private developers? Furthermore, of the additional 20,000 jobs in the LDDC area, about which the Government boast, 15,000 are brought in from outside, with a net loss of 6,000 jobs over the whole area. Does that not show that the LDDC is not serving the needs of local people?

It shows more than that. It shows one of the more unsavoury aspects of Conservative party tactics. When it was obsessed with private enterprise taking over these matters, and with giving private enterprise authoritarian powers by creating the LDDC, it thought it wise to abuse the institutions that were to be replaced. That is the normal technique of Conservative policy, which shows the shabby nature of its policies and attitudes, as well as their failure, which I continue to describe simply by relying on the figures.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Not now, but I will give way in a moment.

The jobs that the urban development corporation is providing for inner-city residents are almost invariably the jobs that those residents least want. The London Docklands development corporation, after much pressure from the boroughs, has now agreed that 4 per cent. of the new jobs in its area should be geared to the needs and attract local residents. That total is disgracefully inadequate. The jobs themselves are likely to be still more inadequate. A report into Canary wharf concluded that most of the new jobs created by the corporation would be part-time low-paid and concerned with cleaning and catering. It is not surprising that the LDDC chose to suppress that report rather than allow it to be published.

The epitaph on the Government's record on creating jobs in inner cities is provided by the unemployment statistics in the 44 inner-city authorities for which comprehensive figures are available. In only 14 of the 44 authorities did employment improve as compared with the national average. In four, the numbers of unemployed were higher in absolute terms than when the Government came to power.

The second task that the Government set themselves was to improve housing conditions in the inner cities. Housing conditions have deteriorated. During the last six years for which figures are available, homelessness has increased in the programme authority by an average of 63 per cent., outstripping the national increase in homelessness by 14 per cent. The total stock of council housing has fallen by almost 2 per cent. That reduction is a direct product of Government policies—their refusal to allow councils to build the homes which were necessary to replace those which were sold. The private rented accommodation which has been built in the inner cities, particularly in London, is wildly beyond the means of the traditional inner-city family. For the typical low-income family to be decently housed, we need a programme of sustained municipal building. The Government will not provide it. They positively obstruct it because they are blinded by dogma to the real needs of the people.

The third need of the inner cities—both in terms of the lives of the men and women who live there and as an inducement to new industry to move into those areas—is a reduction in inner-city crime. Since the Government were elected, the whole country has been swamped by a crime wave of record proportion. The statistics of crime in the inner cities over the past 10 years is a savage indictment of Government policy, for much of the blame must lie with a Government who allow the acceleration of inner-city unemployment, cause the deterioration of inner-city housing, and, by their so-called social services review, deepen and extend inner-city poverty.

Anyone who doubts the relationship between deprivation and crime ought to read again Lord Scarman's report, which said:

"There can be no doubt"

that it is

"a factor in the complex conditions which lie at the root"

of inner-city crime. The Government are responsible for those conditions and they must take responsibility for the crime which they create—crime of which the inner-city families are overwhelmingly innocent victims.

Let me remind the Government of the record. In the west midlands police division, which includes my constituency in the inner city of Birmingham, burglaries have increased by 49 per cent. since 1980 and wounding with intent has gone up 63 per cent. Assault on the person has increased by 75 per cent. That pattern is reproduced throughout the inner cities of Great Britain. In the past 10 years, recorded crime has grown by 47 per cent. in central Manchester. The incidence of recorded violent crime in central Leeds was up a staggering 89 per cent. for the first three months of this year, compared with the first three months of 1979. In central London, the figures are equally bad.

The Government came to power promising to crack down on crime and saying that they would combat and overcome crime in inner cities. In Hackney, crime has increased by 50 per cent., in Lambeth by 40 per cent. and in Southwark by 30 per cent. No one doubts that poverty and despair breed crime. That is not to condone the increases but to explain them, and to condemn the Government on whom the responsibility, indeed the blame, for increasing crime figures must fall.

Fourthly, a year ago, the Government promised improved inner-city education. I hope that the Minister will tell us what form that improvement in inner-city education is to take. Is it suggested that opting out of the state system will help the inner-city schools? It will do quite the opposite. Inner-city schools will become the poor and neglected relatives of their suburban neighbours. Is it suggested that city technology colleges will help the inner cities? The nearest CTC to the inner city I represent is located in Solihull. In that borough, it is unlikely to do much to combat the problems with which CTCs are said to deal.

Education in the inner cities is expensive. There is a great need for extra facilities, nursery places, English as a second language teaching and special needs classes. The Government's record of expenditure on education budgets can be summed up in a single sentence. They abolished the Inner London education authority for spending too much on inner-city education. That is the true reflection of Government policy. They have adopted that policy and they have failed to help the inner cities because they do not care about them or understand them and because they are ideologically incapable of advancing policies that meet their needs.

My hon. Friend probably knows that the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts is dealing with teacher shortages. In the words of the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, the shortages are "catastrophic". It is difficult to get Conservative Members even to admit that there are teacher shortages; they do not for a moment admit that there are teacher shortages on a grand scale in ILEA, which they are trying to abolish.

I say with the greatest affection for my hon. Friend, who represents the constituency in which I was born and brought up, that it seems a long time since he first made that point to me and I made a dangerous point in reply. I will make it again, notwithstanding his great experience of education and education trade unions. I believe, as he may believe too, that some special inducement must be made to bring teachers into the areas where teaching is most difficult. We are prepared to spend extra money in some schools on persuading teachers to spend time teaching Latin and Greek to small groups of boys and girls, so we should be prepared to spend extra money on persuading more teachers into the areas of greatest need to teach English as a second language to boys and girls and to deal with other special difficulties.

I sometimes get into trouble with my hon. Friend's union when I make that point, but I have made the point strongly and I will go on arguing for it, not to interfere with proper wage negotiations with teachers, but to defend what is necessary to help the people who teach, who want to help and who need help. They can be enabled to help only if we have a pay structure that reflects the particular problems of teaching in the central areas.

As a third native of Sheffield, perhaps I should join the party. We have heard at great length an attack on the Government's policies for dealing with the inner cities, but we have not heard one word about the Labour party's policies, apart from building more council housing and providing more social security. We have heard no other word of remedy from the Labour party.

The hon. Gentleman is about to hear more than one word on our policies in the next five or six minutes. He and his party's Front Bench must understand that they have been in power for 10 years and that the whole focus of political debate for the next two or two and a half years will be on the inadequacies and failures of the Government's policies over the past 10 years. The scare stories about what has happened, from the Zinoviev letter to the groundnut scheme, will not work any longer. The Government will be judged by their record, and I have no doubt what the judgment will be.

To return to my previous point, the Government are, by their very nature, incapable of meeting the needs of the inner cities. I believe that the Prime Minister herself believes that the problems of the inner cities are intractable and are a necessary part of the divided society, which she positively welcomes and which she has done much to create. The Secretary of State for Social Security no doubt regards inner-city residents as the undeserving poor—the families who buy television sets when they have no right to expect the entertainment enjoyed by their more prosperous contemporaries. He will say of the inner cities that they are not so much poor as unequal. Unequal they certainly are, but other countries have tried to reduce that inequality, and have succeeded.

