When the BSE tragedy struck this country, I shared with my constituents a sense of distress for the cattle involved and for the agriculture community. I little thought that the BSE problem would have an immediate impact in Gosport, because it is not an agricultural area. We Gosportians—I grew up there, and I have represented the area for 22 years—are proud of our constituency, but the last thing we would claim for it is that it is an agricultural area. One will not see a pig or a sheep in Gosport. We have hardly a horse, scarcely a cow and only a handful of goats.

Because we have so few agricultural animals, we value Felicia park at Forton, which is a mildly eccentric and totally delightful farmlet where children can see live farm animals. Without that opportunity, they may not know what farm animals look or smell like in the flesh. I hope that Felicia park will continue, despite the development in that area.

It was, therefore, a surprise and a shock to receive a plea from a local firm for help following the BSE scandal. Pinnacle Meats has a serious problem: proportionately it is the worst problem of anyone affected by the BSE crisis. It was at that point that I learned about the cattle head deboning industry. I trust that hon. Members had a good breakfast before the debate.

I should say a few words about the trade so as to put the problem in context. Before March this year, cattle were killed in abattoirs and the bulk of the carcase was handled within the mainstream butchery trade. That business is vast: it is so large that it operates from enormous factories, its turnover is huge and its profit margin is correspondingly small in percentage terms. It will be important to bear that in mind when we consider the head meat boning industry later.

By contrast, the cattle head deboning business is tiny. It operates through about 12 firms, typically with 12 to 20 employees. It is a highly specialised part of the trade. It buys cow heads from abattoirs, takes them to purpose-built premises where the edible portions—mainly the cheek—are removed under strictly controlled conditions, and the remainder is dispatched for destruction, also under strictly controlled conditions.

Pinnacle Meats in Gosport is typical. It was set up by Graham Reed and John Gray in 1988, and established itself in the trade with four employees. United Kingdom and EC regulations became more stringent after 1988, and it was increasingly necessary for such small firms to buy specially designed equipment. In 1992, Pinnacle Meats moved to new premises in Gosport and took the lease on larger premises in an industrial estate. To carry on its business, it had to invest in expensive, specialised equipment.

The company had to comply with the EC cutting plant licence for 1992, and the cattle head deboning regulations imposed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which applied from August 1995. I am told that that is the only part of the meat distribution trade in which producers require a special licence.

The rules were strict. I visited Pinnacle Meats and I saw the way in which the rules were observed. The cattle heads were kept at regulated temperatures from the moment of slaughter to the moment of dispatch from the cattle head deboning plant. Temperatures and cleanliness were vetted at every stage by MAFF officials, who had right of entry at all times. The quality of the meat was vetted on arrival at the deboner's premises, and there were strict rules to ensure that the paths of the raw material and the product did not cross.

Record keeping was, by regulation, meticulous, and it had to be available to MAFF inspectors at all times. There were daily audits of stocks, with reconciliation of input and output. Maintaining those standards was expensive. At a cost of £300,000, Pinnacle installed epoxy resined floors, special wall cladding, metal detectors, code-printing weighing scales, vacuum-packed conveyor systems and a special scissor lift to enable the product to be loaded directly into a specially designed bay. The equipment was highly specialised, and referable only to the business of cattle head deboning. Those who have visited any such premises in any part of the country will know that there is no way of readily transferring equipment of that kind and using it to operate any other kind of business in the meat industry, or other industries. It is purpose designed.

As I have said, all that cost about £300,000. Most of the businesses involved were small family businesses. As hon. Members will know, it is normal for banks lending money to small family businesses not just to lend on the security of the company, but to require the security of the home of the proprietors. Pinnacle is typical of many small firms—the trade was chiefly concentrated among smaller firms—in that its proprietors borrowed against the security of their homes. They borrowed because they were told that they had to in order to comply with the regulations. In other words, the Government told them that they must spend the money to stay in business, and they had to take up the security of mortgages on their houses in order to do that.

In that way, Pinnacle and other companies built up a useful and profitable business. Pinnacle was deboning about 300,000 cow heads a year, providing a useful service to abattoirs and purchasers of the product and a profitable business for their employees. The process usually involved the removal of cheek meat, some of which was considered a delicacy. Pinnacle, for instance, exported 10 tonnes of cheek meat a month to France, where it is sold as a delicacy—joue de boeuf. Hon. Members who have had the opportunity to eat joue de boeuf in the Crillon may not know that it probably came from the industrial estate in Gosport. That was a matter of pride to my constituents—until 29 March 1996. Until that day, the business was providing joue de boeuf, meat spreads, sausages, hamburgers and other meat products throughout the United Kingdom and, indeed, Europe. Graham Reed and his partner had a sound, profitable business; they employed 25 people, who produced food in strictly controlled conditions. Then came the BSE scare, and the Government reacted by taking action against cattle. On 29 March 1996 they passed the Specified Bovine Material Order, which states that the whole of the heads of cattle that died in the United Kingdom, apart from the tongues, constitute specified bovine material that may not be sold for human or animal consumption. People who had profitable businesses on 28 March 1996 woke on 30 March to discover that those businesses had been destroyed. I reiterate that they had borrowed money that they now had no way of repaying, because they had no businesses.

Let me make two points about the Specified Bovine Material Order. First, there is nothing wrong with head meat. Foreign head meat is still being sold. It is head meat from cattle that die in the United Kingdom that cannot be sold for human or agricultural consumption; foreign head meat can be and is being sold in this country. We have become importers, rather than having a profitable export trade—Pinnacle had an export trade worth £ 15,000 a month to France alone. That is because the authorities in the United Kingdom are concerned only about the possibility that the method of slaughter used in UK abattoirs will lead to contamination of head meat. They are not bothered about head meat from other parts of the world. Head meat that is eaten now can come from anywhere other than Britain.

Secondly, no one has ever suggested that the UK cattle head deboners have any done anything wrong. They were controlled, and operated in a sterile environment; their businesses were well run and efficient. It is in no way their fault that they have been put out of business—for that is what has happened. The order of 29 March made the product illegal, and ended the trade.

Hon. Members may ask why the deboners do not go and do something else. The trade was highly specialised: it operated on specialised premises, and with specialised equipment. Pinnacle's blast freezer capacity was 30 tonnes a week, which is minuscule in comparison with that of larger meat producers. As I explained earlier, the larger producers operate with vast quantities, and because of that they work on tiny margins. It is impossible for a head deboner who, because of his specialised trade, was working on a margin of about 10 per cent. to compete with the mainstream meat business, which typically operates on margins of between 0.5 per cent. and 1 per cent.

Can my hon. Friend confirm that the circumstances that he has described are the same in all similar bovine head deboning companies around the country, such as H. J. Wilson in my constituency? The point is that the owners of such concerns never had time to look for other business. They had all borrowed heavily to meet the requirements of the regulations, and on the day on which the order came into force they had no choice but to close their businesses. They did not have the option of looking elsewhere, because of the Government's determination to take action to restore confidence. Why should the owners of such companies bear the brunt of the cost and the anguish of losing their homes because of action that was taken allegedly for the wider good?

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Over the past eight months or so, I have been struck by the similarity of many points put to me by hon. Members.

A trade like cattle head deboning might be expected to range from tiny one-man businesses to larger businesses employing between 50 and 100 people. Not at all: the nature of the trade lends itself very well to businesses employing about 20 people. Typically, these are family businesses, although there are one or two instances of deboning being carried out by larger companies. They were proud of what they were doing, and they had borrowed in order to comply with European regulations. In almost every case, they did not have enough capital to continue unless they borrowed. Virtually all the firms in the trade were small family businesses, which borrowed against the security of houses and subsequently went bankrupt when they had to close. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Mr. Batiste) for citing a company in his constituency.

It is not possible to switch from deboning cattle heads to deboning the heads of pigs or sheep. Some companies have tried, but purpose-built premises such as theirs do not lend themselves efficiently to any other business. It can be done, but it is rather like using a Ferrari to go shopping. This is a highly specialised business, which does not compete well in the normal field of the meat trade.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware—as I have been made aware—that the Government have now instructed abattoirs not to process sheep heads? That alternative has been closed off. Apparently, however, the abattoirs are being compensated for the loss of their business, whereas cattle head deboners are not. Is that fair or consistent?

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Let me take this opportunity of saying that concern about the issue extends across the House and, indeed, across the United Kingdom.

I was not aware of the position that the hon. Gentleman describes, but the inconsistencies in regard to compensation are such that, in my view, the present situation is untenable. I cannot look my constituents in the eye and defend what is currently happening.

If we accept that those companies cannot readily move to any other kind of business, we must also accept that the only answer is compensation. By temperament, I am not one to demand compensation for everything—I am laissez-faire on the more hard-right wing—but in this instance, I feel that points should be made on behalf of our constituents. They should be given the opportunity to set up in some other business, perhaps parallel, but different from the business that they were in before. So what of compensation? Would it set a precedent?

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for not being able to stay for the full debate due to Select Committee business, but is there not an inconsistency in that the Prime Minister talks of compensation for farmers while the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food talks about stabilising the market? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, once we land in the area of compensation, we are inevitably driven to the compelling nature of the deboners' case, as the Home Secretary was driven last night into saying that he was initially prepared to compensate only for the loss of handguns, but now accepted that he probably had to give compensation for ancillary materials. It is always difficult to argue by analogy, but there is a parallel here that the Government should consider. There is grave injustice for the people needing compensation.

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Over the months, he and I have maintained contact on the subject of compensation and on the difficulties suffered by the trade. It is good of him to find time in advance of his Select Committee to come to the Chamber to support the plea for compensation.

Would compensation set a precedent? I have conducted a little research. I gather that the Oral Snuff (Safety) Regulations 1989/2345 is one sort of parallel, but when oral snuff was banned by the Government with that regulation the people who distributed oral snuff did not suffer particularly because other parts of the tobacco trade made up for the loss. Similarly, the Asbestos (Prohibitions) Regulations 1992/3067 caused some difficulty in the building trade, but few companies specialised in asbestos.

I tried to find a parallel for the Government, by edict, banning a business. The advice that I was given earlier this year by the House of Commons Library ran as follows:

"I have been unable to find a comparable example of a recent Order with as dramatic an effect as the one to which your enquiry relates".

So it sounds as if this is unprecedented.

Let us look for other parallels. The BSE orders allow farmers to be compensated. In a letter to me on 17 July 1996, the Prime Minister said:

"our policy is to target support at those sectors which are essential for a secure and efficient beef supply chain".

Bully for the beef supply chain, but what about the people who cannot carry on and who have been driven out of business?

Another parallel is salmonella. Since 1989, compensation has been paid to chicken farmers for their entire flock, on a varying basis from 60 per cent. to 100 per cent. of its value. The hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) put his finger on the latest example. It is only 12 hours ago, almost to the minute, that I, for the first time in my 22 years in the House, voted against the Government. I did so on the issue of compensation and gun control.

The Government have decided to ban most handguns and to compensate handgun owners. On legal advice yesterday, the Home Secretary told the House that he would also be compensating for equipment. He was specifically asked—the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North made the point and I reiterate it—by my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) about compensation for people in the gun business. He said:

"is it not clear that it would be grossly unjust if the money resolution did not cover people who have businesses—for example, shooting ranges with long leases—that will no longer receive any revenue? They are likely to go bankrupt … Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure us that the money resolution will cover such people so that the House can debate the point?"

The Home Secretary replied:

"My right hon. Friend is unaware of the precise terms of the revised resolution. I cannot give him the total assurance that he requests, but I have said—I hope that he will take comfort from it—that in deciding the precise scope of the revised money resolution we shall take full account of points made in the debate today, including the point that he has just made."

My hon. Friend is in danger of misleading himself. If he reads on, he will find that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary went on to deal specifically with that point again. Referring to my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), he referred to the distinction

"from claims for compensation for loss of trade and business. So far as I am aware, there is no precedent for such claims and I would arouse false hopes and expectations if I were to give my right hon. and hon. Friends any comfort on that point. There is a clear distinction between the two."—[Official Report, 12 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 181–2.]

The Home Secretary said that there is a clear distinction between loss of money in relation to accessories and loss in relation to a business.

That is not the point. I was in the House and I recall the moment well. I prefer the Home Secretary's first reply to his second.

For the sake of argument, let me accept the point of my hon. Friend the Minister of State. I regret the ban on handguns, but if they are to be banned, I suppose that the owners should be compensated. Where is the principle in all this? If it is fair, right and in the public interest to compensate a gun owner for the loss of his gun, which is part of his sport and his hobby, how much more must it be right to compensate someone who has been made bankrupt by Government edict? Surely that is a much more forceful point.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the case is slightly stronger than even he makes out? People who may, unfortunately, have bought guns that are no longer available, at least bought them of their own volition. The vast majority of the debt of the deboners whom we are discussing has been incurred for machinery and expenses. It was incurred not on the volition of the owner or the deboners, but precisely because of Government and European legislation. Those deboners are being doubly punished, first, by spending the money at the Government's direction and, secondly, in being that by a second Government edict that they have no way of repaying that money.

That is absolutely right. To comply with Government requirements, these people spent and borrowed money to bring their premises up to standard. That is precisely the point.

May I say to my hon. Friend the Minister of State that there is no parallel here. I listened extremely carefully to what my right hon. and learned Friend Home Secretary said yesterday. He was talking about loss of trade or business in future. What we are talking about, on behalf of our constituents, is an ex gratia payment—if the Government do not like the term "compensation"—for the confiscation of private property to meet the Government's requirements, as advised by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee. That surely, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) would agree, is the point. We are talking not about loss of trade and business in future, but about recompense for confiscation.

The interventions in my speech have again made clear how widely the feeling of anger is shared by hon. Members. Clearly, it goes across the United Kingdom and affects every part of the UK. It is shared by all parties in the House. We have been stirred to anger on behalf of our constituents and we expect something to be done about it.

May I ask my hon. Friend to draw a specific distinction between compensating companies for the equipment that they have had to buy to meet their trade, as opposed to a more theoretical argument about future loss of earnings? There is an exact parallel with guns. On the day after the Government's announcement on guns, an ammunition factory in my constituency closed because no business was left for it. Overnight, all the specialist equipment, which is just as specialist as deboners' equipment, became worthless.

I understand that the Government did not start negotiating, but were prepared to receive information from the industry to calibrate the amount of compensation that would be required. I understand that the trade responded by putting together a compilation—I have a copy here—showing that the gross overall value of the trade was about £11 million. The amount of money spent to comply with regulations in the past three or four years was calculated at about £2.25 million. I am told that the trade was optimistic that negotiations would take place, leading to compensation, and that those negotiations, or preliminary discussions, were broken off. The Government are not now prepared to receive information about the value of the trade. Those are the figures should the Government decide to compensate. I support the claims of those who enjoy the sport of shooting, but the claims of the head deboners are absolutely justified, and they have an overwhelming case.

The Minister will have had his speech prepared for him by civil servants who put together what are known as building blocks. The essential building block will be the argument that has been put to me in reply to many letters and parliamentary questions about compensation, so the Minister will read to us:

"The reason is that we are not able"—

Let me help my hon. Friend because, so far, he has failed totally to address the main point of the debate, and I fear that he has been misled by the House of Commons Library on the Skoal case. Lord Justice Taylor said about that case that is would be wrong for the Government to pay compensation where Parliament, with proper and due diligence, has caused a business to suffer. He said that there was no right to compensation if a business was lost as a consequence of that. That was the judgment of the High Court as recently as 1990. No compensation was offered as a result of the statutory instruments to which my hon. Friend referred, and I fear that he has been misled by the Library.

The point that my hon. Friend has not so far addressed in his speech, and which mine will deal with because I did draft it, is the concept of settled public policy. No Government at any time have ever paid any compensation for the loss of business—[Interruption.]

Order. I would prefer to see the Minister's face rather than his back.

No Government at any time have paid compensation for the loss of business, consequent upon a decision of Parliament. My hon. Friend must deal with that fact, but he has yet to do so.

Let me range a little more widely. If my following comments sound irrelevant, I hope to prove their relevance.

I came to the House in 1974 and I was told about a group of widows called the pre-1950s widows. They were the widows of men below the rank of W 1, who retired before 1 August 1950 and who did not receive a service pension. For five years I campaigned on behalf of those widows. I did everything: I introduced 10-minute Bills, tabled early-day motions and initiated late-night debates on the subject. I remember that at one Conservative charity ball I waltzed the then Mrs. Thatcher around the floor and I told her about the case, and she took an interest in it.

I am extremely proud of that five-year campaign on behalf of the pre-1950s widows. Every time I raised the issue in the House, a Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and said that there was no precedent and that it was absolutely impossible to do anything for those women. I was told that the Government could not make ex gratia payments to service widows. Eventually, however. Sir Keith Joseph stood at the Dispatch Box and said that although the rules said we could not do it, the broad view revealed that it was not fair and that we had to compensate them. We did it—we gave service pensions to those widows. It took five years of campaigning and I had five years of Ministers telling me that it was impossible, but then we did it.

I retract my earlier comment to my hon. Friend the Minister about his speech being drafted for him by civil servants. Of course he wrote his own; I always wrote my own speeches when I was a Minister. Other Ministers, however, have explained the refusal to pay compensation to deboners as follows:

"The reason is that we are not able to make exceptions to the policy of targeting aid at the essential links in the beef supply chain. If we did, we would need to extend the exceptions to cover claims from other groups. We have looked very hard at whether head de-boners could be defined as a unique group but we have concluded this is unfortunately not possible."

I do not accept that the problem is insoluble. In 1534 this House agreed that King Henry VIII was head of the Church. If it can do that, it can do anything. If this House said that tomorrow is Wednesday or Saturday, subject to European regulations of course, it would be because this House is virtually omnipotent. Where there is a will, a way can be found. I ask my hon. Friend and his colleagues to look again at the issue and find a way to compensate that small industry.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) on obtaining this Adjournment debate. I also congratulate him on making such an excellent case for such hard-working people. He has covered every problem that they face.

