It gives me great pleasure to present the "Reforest the Earth" petition, which concerns the destruction of the world's forests, and its effects on the global environment and on the local environment of the regions immediately affected and their indigenous peoples. It has been organised by the forests lobby—a coalition of environmental groups—and is signed by more than 10,000 people. It states:

Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House urge Her Majesty's Government to:

(1) immediately institute a moratorium of all timber coming from primary/old growth forests or from areas where indigenous peoples are struggling for land rights or where there are human rights abuses occurring.

(2) encourage and promote major re-afforestation in Britain, where so much forest has already been destroyed, and

(3) adopt the Forests Manifesto for Britain.

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

It is signed by Ms. A. C. Zelter, Valley Farmhouse, Cromer, Norfolk and Tigger of 10 Little Bethnal street, Norwich, Norfolk.

I wish to present to the House a petition that has been presented to me by the organisation MIND which you, Madam Speaker, with all your considerable political experience, will know is highly regarded throughout the United Kingdom for its excellent work. The petition is signed by a substantial number of people from the county of Humberside and from my city, Hull, who are deeply concerned about the way in which disabled people—both mentally and physically disabled—are unjustly discriminated against.

The petition reads:

To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament Assembled.

The Humble Petition of North Humberside Association for Mental Health (MIND) sheweth:

That disabled people must have a right to the same equality of opportunity in all aspects of their daily life as non-disabled people.

That people who are disabled or perceived to be disabled (for whatever reason) are continually having to face widespread unjustifiable discrimination.

That legislation is necessary to outlaw this discrimination.

Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House introduce legislation to outlaw unjustifiable discrimination against people with actual or perceived disabilities as soon as possible.

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

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

I shall tell the House why I have chosen to promote this Bill rather than one of the many other options that I had. After 18 years of balloting, I am still getting over the shock of coming first. I thought about what I could achieve and felt great joy as I did so, which was why I chose this Bill. I shall explain what the Bill is intended to achieve and how it fits in with my own political experience since I was first elected to a local authority almost 30 years ago.

The Bill gives new powers to local authorities in a rapidly changing world. It gives them powers to mobilise their expertise in the most practical and cost-effective way, to assist the people in many countries who can make best use of their undoubted qualities and inherent skills—subject to certain conditions. It is not, and it would never be, my intention to restrict or control the powers that local authorities exercise now; the purpose is to encourage a genuine sense of international interdependence, providing that the costs of such help fall on the taxpayer in general and not on local charge payers. Know-how, properly and continuously given, is at a premium if we genuinely seek to forge new alliances based on the democratic values that local and national government adhere to in this country.

The sponsors of the Bill, who come from all parties, have one thing in common: they are internationalists who recognise the importance of such links. Some of them are members of the Council of Europe, some of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, others of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, others of the all-party group on overseas development and others still of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Because of their experience in such groups, they recognise the importance of reaching out to narrow the differences in the world and to share knowledge and experience with the wider world, if we are to have any hope of defeating those who thrive on overt nationalism and ethnic differences, evidence of which is all too obvious today.

My first contact with the International Union of Local Authorities was a long way hack, in 1970 when I attended a conference in Toronto. I was a delegate representing Nottinghamshire county council—I was the chairman of its finance committee. I vividly remember the impact of our contacts and discussions at that conference. We recognised the problems that others face, the values of shared experience with developed and developing countries and the sense of a one-world community, although at that time many parts of the world were not part of that community. Still, we understood what could be achieved through contacts and knowledge.

My second relevant experience was in the early days of my second Parliament—my first had lasted only six months. As a keen European, I asked to be sent to the Council of Europe in 1974–75. I remember arriving in Paris and telling the leader of our delegation that I was a new member. He looked at me in a puzzled way, so I said, "Surely you know me, Sir John? I am a great friend of Kenneth Clarke." He said, "Well, I hope you pair with him regularly".

Shortly afterwards, I was made a member of the twinning committee. My hon. Friends who are members of that committee will know that it is part of the Council of Europe, and it is doing incredibly good work to give flags to local authorities that have shown themselves to be working for the wider European ideal. I remember being bitterly ashamed of the fact that only two applications had come in from the United Kingdom; many more had arrived from other member countries.

I remember returning from the meeting and going straight to my newly formed local authority, Broxtowe borough council, and pressing it to set up a twinning commmittee to seek links with other parts of the world. I am happy to say that that has been successfully done, the more so because it was decided to involve all parts of the community in Broxtowe. The local authority enabled others to join together. The result has been remarkable. We now have many links with Gütersloh in Germany; these include school children exchanges exchanging a bagpipe band for an oompah band, industry exchanges, fire brigades exchanges and police exchanges.

We had a moving experience on the 10th anniversary of our twinning. The German police paraded through the centre of my town beside our own policemen. In all these ways, our society has improved—in terms of knowledge, friendships and many other benefits.

I am glad to say that twinning has become far more extensive in western Europe, particularly among the more enlightened authorities. Many of them have links with eastern Europe and Africa. My right hon. Friend Baroness Chalker has encouraged this, as has the International Union of Local Authorities. The practice is criticised only by those who cannot comprehend the value to local interests of wider experiences and contacts. There are now more than 1,600 such links between this country and the wider world; and I have already said that it is essential that linking should go on between whole communities, not just local authorities.

I have had a great deal to do with the Foreign Affairs Committee. We have travelled widely and, together with the all-party group, we have twice promoted the one-world programme across Europe, linking north and south under the slogan, "Think globally, act locally". With the considerable help of the BBC, Channel 4 and others, in 1988 and again last year, we promoted the idea of the global village—of common values and of the great importance of an interdependent world.

I realised that the natural extension for me of such activities was the necessity for technical exchange, brought so sharply into focus by the end of the Soviet domination of central and eastern Europe. Countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania exhibited a desperate need to establish democratic local government, as did the Commonwealth of Independent States. The need to provide these countries with services never before sought was being hampered, despite the availability of money from the Foreign Office in the shape of the know-how funds. That enlightened policy of assistance was being hampered by a lack of legal clarity. It seemed that a private Member's Bill was needed to provide the relevant statutory powers.

So it was that I naturally used my number one position in the ballot to further this desirable aim. Local authorities have a vast fund of experience which is directly relevant. Previous contacts through twinning are helpful, certainly, but not essential. What is essential is subsequent continuity; local authorities can maintain contact and establish personal relationships based on trust. They can thus build a more meaningful human bridge from which both partners benefit.

If an initiative is begun with a local authority in another country it is possible to return and offer assistance when problems arise. Officers can go on exchanges, people from the other local authority can be brought over to look at the next stage of a project. That is a far surer way of delivering the necessary assistance.

Despite using examples taken solely from eastern Europe, I have no wish to place any geographical limitations on this scheme. As other parts of the world seek help through other agencies—the Overseas Development Administration, European development funding or United Nations bodies—the same ability to twin in a technical sense would be covered by the Bill.

I have a special sympathy for many countries in Africa. Ethiopia has been ravaged by war, tragedy and famine for a long time, but it now has an interim Government trying to do the right thing by their inhabitants, but desperately in need of know-how. The establishment of a know-how fund specifically to help that country is precisely the right way to mobilise the expertise of local authorities. That can link the major towns in Ethiopia and reach out to establish the essential fabric of democracy and service. The same applies to Mozambique, Angola and the black townships of South Africa where there is a desperate need for expertise and know-how.

When looking for flesh and blood examples to bring the matter into focus, one looks first at one's own locality. My county council has had links with Poland and Czechoslovakia which pre-date the overflow of communism. Those friendship links have given us a clear understanding of the needs and economies of cities such as Poznan in Poland or Kolin in Czechoslovakia. As a result of that knowledge, Nottinghamshire county council pressed for part of the Government's know-how fund to be specially earmarked for local authority technical links. When the scheme was established, the council bid successfully for three projects.

Kolin was assisted with local government structures and economic development. Kolin is a large town, but it is too small to market itself effectively and resource itself adequately to provide the range of economic development services that are provided in a county such as Nottinghamshire, which has been a catalyst in bringing together Kolin and its neighbours in mid Bohemia. It has provided advice for the provision of an economic development strategy and that project is proceeding.

Kolin is ringed by chemical plants, and we are all aware of chemical tragedies that have occurred in different parts of the world. An accident at one of those plants could have serious consequences and set back the recovery of the town. Nottinghamshire county council reviewed the fire service provision and paid particular attention to fire prevention and minimising fire risk. As a result, the Czech authorities have adopted Kolin as a model of good practice for their country. The project is still under way and a positive side benefit is business for manufacturers and traders in fire-fighting equipment.

We understand that, following a visit to the Home Office by Mr. Zeman, Czechoslovakia's Vice-Minister for the Interior, and Kolin's chief fire officer, the British model for national and local management operation and control of the fire service is likely to be adopted for the whole of Czechoslovakia. That is expected to result in further consultancy work for United Kingdom institutions, especially the Fire Service College at Moreton-in-Marsh.

The scheme in Ponzan is dealing with waste disposal and economic development. Any successful economy needs to remove its waste cleanly and effectively, and the shared experience of Nottinghamshire and Poznan is developing best practice. One of the ironies about so much of eastern Europe's centrally planned economy was that it did not provide very well for waste disposal, and pollution is now a serious problem in many parts of eastern Germany and central Europe.

Energy conservation and economic development are also being promoted in Poznan. In theory, the market economy should rationalise the consumption of scarce resources. However, even in western economies the market is distorted, especially in energy. Nottinghamshire county council has won many awards for its energy conservation schemes and achievements and has been asked by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to undertake this fourth know-how project. I could continue to speak about my county, but I should like to enlarge the debate.

Under the existing scheme, Bradford is represented in Czechoslovakia. Doncaster, Hull, Dorset, Berkshire, Scunthorpe and Southampton are all working in Poland. Hungary has schemes from Croydon, Chorley and Kent. In the Ukraine, Peterborough, Brighton and Barnsley are represented. Dartford is represented in Estonia and Islington is working in Budapest. St. Helens is linked with Vybong. The great benefit of those schemes is the relatively low cost, but the assistance and add-on value from the know-how transfer is almost immeasurable.

In drafting the Bill, I made every effort to consult and to carry the local authorities and their associations with me. I have tried hard to overcome any suspicion by local authorities that part of the Bill requires the Secretary of State's consent. There have been several drafts of the Bill. It is so simple and small that it should have gold edges to maximise its importance. Consultations continue and we are willing to consider helpful and meaningful amendments.

I am confident that changes in the Bill in the use of general consent procedures and de minimis provisions will not in any way hamper those local authorities that see real value in participating in this wide-ranging and important scheme. The Bill has had to have its scope widened to cover joint authorities such as fire, police, waste disposal and passenger transport. We have considered especially the request of the local authority associations to provide assistance to bodies in other countries that cover the same functions and services as United Kingdom local authorities. Therefore, there is no way in which we can minimise the ability to transfer.

I am delighted at the evidence of good will on all sides. My sponsors include Members of all the major parties and I understand that the Opposition support the Bill. I welcome that. Local government and those of us who are involved in it provides the genuine sinews of democracy. The partnership of local and central government, coupled with European initiatives and United Nations schemes, provides the warp and weft of a civilised society. We see at present the result of breakdown in society and the suffering that ensues for those who have no power to prevent it. That can happen in the heart of Europe, as much as in the wider lands of Africa.

By passing the Bill and showing a better way, the House will light thousands of candles. That will bring people together in service to their fellow citizens, which is the motivation of most hon. Members.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) on his success in the ballot. My hon. Friend's shock at winning is matched only by my shock at being called so early in the debate. I also congratulate my hon. Friend on rejecting more glamorous alternatives. His Bill could be described as technical, but it is important and has major ramifications for local authorities in Britain and those abroad which will be able to be assisted more by its provisions.

I have two main reasons for strongly supporting the Bill. First, it corrects an apparent ambiguity in the present law governing local authorities. Secondly, it will bring to greater public knowledge the possibilities that it contains. It will draw attention to the importance of the technical twinning scheme and to other ways in which local authorities in this country can benefit those abroad. I therefore welcome the publicity that will flow from the Bill's introducion.

Local government has a significant role to play in assisting development in other countries, and such work is particularly important in eastern Europe at this time. I cannot stress too much the importance of Britain and other countries in the west supporting the reform process in eastern Europe. One might ask why it is particularly important to support eastern Europe. After all, it does not provide our immediate neighbours and, to some in Britain, the countries of eastern Europe might seem almost irrelevant.

There are a number of reasons. There are simple reasons of national interest. It is undoubtedly in the interests of the people of this country to help to foster stable and friendly political institutions in eastern Europe. That has not always been the case. In fact, until recently one could describe the systems of such countries as stable up to a point, but distinctly unfriendly.

An even more dangerous possibility looms ever-present today—that of countries having political systems that are both unstable and unfriendly, and therefore highly unpredictable in their political and military development. To the extent that local authorities and other institutions in Britain can help the development of stability and of democratic processes in such countries, that is broadly to be welcomed.

A second form of development that could be described as being in our national interest, as well as in the interest of those other countries, is economic development. The more that countries in eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world can be encouraged to develop economically, and the more that we help in that process, the more the economy of the whole world will benefit—and that will benefit this country, particularly as our nation is so dependent on trade.

There is also the motivation of supporting in idealistic terms the development of democratic structures. They cannot be imposed from above but must develop from below, and they cannot just rest on undemocratic structures that are at the centre of a nation—the state structures—but must develop equally at a grassroots level. We would describe that as the local authority level. Whatever term or description one uses, they are those structures that serve the local provision of services to people in towns and villages throughout the world.

The development of that process can be underpinned and perhaps will develop specifically from know-how, human resources and expertise. We all know that many countries in the world, particularly those in eastern Europe, are desperately short of know-how and expertise. That is where we can provide immeasurable support.

The cost challenge of development in eastern Europe will be immense, and it would be unrealistic to imagine that this country alone could make such a significant contribution that a major part of the problem could be overcome by us alone. There are limited possibilities, purely because of the vastness of the problem. It is only right that international institutions should seek to give assistance. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the PHARE scheme will tackle some of the major problems of debt and investment.

The Government know-how fund, which I have always warmly welcomed—I believe that it contributes greatly to helping and developing eastern Europe—is specifically designed to support human resources, technical know-how and training. That can be matched most effectively at local level, through the technical twinning scheme. The scheme was small when it was started, but it has proved to be so successful and has contributed in such a uniquely useful way that it has grown fast. A number of go-ahead local authorities, some of which my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe mentioned, have already contributed a great deal and have shown the worth of that scheme.

My own local authority, Bromley, has knowledge and expertise, matched by many others in the country, which could be of practical help in, for example, waste disposal—which may be mundane, but it is important—and the way in which the police force deals with local problems. That is something in which police forces in eastern Europe have hitherto, perhaps, not been very skilled, or have not attempted.

There is also organisational, structural change—such as privatisation. In many eastern European countries, privatisation is a driving ideal after the experience of past decades. It is something which many local authorities in this country have also seen as new. It poses many challenges that have been successfully tackled by several leading local authorities in Britain.

Recently, my own local authority effectively privatised its housing stock—at least, through a complicated process, the housing has passed out of direct local authority control in its entirety. Perhaps a better example is what is being done with direct labour forces—which could certainly be matched in eastern Europe. Much of the expertise acquired in this country could be used to great effect abroad.

The Bill will encourage all those possibilities and the ideal of the further technical links that are so important. The earlier processes attempted in Britain hit snags. In many senses, they were technical snags. They were not problems with the application of the idea so much as with the ultra vires nature of the powers used. In fact, a number of district auditors—and more recently the Audit Commission—questioned the validity of local authority involvement in technical twinning schemes. The Bill therefore plays an important part in sorting out that dilemma and anomaly. I welcome that, because for a local authority to operate effectively, its powers and responsibilities, and the legal basis of them, must be clear.

To rely simply on section 137 of the Local Government Act 1972, as has been done in the past, to promote areas of spending and activity not encompassed by other areas of the law could be rather dangerous. That apart, it is quite controversial. During the 1984 miners' dispute, a number of local authorities sought, in their wisdom, to use their finances and resources to support various aspects of the miners' strike. They did so amid great controversy and widespread opposition from their ratepayers, because in many cases the authorities did not have any direct link with the dispute or mining, or have any mines in their areas. That put local government in bad repute. It will be much better to have a law that clearly defines, in simple and direct language, as the Bill does, what may or may not be done. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe on the way in which his Bill has been drafted.

It is the best sort of Bill. It is brief—which is certainly to be welcomed, clear, and simple in its objective. It will benefit both the providers—local authorities in this country—and the recipients, the local authorities in other countries that need our support and help so desperately.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) on the Bill. I have considerable experience of local government. My authority, Croydon, was mentioned earlier; I know that the current restrictions have inhibited it drastically, preventing help from reaching eastern Europe and other countries all over the world. The clarification provided by the Bill is very welcome, for a number of reasons.

As a member of a local authority, I have had to run around using the Local Government Act 1972 as a sort of cover in my attempt to assist overseas countries. The provision of expertise has been inhibited by the lack of available personnel for the task. Assistance is also needed within this country, for instance with the selling of contracts. I am thinking in particular of Wandsworth selling to Lambeth. In that instance, twinning, was obviously not desirable. Having bought the contract and the software, Lambeth had some difficulty in understanding the details and putting them into action; every other council in the country managed, but someone murmured something about difficulty with joined-up writing.

Particular emphasis has been placed on this subject since we began helping eastern European countries. It is important that the right expertise reaches developing countries. This has, of course, happened before, within the restrictions imposed by the current legislation. My personal experience of trying to help such countries as Russia—Moscow in particular—and Poland, especially Warsaw and Gdansk, has shown me the appalling lack of even basic local government structures in those countries. There is no simple, fundamental planning: they have no structure, no understanding of such matters, and they do not know where to go. Housing is an example of that. I was told by Moscow's deputy mayor that Russia had no banks or building societies to speak of; everywhere flats were in a poor state of repair; people wanted to purchase their homes, but they could not do so because they did not understand the procedures involved. Basic amenities that are taken for granted even by school children in this country were not available.

I realise, of course, that the main problem is the different system that operates in such countries, but they are trying to break out of that system—for instance, through use of the private sector. They are seeking to follow the example set by many local authorities in this country to obtain a better service, at a competitive cost, for the people whom they serve.

When I worked for Wandsworth council, I found it impossible to help a number of countries—apart from Russia and Poland, which I have already mentioned. We were unable to help Latvia and Estonia, for example, because of the restrictions imposed by the current legal framework; we were forced to resort to section 176 of the Local Government Act 1972, which involved the mayor and other leading council members and came under the general heading of official courtesy. Sending officials to Latvia and Estonia stretched the regulations somewhat.