All our partners in Europe are taking positive steps to provide the jobs, the houses and the services that the inner cities need, and so is America. Those initiatives, which even in America involve a key role for public initiative, have been described by the Prime Minister as "Marxist". I know that the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) has impertinently asked the Prime Minister whether she has ever read any Marx. That is a question of staggering naivety. The Prime Minister never shows any evidence of ever having read anything, so why should we think that she has picked out Marx while she has neglected everybody else? [HON. MEMBERS: "What about Neville Chamberlain?"] By comparison, Neville Chamberlain was a paragon of erudition, culture, literature and understanding.

The day will come when Government policy is based on something more respectable than prime ministerial ignorance and prime ministerial prejudice. That policy will be based not on dogma, but on an objective assessment of what can encourage the creation of jobs and the reduction in poverty. In consequence, it will be one of partnership. It will be a partnership between private investment and public enterprise; between national Government and local government; and between the people of the area and those agencies that are created to assist them. Partnership with local residents is essential.

If the national Government pursue policies—ranging from discrimatory immigration laws to the pauperisation of the young unemployed—which disadvantage the inner cities, the Government must expect the people who live there to feel suspicious about the initiatives that the Government take. If the Government fail utterly to meet the problems of the inner cities, they must not be surprised if the inner cities feel despair and if that despair leads to the crime and vandalism that further accelerate inner-city decline.

Partnership has to be built around policies which are intended explicitly and specifically to help the people in the inner cities and the conditions that prevail there—not, for example, the inner-city landowners who are the only real beneficiaries of the enterprise zone scheme. We cannot afford silly little Government diktats that prevent local councils from insisting that inner-city firms provide employment for inner-city residents. We cannot afford stupid limitations on assistance to co-operatives and common ownership projects, when such new, local, small enterprises are exactly what the inner cities need. Above all, we cannot afford a doctrinal refusal to invest in inner-city services and inner-city infrastructure.

I vividly recall a meeting with the Birmingham chamber of commerce—a group of men and women who even in a good year would not want to see the return of a Labour Government. We were told by the Birmingham chamber of commerce that, if the Government did not show their faith in the inner cities by spending their money there, nothing would induce private enterprise to create the confidence that would enable them to provide the essential investment. The inner cities will not prosper while they are left to themselves and to the market—and that, I fear, means that they will not prosper until another Government are elected.

I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:

`welcomes recent falls in unemployment in the inner cities and the increasing level of investment in their regeneration; notes with approval the growing commitment of the private sector and the improved partnership between the private sector, voluntary organisations and central and local government in tackling inner city problems; and looks forward to continued progress under Action for Cities and other programmes designed to ensure that all parts of the United Kingdom share fully in the increasing prosperity of the nation as a whole.'

This is the second debate in little more than a week which suggests that the Opposition have become the victims of their own propaganda. Last week we had a debate on the alleged "decline" in manufacturing industry. About the only fact that the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), whom I am sorry not to see in his place today, could produce in support of his claim was that, although manufacturing investment was rising strongly, as he was forced to acknowledge, it was still marginally lower than in 1979. In my response I acknowledged that he had a small, modest point, and advised him to use it while he could because I did not think that he could depend on it much longer. I am glad to be able to tell the House that this morning we published the final estimates for the value of capital investment in manufacturing in 1988, and they show that manufacturing industry is not just higher than it was in 1979 but higher than the previous record figure.

The Opposition's motion contains the even more flimsy charge of total neglect of inner cities. Not surprisingly, the speech of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) did not remotely substantiate or sustain that charge. Nor could it conceivably have done so, as no previous Government have ever brought together such a comprehensive range of programmes as those which make up "Action for Cities" and its component parts in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. No previous Government have given the problem of urban regeneration so much emphasis by bringing together programmes in that way, or put so many resources behind measures to tackle the problem.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the £36 million that was provided when the "Action for Cities" campaign was launched in March 1988 as the total expenditure on the programmes of which it consisted. One year later, when I launched the reporting document, "Progress on Cities", about two and a half months ago, I was able to say that the estimate for those same programmes had risen to about £3·5 billion. It had risen by £0·5 billion between 1988 and 1989—far more than would have been needed to maintain the value of those programmes in real terms. If that is to be described as neglect, I can think of quite a few others who would like a share of it.

What was the reduction in the rate support grant for major cities in the United Kingdom? Will the Minister contrast that with the small injection of capital to which he has referred?

We have directed the pattern of Government expenditure to local authorities and others, including urban development corporations, in a way that has markedly increased the impact of those programmes and their effect on the ground.

What is even clearer than the expenditure statistics that I have given in overall terms is the evidence of what is happening not only with physical regeneration and redevelopment—we heard little about that from the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook—but with the level of unemployment. In the 57 urban programme areas—I go a little wider than some of the right hon. Gentleman's statistics—unemployment has fallen by one third in the two years to March 1989, and by not far short of a quarter in the past year alone. In the past year, too, there has been a particularly encouraging drop in long-term unemployment—that is, those out of work for six months or more —which is one of the hallmarks of far too much inner-city unemployment.

In view of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks about variations in different parts of the country, I will give him the facts as stated in last week's announcement of a further fall in unemployment. They put into a slightly different perspective some of what he said about the pace at which unemployment is falling in different parts of the country. The facts are as follows:

"All regions in the United Kingdom have shared in the downward trend in unemployment with the west midlands and Wales experiencing the biggest reductions over the past year followed by Yorkshire and Humberside, the north-west and the north. Within this total long-term unemployment has been falling faster than unemployment generally and in January the number of long-term unemployed was the lowest for more than six years."

That is the perspective in which the right hon. Gentleman's remarks should be considered.

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us exactly what is happening on Merseyside? He cannot put the whole of the north-west together. What is actually happening on Merseyside?

I visit Merseyside, the north-west, the north and the west midlands fairly frequently. Unemployment is falling in all parts of the country and the level of confidence and optimism is rising.

Will the Minister simply give us the figures which meet or do not meet my point? For the promises made two years ago to be met, unemployment in the inner cities should be falling more rapidly than elsewhere. The Minister has given figures for Scotland, the west midlands and the north of England, but the west midlands is not one big inner city. What is the unemployment figure in the inner cities? Is it not the figure that I gave? Is not the Minister trying to confound the issue with irrelevant alternatives?

I am trying to put into perspective some of the figures that the right hon. Gentleman sought to use about the pattern of unemployment. It has admittedly and undoubtedly taken a considerable amount of time to achieve the progress that we wish to see with this particularly intractable part of the unemployment problem.

Some of the more satisfactory trends in inner-city unemployment can be seen in areas where the Government have established specifically targeted task forces to help overcome problems in three or four wards of a city. A disturbing aspect of the Labour party's recent policy document, which was the exact obverse of one of the right hon. Gentleman's implications, was the apparent desire to get away from carefully targeted measures aimed at specific pockets of unemployment and difficulty which exist in places such as Birmingham or Bristol against the background of fairly widespread prosperity for the city as a whole. That is particularly true in Bristol.

