To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the progress of appeals by nurses with regard to regradings.

The grading appeals are being dealt with under a longstanding 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 this agreement are for local decision.

The Under-Secretary will know that today a large delegation of Confederation of Health Service Employees nurses attended the Scottish Grand Committee, which was discussing health. Many of those nurses are still awaiting their gradings which were originally given on 31 October 1988. Can the Minister give the House a guarantee that those appeals will be heard by 31 October 1989?

No, I cannot give that assurance. It is for local health authorities to hold those appeals as expeditiously as possible. I should point out to the hon. Gentleman that the unions, including COHSE, agreed the procedure for grading appeals. We are following that procedure, which involves three tiers, to the letter.

Will my hon. Friend take it from me that, whatever scheme is in operation, the midwives in south Teesside, who have been given one of the most magnificent hospitals in the country, are thoroughly fed up at having to wait for their claims to be heard? What will the Government do, apart from sitting back and saying that it is in someone else's hands?

The local health authority will be pursuing those appeals as expeditiously as possible. Midwives have enjoyed an increase in salary over the past two years of 28 per cent. on average. The concern is not about pay, it is about other conditions of service. The midwives have had an excellent pay increase and appeals will he heard as quickly as possible.

Is the Minister aware that at the midwives' conference that I attended last week, and which he could not attend the night before, but attended the following day, morale was very low? That was because the grading system still has not satisfied any group of midwives. Can the Minister tell the midwives that perhaps in the next six months they will have a satisfactory answer to the grading system?

Ninety per cent. of all staff midwives are on grade E and higher. They have had a remarkably successful outcome from the regrading exercise and the pay increases.

I appreciate that this was before the Minister's time at the Department of Health, but does he recall the Secretary of State lecturing nurses last summer that if they were dissatisfied with their grades they should appeal? As they encouraged nurses to appeal as the remedy, Ministers cannot now wash their hands of the shortcomings of the appeals system. Is he aware that tens of thousands of appeals at district level will not be heard until the end of next year and that 2,000 appeals at regional level will not be heard during this Parliament? What has happened to the Secretary of State's press statement on 5 December in which he promised that appeals would be heard by this spring? Will the Minister at least assure us that they will be heard by next spring?

The smooth running of the appeals machinery to which the hon. Gentleman refers has been clogged up by the unhelpful and unco-operative attitude of COHSE and the National Union of Public Employees.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what action is being taken by individual health authorities to increase the number of operations where their current performance rate falls substantially below the national average.

We expect health authority managers, who now have available to them information on their performance relative to others, to use this to monitor their own performance and then to make any necessary improvements. We have a range of initiatives to help support and sustain such efforts.

Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that after the massive increase in spending during the past 10 years on additional staff, new hospitals. other new buildings and modern equipment, the British taxpayer is entitled to ask why we still have a waiting list? Is that not of itself sufficient justification for the Government's reforms of the National Health Service?

Yes, particularly when some recent research showed that if every district health authority was capable of using its operating theatres as efficiently as the average—not even as the best—that would create enough vacant beds to allow everyone on the waiting list to be operated on immediately. That is the precise scope, and there are many other examples of what the added efficiency that we propose in the review will do for the National Health Service.

What does the Minister say to a health authority such as Central Birmingham, which is responsible for the Birmingham children's hospital and which has limited the number of open-heart operations to 320, when the surgeons are capable of carrying out 380, and where the waiting list for children now stands at 140, when a year ago it stood at 110? That was at the time of the tragic deaths of David Barber and Matthew Collier, which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Hughes) has raised repeatedly in the Chamber. What does the Minister say to those area health authorities that are putting the lives of bairns at risk? When will they get enough money so that surgeons can carry out the operations?

I have every sympathy with the parents of youngsters awaiting such operations. A great deal of attention has been given to improving the position at Birmingham children's hospital. I am advised that double the number of heart operations on youngsters will be carried out at that hospital this year compared with last year. That marks real progress and I hope that we shall be able to do even more in the months ahead.

Will my hon. and learned Friend congratulate my health authority, Bury, on the way in which it has dealt with the issue and is able to treat more patients by increasing the number of consultants by 35 per cent. over the past five years? Will he note that it has achieved that by saving on administration and by putting more services out to tender? Is not that the way that health authorities should go?

What is encouraging is the range of initiatives taken by different health authorities. I applaud what Bury has done and, equally, I applaud other health authorities which, by having a higher proportion of operating cases treated as day cases, have managed to transform their waiting lists. The Coventry and Warwickshire hospital, which I visited last month, has transformed a waiting list of 1,400 to a list of 300 simply by increasing the proportion of day surgery cases from 7 per cent. of the total work load to 43 per cent. We look to such initiatives, and that is the scale of improvement that is possible when people use their ingenuity.

Is it not the case that to stay within inadequate budgets, hospital managers are telling doctors to do fewer operations, rather than more? How does the Minister's earlier answer square with a report in yesterday's Daily Mirror that two heart surgeons at Birmingham children's hospital were threatened with disciplinary action because they exceeded by one the ration of heart operations that they were allowed to carry out in May? Does that not show that the Government's real interest lies in saving money, not lives?

This year, over 20 per cent. more in-patient cases will be dealt with in the National Health Service than were dealt with 10 years ago and there will be many more operations than there were last year. It is interesting that although the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) made his usual call about underfunding, that was specifically not endorsed at the meeting between regional health authority chairmen and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State last week. The problems of the National Health Service cannot be explained away by a shortage of resources, but have much to do with improved performance. It is about time that the Opposition played some part in making that clear.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations he has received about sickness, including ear, nose, throat or body sores, in bathers, fisherman or other users of the Bristol channel attributable to the poor water quality and high sewage or industrial pollution of this marine cul de sac.

None. My right hon. and learned Friend is aware of recent concern expressed by the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisation to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food about the possible health risks to fishermen from sewage disposal to sea. The public have also expressed concern to my Department and to the Department of the Environment about the state of our bathing waters.

I thank my hon. Friend for his clear awareness of some of the problems. Is he aware that not only fishing clubs but swimmers, school parties, parents and all who use the Bristol channel complain bitterly of sore throats, sore eyes, stomach upsets and other unpleasantness, all of which they attribute to polluted water? Is he further aware that the waters of the Bristol channel were last tested in 1987 and that the results of that survey have yet to be analysed or published? Will he request all medical authorities and GPs near the Bristol channel to give him information on the problem, which I suspect is small individually but major nationally?

I give my hon. Friend that assurance. We appreciate and welcome comments from not only district health authorities but general practitioners on reports from their patients about any ill effects from sea bathing. A contract has been placed with the independent water research centre to carry out a study to assess the risk of contracting illness from sea bathing. That study commences this summer, and we shall place the results in the Library.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the new general practitioners' contract will affect the chances of night visits being made by a patient's own doctor.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the new general practitioners' contract will affect immunisation and screening policies.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the new general practitioners' contract will affect the assessment of the development of young children.

The new contract will introduce a higher visit fee for those doctors who visit patients themselves, or who arrange night cover in small rotas of no more than 10 doctors. I believe that this will encourage general practitioners to carry out more home visits themselves or ensure that their patients see a doctor whom they know.

The new payments for the achievement of specified levels of childhood immunisation and cervical cytology will offer GPs a powerful incentive to raise protection against diseases for their patients.

The new contract will introduce for the first time a fee for GPs who provide services to monitor the development and well-being of their child patients.

Although a deputising service clearly has its uses, does it not make sense for general practitioners to have an incentive to visit their patients rather than to encourage the attendance of deputies, who may have had absolutely no contact with the patients, particularly elderly patients? If anyone had any doubts before, does this not clearly show that the function of the new contract is to improve the quality of service to the patient?

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. His point will be endorsed by his constituents who much prefer, wherever possible, a visit by a doctor from their own practice or one in close contact with it. I am glad to say that the majority of GPs do not use commercial deputising services. It is fair that they should be paid a higher reward for that. I regret to say that, at the moment, the general medical services committee is seeking to reopen discussions with me on the higher fee. I see no basis for that. We must remember the patients' interests and the public interest in settling the contract.

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for that reply. Does he agree that good doctors have nothing to fear from the new contract? Will he confirm that, in future, in places such as west Norfolk, where there is a large retired population, people will get even better service from their GPs and will not mind them receiving extra rewards?

We are very conscious of the increasing number of elderly patients and the increasing needs of elderly patients, particularly those beyond the age of 75. That is a growing feature of the population of Norfolk. Patients would welcome the introduction of a new higher fee for GPs in return for keeping at least in annual touch with all their patients over the age of 75.

My right hon. and learned Friend will be aware of my concern that the National Health Service should cope with the needs of patients of all ages, particularly young children. Does he agree that his earlier replies give the lie to claims that the new contract would work against patient care? What can he do to bring home to GPs the considerable benefits to patients from the new contract?

I am glad to say that the new payment for child surveillance, which is monitoring the development and health of children under the age of five, was put into the contract at the request of the medical profession and the GMSC. It is one of many features of the contract that should encourage much better service to patients. Many GPs have still not altogether understood all the details of the contract on offer. They should realise that the resulting contract must be on a balance between the legitimate interests of the profession and the legitimate needs of patients to ensure that general practice maintains the highest international standards.

As the right hon. and learned Gentleman was originally appointed to his post because of his great powers of communication—we might call him the "Kenneth Baker of yesterday"—can he give the House an estimate of what would have been the response from doctors to the new contract without his great clarity and vision?

I remain a colleague of Kenneth Baker today. I have certainly communicated with doctors. I and my negotiating team have had 19 meetings with the GMSC negotiators, spent 110 hours in negotiation and produced 38 papers as bases for discussion. We eventually reached an agreement that the GMSC recommended to the profession.

Obviously, I regret the fact that GPs have decided to reject the recommendations of their own negotiators, but at least it was not by the nine to one vote that greeted Aneurin Bevan when he tried to persuade the British Medical Association to accept his terms of service when the NHS was founded.

The hon. Member for Norfolk, North-West (Mr. Bellingham) referred to the elderly. Is the Secretary of State aware that in Sheffield the most freely expressed fear about the new contract is that it will prejudice the dedication of services and resources to the elderly, especially in respect of night visits? Will he comment on the effect of the new contract on Sheffield's elderly population, especially as it is expected that the number of those over the age of 85 will increase by 82 per cent. during the next decade?

I do not accept the interpretation that the hon. Gentleman claims has been put upon the contract by some doctors in Sheffield. As I have already said, we are introducing a new, higher payment in exchange for regular contact with patients over the age of 75. The new contract will benefit the elderly, who would much prefer that, whenever possible, night visits are made by someone from their own practice whom they are likely to know.

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman make it clear that doctors will not be paid for immunisations and screenings if they do not achieve a minimum target of 70 per cent. of their patients? In an area such as Teesside, doctors, however hard they try, will have great difficulty in reaching that high target. It is a question not of good or bad doctors but of a target that is unattainable.

Vaccination is part of the ordinary duties of every GP. I am sure that they all accept that they must strive to raise the level of immunisations. The 70 per cent. target is already being met by the majority of practices, certainly in England, and it can be achieved regardless of the social status of an area. It is important to try to secure a National Health Service that meets the highest international standards of patient care. The target that we have set is that recommended by the World Health Organisation, and none of us should recommend second-rate or lower standards for the NHS than those regarded as reasonably attainable in developed countries.

Although it may be true that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North-West (Mr. Bellingham) said, the majority of doctors have nothing to fear from the new contract, does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that some excellent doctors are apprehensive? Despite his efforts through meetings, papers and discussions, does he agree that there is a need for a concerted effort during the next three months, when Parliament is not sitting, to talk to doctors throughout the country in as conciliatory and constructive a manner as possible, in the hope of persuading them that they have nothing to fear?