The Glasgow meat market is based in my constituency. I was contacted by Mrs. Fyfe who worked in the meat trade and I was horrified to hear that on a Thursday evening she received a fax from civil servants at the Scottish Office instructing her to stop trading. I challenge the Minister's argument about the decision of Parliament, because Mrs. Fyfe's business was closed down on the instructions of civil servants. From the Friday, Mrs. Fyfe and others had to cease work.

As the hon. Member for Gosport said, it was not so long before that that the same civil servants instructed Mrs. Fyfe and others who work at the Glasgow meat market that, to comply with European Community standards, they had to buy the necessary equipment for their particular trade. Mrs. Fyfe had to go to her bank and say that she had been instructed to buy certain equipment because of EC regulations. She said that she needed a loan to keep herself, her husband, her daughter and her four employees in a job. The bank said that that was fine and agreed to give her a loan, but she had to put up not only her business as security, but her home.

I have been a Member of the House for 17 years. I have heard Ministers say how we must encourage small businesses, which are the answer. We have been told that we cannot bring great big factories into cities like Glasgow but we can encourage people to show initiative. I remember when Mrs. Thatcher said the Government would encourage people to show initiative, get on their bikes and create small businesses. The argument was that a small business may employ four or five people, and other businesses with similar numbers of employees may develop, so before long a group of people are in work and have the dignity of employment.

Mrs. Fyfe's husband was a black cab driver in the city of Glasgow. He was out in all weathers and at all hours to raise the money to start their business off. The Fyfes did not make a fantastic living from it, but they earned enough probably to enjoy a decent holiday every year. It was hard work for them, but now they have been left with no livelihood.

The Fyfes have not said to me that they are looking for big money, but, as the hon. Member for Gosport has already said, they want compensation to claw back the money they had to spend to meet EC regulations They want something to enable them to start up another business. It must be appalling to have to say to four or five people, "I am sorry, but I have to let you go." We are not talking about a big organisation, where the employer may pay off people he does not know. Mrs. Fyfe may have employed just four people, but those men and women have worked for her for 20 years. She knows them and their families. She knows the consequences of telling them that she must lay them off. In a city like Glasgow if a person is over the age of 40 the chances of re-employment are slim, especially when the industry that formerly employed him has been closed down.

I went to see Lord Lindsay, and he said, "No, I am not compensating farmers." I could only scratch my head, because all that I had been hearing from the Agriculture Minister was that he would look after farmers. Lord Lindsay said, "No, we are not compensating farmers. We are intervening and buying their cattle." It is a rose by another name. I do not mind if we call it "intervention" for the beef industry, but let us provide compensation.

I was a trade union official. Sometimes bosses would say, "I'm not going to pay overtime, but I'll give good expenses." No one complained if expenses were equivalent to the amount of overtime that people deserved. They could call overtime whatever they liked. If Ministers wish to call compensation "intervention", I shall be happy to go to Mrs. Fyfe and other people who work in the industry in Scotland and tell them, "I'm sorry; they're not going to give you compensation, but they will give you intervention." I would be as happy as Larry with that—as I am sure the hon. Member for Gosport and other hon. Members would be.

I think back to the most recent debate we had on the problems in agriculture and to the words of the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross), who said that the BSE problem does not start and stop at the farm gate, but that it goes beyond and into meat markets and into industries such as head deboning. The Government must face up to that fact. In a few months, as culled cattle enter slaughterhouses, there will be serious problems. The effect of any decision made by Parliament is that some people—such as Mrs. Fyfe—will lose their livelihood, but, as in this case, within the year, other people will become millionaires.

The Government are prepared to pay about £40 per head of cattle that goes to a slaughterhouse. People conducting the slaughter will be able to sell the cattle hides for approximately £20. I am not very good at mathematics and failed my mathematics exam, which is probably why I am a Member of Parliament, but even I can understand that, with 5,000 cattle per week in Scotland—I do not know the overall number for the UK—we are talking about a very large number.

The cattle that will be slaughtered are not suffering from the disease. They are healthy beasts—but the situation must make farmers sick. I do not know much about the farming industry, but I know that a farmer will sit up all night with an ill beast, and that he will spend more on vet's bills for his cattle than he probably would spend on doctors' bills for his family. He knows his responsibility. Farmers will have to take healthy cattle to slaughterhouses because of the Government's actions. But that is another matter.

Mark my words: many millionaires will be created because of this. It is a crying shame that people such as Mrs. Fyfe and those mentioned by the hon. Member for Gosport have to suffer. Those men and women have made great sacrifices. They did not clock in at 8 am and clock out at 5 pm. They worked long hours, and, after working those hours, they sent in reports to civil servants at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and then did their bookkeeping. We are talking about small family businesses.

I do not like attacking any hon. Member who is not present in the Chamber, because that is not the done thing. However, I was appalled when I saw on television the way in which the Agriculture Minister conducted himself in Europe. It did not help the men and women who are losing out when they saw him strutting about Europe wearing a 1930s-style hat and two watches, like an eccentric Englishman. People's appearance makes a difference, especially if they are in a position of responsibility. The Minister's press conferences and arrogant manner did not help or inspire confidence in people whose livelihoods depend on his decisions.

We are not talking about a great deal of money for compensation. I ask only that people be compensated for improvements that they made in their businesses, which were required by a decision made by Parliament.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) on saying everything that I would have wished to say. He has, therefore, considerably shortened my speech on those points. I am grateful for that, because I can now say something extra.

It gives me no pleasure at all to be critical of the Government when, at last, matters seem to be coming right for our farming industry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on the way in which the cull is starting to make a deep impression on the crisis in the countryside. The situation is coming right. However, one problem is not coming right.

On 20 March 1996, my hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food made a statement to the House on BSE. I asked him about the paramount importance of food safety and the need for market support mechanisms. The answer he gave could not have been clearer. He said:

"People sometimes suggest that the interests of agriculture and farmers are MAFF's overriding concern, and obviously they are of great concern to us; but our paramount duty is to public safety—the safety of the food chain and of British food. That is the paramount duty owed by my Department, and myself as Minister to the House and the country."—[Official Report, 20 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 396.]

He cared, most of all, for the food industry.

On 28 March 1996, at Agriculture Question Time, I raised the issue of head deboners, warning of the closure of food processing plants. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mrs. Browning), replied:

"While I sympathise with, and have every concern for, my hon. Friend's dilemma, it would be quite wrong for the Government to challenge the scientific advice that we have accepted at this Dispatch Box."—[Official Report, 28 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 1160.]

She said that she had every concern for my dilemma. I was not asking for the Government to challenge the scientific advice.

Nine months later, it is demonstrably clear that the interests of agriculture and farmers are MAFF's overriding concern, and that "every concern" does not extend to the head deboning industry. Nine months later, I am posed another dilemma. On today's Order Paper, I see that my right hon. Friend the Agriculture Minister invites me to congratulate

"the Government on the action it has taken to deal with the BSE crisis",

and to welcome

"the package of support the Government has provided to the beef industry".

That is, indeed, a dilemma.

I think of the case of Touchmead Ltd., in Amesbury—an important town in my constituency, which has suffered job losses because of the situation. I shall listen carefully to what Ministers say in this debate, and in the debate later today, before I decide whether I can, in all conscience, support the Government today.

My hon. Friend touched on a very powerful issue. If there is a need, in the public interest, to take action—as, for example, in the case of guns or of beef—we can agree with the principle, but the action must be applied with justice if the Government want to have the support of their Back Benchers. That is the message that the Minister should take away from this debate.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I shall now reinforce the point that he has so clearly made.

Touchmead Ltd. of Amesbury constructed a whole new plant. It moved out of the centre of town to a countryside location. It did so to conform to new regulations. In 1995, that new plant was once again upgraded. The head deboning section was renewed. The firm was working for the quality end of the market, supplying some of the best-known food chains in the country. It was a major exporter of some of its products, particularly to France, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport has pointed out. "Waste not, want not" was a pretty worthy phrase to use with regard to head deboners—a little-known part of the British food chain.

We are talking about large quantities of food. Touchmead Ltd. was dealing with 800 bovine heads and 900 porcine heads a day, and a tonne of bovine flank and rib and two tonnes of offal every week. A veterinary report on the company said that public health risks were very well catered for. It continued:

"Particular attention has to be paid to the safe handling and disposal of Specified Bovine Offal. Changes have been made in the handling techniques with the advent of the new guidelines.

The present management has a very positive attitude to meat hygiene. They regard themselves as being at the forefront of their particular field. They often turn to the OVS"—

the official veterinary surgeon—

"for help and guidance in the resolution of meat hygiene related problems.

As the proprietor is always anxious to seek new markets, a considerable effort has to be made to ensure that he is aware of the requirements for these.

Because of the restricted hours of attendance it has been our"—

the vets—

"deliberate policy to vary the time of day at which we attend the plant."

That report was made on 26 February.

On 28 March, I received a letter from the veterinary officer who was responsible to MAFF for looking after that company. He said:

"This purpose built factory conforming to EEC standards has been visited by us on every working day for the past 2 years.

In our opinion they carry out a good job in their function of removing useable meat from bovine and pig heads for further processing.

To our knowledge they have complied with all requirements from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, where necessary amending their techniques to conform to any new legislation.

We feel it is ridiculous for their factory to be under threat of closure due to proposed changes in legislation which are likely to prohibit the use of any useable meat derived from bovine heads."

On 29 March, Touchmead Ltd. was closed by the Government. A decision was taken somewhere along the line not to pay any compensation. There is no alternative use for the deboning capital equipment, and the irony, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport has said, is that imports are continuing of foreign head meat-meat subject to less stringent controls than our own.

I feel very sorry for my hon. Friend the Minister. It is a peril of collective responsibility that he has drawn the short straw today. I would rather see my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, with whom I have had many discussions on the matter, sitting on the Front Bench. Ultimately, of course, it is his decision whether this tiny amount, this maximum of £11 million, is paid. Farmers have received £2.5 billion to cope with the crisis that affects them.

A line always has to be drawn somewhere concerning any payment and it is the unpleasant duty of Ministers, acting on the advice of their civil servants and MAFF's accounting officer, to decide where to draw it. Clearly, with such decisions, natural justice should not be offended. The decision should not be arbitrary but should properly take into account all relevant factors—in this case, compulsory new investment. The decision taken by the Government not to pay anything to the small number of firms in the head deboning industry is unfair. It offends natural justice and it is arbitrary. That is bad government. I do not mind whether the help is called compensation, ex gratia payments, intervention or market support. If there is no precedent, it is time to set one. Mention has already been made of firearms, salmonella in eggs and other inconsistencies.

During the BSE crisis, the Government have been accused of many things. Let us face it, that is partly because 80 per cent. of hon. Members do not understand rural affairs very well. They do not therefore understand that the entire rural industry—be it animal feed, machinery or Land Rover dealers—has been shaken by BSE and the cash flow in the rural economy has simply stopped. Even lawyers and accountants have had to wait for their bills to be paid. The banks have been very understanding about head deboners. I talked to the bank manager concerned and he was very helpful. I talked to the collectors of taxes on behalf of my friends in the head deboning industry, and they were very understanding. The Inland Revenue has behaved impeccably. Even travel agents have been affected by the BSE crisis in the industry. Things are becoming right at last—but not on cattle head deboning.

What has happened to the head deboners did not happen to farmers, who have been through hell but have at least had £2.5 billion to help them during the crisis. What has happened to the deboners did not happen to the livestock transport firms, which have been very busy indeed. I dare say that some of the people involved will end up millionaires, and good luck to them. The same did not happen to the abattoirs or the renderers, which have worked very hard and are doing very nicely, and good luck to them. The same did not even happen to the livestock markets. They lost massive revenue but could limp through the crisis, and their market trade is returning. The head deboning industry will never return. The Government had to act on SEAC's advice, but they did not have to confiscate private property, put hundreds of people out of work and not pay a penny piece to help.

It is the ill-fortune of the deboning industry that it comes within the remit of MAFF. The DTI would not have treated it in the same way, nor would the Department of Health. The industry got tangled up in MAFF and has been treated as the tail-end Charlie of this awful crisis. One Minister has been quoted as saying recently,

"there is no cattle head deboning industry and that's tough".

It is especially tough for Mr. and Mrs. Ron Styles and their 60 former employees, who did everything that was asked of them and have been let down.

What is to be done? It is not too late. The Government do not have to wait to be forced into action by the courts. There is something else, of course, that they can do: contribute the modest amount of money that we are asking for on behalf of our constituents. When the nightmare of BSE is behind us and farmers, consumers and the food industry have regained their old confidence and worldwide markets once again respond to the excellence of British food from British farmers, we shall have to revisit the reform of MAFF itself. The food production industry can hold its own with any industry. It belongs in the DTI, and so does the fishing industry, given the chance.

Land stewardship and land use are increasingly integrated into the responsibilities of the Department of the Environment. Perhaps those functions belong there. Food regulations and standards should long ago have gone to the Department of Health. Consumers would prefer that and as a result would have more confidence than they do in the self-policing of poor old MAFF.

I was rather hoping that the hon. Gentleman would tell us about the consequences of the closure of the company in his constituency for the people who ran it. The principals of two companies in my constituency—Lilacmead and A. J. and J. A. Cattermole Ltd.—have lost their businesses and their homes as a result of the crisis. Was that the consequence of Touchmead's closure as well?

Two generations of the Styles family, the owners of the business who started it from nothing in the town of Amesbury, have been affected. More than 60 families have been directly affected due to lay-offs as a result of the arbitrary action. Many, I am glad to say, have been re-employed, but too many have not.

After the BSE crisis, we need to make a new start. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister, even at this stage, not just to tell us that there is no precedent and that he can do nothing about the problem but to be prepared to look again on behalf of all our constituents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport has so eloquently requested, to see whether a way through can be found. We do not mind what the help is called, but we do mind about the reputation of good government.

I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) not just on securing this debate, but on the consistent work that he has done from the outset on behalf of head boners. I know that that work is appreciated on both sides of the House and across the country. We welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman is continuing to press the case and we are glad to have the opportunity to back him up.

I have said before that my constituency is probably more affected by the BSE crisis than any other. It is affected across the range of the industry, from hill farms to abattoirs—there are two abattoirs in my constituency, but with the new boundaries there will be three. I represent a range of aspects of the meat processing industry. To take some of the edge off his support for the Government's measures on the cattle cull, I can tell the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) and the House that Scottish farmers will not be satisfied until the Florence agreement is implemented and the selective cull is in process. That is essential before the ban can be lifted or a timetable for that lifting can be drawn up. The industry is 30 per cent. dependent on exports.

The situation is worse in Northern Ireland.

I understand that the proportion is even greater there. We need progress towards the lifting of the ban.

We are addressing the particular problems of the head boners this morning. Mr. John Troup, who lives in Deystone in my constituency, was the principal of T and T Meats, a small company that used to exist in Aberdeen. He is in the same desperate plight as other hon. Members have had to bring to the attention of the House. His small business employed five people, specialising exclusively in taking the meat off cattle heads. He was trading profitably, making between £50,000 and £60,000 on the business in the previous full financial year. He had reinvested that money in the business and, like others, had extended the mortgage on his house.

Mr. Troup is desperately fighting a rearguard action to save his house, working as a fish packer to get some money to try to meet his basic overheads. His wife has been forced to abandon the further education course that she was pursuing and take a manual job in an attempt to keep enough cash coming in to avoid the house being recovered by the building society.

That is the effect on a previously successful small business that has been closed down by Government edict. The Government have said only that they are not paying compensation because it is not Government policy to do so. There is no legal remit: the Government have simply decided not to.

I have a letter—I am sure that other hon. Members have similar letters—from Lord Lindsay, the Scottish Office Minister responsible for agriculture, to the solicitors representing the Scottish head boners. He says:

"I sympathise with the head deboners"—

I am afraid that sympathy will not be enough—

"whose business activities have been greatly affected by the measures introduced on 29 March and I fully understand the difficulties this has presented for them;"—

I wonder whether he does—

"but as has been made clear previously, the purpose of the financial assistance which the Government has made available is to provide market support to keep the essential links in the beef supply chain operating while companies adjust to the changed market circumstances. It is not, and has never been, Government policy to utilise public funds to compensate businesses for losses incurred as a consequence of decisions taken to strengthen public health controls."

That says only that it is a policy because it is a policy. The House must recognise that the distress of those businesses requires the Government to revisit the policy and decide what to do about it.

We are not talking about business failure resulting from the cumulative effect of a number of measures over time. We are talking about people who went to work as usual one morning to find a fax on the machine telling them to cease business immediately—the same day—without compensation and that disregarding that fax would be a criminal offence. That is quite different from going out of business because of various measures that make the business non-viable, which usually allows for some time to readjust and retrieve something, rather than having the entire business taken away.

I understand that the Association of Cattle Head De-Boners is taking the Government to the European Court of Human Rights. Lord Lester QC has advised that there is no domestic remedy, but the European route has a high probability of success. The association's solicitors say:

"the Junior Counsel engaged on the drafting of the documentation believes that the chances of the members succeeding has increased greatly since the initial consultation with Lord Lester."

I do not want to intrude on the Government's grief in their experiences in European courts, but it would surely be better for them to face up to their domestic responsibilities than for the issue to be resolved in the European Court of Human Rights, creating another cause of potential humiliation and perhaps anger in some quarters of the Government. They can avoid that by taking action in advance.

The issue may not affect many businesses or jobs—I think that the estimation is that 100 jobs will be affected in Scotland—but the loss of livelihood for the individuals involved is of unprecedented proportions, coming with no warning or opportunity to find any other compensation or alternative business. Whatever the Minister's brief, I hope that he will not close options and will undertake to revisit the issue. Saying simply that the Government have no policy to pay compensation is not a good enough answer. These people deserve compensation. They were doing their business and had their livelihoods removed as a direct result of a faxed instruction from the Government. The Government must accept their responsibility.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) on his determination and persistence in pursuing the case for the head boning industry and on the eloquent way in which he has put the case this morning, which will allow me to be comparatively brief.