Bridges between this country and eastern Europe can be built by forming links with British businesses. Opportunities are being sought but not fulfilled, and local government in this country may have to act as a catalyst, introducing services of a reasonable quality to the countries concerned and also bringing in useful foreign currency. In this connection, not only eastern Europe but Africa is relevant. Because of the restrictions that I have mentioned, Wandsworth council was forced to turn down invitations to visit Ghana and Tanzania and provide expertise, particularly private-sector expertise.

What has not yet been mentioned is the opportunity for British local government to earn money overseas. That opportunity is, of course, limited by the current legislation, but the Bill would largely overcome the problem. South Africa, which has sent two delegations to Wandsworth, is now trying to introduce competitive tendering to help the black community and the smallest businesses to provide local government services, and to overcome its current difficulties.

Wandsworth has had some intriguing contacts. New York, for instance, has asked for help with competitive tendering and privatisation, as have a number of other American states. Both New York and Hong Kong have sought information on housing management; Paris has asked for help with local government management and competitive tendering. The front-line competitive tendering council in France—Reims—is now using contracts sold to it by Wandsworth council, which is earning a few francs for this country. The story is the same in Canada, Australia and New Zealand: they are using competitive tendering and working with the private sector, and contracts are being sold.

It is interesting to return to some of those countries and find the contractors working as consultants, taking local government contracts and specifications from this country, attaching their own names and selling them. Fortunately, most of the countries concerned recognise that the contracts originated here: they return to this country, and further income is generated.

Japan and Taiwan are two more examples of countries that seek not only help with privatisation, but the expertise that we can offer in relation to local government management of computer systems. Norway and Sweden are doing the same. Commercial organisations outside local government are also seeking assistance: they have visited this country, and have invited local authority members and officers to go to their countries and provide expertise. The Bill will enable us not only to help eastern Europe, but to expand and bring ourselves extra income.

On the tube on the way here, I made a rough calculation of Wandsworth council's earnings last year as a result of its efforts in this regard. Operating under the existing restrictions, it probably made over £100,000; and, of course, it levies no community charge.

I have some qualms—although I am open to reassurance—about the possibility of flagrant junketing on the council tax. "Junketing" was the word used by a Labour member of Wandsworth council. Back in the days of the GLC, there was junketing on the rates: the GLC provided facilities for a small minority group of what were described as anti-racist Maoris from New Zealand. I could not see those people as distinguished members of any community. They had been rejected by the Maori community in New Zealand and by New Zealand local government, and had come here to find a home. The GLC met their need.

I hope that the Bill will put an end to such abuses. With a bit of luck, we may receive some advice later from our poacher turned gamekeeper.

I cannot recall the example that the hon. Gentleman gave, but I shall assume that it is accurate. He called it an abuse. I assume that, by that, he means an abuse in the sense that he disagreed with it, rather than an abuse of any legal powers that the Greater London council then had.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his suggestion, but I made an objection because I felt that it was an abuse of the law as it stood. It was not questioned; it was not presented to the auditor, for it was too insignificant to bother with. Nevertheless, it was an example. I could see no way in which we could call these visitors distinguished visitors. They were not entertained by the leader of the council, although that might nominally have been so. It was an insult to a country that is extremely friendly and has very close links with this country. It was also an insult to the Maori people of New Zealand.

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for interrupting his speech again. I shall not enter into an argument about the points he has made. If necessary, I shall have the opportunity to do so later. I cannot, however, let him get away with saying that he thought that it was an abuse of the law. He knows that a legal opinion would have been given to the local authority by its officers with regard to any such proposal, They are sensitive to any matters that involve overseas expenditure. In the circumstances, the hon. Gentleman cannot suggest that the officers of the GLC connived with law breaking. I ask him to think very carefully about that and to withdraw what he said.

I am raising a question rather than an allegation. It is an example that we need to bear in mind. I am sure that we shall receive assistance from the hon. Gentleman—as I have already said, a poacher turned gamekeeper—to ensure that the Bill covers that difficulty and makes certain that it does not arise again.

The Bill provides the opportunity for an overdue clarification of an extremely difficult area. Local government expertise could be paid for by the various bodies that are already waiting to take advantage of it. It also provides an opportunity to attract considerable income from overseas to this country. If one small council can earn more than £100,000 a year, the potential, if we multiply that sum by the 650 other councils in England and Wales, is considerable.

I join others in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) for introducing the Bill. It is a worthy Bill and typical of my hon. Friend, in that it seeks to do good rather than to grab the quick headline. I applaud him for his approach. He and I were parliamentary neighbours in the 1983 to 1987 Parliament. At the time, I had the constituency of Nottingham, North. We fought together for the establishment of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers; we may hear more about that in the new year.

I am pleased to support the Bill. Frankly, I am astonished to find that it is necessary. I have no experience of local government—I bow to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford) and to other hon. Friends with local government experience—but the fact that the Bill is necessary makes it clear to me that the loophole must be removed. When we look back at the battles of the past decade between central Government and local government, we find that it remains as important now as it was then that local government should remain a pure creature of statute and that its powers should be clearly defined.

We live in a fast-moving world where the instant conveyance of communication has become part of everyday life. During his retirement speech, Ronald Reagan pulled out of his pocket a micro chip and said that it had done more for the progress of the world than he or any other politician had done. The instant communication of information is very much a part of the Bill.

As we seek to maintain our standing in the world and to influence progress in the world, we have to move forward just to stand still. I take my hat off to the progress made by the BBC world service in that respect, particularly its television service in Asia and Africa, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe alluded. Perhaps I may be allowed to digress for a moment to say that I hope that the BBC world service will not suffer as the debate on the future of the BBC continues next year.

We must seek to influence world events by allowing local authorities to pass on their advice and expertise. We must also remove any doubts that have been raised by the Bill. I became convinced in my youth of the need for educational exchanges. My father was the founder of the veterinary school at Bristol university, which now has an international reputation. It was the twinning of Bristol and Hanover that led to his invitation to lead a team of young veterinary surgeons to Germany in the post-war years. I accompanied him on one of those trips in the 1960s. I listened to my father, this mild and intelligent man, speaking in fluent German to those German students, impressing on them the need for an understanding of animals and referring to the anatomy of the horse, as envisaged by the artist Stubbs. As I did so, it became clear to me why there should be a consensus for peace. That consensus has lasted for nearly five decades. I hope that it will continue for at least another five decades. Cultural and educational exchanges are important to that peace.

I am concerned about the fact that local authorities face the threat of judicial review when they may have exceeded their powers. The ultra vires rule is essential. It provides a remedy against the abuse of power by local authorities. I was surprised that the inquiry's report into the Western Isles investment in BCCI proposed the scrapping of the ultra vires rule. I am pleased that the Audit Commission opposed the suggestion, as do I. That makes the Bill essential.

I am pleased that the scope of the Bill is global. I was also pleased to hear my hon. Friend say that that was his intention. He, too, will no doubt have an interest in Africa, particularly its population and development. I hope that some of the educational advantages that may flow from the passage of the Bill will address the population issue in both Africa and Asia, where assistance is needed.

The Bill is primarily targeted on eastern Europe. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) mentioned, the end of the cold war has brought about a new era in international relations in eastern Europe. But it is a fragile era and the events of recent weeks suggest that it is becoming even more fragile as backward steps are taken in eastern Europe. Every effort must be made by the House and the Government to bridge the gap between east and west. We must try to convey the ideas of innovation and the culture of the west, which have succeeded so well in recent years. An important element in building bridges with eastern Europe is the establishment by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of a know-how fund to convey our ideas to that part of the world.

I understand that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has agreed to revise the technical links scheme to cover the agreed costs of technical twinning projects. There are two views of twinning. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central mentioned the first view—junketing. Any twinning arrangement must have a sound and economic purpose. No one would support junketing of any kind. I do not want to enter into a discussion with the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) about what that might include.

The second view of twinning is the concept that we are addressing today: partnership between local authorities and the wider community. My borough of Croydon has forged such a link. In the post-war years it established the Croydon-Arnhem link. It was founded in 1946 by a Dutch journalist, Albert Milhardo, with the late Group Captain Cummings of Croydon and Alderman Lewis.

Initially it was a sporting exchange, fostered by a cup donated by the local newspaper, the Croydon Advertiser. Since the establishment of the link, 3,000 people have been to Arnhem, exchanging cultural, artistic and sporting views. The link has developed in a way that all would applaud. We have seen exchanges of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and now the police are considering an exchange. Most important, in 1988 it moved from being a cultural relationship to a commercial one when we had the Arnhem cultural and commercial week. That was a great success, with exhibitions in the Whitgift school promoting the relationship.

The end of the year will see the establishment of the single market, which will provide a further incentive to explore the potential of twinning for the promotion of economic development. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central mentioned waste disposal information as the sort of area that can be developed during the expansion of the single market.

Perhaps surprisingly, I use the borough of Chorley as an excellent example of the type of exchange that will flow from the Bill. In 1990, Chorley established links with a Hungarian town called Szekesferhervar—I will let the Hansard reporter have a note of that later. Hungary is one of the most progressive countries in eastern Europe and the town to which I have just referred is 35 miles outside Budapest. It is an important production centre which has the largest aluminium processing plant in central Europe. Through the British ambassador, it conveyed the fact that it wanted cultural and educational connections as well as commercial and economic connections. It wanted to stress the economic side of any proposed links and settled on Chorley.

Chorley has a number of empty mills and has developed technology for incubation houses for hens. Outside the town there are many empty barracks, which, I am pleased to report to the House, are now filled with incubation units. That is a fairly humorous but excellent example of the transfer of technology. Such nuts and bolts technology at local level—or should I call it chicken and egg technology?—is so important.

Will my hon. Friend use this opportunity to stress the provisions of clause 1(5), which ensures that the cost of such measures will be paid not by local authorities or residents but by the Government through the know-how fund and other sources?

I cannot confirm that, but if my hon. Friend says that that is the case I am sure that it is, which makes the Bill all the more important.

That transfer of nuts and bolts technology and advice is important and is at the heart of the Bill, which is why I support it.

Like my colleagues, I should like to tip my hat to my very hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester). I remember from my earliest days in the House that he established with me his interest in foreign affairs when we were joint members of an Inter-Parliamentary Union team to Tanzania, where the need for legislation such as the Bill to improve local government became apparent many years ago.

For a long time I have supported the Government's activities through the know-how fund and have urged on them and other Governments of the western world some form of Strasbourg plan akin to the Marshall plan. I still feel that there is room for vast improvement in the amount of financial and know-how assistance that we give to the developing countries of eastern and central Europe as they struggle from being directed communist dictatorships into something approaching what we termed until recently a western economy and method of government.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway), I am no expert on local government—we stand in stark comparison with my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford) or my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe. I have had some experience in recent years, as a member of the United Kingdom delegation to the Council of Europe, of the evolutionary process through which the central and eastern European countries are going. Later today, I am pleased to say, a visiting member of the Lithuanian Parliament is coming to my constituency to see how things work at the consistency level. It will be interesting to hear that representative's reaction to our debate.

There is hardly an area of governmental activity or life that local government does not touch on directly, so the Bill will help those evolving states. The movement from the centrally directed planned structure of the communist world to the western approach cannot but be helped by the establishment of local structure plans, local development plans, local environmental health systems, the building of local roads and even the provision of local housing. I say "even the provision" because we are moving on from the method whereby local government provides all local housing—a welcome step which perhaps can be adopted by the developing countries.

In introducing the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe briefly mentioned policing and the way in which he has established contact between his local police authority and a local police force and opposite numbers on the continent. There must be far more room for such contacts and such cross-learning, not confined merely to police forces and activities but including the broader concept of civil defence and the emergency services such as the fire services.

Personal services are being slowly introduced in all the developing countries of western and central Europe at enormous cost. One of the greatest difficulties that they have to overcome is the introduction of the concept of individual responsibility and the Government providing only the backdrop or safety net, such as we have in Britain, to enable individuals increasingly to look after themselves and their own families. It is crucial, therefore, that local authorities in those countries—town, village or some form of geographical area wider than that—can understand how they should structure local health administration, the provision of social services, the administration of social benefits and, looking to the future as, excitingly, those countries always are, the provision of ever better education to the young people who must grow up in a developing and changed world from that in which their parents grew up.

I remember visiting a hospital outside Prague and meeting a distinguished recorder; I think that his title was administrator of the local hospital. He was most apologetic for speaking such bad English, yet he spoke perfect English even though he had not spoken it for 40 years. He spoke to a group in impeccable English about not only general subjects of interest but specific and technical subjects of medical achievement. I remember asking him what we as politicians, with no great power but a little influence, could do to help him perform even better with his basic materials and hospital plant. He immediately said that if only he could be a regular reader of the British Medical Journal it would make all the difference in the world to him.

In the lowest level, know-how fund way, I spoke to a constituent who is a retired doctor but who still skims through that journal to keep up to date. From that moment to this, the retired doctor, instead of throwing away his copy, has forwarded it to the doctor in the hospital outside Prague. I hope that it is helping, even if in the simplest but inter-human way, to apply the know-how fund principle of assistance to the doctor and his colleagues who, I am sure, are benefiting.

That is an example of the personal side, but there is a hard-edged financial administrative side with which we can also be of assistance and on which the Bill would make it possible to give better assistance to evolving local authorities. Examples include the problems of how best to raise local revenue and, having raised it, how best to spend it; how to apply expenditure planning not only for the current year but for the future; how to establish budgetary responsibility and how to react properly to budgetary accountability.

We tend to take such ideas for granted, except in our more acid debates in the House or at local government level. We and most countries of the western world regard them as an accepted way of life, but, goodness gracious, that is certainly not so for evolving local authority organisations in central and eastern Europe.

Like other hon. Members, I have accented the way in which the Bill would assist people in evolving states in central and eastern Europe because of the extreme importance of their correct and proper evolution into democratic and economic freedom. They are part of our continent, but one must not overlook the parallel needs of other parts of the world, such as Africa and elsewhere, which are passing through dissimilar but equally pressing difficulties.

We are part of Europe and, as the Prime Minister said, we must be at the heart of Europe. It is appropriate that, as the future of Europe is being discussed this very day in Edinburgh, we are discussing ways in which we can help the future of local communities, towns, villages and whole areas in the evolving parts of Europe to become the free association of peoples which we wish to encourage.

I close by complimenting my very hon. Friend the hon. Member for Broxtowe on the Bill. I wish it well on Second Reading and through its later stages in the House and in another place.

I also warmly welcome the Bill and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) on his good fortune. The Bill will legislate for much of what has been happening for a long time—the provision of assistance in so many ways by British local government officers and authorities for so many people elsewhere in the world.

I share the experience and conclusion of my hon. Friend and several other hon. Members, which is that British local government is widely regarded as pre-eminent throughout the world. Today, international demand for its advice and the benefit of its long experience is becoming almost overwhelming with the unprecedented establishment of so many new democracies following the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the end of Soviet influence throughout the world. British pre-eminence in that respect is seen especially in the demand for impartial, objective and, above all, experienced advisers and observers during the holding of free and democratic elections. I am sure that it is such advice and assistance in the electoral process which my hon. Friend had in mind as one of the aims of his excellent Bill.

A growing number of hon. Members have been observing such elections in recent years. I did so in Nicaragua in 1990 with my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris), now the Minister for Transport in London. I also observed the Turkish referendum for the new constitution in 1982 and the peace processes in Angola, Namibia and Nepal as well as those in many of the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet empire in Europe.

The lesson of those and many other elections being held for the first time in many countries—especially those being held in nations that we still regard as rather primitive—is that to observe polling day itself does not provide a sufficient basis on which to judge whether the elections are free and fair. The entire period of the campaign must be observed to enable us to determine whether the election is free—for example, whether it is free of one party's domination of the media, free of any threats and intimidation in advance of polling day and free of the monopoly of the resources and assets of the former dominant party, usually the Communist party. That can take several weeks, which is an impossible time for us parliamentarians to spend.

In such circumstances, experienced British local government officers can make a crucial difference by advising, as well as monitoring whether a country has held free and fair elections and therefore qualifies as a democracy.

I am extremely privileged to hold one of the most exciting jobs in Europe, that of the chairman of the Council of Europe's committee for relations with European non-member countries. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) was until recently a very valuable member of the committee, which is responsible for dealing with the applications of all the newly independent states of central and eastern Europe to become full members of our parliamentary assembly.

In order to qualify, a country must satisfy our standards for multi-party pluralist democracy and abide by the rule of law on human rights as we define it under the European convention on human rights. It must have its laws and constitution analysed in depth by a member of the European Court and the European Commission and to have had fully observed free and fair elections.

To date, four countries—Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria—have become full members of the Council of Europe since the peoples' revolutions of 1989. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes was the rapporteur for Bulgaria's application for full membership and he did an excellent job. We have offered special guest status to a further 10 countries in recognition of their clear commitment to economic and political reform. That status enables them to send parliamentary delegations to Strasbourg, but not, of course, to vote. The special guest status countries are the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the three Slavic states of the former Soviet Union—Russia, Ukraine, Belarus—and the four Balkan states of Slovenia, Romania, Albania and Moldova. We hope that as Slovenia and Lithuania have held free and fair elections, they will become full members by February's part-session of the Council of Europe.

That leaves four other countries whose applications we are now considering. They are the two Caucasian states of Armenia and Azaberbaijan, and two other Balkan states—Croatia and Macedonia. Two other countries that clearly have not even got around to applying for special guest status at the Council of Europe because of their other preoccupations are Bosnia and Georgia, where there are civil wars. The Council does not want to know the new Yugoslavia of Serbia-Montenegro, in view of the clear denial of human rights for which they are responsible.

There are then the five Asian republics of the former Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. They are countries with which hon. Members will be familiar, as they are with the pronunciation of their names. They are not part of the European continent, so they do not qualify as members of the Council of Europe although they were part of the Council of Europe when the Soviet Union had special guest status there. We are discussing the possibility of consultation agreements with them because it is important that our European heritage and all the standards we seek to uphold in democracy not only at national level, but at local level, should be encouraged in those countries.

Those countries are increasingly coming under pressure from one of the most fundamental Islamic influences to the south, which is very worrying. There is civil war in Tajikistan and in Uzbekistan between the democrats and Islamic fundamentalists. There is also the influence from the east of the last remaining evil empire—communist China.

The 10 special guest countries in the Council of Europe have access to all the collective expertise, advice and assistance acquired by member states of the Council of Europe. The Bill can only enhance that for local democracy.

I am glad that the local government side of the Council of Europe, the conference of local and regional authorities in Europe, is reforming itself into two representative bodies so that it can respond more effectively to the growing trend towards regional government in central and eastern Europe and so that it can give practical implementation to the well-known principle of subsidiarity, which I hope is very much on the agenda in Edinburgh today, on which the European charter of local self-government is based.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) and others have mentioned, the emerging democracies can benefit from the European Community's PHARE programme as well as from the know-how funds provided by this country and others. They can also benefit from the town twinning arrangements to which my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe referred. Those arrangements can do so much to increase knowledge and understanding between communities.