My two ministerial colleagues and I hold meetings with hundreds of doctors each week, and they have been successful and productive. One of the main actions that we can take is to explain the impact of the contract to individual GPs, many of whom are labouring under unreasonable and unnecessary fears about a possible loss of income in their practices. In fact, the best doctors will gain under the proposals, but some will have to improve their performance. Many doctors are labouring under a misunderstanding because they have not absorbed the detail of the new contract. I shall take my hon. Friend's advice and I shall almost certainly communicate in writing with all GPs, setting out the terms on offer.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a further statement on his plans for community care.

As I said in my statement on 12 July, we will publish a White Paper on community care in the autumn.

Will the Secretary of State elaborate on the arrangements for community care between now and 1991? He will be aware that many elderly and mentally ill people are already being discharged into the community, particularly in inner-city areas such as mine, and that facilities are already insufficient. Will he examine projects such as that proposed for St. Olave's hospital in my constituency where there is a danger that half the land will be sold for housing at market value rather than for the community care provision that would allow his plans to be implemented in the near future rather than having to wait until 1991 or thereafter?

Our response to the Griffiths report aroused great enthusiasm among local authorities for the opportunity that it offers to improve the level of community care that we provide. I am sure that local authorities and health authorities are beginning to draw up their community care plans and to plan for new developments. Therefore, as a result of the announcement, increased priority will be given to community care immediately. I trust that that means a steady development before we reach 1991. I shall look at the constituency case to which the hon. Gentleman referred when he sends details to me and if there is ministerial responsibility, the Minister responsible will respond to him.

Do the community care proposals involve a review of attendance allowances with a view to making them more prompt, efficient, generous and sensitive?

All of us become involved in appeals against refusal of attendance allowance, and I know how difficult many of those cases are. The Griffiths report did not specifically address the important matter of the benefits and financial assistance given to disabled people and those who care for them. I shall draw my hon. Friend's remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security and I have no doubt that he will bear his point in mind.

Will the Secretary of State explain why, in his recent statement on community care, he made only a passing reference to Lady Wagner's report? Does he accept that, in view of the huge explosion in residential care, especially in the private sector, there is a need for minimum standards in the private and the public sectors and for proper inspections, too?

Lady Wagner's report was excellent and the Government are grateful to her. Many of its recommendations have already been implemented. We endorsed it yet again in my statement, and we touched on her suggestions for the inspection of nursing and residential homes where we did not see any need for change in the statutory position at the moment. We introduced the legislation that brought in the system of supervising standards and we have made important recommendations which will help local authorities so to organise matters that the same attention is paid to the standard of care in public sector homes as should be paid in private sector homes.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many complaints he has received from patients and general practitioners in the last four years as a result of the introduction of the limited drugs list.

Since the selected list scheme was introduced in April 1985 the Department has received some 6,000 letters about the scheme, but not many recently. Recent correspondence has tended to recognise that the selected list scheme has produced worthwhile financial savings while fully protecting the interests of patients. None of the dire predictions made at the time of the introduction of the scheme by the British Medical Association and others has proved to be true.

My hon. Friend will recall only too clearly that the outcry and fears expressed by general practitioners four years ago before the introduction of the selected list was not dissimilar to the present outcry from general practitioners about prescribing costs. For the sake of those vulnerable patients who are completely confused, will my hon. and learned Friend take the opportunity to bang on the head once and for all the untruth going about that any patient might be denied medicine? Will he reassure the elderly and those on long-term medication that they have nothing to fear under the Government?

I am very happy to give my hon. Friend the reassurance that she seeks. Every patient will receive the medication that they require—that is a categorical promise. Despite the controversy over the limited list, it establishes that worthwhile savings of about £75 million per year can be made, which can be deployed elsewhere in the Health Service to the greater benefit of patients. The controversy shows also that, unfortunately, some groups within the Health Service are so resistant to changes that they will seek to blackguard them with the most wild charges—none of which, in respect either of the selected list or of other reforms, has proved to be true. The same will doubtless be true of the dire predictions made about the White Paper.

One of the drugs that is the subject of most concern and, I suspect, of most representations, is Mucodyne—which was restored to the list, but only in the children's version. Many elderly people suffering from bronchial complaints, including a number of my constituents, have found no substitute for Mucodyne that meets their needs, and must fork out about £13 or £14 every time that they purchase a bottle. They have no choice because there is no proven, practical alternative. Mucodyne has also been the subject of many parliamentary questions, and I ask the Minister to bear my comments in mind if the list is ever reviewed.

The hon. Gentleman knows that the drugs included on or omitted from the selected list were the subject of professional evaluation by an advisory committee, so those decisions were taken not by the Government but on specialist advice. The hon. Gentleman will know also that we offered the British Medical Association an appeal mechanism but it did not take us up on it. That would have been a way of dealing with any residual points.

Is not the simple truth that if my right hon. and learned Friend and his colleagues had listened to the BMA's campaign against the limited list, £75 million per year less would have been available to spend on patients?

Yes, and that £75 million equals the cost of building a new Great Ormond street hospital every year for the past four years. That is what the debate is all about. Of the £2 billion currently spent in the NHS on prescribed drugs, tens of millions of pounds is misspent because of the refusal by some general practitioners to prescribe generic alternatives, slack repeat prescribing, and other reasons. Just as it is necessary for patients to have the drugs that they need, it is important that patients are not prescribed drugs that they do not need.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he has issued any guidance to health authorities on balloting National Health Service staff or members of the public on whether they agree with proposals to allow National Health Service hospitals to opt out.

No National Health Service hospitals are going to opt out of the National Health Service.

Is the Secretary of State aware of the overwhelming wall of hostility against his proposals for futuristic private hospitals? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman believes that his proposals have the support of doctors, nurses, patients and the public, why does he not put them to the test by balloting Health Service workers and the public? He has spent enough taxpayers' money trying to sell that rotten idea.

Recently, the hon. Lady, together with some of her colleagues, gatecrashed a meeting that I was holding with the staff of various hospitals in Leeds. The hon. Lady and her friends found themselves listening to a very serious discussion about the potential benefits of self-government for hospitals and units in the Leeds area, and found it so daunting that they left after a little while. If the hon. Lady and her friends had stayed, they would have understood my proposals more clearly. Clearly, the hon. Lady still does not understand them—and obviously she is not ready herself, let alone her constituents, to cast a vote on the matter. If we receive any applications for self-governing status from NHS hospitals, as I am sure that we shall in due course, we will consult most thoroughly—as we always do on any serious proposal.

Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that balloting hospitals and the community would be as ludicrous as it would be unworkable? Does he agree that it would divide communities and hospitals, and divert valuable time and resources away from the Health Service?

I am accused of challenging one or two of the Health Service's traditions, but I am not very much in favour of traditions that lead to inefficiency. However, I cannot recall a single occasion in the past 40 years when anyone has suggested that managerial changes should be the subject of a local ballot. At this stage, people should concentrate on seriously studying the Government's proposals, and wait to see what applications are made and what would be the benefits to the patients concerned.

I presume that when the Government presented their proposals they discussed the decision that the managers and consultants involved would determine whether hospitals should opt out of local health authorities, and that the local community would be considered. If the majority of consultants in a hospital were opposed to that hospital's opting out, would it still be able to do so?

I have never used the phrase "opt out". It has not featured in any of my documents or speeches. The self-governing hospitals, like other hospitals, will look to the district health authorities for funds, as money comes with the patients referred by those authorities.

Let me suggest again that the description of the proposal that we have heard is based on misunderstanding, or is misleading. We shall consult in the ordinary way when applications are made, but I do not believe that such matters can be decided sensibly by means of a yes or no vote among any particular section of staff, or in any other part of the community. Those responsible will put forward considered applications that will be examined in the same way as any other important changes in the service.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the allocation of the extra £40 million to help with the implementation of the White Paper "Working for Patients".

I have undertaken to ensure that the costs of implementing the NHS review will be met by the taxpayer over and above the resources provided to maintain the growth of services to patients. The provision of the additional £40 million brings the total available this year for the implementation of the review to £82 million, of which £70 million is for the hospital and community health services, £5 million for the family practitioner services and the remainder to meet administrative costs in my Department.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that hard-pressed managers in the NHS deserve our full support, and that those additional resources are a welcome and constructive step towards implementation of the White Paper proposals? Does he agree that they are especially to be welcomed as new money that will leave untouched the existing record level of resources for patient care?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he knows, the great majority of managers in the service are very enthusiastic about the reforms proposed in the White Paper, and are working extremely hard to ensure their implementation. Some investment up front will, as I have said, be required, and we shall continue to provide it over and above the necessary increase in resources required to maintain the growth in patient care.

How much of that new money will be allocated to patient care, and how much to the provision of hardware, accountants and software to be employed in billing procedures? It is rather important for the patient to know what he is spending the money on.

As the hon. Lady knows, in last year's public spending round we increased total spending on the National Health Service by £2 million. With additions during the year, we have brought the amount to be spent on the implementation of the review to £82 million. That covers a wide range of services, including grants for the training of more people with public health expertise who will be able to identify patient needs. Those needs will be resourced much better once the new system is in place.

Has my right hon. and learned Friend made any assessment of the savings that will be made by the streamlining of the decision-making process in self-governing hospitals? At present, as he well knows, major decisions must go first to the district health authority, then to the regional health authority, then to the Elephant and Castle and then all the way back down the line. Is it not true that savings will be made and that for all but the third rate, this will be a far better process?

Over the years we have moved steadily towards replacing the second-guessing of decisions that has been traditional in the Health Service, when Ministers and their civil servants supervised the regions, which supervised the districts, which supervised hospital management. With self-governing hospitals, we shall put real responsibility into the hands of local people.

I agree with my hon. Friend that great improvements will be made in efficiency, and that at the same time the hospitals will be made even more responsive to local opinion, local patients' needs and perceived gaps in the present health care provision.

Will the Secretary of State accept that we agree that this latest share-out shows the Government's priorities? Is he aware that three quarters of the new money has been spent on more finance staff and more computers for them, but only a couple of million pounds on the medical audit? Does it not speak volumes for the priorities of his White Paper that the accountants who treat no patients need 12 times the new resources that are given to doctors? Is not the truth that his priority is cost control, not patient care?

The hon. Gentleman makes a specialty of picking out details of the White Paper that he blows up into misrepresentations. He knows perfectly well—[Interruption.]

Order.

This will be planned and brought in by the profession. The additional £2 million is extremely welcome to the profession and shows our good will to that development. We accept that more money will be required to finance medical audit when the profession has in place the mechanisms required to carry it out. We are talking about £2 million being spent on pump priming for that purpose this year.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend take all possible steps to implement the White Paper at the earliest opportunity so that my constituents, who are suffering excessive waiting lists in Barking, Havering and Brentwood, have the advantage of one of the White Paper's many proposals—that money should follow patients rather than some abstruse formula?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I reassure him that progress on preparation to implement the review is going steadily and very well at present. We seem well on target to deliver not only the review but, most important, its benefits to patients such as his constituents, who will experience a big improvement in how the service is delivered once the changes are in place.

Order. It is difficult to hear questions against a background of discussion.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what consultations he has recently undertaken regarding the supply, and fitting and repair of artificial limbs.

These matters are dealt with in England by the Disablement Services Authority. We are regularly in touch with the authority's chairman.

What on earth possessed the right hon. Gentleman's Department to bring wholly improper pressure on the Welsh health common services authority to award its three-year contract for the supply of artificial limbs in Wales to Intermed? Its artificial limbs may be straight, but its behaviour is so bent that two days after it was awarded the contract, which specified local manufacture at Rookwood hospital in my constituency, it said that it would move the manufacture and major repair of all artificial limbs for Wales to its central factory in Alton, Hampshire, contrary to the recommendations of the McColl committee on the supply of artificial limbs that manufacture and major repairs must always be done in the locality.