Until the beginning of the year, I was unaware of the existence of the head boning industry. I became aware of it when I received a letter from my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food informing me that a firm in my constituency, Latchingdon Fresh Meats, had failed to make the necessary changes to its premises to comply with the Fresh Meat (Hygiene and Inspection) Regulations 1995.

The proprietor, Mr. Ken Pearson, had requested a derogation, but my hon. Friend was minded to turn it down. However, she offered to meet Mr. Pearson, and we met on 19 February. I pay tribute to her sympathetic and understanding attitude. As a result of that meeting, it was agreed that Mr. Pearson would make the necessary changes. He has spent some £30,000 to bring his premises up to European requirements. That is a substantial sum for a business of that size, but he was able to borrow the money because he was running a thriving, successful business. The business concentrated on the sale of fresh meats, but 40 per cent. of it was in head boning. He was boning some 400 ox heads a week.

The Government's announcement six weeks later wiped out that part of his business at a stroke. He immediately had to lay off two people and was left with £15,000 worth of virtually unsaleable stock. The loss of the ox head boning business also affected the rest of his business, more than halving his turnover. Six months later, after the Government's measures, he is just about going, but it is still a struggle.

Although there are only about 30 head boning firms in the country, I soon discovered that a second one, Pearce Meats, was also located in my constituency. Bigger than Latchingdon Fresh Meats. it is exclusively a head boning business. Before the Government's measures, it was boning some 2,000 ox heads, and between 4,500 and 5,000 pig heads a week. The Government's measures have wiped out between 25 per cent. and 30 per cent. of its business. The company immediately had to lay off four people.

Like Mr. Pearson, Pearce Meats had also invested to meet European standards—some £80,000 to £100,000 during the previous four years. On each ox head, it previously made a profit of about £3. The Government's ban immediately cost the company around £6,000 a week. As a result of expanding the pig head business, Mr. Pearce has just about got the company back into profit, but it has taken four months, during which he did not think that his business could possibly survive. Those whom he was forced to lay off have not found new jobs.

The general point, which was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport, is that, whether the ban was justified is arguable; foreign head meat is still being sold. However, I accept that the ban is here to stay. The point is that both firms in my constituency did everything that they were required to do. They invested substantial sums at the behest of the Government yet, a few months later, the Government wiped out their business at a stroke.

Unlike other parts of the meat processing industry, which will recover in time, there is no prospect of recovery for the head boning industry, yet it is the other parts of the industry that have been given substantial sums in compensation. I must tell my hon. Friend the Minister that that is unjust. The amounts involved are not great, but my constituents deserve better treatment than they have so far received. I urge my hon. Friend to listen to the arguments and to give us something today that we can take back to our constituents.

The number of hon. Members who wish to speak in this debate is testimony to the breadth of support for the case put by the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers). I will make my remarks as brief as possible so that other hon. Members can participate.

I have no pecuniary or commercial interest in the matter, and I have no specialised knowledge of it—indeed, I find it difficult to pronounce some of the words associated with this great problem, far less get my mind round them. However, I have two interests in the matter. One, of course, is public health; the other is that I know an injustice when I see one and I believe that there is an injustice in this case.

We need not rehearse what happened on 29 March or before, but I want to make two points, the first of which has been made by everyone. I wrote to the Minister as soon as the injustice of the case was brought to my attention by a company in my constituency, as was the case with other hon. Members. I refer to Wilson Young Ltd., part of the National Products Company in Shotts. I have still not had a satisfactory answer or explanation. Why were companies based in the United Kingdom, even in areas such as Scotland with an extremely low incidence of BSE, prohibited from entering the trade, when the same products could be imported from countries that had instances of BSE, some on a small scale but some on a par with the Scottish experience?

The most important issue is compensation. On 29 March, my constituency firm was hit by a whirlwind. We have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) and for Midlothian (Mr. Clarke), and from the hon. Member for Gosport, about faxes saying, "Cease trading immediately." That is what happened in my constituency.

The Minister should think again. I am left, as are other hon. Members, with constituents who have complied with every Government regulation, observed the rules as laid down by the Government and the EC and who have invested in machinery specifically for the purpose. Compensation is available for farmers, for market support to help the essential links and supply chains, for abattoirs and for the beef stock transfer scheme, but none of that offers any consolation to people such as our constituents.

Head meats sourced from outside the UK are a sufficient problem, but when there is no compensation at all, their importation adds a gross injustice to an insult to many of our people. In most cases, the debts were incurred neither as a result of investing to speculate and to accumulate nor as a risk taken on the market, but as a direct result of Government instructions and Government regulations. It seems to me that there is a clear distinction between compensation for future trading profits and recompense for debt incurred as a direct result of Government instruction. I plead with the Minister, as other hon. Members have, to rethink the Government's position and to make some recompense to people whose lives were destroyed on 29 March.

I say, first, to my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) that I have no difficulty dealing with the brief from the point of view of collective responsibility. Some of my hon. Friends have given the impression that some of the decisions that have been taken are capricious or arbitrary. I hope that my hon. Friends accept that my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and all the other Agriculture Ministers have taken great care over the issue. Of course we have listened carefully to the representations made to us by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), whom I congratulate on introducing this Adjournment debate. He did so very fairly and in full deference to the interests of his constituents. I fully understand his concerns.

We have, of course, looked at the matter time and again over this summer. Our decisions have, as I hope to explain to the House, been by no means capricious or arbitrary. They have been taken with great care, having regard not just to the Government's policies at the moment, but to long-standing, settled public policy and settled UK law.

The debate concerns established principles of compensation. I fully recognise that several issues such as compensation and market support have been raised, and I hope that I can distinguish them for the satisfaction of the House this morning.

The long-standing public policy on compensation is clear. There is a well-established principle in public law for paying compensation for loss of property as a result of Government action. The European convention on human rights requires the payment of compensation where property is expropriated. That principle means, simply stated, that when an individual is deprived of his property, fair compensation for that deprivation, subject to any overriding circumstances in the public interest, is properly due.

Where, under the over-30 months scheme, it has been necessary for cattle to be slaughtered, that is, in effect, the confiscation of property, and compensation flows from that action. Compulsory purchase is an example of compensation for loss of property. It has, however, also been a long-standing matter of settled public policy that no Government are under any obligation to pay compensation to a business for any loss of opportunity of carrying on that business which may arise from Parliament's properly considered legislative decisions.

The Minister talks about compensation for loss of property. Does he accept that that principle should extend to cases where property is rendered valueless as a result of Government action, which is what has happened to the equipment purchased in this case? The Minister referred to the European convention on human rights. Will he give us an assurance that if the action taken under the first protocol is successful, the Government will implement any decision immediately?

There is a considerable distinction in that no property has been expropriated. The case to which I referred in my intervention during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport is relevant to this point. As the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) made clear, no one involved in the matter has made any attempt to suggest to the High Court or to any of the courts of the United Kingdom that the Government's actions have been outwith UK law. If people feel that they have a remedy elsewhere, such as the European Court of Human Rights, they must investigate that remedy. It would be hypothetical to suggest what may or may not happen.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I will not give way because there is an important principle to be made clear. I will give way to my hon. Friend if I have time later.

In this case, there has been no confiscation or expropriation of private property. What has happened is not a loss of property. We should be clear that we are talking about the loss of a business. Here the principle is clear. The Government do not compensate for loss of business. That was demonstrated clearly in the case to which my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport referred. Indeed, in many ways, the Skoal case may have been based on stronger grounds than is the head boners' case. As Lord Justice Taylor made clear in his judgment of the case in 1990:

"The applicants challenged by way of judicial review the decision of the Secretary of State for Health … to make the Oral Snuff (Safety) Regulations 1989. The Regulations provide that no person shall supply, offer to supply, agree to supply, expose for supply or possess for supply any oral snuff …

During 1984, the applicants were looking for a manufacturing and packaging base outside the United States. They discussed with the Department of Trade and Industry and the Industry Department for Scotland the possibility of setting up a factory to market these products in Scotland. They were encouraged by the Government departments to do so and were offered a Government grant by way of incentive. In the result, the applicants built a factory at East Kilbride, near Glasgow, which was opened in 1985. They received £193,357 of Government grant."

The company had been encouraged by Government grant to set up in the United Kingdom.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I shall give way when I have finished this point.

The business was closed as a consequence of legislation. The applicants complained to the High Court that they should receive compensation because they had been encouraged to set up the business. On that specific point, Lord Justice Taylor said:

"the decision to ban the applicants' products is tantamount to a breach of contract or a breach of representation and, as such, is an abuse of power. However, a Minister cannot fetter a discretion given him under statute. Provided he acts within his statutory powers, rationally and fairly, he is entitled to change his policy."

rose—

I shall give way in a moment, but I wish to make my points in some order as it is important to establish the principles relating to these important matters.

In giving judgment, Lord Justice Taylor held

"that it would be absurd to suggest that some moral commitment to a single company should prevail over the national interest"

and that the company's loss of business, though consequential on legislation, did not justify a legal claim for compensation from the Government.

The Meat and Livestock Commission was offering grants to the companies. My constituent's company, Touchmead, was pursuing the possibility of such a grant, but it did not work out. Surely that was a clear indication that the Government were inducing companies to borrow money and take risks in exactly the way that the Minister has described.

My hon. Friend clearly did not hear me correctly. In the Skoal case, the company was given a grant to set up in business in East Kilbride. To that extent it had a better case or was at least on all fours with the case that my hon. Friend mentions. In that instance, the High Court ruled that provided the Minister acted properly, there was no cause for compensation if the business ceased to trade as a result of a decision by Parliament.

I expect that the Minister is absolutely right in the legal sense, but the arguments that have been put by hon. Members on both sides of the House go beyond that in terms of the Government's moral obligation in respect of the hardship that has been inflicted on the companies.

I appreciate that the Minister is under certain restraints in terms of Treasury budgets, but will he consider two quick suggestions? He knows that there was substantial overpayment in compensation to slaughterhouses, which has never been clawed back. I do not know whether some agreement has been made, but there may be some scope within existing budgets to redirect some money towards this sector of the industry.

Secondly, the Government stopped the marketing and processing grants scheme, which is an EU scheme. Will he reconsider that scheme, as it might provide some assistance to companies that have moved into other sectors such as pig head deboning?

I am endeavouring to explain to the House that our decisions have been taken on long-established principles of public law. The fact that we have been unable to offer head deboners the assistance that hon. Members are urging upon us is not a matter of being moral or immoral, but of following long-established public policy and law.

That was made clear in the House yesterday by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. Perhaps I should have read the whole exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) and my right hon. and learned Friend. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives specifically asked:

"Will he take fully into account compensation for the stock of weapons and accessories that such businesses hold and for loss of trade?"

My right hon. and learned Friend made it clear that there should be a distinction between claims for compensation for loss of trade and business. He said:

"So far as I am aware there is no precedent for such claims and I would arouse false hopes and expectations if I were to give my right hon. and hon. Friends any comfort on that point."—[0fficial Report, 12 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 182]

The Minister is not prepared to set a precedent on loss of trade, and we all understand that. Although there might be a moral argument for compensation, it is not necessarily being sought at the moment. In compliance with the regulations, businesses have spent money on equipment that has been rendered totally useless by a further regulation. Can the Minister not compensate those businesses purely for property that they bought to comply with the regulation and is now of absolutely no use to them? If he has to cover himself by confiscating it, he should do just that, but there should be some compensation.

We have not been uninterested in the representations that have been made to us by my hon. Friends the Members for Gosport and for Salisbury, among others.

On at least two occasions we have taken counsel's opinion to see whether we can provide further help to cattle head deboners under established law. Contrary to what some people think, Ministers do not have powers capriciously and freely to dish out public money. They have to have some legal authority to do so. When we took counsel's advice, we thoroughly reassessed the case for a change of public policy on supporting deboners, following the meetings that my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport had with my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary. We then sought further advice from leading counsel in the field. Of course we considered the matter carefully.

Counsel's opinion was that, having regard to established law and public policy, the cattle head deboners were not entitled under domestic law to compensation for the loss of their business resulting from the decision to classify the whole cattle head as specified bovine material.

As there is all-party support on the matter, surely the solution is perfectly simple. Blow the QCs—we should bring in a perfectly simple Bill that would be backed by both sides of the House.

My hon. Friend, who I suspect may have supported the Government last night—

No.

I am sad that we did not have her support, but she will have recognised that, in a number of instances, such as with firearms, companies go out of business as a consequence of certain Acts of Parliament. This is another such instance. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin), whose contribution to the debate was to make gratuitously offensive comments about my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, scorns. Of course there is a precedent. As a consequence of the Firearms (Amendment) Bill, certain companies will go out of business. Last night, I heard no Labour Member urge that those companies should receive compensation for their loss of business. Clearly the Opposition pick and choose what they consider to be easy issues to attract public sympathy.

rose—

I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman, who makes gratuitously offensive comments.

Ministers have to ensure some consistency in public policy, and we shall do that. The value of the cattle deboning industry has been assessed at some £l1 million. We have provided support and assistance to deboners because some cattle head deboners, as cutting plants, have benefited from the beef stock transfer scheme under which the intervention board has purchased unsaleable stock at 65 per cent. of the pre-crisis market price. Cattle head deboners have, therefore, benefited to the tune of some £6.7 million under that scheme.

Out of the total value of the business of £11 million, cattle head deboners have received £6.7 million, and the company that my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport mentioned has received more than £100,000 under that scheme. It was also open to the cattle head deboners to apply for unsaleable stock to be taken off their hands under the separate disposal scheme that we introduced for downstream sectors. I appreciate that those who have companies wish the Government would come up with the money, but hon. Members have not addressed today the long-established principle of United Kingdom law that no Government, at any time or in any circumstances, in any way, have paid compensation for the loss of a business following a legitimate decision of the House.

I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, know this subject inside out, because you were at the forefront of a campaign in the past few years to have the disease prescribed. That campaign came to fruition when the disease was prescribed on 13 September 1993. Today's debate is about the callous and uncaring way in which the Government have treated former miners by failing to act on the recommendations that have come from the review carried out by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council of the prescription test for deciding chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

The Secretary of State for Social Security has had a copy of the recommendations on his desk since February this year—some three months before it was officially published in May 1996. In the mean time, many miners who would probably have been able to succeed with a claim under the recommendations of the review have, sadly, passed on.

Last week, I took the opportunity to check with Centris, the company that now manages the mineworkers' pension scheme, to find out how many miners in receipt of an occupational pension had died since April 1996. I used the criterion of the occupational pension because, as the Minister is aware, the qualification period to claim chronic bronchitis and emphysema is 20 years and, therefore, most of the miners who claim will be members of the mineworkers' pension scheme. Centris provided me with figures showing that 3,502 former miners had passed on since April 1996. I accept that it is not possible to say how many of them would have been made an award under the terms of the new recommendations, but it is fair to assume that a good number of them would have won through.

The House will recall that the disease was first prescribed on 13 September 1993. The prescription was made because new evidence, which was examined at the time by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, showed that the disease was an endemic risk of coal mining. The new evidence had come from longitudinal studies that had been carried out in America and Belgium. After that new evidence has been analysed, it showed a greater incidence of the disease among coal miners than in the general population and, consequently, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council made the recommendation that the disease should be prescribed.

The date of introduction was more than a coincidence. In my view, the Government timed it to sweeten the bitter pill of the colliery closure programme. In other words, political expediency led to the introduction of prescription. Now we find that the delay seems to be caused by public expenditure fears, which I believe to be totally unfounded.

In its first report in November 1992, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council recommended three tests for diagnosing the disease. The Government accepted those recommendations and implemented them in full. Under the tests, an applicant must first qualify by having worked underground for 20 years. That means that we are talking about miners who had a career in coal mining, not about people who left the industry after a few years. That is a fair point. Secondly, a miner has to show that he has X-ray evidence of dust retention or simple pneumoconiosis. Thirdly, he must demonstrate a 1 litre or more reduction on the forced expiration volume test over one second. If his lung capacity is reduced by 0.98, he is ruled out because the criteria are absolute. I have seen cases in which a man has had a 0.98 reduction in his lung capacity, yet the examining authorities have not been able to make him an award. There is a need for greater flexibility, and the review accepted that.

Many people have been turned down because of the X-ray evidence. One of the arguments in the early days was about whether the X-rays were of the International Labour Organisation type. We got over that problem and the X-rays now conform to the ILO type, but many injustices still occur. I shall give an example to show the Minister what is happening. In my constituency live three brothers who spent their whole working lives in the industry. The Selwood brothers are aged between 79 and 83. The brother who is 79, Harry Selwood, has 100 per cent. pneumoconiosis. The other two brothers have no pneumoconiosis, but they are racked with chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Because they have been unable to show on their X-rays evidence of dust retention, the other two brothers cannot receive a payment for the disease.

Such examples led the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council to carry out the review. It had soon become evident that the prescription test, as originally introduced, was unfair. The number of applicants and those receiving awards did not come anywhere near the figure that the Government predicted. At the time, the Government predicted that there would be 80,000 to 90,000 applicants.

In fact, the bulk of the applications and awards were made in the first year. I can say that because I have made comparisons between parliamentary answers. For example, on 27 October 1994, in answer to a parliamentary question, it was revealed that between September 1993 and September 1994 a total of 43,827 applications had been received. Of those, 40,338 had been processed and just 4,469 awards had been made. Two years on, according to a parliamentary answer given on Monday this week, by 30 September 1996 a total of 48,778 claims had been received and 5,352 awards had been made. The bulk of the applications and awards have been made and, in the past two years, only about 5,000 new applications have been received.

The number of awards is absurdly low and that has led to the prescription test being challenged by such people as Mr. Peake of Pontefract general infirmary and Mr. Howard of the Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield, two consultants who deal daily with miners suffering from the disease. It also resulted in a regionally based media campaign that included, for example, the Barnsley Chronicle, the Yorkshire Post, the South Wales Echo and the Nottingham Evening Post as well as regional television and radio. As a result of that campaign, the IIAC eventually decided to conduct a review. It started that review on 16 January 1995.

