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

The Bill has two main purposes. The first is to make life more difficult for kerb crawlers, and I shall explain how I propose that should be done. The second is to remove the present legal presumption that boys under 14 are incapable of sexual intercourse. For some time the Home Office has been concerned about the matter and I am glad to be able to include it in my Bill. I should like to thank the Home Office and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for their help and co-operation.

In an Adjournment speech last year I said:

"Over the past few years, a plague—a pollution—has struck a part of my constituency. Certain streets have become red light areas. At night, they swarm with prostitutes. I accept that that is not unique to Streatham, although it is unique to the residents there."—[Official Report, 12 January 1989; Vol. 144 c. 1092.]

The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox), who is present, is also worried about the matter. I am glad that he managed to return from Belgium yesterday. I know he was there because I have been unable to pair with him for the past two days.

The problem is a plague and a pollution, but in a recent survey in the press that asked the public to list in order of importance the crimes that most trouble them, prostitution and kerb crawling came low on that list. I understand that because that crime and nuisance affects only small areas, but if one questioned the residents in those areas they would put that problem top of their list. People not affected by the problem have no conception of the distress caused. For those living in the affected areas it is a plague and a horror. Their wives or daughters are solicited as they return from the bus stop. Life is most unpleasant for them.

Last year a traffic count was taken in a quiet, tree-lined residential road in my constituency. Between 5 pm and 6 pm, rush hour, 12 cars passed along the street, but between midnight and 1 am, 124 cars were clocked going along it. Imagine trying to sleep, especially in the summer with the windows open. Constituents and friends have told me that in the summer they must move from their main bedrooms in the front of the house to one of the bedrooms in the back, or they must keep their bedroom windows closed.

The Sexual Offences Act 1985 was introduced to deal with problems just as great as those described by my hon. Friend. As it appears that problems remain as bad as they were, has that Act had no effect?

My hon. Friend has put his finger on it. When I was fortunate to win a high place in the ballot for private members' Bills I decided to introduce this Bill because of that failure.

A local resident has described the problem in the following terms:

"The noise is endless as the cars screech around the roads, viewing the prostitutes as they stand on the corners. The noise of the prostitutes screaming among themselves or at their clients. The pimps and their cars; the harassment of residents as they walk down their own streets."

It is intolerable that that should happen.

I was contacted by a constituent who was deeply distressed when his small son wandered in one morning, having popped outside to look around, carrying an empty hypodermic syringe that he had picked up behind the bushes of his garden. If that boy had pricked himself with the syringe the family would have been deeply worried because there is a high incidence of hepatitis B among prostitutes and even some cases of AIDS.

As one who normally lives in the quiet countryside of Scotland, but who must live in London during the week, I persistently have difficulty sleeping because of motor cars. Whether they are after prostitutes or not makes no difference to my disturbance. Why should the ordinary citizen living in a town be capable of distinguishing between a motor car that is kerb crawling and a motor car that is not? To make an improper suggestion, of whatever form, to someone who is not a prostitute, even, "Go to hell", or, "I don't like the look of your face", is an offence known to the law of Scotland. Is it not known to the common law of England?

I reassure my hon. and learned Friend that the Bill does not apply to Scotland, but to England and Wales. It does not relate to the tranquility of Scotland. I accept that all traffic is a nuisance, but the average motorist does not leave empty hypodermic syringes in one's garden.

Various things have been done in Streatham recently to rid the area of the problem. In April 1988 a vice squad was formed and, possibly because of my Adjournment debate, the squad now has its own van rather than having to rely upon the general purpose police van. In 1987, 239 prostitutes were prosecuted; in 1988 the figure rose to 803. However, in 1988 only 180 kerb crawlers were summonsed under the Sexual Offences Act 1985—it is not an arrestable offence. The police, as in other areas, send letters to people seen circling around. Any kerb crawlers who happen to read this debate should note that they may find a surprising letter on the breakfast table one morning. Yet still the kerb crawlers come back.

I have great praise for the police, but the vice squad consists of only six officers. I was surprised to learn that in Wandsworth, next door to my constituency, where the problem is less acute there are 12 officers in the vice squad. I intend to raise this with my right hon. Friend the Minister and with the helpful deputy assistant commissioner, Mr. Metcalfe, whom I shall meet in a few weeks' time.

A traffic management scheme was eventually introduced by Lambeth council it took three years to introduce it. Although it is a nuisance to residents to drive round and round to reach the main road, it has helped and the traffic flow has been reduced in some areas. Is it not absurd, however, that money must be spent and residents incommoded as roads are blocked off just to stop the problem? I am also told by the police that a new kerb crawling route has developed on the other side of the High road. Although the traffic management scheme is good, it does not represent a solution as kerb crawlers still come back. Hon. Members must accept that this is a grave problem and that something must be done to solve it. The House has a responsibility towards our citizens.

Does my hon. Friend believe that reducing the requirements of the law by repealing the words "persistently" and

"in such a manner or in such circumstances as to be likely to cause annoyance to the woman (or any of the women) solicited, or nuisance to other persons in the neighbourhood"

is sufficient to make a significant difference to the law?

Yes. There are other actions that could be taken which, for reasons that I shall explain, are not included in the Bill.

The House will know that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Dame J. Fookes) also won a high place in the ballot in 1985 and introduced the Sexual Offences Act 1985, which was earlier known as the "Kerb Crawlers Bill". It was the first time that kerb crawling was made a criminal offence. The Bill's intention was to make it an offence to solicit a woman from a motor vehicle or in the immediate vicinity of the motor vehicle belonging to the man soliciting a woman. However, in Committee in the other place, the Bill suffered some amendments, one of which was the inclusion of the word "persistently", which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir Nicholas Fairbairn) mentioned. It became an offence for which one could be summonsed for a kerb crawler persistently to solicit a woman or more than one woman. A man had to solicit "persistently", or it was not an offence.

I appreciate that the Bill does not apply to Scotland, but I should like an answer to the question that I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Dame J. Fookes) at the time of her Bill. Surely to go up to a woman who is not a prostitute and to proposition her is an offence in common law. It is an assault. To go up to a woman who is a prostitute and to proposition her is not, I presume, an offence in English common law. Why should it be an offence to do so from a motor car when it is not while standing on the pavement? If it is not an offence under English common law to go up to an ordinary woman and proposition her, there is something odd about the common law in England.

I am coming to that point in a moment. It is indeed an offence in England and, no doubt, in Wales for a man on foot to solicit a woman persistently. The difference, as I shall explain to my hon. and learned Friend, is that the soliciting from a motor car should not have to be persistent, because a motor car is a nuisance at I am if it is driving round and round, especially when the driver honks its horn and flashes its lights and people shout to and from it. That nuisance element does not exist when a man is walking along the street, except that he creates a nuisance to the women whom he persistently solicits.

The inclusion of the word "persistently" for kerb crawlers has made the 1985 Act almost ineffective in summonsing and stopping kerb crawlers. Under the present law, the police can stop a kerb crawler after he has solicited a woman. He can say, "Yes, I am a kerb crawler and I did solicit that woman, but I did not annoy her, I created no nuisance and I solicited her only once". The police would be unable to do anything about that under the present law. Both the police and the Crown prosecution service say that the present kerb crawling offence cannot readily be enforced. The reason is that, theoretically, two separate approaches by the kerb crawler, either to the same woman or to two different women, are required to establish persistence. However, It is likely in practice that a prosecution will succeed only if three or four approaches have been noted by the police. In acute areas, such as in my constituency, it is unusual for more than one approach to be needed. The House must accept that it is difficult for the police successfully to follow a motorist undetected while he makes several approaches.

The 1985 Act says "persistently" or so as to "cause annoyance" or "nuisance". One approach which causes annoyance or nuisance does not require persistence. My hon. Friend has not understood the words of the Act. Under the Act, if a person goes up to a woman and causes her annoyance or nuisance, he has committed an offence whether he does so once or more than once.

If my hon. and learned Friend, whose interest in the Act I appreciate, reads Hansard tomorrow, he will understand that I said that if a kerb crawler is stopped by the police and says, "Yes, I am a kerb crawler; I solicited this woman only once and I did not cause her nuisance nor annoyance", he cannot be arrested. I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend will agree that I am right.

The real problem in Streatham—we share a common boundary—is not whether offence is given to prostitutes or to other women walking along the street but that the offence and nuisance is caused to people who live there. Whether there is nuisance for the contracting parties is not the point. The problems are the condoms, the noise and the hypodermic syringes. That is the nub of the matter and we want to get rid of those problems.

The hon. Gentleman is right and that is what I have been saying. It is the presence of the motor car that makes the kerb crawler distinct from the pedestrian. That is why I want to take the word "persistently" out of the legislation on kerb crawlers.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross mentioned the woman who is not a prostitute. Great nuisance can be involved for her. As I said, wives and daughters are solicited. The woman who is not a prostitute is usually very reluctant to come forward and would usually have difficulty identifying the driver. Unless the police are to hand, the offence goes unreported and the kerb crawler goes unpunished.

As a result of the wretched word "persistently", the police have had to fall hack on showing that kerb crawlers, under another section of the 1985 Act, are causing a nuisance to others in the neighbourhood by soliciting.

In Streatham, the police had to ask residents to note the number plates of cars that circled round. Those were reported to the police, on a special telephone number and the police would note down the registration numbers. When a particular driver stopped to solicit a woman, even if only once, the police could secure a conviction on the ground that he was causing a nuisance to the neighbourhood in pursuit of soliciting. What a way for people to spend the evening! They had to sit in their homes, peering through the windows and noting down car number plates as cars passed. That is nonsense. However, they secured prosecutions and I congratulate them.

There was a recent case in Nottingham where the police, from a vantage point, noted the number plates of cars going round and round. When a car stopped for the driver to solicit a prostitute, the driver was summonsed. The police there secured some convictions in that way, but it is an uncertain way to secure convictions and it is enormously time-consuming for the police.

The consequence of the flaw in the 1985 Act is that in 1988, just under 10,000 women—9,183—were prosecuted for soliciting, with 8,829 convictions. In the same year, there were 578 prosecutions for kerb crawling and 521 convictions. There is clearly an imbalance between the number of prosecutions of women offenders and men offenders. The Act is not doing what it was meant to do—redress the imbalance created by the fact that the prostitute was criminalised while the client got off scot-free. I am quoting from an article in The Independent of 9 February.

I am most obliged to my hon. Friend, whom I am trying to assist. My hon. Friend's Bill would remove from the 1985 Act the words

"in a street or public place while in the vicinity of a motor vehicle … cause annoyance to the woman … or nuisance to other persons in the neighbourhood."

The hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser) pointed out that that is the gravamen of the nuisance. The words that my hon. Friend would remove already constitute an offence under the 1985 Act—the very offence of which he complains: nuisance to the residents.

I am grateful for my hon. and learned Friend's help in this matter, but perhaps he has not followed what I was saying. Because the police could not arrest kerb crawlers for soliciting, they had to fall back on a cumbersome procedure which entailed dozens of residents sitting up until 2 am noting down number plates. I cannot believe that even my hon. and learned Friend would think that a good way in which to implement the law, when it can be perfectly satisfactorily implemented by arresting kerb crawlers—without getting hundreds of residents to ring up the police to complain of nuisance at 1 o'clock in the morning. This is only common sense.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the legalistic hair-splitting of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) has merely demonstrated the need to simplify this offence?

I entirely agree. My hon. and learned Friend raised more or less the same objections on Second Reading of the 1985 Act, but I quite understand his seriousness and his purpose.

As I was saying, the Act does not redress the imbalance which leads to the criminalising of the prostitute yet lets the client off scot-free. I understand that prostitutes do not have to solicit persistently: they can be charged after just one solicitation. So the word "persistently" applies not to the prostitute but to the kerb crawler, which is why about 8,000 or 9,000 prostitutes were prosecuted in 1988, but fewer than 600 kerb crawlers were. That is unfair.

Clause 1 would amend the 1985 Act to remove the word "persistently" as it applies to prostitutes. My hon. Friend the Member for Drake has written me a letter apologising that she cannot be here today because of urgent engagements in her constituency. She has asked me to tell the House that she is delighted with the terms of the Bill. It has her full support and she regrets the watering down of her original proposals in Committee.

I support the change in the law because I know of the problem in Streatham. But there is sometimes a difficulty. When these cases are brought in the magistrates court the prostitutes are never called as witnesses. The only witnesses are police officers. The problem is how to deal with a case brought against a person who may vehemently protest his innocence of having, as a police officer may say, propositioned a prostitute on one occasion—but there is no proof that the woman was a prostitute. She is not called as a witness, yet the man's entire reputation can be destroyed. That has happened to judges in Nottingham and London, and it is one difficulty inherent in striking the right balance.

I entirely agree. I hope to persuade the House on this matter when I come to it in more detail later. But in motoring offences, it is also the word of the police against that of the driver. If prostitutes could be present in court, they would be; but I cannot believe that they would turn up and give evidence in court. In any case they would probably deny that the man being charged had been soliciting.

There may be a similarity with driving offences, but this offence is much more serious for a man's reputation. It would certainly be taken more seriously by newspapers than if a man were charged merely with a motoring offence.

I agree. I was merely pointing out that for a number of offences it is the police officer's word against that of the defendant.

The change suggested in my Bill and in the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Drake is exactly that recommended by the Criminal Law Revision Committee in its 16th report, published in 1984. I think that the House would recognise the eminence of those who served on the committee. Paragraph 40 states:

"We now recommend that it should be an offence for a man to use a motor vehicle in a street or public place for the purpose of soliciting a woman for prostitution. The object of the offence is to stop the man who goes out in a vehicle to look for a prostitute."

Nowhere does the report mention the word "persistently". Straightforward solicitation is the offence.

I have read the Official Report of the proceedings on the 1985 Act and I appreciate the anxieties expressed about the proposals to remove "persistently". They were expressed in 1985 and have been expressed again since. Some hon. Members may have received a letter from the Campaign Against Kerb Crawling Legislation, which claims that such legislation infringes civil rights. The letter was sent to me by a QC, and the campaign is apparently made up of anti-rape, black and civil rights organisations, and of probation officers, solicitors and trade unionists. I believe that it was started by the prostitutes collective.

I dismiss the suggestion that my Bill in any way infringes civil rights. In so far as they are involved, they are rights of my constituents to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of their homes from evening to dawn—rights that they are being denied now.

It might be argued that if a single offence rendered a kerb crawler liable to prosecution it might be easy for the police to frame someone, but if they wanted to do that, they could do so under the present law, claiming that they had seen a person solicit twice. I do not believe, in any case, that the police would ever do anything like that. I hear my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross laughing. Perhaps he thinks that the police frame people. As I said, if they wanted to do that they could do it under the present legislation just as well as under my Bill.

It might also be suggested that the police could act as agents provocateurs. However, that would be in direct contravention of the police standing orders. If the police wanted to do that, again they could do so under the present legislation just as easily as under the legislation that I propose. I dismiss that argument, too.

Hon. Members have also raised the objection that the provisions would make it easier for the police to make a mistake because they might summons someone who merely stopped to ask the way. It is not impossible that someone might stop twice to ask the way, in which case that person could be prosecuted under the present legislation. I take this objection seriously because it is the nub of the argument. I have discussed the matter with the police and with the Home Office. When I pressed the police on this point, they told me that kerb crawlers are easily recognisable. They flash lights, sound horns, chat to prostitutes and open their car doors. The police usually do not stop them until the girl gets into the car. They are absolutely sure that they would give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who claimed that he had stopped to ask the way. In any case, if someone stopped to ask the way and the police came up and said, "Look here, sir, what are you doing", that person would say, "Well, I am going to such and such a place". There is no reason why the police could not go to that place to determine whether he was expected.

I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. As legislators, should we not ensure that there is no opportunity for error, mistake or misjudgment by the police by framing the legislation in such a way that the courts can always ensure that somebody will not be convicted wrongly? Is that not what we should be doing, rather than relying on the discretion of the police?

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying. If I can continue my speech, perhaps I shall be able to reassure him a little more.

Although my hon. Friend has just said that he wishes to continue his speech, does he agree that it is relevant not merely that the police might or might not give a suspected person the benefit of the doubt hut, more importantly, that a court would do so? A court has a duty to acquit unless it is satisfied about the guilt of the accused person beyond all reasonable doubt. The sort of case to which my hon. Friend and other hon. Members have alluded in the past few minutes would bring that consideration into play. does my hon. Friend agree that that is the answer?

Yes, exactly. My hon. Friend has pre-empted me. I was just about to say that.

When the Sexual Offences Act 1985 was discussed, the Crown prosecution service was not in existence. However, we now have an independent Crown prosecution service which would never—or which would be extremely loth to—summons and prosecute a person about whom there was any doubt. The fact that the Crown prosecution service was not in being in 1985 was one reason given by those who spoke in the various committees as to why the word "persistently" should be included.

As the Crown prosecution service now exists, I ask the House to remember, as my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jesse') said, that the prosecution must show beyond all reasonable doubt that a man was soliciting for the purpose of prostitution. Therefore, it is not a matter of police discretion. That is merely the initial barrier. Two other barriers must be passed. The first is the independent Crown prosecution service and the other is the court itself where, I repeat, the man has to be shown to be soliciting for purposes of prostitution beyond all reasonable doubt. That reassures me completely and I very much hope that it will reassure the House.

The debate is interesting, but many of the interventions could be made in Committee. We are discussing the broad principle of a proposed Bill. The points that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) rightly made should properly be dealt with by amendments in Committee. They should not be discussed in the detail that we are getting into in this Second Reading debate. I hope that my hon. Friend will resist too many further interventions on points that are Committee rather than Second Reading points.

I concur with my hon. Friend. If the Bill is fortunate enough to get into Committee, I have no doubt that we shall spend a considerable amount of time arguing these points. I do not exclude the possibility of finding a better solution, but the inclusion of the words "persistently soliciting" are not a better solution to the problem.

I am grateful for being found irresistible. I appreciate the thrust of the Bill and admire and support what my hon. Friend wishes to do. However, has he ever been to a magistrates court to see a prosecution under the 1985 Act? Has he seen policemen giving evidence where there has been a denial of the offence? Perhaps if my hon. Friend had done so, he would not be quite so sanguine about the two hurdles that he has described as foolproof.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Yes, I have been to a magistrates court and seen prostitutes being charged, but I have not seen kerb crawlers being charged. I entirely accept my hon. Friend's point. I shall follow his advice and see whether I can do that. The only problem is that under the present law very few kerb crawlers are charged, so one might have to wait a considerable time before one found such a case.

To sum up on this important point, it was a credit to the House and the other place that they adopted such a cautious approach in 1985, when the Crown prosecution service was not in being, and when, for the first time, kerb crawling was made a criminal offence. I hope that everyone, whatever their views, will accept that the present Act has not worked as intended. I feel strongly that the offence that was originally proposed by the Criminal Law Revision Committee is the best solution because, as I said, we now have the Crown prosecution service and because a great deal of distress is being caused to law-abiding citizens. If we want the police to deal with the problem, they must be given the power to do so. Therefore, I urge that this problem be rectified.

I must hurry along because I have taken rather a long time so far. Clause 1(3) would make life more difficult for kerb crawlers by proposing an increase in the maximum fine from the present £400 to £1,000. I recommend that increase because the average fine imposed on convicted kerb crawlers in my part of the world is about £100, although it has now increased slightly. If we have a maximum fine of £1,000, I hope that the average will increase to £300 or £400.

I very much hope that we shall move to the excellent system recommended by the Home Office and adopt unit cost fines, of which hon. Members will be aware. Under the system of unit cost fines, I should like a rich man to be fined the £1,000 if the court thought that correct.

Under the new system of fines, is it not clear that an unemployed youngster in Lambeth between the ages of 16 and 18 could never be fined anything?

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will answer that point when he replies——

I am used to the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser).

I now turn quickly to a few other matters. First, I am extremely worried about the pimps who swarm around in Streatham. If there are any real villains here, they are probably the pimps. When the press reported that my Bill included provision for action to be taken against pimps, I received some very strange phone calls from people saying that pimps should be allowed to ply their lawful trade in an orderly manner and challenging my proposal to discriminate against them.

Under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, a man can be prosecuted only if knowingly he lives

"wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution … or ….exercises control, direction or influence."

That legislation probably successfully controls the situation in respect of brothels, but where a pimp drives a girl somewhere in the evening, picks her up at dawn, and takes the money from her, it is difficult to secure a conviction.

One police force in the midlands is securing convictions, but it is having to put one or two officers on to a single suspect for days to establish whether he has other sources of income, how long he spends in the girl's company, and so on. Police in my part of the world do not have sufficient manpower to do that. Even if an officer sees a girl giving a man money, and challenges him, the girl can say that the man is her banker and will be returning the money to her the next day. There have been remarkably few prosecutions of pimps. In 1988, only 75 of them were found guilty in the whole country.