The Government's targeted approach, which is beginning to be seen coming through in some of the figures —I make no grander claim than that—reflects the approach that we have tried to adopt to inner-city problems. The continuing fall in unemployment—as shown in the figures announced last week, which accompanied the press release from which I quoted a few moments ago—gives us all further encouragement.

What was most striking about the speech of the hon. Member for Sparkbrook was not its variance with what Ministers say at the Dispatch Box—that is something that we expect and could sensibly predict—but its variance with what is said around the country by those who have looked at what is happening in our cities and those involved in local government and in the industrial and commercial life of our cities.

I could have brought a very substantial sheaf of documents relating to these matters to the Chamber today. Instead, I have culled a few which I felt it might be sensible to refer to the House. The managing director of the Newcastle Chronicle and Journal, at the north-east business man of the year dinner earlier this year, which I attended, said:

"There is a renewed pride in what is being achieved. The fundamental change of attitude throughout the region over the past 2 or 3 years is miraculous. We have moved from being a depressed, depressing and defeatist area to one which wants to take on the world."

I refer also to a special report published in The Times last autumn about regional developments generally. Its sub-heading read:

"Improvements in the national economy have given Britain's poorer areas an opportunity they are determined to use … And … with government help, they are seeing results."

Just before Christmas The Sunday Times reported:

"Sheffield set to carve role for tomorrow."

I am glad to see hon. Members who represent Sheffield constituencies present in the Chamber today. After referring to what had been happening in Sheffield, the article continued

"Even more strikingly,"

this new feeling

"has trickled down to the level of the Sheffielder-in-the-street. It was hard to find anyone last week who was not anxious to stress the city's exciting future."

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Yes, indeed. I was in Sheffield a week or two ago and everyone to whom I spoke voiced the same view as that expressed in The Sunday Times to which I have just referred.

The right hon. Gentleman is not telling the full story. The reality is that the Government left the east end of Sheffield a desert—it was so still and quiet. There has been an upsurge at the prospect of the student games coming to Sheffield in a couple of years' time. We are pleading with the Government to give us more money for that. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Mr. Trippier), could tell the right hon. Gentleman a lot more about Sheffield's lack of money and its urgent requests for more from the Government.

No doubt my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has heard the hon. Gentleman.

Sheffield's pride in being able to stage the student games reflects its change in mood and confidence, which is also reflected in the work of the urban development corporation and plans that it has for the lower Don valley, in what the local authorities and the local business men, including those in the chamber of commerce, are achieving through partnership, and in the fact that there is a much stronger partnership now between the public and private sector in Sheffield than was ever the case two or three years ago.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) asked about Merseyside. I will come closer to the immediate situation there by referring to a substantial supplement on Liverpool in The Times yesterday, which the hon. Gentleman no doubt saw, headed "Panorama of growing prosperity" and subheaded:

"As Liverpool toasts its Cup Final victory, it is also celebrating an economic turnaround which will enable the city to enter the 1990s with its confidence restored".

Another subheading reads:

"How Merseyside turned optimism to realism and won the confidence of industry and new investment".

Perhaps most telling of all is a quote from the Labour leader of Liverpool city council, Keva Coombes

"I am convinced that we have more reason to be optimistic now than for many years".

He is then reported as saying that:

"there was also now a more pragmatic approach to working together between the council and central government agencies."

Finally, with regard to the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook, I have with me the foreword to a document recently published by Birmingham city council called, "Birmingham economic strategy", signed by the Labour chairman of the economic development committee, Councillor Albert Bore, which says:

"There are many indications that Birmingham is regaining its competitive edge in many of the manufacturing sectors in which it was previously world famous. It is also going to become one of Europe's major visitor destinations for business, culture and leisure in the 1990s."

Another Birmingham city council publication, "The Birmingham Investment", published within the past month or so, says:

"Look around the city and you will see evidence of new investment and new development everywhere."

This is the city that the right hon. Gentleman was describing in such gloomy and depressing terms no more than 10 minutes ago. It goes on:

"From more than £500 million of new retail and leisure developments—including Britain's national indoor arena—to the new industrial and office property developments that are rising all over the city."

We are told:

"Listen to the city's new business community, and you will discover a new mood of confidence and optimism among thousands of local companies."

That is not a Minister talking, but Birmingham city council.

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I can understand why the hon. Gentleman may wish to stop me, but I will continue for a moment.

The publication goes on:

"Over the last few years a series of investments has changed the whole landscape of business property in Birmingham … Birmingham Heartlands, for example, has brought the city together with 5 major developers in a unique inner city regeneration programme."

The Minister is talking in glowing terms about new developments. Will he confirm the fundamental point that any recovery taking place in the west midlands in general or in Birmingham in particular is recovery from the devastation caused by the Conservatives as a deliberate instrument of economic policy in the early 1980s? Let us not overlook the question of the quality of jobs. In the west midlands, for instance, in engineering alone the number of apprenticeships, according to official Government figures, is 54 per cent. of what it was in 1979. Is that not a dreadful indictment of the Government?

I am not in a position to confirm the hon. Gentleman's observations of the causes and position from which industry in Birmingham and the west midlands is recovering, but let us consider the statistics relating to the motor car industry—historically a source of great importance to the midlands. The decline in that industry set in during the period of the Labour Government—aggravated, admittedly, in the early 1980s by a world recession. The industry is now recovering. Last year, the production of motor vehicles in Britain exceeded the 1978 level—[Interruption.] The decline started during the 1970s. It did not suddenly start in 1979. The level of motor car production has now exceeded the 1978 level because, for the first time in a decade, the industry is moving up and not down.

I remind the Minister that the debate is explicitly and specifically about inner cities. Whether his facts are right or wrong, to talk about the prosperity of a whole region is wholly irrelevant—[Interruption.] The Minister has hardly said a word about the inner cities since his opening remarks.

The idea that the tourist attraction that Birmingham is becoming, and I hope will increasingly become, will provide any jobs in the inner city of Birmingham is ridiculous. In the bit of the inner city that I represent, the improvement in the motor industry will have no effect whatever. The debate is designed to focus attention on specific problems. For the Minister to talk in such general terms shows that he does not even know what the inner cities are.

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would rather I did not give way, as I have been doing in line with the normal courtesies of the House. My last observations were in response to the intervention of his hon. Friend the member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott). Does the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook really believe that the vehicle industry has nothing to do with the inner cities? Only a fortnight ago I was at what is now Leyland-DAF Vehicles, what used to be Freight Rover, in inner city Birmingham, one of the areas in which we have a task force—[Interruption.] It is important in the area in which it is located. That firm is now embarking on a modernisation, expansion and training programme to ensure that the jobs that it is creating go to the people who live around the factory. That is the importance of some of these developments. If Opposition Members do not appreciate that, they should study some of the issues involved.

Will the right hon. Gentleman reflect on the task force experience in Leicester? Three years ago, amid a great fanfare, the Leicester task force was set up in Highfields. This year, in a sneaky letter to me and to other Leicester Members, it was announced that the task force was to close because of its failure. Will the Minister explain why that task force closed in Leicester?