The council reported to the Secretary of State in February 1996. In the review, which was published in May 1996, the council recommended to the Government that the X-rays should be dropped from the prescription test altogether because there was clearly no connection between pneumoconiosis and chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Therefore, to call for X-ray evidence of simple pneumoconiosis did not address the problem. The council considered that the FEV1 test should be amended, but that the 20 years underground qualification should remain.

In the final paragraph of his letter to the Secretary of State published at the front of the report, the chairman of the IIAC said:

"The Council understands that these recommendations may lead to a large number of previously unsuccessful claims being reconsidered and may therefore be relatively costly to implement. Nevertheless the strength of new scientific evidence published since our 1992 report makes it necessary for us to recommend a revision of the terms of prescription. We believe it should not be necessary to review the terms of prescription for the foreseeable future unless there is evidence that levels of exposure to respirable dust in coal mines are increasing."

In other words, the chairman recognised that the prescription test set out in the original report of 1992 was flawed. It is appalling that the Government have so far failed to act on the IIAC review. One gets the impression that interference by the Treasury is to blame for this unjustifiable delay. Perhaps the Minister could shed some light on that.

I put it to the Minister that even if the total number of awards is doubled, the costs are easily manageable. It will not cost the Treasury one penny, as I shall show in a moment. I say that because currently 5,352 awards have been made. The average assessment is 55 per cent. The pension payable for that degree of disability is £54.72 per week. If my mathematics are correct, that works out at less than £15 million a year for the pension element. Administration costs would, of course, have to be added. So if as a result of the new criteria the number of applicants doubled to 10,700, the cost of the pension element would be about £30 million. As I say, administration costs would have to be added. The Minister may say that one of the reasons for the delay is the administration that is required to deal with large numbers of applicants.

Has my hon. Friend seen a parliamentary answer from the Minister only last week which suggested a cost of £20 million in the first year, with £5 million administration costs? Does he agree that that is a small sum in the relative scale of things?

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I have seen that parliamentary reply. It suggests that the costs of introducing the new criteria set out in the review are manageable.

I said that changing the criteria would not cost the Treasury a penny because the awards could be paid for out of the £320 million that has already gone into the Treasury's coffers from the sale of British Coal's land. By anyone's reckoning, that is money that should come back to mining communities. If that source of financing cannot be tapped, the awards could be financed from half the annual surpluses that the Government rip off from the mineworkers' pension scheme. As the people whom we are talking about are elderly, clearly the cost will diminish year on year. Therefore, that £320 million could well pay for the scheme into the future.

It is an appalling indictment of the Government that they have sat on the IIAC recommendations for nine months. In the mean time, literally hundreds of former coal miners have died of the dust and have been unable to make a claim. Neither they nor their families, who in many instances cared for and nursed them, have a chance of claiming benefit for their suffering. It is estimated that in the Barnsley borough 12 per cent. of the population are carers and that most of the people for whom they care are relatives who previously worked in the mining industry.

I hope that the Minister can tell us that the recommendations will be implemented immediately and that they will be retrospectively applied in view of the delay that has been caused by the Government.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing the opportunity to debate this matter. As soon as the debate appeared on the Order Paper, I wrote to Madam Speaker asking for the opportunity to take part. This is a significant issue which involves a substantial number of my constituents as well as others in west and north Yorkshire. My colleague represents south Yorkshire and I endorse all his remarks because they apply to miners in west and north Yorkshire.

As several hon. Members want to speak, I shall keep my comments brief. I wish to put a number of questions to the Minister. If he cannot respond to them this morning, they will be on record and I hope that he will follow them up after the debate. The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council report was presented to the Secretary of State in February this year and was made public in May. It recommended two main amendments. The first was that the forced expiration volume in one second test—the FEV1 test—should be retained but amended to allow underground workers who have small lung volume to be judged according to their frame. The second was that the need for radiographic evidence of coal dust retention be removed from prescription.

Since the report was published, I have received numerous inquiries from former mineworkers in my constituency. They asked how and when the report would be implemented. I wrote to the Secretary of State giving the names of some of the individuals who had been pressing me. The response has been negative. I should like the Minister to deal with a number of issues. First, when will the recommendations be implemented? That is what everyone wants to know. If he can give some indication today, that will be a step in the right direction. Secondly, will claimants denied benefits because they failed either the FEV or the X-ray test, or both, be granted benefit automatically, or will they have to reapply when the Secretary of State agrees to implement the recommendations?

Thirdly, will the widow or any relatives be able to make a posthumous claim because their husband or father failed the FEV and X-ray tests, but has since died? Will claimants who have satisfied the FEV test but have been denied benefit because they failed the X-ray test be automatically assessed? Will any benefits due to them be paid back to the date of their previous claim, or to September 1993 if the claim was submitted within the original time limit? A substantial number of people applied in September 1993, but it took three or four months before some qualified for the examination. If we are to be fair to them, they should receive compensation from September 1993. Will that apply to posthumous claims made on behalf of a miner's family? Will those claims go back to 1993?

We must also consider surface workers. Those of us who have worked in the mining industry are aware of miners who worked underground for perhaps 15 or 18 years, but then had to work on the surface in dusty conditions. Those men have been denied the opportunity of applying for benefit, and that is an injustice. The Minister must reconsider, because a substantial number of people who should be claiming benefit are involved.

We are told that 3,502 former mineworkers in receipt of an occupational pension have died since the report was presented to the Secretary of State. How many of those who claimed benefit were turned down because they failed the X-ray test? It would be easy to identify them. Since the Secretary of State received the report. how many appeals have been lodged on the basis that the X-ray showed no dust on the lung? The Secretary of State is sitting on a recommendation from the advisory council while people are being refused benefit because there is nothing on their X-ray. Those applicants are appealing, but that test will not now apply. How much will that cost the Department of Social Security? We have heard that there is a lack of resources to pay the benefit, but the Secretary of State's refusal to act on the recommendation is costing the Government money. However, the people who will pay most are the retired miners.

How many people have failed because of the FEV test? How many appeals have been lodged? If the Secretary of State implemented the recommendations of the report, it would solve many of the problems and many miners would not need to appeal against their assessment. We are also aware of people who—having been turned down because the X-ray did not show them to be suffering from category 1 dust—have died shortly after the X-ray and been found to have been suffering from category 3 dust, which causes pneumoconiosis. But because the regulations say that the X-ray should show category 1 dust, they have not qualified for benefit. The regulations are flawed, as the case now being pursued through the courts will reveal. In such cases, no payment has been made to the family or to the widow.

My hon. Friend will be aware that two years or more ago, some of us—including, I think, my hon. Friend—submitted evidence to the Minister that the quality and nature of the X-ray film being used did not allow a proper diagnosis to be made.

That is a substantial point that we made in our evidence to the Government. A significant amount of evidence shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that an injustice is being done to many former miners.

In the 1950s, I worked at a colliery where 2,500 miners worked underground, and some 20,000 miners were working in the area at that time. Those were the numbers in the industry in the early 1950s, and—while other hon. Members will be representing some of them—few of those miners are left because they have been racked by industrial illness and injury. But for the few who remain, the recommendations must be applied immediately. Will the Minister address the points of concern that I have raised? If he cannot answer them this morning, will he ensure that we receive written answers so that people can be made aware of the Minister's response to the concerns of former miners?

I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on obtaining this debate. I think that I am qualified to take part as I am an ex-miner and for 12 years was general secretary of the Scottish area of the National Union of Mineworkers. I also represent a mining constituency, where many people suffer from the diseases in question.

As only 5 to 6 per cent. of Scottish claimants were successful in obtaining a pension under chronic bronchitis and emphysema prescribed disease D12, I was delighted to hear that the Government's advisory committee had agreed to recommend changes in the qualifying method. For example, the recommendation to drop category 1, pneumoconiosis, was a breakthrough. However, the Minister has still not embraced that change, although he received the recommendations in February and we are now in November. Are the Government waiting for most of the claimants to die so as to save the Exchequer money? As the economist John Maynard Keynes once said,

"In the long run, we are all dead."

The Minister wrote to me in response to a letter that I had sent on behalf of the family of the late Joe Knox of Bonnyrigg, who died prematurely of bronchitis and emphysema, but was disqualified under the current scheme. The Minister's reply made the excuse that he did not have time to analyse the findings of his advisers, but he made it clear—as he has done to my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien)—that no retrospective claims would be accepted. We cannot repay families for the loss of a relative's life or health, but a pension or lump sum might show that society actually cared in some small way for the sacrifice that they made. Many miners' families are extremely bitter, and they blame the Government for the way in which the situation has been handled.

I wonder how the Minister can sleep at night, knowing that he is a party to such a grievous injustice. But it is never too late: even Ebenezer Scrooge had a dramatic change of heart. I appeal to the Minister in the run-up to Christmas to change his attitude and shed some ray of hope on those affected in mining communities and particularly in my constituency. I hope that he will reconsider the policy of no retrospection and implement the recommendations immediately.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing this debate.

I ask the Minister to note how many hon. Members signed the early-day motion and also consider all the correspondence. The issue matters a great deal, especially to hon. Members who represent coal mining areas. We have heard a great deal in the past 24 hours about how the House must determine issues of health and safety at work and deal with matters which, according to the Government, affect this country. In mining areas, nothing matters more than ensuring that those who have worked underground and have paid with their health get proper compensation for chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

Concern is not confined to ex-miners and their families; the British public realise how much suffering and hardship has been endured. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone spoke earlier about the newspaper campaigns, especially in Yorkshire, and in my area of north Staffordshire the Evening Sentinel is backing the cause. We need a proper answer from the Minister today. If we do not get it, we can turn the matter into a public campaign throughout the country, and especially in mining areas.

We must give ex-miners an assurance that they need not live in fear of the cold this winter. In north Staffordshire, about 90 per cent. of applicants for the benefit have been turned down. I spoke to the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers this morning and he told me that a huge number of men had died since the benefit was introduced in 1993. We cannot afford to let down those who are left and their families.

The compensation is not large, ranging between a maximum of £90 and £20, but for the men and their families it represents the ability to keep warm as we approach the winter months. We cannot afford to delay action for another 12 months. I have read the recommendations carefully and I have written regularly to the Minister. I recognise that the Government should have due time to consider the various recommendations, but how long must we wait for them to say whether they intend to implement them?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone said, it is right to do away with the X-rays and we should no longer count sickness and absence in the 20-year period that is being assessed. There should also be changes in the criteria for the lung function assessment. As new mining techniques mean that miners could be at risk from a more concentrated exposure to coal dust, the matter should be kept under review.

Will the Minister give us an absolute assurance about how much money is involved, how many people in his Department are working on the issue, and whether he has the staff resources to ensure that the recommendations can be implemented in full? Will he ensure that when he implements the proposals—as I hope that he will, not least because of public pressure—there will be proper arrangements so that an administrative blunder cannot create a three or four-year delay in assessment? The administrative arrangements must be in place, especially in coal mining or ex-coal mining areas, to ensure that the men who need the benefit and apply for it can be paid quickly.

Only last week I received a letter from a constituent in Bradeley village who said that she had followed carefully the campaign in the House of Commons and that, although it was too late for her husband, who had died, we should do what we could to get the Government to introduce the benefit in full and without further delay, on behalf of all the men who have died and all the wives and families caring for men who are ill. That is what we want from the Minister today.

It is important to recognise that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) has been slogging away on this campaign for ages; others have been involved—I and other hon. Members went to present evidence at the Trades Union Congress, for instance—but my hon. Friend has been in the front row for a long time, and he is to be congratulated on his efforts.

The issue could have been settled relatively easily because, generally speaking, the Government are supposed to take on board what the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council—a so-called independent body, staffed by people with medical expertise—says about a case; although the council is a quango, I do not think that it has yet been stuffed with Tories. If the recommendations had come from the City of London, the Government would have implemented them within a couple of weeks and we might have had a statement from the appropriate Minister, but this is different: it is about miners and mining communities in areas of Britain where the Tories by and large have no political influence.

I put it to the Minister and to the Secretary of State, who is not here today, that I know what their game is: they think that miners vote Labour so they need not bother about them. That was their attitude when they shut the last batch of 31 pits. We are talking about communities that have been ravaged by the Government, especially in the years since the miners' strike. There are areas of mass unemployment: male unemployment is as high as 50 per cent. in some of the coalfield villages, despite the fiddled figures that the Tories trot out every day—we had another lot today. We are talking about real poverty.

Groups of miners, wealth creators who worked, in some cases, for 40 or 50 years, who dug the coal during the war and whenever it was necessary, are coughing their lungs up, and what thanks to they get? They are told that they can have an X-ray and an FEV test, that they have to have worked for 20 years and that if they were dragged out of the pit on their hands and knees and had to work on the surface for the last few years they would not qualify. There were about 10 different hurdles for people to jump. What happens? As my hon. Friend said, only 10 or 11 per cent. succeed. Yesterday, at Social Security Question Time, we heard about some tribunals where 50 per cent. of applications are successful, so 10 or 11 per cent. is a paltry amount.

You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have also been involved in this matter, probably from the beginning, in an attempt to put the matter on the statute book, so this could be described as an all-party affair, although it does not extend as far as the Conservative Benches.

What does the Minister have against miners and their communities? We are talking about a relatively small amount of money. The Government gave away the pits to Budge for a song; yet they cannot find this small amount of money to legislate on the recommendations of a body whose recommendations are usually accepted by Governments.

I remember only too well my efforts during the 1974–79 Labour Government to have a chemical factory disease prescribed. Some of my hon. Friends will remember that, because there are not many prescribed industrial diseases. When such a measure goes on the statute book, it is supposed to be implemented. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme), who was in the Department of Social Security at the time, had that recommendation accepted within a short space of time. Yet the present lousy, rotten Government have been sitting on this matter for almost the whole of this year because they cannot stand miners who had the guts to stand up against this paltry Government on a number of occasions.

What is bugging the Government? This is not a Common Market directive. When we have a directive such as the one that we had from the Common Market yesterday giving workers three weeks holiday and a 48-hour week, one can understand that the Government have to give way to the Euro-sceptics in their party. But this is not a Common Market directive—it is British through and through—so why can the Government not implement it?

Just think about those miners walking along the streets of the pit villages, struggling from lamp post to lamp post. They walk 25 yards, then they grab at the nearest fence, coughing, their heads bent low. Then along comes Mr. Deputy Speaker and people such as my hon. Friends and they manage to convince the powers that be that there should be chronic bronchitis and emphysema legislation. It took years; then, when it was introduced, the Government emaciated it. Many thought that after 40 or 50 years they would see some rainbow, a little extra money to buy all the things that they had never been able to buy, but they finish up with this tinpot legislation.

Some of us decide to try to make things better and we make promises. We tell people that we will take the matter to an independent body. We do so, and that body goes along with many of our proposals. Yet this stinking Government do not have the guts to implement the recommendations. The Government should get off their knees and give some hope to people who have put more into society than any of those who sit on the Conservative Benches.

I shall be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as a number of my hon. Friends wish to join in. I echo the reference made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) to yourself. You will recall that I was one of the sponsors of the several Bills that you presented in an effort to achieve justice in this matter of coalfield concern.

On Sunday morning last, with a number of other people from my local community, wreaths were laid at the memorial to the men of Manvers Main colliery who were killed in the world wars. In the first world war, more than 200 men from that one pit died. More than 40 of them gained medals for gallantry, including the Victoria cross. Their grandsons and great nephews are suffering from these industrial diseases now. Yet they were labelled by the Government as the enemy within.

My hon. Friend referred to the substantial contributions made by people from the coalfields, yet they have not been treated fairly. In response to your private Member's Bills, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Government eventually gave way and allowed a scheme. Then they drew up qualifications and regulations which meant that only a tiny proportion of the men who applied would succeed. Yet their neighbours, people without political experience or qualification, knew well that those men were coughing and would die far earlier than they otherwise would have done. While the Government have hedged, prevaricated and delayed, thousands have died. As my hon. Friends the Members for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) and for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) have said, the numbers are shrinking and the cost will diminish rapidly. The Government have taken a great deal of money out of the coalfields as a result of privatisation; we ask that a little of that money is put back into the areas where it was created.

I hope that the Minister has heard the voices from coalfield communities all over the country—Scotland, Wales and the midlands—and that he recognises the strength of feeling there. He knows of the campaign to obtain the benefit in the first place. We need to congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on that. Then there was the campaign to have the benefit reviewed because it was not meeting the needs of those involved.

The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council reported in February. It is now nine months on and the clock is ticking for many of those miners. They have given their health and lives to bring comfort and warmth to the nation. It is time for the Minister to make an announcement. Nine months is a long time in anyone's reckoning. For those who are ill and in the twilight of their days, it is important that we have an announcement now.

I am sure that the Minister is aware of the campaign by the Nottingham Evening Post, in which he has been quoted. Back in June, the Secretary of State told that paper that the recommendations would be implemented. If he can tell the Nottingham Evening Post in June that things will be good for former miners, why cannot an announcement be made here today in Parliament during this important debate?

Perhaps it has something to do with the cost. I am grateful for the parliamentary answer that the Minister gave me only last week, telling me that according to his calculations the cost in the first year would be £20 million with £5 million administrative costs. As many of my hon. Friends have pointed out, that cost will decline in future years as the group of beneficiaries gets smaller.

The coalfields have contributed to Britain's wealth, but the communities there have had a tough time. They believe that the Government have turned their back on them and walked away. They have buried the coal industry, but they must not bury those miners who are chronically crippled and ill without giving them the benefit of some extra help.

The Budget is due in a fortnight's time. If the Minister cannot make an announcement today, will he ensure that a decision is made as part of the Budget process? There may well be discussions, debates and perhaps some tension between the Department of Social Security and the Treasury at this moment, but the campaign will go on. People will not walk away from this. Enough is enough. It is important to make an announcement and pay the benefit now because many of the miners, their wives and families are in an intolerable situation.

Let us have an announcement now. The Government have had the opportunity to consider the matter for nine months. We know what the cost has been. The time has come to look after those who have looked after the nation for so many years.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on his campaign, not only on this issue but on many other issues relating to the mining industry. He has acted with his customary modesty, but I pay special tribute to his persistence in those matters, which is applauded by those us who represent mining communities.