The Home Office should consider framing some form of law that will make it easier to prosecute pimps. In an Adjournment debate in January, my right hon. Friend the Minister helpfully suggested that it might be possible to create the offence of receiving immoral earnings in the pursuit of immoral earnings, and perhaps that aspect can be examined in the context of some future Bill. It requires great thought and care, which is why I did not feel it appropriate to cover it in this Bill. However, if the Home Office can incorporate in future legislation a provision for the prosecution of the pimps who run the girls who are the object of kerb crawlers, I would welcome it.

I considered including as another purpose of the Bill giving magistrates the power to endorse the driving licence of a convicted kerb crawler, which would have a salutary effect. I have been persuaded that such a measure would not be appropriate because that penalty is reserved for serious driving offences. However, I understand that someone who drives a getaway car, even if he obeys every aspect of the law while doing so, can have his licence withdrawn. It is not like saying that if one is caught pick-pocketing, one's television licence should be taken away, as such a penalty would be irrelevant. But the use of a car in kerb crawling enters the realm of a driving offence. Perhaps my right hon. Friend will cover that matter when he winds up.

The prostitutes themselves are victims, although not so much as the residents of the areas that they infest. The average fine for a prostitute in south London used to be £35, but it is now about £75. The police inform me that a prostitute can make as much as £600 per night.

And that is tax free.

As my hon. Friend says, that income is tax free.

Prostitutes are back on the beat within half an hour of being taken to the police station. I agree that imprisonment is not an appropriate punishment, and its use was ended in 1983—and quite right, too. The use of the community service order stopped at the same time because it can be used only as an alternative to a custodial sentence. I do not know whether such a sentence could he invoked, but I shall not comment further on that possibility.

Perhaps it would be possible to consider the electronic tagging of persistent offenders, be they prostitutes or kerb crawlers. If a prostitute does not pay her fines, she risks a custodial sentence—but to impose one would, I think, be wrong. Tagging in conjunction with a curfew from dusk until dawn might be worth considering if the current Home Office experiment with tagging is successful, and new legislation would not be required.

Great problems are also created for the residents of my constituency when perhaps a dozen girls congregate in the street at 1 o'clock in the morning, laughing and shouting at motorists. Any chief superintendent who happens to read the report of this debate may like to know that the Public Order Act 1986 could apply in some cases. It states that it is an offence to use

"abusive or insulting words or behaviour … within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress".

So police officers may not after all be totally helpless in trying to move on people who cause such a nuisance.

The Bill's second purpose is to remove the presumption in common law that a boy under 14 years of age is incapable of sexual intercourse, which I understand is a matter of concern to the Home Office. The Bill would cover only boys aged 10, 11, 12 or 13, since children of nine or younger cannot be charged. The present law rules out prosecution for rape, assaults to commit rape, nonconsensual anal intercourse and under-age sex.

Only in England.

I assure my hon. Friend that that provision does not apply to Scotland. At present, a youngster accused of rape is usually prosecuted for indecent assault as an alternative. I repeat that no child aged under 10 could be prosecuted under my Bill.

My hon. Friend will be glad to know that such an assumption has never been made under Scottish Law. I am sure that the House will be delighted if the measure that he suggests passes into the law of this country, so that after 500 years, English law will be as civilised as Scottish law. After all, Mary Queen of Scots was betrothed to the dauphin of France at the age of five, and there was an assumption that their marriage would be consummated.

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. Again and again, regrettably, I find that Scottish law has something to offer the law of England.

Offences have shown that the present assumption is nonsense. One letter that I received, whose sender I will not of course identify, stated:

"My daughter was sexually assaulted by a boy last August. She was found to have lost her virginity by this boy, and yet in law I am unable to do anything about the attack."

The letter goes on to explain that the boy was aged only nine. Even that offence would not be covered by my Bill, but if there is a problem with nine-year-old boys, one may presume that there is with older boys.

It is difficult to know the extent of the problem because, as boys cannot legally be charged with rape at those ages, there are no central statistics. However, between 1984 and 1988 the numbers of 10 to 13-year-olds charged each year was a minimum of 40 and a maximum of 76. In Brixton, which is part of my constituency, in the past 12 months there were six cases where the police had to substitute indecent assault for rape, and they all involved girls under the age of 16. In north Yorkshire, I am told that there were about 13 cases, one of which was particularly unpleasant, when two boys aged 13 held the victim down by force.

Earlier my hon. Friend quoted from this disgraceful letter from the Campaign Against Kerb Crawling Legislation. Does he agree that we should condemn the rest of that letter which says that if this clause, affecting under-age boys, becomes law it will be

"a frightening prospect more likely to affect Black and other working class boys".

Does he agree that that is a disgraceful and racist slur from that organisation which should be widely condemned? It is all very well for the author of the letter—Mr. Ian Macdonald QC—to say that from his elevated position, but it is a slur against black and working-class people and it should be withdrawn.

I am most grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend is right. It is a disgraceful letter, and I am glad that he named the QC who signed it and sent it to me.

Perhaps my hon. Friend would consider forwarding that letter to the Bar Council and to the Commission for Racial Equality so that they may decide whether this statement should have been made by one of Her Majesty's Counsel.

I am grateful for that intervention, and I shall certainly consider and discuss that.

I must emphasise three points. First, no youngster under 14 can be convicted of any crime unless he knowingly committed the crime beyond reasonable doubt, as with an adult. Secondly, the youngster must understand that what he did was seriously wrong and goes beyond childish mischief.

There may be concern that this change could lead to more children appearing before the courts charged with unlawful sexual intercourse. I am advised that the law is not usually involved with what is termed "consenting adolescent sexual involvement", unless it is a special case. Therefore, we need not be concerned that more boys will appear before the courts.

I am advised, and I believe it to be true, that the effect on the sentencing—a care order or whatever—on the boy who is convicted would be neutral, whether the charge was rape or indecent assault. He would not get a bigger sentence. No doubt he would get a care order or, in the case of a had indecent assault or rape, a care order to a secure place.

One may ask, why should we bother to change the law if it makes no difference to sentencing? There are two reasons. First, the law should not be seen to be demonstrably wrong and, secondly, and more importantly, there is the effect on the victim and the victim's family. The victim will be given anonymity in a case of rape, and the family will see justice to have been done, and will feel less aggrieved by the wretched business.

I have at last finished, and I am grateful to the House for letting me speak for so long. I commend the Bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I support the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton).

During the years that I have been in the House, soliciting and kerb crawling have been a major problem in the Balham area of my constituency, and I have made many speeches on the subject. I have asked countless questions about the issue, and the problems that it has caused and does cause to many of my constituents.

The constituency of the hon. Member for Streatham adjoins my constituency of Tooting. Bedford hill was one of the most notorious red light areas in London, and it goes from my constituency into his. We are obviously concerned about the effect that that has on our constituents, but I am sure that the problem that we are discussing here today also affects hon. Members representing many smaller towns, as they sadly now experience similar problems to those of large cities.

We often hear it said that prostitution has existed for centuries and that no one and no action will stop it. That may be true, but our constituents suffer. Whatever views some hon. Members may express in the debate, if they have never seen what happens and the problems that men and women face—especially women but some men—when they seek to protect their wives and girl friends, they know little about the deep concern felt by so many people about the problem.

The issue has to be tackled—for example, the continual abuse that people suffer when they seek to move prostitutes away from the areas in which they live; the cars that drive around hour after hour, from early evening to the early hours of the morning; the fighting that often takes place between the girls themselves, or, as the hon Member for Streatham mentioned, the pimps who look after them; the noise and the threats. My constituents have faced that day after day, for hours on end, and not just occasionally.

What about the women who live in our constituencies? Irrespective of the time of day, when they are seen walking along a street they are often taken for prostitutes. Any woman who walks along those streets, either at midday or in the early hours of the morning, is regarded by motorists who come into the area—they are not local motorists driving around—as a possible prostitute. Women have come to my surgery and appeared at meetings called by my constituents, and outlined in detail what has happened to them. Many of them now say that they will not go out in the evening because they know that they will be repeatedly accosted by kerb crawlers.

Bedford hill is about three quarters of a mile long, and women who live in the roads adjoining it have told me that, if they walk down Balham high road, to the local tube station a mile away, they may be accosted a dozen times by motorists.

In an earlier intervention, the hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) asked what the difference was between a kerb crawler accosting a woman and someone walking along the street accosting a woman. But if a woman is accosted by someone who is walking, she can say, "I'm not a prostitute, leave me alone," and cross to the other side of the road. She may see someone else walking along the road, and ask if she can walk along with that person. A kerb crawler in a car, however, may persist in following her.

I was a member of the Standing Committee that considered the Sexual Offences Bill in 1985. We discussed at length the effect of such legislation on the rights of individuals, and the possibility of people being charged in error. One oft-quoted example was that of the motorist who casually stops a woman to ask the whereabouts of a certain address. Such arguments did not impress me: I do not believe for a moment that the kerb crawlers who drive round and round an area are looking for an address. What they are looking for are the services of prostitutes, and they see any woman walking the streets as a potential prostitute.

The hon. Member for Streatham mentioned prisons. I have some knowledge of that subject: Wandsworth prison is in my constituency, and I have visited many others over the years. I have no wish to send men or women to prison for involvement in sexual offences; nevertheless, I am very annoyed by the way in which the courts view the problem. Fining is inconsistent: in one area the fines may be reasonable enough, but in another they may be pathetic. I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman's claim that prostitutes can earn several hundred pounds a night, and such fines will not deter them.

Some years ago, I wrote to the then Home Secretary—Lord Whitelaw, as he now is—to say how appalled I was at the pathetic fines imposed in the South Western magistrates court. He replied, "I am sorry for you and your constituents, but I cannot do anything about it." He may not have been able to do anything, but I believe that Law Officers in this or the other House could have acquainted the magistrates with the deep concern felt not only by Members of Parliament but by the police, who spend countless hours obtaining evidence to take offenders to court, only to see pathetic fines being imposed.

Is not one of the problems encountered by the lay magistracy in particular the reluctance of Ministers and the Lord Chancellor to interfere? From time to time, the Lord Chancellor addresses meetings of the Magistrates Association: perhaps a copy of Hansard could be sent to him, to impress on him the need to make a speech suggesting that a toughening of the penalties would not come amiss.

The hon. Gentleman has made some valuable contributions this morning. I fully support that suggestion.

On 17 January this year, I received some figures from the Home Office in reply to a question that I had asked. In 1988—I assume that to be the most recent year for which figures were available—517 motorists were convicted of kerb crawling in England and Wales. The present maximum fine is £400, but, according to the Home Office, it was not imposed in any of those cases.

Far be it from me to disagree with the hon. Member for Streatham, and I am not entirely opposed to his suggestion of an increase in the maximum fine to £1,000, but, if the present £400 maximum is not being imposed, what chance is there that the magistrates would impose a higher fine?

I entirely agree. I wish that higher fines were imposed, and I only hope that increasing the maximum to £1,000 will at least make magistrates realise that such offences are more serious than they seem to think.

I accept that.

We often complain about the police—I complain about them myself somtimes—and, by and large, the police accept such complaints if they are justified. We should, however, be grateful for much of what they do. I pay the warmest possible tribute to the work of Chief Superintendent Tom Jones and his officers in my constituency.

In 1985, there were seven reported kerb-crawling offences; in 1989, the figure had risen to 52. In 1988, there were 346 convictions for prostitution; in 1989, the figure had fallen to 70. That may sound impressive, but, although my local police may have managed to reduce the number of convictions for prostitution, the women have simply moved a mile or so down the road and set up business in the neighbouring constituency of the hon. Member for Streatham.

Under the existing legislation, the police are prevented from doing work that they would like to do. I entirely support the removal of the word "persistently" from the 1985 Act. How often must women be accosted by motorists—once, twice, five times? Must we wait until it has happened 10 times before we say, "This woman has suffered too much: we must act"?

A long time ago, I asked the present Minister of State, Home Office—the hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), who was replying to a debate—how he would feel if he had gone home the previous evening and asked his wife what sort of day she had had, and she had burst into tears and said that she had been accosted and taken for a common prostitute by motorists as she went to pick up the children from school. I believe that the hon. and learned Gentleman realised then just how serious such offences are. I referred earlier to the fact that it is only women who are affected. In my constituency, and possibly in the constituency of the hon. Member for Streatham, husbands and boy friends who told people who tried to pick up their wives and girl friends to leave them alone were subjected both to abuse and, in some cases, physical action. That is another reason why the Bill is so important.

If the hon. Gentleman cares to look at the 1985 Act, he will see that the matter to which he has referred is already an offence. It is an offence to cause annoyance to a woman or a nuisance to any other person in the neighbourhood. In other words, once is enough. What the hon. Gentleman seeks to do would remove that offence, which seems to me to be the very opposite of what he intends.

The hon. and learned Gentlemen's legal background and knowledge are extensive. What he says is what he believes ought to happen. However, what actually happens in the courts is very different. If he doubts that, all that he needs to do is to get in touch with the local police officers who control the areas that are represented by the hon. Member for Streatham and I and listen to what they have to say about magistrates' sentences. It sounds very nice when the hon. and learned Gentleman says, "In law, that is what it means", but that is not what is happening. That is why people such as the hon. Member for Streatham and I feel so strongly about the matter.

I have lived in my constituency for a long time. The area in which I live has never been troubled by the activities of prostitutes. I never see motorists driving round and round my area. However, in the Bedford hill area of my constituency, one sees them doing it seven nights a week. If one says they do not do it in the area where I live, so why do they do it in another part of my constituency, the answer is abundantly clear to us all: that that is the area which prostitutes frequent.

I do not decry traffic management schemes and better lighting. Such schemes have been introduced in my area, and they have helped to some extent, but what is the good of helping my constituents if, because of the action taken in my area, half a mile down the road people who previously never suffered from the problem are confronted with it?

The hon. Member for Streatham referred to those who live on immoral earnings. There were nearly 9,000 convictions for soliciting in 1988. In the same year, only 29 males in England and Wales were found guilty of living on immoral earnings. It is a little hard to believe that, with 9,000 convictions for soliciting in 1988, only 29 men were guilty of living on the immoral earnings of prostitutes.

The hon. Member for Streatham referred to the need for more vigorous police action. Men who live on immoral earnings are often the most brutal individuals. They terrorise women, many of whom do not want to be prostitutes. Faced with enormous financial problems, they thought that prostitution would help them to get out of their difficulties and that they could then return to a normal job and a normal life style. Often, however, those who live off their earnings force them to continue as prostitutes. The action that can be taken against such individuals must be strengthened by the courts and by Parliament.

Without doubt, the hon. Member for Streatham has introduced a much-needed Bill. Apart from the great support that he will receive from both his constituents and mine, he will find that many people who, sadly, have been terrorised year after year by the activities of kerb crawlers will warmly welcome the Bill. It will help to protect them, their families and the whole community from the activities of these people. I pledge my total support to the hon. Member for Streatham.

I begin where the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) left off—by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton) on introducing the Bill. When it is enacted, it will provide great protection and relief for many of his constituents, particularly for young women who are plagued by these activities. It will also protect residents and young women in many parts of the country.

Ordinary people in ordinary areas are affected by such activities. No matter what the kind of area in which people live—on council estates, in middle-class areas—this plague can be found. It has certainly come to the constituencies of the hon. Member for Tooting and of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. It has not yet reached my constituency, and I hope that it will not. If it does not, my constituents will be able to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham for the Bill that he has introduced today.

I agree that the person we want to get at is the pimp. When the Bill is considered in Committee, I hope that it will be strengthened so that that person can be caught. I am sure that that would be welcomed. As drafted, the Bill evens up the measures that can be taken against prostitutes who are treated as criminals and those who kerb-crawl and who are causing the real nuisance.

I refer to the letter against the kerb-crawling legislation. It is appalling. It casts a slur on black and working-class young boys. It is even worse than that. It can almost be described as the Sinn Fein apologia for the pimp. These people have decided to defend pimps instead of those who try to go about their lawful business. The letter says:

"We write this because we are concerned with human, legal and civil rights and we oppose Sir William Shelton's Sexual Offences Bill."

To whose civil rights does the letter refer? It does not refer to the civil rights of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham, or to the civil rights of the constituents of the hon. Member for Tooting, or the citizens of Wolverhampton, Norwich and other cities who have been plagued by this problem and who have written to my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary.

I hope that the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham will be able to answer one query about those who solicit on foot. The policy advisory committee on sexual offences said that this matter caused it concern when it considered the problem. If we stopped the kerb crawlers but allowed those people to get out of their cars and solicit on foot, thereby continuing the problem but in a different form, we should have won a pyrrhic victory.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will consider that matter in Committee. I warmly congratulate him on the Bill and I hope that it will have an unruffled passage through the House. It will certainly have my support.

Two seconds early. Would it be for the convenience of the House if I asked the Foreign Secretary to make his statement now?

I could raise a point of order to fill in.

The hon. Gentleman is always very helpful.

Last night, Mr. Speaker——

With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about constitutional development in Hong Kong.

When I came back from Hong Kong on 17 January, I told the House that I hoped to be able to announce a decision on the introduction of direct elections to the Hong Kong legislature in 1991 in a matter of weeks. In view of intense press speculation in the past few days, I have decided to make the announcement now.

At the time of the signing of the joint declaration in 1984, there was no elected element of any kind in the legislature. In February 1988, the Hong Kong Government announced that 10 directly elected seats would be introduced in 1991. It has been clear for some time that the people of Hong Kong want to see a more rapid rate of progress. The question we have had to decide is what new starting point would be right.

We wish to establish in Hong Kong, before 1997, a system of government which includes from the outset a substantial element of democracy, and which can endure and further develop after 1997. That is what Hong Kong wants, and that would be the best outcome for the territory.

If the outcome is to be achieved, the start which we make in 1991 must be carried through in the arrangements set out in the Basic Law. With this objective in mind, we have entered into discussions with the Chinese Government about the provisions relating to the political structure after 1997 to be included in the Basic Law for the future Hong Kong special administrative region.

In those discussions, we have pressed the case for a faster process of democratisation in Hong Kong than that set out in the second draft of the Basic Law. We have also made it clear that the new proposals which emerged from the meetings of the Basic Law drafting committee, which took place in Canton in December and January, would not command general support in Hong Kong. We have stressed the importance not only of achieving a steady progression in the number of directly elected seats, but of arrangements for the political system as a whole which Hong Kong people will find acceptable.

The final plenary meeting of the Basic Law drafting committee has been taking place in Peking this week. The meeting has not yet finished, and the outcome is not yet certain. We shall want to study carefully the draft which emerges from that meeting. There are, however, indications that the draft will provide for 20 directly elected seats in 1997 and for further increases to 24 seats in 1999 and 30 seats in 2003. The rate of progress would not be as rapid as many people in Hong Kong, or we ourselves, would have liked to see, but it would be a considerable improvement on the position reached in December. It would reflect a willingness by the Basic Law drafters to respond to the representations which we and others in Hong Kong have been making.

We are following closely the recommendations which are emerging from the plenary meeting on other issues of importance to Hong Kong. The key issues are voting procedures; the composition and constitution of the grand electoral college which is to return a proportion of the members of the legislature; and restrictions on the nationality of members of the post-1997 legislature.

If, as I hope, the plenary meeting resolves these matters in a satisfactory way, and if the figures for directly elected seats which I have mentioned are confirmed, we would regard that outcome as one which, although not ideal, I could reasonably commend to the House, and to the people of Hong Kong, as a basis for the future.

On that basis, and in the interests of the continuity which we believe is what most Hong Kong people want, the Hong Kong Government will make arrangements to introduce 18 directly elected seats in 1991. There would thus be a continuous upward slope of development from 1991 to 2003, with the possibility that full direct elections could be introduced in 2007.

As for 1995, when the last elections under British Administration are due to take place, we plan to increase the number of directly elected seats to at least 20. If we then decide to introduce the electoral arrangements envisaged in the Basic Law, it will be possible for members elected in 1995 to carry on over the 1997 barrier to 1999.

Those who suggest that whatever we do now China would be obliged to accept in 1997 are out of touch with reality. The measures which we are introducing will preserve the concept of one country, two systems, which is the basis of Hong Kong's future success. We shall continue to press the case for a faster pace of democratisation. Opinion in Hong Kong and policy in China on this matter have both moved a long way since 1984. There will be further evolution between now and 1997.

This will be a substantially greater first step towards democracy in Hong Kong than was planned two years ago. That is the first important requirement. This arrangement offers the prospect of further such steps to be enshrined in the Basic Law, both in 1997 and thereafter. That is the second important requirement. I believe that, taken together, the arrangements make good sense for Hong Kong.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary's statement will be greeted with dismay in Hong Kong. In December, the right hon. Gentleman stated in the House that he was anxious that

"the last main chapter in the story of this country's empire … should not end in a shabby way."—[Official Report, 20 December 1989; Vol. 164, c. 368.]