For those important reasons, the Bill is timely in encouraging British local government expertise to be more available. In so doing, it will help the new local democracies to survive the inevitable backlash arid disillusionment throughout the former Soviet empire in central and eastern Europe as people find that freedom does not bring instant democracy.

A document published this year by the Council of Europe illustrates perfectly the benefits and help that the Bill could bring to the emerging democracies. The document is a handbook for observers of local or national elections in emerging democracies. It is a veritable checklist of the basic rules to be followed by the teams responsible for advising on and monitoring free elections.

It lists the tasks to be undertaken in the run-up to polling day, on polling day itself, at the count and in the process of reporting back on the outcome of the election.

I mention the handbook especially because it was prepared by Mr. Keith Lomas who, until earlier this year, was the town clerk and chief executive of my borough of Bournemouth. The book is based on his considerable experience of having helped to organise the independence elections in Rhodesia, where he was based for three months, under the late Lord Soames in 1980. More recently he monitored the elections in Romania and Namibia on behalf of the United Nations. I am pleased to have the opportunity to pay tribute in the House to Keith Lomas and to his 20 years of dedicated service in the borough of Bournemouth. He has the British local government experience whose spread the Bill seeks to encourage.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe referred to the help that his local fire service is providing in eastern Europe. I cite another example of a constituent of mine who is an officer in the Dorset fire service. He has been seconded by the Home Office to British dependencies in the Caribbean where he is to report on the efficiency of the local fire services on the islands. His report could be very revealing. There is no fire cover there because, in practice, there is no emergency fire service. The inhabitants of the islands are at total risk, as are all visitors and tourists who use the hotels, the public buildings and the tourist complexes. There is wide scope for further assistance to establish effective emergency fire cover for those for whom this country continues to have a responsibility. Such assistance could be provided under the Bill.

I very much hope that the Bill will be given a clear passage through the House and that the Government will give it full support. I look forward to the response by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment. There has never been a better time, since the establishment of our second empire one and a half centuries ago, for British local government to be a force for good local government throughout the world. There is great respect and a great demand for such a force. I hope that the Bill is given a clear passage through the House. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe on his good fortune and on his foresight.

It seems that there will be a commercial break shortly after I begin my speech. I reiterate the thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) for introducing the Bill. It must be extremely tempting for an hon. Member who comes top of the ballot for private Members' Bills to go for something glamorous and to hit the headlines—although the experience of so many colleagues who have hit the headlines in the past couple of days may be a good reason for going for a discreet and timely measure.

One of the main reasons why I fully support the Bill was explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford). It is worrying to many of us that those who work in local democracy who want to help those outside their own immediate area by giving them expertise should be dissuaded from doing so by the current law. It is a matter of urgency that the House should change the law, because it cannot be right for us to expect those who want to help to cower, hoping that they will not be picked up under existing legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central, who is not here now, raised an important point.

There will always be those who ask why we should give such help in the first place. I am sure that all hon. Members who have travelled not only in the emerging countries of eastern Europe, but in the member countries of the Commonwealth and in other third-world countries will be only too well aware from their own experience why the Bill is needed. We need to help countries such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which I have visited, and the countries of Africa such as Kenya, which I have also had the pleasure of visiting.

The town of Nailsey in my constituency was one of the first to twin with an east European town—Chrzanow in Poland, which is considerably easier to pronounce than some of those mentioned by my hon. Friends.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East mentioned some of the important respects in which our friends in eastern Europe are under-privileged, but perhaps it is the small things—the anecdotal evidence—that bring the point home to us. We all take for granted the facilities provided at hotels, including the sweets sitting on the reception table. While I was staying at a hotel in Prague, I watched with some amusement as two children, who had been standing outside waiting their chance, dashed through the revolving doors, picked up a bag of sweets and ran away along the nearest escape route. That sad story brings home the fact that people in eastern Europe do not even enjoy the minor privileges that we in the United Kingdom take for granted. The children were forced to stand there like little vultures.

With permission, I should like to make a statement about the funding of the arts.

Over the past two years, there have been a number of significant developments or commitments in relation to the funding of the arts. First, at regional level, arts associations have been replaced with incorporated regional arts boards and the development of a system of integrated planning and accountability. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton) announced in December 1990 that final decisions on the extent of funding responsibility for regional arts boards would be taken after the new boards had had time to establish themselves.

Secondly, a national arts and media strategy, entitled "A Creative Future", has now been completed by the Arts Council. I am grateful to all those who contributed to the extensive consultations involved in its preparation. It will form an important point of departure for future decisions. Thirdly, in the Conservative party election manifesto, the Government committed themselves to re-examining the role of the Arts Council.

I must say that it is difficult to decide the right balance between local and central decision making. I have consulted arts organisations widely and found that there is no clear consensus on the way forward. When it met to consider the issue on 3 November, the Arts Council itself did not reach a unanimous view. However, we are now in a position to be clear about the roles and responsibilities of those who operate the funding system, and there is need for a firm decision after such a long period of expectation.

I should like to confirm the earlier decision taken by my former right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham, who was then the Minister responsible for the arts, that the Arts Council should retain its funding responsibility for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National theatre, the Royal Opera house, the English National Opera and the south bank and for those clients who have a nationwide distribution base, either because they tour or because they publish.

However, at a time of public expenditure restraint, I do not want to add to administrative costs by duplicating unnecessarily staff at central and regional levels. I have therefore decided that the Arts Council should retain funding responsibility for those other arts organisations whose comparators are so few and far between that they can be properly assessed only at national level. All other clients will be delegated to the regional arts boards.

I am arranging for lists of both sets of organisations, drawn up in line with these criteria on the basis of Arts Council advice, to appear in the Official Report. In all, a further 42 clients will be delegated in addition to the 22 already delegated on 1 April this year.

Within that system, I as Secretary of State will remain accountable to the House for the way in which the Arts Council decides to spend the grant in aid. In particular, I have a close interest in the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which that money is spent; in the appropriate balance between public and private sector funding; and in such matters as the emphasis to be given to touring, access for disabled people and educational work by arts organisations.

As a result of the decisions, the regional arts boards will have responsibility for a wider range of clients. It is right that decisions should be taken as close as possible to those affected by them, within an overall policy framework. The Arts Council will continue to have a central role in providing that framework and in managing the funding system. It will continue to fund a number of clients directly. It will decide how much of its grant in aid should be allocated to each board on the basis of the corporate plans submitted by the boards and of the comparative evaluation of arts organisations across the country. The council will also continue to play a crucial role in monitoring developments in each region, in setting standards, in joint assessments of clients and through its continuing involvement in periodic in-depth appraisals of delegated clients.

Those conclusions carry organisational implications for the size and organisation of the Arts Council. The council also needs to consider what scope it has for introducing further market testing and subsequent contracting out of those services that do not constitute its core functions of grant allocation and client assessment. In addition, I shall shortly be announcing the implications of the new national lottery for the work of the Arts Council.

I am therefore commissioning consultants to examine the council's existing structures and to make proposals for change to be implemented progressively from April 1993. I shall also be asking the council to report to me by the end of next June on whether the existing regional arts board staffing and structures offer the expertise and value for money needed to operate the new funding system effectively. I expect the new system as a whole to produce administrative savings.

The organisational changes need to be completed before delegation is introduced if the exercise is to be successful. I have therefore decided that delegation should now take place one year later than originally envisaged—that is, on 1 April 1994. The Arts Council and the regional arts boards have also been considering the extent to which responsibility for schemes and projects should he delegated. I should like discussions concluded by next May, with delegation in this area completed by 1 April 1994. A common framework for delegated schemes arid projects will be in the best interests of artists around the country.

The debate over delegation has been prolonged and the resulting uncertainty has not been helpful. However, I believe that, in current circumstances, the decisions I have announced will best meet the longer-term interests of the arts organisations that the funding system has been created to serve. In order to provide a much-needed period of stability, I do not plan to reopen the issue in the lifetime of this Parliament.

Following are the lists:

Arts organisations for which funding responsibility will be retained by the Arts Council.

In addition to the national companies, including the south bank, touring companies and publications with a nation-wide remit, the following will continue to be directly funded by the Arts Council:

• Northern Ballet Theatre
• City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
• London Philharmonic Orchestra
• London Symphony Orchestra
• Philharmonia
• Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
• Hallé Orchestra
• Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
• Western Orchestral Society
• Opera North
• Northern Sinfonia
• City of Birmingham Touring Opera
• Serpentine Gallery
• Whitechapel Art Gallery
• Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
• Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
• Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
• English Stage Company (The Royal Court)
• Institute of Contemporary Arts

It is regrettable that an important statement on the future of arts funding should have been smuggled into the House on a Friday morning in the middle of the Edinburgh summit. The regions affected by the Minister's proposals should have the widest possible representation by hon. Members on such occasions.

I welcome the general approach of the statement, and some of its contents. In particular, the arts world will be reassured that the Minister does not propose to continue to pursue the centralising tendencies of the Government but will allow regional arts boards considerably more say.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, however, that he is continuing to create a two-tier system of clients for the immediate future? Some will be funded centrally, and they will be seen as first division clients, but those who are funded regionally will be seen as second division clients. That will divide and demoralise the arts world and will be extremely counter-productive.

The Minister has referred to "accountability" and "cutting administrative costs". The Opposition know that those are weasel words. The right hon. Gentleman has not made it clear what the financial implications of his statement will be. He referred to a reduction in administrative costs. He should know that the £2 million saving originally envisaged by Mr. Richard Wilding in his report has long since disappeared, and everyone in the arts world estimates that it will cost many extra millions of pounds to implement the reorganisation strategy. Can the Minister assure us that that money will not come from the top-slicing of arts clients?

In the regions, the arts policies of local authorities are being butchered by the Government's policies, including the poll tax and poll tax capping. The Minister said that the regions were important. He should understand that his policy should give local authorities statutory responsibility for arts funding and thus attract and be eligible for revenue support grant in that regard. That is the Labour party's policy. If the Minister could confirm that that might also be his policy in the future, his words on delegation would have some real substance. However, we welcome the Minister's attitude against centralisation and towards devolution. Although we realise that the word "devolution" is anathema to the Conservative party, considerable devolution to the regions is continuing on the arts side at least. We clearly welcome that.

The Conservative party promised in its election manifesto to maintain support for the arts. However, the Chancellor of the Exchequer did just the opposite in the autumn statement. The Secretary of State referred this morning to the future role for the Arts Council and spoke about the implications of the new national lottery for the work of the Arts Council.

There is considerable interest in the implications of the new national lottery for sports and the arts. Does the Secretary of State propose to ring-fence money for the arts? Will the national lottery money be additional to that ring-fenced money? We should like that assurance this morning.

Putting off devolution for yet another year is unfortunate and will cause considerable unease. I wonder precisely why the Secretary of State has decided to put it off for another year. He referred to uncertainty, and to the debate on devolution being prolonged. How far is that uncertainty due to the indecision of the Government? I believe that we know the answer to that.

Many aspects of the statement need further and detailed consideration. The Secretary of State referred to the Arts Council retaining funding responsibility for the other arts organisations, and to other clients being delegated to the regional arts boards. Does that mean that there will be more or less than originally envisaged? Is the Secretary of State confident that financial arrangements to deal with the extended devolution will be suitable and considerable and enough to cover the work that he expects the regional arts boards to carry out? Has the framework been put in place?

Many of my hon. Friends will want to consider in some detail the implications of the list announced by the Secretary of State. However, I stress once more that if decisions are to be taken—as the Secretary of State said—as close as possible to those affected by them, why does not the right hon. Gentleman say today that he is prepared to involve the local authorities as well as the regional arts boards in his plans?

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) has asked me a significant number of questions, and I will seek to respond to them in the order that she asked them.

I appreciate the inconvenience of taking a statement like this on a Friday morning. Frankly, my preoccupation was to make absolutely certain that we made the statement before Christmas because of the uncertainty that has bedevilled this particular issue. It would obviously have been desirable if we could have made the statement last month.

I have consulted widely with the interested parties before making the decision, as that seemed the right thing to do. I am afraid that that has caused us to be a little behind our programme.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for welcoming the Government's general approach. I hope that the chalice that she has handed across the Dispatch Box will not too greatly poison my relations with my colleagues on the Back Benches. However, if we can maintain a bipartisan approach on the arts, that is all to the good.

The hon. Lady said that she feared that we were creating a two-tier system. When we consider the specific categories of the theatres, the visual arts and the orchestras, it is clear that specific criteria have determined our particular choices. In the context of the theatres, the hon. Lady will see that the Royal Court is the only theatre that I have added to the previous list. All other theatres have been delegated. That would be at variance with a two-tier suggestion. The decisions that we have made are extremely close to those originally recommended by Mr. Wilding.

The hon. Lady necessarily became rather more partisan in her reference to weasel words. Words like "accountability" have significance on the Conservative Benches. They also have significance in the country at large.

The House will be glad to hear that the regional arts boards are now costing less to run than the regional arts associations before them. The decisions about the allocation of funding will, of course, necessarily be taken by the Arts Council.

While I understand the Labour party's position in respect of local authorities, the Government and a. large number of local authorities do not agree with that view and wish to maintain as much freedom as they can in the allocation of their expenditure.

In terms of the role of the Arts Council, the hon. Lady's reference to the national lottery and the ring-fencing of money for the arts, I should stress that it is envisaged that the national lottery will not in any way be a substitute for public expenditure. In those circumstances, it will be necessary for those who are responsible for distributing it to ensure that they are distributing it to things for which' there would not be an ordinary public expenditure equivalent. That constitutes the kind of ring fencing that the hon. Lady seeks.

The hon. Lady said that delay is potentially causing unease. The benefit of announcing a decision, even if it is for implementation in 1994, is that it removes the uncertainty that has surrounded these matters over the past two years. As for the period between now and 1994, there would have been much greater unease if we had sought to go forward on 1 April 1993, because of the lack of total preparation for the changes.

I have announced consulting work in connection with the Arts Council, and I have indicated that there will be an analysis in the summer to discover whether the regional arts boards are administratively prepared for the extra duties to be passed to them.

I must apologise to the hon. Lady because I did not catch her penultimate question. However, I will read it in Hansard. If she passes her question across the Dispatch Box to me, I will try to answer it today.

In respect of the process of delegation, there is already in place an integrated planning system which will of course be further refined during the next 15 months. That is intended to cover the specific questions that the hon. Lady asked about the monitoring of delegation.

In responding immediately to a rather complicated statement, may I ask my right hon. Friend what decision making he will be passing down the line to the incorporated regional arts boards to tap and encourage local sources of funds from local government, individual benevolence or local businesses? In parentheses, I hope that nothing that he has said today will have an adverse effect on the quite excellent business sponsorship of the arts that has been going on for so long.

In the context of the national lottery, which will soon be with us, will my right hon. Friend also elaborate on whether local fund-raising activities will be given the same freedom to tap sources of funds as will be given to the national lottery when it is launched? That is important, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend would wish to allay any fears on that point.

In the context of the responsibilities of the regional arts boards, I can confirm that one of the powerful sources of energy that has flowed from existing transfers is the enthusiasm that can be generated locally for particular projects. An encouraging feature of the developments in business sponsorship of the arts this year has been the fact that, although some of the larger sponsors have reduced their funding during the recession, the amount of overall sponsorship has been rising. That is because of the very large number of smaller contributors who have been doing things locally—for instance, jazz festivals in their immediate neighbourhoods. In that respect, we will add further impetus to the calculations.

I fear that I missed one word of my hon. Friend's question about the national lottery. He was concerned about somebody in particular being disadvantaged. It would assist me if he would say on whose behalf he was speaking.

With permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker. All other fund-raising bodies or potential fund-raising bodies which may be circumscribed in their abilities to appeal for funds, as compared with the freedoms being given for fund raising through the national lottery.

I think that I take my hon. Friend conceivably to be asking a coded question in relation to charities which are potentially affected by the national lottery. I assure my hon. Friend that those considerations have been taken into account in our preparation for the Bill.

Does the Secretary of State accept that the effectiveness of his proposals for the transfer of responsibility to regional arts boards cannot be judged until some time has passed, and that it will be judged by the extent to which they increase access to the arts and help to redress the metropolitan bias of arts funding, to which the Arts Council has drawn attention in the national strategy for arts and media?

The right hon. Gentleman's desire to achieve stability, in view of the uncertainties flowing from five Secretaries of State or equivalent Ministers in rather fewer years, is desirable. It is not possible to close down the debate in the manner that he described at the end of his statement, for substantial parts of the country lack facilities that will be required to be built up and, in practice, his proposals might require to be looked at with flexibility which should not undermine the certainty that he seeks to achieve.

Does the Secretary of State also recognise that the effectiveness of the structural proposals will be undermined if funding is not placed on a more secure basis than the autumn statement provided, that triennial funding is to be preferred to annual funding, and that a separation of structure from funding cannot be total?

The hon. Gentleman's question about effectiveness is obviously well targeted. I agree that the test of the decisions that I announced today, in line with previous policy under previous Ministers, will be the extent to which the arts flourish. The success of the arts organisations in the response that they evoke from the nation is the critical criterion.

One of the disadvantages of the uncertainty of the past couple of years, when decisions were quite properly and deliberately delayed, has been not properly to test the ability of regional arts boards to handle the issues concerned. Of course the hon. Gentleman is right to say that we will consider the manner in which they handle responsibilities now that that uncertainty has been removed.

On the hon. Gentleman's question about the absence of facilities in certain parts of the country, one of the attractions of the national lottery—again I refer to what I said earlier about its not being a substitute for public expenditure—is that it will be possible to envisage capital projects that are clearly one-off events and are not instead of anything that might be happening at the relevant time. I have said that we will obviously keep matters under review. I was seeking to say that we will not pull up the system by its roots during the life of this Parliament, because that would be the worst possible development in terms of uncertainty.

I invite my right hon. Friend to comment on one respect in which the moneys that were announced today will be spent, and that is the extent to which the Arts Council is or is not entitled to appoint its own members to the boards of artistic companies. I appreciate that my right hon. Friend cannot comment on a specific example, but may I none the less cite one?

I refer to a constituent, Dr. Mary Malecka, who used to sit on the board of the Haymarket theatre in Leicester. She received a letter saying that she was no longer able to do so. That letter came not from the Haymarket theatre but from the Arts Council. To what extent is the Arts Council risking going beyond its statutory position in doing that, and is it in the interests of artistic freedom that we should allow it such licence?

My hon. Friend was kind enough to say that I would not be able to comment on the specific constituency case that he mentioned. I will certainly consider the circumstances that he addressed.

Is there not a danger that there will be less money for London arts, ethnic minority arts and disabled persons arts? What does the Secretary of State mean by the Arts Council "privatising" client assessment? Does that mean that it will hire private detectives at great cost to snoop on drama groups and artists? Should not the Government make extra funds available to the arts in advance of the national lottery?