The hon. Gentleman is not merely paraphrasing the letter that was written at the time but is turning it on its head. The point made in it was that the economic and employment situation in Leicester, including Highfields, had improved to a significant extent during the life of the task force, that a number of development funds and other activities had been set in hand which, in our view, would have a continuing beneficial effect, and that we felt it right to use the resource represented by task forces in areas where the problems are greater than those of that part of Leicester. The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that at the same time as I announced the winding down of task force programmes in Leicester, Wolverhampton and Preston between March and the end of the year, I announced new task forces, which are very much welcomed by the local authorities involved, in Granby and Toxteth in Liverpool, in Bradford and in Lewisham. Those areas all have significant problems which I believe that the task forces can help to overcome.

If the picture painted by the Opposition motion is unrecognisable in the real world, no right hon. or hon. Member would disguise the fact that there is still much more to do in pressing ahead with the programmes and initiatives to tackle inner-city problems. That is not surprising. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook was very fair in acknowledging that the problems of inner cities did not suddenly come on to the scene in 1979 or in the early 1980s but that their causes are deep-seated and go back at least one generation—some would argue, longer than that—and just as their roots go back a long way, so it will take time to overcome them fully.

Today I seek to describe the progress being made in overcoming problems which have been encountered over decades and even for generations. The right hon. Gentleman acknowledged that the causes are complex. The most obvious among them is the failure to come to grips with the pattern of industrial change over a long period and instead to pretend that it was not happening by disguising it in various ways, with the result that the process of adjustment was even more difficult than it needed to be. I should have made that point in particular to the hon. Member for The Wrekin if he were still in his place.

Whatever view is taken of the causes of industrial change, old industries close, leaving derelict sites which detract from the environment and causing a loss of income to the community which is reflected in declining property standards and falling land values. Too often, it also means that younger, more economically active people leave the area to work elsewhere, which in turn breeds a loss of community pride. Together, those factors create a depressing physical environment which has other adverse social and economic effects.

There is no question but that there has been industrial change and that it is continuing, but does not that create a need for the Government to intervene? If there is decline in one or two industries, or in a whole series of them, surely the Government must have policies, plans and concepts for dealing with workers who are left high and dry and unemployed. Have not the Government failed to do anything serious about developing alternatives to deal with industrial change?

No, I do not think that that is true. The hon. Gentleman may wish that it had proved possible in some cases to avoid some of the transitional difficulties which arise in moving from one pattern of industry to another, but I hope that he agrees that one of the most notable features of the regional economy currently—although the north-east is the most striking example, this can be seen in the north-west as well—is the increasing growth of new industries, not least with the assistance of inward investment from overseas in creating electronics industries, rebuilding some important parts of motor car manufacturing and the like. Very often that is assisted by the kind of Government policy for which the hon. Gentleman calls. In his own region, assistance was recently given to Vauxhall for further investment at Ellesmere port, which will both safeguard existing jobs and create new employment in that part of Merseyside. That is just one of many examples that I could cite.

As the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook seemed to recognise, it follows from the complexity and the deep-seated nature of the problems that there can be no simple or overnight solution to inner-city decline. It requires a range of measures tailored to deal with different aspects of the problem, and carried through with a sustained and determined approach over a number of years. That is precisely what we have sought to bring about through the "Action for Cities" programme.

I emphasise that the Government's approach starts from the recognition that the first essential is a prosperous national economy. The whole House knows—certainly the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook knows it well from his experience in the last Labour Government—that regional resurgence and inner-city regeneration cannot be created on the back of the national economic stagnation and relative economic decline that we saw in the 1970s. The foundation of what we seek to achieve in the inner cities is what we have already achieved for the country as a whole —sustained economic growth such as has not been seen since the war.

It is on that foundation that we have built and are pressing forward the range of programmes and initiatives to which I referred briefly earlier in my speech. They cover housing, with the Estate Action programme involving tenants in the management and improvement of their homes. They provide a substantial increase in the money available to housing associations through the Housing Corporation and through local authorities. They cover a large expansion in training programmes, both to encourage enterprise—through, for instance, support for small firms—and to help people back into work.

The programmes cover matters that the hon. Member for Walton has just raised, with support for inner city business—including regional selective assistance—and a variety of grants for small firms, as well as the work of the English Industrial Estates Corporation. They cover a substantial programme of derelict land reclamation, and —this comes closer to the points raised by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook and by other hon. Members in interventions—they cover the urban programme, including city grants, and the work of the urban development corporations, which together are receiving a substantial increase in the coming year.

The programmes also cover the task forces to which I referred—in some 16 locations up and down the country —and the co-ordinated work of the city action teams, bringing together the work of various Government Departments. They cover the safer cities campaign, which is directed strongly towards the crime problems to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that he did not tell us about the decrease in a number of important elements in the crime figures last year. No one disputes that substantial increases in crime have occurred—again, over a period going back well before 1979—but last year, according to the metropolitan and non-metropolitan force figures, there was a decrease in recorded notifiable offences of 11·3 per cent. in the west Midlands, 4·5 per cent. in West Yorkshire, just over 6·5 per cent. on Merseyside some 6·5 per cent. in Northumbria, more than 13 per cent. in South Yorkshire and nearly 8 per cent. in Greater Manchester.

No one is suggesting that further progress is not needed in tackling such problems. I merely ask the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook and his hon. Friends to recognise that in many important respects—and, I believe, to a significant extent as a result of the approach that the Government have adopted and the wide range of initiatives brought together in the "Action for Cities" programme—progress is now being made in dealing with some of the problems that have proved intractable for Governments of both parties over a long period.

All the initiatives that I have mentioned are being pressed forward continuously. In March, when "Progress on Cities" was published, we announced a number of new task force projects. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment announced the building up of his compacts initiative to improve opportunities for inner-city youngsters to build links with and get jobs in local firms. That is going on in a consistent drive all the time.

Today, for example, we are announcing an important agreement between English Estates and London Industrial to co-operate in a joint venture for a substantial programme to provide managed work space in inner-city areas of London. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Mr. Trippier), whom I am delighted to see here, has today announced two new city grants totalling more than half a million pounds towards the construction of industrial units on the Ketley business park in the Wrekin and—this will interest the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), I hope—towards the cost of the refurbishment and conversion of a 160,000 sq ft factory into industrial units in Huyton in the borough of Knowsley.

Those are just further examples of practical steps being taken under the initiatives to which I have referred to tackle the sort of problems that we all acknowledge need to be tackled if we are successfully to overcome the long inner-city decline.

As a number of right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak in the debate, I will therefore emphasise only briefly three points that I believe to be of particular importance in considering what the Government have been seeking to do.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I think not. I have already taken up a good deal of the time of the House. I think that it would be sensible now to allow the hon. Gentleman to make his own contribution to the debate.

The first point that I want to make about the way in which the Government programmes are organised and the results that they have achieved concerns the significantly greater involvement of the private sector in the regeneration of inner cities and in working together with local authorities to that end. Sheffield, to which I referred earlier, is a very good example—as is Birmingham, with the Heartlands scheme—but those examples are now being matched and modelled in many parts of the country with the development of business leadership teams, often involving a direct partnership between local authorities and the business community, such as the Wearside Opportunity, the Newcastle initiative, Teesside Tomorrow, and a number of others.