Arrangements in Wales are a matter for the Welsh Office, not the Department of Health. Prior to our beginning this exercise, Intermed's share of the lower limb market was 75 per cent. in England, but it is now 16 per cent. I should have thought that that was a move in the direction that the hon. Gentleman wants.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr. Smith) of 6 June, Official Report, columns 97–99, what other action has been taken in response to the report of the committee of inquiry into the care and after-care of Miss Sharon Campbell, Cm 44; and if he will make a statement.

We continue to carry forward work which calls for Government action, particularly that concerned with the continuing care of patients discharged from mental illness hospitals. We will begin formal consultation on guidance on continuing care this Friday.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that his plans to improve health services for the mentally ill, which he announced in a detailed response to a question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. Goodlad) on 13 July, take account of the findings of the Sharon Campbell inquiry and go a long way to ensuring that such a tragedy never happens again?

The statement of the Government policy on care of the mentally ill in the community made on 13 July was widely welcomed by hon. Members and the voluntary organisations involved. The announcement by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State of additional money in 1991–92 through the Health Service to help local authorities improve the quality of social care will go a long way to addressing some of the concerns that he and the Spokes report on the care and aftercare of Miss Sharon Campbell raised.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the effects of the new general practitioners' contract on health promotion clinics.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what are the implications of the new general practitioners' contract for preventive health care.

The new contract forms an important part of our policy of encouraging health promotion and the prevention of ill health. GPs' terms of service will make clear their role in these areas, and there will be new payments encouraging the provision of health promotion clinics, check-ups for newly registered patients and help to achieve high levels of coverage for cervical cancer screening and childhood immunisations.

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that reply. Does he agree that the provision for the first time of an incentive to general practitioners to run health promotion clinics will greatly improve the quality of patient care and provide GPs with the opportunity not just to react to problems as they come through their doors but to raise the quality of health of the patients on their lists?

Yes, it is absolutely vital that the NHS becomes a service for health and not just a service for sickness. The way in which we have chosen to have a contract that is performance related will, for the first time, properly reward those who take the initiative in preventive medicine, rather than merely reward those who have been in practice for a long time, unrelated to performance.

Can my hon. and learned Friend confirm that in terms of preventive medicine, the new contract for GPs will, for the first time, require them to visit elderly patients, that they will be paid to make those visits and that the visits will have to take place at least once a year? Will he confirm that they will be thorough visits and that the elderly people being visited will be properly looked after?

For the first time, GPs will be paid more for having elderly patients on their lists. I find it astonishing, therefore, that the charge should be levelled at the contract that somehow it will make it more difficult for elderly patients to get treatment, when for the first time they are singled out as being patients whose care requires extra payment from the state.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 25 July.

This morning I had a number of meetings. I then received General Yazov, the Soviet Defence Minister, on his first visit to the United Kingdom. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today and will be attending a special garden party to celebrate 150 years of public education. This evening I hope to have an audience of Her Majesty the Queen.

Is the right hon. Lady intending to reshuffle her as well?[Interruption.]

Order. It is a good thing that I cannot hear many of the sedentary remarks that are made.

Now that the Prime Minister has guillotined half the Cabinet and frightened the other half to death, can I assume that that is an admission that all the fundamental policies of the Conservatives have been wrong? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] Is it not a fact that they have been wrong in, for instance, education, the economy, the poll tax, water and pollution? [Interruption.] It is clear that hon. Members in all parts of the House agree with me. Is the right hon. Lady now for turning, or will the developing chaos of wrong policies continue, to the detriment of the British people?

I do not think that the hon. Member can count. His side, the Labour Opposition, is constantly changing its policies, which is not surprising considering that they have had, and still have, such a rotten set. We sometimes change members of our Cabinet and Administration in order to pursue the same policies which have brought success to the British people for so long.

While my right hon. Friend the new Foreign Secretary is getting his feet under the table, will my right hon. Friend contact the Indian Prime Minister and express to him the disquiet of many in the House about what is happening in India's relations with Nepal and Sri Lanka?

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has of course had his feet under the same table, as a very effective Chief Secretary, for a long time.

I saw the Prime Minister of India recently in Paris and had long talks with him. Obviously, he is taking an active part in the difficult questions that face Sri Lanka. I am sure that he will consider everything carefully in the interests of the people there, of the people of India and of his own army. I also know of the difficulty that is being encountered over Nepal and of the disquiet that it is causing in some parts of this House.

Will the Prime Minister be good enough to convey my congratulations to the former Foreign Secretary on his promotion? Can the Prime Minister tell us whether the appointment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman is intended to result in any changes in policy?

As usual, the right hon. Gentleman cannot have listened to previous answers before he came up with his prepared question. I made it quite clear in my previous reply that changes in the Cabinet will mean that the policies that have been so successful in Britain, and so successful in the House, will continue, because we have the right policies and they have transformed our country.

If the Prime Minister is saying that no changes are needed, is she disagreeing, at this early juncture, with her new deputy, who said this morning that he was needed

"particularly when the Government as a whole are facing a new round of problems on the home front"?

We shall deal with those problems in this Cabinet as effectively as we dealt with previous problems. I quite understand that the right hon. Gentleman is once again going on about personalities because he is not capable of asking a question on policy.

Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the Government's decision that Sikh workers on building sites no longer have to wear hard hats? Does she agree that this will be welcomed by many ordinary Sikh people, who will be able to go about their business and do their jobs, and that this demonstrates the Government's understanding attitude to towards ethnic minority British people?

I know that this decision will be welcome to the Sikh community. My hon. Friend will also be aware that employers will be relieved of any compensation that might come about because Sikhs are not wearing hats but, in general, I believe this will be welcome to the Sikh community.

While we welcome the new Foreign Secretary, may we have a pledge from the Prime Minister that she does not intend to interfere incessantly, and that, if he wishes to make a statement to the House on society, whether British or foreign, she will not cross it out?

I have great confidence in the present Foreign Secretary, as I had in the previous one. I notice that the present Foreign Secretary has taken over after quite a prolonged period of office in Cabinet, unlike the right hon. Gentleman before he was made Foreign Secretary.

Will my right hon. Friend turn her attention later today to the problem of London's traffic? Does she agree that, whether there is a strike or not, London is grinding to a halt, and that we need to consider such solutions as banning deliveries during certain hours and banning cars that contain fewer than a certain number of passengers? Does she agree that unless drastic solutions are found London will grind to a halt?

I am aware that my hon. Friend is concerned, and that he will be more concerned at another totally unnecessary strike tomorrow because the National Union of Railwaymen did not accept the result of an independent arbitration. I know that increased prosperity, and the increased number of cars, brings increased traffic problems. This is a traffic problem and my right hon. Friend the new Transport Secretary will be looking at that, among other things.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 25 July.

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

Having carried out a reshuffle of her Cabinet of doormats, is the Prime Minister aware that the British people do not appreciate the Right-wing extremism of the Government's policies, nor do they trust her to handle the National Health Service now that it has been revealed that so many local health authorities are having their budgets cut? Does the Prime Minister realise that the day that millions of people in this country yearn for is the day when they see the back of her?

No. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the policies followed by the Government have brought a higher standard of living to this country than has ever been known and a higher standard of social services than could ever have been provided by previous Governments. I do not think that the people wish to return to the awful standard of living, awful health services and the terrible domination by the trade unions that were the characteristics of previous Labour Governments. Cheer up—I notice that even the Labour party is trying to move Right because it thinks that those policies are more popular.

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the average law-abiding football fan has nothing to fear from the passage into law of the Government's Football Spectators Bill? Will not the only type of person placed in difficulty be the hooligan, the person who regularly exhibits bouts of threatening behaviour such as swearing in public, perhaps to a radio interviewer, or causing fights in the streets, say, outside an Indian restaurant?

I agree with my hon. Friend. The Football Spectators Bill will give us extra defences against hooligans and extra powers to get better grounds. I agree that the law-abiding spectator will welcome it. The legislation also gives us a basis on which to bring into law any proposals resulting from the Hillsborough report without having to wait a further year.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 25 July.

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

On Mr. Tiny Rowland's campaign in The Observer on Tornado, the House of Fraser and other matters, did the Prime Minister ever meet the Sultan of Brunei and discuss the takeover of the House of Fraser? Is it true that the report by the independent directors of The Observer into that newspaper was a whitewash in so far as it believed Mr. Rowland when he said that he did not have links with Dassault, while at the same time Lonrho employees were busily briefing Fleet street, especially Jon Craig of the Sunday Times, saying that there were commercial links between Lonrho and Dassault? Is it not about time that Mr. Rowland divested himself of control of The Observer?

I have no information on the hon. Gentleman's last point, but I am aware that the hon. Gentleman has tabled a number of early-day motions on this point. It would not be right for the Government to make any comment while the investigations concerning the House of Fraser continue. I meet the Sultan of Brunei from time to time to discuss matters of state. He is a very good friend of Britain.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the majority of east coast ports are now working normally? Is she aware also that unemployment in King's Lynn has come down from a high of more than 15 per cent. to under 5 per cent. and that with a new, reinvigorated port unemployment should disappear altogether?

Dock workers are steadily returning to the ports. I think that they realise that there is no point in a strike. They are more keen to build a future for the ports in which they work and for the industries in the hinterland of those ports. The passing of the Dock Work Act was a good decision for the future prosperity of my hon. Friend's area and for all those in the hinterland of those ports.

To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 25 July.

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

Does the Prime Minister agree that as she has not sacked or moved the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Wales, they must have been the most successful members of the Cabinet? Will she confirm that she has moved the Secretary of State for the Environment, who did not have the presentational skills to sell the poll tax? That being so, against the background of a massive trade deficit, how will he sell our goods abroad?

I think that the hon. Gentleman must be very satisfied with the overwhelming majority of policies that are being pursued by this Government and bringing such prosperity to this country. With regard to the community charge, I understand that many Opposition Members wish to have high expenditure but do not wish to contribute to it. That is totally and utterly wrong. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the community charge will contribute to only 25 per cent. of local authority expenditure in England, only 18 per cent. of local authority expenditure in Wales and only 14 per cent. of local authority expenditure in Scotland. It will be a much, much fairer charge than any previous charge, and I note that the Labour party has abandoned its latest policy because it is absolutely rotten.

We now come to the first of the Opposition motions—that on the poll tax. I must announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

I beg to move—[Interruption.] That is all very well, but we would like to see that right hon. Gentleman replaced with a Socialist Secretary of State.

I beg to move,

That this House rejects the unfair, inefficient, intrusive and bureaucratic poll tax, the so-called community charge, because the tax will bear most harshly on the poorest and weakest in the community, will discriminate against carers at home, will undermine and distort local accountability by concentrating an unprecedented 75 per cent. of local authority expenditure under Ministerial control, and is capricious and unfair in its effect on areas of the country with low rateable values; furthermore regards the proposed rebate system as mean and inadequate; recognises that the national business tax will cause grave financial problems for thousands of small business people; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to abandon these proposals.

We already have evidence of those effects in Scotland.

Before I proceed, I want to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the new Secretary of State on his major promotion. We know that he brings considerable intelligence and ability to a Department much in need. of both. However, what has been lacking in the Department of the Environment are not just those things, but good judgment and coherent principles to safeguard the environment, the essential public services and local democratic government.

Will my hon. Friend remind the House of how many Environment Secretaries he has seen off since he has been Shadow Environment Secretary? How long does he think the new incumbent will last in his office before we have a Socialist Environment Secretary?

As I said earlier, it is all very well seeing off Tory Secretaries of State, but I am getting a little fed up with them being replaced by other Tories. Next time we want to replace not only the right hon. Gentleman, but all Members of the Treasury Front Bench.