The Arts Council will, of course, make decisions about its allocation of funds to the regional arts boards on the basis of the responsibility that those boards have. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, also as a London Member, will share my pride in the reputation that the London arts board has built up since its inception. As for the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, I am conscious that, from time to time, we enter the wilder forms of conspiracy theory, but I do not think that what the hon. Gentleman has suggested is likely to occur.

I thank my right hon. Friend for using this opportunity to end the uncertainty in arts funding and for confirming that the Arts Council will continue to support the great British arts institutions—ballet, theatre, music and opera. What effect will my right hon. Friend's statement have on popular bodies such as the Bournemouth symphony orchestra, which successfully performs in not just one but several regions in this country, as well as internationally? Will it be entitled to grant aid not just from its own regional body but from any of the others?

I am conscious that my hon. Friend has a certain orchestra in mind. That orchestra will remain with the Arts Council. Touring is considered as a separate element.

In welcoming the Secretary of State's statement we have to congratulate him on its clarity and the speed with which he made the decisions since his recent appointment.

More than any right hon. or hon. Member, the Secretary of State knows about the vitality of the arts throughout the Province of Northern Ireland. He will know also that we in Northern Ireland, as United Kingdom taxpayers, contribute to the national Exchequer in the same way as other citizens of the United Kingdom, and that therefore, in some respects, we have an interest in the national Arts Council. However, There is a feeling in Northern Ireland that the national arts institutions that tour the United Kingdom do not go to Northern Ireland to the same extent as they go to other parts of Great Britain. That raises the question whether it is wise to retain a separate arts council in Northern Ireland.

I wish that the Secretary of State had given some attention in his statement to whether it would now be better for Northern Ireland to have a regional arts board, just as other regions in Great Britain have regional arts boards, so that we could have shared more equitably in national institutions' tours of the United Kingdom.

The Secretary of State said that the national lottery might be used to fund the arts. If it is intended to keep the Arts Council in Northern Ireland as a separate institution and not to allow it to become part of the network of regional arts hoards, will the national lottery be used to finance the separate Arts Council in Northern Ireland as well as the Arts Council in Great Britain?

The right hon. Gentleman was kind in his initial remark, and asked two specific questions. I have many reasons for regretting that I no longer serve the Province, and the issue of the vitality of the arts in Northern Ireland is one of them. I am greatly encouraged when I go round and see the national companies and touring companies which, perhaps because of my previous tour of service in the Province, know me and show their enthusiasm for touring. I shall do everything that I can to encourage them.

The distributor of funds for the arts will clearly take Northern Ireland into account, but it would be wrong for me to say how that will be done. The matter of the Northern Ireland Arts Council is one for my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and I shall draw his attention to the interest in the matter shown by the right hon. Member for Strangford (Mr. Taylor).

I understand that my right hon. Friend's Department publishes guidelines for client selection. Will he give priority to the touring that he mentioned in his statement? It is important that those in the regions are able to see the well-proven popular shows performed in other parts of the United Kingdom, particularly the cities, that they may not otherwise be able to afford to travel to see. That issue must take priority over funding minority interest events, which not many people would go to see even if they could afford to do so.

I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Arts Council will continue to have particular responsibility for touring. I know that it wants to ensure that we operate a national system.

Does the Minister agree that art reflects society at any given time? The arts of the 1990s will probably reflect the slump throughout the decade. Is the Secretary of State aware of the fact that he cannot rely on business paying too much money into the arts, because every hour of every day, three businesses go under the hammer and bankruptcy proceedings are taken out against them? Is he also aware that, if he uses the national lottery to finance the arts, he will be calling on working-class people in villages where pits are being closed and, with them, brass bands—which are part of the culture of those villages, in some cases, the only art form—to buy national lottery tickets so that other people in the metropolis can go to the ballet and the opera?

The issue of art reflecting society leads on to a larger debate——

It is true.

I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman's main thesis. The amount of money, in real terms, spent on the arts is now 44 per cent. above what it was when the Labour Government left office.

As for business sponsorship of the arts. I reiterate what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) that the amount of sponsorship continues to rise in absolute terms, partly because the network of sponsors is steadily spreading. I have said before from the Dispatch Box that I regard brass bands as part of our national heritage, and have spoken of my interest in their future. However, the decision whether to buy a national lottery ticket is a matter for the individual. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is wrong to suggest that the proceeds from the tickets would necessarily go to metropolitan arts. They will be allocated by the distributor, whoever that may be, on a national basis. They are not intended as a substitute for public expenditure.

The Welsh Arts Council is currently funded directly by the Arts Council of Great Britain, which is an anomaly, as other organisations such as the Welsh tourist board are funded directly from the Welsh Office. During the examination of the structure of the Arts Council of Great Britain, will the possibility of direct Welsh Office funding for the Welsh Arts Council be considered? If that is not the current intention, when is such consideration likely to take place?

The decisions today relate to the balance of responsibility between the arts councils and the regional arts boards. Therefore, they have no direct impact on the Scottish and Welsh arts councils. However, it will be appropriate to consider that issue in future, and I do not rule it out.

The Secretary of State said that the national lottery was not meant to substitute for Government expenditure on the arts and sports. Will he today give a firm guarantee that there will be no national lottery substitution for public expenditure on arts and sports funding in any way during the course of this Parliament? I want that guarantee today.

I reiterate that the national lottery is not intended——

That is different. We want a guarantee.

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying; he and I have had many gracious exchanges over the years, and I should be grateful if he would allow me to finish my paragraph. The national lottery will not be a substitute for public expenditure——

In this Parliament?

It will not be a substitute in the next Parliament, either. The clear statement has been made that it is not intended to be a substitute for public expenditure.

Therefore, it is important that those who allocate the funds should not do so to recipients normally funded through public expenditure.

It seems unfortunate that we have lapsed back into the practice of having important arts statements on Fridays. National Heritage questions were held earlier this week, and it seems that today's important statement should have been made then—there is no reason why it should not have been. I notice that the Secretary of State is missing an important event—the Association of Business Sponsorship of the Arts awards at the national theatre. However, he will arrive there in time for a light buffet at 12.30 pm, but the statement means that I shall not get there for either event, so perhaps he will give my apologies to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who I know will miss me sorely.

Will there be a period of public consultation on the issue of the organisational changes? Will the Secretary of State give the House a guarantee that he will speak to the Leader of the House so that we may have a full debate on the Floor of the House on today's important statement about the future organisation and funding of the arts in Great Britain? We should not merely have to rely on a statement slipped out on a Friday, which almost leads us to believe that the Secretary of State felt ashamed of what he was saying.

The hon. Gentleman's final observation is totally wrong. By helpfully reminding the House that the ABSA awards are taking place today, which he might have attended, as might the hon. Members for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) and for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd)——

And me.

The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) particularly regrets not being present. That in itself is a sign of how inconvenient it has been to have the statement on a Friday. I acknowledge that inconvenience, but we were determined to have the statement before Christmas. This is not a consultative exercise. The decisions have been announced as decisions; they have been pressed on us for a significant length of time by the interested parties, who have wanted a firm decision to be taken. Of course there will be an opportunity to discuss them; and I should certainly welcome an arts debate, whatever form it took.

It may help if I reiterate what I was saying before the commercial break. It is all too easy for people in the United Kingdom to ask why they should help the emerging east European countries, given that we are in difficult economic circumstances ourselves. I offered an anecdotal example of a hotel in Prague. Similarly, on a recent visit to Budapest I stayed with some of my hon. Friends at a hotel where we came across what we thought was some sort of fringe, alternative-medicine clinic. It turned out to be a mainstream clinic in the health service of Hungary. It is all too easy for us to take our facilities for granted, but those with experience of east European economies, local government and medical services realise how fortunate we are in the United Kingdom.

Some people say that the east Europeans got themselves into this mess and should get themselves out of it. But the people who are the victims of oppression in eastern Europe cannot be held accountable for the fact that state socialism was the intellectual hiccup of the 20th century. We have a duty to help these people, on whom socialism was imposed by those who came before.

East European nations greatly need our financial help and the expertise that we can give them. They have suffered 80 years of oppression and of violations of their human rights—80 years in which every little bit of their self-reliance was knocked out of them. Some parts of the United Kingdom may exhibit victims of the welfare state mentality; how much more do the victims of the former Soviet Union suffer from that mentality? All their self-reliance was knocked out of them, systematically and over decades.

Unfortunately, we have not been able entirely to eradicate this mentality from Opposition Members, even if we have managed to rescue east European countries from it. Those countries have no experience of democratic institutions. We take our whole culture of democracy for granted: they have no experience of it. It is not a matter of tinkering with their systems to improve them: some of these countries have no system or structure in place to improve upon. If they are to remain stable and to develop economically and politically, they urgently need our help.

Even if we do not help these countries for philanthropic reasons, there are advantages for us in other areas. It will be to out long-term advantage if there is a stable European economy, both east and west. We shall be looking for export markets in these countries, so we might as well help them develop the expertise to move to free markets, by means of our know-how funds and so on. They need the political development which brings political stability.

We are all well aware of what decades of political instability in Europe have meant for defence expenditure and for our fears about security. We should not forget our military security merely because the immediate threat of the cold war has passed. We must not forget that the potential for instability remains. The same number of weapons are still deployed against us, so it is all the more important to maintain the political stability that leads to military security.

There is immense good will towards the United Kingdom on the part of east European countries, middle eastern and African countries, and former empire countries that are now part of the Commonwealth. We do ourselves down if we believe that we do not have something to offer them, given our historical experience and our expertise.

I caution some hon. Members who talk of imposing our culture on these countries. I believe in the triumph of the west; our values, our market economies and our democratic credentials are being taken over worldwide. But there are dangers in trying to impose our culture on other nations. We must teach them our values, but we must also allow them to develop them in a way compatible with their culture. That is more sustainable in the long term than trying to impose a single model on them—an attempt that has sometimes failed in the past.

What do these countries need? They could do with a little political understanding. The German example is worrying. Parts of the west German political establishment did not exhibit tolerance for the problems of the east for very long. We will not solve the problems of eastern Europe or other developing countries in a short time. The process will require a great deal of patience. In the meantime, we must display our political maturity to the full. Hon. Members and people in the United Kingdom at large would benefit from travelling more widely and learning for themselves how far behind us these countries are.

These countries need financial help. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is the institution that has been set up to provide funding. Developing countries also need professional knowledge, and some of our know-how. The environmental aspects of the know-how funds are important. Anyone who has travelled to eastern Europe knows how far behind us its countries are in terms of consideration for the environment. The environmental debate in this country is at a far higher level than in theirs. Environmental horrors are widespread in eastern Europe. We must therefore match our expertise to these countries' needs, and I commend my hon. Friend for attempting to do that by means of this Bill.

There are always risks in Bills of this kind, but they have been well avoided in this case. There is the risk, for instance, of treating town hall officials and politicians as if they are mini-foreign offices running their own foreign policy. Public money has been wasted too often in the past. There have been public interest abuses in local government, and those abuses must be stopped. So the transfer of expertise must be limited to legitimate functions of local Government. This Bill achieves exactly that.

The Bill contains two important safeguards. Clause 2 gives the Secretary of State the final say. All foreign office implications must ultimately be sanctioned by central Government, and local government must not be allowed to use a Bill of this nature to further minority aims. I therefore congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe on clause 2.

Clause 4 makes it quite clear that the process is not about transferring money from the United Kingdom to other structures abroad: it is about transferring expertise. I hope that those listening outside the House will take note of that. It is important to differentiate between the functions of central and local government: the functions of the former include overseas aid for the developing countries of eastern Europe and beyond; the functions of the latter include providing the expertise that local government has built up over many a year.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing this important Bill. It is perfectly in tune with his other contributions to this subject over the years, and I believe that it will be valuable to all who wish to help these developing countries to emerge from a dreadful period of their history to join the free family of nations.

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. Until I came in at 10 o'clock I had no intention of speaking and was riot aware that the Bill was being given its Second Reading. For some time I have believed that the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) should speak from the Dispatch Box for the Government on overseas development because he knows more about that than any other Conservative Member.

The Bill addresses many of the issues that I was able to identify when I was an Opposition Front-Bench spokesman on overseas development. I have since moved to agriculture, but I still follow overseas matters. I had to leave that brief because of the arrangement between the other place and this House in terms of answering questions. If I had remained in that post I would have tried to be on the Standing Committee dealing with this Bill.

The Bill is about overseas development and about how this country can transfer expertise and skills, which we have in abundance, to other local authorities or to simpler bodies in various parts of the world. Some of my colleagues and I prepared a document that revamped and amended Labour's historic approach to overseas development and contained a section dealing with the transfer of skills. We intended to use local authorities in precisely the way the Bill envisages.

That policy initiative resulted from the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) and myself in various parts of the world. In many countries we discussed the problems of acquiring the expertise and skills that are necessary to enable local government to be properly managed. We often drew the simple conclusion that if our public health official, housing manager or social services officer responsible for disablement or for elderly care had been available, it could have resulted in a major transformation in the delivery of services. The quality of service might not be as sophisticated as that which is available in the United Kingdom, but delivery could have been transformed. The Bill opens the door to creating such opportunities.

Experience is required in building surveying and in the establishment and enforcement by surveyors of building regulations. Such expertise is required in the most deprived parts of the world and in parts of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Our local authorities have such expertise, especially in building surveying and in the introduction and enforcement of regulations. As we all know, building standards are low in many parts of the world.

Hon. Members have spoken about environmental management, a subject in which Britain is on a learning curve. We have already developed skills in such management which should be transferred, especially to central Europe where there are major environmental problems and where, perhaps inevitably, there will be an environmental disaster.

There is some criticism in Britain of the management of publicly owned housing, but, in the main, it is about the resources that are available to local authorities. In principle, the systems for local housing management are good, even if the funds are not always there to oil the management arrangements. In many parts of the world where housing projects have been completed under overseas development schemes, we could provide management teams. When I held the development brief I discovered that when the major donors completed projects they did not always leave behind a management system. The schemes often went to rack and ruin because of the lack of a revenue-supported management system.

Perhaps an argument against such a system is that it draws funds away from the original capital project. However, we could approach local authorities in third-world countries to see whether they are prepared to transfer managerial resources to secure continuity in the management of donor schemes. Whether they are British donors is irrelevant.

Direct labour organisations have varying support in the House, but perhaps today we can unite on the principle. Regardless of one's political views about the necessity for DLOs, some local authorities operate them very efficiently. Perhaps some people could be transferred abroad to help establish similar organisations to carry out public works.

The Bill is about a two-way process. I have spoken about what we can give, rather than about transferring large amounts of aid which often, unfortunately, may not reach the targets or the expectation of the local project. The other benefit derives from people leaving the United Kingdom, perhaps on six or 12-month contracts. I have not read the Bill in detail or spoken to the hon. Member for Broxtowe about it, but, if he thinks as I do, he probably envisages people leaving here under contract to carry out a piece of work and then returning. He probably also envisages a flow of people from other countries to the United Kingdom. Perhaps in future we may have a Pole, a Ukrainian, an Estonian and a Lithuanian working in the housing, health or social services departments in Workington or Carlisle or elsewhere in Cumbria. People may be brought in to gain experience of how local authorities can be managed efficiently and to learn about the delivery of quality services. Such an interchange of people will help international relations.

The House will look kindly on the warm and generous words that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) had for my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester), which reflected not only on the merits of my hon. Friend's Bill but on him personally.

In an excellent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway) referred to some unpronounceable town in Hungary that is twinned with Chorley. That struck a particular note with me. If one drives, as I often do, past Rutland Water and through the small village of Whitwell, one cannot help but notice a large sign proclaiming, "Whitwell—twinned with Paris". One might ask how such a tiny mouse of a town could be twinned with such an elephant of a European capital. That came about because the parish council, which is very internationalist in its outlook, wrote to the mayor of Paris explaining that Whitwell lay at the heart of England and wished to twin with an important capital on the European mainland. The council received no reply. It wrote again, and still no reply came. On the third occasion, the council's letter included a paragraph stating, "If we receive no reply within five weeks, Mr. Mayor, we shall assume that you have agreed to our proposal." The sign was erected in the fifth week and has remained there ever since.

The sense of municipal pride and the effectiveness of our local administration has gone from peak to trough over the past 100 years, but in many respects has reached a peak again. In many of our towns and cities, we can see monuments to the effectiveness of Victorian local government—splendid buildings that were imaginatively designed and planned, well laid out, and of a structure and beauty that have endured more than a century.

In the years after the last war, some of that went horribly sour. Local government became inefficient, and some of its planning and other decisions were detrimental. In the past 10 years or so there has been a dramatic turnround in the quality of local government administration and in the professionalism with which it addresses its tasks. Since the somewhat unconservative reforms of 1973—which attempted to abolish the county of Rutland but have not altogether succeeded—a debate has raged about the future of local government, and its entire detail is now being studied by an excellent royal commission.

During those years, many councils were charged with detailed statutory obligations and developed valuable expertise. In the past 20 years, the House—in the Acts that it has passed—has obliged local government to take on more and more duties. In doing so, local government has developed a professional approach to the conduct of its duties that is exemplary.

At the same time, we have witnessed the collapse of many aspects of government, particularly in what were the iron curtain countries. Our own councils re-examined the way in which they conducted their affairs and—urged by Conservative Administrations—decided to privatise where that was deemed possible, to contract out services, and to bring greater efficiency to the charge payer and greater attentiveness to the sensibilities of those who must pay a local tax.

In the past few years, our Government have urged the former communist countries to adopt our methods of government—to look to a free enterprise system, and to try to copy or mimic the way that we conduct our business. No sooner had we done that than we found that our councils are almost forbidden by law to share their expertise. Those who want to give Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and other countries the benefit of their experience must take a small step beyond the law.

Nothing could be more galling to those able to offer that expertise. Nothing could be more irresponsible on our part than to have urged all those in the west to share the benefits of our system with the emerging democracies of the east, only to put a barrier in their way as soon as they wanted to do so.

Those aspects of our body politic that have been privatised, such as water companies, are free not only to advise but to invest in the emerging democracies. Regional water companies and British Gas are very internationalist in their outlook and are lending much expertise to those who are so desperate for the benefits that they can offer.

That cannot be done easily by local government, which is why I welcome my hon. Friend's excellent Bill. The hon. Member for Workington mentioned several of the ways that we can help which I had in mind. For example, many of the emerging democracies have no basis of law in governing the development and ownership of property. British local councillors and council officers who are expert in planning and building control could visit those countries, or invite them to send representatives to our country, to help them at the very start of the long process of redevelopment. Our experts can help them to understand how properly to develop their cities and infrastructure and to establish a proper framework of property ownership and development.

That will be of crucial importance if firms are to be able to invest with certainty and to manage their risk—and not construct a factory only to find that someone else owns it, or that the rules governing the supply of water and electricity and the disposal of sewage are unclear. That is one area in which our councillors and officials, with their great expertise, can be of great use, and I encourage that practice in all respects.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe mentioned the conduct of elections. Nothing can be more important to the emerging domocracies than that democracy should survive, that those who participate in the democratic process should have faith in it, and that the process should endure in a way that enjoys the trust of the electorate.