That greater involvement of business, which is crucial to the real regeneration of the inner cities, is being assisted and supported by the way in which—this is what I had in mind in answering an intervention a few moments ago —the remodelling of some of the initiatives to which I referred in summarising the elements in the "Action for Cities" programme is very much directed to ensuring that Government money brings in substantial amounts of private sector investment alongside.

The urban development corporation is a very good example. I will not use only the London Docklands development corporation because the gearing there is particularly high—between £8 and £10 of private money coming in for every £1 of Government expenditure on the urban development corporation. That is well above the average, but even the average is about £4 of private sector money coming in behind every £1 of Government money and much the same ratio is true for city grant as well.

It is important to understand the extent to which the Government's initiatives are bringing in other resources on a very large scale and that therefore the figures that we use —whether £3 billion for last year or £3·5 billion for this year—for the total Government spending on the inner-city programmes are a significant underestimate of the resources now coming into the cities to assist with their regeneration.

The second point, on which the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook touched, is the improvement, which I very much welcome, in the degree of co-operation and—the right hon. Gentleman also used the word—the partnership which is taking place between central and local Government. Many local authorities, for example, are becoming much more actively involved in the work of urban development corporations and of the Government's task forces and in co-operating not just with other agencies in Government but with the private sector and voluntary organisations. That is a very important part of the improvement in the scene that has occurred in the past few years and one that I very much welcome.

The third point that I wish to emphasise is very much related to the points that have been made about the need to ensure that the benefits of all these programmes, including the work of the urban development corporations and the physical redevelopment that is taking place, accrue to the people who live in the inner-city areas. I do not accept the simple assessment that has been made in some quarters that the mere fact that docklands is being regenerated—to take an example that is frequently used —attracts people into the area and therefore can be seen as benefiting them as well is contrary to the aims of Government policy.

Part of the problem of the inner cities, a point to which I referred earlier, has been the extent to which many of the young, dynamic, economically active people have left the inner cities over a long period, leaving behind only the deprived and the disadvantaged. It follows that part of the real long-term answer to inner city problems must be to recreate more balanced communities in the inner cities and therefore to attract back to them—

Will the Minister give way?

No, I do not intend to give way now.

We must attract back to the inner cities some of the groups who, historically, have left or been driven out. I make no apology for that.

Will the Minister give way?

No.

rose—

What is important—I very much welcome it—is what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment is doing through his training programmes, what the urban development corporations and others are doing through their programmes—not least those associated with Canary wharf—and not least what the Government's inner-city task forces are doing by developing what are called customised training projects, involving the matching of local unemployed people with the training required to get them the jobs that are known already to exist and the employment that is required with local employers. That is an increasingly significant part of the inner-city policy.

Will the Minister give way?

No, I will not give way, for the reasons that I have already explained.

That is, I repeat, an increasingly significant part of our inner city policy, and one to which we are determined to give greater emphasis.

I have taken up a good deal of time, not least because I have sought to respond substantially to the interventions that have been made.

The Minister has not done so.

Whether it is judged in terms of expenditure, the range and purpose of the programmes and the increasing results of the programmes—measured not just by what I say, but by what people are saying throughout the country, whether business leaders, or local government leaders and others—there is no way in which what is happening can credibly be presented, as the Opposition's motion seeks to present it, as a story of total neglect.

It is.

It is a story of increasing success in spreading to all parts of the country the increasing prosperity that we have created for the nation as a whole. I invite the House to reject the motion and to pass the amendment.

When we discuss the regeneration of the inner cities, we have to differentiate between myth and reality. The myth was perpetrated by the Prime Minister at the last general election when she said that the Government must get into the inner cities. That myth has been prolonged by Government propaganda. Glossy brochures have been distributed, illustrating proposed developments in the inner-city areas. There has been media coverage of visiting Ministers donning protective helmets and cutting tapes, trowel in hand, ready for action. They have posed and postulated in order to convince the electorate that all is well, that the inner cities are safe in their hands.

That is the myth. The only people to benefit will be the developers and financiers and those with the yuppie mentality, enjoying their new "with it" accommodation in converted warehouses or posing in their new theme pubs. What, however, is the reality? In Manchester inner city, the commercial centre is surrounded on the periphery by real people with real problems. They have experienced the loss of some 25,000 jobs, mainly in manufacturing industry, since the early 1980s, creating an army of unemployed. There is still over 33 per cent. male unemployment in the inner cities. That is intensified in pockets where there is a concentration of ethnic minorities who, like the disabled, find it hard to get employment, unless in the low-paid service sector, doing menial tasks.

In the inner city of Manchester, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) said, there is a lower standard of living than in greater Manchester or north Cheshire. Before the changes in benefit in April 1988, 83,000 people were dependent on supplementary benefit. Those are the very people who have suffered an adverse effect in their meagre standard of living since then. A total of 18,000 have lost all housing benefit, and 45,000 now receive no help with their water rate bills. Then there are the children: 7,000 have been deprived of school meals. Because of social security changes, and especially because of the abolition of Department of Social Security grants and their replacement by the social fund, 50,000 people are worse off. Also, they have the spectre of the poll tax just over the horizon.

Poverty is a stark reality in the inner city. It manifests itself in low birth weights, premature deaths and increased crime. A recent report by the city council on the impact of poverty shows what poverty really means:

"Not being able to afford food. Over a third of households in poverty said they ran short of money to buy food. Falling into Debt. Over a half of households in poverty said that they had fallen seriously behind with payments during the previous year. A Cold Home. One third of households say there are times when they go without essential heating, and around half of them are in debt with fuel bills."

That is the inner city in Manchester. In a so-called booming economy, the gap between the poor and the rich is widening. The few jobs created outside the bogus training schemes are mainly low-paid and part-time, with no job security. As the better-off receive tax handouts and the benefits of the poll tax, the poor in the inner cities are losing. They are the people who are left on the sidelines.

Ethnic minority households suffer even worse. Their rate of unemployment is estimated at more than one and a half times that of white people. They have greater difficulty in obtaining work.

There are only two growth industries. The first is the demolition contractor, smashing down the old, empty factories, like wolverines at a dead carcase. Those factories once provided jobs and dignity for the people of pride in their craft. The other growth industry is the loan shark, preying like a vulture on the misery of people. Again, what can we expect? That is private enterprise and will be welcomed by the Government, who cynically deceive the inner-city people that all is well but at the same time deprive them of meagre means so that they can line the pockets of their affluent friends and supporters.

It is no use building luxury flats, marinas and theme pubs, and in Manchester fantasising about the G Mex Centre, mainly financed by public money, and the vast improvements to the Holiday inn, once the Midland hotel owned by British Rail, when very few of the people that I represent can afford the prices that would give them access to such places.

Next time Ministers come to Manchester, they should visit the real people and see their standard of living, their poor housing conditions and the effect on a great city and its people of the Government draining it of financial resources. If Ministers have any conscience, they will riot sleep easily afterwards. The Prime Minister's words have rebounded in her face. She has no conception of life in the inner cities. She does not care, and she has betrayed the finest people in the country.