What he has said today, if he keeps to it, ensures that the chapter will end in a shabby way, for he has caved in completely to China.

Although the right hon. Gentleman told the people of Hong Kong last month that Britain alone was responsible for governing Hong Kong until July 1997, his surrender to China on elections to the Legislative Council has given China a decisive voice in what happens in Hong Kong not in seven years time but now. He has allowed the Chinese completely to dictate the pace of progress such as it is next year, right up to the end of British rule.

Only last week, the Foreign Secretary told me in the House, referring to the consensus of Office of the Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils:

"We must take that seriously".—[Official Report, 7 February 1990, Vol. 166, c. 877.]

He said that we must take seriously the OMELCO consensus, yet he knows well that it calls for 20 elected members next year and 30 in 1995. He has rejected the OMELCO consensus for 1991 and for 1995.

The right hon. Gentleman has gone back on what he said to the House only nine days ago, and he has certainly gone back on what his predecessor, the present Leader of the House, who is sitting next to him, told the House last July in the most specific terms. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said:

"the pace of development should reflect the wishes of the whole community. The unanimous view expressed by OMELCO on 24 May was a significant step towards the establishment of a consensus in Hong Kong."—[Official Report, 13 July 1989; Vol. 156 c. 1170.]

The OMELCO consensus calls for 20 elected members next year, not 18, 30 in 1995, not 20, and a fully elected Chamber by 2003. By 2003 all that the right hon. Gentleman hopes for is a 50 per cent. elected Chamber—the limit laid down by China. Although he talks about the possibility of a fully elected Chamber by 2007, I should be grateful if he would provide the evidence for that hope. If the right hon. Gentleman fears that accepting the OMELCO consensus would offend China, he must be well aware, for Dame Lydia Dunn and Allan Lee of OMELCO must have told him as they told me only a few days ago, that the people of Hong Kong are ready to take that risk. If they are ready to take that risk, why has the right hon. Gentleman caved in to China?

Moreover, he must explain to the House what has happned to the Bill of Rights. His predecessor announced its introduction with a great fanfare in the House on 5 July, but there has not been a word about it today. What has happened to it? Has it been dropped? Is this yet another cave-in to the Chinese?

The Government's policy on Hong Kong is in complete disarray. Their half-baked plan to provide British passports to 50,000 Hong Kong heads of household has provided no confidence. An opinion poll in Hong Kong last week showed that 90 per cent. of executives, professionals and entrepreneurs—the people whom the passport scheme is designed to impress—doubted whether the package will achieve its objective, and 86 per cent. of younger Hong Kong residents regard the passport plan as irrelevant.

It is still not too late for the Secretary of State to change his mind and to implement the OMELCO consensus. I urge him to do so and, even now, not to betray the people of Hong Kong.

The right hon. Gentleman, not for the first time, is way out of touch with reality. He reflects some of the headlines in the London press today, but no doubt a little later he will be able to obtain translations of the Chinese language press in Hong Kong.

If the British Government had done what the right hon. Gentleman says—if we had simply caved in and surrendered to whatever the Chinese wanted—we would have accepted what the Chinese wanted, which is what we proposed in the different circumstances of February 1988—to start with 10 directly elected seats. That has been the Chinese preference.

We take seriously the OMELCO consensus, which was to start with 20 directly elected seats. We are starting with 18—two fewer than the OMELCO consensus, but eight more than the Chinese preference. That puts the position in perspective.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to Dame Lydia Dunn, who lives in Hong Kong and feels some responsibility for the territory's future. A few hours ago, she said that, although the result that I have announced had fallen short of the OMELCO consensus,

"major uncertainties for the territory's future had been removed."

She further said:

"What we must do now is put our efforts into making the 1991 elections a success."

That is entirely different, and much more constructive, from the vapourings of the right hon. Gentleman.

I pay tribute to Dame Lydia Dunn, to the people who would have liked us to go further and to the people who worked out the OMELCO consensus. Hong Kong is much in their debt. They will accept this outcome with a mixture of disappointment and relief. That is the tone of Dame Lydia Dunn's statement, which I commend to the right hon. Gentleman and to the House.

The Bill of Rights, which the right hon. Gentleman legitimately asked about, is alive and well and proceeding through the Hong Kong procedures. It is being examined by the Executive Council. When it is finished, it will be published as a consultation document and anyone will be free to give views on it. The Hong Kong Government hope to carry through the Hong Kong procedures during the rest of the year.

That concept was announced last summer by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House. It is a Hong Kong document, and it is proceeding through Hong Kong's procedures. The relevant United Nations convention is already embodied in the draft of the Basic Law for after 1997.

I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has measured the difficulty of the situation or appreciates the tightrope that we have had to walk. We have tried to find an answer to respond to the two feelings that were expressed to me so often when I was in Hong Kong not long ago. The first is a feeling among a growing number of politically conscious people, who want a faster pace of democracy. The second stresses the damage done by constant collisions with the Chinese Government during the interim period. It has not been easy, and it will not be easy, to reconcile those two messages that are coming from Hong Kong all the time. I hope that the arrangements that I have announced are a reasonable effort to do so.

rose——

Order. I am sure that I do not need to remind the House that this is a private Members' day. I ask for brief questions on this important statement.

With his usual skill, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is trying to handle an agonising dilemma—maintaining confidence in Hong Kong and maintaining a relationship with a sullen and difficult China. He deserves the understanding of the House, which I hope he will get—he does not seem to be getting much from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman).

Will my right hon. Friend concede that the Basic Law is China's decision on how Hong Kong should be governed after 1997? We have advised the Chinese on it, but we are not bound by every detail. One understands the need to proceed in the careful way that my right hon. Friend wants, but what is the latest date by which the regulations must be laid that finally cast in concrete the number of 18 for the 1991 election, on which my right hon. Friend says the Hong Kong Government have now decided? Will he give an assurance that the numbers for 1995 will at least be kept open for further review and discussion, bearing in mind that we, not the Chinese, govern Hong Kong until 1997?

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I have been conscious of the work and recommendations of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs which he chairs.

The electoral regulations for 1991 need to be produced and carried through in Hong Kong during the summer and autumn. The time has come to announce a decision for 1990–91, which I have done, subject, as I carefully set out in my statement, to the outcome of the present discussions in Peking being indicated to me. The figure for 1991 is two fewer than the OMELCO consensus, but eight more than the Chinese would have preferred.

My right hon. Friend will have noticed that I deliberately have not fixed a figure for 1995; I have simply said that it will not be below 20. I hope that it will be more, and that opinion and policy in China will continue to evolve in that direction. I am keen—anyone who thinks seriously about the democratic process in Hong Kong would be keen—that those who are standing for election in 1995 should be able to see Hong Kong through the transition in 1997 and retain their seats until 1999.

On reflection, surely the Secretary of State must agree that the sentence in his statement that opinion in Hong Kong has

"moved a long way since 1984"

must rank among one of the greatest understatements of the year.

The international community does not understand why the Government have adopted such a craven posture before the Chinese Government. What should have been said bluntly to them was that the demand for greater democracy and greater assurances on nationality in Hong Kong are entirely the responsibility of the Chinese Government because of their actions in Tiananmen square. If we had made that clear and adopted that posture, international opinion would be wholly behind us. The statement falls far short of the requests of OMELCO and of the Select Committee for 50 per cent. elected membership by 1995.

We have had a very blunt discussion with the Chinese Government, not just on numbers but on other aspects of the draft Basic Law, about which we have made representations to them. That is one reason why the discussions have taken so long.

If the right hon. Gentleman were aware of the nature of the discussions, he would agree that we have bluntly put the reasons why, in our view, opinion in Hong Kong has shifted since 1984. That is why the position of the British Government has shifted. Our main interest is the interests of Hong Kong; we have no other major interest in the matter. Our opinion has shifted, as the numbers reflect, with opinion in Hong Kong.

Opinion in, and the policy of, China has also shifted. It has not done so as far as we should have liked, but we shall continue the task of persuasion. In my view, it has shifted far enough, as the contrast with the figures for last December show. Last December, the Chinese were talking about starting with 18, with no changes for 10 years thereafter. There has been a considerable shift—I would not put it higher than that—and we hope that that evolution will continue.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that those who have taken the trouble to understand Hong Kong better than the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) will know the impossibility of satisfying all the main strands of opinion in Hong Kong in this sensitive matter and that there are powerful arguments in favour of the prudent decision that my right hon. Friend has taken? Is not the basic problem the change in the line taken by China since the events of June to a much more difficult stance? Does my right hon. Friend see any prospect of China returning to the more flexible line that it adopted before June? Is he satisfied that people in Hong Kong recognise the importance of making it clear to Peking that Hong Kong is not, as Peking appears to suspect, becoming a hotbed for subversion of China?

I think that my right hon. Friend is right. The events of last June have both increased the appetite and feeling in Hong Kong in favour of democracy and made the Chinese Government defensive, and, to use my right hon. Friend's word, "difficult". Our job is to continue to try to persuade the Chinese Government that Hong Kong's future in China—two systems, one country—depends, if it is to be successful, on keeping alive the spirit of enterprise and freedom in the territory. This measure is part of that. It is a start to democracy, not, as some headlines in today's press suggest, an end to it. It is a more substantial start than was envisaged previously.

On my right hon. Friend's specific point, he is perfectly right to say that the matter is one of the Chinese preoccupations. We must explain to the Chinese Government that the Hong Kong Government and this Government have no intention of using Hong Kong as a springboard for changing the system under which China is governed. We must also explain that, equally, people in Hong Kong have rights of free expression and free demonstration. That is part of the Hong Kong system and not something that we, or the Hong Kong Government, can snuff out.

Is the Foreign Secretary aware that he is all too painfully in touch with reality, under the heel of Peking? The humiliation of the Westminster Government may not matter to him, but humiliating the Hong Kong Government matters very much. This issue will vitally affect the interests of the people of Hong Kong, not only before 1997 but afterwards.

The calculation is not just what will happen after 1997, but what the effect will be up to 1997—a period for which the Government are responsible. It is not only a question of the proportion of directly elected seats in the Leglco, but the relations between the Executive and the legislature, which are potentially much more important both up to and after 1997. Considerable benefit can be gained from more effective arrangements.

Has the right hon. Gentleman sought any support from the United States, which is in a stronger bargaining position because of China's concern about sanctions, for a stronger line in establishing a strong democracy in Hong Kong? Is he aware that the action that he has announced today will have consequences for the progress of the immigration legislation that he will shortly bring before the House?

Yes, I think that it will be beneficial. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman's main point. We would have achieved a better reception from the Opposition and the London press if we had planned for a break, a dead end, for Hong Kong in 1997. We would have got more immediate applause but I am sure that in Hong Kong it would have died away quickly.

People in Hong Kong simply do not want a series of collisions and controversies if they can be provided. They are anxious to make a start to democracy and we are providing for that. They are anxious to keep their freedom of expression and we are defending that. They do not want to proceed on the basis of constant collisions, which will not be good for confidence in Hong Kong or the future prosperity of the territory.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that neither this Government or this country nor world opinion have any way of imposing their will on China, except through patient and constructive argument and negotiation of the kind in which he has been engaged? Would it not be a folly and a cruel deception on the people of Hong Kong to give them a system, before 1997, that was unacceptable to the Chinese Government on takeover? Has my right hon. Friend received any assurance from the Chinese Government that Hong Kong citizens holding British passports, with the right of abode in Britain, will be qualified to stand for elections and vote in them?

On the last point, the Basic Law drafting committee has, as I understand it—this is one of the points of whose outcome we are not yet certain—increased from 15 to 20 per cent. the proportion of people holding foreign passports who will be able to sit in the Legislative Council. That is an important point and there has been some improvement.

I agree with my right hon. Friend's first points. It is important to proceed as far as possible after, to use his words, patient and constructive discussion, with the Government in Peking. We have our responsibilities, and they know that. That is why we have moved to the figure of 18. It does not make sense to proceed on the basis of a breakdown, a dead end, in 1997.

After the horrendous massacre in Tiananmen square, it was inevitable that the Chinese and British Governments would not agree on the pace of democratisation. Surely, the question for the House and the Foreign Secretary to determine was whether to go on patiently negotiating or have a confrontation and a battle of face that could have led to a calamitous fall in confidence in Hong Kong. Is the Foreign Secretary aware that he has taken a realpolitik decision of some courage and should not be too concerned about the talk of cringeing and cravenness from people who are not facing the realities?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who has visited Peking recently and studied the position with considerable care and a sense of responsibility.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there are two categories of critics of the Government's stand on democracy in Hong Kong? The first category consists of well-meaning people who, in their natural anxiety to expedite democracy in Hong Kong, overlook the difficulties of dealing with a country of 1 billion people which is not in a noticeably co-operative mood. The second category consists of people, exemplified by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who cynically use the issue of democracy as a pious smokescreen to cover their own unwillingness and inability to reassure the people of Hong Kong over passports.

Did my right hon. Friend note in the question of the right hon. Member for Gorton his statement that the Government should be prepared to "take the risk"—he used the word "risk"—of a conflict with China? He thereby implied that the Opposition were prepared to risk the future of 4 million people in Hong Kong for their own political purposes.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Oppositions can, for some time, live in an unreal world. The right hon. Member for Gorton has put himself in a completely unreal world, in which the constitutional development of Hong Kong can be divorced from 1997 and considered in isolation from it, and no thought is given to the people who will be encouraged to come forward to stand in 1991 and 1995. An Opposition can dwell in unreality for quite a long time, as long as they do not pretend or claim that they are fit to govern.

I have seen the realities of Hong Kong recently and am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the vast majority of Hong Kong citizens will regard his latest plans as a slow boat to China. Is this not part of an overall sell-out, evidenced by a document sent by him to all hon. Members, stating that the people who are to be allowed here under his other plans are almost all ethnic Chinese? Are there still no arrangements to be made for others—for example, the 10,000 Indians—who live there? Surely the right hon. Gentleman, who usually tries to be so fair, must realise that the Hong Kong people, in their context, will see him as selling them up the Yangtse Kiang river?

The hon. and learned Gentleman, while searching for old-fashioned phrases, has missed the point entirely. He is on a different point about the non-Chinese in Hong Kong. As I explained when I made my statement before Christmas, non-Chinese will be covered by the nationality proposals, but there will not be separate and special provision for them. On the hon. and learned Gentleman's specific point, I repeat that the Opposition can toss these phrases about and get some immediate applause for them. As the hon. and learned Gentleman watches the response in Hong Kong, reads what is written in the newspapers that the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong people read, considers what is happening to the index there and the reactions, I think and hope that he will find that what I said earlier is true. The reaction will certainly be one of disappointment against politically conscious people, but also one of relief.

Does my right hon. Friend accept the overwhelming reality that, however much we may want democracy in Hong Kong, there is no point on earth in going ahead in a state of confrontation with China? Will my right hon. Friend utterly reject the remarks of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) about a craven posture and the rest of it? If Labour Members have some secret ingredient to solve a difficult and delicate situation, will my right hon. Friend ask them to put it before the House? Finally, does my right hon. Friend agree that, under one country, two systems, the best way for Hong Kong to proceed is to make its system work and perhaps concentrate less on the other system in mainland China?

I note my hon. Friend's final point. The Opposition's policy on Hong Kong, where it is not obscure, is irresponsible.

Whatever the difficulties, in the end is not democracy indivisible? Therefore, does not the Secretary of State's statement about a substantial element of democracy mean a substantial element of autocracy? If we are in favour of democracy in eastern Europe and crave it for South Africa, why is it not also appropriate for Hong Kong?

Everybody who has studied or worked on the problem of the future of Hong Kong knows that the problem is unique and the solution has been unique. It is not easy to operate. The Government, the House and the people in Britain who are responsible for Hong Kong will be walking a tightrope for some years yet. I am not pretending that the solution will be easy. Equally, no purpose is served by letting others forget the unique nature of the problem. That is understood in Hong Kong and the OMELCO consensus. The discussion has been where to start on a steady progression.

Faced with the unreal expectations in Hong Kong, which have been reflected today in the Chamber, and the intransigent mood in Peking, should not the Government be congratulated on reaching a reasonable settlement in all the circumstances? Is it not highly likely that, following events in eastern Europe and bearing in mind the age of the curent leadership in Peking, a far more flexible mood will develop there long before 1997? Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Hong Kong stock exchange has risen 70 points in anticipation of his statement this morning?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that last point. That is one measure in the territory, where the confidence of people who do business is extremely important for general confidence. His point is entirely valid, and I am grateful to him for it.

Is not the truth of the matter that these negotiations between Britain and China on Hong Kong have been a charade from beginning to end? The Government talk about democracy and propose a mini-House of Lords arrangement for Hong Kong in the hope that, by the year 2009, the Chinese will import some more? Why do the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister go rabbiting on about one person, one vote in eastern Europe, yet cannot put those arrangements forward where they have at least limited power? What will de Klerk say in South Africa when he hears this message and their talk about one person, one vote in South Africa? He will say, "I think I'll take my line from those people in Britain who don't have the guts to get one person, one vote for the people of Hong Kong."

Briefly, please.

Does the Foreign Secretary not realise that something happened in Tiananman square? Why did he not go to the Chinese and say, "All bets are off. We'll start again"?

The hon. Gentleman was so busy polishing up his question that he failed to notice that his hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) had just asked exactly the same question in rather better language. I have answered it as best I can. I am rather glad that I did not choose the hon. Gentleman as one of our emissaries to Peking.

Is it not clear that the best service that this House can provide to Hong Kong is to behave with bipartisan prudence and the worst to excite expectations that we have no chance whatever of fulfilling? Should we not remember that no one is immortal?

That is rather cryptic. None of us is immortal, as my hon. Friend says. I am grateful for his observation. I hope that opinion and policy in China will continue to evolve, as I hope confidence in Hong Kong will develop. The Chinese will increasingly understand that the huge prize of which Hong Kong consists, with its plans for the future which will make it even more prosperous and more important for the economy of south China, depends on their understanding the importance in Hong Kong of free institutions and progress towards democracy, of which this arrangement is the start.

The questioning of my right hon. Friend so far reflects the limited recognition that the House has given to the fact that the stamp of our political idealism and institutions has a far greater influence than that of our national power. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend that, for a substantial development towards democracy, we must, to use his phrase, be patient and look to a perspective of the year 2007. If by then the democratic conditions that we have asked for from the Chinese Government and the people of Hong Kong have not been fulfilled, would he consider it appropriate that the sanctions that are now being placed on South Africa to achieve those conditions virtually immediately, should be placed on Hong Kong or China? If not—I am sure that he will say not—is that in itself not an adequate and wholly convincing argument why that dangerous precedent should be stopped straight away?

My hon. Friend is ingeniously leading back to a matter which the House debated two days ago. It is better to accept that the problems of, and, therefore, the solutions to, Hong Kong are unique and not easily comparable with those in other parts of the world.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm a report in today's Financial Times that the Chinese propose a change in the Basic Law to prevent persons who have a right of entry into any other country from holding any of a series of top legislative and executive posts? If that is true, does it not mean that, even by his test of preserving the future prosperity of Hong Kong, his proposal possibly to allow 50,000 Hong Kong Chinese into this country is a failure even at this stage?

My hon. Friend is mistaken. There has always been a number of senior posts—a few dozen at the most—which, under the arrangements with China, it is agreed will be held by Chinese citizens. That in no way negates or defeats the purpose of the wider scheme affecting many more people, which I proposed to the House before Christmas.

My right hon. Friend will acknowledge the almost inevitable feeling of disappointment that has come as a result of this statement. On the other hand, he will have been sustained by the congratulations that he has rightly received on what has been achieved. Does he agree that it is of immense importance that the rather unattractive sucking up to the red Chinese for major contracts in Hong Kong is not allowed to continue and that British interests and British corporations are firmly and wholly entrenched in the colony ahead of 1997?

It is important that British companies should ensure that that is so. They, like their competitors, should realise that the opportunities in Hong Kong are not decreasing, but increasing sharply. The first responsibility rests with British firms themselves. It is also the British Government's job to ensure that British interests in the territory are fully represented and protected. That is why we build up the scope and seniority of the trade representative. The Government of Hong Kong must ensure that there is a level playing field, and that British firms which submit proposals of the right quality and price have as good a chance as anybody else.

rose——

Was the hon. Gentleman present for the statement?

Yes, for the statement.

Perhaps we should return to the Sexual Offences Bill.

We return from great international issues to the type of subject that we commonly debate on a Friday. The train of the debate has been somewhat lost, but no doubt we shall be able to change down to a suitable gear for a Friday debate.

One of the attractions of Fridays is that we leave behind us the great issues, such as German reunification or the future of South Africa, and discuss parking, consumer guarantees, or kerb crawling. Perhaps we flatter ourselves if we believe that it is our role to discuss great issues over which we have no control. The minor matters that we tend to discuss on Fridays are of more immediate concern to our constituents and often they are issues over which we have some control.