Every Member of Parliament has witnessed the efficiency with which the voting papers tipped out of the ballot boxes on election night are counted in a way that we fully trust. As the piles mount up, one knows that the votes have been properly counted. The conduct of elections is another area where local government expertise can be applied with great benefit to the emerging democracies of eastern Europe.

Environmental control is another important issue. As the economies of emergent democracies develop and speed up, waste disposal and, where possible, recycling will be of utmost importance. As the economies of eastern Europe began to crumble, many of the safeguards and standards that we take for granted were swept aside. We know from documentary programmes and from our own studies the ease with which waste was poured into beautiful waters. We probably cannot imagine the extent to which other waste may be piling up in areas that we have not yet identified. Waste disposal and recycling are done very well in this country, and our local councils should be free to explain the most modern methods to countries that are desperate for such instruction. The same applies to community care and social services: since the war we have benefited increasingly from a growing welfare state, and the countries that we are discussing will soon be crying out for the same facility.

We are made miserable by watching on our television screens, from the comfort of our armchairs, the suffering of people confined to asylums. We can offer our expertise, however: we can help other countries to care for such people in the best possible way. If we deny those countries our expertise we shall be denying them a basic human right, which would be unforgivable.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford) pointed out earlier, we should not assume that the Bill applies only to eastern Europe. We may not be able to predict where it will be of benefit in the future, but we know that it will allow our councils to travel to any part of the globe—albeit, under the sensible clause 2, with the permission of the Secretary of State, to ensure that the process is properly monitored and does not use public funds when that is inappropriate.

Moreover, the Bill will not be a one-way street. Perhaps we now have the advantage of knowing a bit more titan some other countries, and being able to apply our expertise; but, as they visit us and we visit them, we shall gain the ability to benefit from their experience. I commend the Bill, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe.

I join hon. Members on both sides of the House in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester). I am proud to sponsor his Bill; I do so not only through conviction, but because of my deep interest in Commonwealth matters, which is expressed chiefly through my membership of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

I viewed today's debate with some trepidation at the beginning of the week, knowing that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe was besieged in a Bombay hotel. I wondered whether it might be possible for him to arrange to telephone his speech to the House; it was with enormous relief that we received the message that he was able to fly back to London. I echo the tribute paid by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) to my hon. Friend's contribution to overseas matters during the many years in which he has been a Member of Parliament—years that have passed as quickly as the years that I have spent in the House, and, I trust, as enjoyably. It will be difficult to match my hon. Friend's knowledge and ability in the future.

My hon. Friend has used his privileged position—he came first in the ballot, on which I congratulate him—to clear up a technicality: modest as ever, he used that very phrase. I join other hon. Members in praising him for choosing such an important but low-profile subject, rather than trying to introduce legislation that would make headlines and bring him publicity. The Commonwealth—and, indeed, the Commonwealth of Independent States—will be particularly grateful to him.

My hon. Friend, with his interest in Commonwealth matters, will know that, although Commonwealth parliamentarians range from those who represent a million or more in India to those who represent a hundred or fewer in the Cook islands, and although they have a huge variety of responsibilities and interests, a recurrent theme when they gather is the problem of seeking advice. How, for instance, can a distant country tackle the problem of refuse disposal cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan), or that of coastal defence and protection?

We regularly bend our minds to the question of election monitoring and election structuring, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) pointed out. Not having recourse to a direct line of advice leads to a feeling of powerlessness: as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford) said, in the past we have had to assist in oblique ways. I am very pleased that we are now seeking to use all our expertise to solve other countries' problems.

My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State may be able to clarify the question of election monitoring. In this country, election monitoring—or election structuring—is carried out by the returning officers, who are part of local government but who do not necessarily include only one local authority in their bailiwick. The returning officer for my constituency, for instance, is responsible for two district councils. Will my hon. Friend confirm that the matters relating to election advice that were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East will be covered by the Bill, and that they will not fall between two stools?

Reference has been made to the "export potential" of the Bill, and the possibility of mutual benefit—benefit to the recipient authority in the form of advice, and benefit to this country in the form of possible orders for equipment, software and so forth. We must he proactive in this regard. It is one thing to enable a technicality to be removed; it is another to maximise the opportunities presented by the Bill. Other agencies, apart from the Overseas Development Administration—for instance, the European development fund and various United Nations agencies—can be used at no great expense; but how are they to be harnessed, and how can we ensure that they know what expertise is needed? How is local government to know what opportunities are available?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe, and I am glad that the House is giving the Bill a fair wind.

On behalf of the official Opposition, I welcome the Bill and say that we shall give it our wholehearted support. I join hon. Members in all parts of the House who have congratulated the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) on securing pole position in the ballot for private Member's Bills. I say that with more than just a slight twinge of jealousy.

As others have said, the subject is a most appropriate one for the hon. Member for Broxtowe, for he has great interest and knowledge of overseas affairs. My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) spoke for all my hon. Friends when he said that we should have liked to see the hon. Gentleman speaking on overseas development matters at the Dispatch Box.

The hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Shepherd) reminded the House that the hon. Member for Broxtowe has just returned from an eventful Commonwealth Parliamentary Association visit to India. According to newspaper reports—which I understand from the hon. Member for Broxtowe became a little lurid in the telling—bricks were thrown at the delegation, thus leading to that classic newspaper headline in this country "MPs stoned in India." That confirmed the very worst suspicions of uncharitable voters about the conduct of Members of Parliament while abroad.

We welcome the Bill. It underlines the great contribution that can be made by British local authorities to development abroad. It is interesting to note that a consensual atmosphere has permeated this Second Reading debate. That atmosphere extends outside the House. The hon. Member for Broxtowe has consulted extensively with various local authority associations, all of which—Conservative dominated and Labour dominated—have welcomed the Bill. Nevertheless, I shall raise later a few worries that they have. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure them. If he cannot reassure them today, I hope that we shall be able to deal with them in Committee.

The hon. Member for Broxtowe said that local government provides the genuine sinews of democracy. I say "Hear, hear" to that—and "Hear, hear" again. I am a passionate believer in local democracy and local accountability. I served as an elected member of two local authorities from 1970 until 1986. I might have served longer than that if the Conservative Government of the day had not abolished the authority upon which I happened to be serving at that time, the Greater London council, of which I was the chairman.

I have to say, in this consensual atmosphere, that there are those of us on this side of the House who feel that, since 1979, Conservative Administrations, far from welcoming the contribution—both in this country and abroad—that local authorities can make, have been at war with them by restricting their autonomy, by continually undermining their accountability to their local electorate and by limiting their resources, while placing ever more responsibilities, which previously were central Government responsibilities, on local authorities and then denying them adequate funds to carry them out, thus leaving them—it is an old trick but it never fails to work—completely in the firing line when they cannot deliver the standard of services that they would like to provide.

May I remind the hon. Gentleman that it was a Labour Secretary of State for the Environment who, speaking about local government finance, said, "The party's over?"

We had something to celebrate in those days, I might add. If I remember rightly, at that time the rate support grant was running at around 60 per cent. of local government expenditure. Now it is down to about 40 or 41 per cent. In those days, there was an awful lot for local authorities to be pleased about. I do not suggest to Conservative Members that local government can have complete liberty over its finances. Central Government must always set the broad parameters. Central Government always have done and always will do. What we have seen, however, is the continual change of those parameters and of the duties and responsibilities of local government under Conservative Administrations since 1979.

I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, who is in full flow, but, to put the historic record correct, since he was a local authority member in the 1970s, he may or may not recall that, when it came to detailed capital expenditure, every single detail of large swathes of local authority expenditure had to come to the Department of the Environment to be examined and pored over by accountants, engineers and architects, thus doubling or tripling the work. That includes the time when the hon. Gentleman's party was in government. We did away with that when we came to power in 1979.

The Government also did away with a lot of local authorities, which was one way of dealing with it. It is rather like going to the doctor to complain of a headache and getting one's head chopped off. The doctor gets rid of the headache, but such drastic measures do not necessarily commend themselves to people who are suffering from a headache.

The Government have attacked local authorities, and it worries me greatly. I am a very reasonable person. I like to think charitably, even of Conservative Members, although I am continually disappointed in that hope. However, I should like to think that in our system of local government we have something that is worth standing up for and defending, in real terms. Of course there will be political differences between us—that is the stuff of our party political democracy—but the way in which local authorities and councils have been abused by the Government in recent years is, to me, unacceptable.

I do not intend to make a big issue of it, but a number of hon. Members have referred in the debate to local authority junketing and to the fact that we must make sure that the Bill does not lead to even more. It is a bit rich to say things like that in this place when large numbers of overseas fact-finding trips are available to Members. We get very upset when our electors refer to those as junkets.

In the circumstances, it is unwise of us to refer to similar local government activities as junkets. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) once memorably said about visits of Members of Parliament abroad, "I notice that they never go fact-finding to Greenland in the winter." [Interruption.] No, his passport was stolen. It was obviously one of those plots by central Government to stop him going abroad and telling the truth about what goes on in this country.

Our local government system deserves far more credit from the Government than it has received. I hope—again, it is a faint hope—that today's atmosphere, in our discussions about this measure that affects local authorities, will be a harbinger of future debates and future relations beween central Government and local authorities, although I shall not hold my breath while I wait.

The hon. Members for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) and for Broxtowe referred to relations with eastern Europe, a matter which should concern all of us. There is a crisis in eastern Europe. There is a particular crisis developing in Russia. One reads the news coming out of Moscow these days with increasing alarm. Economic and social problems are leading to political problems.

I must say to the hon. Member for Beckenham that Britain must do more through local authorities and central Government to assist eastern Europe. Like many others, I believe that we need a latter-day equivalent of a Marshall aid plan for eastern Europe. If conditions deteriorate badly in eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, the political implications for western Europe will be profound.

It could be a tragedy of historic proportions, and it is not good enough for western Governments to stand on one side saying, "We hope that the reforms will work. We are looking vary favourably at you. We are keeping our fingers crossed, and we are giving you a little money." That is not enough. We are not responding sufficiently to the enormous changes that are taking place in eastern Europe—changes which are unimaginable in our society. We think that we have problems in Britain, and Labour Members often talk about the problems created by the Government's economic policies, but ours are as nothing in comparison with the problems of eastern Europe, particularly in Russia.

I hope that the Bill will offer the Government a greater incentive to do far more in conjuction with our European partners to assist those people of eastern Europe who are going through such tumultuous changes. The demands on local government for advice and assistance from central and eastern Europe and the third world are enormous, but they represent the desire of communities in those countries to control themselves. Inquiries have already been made of local authorities about, for example, Britain's electoral arrangements.

The hon. Member for Beckenham mentioned Lithuania. I wrote a report for the Council of Europe on Lithuania's application for membership of the Council of Europe. One of the problems that emerged during my two-day visit to Lithuania—I can assure hon. Members that that was no junket!—was how to organise political parties, voting and registration. Our local authorities have great expertise on such matters. Countries such as Lithuania look to us to tell them how to organise free elections. We must respond generously to those requests, and no doubt the Bill will facilitate that.

Such countries are also asking about organising individual services. The hon. Members for Broxtowe and for Beckenham and others mentioned waste disposal, which is an important matter. Many east European countries have no real standards of waste disposal, and one saw how appalling it was when the great security blankets were lifted in countries such as Albania and Romania. When we saw how bad conditions were in eastern Europe, it put all our problems into context.

On one of my visits to the German Democratic Republic, I took a close interest in waste disposal, which has always been a matter close to my heart—for many obvious reasons, some uncharitable Conservative Members might think. When I was chairman of the public services committee on Lambeth borough council, it was always a fascinating subject. One pulls the chain or sticks it in the dustbin and tends to forget about it. It is fascinating to know what happens after that. In eastern Europe, when one pulls the chain it does not normally work; it certainly did not do so in Lithuania when I was there recently, but that was a nasty experience on which I do not want to dwell too long.

When I was in the German Democratic Republic, I saw how the west Berlin authorities had taken advantage of the low standards in east Berlin. They had moved their rubbish over for the east Berlin authorities to deal with. The German Democratic Republic authorities were happy to take the hard currency—God knows where it was going—but the irony is that the federal republic has now inherited many of the problems that it helped to create. Our waste disposal authorities are very efficient and have much expertise to offer east European countries, where the standards of environmental protection are abysmally low, to put it mildly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Workington mentioned direct labour organisations, which have come in for a lot of criticism in the House, some of which has been fair but an awful lot of which has been very unfair. It is good to know that the expertise of the remaining direct labour organisations can be effectively transferred to other countries in the east.

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Ellesmere Port and Neston borough council direct labour organisation whose workers organised convoys to Romania and have adopted an orphanage there, thus creating a link between Romania and the town? That is an example of what a direct labour organisation can do to promote the concept behind the Bill.

I certainly join my hon. Friend in offering congratulations. I take the opportunity to say that many organisations in this country, especially voluntary organisations, are doing much to relieve suffering around the world, not only in eastern Europe but in Somalia and elsewhere. The House must always be prepared to pay full tribute to the people who not only contribute financially but often risk their lives in the provision of humanitarian assistance to areas far less fortunate than ours.

I return to the overseas requests to local authorities for their expertise, especially the request about forms of local taxation. I was surprised when I heard of such a request—I assumed that people were getting in touch with local authorities to find out how to avoid the mistake of the poll tax, which I assume we would not wish to export. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), was a poll tax rebel, and rightly so. I am glad that his rebellion was duly rewarded in the end, although it took a long time, as it did for me. As one rebel to another, it is nice that we have reached a position of junior responsibility, which is wholly unpaid in my case but rather more remuneratively rewarded in the Minister's case.

We can tell other countries about local taxation, if only what to avoid. We can tell them about mechanisms of accountability, which is connected to electoral arrangements. Accountability is very important because local government accountability and democracy underpin parliamentary accountability and democracy. We tamper with them at our peril, and I believe that we have tampered far too much.

Consumers' and citizens' rights are new rights which countries in former totalitarian regions are now seeking to establish for the first time, and not merely by means of constitutions on pieces of paper which set out the most wondrous array of freedoms, none of which applies in reality, but by real consumer rights and citizenship rights. They are the areas of expertise which our local authorities can offer.

Local authorities are the bodies best placed to meet the myriad needs of individuals in their daily lives. The decisions taken by local authorities affect the daily lives of our constituents far more than the Acts passed by central Government. When I walk around Forest Gate, I am regularly seized by constituents—not by the throat, I hasten to add—who ask why, for example, the streets are so dirty. I always say that it is not the councillors who throw around the dirty rubbish but the dirty people who live in the area. They also ask why they cannot get their child into a particular school or get a place in hospital.

Their questions are always about local services—they rarely stop me in Forest Gate to ask about the situation in Bosnia. That does not mean that they are not interested—of course they care—but their daily lives are affected by the actions of their local authorities.

The ability of local authorities to deliver services is very much affected by the decisions made in the House and in the Departments of central Government, so, although we are not directly responsible to the people on the street, we are indirectly responsible, because we decide the resources that will be available to local authorities for the discharge of their responsibilities.

The list of those responsibilities is vast—it includes homes, safety in those homes through the fire services and the police, safety in the streets, transport, education, social security, leisure, arts, sports, heritage and jobs and training through the fostering of economic development.

Many local authorities have economic development units which are doing a grand job in trying to mitigate the worst excesses of central Government economic policies. Other local government services include encouragement of and funding for the voluntary sector, environmental health, acting as a consumer watchdog, planning the physical environment, waste collection, waste disposal and licensing, including recycling, and the control of building standards.

All those services have an impact on our constituents in their daily lives; hence local authorities are very much in the firing line. The Minister and Conservative Members have made the lives of local councillors pretty miserable these days. I find it strange—not wondrous strange, but still strange—that people want to stand for their local authority any more. They get abused by local newspapers and national newspapers. Their range of duties is continually prescribed by central Government. The resources available to them are limited by central Government. They are denounced by Conservative Members. Often if they are Labour councillors, they are attacked by their own local parties. They are asked, "Why is the council carrying out the cuts imposed by this lousy Conservative Government? Why are you doing the Tories' dirty work? You are nothing more than the running dogs of British imperialism." That is the sort of language one expects to hear in my general committee these days.

In London, many councillors simply stand down because they are not prepared to carry on trying to run services with the inadequate resources provided by central Government. It is not only Labour councillors who think in those terms. Harrow council, a true blue Conservative council, made similar noises recently when it considered its standard spending assessment and the budgets with which it would have to deal. If the Minister is spreading such discontent in true blue areas such as Harrow, one can imagine the problems he is creating in good, solid socialist areas such as Newham. Although he is probably not very worried about the latter, he should be a little more concerned about the former.

Local authorities are grappling with some of the most pressing contemporary problems, especially in inner-city areas and areas that have been affected by industrial decline. The problem of homelessness is appalling. At my advice surgery tonight, 60 per cent. of all the cases will be about homelessness. It is a crisis. I know that that word is overused in politics, but it is true that homelessness is a crisis in London and elsewhere, as evidenced by the number of people who are sleeping rough on the streets.

At this time of year, everyone is concerned about the homeless, but that concern should not be confined to the run-up to Christmas. It may give us a feeling of having done something when we see Crisis at Christmas open up warehouses—there are many empty warehouses in London and elsewhere—and we see the homeless getting a bit of Christmas cheer. That may relieve our consciences, but it should not. The problem of homelessness should stay uppermost in our minds all the time. It is unacceptable in the latter part of the 20th century to have so many thousands of unemployed construction workers while so many thousands of people are homeless. Surely it cannot be beyond the wit of even this Government to bring those two together to provide the decent homes which are so necessary.

Before Conservative Members ask about empty local authority properties, I point out that no local authority deliberately keeps its properties empty. I assure hon. Members that in Newham, local Members of Parliament have regular meetings with housing officials to ensure that such a criticism can never be validly levelled at the borough. It would give me no satisfaction, and it would weaken my argument in criticising the Government, if I knew that the local authority for which I have some responsibility and to which I have some accountability was failing to fill its voids as fast as possible.

Local authorities have to deal with other issues, such as illiteracy, environmental improvement and the problem of drugs. Drugs are a tremendous problem in London. In recent discussions, Scotland Yard said how worrying the drugs problem had become. Other local authority services include job creation, job training and crime prevention. They are all matters with which we are having to deal in this country at the moment, but our problems pale into insignificance in comparison with those of eastern Europe, where there has been an enormous increase in the supply of drugs, in crime on the streets and in homelessness.

Many people in eastern Europe must be wondering what they have let themselves in for. We must think carefully about that because if, in comparison with what is happening at the moment, Mr. Brezhnev's presidency should start to look like the halcyon days, or Joseph Stalin like a kindly old gentleman who knew how to provide decent services, we should he in trouble, too. The east Europeans will be in more trouble than us, but we will also be in trouble. We must recognise our shared responsibility. As we battle against homelessness, illiteracy and drug-related crime and drug provision, we have things that we can tell and expertise that we can pass on to those grappling with those problems openly for the first time.