The new Secretary of State and his new Minister for Local Government, the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt), whom we also congratulate and welcome, must have at least some private misgivings, because they have inherited something of a shambles. The poll tax, water privatisation, the Government's failure adequately to safeguard the environment, both nationally and internationally, are, together with the threat to the National Health Service, the most deeply resented issues in British politics.

It is evident that no amount of repackaging or changes in personnel can possibly make the poll tax and water privatisations popular, or acceptable to the British people. Both are clearly seen as deeply unfair, inefficient and damaging to families, to services such as education, and to the environment. Both are inconsistent with the widespread desire of the British people for a better quality of life.

Therefore, without fundamental changes in the policies themselves, the new Secretary of State faces just as rough a ride with his colleagues as his predecessor—indeed, an even tougher time, as the awful truth of the consequences of the poll tax and the national business tax on property dawn on the Tory party and the people.

rose——

No, I shall not give way.

We shall, of course, miss the special and idiosyncratic presentational skills of the previous Secretary of State, whom we also wish well. Opposition Members take considerable pleasure in the knowledge that he is still on the loose, still on the Government Benches and free to range the country in an attempt to recover support for the Tories, much of it lost by his own policies at this Department in the first place. British industry has been remarkably and uncharacteristically silent about its new Secretary of State. We share its obvious misgivings about the future well-being of industrial policy, jobs and the economy.

Like his hon. Friends, we shall listen to the Secretary of State's speech with particular interest. Indeed, the Labour party chose this debate because we wanted to give him the earliest opportunity to announce the changes in policy that he envisages. We promise him a warm welcome.

The Secretary of State will know about the uproar in the Chamber last week about the poll tax—or the "Tory tax" as the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) rightly calls it. That uproar was yet another sign of the fear that is spreading through the Tory party about the implications of the poll tax for them and their survival. Like us, I am sure that they too will be anxious, if not desperate, to hear about changes in policy, not just in personnel and presentation.

It was the predecessor of the Secretary of State who, with typical candour, blew the gaff on the Conservative Government's real intentions about the poll tax when he asked why a duke should pay more than a dustman. The implication is clear. The intention was to introduce a tax unrelated to income or to the ability to pay, and that is exactly what the Tory Government have done.

The people of Scotland have already been made to suffer, but they have reaped their revenge through the ballot box. The people of England and Wales will eventually do so too.

rose——

No, I shall not give way at the moment. We say that there are many reasons—equity, social justice and the principles of progressive taxation—why someone such as Lord King, the chairman of British Airways, with a reported salary of £386,000 per annum, should pay more than an engineering apprentice in his company with a take-home pay of between £65 and £85 per week. We know instinctively that it is grotesquely unfair to make them pay the same contribution in local taxation—[Interruption.]

Did I hear a Tory Member mutter something about rebates? Yesterday, I released up-to-date figures compiled by the statistical section of the Library, which showed the mean and inadequate rebates that would have been available if the poll tax had been in operation this year. Last week, the Department finally published its illustrative poll tax figures for 1989–90. Using the latest poll tax figures, I asked the statistical section of the Library to calculate for each local authority the maximum level of net weekly income at which poll tax rebate would be payable to single persons, married couples and pensioners.

The Government have always been afraid and unwilling to publish that information. The Social Security Act 1986 and the poll tax Act 1988 require everyone to pay at least 20 per cent. of the rates bill, regardless of their circumstances or ability to pay. That extremely unfair rule continues next year, when the poll tax comes into force on 1 April 1990 in England and Wales.

Will the hon. Gentleman admit that, because the figures published in the document about the Labour party's proposed capital tax and local income tax showed how catastrophic they would be for the British public, the Labour party abandoned those policies?

No, I will not admit that, because it is not true. There has been no abandonment of policy. Nor did the previous Secretary of State for the Environment publish any realistic figures. The right hon. Gentleman told me in a note referred to in a parliamentary answer on 9 November 1987:

"There is no comprehensive data available from which to assess the outcome of a capital revaluation of domestic rateable values, and it is not Government policy to undertake such a revaluation. Some insight into the possible effect of a revaluation on the basis of capital values can be obtained by considering the relationship between house prices and existing rateable values in England."

But the Department does not have the data. It was quite dishonest of the previous holder of that high office to fabricate the results.

I notice that the Leader of the Opposition said last week that the Opposition's policy needed sophisticating. Will the hon. Gentleman say when it is likely that their policy will be sophisticated enough to share with the rest of us?

We are sophisticating all our policies all the time. That is why there is such a large and growing gap in British public opinion about the relative merits of party policy. When we have finished our considerations of these matters, the Secretary of State will not be the first to know, and that will come as no surprise to him. However, his right hon. and hon. Friends are waiting to hear from him not about Labour party policy, but how he proposes to dig them out of the appalling mess that present Government policy has got them into in their constituencies. Let me illustrate how big that mess is.

Figures show that a single pensioner in the Prime Minister's Finchley constituency, would face a poll tax bill of £290 per person per annum and would lose all entitlement to rebate if his or her net income exceeded £72·50 per week. In other words, a pensioner with a net income of £73 per week would be expected to find £5·57 per week to pay the poll tax. In Bath, the constituency of the Secretary of State, a single pensioner faced with a poll tax bill of £281 per year, according to the Government's figures, would lose all entitlement to rebate if his or her net income exceeded £71·60 per week.

A married couple with two children aged eight and 10 living in Finchley would lose all rebate if their net income exceeded £151 per week. In other words, they would have to find £11·15 per week just to pay their combined poll tax. A married couple with two children living in similar circumstances in the Secretary of State's constituency would lose all entitlement to rebate if their income exceeded £149·10 per week, and would have to find £10·81 per week to pay their combined poll tax bill.

rose——

rose——

A single person under 25 living in Finchley would lose all entitlement to a rebate if his or her net income exceeded £58·80 per week, and nearly 10 per cent. would go towards the poll tax.

Those are the realistic implications of the impact of the poll tax on take-home pay, including the Government's current proposals for rebates. Those figures prove that all but the poorest face substantial additional tax burdens, with everyone required to pay the minimum 20 per cent. The tables show how little the rebates are related to the ability to pay or personal circumstances and are based on this Government tolerating scandalously low levels of pay and poverty.

The figures reinforce the conclusion of yesterday's Child Poverty Action Group report on poll tax benefits and the poor, which said:

"The poll tax is intrinsically unfair—as a flat-rate tax, it falls equally on the shoulders of the rich and the poor. Even with the help of rebates it is poorly related to the ability to pay.

The inefficiencies of the poll tax are legion. Local government has already been faced with bills two to three times those for the collection of rates. At the annual conference of the Tory-dominated Association of District Councils, its leader, Tory councillor Roy Thomason, interrupted the then Secretary of State, the present Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, to say:

"£200 million more, Secretary of State."

The then Secretary of State replied:

"My advice to you is to find better ways of raising the community charge and try to make savings, rather than always complaining about not having enough money."

That answer was jeered to the rooftops by the Tory-dominated conference of the Association of District Councils.

Last week. there was a fiasco when the Government announced the so-called "safety nets". Howls of outrage from Tory Members rang round this Chamber, but in the main, they were only getting what they voted for in Division after Division, when, with a few honourable exceptions, they passed the legislation in the first place. The panic in the Tory party was astonishing.

As the hon. Gentleman and the House know, I come into the category he has just mentioned. If he is to beguile me to an alternative solution, he must—as I am sure he will—suggest one or more alternative ways in which we may proceed; otherwise, I may be convinced to follow my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

I recollect that the hon. Gentleman had his own alternative, which he tried to persuade his ministerial colleagues to accept, without success. In the main, Tory Members voted for what they are getting, and their panic is astonishing. It exposes the reality that many of them apparently did not know what they were voting for.

The safety net financial allocations are as capricious as every other aspect of the poll tax. Their application has nothing to do with efficiency or otherwise. Tories in the north, especially the north-west and Yorkshire, want more grant for their often Labour-controlled authorities because they fear a political backlash. Tories in the south complain that their constituents will subsidise their colleagues' areas. Let us consider the reality.

Wandsworth, for example, a Tory borough, gains £46·4 million from the safety net system. Is Wandsworth inefficient? Is that what Conservative Members are saying? Is it a poor council? Or is there a political reason for that allocation? Birmingham, a Labour city, contributes £50·2 million. Birmingham certainly qualifies under the Tory definition of efficiency, yet Birmingham has huge problems in housing, employment and inner-city difficulties. It has had to adjust to a cumulative loss of more than £500 million in rate support grant alone under this Government. Yet the people of Birmingham, under the safety nets, are asked to contribute an additional £50·2 million to subsidise the poll tax.

Let us consider Westminster. Is that a well-run Tory council? The safety net effect adds £33 per adult to the poll tax of £428 in Westminster. Lady Porter's policy of "building stable communities", which was described by Tory councillor Mrs. Patricia Kirwan as "gerrymandering the electoral processes", will cost each poll tax payer in Westminster an extra £60 a year. Is Westminster efficient? Are any Conservative voices raised about what is going on there?

Copeland borough council in my own constituency, which, under Labour control, had no rates increases for seven years, gains £5·2 million from safety netting—equivalent to £94 poll tax per adult—but the average two-adult household in my constituency will still be £40 a year worse off under the poll tax than under the rating system. So much for Tory claims that people are benefiting.

We know that poll tax registration involves massive new and regrettable intrusions into people's privacy and family lives. Many councils are asking people to respond to questions that the registration officer has no right to ask in the first place. Breaches of the Data Protection Act 1984 have occurred, and more than 300 councils are being required by the Data Protection Registrar to account for the questions on their forms. I seriously ask the Secretary of State to go away and look at that problem and do something about it. Will the Government stop unnecessary, and in some cases unlawful, activity by poll tax registration officers?

Those problems were highlighted during our debates, but they were dismissed by the then Ministers.

I should like to know whether the Secretary of State intends to make any changes. Responsibility for the final level of poll tax charged will overwhelmingly rest with Ministers and not with councils, whatever their political control. Ministers will decide and control 75 per cent. of council income, and they have already begun to consider how they can gerrymander the situation.

In the controversial propaganda leaflet that was sent to every household earlier this year, the Government said:

"Every council will decide the level of its community charge—just as it decides the rates now."

Of course, that statement is totally untrue. The leaflet goes on to mention the needs grant that each council will get. What the leaflet does not say is that the Secretary of State himself will decide how much each council needs to spend. His decisions could make hundreds of pounds of difference to the poll tax to be paid by almost every adult. That is what the system provides for.

The Opposition have a copy of the Government's working documents. For instance, one set of figures in front of the Secretary of State tells him that Birmingham needs to spend £627 million to provide a standard level of finance—to the Government's standards, that is. However, another figure tells the Secretary of State that Birmingham needs to spend £750 million to provide that same standard level. An analysis of the figures shows that the different formulae available for the Secretary of State to choose from could add over £3 a week to the poll tax for everyone in Birmingham. In almost every local authority, the situation and the effect are the same.

In Westminster, for example, the Secretary of State's choices could influence the poll tax by as much as £4·76 a week, in Kensington and Chelsea by £4·41 a week, in Wandsworth by about £3·70 a week, in Portsmouth by £2·20 a week, in Manchester by £3·40 a week, in Newcastle by £2·70 a week, and in Newham by as much as £5.40 a week. That is the Secretary of State's latitude, in addition to his 75 per cent. control, in determining exactly how much poll tax will be paid by people in towns and cities. It is nonsense to claim that that increases accountability and leaves more decision taking for local government. It does exactly the opposite.

The figures make a mockery of the Government's claims that high levels of poll tax are due to inefficiency or high spending. They demolish the argument that the poll tax will increase local accountability. Hundreds of pounds per person per year can be added to councils' bills by the Government and the figures that they decide to put into their computers.