I once asked a friend of mine who had a successful marriage what the recipe for it was. She said that she let her husband decide all the important things such as who will be the next Prime Minister and the rate of money supply, whereas she decided the unimportant things, such as where they would live and where they would go on holiday. Perhaps that is the appropriate role to adopt when considering problems that concern our constituents. I suspect that kerb crawling and such like has more relevance to them than the great issues of the day, about which we tend to get rather excited.

The most common problem that I hear about at my surgeries is that of bad and inconsiderate neighbours, which causes an enormous amount of distress. There is no ready practical remedy for it. It is also clear from today and from the record of the 1985 debate that kerb crawling is a problem experienced in many constituencies. I hope that we can go some way to finding a practical solution to a practical problem. It is interesting that, so far, no one has adopted a high moral tone in this debate—the House is at its least attractive when that happens. Hon. Members recognise that this is a practical problem of nuisance caused to residents in some areas.

The Bill has two main objectives. The first is to increase the effectiveness of the law dealing with kerb crawling and the second is to remove the serious limitation in the law that prevents the conviction of boys under 14 for the offence of rape.

It is difficult to obtain convictions for kerb crawling because the police or the prosecuting authorities must prove that the soliciting was persistent or that it caused nuisance or annoyance. The offence was created by the Sexual Offences Act 1985, but that Act does not appear to be much of a deterrent. That is because it is difficult for the prosecuting authorities to prove persistence, nuisance or continuing annoyance.

The Bill also introduces a much higher fine for the offence and it is right that the courts should have the discretion to impose such a fine. I appreciate the argument for relating the fine to a person's income, but that represents an extremely dangerous end of the wedge. One could argue that because a sentence of one year's imprisonment would be devastating to certain people, they should be sent to prison for less time than the hardened individual for whom five years' imprisonment might be more appropriate. That would be unfair. Those involved with the criminal law and criminals in particular recognise that sentencing is arbitrary. If personal circumstances were taken into account when imposing a fine one could quickly get into deep water.

I should have thought that the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applies. If someone propositioned someone else and asked her if she was a prostitute, that would annoy and it would be a nuisance. If that person was a prostitute there might be a burden of proof on her to suggest why it caused annoyance, but if an innocent person were so addressed it is inevitable that offence and annoyance would be caused. There would be no need to prove that as it is obvious.

At present the courts sentence recidivists to longer imprisonment than those who, if sent to prison, would lose their livelihoods and their ability to support their families.

I accept what my hon. and learned Friend says about the difficulty of proving the annoyance caused. My legal studies took place a long time ago, but I believe that the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applies to civil, not criminal law. In England one must prove the elements of the offence in criminal cases. I agree with my hon. and learned Friend that it is sensible to sentence a repeated offender to a longer term of imprisonment than someone who has committed his first offence. If, as a matter of law, the courts were invited to fine relatively wealthy people more than less wealthy people, we would get unto great difficulty, especially if we translated that doctrine to other areas of sentencing.

A respectable city figure of 40 years' standing who commits an insider trading offence might find one year in gaol devastating. It would probably ruin his marriage and his livelihood, especially if he spent all his resources on legal fees. The hardened east end criminal might find one year in gaol a doddle. He would be prepared to take that sentence in exchange for £50,000 gained from an armed robbery. If one starts to draw such distinctions one is in dangerous territory. The present arrangements are too arbitrary, as is the proposal about fines.

I do not intend to deal in detail with the abolition of the presumption that boys under 14 years cannot commit the offence of rape. It is clear that they can and my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton) is on to a good point.

There is no doubt that great nuisance is caused to people in neighbourhoods where kerb crawling occurs. It is interesting to note from the 1985 debate how many hon. Members said that kerb crawling was a serious nuisance in their constituencies. When my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Dame J. Fookes) introduced her Bill she said:

"From the point of view of ordinary women who live in that area or who have to pass through it on their way to work, it can be an extremely embarrassing and unpleasant experience to be accosted …

That is becoming more and more intolerable, because it brings secondary nuisances into play. Quarrels arise where a prostitute and a man do not agree on a price, car doors bang and there are traffic problems"

Those problems were shared by many other hon. Members. The debate covered a wide swathe of the country and political opinions.

The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) said of my hon. Friend's Bill:

"She will be giving great hope also to communities such as the one which I represent, where local residents have had to suffer year after year the abuses, threats and noise that arise when an area becomes the haunt of kerb crawlers … Motorists are to be seen driving around for hour after hour looking for prostitutes … any woman who walks along the streets of some areas … will be seen as a potential prostitute. They can be young school girls or elderly ladies … They can be walking home from school or going home from work. I have even been contacted by women to tell me that they have been stopped by motorists when taking their young children out. They have been seen as potential prostitutes."

It is clear that kerb crawling is a great nuisance in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. Apparently the 1985 Act has not had much effect in diminishing the incidence of that nuisance and that suggests that more needs to be done.

In the 1985 debate the former Member for Battersea, Mr. Alfred Dubs, said that he welcomed the Bill. That constituency is close to Streatham. He said:

"Since I first came to the House in 1979, I too have received a continuing stream of complaints about kerb-crawling men from women in the area. Some of the complaints are extremely bitter. I was once told by a mother that her schoolgirl daughter aged 14 was afraid to walk home from school in the afternoon because she was being harassed … I have received millions"—

No doubt that was an exaggeration, but he obviously felt strongly about the matter—

"of complaints about what it is like to walk home on dark afternoons and evenings and to be subjected to such intimidation".

Similar problems were experienced in other constituencies. The former Member for Nottingham, North, Mr. Richard Ottaway, described the problems in Nottingham. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, lichen (Mr. Chope) described what was happening in that area and spoke of the problems in Wandsworth when he was leader of that borough council.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) made similar complaints about Birmingham where, he said that

"kerb crawling has reached epidemic proportions and we cannot wait much longer for legislation to control it"—[Official Report, 25 January 1985; Vol. 71, c. 1241–88.]

He then read out letters from his constituents making that point.

In 1985, there was clearly a serious problem of nuisance in a widely differing range of towns and cities. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham has put the case strongly about what has been happening in Streatham, and the hon. Member for Tooting has dealt with similar problems in his constituency, the problem clearly occurs in many other areas. I have a copy of a letter from Wolverhampton metropolitan borough council in 1988 to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Hicks) which says:

"You are probably aware of problems relating to Prostitution in the All Saints Area of the town. The Housing Services Committee have been concerned for some time about the effect upon residents in that area … It would appear that operating under existing legislation with the existing resources available particularly to the Police Authority, there is little more that can be done to reduce prostitution."

Somebody from Norwich wrote to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary when he was Home Secretary saying:

"Would you please consider making our lives a lot easier and happier by a change in the law, to prevent soliciting in residential areas, not just in Norwich but nationally."

That letter was written in June 1989.

It seems clear that the problem is continuing. I do not know whether the changes that my hon. Friend proposes will make it easier to obtain convictions for the offence. We often do not achieve the effect that we have set out to achieve in legislation. Although, on the face of it, the Bill would appear to make convictions easier to obtain, I should be interested to hear the views of my right hon Friend the Minister.

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham seeks to remove from the elements that are necessary to prove the offence the aspects of persistence and annoyance and nuisance. I realise that the first and the second two are really alternatives. Under the 1985 Act, a man commits an offence

"if he solicits a woman … in a street or public place"

for the purpose of prostitution

"from a motor vehicle … or … in the immediate vicinity of a motor vehicle that he has just got out of or off."

Under the Bill, it would no longer be necessary to prove that he had acted "persistently" or had caused nuisance or annoyance. That would seem to make the offence easier to prove. Does my right hon. Friend consider that that is the view of the police, or is the problem simply a question of police priorities and resources? The prevention of kerb crawling may not be high on the list of police priorities.

I should also be interested to hear my right hon. Friend deal with a matter that has been raised by one or two hon. Members—the potential for convicting innocent people. The police seldom fit people up, but it is far from unknown, and several recent cases are extremely disturbing. We should not want to make that easier or encourage it by anything we do in the House. However, if corrupt police officers decide that they want to fit people up with convictions, it is pretty easy for them to do so already and I am not sure that the changes proposed by the Bill would make it easier.

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham also seeks to remove the presumption that a boy under 14 is incapable of committing rape. Events about which we know have made it clear that we should support my hon. Friend's proposal. Clearly, such offences are committed by people under that age, although it would still be necessary for the prosecution to prove that they knew that what they were doing was wrong and there would not be a presumption, as there is in the case of someone over 14, that they intended to cause the natural consequence of their actions. As my hon. Friend said, nobody under the age of 10 could be convicted of the offence.

If the Bill were passed, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham would succeed in simplifying section 1 of the 1985 Act by removing the qualification of persistence, and a man would commit an offence if he solicited a woman for the purpose of prostitution from a motor vehicle while it was in a street or in a public place, or in a street or in a public place while in the immediate vicinity of a motor vehicle which he had

"just got out of or off".

Ending a sentence with two prepositions and a conjuncton takes some doing. Perhaps the legislation could be polished up in Committee to avoid that as it is an ugly piece of construction.

What my hon. Friend seeks to do seems to be achievable. He would make the offence simpler to prove in court. Persistence is clearly difficult to prove unless, as m; hon. Friend said, police officers follow a particular individual and can themselves give evidence of persistence.

The other aspect of the present offence is that it has to be committed in such a manner and in such circumstances as to be likely to cause annoyance to the woman concerned or nuisance to others in the neighbourhood.

It is difficult to prove nuisance to the woman concerned. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) suggested that that would be self-evident. However, evidence is still required and it is extremely unlikely that the prostitute in question will give evidence herself. If an innocent bystander is accosted in this way, she can give evidence, but those circumstances are relatively rare. When it happens, the woman is probably reluctant to go to court and to be cross-examined on how she got herself into the situation. She may lay herself open to various unsavoury allegations.

We are still left with section 2 of the 1985 Act which says:

"A man commits an offence in a street or public place if he persistently solicits a woman … for the purpose of prostitution."

The distinction here is that the offence does not involve the use of or proximity to a car. I should be interested to know why it is felt that the word "persistently" is appropriate in that offence, as it makes the previous offence difficult to prove.

The changes spring from the Criminal Law Revision Committee, which reported back before the 1985 Act. The committee clearly felt that some changes to the law were necessary. It said:

"We have found it impossible to separate the question of kerb crawling from the more general question of men accosting women for the purpose of prostitution … We were, however, in favour of creating a specific offence to prohibit kerb crawling."

I am not sure of the logical connection between those two statements. Nevertheless, the committee concluded that a specific offence relating to kerb crawling was necessary. It proposed three separate offences, which dealt with different aspects and all were reflected in the original draft of the 1985 Bill. The amendments that qualified the offences in a way that my hon. Friend seeks to change today were introduced in Committee. If the Bill is passed, we shall return to the position of the 1985 Bill as originally drafted and the position that was proposed by the Criminal Law Revision Committee. It suggested:

"It should be an offence for a man to use a motor vehicle in a street or public place for the purpose of soliciting a woman for prostitution. The object of the offence is to stop the man who goes out in a vehicle to look for a prostitute. We are not of course drafting the offence—this would be task of the Parliamentary draftsman."

It did not consider it appropriate or necessary to have the qualifications of persistence, or of causing annoyance or nuisance. Those qualifications were added to the Bill at a later stage.

I should be grateful to hear what my right hon. Friend has to say on that aspect of the Bill. Will it make it easier to obtain convictions? Has the problem of obtaining convictions been caused by the qualifications in the 1985 Act, or by reluctance on the part of the police to prosecute or to give the matter a sufficiently high priority? There is a practical problem of nuisance to people living in many areas of our cities. If anything, the problem is becoming worse. It has not been helped substantially by the 1985 Act and, on the face of it, the Bill is likely to go a long way towards improving that. Subject to what my right hon. Friend says, if the Bill will have beneficial effects, we should support it.

I want to join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton) on introducing the Bill. It gives the House the opportunity to review the Sexual Offences Act 1985 and to consider what might be done to improve it. There is no dispute in the House that kerb crawling is a despicable act. We should all like it to be eliminated, primarily because it impairs the quality of life of those in the red light districts whose homes suffer as a result of it.

The other major part of the Bill concerns the charging of boys under the age of 14 with rape. That measure is long overdue, and the hon. Member for Streatham has our unequivocal support for it.

The 1985 Act was introduced because it was felt at the time that there was no modern legislation that could effectively get to grips with the problem that was so enlighteningly outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox). There is kerb crawling in my constituency, but on a much smaller scale than in the constituencies of my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting and of the hon. Member for Streatham.

The 1985 Act has failed, probably mainly because of the evidential requirements, which were so stringent that the Act is now difficult to enforce. It must be established that the kerb crawler was persistent, or that his actions caused nuisance or annoyance; to find the evidence for that is clearly difficult—a difficulty that the Crown prosecution service and the police have had to face.

This Bill makes it possible for a kerb crawler to commit an offence by soliciting only once. That must make convictions easier; the task of gathering evidence will be correspondingly lessened. Those who are so dramatically affected by this disease would welcome a simpler, more effective mechanism for bringing charges.

It has been said today that kerb crawling degrades parts of our cities, and hon. Members have given vivid descriptions of the huge numbers of cars that travel around certain areas. We have read reports of people's gardens being used as urinals. The hon. Member for Streatham told us an horrific story about syringes. Many drug pushers and junkies who have reverted to prostitution hang around these areas.

In addition to the environmental decay that has stemmed from these practices, I am sure that hon. Members who are married men would find it grievously offensive if their wives were persistently solicited when walking the dog, bringing a daughter home from a party or going to the local shop. Effective action must be taken to stop that.

The intentions behind the 1985 Act were good, but it has failed to deal with the problem. While the police and the courts have been using that defective legislation, however, local authorities have been taking action. The traffic management schemes to which the hon. Member for Streatham referred have made a difference—but there is no single simple solution to the problem. Any solution must embody many elements.

The police have also taken various initiatives. For instance, they observe kerb crawlers driving around and then send letters to their homes telling them that they have been seen cruising in a red light district. Other police forces have written to employers of those whom they believe have been driving around red light areas persistently.

I find such practices rather dubious. If a wife opens a letter sent to someone's home—it happens in some families—a broken marriage could result. A man's career could be wrecked if an employer read a letter from the police and decided that his kerb-crawling employee should no longer work for the company. In such cases, the police are taking action on their own against people who could be perfectly innocent: they have been neither charged nor convicted. The practice should be discontinued.

I have read the Bill with great care, and I do not believe that it will solve the problem satisfactorily. Certainly, it is not the complete answer. But any legislation would have to be taken in conjunction with other innovative measures, such as the road traffic schemes that I have mentioned. The House would be mistaken to believe that this legislation would eradicate the problem.

Clause 1(2) is central to my reservations about the Bill. Under the 1985 Act, an offence is committed if a person persistently solicits, but under this Bill he would have to solicit only once to commit an offence. I should like to examine in a little detail, even though we are on Second Reading, the way in which the police catch kerb crawlers.

I refer the House to an article in The Independent, dated 7 December 1988 and entitled, "Kerb-crawlers targeted in a nightly game". It is instructive to discover how the police operate already, and then to square that with the measures in this Bill.

The journalist who wrote the article sat in the back of a police control car. Sergeant Eddie Rich was the officer in charge and, according to the article,

"is blessed with remarkable night vision and a good memory. The registration number of each passing car is mentally logged.

The punters drive around the particular circuit of roads—twice past the police suggests a punter, three a certain bet for tailing to see if he is persistently soliciting …

The rules of the game are strict: the man has to be observed persistently soliciting. It is no good just seeing him driving slowly. Sometimes, the punters are overtaken and waved to a stop after having picked up a prostitute…

Normally the punters are cautioned: two cautions and they are 'current'—liable to arrest under the Street Offences Act …

The driver is asked to get out of the car, informed pleasantly that he is in a red light area, asked if he knew the girl he had just picked up was a prostitute …

'Some deny it—the stories are variations on a theme of "I was just giving her a lift" or "she's an old friend".' The man is usually informally cautioned and sent on his way by Sgt. Rich with a cherry: 'I won't tell your wife if you don't' …

Persistent soliciting, repeatedly approaching women who do not respond or being caught several times in the same night in the company of prostitutes, leads to a summons under the Sexual Offences Act."

I thought that a useful illustration. In summary, the police take the numbers of the cars going around if they have been past them three times. Next, they see a man get out of a car. Thirdly, they see the man talk to a woman and, fourthly, the police then decide whether the man was soliciting a prostitute. That is essentially the practice.

It is clear that clause 1 would give the police considerable powers to bring charges—appreciably more than currently exist. The police would need to know that the woman was a prostitute, but I do not believe that that is too difficult, because many of the women will have been to court. They will be known and some will even have pleaded guilty. However, how will the police be able to establish that the man was soliciting a prostitute? It is unlikely that the police would have overheard the conversation between the prostitute and——

rose——

If I can just finish my little bit of logic, I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.

It is unlikely that the police would have overheard the conversation between the prostitute and the man. Furthermore, the prostitute would be unlikely to deny that she was solicited by him. Therefore, on what grounds will the police proceed?

Although as I have already said, I support the motive behind the Bill, I am concerned that we might be creating legislation that could result in innocent people being convicted. I should like to give an example of that, but before I do so, I give way to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin).

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I understood him to say—I assume that he is basing this on the Sexual Offences Act 1985—that a woman has to be a prostitute before there can be proceedings. That does not seem to accord with the Act, because all that the man has to be seen to do is to solicit

"persistently or, subject to section 5(6) below, in such manner or in such circumstances as to be likely to cause annoyance to the woman (or any of the women) solicited, or nuisance to other persons in the neighbourhood".

Therefore, we do not need proof that the woman is a prostitute. All that needs to be proved to show that a man has committed an offence is that he has solicited a woman for the purpose of prostitution. It does not matter whether she is a prostitute. He is doing wrong by assuming that she might be, and by the fact that that is the purpose in his mind.

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was directing my argument to cases in which a man gets out of a car and solicits a prostitute. The hon. Gentleman is right to bring that point to the attention of the House, because that part of the legislation protects women who are not prostitutes. On those grounds, I support what the hon. Gentleman has said 100 per cent.

I should like to give an example of the sort of case that is helping me to decide whether we should give the Bill a Second Reading. We have heard about how the police operate, but let us take the case that I outlined to my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting in the Library yesterday. I believe that he obliquely referred to it.

I refer to the example of a man who is visiting a friend who has a flat above a shop in a red light district. The visitor has never been to that area before and is having difficulty in finding the flat, which does not have a conspicuous entrance. He is lost and drives around the block two or three times to try to find the flat. The police have noticed that he has passed them two or three times and that he has been staring out of the window of the car towards the pavement. He still cannot find the flat, and after looking for some time, he gets out of the car to seek advice. He goes on to the pavement and a young lady readily comes towards him. He asks her about the address of his friend. The visitor does not know that she is a prostitute. However, by now the police will have got into their car and assumed that he was kerb crawling and soliciting.

As a friend of the police, I always weigh in their favour, but, as legislators, we have to take into account the fact that the police report could say, "I did not hear what was said, but I believe that the man was soliciting." No corroboration is needed. We all know that in such a case the visitor is an innocent man, but it is clear that he would be vulnerable to being charged in accordance with the 1985 Act, as it would be amended by the hon. Gentleman's Bill.

I hinted earlier in an intervention that I believe that, as legislators, we have to be careful what we create. The cry of civil liberties is often raised, but we must take it into account and ensure that innocent people are protected. I believe that that case is realistic and fear that the clause needs careful attention. The matter should he considered in Committee so that we ensure that we have legislation that not only eliminates the disease of kerb crawling and prostitution, but which also ensures that we have a balance.

The hon. Member for Streatham is aware that the other place included the word "persistently" in the Act for the very reason that a new piece of legislation was being introduced that might result in heavy convictions. That is why there is doubt in my mind; although I want powerful legislation that is easy to operate, I want to ensure that we shall not convict innocent people.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern and welcome what he has been saying. Perhaps I can help him with the example that he gave of a visitor who might have got into trouble, because I understand that it is a cause of concern. However, under the 1985 Act, that person could still have got into some trouble.

I remarked earlier that Nottingham police have secured convictions by noting the number of a car seen to be driving past two or three times and stopping, and because the driver had a conversation with a prostitute. However, that takes a lot of police manpower, and a prosecution is not certain.

Even under the present legislation, a person in the situation described by the hon. Gentleman might find himself in difficulty with the police—but not if he was a genuine visitor. He would only have to say, was visiting my aunt. She has just moved to a new flat and I am not sure where she lives. I have her address and telephone number." The police only have to go to that address and knock on the door, to find it opened by a lady saying, "Yes, where's my nephew?" I do not believe that a genuine visitor would find himself summonsed.