It gives me great pleasure to support my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy. The Government have achieved miracles in the resuscitation of the inner cities. Much of what I heard earlier from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) represents a Birmingham that I do not recognise. I have lived there for 60 years; I was born, bred and educated in Birmingham. I served on the city council and the West Midlands council for 20 years. My father was a slum clergyman in a city centre mission, where I worked from my teens. I know my Birmingham, and I know the city centre.

Birmingham's decline happened from the time of Sir Stafford Cripps, under the national Government. Giving assisted area status to every other part of the country was against the interests of the heartland of Britain. Industry was not allowed to build brick upon brick there until the Conservative Government got in and reversed that policy in 1979. The dictum of strengthening the weak weakened the strong in the west midlands, until the area had to be totally refurbished.

Thanks to the actions of the Government, the picture is totally different. By January 1989, in England alone, inner-city unemployment had fallen by 26 per cent. and in Birmingham it had fallen by 23 per cent. No wonder the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook moved the motion in such a quiet tone and was so inhibited. The real massage from the inner cities is that they are alive and thriving under a combination of public and private enterprise and that they are economically successful. Many of the things that the right hon. Gentleman said were inaccurate. I saw the chamber of commerce not some time in the past, as he did, but last Friday, and it did not express any dissatisfaction. It was waiting to hear what the Secretary of State for Transport would say on inter-urban roads. He introduced a programme that will raise public investment in roads from £5 million to £12 billion. That will help the economic success of Birmingham and the west midlands.

The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook spoke about city training centres but he got the address wrong. The address is Kingshurst, Birmingham. It is a mere 100 yd or so outside the city boundary.

We have a picture of increasing success. I am pleased that earlier today the House approved without argument the Third Reading of the Midland Metro Bill, which will lead to the investment of £1,000 million in the light electric railway system to link the towns lying between Wolverhampton and Birmingham on the line of the Wolverhampton low-level rail route. This will work wonders and green up an area which has been neglected in the past; it will environmentally help the city centres of all the so-called black country towns which lie along the route—and that is only part of the scheme.

Following the advent of the national exhibition centre, we have approved and are building a conference—convention centre which will open in two or three years time. We are spending £147 million, which is coming partly from Europe, partly from the Government and partly from private enterprise. We are spending £240 million on a canalside leisure project. So, in Birmingham and the inner city, £1·6 billion-worth of building and investment is under way.

Everywhere, shopping schemes, factory schemes and units of commerce are being created in Birmingham, with a consequential shattering reduction in unemployment. Unemployment has almost ceased to be the major problem that it was in the past.

We have spent about £90 million on Birmingham international airport, and another £80 million is to be spent on it, bringing business people from all over the world to our factories, convention centres and exhibition centres.

Heartlands Birmingham, a city centre initiative chaired by a former illustrious colleague of ours, Sir Reginald Eyre—the former Member for Birmingham, Hall Green—is redeveloping more than 2,000 acres. That partnership was requested by the Labour-controlled city council of Birmingham; it is a partnership between the private and public sectors, involving a large amount of private enterprise money. This urban development authority was not in line with Government thinking on urban development corporations, one of which has been so successful in and around the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Hicks). Nevertheless, the initiative was allowed and is now in being.

It is introducing phenomenal infrastructure. A new water link scheme on the canal was initiated this very week. When, in future, we discuss inner-city redevelopment we must bear in mind not only isolated spots of canal redevelopment but redevelopment throughout the country on canals that run through so many of our city centres in the midlands and the north. In Brum we have more canals than Venice, and I commend to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy this complete urban renewal along canal frontages by means of environmental and commercial schemes.

The one thing that Heartlands Birmingham would appreciate now, on top of the vast sums of money announced in the inter-urban road scheme, is finance for the Spline road, which will be needed to bring more factories and redevelopment into Heartlands. I should declare an interest as an adviser to PPG Industries—

Ah!

—a firm which has brought to the centre of Birmingham a project involving huge refurbishment of most of the land. It did the same in Pittsburgh, and it has invested £60 million in Wigan, not far from the area of Manchester represented by the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) who has been making sedentary remarks. This firm has specialised, and has introduced private sector schemes of excellence everywhere. I hope that this redevelopment will continue.

In addition to passing on to my right hon. Friend unstinted congratulations on the regeneration of our city, I recommend to him the adoption of a scheme of tax-free municipal bonds, which can produce more and more money for the redevelopment of inner cities. This scheme has been wholly successful in America. Tax-free bonds have been taken out by corporations and individuals on worthless land in the Baltimore inner-port scheme, and in Boston, Massachusetts, Washington and New York. Redevelopment has increased the worth of those bonds substantially. Thus, they have rejuvenated city centres in many parts of America. I hope that we too will be able to begin such a system to improve still further the excellent development that is already in place. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will, with his right hon. Friends in the Treasury, determine whether such a scheme could perpetuate the excellent action that has already been taken in Birmingham and other areas.

It is a measure of the Government's failure adequately to deal with the problems faced by our inner cities that, after ten years, we still have to raise these issues and press for more effective solutions. The Government have tried, as the Minister has described this afternoon, in their own way, but despite the numerous gimmicks—tons of glossy brochures, loads of slick advertising, breakfast time press launches and myriad excuses—the basic problems remain: inadequate housing, poor facilities and poverty in the areas that we describe as inner cities.

Despite the attempts by the Secretary of State for Social Services to deny the obvious, large-scale poverty has grown in the past ten years in these areas. Where there is poverty, bad housing, poor facilities and services, there is unfortunately also crime to add to the miserable conditions in which people must live.

The Opposition motion calls for more emphasis on partnership between Government and local authorities. Inner-area partnerships already exist. My constituency is entirely encompassed by the Newcastle-Gateshead inner area partnership. The system was set up by the last Labour Government but, although it has been continued by this Government, its effectiveness has slowly been eroded by inflation, which has not been properly compensated for and which has led to a reduction in real terms of Government investment. Government restrictions on the type and duration of schemes have led to an emphasis on economic development, and because of its limited resources and a reduction in support for socially desirable schemes, the partnership can have little impact—yet it could have had a major effect.

The influence of local authorities has been gradually limited even though almost all the innovations and partnership proposals come from them. Those which do not, come from the voluntary sector. The Department of the Environment merely holds the purse strings, and Ministers continually block schemes which councils know will benefit their areas because they do not fit the Government's political philosophy. The money that central Government contribute, apart from being eroded and strictly applied, has to be balanced against the money that was taken away from the councils by reductions in rate support grant and other grants over that period. In the case of Newcastle and Gateshead, the reduction in rate support grant alone came to more than twice what was received through partnership over the past 10 years. The Government give with one hand and take back with a forklift truck.

One of the most worrying aspects of the Government's 10 years has been the horrific increase in crime. As I said earlier, our inner cities have also borne the brunt of this. What has the party of law and order done about it? The answer is percious little, and nothing that has had any noticeable effect. Northumbria police authority has continually pressed for more resources to deal with the problems that it faces, particularly in the Tyne and Wear conurbation. The Government's response has been not only inadequate but inequitable.