From April 1990, Tory Ministers will control more than 75 per cent. of all local government income, an unprecedented state not only in Britain but in any western democracy. The Government's documents expose their determination to exercise even greater control over local government revenue raising. They show that the biggest influence on poll tax bills will be central Government policies and decisions, not local authority decisions taken in the communities.

For the increasingly large number of Tory Members who are now panicking, there is more bad news on the way. Last February, the Government announced their proposal for phasing in the combined effects of the nationalisation of business rate poundages and the first revaluation since 1973. Increases in business rate bills are planned to be restricted to 20 per cent. per annum plus inflation. Businesses gaining from the changes will have their benefits delayed. It all sounds remarkably like poll tax safety nets, and will have the same political effect when Tory Members and those business people active in local Conservative associations wake up to what is happening. An increase of 20 per cent. per annum plus inflation means rates bills going up by three times in five years.

Even five years of safety nets will not lead to the full introduction of the new business rate arrangement. Businesses in Tory areas in the south will find their poundages rising hugely. Government figures included with the poll tax calculations published on 19 July show that Kensington and Chelsea's business rate poundage will rise by 111·4 per cent., Wandsworth's by 60 per cent., Westminster's by 51 per cent., Redbridge's by 46 per cent., Bromley's by 43 per cent. and South Herefordshire's by 23 per cent. The revaluation will push up the figures even further. The combined effect of national business tax and revaluation in, for example, Kensington and Chelsea will have astronomical implications for the business rates that people will be expected to pay.

The Government are trying to cover up that unpalatable arithmetic. The new rateable values for every individual property must be deposited by the Inland Revenue with charging authorities by 31 December—yet the first that businesses will know about them, unless they or their advisers track them down in the town halls, will be when they receive the bills in March 1990. The Government hope that ratepayers will look only at the amount payable, restricted to an increase of 20 per cent. plus inflation, and not the eventual liability shown by the rateable value. Most business people will soon see through that. If Tory Members think that they are in trouble now because of the poll tax, let them wait until the facts of the new business tax come out.

A number of Conservative Members have asked about Labour party policy. For the expenditure of a modest 75p and a letter to Walworth road, they can have a copy of our document. We intend to introduce a modern property tax based on the capital value of a property, with up to 100 per cent. rebates for low-income families or those least able to pay; we will reduce the proportion of local taxes raised through property tax; we will dedicate an element of the income tax to local government; we will restore business rates as a local tax; we will return meaningful purpose to the statutory consultation between local authorities and local businesses; we will end the ever-changing and chaotic restrictions, penalties and cuts; and we will have annual elections for a part of every local authority.

That will provide for a local taxation system that is genuinely fair because it is directly related to the ability to pay. It will end the need for dramatic increases in local tax bills. It will restore the right of local people and their councillors to govern their communities and raise revenue free from central control. It will take account of the differences in resources of authorities in different parts of the country.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No.

The Cirencester besom has been replaced by the modern Tory technological broom, from arid Silk Cut dry to Blue Chip glistening wet. The Secretary of State comes with a record of rebelling against cuts in employment and housing benefit, being in favour of aid to the poorest and of incomes policy, and is described as the heir to the tradition of Macmillan and Macleod.

rose——

The Secretary of State was co-author of the pamphlet by the Blue Chip Group, which argued that the Prime Minister's economic policies were socially divisive and politically unworkable. He was vice-president of the Tory Reform Group. He has now been promoted to patron of the Tory Reform Group, the body which published a paper on the poll tax which said:

"The Government's case for the community charge rests, above all, on achieving proper accountability. Yet this is precisely where it fails."

It said that the poll tax

"shows every sign of being an administrative nightmare"

and that the uniform business rate

"will result in a massive increase in the centralisation of power."

Those are the views of the Tory Reform Group, of which we learn that the right hon. Gentleman is no longer a mere vice-president but a patron.

What has changed? Have his views changed, have the views of the Tory Reform Group changed, or have the Prime Minister's policies changed? If he was asked for his view yesterday, did he say with candour—candour which we know that he has in abundance—"Margaret, we have got it about as wrong as possible"? Or was it "as you were" with the policy?

The Secretary of State's problem is that the profoundly detested policies that he has inherited are the Prime Minister's own ideas. The policies have exceeded their shelf life. The ideas have passed their sell-by date and the British people will no longer buy them.

The flat-rate poll tax is a scandal which divides Britain from the rest of Europe and every other western democracy. The poll tax is unique to Britain; no other country in Europe has a tax that is so harsh, unfair and intrusive. The 24th amendment to the constitution of the United States of America rules out any connection between poll tax and citizenship. Churches, charities, voluntary organisations, businesses and many——

We do not live in America. We live here.

Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman does live here.

—leading Tories have all condemned the poll tax proposals, and the Labour party's protest campaign has informed and focused the overwhelming opposition of the British people.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No.

But whatever the Secretary of State's message today, our message is clear: the poll tax will go when the Prime Minister and her Government go. There can be no future for such an iniquitous, unfair, inefficient and capricious tax. A Labour Government will abolish it.

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

"supports the introduction of the community charge, the principles of which are manifestly fairer and simpler than those that now apply to domestic rates; welcomes the exemptions conferred on those who cannot be asked to pay and the generous discounts, rebates and increased income support available for those on low incomes; recognises that the unified business rating system introduces a valuable stability for non-domestic ratepayers; congratulates Her Majesty's Government on implementing proposals that will improve the accountability of local government by insisting that all who benefit from their services should have a say in their quality and cost; and notes that either a local income tax or a two-tax system based upon local income tax and capital value tax would be much more expensive to implement, much more unfair and make local government much less accountable."

I shall begin as I am sure the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) and I will go on. The hon. Gentleman paid me some very genial courtesies, and I return the compliment. As the House knows, the hon. Member for Copeland was a Labour moderate before it became compulsory. He was a moderate before anyone had heard the name of Peter Mandelson. As a result, he has always enjoyed the respect of the House. I realise that, for as long as the hon. Gentleman comes to the Opposition Dispatch Box, I shall always have my work cut out. Between the two of us—wild eyed fanatics that we both are—I am sure that we shall keep our debates within the bounds of sobriety and public decorum.

A combination of typical ministerial humility and concern for all right hon. and hon. Members who wish to participate in the debate persuades me to be brief. [Laughter.] I knew that the hon. Member for Copeland would believe that. It is always tiresome when Front Bench speakers take up too much time in short debates.

The burden of the comments that I have heard from Labour spokesmen, such as those made on television last night by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) and in the speech of the hon. Member for Copeland is—I shall try to be briefer than the hon. Gentleman managed to be—different man, same policy. Having listened to the comments of the hon. Member for Copeland, I have an overwhelming feeling that, had I been privileged to participate in earlier debates, I could say of him now—same man, same speech.

The House can be in little doubt that the hon. Member for Copeland does not care much for the Government's reform of local government finance, but he remains more than a trifle obscure on what he would do instead. There is an unfashionable degree of consensus on one particularly important point. On the Opposition, Conservative and Democrat Benches, there is agreement that the existing system of domestic rates must be replaced. The main reason why that must be done is that the domestic rating system is unfair. Whatever may have been the case in the 19th century, there is little relationship today between the rateable value of domestic property and the value of the services that individuals receive from their local authorities.

Still less is there much of a relationship in many cases between the value of a house or flat and the ability of its occupant to pay for local services. Moreover, the present system obscures the relationship between expenditure on services and payment for them. I shall deal with those points in more detail shortly.

I was not sure from the remarks of the hon. Member for Copeland, and from the Opposition's comments over the past few weeks, about their alternative. Sometimes they seem to have one, sometimes not. Today seemed to start as a have day, then it was a not day, and then a have day again. On have days—and perhaps this is one of them after all—it is suggested that about 80 per cent. of locally raised revenue should come from capital value rates. That would exacerbate the problems of the existing system. We all know well enough that an increase in the value of our house or flat does not mean that we can afford to pay more for local authority services or for anything else. If that is true for most people, what about the retired, the widowed, and all those people living on fixed incomes?

Is the Secretary of State aware that the Select Committee on the Environment of the 1979 Session, which had a Conservative majority, totally rejected the poll tax as an alternative to the rating system? The poll tax was rejected also by one of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors as Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member of Henley (Mr. Heseltine). May we take it that the Secretary of State is enthusiastic about the poll tax as an alternative to the existing rating system?

My memory of past Environment Select Committee reports is clearly not as extensive as the hon. Gentleman's. What I do recall is that I, along with my right hon. and hon. Friends, have fought two elections arguing the case for a community charge, and that we won those elections with what can only be described as comfortable majorities.

If the Secretary of State is going to cling to this policy, may I suggest that he learns his history a little better? Is he not aware that a White Paper in 1982 specifically rejected the idea of a poll tax, on the grounds that it was unworkable and unfair? Does he recollect that the Government went into the 1983 general election making no mention of a poll tax, and—again—specifically rejecting the possibility of one?

indicated dissent.

It is no use the Secretary of State shaking his head. The poll tax was invented in panic after revaluations in Scotland in 1984. Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that it is both paradoxical and an insult to his own intelligence that he should start his speech by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) on his moderation and then—apparently—give notice that he is going to accept uncritically the most extreme and offensive of the Government's policies?

That intervention suggests that we should not give way in debates such as this as often as we would like. Let me point out to the hon. Gentleman—I know perhaps even more than he does about these matters—that we began to advocate the abolition of domestic rates in 1974, and included that view in our election manifesto. [Interruption.]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. I do not give way to hon. Members who sit and shout abuse during debates.

The Secretary of State does not seem to have a very clear grasp of the chronology of policy development in his own party. Is he not aware that his right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) has gone on record, as have his supporters, as making it clear that he worked with all his might and main to ensure that no mention was made of the poll tax in the Tory party's 1983 manifesto?

Whatever our disputes about the history of Conservative manifestos, I think that even the hon. Gentleman will concede that there was a clear mention of the community charge in our last manifesto. If it will suit him, I will settle for one example: the majority that we won in the last election, which we fought on the community charge.

I was pointing out that capital-value rates, as advocated by Opposition Members—coupled with a local income tax—would not be fair or administratively simple; nor would they overcome the lack of accountability to the electorate. That is one of the great drawbacks of the existing system. I know that the Opposition have criticised us for allegedly distorting their policy and its effects, but I am prepared to do a deal, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider it fair. If the Opposition will tell us clearly exactly what their policy is, and the assumptions on which it is based, we shall be willing to work out with them a fair comparison of our proposals and theirs. I do not think that anything could be fairer than that.

The Secretary of State's predecessor made the same offer. The right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewksbury (Mr. Ridley), however, was not aware that I had already tabled a parliamentary question asking him to do just that. When we are ready, we will ask the Secretary of State to do it, but as he wants to avoid distorting the implications of our policy, why does he not consult the Institute for Fiscal Studies? The Sunday Times—not, incidentally, a known supporter of the Labour party—invited the institute to examine our proposals, and this is what it reported:

"Smith found that Mr and Mrs Average, a couple with children, and an income of £13,000 a year, could expect to pay a total of £394 a year in poll tax, but only £363 under Labour's plan."

In other words, they would do better under Labour.

The Rating and Valuation Association has also carried out studies, which conclude that our proposals are not only fairer but more efficient than the poll tax. Why does the Secretary of State not read those?

The hon. Gentleman had better have a word with his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who only last week told the hon. Gentleman and others that their policy needed sophisticating, as it was not quite right. When the hon. Gentleman has finished his sophisticating, and has put his policy in place, we shall be happy to look at it. I hope that, when we do so, the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members will not complain as they did last week when we present the House with the consequences.

rose——

I have already given way as many times as the hon. Member for Copeland, and I wish to get on.