That returns us to the earlier point, that prosecution would be at the discretion of the police and the Crown prosecution service.

Other legislation could be invoked, but the 1985 Act was created specifically to deal with the problem of kerb crawling and prostitution and with the horrific problems that we heard about. We are trying to create legislation directed specifically at kerb crawling and prostitution and to make it work so as to achieve a balance between securing a conviction with reasonable ease—by removing the necessity for evidential requirements that are too stringent—and ensuring that there are never any wrongful convictions. I would welcome the Minister's comments on the risk of misjudgment, for I know that he will have put: a lot of thought into that aspect.

Clause 1(3) contains the proposal, which we support., that penalties should be raised from level 3 to level 4, from £400 to £1,000. A penalty of £400 is absurdly low for such a serious offence. To put it into perspective, a level 3 fine is imposed on people who attempt to evade paying their tube train fare. Clearly, that offence can hardly be compared with the nuisance and annoyance caused by prostitution and kerb crawling.

Labour's policy document, "A Safer Britain" stated that fines should be means-related, to ensure that people on low incomes are able to pay the fines imposed on them. The last thing that we want is to put people behind bars because they cannot pay.

indicated assent.

The Minister nods, and he addressed the same point in the Government's recently published White Paper, which appeared after our own policy document.

Raising the penalty to level 4 will mean that both rich and poor will, at least under Labour's proposals, regard their fines as a real punishment. I understand that many kerb crawlers are reasonably well-off and probably do not even notice that their bank account has been debited by the amount of the fine at its current level.

Clause 2 will enable charges to be brought against a boy below the age of 14, against the current assumption that such a boy is incapable of rape and cannot have sexual intercourse. We fully support that notion and believe that the present law is unrealistic. The situation was best summed up by the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee's "Working Paper on Sexual Offences—October 1980". Paragraph 27 of that document states:

"Under the present law, as we have already stated, a boy under 14 cannot be convicted of … rape … whatever his actual physical capacity. Boys under this age … do in fact commit acts which would be rape if they were over 14 … Cases of this kind occur in what have become known as 'gang bangs', that is a series of sexual assaults by a group of youths on a girl. Such cases are very serious indeed as the girl often suffers severe emotional injury as well as physical harm … The older boys will be convicted of rape and punished severely, while a boy under 14, who may have had a leading part in the rape, can only be treated as having aided and abetted."

Such a scandalous situation should not exist in modern law.

It is difficult to assess the extent of rape offences by boys aged below 14. We know that in 1988, extraordinarily enough, 45 boys under 14 were prosecuted for indecent assault, and that a further 290 were cautioned. Our posture is that rape is so serious, and its effect on women so great, that men should be severely punished, whether or not they are below the age of 14—provided that they knew that what they were doing was wrong.

My right hon. and hon. Friends and I will give the Bill a Second Reading but in its present form, it will not succeed any more than the 1985 Act in seriously limiting kerb crawling. We must take a broader look, beyond legislation—which cannot by itself do the job. There are many elements to the solution, and they must be carefully considered in Committee, where I hope that we shall have an opportunity to add to the proposals of the hon. Member for Streatham, in helping the people living in red light districts who have to endure horrific problems, in the hope that they will be able to enjoy a decent environment in future.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise for interrupting the debate, but I seek your clarification as to how I may pursue an urgent matter that has just come to my attention. Apparently, on 11 February the Hinkley Point nuclear power station was, as a result of storms, out of action for 20 minutes, during which time it had no cooling—which could have led to a serious meltdown and a major nuclear incident.

I understand that the Secretary of State for Energy was notified of that incident. An investigation into whether or not such an event did occur is, I am sure the House will agree, a matter of considerable urgency and public concern. Will it be possible, through your good offices, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to alert the Secretary of State and to request that he makes a statement to the House or outside it about whether such an incident did occur and to propose steps to resolve the matter—or to give a reassurance that it did not? My information suggests that there was a serious incident in which the station's lights and cooling system failed, and that there was considerable disorder and anxiety.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern, but there is nothing that I can do directly to help. Doubtless what he has said will be listened to and notified to Ministers.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton) on his fortune in securing such a high place in the ballot, and on introducing the Bill. My hon. Friend is well known for the assidious way in which he looks after his constituents. Kerb crawling is a great problem in his constituency, and he has rightly grabbed with both hands the opportunity to deal with the problem.

Kerb crawling and prostitution are a plague—a localised plague but nevertheless one that covers quite large areas. Once an area has a reputation for such a thing it is difficult to get rid of it. Different areas have different reputations. For example, Belgravia has a reputation for large stucco houses, and that is why people go there. Islington has a reputation for a famous street market, and my constituency has a reputation for the longest street market in Europe and for an extensive area of public open space—Walthamstow marshes. It is also well known for including an area of Epping forest. Those are good reputations, but part of my hon. Friend's constituency has a thoroughly bad reputation, and possibly because it is so bad, it is all the more difficult to get rid of.

Other areas suffer from kerb crawling and prostitution. I lived in Islington for many years, and I know that Finsbury Park was a notorious locality. It is very pleasant—close to a park—with nice houses and wide streets, but it had that reputation and the local council had to work hard over a number of years to eradicate the problem.

Kerb crawling is an unpleasant activity, except for the person indulging in it. However, by indulging in that activity people make an area unpleasant for others. Take an area such as King's Cross, which at one time had a reputation for kerb crawling. I do not know whether it still has, but at one time it certainly did. Around a major railway station, there are a lot of people coming and going.

They may include strangers, people from abroad perhaps, and it cannot be pleasant for them to arrive at King's Cross station, to wander out into the street to look for a cup of coffee or something to eat and to be accosted or see someone obviously kerb crawling.

I have seen kerb crawling in the King's Cross area. I saw a large, black Mercedes with diplomatic plates crawling around the back streets, and it was clear what the driver was up to.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) offered a note of caution about lost strangers, and I think that that is a valid point which will have to be closely considered in Committee. Some areas of cities have the most complicated one-way systems. Harking back to Islington, the Barnsbury one-way system is notorious. Once in it, it is almost impossible to get out without the services of a guide. Even taxi drivers do not like to go there. I am not insinuating that that area suffers from kerb crawlers—I am sure that it does not. However, if one does not know the area and gets stuck one can go round and round. The car may start to overheat, and the driver may get hot and bothered and not know which way to turn. He may come up against a no entry sign, which means that he has to turn round and find another way. In the end, drivers are sometimes forced to go the wrong way down a one-way street because it is the only conceivable way of getting out.

If a driver is unlucky enough to find himself in a one-way system in an area known for kerb crawling there may be the possibility of an error. I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham said about that, but it is nevertheless a possibility, and perhaps it could be considered in Committee.

Urban areas suffer increasingly from disturbances. Hon. Members with town and city constituencies know that only too well, as they are receiving more and more complaints. During last year's long hot summer most people kept all their windows open, and the weather was taken as an invitation to be sociable and give parties—which nowadays seems to mean people arriving at any time up to 4 am, often with much screeching of tyres, revving of engines and blasting of music from car radios. The hosts of such parties sometimes seem to hold open house: word gets round, and people come from miles away. I have received complaints about such problems in two streets in my constituency; they are very difficult to deal with.

As all hon. Members know, it is unwise to become involved in disputes between neighbours, but it is difficult not to when the inhabitants of an entire street arrive in despair at our surgeries. As soon as I see the dark rings under their eyes, I know all too well what the problem is: they have been kept awake at night, perhaps throughout the week.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham pointed out, kerb crawling compounds the problem. People who sleep in front rooms are forced to sleep at the back of the house to get away from the noise. Groups of prostitutes sometimes congregate at 1 am, screaming, shouting, chattering and laughing; people arrive in motor cars and hoot their horns. The disturbance must be terrible. On top of all that, there is the distress caused to women and their daughters as they go to and from school and the shops or engage in entirely legitimate recreations. They must dread coming home sometimes, knowing that they will be accosted.

I am glad to learn that the penalties will be sharpened. The Bill proposes an increase in the fines from scale 3 to scale 4: not being a lawyer, I did not have a clue what that meant, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham for spelling it out. There is, of course, a danger that heavier fines may simply encourage prostitutes to work harder to recover the money that they have had to pay, and we should make it clear to the courts that prostitutes must really feel the effect of the penalties imposed on them.

Kerb crawlers must also be deterred. Once they are convicted, the story of their shame must be spread across their local newspapers. If a kerb crawler comes from the north of England, The Northern Echo should know about it, and should spread the story across the centre pages with a whacking great photograph in the middle and the caption, "This man was convicted of kerb crawling". He must be held up to scorn and ridicule.

That sort of penalty will make people think twice about committing such offences. Fines are chickenfeed to rich business men and even foreign diplomats, who simply write out a cheque or take the money out of petty cash. They will value their reputation far more than just having to write out a cheque. If they know that the story will be spread across the local newspapers, together with their photograph, it will act as a strong deterrent.

How do we tackle the problem nationally rather than locally? I do not believe that the French system would be acceptable here. If we legitimised brothels from scratch, if I may put it that way, where on earth would they be sited? If people saw in their local newspapers an application for planning consent for a brothel in the neighbourhood, they would not be very happy.

Or there might be planning application for change of use.

Yes, indeed. One wonders to what use a warehouse in an established industrial area might be put. Could it be said that a change to use by prostitutes is a legitimate industrial activity? We are skating on thin ice.

Other countries have attempted to solve the problem by heavy-handed and brutal means. When I went on a long journey round South America about 12 years ago I was approached by a girl in Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. Fortunately for me, just at that moment a police car came. round the corner and she fled, or she might have left me holding the baby. I should have found myself in serious trouble. Paraguay's prisons are not the most pleasant of places.

When I was in Buenos Aires I went to the docks area purely for the purpose of travelling across the river Plate to Montevideo. Exactly the same thing happened. A couple of girls suddenly popped out of the building and gabbled something at me. My Spanish was quite good in those days, but I could not follow what they said. However, they did not have to say anything; what they meant was perfectly clear. Again, fortunately, just at that moment—my guardian angel must have been wearing a police helmet—a police van appeared. However, the two girls dragged me into the house, slammed the door and bolted it. I thought that I was going to be in the most desperate trouble. I looked through my passport to see whether I had the name and address of our consul in Buenos Aires. Fortunately, all that the girls did was to take me upstairs where there appeared to be a perfectly

legitimate restaurant where I spent a happy and convivial evening. They did not attempt to take me downstairs again.

In such countries, the problem is solved by the use of police brutality. Nothing would induce me to suggest that that is the way to solve our problem. The Bill is on the right lines. However, it needs to be considered further in Committee. Its provisions will result in cleaning-up the area where my hon. Friend's constituents are suffering. All hon. Members must believe that that is the right way to proceed.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. In particular, I most warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton) on introducing a Bill that attempts to deal with a most difficult, awkward and, frankly, unpleasant subject. It is not a subject for the squeamish. My hon. Friend has shown considerable courage in introducing the Bill. Both the House and the country are in his debt.

My hon. Friend described some ugly and disagreeable scenes in parts of Streatham. I must say that I have never heard of kerb crawling taking place in my constituency, in Twickenham, Teddington, Hampton or Whitton. My hon. Friend said that in his constituency it took place only in certain districts and neighbourhoods and that it did not happen in many other constituencies. I cannot claim that all my constituents are entirely innocent of all crimes. Constituencies are affected by their geography: as mine is near Heathrow airport, there have been cases of drug smuggling; and there have been other serious crimes, ranging from murder and rape to burglary.

It is something of a mystery why prostitution should take place in this day and age. It seems rather odd that people should pay for what can be obtained free, but it does happen.

What causes offence is the open display and the banging about. Hon. Members have spoken of the nuisance and the annoyance, and have referred to doors slamming. Over the years, I have protested about aircraft noise, which is a major nuisance in my constituency as it is close to Heathrow. However, one old lady wrote to me saying that she did not mind the noise of the aircraft as she liked to think of people going for rides in aeroplanes, but what she could not stand was neighbours' car doors slamming at night.

One can well imagine that, in kerb-crawling areas, the noise of doors slamming, loud conversation, people calling out from cars, cars circling round and brakes screeching at all hours of the evening and the night must be very annoying to many people.

I accept what my hon. Friend says—that the enforcement of the 1985 Act is difficult because of the way in which it is drafted. It is significant that, in the last year for which statistics are available, there were only 521 cases of men prosecuted for kerb-crawling, yet there were more than 8,000 cases of women prosecuted for soliciting—about 16 times as many.

I am rather doubtful whether the proposed increase in the maximum fine from £400 to £1,000 will act as much of a deterrent unless it is fully applied by the courts. The £400 fine is now seldom imposed: I am told that the average fine is about £100. Unless the courts take notice of the increase and impose high penalties, I am sceptical about the deterrent effect of increasing the maximum fine. The courts are too lenient in respect of many different criminal offences, and this is probably one of them.

I should like to ask my right hon Friend the Minister of State whether the motor vehicles referred to in the Bill include motor cycles. We have to anticipate the law applying into the next century, when the North sea oil runs out and petrol will be more expensive and more people will turn away from the use of cars and use motor cycles.

I should like to be assured that the proposed amendment to the law on kerb crawling will include motor cycles, because it would be possible to kerb-crawl for the purpose of soliciting prostitutes by motor cycle. Motor cycles might be even noisier than cars. The engines of motor cycles might make even more noise than the slamming of car doors. It is not convenient for everyone to travel on motor cycles. Some people who are solicited—the younger ones, if not the older ones—may be prepared to ride pillion.

The threat of AIDS adds importance to the debate. The House debated AIDS the day after my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham had an Adjournment debate in January 1989 on kerb crawling. Since that time, the threat of AIDS has increased. Within the past few days, Health Ministers have given new warnings on the increasing risk of AIDS being spread through sexual intercourse between men and women. Prostitution increases that risk. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham said that some prostitutes in Streatham may be suffering from AIDS or hepatitis. In that context, it is right to intensify the attack on kerb crawling.

Clause 2 rightly abolishes the presumption that theoretically a boy under the age of 14 is incapable of committing rape. An extract from The Daily Telegraph of 5 September 1989 is headed: "Hunt for boys aged 12 and 14 over sex attack." It reads:

"A boy aged about 12 and another believed to be between 14 and 16 years old were being hunted by police in Leeds yesterday after subjecting a 29-year-old married woman to a horrifying sexual assault at knife-point. More than 40 police officers were drafted into the Garforth area where the woman was attacked early Sunday evening after being dragged into bushes between two busy roads and ordered to strip naked.

She was raped by each of the boys as the other watched, using a Stanley knife with which she was repeatedly threatened.

The attack lasted more than 15 minutes.

A detective inspector said

"She was now being treated by a police surgeon and was likely to be admitted to hospital because she was still in a serious state of shock.

`In all my experience, I have never seen such an attack to be committed by someone as young as 12, but from the evidence we have there is no doubt that one of these boys is no older than that … We are treating this as an extremely serious attack on this lady and we are anxious to apprehend these two boys as quickly as possible.

Under our law people under the age of 14 cannot be tried for the crime of rape so we are describing this as a serious sexual assault.—

The age of 14 was set in the 19th century, partly by statute law and partly by case law. It is a known medical fact that the age of puberty for girls and boys has gradually reduced. Boys and girls mature earlier than they did a century ago. I do not know the reason for that; it may have something to do with improved and balanced diet.

The tendency to violent crime is augmented by violent and pornographic scenes depicted on video or sometimes on television. I hope that, in addition to enacting the Bill, the House, through the Broadcasting Bill and other measures laid before it, will tighten up on pornographic and violent videos. The combination of those videos and the gradually reducing age of puberty have contributed to some boys aged under 14 committing crimes that should come within the ambit of the Bill.

I hope that the Minister will listen to what I am saying. I hope that the House will give the Bill an unopposed Second Reading and that it continues to progress as rapidly as possible.

I was listening carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel); if he wants to cross-question me afterwards in a sort of "Mastermind", I am sure I shall be able to answer his questions. I am glad to join in the congratulations that he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton) on the excellent Bill that he has introduced today.

I am grateful for this opportunity to outline the Government's position. Before doing so, it is incumbent on me, on behalf of the House, to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham wholeheartedly. All hon. Members who have spoken have been in favour of the Bill. I congratulate him warmly both on his success in the ballot and on introducing a Bill that strengthens and rationalises the law in a way that will be understood and welcomed not only by his constituents, but by people throughout the country, particularly where the nuisance of street prostitution and kerb crawling exists.

The constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham are fortunate to have his powerful voice in this place. My hon. Friend has previously discussed the nuisance that so affects his constituents. The fact that he has struck a resonant chord with the House can be recognised by the strong support that he has received from the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) and from my hon. Friends the Members for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) and for Lewisham, West (Mr. Maples), subject to one qualification that I shall attempt to deal with later.

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham certainly enjoys the support of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall), also subject to one or two qualifications that I shall attempt to deal with. If the Bill receives a Second Reading, we can deal with those reservations in Committee. We heard a powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson). I only wish that he had gone on longer with his tales from Argentina, but perhaps we can discuss them on another occasion in the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham also received congratulations from my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham in a powerful speech.

Almost exactly a year ago, I was on my feet replying to a speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham on the Adjournment. In his speech he represented, with his customary courtesy and clarity, the need to modify the wording of the Sexual Offences Act 1985. He gave us a treat today by reading some extracts from the speech that he made on that occasion. I often feel that my own speeches read quite well when I look back on them. Certainly, the extract that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham gave read extremely well. It has worn well in the passage of time.

At that time, I said that I agreed with his arguments, some of which I was unfamiliar with. I gave a clear hint that the Government would favour a reform as soon as they had a suitable opportunity to look again at the issue. My hon. Friend has taken me at my word, and I am glad to be at the Dispatch Box again, almost exactly a year after he raised the issue on the Adjournment, honouring what I said to him then and offering the Government's support for what he seeks to do.

My hon. Friend raised a number of broader points, which he has not chosen to put into his excellent Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent drafting of the Bill. He made points that he felt deserved an airing. He spoke of what we should do about pimps and pimping and the men who live so vilely on the often young, simple and deluded women, who ply their trade. He has made some important points and the Government must consider that issue in future, although not within the Bill's context, unless my hon. Friend seeks to amend the Bill later in Standing Committee. I think that perhaps he will not.

My hon. Friend asked whether men who were convicted of kerb crawling should have their driving licences removed as an additional penalty to drive home the lesson of conviction. It is an interesting idea, but the main purpose of imposing disqualifications from driving following convictions for road traffic offences is to remove bad drivers from the roads. That is why we have that offence. That would not be the purpose here if we were to take up that suggestion.

We could also remove or endorse the driving licences of people as an additional penalty. There is an additional penalty for offenders who use motor vehicles in committing more serious, indictable offences—for example, robbery. Only the Crown court can disqualify an offender on those grounds and only when convicting the person of an offence punishable with more than two years' imprisonment. Kerb crawling is not on a par with that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham specifically asked whether someone kerb crawling from a motor bicycle would be caught by the Bill; the answer is yes. It covers any form of motorised vehicle. I hope that that satisfies him.

A couple more interesting points were raised about the use of electronic monitoring and curfews as a possible form of punishment for prostitutes to keep them off the streets. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will certainly bear in mind what has been said. The House will be aware that, in my right hon. Friend's White Paper, which was announced last week to such universal acclaim, the Government's intention that we should move towards making curfewing more available to the courts was not just floated, but stated. That is an important issue, and if we have a criminal justice Bill, we shall have to consider the use of curfewing a a power to be made available to the courts in this context.

The Bill has two separate purposes, and it is right that each should be considered fully and individually on its own merits. The first is to increase the effectiveness of the law in dealing with the appalling and persistent—I use the word carefully—nuisance of kerb crawling. The second is to remove a serious limitation in the law, which prevents the conviction of any boy under 14 of a sexual offence involving penetration.

This morning, we have heard a great deal about the first purpose of the Bill set out in clause 1. I propose to begin by saying a little more about the second purpose, about which we have heard rather less. It involves a reform which merits closer attention than it has been given hitherto.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham explained, the abolition of the presumption about the sexual capacity of boys under 14 was recommended by the Criminal Law Revision Committee in its 15th report. There was unanimous support for the proposal To that extent, clause 2 is short, to the point and just what is wanted by the committee and most sensible public opinion today.

As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West reminded us, it is important when we legislate to understand what we are doing and why we are setting out to do it. I have studied the Bill carefully to see the import of clause 2. It is important to be absolutely clear why my hon. Friend wants clause 2 and to remove some evident misconceptions about what the Bill may do in respect of clause 2.

The first misconception is that we are just talking about rape. The sexual offences that the law says such boys cannot commit are not restricted just to rape. Obviously, I must go into some detail, but I intend to spare the House as much unpleasant detail as I can. It is important to appreciate the effect of clause 2 before the House decides to give the Bill a Second Reading, as I hope it will.