Luckily, I still represent a mining community, but that is no thanks to this Government. It is thanks to the effort of the miners themselves—not to the Deputy Prime Minister, who was responsible for the privatisation programme and who made many promises during the passage of that legislation, most of which have been broken. Indeed, on 27 June this year, he told us that he was looking at the recommendations as a matter of urgency. I do not know what urgency means to the Deputy Prime Minister—perhaps it means working with civil servants in an attempt to commandeer them in his vain efforts to win the next general election. I can tell him now that he might as well give up and apply himself to matters of greater importance, such as this campaign.

The Minister, the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Evans), himself represents a south Wales constituency—it might be ungracious, but I should add that he will not do so for much longer. I am sure that, in the next general election, that seat will be reclaimed for the Labour party. The hon. Gentleman knows the situation in south Wales and the conditions in which people live. From his practice in the area, he has known for many years the suffering that those communities have endured. He knows that, all along, miners and their families have had to fight for every penny of compensation that they have ever received from the state. When I was a journalist, I fought alongside the miners in the pneumoconiosis campaign. Everyone knows how hard the miners had to fight to get just compensation for contracting that terrible disease.

I was elected in the middle of a miners' strike. In 1984, I went down a small street in Penrhiwceiber—a small mining village known to the Minister. In every other house there was a man suffering from either bronchitis and emphysema or pneumoconiosis and many of those men were using oxygen machines at that time. I went down the same street a year later and was told, "He's dead," "He's dead," "He's very ill," "He's dying." That is why it is important that the matter be dealt with urgently. Urgency must mean more to the Deputy Prime Minister than five months' delay while people wait for him to come up with a response to those proper recommendations.

The Minister has, of course, been trying to explain why the reduced earnings allowance is a just measure, but I remind him that, ever since the Social Security Act 1986 was passed, disabled people and their relatives have been penalised by this Government. This is an opportunity to put matters right. We are not asking a big favour—the sum of money involved is small—but it would make an enormous difference to those miners and their families who are suffering as a result of an industrial disease that they contracted when they were working in our mining industries.

I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) for not having been present at the beginning of the debate. He has done us all a service by obtaining the debate. Like many other Opposition Members, I come from a coal mining area and have many constituents who are worried about the current position.

When, after a long campaign of which you do not need reminding, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the House decided to classify emphysema and bronchitis as an industrial disease, many of us were greatly relieved. That was followed by massive disappointment, with many of my constituents finding that the tests to get compensation were so tightly drawn that the rejection rate was well above 90 per cent. For many years, I have been dealing with the case of Mr. George Lambton who worked for 51 years in Kiveton Park colliery in my constituency. He failed the tests that were originally used to determine whether someone qualified for compensation.

When I read the report published in February this year which revealed the weaknesses in the tests, I was greatly relieved and wrote to Mr. Lambton about it. I also discussed the matter with hospital consultants who were experts on the question of hard versus soft X-rays being used to identify the disease. What intrigued and pleased me about the February report was its findings on the FEV test—that lung capacity varies according to the stature of the individual.

Mr. Lambton is a very small man. He and his general practitioner are absolutely convinced that he suffers from the disease—now classified as an industrial disease—of emphysema and bronchitis, but he has failed the FEV test. As has been made clear by the report, the main reason for his failure is probably his stature—he is only about 5 ft tall. I wrote to him about the report and said that he should reapply for compensation for emphysema and bronchitis, and he has done so. It is nearly sorted out now—he went for an X-ray and was told, "Oh, by the way, you have pneumoconiosis as well, so you should apply for that compensation, too." Mr. Lambton's lungs are clearly in a bad condition.

Mr. Lambton's appeal has not gone through yet, but if he reaches that point before the regulations are changed to correct the problems with the original assessment, he will be back to square one. That is not good enough. When a report is published that clearly shows why there was a failure rate of more than 90 per cent., action is needed. It is wrong to leave thousands of people like Mr. Lambton in this state of limbo resulting from delay in implementing a sensible recommendation that would enable them to get the compensation from the state that they deserve.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) pointed out that the Secretary of State said that the regulations would be altered. I hope that the Minister will come to the Dispatch Box to say that that will be done as soon as possible. If my constituent fails at his next attempt because the regulations have not been altered according to the recommendations, I shall tell him to reapply, and to keep going until he gets justice. The Minister should give some firm assurances about when that injustice will be put right—many thousands of people need it to be done straight away.

This has been an excellent debate and I hope that the Minister is thinking about what he is going to say. Hon. Members have spoken with great emotion and the report contained cold logic, so I sincerely hope that the Minister has come here not with fine words, but with a commitment to accept the recommendations and to proceed quickly with implementation of the proposals.

There is a profound sense of injustice, anger and disappointment throughout the coalfields of Britain, and rightly so. Communities, ex-miners, miners' families, councillors, councils, mining unions, Members of Parliament and local newspapers such as the Nottingham Evening Post have campaigned vigorously over the past few years for the issue to be taken seriously and resolved. I join my hon. Friends in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) for his endeavours in this respect—he simply will not give up and that is a message that the Minister should understand. I hope that the Minister has something positive to say, but he should be under no illusion about the fact that, if he is not positive this morning, the campaign will go on and on until we achieve victory for the thousands of ex-miners up and down the country.

Emotion is important in the House and, this morning, we have heard passionate but concise speeches. These men have contributed greatly to the nation's prosperity—that is not in doubt. Many of them knew that their health was being damaged every day they went down the pit. The real tragedy is that the lives of some of those whom we hope will be beneficiaries are now ebbing away. They face the damage caused by chronic bronchitis and emphysema and that is linked to a sense of injustice and concern at the fact that they do not have enough cash in the household. That is not a situation facing the Minister, but it does face those families.

It is always useful to throw in one's own experience. My father was a mineworker for 30 years and his last trip up from the mine was on a stretcher. My grandfather worked for the private coal companies. The conditions in those mines were part of the reason for nationalisation. I have seen colleagues who have been councillors, lying in bed with an oxygen cylinder by their side. I am sure that that is not an experience shared by the Minister or those who advise him, but it provides a telling insight into the suffering that is endured by many of those ex-miners.

Of course, of itself, emotion is not enough on which to base changes to legislation or regulations. However, the emotion of this issue has been built on by the hard and compelling logic of the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council. Public interest should be represented. We have the emotion, the passion and the sentiment, but more important, we have the logic of an inquiry that has delivered recommendations to the Minister.

Given that emotion and logic, Parliament must respond. That is why there is a tremendous responsibility on the Minister this morning. He cannot duck the issue. All my colleagues have put their points to him and he has the report on his desk. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Social Security and a host of Under-Secretaries have uttered fine words, but they have been running. The Minister cannot run any further. He is faced with the contributions made by my colleagues and the logic of the report. I hope that he will rise to the occasion.

So far, the campaign has been successful, and that success encourages everybody to believe that we will go from strength to strength. It was as a result of the campaign started by my hon. Friends that, in 1993, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council made emphysema and bronchitis a prescribed disease. It was through their efforts that, in January 1995 the IIAC decided to review the prescription because it was far too constrained and, as a consequence, out of 50,000 miners who had applied only a handful—5,000—got what they deserved.

The IIAC reported to the Minister earlier this year. It is worth restating that, in a technical area, the changes will make a profound difference to those seeking to obtain industrial injuries benefit. The report recommended dropping the requirement for X-ray evidence of pneumonoconiosis. It recommended keeping the 20-year rule but, importantly, making sure that it included sickness periods. It was outrageous that, initially, the 20-year period would not have included the sickness periods. The report recommended keeping the FEV test, amending it to allow for workers with small lung volumes. That seems to be elementary common sense and one wonders why it was not included in the first set of recommendations. One does not have to be a medical expert to realise that implementing those changes 'would allow a larger number of people to get the justice that they deserve.

The case has been made and that is not the basis for this debate. It is important to look at some of the comments that have been made from the Prime Minister through to the Under-Secretaries. To come right up to date, when visiting Nottingham a few days ago, the Prime Minister said that the matter was still being considered. The headline in the Nottingham Evening Post said, "Prime Minister, John Major, visiting Nottingham today, is still refusing to guarantee extra cash help for crippled ex-miners."

On 27 June—this has already been quoted—the Deputy Prime Minister told my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone that he would view the matter with urgency. What does "urgency" mean" The report has been on the Minister's desk since February and it was published in May. The Prime Minister spoke in November, the Deputy Prime Minister spoke in June and we have had many fine words from other Ministers. I am pleased to see in the House the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott), because during his time as a Minister he contributed to some of the more positive aspects of the debate.

Why the inactivity? What is the problem in a budget that spends £90 billion of taxpayers' money and which will rise in 1998–99 to £101 billion? This is the first group of Ministers to look forward to that level of budget, but they will see a Labour Government use it more effectively. I want to ask the Minister some direct questions.

The Minister has seen the report and has had expert advice. He knows of the hardship and misery that the delays are causing to people in the coalfield communities in Britain. Why the delay? I hope that he will give us the reasons. Although we have had some comments on the recommendations in the report, the Government have not overwhelmingly embraced its findings and recommendations. The Minister—I see him raising his eyebrows—may suggest that he has done that, but the comments were not specific enough for us to be reassured that, at the heart of Government, the scientific report has been accepted. I want to find out whether the recommendations have been fully accepted. When will the Government implement the changes? My hon. Friends have already asked whether this is a battle between the Department of Social Security and the Treasury—it often is. We have not found out whether the Department of Social Security is whole-heartedly pursuing the Treasury—if it is the Treasury that is blocking this. Those are important questions.

The other issue which underpins the attack that we are making this morning goes back to the initial comments. This is supposed to be a Parliament for all the people of the United Kingdom. It is supposed to be a Parliament that looks at evidence impartially, weighs it up and makes recommendations. If I were an ex-miner in Nottingham, Barnsley or any other part of Britain and I was struggling for breath in the way described by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—I have seen such people walking along the streets—I would wonder what sort of Parliament this is. The partiality of this Parliament is often a disgrace.

If the debate is reported, it means that the public will have an opportunity to know about this excellent debate and the contributions made by my colleagues. Also, the Minister has an opportunity to become a superstar in the mining communities. That is not an opportunity that will fall to him very often. He has the chance to become a hero in the working-class communities of Britain. That must be a challenge for any Tory Minister.

I have been generous and have tried to reflect the excellent case that has been made by my colleagues. I hope that the Minister will say, "Yes, yes, yes," to all the questions we ask so that we can tell our constituents that this Parliament works for them and for Britain and that, on this serious issue, there was a consensus which paid dividends and people got their just reward.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing the debate, and I am grateful to him for that. I have been asked in a number of different ways by everyone who spoke, including the shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish), whether I will make an announcement. I shall begin by making my answer to that question clear. I am not able to make an announcement this morning. I did not leave that statement to the end of my speech, because I knew that hon. Members wanted to know my answer now. Let me explain where we have got to, and then I will reply to the debate in some detail.

I raised an eyebrow when the scientific medical aspects of the IIAC report were mentioned. The Government accept those conclusions: that is an important matter. I also make it clear that an announcement will be made shortly, but I cannot go into detail about what stage those matters have reached. I stress that the Government are attending to the matter, and an announcement will be made shortly. I cannot go further than that. I have no doubt that hon. Members will press me to do so, but that is my position.

In view of what the Minister has just said, will he tell us what is holding up the announcement? Where is the blockage? Is it in the Treasury? Will he share that information with us? We want to know why, having had sufficient notice, he is unable to make an announcement today.

It is tempting to answer the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley), and it may be simpler for me to do so, but she will appreciate that I cannot. The matter is being attended to, and an announcement will be made shortly.

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I shall give way to the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone first, because he secured the debate and I think that he rose slightly more quickly than the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy). [Interruption.] I am so sorry, it is the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping).

Will the Minister remind the House that on the day after the Budget it is normal practice for the Secretary of State for Social Security to make an announcement? By my reckoning, that day of judgment will be 27 November. My hon. Friends may be relaxed and mild now—the Minister heard my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—but he should reflect on that and make it a red letter day in his diary.

I do not think that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) could be so described this morning: he made a powerful speech. I hear what the hon. Member for Sherwood says, and I have made it clear that an announcement will be made shortly. [HON. MEMBERS: "When is shortly?"] That means shortly shortly, within reasonable shortness. Other than that I cannot qualify shortly in a helpful way, and beyond that I cannot and will not go.

A long time ago, when a better Government were in office, I brought to the House's attention the case of a constituent who was suffering from those diseases. He depended on oxygen and could not leave his house because he had to be by the side of a large oxygen cylinder. I asked the then Government to allow portable oxygen cylinders to be provided by the national health service. They agreed, and within an astonishingly short time people such as my constituent were able to go to the local club, go for a walk to see their son's allotment and accompany their wives to the local shop, because they could carry a portable cylinder and were free. They were liberated by a caring Government who acted with expedition, whereas this lot have been sitting on this matter for years.

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I think that I am obliged to answer the hon. Gentleman's question first. I hear the point that he makes. It concerns a wider issue, but I understand why he makes it.

Will the announcement that is likely to be made in the near future be made orally to the House, and not in the form of a written answer to a question?

I cannot answer that, but I can assure the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone that it will be made in whatever is the appropriate conventional fashion. I shall deal with the specific points that hon. Members have raised, because it is important that I go through them one by one. The hon. Member for Sherwood referred to my parliamentary answer on the cost, which will be £20 million plus £5 million for administration. I appreciate the points made about property sales and the sums that, it is said, should be paid back to the mining communities. For nearly 200 years, there has been a consolidated fund. Hon. Members must appreciate that, whatever their merits, the proposals involve a public expenditure commitment, which must be accounted for in the usual way.

The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish), who seemed in one breath to be satisfied with the largeness of the social security budget, said that if he were in office he would apply it more appropriately. He must explain what allowance would be made if that were done.

The hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) asked me several specific questions about matters that go beyond the area that we are discussing today. I warn him that some of his observations about retrospection go further than what any Government have done in the past in connection with this scheme. I shall read his speech carefully in Hansard, and I shall do my best to answer his questions. I may be able to answer them more fully at the time of the announcement. I have noted the points that he made, and I shall examine them carefully.

I prefaced my remarks by saying that I thought that the Minister would not be able to answer my questions, but that it would be helpful if he could answer them in writing. I am concerned about what the Minister just said about retrospection going beyond what we could expect. Does he accept that the regulations are deeply flawed? They require that dust retention should show up on the X-ray, but post-mortems reveal a vast discrepancy in that area. In my opinion, retrospection is understandable and fair, and I hope that the Minister will give it fair consideration.

As I understand it, the scientific evidence presented by IIAC is correct. The difficulty with the X-ray test is that what shows up on the X-ray depends in part on the carbon content of coal. Anthracite and best Welsh steam-coal produce more visible signs in X-rays than do other types of coal. That is the scientific argument presented by IIAC, and, as I said, we accept that.

The difficulty with retrospection—I put this in general terms—is the way in which the scheme has operated since 1946. Scientific knowledge develops. The purpose of IIAC is to monitor the scientific argument as it develops and extends. Governments have traditionally taken the view that when the scientific evidence, as assessed and reported on by IIAC, meets the statutory test of the scheme—which has been in place since 1946—the change is made for future cases. That happened in 1993 in respect of this issue.

I put in a word of caution, because the hon. Member for Normanton, for understandable reasons, is trying to press me to go further than any Government have gone before. I shall consider the point, and I shall try to reply to him as best as I can immediately, and subsequently when the announcement is made.

I wish to reinforce the point. Between 1993 and now, a significant number of cases have come before the Department. Will the Minister reassure me that if the changes are accepted and implemented, the case load from 1993 to 1996 will be eligible for reconsideration in an attempt retrospectively to bring justice to those people?

That would involve further expense, over and above the figures that we quoted earlier. I shall consider all matters, including that one, before the announcement is made. However, the scheme has not traditionally been operated in that way. The purpose of IIAC is to advise the Government and Parliament on the evolving state of the scientific evidence. The point at which, in IIAC's judgment, the two criteria have been met is the point at which, traditionally, we respond to IIAC.

I am grateful for the candidness of the Minister's responses. Would he be amenable to further representations being made in the next few days about the question of retrospection? It is important to my hon. Friends. I merely ask the Minister to acknowledge its importance, and to tell us whether he would be happy to obtain further evidence before the announcement is made—shortly, or shortly shortly.

I hope that "shortly" means fairly shortly. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is, of course, yes. I hope that there was no misunderstanding in the summer. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone on 23 July, inviting him to meet Ministers with members of the miners' group. That meeting has not taken place for some reason, but I shall be delighted to meet any members of the group.

We want to see the Minister.

When people say that to me, I know full well that it will happen. Anyway, if any hon. Members wish to make further representations, I shall be delighted to listen.

I raised the question of retrospection because a letter that I received suggested that there was to be no retrospection. Is the Minister now opening the door to discussion about the matter? In the example that I gave, someone died of the disease.

The fact that I am always prepared to listen to an argument should not lead to the supposition that I necessarily accede to that argument. As I made clear to the hon. Member for Normanton, what is being demanded goes further than any Government have traditionally gone under this scheme. Nevertheless, if anyone wants to put a particular case to me, I am prepared to listen to it carefully. I will have it assessed carefully, and I will have it costed carefully. I give this warning, however: although I am prepared to listen, we are being asked to go much further than the scheme has previously gone.

I should make it clear to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North that there is an issue of administration. I was asked specifically how long the arrangements would take to implement were we to make such an announcement. The 1993 scheme took five and a half months to implement, and serious questions of administration are involved in any such implementation; but the Government are attending to all matters.

I shall be kinder to the hon. Member for Bolsover than he was to me. IIAC is, of course, a quango, but I think that even the hon. Gentleman will agree that, if there is such a thing as a quango, it is the best of all possible quangos. It is an expert body: it contains medical experts of the highest repute, as well as representatives of both the TUC and the CBI.

The hon. Member for Sherwood mentioned the Nottingham Evening Post interview with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I regret to say that that newspaper read rather more into off-the-cuff remarks than was justified, although I appreciate that the interview excited considerable interest in Nottinghamshire at the time.