There are three main attacks in the motion and the hon. Gentleman's speech. We are told that the new arrangements are unfair, undemocratic and unworkable. We all know that domestic rates are an unfair tax on property. They are paid for by only half the adult population. They take no account of the number of adults living in a house, and there is a poor fit between the rateable value of a property and the income of its occupants. Four out of 10 people in above-average rated properties have below-average incomes. By contrast, the community charge is fairer, simpler and more honest. It is based on people rather than property, and for the first time it will be paid by almost all adults. The charge will share the cost of paying for local council services more widely and fairly, but people will not all pay the same bill.

I welcome the Secretary of State to his new position. He has served in Northern Ireland in the past. Can he enlighten us as to why the boon has not been extended to Northern Ireland? Is it because, in the past, we believed that those who paid rates had a responsibility to take part in local authorities?

I had some responsibility for local government in Northern Ireland a few years ago. As the hon. Gentleman will know, local government in Northern Ireland, for a variety of historical reasons with which the hon. Gentleman will disagree, has different functions and responsibilities from local government in this country. If the hon. Gentleman would like the community charge to be introduced in Northern Ireland, he will be able to pursue that in conversations with the responsible Minister in the Northern Ireland Office.

As I have said, people will not all pay the same bill. The rebate system that we are introducing offers help where it is most needed—among those with low incomes or no income at all. It is more generous than the present system of rate rebates. Taking the arrangements for the community charge and the rebate together, it is worth noting that one in four charge payers will receive a rebate. I am extremely concerned that those who need help should receive it. I am asking my officials, as a matter of urgency, to review the arrangements we are making to maximise the take-up of rebates.

For 5 million people, the continuation of the maximum rebate and the uprating of income support, which has already taken place, will mean that, unless they live under a very high-spending authority, they will not be paying anything extra in community charge. Indeed, they may well be a little in pocket.

When my right hon. Friend is listening to the selective figures from the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) will he give the figures for Southampton, which are extremely favourable to a city of 250,000 people? At the same time, will he try to get out of the Opposition Front Bench spokesmen their policy to take over from the poll tax?

I am afraid that my knowledge of the position in Southampton is not as encyclopaedic as my hon. Friend's. I will encourage my hon. Friend who will reply to the debate to refer to those figures. Widows, single-parent families and others who are hard hit by rates in particular areas will be more fairly treated.

The next plank of the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Copeland is that there is something undemocratic about the new arrangements. There is certainly something deeply undemocratic about the present system. Only half the local electorate pay for the services enjoyed by us all.

Why does the Secretary of State continue with the myth that, because there are only half as many rate bills as poll tax bills, only half as many people contribute? Do not all members of his household, like all other households, contribute to the rates bill? I assure the right hon. Gentleman that in my constituency, if a son is working, he contributes to the rates bill and if a wife has an income, she contributes to the bill—all the family pay the rate bill.

That is not the criticism that has been put and believed widely by those who have argued against the domestic rating system for many years—certainly at every election that I have ever fought.

We have seen the results of undemocratic weaknesses in many parts of local government, particularly in some inner-city areas governed by the extremist councillors that the Labour party tries to keep under wraps. We have seen sky-high rates for domestic ratepayers; businesses and jobs chased away from where they are needed as a result of rocketing business rates; and waste, inefficiency and extravagance in local authority budgets, contributing to an ever-increasing burden on the few who pay rates.

Under our system, there will be a simple link between the cost of services that an authority chooses to provide and the level of the community charge. People can decide what they think about the quality and cost of those services. The community charge bill will show this crucial relationship in the clearest possible way. Every pound per adult that an authority chooses to spend above the standard level of service will mean £1 extra on the community charge bill. Equally, every £1 per adult saved feeds through to £1 off the bill. That is a major improvement in local accountability and democracy. It gives a clear choice about the cost of local authority policies, which is precisely what the Labour party is so concerned about. The community charge puts I he community in charge.

The other argument that we hear from the Opposition is that the new arrangements are complicated and unworkable. The hon. Member for Copeland referred to a scare story and to invasion of privacy. The legislation was drafted specifically to limit the amount of information for which registration officers can ask. We give specific advice, which we agreed with the local authority associations and the Data Protection Registrar, on the registration form. Some registration officers went beyond that and, quite properly, were pulled up short by the registrar. I hope that they will listen to our advice.

This is one of the few points of debate on which there is some agreement. That statement has been made previously by Ministers, but it seems to have gone unheeded. Why does not the Department take action by writing to community charge registration officers or issuing notes for guidance to stop this practice, which is an unnecessary invasion of people's privacy and, in some cases, is illegal? I assume that there is no party political dispute about that matter at least.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have issued guidance. I am certainly prepared to consider whether there is a case for further guidance, because I agree with the hon. Gentleman that in some cases registration officers have gone beyond what the law should have allowed.

It would be remarkable if a system that abolished rates and introduced a long overdue reform of local government finance could be achieved without some disadvantage to some people. Without undermining the principles on which this reform is based, we shall continue to do all we can to smooth the transition. Much of the recent discussion about the new system has, understandably, concentrated on the safety net.

The changes that are coming next April are substantial. We are moving from a discredited system under which grant is distributed largely on the basis of rateable values to a fairer system. Inevitably, whenever there is change, some people benefit but others are worse off.

One of the main changes is the ending of resource equalisation. That has meant in practice that grant is taken from areas with high rateable values and directed towards areas with low rateable values. This might be a sensible basis for paying grant, but only if one accepts that rateable values are a fair basis for local taxation. As I have explained, that is not the case. With the move to the community charge, we are doing away with that cross-subsidy. It is a cross-subsidy of which few people are aware. It illustrates one of the problems of lack of accountability in the present system.

Councils providing the same level of service will in future be able to set the same community charge. If we had not introduced the new system, those authorities contributing to resource equalisation would have had to continue to pay that back-door cross-subsidy indefinitely. We shall do away with that unfairness.

The issue is how fast we can move to the new system. Some of my hon. Friends want us to move the whole way immediately. They represent those who have been paying the burden of resource equalisation in the past. They want to get rid of it now. I appreciate their concern, but it would not be easy to move to the new system overnight, and what my right hon. Friend proposed last week makes a big start towards phasing out a penalty and phasing in a gain.

Those areas which have traditionally benefited from resource equalisation need a period, however short, to adjust to the new circumstances. Other hon. Members representing those parts of the country have stressed that they need time for people to adjust to the withdrawal of the hidden subsidy. We have, first, made the system explicit. No longer will there be disguised cross-subsidy in the grant system. But we have proposed a temporary safety net which is separately identifiable and which makes clear what is happening.

Secondly, we have nearly halved the amount which contributors will have to pay to the safety net. Over 200 authorities will be better off as a result of the change. They will now pay 40 to 50 per cent. less in the first year than they would have paid under the old safety net proposal. That is significant progress.

I wish to make it absolutely plain that I shall look carefully at the points that were made when my right hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) made his statement on local government finance last week. Naturally, some would like to go faster, with more of the gains coming through immediately. Others would wish to go more slowly, giving greater protection to the losers. I am not sure whether that circle can be squared, but I shall pay the closest attention to what is said in this debate and in future discussions.

I come to these issues relatively new. The hon. Member for Copeland made that point. I recognise that there will be many further exchanges across the Floor of the House before the charge is brought in next spring. I shall of course want to listen to any helpful suggestions on how we might make the transition as easy as possible. It would also be a welcome change to hear from Opposition Members—perhaps we have been making progress today; a bit here and a bit there—precisely what they would do, sophisticated or perhaps not so sophisticated.

For our part, we shall continue to press ahead with the introduction of this reform, whatever the kebabing tactics of the Opposition. We shall press ahead for the reasons set out in our amendment to the motion, and I urge the House, for the reasons there set out, to vote with us at the conclusion of the debate.

I listened to the maiden speech by the new Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Patten), with great interest. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his appointment. I have known him for some time in the House. I met him first as a colleague on the Select Committee on Defence, and I recognise his outstanding ability to grasp, and master, issues. I do not think that he needs to excuse himself if he finds this issue difficult to grasp.

I caution him that he does not need to look at the crystal ball—in Scotland we have the book. The poll tax books are coming through the door. Some of the three-monthly payments are due right now. Nice little letters come through the door to remind us that, if we do not pay for the three months, the whole year will become due.

I caution the Secretary of State because I think that he, is a fair man. He comes from overseas development, where he considered the world situation. It was his responsibility to attempt to transfer resources from the richer nations to the poorer nations. An outstanding example of that was his experience in Nepal. We know that because the Select Committee on Defence went there and because of our exchanges with him.

I shall give a graphic illustration of the effect of the poll tax. An old man, aged 90, in my constituency told me that he and his wife, aged 88, have £6,000 in the bank. They pay two poll taxes. He asked, "Dick, my boy, does that mean that I will have to pay the same as the Earl of Elgin?" I told him, "Aye, that's the law." In God's name, is that fair? How can one say honestly that someone who has taken notice of the credos of the Tories, who has been careful and has built up a capital sum, should pay two poll taxes?

An old lady moved about 200 yards down the road to look after her mother, aged 90. The law says that she is now resident there and they will have to pay two poll taxes there and two poll taxes at the standard charge rate for the house that she has vacated. Instead of paying about £800 in rates, they are paying £1,200. How in God's name is that fair?

We have a tax on property. Does the Secretary of State not know that the standard charge is a tax on property? I part company with many of my hon. Friends on many issues, but I think that, in a system of taxation which is multi-based, there is no reason for excusing property. Everything else is taxed, so why in heaven's name is there a case for exempting property? That is what the Tories have tried to do, however, on the basis of accountability.

If one wants to evade accountability for looking after old people properly within the community, what does one do? Put them in a hospital, or a nursing home, where they do not pay any poll tax. Have them in the bosom of the family, however, and they will pay the tax. How in God's name can that be defended in a civilised society which prides itself on trying to look after elderly people?

In their constituency surgeries, Scottish Members have come across people who have been crippled by the poll tax. Does my hon. Friend agree that, yesterday, we saw a plain reaction to the Scottish poll tax in the resignation of the right hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger)? Does he also agree that the right hon. Gentleman's resignation shows plainly that he and others in Ayr have given up hope of the Conservatives retaining that seat, because of this and other legislation?

I will not digress too much.

The Secretary of State has had experience of Northern Ireland. There is no way the Government would try to introduce the poll tax in Northern Ireland without first putting it in their manifesto, but they did that in Scotland. They put it into practice without it being in the manifesto and the Scottish people have pronounced on it—we have voted on it.

I ask the Secretary of State to give me his attention and not to talk to the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who is trying to get his ear.

In Scotland, we pronounced on the poll tax. Accountability is the argument for the poll tax, but the only part of the United Kingdom that had the poll tax in 1987 was Scotland, and the Scottish people overwhelmingly rejected it.

The Secretary of State should not look at a crystal ball when he can read the book. He should consult his colleague, the Secretary of State for Scotland and, in a moment of reasonable quietude, perhaps achieve some understanding of what is happening there. Many people are paying poll tax, but many others, like me, are not. We will accept the odium.

I notice that people in certain parts of England have achieved a change of Secretary of State by burning an effigy of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor. I wholly disapprove of that practice. I think that it is more illegal, and more of an incitement to bad behaviour, to burn an effigy of the right hon. Gentleman than to say there is a basic right in a civilised society to object, through civil disobedience, to the imposition of an unfair and unjust tax that has been rejected by our people in a democratic ballot. What can we do if they do not listen?

The Secretary of State's closing remarks showed, although it is early days, that he is looking at ways in which the safety net can be shaded. I think that a large proportion, if not all of the safety net, will be borne by the Exchequer.

We came first in Scotland and the Scottish people inherently and instinctively resent being made the guinea pig for legislation which cannot work in any part of the United Kingdom and is certainly not working in Scotland.