The offences that the law says boys under 14 cannot commit include all those crimes that involve the offender's capacity, physically and unlawfully, to penetrate a victim. All the various acts and attempted acts of rape and of buggery are involved. It is important that the House understands that.

The second misconception that might arise from clause 2 is that boys under 14 just do not do that type of thing. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham has already given us a graphic account of an incident in Leeds, from which it is clear that boys have committed the exact offences under consideration.

The other misconception is that, if boys under the age of 14 commit such acts, the numbers are too small for the law to be involved. That fallacy is aided by the fact that, because such offences are not recognised, statistics on them are not collected. Unless the House decides to change the law we must, for now, depend upon the necessarily anecdotal, but powerful, evidence from the police in Leeds and elsewhere.

Statistics tell us, however, that in the four latest years for which figures are available, nearly 300 boys aged between 10 and 13 years were proceeded against for indecent assault on a female. That is a pretty shocking statistic. In 85 of those cases, the assaults were committed not on young girls—not that that makes it any better—but on victims who were older than 16, in some cases women in their 20s or even older. Therefore, in a substantial number of cases adult women were the victims.

The lesser charge of indecent assault had to be substituted in those cases because the law does not allow for the offender to be capable of doing what he did. Those cases are not concentrated in London, and they are exceptionally distressing. In the past 12 months alone, in West Yorkshire there have been 12 cases involving boys under 14. There were half a dozen in Brixton, one small area of London, and others around the country.

It is important for the House to realise the nature of the offences. In one, the victim, aged four, handicapped and epileptic, was raped by the boy next door, aged 13. In another the victim was aged five. A victim aged 10 was gang-raped while visiting friends by 13-year-old boys who dragged her upstairs. The last of the litany of distressing examples that I could give the House was a sickening multiple attack on a married woman in her late 20s, a mother of three, by schoolboy rapists under the age of 14.

Any hon. Member who has received, as we have received in the Home Office, letters from the parents of a violated child who has gone through the most awful physical pain and, as hon. Members have said, who may suffer persistent mental trauma for many years, will know the pain and the consternation that they feel, not only because the act has happened, but because the law is adding to the injury of a vicious rape or a brutal act of sexual assault the insult that it did not happen. The law says that what manifestly happened and can be proved did not happen. That is grossly unsatisfactory for the statute book.

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham has homed in sharply on that point. The House and I should be grateful to him for dealing with the matter. Our criminal justice system is entitled to the confidence of victims just as much as to the confidence of criminals. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is right when he says that we should put the victim first on every occasion. The victim and the victim's relatives need the help and support of the law.

I come now to a closely related matter which arises out of the argument that I have used in support of the Bill, but which has not been picked out in this morning's debate and which affects adult women in particular. The names of juveniles who are the victims of rape or other offences are, of course, protected absolutely by law. It is wrong to suppose that the Bill would make no real practical difference to the adult victim.

This is an important issue. At present, the adult woman victim of an under-14 rapist is not protected by the anonymity provisions which would be afforded to her were the alleged assailant aged over 14. Surely that is wrong. The issue concerns me as chairman of the ministerial group on women's issues. If the offence is rape and can be recognised as such, all victims, however young their assailants, will from now on benefit from the provision guaranteeing anonymity.

In particular, non-juvenile victims will be guaranteed anonymity by the provisions in the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) and I served together on the Committee that considered that Bill. We were equally happy, as was the Labour Front Bench, to agree to the extension of anonymity to a woman who was an alleged rape victim from the moment that she reported the rape, whether it was ever brought to trial or conviction. It is clear that, unless we change the law concerning boys under 14, we cannot extend that provision to women. Should the Bill receive a Second Reading and go into Committee, that protection will be extended. People will be tremendously grateful to my hon. Friend for making that possible.

My hon. Friend's provision is important to the parents of young victims in that they are seeing that justice is done and that it is recognised that an offence has been committed when it manifestly has been.

That will be a relief not only to the parents of victims, but to the parents of those who may perpetrate such acts. It will deter those youngsters from getting into trouble.

My hon. Friend is right about parental responsibility in this respect. It is a theme on which she has addressed the House on a number of occasions and I agree with her entirely.

This provision is extremely important to the adult victim of an under-14 assailant. She may now have the protection of anonymity to help her through the hurt and trauma of rape. It is a significant provision for a small group of victims.

Clause I may be of more significance to more people and seeks to amend the kerb crawling offence in section 1 of the 1985 Act.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if, as I believe is right, younger boys are to be prosecuted and convicted of offences of rape and other penetrative offences, it will be important to examine the way in which they are dealt with after conviction? Is the Home Office looking into appropriate ways of dealing with these young boys, who tend to he peculiarly mixed up and from appalling backgrounds?

My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Health, who is responsible for policy matters governing the care of young offenders in this category, are considering these matters all the time. It is a disturbing fact that those who assault have often in their turn been assaulted physically or sexually, or both, in their youth. There seems to be something, if not hereditary, at least connected to family circumstances, which leads some of these young disturbed people to behave as they do. But we cannot forgive them in the first instance for the dreadful acts that they have committed. We hope to reform and rehabilitate them as soon as possible thereafter, while, of course, protecting the victims.

I turn now to the first provision of the Bill, to amend the kerb crawling offence in section 1(1) of the Sexual Offences Act 1985. A good many hon. Members have experienced complaints from their constituents: my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West, the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser), the hon. Member for Tooting—he made a powerful speech on which he was rightly congratulated by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West—my hon. Friends the Members for Twickenham for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg), and for Wirral, South (Mr. Porter); and lastly, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West who made a perfectly timed four-minute intervention before the statement at 11 am. I understand the anxiety that some hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West, have voiced about this provision.

Anyone who has looked into the history of the 1985 Act will know that my hon. Friend's Bill deletes from the kerb crawling offence in that legislation the qualifications of persistence, nuisance and annoyance which were added to it during its passage to the statute book. The insertion of those qualifications reflected the caution with which Parliament, understandably and perhaps even rightly, approaches proposals that may affect the liberty of the individual. But there was no real argument back in 1985 about the need to grant powers to deal with severe local problems and the nuisance caused by kerb crawling.

So far, the debate today has not been about what may or may not be morally reprehensible but about which activities pursued by prostitutes' clients should be restricted because of their effects on residents and ordinary women. The House has to strike the right balance between dealing with the problem effectively and removing this persistent stain on the lives of many, and safeguarding the interests of the innocent. This morning we have heard one or two powerful examples of how innocent people might be convicted. I do not think that likely, but that is the sort of issue that we need to discuss in more detail in Committee.

There is a crucial difference between today's debate and the debates of five years ago. Today's takes place against the background of the all-too-evident failure of the offences finally agreed upon in the Bill brought in by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Dame J. Fookes) to catch the nuisance. That point was powerfully made by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin) in one of his interventions.

In the last three years for which figures are available—1986, 1987 and 1988—the total number of convictions for the section 1 offence for the whole of England and Wales is only 955. The annual average for the whole country is probably less than the number of kerb crawling incidents seen in one week—or perhaps in one night—in some hon. Members' constituencies.

The offence as specified in the 1985 Act—this was not the intention of my hon. Friend the Member for Drake, who tried so hard to make the provisions work at the time—has neither caught nor deterred offenders in the way in which many hon. Members hoped that it would. The reason for that failure is not difficult to find. Because of the changes made in Committee, the Act was blinded to the real nuisance of kerb crawling. I can advise my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West, who raised a point earlier on this issue, that the Act is not as effective as it should be.

My hon. Friend asked specifically whether the police feel that they need more powers. The answer to that is a clear and unequivocal yes. Those who have to live with kerb crawling or who have spoken to those beleagured people or to the police who try to deal with the nuisance, know that the real nuisance is in the sum of the activity, not the individual incident—a point that was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. In such areas, there is no shortage of prostitutes. Even if a man does not solicit persistently, when his activities are added to those of others, a persistent nuisance definitely emerges.

Hon. Members who represent some of the worst afflicted areas, such as my hon. Friend the Member For Streatham and the hon. Member for Tooting, will readily agree that whole neighbourhoods continue to live with a dreadful infestation of slow-moving cars trailing girls. Many women are in fear of going about in those areas. Feelings range from unpleasantness to outright fear.

It is said by some that, where there is no witness to testify, there cannot be a victim. I do not find it at all difficult—I do not know of any hon. Member who will find it difficult—to identify the victims in this respect. The victims of kerb crawling are the constituents of Streatham and elsewhere, who suffer from the nuisance. Frankly—this is why I personally support my hon. Friend's Bill—I do not think that we have given the victims of kerb crawling enough attention. Many of those victims have made representations to hon. Members of all parties, to the Home Office and to the Metropolitan and other police forces.

Of course individuals have been upset by isolated incidents, but I reckon that the Criminal Law Revision Committee go it right. When the committee published its report in 1984, I hope that its members were not too put out by the fact that its recommendations were not acted upon immediately, although some hon. Members tried to ensure that they were. I hope that the members of the Criminal Law Revision Committee—they are a distinguished group assisted by distinguished secretaries and assistant secretaries—now feel a bit more cheerful, because it eventually looks as if their advice will be accepted, albeit belatedly. I do not know whether any member of the CLRC has ever read any W. H. Auden, who was right when he said

"Time will show nothing but I told you so."

The CLRC will be able to sign up to what Auden wrote. The CLRC examined the whole subject in detail and concluded clearly and correctly in 1984—this has been borne out by the passage of time—that by its very nature, kerb crawling is a nuisance, irrespective of whether the manner in which it is carried out may or may not cause a nuisance on any particular occasion. The CRLC said:

"The law should not be too difficult to enforce. It must deter. Evasion should not be easy … An ineffective law would be worse than useless."

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the proposal to increase the maximum fine from £400 to £1,000 is unlikely to be effective if magistrates impose an average fine of £100?

My hon. Friend is right to say that fines must be set at the right level to be an effective deterrent. I hope that, when members of the Magistrates Association read the report of this debate in Hansard and other accounts of the Bill's progress through Parliament, they will take note of my hon. Friend's emphasis on the need to impose fines that really bite on those people who cause such a nuisance. If that is not done, the Bill will not have the effect that it should. I agree very much with the spirit of the views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham.

The problem with the existing offence is that the prosecution has to show not merely that a man was soliciting from a car for the purposes of prostitution but that that activity was repeated. I do not need to rehearse the arguments that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham made most effectively. There has been a hint in comments made about the Bill, not in this Chamber, but publicly, that there is a lack of confidence in the police and that a person should never be convicted of kerb crawling or of any other offence on the evidence of a policeman alone.

Would the same argument be made if the policeman was the sole witness to an armed robbery or to a rape in the street? Surely not. The lack of confidence that some people have in the ability of the police to pursue such offences properly is illogical and wrong, and does no credit to those who display it. The laws of our country allow a court—the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery, who sits as a recorder in the courts of our land, will correct me if I am wrong—to convict on the evidence of one credible witness in all except a very few cases.

Those who have criticised the ability of the police to provide satisfactory evidence are suggesting that the sole evidence of any adult witness may be relied upon to secure a conviction—unless that adult person happens to be a police officer. That is ridiculous, and I utterly refute any suggestion that the police cannot and would not properly enforce the law. That is their job, and the one that the public expect them to do.

I am not insensitive, and no right hon. and learned Member should be, to fears about the possible use of techniques to entrap men into committing offences, and it is important that civil liberties are properly addressed. Government policy is clear, and was spelt out to the Home Affairs Committee in the course of its recent inquiry covering the investigation of drugs offences. British police operate under strict guidelines on the incitement of offences. Officers are instructed:

"No member of a police force and no public informant should counsel, incite or procure the commission of a crime."

Quite right too. We have no intention of changing those instructions.

The basic question is whether kerb crawling is to be tackled at the root—that is, on the basis of the act of soliciting. As I said, our intention in supporting the Bill is to ensure that the problem is dealt with at the root, locally.

While I appreciate the concern expressed by some—though not by many right hon. and hon. Members today—that the section 1 offence should retain its qualifying elements, I ask the House to reject that proposal. The principal nuisance is kerb crawling, and to continue to allow car drivers to pick up women provided that they make only one approach each time or cannot be proved to have caused nuisance or annoyance will not cure the serious problem experienced in so many inner-city areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham asked a penetrating question about why, in his area, only six police officers are apparently concerned with what one might loosely term vice squad activities, whereas in next-door Wandsworth, 12 officers are available for those activities. I understand that in Streatham there is a team of one sergeant and four constables dedicated to combat prostitution, but that may change from week to week, and month to month.

The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is well aware of the seriousness of the problems. The deployment of police manpower is a matter for the Commissioner and not for my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. However, no doubt the Commissioner, who does such distinguished service in the capital, will take close account of what has been said today, because the Official Report will be drawn to his attention.

At this stage, as I am dealing with police enforcement, I should mention the point raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) in his earlier intervention, when he described something which is not an offence at common law. He suggested that approaching a woman could be an offence at common law. I have to tell him that an assault at common law will be committed only if the woman who was the victim was struck, or put in fear of being struck.

These nuances of the differences between Scottish, English and Welsh law are lost on me, and I must take more instruction from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross.

The letter that some of us have received from the Campaign Against Kerb Crawling Legislation, has been satisfactorily, and rather fiercely dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West and in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate.

This has been a most interesting debate. The Government feel that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham will bring about two important reforms in the Bill. One reform affects a small number of people—women attacked by boys under 14. The other affects a much larger number of people, whose lives are made miserable by street prostitution and kerb crawling.

We need to get the law right for the whole country, so that the appropriate offence can be charged for the appropriate mischief. I support my hon. Friend's Bill, the Government support my hon. Friend's Bill, and I think that the whole House has supported it. I hope that it gets a richly deserved Second Reading, and a good passage through Standing Committee to the other place and on to the statute hook, where it deserves to be.

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

I am most grateful for the all-party support that I have received. As hon. Members will see from the Bill, at is a lawyer's dream and I am a lawyer. As such, it gives me great pleasure to move the Second Reading.

This is more than merely a technical Bill. It is intended to be, and I hope will be, of importance to secure the position of farm tenants. Farm tenancies are a scarce commodity. They are vital in our agricultural system because they enable young people to gain a foothold on the farming ladder. They enable people to become farmers who cannot raise capital from inheritance or financial institutions—the sort of capital needed to start a farming business these days if one has to buy land. Many successful tenant farmers go on to succeed as owners of farms.

To succeed, tenants need reasonable security of tenure. There are many tenant farmers in my constituency and tenant farmers there have brought home to me the importance of this modest measure.

I acknowledge a considerable debt to the National Farmers Union—nationally and in my constituency—as it has assisted me with the Bill. I also acknowledge my gratitude to the Minister and to Baroness Trumpington who sent me my only Valentine on 14 February, but a welcome one none the less. She told me—I hope that we shall hear the same from the Minister—that the Government regard the Bill as a sensible precaution for the benefit of farm tenants.

I must touch on some technical issues to explain the Bill. Case B of schedule 3 to the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 states that a landlord can give notice to quit if the land is required for non-agricultual use, either where planning permission has been granted, or where it is not required other than by virtue of the town and country planning legislation.

Until July last year the consensus of legal opinion was that that second provision referred only to the Crown as being exempt from the requirement of planning consent, and that any private landlord wishing to resume possession of tenanted land for normal agricultural use could not do so without having first obtained planning permission. The case of Bell v. McCubbin, however, turned 40 years of legal thinking on its head. Any hon. Member can read about the case if he pops into the Library and looks up page 54 of (1990) I All England Reports, which, I am sure, is everyday reading for us all: I have a copy with me. Bell v. McCubbin, heard in the Court of Appeal, altered the understanding of those who deal in agricultural holdings law, and in doing so altered—dramatically—the circumstances of tenants.

The court held that a landlord could serve a valid notice to quit all or part of a tenancy under case B of schedule 3 to the Act if the land or buildings in question were already being used for a non-agricultural purpose, and the landlord wished to resume possession for the same purpose. In Bell v. McCubbin, the landlord wanted to resume possession of a farmhouse that was being sublet as a residential dwelling. He also wished to let it as a residential dwelling; thus no change of use was involved, and planning permission was not required.

Many tenants have taken advantage of Government-encouraged schemes for their farms. A number have diversified and set aside land, using parts of it for non-agricultural purposes that bring them a portion of their income. Although a landlord's ability to serve a notice to quit part of the land is limited for technical reasons, most modern tenancy agreements contain a clause enabling him to do so. If, for instance, a tenant is using a building for holiday letting, and his tenancy agreement contains a clause specifying that the landlord can resume possession of part of the holding for non-agricultural use, the landlord can serve a valid notice to quit, provided that he does not wish to change the use of the building. Once he has regained possession, however, he may change its use at a later date.

The knock-on effect of Bell v. McCubbin is that landlords may use the precedent as a technical mechanism for dispossessing tenants. That may not be confined to cases in which only part of the land is required. It could provide carte blanche for unscrupulous landlords and, above all, to the minority of estate and land agents—I emphasise that they are a minority—who are sharks, and could help an unscrupulous landlord to get a tenant out at any cost and on a technicality if possible. Such agents smile wryly when they find a new technicality, however much injustice it will cause.

Tenants could be dispossessed of their entire holdings if the landlord wished to resume possession—for example, for shooting purposes. Shooting rights generally cover all the land. If a landlord purported to wish to use all the land for that purpose, no change of use would arise. Therefore, no planning consent would be necessary and the tenant would be out. One can think of many other examples whereby a landlord might, on entirely spurious grounds, obtain the land, although his intentions may be disingenuously expressed.

Where a tenant is dispossessed of land under case B, statutory compensation is currently payable. However, it is only a maximum of five to six years' rent. That is wholly inadequate, given the drastic reduction in the availability of tenanted land in recent years and bearing in mind current land values.

In my constituency—which I believe is, statistically, the one with the most agricultural land in the United Kingdom, with a higher proportion of its work force employed in agriculture—it is almost impossible to find a tenanted farm. Whenever such a farm becomes available, there is a long list of applicants. Shortlists are drawn up and the interviewing procedures are harsh. They are not unfairly harsh, bearing in mind the scarcity, but they are harsh for the many able people who fail to acquire a tenancy. If a dispossessed tenant receives only statutory compensation, it is almost certain that he will not have sufficient capital to buy another holding. He will face financial disaster and unemployment and misery for his family.

There is a call from certain sections of the farming industry for a reduction in security of tenure for tenants. There is a call from some quarters for fixed-term tenancies. There is undoubtedly room for genuine debate about the future of the agricultural holdings law. I do not want for one moment to discourage that debate, which has only recently started to gather momentum. I hope that we shall review carefully the agricultural holdings law. Our aim should be to start from the status quo as it was understood before Bell v. McCubbin and try to create agricultural holdings law that will ensure that tenancies are a vital and living part of an industry that allows farmers to develop at all stages of their lives, and at all levels. The Bill in no way prejudices the longer-term view of the agricultural tenancy law. As I have implied, I should like to take part in that review, if such an opportunity presents itself in the House.

As my proposal in no way prejudices future reviews, I should be unable to understand any opposition to the Bill. I believe that it will do perhaps more than it deserves, to be honest, to boost confidence among tenants. It would give me a great deal of pleasure if, with the support of right hon. and hon. Members, the Bill reached the statute book.

I thank the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) for introducing this excellent measure. I was appalled when I read the Appeal Court's decision. It upset all that we had previously believed. I very much hope that the Government will fully support it.

I support the measure.

I hark back to my days at the royal agricultural college, before Argentina. In those days—some time ago now, I am afraid—our studies revolved around the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948. I well remember our lecturer dinning it into our ears time and again that there were seven deadly sins whereby a tenant could be dispossessed of his land. One was the death of the tenant and there was no argument about that, but another was using land or buildings for non-agricultural use.

The importance of the tenanted sector in agriculture is not sufficiently realised. It has been the backbone of British agriculture for centuries. Many people thought that the 1948 Act would establish the structure and framework for British agriculture in the post-war period and indefinitely thereafter. But the 1948 Act created its own problems. It was very narrow and restrictive and had the effect that people who might have let their land decided not to do so, for many good reasons, the major reason being that if a tenant has security for life, the landlord has no prospect whatever of getting the land back.

As a result of that Act, well-intentioned though it was, the tenancy sector has continued to decline. Today, with agriculture under great pressure, all too often tenants do not have assets to fall back on. All too often tenants' assets consist of machinery, much of which is probably old and outdated and would not fetch very much, and livestock, which would have some value, but as the tenant does not own the land he does not have that capital base to fall back on. In these difficult times, some landlords may well find that their tenants have failed. That is not a happy position for the landlord, let alone the tenant. The landlord may find that a farm which has come back to him unexpectedly because his tenant has failed is in bad heart. There may be a list of dilapidations as long as his arm and he may have to spend more capital on putting them right and on returning the land to good heart.