Criticisms have been made of the 1993 scheme, quite apart from those addressed by IIAC. The hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) seemed to be saying that in 1993 we had somehow frustrated everyone's intentions by devising a scheme that was tighter than the one for which they were campaigning. As I understand the position, we simply implemented what IIAC then recommended.

Having—I hope—dealt with most of the points that have been made, I will not reintroduce a discussion with the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) on reduced earnings allowance, or on any of the other matters that she mentioned. The debate focuses, very properly, on a particular matter.

It is an important issue.

I know that it is important, but it is separate and distinct from what we have been discussing today.

It is important to define the role of IIAC, and the conditions that must be satisfied before a disease may be prescribed. That will explain why the terms of the prescription of chronic bronchitis and emphysema were drawn up in the way that they were in 1993, why the council reviewed the criteria this year and why it reached the conclusions and made the recommendations contained in its report.

No doubt everyone will be encouraged by the fact that the opinions expressed in both the 1992 and the 1996 IIAC reports on the subject were unanimous: there was agreement among all representatives on the body, including the medical experts.

Industrial injuries disablement benefit is payable for disablement resulting from industrial accidents and from certain diseases that are prescribed. As I said earlier, the legal basis for prescription has remained unchanged since the scheme was introduced in its modern form in 1946—although I appreciate that that reformed the 1897 scheme. The statutory provision is contained in section 108 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, which states:

"A disease or injury may be prescribed in relation to any employed earners if the Secretary of State is satisfied that—

(a) it ought to be treated, having regard to its causes and incidence and any other relevant considerations, as a risk of their occupations and not as a risk common to all persons: and

(b) it is such that, in the absence of special circumstances, the attribution of particular cases to the nature of the employment can be established or presumed with reasonable certainty."

When my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Sir G. Lofthouse)—now Deputy Speaker—introduced his Bill, he had in mind the regulations to which the Minister referred. Although the Bill was accepted, my hon. Friend's experience in the mining industry—which was included in it—was not taken into consideration by the review body. We are asking for the changes to be implemented without further delay, and for other matters that we have mentioned today to be taken into account. I hope that the Minister will consider all the facts that have been presented, because further changes must be made.

I hear that argument, and will give careful consideration to what it involves.

The statutory test is important. It is of fairly long standing, having existed throughout my lifetime. It has worked so far, although I appreciate that whether it is too strict, and whether it is drafted in quite the right way, are matters of argument.

This is a slightly unusual scheme. It is a compensation scheme, not a benefit scheme. It is distinct from, for instance, the arrangements for disability and incapacity benefits. It is a scheme of compensation—in the tradition of workmen's compensation that goes back to 1897—which is not based on proof of fault: it is a tax-free, no-fault compensation scheme. Therefore, it requires criteria that are clear and well established: no doubt that is why they have remained in their present state for a long time.

The payment of compensation is normally connected with the fact that someone has been subjected to an unnecessary risk. Here we are talking about the loss of a faculty, either mental or physical, following an injury sustained at work. The benefit that is payable from the scheme is for that loss of faculty, and will therefore continue to be paid because the loss of faculty will remain until the end of the person's life. That is rather different from a compensation payment.

Traditionally, that is not so. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's analysis is correct, although I suspect that at the end of the day it does not matter.

As the hon. Gentleman will know, between 1897 and 1946, when a Labour Government reformed the scheme, people had an option, although not a very comfortable one. Either they accepted no-fault payments under the scheme's predecessor, or they sued at common law and had to prove negligence or breach of statutory duty, which was difficult and expensive. At its inception, the scheme was perceived as an alternative to suing at law. When the 1946 reforms came in, instead of either/or it became both.

Under a Labour Government.

I know what the hon. Gentleman says. I accept that the scheme has remained in that state since 1946 and of course it was a Labour Government who imposed it, but the point is that, in its modern form, the scheme remains one of statutory compensation and is distinct from benefits. We have been talking loosely in terms of benefits, but the scheme is not like the welfare benefits generally administered by my Department, but a form of compensation for a type of injury.

Will the Minister give way?

I have about half a second. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Yesterday in the handgun debate, as a result of representations about money, the Secretary of State for the Home Department said that he would consider finding extra money to resolve the gun lobby arguments. Will the Minister give the same guarantee on this matter when he has considered all the questions that have been asked by my hon. Friends?

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Order. We must now move to the next debate.

I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue in the debate, which comes, by good chance, this morning. First, I will remind the House about some characteristics of the hospice movement, although I doubt whether any Members are unaware of them.

Through its in-patient facilities, the hospice movement provides specialist care for people in advanced stages of serious illness. Through day care, it provides opportunities for expert help with symptom control, for counselling and for other therapies, as well as mental and physical refreshment for patients living at home and for their carers. Home care is provided by qualified hospice staff to support community nursing services, to assist patients and carers in daily nursing routines and regular assessment, and to maintain an open door to in-patient respite care.

I mention all those services because they are less well known than the major and best known hospice service, which is in the treatment and care of people whose condition cannot be cured, particularly to reduce, if not eliminate, patient discomfort and to improve patients' quality of life. Specialists are there to allay fear, to prescribe possible treatment and to provide holistic support to improve the quality of life.

Time never stands still and the needs of people suffering terminal illness will always become greater and require increasing support. That is the function of marvellous hospices such as St. Peter and St. James's home and hospice at Wivelsfield Green in my constituency. The Minister's colleague, Baroness Cumberlege, who visited the hospice recently, can vouch for the impressive quality of its work. I must say immediately, however, that the benefit from the hospice's care and service covers adjacent constituencies as well as my own and is almost equally provided to patients from East Sussex and West Sussex, which causes part of the funding problem.

Hospice funding does not depend entirely on health authorities. Like other hospices, St. Peter and St. James's depends to a large extent on charitable donations. It is only through such generous public support that: the hospice survives and can continue to give vital assistance so marvellously. It devotes much energy and innovation to fund-raising activities and local people are continually wonderfully generous, but health authorities also must contribute from the funds provided to them by Government to do so.

The Minister will know—indeed, his colleague has told me—that until last year Government funding was specific and had risen from £8 million in 1991 to £48 million in 1994–95, which is to be welcomed. Since then, funding has been built into health authorities' general allocations, with an aim to meet hospice needs on a 50:50 basis. The Department of Health guidance states specifically that removal of separate identification from funding for specialist palliative care—for hospices—should not be viewed in any way as representing a reduction in priority for that sector. That was confirmed by my hon. Friend the Minister for Health in his letter to me on 14 August.

The East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authority's contract with St. Peter and St. James's is for three years—its last year is next year—at £50,942 per year. I am told that that equals only about one third of the cost of in-patient services alone. No extra funding is provided for day care or for home care services, either from the authority or from local social services. It appears that no more funds are available for this wonderful hospice while a new hospice is being developed in Brighton and Hove. It is invidious to choose between the two. Both need better support.

The picture is even bleaker with regard to funding from West Sussex. Patients from West Sussex, just across the nearby county border, represent approximately 50 per cent. of the hospice's work, but the authority provides only £10,550 per annum—an invidiously small remuneration for the wonderful services provided to many people for whom it is responsible. It is not prepared to pay for any day care services, thus forcing patients requiring those services from St. Peter and St. James's to pay for them themselves.

The net income from both East Sussex and West Sussex health authorities of just about £60,000 leaves St. Peter and St. James's with the need to raise between £400,000 and £500,000 each year. That is far removed from the 50:50 funding guideline goal and shows a dramatic reduction in priority for palliative care funding, contrary to the Government's guidelines.

I will give one dramatic illustration. Recently, an East Sussex AIDS patient in a West Sussex hospital was moved to St. Peter and St. James's with the promise of necessary funding to come with him. The money never appeared. The hospice became the pig in the middle between health authorities and social services. Eventually, money was agreed only under threat of having to move the patient elsewhere and receiving negative publicity for that action. Sadly, the money was paid only after the patient had died.

That was a human tragedy. The hospice charges for that AIDS patient are approximately one third of the cost elsewhere and the hospice's services for such a patient are infinitely better—indeed, unmatched. Professional and dedicated people are trying to do their best for a desperately ill and dying patient and for many others like him, but they are not being provided with the basic funds to do so. That is one illustration of an omnipresent problem which has threatened St. Peter and St. James's literally with closure, so desperate is its financial position. But for one generous and substantial donation out of the blue last week, the hospice would probably have been closing as we pursue the debate.

What do I ask my good and honourable friend the Minister to do? First, I ask him to issue new hospice funding guidelines to health authorities to ensure that proper funding is provided in at least the same proportions as previously provided under the specific ring-fenced money provisions of yesteryear. Secondly, he must ensure that health authorities move speedily—I stress speedily—to a 50:50 funding proportion, to establish a deadline for them to do so and to fund them accordingly. Thirdly, he should make certain that health authorities provide fair funding to cover the needs of patients from their region and do not hide behind contracts that have been overtaken by increasing needs, nor rely on the good will of people dedicated to provide those services while denying them the funds to do so, as the West Sussex health authority is doing. Fourthly, some better mechanism must be established for decision-making on funding matters between health authorities and social services to avoid in-fighting such as that recently faced by the St. Peter and St. James's AIDS patient. Fifthly, the Minister should make sure that the principles of the patients charter apply, so that patients go where they can get the services that they need and the funds go with them. Sixthly, and finally, my hon. Friend should see what can be done to provide assistance to hospices to help them to deal with health authorities and social services on a more equal basis in their contractual and financial dealings.

The House will realise that people in the advanced stages of illness, and often apparently approaching death, need special help. Hospices such as St. Peter and St. James's uniquely provide with care and dedication the specialist services required. They continue to deserve public support, and I am sure that they will continue to get it. But they also deserve better support from Government-funded bodies such as health authorities and social services departments. I call upon my friend the Minister to give that help.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone), and I congratulate him on securing time for a debate on the funding of St. Peter and St. James's hospice. I have no doubt that it is an extremely important issue.

I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend. He feels that the hospice provides a valued service for the people of Lewes and Haywards Heath in East Sussex, and I understand any concern that he has for its future.

Before I respond to my hon. Friend's concerns about funding, I should like to express sadness at the untimely although not entirely unexpected death of Julian Wellesley, chairman of the East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authority. He was a well respected man, with a successful career in finance and commerce. He devoted considerable time and energy to the health service, and was appointed to the position of health authority chairman in 1990. He proved to be an outstanding chairman, leading his authority with great style and skill, and his name will live on in the many improvements to local health services that he pushed through.

I should like to add my support for my hon. Friend's words. I knew Julian Wellesley for many years before I came to the House. He started his work in the health service on the board of Eastbourne general hospital. He was then appointed chairman of Eastbourne health authority and most recently he was a marvellous chairman of East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authority. He engineered the bringing together of the local health authorities and community care providers under one wing. I believe that my hon. Friend's words are justified.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

I know something about St. Peter and St. James's home and hospice from my colleague, Lady Cumberlege, who visited the premises on 20 August, as my hon. Friend said. She was very impressed by what she saw. The charity's efforts are obviously much appreciated by patients and the local community.

St. Peter and St. James's home was built 20 years ago to provide residential care for severely disabled people and elderly people. It branched into hospice care in the early 1990s. The hospice comprises six in-patient beds and a new day centre. It also provides home support services for patients in the community.

St. Peter and St. James's is one of a number of hospices in Sussex. Like other voluntary hospices, it is funded from charitable sources, and also by the health authorities. I will have more to say about health authority funding of hospices, which ultimately comes from the taxpayer, of course, but first I should like to pay tribute to the excellent work done by charities up and down the country in raising many millions of pounds every year for hospice care. None of us is under any illusion about how difficult it can be to raise the sums required, and we are extremely grateful for the considerable unpaid time and effort so generously given by so many people.

I should make it absolutely clear that our commitment to palliative care is undiminished. I also remind the House that the United Kingdom is a recognised world leader in the care of the terminally ill. Significant advances have been made in pain and symptom control and in improving the overall quality of life for patients with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. The aim of our policies is to ensure that the benefits of those improvements in treatment and care are available to all patients, wherever they may live.

The spectrum of palliative care provision and support required to meet patients' and carers' needs continues throughout the patient's illness and into the carer's bereavement. It ranges from the promotion of physical and social well-being to highly specialist palliative care involving physical, psychological, social and spiritual support. It is provided in both community and in-patient settings. It will vary according to the stage of illness, and may be required from the time of diagnosis.

To provide such services, the Government's support for hospice and specialist palliative care services has, as my hon. Friend acknowledged, increased sixfold between 1990 and 1994. In 1994, that funding reached nearly £48 million. As of January this year, there were 171 hospices operating in England, with a total of 2,599 beds, 308 home care teams, 89 hospital support teams and 191 day hospices. Some of those are part of larger national voluntary bodies, but most are locally based individual charities such as the St. Peter and St. James's hospice. As the House will appreciate, the care of the terminally ill nationally is a large undertaking, which has grown enormously in the past 10 years.

As my hon. Friend said, since 1994, funding for specialist palliative care has been built into health authorities' allocations and has not been ring-fenced as it originally was. My hon. Friend is concerned that that practice has diminished support. I can tell him that my Department has a good working relationship with the National Council for Hospice and Specialist Palliative Care Services. We rely on that organisation to identify local problems. The council is co-ordinating a survey of all health authorities and is interviewing those responsible for palliative care. The picture is incomplete because the survey is expected to be published early next year, but the evidence so far is that health authorities are at least maintaining—I emphasise that word—their palliative care funding levels. The change in the funding approach was designed to ensure that health authorities planned for palliative care in the same way as they planned for other health services. Health authorities are free to negotiate with individual providers the level and form of support required to meet the palliative care needs of their population. That flexibility in the use of funding has enabled the palliative approach to become more widely adopted in all settings, including hospices, hospitals, nursing homes and the patient's own home.

It is, of course, essential that hospices and health authorities work in partnership when drawing up and developing local strategies for palliative care. Agreement between them must be based on the assessed health needs of the resident population and should take into account local priorities, available resources and existing patterns of services. That should allow resources to be used effectively and avoid undue duplication.

It is also important for health authorities to ensure that new developments do not divert resources from established palliative care units if they are delivering high quality care. That fact needs to be emphasised in the context of today's debate as I know that St. Peter and St. James's is a valued as well as an established palliative care unit. I am sure that that point will not be lost on the health authorities. Indeed, if there was any danger of that, we re-emphasised that point as recently as 15 October 1995 in guidance to all health authorities.

East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authority and West Sussex health authority are responsible for contracting for palliative care services in Sussex and the area served by the St. Peter and St. James's hospice. While I understand the wish of that hospice and those connected with it to secure as much funding as possible from their health authorities, it is for the two Sussex health authorities, as purchasers of health care for their residents, to determine what level of resources to devote to palliative care, and which particular providers to use.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes referred to the level of support being provided and mentioned a total contribution of approximately £60,000 from the two health authorities to the more than £400,000 required to maintain the hospice. Those are large sums of money for the authorities, but I readily agree that they are small in relation to the total sum required. My hon. Friend was correct to say that approximately 30 per cent. of the costs of patients from East Sussex are being matched by funds from their health authority, and that the percentage provided by the West Sussex authority to maintain patients from its area is even smaller—perhaps as low as 10 per cent.

I remind the Minister that those figures apply only to funding for in-patient services and not for other services.

I accept that, but those are the amounts being provided by the two health authorities.

The matter of what resources are available to the health authorities is a separate issue. As a Member of Parliament representing a Sussex constituency, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes will be aware of the difficulties faced by the West Sussex and the East Sussex, Brighton and Hove health authorities. This year, the disparity between the target and actual amounts that the East Sussex health authority should receive is more than £18 million, while for West Sussex the amount is more than £15 million. Those disparities are among the worst in the country. My hon. Friend will be aware that the authorities are some distance from the target amount of funding that they should receive.

My hon. Friend will also be aware that we are endeavouring to diminish the disparity between the ideal and actual amounts over time. Therefore, this year the two authorities received increases that were very much higher than inflation. They can also expect increases very much above inflation in future years. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be aware of the commitment made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at the Conservative party conference to real-term increases in the health budget, which will be reflected in the amount of money going to health authorities.

At this time of year, health authorities do not know how much money they will receive next year, but they will know fairly soon. I hope that the authorities will appreciate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes in this debate and bear in mind the situation facing St. Peter and St. James's hospice when they consider the disposition of their resources, which have been increased in real terms. I hope that they will consider the situation very carefully when they know where they stand.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes made an important point about the need for co-operation between the two health authorities. It is important that the problem does not slip between the fingers of both authorities as they are both taking their own point of view and not co-operating with one another. I am glad to be able to tell my hon. Friend that there is correspondence between the two authorities on the matter. As he knows, there is also correspondence outstanding between the hospice and the West Sussex health authority. So the problem is being dealt with. My hon. Friend also raised the important issue of ascertaining the exact financial position. I agree that that must happen soon, and I hope that the two authorities will talk with the hospice to deal with the problem.

I hope that my reply has reassured my hon. Friend that I should like the problems to be dealt with urgently by the health authorities, after they are made aware of the resources that will be available to them in the next financial year.

A couple of questions arise from the Minister's reply—which I much appreciated. He has certainly reassured me about what he would like to see happen, but it does not reassure me about the behaviour of the authorities. There have been long-drawn-out conversations between the East Sussex, Brighton and Hove authority and the West Sussex authority, which have reached a complete impasse. Based on my correspondence with the authorities, they have shown no sign in the past year of overcoming that impasse. Any additional guidelines that the Minister can provide would help. Any assistance that he can give to hospices, so that they can be on a more equal footing in their contractual arrangements, would also be appreciated.

The Minister mentioned the need to close the funding gap for the two authorities to bring them up to the national norm. Therefore—I did not anticipate that the debate would reach this conclusion—the problems of the St. Peter and St. James's hospice rest on the shoulders of the Minister.

Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that interventions should be used to intervene in the debate and not to make a second speech.