I do not know what the figure will be—whether we will have 500,000 non-payers by August—and I cannot predict it, but I predict that it will be substantial. That underlines the fact that payment has brought about an enormous amount of resentment, which has been added to by behaviour in this House last week such as when the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) who, although he is a supporter of the poll tax, said that he resented the way that the safety net has been arranged. Also, for the first time in the British media we have seen resentment at the poll tax.

Last year, I ran all the way from Edinburgh to London to protest against the poll tax. I shall continue to protest. This is a marathon race that has been taken up by Opposition Members. We do not intend to renege on that. We will go the distance until the poll tax legislation is removed from the statute book, because it is unfair and unjust, and does not do what the Government have suggested it does. It is unfavourable to the poorer sections of the population and to those sections of the population who ought to be cossetted—the sick and the mentally handicapped. Those people ought to be assisted.

I have sufficient faith in the right hon. Gentleman's background—I will not dwell on his religious upbringing—to believe that, when he examines the matter, there will be adjustments, but they should come in Scotland first. The ideal solution is to remove the legislation from the statute book.

I recognise the time constraints in this important debate, but I should like first to welcome my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) to the Dispatch Box as Secretary of State for the Environment. We served together in the Northern Ireland Office, and I am sure that he will do an excellent job in charge of the Department of the Environment. It is an important portfolio. I welcome also my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt) to his new portfolio—because he will reply to the debate, I have tried to win his favour before deploying my arguments.

First, I believe in effective local government. I do not want power to be centralised, because liberty comes from a balance of power. I spent 10 years in local government and I do not want local government to be stripped of its powers. Over the past 20 years, local government has been threatened because often the majority party in local government differed from the party in government, so they do not have much time for each other. The danger is that the party in control may ride roughshod over the other party.

Secondly, I believe in the community charge. There is a straight difference of opinion between the two sides of the Chamber on this matter, but I believe that people should pay at least something towards what they vote for. That is what responsible government is about. We can argue about the amount that people should pay and about the amount of rebates.

It has been said that people pay as part of a family, but in some parts of the country only one in four of the people on the register pay rates, compared with one in three and one in two in other areas. That is wrong. There is an incentive to increase expenditure when some people can vote to spend other people's money. As a northern nonconformist, I believe that there is no political morality in that. I welcome the community charge as a means of bringing political responsibility into local government voting.

We have frequently heard about the peasants' revolt. Their revolt was basically against the oppressions of the feudal controls on the labour market. I would argue that that was a Thatcherite revolution. If I had met Wat Tyler on his way to London bridge, I think that I could have made him a member of the Brent, North Conservative association. His supporters wanted a free labour market. If they were marching on us today, I believe that there would be more of their supporters sitting on the Conservative Benches than on the Opposition Benches.

Thirdly, the present method of funding the safety net is immoral and is political suicide for the Conservative party. The idea of transferring money over four years from the heavy community charges levied on careful Conservative areas to spendthrift Labour authorities is unsaleable in Conservative areas. That will take place over a full four-year cycle of local government elections in England and Wales, over a general election and within one month of the next European election. All that time, electors in prudent areas will see that they are transferring through their community charge £25, £50 or £75 per person per year to areas that have more amenities because they have spent more money.

About a fortnight ago, a list that I compiled was printed in, I think, The Times. I referred to 25 Conservative seats in which all the constituents were to transfer considerable sums through the community charge over four years to largely Labour areas, yet the majority vote in favour of the main party was less than 5,500 in each constituency. This matter will be raised repeatedly in those constituencies.

Shame.

There is no shame in it. Those authorities made a decision to be prudent—the shame lies with those who have wasted the money. The shame is that people in prudent areas have to pay for someone else's waste of money. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to bring in a moral point. This is a dangerous and indefensible action.

Fourthly, I believe that a safety net so funded will break the morale of many good Conservative authorities. The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) referred to Wandsworth. It was Thatcherite before Thatcherism, John the Baptist before anyone else came along. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, lichen (Mr. Chope), who I believe is still in the Department of the Environment—it is difficult to keep up with everything that is happening—made his name in Wandsworth by being a Thatcherite and bringing down expenditure.

The average rates bill per household in Tower Hamlets is £500, compared with £360 in Wandsworth. Tower Hamlets is usually Labour—controlled but at present is under the control of the Liberals-most hon. Members on both sides of the house, except perhaps the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor), hope that that is only temporary. After the calculations on the community charge and safety net have been made and the money has been passed back and forth, an individual in Tower Hamlets will pay £153 and an individual in Wandsworth £148. That is the result after all the efforts over the past 15 years in Wandsworth to build up a Conservative careful authority, which documents such as "Good Council Guide: Wandsworth 1978–87" have made famous. It is a green-coloured document, which shows that the council was going green at that time and knew what would happen to the Department of the Environment.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I shall give way when I have finished this point. We must go through paragraph by paragraph—it is much tighter and neater that way. It is like writing essays—we must do it properly.

After all that time, people in Wandsworth will be only £5 better off than people in Tower Hamlets. That is why I believe that this proposal will destroy the morale of many Conservative authorities.

I shall now give way to the hon. Member for Truro, as long as he makes just an intervention, not a speech.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman accepts that there are differences between Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth in terms of, for example, housing pressure. Tower Hamlets has large immigrant communities moving in, unlike Wandsworth. I think that all hon. Members accept that point. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman welcomes the fact that Tower Hamlets, under the Liberal Democrats, has cut rates.

For the hon. Gentleman's benefit, I shall repeat my point. Wandsworth will compare the old rates and the new community charge and ask what it has done over those 15 years. I stand by what I say, whether or not the hon. Gentleman agrees with me.

Fifthly, the safety net is a strange formula. I spent nine months as Minister for Local Government. I always wondered where the calculations came from, where we changed them and what the computers did. Sometimes I felt that there were satanic demons, or gremlins, in the basement and, after we had all gone home, they moved the computers around. I believe that they have now moved up the stairs and are coming out.

I am sorry that the hon. Members for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) and for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) are not in the Chamber. Using the straightforward community charge, people in Brent will have to pay the second highest amount in the country—£561 per person, according to the projected figures. The safety net was supposed to give councils a chance to get it right, but Brent will have to transfer £36 per person per year to other overspending authorities. Anyone who can defend that should be a member of the Magic Circle and performing at the London Palladium.

Does my right hon. Friend accept that many people in the Department of the Environment and elsewhere believe that Brent Council, as presently constituted, is beyond redemption?

I must not get into a religious argument with my hon. Friend, for whom I have great respect, but I believe in the saving of souls and the redemption of all men. It seems that I may have cross-party support on that.

My sixth point is that, if there is to be a safety net, the money must come from the Treasury. It must not come from the good authorities, because that makes a farce of the community charge and destroys the whole basis of the new arrangements. If my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wants to retain the safety net—and that is his right as Secretary of State—the Treasury must pay the lot. We do not want all kinds of formulas that we cannot understand; we have had too many of those from the Department of the Environment already.

We are told that £630 million will be needed next year to cover the safety net. If my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State comes back in October and says, "My right hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North can sit at ease; he does not need to intervene because I have got hold of the £630 million," I shall decide that his is the best of the recent appointments. He will command my support on almost every other issue—that is a dangerous thing to say—for as long as he and I are still battling in the Chamber.

Consider what a headmaster would do. If 10 boys broke 10 windows in my school, I would charge the 10 boys, as would all old schoolmasters; even Scottish dominies would charge the boys, and it would be for the boys to decide how to raise the money. The last thing I would do would be to say to those 10 boys, "Go away. You have done nothing wrong," and then call the rest of the school together and say, "You are paying for the 10 windows." There would be a riot in the school, and there is no doubt in my mind that when Conservative voters find that they are paying for windows, as it were, that others have broken, there will be a riot in the constituencies.

I shall vote against the Opposition motion this evening, for the simple reason that there is a new Secretary of State in whom I have great faith. Earlier, we were talking in religious terms. I am not suggesting that my right hon. Friend should move mountains; I just want him to remove the safety net. That will do for me at the moment. My right hon. Friend can move mountaains later as part of the Department's activities on the green side, but on the local government side, all I want is for the safety net to be removed.

If, by the time we next debate the safety net in the House, it has not been announced that it will be financed from Treasury money, I shall certainly vote against it. I am not putting the Secretary of State on probation. I have total faith in him and I know that he will solve the problem—[Interruption.] I must not argue with the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas). I am sorry that no Treasury Minister is here to listen to what I, at least, believe to be words of wisdom. On the day when we discover that the safety net is to be funded by the Treasury, a cheer will go up throughout the country. I look forward to that day arriving before we reassemble after the recess.

I join in welcoming the Secretary of State to his new role. There has certainly been a change of image. The only thing that I would say to him—I am sure that others have given him this advice—is that the quality of the salesman will not make up for duff goods. The fact that we have already heard criticisms from Conservative Back-Bench Members, mollified only by his newness and not by his remarks, is a sign of the difficulties that he may experience in his new role. I wish him luck, however, and I hope that we see some changes in practice as well as in presentation.

The poll tax is the most unpopular measure to have come from this Government so far. I say "so far" because it has had to jostle for its place with other measures. Later this evening I shall refer in an Adjournment debate to the reform of the National Health Service, and I think that the Bill containing the proposals for that reform may topple the community charge as the most unpopular measure when it is introduced in the autumn.

I am afraid that we are past the point at which we can expect Ministers—under this Prime Minister at least—to say, "We got it wrong. We shall change the provisions fundamentally." Ministers have committed themselves to the proposal. I suspect that, when the Prime Minister interviewed replacements for the previous Secretary of State, she checked that they were not likely to rock the boat. I can imagine her asking the current Secretary of State some questions: "You are patron of this organisation the Tory Reform Group. You don't really mean it, do you? You are there as a figurehead, are you not? I am sure that you do not stand by what that body says and that you would not want to have to take responsibility for it. You would not agree with its members any longer, would you?" I can imagine the right hon. Gentleman thinking about it, but not very hard, and deciding that perhaps he could sell the required message. With a change of Prime Minister or a change of Government, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will get the chance to do otherwise.

This debate allows us a moment of reflection, and it is to be hoped that it will allow the new Secretary of State to consider changes that he may be able to introduce even under a Prime Minister who has an iron will and dislikes deviation from the set course. I was pleased to hear at least one Conservative Member speak up from the Back Benches. I was particularly pleased that the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) pressed for change by calling for Treasury cash. The great error that the former Secretary of State made when he addressed I he House last week was to try to reconcile the irreconcilable by telling those whom he had previously said needed help and support that they would get a little less, to help those whom he had said were getting more than they deserved. That was not an easy concept to sell, and he failed to sell it. If a safety net is needed, it should be funded by the Treasury, not by calling on other local authorities to step in merely to suit the Treasury's other financial aims.

The debate has been called so that we can consider the effects of the poll tax on ordinary people. One thing seems certain: As with so many measures that have been introduced under this Government, the effect of the poll tax will be to hit the poor and advantage the rich—in. particular, to hit the old and the young——

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I shall give way in a moment, when I have had the chance to develop my argument.

The community charge will affect most those just above the level at which one can claim supplementary benefit, who may have to pay the full poll tax. Equally, because the income support increase to help people pay the poll tax is based on the national average charge, people who live in areas of high poll tax—which tend to be the most deprived areas—will lose most. The living standards of those on low incomes will inevitably be adversely affected by the poll tax.

The analysis by the Child Poverty Action Group gives us evidence to support that. It considered the effect of the poll tax on the living standards of poor and middle-income families. I am sure that the new Secretary of State has recently been briefed on this. He will know that, overall, 63 per cent. of tax units will lose by the poll tax and 37 per cent. will gain.

Tax units? Does the hon. Gentleman mean people?

We are talking not about individuals but about families paying tax—or tax units—63 per cent. of which will lose and 37 per cent. of which will gain.