Of course, ingenious people are always trying to dream up schemes to keep the tenanted sector going. Of course, there are such options as share farming and farming for fixed periods. The future probably lies in such schemes. Nevertheless the tenanted sector remains under great pressure.

One of the results of that pressure is that tenants are having to seek diversification. Indeed, they are being urged to diversify and that is one answer to their problems. I am sure that we can all think of examples where a tenant may have a range of redundant farm buildings that were constructed some time ago. The buildings tend to have low eaves and perhaps brick pillars at intervals—the type of building which in the old days one would back one's Fergie 35 into or where one could dump one's little two-furrow plough, but that is not the case today as farmers tend to have rather larger machines and the old ranges of buildings fall into disuse and disrepair.

Sometimes the tenant may decide to diversify and to put such buildings to a non-agricultural use. The tenant may well be able to set up small business units to accommodate people who may be setting up a business for the first time and are desperate to find premises—perhaps they come from the nearest town five miles away. The accommodation may be pretty basic; nevertheless they have a roof over their head and as long as there is a supply of running water and electricity, those buildings can be put to some use. The income that the tenant gets from those buildings means that he can repair and improve them and perhaps he can build up a thriving business. But of course it is not agricultural use. That comes back to the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile). No one thought that the court could reach the decision to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred. Nevertheless, it happened. It was not a welcome decision, and as a result the hon. and learned Gentleman introduced the Bill.

That decision is not welcome for tenant farmers, who are under pressure and are seeking to boost their income. An unscrupulous landlord will see a great opportunity to divest the tenant of part of his holding.

Planning laws have been relaxed. The grade of agricultural land is no longer taken into account when assessing planning applications. There is more pressure for alternative land use, such as the set-aside scheme and the idea of environmentally sensitive areas, which were originally introduced to reduce overall agricultural output and to attain certain environmental objectives.

That is all very well, but in practice such schemes are not available to all classes of farmers. Many diversification schemes involve proposals that fall outside the legal definition of agriculture, which means that they are subject to the landlord's consent. I do not want to give the impression that all landlords are wicked—far from it, there are many good and supportive landlords—but some have refused consent to otherwise reasonable propositions that would not have affected their long-term interests. The tenant has no power to challenge such a refusal. Some tenants feel too vulnerable even to consider such a scheme, and some landlords' agents—we all know about landlords' agents—have been known to send threatening letters when a tenant has gone only as far as registering his eligibility for set-aside.

The Bill should find a welcome among hon. Members. The court decision that I mentioned was unwelcome, but I hope that the Bill will correct that anomaly.

It was amusing, given that the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) referred to the Valentine that he had received in the form of a message of support from the Minister, that we heard a speech in support of the Bill from the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson) who. as all hon. Members know, is an incurable romantic.

In addition to being an incurable romantic, the hon. Member for Walthamstow is a chartered surveyor. I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery will have appreciated the support that he received from the hon. Gentleman.

I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery on winning a reasonable position in the ballot for Bills and on his good sense in introducing a measure that has broad, cross-party support. By introducing the Bill, he is doing a particular service not only to his constituents but to farmers in Wales and throughout Britain. That is reflected in the fact that the National Farmers Union has written to many hon. Members urging their support for the Bill.

I am pleased to say that, without reservation, the Labour party will support the Bill, which the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery referred to as a technical but an important measure.

The hon. and learned Gentleman made a lucid and compelling case in support of the Bill. It is supported by my hon. Friends the Members for Clwyd, South-West (Mr. Jones), for Western Isles (Mr. Macdonald) and for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy). Therefore, representatives of England, Scotland and Wales support it.

I am sure that the Bill will be given a Second Reading, and I wish the hon. and learned Gentleman well in a successful Committee stage and on Third Reading.

I, too, congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) on being successful in the ballot and on bringing forward the Bill. Not only has he all-party support in the sponsorship of the Bill, but support today from both sides of the House.

I shall take this opportunity to set the Bill in its historical context. I shall speak about the development of the tenanted sector and the prospects for the future, as well as explaining the Government's attitude to the Bill. I shall do so because the hon. and learned Gentleman said that he would welcome a good, broad debate on the future of the tenanted sector. I cannot supply that wide-ranging debate today, but I can set out some of our thoughts.

As the House will know, at the end of the last century about 90 per cent. of agricultural land was tenanted. Since then there has been a steady decline, and it now accounts for no more than 37 per cent. The main reasons for the decline have been socio-economic factors such as the redistribution of wealth, economic depression and changes in the class structure of our society. They were also due to the effects of capital taxation, the value of vacant land and legislation giving increased security of tenure to the tenant and making it less popular to let land.

The effects of the socio-economic changes are the province of the historian, but they are relevant and must he considered. In the 19th century most land was owned by private landlords who let it to tenant farmers. However, the loss of capital and income following the Wall Street crash in 1929, and the great depression of the early 1930s, forced a number of traditional land-owning families to sell land to cover their losses. That, coupled with the social changes following both world wars, led to major changes in the structure of our rural society, with a surge of relatively small owner-occupiers farming their own land. Some of them were former tenants.

Successive Governments' fiscal policies and, particularly, capital taxation have also had a significant effect on the structure of estates. As the name implies, capital tax was imposed on the value of the estate rather than its ability to produce income. Land is a low revenue-earning, long-term investment. Estates comprising let land are particularly vulnerable because the owner's asset is not easily realisable and the income derived is low in relation to its taxable value. With marginal rates of taxation of capital assets rising as high as 75 per cent. under capital transfer tax, landlords have had to sell land to meet a large liability.

Changes in capital taxation introduced by this Government have been warmly welcomed by the agricultural industry. A major reform of capital gains tax has been instituted and the severity of inheritance tax has been considerably reduced by increasing its threshold and replacing the previous four rates of tax by a flat rate of 40 per cent.

Throughout the century, land sold with vacant possession has attracted a premium, fetching up to twice as much as tenanted land. In addition, agricultural land with vacant possession attracts 50 per cent. relief from inheritance tax on a land transfer, whereas tenanted land attracts only 30 per cent. relief. Those factors are obviously important to a landowner who is contemplating a sale. He may decide to keep land in hand to keep his options open.

We must consider the effects of legislative changes. It must be admitted that the progressive increase in the protection of tenants has brought about a change in owners' attitudes to letting land. Compensation for eviction without just cause was introduced in 1923. The Agricultural Holdings Act 1948 gave tenants security of tenure for life and the Agricultural (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 gave successive rights to two eligible and suitable successors. As a result of the 1976 Act, any landowner letting land risked abdicating effective control for more than 100 years.

It is difficult to say to what extent each of these factors—social, fiscal or legislative—has directly affected the tenanted sector. The fact is that there has been an increase in the size of the owner-occupied sector. A change in that direction was probably inevitable and it echoes the pattern of the residential sector. However, some landowners who do not want to farm the land themselves have been disinclined to let and have looked for other forms of contractual arrangements to maintain value and income. Partnership and share farming agreements have gained in popularity. Not only do they preserve the capital value of the land, but they offer a higher potential return with a more favourable income tax statement.

The latest figures in the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers' annual tenant farms survey show that although the provision in the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948, which disapplied the succession provisions in respect of new tenancies created after that date, has encouraged more private landlords to relet land that falls vacant on short-term arrangements, it has not stopped the downward trend in the amount of land held on a full tenancy. One can conclude only that to many land owners, letting land on a full tenancy is not a sufficiently attractive option.

I shall look briefly at one or two aspects of the landlord-tenant system from the tenant's point of view. We recognise that farming is going through a difficult period of rapid change. I shall consider what has happened to the tenanted sector historically when farming has gone through bleak spells.

With steadily increasing security of tenure since the early part of this century the established competent tenant has been able to weather the various depressions of the past 70 years. During the agricultural depression of the 1920s the Government imposed restrictions on the rents that landlords could charge, which led to a large number of landlords selling farms to sitting tenants. Subsequently, that trend has continued, particularly when further constraints have been placed on landlords. In effect, provided that a tenant is not too heavily in debt, he is often in a better position than owner-occupiers who have recently purchased farms and face interest payments in excess of the rents paid by the tenants. When a tenant farmer is highly geared his lack of collateral may encourage the banks to recall funds, whereas an owner-occupier may be given more time to restructure his business. Apart from that disadvantage, the system has generally served the competent tenant fairly well.

Rents are always a vexed question. Therefore, it is worth asking whether rental levels have mirrored the fortunes of farming. Historically, the prosperity of the industry has been influenced by technological advances and by Government or now, European Community policy. In the past two centuries, the agricultural revolution and the Corn Laws had as profound an effect on the fortunes of agriculture as modern advances have had in recent years.

As one or two colleagues may remember, 30 years ago the Agriculture Act 1958 introduced a rent formula under which the holding might reasonably be expected to be let on the open market by a willing landlord to a willing tenant. There was a risk that that would emphasise key money value and scarcity value rather than reflect solely the true productive and earning capacity of the holding, if the supply of tenancies did not keep pace with the demand. Many would argue that that happened in the 1970s and that rents were out of step with farmers' incomes. It was also the period of accession to the Common Market. Some take the contrary view, arguing that the high levels of tender rents being offered then were partly a reflection of farmers' perception of the returns that they could make, rather than key money. If one accepts that argument, rents followed the fortunes of the industry during the 1970s, but I suspect that the answer lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Certainly in the early 1980s when farm incomes began to fall back, rents continued to rise by between 30 and 40 per cent. at each review. Although to some extent that could be explained by the inevitable time lag, because rents cannot be changed overnight while the cost of labour and capital can, it suggested that the old formula was unsatisfactory.

All hon. Members will know that a new rent formula, based on a proposal put forward by the National Farmers Union and the Country Landowners Association, was introduced by the Agricultural Holdings Act 1984. It required arbitrators to take account of all relevant factors, including the productive capacity of the holding and its related earning capacity.

Does the Minister agree that as a result of the declining profitability of farming systems, landlords have decided to sell assets such as houses of high value? That means that the holdings have been split up. That is an undesirable state of affairs and one reason for the Bill. If farming was more profitable the need for landlords to sell their assets would be reduced.

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Now that we have price restraint in the EC, I recognise that a farmer might not get a better return from farming than if he sold his land for a golf course, hotels or housing.

The holding is split up.

First, the landlord must get the land back to split up the holding. I do not believe that the great danger is posed by landlords reclaiming their land to split up their holdings, but by what happens when farms in owner-occupation come to the end of their lives. When a farmer dies and he has no sons or daughters who want to continue that farm, it is split up. Land agents would be the first to suggest to the heirs and successors that the farm should be sold off in lots—the house to someone from the City and the buildings converted into flats. The next-door farmer might tut-tut about the land being split up, but he will be the first to put in the highest bid for the fields adjoining his boundary.

That is not good for farming.

I accept that, but I do not see how one can stop that inevitable trend. The solution would be to introduce legislation to say that someone cannot sell his land in lots or to introduce punitive taxation against someone owning more than X acres of land. I do not believe that that would be acceptable to the House or to the EC.

The new formula that was introduced in the 1984 Act has been in operation for about five years. Information from the Ministry's survey into farm rents in 1988 showed that rent settlements are responding not only to the general decline in the profitability of the industry, but to the profitability of different sectors within agriculture. On a national basis, in 1988 more rents stood still or fell than rose. Comparing cereal areas and dairying areas shows that in the east midlands and East Anglia 78·37 per cent. and 71·75 per cent. of rents were static or fell compared with 44 per cent. in the south-west.

The average rent increases show the same picture. In Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire the average increase was 1 per cent. compared with Cheshire, a noted dairying area, where the increase averaged 6·3 per cent. The national average was 3·6 per cent. Although it may come as a surprise to some hon. Members, those figures show how the new rental formula is having the desired effect of fine-tuning rents. That is certainly good news. The 1989 survey will be published soon.

Despite its imperfections, the landlord-tenant system has served tenants well. It is still a basically good system for those who are fortunate enough to rent a holding. The problem lies in the future, because the system is not sufficiently attractive to landlords. The continued decline in the agricultural tenanted sector is disappointing in view of the legislative changes introduced after much effort in 1984. I suspect that there is still insufficient flexibility in the system to encourage the letting of land and further changes would seem to be necessary.

The issues are extremely complex and conflicting views have been expressed by various sections of agriculture. I am the first to recognise that it may be difficult for landowners, aspiring young farmers and existing tenants to reach a consensus on any proposals and I appreciate that it may not be possible to reach a consensus at all. My colleagues and I will be looking for some signs of agreement on the measures to be taken as the debate unfolds in the coming months.

Even more important is a proposal that genuinely addresses the problem and is likely to be effective in increasing the amount of tenanted land.

Before the Minister leaves that point, can he tell us how he intends to proceed with the consultations? Will he produce a consultative document or will he consult the National Farmers Union and the other farmers' unions in the normal way? I ask that because I want to take the opportunity of letting the Minister know that the Opposition share the concern about the point that he has just made and, if at all possible, we should like a cross-party solution to the problem.

I welcome what the hon. Gentleman has said. A cross-party solution to the problem would be ideal. I have no intention of publishing a consultative document, a White Paper or a Green Paper at this stage, but I know that the Country Landowners Association has certain proposals and that the National Farmers Union has certain concerns about them. The union is to consult with us and to give us its opinion. I am also keen to hear the views of the National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs, which has some sensible ideas. I am always impressed when I hear what it has to say about the future of agriculture. We shall also want the Tenant Farmers Association to say what it thinks. Everyone in agriculture has seen that the 1984 Act has settled down. They know that there is still insufficient land coming forward in the tenanted sector and they all have some ideas about how the matter should be approached. They know that we are keen to hear their views and I am happy to put it on record today that we are doubly keen to hear what they have to say. We shall take all their views into account.

I also want to make it clear that on this occasion, as opposed to the early 1980s, we shall not let the lack of total consensus stop us. I know that in the early 1980s, before we came forward with the Agricultural Holdings Act 1984. my predecessors took the view that unless there was complete unanimity in agriculture and all the unions could agree on a proposal, we should not legislate. Now we shall not let the lack of total consensus stop us from legislating. The difficulty would be to find a legislative slot if we came up with a solution that was acceptable to many in agriculture and to the House. It would, of course, be helpful if we had all-party agreement on what needed to be done.

I have no intention of undermining the status quo. The argument must proceed from where we are now and there would be no question of obtaining all-party support if one were to try to unscramble any of the previous legislation. If we are looking for modest improvements in allowing more land to come forward for letting, we must start from our present position.

Apart from the major issue of finding more flexibility to persuade landlords to enter into agreements with tenants and to make a bit more land available under arrangements different from those that we have now, individual cases occasionally arise which provoke criticism of the existing legislation. The current legislation is intended to balance the interests of landlords and tenants. It will never be wholly satisfactory to one side or the other and there will always be some exceptional cases.

As the House knows, legislation on agricultural holdings is an extremely complex area. Nowhere is that more true than in the case of notices to quit. Schedule 3 to the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 deals with notices to quit where the consent of the agricultural land tribunal is not required, which are known as incontestable notices to quit. There are eight categories. The agricultural holdings legislation aims to strike a fair balance between the often conflicting interests of landlords and tenants. The satisfactory tenant farmer is given security of tenure, but the legislation recognises that there are circumstances in which the landlord should be able to regain possession.

Case B in the schedule is where a notice to quit is given on the ground that the landlord needs the land for a use other than in agriculture. Case B(a) covers the situation where the landlord has obtained planning permission to use the land for a non-agricultural purpose. This is not always an easy concept, but it should be remembered that the landlord is the owner of the capital asset and should, in common with other owners of property, be entitled to any increase in value that may accrue from possible development. He has elected to enter the land market with all the risks that that involves, which in some cases can mean a low return and falling land values, where there is no development potential, or the land is of poor quality.

Case B(b) deals with the position where no planning permission is required. This is the aspect of the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 with which the hon. and learned Member's Bill deals. It was always widely held that case B(b) related only to the Crown. It was available, for example, to the Foresty Commission if it needed to obtain possession of land for the purposes of afforestation.

On 13 July 1989, in Bell v. McCubbin, the Court of Appeal ruled that under case B(b) a private landlord could recover possession of a farmhouse which had been sublet by the tenant for residential purposes to persons employed outside agriculture and was required by the landlord for his own, non-agricultural use. The extent of this loophole has not been tested in the courts, but the ruling has caused considerable concern to tenants. They fear that it could have widespread implications and reduce their security of tenure. The hon. and learned Member has ably explained the reasons for those fears and there is no reason to repeat them. We think that the repercussions of the ruling are likely to be much more limited than has been suggested. Nevertheless we understand tenants' worries, and we consider the hon. and learned Member's approach to removing them sensible.

The hon. and learned Gentleman has seen this morning the all-party support for his Bill, and I am pleased to add my support to it. He will appreciate that the drafting of the Bill needs to be looked at carefully. I hope that he will be willing to accept assistance from the parliamentary draftsmen in my Department so that the Bill achieves his objective, and I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading today.

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

Hon. Members on both sides of the House know of my concern with this issue. I am pleased to see that the Minister of State, Home Office is here. I remind him that on 12 June 1989 he said that

"my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary hopes to announce his conclusions on an inquiry"—

into the racing and betting industries—

"before the House rises for the summer recess, or if not, in the spill-over session."—[Official Report, 12 June 1989; Vol. 154, c. 683.]

It has not yet been done. Part of the purpose of today's debate is to ensure that it is done some time soon.

The purpose of the Bill is straightforward; it is to amend the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963 to enable payment of a levy to the greyhound industry from moneys already deducted from punters for that purpose by the bookmakers in off-course betting establishments.

There is a great need for this legislation. Greyhound racing is the second most supported spectator sport in Britain. As census figures show, more than 5 million people support the sport by going along to tracks every week. They attend 83 tracks, 48 of which are independent and 35 of which are registered with the National Greyhound Racing Club. The membership of that club and of the independents now amounts to more than 15,000 greyhound owners. More than 20,000 greyhounds are registered and in training. At least 10,000 race meetings are held every year, accommodating over 120,000 greyhound races.

I have been reading the Bill, so I should like to refer the hon. Gentleman to paragraph 24(1) of the schedule on page 3, which states:

"There shall be a Horse and Greyhound Betting Levy Board … (referred to as 'the Levy Board') which shall be charged with the duty of assessing".

I do not see how that assessment is to be made. Will the hon. Gentleman explain how the duty of assessing will be covered by the Bill, if it is enacted?

Yes, certainly. I have only a short time, but I hope to get to that point later in my speech. I shall try to iron it out as I go along.

I return to the fact that greyhound racing is extremely popular. Two extremely popular daily newspapers, The Sporting Life and The Racing Post, produce individual newspapers on greyhound racing six days per week. Today, they include full coverage of the racing that is to take place at Bristol, Wimbledon, Shawfield, Wembley, Oxford, Romford, Brough Park and at many other race courses, at which betting will take place in off-course betting shops.

Unlike the horse racing industry, the greyhound industry receives no levy money whatever, although moneys are deducted at source in betting shops off-course, throughout Britain. That is a scandal of huge proportions because 10 per cent.—10p in every pound—is deducted from bets, under the legislation to which I have referred, with the purpose of 2 per cent. of that 10 per cent. coming back into the sport. Most punters are having that money deducted fraudulently because at present the only money that goes back into the greyhound industry returns via the Bookmakers Afternoon Greyhound Service, known as BAGS, which is a payment of about £2·8 million per year for 10 tracks, covering 620 individual race meetings. On my calculations, that works out at about £4,500 per meeting and £380 per race.

I like the idea of a levy on greyhound racing so that a lot of money can be raised. However, to what purposes will that money be put? Many of the greyhounds suffer enormous stress during racing. Will the money be spent on the veterinary aspects of racing?

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has raised that matter because that is, indeed, the whole purpose. We have just spent some time dealing with the farming industry and with the support that it receives. Indeed, some farmers are involved in horse racing. The fact is that a huge amount of money—about £38 million this year—will be paid to the horse racing industries via the Horserace Betting Levy Board, whereas nothing will be paid to the greyhound industry. That £38 million is not purely for the Jockey Club to spend as it likes, because much of it is to be invested in new equine research. The greyhound racing industry needs a levy so that the 20,000 greyhounds that are in training at present can reap the benefits from the research establishments and thus help people to enjoy the sport.

I am pleased that the Minister is taking great note of this. I have just referred to BAGS. Everybody thinks that £2·8 million a year is not a bad amount of money to pay for those services, given that 620 races are covered by the service. However, the problem does not stop there because six of those 10 tracks are owned by the big three bookmakers, who pay themselves £1·6 million for the use of the service. Therefore, in real terms the other four main greyhound tracks in Britain received only £1·2 million per year for the whole of the service.