The concept of the community governing itself within the laws of the country concerned is similar to the principle of subsidiarity as it should be applied within the member states of the European Community. I find it rather depressing—perhaps I ought also to find it strange—that the Government bang on about subsidiarity in the EC when what is needed is a bit more subsidiarity in the relationship between central and local government. At the moment, local authorities are faced with a great centralising Government, whatever the Minister may protest to the contrary. Centralisation was the natural instinct of the previous Prime Minister. I hope that it may gradually abate in the few years that the present Prime Minister has left to him. It would certainly be a great improvement if he recognised that we need to devolve more powers to local communities rather than taking powers away from them.

In view of the hon. Gentleman's dislike of centralisation, I look forward to hearing him welcome the opting out and local management of schools and fund-holding practices.

I do not welcome them, because they do not give more power to local communities. Although they may give the appearance of more local autonomy, they are in fact centralising measures. What opting out and LMS mean is that the Department for Education funds schools and so decides what goes on. Those who have hold of the purse strings decide what happens. It is the same with central Government's approach to local government, and it is an old trick: one simply restricts funding and lets local authorities take the blame for the failure to deliver adequate services.

I have been struggling to work out how the hon. Gentleman's remarks come within the scope of what we are discussing. I now realise that we are talking about overseas aid in reverse. The delegation and freedom of schools works very successfully in a number of Commonwealth countries, and perhaps we have learnt from them.

The hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford) need not worry too much about the extent to which my remarks come within the context of the Bill, because he is not in the Chair. I have not been called to order by the occupant of the Chair and therefore consider my remarks to be in order. It is the approbation of the occupant of the Chair and not that of the hon. Gentleman which I desire.

The problem that Britain faces is that the Government have continually attacked local authority services. It is somewhat ironic that other countries should be seeking advice from the United Kingdom on a whole range of matters in connection with which the ability of our local authorities has become increasingly limited by central Government policies.

As I said, United Kingdom local government has a long and proud record, not least in innovations subsequently adopted nationally—in public health and basic utilities in the 19th century, and in equal opportunities and recruitment in the 20th. Many of those innovations were disparaged by national politicians in this place but subsequently adopted in legislation. United Kingdom local authorities remain vital bodies with a willingness to experiment and they remain in close touch with their communities. However, as I have said, increasingly in a unitary and already centralised state without a written constitution, central Government have sought to control and even stamp out many local government activities.

There have been no fewer than 144 Acts of Parliament since 1979 on local government. Not very many of those were particularly helpful. That information was provided by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Hornchurch.

Of the 144 Acts, 51 must be regarded as major and their results are well known: the virtual removal of budgetary discretion by capping and now effective capping in advance through publishing the criteria and thereby forcing authorities to budget in accordance with them; the reduction of local revenue to an average of 15 per cent. of local spending; the abolition of key authorities; the transfer of key services such as further education; compulsory competitive tendering; national control of teachers' pay; imposition of housing action trusts—initially without ballots until defeated in another place; encouragement of estate transfers to private landlords; refusal even now to allow the majority of capital receipts to be spent on regeneration and central prescription, for example, in education. Therefore, it sits ill on the lips of Conservative Members to talk about the advice that we can give other countries about democracy, democratic accountability and the maintenance of an effective local government system.

Central Government's drive to get local government to produce value for money and standards has, over recent years, generated the expertise in dealing with the private sector to get that sector to work for local government. It has produced the information and knowledge that countries overseas seek and pay for.

It is a normal political ploy to take the credit for anything that looks good and blame everything that has gone wrong on someone else. The Minister cannot pin a partisan approach on this matter on me. It would be a very stupid politician—and I am certainly not one of those—who claimed that everything done by one side is bad and everything done by the other side is good. That is absolute nonsense. That is the very thing that I am complaining about.

Some reforms have been useful. I cannot actually think of one at the moment, but no doubt a Conservative Member could assist me. Let me be charitable in this season of goodwill: the Conservative Government must have done something good in local government. However, I object to the peculiar attitude on the Conservative Benches that a Conservative local authority must mean good and a Labour local authority must mean bad. That is nonsense and it does no service to the House. It certainly does a grave disservice to local authorities.

I have always been prepared to support any and every local authority. I have been prepared to criticise authorities where necessary—both my own and Conservative authorities. However, I have always been prepared to pay tribute where necessary. I thanked the Minister for Housing and Planning when he visited Newham recently and said some very nice things and, much more importantly, gave us some extra resources. I welcome that kind of thing. That is the kind of spirit in which I hope we would go forward in terms of local and central government in the context of the Bill.

I want to refer specifically to concerns that the local authority associations have with regard to the Bill. Everyone has welcomed the prior consultation. The hon. Member for Broxtowe has done a magnificent job in consulting everyone. All local authority associations—Conservative and Labour dominated—have appreciated that.

However, there are some concerns. The first involves the requirement for consent. The associations see no need in principle to import a requirement for the Secretary of State to give his consent to individual schemes. Local authorities are responsible bodies which act within the law. They are accountable to their electors and subject to increasing tight ministerial control on their overall expenditure. The associations understand that Ministers are unlikely to want the requirement to be dropped, but welcome indications that a general authorisation is likely to be given under clause 1(2).

Secondly, there are concerns about the "without prejudice" clause. It would have been preferable if the Bill had included a clause that made it clear that the new power had no effect on any existing power to provide technical assistance to bodies outside the United Kingdom.

The reason for that is that the new provision is likely to overlap with existing activities that are undertaken in conjunction with activities covered by other specific powers—for example, the promotion of economic development under section 33 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 or under general discretionary powers such as section 137, as amended, of the Local Government Act 1972. General powers are intended to be used only where no more specific powers exist. Therefore, in practice, activities would come to be undertaken increasingly under the new powers as set out in the Bill, and thereby impose a consent requirement where none applied before and further limiting local authorities' discretion.

Thirdly, there is the de minimis exclusion. I understand that an announcement is expected of a de minimis threshold below which consent would not be required. That is likely to take the form of an expenditure limit determined by the size of the resident population of the relevant authority's area, and will be issued under a general authorisation after enactment. The recognition of the need for a de minimis arrangement is welcomed by local authority associations, although they consider that a more buoyant mechanism would avoid the need for regular updating of the fixed amount against inflation. There might be difficulties if a relatively inflexible range of fixed amounts were applied to very large authorities. I understand that Strathclyde regional council and Birmingham city council are particularly active in that respect.

It will be important to establish whether the proposed limit would include the notional cost of officer time. An initial visit by officers might be necessary to assess a project before any decision is made on funding. It will be preferable to exclude altogether initial expenditure on the development of unfunded projects. It is hoped that the thresholds will be established to take account of those concerns.

Fourthly, I refer to the scope of the Bill. Clause 1(1) covers the provision

"of advice and assistance … to a body engaged in local government outside the United Kingdom."

That is a fairly limited form of wording. The associations have pointed to possible difficulties in assisting bodies setting up local government and public agencies which might provide services which, in the United Kingdom, are functions of local authorities. That is an important point, and I hope that the Minister will be able to address it. I trust that, if he cannot do so now, the matter will be reviewed in Committee.

Fifthly, certain local authorities choose to channel advice and assistance through consultants. Such firms have frequently been engaged by the United Kingdom Government to act as go-betweens with institutions overseas. The associations will wish to seek assurances that the wording of clause 1(1) does not preclude such arrangements from continuing.

Sixthly, clause 1(4) excludes from the new power the provision of grants, loans or other financial assistance. There is concern that that could be taken to cover the provision of equipment, expertise and joint work on projects. As a practical example, fire authorities have been encouraged to donate fire appliances on replacement to the new democracies of central and eastern Europe. Such vehicles and equipment clearly have a book value, and it seems possible that clause 1(4) would prevent the exercise of the power in that respect. I am sure that the Minister will be able to clear up that matter.

It has just dawned on me that there should be monitoring of the expenditure that local authorities entertain under the Bill, because it might be taken into account in the annual allocation of overseas aid. What are the sums involved?

They might be very small.

The Minister says that they might be very small, but we do not know how the scheme will develop over years. It might become the central vehicle in the delivery of skills and information about skills.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Those matters are best kept for the Committee, although no doubt the Minister will say something about them. There must not be any charge for any of those services, however they are provided to local charge payers. That clearly must not follow. Although there is much good will within hard-pressed local communities for dealing with problems overseas, it can ruin the exercise if local electors——local taxpayers—feel that they are losing services and losing out through local authority activity overseas.

Clearly, everything must be self-funding. When the arcane mechanisms for calculating revenue support grant and standard spending assessment are being considered at the Department of the Environment, I hope that it will be possible—to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington—-to monitor which local authorities are becoming involved. I am sure that the Bill will shortly become an Act, and the local authorities should be monitored to see how they are discharging their responsibilities and carrying out their functions under the new Act, and to what extent that will impact on the provision of local services.

I know what the hon. Member for Broxtowe means in the Bill, which states that its provisions will be self-funding. However, it will be virtually impossible to ensure that it is completely watertight: there will be some leakage. I hope that that fact will be taken into account. To put it crudely, there is no such thing as a free lunch, even for Conservative Members. Therefore, where there may be some leakage, I hope that local authorities will not be penalised, providing that it has arisen accidentally and not because those authorities have flouted the Bill's provisions.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Broxtowe on introducing an exceedingly necessary Bill to give powers where we thought they already existed but found they did not. It has been described as a modest Bill, but I do not think it so—it is a useful and important Bill. The Opposition welcome it and will work hard in Committee to raise various issues and obtain from the Minister assurances on and solutions to a few minor problems raised by the local authority associations. I thank the hon. Gentleman for introducing the Bill and I wish it well.

It seems an appropriate time for me to set out the Government's position on the Bill and deal with some of the queries raised by earlier speakers. I shall start, predictably, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester). The Bill encapsulates two of the characteristics that he brings to the House. There has been wide reference to one of them: his knowledge of developing countries. The Bill goes straight to the heart of that expertise, and it is particularly appropriate that my hon. Friend should be introducing it. Secondly, as my hon. Friend reminded us in his speech, like me he is a former chairman of finance of a local authority. The combination of those two qualities makes his introduction of the Bill most appropriate. I warmly congratulate him on doing so and express my relief that he has returned safely from his interesting trips abroad.

I shall first dispose of the only discordant note introduced in this morning's proceedings, by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). I assure him that it is commonplace for myself and other Ministers travelling around the country to give credit where it is due to local authorities, regardless of the nature of their political control. To make an obvious point, in recent months we have specifically recognised the work of a number of Labour authorities in relation to city challenge. We recognised the plans that they proposed, and duly acknowledged their merit in the award of city challenge.

If I dare say it to such a trendy Member, the hon. Member for Newham, North-West is in danger of being a little out of touch. We consulted and listened to local government on the important issue of whether a staff commission for new authorities is needed, possibly under the local government commission. We listened, acted and announced a staff commission. On the further development of compulsory competitive tendering in the white collar sections, we have listened to the concerns raised by local authorities across the country and responded to them. The local authorities have recognised and welcomed the steps that we have taken. Above all, the introduction of the council tax from next April has been effected hand in hand with local authorities to ensure that there are no problems.

The hon. Member for Newham, North-West may turn up here with a modern hairstyle modelled on Jonathan Ross's, but his views are stuck in the 1970s or early 1980s. He must get up to date. He need not hold his breath: he can carry on breathing easily. We are in a good partnership and it is working well.

The Bill has the strong support of the Government. I am pleased to see that it seems to command the support of all sections of the House. Before dealing with its detail and how we envisage its operating, I might usefully go into the background for the benefit of the House and explain how we have arrived at this point.

We start with that often misunderstood idea, town twinning. There are those—the few, as ever—who have given it a bad name. The phrase "junketing on the rates" has been mentioned more than once this morning, first by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford), who brings considerable expertise—not to junketing on the rates but from running a very efficient local authority in Wandsworth which sets an example to authorities here and abroad.

These stories of junketing have been helped along by the tabloid press, but I think that they are very much the exception. They belong much more to the past, when scrutiny of local expenditure was not as vigorous.

The town twinning movement took off after the second world war, representing the genuine wish of people throughout Europe to reach out the hand of friendship and to build bridges of understanding so that never again would bigots or fanatics be able to come to power on a tide of ignorance and suspicion and lead our continent into tragedy.

Town twinning is a small-scale, grassroots activity, consisting of exchanges of school children, sports teams, artistic groups and the like. Sometimes it has been extended to co-operation on technical matters. In recent years, that has increasingly happened when British authorities have been twinned with authorities in less-developed countries, but such assistance has inevitably been small scale.

Although there is no single or specific piece of legislation giving power for town twinning, a number of powers exist which, together, allow for all the educational and cultural activities understood to come under traditional town twinning.

The position on technical twinning—technical assistance to a twinned overseas authority—has always been more uncertain, with lawyers working for individual authorities and the Local Government International Bureau concluding that, on balance—how else would lawyers conclude?—sufficient powers could be inferred to allow authorities to undertake such work. It was certainly understood that there would be no legal problem if the cost of such assistance were paid from central Government grant.

Following the collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe in 1989 there was keen interest among Ministers at the Department of the Environment and in the local government community in assisting the setting up of stable and efficient systems of local government in these newly democratic countries. That was seen as having the potential to make a major contribution to the achievement of political stability and economic recovery there.

The interest and enthusiasm were not confined to the United Kingdom. Within weeks of the fall of communism in the first of the east European dominoes, Poland, Senator Regulski, the Polish Minister charged with setting up democratic local government from scratch, was in London asking for our help. Delegations from Hungary and Czechoslovakia followed.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales, when he was Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities, led a mission to Poland in February 1990, and the value that the Poles and other east Europeans placed on our local government experience and expertise was made very clear to him.

Why us? It is clear that the east Europeans value our long tradition of democratic local government and our tendency to gradual evolution to meet new challenges. They also appreciate that in terms of their size, their budgets, the scope of their activities and their provision of local services our local authorities are probably unsurpassed in Europe and have a great deal to offer in terms of nuts and bolts experience and advice.

Visitors to this country are usually more than a little surprised to discover how much autonomy local government in Britain has. European local authorities have much smaller budgets. Visitors are taken aback when we explain that there is no general system of supervision of local authorities by the state, that local government has no hierarchy and no prefect or commissioner or voivode with whom everything has to be agreed. There is no Government rule book setting out how an authority should transact every aspect of its business. That is the reality in Britain. We could ask any French mayor about the reality in France, but it would be advisable to do so when he is well out of earshot of his prefect.

We have many lessons to teach local government overseas, but perhaps we could learn from our own mistakes and tell those authorities about the dangers and pitfalls of over-regulation which affects not only local government but many parts of our national life.

I have considerable sympathy with my hon. Friend's view. He will remember that when we took power in 1979 one of our first acts was to sweep away more than 300 controls governing the minutiae of the way in which local government conducted its business. I am sure that there will always be opportunities for further gains in that area.

The result of what I have been outlining was a series of Foreign and Commonwealth Office-sponsored assistance programmes for local government in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. The second initiative was the technical links scheme which was set up by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Local Government International Bureau in June 1991. It is a joint central-local government initiative financed by a £700,000 per annum allocation from the know-how fund. Its purpose is to contribute to the growth and management of local democracy in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and the Commonwealth of Independent States by supporting specifically targeted technical projects to be carried out jointly by a United Kingdom local authority and a local authority in one of those countries to help the east European authority develop its capacity and skills. Projects aim to deal with urgent technical difficulties such as, for example, environmental, public health, infrastructure or service delivery problems. Through achievement in those areas, the efficiency and effectiveness of east European local authorities can be improved and local democracy strengthened. Local economic and social reconstruction will also benefit.

Local authorities showed a strong initial interest in the scheme and nine projects were approved in November 1991. However, by last December doubts had begun to arise over local authorities' powers to do such work. A court case on another matter dealt with the scope of section III of the Local Government Act 1972, on which, I believe, local authorities may have been relying for power to give technical assistance, and may have strengthened those doubts. The Audit Commission, which strongly supports the objectives of the technical links scheme, received legal advice to the effect that there were serious doubts about authorities' powers to carry out such work outside the United Kingdom.

It is for the courts to interpret the law and for individual local authorities to satisfy themselves about their powers, and some have continued to be satisfied that they have sufficient powers. My Department did not dissent from the Audit Commission's view. The doubts rapidly cast a shadow over technical twinning and the technical links scheme. Authorities felt inhibited and I think it fair to say that the scheme was put on ice for a time.

It was clear that, unless we could take action to remedy these legal doubts, we risked losing an extremely effective scheme for getting assistance to eastern Europe. We looked in vain for alternative powers, but the situation could be remedied only by primary legislation.

The possibility of an amendment to last year's two Department of the Environment local government Bills was investigated, but would have widened their scope to an unacceptable extent. Therefore, I am extremely pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe, who was successful in the ballot, chose this Bill. By doing so he has made it possible to save this initiative and British local government's capacity to use its expertise to help eastern Europe.

We have taken two steps to help local authorities in the period before my hon. Friend's Bill comes into force, assuming that it will. The first is that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has agreed that all significant direct costs incurred by local authorities in carrying out a project under the technical links scheme will be met from the know-how funds. Previously, most staff costs were met by the authority.

Secondly, we have made it known that the Secretary of State is prepared to sanction under section 19 of the Local Government Finance Act 1982 local authority expenditure under the technical links scheme. That power is one which the Secretary of State may exercise only in special circumstances—for example, in anticipation of new legislation that has been announced and is not expected to be controversial and will authorise the type of expenditure in question; in other words, where it is probable that a sanction will be required for only a limited period of time.

Where a sanction is granted, the auditor has no power to apply to the court for a declaration that the expenditure is contrary to law. We informed the Audit Commission and the local authority associations that, in the unlikely event of expenditure under the scheme being challenged by an auditor, we are prepared to offer a sanction.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe explained, the purpose of the Bill is to provide local authorities with a power to provide advice or assistance, on any matter in which they have skill or experience, to bodies engaged in local government outside the United Kingdom, subject to the consent of the Secretary of State.

Like my hon. Friend, the Government intend to ensure that local authorities have, more or less, the powers that they thought they had until doubts set in last December. I say "more or less" quite deliberately. It is true that if my hon. Friend's Bill is enacted we shall have a requirement for the Secretary of State's consent that we have not had before. On the other hand, we shall also have a clear and definite power to provide overseas technical assistance where before we had only "inferred or implied" powers, uncertainty, and a reliance on a liberal interpretation of the law—some might say wishful thinking. I am clear that on balance local government will be in a stronger position after this Bill is enacted than it was in prior to the arising of the present "doubts".