The key figure to which the Child Poverty Action Group draws attention is this. Of the bottom range of taxpayers, 83 per cent. will lose and only 16 per cent. will gain, and the average loss involved will be more than £1 a week. In contrast to that, of the top range taxpayers—the very rich—71 per cent. will gain and 29 per cent. will lose. That is an almost complete reversal of the figures for the population as a whole. That is why I say that the poor will incur the losses and the rich will gain the advantage.

The hon. Gentleman said that the old would suffer under the community charge. Does he agree that 90 per cent. of single pensioners will be better off under the community charge?

I do not agree with that figure. Some single pensioners will gain, but not 90 per cent. of them. They might also gain under other systems. That is an argument against the rates, but not for the poll tax.

Combined with the changes in social security benefits, the poll tax will be a particularly bad deal for the worse-off in society. That is hardly a more equitable system than the rates. The two changes mean that families, with children who have a net income of less than £75 a week—which is a third of all families with children—will lose between £4·88 and £5·01 a week. I know that the Prime Minister does not believe in society, but I thought that she and her Ministers made a virtue of supporting family life. These changes will make life harder for families, and there is no justice in that.

This weekend I was approached by a pensioner in my constituency who lives in a residential care home and will be exempt from the poll tax. Did she congratulate the Government on exempting her? No. She said that she did not understand why those being cared for by their families at home should be penalised for the privilege, while she was exempt. She wondered whether the Government really intended to force people into residential care homes. She did not criticise the Government's treatment of her—she understood why people might wish to be cared for in residential homes—but she could not understand why the Government wanted to create a financial incentive to take people out of the family home and put them into care, no matter how good the care was.

The Secretary of State referred to the difficulties of taking up means-tested benefits and said that he would seek ways to alleviate them. I wonder whether much can be done within the present system of rebates. In Scotland, the take-up of rebates by people on low incomes is extremely low. In some areas, it is as low as 25 per cent. The Secretary of State was right to highlight the difficulties. I am not convinced that, under the poll tax and the cumbersome system of rebates and help that goes with it to make it workable, the Secretary of State will be able to achieve his objectives. It is good to hear a Government spokesman speak in favour of helping people to claim the money, but the Government do not have much chance of succeeding in that. Time will tell, but I believe that our fears will be proved correct.

The implications of the poll tax for civil liberties cause great anxiety. It brings with it wide and intrusive powers to establish and maintain the register and to enforce payment. Only today, I heard about an example in Rochdale which illustrates the problems of enforcing the poll tax. It is not an extreme example, but it illustrates the effect on people's daily lives, which is unnecessary and would not have arisen if the Government had not insisted on introducing the system.

Since last Friday, 33 canvassers have been calling at homes in Rochdale at 8.30 pm or at weekends to chase people about their poll tax registration. It is bad enough to approach people at a time of day when they cannot telephone anyone to advise them on their rights, but to call on the elderly and infirm at 8.30 pm is to frighten them. That is not simply because they are frightened of officials, but in some cases any unannounced caller at 8.30 pm causes fear and anxiety. Such calls would not be necessary but for the cumbersome nature of the system of taxation that the Government have chosen to introduce.

The effects of the uniform business rate are mentioned in the Labour party motion. Non-domestic rates currently raise more than domestic rates. The new rate will be set nationally, yet Ministers talk about the need for more local control and accountability and a greater link between people and their local authority and between businesses and their local authority. Ministers should be aware that the uniform business rate breaks the link. Deprived of locally raised non-domestic rate revenue, local authorities will depend on central Government for about 75 to 80 per cent. of their funding. So much for the supposed increased accountability of the poll tax.

The uniform business rate will penalise local businesses in areas where local authorities have done most to help them by keeping rates down and spending money sensibly. Businesses in my constituency are being asked to pay increases in their rates, in some cases massive increases, to fund local authorities elsewhere which in the past set high rates and provided more services. They are being asked to pay a considerable increase without seeing an improvement in local services in an area already acknowledged to be deprived and where incomes are almost 20 per cent. lower than the national average. We have more small local businesses than almost any other area. They thought that the Government were on the side of businesses, but they are penalising them.

As shop owners discover the effects on their business of this change, combined with the effects of revaluation and a wholly inadequate system of safety nets, they will go bust and change their vote. They will wish that they had not left it so late to change their allegiances.

In Truro, small shop owners paying rates of £767 will be shocked to see them rise to £1,750 over five years. That is an increase of 128 per cent., allowing for an inflation rate of 7 per cent. The bill of another retail outlet that we looked at would rise from £810 to £2,100. That is because the Government will not acknowledge their responsibility to support businesses. They are simply breaking local contracts.

The poll tax has been completely discredited. My party has never defended the rating system. For years, we have advocted a system of local income tax. Unlike the Labour party, we argued that case throughout the debates on the Local Government Finance Bill. We gave Ministers details of the alternative system that we would introduce. Ministers did not give figures on or make comparisons with our system, but snatched figures out of the air for their version of a local income tax system to mock it. They say that they are prepared to consider the Labour party's proposals and produce figures on them, but they dare not do so for a truly accountable and effective system of local income tax.

That is surprising, because every other European country has a system of local income tax, and it is used around the world. No other country uses the poll tax. Local income tax makes more sense. I do not know whether the Minister noticed that I was disturbed by what the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said. It appears that the Labour party is moving away from any attempt to introduce in part a local income tax. The hon. Gentleman said that he sought to allocate a proportion of national income tax to local authorities, which is different. We have read in the newspapers that even the leadership of the Labour party believes that the system that it has come up with is too complicated.

I should hate another hare to start running, so I shall put the record straight. There has been no change this afternoon. We are in favour of a system based on the capital values of property, adjusted to take account of the income of those in the household.

I may be wrong, but I think we are getting further developments as things go along. It is interesting to listen to what is happening. It would be easiest if the hon. Member for Sheffield. Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) would accept the advice of those in his party who I know believe that a straightforward and simple system of local income tax would be the most workable alternative for the party to defend. I regret that the Labour party was unable to put forward any proposals during our debates on the Local Goverment and Finance Bill. It might have done more to put the Government on the spot at a time when we were all agreed that the existing rating system was an inadequate alternative to the poll tax.

In Cornwall, as in many other areas, domestic ratepayers and business men will be horrified to find that they are being asked to work under and pay for a system which means that the least efficient and the highest-spending authorities are subsidised by those which are most efficient and have the fewest local services. I do not believe that that will be any more popular in my local authorities than many Conservative Back-Bench Members believe that it will be in theirs.

Perhaps I should thank the Secretary of State's predecessor for handing me votes on a plate, but I honestly believe that the impact on those who will have to pay the poll tax—it will hit the poorest hardest—is insupportable. I regret the fact that those people will be penalised in that way. Although he was handed a job that he wanted to take and that will allow him to develop many of his ideas on the environment and other areas, which we look forward to hearing, I believe that the Secretary of State will regret the fact that he has to defend the indefensible and put forward a policy that hits those who are most defenceless.

I join other right hon. and hon. Members in sincerely congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) on his appointment as Secretary of State, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt) on his appointment as Minister of State. I would like to place on record my personal gratitude to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewksbury (Mr. Ridley) for the consistently courteous and thoughtful way in which he received many of us who are especially interested in matters affecting the Department of Environment and local government. His attitude and his approach to his parliamentary colleagues bore no relationship to the sort of comments that we have heard from Opposition Members and those that have appeared in some of the less informed sections of the media.

I join my right hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) in wanting a closer, healthier link between central Government and local government, and between local government and the householder and the consumer of local government services. I ask my right hon. Friend, as a former Minister in the Department of Education and Science, when he further considers the matters generally, to give further thought to the possibility of the transfer of teachers' salaries to the centre, which would inevitably mean a lower community charge bill for all households.

The whole question of the reform of the domestic rating system has moved since 1974 further and further up the political agenda. All major and serious political parties at the last election committed themselves to a reform of the domestic rating system. However, the Conservative party was the only one to come forward with any credible alternative, having given serious and comprehensive thought to all other alternatives. It was for that reason that I supported, in principle, this legislation through all its stages.

However, the official Opposition simply said, "We will abolish the Rates Act and we will do away with the community charge in Scotland." There was no mention in their manifesto of any alternative, but now it has crept out bit by bit—the twin tax of capital valuation and local income tax. I was delighted to hear from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) that the official Opposition are still committed to those two unfair strands of taxation. They are committed to them because they represent a wealth tax and have no relationship with the value of a person's property, whether they own it or not, or to the cost of the services provided.

I will give way to the hon. Member for Brightside if he can confirm to me and to all my Mid-Staffordshire constituents, who do not own their own homes, but who are tenants of local authorities, that what they would pay, if a Labour Government were subsequently returned, would be a capital tax based on the value of the property which they occupy, even though they do not own it. [Interruption.] I will willingly give way to the hon. Gentleman. I am grateful for the confirmation that 40 per cent. of local authority tenants in Lichfield and Cannock Chase district councils and Stafford borough council will pay a valuation tax based on the capital value of a property in which they have no personal direct stake.

In view of the way in which the hon. Gentleman is managing to create himself a scenario, which is completely out of tune with what we are suggesting, I shall put him straight. We are not suggesting that people will be in that position. I made it clear that our tax would be a fair tax and it would therefore take account of the ability to pay of those in the household. That is different from what the hon. Gentleman has said. It would be over and above the question of rebates, as all progressive taxes should be.

As the hon. Gentleman has responded to my invitation, I shall push him a little further. I ask him yet again to confirm that the capital taxation that his party proposes to introduce will be based on the value of a person's property, even though he does not own it. In other words, a council tenant occupying a property in Mid-Staffordshire, possibly worth £100,000, will pay tax to the local authority, especially if his income is in excess of the threshold which the hon. Gentleman implied would be introduced. Is that true or false?

The hon. Gentleman must make his own speech, and defend this iniquitous tax.

I am just about to come to that. The hon. Gentleman has confirmed the worst fears of a significant proportion of the population who do not own their properties. We shall pursue that point relentlessly between now and 1992, until the truth is told.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make his speech. I know that a number of Opposition Members wish to make their contributions. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I would like to pursue the policies of the Liberal party. At the last election, in its manifesto, the Liberal party, under the paragraph beginning

"Local government needs a fair system of local finance which the rates no longer provide",

said:

"We are committed to the planned introduction of a local income tax as the main source"—

not the only source—

"of local government revenue in place of domestic rates. We believe that business rates should be related to ability to pay and we will consult with industry and commerce as to how this can be achieved."

The second part of that commitment means that the Liberal party does not have any policy at all on how non-domestic ratepayers should be treated.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, but I shall willingly give way to the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) if he will now tell the House and the nation how much he would put on the standard rate of income tax to take account of local income tax to fund the main contribution of local government expenditure, and then what other additional tax he would impose to take account of the balance.

The hon. Gentleman is more than welcome to have a copy of our pamphlet on this subject. If he drops me a note, I will send him a copy. The answer is that, as the tax will be set locally, it will, of course, vary, but it will vary between 5 and 8 per cent., roughly speaking.

I am baffled by the hon. Gentleman's answer—between 5 and 8 per cent. of what? If it was between 5p and 8p in the pound on the standard rate of income tax, I would believe that the hon. Gentleman was somewhere near the truth because those were the figures produced by the Layfield committee when it reported in 1977.

That brings me back to the position today. Why was the Conservative party committed to reforming the rating system in the first place? The answer is not only because the domestic rating system is wholly out of date and wholly unfit for the second half of the 20th century and bears no relationship to the cost of the services provided, but because successive Governments—both the Conservative Government in the early 1970s and subsequently the Labour Government and then the Government under the control of the Liberal party in partnership with the Labour party—funked the issue of rating reform. It is because there is now no possibility of revaluing domestic property on any sensible scale that an alternative system had to be introduced.