I agree absolutely, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I stand admonished by your ruling. I was seeking clarification from the Minister on two extremely important points. I hope that he has taken them on board. He still has a moment in which to apply his mind to them.

First, I realise that the problem has been a matter of debate between the two authorities. As a result of the points made by my hon. Friend in this debate, and particularly because of the immediacy of the financial problems faced by the hospice, I shall ask the authorities to re-examine the matter, in conjunction with the hospice, to discover the exact financial problems.

Secondly, I can reassure my hon. Friend that we realise the funding problems faced by the authorities. We hope that there will be further progress in narrowing the gap between the authorities' current position and the norm in the announcement about health authority funding for the next financial year. That will mean increased real resources for the two health authorities to tackle the problem and will allow them to give the problem the priority that they would wish to accord it.

Order. As the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) and the Minister are in the Chamber, we can begin the next debate early.

Thank you very much, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am pleased that we have an extra three minutes for the debate, because it is about a matter of great importance. I should say that I have corresponded with the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) on the matter, and I am glad that he is in the Chamber today. In accordance with previous rulings from Madam Speaker, I sent him a note last night to confirm that I would be speaking in the debate.

I should also say that I am a member of Unison, which is the union involved in the dispute. I am a former official of Unison, and was supported by it in the most recent general election. I am very proud to be a member of Unison and to be involved with it.

The dispute has been going on for just over a year. A group of women and one man, who are cleaners at the Hillingdon hospital, have been trying to get back their jobs. They have stood outside the hospital in foul, wet weather and in fine, dry weather, suffering harassment, abuse and abominable behaviour by passers-by. They have also suffered at the hands of the obdurate management of a very large, wealthy and powerful company, known as Pall Mall Services.

The background to the dispute is that, in October 1994, Pall Mall, Healthcare Support Services won a contract to provide cleaning services at the Hillingdon hospital. It sent all staff a letter, on 3 October 1994, which stated:

"Re: Transfer Of Contract—Initial Healthcare Services to Pall Mall Healthcare—Hillingdon Hospital, 17.10.94.

We are delighted to have won the contract to provide support services at Hillingdon Hospital and are pleased to confirm, following our presentation and individual meeting, your transfer from Initial Healthcare Services to Pall Mall Healthcare on 17th October 1994.

We will shortly be completing a contract of employment for you, but as you are transferring under the Transfer of Undertaking Regulations, your terms and conditions will remain the same.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you in advance for your help in making the transfer as smooth as possible and look forward to a successful working partnership as part of the Pall Mall team."

Those were high hopes indeed.

One year later, a number of staff received a letter saying:

"We wrote to you on 30th June 1995 giving you notice that your contract of employment would terminate on 30th September 1995 and confirming that a new contract of employment was on offer from 1st October. We wrote to you again on 29th August once again to offer you the opportunity to accept the new contract of employment.

We are sorry that you have chosen not to accept our offers of a new contract and confirm that accordingly your contract of employment terminated with effect from Saturday 30th September 1995.

If you wish to accept our offer it remains available for acceptance at the moment but will expire without further notice when we have no further vacancies."

There is an entire story between those two letters. Pall Mall took over the cleaning of Hillingdon hospital and, in accordance with the law, maintained the staff under the conditions set out in the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employees) Regulations 1981, and confirmed in writing that they would continue to be paid properly. Yet a very short time into the contract, Pall Mall did what it has tried to do in a number of hospitals—indeed, unfortunately, contract cleaners across the national health service too often try to do it—by introducing new pay and conditions, abolishing London weighting and forcing wage cuts of between £25 and £35 a week on people who were already receiving very low wages. The women concerned quite rightly said that they were not prepared to sign the new contracts of employment. They had been taken on in good faith by Pall Mall and had good faith in the company. Pall Mall broke that faith and tried to force the women to accept lower wages and worse working conditions, which is absolutely disgraceful.

Accordingly, Pall Mall took the opportunity to dismiss the cleaners. I have a list of some comparisons between the former terms and conditions and the new ones which shows, for example, that London weighting is no longer applicable, holidays are reduced, sick pay is likely to be reduced and basic wages are lowered. Indeed, the whole gamut of working conditions has been made considerably worse for the women employed at the hospital.

We must ask what is the Pall Mall group and why is it behaving in such a way. It is a very large organisation; it employs more than 10,000 people. Its turnover is more than £70 million a year. Its profits are more than £2 million a year. In 1994, it recorded a profit of £2.2 million, yet the giant organisation is built on sweat, low wages, poor working conditions and aggressive management techniques. The average pay of those in Pall Mall employment is not much more than £5,000 a year. Six Pall Mall directors pay themselves more than £300,000 a year. In other words, they consider themselves more valuable than 63 cleaners. That is the sort of organisation with which we are dealing.

Although the company was forced in 1994 to accept the TUPE regulations, it has not tried to adhere to them. Indeed, it has constantly harassed and lobbied the Government in its efforts to amend or renegotiate its way out of them because, when it wins a contract to take over cleaning in a hospital or any other place, it does not like to have to honour existing terms and conditions or take on the existing staff. It is not a model employer by any means. It has been found against in disputes on a number of occasions—most prominently and recently in a case of persistent sexual harassment against one woman employee, for which it had to pay out £10,000.

The purpose of today's debate is to bring to the attention of the House and—I hope—a much wider public what is going on in Hillingdon and many other hospitals. People who work for the NHS do so because they believe in it; they believe in universal health care. Some of the women at Hillingdon hospital have given 30 years' service to cleaning it. People might ask what is a cleaner. If one wants an efficient hospital that is properly run and managed, one needs managers, doctors, nurses and technicians, but one also needs catering staff, cleaners and maintenance workers. One needs people who are properly employed and treated in order to run a hospital.

The women concerned have given 30 years to ensuring that the hospital is a decent, clean and safe place to work. The huge, very profitable organisation of Pall Mall came along and took over the contract, probably realising fully that the price that it had offered for the takeover was unsustainable and that it would therefore cut the women's wages. In other words, it conned people in order to get the contract in the first place. It is abominable that the women were thrown out of their jobs as a result of the way in which Pall Mall behaved and are campaigning for their reinstatement. They are strongly supported by my union in the campaign.

As the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, Hillingdon hospital is in my constituency. I am sure that he knows that about 200 of the 230 members of staff accepted the conditions offered by Pall Mall Services. Those who did not have been engaged in the industrial action to which he has referred, although, happily that has not had an impact on the service provided by the hospital to patients. The hospital's trust has, with my full support and in response to my urging, attempted to bring both sides of the dispute together and to reach a settlement. Earlier in the year, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service brokered an agreement, which I believe was recommended by Unison but rejected by the staff concerned. It appears that the next step in the saga will be for the matter to go before an industrial tribunal. Will the hon. Gentleman comment on the agreement that Unison tried to broker and why it was rejected? He has told the House that he is a member of Unison and it may be valuable for him to comment.

I would have been happier if the hon. Gentleman had said that he supported the women's predicament and recognised the injustice that they feel. People do not reject offers of jobs without having very strong reasons for doing so. I think that they were absolutely entitled to reject the offer. The women have been wrongfully dismissed by Pall Mall and, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, their case is to be taken to a tribunal.

I was present at the hospital's annual general meeting and listened to the views expressed by the staff who were not offered new contracts under Unison. I have had further meetings with the hospital management as a result. One of the reasons why I am present is to tell the House that. I think that the hon. Gentleman will be assured of my concern.

Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman's comments do not reassure me at all. He has said that he has met the hospital management and other staff who, for their own reasons, fears or whatever else, accepted new contracts and conditions, but has not said whether he supports the women who have been thrown out of their jobs by the wealthy Pall Mall company. Does he think that it is right that women cleaners should work for less than £3 an hour?

I made it clear that I listened to the staff who had lost their jobs as a result of the events that the hon. Gentleman has described. It was as a result of listening to them that I immediately asked for further meetings with the hospital staff in an effort to bring to an end the regrettable dispute. There is no lack of sympathy or understanding on my part with the staff concerned.

I am glad that that is so. Given that, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will give his support to the women who have been standing outside the hospital for a year trying to get their jobs back and to ensure that all cleaners in all hospitals are paid a decent living wage. He and I would not like to work for, or try to live on, £3 an hour; we probably could not. Why should they or anybody else have to do so? Ancillary staff are treated disgracefully in the health service anyway, but those employed by contractors are considerably worse off. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise the absolute justice of the women's case and the wide support that they enjoy in the local community, from my trade union, Unison, and from a number of other unions.

People have had enough of this cavalier, anti-trade union approach to management which says that it does not matter how low the wages are provided that somebody can be found to do the job. In a time of high unemployment, it is possible to get people to do jobs for disgracefully low wages. That does not make such practices right, happy or just. I want to draw attention to the plight of the workers at Hillingdon hospital.

The Minister has a trade union background, even though he turned his back on it some years ago. Perhaps he can tell us why the national health service internal market deliberately encourages contractors to cut costs, to worsen conditions and to treat contract workers in that way. We would be far better off if we ended the principle of the internal market and instead started treating all national health service staff as crucial parts of a team that ensures that we have good-quality hospitals and working conditions.

The Minister must recognise that all is not well in this dispute any more than all is well in the current dispute in Northern Ireland. He should intervene to ensure that Pall Mall takes the staff back and employs them under conditions no less favourable than those that they were given in writing when the contract was taken over in 1994.

We should go a stage further than that. When contracts come up for renewal, we should end the principle of contracting out cleaning services and take staff directly into national health service employment so that they can be assured of good-quality working conditions and training.

There are problems and dangers for us all in the employment of contract workers. There have been many contract failures in the national health service, with cleaning being inadequately or badly done, staff being badly trained or untrained and incoming staff not being given health checks. Many issues need to be addressed.

The purpose of the debate is to draw attention to what has happened at Hillingdon hospital and the way in which those women have been treated. The wider community, particularly the Government, must intervene to stop the abuse of power by Pall Mall and the Pontius Pilate attitude of the hospital trust, replicated by the Department of Health, which is saying, "It is nothing to do with us. It is all a matter for the market."

Imagine the situation of people whose jobs have been sold to another employer over their heads and who are told a few months later, "Sorry. We did not really mean the promises that we gave you. We did not really mean to give you the undertakings that we gave six months ago. That was all window dressing to get the contract. Would you kindly accept a cut in wages, worse working conditions and less holiday pay? Would you kindly accept less enhanced pay for overtime, night time and weekend working? In other words, would you kindly do whatever we want you to do?" What would any of us do if faced with such a situation?

I do not blame those women for what they did. I have the deepest admiration and support for them, as, I believe, do many other people in hospitals, even those who felt that they had no alternative but to accept the unbridled power of the marketplace which forces them into worse working conditions.

My plea is for the Government to intervene to ensure that everybody working in a national health service institution enjoys conditions at least as good as nationally negotiated and agreed NHS conditions. The Minister must recognise that this obscenity can be put right only when proper national conditions are applicable to all workers.

The women are fighting a battle of enormous principle that will go down in history as such, akin to the current dispute at the Liverpool docks and other episodes in the great history of trade union struggles in this country when workers have stood up and said that they are not prepared to allow employers to ride roughshod over them and destroy a lifetime's gains in working conditions. Pall Mall should have some respect for 30 years' service in the NHS rather than casting those women out on the stones outside in the freezing air to campaign for their reinstatement.

I am proud to be associated with the trade union that supports those members. I very much hope that, soon, those women will be back in work in that hospital, able to continue the dedicated service that they have given to the national health service, rather than suffering disgraceful treatment at the hands of Pall Mall. We need to get a grip on the power of cleaning companies and their awful treatment of so many of their staff. Will the Minister explain why he has apparently been unable for so long to do anything and what he will do to ensure justice for these women?

It is most regrettable that the dispute has remained unresolved for more than a year. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) has made extreme efforts, which he has mentioned during the debate, to bring it to a resolution. However, it has not been resolved.

I sympathise with the predicament of those involved, but the parties to the dispute are a private company and a number of cleaning workers who parted with that company last year. I stress that the workers were not national health service employees at the time. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) may have given the contrary impression. Many of them had not been employees in the national health service for more than six years. Neither the national health service managers at Hillingdon nor I have any jurisdiction over the matter. Furthermore, given that industrial tribunal proceedings are now in progress, with the aggrieved workers claiming unfair dismissal by Pall Mall, we should be particularly careful to avoid any comment that might prejudice the case.

I must make one other point clear from the outset. The hospital has at all times during the dispute continued to provide its customary excellent service to patients. At no time has the quality of cleaning at the hospital been compromised and the contractor has continued to fulfil all its contractual obligations at the hospital. Patients, their relatives and friends and the residents of Hillingdon can be assured of the quality of health care provided by the hospital. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge will want to endorse that, particularly considering last week's debate on another matter.

Before discussing the circumstances of the dispute at Hillingdon, I should like to comment generally on the Government's policy on market testing—an issue that the hon. Member for Islington, North raised—particularly as it relates to non-core NHS services. By testing services through competition, we seek to ensure that the support services provided to national health service hospitals are the best available and provide the best value for money. Whether a support service is provided by the public or private sector depends solely on who best satisfies the criteria of quality and value.

As a result of the market testing initiative, the national health service has saved more than £1 billion since 1983. That means that £1 billion for investment in patient care has been made available. Apart from the cost savings achieved, market testing has also led to greater innovation, better specification of service needs and improved management, releasing resources from non-core support services and making them available for the core business of improving health and patient care, which is what the national health service is all about.

We estimate that the service contracts currently in place in the national health service are achieving an annual saving of between £100 million and £150 million. Again, that is money for use in direct patient care.

The Minister is keen to quote savings of between £100 million and £150 million on NHS contracts. Does he recognise that that saving comes straight out of the pockets of the lowest-paid people in the national health service, creating more poverty, worse working conditions and worse living conditions for many people? Is he proud of that?

The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The service improvement has come from a reconfiguration of services and greater efficiency by the providers. There has been no loss of quality in the service and, often, pay has not been reduced. The hon. Gentleman mentioned pay at Hillingdon. The rate for cleaners there is £3.69 an hour—one of the best in the area according to the Uxbridge and Hayes job centres. General airport cleaners at Heathrow—broadly comparable with Hillingdon staff—earn £3.50 an hour. The pay conditions implemented by Pall Mall at Hillingdon are no worse than is general for the area. Not only that, the hon. Gentleman failed to mention that, when the changes in the TUPE arrangements were negotiated, the workers were offered compensation of between £400 and £1,000. The hon. Gentleman cannot, therefore, say that the provider has behaved badly in this case.

I am glad that the Minister has given way on that point. He failed to say that the overtime and weekend rates were cut as a result of the change. Does he recognise—it is important that he does—that Pall Mall had a contractual agreement with the cleaners which it unilaterally broke in 1995? That is the nub of the argument. The company gave a solemn undertaking in October 1994 that the staff would be employed, under TUPE, on existing conditions of service. It broke that undertaking and subsequently dismissed the women from their jobs.

If the hon. Gentleman is reasonable, he will recognise—

I am.

I am glad to hear it. The hon. Gentleman should recognise that the changes were a result of renegotiation—for which compensation was paid—which was part of a change in the services that the provider wished to make.

I do not accept that.

Well, the fact is that the hon. Gentleman's own union negotiated an agreement which the workers did not accept. The hon. Gentleman made great play of the point that we should stand up for workers' rights and so forth, but when the union of which he is a member said to the workers in the dispute, "We advise you to settle on the terms that Pall Mall is willing to offer", they refused. Where does the hon. Gentleman stand? Is he in favour of trade union members accepting what has been negotiated by their officers or not?

The Minister and I both have a background of trade union negotiation and activity. The difference is that he pretends to forget it, whereas I do not. He knows perfectly well that, on many occasions, a union recommends something to its members which they subsequently do not accept. The duty of the union is then to continue to represent those members until they are satisfied with what is on offer. Unison has continued to represent those members, and it continues to campaign for their reinstatement and to try to force Pall Mall to keep to the agreement that it made in October 1994. What the public need to know from the Minister is whether he supports the Pall Mall group in its unilateral reneging on the conditions under which it employed the women in October 1994.

The hon. Gentlemans acknowledged the point that, unlike some of my colleagues, I have particular experience of trade unions. What that taught me was the realism that trade union negotiators often bring to situations where two sides may be very divided on what they wish to achieve. The practical negotiating skills that trade union negotiators often deploy should not be ignored. The fact is that Unison negotiators achieved an agreement which was then unilaterally turned down by the workers in question. One has to question why that was. I take no side on the issue, but I merely point out the facts. An agreement was brokered by Unison which the workers felt it right to turn down, for whatever reasons.

Before I was slightly sidetracked by the hon. Gentleman—quite reasonably, and I am not complaining about that—I was justifying the Government's approach to market testing. Market testing offers a practical and proven way in which to determine the best way in which to meet support service needs, in terms of both quality and value for money. It also gives local managers opportunities regularly to review support services in the light of market developments and in response to local circumstances and needs. Legislation ensures that employees' rights are protected when there is a transfer of an undertaking and guidance on market testing incorporating advice on the legislation has been issued to the national health service generally.

If a contract is awarded under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, which we all know as TUPE, staff transfer to the new contractor. Under TUPE, the new service provider, who is usually an incoming contractor, takes over the contracts of employment of all employees who were employed in the undertaking at the time of the relevant transfer. It is then up to him after a suitable period, if he wishes to do so, to renegotiate the contracts in the light of the situation as he sees it. It is not unusual to find that, in such a situation, the new provider offers compensation for any changes that he may wish to make in the contracts.

It is interesting that, of the people working for Pall Mall, as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge said, 200 accepted all the changes. The only people who did not do so were a particular group of workers who decided to go against the views of their own union and not to accept the position.

I shall now return to the position at Hillingdon. Hillingdon hospital market tested its hotel services in 1994 and awarded a five-year contract to Pall Mall in October of that year. The hotel services concerned were catering, sterile services, laundry and portering, as well as cleaning, which had originally been contracted out to a different firm in the late 1980s.