If the criterion for the distribution of resources was crime, then 200 police officers should be distributed to the Northumbria force from other areas. In the Tyne and Wear area, an officer handles an average of 50 crimes a year—the highest in the country. In Manchester, the figure is 46 and in the Metropolitan police force it is only 27, the lowest in the country. That is possibly because, per capita, Northumbria has the lowest number of officers and the Metropolitan police force has the highest. There are 2·4 officers per 1,000 of population in Northumbria, and 3·9 in London. However, when the Northumbria police authority asked the Home Office for 80 extra officers for 1989–90, it got just 30.

As a further example of the unequal nature of the distribution of resources, when the Government were approached with a request for 59 officers for the specific purpose of policing the Tyne and Wear metro system, they turned the request down. However, London Regional Transport has been loaned 82 officers from the Metropolitan and City of London forces, pending the completion of training of 50 extra British Transport police. I understand that a meeting is to be held on 27 June, in another attempt to convince Ministers of the merits of the Tyne and Wear case. I hope that Ministers will take account of the disparities that I have mentioned and grant this necessary, but in the circumstances modest, request.

A number of important problems need to be tackled urgently if the people of the inner-city areas on Tyneside are to be relieved of their problems, and its economy regenerated. In housing, massive renewal and refurbishment is needed at a time when Government policy has halted council house provision and slashed the housing capital programmes of the local authorities. Last July, Newcastle city council made a realistic bid for approval to borrow £48·3 million for 1989–90, but received permission to borrow only £6 million. Apart from being grossly inadequate to meet the needs of the city, that was even 25 per cent. less that it had been in 1988–89, before inflation is taken into account. That is a measure of the Government's understanding or caring about the housing needs of the inner-city areas, the plight of the homeless and the needs of those with special housing problems.

The same thing has happened in education. In Gateshead, the council's secondary education system is in an unholy mess, largely because of the parochialism that the Government encourage. The Government's answer is to encourage privatisation and to bring in business men to run our schools. Thus, we have the proposal for a city technology college in Gateshead, just to add further confusion and complication to the problems that already exist. That proposal sacrifices our children's future to the short-term needs of business men. This was amply demonstrated by the main sponsor of the new college, Mr. Peter Vardy, a local second-hand car salesman, who said that the purpose of the college would be

"to education children for the needs of business"—

that is, when they are not being indoctrinated into Mr. Vardy's preference in religion. I am sure that all parents who care about their children's education and future will avoid the college like the plague, despite its deliberately alluring title of "King's college", which masks its sinister purpose.

Our inner cities, particularly in the north-east, need adequate infrastructure and good communications—not least, the provision of a high standard roads network, both within the region and linking us to the rest of the motorway system. Again, the Government, despite the opportunity, failed to come up with the goods when their future proposals, outlined in last week's White Paper, fell short of providing the vision or the urgency required. I hope that the representations that will be made to Ministers from both sides of the House on behalf of the region will be taken fully into account.

The Tyne and Wear metro transport system is one of the most modern and efficient in Europe and has brought great benefits to the conurbation. Earlier today, the House agreed to a Bill that will allow for the extension of the system to Newcastle airport—an important and significant extension for the local economy. Again, the system will be relying on the Government for financial support, and I hope that they will look sympathetically on that request.

Unemployment remains a massive problem in the northern inner cities, with some wards in my constituency running male unemployment rates in excess of 50 per cent. That provides further evidence of the nonsense spoken by the Secretary of State for Social Services. The Government claim that this problem is reducing, but while some reduction is evident, a major factor in that reduction is the manipulation of the method of calculating unemployment rather than any significant increase in job opportunities. In my inner-city constituency, what decrease there has been, has been at a lower rate than that for the region as a whole.

Those jobs that have been created are generally low-paid, part-time and in the catering and service industries. The days when people could rely on stable, well-paid work in valuable manufacturing industry have gone, as the Government's disastrous neglect of manufacturing led to a slump of previously unknown depths. Only now, as the Chancellor has told us, has it begun to make progress against the level that it was 10 years ago. In the process, we have lost the skills and the expertise of our craftsmen, which at one time were passed on to future generations, but have now been lost for ever in many cases.

The recovery of which the Chancellor spoke is not a recovery in manufacturing industry. As has been said, the recovery is from a particularly low base. I worked in an engineering factory on Tyneside for 20 years and in 1979, that factory employed about 6,000 people. Now, it employs about 1,600. It has picked up in recent months and is beginning to improve, but it has a long way to go to get back to 6,000.

The north-east of England is a marvellous place in which to live, to work and to bring up a family; I would never wish to work anywhere else. However, our inner-city areas not only share the problems faced by similar areas but also have the disadvantages which I have outlined, which a Government could resolve, with a little will and by letting us help ourselves. No doubt hon. Members will know that many good things are going on in the north-east. They include co-operation between local government and the private sector, which has always been a feature of the area and has brought a great deal of benefit. It would continue to do so were it not hampered by the Government's obsession with giving dominance to the private sector, often when it does not want it.

The Chancellor of the Duchy quoted the managing director of The Newcastle Journal saying at a recent dinner held in my constituency that the region was ready to take on the world. Some people will say anything for a free dinner, particularly when those attending the dinner are the people who dish out the rewards. However, he neglected to say that much of what is happening in the north-east is the result of the innovation of local people, the assistance and encouragement that people are given by the local authorities, and the contribution of the local authorities themselves. It has little to do with Government policy, which has hampered rather than encouraged that progress.

I look forward to the day, not too far away now, when we shall have a Government who recognise the legitimate role of all sectors of the community, stop interfering and let us get on with the job.

For too long, those who live in our inner cities have felt relatively abandoned—second-class citizens making do with second best, for whom no one appears genuinely to care, and invariably finding themselves living within the confines of local Labour authorities whose interest seems to be to keep them imprisoned in an environment of fear and despair. The Opposition's motion is distinctly hypocritical.

It took my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to take the bull by the horns in June 1987—thank God she did—and to recognise that for too long successive Governments had ignored the underlying problems in the inner cities which had to be tackled. Why should those who live in the inner cities be denied the quality of life that the rest of us all too easily take for granted? It was a matter of taking up the basic strands of inner city life, injecting leadership—one of the most important criteria of any initiative—finance, enthusiasm and determination to overcome the problems which have contributed to an inferior way of life.

Instead of talking, we should act. I could talk for hours about the Government's successive initiatives. I find it quite incredible that Opposition Members can say that nothing has happened under this Government. The Government have provided new jobs, training, new homes, more homes for rent, better education for all, a rejuvenation of derelict areas in which no one wished to invest, and an improvement in law and order. Within that structure, they have recognised the need for local authorities of whatever political persuasion to endeavour to put politics behind them and to work with the Government and the private sector for the good of local people.

Unlike one or two Opposition Members, I can report at first hand that Wolverhampton is a thriving town. In the debate on manufacturing last week, we discussed the huge turnaround in the past seven years. People are flocking to invest in Wolverhampton and to set up new companies. But we have to remember the people who live there, and how much their quality of life depends on jobs and on the environment that is provided for them.