Conservative Members might not appreciate the fact that 4 million people per day use and gamble in betting shops. The current value of off-course greyhound betting is more than 27 per cent. of all gambling in a multi-billion pound industry.

Will the Bill have any impact on right hon. and hon. Members'? Conservative Members in particular take an interest in placing bets on the stock exchange. Could the Bill affect our behaviour?

What a frivolous remark.

It was not a frivolous question. There are many different ways of gambling. As my hon. Friend says, Conservative Members usually gamble on the stock exchange, while other right hon. and hon. Members gamble in other ways. I can give the House details of two gambles that I have undertaken in the past 24 hours. First, I gambled by going to the Members' Tea Room a short while ago, where I sat down and succeeded in ripping the trousers of my suit. I hope that the Serjeant at Arms will do something about that. Secondly, in connection with a social event in my constituency in support of the ambulance workers' dispute, I purchased a couple of bottles of whisky from the House of Commons Shop. Unfortunately, when I left them on a cabinet outside the Members' Tea Room last night, they were purloined during the course of the evening. That gamble was also a terrible mistake that I hope the Serjeant at Arms will put right.

It is not good enough for the Minister to pop along for the last few minutes of a speech on a private Member's Bill on a Friday. There is a serious need for an inquiry into the greyhound racing industry, and an even greater need to stop the fraudulent acquisition by off-course bookmakers of a 2p in the pound deduction that is not going back into the industry.

Legislation is in place to ensure that a similar deduction benefits horse racing. Twenty-seven per cent. of all off-course betting is on greyhound racing, yet not one penny of that money goes back into the industry. Instead, it all goes into the pockets of bookmakers, who do nothing for that magnificent sport.

I hope that it will be considered in order for me to welcome two guests of mine in the Strangers' Gallery——

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not make such references.

I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. They are guests of mine from Israel——

Order. Right hon. and hon. Members must not refer to persons who are in other parts of the building or in the Strangers' Gallery.

I apologise most sincerely for referring to those two individuals against the rules of the House.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

No. I am trying to develop an argument. My hon. Friend must allow me to make a start, or we shall never reach the kernel of the debate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale) on his luck in the lottery for private Members' legislation. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) on his very temporary stay on the Opposition Front Bench. It would have been appropriate had he remained there for the entire debate because Walthamstow stadium, which holds a large number of greyhound race meetings, is in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.

The hon. Member for Mansfield proposes the introduction of a levy that is really a tax. My advice to him, in the words of Edmund Burke, is,

"To tax and to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to man."

I hope that it is in order to give that quotation so soon after St. Valentine's day.

My late father always advised me that gambling comprises three activities. First, part of the stake money goes to the Treasury. Secondly, part of the stake money goes to the bookmaker—none of us has ever seen a poor bookmaker. Finally, the rest of the stake which had not gone to the Treasury or the bookmaker was redistributed among those who were fool enough to put it down in the first place.

It was with some regret that I heard the hon. Member for Mansfield say that about 4 million people gamble every week. That is a slightly lower figure than the number of people who gambled by voting Labour at the last election, and the number who may gamble by voting Labour at the next election, but it seems far too high a figure. I wish that the Churches, when they give a moral lead to the country, would tell people how stupid and foolish it is to squander resources on gambling. It is a feckless, stupid and ineffectual way of life.

It is a privilege to speak in this debate on the ivory trade. On 17 January, the British Government announced that they had given approval for Hong Kong to reopen its markets in the ivory trade, and they have avoided debate on the issue in the House ever since. Until now, they have got away with that ignominious decision, but I have called this debate because elephants never forget. I support the ban on the ivory trade, along with all the major wildlife and environmental organisations, so that we can save the African elephant from extinction.

There is a risk of extinction because the numbers of African elephants are 50 per cent. down over the past 10 years. Last century, there were some 10 million African elephants. In 1970 that figure was down to 2 million. In 1979 it was 1·3 million, and now it is just over 600,000. That is a rate of decline of 10 per cent. per annum, and at that rate they will be extinct by the end of the century.

The poem by Edward Braithwaite contains two lines that are tragically appropriate:

"Horn of the Elephant; The Mournful Cry of the Elephant"

That mournful cry will not be heard much longer.

Last year, 100 countries got together at the convention on international trade in endangered species conference. They voted by 76 votes to 11 that the African elephant should be an appendix 1 specimen. That meant that it should not be returned to commercial utilisation in any form. The United Kingdom strongly supported that, and moved a resolution that was passed with overwhelming support to give immediate effect to the ban, which commenced on 18 January this year.

However, there is a get-out clause. Countries can register a reservation within 90 days, and the United Kingdom did that on the day the ban was due to commence. They have opened the door to the continued destruction of the African elephant.

The exception for Hong Kong means that there is a tremendous spur to poachers whose markets were to be closed by the ban. They now have a chance to cover up their sales from recent killings by claiming that they come from the existing Hong Kong stocks. Of the 670 tons of ivory in Hong Kong, it has been estimated by the Environmental Investigation Agency, that 570 tons came from illegal sources in the first place. There is already evidence that poaching has resumed.

This week Members of Parliament received a letter from Elefriends, the elephant protection group, which said:

"News from Kenya reports that over 20 fresh carcases have been found in the last 3 weeks indicating that, despite the efforts of a revitalised and dynamic Parks Service, the poaching problem is far from over."

Many other organisations have condemned the Government's lifting of the ban. George Medley, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature, said:

"The British Government has effectively created a major loophole … Poachers will simply step up their activities. Countless elephants will be slaughtered. We are right back to square one."

Mr. Allan Thornton, of the Environmental Investigation Agency, said:

"This will have a disastrous effect on elephant conservation. It will reward the same ivory syndicates the ban was supposed to put out of business."

Isabel McCrea, wildlife director of Greenpeace, said:

"It is very embarrassing in terms of international conservation. We are the only Western country to enter a reservation.

The Government's supposedly green credentials have been sullied".

William Travers of Elefriends said:

"This is devastating. Dealers, poachers and smugglers will rub their hands with glee."

Other countries have been more responsible than Britain. France imposed a unilateral ban on ivory imports in June last year. Japan, which is thought of as an eco-terrorist, and is in some respects—its treatment of whales, for instance—has stuck to the CITES ban, although it used to take 40 per cent. of the world's ivory. Kenya has publicly destroyed its stocks, and the United Kingdom should do the same to the Hong Kong stockpile.

Elefriends asks a number of questions that I think the Minister should answer. The Foreign Secretary said that the Hong Kong stockpile is legal. How can it be legal when ivory exports from the whole of Africa amounted to 200 tonnes in 1988, and in the same year Hong Kong imported more than that–260 tonnes? All the representatives of the conservation movement, including the World Wide Fund for Nature, Elefriends, the RSPCA, the Environmental Investigation Agency, the World Society for the Protection of Animals—which has observer status at the United Nations—and the international fund for animal welfare, have said that the Government's decision will undermine international efforts to protect the elephant and will increase poaching.

How can the Foreign Secretary say, as he did in the Daily Express on 18 January, that allegations that the British decision would condemn elephants to death were "nonsense"? What is the Government's response to the deputation—the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr.Greenway) and I joined it, as did many other hon. Members—that went to Downing street on 31 January, along with outraged people representing wildlife organisations worldwide? If the Hong Kong ivory traders cannot dispose of their stocks within the six-month reservation period, will the Government's policy be to allow them the 18-month extension that they have already requested?

There is a consensus in the conservation movement that the Government's decision will increase poaching pressure on Africa's remaining herds. What additional resources will the Government make available to the anti-poaching forces so that they can combat the effects of that decision—a decision that puts at risk the lives of rangers as well as elephants?

On 25 January, I asked the Prime Minister who had made the representations to thwart the ban. The Prime Minister refused to answer, saying:

"It is not my normal practice to release such correspondence."—[Official Report, 25 January 1990; Vol. 165, c. 807.]

Why is there such secrecy? Why can we not know who is responsible and what their case is—a case that appears to be so powerful that it is more important than the survival of the African elephant?

I think that we were given the answer on the front page of the Sunday Express on 21 January, which spoke of an "explosive rift" between the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for the Environment. It said:

"Environment officials have disclosed Mr. Patten's anger that the issue was taken out of his hands because of his likely opposition and handed over to Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd as part of a package to boost confidence in Hong Kong … One Whitehall insider said: 'If it comes to a choice between lining the pockets of a few Chinese millionaires or preserving the dwindling elephant herds, the elephant would win the people's hearts and minds every time."

That is quite right. Two powerful individuals—the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary—have overriden a ban that has been overwhelmingly supported by hon. Members, by the people of this country and by world wildlife and environmental organisations. The Government have passed the problem from the Department of the Environment to the Foreign Office. The question is no longer conservation but political expediency.

If we are to tackle the problem, we need—if you will forgive the pun, Mr. Deputy Speaker—a two-tusked approach. First, we must back up the anti-poaching forces, since 80 per cent. of all trade in ivory is the result of poaching. Secondly, we must tackle the consumer market for ivory. That is why the ban is so important and it should be reinstated immediately. The Government's decision shows that capitalism and conservation do not mix. We must stop the bloody ivory trade. We must save the African elephant from extinction.

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Ealing, North.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) for providing me with this small slot in his debate. I congratulate him on it.

Order. Is the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) making a contribution to the debate, or is he intervening? If he is making a contribution to the debate, am I correct in thinking that he and the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) have permission to take part in the debate?

Yes, Sir.

I reiterate my congratulations to the hon. Member for Leyton. Like him and the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), I speak as a sincere Elefriend. Capitalism is, I believe, big enough to overcome the challenge presented by that valuable stock of ivory in Hong Kong. Those who own it are greatly tempted to sell it. I plead with them not to do so. If they were to sell that enormous stock of ivory, amounting to several thousand tonnes, the temptation to continue to kill elephants thus leading to their extinction, would be great. For many, the temptation would be irresistible.

The elephant has a unique place in the animal kingdom and in our world. The extinction of the elephant through greed, since its ivory can be used for necklaces and other decorative purposes, would be a tragedy, morally wrong and disgraceful. I hope that the Minister will give ground in the debate and will try to ensure that that stock of ivory is not sold. If he cannot do that, I hope that he will ensure that the profits from its sale are used to police those areas of Africa where the elephant is in grave danger of extinction and that they are not used for man's commercial pleasure.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) on being lucky enough to secure this Adjournment debate. Our previous Adjournment debate on the plight of the African elephant and the disposal of Hong Kong's ivory stock was initiated by me on 26 May 1989. The Under-Secretary of State said:

"we will—

that is the Government—

be urging the European Community to take action together to ban the import of raw ivory prior to the decisions of the CITES meeting. Furthermore, when we go to CITES, we will make representations to the effect that, rather than wait the normal 90 days for the resolution to take effect, we should act immediately to preserve and protect the African elephant."—[Official Report, 26 May 1989; Vol. 153, c. 1300.]

All hon. Members endorsed those sentiments.

Subsequently, the Government completely undermined that pledge. My hon. Friend referred to the fact that the Foreign Office shoved aside the Department of the Environment. It is using the Hong Kong ivory as a pawn in the game of politics that is unfolding in the Crown colony. The Government's disgraceful decision to enter a reservation on behalf of the 670 tonnes of Hong Kong ivory that are being allowed to come on to the market has boosted the ivory trade and world demand for ivory. As the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton said, it has resulted in further slaughter of the African elephant.

I plead—indeed I demand on behalf of all elephant lovers in Britain and around the world—that the Government rescind that disgraceful reservation that they entered on behalf of Hong Kong. They should go back to CITES and cancel the reservation. If they do not do that the Minister should describe to the House what regulations the Government will impose to ensure that no further illegal ivory enters Hong Kong and that when the ivory stock is disposed of there will be no question of further trade being encouraged by the Government. Despite their fine words on 26 May, the Government have let down the country and they stand condemned for it.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) on securing this debate and on raising an issue of considerable international concern. It is an issue in which it has often been difficult to separate facts from emotion. At times, the argument strays some way from the realities of habitat management and animal conservation. I believe that everyone who has spoken in this afternoon's debate is agreed on one thing—the African elephant must be preserved.

The Government were among the first to recognise the potential threat to this magnificent species, and have been in the forefront of moves to ensure its survival and its recovery. The main instrument through which those efforts are co-ordinated is the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora, known as CITES. We were one of the first countries to sign the convention in 1973, and since its inception have played a major part in strengthening and improving it.

As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, the Indian elephant was one of the first to be listed on appendix I of the convention and has always received the strongest protection. The African elephant was first listed on appendix III of the convention, and more latterly in appendix II and now finally in appendix I.

By 1985, it was clear that the earlier controls were not enough to stop the decline in the species. At the 1985 meeting of the conference of the parties to CITES, the United Kingdom played a leading role in the introduction of tighter restrictions on trade. Those included the establishment of the ivory trade monitoring unit, which is attached to the CITES secretariat. As no funds for the operation of this unit had been provided in the core budget of the convention, the United Kingdom has contributed £5,000 per year to the running costs of that monitoring unit.

Within the European Community, we went further than that. Ivory imports were first restricted and then, in May 1988, the European Community introduced a complete ban on the import of ivory and elephant products from certain African states where the elephant population was known to be under particular threat.

I am sorry to say that the African elephant has continued to suffer losses at the hands of ruthless, determined and well-organised poachers. That is why the population in 1989, as mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, was estimated at 610,000, which is a reduction on previous years.

On 23 May 1989, Lord Caithness, after a visit to Kenya, announced the Government's intention to urge our European partners to support proposals to list the species on appendix I of the convention, thus effectively banning commercial trade. We were successful in achieving that support and in securing agreement in principle to a ban on imports of ivory into the European Community.

While those arrangements were being made, the Government introduced on 9 June a unilateral ban on imports of ivory into the United Kingdom. That was followed by a European regulation imposing a Community-wide ban, which came into force on 17 August 1989.

The whole question of the conservation of the African elephant and the proposed appendix I listing was fully discussed at the seventh meeting of the conference of the parties to CITES held in Lausanne in October last year. It was a very complex and difficult issue, which generated a great deal of emotion, and there was a great deal of media interest. In such an atmosphere, objective and dispassionate scientific discussion was at best difficult. Although the conference was united in its desire to ensure that the African elephant was given the protection that it needed to survive, there were sharp differences of view about the best means of achieving that objective.

The east and central African states, whose elephants had suffered most from poachers, were strongly in favour of a complete ban on trade in ivory. A number of southern African countries, including Botswana and Zimbabwe, have elephant populations which are sustainably managed, and are therefore stable or increasing. The authorities have to cull the animals to reduce pressure on the habitats, on which the survival of their elephant populations depends. The proceeds from the sale of ivory can be ploughed back into local conservation projects, which help to provide work for local people. Those countries, perhaps not surprisingly, wished to continue to trade in elephant products. I have some sympathy with their view. If elephant populations are to be managed, that means the culling of animals, and therefore the production of legal ivory.

Although we listened sympathetically to the views of the southern African states, we concluded that an overall ban was necessary. Indeed, we went further and proposed to the conference a resolution urging that if the appendix I listing was agreed, parties who were able to do so should implement appendix I controls immediately, without waiting for the formal entry into force of the uplisting three months later.

However, many people, including some prominent voluntary conservation organisations, were concerned that if a complete and indefinite ban on ivory were introduced, a number of major ivory producer and consumer countries might opt out of the stricter controls. Without their support, a trade ban could not hope to succeed.

Accordingly, the conference considered a compromise put forward by Somalia, which attempted, as far as possible, to reconcile the differing views and interests. That entails listing the African elephant on appendix I and banning trade until such time as the conference of the parties decides that trade in particular elephant populations can be resumed without threatening the survival of the species. After much discussion, that proposal was accepted by the conference.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that a distinction must be drawn between culling and poaching. That is the difficulty that we face. Are the implications of the agreement that my hon. Friend described that the elephant will be culled in future, and worldwide? If not, will he pursue that?

I hope that the African countries will manage their elephant populations responsibly. In some cases, that must entail culling. We must strike a balance between populations and the habitat. An elephant population explosion in those countries would damage the habitat on which elephants depend. Management of the herds is important.

The Minister talked about pressure on the habitat being caused by the elephant. Governments can now claim, because they have so restricted the area of the African elephant, that some elephants should be culled. Man has put pressure on the elephant and, having done so, uses that as justification for further slaughter.

There is something in what the hon. Gentleman says. The exploding human population in some of those African countries has come into conflict with the elephant population. But rather than discuss that matter at length, I owe it to the hon. Member for Leyton to deal with Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was another difficult and sensitive issue. The CITES conference considered a proposal to allow trade to continue in stocks of ivory accumulated before the decision to transfer the African elephant to appendix I of the convention. This was of great interest to the United Kingdom, because it affected Hong Kong. In considering our position on that issue, we had to take into account the fact that the stocks of ivory in Hong Kong were held legally, and that the United Kingdom has special responsibilities to Hong Kong. Representatives from the colony were part of the United Kingdom delegation, and were able to explain to the conference their case for allowing trade in existing stocks of ivory to continue. However, having listened to all the arguments, the conference voted against the proposal; with the United Kingdom abstaining on behalf of Hong Kong and Portugal abstaining on behalf of Macau.

Hong Kong has traditionally been a major ivory trading centre. It has substantial stocks of legally acquired ivory, and an ivory-carving industry on which 3,000 local people depend for their livelihood. I dispute the newspaper reports, quoted with some approval by the hon. Member for Leyton, that the only people affected are millionaires. It is uncharacteristic of the hon. Gentleman to overlook the interests of 1,200 craftsmen and 1,800 workers who depend on that trade.

The Environmental Investigation Agency said that 300 jobs were involved, not the number that the Foreign Office has quoted. What effort have the Government made to find those people alternative jobs—because the trade will end? Surely, it would have been better for the Government to make a big effort to get them replacement jobs so that the ban could be kept in place.

Urgent efforts are being undertaken to retrain and find alternative employment for the workers involved. This does not involve just their livelihood as regards employment, but would effectively render valueless stocks of ivory calculated at that time to be worth more than £80 million. That fact influenced the Hong Kong authorities, which have reaffirmed their commitment to comply with the ban on international trade in ivory, resulting from the conference decision. However, they are understandably concerned about the need to allow some time for their ivory traders to dispose of their stocks, and for the workers to find alternative employment. That is why the authorities approached the United Kingdom Government and asked us to enter a temporary reservation on their behalf. In making that request, they made it clear that the ban on the import of all forms of ivory into Hong Kong, which was introduced with ours in June 1989, would remain in force, and that only existing stocks of legally acquired ivory would be allowed to be exported. That was to ensure that there would be no loophole through which illegally acquired ivory could enter trade via Hong Kong.

We considered that carefully, and on 17 January my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs announced the Government's decision to agree to Hong Kong's request. The Government entered on that day a temporary six-month reservation against the listing of the African elephant on appendix I of the convention. The effect of the reservation will be that during the period that it remains in force, Hong Kong will be able to export its existing ivory stocks either to CITES parties which have entered appropriate reservations, or to non-CITES states. But in entering the reservation, we made it clear that it will not apply to the United Kingdom or to any of our other dependent territories. So none of the Hong Kong ivory will be imported into the United Kingdom and after the expiry of the six-month period, all further commercial exports of ivory from Hong Kong will be completely prohibited.

The reservation is the best way of meeting the Government's responsibilities to a dependent territory without compromising our support for measures to conserve the African elephant.

The Hong Kong Government have taken various measures to deter illegal trading and to enhance controls over existing stocks. A special customs task force has been set up to investigate and stop any illegal trade through Hong Kong, and maximum fines for violating endangered species legislation have been increased five-fold. Illegal consignments are confiscated. Controls over ivory in Hong Kong are now among the most comprehensive in the world.

All stocks of ivory in Hong Kong are registered, and since 12 January, possession licences have been required for all commercial ivory and personal effects in excess of 5kg. Movements of ivory between dealers is recorded and their records of stock holdings are adjusted accordingly. No ivory can leave Hong Kong without an export licence, and no licences are issued for exports to countries that have implemented the CITES ban. An export licence is granted only for ivory which has appropriate CITES documentation.

Those thorough and comprehensive measures are clear and reassuring evidence of the Hong Kong Government's firm commitment to adhere fully to CITES.

We and the Hong Kong Government are fully committed to the conservation of endangered species and to CITES itself. We would not have entered a reservation if we believed that by doing so we were putting at risk the future of the African elephant. Controls on imports and exports are only one part of the problem. A major threat to the elephant is from continuing poaching. Through our foreign aid programme we are giving the African countries concerned aid and practical and technical assistance to deal with the real threat to the future of the elephant.

Once again I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising this important subject. The African elephant has been described with some justice as "nature's great masterpiece" and "the only harmless great thing". There is now an unprecedented international awareness of the plight of the elephant and a widespread determination to take appropriate action to ensure its future well-being. We shall not relax our efforts to conserve this "great masterpiece" because without it the whole world would be the poorer.