The estimated savings achieved against previous costs were £500,000 on a contract for hotel services worth about £4 million. The contract won by Pall Mall at Hillingdon hospital was one to which TUPE applied. As a result, both the national health service workers affected and the domestic staff, who were already privately employed, became employees of Pall Mall, keeping their existing terms and conditions of employment.

Pall Mall spent six months in negotiation and consultation over new contracts for the transferred staff. The package included new shift patterns and rates of pay comparable with other employees in similar jobs in the area. I have spelled out the exact figures for the hon. Gentleman. More than 90 per cent. of the transferred work force signed the new contracts in autumn 1995. Regrettably, 30 domestic staff refused to accept the new contract and their existing contracts were terminated by Pall Mall on 31 October last year. A further 22 staff signed the new contract but never went back to work and were deemed by Pall Mall to have dismissed themselves.

Earlier this year, ACAS brokered an arrangement between the parties in the dispute which was recommended by Unison, as I mentioned, but which its members unfortunately rejected. The reasonableness or otherwise of that arrangement is not something on which I wish to comment, given the current industrial tribunal hearing.

The fact is that Pall Mall employs approximately 210 staff at Hillingdon hospital. None is on strike and Pall Mall is meeting its contractual obligations at the hospital under the contract for the hotel and cleaning services.

What concerns me is the action taken by some of the more vociferous individuals involved in the dispute. I understand that at one point, pickets using loudhailers were causing such a commotion that the hospital was concerned for the treatment of patients in intensive care. Hospital management pleaded with the pickets to moderate their behaviour. There are, therefore, questions about the behaviour of the pickets and not only about the behaviour of the management.

I have been waiting for the Minister to get on to smearing people who have lost their jobs as a result of a contract granted to a wealthy multinational corporation. Can the Minister now tell us—I have asked him this three times already—whether he approves of Pall Mall's action in imposing new conditions of service on staff in breach of its undertaking in October 1994? An important principle is involved. The Minister should recognise the justice of the workers' case and the strong passions aroused by the company's behaviour instead of attacking people who are trying to defend their existing conditions of service.

I was pointing out that I am responsible for the health service. I was also pointing out that some patients at Hillingdon were being seriously inconvenienced and that their health may have been detrimentally affected by the behaviour of the pickets outside. I deplore that, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman does too. Whatever he may feel about the rights of the pickets in question, he should realise that they should not interfere with the provision of health care at Hillingdon hospital. Does he accept that? The hon. Gentleman says nothing, but I feel as strongly about that point as he does about his case.

Those women gave 30 years to the national health service. They have shown a greater commitment to the national health service than the Minister and his Government have ever shown. He should intervene in the dispute to ensure justice for the women rather than raising what are, in effect, red herrings surrounding the serious issue of the disgraceful treatment of the employees concerned.

Interfering with the proper treatment of health service patients is not to be taken lightly. I am disappointed by the hon. Gentleman's attitude.

The fact is that Pall Mall took over and ACAS brokered an agreement which was agreed to by Unison, of which the hon. Gentleman is a member, but the workers in question did not choose to accept it, for whatever reasons. I am not commenting on those reasons; the workers obviously feel that they have justice on their side. Others may take a different view. Those are the facts of the matter. I hope that, when the industrial tribunal looks at the case, it will take all aspects into account and will come to a reasonable conclusion. That is the right and proper thing to do and I am sure that that will be done.

In the mean time, Pall Mall continues to fulfil all its contract requirements to Hillingdon hospital. It is regrettable that a few of Pall Mall's workers came to be in dispute with the company and, as I have said, it is now for the industrial tribunal to consider the rights and wrongs of the case. The dispute is not a matter for the health service or for me. There is no suggestion that Hillingdon hospital has not acted properly at all times. On the issue of market testing, which the hon. Gentleman raised more generally, the Government do not intend to change a policy that has saved the national health service more than £1 billion. Market testing of national health service support services is not about contracting out services; it is aimed at producing more cost-effective services and better value for money from whatever source. That is precisely what has been achieved at Hillingdon and countless other hospitals. We certainly intend to continue what is an extremely sensible policy for the health of the nation.

I have two reasons to be grateful for the opportunity to discuss the proposed changes by Hillingdon borough council to the draft unitary development plan. First, the new planning proposals set out by the borough council cause the most acute local concern I have ever experienced in the 17 years that I have represented Ruislip-Northwood. Secondly, they raise aspects of environmental and housing policy that are of national significance, as they demonstrate the need to encourage the private rented sector, rather than relying on housing association developments subsidised by the taxpayer.

My constituency is largely residential, with some light industry at its southernmost extremity. Most people commute to London by tube or train, or travel by car to work at Heathrow airport or Stockley park or along the A4-M4 and A40-M40 corridors. Unemployment is the lowest of any Greater London constituency and, despite constant developmental pressures, limited school places and traffic congestion, Ruislip-Northwood is a pleasant place to live, to raise a family and to retire. It has excellent schools, good recreational facilities and playing fields and a high proportion of owner-occupied homes. In short, it comprises a harmonious blend of residential districts and public open space, underpinned with carefully designated, well preserved, green chain and metropolitan green belt areas.

That crucial harmony and balance have been deliberately put at risk by the Labour borough council's proposed changes to the UDP. When the plans became public in late July, proposing social housing development on up to 50 acres of green chain land, I immediately wrote to the leader of the Labour borough council, Councillor Chris Rogers, to protest that the wholesale social housing developments which were being promoted by the socialist borough council put at risk the quality of life of my constituents, would damage the environment irreparably and would be fiercely resisted by local residents.

It is worth quoting my letter verbatim, as it summarises the arguments clearly—not one of which was addressed by the Labour council leader in his curt reply:

"I am in receipt of your letter of 22nd July 1996. Your comments have been noted."

Hon. Members will agree that maintaining the value of my constituents' homes, retaining playing fields and recreation grounds for their children and designated public open spaces in a green chain of protected areas for people to walk, exercise their dogs and breathe freely when so much of their daily lives is spent strap-hanging on the underground travelling to and from work and enduring endless traffic jams, noise from aircraft and motorways, are worthy planning priorities for any responsible outer London borough.

Under the heading "Urbanisation of Ruislip-Northwood", I wrote as follows:

"Dear Councillor Rogers, I have been informed by Councillors in my constituency that Hillingdon Borough Council has arbitrarily and peremptorily altered the Hillingdon Draft Development Plan so as to permit the construction of very substantial amounts of social housing within my constituency.

First it would have been courteous if the Council had informed me in advance. Secondly and much more importantly these proposed developments on important predominantly green areas within Ruislip-Northwood will seriously degrade the local environment and prejudice the important amenity areas for local constituents.

The Field End Road and Sidmouth Drive recreation grounds are much appreciated by local people. Children have all too few areas on which to play and that the Council should deliberately curtail recreation space for children will be much resented and rightly, bitterly contested.

Likewise the St. Vincent's Hospital site is a particularly beautiful semi secluded area on the edge of Haste Hill which an aesthetically sensitive council responsible to the feelings of local people would wish to preserve.

It is clear that the Council has its own agenda to put as much open space as possible under concrete and brick. I believe my constituents will contest these thoroughly undesirable plans implacably and that they will organise to save our green fields from the clutches of inappropriate Council-sponsored developments.

Coming on top of your publicly quoted observations in favour of a Warner Bros Theme Park on green belt land in Uxbridge"—

in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby), who is here supporting me and is president of the Metropolitan London Green Belt Council—

"it is clear that preserving the quality of life for local residents from undesirable urbanisation does not feature as a policy of Hillingdon Borough Council.

A little bit of imagination and sensitivity to local feelings could preserve an attractive environment for generations to come. The Council clearly prefers to promote an impersonal urban sprawl. I give you notice that it will he fiercely resisted."

It is small wonder that local people have been incensed. They see elected Labour councillors, who should be the custodians of the local environment and quality of life, deliberately setting their face against them. The civic centre has been inundated with thousands of objections. Public meetings have been held on Field End recreation ground and Sidmouth drive playing fields, and protest handbills are displayed in countless windows nearby.

Local Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) who sent a message of support and has done much locally, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks), who is in his place, have been strenuous in their opposition, as have local residents' associations such as south Ruislip residents association in my constituency and Roxbourne residents association in Harrow, West. The Conservative councillors' group on Hillingdon borough council and responsible conservation groups, such as the Hillingdon group of the London Wildlife Trust, Friends of the Earth and the Sports Council have all protested in meticulous detail, itemising the environmental damage that would ensue from the plans.

I fully support what my hon. Friend has said today. Does he agree that the general thrust of the modifications should concern the House and the Minister—that the plan seeks to

"contribute as far as possible to the Borough's identified housing needs by seeking to ensure the highest acceptable number of new dwellings are provided in the form of affordable housing".

It takes no account of the need for other varieties of housing in the borough and is putting at risk green belt sites, green chain sites and other land locally.

The local authority has argued that the council has revised housing allocation, and is planning a 10 per cent. increase. That information came from the London Planning Advisory Committee. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will say a word or two about that.

It has also been argued by council officers that the inspector considering the original draft development plan made a comment to the effect that Hillingdon should be more proactive in the provision of such housing. I challenged them to show me where those words appeared. They do not appear anywhere; they are an interpretation by the council's officers, as was admitted to me at a recent meeting.

rose—

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I shall proceed for a sentence or two before giving way to my hon. Friend.

To his great credit, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment lodged his objections with Hillingdon borough council, which was an extremely responsible and unusual action and helped to concentrate the mind of the local authority. His action induced the council to bow to popular pressure and to withdraw the Sidmouth drive playing fields in my constituency from its plans for social housing development.

Both my hon. Friends the Members for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) and for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) will recall that back in the '70s we had problems with the infamous Alderman John Bartlett, who wanted to turn Ruislip-Northwood into one massive council estate for political reasons. When the Conservatives took power in 1978—I was the housing chairman—I was presented with a waiting list of 10,000 people. It was completely false, because it contained the names of people who had bought their own homes or been rehoused years before. I am convinced that the figures in Hillingdon today have been falsified to justify what is called social housing—I call it council housing—and to turn even more of Ruislip-Northwood, parts of Uxbridge and parts of my constituency into council estates.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who brings incomparable experience of great relevance to the subject. The question of density is crucial and my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge referred to the lack of balance, which perturbs my constituents particularly.

Now that the crucial democratic precedent has been established over Sidmouth drive playing fields, the council should also withdraw its proposals to build social housing on Field End road recreation ground in my constituency. The surface of the recreation ground is currently pockmarked with large boreholes, dug at the behest of the council at the council taxpayers' expense.

I tabled four parliamentary questions to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment about his commendable intervention. It is worth recording the reply yesterday by my hon. Friend the Minister who has responsibility for London:

"Objections were made by my right hon Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to twenty six proposed modifications. The objections were made to modifications that appeared to bring the plan into conflict with national or regional policies without good reason and where that was proposed would result in the plan lacking clarity such that it could cause great difficulties to users later.

Twelve modifications concerned Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land; six modifications would produce policies or proposals that were unclear or imprecise; and three modifications conflicted with our preferred approach to planning and affordable housing. A further five modifications to which objections were made related to proposals for residential development on two recreation grounds.

Objections to the published modifications in respect of the deposited Hillingdon Unitary Development Plan are addressed to the Council of the London Borough of Hillingdon. I would be pleased to provide a copy of the objections made by my right hon. Friend, but the approach in the first place should be to the Council."

I have obtained a copy through other sources and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Minister with responsibility for London for their assiduous efforts to ensure that the interests of my constituents were safeguarded.

My hon. Friend the Minister continues:

"We encourage local authorities to meet with objectors to discuss objections."

There have been no such effective meetings as yet, although on occasions there has been a dialogue of the deaf in the Ruislip-Northwood forum and elsewhere, but no proper reasoned dialogue.

"These informal meetings are helpful, not least to consider how the plan might be changed to meet the objections. Officials in the Government Office for London and those from Hillingdon have met recently to pursue the objections made by my right hon Friend. Further discussion is likely once Hillingdon's response to the objections they have received is known."

In those circumstances, it is clear that Hillingdon borough council should act democratically and rescind its proposed changes to the draft unitary development plan. At the least, it should initiate a public inquiry, with an inspector appointed by the Secretary of State. Following the inspector's report to the local authority, the Secretary of State could either direct appropriate modifications to the unitary development plan or call it in for his decision in its entirety.

My view is that the Labour Hillingdon borough council, which has clearly learnt nothing from the bad old days of socialist municipal vandalism at the hands of Alderman Bartlett 20 years ago, should waste no more council tax payers' money on proposals that have no public support, and should withdraw them totally at its unitary development plan sub-committee meeting on Thursday 21 November.

I reiterate my gratitude to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the House for allowing me to bring the matters to your attention. They may appear parochial, but they raise issues of national importance and planning questions of the utmost significance to my constituents.

It must be borne in mind that constituencies such as mine and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge and for Hayes and Harlington are under special developmental pressure. I mentioned the horrendous application by Warner Brothers to build a theme park and film studios in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge. It would have a crucial knock-on effect in my constituency. On top of that pressure we have the expansion of the motorway network and, of course, the potential fifth terminal at Heathrow airport.

The maintenance of pleasant residential areas, where it is possible to live happily and harmoniously in a balanced environment, is a crucial policy for any responsible local authority, which ours clearly is not. Luckily, it is a policy that I know that the Government support and that has received effective backing, throughout his tenure of office, from my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for London.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) on securing this debate. He has received support from my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) and for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks), and they are a formidable team. As has been pointed out, the proposed changes to Hillingdon's draft unitary development plan have caused considerable anxiety to the constituents of all three of my hon. Friends, and they have assiduously pursued those concerns.

The development plan—the unitary development plan in the case of Hillingdon—should under normal circumstances provide for rational and consistent decisions, and should give greater certainty about where new development will be permitted. In permitting plans, the right balance must be struck between the demand for development and the protection of the environment. In that way, plans have a key role to play in contributing to the Government's strategy for sustainable development. Plans help to provide for necessary development, but development should be sought only in locations that do not compromise the needs of future generations.

It is right that anyone with an interest in their area and the way it will develop in the future should participate in the preparation of the plan and help to influence the emerging proposals. Indeed, an objective of the plan-led system is to secure public involvement in shaping local planning policies.

More than two thirds of the London boroughs will have adopted plans by the end of the year. Until Hillingdon published its package of proposed modifications, it looked as if it too would be able to adopt its plan by the end of this year. Hillingdon has already taken its plan to public inquiry. The inspector's report recommended modifications to the plan where the modification would provide a definite improvement.

However, Hillingdon's modifications go further. They are numerous and complex. Several are at variance with the inspector's recommendations, and some modifications bring forward new proposals. While there may be occasions when local reasons support disagreement with an inspector's recommendation, the expectation is that authorities will wish to accept the inspector's recommendations in most cases.

Given what is included in Hillingdon's proposed modifications, the borough cannot be surprised to have received so many objections. I understand that it has received 4,000 or more, the majority relating to the proposals for affordable housing on the Field End and Sidmouth drive recreation grounds.

The modifications are controversial in other ways. For example, there are proposals that affect the metropolitan green belt and metropolitan open land, including proposals for housing. There are also changes in the designation of open areas currently identified as forming part of the green chains that my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood mentioned. It is fair to say that we would prefer to let local authorities get on with their plan-making. However, we will object where the plan is at odds with national or regional policies without good reason, or where it is so technically defective that it could cause great difficulties to users later. As my hon. Friend has already mentioned, we have objected to several of the modifications proposed by Hillingdon. We have objected to significant changes to the green belt and metropolitan open land. Our policy is clear: the essential characteristic of green belts is their longevity. Their protection must be maintained as far as can be seen ahead. Our planning policy guidance note on green belts—PPG2—advises that, once green belt boundaries have been defined, they should be altered only in exceptional circumstances.

Does my hon. Friend agree that another principal aspect of green belt policy is the openness of land? So many people forget that openness is a key factor and that it needs to be borne in mind. Without openness, we have urban sprawl, we have development, we have towns joining together and we lose the benefit of living in a balanced, decent community.

You can see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that my hon. Friend is well versed in green belt matters. As president of the London green belt group, he makes his expertise clear.

As my hon. Friends are aware, the principles of control over development in the green belt also apply to metropolitan open land. Other proposals brought forward by the Hillingdon modifications are clearly of local concern but do not necessarily raise issues that would warrant an objection from us. The changes to the proposed green chains are an example.

Although the modifications affecting the Field End and Sidmouth Drive recreation grounds were part of a proposed green chain, they raise different issues. Here Hillingdon has proposed to build on the recreation grounds. Open space and playing fields will be lost. I am not entirely sure how much open space or how many playing fields will be lost, because Hillingdon council has not made the modifications clear.

Strategic guidance looks to the boroughs to maintain and enhance the quality of all London's open spaces, particularly our parks. We expect to see policies in UDPs for the protection of open spaces. Our planning policy guidance for sport and recreation—PPG17—makes it clear that all playing fields are of special significance and that, if they are not required for their original purpose, they may be able to meet the growing need for recreational land in the wider community. Our expectation is that playing fields will normally be protected.

For these reasons, we objected to the modifications affecting the recreation grounds. Frankly, we also needed to object because what was proposed was far from clear. We do not know how much open space will be lost, how much development is proposed or whether it is necessary—in other words, the sort of questions that my hon. Friends and their constituents are asking.

It is apparent that local people feel strongly that a further UDP inquiry is warranted. In the first place, this is for Hillingdon to consider, but we have advised planning authorities that a further inquiry will be necessary where objections to modifications raise issues that were not examined at an earlier stage.

I understand that Hillingdon officers are preparing a report for their members' committee meeting to be held on 21 November, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood mentioned. I anticipate that the report will set out the options on the way forward—including, we hope, a further local inquiry.

I urge my hon. Friends—although I realise that I do not need to urge them—to continue to press their concerns with the local authority. We will keep a close eye on the plan and pursue our objections until we are satisfied that the proposals do not conflict with our policy guidance. It is, of course, too early to consider whether intervention in the plan is warranted. We must first wait to see what else emerges from Hillingdon's consideration of the objections that it has received. I hope that the council is receptive and responsive.