One of the most important and disturbing problems in Wolverhampton has involved homes and housing. People want housing where they can feel safe and which they can respect. One of the most serious problems in my constituency is the inability of the local Labour council to impose strict housing management, with the result that no matter how much money it spends—whether from ratepayers or taxpayers— the area is left to decline and heads are buried in the sand when it comes to ensuring that tenants abide by the rules of their tenancy, with the result that, all too often, such tenants reduce the quality of life of the people around them. In Low Hill in my constituency, thousands of pounds have been spent doing up council properties, with fantastic results, but the local housing department then allowed gipsy families to conglomerate in those houses and mow down the front garden walls, which had recently been erected, to put their caravans in front of the houses. Sometimes they even tethered animals inside their homes. Yet normal, conscientious people, many of them pensioners, are expected to live alongside such activities. Regrettably, the local council has shown no determination whatever to sort that situation out. The local council talks a lot but does little.

The hon. Lady said that the council neglected to carry out repairs to council houses. Before accusing the council of neglect, will she tell the House what the budget is for the Wolverhampton housing committee to spend on council house repairs and whether it has declined in the past three years in real terms?

The hon. Lady must have misheard me. I was not discussing repairs. I was discussing improvements that the council has made. In some cases it has done a marvellous job, but I decry the fact that, having invested money in council houses, it has then abandoned those properties so that no one wants to live in them. I ask the hon. Lady why Wolverhampton council has not collected the £4 million outstanding in rent arrears, which could be further invested for the good of other tenants.

Because the Government have made the tenants so poor that they cannot afford to pay their rent.

Now that the hon. Lady has opened up the debate, why does not the council get on with the job of filling the 2,000 empty homes so that we can solve the housing problem?

Another area in my constituency is called Heathtown, where, after 16 years of a Labour local authority, people felt like prisoners living in high-rise flats where the lack of housing management resulted in squalid conditions fit only for animals. I have seen it many times. The flats were not fit for people to live in and they were a breeding ground for criminal activity. The local council could not give the flats away to people on the waiting list and had to advertise them outside its own area although it has a long housing waiting list. The Government stepped in, recognising that Labour councillors could not control the housing and offered a much-needed estate management initiative, 'Estate Action', and an initial injection of £600,000. The local Labour authority now thinks it marvellous that the flats have security doors, video cameras and concierges. The local people assume that it is local authority money and, as with so many initiatives, do not realise that it was Government money and Government-inspired.

When the Opposition with their hearts on their sleeves talk about the homeless, they do not mention the delaying tactics that Labour councils apply to prevent people from owning their own council homes. On Fridays and Saturdays my surgery is filled not with social security problems but with people who put in to buy their council homes two, three or four years ago but find the local council using delaying tactics to thwart the right to buy. That is a disgrace.

Nationally, there are 103,000 empty local authority dwellings, many in inner-city areas. Nearly 22,000 of those are available for immediate letting. In theory, every homeless family could be taken out of bed-and-breakfast accommodation if Labour authorities would let those properties.

Jobs and training figure very largely in the west midlands, where there has been an enormous reduction in unemployment. Wolverhampton has had the benefit of a Government task force which has done a marvellous job getting people into work. One of the problems that: we recognise is that people need to be retrained in new skills and others need basic remedial education to help them apply for training places. When I hear Opposition Members talk about the creation of jobs and about training and skill shortages, I find it incredible that in Wolverhampton, where there is high unemployment, the local Labour council has turned down £700,000 for 400 places. That is the sort of initiative that the Labour council takes on employment training.

When I visited a day-care centre for the elderly last week. I met many elderly people who said, "Mrs. Hicks, I hear that your Government is closing down our day centre." When I asked them why that should be so, they said, "We have no more employment training places—what are we to do?" I had to explain to them that their local caring Labour authority was handing back the money for those places and then asking my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment, "Why has the European Commission turned us down for money for training, and why won't our local Member of Parliament, Mrs. Hicks, fight for more money for training?" [Interruption.] I draw from experience in my appraisal of the local Labour council only because of the Opposition motion today. It is far better to talk from experience than simply to waffle.

I want to talk further about the creation of urban development corporations. I was fortunate the other day to go around the London docklands for the first time. I must admit that I had left it too long. It was fantastic. I came back to the House and decided that the whole House should take a day trip to the London docklands because the enthusiasm that I saw there sent me back full of heart. There were so many achievements there such as rebuilding and new factories—

They were there before.

I can see what was there before, where the area has not been improved. The area had been so run down that people believed that nothing would ever happen. If we can achieve such rejuvenation through the Black Country urban development corporation, which is in its early days, it would be extremely encouraging. In the Black Country UDC we have £160 million, which will provide 20,000 jobs, but the Labour party locally says, "If we get back in, we shall do away with all urban development corporations."

I recognise that one of the most disturbing elements of inner-city life concerns law and order. If people do not feel safe in their flats, whether they rent or buy them, that is a disgrace. In Wolverhampton, we have a superb town centre where local people were frightened to shop. They said, "We have a lovely town centre, but we shall avoid it like the plague because it is not safe by day or by night."

Ten years ago your Government were going to solve all that.

We said, "Let us have video cameras in the town centre," and Wolverhampton was one of the first towns to do so. Local Labour councillors said, "We do not want nasty video cameras because they are an invasion of privacy and a restriction on individuals". [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes, they are."] We have seen the biggest reduction in crime in Wolverhampton and we now have virtually no criminal activity in the town centre. All the other local authorities now say, "Let us follow Wolverhampton's initiative," and who is taking the credit for that? It is the local council.

Give us the figures.

There is the real spokesman on law and order.

I happen to have the figures with me. We have had an 18 per cent. downturn compared with the same period last year. Robberies are down by 52 per cent. in Wolverhampton, house burglaries are down by 24 per cent., criminal damage is down by 16 per cent. and wounding is down by 3 per cent. The only figure to show an increase is for the theft of bicycles, which have increased by 38 per cent. The figures speak for themselves, as they do throughout the west midlands. I was delighted when the Government chose Wolverhampton as one of the first towns to take part in the 'safer cities' scheme and we worked hard to be chosen. The scheme involves many threads, not just the Government or the police, but junior crime prevention, probation officers and the local community. If inner-city life is to improve, everyone must be involved. We cannot just leave it to the local council or the Government.

Unless we provide sound education to equip young people with skills for the future in a manufacturing area such as mine, we shall have problems as a result of the decreasing work force. We welcome all initiatives to bring industry and schools closer, and I am glad that we have now taken the initiative with the chamber of commerce to establish a compact in some of the schools in my constituency. I also welcome the city technology colleges. One of the first towns that would have had the offer of a CTC was Wolverhampton, but what happened?

The council did not want one.

That is right—the hon. Gentleman knows his party so well. There is a skills shortage in the area, and as a manufacturing area we should be encouraging our young people in technology, but the council did not want a CTC because it believed that it would be elitist. That is one of the saddest decisions that the council has made.

The Conservative party has shown commitment and vision. Our initiatives speak louder than the hollow words of the Opposition. The Opposition motion is a cheek coming from a party that has not come forward with one policy, but merely destructive opposition to all that we have achieved.

rose—