Ever since my hon. Friend took on this Bill, both he and my Department have been at pains to consult representatives of local government on the way in which we should deal with the legal problem. Last summer, my officials circulated copies of the first draft of the Bill to the local authority associations and to others in local government who are prominent in the provision of assistance overseas. Subsequently, my hon. Friend and my officials had two full meetings with the associations and others. We tried to take on board their concerns as far as we were able, and I know that that was welcomed by the associations, who have made clear their strong support for the Bill—as was echoed this morning by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West.

We shall stay in close contact with local government throughout the proceedings on the Bill. It is an enabling Bill for local government, and we want to enable it to do a good job overseas—but there must be safeguards, and that brings us to the consent requirement. That is not meant in any way as a heavy-handed control, but as a means of ensuring that the good name of the many, sensible authorities doing a valuable job overseas is not overshadowed by the well-publicised misdeeds or excesses of the occasional crackpot authority.

The consent requirement will ensure also that no significant cost arising from overseas technical assistance falls on the local council tax payer. We support such assistance, but it is not appropriate for significant costs to be met out of local taxation—it is not a function or service of local government.

However, as I say, we have no intention of being heavy handed and I do not envisage the need for many individual consent applications. We intend to issue general authorisations, which will cover most work of that type.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State intends to give general authorisations for work under approved Government, EC, or other international agency schemes. Those authorisations will cover also de minimis expenditure, being expenditure below approved thresholds related, as was suggested by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West, to authorities' resident population, and work carried out where there is no net expenditure—that is, where grant or other income matches the amount of expenditure.

We also intend that the general authorisations will cover small-scale expenditure on advice and assistance arising out of, and incidental to, town twinning links, provided that it does not exceed twice the spending in the previous financial year. That will allow authorities to continue to undertake small-scale work of that type without having to seek specific consents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe and my officials will be discussing the details of these proposed general authorisations with the local authority associations in the new year and I will write to the chairmen of the associations before the Committee stage of the Bill, with a model general authorisation covering those matters. If I have not already conveyed this from the Dispatch Box, I can confirm that my approach is to be very open minded, and I expect to satisfy the authorities in due course in respect of some of the smaller points made by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West.

I turn to specific points raised in today's debate. There was a marvellous balance between the significant number of excellent speeches made by my hon. Friends. I know that they will understand, however, if I begin by dealing with what was said by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West. He asked me whether officer time would be included in the provision for de minimis limits. I am open to suggestion; we shall await representations from local authorities.

I cannot accept that a "without prejudice" clause would be appropriate. The argument for such a clause is that, by providing a specific power enabling overseas technical assistance to be given, the Bill will remove local authorities' existing ability to do such work on the basis of general discretionary powers—such as section 137 of the Local Government Act 1972—or specific powers such as section 33 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, which promotes economic development.

The central point, however, is the serious doubt about the legitimacy of using the existing powers. The Audit Commission's lawyers take the view that there are no existing powers for technical assistance: that, indeed, is why the Bill has been presented. It is difficult to see the purpose of a "without prejudice" clause in respect of powers that are not thought to exist. Nevertheless, to meet the local authorities' concern that small-scale technical assistance work arising out of town-twining activity should not require a consent under the Bill, the Secretary of State will give a general authorisation for such work.

As the hon. Member for Newham, North-West said, local authority associations have asked my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe to amend the Bill to allow local authorities to assist bodies—such as consultancies—that help overseas authorities. I am advised that the Bill, as drafted, would allow a council to provide an overseas authority with advice and assistance, in conjunction with consultants; if the legal position varies, I shall await further representations.

The hon. Member for Newham, North-West mentioned the reference to financial assistance in clause 1(4). That is intended simply to prevent local authorities from providing overseas authorities with such assistance, such as grants or loans. The question has now arisen whether the provision also excludes other financial assistance, such as the provision of equipment. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the possibility of fire authorities' donating fire appliances that have been replaced. My hon. Friend and my officials will discuss such matters with the local authority associations before the Committee stage, and I am sure that we shall be able to resolve them.

I shall write to the hon. Gentleman about any outstanding matters.

The Minister has not yet mentioned the scope of clause 1(1), which refers to

"a body engaged in local government".

The Bill, as drafted, covers the provision of assistance to

"a body engaged in local government outside the United Kingdom".

Associations have pointed out to my hon. Friend that that wording would not permit assistance for bodies setting up local government or public agencies to provide services that, in the United Kingdom, are functions of local authorities. I understand that my hon. Friend therefore proposes, immediately after the debate, to table an instruction to the Committee to widen the Bill's scope to allow local authorities to assist all bodies engaged outside the United Kingdom in activities that are the equivalent of, or comparable to, activities carried on by local authorities in any part of Great Britain. Such an instruction would have the Government's full support.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant)—who was surprised to find himself opening the batting this morning—made several good points. In particular, he emphasised the efficiency of his local council, the London borough of Bromley. Like Wandsworth, which I mentioned earlier, Bromley is an efficient authority from which others, in this country and abroad, could learn a great deal.

Like me, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central is a member of the former council leaders' club, and he speaks with the benefit of considerable expertise. He rightly pointed out that many of the countries that we are discussing have none of the basic institutions on which they should be able to build; the Bill will play a significant part in helping them to learn from our experience. Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway), who has apologised to me for being unable to stay to the end of the debate as he has a constituency engagement, stressed that the Bill will bridge the gap between east and west. In particular, he rightly underlined how the nuts and bolts exercise can be so helpful to so many authorities abroad.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) reminded us of the established links that he and many other hon. Members already have with representatives of other countries already—in his particular case with Lithuania and Czechoslovakia—and also of the culture change now being faced in central and eastern Europe. He believes, and I share his views completely, that the Bill will help them. That is another reason for welcoming it.

In a strong speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) made the very important point about the holding of proper elections which, in some countries at least, is still something of a novelty. The experience of our local authority officers in running elections will be of substantial assistance to them at local government and national level. My hon. Friend also pointed out that he is chairman of the relevant Council of Europe committee. These are exciting times for him. I am sure that the House wishes him well in furthering good relations between all the countries of Europe. As he said, there has never been a better time for local government to influence the rest of Europe.

In an excellent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) stressed the need to help various countries. He mentioned Poland and Czechoslovakia and spelt out precisely why that assistance is important and is in our own interests—an important point which sometimes can be overlooked—as they move towards full and free markets and democratic systems. He was also surely right to utter a cautionary note about there being no specific single model of local authority organisation towards which these countries should move.

I enjoyed in particular the speech of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). I am glad that he is still in the Chamber, although I know that he has other engagements. I am grateful that he has stayed until the end of the debate. He spelt out several helpful practical examples of housing management and social services. They will be of assistance to those countries. He also painted an interesting and attractive picture of the interchange of people within Europe in general.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) reminded us, in a memorable comment, that when it comes to twinning—in his case between Whitwell and Paris—twins do not necessarily have to be identical. He, too, highlighted our expertise not just in running elections but in waste disposal. I am not sure that there is a direct connection between the two, though I am sure that if I think about it for long enough I shall find one.

Lastly, my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Shepherd) rightly praised the expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe and asked me specifically to confirm that no restraint should be placed on election advice when electoral registration officers cover two or more authorities. I can confirm that, according to my information, there should be no problem over electoral registration officers being able to provide advice on the organisation of elections.

I hope that hon. Members feel that I have endeavoured to summarise the debate in a relatively short speech. The Bill has the strong support of the Government. We are keen for British local government to provide vitally needed technical advice to local government in central and eastern Europe, to the Commonwealth of Independent States and elsewhere and to demonstrate its competence and expertise. We must, at the same time, protect the local taxpayer. It is not appropriate for significant cost, arising from such assistance, to fall on the council tax payer. That is why we have the technical links scheme, under which all significant direct costs involved in undertaking this work are met by the know-how fund.

The Bill has the support not just of central Government but of local government. The co-operation between the two sides over the Bill has been an excellent example of the progress that has been made in building a more constructive partnership and relationship and gives the lie to the picture of permanent central Government-local government conflict. I have great pleasure in urging the House to support the Bill.

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

I am grateful to have time to debate the Bill. This is the second time in my parliamentary career that I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity of introducing a private Member's Bill. The first time was in 1986 with the Corneal Tissue Bill, which successfully completed its stages in Parliament. I hope that I can make it a brace of successes with this Bill.

The Bill seeks to amend the Road Traffic Act 1988 to enable physically disabled people to give paid instruction in the driving of motor cars in specified circumstances. It has the support of the Department of Transport and I should like to thank all the staff of its disability unit who have helped so much with it.

The Bill is welcomed by many disabled people and organisations that represent the interests of disabled people and, at this early stage, I should like to quote messages of support that I have received from two of he leading disability organisations. The first is from the national vice-chairman of the Disabled Drivers Association, John Hennessey, who says:

"It is many years since one of our members from Coventry was denied the opportunity to become a driving instructor and become gainfully employed, because she only had a licence to drive cars with automatic transmission. The `Disabled Drivers Association' warmly welcomes this Bill which will remove the present discrimination against disabled drivers and enable those who wish to work as driving instructors to do so. This measure is of vital importance and the need for it is overwhelming."

The other message came from Bert Massey, director of the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation. He writes:

"RADAR warmly welcomes this Bill, which if passed, will enable disabled drivers to become driving instructors. The Bill will affect a small number of disabled people, but removes a barrier to them becoming 'economically active' and assisting other disabled people to become 'independently mobile'. We very much hope the House will grant it a Second Reading."

The Bill is sponsored by Members from four parties in the House, so it is truly an all-party Bill, and most of them are active in the all-party disablement group, which also supports the Bill.

Our proceedings began this morning with the presentation of a large petition calling for antidiscrimination legislation for disabled people. It is in that context that I present the Bill. We all know that disabled people face many obstacles in their daily lives in education, housing, transport, employment and many other areas. Significant progress has been made in removing the barriers in recent years, but much more remains to be done. I hope that the Bill will contribute by making provision for disabled people to become approved driving instructors, thus allowing those who qualify as such to have greater financial independence.

When we think about the range of problems facing disabled people we think of the difficulties of gaining access to buildings such as theatres and cinemas and of the problems on the educational front with grant-maintained schools and the need to ensure that proper provision is made for those with special educational needs, but they also face difficulties with transport that must be tackled, for example by using lower-access buses. Disabled people suffer from discrimination in a whole range of areas and the Bill seeks to tackle that.

The demand for the Bill is certainly well established. Over the years, the Department of Transport and the disability organisations have received representations from would-be driving instructors who are excluded from that source of employment. The Bill aims to rectify that problem and to open up new employment opportunities for disabled people as driving instructors approved by the Department of Transport.

Why is there a need to amend existing legislation? At the moment, someone who wants to become an approved driving instructor must be able to give tuition in the driving of cars with a manual gear box. That prevents disabled people, who are restricted by their driving licences to cars with automatic transmission, from becoming approved driving instructors and thereby giving paid tuition. The Bill would therefore deal with discrimination against disabled people in one aspect of employment. Until we have general anti-discrimination laws, I believe that it is the correct way to try to remove discrimination piece by piece.

In presenting the Bill, I am mindful of the need to ensure that it will not undermine road safety. A key feature of the Bill is the requirement for a disabled person who wants to become an approved driving instructor to satisfy an assessor appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport that he or she could exercise control in an emergency while giving instruction. Essentially, the assessment will be on the basis of the ability to exercise emergency control in a car fitted with automatic transmission with or without additional modifications to the vehicle, as the assessor may consider necessary.

Could my hon. Friend enlarge on that? Would he recommend that the assessor should be requested to forecast the capacity of the candidate to become a driving instructor over a prescribed interval such as one year or two years in case someone with a debilitating progressive disease might get worse in the period after the assessment has been made?

My hon. Friend raises a crucial point with which I am about to deal in detail. It is the safety factor which will concern most people in allowing a new group of people to become driving instructors.

The Bill would require a satisfactory assessment of the ability to exercise control, which would lead to the issuing of an emergency control certificate. The certificate would detail any modifications to the vehicle that the assessor may consider necessary. The important point is that the assessor may include a recommendation that the candidate should undergo a further emergency control assessment at the end of a period specified on the certificate. In other words, the assessor may consider the candidate's type of disability and define a period after which a further assessment must be made. I believe that that answers my hon. Friend's question.

The registrar of approved driving instructors will require the production of a current emergency control certificate before a disabled person's name can be entered in the register. In practice, I suspect that disabled people who want to become approved driving instructors would obtain the emergency control certificate before spending time and money taking the qualifying theoretical examination and practical test of driving and instruction ability which must be passed before entry in the register is possible. The Bill mirrors for a group of disabled drivers the requirements laid down for non-disabled drivers.

As an added road safety measure, the Bill contains powers for an emergency control certificate to be revoked in the event of a disabled person no longer being able to meet the emergency control requirements. It would be an offence to continue to give paid instruction without a current emergency control certificate. The Bill contains a number of safeguards around the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel).

It would also be an offence if a disabled approved driving instructor or trainee instructor failed to inform the registrar of approved driving instructors of any worsening of his or her disability or failed to disclose a disability that had not been previously notified. Thus, the registrar can ensure that a person should return within a given time for further assessment and the prospective driving instructor is required to disclose any disability that had not previously been notified. He or she must notify the registrar if there is a worsening of the disability.

May I take my hon. Friend further on that point? Given that the assessor can pre-determine the timing of a subsequent examination in certain conditions, would not it be an idea to have regular retesting? That would also avoid the need for individuals to report a worsening in their condition, which would necessarily sometimes be a subjective decision.

The provisions of the certificate detail the time at which a further application should be made. A condition may improve rather than worsen, and a prospective disabled driving instructor who has been denied a certificate could come back for a reassessment. There is a duty on the disabled person to inform the registrar if his or her condition worsens. A disabled person can also ask for reassessment if the condition improves.

The introduction of the concept of the emergency control certificate is the key safeguard for road safety. Although it is necessary for road safety purposes that an additional requirement should be placed on disabled people, it should not act as an disincentive to disabled people who want to qualify as improved driving instructors; nor is it proposed that there should be any financial penalty for disabled people. With the agreement of my hon. Friend the Minister for Roads and Traffic, it is intended that no charge should be made for the issue of the emergency control assessment certificate.

A disabled person who holds a valid emergency control certificate, and who has passed the necessary written and practical qualifying tests, just as non-disabled people have to qualify, will be able to have his or her name entered in the register of approved driving instructors. That would enable a disabled person to give paid driving instruction, although he or she would be restricted to cars with automatic transmission and with any other special modifications that might be specified in the emergency control certificate.

Technology is developing so quickly that in the past 10 or 20 years, we have seen a range of adaptations and modifications to allow people with very severe disabilities to be able to drive cars. One can imagine that in the foreseeable future, technology will go even further, to a point at which one would press a few buttons and programme a computer that would drive the car and even navigate it. Such a computer would be extremely useful for my wife, as navigation is not her strongest point. I look forward very much to such developments.

I will run briefly through the main features of the seven clauses. Clause 1 sets out the conditions that must be satisfied if a disabled person is to be registered as an approved driving instructor.

The interesting proposal for emergency control certificates is important for disabled driving instructors in terms of road safety. It also has interesting implications for non-disabled driving instructors. Does my hon. Friend think that there is a potential for widening the scope of the certificates so that all driving instructors would eventually need to have them, given the difficulty for anybody, whether disabled or not, in controlling motor cars in an emergency?

It is certainly the case that the certificate is a prime requirement for all drivers when they are assessed for introduction to the register. The non-disabled driver has to show clearly that he or she can take control of a vehicle in an emergency. In the case of disabled drivers, whose cars have automatic transmission and other modifications, it becomes a more complex requirement. That is why the special advice centre set up by the Department of Transport will be responsible for providing an assessor who will look carefully at that requirement and at a certificate showing that a disabled driver is equally able to gain immediate control of a vehicle in an emergency. We can consider carefully in Committee whether the same degree of certification should apply to non-disabled drivers.

Clause 1 contains provisions to ensure that the disabled person can satisfy requirements that mirror those set out in part V—section 125—of the Road Traffic Act 1988. The disabled person who wanted to apply to the registrar to have his name included in the register of approved driving instructors would need to satisfy three conditions as a first step: first, he would have to suffer from a relevant disability or a prospective disability; secondly, he would have to hold a current restricted driving licence; and, thirdly, he would have to hold an emergency control certificate.

The disability or prospective disability would be a physical condition, whose relevance would depend on whether it was likely to hinder the safe and proper control of a motor car and, as such, be a source of danger to the public. In practice, potential disabled approved driving instructors will have shown their ability to drive safely—otherwise they would not possess the limited restricted licence required under the second of the three conditions. The Bill recognises, however, that some people suffer from intermittent or progressive physical disabilities—hence the inclusion of the term "prospective disability".

The possession of a limited driving licence required under the second of the three conditions refers to a licence limited to certain classes of motor car by reason of a person's disability. In practice, that generally means that the licence restricts the holder to driving cars with automatic transmission, with or without all the additional suitable modifications such as a hand-operated throttle and brakes.

The third requirement—that a disabled person possess an emergency control certificate—is a crucial element in the Bill.

Clause 1 also specifies the duty, which I have mentioned, to disclose to the registrar of approved driving instructors any worsening of the physical disability of the candidate instructor, and also the duty to disclose any disability not previously mentioned.

The clause also provides for the registrar to order a reassessment of emergency control ability and—again, mirroring the existing legislation—for the registrar to provide periodic tests of continued ability to give instruction, re-emphasising the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Carrington).

Clause 1 also requires that, before entry to the register of approved driving instructors, a disabled person must first pass the necessary written and practical tests of ability. Clause 2 amends section 129 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to enable disabled people to hold a trainee licence and to give paid instruction if so desired. A trainee licence is not a requirement under the existing legislation, and I do not propose to change that position.

To hold a trainee licence, a disabled person would first need to have passed the first two parts of the three-part qualifying examination—the written theory test and the test of driving ability. A trainee licence would enable a potential approved driving instructor to get practical experience and to instruct for payment before taking the practical test of ability to instruct. As with the legislation governing existing trainee licence holders, the Bill provides for regulations to be made limiting the period during which a disabled person may hold a trainee licence. The existing regulations governing such licences restrict the period to six months and I would envisage the same period applying to disabled trainee licence holders. It is interesting that, under existing legislation, prospective driving instructors are given a six-month period during which they can gain experience before doing the final practical test and be paid for it.

Clause 3 provides for the assessment of a disabled person's ability to control a motor car in an emergency so that that person may be granted the necessary emergency control certificate. The clause is a vital part of the Bill.

As I have said, the assessment would be undertaken by an assessor appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport. The disabled person would need to satisfy the assessor that he or she would be able to take emergency control while giving instruction. The assessment would be made on the basic ability to exercise emergency control of a vehicle fitted with automatic transmission with arty special modifications that may be necessary.

The clause provides that the certificate will specify the class of motor car with any necessary modifications. The certificate may include a recommendation that the person should undergo further assessments at the end of such periods as may be specified. The assessor has control over the length of time before further assessments are necessary.

Does the Bill state whether the assessor must be medically qualified or at least a medical auxiliary?

The Bill does not define that specifically. Appointments are made by the Department of Transport centre responsible for supervising and helping to advise and develop modifications of vehicles for disabled people. The assessor appointed to deal specifically with emergency certificates will, of course, have to be fully qualified to do that. The degree of medical expertise is something which I would have to examine further. However, that is a very important point and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham.

Clause 3 provides that the emergency control certificate will specify the particular class of motor vehicle and the further assessments needed at the end of any periods specified in the certificate. With regard to further assessments, it would be open to a disabled person to apply for a reassessment to enable him or her to instruct in a class of car not covered by the existing emergency control certificate. Alternatively, the registrar may require a reassessment if he believes that there are grounds for that.

The clause also provides that a period of time should elapse before a disabled person can apply for a reassessment. That period could be six months or another specified period. That is generally the case with such provisions as attendance allowance, where a period of time is set before a reapplication can be made after an earlier decision.

Clause 4 imposes a duty whereby a disabled person who is an approved driving instructor will be required to disclose to the registrar any previously undisclosed physical disabiity or worsening of a disclosed disability.

Clause 5 makes it an offence to give paid instruction in a vehicle not covered by an emergency control certificate. It also makes it an offence to give paid instruction without a valid emergency control certificate. The registrar of approved driving instructors will have no power to suspend disabled people from the register. Therefore, several months could elapse between the revocation of an emergency control certificate and the removal of the name from the register.

In the meantime, that person could give instruction without the ability to intervene in an emergency. I recognise that that would have very serious road safety implications; hence the need to create that offence to cover someone who continues to give paid instruction without a current emergency control certificate, even if that person's name was still on the register.

Clause 6 introduces a long and detailed schedule of related and consequential amendments necessary to the Road Traffic Act 1988 and the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988. Clause 7 provides the short title of the Act if the Bill is enacted and it also provides for commencement, which would be by order of the Secretary of State for Transport. It also excludes Northern Ireland from the extent of the legislation.

I hope that the House will share my view that the Bill offers a new opportunity for disabled people, while ensuring that road safety principles are not compromised. I believe that my Bill will ensure that, as approved driving instructors, that same group of drivers will be able to provide an effective and safe service to other would-be drivers.

I thank the hon. Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) for introducing the Bill and for his excellent work in the all-party disablement group. I also thank the Home Office for consenting to those parts of the Bill relating to offences. I hope that that indicates the Government's general support for the Bill.

My party wholeheartedly supports the Bill, which is important for two reasons. First, it opens a sphere of employment that is currently barred to disabled people. Secondly, by providing for disabled instructors, it will make it possible for more people with disabilities to learn to drive and to gain the extra freedom that the rest of us take for granted.

Unfortunately, at the moment there is a shortage of driving instructors who are willing to teach disabled people. Clearly, that is unacceptable. The current situation also means that people with disabilities who do get taught to drive will be taught by people who may not have an adequate understanding of their needs or the particular skills required for driving some specially adapted cars.

Furthermore, it seems obvious to me that in most cases disabled people would prefer to be taught by disabled instructors. However, in supporting the Bill, we must not forget the many other transport problems that disabled people face. I have recently received complaints regarding the orange badge scheme for disabled drivers and regarding disabled access to the London underground.

Measures such as the Bill, which enable people with disabilities to extend their freedom of travel and access, should be supported, and I hope that all hon. Members will so do.

The whole House and the country are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) for having brought forward this excellent Bill. For many years, my hon. Friend has been renowned for his work for the disabled. He himself is far from disabled—he has captained the Lords and Commons skiers against the Swiss Parliament, and he has played tennis for the House of Commons against the French. My hon. Friend's remarkable and compassionate concern for the disabled is shown in the Bill. Only a small number of people are affected by the Bill, but a principle is involved—a matter of fairness so that people who are disabled but who would be capable of making good driving instructors can carry out that employment and derive a livelihood from it.

Of course physical capacity matters. I am glad that my hon. Friend went so carefully into what would be needed to check physical capacity. Arms and legs matter in that connection. It is important for anyone driving a car to be able to react quickly and jam on the brake with a sharp movement in an emergency. An instructor needs to be able to show a learner driver how to do that. My hon. Friend referred to the need for driving instructors to obtain quick access to the hand brake or to seize the steering wheel and turn it in an emergency. Those points matter greatly.

There is also manoeuvrability. I have noticed many drivers proceed perfectly safely along a highway and avoid accidents when driving forward but be hopelessly incompetent when it comes to backing into a confined space or carrying out a three-point turn. The three-point turn used to feature largely in driving tests and in driving instruction. Of course, it is useful for country drivers to be able to carry out a three-point turn, as they might overwise have to travel a mile or two before they find a turning space. For urban and suburban drivers, such as those in my constituency, the need is less marked. Normally, one can drive round a block and have to travel only 200 or 300 yds further. It is useful for a driver to be able to carry out three-point turns, which need some force as well as skill in the use of the steering wheel. It is important for an instructor to be able to give instructions on that function and on reversing into a confined space, which some drivers do so badly. Such drivers do not seem to have a sense of the size of their car in relation to the size of the space or how to back into it with reasonable efficiency. I should like to know that disabled drivers will be able to give instruction on those functions. I should also like to know that it will be safe for disabled instructors to drive on motorways.

When my hon. Friend the Minister replies, will he make it clear that within the European Community the principle of subsidiarity will apply to the legislation? I hope that there will be no question of our legislating today at the risk of having the Act overruled by the common market later.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak. My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) is to be congratulated on introducing the measure. It is a scandal, which has been going on for far too long, that disabled people who are perfectly entitled and, indeed, licensed to drive their cars on the streets, have not been entitled to be instructors provided that they meet the necessary criteria to enable them to teach.

The purpose of the Bill is to be greatly welcomed and, when we look back once the Bill is on the statute book, we will wonder how the original legislation on driving instructors ever excluded disabled people. An extraordinary perversion of the legislative framework meant that it ignored the rights of disabled people. If disabled people can carry out the functions necessary to be able to drive, they should be able to teach others how to drive.

As has already been said by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms. Lynne), it is undoubtedly true that someone who is disabled, and is able to manage a car and understand the constraints imposed on them when safely driving and manoeuvring a car, will have a much clearer understanding of the problems faced by a disabled person who is learning to drive and who suffers similar disabilities. Disabled instructors will be able to understand the intricacies of handling cars that are adapted for disabled people.

Therefore, the Bill is not merely about the justice of a disabled person being able to say, "This is another skill that I can have to add to my existing skills", but will improve the instruction of disabled people learning to drive. That will mean that disabled people will be safer and better drivers, which will benefit us all. Therefore, the purpose of the Bill is to be greatly welcomed and I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing it.

Necessary safeguards are required. There are people whose disabilities will, at times, make it difficult for them to be able to control a car in a crisis. Undoubtedly, crises arise during driving lessons that do not arise when someone is driving alone, whether or not he is disabled.

Therefore, it is right that the Bill should include a requirement that the disabled driving instructor should have to fulfil to ensure that he can gain control of the car in an emergency.

Why, though, if a disabled driving instructor has to prove that he can regain control of a car in a crisis, do we take it for granted that someone who is not disabled always can? After all, it is not obviously true. When he qualifies, an instructor may have quick reactions and great manual dexterity and may be able to regain control of the car in which he teaches, but, as the years go by, reactions slow down and people cease to be as agile as some of us were in our youth. It is conceivable that able-bodied people might then find it difficult to regain control. To introduce a requirement of this nature for all driving instructors is perhaps beyond the scope of the Bill, but it should be considered. If the certification works for disabled drivers, as I believe that it will, perhaps the principle should be extended to all driving instructors—

The purpose of the emergency control certificate is to prove that those whose ability to stop a vehicle may be in doubt can do so. Surely the ability of able-bodied people to stop a vehicle is never in doubt, so there is no need to extend the certification process to them.

I suspect that that may often be true, but the difficulty is that it may not be true of some people. As my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) said, some people who are not disabled have great trouble reversing, doing three-point turns and backing into narrow spaces, even though the vast majority do not. The difficulty is to know who can and who cannot. Some driving instructors will be able to regain control of cars throughout their careers, but others, with less dexterity and slower reactions, will not.

This is rather like the hoary problem of whom advertising affects. Most of the money spent on it is wasted, just as I suspect most of these certificates will be wasted. The problem lies in distinguishing. In matters of road safety it is always wise to veer on the side of caution.

I hope that the Bill reaches the statute book quickly. It will right a great wrong that has lasted for too long. I congratulate my hon. Friend for Exeter and wish him godspeed for the Bill.

We welcome this Bill, and I am pleased that the hon. Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) has introduced it to the House. It is good that he has used his luck in the draw to bring in a Bill which will benefit disabled people. I am well aware, not least because of my working relationship with Lord Ashley, of the work that the hon. Gentleman has done in the all-party parliamentary group on disabled people and through his membership of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, established under the Road Traffic (Production of Documents) Act 1985.

This is a new area of work for me and I should like to put it on the record that I look forward to a close working relationship with all who are disabled or who are working for greater access for disabled people. I know how much the Bill means to many people throughout the country. Access for the disabled is important and should be far higher on the Government's priority list. For evidence of the problem, we need look no further than access for the disabled to the Palace of Westminster. I attended a meeting last week at which evidence was given in private to a Select Committee. During that meeting mention was made of the problem of access for the disabled in the Palace. I hope that speeding the Bill on its way will lead to greater willingness by all Members to look at ways of improving access for people here, thereby setting an example, and throughout the country. I understand that the Government support the Bill. I hope that it will be a reminder that the transport and employment needs of the disabled need to be addressed urgently and that that will start in the Palace of Westminster.

The Bill takes one small but important step towards addressing issues of transport and employment. Disabled people who want to be driving instructors and are able and qualified to do the job currently face legalised discrimination. By ensuring that such people can be registered and employed as instructors, we are removing one further piece of discrimination. I welcome that.

We have heard in some detail about the technical aspects of the Bill and I do not intend to repeat those. I am confident that the Bill's proposals will work well and will not jeopardise road safety in any way. Obviously, road safety is high on my agenda. I welcome the role of the Department of Transport's mobility advice and vehicle information service, but I do not understand why that service is not referred to directly in the Bill. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that in his winding-up speech. The service, which is known as MAVIS, has the full confidence of disabled people and their organisations. It is the country's top centre for assessing whether disabled people are able to drive and it has many cars fitted with different types of controls. I am aware of the Transport Research Laboratory test tracks in Berkshire. I hope that this aspect of the Department of Transport's work is safe from the Government's privatisation plans and that they have no intention of doing away with the mobility and vehicle information service.

I am entirely satisfied with the Bill's technical aspects and its built-in safeguards. The Opposition know how much pressure many disabled people have had to apply to advance the Bill. For the sake of people who wish to become driving instructors and those who have supported the Bill, I hope that its provisions will be properly enacted. People know that this form of employment is properly suitable for disabled people, and I have no doubts about that.

I appreciate that the number of disabled people who wish to become driving instructors is quite small. It is perhaps no more than about 12 a year at the moment, although that could change. There is an important point of principle involved. I welcome the fact that disabled instructors will be able to provide instruction for the disabled and the able-bodied. The Bill will help to deal with the current shortage of instructors prepared to teach disabled people to drive. There are about 500,000 disabled drivers and, increasingly, people—especially the elderly who have had strokes—wish to be re-instructed so that they can carry on driving.

The Bill will create an enormous number of opportunities and could lead the way to a wider public campaign for improved access by the disabled to all modes of transport. I hope that the Minister is listening, because I would apply that to public transport in particular. I hope that the Bill will allow for changes inside planning departments and highway authorities so that access for the disabled will know no limits and I am delighted to give this short Bill of seven clauses the Opposition's full support.

It gives me great pleasure to wind up this short debate on a useful and effective Bill. I am particularly delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) should be the person to bring in the Bill. He has a record of distinction above any in the House in the service of the disabled. On the Second Reading of this useful Bill, it is right to remind the House of the extent of that record.

When my hon. Friend became the Member for Exeter in 1974, his first move was to become secretary of the all-party disablement group. He has served that cause for more than 20 years, and is now joint chairman. He was also a member of the Snowdon working party on the integration of the disabled and of many other organisations working for the disabled.

As my hon. Friend said, in 1986 he presented another private Member's Bill. Most of us feel lucky if we manage to present one during our time in Parliament. That earlier Bill was also dedicated to people in need. My hon. Friend successfully steered through that Bill on cornea transplants. In a wider field, he is also international vice-chairman of the British committee of Rehabilitation International.

My hon. Friend provides a clear example of the way that a Member of Parliament can pursue a worthwhile issue, when something needs to be accomplished. For many years, he has been tenacious, resourceful, and very wise in his efforts to help the disabled. He has accumulated great knowledge of the subject, and has served as an example to us all of how to embrace a cause and, even more important, to endure with that cause and see it through to many successes. It could not give me more pleasure today than to pay the greatest tribute to my hon. Friend for bringing his Bill before the House and for his proven record over many years.

The Bill is worth while and will give employment opportunities to the disabled, who can fill a useful niche in the market for those who want to instruct and to help to train people in how to drive certain types of cars. In Committee, we will have a considerable opportunity to debate various aspects of concern to many, but I will address one or two of them now.

Although everyone welcomes the Bill, many have something to say about safety. It is most important that any measure does not put anyone else on the road at risk. The Bill addresses that point well. Anyone who is to obtain an emergency control certificate must pass various steps and show beyond doubt that he or she has the ability to control and to stop a car. A satisfactory assessment of the ability to exercise control will have to be made before an emergency control certificate can be issued. The certificate will give details of any modifications to the vehicle that the assessor considers necessary; it may also include a recommendation that the driver undergo a further emergency control assessment at the end of the period specified in the certificate.

The Bill also provides for the revocation of certificates if it is felt that the disabled person can no longer meet the emergency control requirements. As my hon. Friend pointed out, it would be an offence to continue to give paid instruction without holding a current certificate. It would also he an offence for an approved disabled driving instructor, or trainee instructor, to fail to inform the registrar of approved driving instructors of any worsening of his or her disability. The same applies to failure to disclose a disability of which the registrar had not been notified previously.

My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel)—who, incidentally, is a distinguished member of the parliamentary skiing team; his style alone gives us much cause for admiration—asked about the assessor. Let me assure him that the assessor will be an approved driving instructor with particular knowledge of the needs of disabled drivers. He will also have a full understanding of the special modifications that are available to help disabled people control their vehicles while giving instruction. It will, of course, be open to the assessor to take medical advice from suitably qualified people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham also asked about instructors generally. We do not propose to require non-disabled driving instructors to hold emergency control certificates. It is important for safety reasons for disabled drivers to be able to exercise emergency control while giving instruction, and that may require special modifications to their vehicles. My hon. Friend asked about the common market: I know of no European Community legislation that would prevent the enactment of this Bill, and any such legislation could in any event be dealt with by means of a statutory instrument.

The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms. Lynne) expressed support for the Bill. We are delighted to observe that it has received all-party support; my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter has been sensible in securing such support. which generally gives a private Member's Bill an excellent chance of being passed.

We are grateful to the Opposition parties for their support. As the hon. Lady rightly said, the Bill will provide employment opportunities for disabled people, which is another welcome feature. As technology develops, the employment opportunities will grow. An increasing number of cars will have automatic transmission and we shall become more used to driving them. There are far more cars with automatic transmission in the United States, so over the next few decades the opportunities will grow for disabled people to become driving instructors and to perform a useful and worthwhile role.

The Department of Transport pays great attention to helping people with disabilities. I am glad that in 1985 the Department set up what it calls the mobility advice and vehicle information service—known to her friends as MAVIS! I hope that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms. Walley) accepts that the Department of Transport takes these matters very seriously indeed. It may help the House if I outlined some of the admirable characteristics of MAVIS.

MAVIS, which is based at the Transport Research Laboratory, has a fleet of some 25 production cars fitted with a wide range of equipment and adaptations, from the simplest low-cost steering wheel knob, to make it easier to turn the wheel, to the highly sophisticated four-way joystick which enables a very severely disabled person driving from a wheelchair to control a vehicle in complete safety. MAVIS also has expert driving advisers who can help disabled people, first, to decide whether they are likely to be able to reach driving test standard and, secondly, and very important, what type of vehicle and adaptation is most likely to suit their needs.

MAVIS is currently providing assessment to some 400 disabled people every year and is giving advice and information in writing and by telephone to many thousands. In addition, MAVIS employs a second driving adviser, supported by the regional health authorities, whose job is to work with health authorities, local authorities and voluntary groups around the country, to promote the setting up of similar centres elsewhere.

In addition to basic advice on driving and car choice, MAVIS provides a wide range of additional information on vital aspects of motoring, such as insurance, parking concessions, and so on. MAVIS is, I think we can all accept, a remarkable lady who shows that the Department of Transport cares about helping people with disabilities. I am responsible, for example, for the orange badge scheme. It is important that it should work well. We are in contact with disability groups to make it effective and practical. There is pressure to extend the orange badge scheme, but if we were to extend it, local authorities would find that there were not enough parking places. The orange badge scheme would then fall into disrepute and the truly disabled would suffer. Therefore, we have to ensure that the orange badge scheme is practical.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North supports this useful Bill. I take issue with her view that we do not do enough for disabled people. Of course we could do more, but I am proud that my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter is on this side of the House, because, by his actions, he has shown that he cares for disabled people. It therefore gives me great pleasure to support the Bill and his admirable efforts.

I beg to move, That the Question be now put.

rose——

Order. Is it a point of order?

Yes. Is it in order for the promoter of a Bill to seek to put the Question immediately if hon. Members wish to speak to the Bill?

The hon. Gentleman was still speaking at 2.30 pm, so the question is, Second Reading what day?

Now, Sir.

No.

15 January

It was a brave attempt.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Has not a mistake been made? If my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) had risen to move the Second Reading of the Occupational Pensions Bill and was on his feet at 2.30 pm, surely the question of continued debate should be adjourned to another day rather than a new day being requested for a Second Reading debate.

No. The question had not been proposed from the Chair, so the procedures are entirely in order.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Clerk had quite properly read the title of the Bill and you asked the promoter to speak to his Bill. He stood and moved that the Bill be now read a Second time, and 2.30 pm arrived; quite properly, you then intervened. If he was on his feet at 2.30 pm, surely the Second Reading is adjourned to another day rather than a new day being named, when the Bill will be lower down the list.

No. It is not an adjourned debate I had not proposed the Question from the Chair.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If you had not proposed the Question from the Chair, what was my hon. Friend doing moving the Bill?

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) was making a speech, or just starting to do so.

Object.

Second Reading what day? No day named.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.

Object.